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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Book of Ghosts, by Sabine Baring-Gould
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: A Book of Ghosts
+
+Author: Sabine Baring-Gould
+
+Illustrator: David Murray Smith
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2011 [eBook #36638]
+[Most recently updated: December 31, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF GHOSTS ***
+
+
+
+
+                       A BOOK OF GHOSTS
+
+                   BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
+
+
+    WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY D. MURRAY SMITH
+
+    SECOND EDITION
+
+    METHUEN & CO.
+    36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+    LONDON
+
+    _Colonial Library_
+
+    _First Published      October 1904_
+    _Second Edition       December 1904_
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "WHO ARE YOU?"]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Some of the stories in this volume have already appeared in print. "The
+Red-haired Girl" in _The Windsor Magazine_; "Colonel Halifax's Ghost
+Story" in _The Illustrated English Magazine_; "Glámr" I told in my
+_Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas_, published in 1863, and long ago out of
+print. "The Bold Venture" appeared in _The Graphic_; "The 9.30 Up-train"
+as long ago as 1853 in _Once a Week_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+JEAN BOUCHON
+
+POMPS AND VANITIES
+
+MCALISTER
+
+THE LEADEN RING
+
+THE MOTHER OF PANSIES
+
+THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
+
+A PROFESSIONAL SECRET
+
+H. P.
+
+GLÁMR
+
+COLONEL HALIFAX'S GHOST STORY
+
+THE MEREWIGS
+
+THE "BOLD VENTURE"
+
+MUSTAPHA
+
+LITTLE JOE GANDER
+
+A DEAD FINGER
+
+BLACK RAM
+
+A HAPPY RELEASE
+
+THE 9.30 UP-TRAIN
+
+ON THE LEADS
+
+AUNT JOANNA
+
+THE WHITE FLAG
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Then the bride put back her veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister Letice"
+
+"Her hat was blown off, and next instant a detonation rang through her
+head as though a gun had been fired into her ear"
+
+"If he went out for a walk they trotted forth with him, some before,
+some following"
+
+"You let that Mustapha come in, and try and stick his knife into me"
+
+"'Mammy!' said he; 'Mammy! my violin cost me three shillings and
+sixpence, and I can't make it play no-ways'"
+
+"I believe that they are talking goody-goody"
+
+"She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table"
+
+
+
+
+A BOOK OF GHOSTS
+
+
+
+
+JEAN BOUCHON
+
+
+I was in Orléans a good many years ago. At the time it was my purpose to
+write a life of Joan of Arc, and I considered it advisable to visit the
+scenes of her exploits, so as to be able to give to my narrative some
+local colour.
+
+But I did not find Orléans answer to my expectations. It is a dull town,
+very modern in appearance, but with that measly and decrepit look which
+is so general in French towns. There was a Place Jeanne d'Arc, with an
+equestrian statue of her in the midst, flourishing a banner. There was
+the house that the Maid had occupied after the taking of the city, but,
+with the exception of the walls and rafters, it had undergone so much
+alteration and modernisation as to have lost its interest. A museum of
+memorials of la Pucelle had been formed, but possessed no genuine
+relics, only arms and tapestries of a later date.
+
+The city walls she had besieged, the gate through which she had burst,
+had been levelled, and their places taken by boulevards. The very
+cathedral in which she had knelt to return thanks for her victory was
+not the same. That had been blown up by the Huguenots, and the cathedral
+that now stands was erected on its ruins in 1601.
+
+There was an ormolu figure of Jeanne on the clock--never wound up--upon
+the mantelshelf in my room at the hotel, and there were chocolate
+figures of her in the confectioners' shop-windows for children to suck.
+When I sat down at 7 p.m. to table d'hôte, at my inn, I was out of
+heart. The result of my exploration of sites had been unsatisfactory;
+but I trusted on the morrow to be able to find material to serve my
+purpose in the municipal archives of the town library.
+
+My dinner ended, I sauntered to a café.
+
+That I selected opened on to the Place, but there was a back entrance
+near to my hotel, leading through a long, stone-paved passage at the
+back of the houses in the street, and by ascending three or four stone
+steps one entered the long, well-lighted café. I came into it from the
+back by this means, and not from the front.
+
+I took my place and called for a café-cognac. Then I picked up a French
+paper and proceeded to read it--all but the feuilleton. In my experience
+I have never yet come across anyone who reads the feuilletons in a
+French paper; and my impression is that these snippets of novel are
+printed solely for the purpose of filling up space and disguising the
+lack of news at the disposal of the editors. The French papers borrow
+their information relative to foreign affairs largely from the English
+journals, so that they are a day behind ours in the foreign news that
+they publish.
+
+Whilst I was engaged in reading, something caused me to look up, and I
+noticed standing by the white marble-topped table, on which was my
+coffee, a waiter, with a pale face and black whiskers, in an expectant
+attitude.
+
+I was a little nettled at his precipitancy in applying for payment, but
+I put it down to my being a total stranger there; and without a word I
+set down half a franc and a ten centimes coin, the latter as his
+_pourboire_. Then I proceeded with my reading.
+
+I think a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when I rose to depart, and
+then, to my surprise, I noticed the half-franc still on the table, but
+the sous piece was gone.
+
+I beckoned to a waiter, and said: "One of you came to me a little while
+ago demanding payment. I think he was somewhat hasty in pressing for it;
+however, I set the money down, and the fellow has taken the tip, and has
+neglected the charge for the coffee."
+
+"_Sapristi!_" exclaimed the _garçon_; "Jean Bouchon has been at his
+tricks again."
+
+I said nothing further; asked no questions. The matter did not concern
+me, or indeed interest me in the smallest degree; and I left.
+
+Next day I worked hard in the town library. I cannot say that I lighted
+on any unpublished documents that might serve my purpose.
+
+I had to go through the controversial literature relative to whether
+Jeanne d'Arc was burnt or not, for it has been maintained that a person
+of the same name, and also of Arques, died a natural death some time
+later, and who postured as the original warrior-maid. I read a good many
+monographs on the Pucelle, of various values; some real contributions to
+history, others mere second-hand cookings-up of well-known and
+often-used material. The sauce in these latter was all that was new.
+
+In the evening, after dinner, I went back to the same café and called
+for black coffee with a nip of brandy. I drank it leisurely, and then
+retreated to the desk where I could write some letters.
+
+I had finished one, and was folding it, when I saw the same pale-visaged
+waiter standing by with his hand extended for payment. I put my hand
+into my pocket, pulled out a fifty centimes piece and a coin of two
+sous, and placed both beside me, near the man, and proceeded to put my
+letter in an envelope, which I then directed.
+
+Next I wrote a second letter, and that concluded, I rose to go to one of
+the tables and to call for stamps, when I noticed that again the silver
+coin had been left untouched, but the copper piece had been taken away.
+
+I tapped for a waiter.
+
+"_Tiens_," said I, "that fellow of yours has been bungling again. He has
+taken the tip and has left the half-franc."
+
+"Ah! Jean Bouchon once more!"
+
+"But who is Jean Bouchon?"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders, and, instead of answering my query,
+said: "I should recommend monsieur to refuse to pay Jean Bouchon
+again--that is, supposing monsieur intends revisiting this café."
+
+"I most assuredly will not pay such a noodle," I said; "and it passes my
+comprehension how you can keep such a fellow on your staff."
+
+I revisited the library next day, and then walked by the Loire, that
+rolls in winter such a full and turbid stream, and in summer, with a
+reduced flood, exposes gravel and sand-banks. I wandered around the
+town, and endeavoured vainly to picture it, enclosed by walls and drums
+of towers, when on April 29th, 1429, Jeanne threw herself into the town
+and forced the English to retire, discomfited and perplexed.
+
+In the evening I revisited the café and made my wants known as before.
+Then I looked at my notes, and began to arrange them.
+
+Whilst thus engaged I observed the waiter, named Jean Bouchon, standing
+near the table in an expectant attitude as before. I now looked him full
+in the face and observed his countenance. He had puffy white cheeks,
+small black eyes, thick dark mutton-chop whiskers, and a broken nose. He
+was decidedly an ugly man, but not a man with a repulsive expression of
+face.
+
+"No," said I, "I will give you nothing. I will not pay you. Send another
+_garçon_ to me."
+
+As I looked at him to see how he took this refusal, he seemed to fall
+back out of my range, or, to be more exact, the lines of his form and
+features became confused. It was much as though I had been gazing on a
+reflection in still water; that something had ruffled the surface, and
+all was broken up and obliterated. I could see him no more. I was
+puzzled and a bit startled, and I rapped my coffee-cup with the spoon to
+call the attention of a waiter. One sprang to me immediately.
+
+"See!" said I, "Jean Bouchon has been here again; I told him that I
+would not pay him one sou, and he has vanished in a most perplexing
+manner. I do not see him in the room."
+
+"No, he is not in the room."
+
+"When he comes in again, send him to me. I want to have a word with
+him."
+
+The waiter looked confused, and replied: "I do not think that Jean will
+return."
+
+"How long has he been on your staff?"
+
+"Oh! he has not been on our staff for some years."
+
+"Then why does he come here and ask for payment for coffee and what else
+one may order?"
+
+"He never takes payment for anything that has been consumed. He takes
+only the tips."
+
+"But why do you permit him to do that?"
+
+"We cannot help ourselves."
+
+"He should not be allowed to enter the café."
+
+"No one can keep him out."
+
+"This is surpassing strange. He has no right to the tips. You should
+communicate with the police."
+
+The waiter shook his head. "They can do nothing. Jean Bouchon died in
+1869."
+
+"Died in 1869!" I repeated.
+
+"It is so. But he still comes here. He never pesters the old customers,
+the inhabitants of the town--only visitors, strangers."
+
+"Tell me all about him."
+
+"Monsieur must pardon me now. We have many in the place, and I have my
+duties."
+
+"In that case I will drop in here to-morrow morning when you are
+disengaged, and I will ask you to inform me about him. What is your
+name?"
+
+"At monsieur's pleasure--Alphonse."
+
+Next morning, in place of pursuing the traces of the Maid of Orléans, I
+went to the café to hunt up Jean Bouchon. I found Alphonse with a duster
+wiping down the tables. I invited him to a table and made him sit down
+opposite me. I will give his story in substance, only where advisable
+recording his exact words.
+
+Jean Bouchon had been a waiter at this particular café. Now in some of
+these establishments the attendants are wont to have a box, into which
+they drop all the tips that are received; and at the end of the week it
+is opened, and the sum found in it is divided _pro rata_ among the
+waiters, the head waiter receiving a larger portion than the others.
+This is not customary in all such places of refreshment, but it is in
+some, and it was so in this café. The average is pretty constant, except
+on special occasions, as when a fête occurs; and the waiters know within
+a few francs what their perquisites will be.
+
+But in the café where served Jean Bouchon the sum did not reach the
+weekly total that might have been anticipated; and after this deficit
+had been noted for a couple of months the waiters were convinced that
+there was something wrong, somewhere or somehow. Either the common box
+was tampered with, or one of them did not put in his tips received. A
+watch was set, and it was discovered that Jean Bouchon was the
+defaulter. When he had received a gratuity, he went to the box, and
+pretended to put in the coin, but no sound followed, as would have been
+the case had one been dropped in.
+
+There ensued, of course, a great commotion among the waiters when this
+was discovered. Jean Bouchon endeavoured to brave it out, but the
+_patron_ was appealed to, the case stated, and he was dismissed. As he
+left by the back entrance, one of the younger _garçons_ put out his leg
+and tripped Bouchon up, so that he stumbled and fell headlong down the
+steps with a crash on the stone floor of the passage. He fell with such
+violence on his forehead that he was taken up insensible. His bones were
+fractured, there was concussion of the brain, and he died within a few
+hours without recovering consciousness.
+
+"We were all very sorry and greatly shocked," said Alphonse; "we did not
+like the man, he had dealt dishonourably by us, but we wished him no
+ill, and our resentment was at an end when he was dead. The waiter who
+had tripped him up was arrested, and was sent to prison for some months,
+but the accident was due to _une mauvaise plaisanterie_ and no malice
+was in it, so that the young fellow got off with a light sentence. He
+afterwards married a widow with a café at Vierzon, and is there, I
+believe, doing well.
+
+"Jean Bouchon was buried," continued Alphonse; "and we waiters attended
+the funeral and held white kerchiefs to our eyes. Our head waiter even
+put a lemon into his, that by squeezing it he might draw tears from his
+eyes. We all subscribed for the interment, that it should be
+dignified--majestic as becomes a waiter."
+
+"And do you mean to tell me that Jean Bouchon has haunted this café ever
+since?"
+
+"Ever since 1869," replied Alphonse.
+
+"And there is no way of getting rid of him?"
+
+"None at all, monsieur. One of the Canons of Bourges came in here one
+evening. We did suppose that Jean Bouchon would not approach, molest an
+ecclesiastic, but he did. He took his _pourboire_ and left the rest,
+just as he treated monsieur. Ah! monsieur! but Jean Bouchon did well in
+1870 and 1871 when those pigs of Prussians were here in occupation. The
+officers came nightly to our café, and Jean Bouchon was greatly on the
+alert. He must have carried away half of the gratuities they offered. It
+was a sad loss to us."
+
+"This is a very extraordinary story," said I.
+
+"But it is true," replied Alphonse.
+
+Next day I left Orléans. I gave up the notion of writing the life of
+Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be
+gleaned on her history--in fact, she had been thrashed out.
+
+Years passed, and I had almost forgotten about Jean Bouchon, when, the
+other day, I was in Orléans once more, on my way south, and at once the
+whole story recurred to me.
+
+I went that evening to the same café. It had been smartened up since I
+was there before. There was more plate glass, more gilding; electric
+light had been introduced, there were more mirrors, and there were also
+ornaments that had not been in the café before.
+
+I called for café-cognac and looked at a journal, but turned my eyes on
+one side occasionally, on the look-out for Jean Bouchon. But he did not
+put in an appearance. I waited for a quarter of an hour in expectation,
+but saw no sign of him.
+
+Presently I summoned a waiter, and when he came up I inquired: "But
+where is Jean Bouchon?"
+
+"Monsieur asks after Jean Bouchon?" The man looked surprised.
+
+"Yes, I have seen him here previously. Where is he at present?"
+
+"Monsieur has seen Jean Bouchon? Monsieur perhaps knew him. He died in
+1869."
+
+"I know that he died in 1869, but I made his acquaintance in 1874. I saw
+him then thrice, and he accepted some small gratuities of me."
+
+"Monsieur tipped Jean Bouchon?"
+
+"Yes, and Jean Bouchon accepted my tips."
+
+"_Tiens_, and Jean Bouchon died five years before."
+
+"Yes, and what I want to know is how you have rid yourselves of Jean
+Bouchon, for that you have cleared the place of him is evident, or he
+would have been pestering me this evening." The man looked disconcerted
+and irresolute.
+
+"Hold," said I; "is Alphonse here?"
+
+"No, monsieur, Alphonse has left two or three years ago. And monsieur
+saw Jean Bouchon in 1874. I was not then here. I have been here only six
+years."
+
+"But you can in all probability inform me of the manner of getting quit
+of Jean."
+
+"Monsieur! I am very busy this evening, there are so many gentlemen come
+in."
+
+"I will give you five francs if you will tell me all--all--succinctly
+about Jean Bouchon."
+
+"Will monsieur be so good as to come here to-morrow during the morning?
+and then I place myself at the disposition of monsieur."
+
+"I shall be here at eleven o'clock."
+
+At the appointed time I was at the café. If there is an institution that
+looks ragged and dejected and dissipated, it is a café in the morning,
+when the chairs are turned upside-down, the waiters are in aprons and
+shirt-sleeves, and a smell of stale tobacco lurks about the air, mixed
+with various other unpleasant odours.
+
+The waiter I had spoken to on the previous evening was looking out for
+me. I made him seat himself at a table with me. No one else was in the
+saloon except another _garçon_, who was dusting with a long
+feather-brush.
+
+"Monsieur," began the waiter, "I will tell you the whole truth. The
+story is curious, and perhaps everyone would not believe it, but it is
+well _documentée_. Jean Bouchon was at one time in service here. We had
+a box. When I say we, I do not mean myself included, for I was not here
+at the time."
+
+"I know about the common box. I know the story down to my visit to
+Orléans in 1874, when I saw the man."
+
+"Monsieur has perhaps been informed that he was buried in the
+cemetery?"
+
+"I do know that, at the cost of his fellow-waiters."
+
+"Well, monsieur, he was poor, and his fellow-waiters, though
+well-disposed, were not rich. So he did not have a grave _en
+perpétuité_. Accordingly, after many years, when the term of consignment
+was expired, and it might well be supposed that Jean Bouchon had
+mouldered away, his grave was cleared out to make room for a fresh
+occupant. Then a very remarkable discovery was made. It was found that
+his corroded coffin was crammed--literally stuffed--with five and ten
+centimes pieces, and with them were also some German coins, no doubt
+received from those pigs of Prussians during the occupation of Orléans.
+This discovery was much talked about. Our proprietor of the café and the
+head waiter went to the mayor and represented to him how matters
+stood--that all this money had been filched during a series of years
+since 1869 from the waiters. And our _patron_ represented to him that it
+should in all propriety and justice be restored to us. The mayor was a
+man of intelligence and heart, and he quite accepted this view of the
+matter, and ordered the surrender of the whole coffin-load of coins to
+us, the waiters of the café."
+
+"So you divided it amongst you."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur; we did not. It is true that the money might
+legitimately be regarded as belonging to us. But then those defrauded,
+or most of them, had left long ago, and there were among us some who had
+not been in service in the café more than a year or eighteen months. We
+could not trace the old waiters. Some were dead, some had married and
+left this part of the country. We were not a corporation. So we held a
+meeting to discuss what was to be done with the money. We feared,
+moreover, that unless the spirit of Jean Bouchon were satisfied, he
+might continue revisiting the café and go on sweeping away the tips. It
+was of paramount importance to please Jean Bouchon, to lay out the money
+in such a manner as would commend itself to his feelings. One suggested
+one thing, one another. One proposed that the sum should be expended on
+masses for the repose of Jean's soul. But the head waiter objected to
+that. He said that he thought he knew the mind of Jean Bouchon, and that
+this would not commend itself to it. He said, did our head waiter, that
+he knew Jean Bouchon from head to heels. And he proposed that all the
+coins should be melted up, and that out of them should be cast a statue
+of Jean Bouchon in bronze, to be set up here in the café, as there were
+not enough coins to make one large enough to be erected in a Place. If
+monsieur will step with me he will see the statue; it is a superb work
+of art."
+
+He led the way, and I followed.
+
+In the midst of the café stood a pedestal, and on this basis a bronze
+figure about four feet high. It represented a man reeling backward, with
+a banner in his left hand, and the right raised towards his brow, as
+though he had been struck there by a bullet. A sabre, apparently fallen
+from his grasp, lay at his feet. I studied the face, and it most
+assuredly was utterly unlike Jean Bouchon with his puffy cheeks,
+mutton-chop whiskers, and broken nose, as I recalled him.
+
+"But," said I, "the features do not--pardon me--at all resemble those of
+Jean Bouchon. This might be the young Augustus, or Napoleon I. The
+profile is quite Greek."
+
+"It may be so," replied the waiter. "But we had no photograph to go by.
+We had to allow the artist to exercise his genius, and, above all, we
+had to gratify the spirit of Jean Bouchon."
+
+"I see. But the attitude is inexact. Jean Bouchon fell down the steps
+headlong, and this represents a man staggering backwards."
+
+"It would have been inartistic to have shown him precipitated forwards;
+besides, the spirit of Jean might not have liked it."
+
+"Quite so. I understand. But the flag?"
+
+"That was an idea of the artist. Jean could not be made holding a
+coffee-cup. You will see the whole makes a superb subject. Art has its
+exigencies. Monsieur will see underneath is an inscription on the
+pedestal."
+
+I stooped, and with some astonishment read--
+
+              "JEAN BOUCHON
+        MORT SUR LE CHAMP DE GLOIRE
+                   1870
+    DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI."
+
+"Why!" objected I, "he died from falling a cropper in the back passage,
+not on the field of glory."
+
+"Monsieur! all Orléans is a field of glory. Under S. Aignan did we not
+repel Attila and his Huns in 451? Under Jeanne d'Arc did we not repulse
+the English--monsieur will excuse the allusion--in 1429. Did we not
+recapture Orléans from the Germans in November, 1870?"
+
+"That is all very true," I broke in. "But Jean Bouchon neither fought
+against Attila nor with la Pucelle, nor against the Prussians. Then
+'_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_' is rather strong, considering
+the facts."
+
+"How? Does not monsieur see that the sentiment is patriotic and
+magnificent?"
+
+"I admit that, but dispute the application."
+
+"Then why apply it? The sentiment is all right."
+
+"But by implication it refers to Jean Bouchon, who died, not for his
+country, but in a sordid coffee-house brawl. Then, again, the date is
+wrong. Jean Bouchon died in 1869, not in 1870."
+
+"That is only out by a year."
+
+"Yes, but with this mistake of a year, and with the quotation from
+Horace, and with the attitude given to the figure, anyone would suppose
+that Jean Bouchon had fallen in the retaking of Orléans from the
+Prussians."
+
+"Ah! monsieur, who looks on a monument and expects to find thereon the
+literal truth relative to the deceased?"
+
+"This is something of a sacrifice to truth," I demurred.
+
+"Sacrifice is superb!" said the waiter. "There is nothing more noble,
+more heroic than sacrifice."
+
+"But not the sacrifice of truth."
+
+"Sacrifice is always sacrifice."
+
+"Well," said I, unwilling further to dispute, "this is certainly a great
+creation out of nothing."
+
+"Not out of nothing; out of the coppers that Jean Bouchon had filched
+from us, and which choked up his coffin."
+
+"Jean Bouchon has been seen no more?"
+
+"No, monsieur. And yet--yes, once, when the statue was unveiled. Our
+_patron_ did that. The café was crowded. All our _habitués_ were there.
+The _patron_ made a magnificent oration; he drew a superb picture of the
+moral, intellectual, social, and political merits of Jean Bouchon. There
+was not a dry eye among the audience, and the speaker choked with
+emotion. Then, as we stood in a ring, not too near, we saw--I was there
+and I distinctly saw, so did the others--Jean Bouchon standing with his
+back to us, looking intently at the statue of himself. Monsieur, as he
+thus stood I could discern his black mutton-chop whiskers projecting
+upon each side of his head. Well, sir, not one word was spoken. A dead
+silence fell upon all. Our _patron_ ceased to speak, and wiped his eyes
+and blew his nose. A sort of holy awe possessed us all. Then, after the
+lapse of some minutes, Jean Bouchon turned himself about, and we all saw
+his puffy pale cheeks, his thick sensual lips, his broken nose, his
+little pig's eyes. He was very unlike his idealised portrait in the
+statue; but what matters that? It gratified the deceased, and it injured
+no one. Well, monsieur, Jean Bouchon stood facing us, and he turned his
+head from one side to another, and gave us all what I may term a greasy
+smile. Then he lifted up his hands as though invoking a blessing on us
+all, and vanished. Since then he has not been seen."
+
+
+
+
+POMPS AND VANITIES
+
+
+Colonel Mountjoy had an appointment in India that kept him there
+permanently. Consequently he was constrained to send his two daughters
+to England when they were quite children. His wife had died of cholera
+at Madras. The girls were Letice and Betty. There was a year's
+difference in their ages, but they were extraordinarily alike, so much
+so that they might have been supposed to be twins.
+
+Letice was given up to the charge of Miss Mountjoy, her father's sister,
+and Betty to that of Lady Lacy, her maternal aunt. Their father would
+have preferred that his daughters should have been together, but there
+were difficulties in the way; neither of the ladies was inclined to be
+burdened with both, and if both had been placed with one the other might
+have regarded and resented this as a slight.
+
+As the children grew up their likeness in feature became more close, but
+they diverged exceedingly in expression. A sullenness, an unhappy look,
+a towering fire of resentment characterised that of Letice, whereas the
+face of Betty was open and gay.
+
+This difference was due to the difference in their bringing up.
+
+Lady Lacy, who had a small house in North Devon, was a kindly,
+intellectual, and broad-minded old lady, of sweet disposition but a
+decided will. She saw a good deal of society, and did her best to train
+Betty to be an educated and liberal-minded woman of culture and
+graceful manners. She did not send her to school, but had her taught at
+home; and on the excuse that her eyes were weak by artificial light she
+made the girl read to her in the evenings, and always read books that
+were standard and calculated to increase her knowledge and to develop
+her understanding. Lady Lacy detested all shams, and under her influence
+Betty grew up to be thoroughly straightforward, healthy-minded, and
+true.
+
+On the other hand, Miss Mountjoy was, as Letice called her, a Killjoy.
+She had herself been reared in the midst of the Clapham sect; had become
+rigid in all her ideas, narrow in all her sympathies, and a bundle of
+prejudices.
+
+The present generation of young people know nothing of the system of
+repression that was exercised in that of their fathers and mothers. Now
+the tendency is wholly in the other direction, and too greatly so. It is
+possibly due to a revulsion of feeling against a training that is looked
+back upon with a shudder.
+
+To that narrow school there existed but two categories of men and women,
+the Christians and the Worldlings, and those who pertained to it
+arrogated to themselves the former title. The Judgment had already begun
+with the severance of the sheep from the goats, and the saints who
+judged the world had their Jerusalem at Clapham.
+
+In that school the works of the great masters of English literature,
+Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, were taboo; no work of imagination was
+tolerated save the Apocalypse, and that was degraded into a polemic by
+such scribblers as Elliot and Cumming.
+
+No entertainments, not even the oratorios of Handel, were tolerated;
+they savoured of the world. The nearest approach to excitement was found
+in a missionary meeting. The Chinese contract the feet of their
+daughters, but those English Claphamites cramped the minds of their
+children. The Venetians made use of an iron prison, with gradually
+contracting walls, that finally crushed the life out of the captive.
+But these elect Christians put their sons and daughters into a school
+that squeezed their energies and their intelligences to death.
+
+Dickens caricatured such people in Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Chadband; but he
+sketched them only in their external aspect, and left untouched their
+private action in distorting young minds, maiming their wills, damping
+down all youthful buoyancy.
+
+But the result did not answer the expectations of those who adopted this
+system with the young. Some daughters, indeed, of weaker wills were
+permanently stunted and shaped on the approved model, but nearly all the
+sons, and most of the daughters, on obtaining their freedom, broke away
+into utter frivolity and dissipation, or, if they retained any religious
+impressions, galloped through the Church of England, performing strange
+antics on the way, and plunged into the arms of Rome.
+
+Such was the system to which the high-spirited, strong-willed Letice was
+subjected, and from which was no escape. The consequence was that Letice
+tossed and bit at her chains, and that there ensued frequent outbreaks
+of resentment against her aunt.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Hannah! I want something to read."
+
+After some demur, and disdainful rejection of more serious works, she
+was allowed Milton.
+
+Then she said, "Oh! I do love _Comus_."
+
+"_Comus!_" gasped Miss Mountjoy.
+
+"And _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, they are not bad."
+
+"My child. These were the compositions of the immortal bard before his
+eyes were opened."
+
+"I thought, aunt, that he had dictated the _Paradise Lost and Regained_
+after he was blind."
+
+"I refer to the eyes of his soul," said the old lady sternly.
+
+"I want a story-book."
+
+"There is the _Dairyman's Daughter_."
+
+"I have read it, and hate it."
+
+"I fear, Leticia, that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of
+iniquity."
+
+Unhappily the sisters very rarely met one another. It was but
+occasionally that Lady Lacy and Betty came to town, and when they did,
+Miss Mountjoy put as many difficulties as she could in the way of their
+associating together.
+
+On one such visit to London, Lady Lacy called and asked if she might
+take Letice with herself to the theatre. Miss Mountjoy shivered with
+horror, reared herself, and expressed her opinion of stage-plays and
+those who went to see them in strong and uncomplimentary terms. As she
+had the custody of Letice, she would by no persuasion be induced to
+allow her to imperil her soul by going to such a wicked place. Lady Lacy
+was fain to withdraw in some dismay and much regret.
+
+Poor Letice, who had heard this offer made, had flashed into sudden
+brightness and a tremor of joy; when it was refused, she burst into a
+flood of tears and an ecstasy of rage. She ran up to her room, and took
+and tore to pieces a volume of _Clayton's Sermons_, scattered the leaves
+over the floor, and stamped upon them.
+
+"Letice," said Miss Mountjoy, when she saw the devastation, "you are a
+child of wrath."
+
+"Why mayn't I go where there is something pretty to see? Why may I not
+hear good music? Why must I be kept forever in the Doleful Dumps?"
+
+"Because all these things are of the world, worldly."
+
+"If God hates all that is fair and beautiful, why did He create the
+peacock, the humming-bird, and the bird of paradise, instead of filling
+the world with barn-door fowls?"
+
+"You have a carnal mind. You will never go to heaven."
+
+"Lucky I--if the saints there do nothing but hold missionary meetings to
+convert one another. Pray what else can they do?"
+
+"They are engaged in the worship of God."
+
+"I don't know what that means. All I am acquainted with is the worship
+of the congregation. At Salem Chapel the minister faces it, mouths at
+it, gesticulates to it, harangues, flatters, fawns at it, and, indeed,
+prays at it. If that be all, heaven must be a deadly dull hole."
+
+Miss Mountjoy reared herself, she became livid with wrath. "You wicked
+girl."
+
+"Aunt," said Letice, intent on further incensing her, "I do wish you
+would let me go--just for once--to a Catholic church to see what the
+worship of God is."
+
+"I would rather see you dead at my feet!" exclaimed the incensed lady,
+and stalked, rigid as a poker, out of the room.
+
+Thus the unhappy girl grew up to woman's estate, her heart seething with
+rebellion.
+
+And then a terrible thing occurred. She caught scarlet fever, which took
+an unfavourable turn, and her life was despaired of. Miss Mountjoy was
+not one to conceal from the girl that her days were few, and her future
+condition hopeless.
+
+Letice fought against the idea of dying so young.
+
+"Oh, aunt! I won't die! I can't die! I have seen nothing of the pomps
+and vanities. I want to just taste them, and know what they are like.
+Oh! save me, make the doctor give me something to revive me. I want the
+pomps and vanities, oh! so much. I will not, I cannot die!" But her
+will, her struggle, availed nothing, and she passed away into the Great
+Unseen.
+
+Miss Mountjoy wrote a formal letter to her brother, who had now become a
+general, to inform him of the lamented decease of his eldest daughter.
+It was not a comforting letter. It dwelt unnecessarily on the faults of
+Letice, it expressed no hopes as to her happiness in the world to which
+she had passed. There had been no signs of resignation at the last; no
+turning from the world with its pomps and vanities to better things,
+only a vain longing after what she could not have; a bitter resentment
+against Providence for having denied them to her; and a steeling of her
+heart against good and pious influences.
+
+A year had passed.
+
+Lady Lacy had come to town along with her niece. A dear friend had
+placed her house at her disposal. She had herself gone to Dresden with
+her daughters to finish them off in music and German. Lady Lacy was very
+glad of the occasion, for Betty was now of an age to be brought out.
+There was to be a great ball at the house of the Countess of Belgrove,
+unto whom Lady Lacy was related, and at the ball Betty was to make her
+début.
+
+The girl was in a condition of boundless excitement. A beautiful
+ball-dress of white satin, trimmed with rich Valenciennes lace, was laid
+over her chair for her to wear. Neat little white satin shoes stood on
+the floor, quite new, for her feet. In a flower-glass stood a red
+camellia that was destined to adorn her hair, and on the dressing-table,
+in a morocco case, was a pearl necklace that had belonged to her mother.
+
+The maid did her hair, but the camellia, which was to be the only point
+of colour about her, except her rosy lips and flushed cheeks--that
+camellia was not to be put into her hair till the last minute.
+
+The maid offered to help her to dress.
+
+"No, thank you, Martha; I can do that perfectly well myself. I am
+accustomed to use my own hands, and I can take my own time about it."
+
+"But really, miss, I think you should allow me."
+
+"Indeed, indeed, no. There is plenty of time, and I shall go leisurely
+to work. When the carriage comes just tap at the door and tell me, and I
+will rejoin my aunt."
+
+When the maid was gone, Betty locked her door. She lighted the candles
+beside the cheval-glass, and looked at herself in the mirror and
+laughed. For the first time, with glad surprise and innocent pleasure,
+she realised how pretty she was. And pretty she was indeed, with her
+pleasant face, honest eyes, finely arched brows, and twinkling smile
+that produced dimples in her cheeks.
+
+"There is plenty of time," she said. "I shan't take a hundred years in
+dressing now that my hair is done."
+
+She yawned. A great heaviness had come over her.
+
+"I really think I shall have a nap first. I am dead sleepy now, and
+forty winks will set me up for the night."
+
+Then she laid herself upon the bed. A numbing, over-powering lethargy
+weighed on her, and almost at once she sank into a dreamless sleep. So
+unconscious was she that she did not hear Martha's tap at the door nor
+the roll of the carriage as it took her aunt away.
+
+She woke with a start. It was full day.
+
+For some moments she did not realise this fact, nor that she was still
+dressed in the gown in which she had lain down the previous evening.
+
+She rose in dismay. She had slept so soundly that she had missed the
+ball.
+
+She rang her bell and unlocked the door.
+
+"What, miss, up already?" asked the maid, coming in with a tray on which
+were tea and bread and butter.
+
+"Yes, Martha. Oh! what will aunt say? I have slept so long and like a
+log, and never went to the ball. Why did you not call me?"
+
+"Please, miss, you have forgotten. You went to the ball last night."
+
+"No; I did not. I overslept myself."
+
+The maid smiled. "If I may be so bold as to say so, I think, Miss Betty,
+you are dreaming still."
+
+"No; I did not go."
+
+The maid took up the satin dress. It was crumpled, the lace was a little
+torn, and the train showed unmistakable signs of having been drawn over
+a floor.
+
+She then held up the shoes. They had been worn, and well worn, as if
+danced in all night.
+
+"Look here, miss; here is your programme! Why, deary me! you must have
+had a lot of dancing. It is quite full."
+
+Betty looked at the programme with dazed eyes; then at the camellia. It
+had lost some of its petals, and these had not fallen on the
+toilet-cover. Where were they? What was the meaning of this?
+
+"Martha, bring me my hot water, and leave me alone."
+
+Betty was sorely perplexed. There were evidences that her dress had been
+worn. The pearl necklace was in the case, but not as she had left
+it--outside. She bathed her head in cold water. She racked her brain.
+She could not recall the smallest particular of the ball. She perused
+the programme. A light colour came into her cheek as she recognised the
+initials "C. F.," those of Captain Charles Fontanel, of whom of late she
+had seen a good deal. Other characters expressed nothing to her mind.
+
+"How very strange!" she said; "and I was lying on the bed in the dress I
+had on yesterday evening. I cannot explain it."
+
+Twenty minutes later, Betty went downstairs and entered the
+breakfast-room. Lady Lacy was there. She went up to her aunt and kissed
+her.
+
+"I am so sorry that I overslept myself," she said. "I was like one of
+the Seven Sleepers."
+
+"My dear, I should not have minded if you had not come down till midday.
+After a first ball you must be tired."
+
+"I meant--last night."
+
+"How, last night?"
+
+"I mean when I went to dress."
+
+"Oh, you were punctual enough. When I was ready you were already in the
+hall."
+
+The bewilderment of the girl grew apace.
+
+"I am sure," said her aunt, "you enjoyed yourself. But you gave the
+lion's share of the dances to Captain Fontanel. If this had been at
+Exeter, it would have caused talk; but here you are known only to a few;
+however, Lady Belgrove observed it."
+
+"I hope you are not very tired, auntie darling," said Betty, to change
+slightly the theme that perplexed her.
+
+"Nothing to speak of. I like to go to a ball; it recalls my old dancing
+days. But I thought you looked white and fagged all the evening. Perhaps
+it was excitement."
+
+As soon as breakfast was concluded, Betty escaped to her room. A fear
+was oppressing her. The only explanation of the mystery was that she had
+been to the dance in her sleep. She was a somnambulist. What had she
+said and done when unconscious? What a dreadful thing it would have been
+had she woke up in the middle of a dance! She must have dressed herself,
+gone to Lady Belgrove's, danced all night, returned, taken off her
+dress, put on her afternoon tea-gown, lain down and concluded her
+sleep--all in one long tract of unconsciousness.
+
+"By the way," said her aunt next day, "I have taken tickets for
+_Carmen_, at Her Majesty's. You would like to go?"
+
+"Oh, delighted, aunt. I know some of the music--of course, the Toreador
+song; but I have never heard the whole opera. It will be delightful."
+
+"And you are not too tired to go?"
+
+"No--ten thousand times, no--I shall love to see it."
+
+"What dress will you go in?"
+
+"I think my black, and put a rose in my hair."
+
+"That will do very well. The black becomes you. I think you could not do
+better."
+
+Betty was highly delighted. She had been to plays, never to a real
+opera.
+
+In the evening, dinner was early, unnecessarily early, and Betty knew
+that it would not take her long to dress, so she went into the little
+conservatory and seated herself there. The scent of the heliotropes was
+strong. Betty called them cherry-pie. She had got the libretto, and she
+looked it over; but as she looked, her eyes closed, and without being
+aware that she was going to sleep, in a moment she was completely
+unconscious.
+
+She woke, feeling stiff and cold.
+
+"Goodness!" said she, "I hope I am not late. Why--what is that light?"
+
+The glimmer of dawn shone in at the conservatory windows.
+
+Much astonished, she left it. The hall, the staircase were dark. She
+groped her way to her room, and switched on the electric light.
+
+Before her lay her black-and-white muslin dress on the bed; on the table
+were her white twelve-button gloves folded about her fan. She took them
+up, and below them, somewhat crumpled, lay the play-bill, scented.
+
+"How very unaccountable this is," she said; and removing the dress,
+seated herself on the bed and thought.
+
+"Why did they turn out the lights?" she asked herself, then sprang to
+her feet, switched off the electric current, and saw that actually the
+morning light was entering the room. She resumed her seat; put her hands
+to her brow.
+
+"It cannot--it cannot be that this dreadful thing has happened again."
+
+Presently she heard the servants stirring. She hastily undressed and
+retired between the sheets, but not to sleep. Her mind worked. She was
+seriously alarmed.
+
+At the usual time Martha arrived with tea.
+
+"Awake, Miss Betty!" she said. "I hope you had a nice evening. I dare
+say it was beautiful."
+
+"But," began the girl, then checked herself, and said--
+
+"Is my aunt getting up? Is she very tired?"
+
+"Oh, miss, my lady is a wonderful person; she never seems to tire. She
+is always down at the same time."
+
+Betty dressed, but her mind was in a turmoil. On one thing she was
+resolved. She must see a doctor. But she would not frighten her aunt,
+she would keep the matter close from her.
+
+When she came into the breakfast-room, Lady Lacy said--
+
+"I thought Maas's voice was superb, but I did not so much care for the
+Carmen. What did you think, dear?"
+
+"Aunt," said Betty, anxious to change the topic, "would you mind my
+seeing a doctor? I don't think I am quite well."
+
+"Not well! Why what is the matter with you?"
+
+"I have such dead fits of drowsiness."
+
+"My dearest, is that to be wondered at with this racketing about; balls
+and theatres--very other than the quiet life at home? But I will admit
+that you struck me as looking very pale last night. You shall certainly
+see Dr. Groves."
+
+When the medical man arrived, Betty intimated that she wished to speak
+with him alone, and he was shown with her into the morning-room.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Groves," she said nervously, "it is such a strange thing I have
+to say. I believe I walk in my sleep."
+
+"You have eaten something that disagreed with you."
+
+"But it lasted so long."
+
+"How do you mean? Have you long been subject to it?"
+
+"Dear, no. I never had any signs of it before I came to London this
+season."
+
+"And how were you roused? How did you become aware of it?"
+
+"I was not roused at all; the fact is I went asleep to Lady Belgrove's
+ball, and danced there and came back, and woke up in the morning without
+knowing I had been."
+
+"What!"
+
+"And then, last night, I went in my sleep to Her Majesty's and heard
+_Carmen_; but I woke up in the conservatory here at early dawn, and I
+remember nothing about it."
+
+"This is a very extraordinary story. Are you sure you went to the ball
+and to the opera?"
+
+"Quite sure. My dress had been used on both occasions, and my shoes and
+fan and gloves as well."
+
+"Did you go with Lady Lacy?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I was with her all the time. But I remember nothing about it."
+
+"I must speak to her ladyship."
+
+"Please, please do not. It would frighten her; and I do not wish her to
+suspect anything, except that I am a little out of sorts. She gets
+nervous about me."
+
+Dr. Groves mused for some while, then he said: "I cannot see that this
+is at all a case of somnambulism."
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Lapse of memory. Have you ever suffered from that previously?"
+
+"Nothing to speak of. Of course I do not always remember everything. I
+do not always recollect commissions given to me, unless I write them
+down. And I cannot say that I remember all the novels I have read, or
+what was the menu at dinner yesterday."
+
+"That is quite a different matter. What I refer to is spaces of blank in
+your memory. How often has this occurred?"
+
+"Twice."
+
+"And quite recently?"
+
+"Yes, I never knew anything of the kind before."
+
+"I think that the sooner you return to the country the better. It is
+possible that the strain of coming out and the change of entering into
+gay life in town has been too much for you. Take care and economise your
+pleasures. Do not attempt too much; and if anything of the sort happens
+again, send for me."
+
+"Then you won't mention this to my aunt?"
+
+"No, not this time. I will say that you have been a little over-wrought
+and must be spared too much excitement."
+
+"Thank you so much, Dr. Groves."
+
+Now it was that a new mystery came to confound Betty. She rang her bell.
+
+"Martha," said she, when her maid appeared, "where is that novel I had
+yesterday from the circulating library? I put it on the boudoir table."
+
+"I have not noticed it, miss."
+
+"Please look for it. I have hunted everywhere for it, and it cannot be
+found."
+
+"I will look in the parlour, miss, and the schoolroom."
+
+"I have not been into the schoolroom at all, and I know that it is not
+in the drawing-room."
+
+A search was instituted, but the book could not be found. On the morrow
+it was in the boudoir, where Betty had placed it on her return from
+Mudie's.
+
+"One of the maids took it," was her explanation. She did not much care
+for the book; perhaps that was due to her preoccupation, and not to any
+lack of stirring incident in the story. She sent it back and took out
+another. Next morning that also had disappeared.
+
+It now became customary, as surely as she drew a novel from the library,
+that it vanished clean away. Betty was greatly amazed. She could not
+read a novel she had brought home till a day or two later. She took to
+putting the book, so soon as it was in the house, into one of her
+drawers, or into a cupboard. But the result was the same. Finally, when
+she had locked the newly acquired volume in her desk, and it had
+disappeared thence also, her patience gave way. There must be one of the
+domestics with a ravenous appetite for fiction, which drove her to carry
+off a book of the sort whenever it came into the house, and even to
+tamper with a lock to obtain it. Betty had been most reluctant to speak
+of the matter to her aunt, but now she made to her a formal complaint.
+
+The servants were all questioned, and strongly protested their
+innocence. Not one of them had ventured to do such a thing as that with
+which they were charged.
+
+However, from this time forward the annoyance ceased, and Betty and Lady
+Lacy naturally concluded that this was the result of the stir that had
+been made.
+
+"Betty," said Lady Lacy, "what do you say to going to the new play at
+the Gaiety? I hear it very highly spoken of. Mrs. Fontanel has a box and
+has asked if we will join her."
+
+"I should love it," replied the girl; "we have been rather quiet of
+late." But her heart was oppressed with fear.
+
+She said to her maid: "Martha, will you dress me this evening--and--pray
+stay with me till my aunt is ready and calls for me?"
+
+"Yes, miss, I shall be pleased to do so." But the girl looked somewhat
+surprised at the latter part of the request.
+
+Betty thought well to explain: "I don't know what it is, but I feel
+somewhat out of spirits and nervous, and am afraid of being left alone,
+lest something should happen."
+
+"Happen, miss! If you are not feeling well, would it not be as well to
+stay at home?"
+
+"Oh, not for the world! I must go. I shall be all right so soon as I am
+in the carriage. It will pass off then."
+
+"Shall I get you a glass of sherry, or anything?"
+
+"No, no, it is not that. You remain with me and I shall be myself
+again."
+
+That evening Betty went to the theatre. There was no recurrence of the
+sleeping fit with its concomitants. Captain Fontanel was in the box, and
+made himself vastly agreeable. He had his seat by Betty, and talked to
+her not only between the acts, but also a good deal whilst the actors
+were on the stage. With this she could have dispensed. She was not such
+an _habituée_ of the theatre as not to be intensely interested with what
+was enacted before her.
+
+Between two of the acts he said to her: "My mother is engaging Lady
+Lacy. She has a scheme in her head, but wants her consent to carry it
+out, to make it quite too charming. And I am deputed to get you to
+acquiesce."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We purpose having a boat and going to the Henley Regatta. Will you
+come?"
+
+"I should enjoy it above everything. I have never seen a regatta--that
+is to say, not one so famous, and not of this kind. There were regattas
+at Ilfracombe, but they were different."
+
+"Very well, then; the party shall consist only of my mother and sister
+and your two selves, and young Fulwell, who is dancing attendance on
+Jannet, and Putsey, who is a tame cat. I am sure my mother will persuade
+your aunt. What a lively old lady she is, and for her years how she does
+enjoy life!"
+
+"It will be a most happy conclusion to our stay in town," said Betty.
+"We are going back to auntie's little cottage in Devon in a few days;
+she wants to be at home for Good Friday and Easter Day."
+
+So it was settled. Lady Lacy had raised no objection, and now she and
+her niece had to consider what Betty should wear. Thin garments were out
+of the question; the weather was too cold, and it would be especially
+chilly on the river. Betty was still in slight mourning, so she chose a
+silver-grey cloth costume, with a black band about her waist, and a
+white straw hat, with a ribbon to match her gown.
+
+On the day of the regatta Betty said to herself; "How ignorant I am!
+Fancy my not knowing where Henley is! That it is on the Thames or Isis I
+really do not know, but I fancy on the former--yes, I am almost
+positive it is on the Thames. I have seen pictures in the _Graphic_ and
+_Illustrated_ of the race last year, and I know the river was
+represented as broad, and the Isis can only be an insignificant stream.
+I will run into the schoolroom and find a map of the environs of London
+and post myself up in the geography. One hates to look like a fool."
+
+Without a word to anyone, Betty found her way to the apartment given up
+to lessons when children were in the house. It lay at the back, down a
+passage. Since Lady Lacy had occupied the place, neither she nor Betty
+had been in it more than casually and rarely; and accordingly the
+servants had neglected to keep it clean. A good deal of dust lay about,
+and Betty, laughing, wrote her name in the fine powder on the
+school-table, then looked at her finger, found it black, and said, "Oh,
+bother! I forgot that the dust of London is smut."
+
+She went to the bookcase, and groped for a map of the Metropolis and the
+country round, but could not find one. Nor could she lay her hand on a
+gazetteer.
+
+"This must do," said she, drawing out a large, thick _Johnston's Atlas_,
+"if the scale be not too small to give Henley."
+
+She put the heavy volume on the table and opened it. England, she found,
+was in two parts, one map of the Northern, the second of the Southern
+division. She spread out the latter, placed her finger on the blue line
+of the Thames, and began to trace it up.
+
+Whilst her eyes were on it, searching the small print, they closed, and
+without being conscious that she was sleepy, her head bowed forward on
+the map, and she was breathing evenly, steeped in the most profound
+slumber.
+
+She woke slowly. Her consciousness returned to her little by little. She
+saw the atlas without understanding what it meant. She looked about her,
+and wondered how she could be in the schoolroom, and she then observed
+that darkness was closing in. Only then, suddenly, did she recall what
+had brought her where she was.
+
+Next, with a rush, upon her came the remembrance that she was due at the
+boat-race.
+
+She must again have overslept herself, for the evening had come on, and
+through the window she could see the glimmer of gaslights in the street.
+Was this to be accompanied by her former experiences?
+
+With throbbing heart she went into the passage. Then she noticed that
+the hall was lighted up, and she heard her aunt speaking, and the slam
+of the front door, and the maid say, "Shall I take off your wraps, my
+lady?"
+
+She stepped forth upon the landing and proceeded to descend, when--with
+a shock that sent the blood coursing to her heart, and that paralysed
+her movements--she saw _herself_ ascending the stair in her silver-grey
+costume and straw hat.
+
+She clung to the banister, with convulsive grip, lest she should fall,
+and stared, without power to utter a sound, as she saw herself quietly
+mount, step by step, pass her, go beyond to her own room.
+
+For fully ten minutes she remained rooted to the spot, unable to stir
+even a finger. Her tongue was stiff, her muscles set, her heart ceased
+to beat.
+
+Then slowly her blood began again to circulate, her nerves to relax,
+power of movement returned. With a hoarse gasp she reeled from her
+place, and giddy, touching the banister every moment to prevent herself
+from falling, she crept downstairs. But when once in the hall, she had
+recovered flexibility. She ran towards the morning-room, whither Lady
+Lacy had gone to gather up the letters that had arrived by post during
+her absence.
+
+Betty stood looking at her, speechless.
+
+Her aunt raised her face from an envelope she was considering. "Why,
+Betty," said she, "how expeditiously you have changed your dress!"
+
+The girl could not speak, but fell unconscious on the floor.
+
+When she came to herself, she was aware of a strong smell of vinegar.
+She was lying on the sofa, and Martha was applying a moistened kerchief
+to her brow. Lady Lacy stood by, alarmed and anxious, with a bottle of
+smelling-salts in her hand.
+
+"Oh, aunt, I saw----" then she ceased. It would not do to tell of the
+apparition. She would not be believed.
+
+"My darling," said Lady Lacy, "you are overdone, and it was foolish of
+you tearing upstairs and scrambling into your morning-gown. I have sent
+for Groves. Are you able now to rise? Can you manage to reach your
+room?"
+
+"My room!" she shuddered. "Let me lie here a little longer. I cannot
+walk. Let me be here till the doctor comes."
+
+"Certainly, dearest. I thought you looked very unlike yourself all day
+at the regatta. If you had felt out of sorts you ought not to have
+gone."
+
+"Auntie! I was quite well in the morning."
+
+Presently the medical man arrived, and was shown in. Betty saw that Lady
+Lacy purposed staying through the interview. Accordingly she said
+nothing to Dr. Groves about what she had seen.
+
+"She is overdone," said he. "The sooner you move her down to Devonshire
+the better. Someone had better be in her room to-night."
+
+"Yes," said Lady Lacy; "I had thought of that and have given orders.
+Martha can make up her bed on the sofa in the adjoining dressing-room or
+boudoir."
+
+This was a relief to Betty, who dreaded a return to her room--her room
+into which her other self had gone.
+
+"I will call again in the morning," said the medical man; "keep her in
+bed to-morrow, at all events till I have seen her."
+
+When he left, Betty found herself able to ascend the stairs. She cast a
+frightened glance about her room. The straw hat, the grey dress were
+there. No one was in it.
+
+She was helped to bed, and although laid in it with her head among the
+pillows, she could not sleep. Racking thoughts tortured her. What was
+the signification of that encounter? What of her strange sleeps? What of
+those mysterious appearances of herself, where she had not been? The
+theory that she had walked in her sleep was untenable. How was she to
+solve the riddle? That she was going out of her mind was no explanation.
+
+Only towards morning did she doze off.
+
+When Dr. Groves came, about eleven o'clock, Betty made a point of
+speaking to him alone, which was what she greatly desired.
+
+She said to him: "Oh! it has been worse this last occasion, far worse
+than before. I do not walk in my sleep. Whilst I am buried in slumber,
+someone else takes my place."
+
+"Whom do you mean? Surely not one of the maids?"
+
+"Oh, no. I met her on the stairs last night, that is what made me
+faint."
+
+"Whom did you meet?"
+
+"Myself--my double."
+
+"Nonsense, Miss Mountjoy."
+
+"But it is a fact. I saw myself as clearly as I see you now. I was going
+down into the hall."
+
+"You saw yourself! You saw your own pleasant, pretty face in a
+looking-glass."
+
+"There is no looking-glass on the staircase. Besides, I was in my alpaca
+morning-gown, and my double had on my pearl-grey cloth costume, with my
+straw hat. She was mounting as I was descending."
+
+"Tell me the story."
+
+"I went yesterday--an hour or so before I had to dress--into the
+schoolroom. I am awfully ignorant, and I did want to see a map and find
+out where was Henley, because, you know, I was going to the boat-race.
+And I dropped off into one of those dreadful dead sleeps, with my head
+on the atlas. When I awoke it was evening, and the gas-lamps were
+lighted. I was frightened, and ran out to the landing and I heard them
+arrive, just come back from Henley, and as I was going down the stairs,
+I saw my double coming up, and we met face to face. She passed me by,
+and went on to my room--to this room. So you see this is proof pos that
+I am not a somnambulist."
+
+"I never said that you were. I never for a moment admitted the
+supposition. That, if you remember, was your own idea. What I said
+before is what I repeat now, that you suffer from failure of memory."
+
+"But that cannot be so, Dr. Groves."
+
+"Pray, why not?"
+
+"Because I saw my double, wearing my regatta costume."
+
+"I hold to my opinion, Miss Mountjoy. If you will listen to me I shall
+be able to offer a satisfactory explanation. Satisfactory, I mean, so
+far as to make your experiences intelligible to you. I do not at all
+imply that your condition is satisfactory."
+
+"Well, tell me. I cannot make heads or tails of this matter."
+
+"It is this, young lady. On several recent occasions you have suffered
+from lapses of memory. All recollection of what you did, where you went,
+what you said, has been clean wiped out. But on this last--it was
+somewhat different. The failure took place on your return, and you
+forgot everything that had happened since you were engaged in the
+schoolroom looking at the atlas."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, on your arrival here, as Lady Lacy told me, you ran upstairs, and
+in a prodigious hurry changed your clothes and put on your----"
+
+"My alpaca."
+
+"Your alpaca, yes. Then, in descending to the hall, your memory came
+back, but was still entangled with flying reminiscences of what had
+taken place during the intervening period. Amongst other things----"
+
+"I remember no other things."
+
+"You recalled confusedly one thing only, that you had mounted the stairs
+in your--your----"
+
+"My pearl-grey cloth, with the straw hat and satin ribbon."
+
+"Precisely. Whilst in your morning gown, into which you had scrambled,
+you recalled yourself in your regatta costume going upstairs to change.
+This fragmentary reminiscence presented itself before you as a vision.
+Actually you saw nothing. The impression on your brain of a scrap
+recollected appeared to you as if it had been an actual object depicted
+on the retina of your eye. Such things happen, and happen not
+infrequently. In cases of D. T.----"
+
+"But I haven't D. T. I don't drink."
+
+"I do not say that. If you will allow me to proceed. In cases of D. T.
+the patient fancies he sees rats, devils, all sorts of objects. They
+appear to him as obvious realities, he thinks that he sees them with his
+eyes. But he does not. These are mere pictures formed on the brain."
+
+"Then you hold that I really was at the boat-race?"
+
+"I am positive that you were."
+
+"And that I danced at Lady Belgrove's ball?"
+
+"Most assuredly."
+
+"And heard _Carmen_ at Her Majesty's?"
+
+"I have not the remotest doubt that you did."
+
+Betty drew a long breath, and remained in consideration.
+
+Then she said very gravely: "I want you to tell me, Dr. Groves, quite
+truthfully, quite frankly--do not think that I shall be frightened
+whatever you say; I shall merely prepare for what may be--do you
+consider that I am going out of my mind?"
+
+"I have not the least occasion for supposing so."
+
+"That," said Betty, "would be the most terrible thing of all. If I
+thought that, I would say right out to my aunt that I wished at once to
+be sent to an asylum."
+
+"You may set your mind at rest on that score."
+
+"But loss of memory is bad, but better than the other. Will these fits
+of failure come on again?"
+
+"That is more than I can prognosticate; let us hope for the best. A
+complete change of scene, change of air, change of association----"
+
+"Not to leave auntie!"
+
+"No. I do not mean that, but to get away from London society. It may
+restore you to what you were. You never had those fits before?"
+
+"Never, never, till I came to town."
+
+"And when you have left town they may not recur."
+
+"I shall take precious good care not to revisit London if it is going to
+play these tricks with me."
+
+That day Captain Fontanel called, and was vastly concerned to hear that
+Betty was unwell. She was not looking herself, he said, at the
+boat-race. He feared that the cold on the river had been too much for
+her. But he did trust that he might be allowed to have a word with her
+before she returned to Devonshire.
+
+Although he did not see Betty, he had an hour's conversation with Lady
+Lacy, and he departed with a smile on his face.
+
+On the morrow he called again. Betty had so completely recovered that
+she was cheerful, and the pleasant colour had returned to her cheeks.
+She was in the drawing-room along with her aunt when he arrived.
+
+The captain offered his condolences, and expressed his satisfaction that
+her indisposition had been so quickly got over.
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, "I am as right as a trivet. It has all passed off.
+I need not have soaked in bed all yesterday, but that aunt would have
+it so. We are going down to our home to-morrow. Yesterday auntie was
+scared and thought she would have to postpone our return."
+
+Lady Lacy rose, made the excuse that she had the packing to attend to,
+and left the young people alone together. When the door was shut behind
+her, Captain Fontanel drew his chair close to that of the girl and
+said--
+
+"Betty, you do not know how happy I have felt since you accepted me. It
+was a hurried affair in the boat-house, but really, time was running
+short; as you were off so soon to Devonshire, I had to snatch at the
+occasion when there was no one by, so I seized old Time by the forelock,
+and you were so good as to say 'Yes.'"
+
+"I--I----" stammered Betty.
+
+"But as the thing was done in such haste, I came here to-day to renew my
+offer of myself, and to make sure of my happiness. You have had time to
+reflect, and I trust you do not repent."
+
+"Oh, you are so good and kind to me!"
+
+"Dearest Betty, what a thing to say! It is I--poor, wretched,
+good-for-naught--who have cause to speak such words to you. Put your
+hand into mine; it is a short courtship of a soldier, like that of Harry
+V. and the fair Maid of France. 'I love you: then if you urge me farther
+than to say, "Do you in faith?" I wear out my suit. Give me your answer;
+i' faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain.' Am I quoting aright?"
+
+Shyly, hesitatingly, she extended her fingers, and he clasped them.
+Then, shrinking back and looking down, she said: "But I ought to tell
+you something first, something very serious, which may make you change
+your mind. I do not, in conscience, feel it right that you should commit
+yourself till you know."
+
+"It must be something very dreadful to make me do that."
+
+"It is dreadful. I am apt to be terribly forgetful."
+
+"Bless me! So am I. I have passed several of my acquaintances lately and
+have not recognised them, but that was because I was thinking of you.
+And I fear I have been very oblivious about my bills; and as to
+answering letters--good heavens! I am a shocking defaulter."
+
+"I do not mean that. I have lapses of memory. Why, I do not even
+remember----"
+
+He sealed her lips with a kiss. "You will not forget this, at any rate,
+Betty."
+
+"Oh, Charlie, no!"
+
+"Then consider this, Betty. Our engagement cannot be for long. I am
+ordered to Egypt, and I positively must take my dear little wife with me
+and show her the Pyramids. You would like to see them, would you not?"
+
+"I should love to."
+
+"And the Sphynx?"
+
+"Indeed I should."
+
+"And Pompey's Pillar?"
+
+"Oh, Charlie! I shall love above everything to see you every day."
+
+"That is prettily said. I see we understand one another. Now, hearken to
+me, give me your close attention, and no fits of lapse of memory over
+what I now say, please. We must be married very shortly. I positively
+will not go out without you. I would rather throw up my commission."
+
+"But what about papa's consent?"
+
+"I shall wire to him full particulars as to my position, income, and
+prospects, also how much I love you, and how I will do my level best to
+make you happy. That is the approved formula in addressing
+paterfamilias, I think. Then he will telegraph back, 'Bless you, my
+boy'; and all is settled. I know that Lady Lacy approves."
+
+"But dear, dear aunt. She will be so awfully lonely without me."
+
+"She shall not be. She has no ties to hold her to the little cottage in
+Devon. She shall come out to us in Cairo, and we will bury the dear old
+girl up to her neck in the sand of the desert, and make a second Sphynx
+of her, and bake the rheumatism out of her bones. It will cure her of
+all her aches, as sure as my name is Charlie, and yours will be
+Fontanel."
+
+"Don't be too sure of that."
+
+"But I am sure--you cannot forget."
+
+"I will try not to do so. Oh, Charlie, don't!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker, and Miss Crock, the milliner, had their
+hands full. Betty's trousseau had to be got ready expeditiously.
+Patterns of materials specially adapted for a hot climate--light,
+beautiful, artistic, of silks and muslins and prints--had to be
+commanded from Liberty's. Then came the selection, then the ordering,
+then the discussions with the dressmaker, and the measurings. Next the
+fittings, for which repeated visits had to be made to Mrs. Thomas.
+Adjustments, alterations were made, easements under the arms,
+tightenings about the waist. There were fulnesses to be taken in and
+skimpiness to be redressed. The skirts had to be sufficiently short in
+front and sufficiently long behind.
+
+As for the wedding-dress, Mrs. Thomas was not regarded as quite
+competent to execute such a masterpiece. For that an expedition had to
+be made to Exeter.
+
+The wedding-cake must be ordered from Murch, in the cathedral city. Lady
+Lacy was particular that as much as possible of the outfit should be
+given to county tradesmen. A riding habit, tailor-made, was ordered, to
+fit like a glove, and a lady's saddle must be taken out to Egypt. Boxes,
+basket-trunks were to be procured, and a correspondence carried on as to
+the amount of personal luggage allowed.
+
+Lady Lacy and Betty were constantly running up by express to Exeter
+about this, that, and everything.
+
+Then ensued the sending out of the invitations, and the arrival of
+wedding presents, that entailed the writing of gushing letters of
+acknowledgment and thanks, by Betty herself. But these were not allowed
+to interfere with the scribbling of four pages every day to Captain
+Fontanel, intended for his eyes alone.
+
+Interviews were sought by the editors or agents of local newspapers to
+ascertain whether reporters were desired to describe the wedding, and as
+to the length of the notices that were to be inserted, whether all the
+names of the donors of presents were to be included, and their gifts
+registered. Verily Lady Lacy and Betty were kept in a whirl of
+excitement, and their time occupied from morning till night, and their
+brains exercised from night to morning. Glass and china and plate had to
+be hired for the occasion, wine ordered. Fruit, cake, ices commanded.
+But all things come to an end, even the preparations for a wedding.
+
+At last the eventful day arrived, bright and sunny, a true May morning.
+
+The bridesmaids arrived, each wearing the pretty brooch presented by
+Captain Fontanel. Their costume was suitable to the season, of
+primrose-yellow, with hats turned up, white, with primroses. The pages
+were in green velvet, with knee-breeches and three-cornered hats, lace
+ruffles and lace fronts. The butler had made the claret-cup and the
+champagne-cup, and after a skirmish over the neighbourhood some borage
+had been obtained to float on the top. Lady Lacy was to hold a reception
+after the ceremony, and a marquee had been erected in the grounds, as
+the cottage could not contain all the guests invited. The dining-room
+was delivered over for the exposing of the presents. A carriage had been
+commanded to convey the happy couple to the station, horses and driver
+with white favours. With a sigh of relief in the morning, Lady Lacy
+declared that she believed that nothing had been forgotten.
+
+The trunks stood ready packed, all but one, and labelled with the name
+of Mrs. Fontanel.
+
+A flag flew on the church tower. The villagers had constructed a
+triumphal arch at the entrance to the grounds. The people from farms and
+cottages had all turned out, and were already congregating about the
+churchyard, with smiles and heartfelt wishes for the happiness of the
+bride, who was a mighty favourite with them, as indeed was also Lady
+Lacy.
+
+The Sunday-school children had clubbed their pence, and had presented
+Betty, who had taught them, with a silver set of mustard-pot, pepper
+caster, and salt-cellar.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Betty, "what shall I do with all these sets of
+mustard- and pepper-pots? I have now received eight."
+
+"A little later, dear," replied her aunt, "you can exchange those that
+you do not require."
+
+"But never that set given me by my Sunday-school pets," said Betty.
+
+Then came in flights of telegrams of congratulation.
+
+And at the last moment arrived some more wedding presents.
+
+"Good gracious me!" exclaimed the girl, "I really must manage to
+acknowledge these. There will be just time before I begin to dress."
+
+So she tripped upstairs to her boudoir, a little room given over to
+herself in which to do her water-colour painting, her reading, to
+practise her music. A bright little room to which now, as she felt with
+an ache, she was to bid an eternal good-bye!
+
+What happy hours had been spent in it! What day-dreams had been spun
+there!
+
+She opened her writing-case and wrote the required letters of thanks.
+
+"There," said she, when she had signed the fifth. "This is the last time
+I shall subscribe myself Elizabeth Mountjoy, except when I sign my
+name in the church register. Oh! how my back is hurting me. I was not in
+bed till two o'clock and was up again at seven, and I have been on the
+tear for the whole week. There will be just time for me to rest it
+before the business of the dressing begins."
+
+She threw herself on the sofa and put up her feet. Instantly she was
+asleep--in a sound, dreamless sleep.
+
+When Betty opened her eyes she heard the church bells ringing a merry
+peal. Then she raised her lids, and turning her head on the sofa cushion
+saw--a bride, herself in full bridal dress, with the white veil and the
+orange-blossoms, seated at her side. The gloves had been removed and lay
+on the lap.
+
+An indescribable terror held her fast. She could not cry out. She could
+not stir. She could only look.
+
+Then the bride put back the veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister, Letice.
+
+[Illustration: THEN THE BRIDE PUT BACK HER VEIL, AND BETTY, STUDYING THE
+WHITE FACE, SAW THAT THIS ACTUALLY WAS NOT HERSELF; IT WAS HER DEAD
+SISTER LETICE.]
+
+The apparition put forth a hand and laid it on her and spoke: "Do not be
+frightened. I will do you no harm. I love you too dearly for that,
+Betty. I have been married in your name; I have exchanged vows in your
+name; I have received the ring for you; put it on your finger, it is not
+mine; it in no way belongs to me. In your name I signed the register.
+You are married to Charles Fontanel and not I. Listen to me. I will tell
+you all, and when I have told you everything you will see me no more. I
+will trouble you no further; I shall enter into my rest. You will see
+before you only the wedding garments remaining. I shall be gone. Hearken
+to me. When I was dying, I died in frantic despair, because I had never
+known what were the pleasures of life. My last cries, my last regrets,
+my last longings were for the pomps and vanities."
+
+She paused, and slipped the gold hoop on to the forefinger of Betty's
+hand.
+
+Then she proceeded--
+
+"When my spirit parted from my body, it remained a while irresolute
+whither to go. But then, remembering that my aunt had declared that I
+never would go to Heaven, I resolved on forcing my way in there out of
+defiance; and I soared till I reached the gates of Paradise. At them
+stood an angel with a fiery sword drawn in his hand, and he laid it
+athwart the entrance. I approached, but he waved me off, and when the
+point of the flaming blade touched my heart, there passed a pang through
+it, I know not whether of joy or of sorrow. And he said: 'Letice, you
+have not been a good girl; you were sullen, resentful, rebellious, and
+therefore are unfit to enter here. Your longings through life, and to
+the moment of death, were for the world and its pomps and vanities. The
+last throb of your heart was given to repining for them. But your faults
+were due largely to the mistakes of your rearing. And now hear your
+judgment. You shall not pass within these gates till you have returned
+to earth and partaken of and had your fill of its pomps and vanities. As
+for that old cat, your aunt'--but no, Betty, he did not say quite that;
+I put it in, and I ought not to have done so. I bear her no resentment;
+I wish her no ill. She did by me what she believed to be right. She
+acted towards me up to her lights; alas for me that the light which was
+in her was darkness! The angel said: 'As for your aunt, before she can
+enter here, she will want illumining, enlarging, and sweetening, and
+will have to pass through Purgatory.' And oh, Betty, that will be gall
+and bitterness to her, for she did not believe in Purgatory, and she
+wrote a controversial pamphlet against it. Then said the angel: 'Return,
+return to the pomps and vanities.' I fell on my knees, and said: 'Oh,
+suffer me but to have one glimpse of that which is within!' 'Be it so,'
+he replied. 'One glimpse only whilst I cast my sword on high.' Thereat
+he threw up the flaming brand, and it was as though a glorious flash of
+lightning filled all space. At the same moment the gates swung apart,
+and I saw what was beyond. It was but for one brief moment, for the
+sword came down, and the angel caught it by the handle, and instantly
+the gates were shut. Then, sorrowfully, I turned myself about and went
+back to earth. And, Betty, it was I who took and read your novels. It
+was I who went to Lady Belgrove's ball in your place. It was I who sat
+instead of you at Her Majesty's and heard _Carmen_. It was I who took
+your place at Henley Regatta, and I--I, instead of you, received the
+protestation of Charles Fontanel's affection, and there in the
+boat-house I received the first and last kiss of love. And it was I,
+Betty, as I have told you, who took your place at the altar to-day. I
+had the pleasures that were designed for you--the ball-dress, the
+dances, the fair words, the music of the opera, the courtship, the
+excitement of the regatta, the reading of sensational novels. It was I
+who had what all girls most long for, their most supreme bliss of
+wearing the wedding-veil and the orange-blossoms. But I have reached my
+limit. I am full of the pomps and vanities, and I return on high. You
+will see me no more."
+
+"Oh, Letice," said Betty, obtaining her speech, "you do not grudge me
+the joys of life?"
+
+The fair white being at her side shook her head.
+
+"And you desire no more of the pomps and vanities?"
+
+"No, Betty. I have looked through the gates."
+
+Then Betty put forth her hands to clasp the waist of her sister, as she
+said fervently--
+
+"Tell me, Letice, what you saw beyond."
+
+"Betty--everything the reverse of Salem Chapel."
+
+
+
+
+McALISTER
+
+
+The city of Bayonne, lying on the left bank of the Adour, and serving as
+its port, is one that ought to present much interest to the British
+tourist, on account of its associations. For three hundred years, along
+with Bordeaux, it belonged to the English crown. The cathedral, a noble
+structure of the fourteenth century, was reared by the English, and on
+the bosses of its vaulting are carved the arms of England, of the
+Talbots, and of other great English noble families. It was probably
+designed by English architects, for it possesses, in its vaulting, the
+long central rib so characteristic of English architecture, and wholly
+unlike what was the prevailing French fashion of vaulting in
+compartments, and always without that connecting rib, like the inverted
+keel of a ship, with which we are acquainted in our English minsters.
+Under some of the modern houses in the town are cellars of far earlier
+construction, also vaulted, and in them as well may be seen the arms of
+the English noble families which had their dwellings above.
+
+But Bayonne has later associations with us. At the close of the
+Peninsular War, when Wellington had driven Marshal Soult and the French
+out of Spain, and had crossed the Pyrenees, his forces, under Sir John
+Hope, invested the citadel. In February, 1814, Sir John threw a bridge
+of boats across the Adour, boats being provided by the fleet of Admiral
+Penrose, in the teeth of a garrison of 15,000 men, and French gunboats
+which guarded the river and raked the English whilst conducting this
+hazardous and masterly achievement. This brilliant exploit was effected
+whilst Wellington engaged the attention of Soult about the Gaves,
+affluents of the Adour, near Orthez. It is further interesting, with a
+tragic interest, on account of an incident in that campaign which shall
+be referred to presently.
+
+The cathedral of Bayonne, some years ago, possessed no towers--the
+English were driven out of Aquitaine before these had been completed.
+The west front was mean to the last degree, masked by a shabby
+penthouse, plastered white, or rather dirty white, on which in large
+characters was inscribed, "Liberté égalité et fraternité."
+
+This has now disappeared, and a modern west front and twin towers and
+spires have been added, in passable architecture. When I was at Bayonne,
+more years ago than I care to say, I paid a visit to the little cemetery
+on the north bank of the river, in which were laid the English officers
+who fell during the investment of Bayonne.
+
+The north bank is in the Department of the Landes, whereas that on the
+south is in the Department of the Basses Pyrénées.
+
+About the time when the English were expelled from France, and lost
+Aquitaine, the Adour changed its course. Formerly it had turned sharply
+round at the city, and had flowed north and found an outlet some miles
+away at Cap Breton, but the entrance was choked by the moving
+sand-dunes, and the impatient river burst its way into the Bay of Biscay
+by the mouth through which it still flows. But the old course is marked
+by lagoons of still blue water in the midst of a vast forest of pines
+and cork trees. I had spent a day wandering among these tree-covered
+_landes_, seeking out the lonely lakes, and in the evening I returned in
+the direction of Bayonne, diverging somewhat from my course to visit the
+cemetery of the English. This was a square walled enclosure with an iron
+gate, rank with weeds, utterly neglected, and with the tombstones, some
+leaning, some prostrate, all covered with lichen and moss. I could not
+get within to decipher the inscriptions, for the gate was locked and I
+had not the key, and was quite ignorant who was the custodian of the
+place.
+
+Being tired with my trudge in the sand, I sat down outside, with my back
+to the wall, and saw the setting sun paint with saffron the boles of the
+pines. I took out my Murray that I had in my knapsack, and read the
+following passage:--
+
+     "To the N., rises the citadel, the most formidable of the works
+     laid out by Vauban, and greatly strengthened, especially since
+     1814, when it formed the key to an entrenched camp of Marshal
+     Soult, and was invested by a detachment of the army of the Duke
+     of Wellington, but not taken, the peace having put a stop to
+     the siege after some bloody encounters. The last of these, a
+     dreadful and useless expenditure of human life, took place
+     after peace was declared, and the British forces put off their
+     guard in consequence. They were thus entirely taken by surprise
+     by a sally of the garrison, made early on the morning of April
+     14th; which, though repulsed, was attended with the loss of 830
+     men of the British, and by the capture of their commander, Sir
+     John Hope, whose horse was shot under him, and himself wounded.
+     The French attack was supported by the fire of their gunboats
+     on the river, which opened indiscriminately on friend and foe.
+     Nine hundred and ten of the French were killed."
+
+When I had concluded, the sun had set, and already a grey mist began to
+form over the course of the Adour. I thought that now it was high time
+for me to return to Bayonne, and to table d'hôte, which is at 7.30 p.m.,
+but for which I knew I should be late. However, before rising, I pulled
+out my flask of Scotch whisky, and drained it to the last drop.
+
+I had scarcely finished, and was about to heave myself to my feet, when
+I heard a voice from behind and above me say--"It is grateful, varra
+grateful to a Scotchman."
+
+I turned myself about, and drew back from the wall, for I saw a very
+remarkable object perched upon it. It was the upper portion of a man in
+military accoutrements. He was not sitting on the wall, for, if so, his
+legs would have been dangling over on the outside. And yet he could not
+have heaved himself up to the level of the parapet, with the legs
+depending inside, for he appeared to be on the wall itself down to the
+middle.
+
+"Are you a Scotchman or an Englishman?" he inquired.
+
+"An Englishman," I replied, hardly knowing what to make of the
+apparition.
+
+"It's mabbe a bit airly in the nicht for me to be stirring," he said;
+"but the smell of the whisky drew me from my grave."
+
+"From your grave!" I exclaimed.
+
+"And pray, what is the blend?" he asked.
+
+I answered.
+
+"Weel," said he, "ye might do better, but it's guid enough. I am Captain
+Alister McAlister of Auchimachie, at your service, that is to say, his
+superior half. I fell in one of the attacks on the citadel. Those"--he
+employed a strong qualification which need not be reproduced--"those
+Johnny Crapauds used chain-shot; and they cut me in half at the
+waistbelt, and my legs are in Scotland."
+
+Having somewhat recovered from my astonishment, I was able to take a
+further look at him, and could not restrain a laugh. He so much
+resembled Humpty Dumpty, who, as I had learned in childhood, did sit on
+a wall.
+
+"Is there anything so rideeculous about me?" asked Captain McAlister in
+a tone of irritation. "You seem to be in a jocular mood, sir."
+
+"I assure you," I responded, "I was only laughing from joy of heart at
+the happy chance of meeting you, Alister McAlister."
+
+"Of Auchimachie, and my title is Captain," he said. "There is only half
+of me here--the etceteras are in the family vault in Scotland."
+
+I expressed my genuine surprise at this announcement. "You must
+understand, sir," continued he, "that I am but the speeritual
+presentment of my buried trunk. The speeritual presentment of my nether
+half is not here, and I should scorn to use those of Captain
+O'Hooligan."
+
+I pressed my hand to my brow. Was I in my right senses? Had the hot sun
+during the day affected my brain, or had the last drain of whisky upset
+my reason?
+
+"You may be pleased to know," said the half-captain, "that my father,
+the Laird of Auchimachie, and Colonel Graham of Ours, were on terms of
+the greatest intimacy. Before I started for the war under Wellington--he
+was at the time but Sir Arthur Wellesley--my father took Colonel Graham
+apart and confided to him: 'If anything should happen to my son in the
+campaign, you'll obleege me greatly if you will forward his remains to
+Auchimachie. I am a staunch Presbyterian, and I shouldn't feel happy
+that his poor body should lie in the land of idolaters, who worship the
+Virgin Mary. And as to the expense, I will manage to meet that; but be
+careful not to do the job in an extravagant manner.'"
+
+"And the untoward Fates cut you short?"
+
+"Yes, the chain-shot did, but not in the Peninsula. I passed safely
+through that, but it was here. When we were makin' the bridge, the
+enemy's ships were up the river, and they fired on us with chain-shot,
+which ye ken are mainly used for cutting the rigging of vessels. But
+they employed them on us as we were engaged over the pontoons, and I was
+just cut in half by a pair of these shot at the junction of the tunic
+and the trews."
+
+"I cannot understand how that your legs should be in Scotland and your
+trunk here."
+
+"That's just what I'm aboot to tell you. There was a Captain O'Hooligan
+and I used to meet; we were in the same detachment. I need not inform
+you, if you're a man of understanding, that O'Hooligan is an Irish name,
+and Captain Timothy O'Hooligan was a born Irishman and an ignorant
+papist to boot. Now, I am by education and conveection a staunch
+Presbyterian. I believe in John Calvin, John Knox, and Jeannie Geddes.
+That's my creed; and if ye are disposed for an argument----"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"Weel, then, it was other with Captain O'Hooligan, and we often had
+words; but he hadn't any arguments at all, only assertions, and he lost
+his temper accordingly, and I was angry at the unreasonableness of the
+man. I had had an ancestor in Derry at the siege and at the Battle of
+the Boyne, and he spitted three Irish kerns on his sabre. I glory in it,
+and I told O'Hooligan as much, and I drank a glass of toddy to the
+memory of William III., and I shouted out Lillibulero! I believe in the
+end we would have fought a duel, after the siege was over, unless one of
+us had thought better of it. But it was not to be. At the same time that
+I was cut in half, so was he also by chain-shot."
+
+"And is he buried here?"
+
+"The half of him--his confounded legs, and the knees that have bowed to
+the image of Baal."
+
+"Then, what became of his body?"
+
+"If you'll pay me reasonable attention, and not interrupt, I'll tell you
+the whole story. But--sure enough! Here come those legs!"
+
+Instantly the half-man rolled off the wall, on the outside, and heaving
+himself along on his hands, scuttled behind a tree-trunk.
+
+Next moment I saw a pair of nimble lower limbs, in white ducks and
+straps under the boots, leap the wall, and run about, up and down, much
+like a setter after a partridge.
+
+I did not know what to make of this.
+
+Then the head of McAlister peered from behind the tree, and screamed
+"Lillibulero! God save King William!" Instantly the legs went after him,
+and catching him up kicked him like a football about the enclosure. I
+cannot recall precisely how many times the circuit was made, twice or
+thrice, but all the while the head of McAlister kept screaming
+"Lillibulero!" and "D---- the Pope!"
+
+Recovering myself from my astonishment, and desirous of putting a term
+to this not very edifying scene, I picked up a leaf of shamrock, that
+grew at my feet, and ran between the legs and the trunk, and presented
+the symbol of St. Patrick to the former. The legs at once desisted from
+pursuit, and made a not ungraceful bow to the leaf, and as I advanced
+they retired, still bowing reverentially, till they reached the wall,
+which they stepped over with the utmost ease.
+
+The half-Scotchman now hobbled up to me on his hands, and said: "I'm
+varra much obleeged to you for your intervention, sir." Then he
+scrambled, by means of the rails of the gate, to his former perch on the
+wall.
+
+"You must understand, sir," said McAlister, settling himself
+comfortably, "that this produces no pheesical inconvenience to me at
+all. For O'Hooligan's boots are speeritual, and so is my trunk
+speeritual. And at best it only touches my speeritual feelings. Still, I
+thank you."
+
+"You certainly administered to him some spiritual aggravation," I
+observed.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir, I did. And I glory in it."
+
+"And now, Captain McAlister, if it is not troubling you too greatly,
+after this interruption would you kindly explain to me how it comes
+about that the nobler part of you is here and the less noble in
+Scotland?"
+
+"I will do so with pleasure. Captain O'Hooligan's upper story is at
+Auchimachie."
+
+"How came that about?"
+
+"If you had a particle of patience, you would not interrupt me in my
+narrative. I told you, did I not, that my dear father had enjoined on
+Colonel Graham, should anything untoward occur, that he should send my
+body home to be interred in the vault of my ancestors? Well, this is
+how it came about that the awkward mistake was made. When it was
+reported that I had been killed, Colonel Graham issued orders that my
+remains should be carefully attended to and put aside to be sent home to
+Scotland."
+
+"By boat, I presume?"
+
+"Certainly, by boat. But, unfortunately, he commissioned some Irishmen
+of his company to attend to it. And whether it was that they wished to
+do honour to their own countryman, or whether it was that, like most
+Irishmen, they could not fail to blunder in the discharge of their duty,
+I cannot say. They might have recognised me, even if they hadn't known
+my face, by my goold repeater watch; but some wretched camp-followers
+had been before them. On the watch were engraved the McAlister arms. But
+the watch had been stolen. So they picked up--either out of purpose, or
+by mistake--O'Hooligan's trunk, and my nether portion, and put them
+together into one case. You see, a man's legs are not so easily
+identified. So his body and my lower limbs were made ready together to
+be forwarded to Scotland."
+
+"But how--did not Colonel Graham see personally to the matter?"
+
+"He could not. He was so much engaged over regimental duties. Still, he
+might have stretched a point, I think."
+
+"It must have been difficult to send the portions so far. Was the body
+embalmed?"
+
+"Embalmed! no. There was no one in Bayonne who knew how to do it. There
+was a bird-stuffer in the Rue Pannceau, but he had done nothing larger
+than a seagull. So there could be no question of embalming. We, that is,
+the bit of O'Hooligan and the bit of me, were put into a cask of
+eau-de-vie, and so forwarded by a sailing-vessel. And either on the way
+to Southampton, or on another boat from that port to Edinburgh, the
+sailors ran a gimlet into the barrel, and inserted a straw, and drank up
+all the spirits. It was all gone by the time the hogshead reached
+Auchimachie. Whether O'Hooligan gave a smack to the liquor I cannot say,
+but I can answer for my legs, they would impart a grateful flavour of
+whisky. I was always a drinker of whisky, and when I had taken a
+considerable amount it always went to my legs; they swerved, and gave
+way under me. That is proof certain that the liquor went to my
+extremities and not to my head. Trust to a Scotchman's head for standing
+any amount of whisky. When the remains arrived at Auchimachie for
+interment, it was supposed that some mistake had been made. My hair is
+sandy, that of O'Hooligan is black, or nearly so; but there was no
+knowing what chemical action the alcohol might have on the hair in
+altering its colour. But my mother identified the legs past mistake, by
+a mole on the left calf and a varicose vein on the right. Anyhow, half a
+loaf is better than no bread, so all the mortal relics were consigned to
+the McAlister vault. It was aggravating to my feelings that the minister
+should pronounce a varra eloquent and moving discourse on the occasion
+over the trunk of a confounded Irishman and a papist."
+
+"You must really excuse me," interrupted I, "but how the dickens do you
+know all this?"
+
+"There is always an etherial current of communication between the parts
+of a man's body," replied McAlister, "and there is speeritual
+intercommunication between a man's head and his toes, however pairted
+they may be. I tell you, sir, in the speeritual world we know a thing or
+two."
+
+"And now," said I, "what may be your wishes in this most unfortunate
+matter?"
+
+"I am coming to that, if you'll exercise a little rational patience.
+This that I tell you of occurred in 1814, a considerable time ago. I
+shall be varra pleased if, on your return to England, you will make it
+your business to run up to Scotland, and interview my great-nephew. I am
+quite sure he will do the right thing by me, for the honour of the
+family, and to ease my soul. He never would have come into the estate at
+all if it had not been for my lamented decease. There's another little
+unpleasantness to which I desire you to call his attention. A tombstone
+has been erected over my trunk and O'Hooligan's legs, here in this
+cemetery, and on it is: 'Sacred to the Memory of Captain Timothy
+O'Hooligan, who fell on the field of Glory. R. I. P.' Now this is liable
+to a misunderstanding for it is me--I mean I, to be grammatical--who
+lies underneath. I make no account of the Irishman's nether extremities.
+And being a convinced and zealous Presbyterian, I altogether
+conscientiously object to having 'Requiescat in pace' inscribed over my
+bodily remains. And my great-nephew, the present laird, if he be true to
+the principles of the Covenant, will object just as strongly as myself.
+I know very weel those letters are attached to the name of O'Hooligan,
+but they mark the place of deposition of my body rather than his. So I
+wish you just to put it clearly and logically to the laird, and he will
+take steps, at any cost, to have me transferred to Auchimachie. What he
+may do with the relics of that Irish rogue I don't care for, not one
+stick of barley sugar."
+
+I promised solemnly to fulfil the commission entrusted to me, and then
+Captain McAlister wished me a good night, and retired behind the
+cemetery wall.
+
+I did not quit the South of France that same year, for I spent the
+winter at Pau. In the following May I returned to England, and there
+found that a good many matters connected with my family called for my
+immediate attention. It was accordingly just a year and five months
+after my interview with Captain McAlister that I was able to discharge
+my promise. I had never forgotten my undertaking--I had merely postponed
+it. Charity begins at home, and my own concerns engrossed my time too
+fully to allow me the leisure for a trip to the North.
+
+However, in the end I did go. I took the express to Edinburgh. That
+city, I think candidly, is the finest for situation in the world, as far
+as I have seen of it. I did not then visit it. I never had previously
+been in the Athens of the North, and I should have liked to spend a
+couple of days at least in it, to look over the castle and to walk
+through Holyrood. But duty stands before pleasure, and I went on
+directly to my destination, postponing acquaintance with Edinburgh till
+I had accomplished my undertaking.
+
+I had written to Mr. Fergus McAlister to inform him of my desire to see
+him. I had not entered into the matter of my communication. I thought it
+best to leave this till I could tell him the whole story by word of
+mouth. I merely informed him by letter that I had something to speak to
+him about that greatly concerned his family.
+
+On reaching the station his carriage awaited me, and I was driven to his
+house.
+
+He received me with the greatest cordiality, and offered me the kindest
+hospitality.
+
+The house was large and rambling, not in the best repair, and the
+grounds, as I was driven through them, did not appear to be trimly kept.
+I was introduced to his wife and to his five daughters, fair-haired,
+freckled girls, certainly not beautiful, but pleasing enough in manner.
+His eldest son was away in the army, and his second was in a lawyer's
+office in Edinburgh; so I saw nothing of them.
+
+After dinner, when the ladies had retired, I told him the entire story
+as freely and as fully as possible, and he listened to me with courtesy,
+patience, and the deepest attention.
+
+"Yes," he said, when I had concluded, "I was aware that doubts had been
+cast on the genuineness of the trunk. But under the circumstances it was
+considered advisable to allow the matter to stand as it was. There were
+insuperable difficulties in the way of an investigation and a certain
+identification. But the legs were all right. And I hope to show you
+to-morrow, in the kirk, a very handsome tablet against the wall,
+recording the name and the date of decease of my great-uncle, and some
+very laudatory words on his character, beside an appropriate text from
+the Screeptures."
+
+"Now, however, that the facts are known, you will, of course, take steps
+for the translation of the half of Captain Alister to your family
+vault."
+
+"I foresee considerable difficulties in the way," he replied. "The
+authorities at Bayonne might raise objections to the exhuming of the
+remains in the grave marked by the tombstone of Captain O'Hooligan. They
+might very reasonably say: 'What the hang has Mr. Fergus McAlister to do
+with the body of Captain O'Hooligan?' We must consult the family of that
+officer in Ireland."
+
+"But," said I, "a representation of the case--of the mistake made--would
+render all clear to them. I do not see that there is any necessity for
+complicating the story by saying that you have only half of your
+relative here, and that the other half is in O'Hooligan's grave. State
+that orders had been given for the transmission of the body of your
+great-uncle to Auchimachie, and that, through error, the corpse of
+Captain O'Hooligan had been sent, and Captain McAlister buried by
+mistake as that of the Irishman. That makes a simple, intelligible, and
+straightforward tale. Then you could dispose of the superfluous legs
+when they arrived in the manner you think best."
+
+The laird remained silent for a while, rubbing his chin, and looking at
+the tablecloth.
+
+Presently he stood up, and going to the sideboard, said: "I'll just
+take a wash of whisky to clear my thoughts. Will you have some?"
+
+"Thank you; I am enjoying your old and excellent port."
+
+Mr. Fergus McAlister returned leisurely to the table after his "wash,"
+remained silent a few minutes longer, then lifted his head and said: "I
+don't see that I am called upon to transport those legs."
+
+"No," I answered; "but you had best take the remains in a lump and sort
+them on their arrival."
+
+"I am afraid it will be seriously expensive. My good sir, the property
+is not now worth what it was in Captain Alister's time. Land has gone
+down in value, and rents have been seriously reduced. Besides, farmers
+are now more exacting than formerly; they will not put up with the byres
+that served their fathers. Then my son in the army is a great expense to
+me, and my second son is not yet earning his livelihood, and my
+daughters have not yet found suitors, so that I shall have to leave them
+something on which to live; besides"--he drew a long breath--"I want to
+build on to the house a billiard-room."
+
+"I do not think," protested I, "that the cost would be very serious."
+
+"What do you mean by serious?" he asked.
+
+"I think that these relics of humanity might be transported to
+Auchimachie in a hogshead of cognac, much as the others were."
+
+"What is the price of cognac down there?" asked he.
+
+"Well," I replied, "that is more than I can say as to the cask. Best
+cognac, three stars, is five francs fifty centimes a bottle."
+
+"That's a long price. But one star?"
+
+"I cannot say; I never bought that. Possibly three francs and a half."
+
+"And how many bottles to a cask?"
+
+"I am not sure, something over two hundred litres."
+
+"Two hundred three shillings," mused Mr. Fergus; and then looking up,
+"there is the duty in England, very heavy on spirits, and charges for
+the digging-up, and fees to the officials, and the transport by
+water----" He shook his head.
+
+"You must remember," said I, "that your relative is subjected to great
+indignities from those legs, getting toed three or four times round the
+enclosure." I said three or four, but I believe it was only twice or
+thrice. "It hardly comports with the family honour to suffer it."
+
+"I think," replied Mr. Fergus, "that you said it was but the speeritual
+presentment of a boot, and that there was no pheesical inconvenience
+felt, only a speeritual impression?"
+
+"Just so."
+
+"For my part, judging from my personal experience," said the laird,
+"speeritual impressions are most evanescent."
+
+"Then," said I, "Captain Alister's trunk lies in a foreign land."
+
+"But not," replied he, "in Roman Catholic consecrated soil. That is a
+great satisfaction."
+
+"You, however, have the trunk of a Roman Catholic in your family vault."
+
+"It is so, according to what you say. But there are a score of
+McAlisters there, all staunch Presbyterians, and if it came to an
+argument among them--I won't say he would not have a leg to stand on, as
+he hasn't those anyhow, but he would find himself just nowhere."
+
+Then Mr. Fergus McAlister stood up and said: "Shall we join the ladies?
+As to what you have said, sir, and have recommended, I assure you that I
+will give it my most serious consideration."
+
+
+
+
+THE LEADEN RING
+
+
+"It is not possible, Julia. I cannot conceive how the idea of attending
+the county ball can have entered your head after what has happened. Poor
+young Hattersley's dreadful death suffices to stop that."
+
+"But, aunt, Mr. Hattersley is no relation of ours."
+
+"No relation--but you know that the poor fellow would not have shot
+himself if it had not been for you."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, how can you say so, when the verdict was that he
+committed suicide when in an unsound condition of mind? How could I help
+his blowing out his brains, when those brains were deranged?"
+
+"Julia, do not talk like this. If he did go off his head, it was you who
+upset him by first drawing him on, leading him to believe that you liked
+him, and then throwing him over so soon as the Hon. James Lawlor
+appeared on the _tapis_. Consider: what will people say if you go to the
+assembly?"
+
+"What will they say if I do not go? They will immediately set it down to
+my caring deeply for James Hattersley, and they will think that there
+was some sort of engagement."
+
+"They are not likely to suppose that. But really, Julia, you were for a
+while all smiles and encouragement. Tell me, now, did Mr. Hattersley
+propose to you?"
+
+"Well--yes, he did, and I refused him."
+
+"And then he went and shot himself in despair. Julia, you cannot with
+any face go to the ball."
+
+"Nobody knows that he proposed. And precisely because I do go everyone
+will conclude that he did not propose. I do not wish it to be supposed
+that he did."
+
+"His family, of course, must have been aware. They will see your name
+among those present at the assembly."
+
+"Aunt, they are in too great trouble to look at the paper to see who
+were at the dance."
+
+"His terrible death lies at your door. How you can have the heart,
+Julia----"
+
+"I don't see it. Of course, I feel it. I am awfully sorry, and awfully
+sorry for his father, the admiral. I cannot set him up again. I wish
+that when I rejected him he had gone and done as did Joe Pomeroy, marry
+one of his landlady's daughters."
+
+"There, Julia, is another of your delinquencies. You lured on young
+Pomeroy till he proposed, then you refused him, and in a fit of vexation
+and mortified vanity he married a girl greatly beneath him in social
+position. If the _ménage_ prove a failure you will have it on your
+conscience that you have wrecked his life and perhaps hers as well."
+
+"I cannot throw myself away as a charity to save this man or that from
+doing a foolish thing."
+
+"What I complain of, Julia, is that you encouraged young Mr. Pomeroy
+till Mr. Hattersley appeared, whom you thought more eligible, and then
+you tossed him aside; and you did precisely the same with James
+Hattersley as soon as you came to know Mr. Lawlor. After all, Julia, I
+am not so sure that Mr. Pomeroy has not chosen the better part. The
+girl, I dare say, is simple, fresh, and affectionate."
+
+"Your implication is not complimentary, Aunt Elizabeth."
+
+"My dear, I have no patience with the young lady of the present day, who
+is shallow, self-willed, and indifferent to the feelings and happiness
+of others, who craves for excitement and pleasure, and desires nothing
+that is useful and good. Where now will you see a girl like Viola's
+sister, who let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on her damask
+cheek? Nowadays a girl lays herself at the feet of a man if she likes
+him, turns herself inside-out to let him and all the world read her
+heart."
+
+"I have no relish to be like Viola's sister, and have my story--a blank.
+I never grovelled at the feet of Joe Pomeroy or James Hattersley."
+
+"No, but you led each to consider himself the favoured one till he
+proposed, and then you refused him. It was like smiling at a man and
+then stabbing him to the heart."
+
+"Well--I don't want people to think that James Hattersley cared for
+me--I certainly never cared for him--nor that he proposed; so I shall go
+to the ball."
+
+Julia Demant was an orphan. She had been retained at school till she was
+eighteen, and then had been removed just at the age when a girl begins
+to take an interest in her studies, and not to regard them as drudgery.
+On her removal she had cast away all that she had acquired, and had been
+plunged into the whirl of Society. Then suddenly her father died--she
+had lost her mother some years before--and she went to live with her
+aunt, Miss Flemming. Julia had inherited a sum of about five hundred
+pounds a year, and would probably come in for a good estate and funds as
+well on the death of her aunt. She had been flattered as a girl at home,
+and at school as a beauty, and she certainly thought no small bones of
+herself.
+
+Miss Flemming was an elderly lady with a sharp tongue, very outspoken,
+and very decided in her opinions; but her action was weak, and Julia
+soon discovered that she could bend the aunt to do anything she willed,
+though she could not modify or alter her opinions.
+
+In the matter of Joe Pomeroy and James Hattersley, it was as Miss
+Flemming had said. Julia had encouraged Mr. Pomeroy, and had only cast
+him off because she thought better of the suit of Mr. Hattersley, son
+of an admiral of that name. She had seen a good deal of young
+Hattersley, had given him every encouragement, had so entangled him,
+that he was madly in love with her; and then, when she came to know the
+Hon. James Lawlor, and saw that he was fascinated, she rejected
+Hattersley with the consequences alluded to in the conversation above
+given.
+
+Julia was particularly anxious to be present at the county ball, for she
+had been already booked by Mr. Lawlor for several dances, and she was
+quite resolved to make an attempt to bring him to a declaration.
+
+On the evening of the ball Miss Flemming and Julia entered the carriage.
+The aunt had given way, as was her wont, but under protest.
+
+For about ten minutes neither spoke, and then Miss Flemming said, "Well,
+you know my feelings about this dance. I do not approve. I distinctly
+disapprove. I do not consider your going to the ball in good taste, or,
+as you would put it, in good form. Poor young Hattersley----"
+
+"Oh, dear aunt, do let us put young Hattersley aside. He was buried with
+the regular forms, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, Julia."
+
+"Then the rector accepted the verdict of the jury at the inquest. Why
+should not we? A man who is unsound in his mind is not responsible for
+his actions."
+
+"I suppose not."
+
+"Much less, then, I who live ten miles away."
+
+"I do not say that you are responsible for his death, but for the
+condition of mind that led him to do the dreadful deed. Really, Julia,
+you are one of those into whose head or heart only by a surgical
+operation could the thought be introduced that you could be in the
+wrong. A hypodermic syringe would be too weak an instrument to effect
+such a radical change in you. Everyone else may be in the wrong,
+you--never. As for me, I cannot get young Hattersley out of my head."
+
+"And I," retorted Julia with asperity, for her aunt's words had stung
+her--"I, for my part, do not give him a thought."
+
+She had hardly spoken the words before a chill wind began to pass round
+her. She drew the Barège shawl that was over her bare shoulders closer
+about her, and said--"Auntie! is the glass down on your side?"
+
+"No, Julia; why do you ask?"
+
+"There is such a draught."
+
+"Draught!--I do not feel one; perhaps the window on your side hitches."
+
+"Indeed, that is all right. It is blowing harder and is deadly cold. Can
+one of the front panes be broken?"
+
+"No. Rogers would have told me had that been the case. Besides, I can
+see that they are sound."
+
+The wind of which Julia complained swirled and whistled about her. It
+increased in force; it plucked at her shawl and slewed it about her
+throat; it tore at the lace on her dress. It snatched at her hair, it
+wrenched it away from the pins, the combs that held it in place; one
+long tress was lashed across the face of Miss Flemming. Then the hair,
+completely released, eddied up above the girl's head, and next moment
+was carried as a drift before her, blinding her. Then--a sudden
+explosion, as though a gun had been fired into her ear; and with a
+scream of terror she sank back among the cushions. Miss Flemming, in
+great alarm, pulled the checkstring, and the carriage stopped. The
+footman descended from the box and came to the side. The old lady drew
+down the window and said: "Oh! Phillips, bring the lamp. Something has
+happened to Miss Demant."
+
+The man obeyed, and sent a flood of light into the carriage. Julia was
+lying back, white and senseless. Her hair was scattered over her face,
+neck, and shoulders; the flowers that had been stuck in it, the pins
+that had fastened it in place, the pads that had given shape to the
+convolutions lay strewn, some on her lap, some in the rug at the bottom
+of the carriage.
+
+"Phillips!" ordered the old lady in great agitation, "tell Rogers to
+turn the horses and drive home at once; and do you run as fast as you
+can for Dr. Crate."
+
+A few minutes after the carriage was again in motion, Julia revived. Her
+aunt was chafing her hand.
+
+"Oh, aunt!" she said, "are all the glasses broken?"
+
+"Broken--what glasses?"
+
+"Those of the carriage--with the explosion."
+
+"Explosion, my dear!"
+
+"Yes. That gun which was discharged. It stunned me. Were you hurt?"
+
+"I heard no gun--no explosion."
+
+"But I did. It was as though a bullet had been discharged into my brain.
+I wonder that I escaped. Who can have fired at us?"
+
+"My dear, no one fired. I heard nothing. I know what it was. I had the
+same experience many years ago. I slept in a damp bed, and awoke stone
+deaf in my right ear. I remained so for three weeks. But one night when
+I was at a ball and was dancing, all at once I heard a report as of a
+pistol in my right ear, and immediately heard quite clearly again. It
+was wax."
+
+"But, Aunt Elizabeth, I have not been deaf."
+
+"You have not noticed that you were deaf."
+
+"Oh! but look at my hair; it was that wind that blew it about."
+
+"You are labouring under a delusion, Julia. There was no wind."
+
+"But look--feel how my hair is down."
+
+"That has been done by the motion of the carriage. There are many ruts
+in the road."
+
+They reached home, and Julia, feeling sick, frightened, and bewildered,
+retired to bed. Dr. Crate arrived, said that she was hysterical, and
+ordered something to soothe her nerves. Julia was not convinced. The
+explanation offered by Miss Flemming did not satisfy her. That she was a
+victim to hysteria she did not in the least believe. Neither her aunt,
+nor the coachman, nor Phillips had heard the discharge of a gun. As to
+the rushing wind, Julia was satisfied that she had experienced it. The
+lace was ripped, as by a hand, from her dress, and the shawl was twisted
+about her throat; besides, her hair had not been so slightly arranged
+that the jolting of the carnage would completely disarrange it. She was
+vastly perplexed over what she had undergone. She thought and thought,
+but could get no nearer to a solution of the mystery.
+
+Next day, as she was almost herself again, she rose and went about as
+usual.
+
+In the afternoon the Hon. James Lawlor called and asked after Miss
+Flemming. The butler replied that his mistress was out making calls, but
+that Miss Demant was at home, and he believed was on the terrace. Mr.
+Lawlor at once asked to see her.
+
+He did not find Julia in the parlour or on the terrace, but in a lower
+garden to which she had descended to feed the goldfish in the pond.
+
+"Oh! Miss Demant," said he, "I was so disappointed not to see you at the
+ball last night."
+
+"I was very unwell; I had a fainting fit and could not go."
+
+"It threw a damp on our spirits--that is to say, on mine. I had you
+booked for several dances."
+
+"You were able to give them to others."
+
+"But that was not the same to me. I did an act of charity and
+self-denial. I danced instead with the ugly Miss Burgons and with Miss
+Pounding, and that was like dragging about a sack of potatoes. I believe
+it would have been a jolly evening, but for that shocking affair of
+young Hattersley which kept some of the better sort away. I mean
+those who know the Hattersleys. Of course, for me that did not matter,
+we were not acquainted. I never even spoke with the fellow. You knew
+him, I believe? I heard some people say so, and that you had not come
+because of him. The supper, for a subscription ball, was not atrociously
+bad."
+
+"What did they say of me?"
+
+"Oh!--if you will know--that you did not attend the ball because you
+liked him very much, and were awfully cut up."
+
+"I--I! What a shame that people should talk! I never cared a rush for
+him. He was nice enough in his way, not a bounder, but tolerable as
+young men go."
+
+Mr. Lawlor laughed. "I should not relish to have such a qualified
+estimate made of me."
+
+"Nor need you. You are interesting. He became so only when he had shot
+himself. It will be by this alone that he will be remembered."
+
+"But there is no smoke without fire. Did he like you--much?"
+
+"Dear Mr. Lawlor, I am not a clairvoyante, and never was able to see
+into the brains or hearts of people--least of all of young men. Perhaps
+it is fortunate for me that I cannot."
+
+"One lady told me that he had proposed to you."
+
+"Who was that? The potato-sack?"
+
+"I will not give her name. Is there any truth in it? Did he?"
+
+"No."
+
+At the moment she spoke there sounded in her ear a whistle of wind, and
+she felt a current like a cord of ice creep round her throat, increasing
+in force and compression, her hat was blown off, and next instant a
+detonation rang through her head as though a gun had been fired into her
+ear. She uttered a cry and sank upon the ground.
+
+[Illustration: HER HAT WAS BLOWN OFF, AND NEXT INSTANT A DETONATION RANG
+THROUGH HER HEAD AS THOUGH A GUN HAD BEEN FIRED INTO HER EAR.]
+
+James Lawlor was bewildered. His first impulse was to run to the house
+for assistance; then he considered that he could not leave her lying on
+the wet soil, and he stooped to raise her in his arms and to carry her
+within. In novels young men perform such a feat without difficulty; but
+in fact they are not able to do it, especially when the girl is tall and
+big-boned. Moreover, one in a faint is a dead weight. Lawlor staggered
+under his burden to the steps. It was as much as he could perform to
+carry her up to the terrace, and there he placed her on a seat. Panting,
+and with his muscles quivering after the strain, he hastened to the
+drawing-room, rang the bell, and when the butler appeared, he gasped:
+"Miss Demant has fainted; you and I and the footman must carry her
+within."
+
+"She fainted last night in the carriage," said the butler.
+
+When Julia came to her senses, she was in bed attended by the
+housekeeper and her maid. A few moments later Miss Flemming arrived.
+
+"Oh, aunt! I have heard it again."
+
+"Heard what, dear?"
+
+"The discharge of a gun."
+
+"It is nothing but wax," said the old lady. "I will drop a little
+sweet-oil into your ear, and then have it syringed with warm water."
+
+"I want to tell you something--in private."
+
+Miss Flemming signed to the servants to withdraw.
+
+"Aunt," said the girl, "I must say something. This is the second time
+that this has happened. I am sure it is significant. James Lawlor was
+with me in the sunken garden, and he began to speak about James
+Hattersley. You know it was when we were talking about him last night
+that I heard that awful noise. It was precisely as if a gun had been
+discharged into my ear. I felt as if all the nerves and tissues of my
+head were being torn, and all the bones of my skull shattered--just what
+Mr. Hattersley must have undergone when he pulled the trigger. It was
+an agony for a moment perhaps, but it felt as if it lasted an hour. Mr.
+Lawlor had asked me point blank if James Hattersley had proposed to me,
+and I said, 'No.' I was perfectly justified in so answering, because he
+had no right to ask me such a question. It was an impertinence on his
+part, and I answered him shortly and sharply with a negative. But
+actually James Hattersley proposed twice to me. He would not accept a
+first refusal, but came next day bothering me again, and I was pretty
+curt with him. He made some remarks that were rude about how I had
+treated him, and which I will not repeat, and as he left, in a state of
+great agitation, he said, 'Julia, I vow that you shall not forget this,
+and you shall belong to no one but me, alive or dead.' I considered this
+great nonsense, and did not accord it another thought. But, really,
+these terrible annoyances, this wind and the bursts of noise, do seem to
+me to come from him. It is just as though he felt a malignant delight in
+distressing me, now that he is dead. I should like to defy him, and I
+will do it if I can, but I cannot bear more of these experiences--they
+will kill me."
+
+Several days elapsed.
+
+Mr. Lawlor called repeatedly to inquire, but a week passed before Julia
+was sufficiently recovered to receive him, and then the visit was one of
+courtesy and of sympathy, and the conversation turned upon her health,
+and on indifferent themes.
+
+But some few days later it was otherwise. She was in the conservatory
+alone, pretty much herself again, when Mr. Lawlor was announced.
+
+Physically she had recovered, or believed that she had, but her nerves
+had actually received a severe shock. She had made up her mind that the
+phenomena of the circling wind and the explosion were in some mysterious
+manner connected with Hattersley.
+
+She bitterly resented this, but she was in mortal terror of a
+recurrence; and she felt no compunction for her treatment of the
+unfortunate young man, but rather a sense of deep resentment against
+him. If he were dead, why did he not lie quiet and cease from vexing
+her?
+
+To be a martyr was to her no gratification, for hers was not a martyrdom
+that provoked sympathy, and which could make her interesting.
+
+She had hitherto supposed that when a man died there was an end of him;
+his condition was determined for good or for ill. But that a disembodied
+spirit should hover about and make itself a nuisance to the living, had
+never entered into her calculations.
+
+"Julia--if I may be allowed so to call you"--began Mr. Lawlor, "I have
+brought you a bouquet of flowers. Will you accept them?"
+
+"Oh!" she said, as he handed the bunch to her, "how kind of you. At this
+time of the year they are so rare, and aunt's gardener is so miserly
+that he will spare me none for my room but some miserable bits of
+geranium. It is too bad of you wasting your money like this upon me."
+
+"It is no waste, if it afford you pleasure."
+
+"It is a pleasure. I dearly love flowers."
+
+"To give you pleasure," said Mr. Lawlor, "is the great object of my
+life. If I could assure you happiness--if you would allow me to hope--to
+seize this opportunity, now that we are alone together----"
+
+He drew near and caught her hand. His features were agitated, his lips
+trembled, there was earnestness in his eyes.
+
+At once a cold blast touched Julia and began to circle about her and to
+flutter her hair. She trembled and drew back. That paralysing experience
+was about to be renewed. She turned deadly white, and put her hand to
+her right ear. "Oh, James! James!" she gasped. "Do not, pray do not
+speak what you want to say, or I shall faint. It is coming on. I am not
+yet well enough to hear it. Write to me and I will answer. For pity's
+sake do not speak it." Then she sank upon a seat--and at that moment her
+aunt entered the conservatory.
+
+On the following day a note was put into her hand, containing a formal
+proposal from the Hon. James Lawlor; and by return of post Julia
+answered with an acceptance.
+
+There was no reason whatever why the engagement should be long; and the
+only alternative mooted was whether the wedding should take place before
+Lent or after Easter. Finally, it was settled that it should be
+celebrated on Shrove Tuesday. This left a short time for the necessary
+preparations. Miss Flemming would have to go to town with her niece
+concerning a trousseau, and a trousseau is not turned out rapidly any
+more than an armed cruiser.
+
+There is usually a certain period allowed to young people who have
+become engaged, to see much of each other, to get better acquainted with
+one another, to build their castles in the air, and to indulge in little
+passages of affection, vulgarly called "spooning." But in this case the
+spooning had to be curtailed and postponed.
+
+At the outset, when alone with James, Julia was nervous. She feared a
+recurrence of those phenomena that so affected her. But, although every
+now and then the wind curled and soughed about her, it was not violent,
+nor was it chilling; and she came to regard it as a wail of
+discomfiture. Moreover, there was no recurrence of the detonation, and
+she fondly hoped that with her marriage the vexation would completely
+cease.
+
+In her heart was deep down a sense of exultation. She was defying James
+Hattersley and setting his prediction at naught. She was not in love
+with Mr. Lawlor; she liked him, in her cold manner, and was not
+insensible to the social advantage that would be hers when she became
+the Honourable Mrs. Lawlor.
+
+The day of the wedding arrived. Happily it was fine. "Blessed is the
+bride the sun shines on," said the cheery Miss Flemming; "an omen, I
+trust, of a bright and unruffled life in your new condition."
+
+All the neighbourhood was present at the church. Miss Flemming had many
+friends. Mr. Lawlor had fewer present, as he belonged to a distant
+county. The church path had been laid with red cloth, the church
+decorated with flowers, and a choir was present to twitter "The voice
+that breathed o'er Eden."
+
+The rector stood by the altar, and two cushions had been laid at the
+chancel step. The rector was to be assisted by an uncle of the
+bridegroom who was in Holy Orders; the rector, being old-fashioned, had
+drawn on pale grey kid gloves.
+
+First arrived the bridegroom with his best man, and stood in a nervous
+condition balancing himself first on one foot, then on the other,
+waiting, observed by all eyes.
+
+Next entered the procession of the bride, attended by her maids, to the
+"Wedding March" in _Lohengrin_, on a wheezy organ. Then Julia and her
+intended took their places at the chancel step for the performance of
+the first portion of the ceremony, and the two clergy descended to them
+from the altar.
+
+"Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"I, James, take thee, Julia, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold----"
+and so on.
+
+As the words were being spoken, a cold rush of air passed over the
+clasped hands, numbing them, and began to creep round the bride, and to
+flutter her veil. She set her lips and knitted her brows. In a few
+minutes she would be beyond the reach of these manifestations.
+
+When it came to her turn to speak, she began firmly: "I, Julia, take
+thee, James----" but as she proceeded the wind became fierce; it raged
+about her, it caught her veil on one side and buffeted her cheek; it
+switched the veil about her throat, as though strangling her with a
+drift of snow contracting into ice. But she persevered to the end.
+
+Then James Lawlor produced the ring, and was about to place it on her
+finger with the prescribed words: "With this ring I thee wed----" when a
+report rang in her ear, followed by a heaving of her skull, as though
+the bones were being burst asunder, and she sank unconscious on the
+chancel step.
+
+In the midst of profound commotion, she was raised and conveyed to the
+vestry, followed by James Lawlor, trembling and pale. He had slipped the
+ring back into his waistcoat pocket. Dr. Crate, who was present,
+hastened to offer his professional assistance.
+
+In the vestry Julia rested in a Glastonbury chair, white and still, with
+her hands resting in her lap. And to the amazement of those present, it
+was seen that on the third finger of her left hand was a leaden ring,
+rude and solid as though fashioned out of a bullet. Restoratives were
+applied, but full a quarter of an hour elapsed before Julia opened her
+eyes, and a little colour returned to her lips and cheek. But, as she
+raised her hands to her brow to wipe away the damps that had formed on
+it, her eye caught sight of the leaden ring, and with a cry of horror
+she sank again into insensibility.
+
+The congregation slowly left the church, awestruck, whispering, asking
+questions, receiving no satisfactory answers, forming surmises all
+incorrect.
+
+"I am very much afraid, Mr. Lawlor," said the rector, "that it will be
+impossible to proceed with the service to-day; it must be postponed till
+Miss Demant is in a condition to conclude her part, and to sign the
+register. I do not see how it can be gone on with to-day. She is quite
+unequal to the effort."
+
+The carriage which was to have conveyed the couple to Miss Flemming's
+house, and then, later, to have taken them to the station for their
+honeymoon, the horses decorated with white rosettes, the whip adorned
+with a white bow, had now to convey Julia, hardly conscious, supported
+by her aunt, to her home.
+
+No rice could be thrown. The bell-ringers, prepared to give a joyous
+peal, were constrained to depart.
+
+The reception at Miss Flemming's was postponed. No one thought of
+attending. The cakes, the ices, were consumed in the kitchen.
+
+The bridegroom, bewildered, almost frantic, ran hither and thither, not
+knowing what to do, what to say.
+
+Julia lay as a stone for fully two hours; and when she came to herself
+could not speak. When conscious, she raised her left hand, looked on the
+leaden ring, and sank back again into senselessness.
+
+Not till late in the evening was she sufficiently recovered to speak,
+and then she begged her aunt, who had remained by her bed without
+stirring, to dismiss the attendants. She desired to speak with her
+alone. When no one was in the room with her, save Miss Flemming, she
+said in a whisper: "Oh, Aunt Elizabeth! Oh, auntie! such an awful thing
+has happened. I can never marry Mr. Lawlor, never. I have married James
+Hattersley; I am a dead man's wife. At the time that James Lawlor was
+making the responses, I heard a piping voice in my ear, an unearthly
+voice, saying the same words. When I said: 'I, Julia, take you, James,
+to my wedded husband'--you know Mr. Hattersley is James as well as Mr.
+Lawlor--then the words applied to him as much or as well as to the
+other. And then, when it came to the giving of the ring, there was the
+explosion in my ear, as before--and the leaden ring was forced on to my
+finger, and not James Lawlor's golden ring. It is of no use my resisting
+any more. I am a dead man's wife, and I cannot marry James Lawlor."
+
+Some years have elapsed since that disastrous day and that incomplete
+marriage.
+
+Miss Demant is Miss Demant still, and she has never been able to remove
+the leaden ring from the third finger of her left hand. Whenever the
+attempt has been made, either to disengage it by drawing it off or by
+cutting through it, there has ensued that terrifying discharge as of a
+gun into her ear, causing insensibility. The prostration that has
+followed, the terror it has inspired, have so affected her nerves, that
+she has desisted from every attempt to rid herself of the ring.
+
+She invariably wears a glove on her left hand, and it is bulged over the
+third finger, where lies that leaden ring.
+
+She is not a happy woman, although her aunt is dead and has left her a
+handsome estate. She has not got many acquaintances. She has no friends;
+for her temper is unamiable, and her tongue is bitter. She supposes that
+the world, as far as she knows it, is in league against her.
+
+Towards the memory of James Hattersley she entertains a deadly hate. If
+an incantation could lay his spirit, if prayer could give him repose,
+she would have recourse to none of these expedients, even though they
+might relieve her, so bitter is her resentment. And she harbours a
+silent wrath against Providence for allowing the dead to walk and to
+molest the living.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER OF PANSIES
+
+
+Anna Voss, of Siebenstein, was the prettiest girl in her village. Never
+was she absent from a fair or a dance. No one ever saw her abroad
+anything but merry. If she had her fits of bad temper, she kept them for
+her mother, in the secrecy of the house. Her voice was like that of the
+lark, and her smile like the May morning. She had plenty of suitors, for
+she was possessed of what a young peasant desires more in a wife than
+beauty, and that is money.
+
+But of all the young men who hovered about her, and sought her favour,
+none was destined to win it save Joseph Arler, the ranger, a man in a
+government position, whose duty was to watch the frontier against
+smugglers, and to keep an eye on the game against poachers.
+
+The eve of the marriage had come.
+
+One thing weighed on the pleasure-loving mind of Anna. She dreaded
+becoming a mother of a family which would keep her at home, and occupy
+her from morn to eve in attendance on her children, and break the
+sweetness of her sleep at night.
+
+So she visited an old hag named Schändelwein, who was a reputed witch,
+and to whom she confided her trouble.
+
+The old woman said that she had looked into the mirror of destiny,
+before Anna arrived, and she had seen that Providence had ordained that
+Anna should have seven children, three girls and four boys, and that one
+of the latter was destined to be a priest.
+
+But Mother Schändelwein had great powers; she could set at naught the
+determinations of Providence; and she gave to Anna seven pips, very much
+like apple-pips, which she placed in a cornet of paper; and she bade her
+cast these one by one into the mill-race, and as each went over the
+mill-wheel, it ceased to have a future, and in each pip was a child's
+soul.
+
+So Anna put money into Mother Schändelwein's hand and departed, and when
+it was growing dusk she stole to the wooden bridge over the mill-stream,
+and dropped in one pip after another. As each fell into the water she
+heard a little sigh.
+
+But when it came to casting in the last of the seven she felt a sudden
+qualm, and a battle in her soul.
+
+However, she threw it in, and then, overcome by an impulse of remorse,
+threw herself into the stream to recover it, and as she did so she
+uttered a cry.
+
+But the water was dark, the floating pip was small, she could not see
+it, and the current was rapidly carrying her to the mill-wheel, when the
+miller ran out and rescued her.
+
+On the following morning she had completely recovered her spirits, and
+laughingly told her bridesmaids how that in the dusk, in crossing the
+wooden bridge, her foot had slipped, she had fallen into the stream, and
+had been nearly drowned. "And then," added she, "if I really had been
+drowned, what would Joseph have done?"
+
+The married life of Anna was not unhappy. It could hardly be that in
+association with so genial, kind, and simple a man as Joseph. But it was
+not altogether the ideal happiness anticipated by both. Joseph had to be
+much away from home, sometimes for days and nights together, and Anna
+found it very tedious to be alone. And Joseph might have calculated on a
+more considerate wife. After a hard day of climbing and chasing in the
+mountains, he might have expected that she would have a good hot supper
+ready for him. But Anna set before him whatever came to hand and cost
+least trouble. A healthy appetite is the best of sauces, she remarked.
+
+Moreover, the nature of his avocation, scrambling up rocks and breaking
+through an undergrowth of brambles and thorns, produced rents and
+fraying of stockings and cloth garments. Instead of cheerfully
+undertaking the repairs, Anna grumbled over each rent, and put out his
+garments to be mended by others. It was only when repair was urgent that
+she consented to undertake it herself, and then it was done with sulky
+looks, muttered reproaches, and was executed so badly that it had to be
+done over again, and by a hired workwoman.
+
+But Joseph's nature was so amiable, and he was so fond of his pretty
+wife, that he bore with those defects, and turned off her murmurs with a
+joke, or sealed her pouting lips with a kiss.
+
+There was one thing about Joseph that Anna could not relish. Whenever he
+came into the village, he was surrounded, besieged by the children.
+Hardly had he turned the corner into the square, before it was known
+that he was there, and the little ones burst out of their parents'
+houses, broke from their sister nurse's arms, to scamper up to Joseph
+and to jump about him. For Joseph somehow always had nuts or almonds or
+sweets in his pockets, and for these he made the children leap, or
+catch, or scramble, or sometimes beg, by putting a sweet on a boy's nose
+and bidding him hold it there, till he said "Catch!"
+
+Joseph had one particular favourite among all this crew, and that was a
+little lame boy with a white, pinched face, who hobbled about on
+crutches.
+
+Him Joseph would single out, take him on his knee, seat himself on the
+steps of the village cross or of the churchyard, and tell him stories of
+his adventures, of the habits of the beasts of the forest.
+
+Anna, looking out of her window, could see all this; and see how before
+Joseph set the poor cripple down, the child would throw its arms round
+his neck and kiss him.
+
+Then Joseph would come home with his swinging step and joyous face.
+
+Anna resented that his first attention should be given to the children,
+regarding it as her due, and she often showed her displeasure by the
+chill of her reception of her husband. She did not reproach him in set
+words, but she did not run to meet him, jump into his arms, and respond
+to his warm kisses.
+
+Once he did venture on a mild expostulation. "Annerl, why do you not
+knit my socks or stocking-legs? Home-made is heart-made. It is a pity to
+spend money on buying what is poor stuff, when those made by you would
+not only last on my calves and feet, but warm the cockles of my heart."
+
+To which she replied testily: "It is you who set the example of throwing
+money away on sweet things for those pestilent little village brats."
+
+One evening Anna heard an unusual hubbub in the square, shouts and
+laughter, not of children alone, but of women and men as well, and next
+moment into the house burst Joseph very red, carrying a cradle on his
+head.
+
+"What is this fooling for?" asked Anna, turning crimson.
+
+"An experiment, Annerl, dearest," answered Joseph, setting down the
+cradle. "I have heard it said that a wife who rocks an empty cradle soon
+rocks a baby into it. So I have bought this and brought it to you. Rock,
+rock, rock, and when I see a little rosebud in it among the snowy linen,
+I shall cry for joy."
+
+Never before had Anna known how dull and dead life could be in an empty
+house. When she had lived with her mother, that mother had made her do
+much of the necessary work of the house; now there was not much to be
+done, and there was no one to exercise compulsion.
+
+If Anna ran out and visited her neighbours, they proved to be
+disinclined for a gossip. During the day they had to scrub and bake and
+cook, and in the evening they had their husbands and children with them,
+and did not relish the intrusion of a neighbour.
+
+The days were weary days, and Anna had not the energy or the love of
+work to prompt her to occupy herself more than was absolutely necessary.
+Consequently, the house was not kept scrupulously clean. The glass and
+the pewter and the saucepans did not shine. The window-panes were dull.
+The house linen was unhemmed.
+
+One evening Joseph sat in a meditative mood over the fire, looking into
+the red embers, and what was unusual with him, he did not speak.
+
+Anna was inclined to take umbrage at this, when all at once he looked
+round at her with his bright pleasant smile and said, "Annerl! I have
+been thinking. One thing is wanted to make us supremely happy--a baby in
+the house. It has not pleased God to send us one, so I propose that we
+both go on pilgrimage to Mariahilf to ask for one."
+
+"Go yourself--I want no baby here," retorted Anna.
+
+A few days after this, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the
+great affliction on Anna of her husband's death.
+
+Joseph had been found shot in the mountains. He was quite dead. The
+bullet had pierced his heart. He was brought home borne on green
+fir-boughs interlaced, by four fellow-jägers, and they carried him into
+his house. He had, in all probability, met his death at the hand of
+smugglers.
+
+With a cry of horror and grief Anna threw herself on Joseph's body and
+kissed his pale lips. Now only did she realise how deeply all along she
+had loved him--now that she had lost him.
+
+Joseph was laid in his coffin preparatory to the interment on the
+morrow. A crucifix and two candles stood at his head on a little table
+covered with a white cloth. On a stool at his feet was a bowl containing
+holy water and a sprig of rue.
+
+A neighbour had volunteered to keep company with Anna during the night,
+but she had impatiently, without speaking, repelled the offer. She would
+spend the last night that he was above ground alone with her dead--alone
+with her thoughts.
+
+And what were those thoughts?
+
+Now she remembered how indifferent she had been to his wishes, how
+careless of his comforts; how little she had valued his love, had
+appreciated his cheerfulness, his kindness, his forbearance, his equable
+temper.
+
+Now she recalled studied coldness on her part, sharp words, mortifying
+gestures, outbursts of unreasoning and unreasonable petulance.
+
+Now she recalled Joseph scattering nuts among the children, addressing
+kind words to old crones, giving wholesome advice to giddy youths.
+
+She remembered now little endearments shown to her, the presents brought
+her from the fair, the efforts made to cheer her with his pleasant
+stories and quaint jokes. She heard again his cheerful voice as he
+strove to interest her in his adventures of the chase.
+
+As she thus sat silent, numbed by her sorrow, in the faint light cast by
+the two candles, with the shadow of the coffin lying black on the floor
+at her feet, she heard a stumping without; then a hand was laid on the
+latch, the door was timidly opened, and in upon his crutches came the
+crippled boy. He looked wistfully at her, but she made no sign, and then
+he hobbled to the coffin and burst into tears, and stooped and kissed
+the brow of his dead friend.
+
+Leaning on his crutches, he took his rosary and said the prayers for the
+rest of her and his Joseph's soul; then shuffled awkwardly to the foot,
+dipped the spray of rue, and sprinkled the dead with the blessed water.
+
+Next moment the ungainly creature was stumping forth, but after he had
+passed through the door, he turned, looked once more towards the dead,
+put his hand to his lips, and wafted to it his final farewell.
+
+Anna now took her beads and tried to pray, but her prayers would not
+leave her lips; they were choked and driven back by the thoughts which
+crowded up and bewildered her. The chain fell from her fingers upon her
+lap, lay there neglected, and then slipped to the floor. How the time
+passed she knew not, neither did she care. The clock ticked, and she
+heard it not; the hours sounded, and she regarded them not till in at
+her ear and through her brain came clear the call of the wooden cuckoo
+announcing midnight.
+
+Her eyes had been closed. Now suddenly she was roused, and they opened
+and saw that all was changed.
+
+The coffin was gone, but by her instead was the cradle that years ago
+Joseph had brought home, and which she had chopped up for firewood. And
+now in that cradle lay a babe asleep, and with her foot she rocked it,
+and found a strange comfort in so doing.
+
+She was conscious of no sense of surprise, only a great welling up of
+joy in her heart. Presently she heard a feeble whimper and saw a
+stirring in the cradle; little hands were put forth gropingly. Then she
+stooped and lifted the child to her lap, and clasped it to her heart.
+Oh, how lovely was that tiny creature! Oh, how sweet in her ears its
+appealing cry! As she held it to her bosom the warm hands touched her
+throat, and the little lips were pressed to her bosom. She pressed it to
+her. She had entered into a new world, a world of love and light and
+beauty and happiness unspeakable. Oh! the babe--the babe--the babe! She
+laughed and cried, and cried and laughed and sobbed for very exuberance
+of joy. It brought warmth to her heart, it made every vein tingle, it
+ingrained her brain with pride. It was hers!--her own!--her very own!
+She could have been content to spend an eternity thus, with that little
+one close, close to her heart.
+
+Then as suddenly all faded away--the child in her arms was gone as a
+shadow; her tears congealed, her heart was cramped, and a voice spoke
+within her: "It is not, because you would not. You cast the soul away,
+and it went over the mill-wheel."
+
+Wild with terror, uttering a despairing cry, she started up, straining
+her arms after the lost child, and grasping nothing. She looked about
+her. The light of the candles flickered over the face of her dead
+Joseph. And tick, tick, tick went the clock.
+
+She could endure this no more. She opened the door to leave the room,
+and stepped into the outer chamber and cast herself into a chair. And
+lo! it was no more night. The sun, the red evening sun, shone in at the
+window, and on the sill were pots of pinks and mignonette that filled
+the air with fragrance.
+
+And there at her side stood a little girl with shining fair hair, and
+the evening sun was on it like the glory about a saint. The child raised
+its large blue eyes to her, pure innocent eyes, and said: "Mother, may I
+say my Catechism and prayers before I go to bed?"
+
+Then Anna answered and said: "Oh, my darling! My dearest Bärbchen! All
+the Catechism is comprehended in this: Love God, fear God, always do
+what is your duty. Do His will, and do not seek only your own pleasure
+and ease. And this will give you peace--peace--peace."
+
+The little girl knelt and laid her golden head on her folded hands upon
+Anna's knee and began: "God bless dear father, and mother, and all my
+dear brothers and sisters."
+
+Instantly a sharp pang as a knife went through the heart of Anna, and
+she cried: "Thou hast no father and no mother and no brothers and no
+sisters, for thou art not, because I would not have thee. I cast away
+thy soul, and it went over the mill-wheel."
+
+The cuckoo called one. The child had vanished. But the door was thrown
+open, and in the doorway stood a young couple--one a youth with fair
+hair and the down of a moustache on his lip, and oh, in face so like to
+the dead Joseph. He held by the hand a girl, in black bodice and with
+white sleeves, looking modestly on the ground. At once Anna knew what
+this signified. It was her son Florian come to announce that he was
+engaged, and to ask his mother's sanction.
+
+Then said the young man, as he came forward leading the girl: "Mother,
+sweetest mother, this is Susie, the baker's daughter, and child of your
+old and dear friend Vronie. We love one another; we have loved since we
+were little children together at school, and did our lessons out of one
+book, sitting on one bench. And, mother, the bakehouse is to be passed
+on to me and to Susie, and I shall bake for all the parish. The good
+Jesus fed the multitude, distributing the loaves through the hands of
+His apostles. And I shall be His minister feeding His people here.
+Mother, give us your blessing."
+
+Then Florian and the girl knelt to Anna, and with tears of happiness in
+her eyes she raised her hands over them. But ere she could touch them
+all had vanished. The room was dark, and a voice spake within her:
+"There is no Florian; there would have been, but you would not. You cast
+his soul into the water, and it passed away for ever over the
+mill-wheel."
+
+In an agony of terror Anna sprang from her seat. She could not endure
+the room, the air stifled her; her brain was on fire. She rushed to the
+back door that opened on a kitchen garden, where grew the pot-herbs and
+cabbages for use, tended by Joseph when he returned from his work in the
+mountains.
+
+But she came forth on a strange scene. She was on a battlefield. The air
+was charged with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The roar of cannon
+and the rattle of musketry, the cries of the wounded, and shouts of
+encouragement rang in her ears in a confused din.
+
+As she stood, panting, her hands to her breast, staring with wondering
+eyes, before her charged past a battalion of soldiers, and she knew by
+their uniforms that they were Bavarians. One of them, as he passed,
+turned his face towards her; it was the face of an Arler, fired with
+enthusiasm, she knew it; it was that of her son Fritz.
+
+Then came a withering volley, and many of the gallant fellows fell,
+among them he who carried the standard. Instantly, Fritz snatched it
+from his hand, waved it over his head, shouted, "Charge, brothers, fill
+up the ranks! Charge, and the day is ours!"
+
+Then the remnant closed up and went forward with bayonets fixed, tramp,
+tramp. Again an explosion of firearms and a dense cloud of smoke rolled
+before her and she could not see the result.
+
+She waited, quivering in every limb, holding her breath--hoping,
+fearing, waiting. And as the smoke cleared she saw men carrying to the
+rear one who had been wounded, and in his hand he grasped the flag. They
+laid him at Anna's feet, and she recognised that it was her Fritz. She
+fell on her knees, and snatching the kerchief from her throat and
+breast, strove to stanch the blood that welled from his heart. He looked
+up into her eyes, with such love in them as made her choke with emotion,
+and he said faintly: "Mütterchen, do not grieve for me; we have stormed
+the redoubt, the day is ours. Be of good cheer. They fly, they fly,
+those French rascals! Mother, remember me--I die for the dear
+Fatherland."
+
+And a comrade standing by said: "Do not give way to your grief, Anna
+Arler; your son has died the death of a hero."
+
+Then she stooped over him, and saw the glaze of death in his eyes, and
+his lips moved. She bent her ear to them and caught the words: "I am
+not, because you would not. There is no Fritz; you cast my soul into the
+brook and I was carried over the mill-wheel."
+
+All passed away, the smell of the powder, the roar of the cannon, the
+volumes of smoke, the cry of the battle, all--to a dead hush. Anna
+staggered to her feet, and turned to go back to her cottage, and as she
+opened the door, heard the cuckoo call two.
+
+But, as she entered, she found herself to be, not in her own room and
+house--she had strayed into another, and she found herself not in a lone
+chamber, not in her desolate home, but in the midst of a strange family
+scene.
+
+A woman, a mother, was dying. Her head reposed on her husband's breast
+as he sat on the bed and held her in his arms.
+
+The man had grey hair, his face was overflowed with tears, and his eyes
+rested with an expression of devouring love on her whom he supported,
+and whose brow he now and again bent over to kiss.
+
+About the bed were gathered her children, ay, and also her
+grandchildren, quite young, looking on with solemn, wondering eyes on
+the last throes of her whom they had learned to cling to and love with
+all the fervour of their simple hearts. One mite held her doll, dangling
+by the arm, and the forefinger of her other hand was in her mouth. Her
+eyes were brimming, and sobs came from her infant breast. She did not
+understand what was being taken from her, but she wept in sympathy with
+the rest.
+
+Kneeling by the bed was the eldest daughter of the expiring woman,
+reciting the Litany of the Dying, and the sons and another daughter and
+a daughter-in-law repeated the responses in voices broken with tears.
+
+When the recitation of the prayers ceased, there ensued for a while a
+great stillness, and all eyes rested on the dying woman. Her lips
+moved, and she poured forth her last petitions, that left her as rising
+flakes of fire, kindled by her pure and ardent soul. "O God, comfort
+and bless my dear husband, and ever keep Thy watchful guard over my
+children and my children's children, that they may walk in the way that
+leads to Thee, and that in Thine own good time we may all--all be
+gathered in Thy Paradise together, united for evermore. Amen."
+
+A spasm contracted Anna's heart. This woman with ecstatic, upturned
+gaze, this woman breathing forth her peaceful soul on her husband's
+breast, was her own daughter Elizabeth, and in the fine outline of her
+features was Joseph's profile.
+
+All again was hushed. The father slowly rose and quitted his position on
+the bed, gently laid the head on the pillow, put one hand over the eyes
+that still looked up to heaven, and with the fingers of the other
+tenderly arranged the straggling hair on each side of the brow. Then
+standing and turning to the rest, with a subdued voice he said: "My
+children, it has pleased the Lord to take to Himself your dear mother
+and my faithful companion. The Lord's will be done."
+
+Then ensued a great burst of weeping, and Anna's eyes brimmed till she
+could see no more. The church bell began to toll for a departing spirit.
+And following each stroke there came to her, as the after-clang of the
+boom: "There is not, there has not been, an Elizabeth. There would have
+been all this--but thou wouldest it not. For the soul of thy Elizabeth
+thou didst send down the mill-stream and over the wheel."
+
+Frantic with shame, with sorrow, not knowing what she did, or whither
+she went, Anna made for the front door of the house, ran forth and stood
+in the village square.
+
+To her unutterable amazement it was vastly changed. Moreover, the sun
+was shining brightly, and it gleamed over a new parish church, of cut
+white stone, very stately, with a gilded spire, with windows of
+wondrous lacework. Flags were flying, festoons of flowers hung
+everywhere. A triumphal arch of leaves and young birch trees was at the
+graveyard gate. The square was crowded with the peasants, all in their
+holiday attire.
+
+Silent, Anna stood and looked around. And as she stood she heard the
+talk of the people about her.
+
+One said: "It is a great thing that Johann von Arler has done for his
+native village. But see, he is a good man, and he is a great architect."
+
+"But why," asked another, "do you call him Von Arler? He was the son of
+that Joseph the Jäger who was killed by the smugglers in the mountains."
+
+"That is true. But do you not know that the king has ennobled him? He
+has done such great things in the Residenz. He built the new Town Hall,
+which is thought to be the finest thing in Bavaria. He added a new wing
+to the Palace, and he has rebuilt very many churches, and designed
+mansions for the rich citizens and the nobles. But although he is such a
+famous man his heart is in the right place. He never forgets that he was
+born in Siebenstein. Look what a beautiful house he has built for
+himself and his family on the mountain-side. He is there in summer, and
+it is furnished magnificently. But he will not suffer the old, humble
+Arler cottage here to be meddled with. They say that he values it above
+gold. And this is the new church he has erected in his native
+village--that is good."
+
+"Oh! he is a good man is Johann; he was always a good and serious boy,
+and never happy without a pencil in his hand. You mark what I say. Some
+day hence, when he is dead, there will be a statue erected in his honour
+here in this market-place, to commemorate the one famous man that has
+been produced by Siebenstein. But see--see! Here he comes to the
+dedication of the new church."
+
+Then, through the throng advanced a blonde, middle-aged man, with broad
+forehead, clear, bright blue eyes, and a flowing light beard. All the
+men present plucked off their hats to him, and made way for him as he
+advanced. But, full of smiles, he had a hand and a warm pressure, and a
+kindly word and a question as to family concerns, for each who was near.
+
+All at once his eye encountered that of Anna. A flash of recognition and
+joy kindled it up, and, extending his arms, he thrust his way towards
+her, crying: "My mother! my own mother!"
+
+Then--just as she was about to be folded to his heart, all faded away,
+and a voice said in her soul: "He is no son of thine, Anna Arler. He is
+not, because thou wouldest not. He might have been, God had so purposed;
+but thou madest His purpose of none effect. Thou didst send his soul
+over the mill-wheel."
+
+And then faintly, as from a far distance, sounded in her ear the call of
+the cuckoo--three.
+
+The magnificent new church had shrivelled up to the original mean little
+edifice Anna had known all her life. The square was deserted, the cold
+faint glimmer of coming dawn was visible over the eastern mountain-tops,
+but stars still shone in the sky.
+
+With a cry of pain, like a wounded beast, Anna ran hither and thither
+seeking a refuge, and then fled to the one home and resting-place of the
+troubled soul--the church. She thrust open the swing-door, pushed in,
+sped over the uneven floor, and flung herself on her knees before the
+altar.
+
+But see! before that altar stood a priest in a vestment of
+black-and-silver; and a serving-boy knelt on his right hand on a lower
+stage. The candles were lighted, for the priest was about to say Mass.
+There was a rustling of feet, a sound as of people entering, and many
+were kneeling, shortly after, on each side of Anna, and still they came
+on; she turned about and looked and saw a great crowd pressing in, and
+strange did it seem to her eyes that all--men, women, and children,
+young and old--seemed to bear in their faces something, a trace only in
+many, of the Arler or the Voss features. And the little serving-boy, as
+he shifted his position, showed her his profile--it was like her little
+brother who had died when he was sixteen.
+
+Then the priest turned himself about, and said, "Oremus." And she knew
+him--he was her own son--her Joseph, named after his dear father.
+
+The Mass began, and proceeded to the "Sursum corda"--"Lift up your
+hearts!"--when the celebrant stood facing the congregation with extended
+arms, and all responded: "We lift them up unto the Lord."
+
+But then, instead of proceeding with the accustomed invocation, he
+raised his hands high above his head, with the palms towards the
+congregation, and in a loud, stern voice exclaimed--
+
+"Cursed is the unfruitful field!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the barren tree!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the empty house!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the fishless lake!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Forasmuch as Anna Arler, born Voss, might have been the mother of
+countless generations, as the sand of the seashore for number, as the
+stars of heaven for brightness, of generations unto the end of time,
+even of all of us now gathered together here, but she would
+not--therefore shall she be alone, with none to comfort her; sick, with
+none to minister to her; broken in heart, with none to bind up her
+wounds; feeble, and none to stay her up; dead, and none to pray for her,
+for she would not--she shall have an unforgotten and unforgettable past,
+and have no future; remorse, but no hope; she shall have tears, but no
+laughter--for she would not. Woe! woe! woe!"
+
+He lowered his hands, and the tapers were extinguished, the celebrant
+faded as a vision of the night, the server vanished as an incense-cloud,
+the congregation disappeared, melting into shadows, and then from
+shadows to nothingness, without stirring from their places, and without
+a sound.
+
+And Anna, with a scream of despair, flung herself forward with her face
+on the pavement, and her hands extended.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two years ago, during the first week in June, an English traveller
+arrived at Siebenstein and put up at the "Krone," where, as he was tired
+and hungry, he ordered an early supper. When that was discussed, he
+strolled forth into the village square, and leaned against the wall of
+the churchyard. The sun had set in the valley, but the mountain-peaks
+were still in the glory of its rays, surrounding the place as a golden
+crown. He lighted a cigar, and, looking into the cemetery, observed
+there an old woman, bowed over a grave, above which stood a cross,
+inscribed "Joseph Arler," and she was tending the flowers on it, and
+laying over the arms of the cross a little wreath of heart's-ease or
+pansy. She had in her hand a small basket. Presently she rose and walked
+towards the gate, by which stood the traveller.
+
+As she passed, he said kindly to her: "Grüss Gott, Mütterchen."
+
+She looked steadily at him and replied: "Honoured sir! that which is
+past may be repented of, but can never be undone!" and went on her way.
+
+He was struck with her face. He had never before seen one so full of
+boundless sorrow--almost of despair.
+
+His eyes followed her as she walked towards the mill-stream, and there
+she took her place on the wooden bridge that crossed it, leaning over
+the handrail, and looking down into the water. An impulse of curiosity
+and of interest led him to follow her at a distance, and he saw her pick
+a flower, a pansy, out of her basket, and drop it into the current,
+which caught and carried it forward. Then she took a second, and allowed
+it to fall into the water. Then, after an interval, a third--a fourth;
+and he counted seven in all. After that she bowed her head on her hands;
+her grey hair fell over them, and she broke into a paroxysm of weeping.
+
+The traveller, standing by the stream, saw the seven pansies swept down,
+and one by one pass over the revolving wheel and vanish.
+
+He turned himself about to return to his inn, when, seeing a grave
+peasant near, he asked: "Who is that poor old woman who seems so broken
+down with sorrow?"
+
+"That," replied the man, "is the Mother of Pansies."
+
+"The Mother of Pansies!" he repeated.
+
+"Well--it is the name she has acquired in the place. Actually, she is
+called Anna Arler, and is a widow. She was the wife of one Joseph Arler,
+a jäger, who was shot by smugglers. But that is many, many years ago.
+She is not right in her head, but she is harmless. When her husband was
+brought home dead, she insisted on being left alone in the night by him,
+before he was buried alone,--with his coffin. And what happened in that
+night no one knows. Some affirm that she saw ghosts. I do not know--she
+may have had Thoughts. The French word for these flowers is
+_pensées_--thoughts--and she will have none others. When they are in her
+garden she collects them, and does as she has done now. When she has
+none, she goes about to her neighbours and begs them. She comes here
+every evening and throws in seven--just seven, no more and no less--and
+then weeps as one whose heart would split. My wife on one occasion
+offered her forget-me-nots. 'No,' she said; 'I cannot send
+forget-me-nots after those who never were, I can send only Pansies.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
+
+A WIFE'S STORY
+
+
+In 1876 we took a house in one of the best streets and parts of B----. I
+do not give the name of the street or the number of the house, because
+the circumstances that occurred in that place were such as to make
+people nervous, and shy--unreasonably so--of taking those lodgings,
+after reading our experiences therein.
+
+We were a small family--my husband, a grown-up daughter, and myself; and
+we had two maids--a cook, and the other was house- and parlourmaid in
+one. We had not been a fortnight in the house before my daughter said to
+me one morning: "Mamma, I do not like Jane"--that was our
+house-parlourmaid.
+
+"Why so?" I asked. "She seems respectable, and she does her work
+systematically. I have no fault to find with her, none whatever."
+
+"She may do her work," said Bessie, my daughter, "but I dislike
+inquisitiveness."
+
+"Inquisitiveness!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean? Has she been looking
+into your drawers?"
+
+"No, mamma, but she watches me. It is hot weather now, and when I am in
+my room, occasionally, I leave my door open whilst writing a letter, or
+doing any little bit of needlework, and then I am almost certain to hear
+her outside. If I turn sharply round, I see her slipping out of sight.
+It is most annoying. I really was unaware that I was such an interesting
+personage as to make it worth anyone's while to spy out my proceedings."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear. You are sure it is Jane?"
+
+"Well--I suppose so." There was a slight hesitation in her voice. "If
+not Jane, who can it be?"
+
+"Are you sure it is not cook?"
+
+"Oh, no, it is not cook; she is busy in the kitchen. I have heard her
+there, when I have gone outside my room upon the landing, after having
+caught that girl watching me."
+
+"If you have caught her," said I, "I suppose you spoke to her about the
+impropriety of her conduct."
+
+"Well, caught is the wrong word. I have not actually _caught_ her at it.
+Only to-day I distinctly heard her at my door, and I saw her back as she
+turned to run away, when I went towards her."
+
+"But you followed her, of course?"
+
+"Yes, but I did not find her on the landing when I got outside."
+
+"Where was she, then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But did you not go and see?"
+
+"She slipped away with astonishing celerity," said Bessie.
+
+"I can take no steps in the matter. If she does it again, speak to her
+and remonstrate."
+
+"But I never have a chance. She is gone in a moment."
+
+"She cannot get away so quickly as all that."
+
+"Somehow she does."
+
+"And you are sure it is Jane?" again I asked; and again she replied: "If
+not Jane, who else can it be? There is no one else in the house."
+
+So this unpleasant matter ended, for the time. The next intimation of
+something of the sort proceeded from another quarter--in fact, from Jane
+herself. She came to me some days later and said, with some
+embarrassment in her tone--
+
+"If you please, ma'am, if I do not give satisfaction, I would rather
+leave the situation."
+
+"Leave!" I exclaimed. "Why, I have not given you the slightest cause. I
+have not found fault with you for anything as yet, have I, Jane? On the
+contrary, I have been much pleased with the thoroughness of your work.
+And you are always tidy and obliging."
+
+"It isn't that, ma'am; but I don't like being watched whatever I do."
+
+"Watched!" I repeated. "What do you mean? You surely do not suppose that
+I am running after you when you are engaged on your occupations. I
+assure you I have other and more important things to do."
+
+"No, ma'am, I don't suppose you do."
+
+"Then who watches you?"
+
+"I think it must be Miss Bessie."
+
+"Miss Bessie!" I could say no more, I was so astounded.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. When I am sweeping out a room, and my back is turned, I
+hear her at the door; and when I turn myself about, I just catch a
+glimpse of her running away. I see her skirts----"
+
+"Miss Bessie is above doing anything of the sort."
+
+"If it is not Miss Bessie, who is it, ma'am?"
+
+There was a tone of indecision in her voice.
+
+"My good Jane," said I, "set your mind at rest. Miss Bessie could not
+act as you suppose. Have you seen her on these occasions and assured
+yourself that it is she?"
+
+"No, ma'am, I've not, so to speak, seen her face; but I know it ain't
+cook, and I'm sure it ain't you, ma'am; so who else can it be?"
+
+I considered for some moments, and the maid stood before me in dubious
+mood.
+
+"You say you saw her skirts. Did you recognise the gown? What did she
+wear?"
+
+"It was a light cotton print--more like a maid's morning dress."
+
+"Well, set your mind at ease; Miss Bessie has not got such a frock as
+you describe."
+
+"I don't think she has," said Jane; "but there was someone at the door,
+watching me, who ran away when I turned myself about."
+
+"Did she run upstairs or down?"
+
+"I don't know. I did go out on the landing, but there was no one there.
+I'm sure it wasn't cook, for I heard her clattering the dishes down in
+the kitchen at the time."
+
+"Well, Jane, there is some mystery in this. I will not accept your
+notice; we will let matters stand over till we can look into this
+complaint of yours and discover the rights of it."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am. I'm very comfortable here, but it is unpleasant to
+suppose that one is not trusted, and is spied on wherever one goes and
+whatever one is about."
+
+A week later, after dinner one evening, when Bessie and I had quitted
+the table and left my husband to his smoke, Bessie said to me, when we
+were in the drawing-room together: "Mamma, it is not Jane."
+
+"What is not Jane?" I asked.
+
+"It is not Jane who watches me."
+
+"Who can it be, then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"And how is it that you are confident that you are not being observed by
+Jane?"
+
+"Because I have seen her--that is to say, her head."
+
+"When? where?"
+
+"Whilst dressing for dinner, I was before the glass doing my hair, when
+I saw in the mirror someone behind me. I had only the two candles
+lighted on the table, and the room was otherwise dark. I thought I heard
+someone stirring--just the sort of stealthy step I have come to
+recognise as having troubled me so often. I did not turn, but looked
+steadily before me into the glass, and I could see reflected therein
+someone--a woman with red hair. Then I moved from my place quickly. I
+heard steps of some person hurrying away, but I saw no one then."
+
+"The door was open?"
+
+"No, it was shut."
+
+"But where did she go?"
+
+"I do not know, mamma. I looked everywhere in the room and could find no
+one. I have been quite upset. I cannot tell what to think of this. I
+feel utterly unhinged."
+
+"I noticed at table that you did not appear well, but I said nothing
+about it. Your father gets so alarmed, and fidgets and fusses, if he
+thinks that there is anything the matter with you. But this is a most
+extraordinary story."
+
+"It is an extraordinary fact," said Bessie.
+
+"You have searched your room thoroughly?"
+
+"I have looked into every corner."
+
+"And there is no one there?"
+
+"No one. Would you mind, mamma, sleeping with me to-night? I am so
+frightened. Do you think it can be a ghost?"
+
+"Ghost? Fiddlesticks!"
+
+I made some excuse to my husband and spent the night in Bessie's room.
+There was no disturbance that night of any sort, and although my
+daughter was excited and unable to sleep till long after midnight, she
+did fall into refreshing slumber at last, and in the morning said to me:
+"Mamma, I think I must have fancied that I saw something in the glass. I
+dare say my nerves were over-wrought."
+
+I was greatly relieved to hear this, and I arrived at much the same
+conclusion as did Bessie, but was again bewildered, and my mind
+unsettled by Jane, who came to me just before lunch, when I was alone,
+and said--
+
+"Please, ma'am, it's only fair to say, but it's not Miss Bessie."
+
+"What is not Miss Bessie? I mean, who is not Miss Bessie?"
+
+"Her as is spying on me."
+
+"I told you it could not be she. Who is it?"
+
+"Please, ma'am, I don't know. It's a red-haired girl."
+
+"But, Jane, be serious. There is no red-haired girl in the house."
+
+"I know there ain't, ma'am. But for all that, she spies on me."
+
+"Be reasonable, Jane," I said, disguising the shock her words produced
+on me. "If there be no red-haired girl in the house, how can you have
+one watching you?"
+
+"I don't know; but one does."
+
+"How do you know that she is red-haired?"
+
+"Because I have seen her."
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I was going upstairs, when I heard steps coming softly
+after me--the backstairs, ma'am; they're rather dark and steep, and
+there's no carpet on them, as on the front stairs, and I was sure I
+heard someone following me; so I twisted about, thinking it might be
+cook, but it wasn't. I saw a young woman in a print dress, and the light
+as came from the window at the side fell on her head, and it was
+carrots--reg'lar carrots."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"No, ma'am; she put her arm up and turned and ran downstairs, and I went
+after her, but I never found her."
+
+"You followed her--how far?"
+
+"To the kitchen. Cook was there. And I said to cook, says I: 'Did you
+see a girl come this way?' And she said, short-like: 'No.'"
+
+"And cook saw nothing at all?"
+
+"Nothing. She didn't seem best pleased at my axing. I suppose I
+frightened her, as I'd been telling her about how I was followed and
+spied on."
+
+I mused a moment only, and then said solemnly--
+
+"Jane, what you want is a _pill_. You are suffering from hallucinations.
+I know a case very much like yours; and take my word for it that, in
+your condition of liver or digestion, a pill is a sovereign remedy. Set
+your mind at rest; this is a mere delusion, caused by pressure on the
+optic nerve. I will give you a pill to-night when you go to bed, another
+to-morrow, a third on the day after, and that will settle the red-haired
+girl. You will see no more of her."
+
+"You think so, ma'am?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+On consideration, I thought it as well to mention the matter to the
+cook, a strange, reserved woman, not given to talking, who did her work
+admirably, but whom, for some inexplicable reason, I did not like. If I
+had considered a little further as to how to broach the subject, I
+should perhaps have proved more successful; but by not doing so I rushed
+the question and obtained no satisfaction.
+
+I had gone down to the kitchen to order dinner, and the difficult
+question had arisen how to dispose of the scraps from yesterday's joint.
+
+"Rissoles, ma'am?"
+
+"No," said I, "not rissoles. Your master objects to them."
+
+"Then perhaps croquettes?"
+
+"They are only rissoles in disguise."
+
+"Perhaps cottage pie?"
+
+"No; that is inorganic rissole, a sort of protoplasm out of which
+rissoles are developed."
+
+"Then, ma'am, I might make a hash."
+
+"Not an ordinary, barefaced, rudimentary hash?"
+
+"No, ma'am, with French mushrooms, or truffles, or tomatoes."
+
+"Well--yes--perhaps. By the way, talking of tomatoes, who is that
+red-haired girl who has been about the house?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am."
+
+I noticed at once that the eyes of the cook contracted, her lips
+tightened, and her face assumed a half-defiant, half-terrified look.
+
+"You have not many friends in this place, have you, cook?"
+
+"No, ma'am, none."
+
+"Then who can she be?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am."
+
+"You can throw no light on the matter? It is very unsatisfactory having
+a person about the house--and she has been seen upstairs--of whom one
+knows nothing."
+
+"No doubt, ma'am."
+
+"And you cannot enlighten me?"
+
+"She is no friend of mine."
+
+"Nor is she of Jane's. Jane spoke to me about her. Has she remarked
+concerning this girl to you?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am, as I notice all Jane says. She talks a good deal."
+
+"You see, there must be someone who is a stranger and who has access to
+this house. It is most awkward."
+
+"Very so, ma'am."
+
+I could get nothing more from the cook. I might as well have talked to a
+log; and, indeed, her face assumed a wooden look as I continued to speak
+to her on the matter. So I sighed, and said--
+
+"Very well, hash with tomato," and went upstairs.
+
+A few days later the house-parlourmaid said to me, "Please, ma'am, may I
+have another pill?"
+
+"Pill!" I exclaimed. "Why?"
+
+"Because I have seen her again. She was behind the curtains, and I
+caught her putting out her red head to look at me."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"No; she up with her arm over it and scuttled away."
+
+"This is strange. I do not think I have more than two podophyllin pills
+left in the box, but to those you are welcome. Only I should recommend a
+different treatment. Instead of taking them yourself, the moment you
+see, or fancy that you see, the red-haired girl, go at her with the box
+and threaten to administer the pills to her. That will rout her, if
+anything will."
+
+"But she will not stop for the pills."
+
+"The threat of having them forced on her every time she shows herself
+will disconcert her. Conceive, I am supposing, that on each occasion
+Miss Bessie, or I, were to meet you on the stairs, in a room, on the
+landing, in the hall, we were to rush on you and force, let us say,
+castor-oil globules between your lips. You would give notice at once."
+
+"Yes; so I should, ma'am."
+
+"Well, try this upon the red-haired girl. It will prove infallible."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am; what you say seems reasonable."
+
+Whether Bessie saw more of the puzzling apparition, I cannot say. She
+spoke no further on the matter to me; but that may have been so as to
+cause me no further uneasiness. I was unable to resolve the question to
+my own satisfaction--whether what had been seen was a real person, who
+obtained access to the house in some unaccountable manner, or whether it
+was, what I have called it, an apparition.
+
+As far as I could ascertain, nothing had been taken away. The movements
+of the red-haired girl were not those of one who sought to pilfer. They
+seemed to me rather those of one not in her right mind; and on this
+supposition I made inquiries in the neighbourhood as to the existence in
+our street, in any of the adjoining houses, of a person wanting in her
+wits, who was suffered to run about at will. But I could obtain no
+information that at all threw light on a point to me so perplexing.
+
+Hitherto I had not mentioned the topic to my husband. I knew so well
+that I should obtain no help from him, that I made no effort to seek it.
+He would "Pish!" and "Pshaw!" and make some slighting reference to
+women's intellects, and not further trouble himself about the matter.
+
+But one day, to my great astonishment, he referred to it himself.
+
+"Julia," said he, "do you observe how I have cut myself in shaving?"
+
+"Yes, dear," I replied. "You have cotton-wool sticking to your jaw, as
+if you were growing a white whisker on one side."
+
+"It bled a great deal," said he.
+
+"I am sorry to hear it."
+
+"And I mopped up the blood with the new toilet-cover."
+
+"Never!" I exclaimed. "You haven't been so foolish as to do that?"
+
+"Yes. And that is just like you. You are much more concerned about your
+toilet-cover being stained than about my poor cheek which is gashed."
+
+"You were very clumsy to do it," was all I could say. Married people are
+not always careful to preserve the amenities in private life. It is a
+pity, but it is so.
+
+"It was due to no clumsiness on my part," said he; "though I do allow my
+nerves have been so shaken, broken, by married life, that I cannot
+always command my hand, as was the case when I was a bachelor. But this
+time it was due to that new, stupid, red-haired servant you have
+introduced into the house without consulting me or my pocket."
+
+"Red-haired servant!" I echoed.
+
+"Yes, that red-haired girl I have seen about. She thrusts herself into
+my study in a most offensive and objectionable way. But the climax of
+all was this morning, when I was shaving. I stood in my shirt before the
+glass, and had lathered my face, and was engaged on my right jaw, when
+that red-haired girl rushed between me and the mirror with both her
+elbows up, screening her face with her arms, and her head bowed. I
+started back, and in so doing cut myself."
+
+"Where did she come from?"
+
+"How can I tell? I did not expect to see anyone."
+
+"Then where did she go?"
+
+"I do not know; I was too concerned about my bleeding jaw to look about
+me. That girl must be dismissed."
+
+"I wish she could be dismissed," I said.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+I did not answer my husband, for I really did not know what answer to
+make.
+
+I was now the only person in the house who had not seen the red-haired
+girl, except possibly the cook, from whom I could gather nothing, but
+whom I suspected of knowing more concerning this mysterious apparition
+than she chose to admit. That what had been seen by Bessie and Jane was
+a supernatural visitant, I now felt convinced, seeing that it had
+appeared to that least imaginative and most commonplace of all
+individuals, my husband. By no mental process could he have been got to
+imagine anything. He certainly did see this red-haired girl, and that no
+living, corporeal maid had been in his dressing-room at the time I was
+perfectly certain.
+
+I was soon, however, myself to be included in the number of those before
+whose eyes she appeared. It was in this wise.
+
+Cook had gone out to do some marketing. I was in the breakfast-room,
+when, wanting a funnel to fill a little phial of brandy I always keep on
+the washstand in case of emergencies, I went to the head of the kitchen
+stairs, to descend and fetch what I required. Then I was aware of a
+great clattering of the fire-irons below, and a banging about of the
+boiler and grate. I went down the steps very hastily and entered the
+kitchen.
+
+There I saw a figure of a short, set girl in a shabby cotton gown, not
+over clean, and slipshod, stooping before the stove, and striking the
+fender with the iron poker. She had fiery red hair, very untidy.
+
+I uttered an exclamation.
+
+Instantly she dropped the poker, and covering her face with her arms,
+uttering a strange, low cry, she dashed round the kitchen table, making
+nearly the complete circuit, and then swept past me, and I heard her
+clattering up the kitchen stairs.
+
+I was too much taken aback to follow. I stood as one petrified. I felt
+dazed and unable to trust either my eyes or my ears.
+
+Something like a minute must have elapsed before I had sufficiently
+recovered to turn and leave the kitchen. Then I ascended slowly and, I
+confess, nervously. I was fearful lest I should find the red-haired girl
+cowering against the wall, and that I should have to pass her.
+
+But nothing was to be seen. I reached the hall, and saw that no door was
+open from it except that of the breakfast-room. I entered and thoroughly
+examined every recess, corner, and conceivable hiding-place, but could
+find no one there. Then I ascended the staircase, with my hand on the
+balustrade, and searched all the rooms on the first floor, without the
+least success. Above were the servants' apartments, and I now resolved
+on mounting to them. Here the staircase was uncarpeted. As I was
+ascending, I heard Jane at work in her room. I then heard her come out
+hastily upon the landing. At the same moment, with a rush past me,
+uttering the same moan, went the red-haired girl. I am sure I felt her
+skirts sweep my dress. I did not notice her till she was close upon me,
+but I did distinctly see her as she passed. I turned, and saw no more.
+
+I at once mounted to the landing where was Jane.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+"Please, ma'am, I've seen the red-haired girl again, and I did as you
+recommended. I went at her rattling the pill-box, and she turned and ran
+downstairs. Did you see her, ma'am, as you came up?"
+
+"How inexplicable!" I said. I would not admit to Jane that I had seen
+the apparition.
+
+The situation remained unaltered for a week. The mystery was unsolved.
+No fresh light had been thrown on it. I did not again see or hear
+anything out of the way; nor did my husband, I presume, for he made no
+further remarks relative to the extra servant who had caused him so much
+annoyance. I presume he supposed that I had summarily dismissed her.
+This I conjectured from a smugness assumed by his face, such as it
+always acquired when he had carried a point against me--which was not
+often.
+
+However, one evening, abruptly, we had a new sensation. My husband,
+Bessie, and I were at dinner, and we were partaking of the soup, Jane
+standing by, waiting to change our plates and to remove the tureen, when
+we dropped our spoons, alarmed by fearful screams issuing from the
+kitchen. By the way, characteristically, my husband finished his soup
+before he laid down the spoon and said--
+
+"Good gracious! What is that?"
+
+Bessie, Jane, and I were by this time at the door, and we rushed
+together to the kitchen stairs, and one after the other ran down them. I
+was the first to enter, and I saw cook wrapped in flames, and a paraffin
+lamp on the floor broken, and the blazing oil flowing over it.
+
+I had sufficient presence of mind to catch up the cocoanut matting which
+was not impregnated with the oil, and to throw it round cook, wrap her
+tightly in it, and force her down on the floor where not overflowed by
+the oil. I held her thus, and Bessie succoured me. Jane was too
+frightened to do other than scream. The cries of the burnt woman were
+terrible. Presently my husband appeared.
+
+"Dear me! Bless me! Good gracious!" he said.
+
+"You go away and fetch a doctor," I called to him; "you can be of no
+possible service here--you only get in our way."
+
+"But the dinner?"
+
+"Bother the dinner! Run for a surgeon."
+
+In a little while we had removed the poor woman to her room, she
+shrieking the whole way upstairs; and, when there, we laid her on the
+bed, and kept her folded in the cocoanut matting till a medical man
+arrived, in spite of her struggles to be free. My husband, on this
+occasion, acted with commendable promptness; but whether because he was
+impatient for the completion of his meal, or whether his sluggish nature
+was for once touched with human sympathy, it is not for me to say.
+
+All I know is that, so soon as the surgeon was there, I dismissed Jane
+with "There, go and get your master the rest of his dinner, and leave us
+with cook."
+
+The poor creature was frightfully burnt. She was attended to devotedly
+by Bessie and myself, till a nurse was obtained from the hospital. For
+hours she was as one mad with terror as much as with pain.
+
+Next day she was quieter and sent for me. I hastened to her, and she
+begged the nurse to leave the room. I took a chair and seated myself by
+her bedside, and expressed my profound commiseration, and told her that
+I should like to know how the accident had taken place.
+
+"Ma'am, it was the red-haired girl did it."
+
+"The red-haired girl!"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I took a lamp to look how the fish was getting on, and all
+at once I saw her rush straight at me, and I--I backed, thinking she
+would knock me down, and the lamp fell over and smashed, and my clothes
+caught, and----"
+
+"Oh, cook! you should not have taken the lamp."
+
+"It's done. And she would never leave me alone till she had burnt or
+scalded me. You needn't be afraid--she don't haunt the house. It is _me_
+she has haunted, because of what I did to her."
+
+"Then you know her?"
+
+"She was in service with me, as kitchenmaid, at my last place, near
+Cambridge. I took a sort of hate against her, she was such a slattern
+and so inquisitive. She peeped into my letters, and turned out my box
+and drawers, she was ever prying; and when I spoke to her, she was that
+saucy! I reg'lar hated her. And one day she was kneeling by the stove,
+and I was there, too, and I suppose the devil possessed me, for I upset
+the boiler as was on the hot-plate right upon her, just as she looked
+up, and it poured over her face and bosom, and arms, and scalded her
+that dreadful, she died. And since then she has haunted me. But she'll
+do so no more. She won't trouble you further. She has done for me, as
+she has always minded to do, since I scalded her to death."
+
+The unhappy woman did not recover.
+
+"Dear me! no hope?" said my husband, when informed that the surgeon
+despaired of her. "And good cooks are so scarce. By the way, that
+red-haired girl?"
+
+"Gone--gone for ever," I said.
+
+
+
+
+A PROFESSIONAL SECRET
+
+
+Mr. Leveridge was in a solicitor's office at Swanton. Mr. Leveridge had
+been brought up well by a sensible father and an excellent mother. His
+principles left nothing to be desired. His father was now dead, and his
+mother did not reside at Swanton, but near her own relations in another
+part of England. Joseph Leveridge was a mild, inoffensive man, with fair
+hair and a full head. He was so shy that he did not move in Society as
+he might have done had he been self-assertive. But he was fairly
+happy--not so happy as he might have been, for reasons to be shortly
+given.
+
+Swanton was a small market-town, that woke into life every Friday, which
+was market-day, burst into boisterous levity at the Michaelmas fair, and
+then lapsed back into decorum; it was, except on Fridays, somnolent
+during the day and asleep at night.
+
+Swanton was not a manufacturing town. It possessed one iron foundry and
+a brewery, so that it afforded little employment for the labouring
+classes, yet the labouring classes crowded into it, although cottage
+rents were high, because the farmers could not afford, owing to the hard
+times, to employ many hands on the land, and because their wives and
+daughters desired the distractions and dissipations of a town, and
+supposed that both were to be found in superfluity at Swanton.
+
+There was a large town hall with a magistrates' court, where the bench
+sat every month once. The church, in the centre of the town, was an
+imposing structure of stone, very cold within. The presentation was in
+the hands of the Simeonite Trustees, so that the vicar was of the
+theological school--if that can be called a school where nothing is
+taught--called Evangelical. The services ever long and dismal. The Vicar
+slowly and impressively declaimed the prayers, preached lengthy sermons,
+and condemned the congregation to sing out of the Mitre hymnal.
+
+The principal solicitor, Mr. Stork, was clerk of the petty sessions and
+registrar. He did a limited amount of legal work for the landed gentry
+round, was trustee to some widows and orphans, and was consulted by
+tottering yeomen as to their financial difficulties, lent them some
+money to relieve their immediate embarrassments, on the security of
+their land, which ultimately passed into his possession.
+
+To this gentleman Mr. Leveridge had been articled. He had been induced
+to adopt the legal profession, not from any true vocation, but at the
+instigation of his mother, who had urged him to follow in the
+professional footsteps of his revered father. But the occupation was not
+one that accorded with the tastes of the young man, who, notwithstanding
+his apparent mildness and softness, was not deficient in brains. He was
+a shrewd observer, and was endowed with a redundant imagination.
+
+From a child he had scribbled stories, and with his pencil had
+illustrated them; but this had brought upon him severe rebukes from his
+mother, who looked with disfavour on works of imagination, and his
+father had taken him across his knee, of course before he was adult, and
+had castigated him with the flat of the hairbrush for surreptitiously
+reading the _Arabian Nights_.
+
+Mr. Leveridge's days passed evenly enough; there was some business
+coming into the office on Fridays, and none at all on Sundays, on which
+day he wrote a long and affectionate letter to his widowed mother.
+
+He would have been a happy man, happy in a mild, lotus-eating way, but
+for three things. In the first place, he became conscious that he was
+not working in his proper vocation. He took no pleasure in engrossing
+deeds; indentures his soul abhorred. He knew himself to be capable of
+better things, and feared lest the higher faculties of his mind should
+become atrophied by lack of exercise. In the second place, he was not
+satisfied that his superior was a man of strict integrity. He had no
+reason whatever for supposing that anything dishonest went on in the
+office, but he had discovered that his "boss" was a daring and
+venturesome speculator, and he feared lest temptation should induce him
+to speculate with the funds of those to whom he acted as trustee. And
+Joseph, with his high sense of rectitude, was apprehensive lest some day
+something might there be done, which would cause a crash. Lastly, Joseph
+Leveridge had lost his heart. He was consumed by a hopeless passion for
+Miss Asphodel Vincent, a young lady with a small fortune of about £400
+per annum, to whom Mr. Stork was guardian and trustee.
+
+This young lady was tall, slender, willowy, had a sweet, Madonna-like
+face, and like Joseph himself was constitutionally shy; and she was
+unconscious of her personal and pecuniary attractions. She moved in the
+best society, she was taken up by the county people. No doubt she would
+be secured by the son of some squire, and settle down as Lady Bountiful
+in some parish; or else some wily curate with a moustache would step in
+and carry her off. But her bashfulness and her indifference to men's
+society had so far protected her. She loved her garden, cultivated
+herbaceous plants, and was specially addicted to a rockery in which she
+acclimatised flowers from the Alps.
+
+As Mr. Stork was her guardian, she often visited the office, when Joseph
+flew, with heightened colour, to offer her a chair till Mr. Stork was
+disengaged. But conversation between them had never passed beyond
+generalities. Mr. Leveridge occasionally met her in his country walks,
+but never advanced in intimacy beyond raising his hat and remarking on
+the weather.
+
+Probably it was the stimulus of this devouring and despairing passion
+which drove Mr. Leveridge to writing a novel, in which he could paint
+Asphodel, under another name, in all her perfections. She should move
+through his story diffusing an atmosphere of sweetness and saintliness,
+but he could not bring himself to provide her with a lover, and to
+conclude his romance with her union to a being of the male sex.
+
+Impressed as he had been in early youth by the admonitions of his
+mother, and the applications of the hairbrush by his father, that the
+imagination was a dangerous and delusive gift, to be restrained, not
+indulged, he resolved that he would create no characters for his story,
+but make direct studies from life. Consequently, when the work was
+completed, it presented the most close portraits of a certain number of
+the residents in Swanton, and the town in which the scene was laid was
+very much like Swanton, though he called it Buzbury.
+
+But to find a publisher was a more difficult work than to write the
+novel. Mr. Leveridge sent his MS. type-written to several firms, and it
+was declined by one after another. At last, however, it fell into the
+hands of an unusually discerning reader, who saw in it distinct tokens
+of ability. It was not one to appeal to the general public. It contained
+no blood-curdling episodes, no hair-breadth escapes, no risky
+situations; it was simply a transcript of life in a little English
+country town. Though not high-spiced to suit the vulgar taste, still the
+reader and the publisher considered that there was a discerning public,
+small and select, that relished good, honest work of the Jane Austen
+kind, and the latter resolved on risking the production. Accordingly he
+offered the author fifty pounds for the work, he buying all rights.
+Joseph Leveridge was overwhelmed at the munificence of the offer, and
+accepted it gratefully and with alacrity.
+
+The next stage in the proceedings consisted in the revision of the
+proofs. And who that has not experienced it can judge of the sensation
+of exquisite delight afforded by this to the young author? After the
+correction of his romance--if romance such a prosaic tale can be
+called--in print, with characteristic modesty Leveridge insisted that
+his story should appear under an assumed name. What the name adopted was
+it does not concern the reader of this narrative to know. Some time now
+elapsed before the book appeared, at the usual publishing time, in
+October.
+
+Eventually it came out, and Mr. Leveridge received his six copies,
+neatly and quietly bound in cloth. He cut and read one with avidity, and
+at once perceived that he had overlooked several typographical errors,
+and wrote to the publisher to beg that these might be corrected in the
+event of a second edition being called for.
+
+On the morning following the publication and dissemination of the book,
+Joseph Leveridge lay in bed a little longer than usual, smiling in happy
+self-gratification at the thought that he had become an author. On the
+table by his bed stood his extinguished candle, his watch, and the book.
+He had looked at it the last thing before he closed his eyes in sleep.
+It was moreover the first thing that his eyes rested on when they
+opened. A fond mother could not have gazed on her new-born babe with
+greater pride and affection.
+
+Whilst he thus lay and said to himself, "I really must--I positively
+must get up and dress!" he heard a stumping on the stairs, and a few
+moments later his door was burst open, and in came Major Dolgelly Jones,
+a retired officer, resident in Swanton, who had never before done him
+the honour of a call--and now he actually penetrated to Joseph's
+bedroom.
+
+The major was hot in the face. He panted for breath, his cheeks
+quivered. The major was a man who, judging by what could be perceived of
+his intellectual gifts, could not have been a great acquisition to the
+Army. He was a man who never could have been trusted to act a brilliant
+part. He was a creature of routine, a martinet; and since his retirement
+to Swanton had been a passionate golf-player and nothing else.
+
+"What do you mean, sir? What do you mean?" spluttered he, "by putting me
+into your book?"
+
+"My book!" echoed Joseph, affecting surprise. "What book do you refer
+to?"
+
+"Oh! it's all very well your assuming that air of injured innocence,
+your trying to evade my question. Your sheepish expression does not
+deceive me. Why--there is the book in question by your bedside."
+
+"I have, I admit, been reading that novel, which has recently appeared."
+
+"You wrote it. Everyone in Swanton knows it. I don't object to your
+writing a book; any fool can do that--especially a novel. What I do
+object to is your putting me into it."
+
+"If I remember rightly," said Joseph, quaking under the bedclothes, and
+then wiping his upper lip on which a dew was forming, "If I remember
+aright, there is in it a major who plays golf, and does nothing else;
+but his name is Piper."
+
+"What do I care about a name? It is I--I. You have put me in."
+
+"Really, Major Jones, you have no justification in thus accusing me. The
+book does not bear my name on the back and title-page."
+
+"Neither does the golfing retired military officer bear my name, but
+that does not matter. It is I myself. I am in your book. I would
+horsewhip you had I any energy left in me, but all is gone, gone with my
+personality into your book. Nothing is left of me--nothing but a body
+and a light tweed suit. I--I--have been taken out of myself and
+transferred to that----" he used a naughty word, "that book. How can I
+golf any more? Walk the links any more with any heart? How can I putt a
+ball and follow it up with any feeling of interest? I am but a carcass.
+My soul, my character, my individuality have been burgled. You have
+broken into my inside, and have despoiled me of my personality." And he
+began to cry.
+
+"Possibly," suggested Mr. Leveridge, "the author might----"
+
+"The author can do nothing. I have been robbed--my fine ethereal self
+has been purloined. I--Dolgelly Jones--am only an outside husk. You have
+despoiled me of my richest jewel--myself."
+
+"I really can do nothing, major."
+
+"I know you can do nothing, that is the pity of it. You have sucked all
+my spiritual being with its concomitants out of me, and cannot put it
+back again. _You have used me up._"
+
+Then, wringing his hands, the major left the room, stumped slowly
+downstairs, and quitted the house.
+
+Joseph Leveridge rose from his bed and dressed in great perturbation of
+mind. Here was a condition of affairs on which he had not reckoned. He
+was so distracted in mind that he forgot to brush his teeth.
+
+When he reached his little sitting-room he found that the table was laid
+for his breakfast, and that his landlady had just brought up the usual
+rashers of bacon and two boiled eggs. She was sobbing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Baker?" asked Joseph. "Has Lasinia"--that was
+the name of the servant--"broken any more dishes?"
+
+"Everything has happened," replied the woman; "you have taken away my
+character."
+
+"I--I never did such a thing."
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, you have. All the time you've been writing, I've felt it
+going out of me like perspiration, and now it is all in your book."
+
+"My book!"
+
+"Yes, sir, under the name of Mrs. Brooks. But law! sir, what is there in
+a name? You might have taken the name of Baker and used that as you
+likes. There be plenty of Bakers in England and the Colonies. But it's
+my character, sir, you've taken away, and shoved it into your book."
+Then the woman wiped her eyes with her apron.
+
+"But really, Mrs. Baker, if there be a landlady in this novel of which
+you complain----"
+
+"There is, and it is me."
+
+"But it is a mere work of fiction."
+
+"It is not a work of fiction, it is a work of fact, and that a cruel
+fact. What has a poor lorn widow like me got to boast of but her
+character? I'm sure I've done well by you, and never boiled your eggs
+hard--and to use me like this."
+
+"Good gracious, dear Mrs. Baker!"
+
+"Don't dear me, sir. If you had loved me, if you had been decently
+grateful for all I have done for you, and mended your socks too, you'd
+not have stolen my character from me, and put it into your book. Ah,
+sir! you have dealt by me what I call regular shameful, and not like a
+gentleman. You _have used me up_."
+
+Joseph was silent, cowed. He turned the rashers about on the dish with
+his fork in an abstracted manner. All desire to eat was gone from him.
+
+Then the landlady went on: "And it's not me only as has to complain.
+There are three gentlemen outside, sitting on the doorstep, awaiting of
+you. And they say that there they will remain, till you go out to your
+office. And they intend to have it out with you."
+
+Joseph started from the chair he had taken, and went to the window, and
+threw up the sash.
+
+Leaning out, he saw three hats below. It was as Mrs. Baker had
+intimated. Three gentlemen were seated on the doorstep. One was the
+vicar, another his "boss" Mr. Stork, and the third was Mr. Wotherspoon.
+
+There could be no mistake about the vicar; he wore a chimney-pot hat of
+silk, that had begun to curl at the brim, anticipatory of being adapted
+as that of an archdeacon. Moreover, he wore extensive, well-cultivated
+grey whiskers on each cheek. If we were inclined to adopt the modern
+careless usage, we might say that he grew whiskers on _either_ cheek.
+But in strict accuracy that would mean that the whiskers grew
+indifferently, or alternatively, intermittently on one cheek or the
+other. This, however, was not the case, consequently we say on _each_
+cheek. These whiskers now waved and fluttered in the light air passing
+up and down the street.
+
+The second was Mr. Stork; he wore a stiff felt hat, his fiery hair
+showed beneath it, behind, and in front; when he lifted his head, the
+end of his pointed nose showed distinctly to Joseph Leveridge who looked
+down from above. The third, Mr. Wotherspoon, had a crushed brown cap on;
+he sat with his hands between his knees, dejected, and looking on the
+ground.
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon lived in Swanton with his mother and three sisters. The
+mother was the widow of an officer, not well off. He was an agreeable
+man, an excellent player at lawn-tennis, croquet, golf, rackets,
+billiards, and cards. His age was thirty, and he had as yet no
+occupation. His mother gently, his sisters sharply, urged him to do
+something, so as to earn his livelihood. With his mother's death her
+pension would cease, and he could not then depend on his sisters. He
+always answered that something would turn up. Occasionally he ran to
+town to look for employment, but invariably returned without having
+secured any, and with his pockets empty. He was so cheerful, so
+good-natured, was such good company, that everyone liked him, but also
+everyone was provoked at his sponging on his mother and sisters.
+
+"Really," said Mr. Leveridge, "I cannot encounter those three. It is
+true that I have drawn them pretty accurately in my novel, and here they
+are ready to take me to account for so doing. I will leave the house by
+the back door."
+
+Without his breakfast, Joseph fled; and having escaped from those who
+had hoped to intercept him, he made his way to the river. Here were
+pleasant grounds, with walks laid out, and benches provided. The place
+was not likely to be frequented at that time of the morning, and Mr.
+Leveridge had half an hour to spare before he was due at the office.
+There, later, he was likely to meet his "boss"; but it was better to
+face him alone, than him accompanied by two others who had a similar
+grievance against him.
+
+He seated himself on a bench and thought. He did not smoke; he had
+promised his "mamma" not to do so, and he was a dutiful son, and
+regarded his undertaking.
+
+What should he do? He was becoming involved in serious embarrassments.
+Would it be possible to induce the publisher to withdraw the book from
+circulation and to receive back the fifty pounds? That was hardly
+possible. He had signed away all his rights in the novel, and the
+publisher had been to a considerable expense for paper, printing,
+binding, and advertising.
+
+He was roused from his troubled thoughts by seeing Miss Asphodel Vincent
+coming along the walk towards him. Her step had lost its wonted spring,
+her carriage its usual buoyancy. In a minute or two she would reach him.
+Would she deign to speak? He felt no compunction towards her. He had
+made her his heroine in the tale. By not a word had he cast a shadow
+over her character or her abilities. Indeed, he had pictured her as the
+highest ideal of an English girl. She might be flattered, she could not
+be offended. And yet there was no flattery in his pencil--he had
+sketched her in as she was.
+
+As she approached she noticed the young author. She did not hasten her
+step. She displayed a strange listlessness in her movements, and lack of
+vivacity in her eye.
+
+When she stood over against him, Joseph Leveridge rose and removed his
+hat. "An early promenade, Miss Vincent," he said.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be
+overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain
+of a great injury done to me."
+
+"You do me a high honour," exclaimed Joseph. "If I can do anything to
+alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me."
+
+"You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been
+done. You put me into your book."
+
+"Miss Vincent," protested Leveridge with vehemence, "if I have, what
+then? I have not in the least overcharged the colours, by a line
+caricatured you." It was in vain for him further to pretend not to be
+the author and to have merely read the book.
+
+"That may be, or it may not. But you have taken strange liberties with
+me in transferring me to your pages."
+
+"And you really recognised yourself?"
+
+"It is myself, my very self, who is there."
+
+"And yet you are here, before my humble self."
+
+"That is only my outer shell. All my individuality, all that goes to
+make up the Ego--I myself--has been taken from me and put into your
+book."
+
+"Surely that cannot be."
+
+"But it is so. I feel precisely as I suppose felt my doll when I was a
+child, when it became unstitched and all the bran ran out; it hung limp
+like a rag. But it is not bran you have deprived me of, it is my
+personality."
+
+"In my novel is your portraiture indeed--but you yourself are here,"
+said Leveridge.
+
+"It is my very self, my noblest and best part, my moral and
+intellectual self, which has been carried off and put into your book."
+
+"This is quite impossible, Miss Vincent."
+
+"A moment's thought," said she, "will convince you that it is as I say.
+If I pick an Alpine flower and transfer it to my blotting-book, it
+remains in the herbarium. It is no longer on the Alp where it bloomed."
+
+"But----" urged Joseph.
+
+"No," she interrupted, "you cannot undeceive me. No one can be in two
+places at the same time. If I am in your book, I cannot be here--except
+so far as goes my animal nature and frame. You have subjected me, Mr.
+Leveridge, to the greatest humiliation. I am by you reduced to the level
+of a score of girls that I know, with no pursuits, no fixed principles,
+no opinions of their own, no ideas. They are swayed by every fashion,
+they are moulded by their surroundings; they are destitute of what some
+would call moral fibre, and I would term character. I had all this, but
+you have deprived me of it, by putting it into your book. I shall
+henceforth be the sport of every breath, be influenced by every folly,
+be without self-confidence and decision, the prey to any adventurer."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, do not say that."
+
+"I cannot say anything other. If I had a sovereign in my purse, and a
+pickpocket stole it, I should no longer have the purse and sovereign,
+only the pocket; and I am a mere pocket now without the coin of my
+personality that you have filched from me. Mr. Leveridge, it was a cruel
+wrong you did me, _when you used me up_."
+
+Then, sighing, Miss Asphodel went languidly on her way. Joseph was as
+one stunned. He buried his face in his hands. The person of all others
+with whom he desired to stand well, that person looked upon him as her
+most deadly enemy, at all events as the one who had most cruelly
+aggrieved her.
+
+Presently, hearing the clock strike, he started. He was due at the
+office, and Joseph Leveridge had always made a point of punctuality.
+
+He now went to the office, and learned from his fellow-clerk that Mr.
+Stork had not returned; he had been there, and then had gone away to
+seek Leveridge at his lodgings. Joseph considered it incumbent on him to
+resume his hat and go in quest of his "boss."
+
+On his way it occurred to him that there was monotony in bacon and eggs
+for breakfast every morning, and he would like a change. Moreover, he
+was hungry; he had left the house of Mrs. Baker without taking a
+mouthful, and if he returned now for a snack the eggs and the bacon
+would be cold. So he stepped into the shop of Mr. Box, the grocer, for a
+tin of sardines in oil.
+
+When the grocer saw him he said: "Will you favour me with a word, sir,
+in the back shop?"
+
+"I am pressed for time," replied Leveridge nervously.
+
+"But one word; I will not detain you," said Mr. Box, and led the way.
+Joseph walked after him.
+
+"Sir," said the grocer, shutting the glass door, "you have done me a
+prodigious wrong. You have deprived me of what I would not have lost for
+a thousand pounds. You have put me into your book. How my business will
+get on without me--I mean my intellect, my powers of organisation, my
+trade instincts, in a word, myself--I do not know. You have taken them
+from me and put them into your book. I am consigned to a novel, when I
+want all my powers behind the counter. Possibly my affairs for a while
+will go on by the weight of their own momentum, but it cannot be for
+long without my controlling brain. Sir, you have brought me and my
+family to ruin--_you have used me up_."
+
+Leveridge could bear this no more; he seized the handle of the door,
+rushed through the outer shop, precipitated himself into the street,
+carrying the sardine tin in his hand, and hurried to his lodgings.
+
+But there new trouble awaited him. On the doorstep still sat the three
+gentlemen.
+
+When they saw him they rose to their feet.
+
+"I know, I know what you have to say," gasped Joseph. "In pity do not
+attack me all together. One at a time. With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will
+you step up first into my humble little sanctum, and I will receive the
+others later. I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from
+the room. I left the window open."
+
+"I will most certainly follow you," said the Vicar of Swanton. "This is
+a most serious matter."
+
+"Excuse me, will you take a chair?"
+
+"No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs. I lose impressiveness
+when seated. But I fear, alas! that gift has been taken from me. Sir!
+sir! you have put me into your book. My earthly tabernacle may be here,
+standing on your--or Mrs. Baker's drugget--but all my great oratorical
+powers have gone. I have been despoiled of what was in me my highest,
+noblest, most spiritual parts. What my preaching henceforth will be I
+fear to contemplate. I may be able to string together a number of texts,
+and tack on an application, but that is mere mechanical work. I used to
+dredge in much florid eloquence, to stick in the flowers of elocution
+between every joint. And now!--I am despoiled of all. I, the Vicar of
+Swanton, shall be as a mere stick; I shall no more be a power in the
+pulpit, a force on the platform. My prospects in the diocese are put an
+end to. Miserable, miserable young man, you might have pumped others,
+but why me? I know but too surely that _you have used me up_." The vicar
+had taken off his hat, his bald forehead was beaded, his bristling grey
+whiskers drooped, his unctuous expression had faded away. His eyes,
+usually bearing the look as though turned inward in ecstatic
+contemplation of his personal piety, with only a watery stare on the
+world without, were now dull.
+
+He turned to the door. "I will send up Stork," he said.
+
+"Do so by all means, sir," was all that Joseph could say.
+
+When the solicitor entered his red hair had assumed a darker dye,
+through the moisture that exuded from his head.
+
+"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "this is a scurvy trick you have played me.
+You have put me into your book."
+
+"I only sketched a not over-scrupulous lawyer," protested Joseph. "Why
+should you put the cap on your own head?"
+
+"Because it fits. It is myself you have put into your book, and by no
+legal process can I get out of it. I shall not be competent to advise
+the magistrates on the bench, and, good heavens! what a mess they will
+get into. I do not know whether your fellow-clerk can carry on the
+business. _I have been used up._ I'll tell you what. You go away; I want
+you no more at the office. Whenever you revisit Swanton you will see
+only the ruins of the respected firm of Stork. It cannot go on when I am
+not in it, but in your book."
+
+The last to arrive was Mr. Wotherspoon. He was in a most depressed
+condition. "There was not much in me," said he, "not at any time. You
+might have spared such a trifle as me, and not put me also into your
+book and _used me up_. Oh, dear, dear! what will my poor mother do! And
+how Sarah and Jane will bully me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That same day Mr. Leveridge packed up his traps and departed from
+Swanton for his mother's house.
+
+That she was delighted to see him need not be said; that something was
+wrong, her maternal instinct told her. But it was not for some days that
+he confided to her so much as this: "Oh, mother, I have written a novel,
+and have put into it the people of Swanton--and so have had to leave."
+
+"My dear Joe," said the old lady, "you have done wrong and made a great
+mistake. You never should introduce actual living personages into a work
+of fiction. You should pulp them first, and then run out your characters
+fresh from the pulp."
+
+"I was so afraid of using my imagination," explained Joe.
+
+Some months elapsed, and Leveridge could not resolve on an employment
+that would suit him and at the same time maintain him. The fifty pounds
+he had earned would not last long. He began to be sensible of the
+impulse to be again writing. He resisted it for a while, but when he got
+a letter from his publisher, saying that the novel had sold well, far
+better than had been expected, and that he would be pleased to consider
+another from Mr. Leveridge's pen, and could promise him for it more
+liberal terms, then Joseph's scruples vanished. But on one thing he was
+resolved. He would now create his characters. They should not be taken
+from observation.
+
+Moreover, he determined to differentiate his new work from the old in
+other material points. His characters should be the reverse of those in
+the first novel. For his heroine he imagined a girl of boisterous
+spirits, straightforward, true, but somewhat unconventional, and given
+to use slang expressions. He had never met with such a girl, so that she
+would be a pure creation of his brain, and he made up his mind to call
+her Poppy. Then he would avoid drawing the portrait of an Evangelical
+parson, and introduce one decidedly High Church; he would have no heavy,
+narrow tradesman like Box, but a man full of venture and speculative
+push. Moreover, having used up the not over-scrupulous lawyer, he would
+portray one, the soul of honour, the confidant of not only the county
+gentry but of the county nobility. And as he had caused so much trouble
+by the introduction of good old Mother Baker, he would trace the line of
+a lively, skittish young widow, always on the hunt after admirers, and
+endeavouring to entangle the youths who lodged with her.
+
+As he went on with his story, it worked out to his satisfaction, and
+what especially gratified him and gave repose to his mind was the
+consciousness that he was using no one up, with whom he was acquainted,
+and that all his characters were pure creations.
+
+The work was complete, and the publisher agreed to give a hundred pounds
+for it. Then it passed through the press, and in due course Leveridge
+heard from the publisher that his six free copies had been sent off to
+him by train. Joseph was almost as excited over his second novel as he
+was over the first.
+
+He was too impatient to wait till the parcels were sent round in the
+ordinary way. He hurried to the station in the evening, to meet the
+train from town, by which he expected his consignment; and having
+secured it, he hurried home, carrying the heavy parcel.
+
+His mother's house was comparatively large; she occupied but a corner of
+it, and she had given over to her son a little cosy sitting-room, in
+which he might write and read. Into this room Joseph carried his parcel,
+full of impatience to cut the string and disclose the volumes.
+
+But he had hardly passed through his door before he was startled to see
+that his room was full of people; all but one were seated about the
+table. That one who was not, lounged against the bookcase, standing on
+one foot. With a shock of surprise, Joseph recognised all those there
+gathered together. They were the characters in his book, his own
+creations. And that individual who stood, in an indifferent attitude,
+was his new heroine, Poppy. The first shock of surprise rapidly passed.
+Joseph Leveridge felt no fear, but rather a sense of pleasure. He was in
+the presence of his own creations, and knew them familiarly. There were
+seven in all. At his appearance they all saluted him respectfully as
+their creator--all except Poppy, who gave him a wink and a nod.
+
+At the head of the table sat the High Church parson, shaven, with a
+long coat and a grave face, next to him, on the right, Lady Mabel
+Forraby, a tall, elderly, aristocratic-looking woman, the aunt of Poppy.
+One element of lightness in the book had consisted in the struggles of
+Lady Mabel to control her wayward niece and the revolt of the latter.
+Mr. Leveridge had never known a person of title in his life, so that
+Lady Mabel was a pure creation; so also, brought up, as he had been, by
+a Calvinistic mother, and afterwards thrown under the ministry of the
+Vicar of Swanton, he had not once come across a Ritualist. Consequently
+his parson, in this instance, was also a pure creation. A young
+gentleman, the hero of the novel, a bright intelligent fellow, full of
+vigour and good sense, and highly cultured, sat next to Lady Mabel.
+Joseph had never been thrown into association with men of quite this
+type. He had met nice respectable clerks and amusing and agreeable
+travellers for commercial houses, so that this personage also was a
+creation. So most certainly was the bold, pert little widow who rolled
+her eyes and put on winsome airs. Joseph had kept clear of all such
+instances, but he had heard and read of them. She could look to him as
+her creator.
+
+And that naughty little Poppy! Her naughtiness was all mischief, put on
+to aggravate her staid old aunt, so full of daring, and yet withal so
+steady of heart; so full of frolic, but with principle underlying it
+all. Joseph had never encountered anyone like her, anyone approaching to
+her. The young ladies to whom his mother introduced him were all very
+prim and proper. At Swanton he had been little in society: the vicar's
+daughter was a tract distributer and a mission woman, and Mr. Stork's
+daughter a domestic drudge. Of all the characters in Joseph's book she
+was his most especial and delightful creation.
+
+Then the white-haired family lawyer, fond of his jokes, able to tell a
+good story, close as a walnut relative to all matters communicated to
+him, strict and honourable in all his dealings, content with his small
+earnings, and frugally laying them by. Joseph had not met such a man,
+but he had idealised him as the sort of lawyer he would wish to be
+should he stick to his profession. He also, accordingly, was a creation.
+And last, but not least, was the red-faced, audacious stockbroker; a man
+of sharp and quick determination, who saw a chance in a moment and
+closed on it, who was keen of scent and smelt a risky investment the
+moment it came before him. Joseph knew no stockbroker--had only heard of
+them by rumour. He, therefore, was a creation.
+
+"Well, my children, not of my loins, but of my brain," said the author.
+"What do you all want?"
+
+"Bodies," they replied with one voice.
+
+"Bodies!" gasped Joseph, stepping backwards. "Why, what possesses you
+all? You can't expect me to furnish you with them."
+
+"But, indeed, we do, old chap," said Poppy.
+
+"Niece!" said Lady Mabel, turning about in her chair, "address your
+creator with more respect."
+
+"Stay, my lady," said the parson. "Allow me to explain matters to Mr.
+Leveridge. He is young and an inexperienced writer of fiction, and is
+therefore unaware of the exigencies of his profession. You must know,
+dear author of our being, that every author of a work of imagination,
+such as you have been, lays himself under a moral and an inexorable
+obligation to find bodies for all those whom he has called into
+existence through his fertile brain. Mr. Leveridge has not mixed in the
+literary world. He does not belong to the Society of Authors. He is--he
+will excuse the expression--raw in his profession. It is a well-known
+law among novelists that they must furnish bodies for such as they have
+called into existence out of their pure imagination. For this reason
+they invariably call their observation to their assistance, and they
+balance in their books the creations with the transcripts from life.
+The only exception to this rule that I am aware of," continued the
+parson, "is where the author is able to get his piece dramatised, in
+which case, of course, the difficulty ceases."
+
+"I should love to go on the stage," threw in Poppy.
+
+"Niece, you do not know what you say," remarked Lady Mabel, turning
+herself about.
+
+"Allow me, my lady," said the parson. "What I have said is fact, is it
+not?"
+
+"Most certainly," replied all. Lady Mabel said: "I suppose it is."
+
+"Then," pursued the parson, "the situation is this: Have you secured the
+dramatisation of your novel?"
+
+"I never gave it a thought," said Joseph.
+
+"In that case, as there is no prospect of our being so accommodated, the
+position is this: We shall have to haunt you night and day, mainly at
+night, till you have accommodated us with bodies; we cannot remain as
+phantom creations of a highly imaginative soul such as is yours, Mr.
+Leveridge. If you have your rights, so have we. And we insist on ours,
+and will insist till we are satisfied."
+
+At once all vanished.
+
+Joseph Leveridge felt that he had got himself into a worse hobble than
+before. From his former difficulties he had escaped by flight. But there
+was, he feared, no flying from these seven impatient creations all
+clamouring for bodies, and to provide them with such was beyond his
+powers. All his delight in the publication of his new novel was spent.
+It had brought with it care and perplexity.
+
+He went to bed.
+
+During the night, he was troubled with his characters; they peeped in at
+him. Poppy got a peacock's feather and tickled his nose just as he was
+dropping asleep. "You bounder!" she said; "I shall give you no peace
+till you have settled me into a body--but oh! get me on to the stage if
+you can."
+
+"Poppy, come away," called Lady Mabel. "Don't be improper. Mr. Leveridge
+will do his best. I want a body quite as much as do you, but I know how
+to ask for it properly."
+
+"And I," said the parson, "should like to have mine before Easter, but
+have one I must."
+
+Mr. Leveridge's state now was worse than the first. One or other of his
+creatures was ever watching him. His every movement was spied on. There
+was no escaping their vigilance. Sometimes they attended him in groups
+of two or three; sometimes they were all around him.
+
+At meals not one was missing, and they eyed every mouthful of his food
+as he raised it to his lips. His mother saw nothing--the creations were
+invisible to all eyes save those of their creator.
+
+If he went out for a country walk, they trotted forth with him, some
+before, looking round at every turn to see which way he purposed going,
+some following. Poppy and the skittish widow managed to attach
+themselves to him, one on each side. "I hate that little woman," said
+Poppy. "Why did you call her into being?"
+
+[Illustration: IF HE WENT OUT FOR A WALK THEY TROTTED FORTH WITH HIM,
+SOME BEFORE, SOME FOLLOWING.]
+
+"I never dreamed that things would come to this pass."
+
+"I am convinced, creator dear, that there is a vein of wickedness in
+your composition, or you would never have imagined such a minx, good and
+amiable and butter-won't-melt-in-your-mouth though you may look. And
+there must be a frolicsome devil in your heart, or I should never have
+become."
+
+"Indeed, Poppy, I am very glad that I gave you being. But one may have
+too much even of a good thing, and there are moments when I could
+dispense with your presence."
+
+"I know, when you want to carry on with the widow. She is always casting
+sheep's eyes at you."
+
+"But, Poppy, you forget my hero, whom I created on purpose for you."
+
+"All my attention is now engrossed in you, and will be till you provide
+me with a body."
+
+When Leveridge was in his room reading, if he raised his eyes from his
+book they met the stare of one of his characters. If he went up to his
+bedroom, he was followed. If he sat with his mother, one kept guard.
+
+This was become so intolerable, that one evening he protested to the
+stockbroker, who was then in attendance. "Do, I entreat you, leave me to
+myself. You treat me as if I were a lunatic and about to commit _felo de
+se_, and you were my warders."
+
+"We watch you, sir," said the stockbroker, "in our own interest. We
+cannot suffer you to give us the slip. We are all expectant and
+impatient for the completion of what you have begun."
+
+Then the parson undertook to administer a lecture on Duty, on
+responsibilities contracted to those called into partial existence by a
+writer of fiction. He cannot be allowed to half do his work. His
+creations must be realised, and can only be realised by being given a
+material existence.
+
+"But what the dickens can I do? I cannot fabricate bodies for you. I
+never in my life even made a doll."
+
+"Have you no thought of dramatising us?"
+
+"I know no dramatic writers."
+
+"Do it yourself."
+
+"Does not this sort of work require a certain familiarity with the
+technique of the stage which I do not possess?"
+
+"That might be attended to later. Pass your MS. through the hands of a
+dramatic expert, and pay him a percentage of your profits in recognition
+of his services. Only one thing I bargain for, do not present me on the
+stage in such a manner as to discredit my cloth."
+
+"Have I done so in my book?"
+
+"No, indeed, I have nothing to complain of in that. But there is no
+counting on what Poppy may persuade you into doing, and I fear that she
+is gaining influence over you. Remember, she is your creation, and you
+must not suffer her to mould you."
+
+The idea took root. The suggestion was taken up, and Joseph Leveridge
+applied himself to his task with zest. But he had to conceal what he was
+about from his mother, who had no opinion of the drama, and regarded the
+theatre as a sink of iniquity.
+
+But now new difficulties arose. Joseph's creations would not leave him
+alone for a moment. Each had a suggestion, each wanted his or her own
+part accentuated at the expense of the other. Each desired the
+heightening of the situations in which they severally appeared. The
+clamour, the bickering, the interference made it impossible for Joseph
+to collect his thoughts, keep cool, and proceed with his work.
+
+Sunday arrived, and Joseph drew on his gloves, put on his box-hat, and
+offered his arm to his mother, to conduct her to chapel. All the
+characters were drawn up in the hall to accompany them. Joseph and his
+mother walking down the street to Ebenezer Chapel presented a picture of
+a good and dutiful son and of a pious widow not to be surpassed. Poppy
+and the widow entered into a struggle as to which was to walk on the
+unoccupied side of Joseph. If this had been introduced into the picture
+it would have marred it; but happily this was invisible to all eyes save
+those of Joseph. The rest of the imaginary party walked arm in arm
+behind till the chapel was reached, when the parson started back.
+
+"I am not going in there! It is a schism-shop," he exclaimed. "Nothing
+in the world would induce me to cross the threshold."
+
+"And I," said Lady Mabel, "I have no idea of attending a place of
+worship not of the Established Church."
+
+"I'll go in--if only to protect Creator from the widow," said Poppy.
+
+Joseph and his mother entered, and occupied their pew. The characters,
+with the exception of the parson and the old lady, grouped themselves
+where they were able. The stockbroker stood in the aisle with his arms
+on the pew door, to ensure that Joseph was kept a prisoner there. But
+before the service had advanced far he had gone to sleep. This was the
+more to be regretted, as the minister delivered a very strong appeal to
+the unconverted, and if ever there was an unconverted worldling, it was
+that stockbroker.
+
+The skittish widow was leering at a deacon of an amorous complexion, but
+as he did not, and, in fact, could not see her, all her efforts were
+cast away. The solicitor sat with stolid face and folded hands, and
+allowed the discourse to flow over him like a refreshing douche. Poppy
+had got very tired of the show, and had slunk away to rejoin her aunt.
+The hero closed his eyes and seemed resigned.
+
+After nearly an hour had elapsed, whilst a hymn was being sung, Joseph,
+more to himself than to his mother, said: "Can I escape?"
+
+"Escape what? Wretch?" inquired the widowed lady.
+
+"I think I can do it. There's a room at the side for earnest inquirers,
+or a vestry or something, with an outer door. I will risk it, and make a
+bolt for my liberty."
+
+He very gently and cautiously unhasped the door of the pew, and as he
+slid it open, the sleeping stockbroker, still sleeping and unconscious,
+slipped back, and Joseph was out. He made his way into the room at the
+side, forth from the actual chapel, ran through it, and tried the door
+that opened into a side lane. It was locked, but happily the key was in
+its place. He turned it, plunged forth, and fell into the arms of his
+characters. They were all there. The solicitor had been observing him
+out of the corner of his eye, and had given the alarm. The stockbroker
+was aroused, and he, the solicitor, the hero, ran out, gave the alarm
+to the three without, and Joseph was intercepted, and his attempt at
+escape frustrated. He was reconducted home by them, himself dejected,
+they triumphant.
+
+When his mother returned she was full of solicitude.
+
+"What was the matter, Joe dear?" she inquired.
+
+"I wasn't feeling very well," he explained. "But I shall be better
+presently."
+
+"I hope it will not interfere with your appetite, Joe. I have cold lamb
+and mint-sauce for our early dinner."
+
+"I shall peck a bit, I trust," said Mr. Leveridge.
+
+But during dinner he was abstracted and silent. All at once he brought
+down his fist on the table. "I've hit it!" he exclaimed, and a flush of
+colour mantled his face to the temples.
+
+"My dear," said his mother; "you have made all the plates and dishes
+jump, and have nearly upset the water-bottle."
+
+"Excuse me, mother; I really must go to my room."
+
+He rose, made a sign to his characters, and they all rose and trooped
+after him into his private apartment.
+
+When they were within he said to his hero: "May I trouble you kindly to
+shut the door and turn the key? My mother will be anxious and come after
+me, and I want a word with you all. It will not take two minutes. I see
+my way to our mutual accommodation. Do not be uneasy and suspicious; I
+will make no further attempt at evasion. Meet me to-morrow morning at
+the 9.48 down train. I am going to take you all with me to Swanton."
+
+A tap at the door.
+
+"Open--it is my mother," said Joseph.
+
+Mrs. Leveridge entered with a face of concern. "What is the matter with
+you, Joe?" she said. "If we were not both of us water-drinkers, I should
+say that you had been indulging in--spirits."
+
+"Mother, I must positively be off to Swanton to-morrow morning. I see
+my way now, all will come right."
+
+"How, my precious boy?"
+
+"I cannot explain. I see my way to clearing up the unpleasantness caused
+by that unfortunate novel of mine. Pack my trunk, mother."
+
+"Not on the Sabbath, lovie."
+
+"No--to-morrow morning. I start by the 9.48 a.m. We all go together."
+
+"We--am I to accompany you?"
+
+"No, no. We--did I say? It is a habit I have got into as an author.
+Authors, like royal personages, speak of themselves as We."
+
+Joseph Leveridge was occupied during the afternoon in writing to his
+victims at Swanton.
+
+First, he penned a notice to Mrs. Baker that he would require his
+lodgings from the morrow, and that he had something to say to her that
+would afford her much gratification.
+
+Then he wrote to the vicar, expressed his regret for having deprived him
+of his personality, and requested him, if he would do him the favour, to
+call in the evening at 7.30, at his lodgings in West Street. He had
+something of special importance to communicate to him. He apologised for
+not himself calling at the vicarage, but said that there were
+circumstances that made it more desirable that he should see his
+reverence privately in his own lodgings.
+
+Next, he addressed an epistle to Mr. Stork. He assured him that he,
+Joseph Leveridge, had felt keenly the wrong he had done him, that he had
+forfeited his esteem, had ill repaid his kindness, had acted in a manner
+towards his employer that was dishonourable. But, he added, he had found
+a means of rectifying what was wrong. He placed himself unreservedly in
+the hands of Mr. Stork, and entreated him to meet him at his rooms in
+West Street on the ensuing Monday evening at 7.45, when he sincerely
+trusted that the past would be forgotten, and a brighter future would be
+assured.
+
+This was followed by a formal letter couched to Mr. Box. He invited him
+to call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings on that same evening at 8 p.m., as he
+had business of an important and far-reaching nature to discuss with
+him. If Mr. Box considered that he, Joseph Leveridge, had done him an
+injury, he was ready to make what reparation lay in his power.
+
+Taking a fresh sheet of notepaper, he now wrote a fifth letter, this to
+Mr. Wotherspoon, requesting the honour of a call at his "diggings" at
+8.15 p.m., when matters of controversy between them could be amicably
+adjusted.
+
+The ensuing letter demanded some deliberation. It was to Asphodel. He
+wrote it out twice before he was satisfied with the mode in which it was
+expressed. He endeavoured to disguise under words full of respect, yet
+not disguise too completely, the sentiments of his heart. But he was
+careful to let drop nothing at which she might take umbrage. He
+entreated her to be so gracious as to allow him an interview by the side
+of the river at the hour of 8.30 on the Monday evening. He apologised
+for venturing to make such a demand, but he intimated that the matter he
+had to communicate was so important and so urgent, that it could not
+well be postponed till Tuesday, and that it was also most necessary that
+the interview should be private. It was something he had to say that
+would materially--no, not materially, but morally--affect her, and would
+relieve his mind from a burden of remorse that had become to him wholly
+intolerable.
+
+The final, the seventh letter, was to Major Dolgelly Jones, and was more
+brief. It merely intimated that he had something of the utmost
+importance to communicate to his private ear, and for this purpose he
+desired the favour of a call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings, at 8.45 on Monday
+evening.
+
+These letters despatched, Mr. Leveridge felt easier in mind and lighter
+at heart. He slept well the ensuing night, better than he had for long.
+His creations did not so greatly disturb him. He was aware that he was
+still kept under surveillance, but the watch was not so strict, nor so
+galling as hitherto.
+
+On the Monday morning he was at the station, and took his ticket for
+Swanton. One ticket sufficed, as his companions, who awaited him on the
+platform, were imaginary characters.
+
+When he took his seat, they pressed into the carriage after him. Poppy
+secured the seat next him, but the widow placed herself opposite, and
+exerted all her blandishment with the hope of engrossing his whole
+attention. At a junction all got out, and Joseph provided himself with a
+luncheon-basket and mineral water. The characters watched him discussing
+the half-chicken and slabs of ham, with the liveliest interest, and were
+especially observant of his treatment of the thin paper napkin,
+wherewith he wiped his fingers and mouth.
+
+At last he arrived at Swanton and engaged a cab, as he was encumbered
+with a portmanteau. Lady Mabel, Poppy, and the widow could be easily
+accommodated within, the two latter with their backs to the horses.
+Joseph would willingly have resigned his seat to either of these, but
+they would not hear of it. A gentle altercation ensued between the
+parson and the solicitor, as to which should ride on the box. The lawyer
+desired to yield the place to "the cloth," but the parson would not hear
+of this--the silver hairs of the other claimed precedence. The
+stockbroker mounted to the roof of the fly and the clerical gentleman
+hung on behind. The hero professed his readiness to walk.
+
+Eventually the cab drew up at Mrs. Baker's door.
+
+That stout, elderly lady received her old lodger without effusion, and
+with languid interest. The look of the house was not what it had been.
+It had deteriorated. The windows had not been cleaned nor the banisters
+dusted.
+
+"My dear old landlady, I am so glad to see you again," said Joseph.
+
+"Thank you, sir. You ordered no meal, but I have got two mutton chops in
+the larder, and can mash some potatoes. At what time would you like your
+supper, sir?" She had become a machine, a thing of routine.
+
+"Not yet, thank you. I have business to transact first, and I shall not
+be disengaged before nine o'clock. But I have something to say to you,
+Mrs. Baker, and I will say it at once and get it over, if you will
+kindly step up into my parlour."
+
+She did so, sighing at each step of the stairs as she ascended.
+
+All the characters mounted as well, and entering the little
+sitting-room, ranged themselves against the wall facing the door.
+
+Mrs. Baker was a portly woman, aged about forty-five, and plain
+featured. She had formerly been neat, now she was dowdy. Before she had
+lost her character she never appeared in that room without removing her
+apron, but on this occasion she wore it, and it was not clean.
+
+"Widow!" said Joseph, addressing his character, "will you kindly step
+forward?"
+
+"I would do anything for _you_," with a roll of the eyes.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge, "I feel that I have done you a
+grievous wrong."
+
+"Well, sir, I ain't been myself since you put me into your book."
+
+"My purpose is now to undo the past, and to provide you with a
+character."
+
+Then, turning to the skittish widow of his creation, he said, "Now,
+then, slip into and occupy her."
+
+"I don't like the tenement," said the widow, pouting.
+
+"Whether you like it or not," protested Joseph, "you must have that or
+no other." He waved his hand. "Presto!" he exclaimed.
+
+Instantly a wondrous change was effected in Mrs. Baker. She whipped off
+the apron, and crammed it under the sofa cushion. She wriggled in her
+movements, she eyed herself in the glass, and exclaimed: "Oh, my! what a
+fright I am. I'll be back again in a minute when I have changed my gown
+and done up my hair."
+
+"We can dispense with your presence, Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge
+sternly. "I will ring for you when you are wanted."
+
+At that moment a rap at the door was heard; and Mrs. Baker, having first
+dropped a coquettish curtsy to her lodger, tripped downstairs to admit
+the vicar, and to show him up to Mr. Leveridge's apartment.
+
+"You may go, Mrs. Baker," said he; for she seemed inclined to linger.
+
+When she had left the room, Joseph contemplated the reverend gentleman.
+He bore a crestfallen appearance. He looked as if he had been out in the
+rain all night without a paletot. His cheeks were flabby, his mouth
+drooped at the corners, his eyes were vacant, and his whiskers no longer
+stuck out horrescent and assertive.
+
+"Dear vicar," said Leveridge, "I cannot forgive myself." In former
+times, Mr. Leveridge would not have dreamed of addressing the reverend
+gentleman in this familiar manner, but it was other now that the latter
+looked so limp and forlorn. "My dear vicar, I cannot forgive myself for
+the trouble I have brought upon you. It has weighed on me as a
+nightmare, for I know that it is not you only who have suffered, but
+also the whole parish of Swanton. Happily a remedy is at hand. I have
+here----" he waved to the parson of his creation, "I have here an
+individuality I can give to you, and henceforth, if you will not be
+precisely yourself again, you will be a personality in your parish and
+the diocese." He waved his hand. "Presto!"
+
+In the twinkling of an eye all was changed in the Vicar of Swanton. He
+straightened himself. His expression altered to what it never had been
+before. The cheeks became firm, and lines formed about the mouth
+indicative of force of character and of self-restraint. The eye assumed
+an eager look as into far distances, as seeking something beyond the
+horizon.
+
+The vicar walked to the mirror over the mantelshelf.
+
+"Bless me!" he said, "I must go to the barber's and have these whiskers
+off." And he hurried downstairs.
+
+After a little pause in the proceedings, Mrs. Baker, now very trim, with
+a blue ribbon round her neck hanging down in streamers behind, ushered
+up Mr. Stork. The lawyer had a faded appearance, as if he had been
+exposed to too strong sunlight; he walked in with an air of lack of
+interest, and sank into a chair.
+
+"My dear old master," said Leveridge, "it is my purpose to restore to
+you all your former energy, and to supply you with what you may possibly
+have lacked previously."
+
+He signed to the white-haired family solicitor he had called into
+fictitious being, and waved his hand.
+
+At once Mr. Stork stood up and shook his legs, as though shaking out
+crumbs from his trousers. His breast swelled, he threw back his head,
+his eye shone clear and was steady.
+
+"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "I have long had my eye on you, sir--had my
+eye on you. I have marked your character as one of uncompromising
+probity. I hate shiftiness, I abhor duplicity. I have been disappointed
+with my clerks. I could not always trust them to do the right thing. I
+want to strengthen and brace my firm. But I will not take into
+partnership with myself any but one of the strictest integrity. Sir! I
+have marked you--I have marked you, Mr. Leveridge. Call on me to-morrow
+morning, and we will consider the preliminaries for a partnership. Don't
+talk to me of buying a partnership."
+
+"I have not done so, sir."
+
+"I know you have not. I will take you in, sir, for your intrinsic
+value. An honest man is worth his weight in gold, and is as scarce as
+the precious metal."
+
+Then, with dignity, Mr. Stork withdrew, and passed Mr. Box, the grocer,
+mounting the stairs.
+
+"Well, Mr. Box," said Leveridge, "how wags the world with you?"
+
+"Badly, sir, badly since you booked me. I mentioned to you, sir, that I
+trusted my little business would for a while go on by its own momentum.
+It has, sir, it has, but the momentum has been downhill. I can't control
+it. I have not the personality to do so, to serve as a drag, to urge it
+upwards. I am in daily expectation, sir, of a regular smash up."
+
+"I am sorry to hear this," said Leveridge. "But I think I have found a
+means of putting all to rights. Presto!" He waved his hand and the
+imaginary character of the stockbroker had actualised himself in the
+body of Mr. Box.
+
+"I see how to do it. By ginger, I do!" exclaimed the grocer, a spark
+coming into his eye. "I'll run my little concern on quite other lines.
+And look ye here, Mr. Leveridge. I bet you my bottom dollar that I'll
+run it to a tremendous success, become a second Lipton, and keep a
+yacht."
+
+As Mr. Box bounced out of the room and proceeded to run downstairs, he
+ran against and nearly knocked over Mrs. Baker; the lady was whispering
+to and coquetting with Mr. Wotherspoon, who was on the landing. That
+gentleman, in his condition of lack of individuality, was like a
+teetotum spun in the hands of the designing Mrs. Baker, who put forth
+all the witchery she possessed, or supposed that she possessed, to
+entangle him in an amorous intrigue.
+
+"Come in," shouted Joseph Leveridge, and Mr. Wotherspoon, looking hot
+and frightened and very shy, tottered in and sank into a chair. He was
+too much shaken and perturbed by the advances of Mrs. Baker to be able
+to speak.
+
+"There," said Joseph, addressing his hero. "You cannot do better than
+animate that feeble creature. Go!"
+
+Instantly Mr. Wotherspoon sprang to his feet. "By George!" said he. "I
+wonder that never struck me before. I'll at once volunteer to go out to
+South Africa, and have a shot at those canting, lying, treacherous
+Boers. If I come back with a score of their scalps at my waist, I shall
+have deserved well of my country. I will volunteer at once. But--I say,
+Leveridge--clear that hulking, fat old landlady out of the way. She
+blocks the stairs, and I can't kick down a woman."
+
+When Mr. Wotherspoon was gone--"Well," said Poppy, "what have you got
+for me?"
+
+"If you will come with me, Poppy dear, I will serve you as well as the
+rest."
+
+"I hope better than you did that odious little widow. But she is well
+paid out."
+
+"Follow me to the riverside," said Joseph; "at 8.33 p.m. I am due there,
+and so is another--a lady."
+
+"And pray why did you not make her come here instead of lugging me all
+the way down there?"
+
+"Because I could not make an appointment with a young lady in my
+bachelor's apartments."
+
+"That's all very fine. But I am there."
+
+"Yes, you--but you are only an imaginary character, and she is a
+substantial reality."
+
+"I think I had better accompany you," said Lady Mabel.
+
+"I think not. If your ladyship will kindly occupy my fauteuil till I
+return, that chair will ever after be sacred to me. Come along, Poppy."
+
+"I'm game," said she.
+
+On reaching the riverside Joseph saw that Miss Vincent was walking there
+in a listless manner, not straight, but swerving from side to side. She
+saw him, but did not quicken her pace, nor did her face light up with
+interest.
+
+"Now, then," said he to Poppy, "what do you think of her?"
+
+"She ain't bad," answered the fictitious character; "she is very pretty
+certainly, but inanimate."
+
+"You will change all that."
+
+"I'll try--you bet."
+
+Asphodel came up. She bowed, but did not extend her hand.
+
+"Miss Vincent," said Joseph. "How good of you to come."
+
+"Not at all. I could not help. I have no free-will left. When you wrote
+Come--I came, I could do no other. I have no initiative, no power of
+resistance."
+
+"I do hope, Miss Vincent, that the thing you so feared has not
+happened."
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"You have not been snapped up by a fortune-hunter?"
+
+"No. People have not as yet found out that I have lost my individuality.
+I have kept very much to myself--that is to say, not to myself, as I
+have no proper myself left--I mean to the semblance of myself. People
+have thought I was anæmic."
+
+Leveridge turned aside: "Well, Poppy!"
+
+"Right you are."
+
+Leveridge waved his hand. Instantly all the inertia passed away from the
+girl, she stood erect and firm. A merry twinkle kindled in her eye, a
+flush was on her cheek, and mischievous devilry played about her lips.
+
+"I feel," said she, "as another person."
+
+"Oh! I am so glad, Miss Vincent."
+
+"That is a pretty speech to make to a lady! Glad I am different from
+what I was before."
+
+"I did not mean that--I meant--in fact, I meant that as you were and as
+you are you are always charming."
+
+"Thank you, sir!" said Asphodel, curtsying and laughing.
+
+"Ah! Miss Vincent, at all times you have seemed to me the ideal of
+womanhood. I have worshipped the very ground you have trod upon."
+
+"Fiddlesticks."
+
+He looked at her. For the moment he was bewildered, oblivious that the
+old personality of Asphodel had passed into his book and that the new
+personality of Poppy had invaded Asphodel.
+
+"Well," said she, "is that all you have to say to me?"
+
+"All?--oh, no. I could say a great deal--I have ordered my supper for
+nine o'clock."
+
+"Oh, how obtuse you men are! Come--is this leap year?"
+
+"I really believe that it is."
+
+"Then I shall take the privilege of the year, and offer you my hand and
+heart and fortune--there! Now it only remains with you to name the day."
+
+"Oh! Miss Vincent, you overcome me."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense. Call me Asphodel, do Joe."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Leveridge walked back to his lodgings as if he trod on air. As he
+passed by the churchyard, he noticed the vicar, now shaven and shorn,
+labouring at a laden wheelbarrow. He halted at the rails and said: "Why,
+vicar, what are you about?"
+
+"The sexton has begun a grave for old Betty Goodman, and it is
+unfinished. He must dig another." He turned over the wheelbarrow and
+shot its contents into the grave.
+
+"But what are you doing?" again asked Joseph.
+
+"Burying the Mitre hymnals," replied the vicar.
+
+The clock struck a quarter to nine.
+
+"I must hurry!" exclaimed Joseph.
+
+On reaching his lodgings he found Major Dolgelly Jones in his
+sitting-room, sitting on the edge of his table tossing up a tennis-ball.
+In the armchair, invisible to the major, reclined Lady Mabel.
+
+"I am so sorry to be late," apologised Joseph. "How are you, sir?"
+
+"Below par. I have been so ever since you put me into your book. I have
+no appetite for golf. I can do nothing to pass the weary hours but toss
+up and down a tennis-ball."
+
+"I hope----" began Joseph; and then a horror seized on him. He had no
+personality of his creation left but that of Lady Mabel. Would it be
+possible to translate that into the major?
+
+He remained silent, musing for a while, and then said hesitatingly to
+the lady: "Here, my lady, is the body you are to individualise."
+
+"But it is that of a man!"
+
+"There is no other left."
+
+"It is hardly delicate."
+
+"There is no help for it." Then turning to the major, he said: "I am
+very sorry--it really is no fault of mine, but I have only a female
+personality to offer to you, and that elderly."
+
+"It is all one to me," replied the major, "catch"--he caught the ball.
+"Many of our generals are old women. I am agreeable. _Place aux dames._"
+
+"But," protested Lady Mabel, "you made me a member of a very ancient
+titled house that came over with the Conqueror."
+
+"The personality I offer you," said I to the major, "though female is
+noble; the family is named in the roll of Battle Abbey."
+
+"Oh!" said Dolgelly Jones, "I descend from one of the royal families of
+Powys, lineally from Caswallon Llanhir and Maelgwn Gwynedd, long before
+the Conqueror was thought of."
+
+"Well, then," said Leveridge, and waved his hand.
+
+In Swanton it is known that the major now never plays golf; he keeps
+rabbits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is with some scruple that I insert this record in the _Book of
+Ghosts_, for actually it is not a story of ghosts. But a greater scruple
+moved me as to whether I should be justified in revealing a
+professional secret, known only among such as belong to the
+Confraternity of Writers of Fiction. But I have observed so much
+perplexity arise, so much friction caused, by persons suddenly breaking
+out into a course of conduct, or into actions, so entirely inconsistent
+with their former conduct as to stagger their acquaintances and friends.
+Henceforth, to use a vulgarism, since I have let the cat out of the bag,
+they will know that such persons have been used up by novel writers that
+have known them, and who have replaced the stolen individualities with
+others freshly created. This is the explanation, and the explanation has
+up to the present remained a professional secret.
+
+
+
+
+H. P.
+
+
+The river Vézère leaps to life among the granite of the Limousin, forms
+a fine cascade, the Saut de la Virolle, then after a rapid descent over
+mica-schist, it passes into the region of red sandstone at Brive, and
+swelled with affluents it suddenly penetrates a chalk district, where it
+has scooped out for itself a valley between precipices some two to three
+hundred feet high.
+
+These precipices are not perpendicular, but overhang, because the upper
+crust is harder than the stone it caps; and atmospheric influences, rain
+and frost, have gnawed into the chalk below, so that the cliffs hang
+forward as penthouse roofs, forming shelters beneath them. And these
+shelters have been utilised by man from the period when the first
+occupants of the district arrived at a vastly remote period, almost
+uninterruptedly to the present day. When peasants live beneath these
+roofs of nature's providing, they simply wall up the face and ends to
+form houses of the cheapest description of construction, with the earth
+as the floor, and one wall and the roof of living rock, into which they
+burrow to form cupboards, bedplaces, and cellars.
+
+The refuse of all ages is superposed, like the leaves of a book, one
+stratum above another in orderly succession. If we shear down through
+these beds, we can read the history of the land, so far as its
+manufacture goes, beginning at the present day and going down, down to
+the times of primeval man. Now, after every meal, the peasant casts down
+the bones he has picked, he does not stoop to collect and cast forth
+the sherds of a broken pot, and if a sou falls and rolls away, in the
+dust of these gloomy habitations it gets trampled into the soil, to form
+another token of the period of occupation.
+
+When the first man settled here the climatic conditions were different.
+The mammoth or woolly elephant, the hyæna, the cave bear, and the
+reindeer ranged the land. Then naked savages, using only flint tools,
+crouched under these rocks. They knew nothing of metals and of pottery.
+They hunted and ate the horse; they had no dogs, no oxen, no sheep.
+Glaciers covered the centre of France, and reached down the Vézère
+valley as far as to Brive.
+
+These people passed away, whither we know not. The reindeer retreated to
+the north, the hyæna to Africa, which was then united to Europe. The
+mammoth became extinct altogether.
+
+After long ages another people, in a higher condition of culture, but
+who also used flint tools and weapons, appeared on the scene, and took
+possession of the abandoned rock shelters. They fashioned their
+implements in a different manner by flaking the flint in place of
+chipping it. They understood the art of the potter. They grew flax and
+wove linen. They had domestic animals, and the dog had become the friend
+of man. And their flint weapons they succeeded in bringing to a high
+polish by incredible labour and perseverance.
+
+Then came in the Age of Bronze, introduced from abroad, probably from
+the East, as its great depôt was in the basin of the Po. Next arrived
+the Gauls, armed with weapons of iron. They were subjugated by the
+Romans, and Roman Gaul in turn became a prey to the Goth and the Frank.
+History has begun and is in full swing.
+
+The mediæval period succeeded, and finally the modern age, and man now
+lives on top of the accumulation of all preceding epochs of men and
+stages of civilisation. In no other part of France, indeed of Europe, is
+the story of man told so plainly, that he who runs may read; and ever
+since the middle of last century, when this fact was recognised, the
+district has been studied, and explorations have been made there, some
+slovenly, others scientifically.
+
+A few years ago I was induced to visit this remarkable region and to
+examine it attentively. I had been furnished with letters of
+recommendation from the authorities of the great Museum of National
+Antiquities at St. Germain, to enable me to prosecute my researches
+unmolested by over-suspicious gendarmes and ignorant mayors.
+
+Under one over-hanging rock was a cabaret or tavern, announcing that
+wine was sold there, by a withered bush above the door.
+
+The place seemed to me to be a probable spot for my exploration. I
+entered into an arrangement with the proprietor to enable me to dig, he
+stipulating that I should not undermine and throw down his walls. I
+engaged six labourers, and began proceedings by driving a tunnel some
+little way below the tavern into the vast bed of débris.
+
+The upper series of deposits did not concern me much. The point I
+desired to investigate, and if possible to determine, was the
+approximate length of time that had elapsed between the disappearance of
+the reindeer hunters and the coming on the scene of the next race, that
+which used polished stone implements and had domestic animals.
+
+Although it may seem at first sight as if both races had been savage, as
+both lived in the Stone Age, yet an enormous stride forward had been
+taken when men had learned the arts of weaving, of pottery, and had
+tamed the dog, the horse, and the cow. These new folk had passed out of
+the mere wild condition of the hunter, and had become pastoral and to
+some extent agricultural.
+
+Of course, the data for determining the length of a period might be few,
+but I could judge whether a very long or a very brief period had elapsed
+between the two occupations by the depth of débris--chalk fallen from
+the roof, brought down by frost, in which were no traces of human
+workmanship.
+
+It was with this distinct object in view that I drove my adit into the
+slope of rubbish some way below the cabaret, and I chanced to have hit
+on the level of the deposits of the men of bronze. Not that we found
+much bronze--all we secured was a broken pin--but we came on fragments
+of pottery marked with the chevron and nail and twisted thong ornament
+peculiar to that people and age.
+
+My men were engaged for about a week before we reached the face of the
+chalk cliff. We found the work not so easy as I had anticipated. Masses
+of rock had become detached from above and had fallen, so that we had
+either to quarry through them or to circumvent them. The soil was of
+that curious coffee colour so inseparable from the chalk formation. We
+found many things brought down from above, a coin commemorative of the
+storming of the Bastille, and some small pieces of the later Roman
+emperors. But all of these were, of course, not in the solid ground
+below, but near the surface.
+
+When we had reached the face of the cliff, instead of sinking a shaft I
+determined on carrying a gallery down an incline, keeping the rock as a
+wall on my right, till I reached the bottom of all.
+
+The advantage of making an incline was that there was no hauling up of
+the earth by a bucket let down over a pulley, and it was easier for
+myself to descend.
+
+I had not made my tunnel wide enough, and it was tortuous. When I began
+to sink, I set two of the men to smash up the masses of fallen chalk
+rock, so as to widen the tunnel, so that I might use barrows. I gave
+strict orders that all the material brought up was to be picked over by
+two of the most intelligent of the men, outside in the blaze of the sun.
+I was not desirous of sinking too expeditiously; I wished to proceed
+slowly, cautiously, observing every stage as we went deeper.
+
+We got below the layer in which were the relics of the Bronze Age and of
+the men of polished stone, and then we passed through many feet of earth
+that rendered nothing, and finally came on the traces of the reindeer
+period.
+
+To understand how that there should be a considerable depth of the
+débris of the men of the rude stone implements, it must be explained
+that these men made their hearths on the bare ground, and feasted around
+their fires, throwing about them the bones they had picked, and the
+ashes, and broken and disused implements, till the ground was
+inconveniently encumbered. Then they swept all the refuse together over
+their old hearth, and established another on top. So the process went on
+from generation to generation.
+
+For the scientific results of my exploration I must refer the reader to
+the journals and memoirs of learned societies. I will not trouble him
+with them here.
+
+On the ninth day after we had come to the face of the cliff, and when we
+had reached a considerable depth, we uncovered some human bones. I
+immediately adopted special precautions, so that these should not be
+disturbed. With the utmost care the soil was removed from over them, and
+it took us half a day to completely clear a perfect skeleton. It was
+that of a full-grown man, lying on his back, with the skull supported
+against the wall of chalk rock. He did not seem to have been buried. Had
+he been so, he would doubtless have been laid on his side in a
+contracted posture, with the chin resting on the knees.
+
+One of the men pointed out to me that a mass of fallen rock lay beyond
+his feet, and had apparently shut him in, so that he had died through
+suffocation, buried under the earth that the rock had brought down with
+it.
+
+I at once despatched a man to my hotel to fetch my camera, that I might
+by flashlight take a photograph of the skeleton as it lay; and another I
+sent to get from the chemist and grocer as much gum arabic and
+isinglass as could be procured. My object was to give to the bones a
+bath of gum to render them less brittle when removed, restoring to them
+the gelatine that had been absorbed by the earth and lime in which they
+lay.
+
+Thus I was left alone at the bottom of my passage, the four men above
+being engaged in straightening the adit and sifting the earth.
+
+I was quite content to be alone, so that I might at my ease search for
+traces of personal ornament worn by the man who had thus met his death.
+The place was somewhat cramped, and there really was not room in it for
+more than one person to work freely.
+
+Whilst I was thus engaged, I suddenly heard a shout, followed by a
+crash, and, to my dismay, an avalanche of rubble shot down the inclined
+passage of descent. I at once left the skeleton, and hastened to effect
+my exit, but found that this was impossible. Much of the superincumbent
+earth and stone had fallen, dislodged by the vibrations caused by the
+picks of the men smashing up the chalk blocks, and the passage was
+completely choked. I was sealed up in the hollow where I was, and
+thankful that the earth above me had not fallen as well, and buried me,
+a man of the present enlightened age, along with the primeval savage of
+eight thousand years ago.
+
+A large amount of matter must have fallen, for I could not hear the
+voices of the men.
+
+I was not seriously alarmed. The workmen would procure assistance and
+labour indefatigably to release me; of that I could be certain. But how
+much earth had fallen? How much of the passage was choked, and how long
+would they take before I was released? All that was uncertain. I had a
+candle, or, rather, a bit of one, and it was not probable that it would
+last till the passage was cleared. What made me most anxious was the
+question whether the supply of air in the hollow in which I was enclosed
+would suffice.
+
+My enthusiasm for prehistoric research failed me just then. All my
+interests were concentrated on the present, and I gave up groping about
+the skeleton for relics. I seated myself on a stone, set the candle in a
+socket of chalk I had scooped out with my pocket-knife, and awaited
+events with my eyes on the skeleton.
+
+Time passed somewhat wearily. I could hear an occasional thud, thud,
+when the men were using the pick; but they mostly employed the shovel,
+as I supposed. I set my elbows on my knees and rested my chin in my
+hands. The air was not cold, nor was the soil damp; it was dry as snuff.
+The flicker of my light played over the man of bones, and especially
+illumined the skull. It may have been fancy on my part, it probably was
+fancy, but it seemed to me as though something sparkled in the
+eye-sockets. Drops of water possibly lodged there, or crystals formed
+within the skull; but the effect was much as of eyes leering and winking
+at me. I lighted my pipe, and to my disgust found that my supply of
+matches was running short. In France the manufacture belongs to the
+state, and one gets but sixty _allumettes_ for a penny.
+
+I had not brought my watch with me below ground, fearing lest it might
+meet with an accident; consequently I was unable to reckon how time
+passed. I began counting and ticking off the minutes on my fingers, but
+soon tired of doing this.
+
+My candle was getting short; it would not last much longer, and then I
+should be in the dark. I consoled myself with the thought that with the
+extinction of the light the consumption of the oxygen in the air would
+be less rapid. My eyes now rested on the flame of the candle, and I
+watched the gradual diminution of the composite. It was one of those
+abominable _bougies_ with holes in them to economise the wax, and which
+consequently had less than the proper amount of material for feeding and
+maintaining a flame. At length the light went out, and I was left in
+total darkness. I might have used up the rest of my matches, one after
+another, but to what good?--they would prolong the period of
+illumination for but a very little while.
+
+A sense of numbness stole over me, but I was not as yet sensible of
+deficiency of air to breathe. I found that the stone on which I was
+seated was pointed and hard, but I did not like to shift my position for
+fear of getting among and disturbing the bones, and I was still desirous
+of having them photographed _in situ_ before they were moved.
+
+I was not alarmed at my situation; I knew that I must be released
+eventually. But the tedium of sitting there in the dark and on a pointed
+stone was becoming intolerable.
+
+Some time must have elapsed before I became, dimly at first, and then
+distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from the
+skeletion. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which
+gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and I saw
+before me the misty, luminous form of a naked man, with wolfish
+countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at me out of eyes deeply sunk
+under projecting brows. Although I thus describe what I saw, yet it gave
+me no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate.
+Indeed, I cannot say at this moment whether I actually saw this
+apparition with my eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the
+brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the walls of the cave; if I
+raised my hand it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to
+me. Then I heard: "I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and
+toes, and rip you with my teeth."
+
+"What have I done to injure and incense you?" I asked.
+
+And here I must explain. No word was uttered by either of us; no word
+could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs,
+nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of
+a man. It was a spook, not a human being. But from it proceeded
+thought-waves, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of my mind or
+soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in like manner I
+thought my replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner.
+If vocal words had passed between us neither would have been
+intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be
+compiled, of the tongue of prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the
+speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to man now. But
+thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not
+think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our
+thoughts to other men that we shape them into words and express them
+vocally in structural, grammatical sentences. The beasts have never
+attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by
+language, but by thought vibrations.
+
+I must further remark that when I give what ensued as a conversation, I
+have to render the thought intercommunication that passed between the
+Homo Præhistoricus--the prehistoric man--and me, in English as best I
+can render it. I knew as we conversed that I was not speaking to him in
+English, nor in French, nor Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover,
+when I use the words "said" or "spoke," I mean no more than that the
+impression was formed on my brain-pan or the receptive drum of my soul,
+was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. When,
+however, I express the words "screamed" or "shrieked," I signify that
+those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when I say "laughed," that
+they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the
+sound of laughter.
+
+"I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about
+this cave!" shrieked the Homo Præhistoricus, or primeval man.
+
+Again I remonstrated, and inquired how I had incensed him. But yelling
+with rage, he threw himself upon me. In a moment I was enveloped in a
+luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about me,
+but I received no injury whatever, only my spiritual nature was
+subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the
+spook disengaged itself from me, and drew back to where it was before,
+screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering
+savagely. It rapidly cooled down.
+
+"Why do you wish me ill?" I asked again.
+
+"I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot
+injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can
+lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing."
+
+"Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent
+resentment?"
+
+"Because you are a son of the twentieth century, and I lived eight
+thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why do you
+enjoy comforts, a civilisation that we knew nothing of? It is not just.
+It is cruel on us. We had nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even
+lucifer matches!"
+
+Again he fell to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by
+failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach.
+
+"I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine."
+
+"Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these
+things--we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole
+of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and iron-stone,
+and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our
+knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we had nothing, nothing--no
+lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery,
+no metal, no education, no elections, no _chocolat menier_."
+
+"How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried
+under fifty feet of soil for eight thousand years?"
+
+"It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always
+remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth heaped
+over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the tavern
+overhead. I have seen men drink there. I have seen a bottle of
+Benedictine. I have applied my psychical lips to it, but I could taste,
+absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the
+patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious,
+marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of
+miraculous. What do you think of doing with me?"
+
+"Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum
+arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum."
+
+He screamed as though with pain, and gasped: "Don't! don't do it. It
+will be torture insufferable."
+
+"But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany
+box."
+
+"Don't! You cannot understand what it will be to me--a spirit more or
+less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with
+fibulæ, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel
+very far from our bones--our range is limited. And conceive of my
+feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing
+prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone.
+Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into the
+tavern, and can see men get drunk, and hear commercial travellers
+hoodwink the patron, and then when the taverner finds he has been
+induced to buy what he did not want, I can see him beat his wife and
+smack his children. There is something human, humorous, in that, but
+fibulæ, palstaves, torques--bah!"
+
+"You seem to have a lively knowledge of antiquities," I observed.
+
+"Of course I have. There come archæologists here and eat their
+sandwiches above me, and talk prehistoric antiquities till I am sick.
+Give me life! Give me something interesting!"
+
+"But what do you mean when you say that you cannot travel far from your
+bones?"
+
+"I mean that there is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our
+psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web.
+Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you
+break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So
+it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous
+spiritual matter that unites us to our earthly husk. It is liable to
+accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a
+blackbeetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have
+never been to the other side of the river, I have feared to do so,
+though very anxious to look at that creature like a large black
+caterpillar called the Train."
+
+"This is news to me. Do you know of any cases of rupture of connection?"
+
+"Yes," he replied. "My old father, after he was dead some years, got his
+link of attachment broken, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could
+not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of
+seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her
+spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken,
+and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body,
+lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took
+possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became
+chummy. In the world of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up
+spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but
+never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a
+female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken
+up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which sex
+each was. You see they had no education. But I know that my father's
+soul became quite sportive in that young woman's skeleton."
+
+"Did they continue chummy?"
+
+"No; they quarrelled as to which was which, and they are not now on
+speaking terms. I have two great-uncles. Theirs is a sad tale. Their
+souls were out wandering one day, and inadvertently they crossed and
+recrossed each other's tracks so that their spiritual threads of
+attachment got twisted. They found this out, and that they were getting
+tangled up. What one of them should have done would have been to have
+stood still and let the other jump over and dive under his brother's
+thread till he had cleared himself. But my maternal great-uncles--I
+think I forgot to say they were related to me through my mother--they
+were men of peppery tempers and they could not understand this. They had
+no education. So they jumped one this way and one another, each abusing
+the other, and made the tangle more complete. That was about six
+thousand years ago, and they are now so knotted up that I do not suppose
+they will be clear of one another till time is no more."
+
+He paused and laughed.
+
+Then I said: "It must have been very hard for you to be without pottery
+of any sort."
+
+"It was," replied H. P. (this stands for Homo Præhistoricus, not for
+House-Parlourmaid or Hardy Perennial), "very hard. We had skins for
+water and milk----"
+
+"Oh! you had milk. I supposed you had no cows."
+
+"Nor had we, but the reindeer were beginning to get docile and be tamed.
+If we caught young deer we brought them up to be pets for our children.
+And so it came about that as they grew up we found out that we could
+milk them into skins. But that gave it a smack, and whenever we desired
+a fresh draught there was nothing for it but to lie flat on the ground
+under a doe reindeer and suck for all we were worth. It was hard. Horses
+were hunted. It did not occur to us that they could be tamed and saddled
+and mounted. Oh! it was not right. It was not fair that you should have
+everything and we nothing--nothing--nothing! Why should you have all and
+we have had naught?"
+
+"Because I belong to the twentieth century. Thirty-three generations go
+to a thousand years. There are some two hundred and sixty-four or two
+hundred and seventy generations intervening between you and me. Each
+generation makes some discovery that advances civilisation a stage, the
+next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so
+culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive, the
+brute beast is not."
+
+"That is true," he replied. "I invented butter, which was unknown to my
+ancestors, the unbuttered man."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"It was so," he said, and I saw a flush of light ripple over the
+emanation. I suppose it was a glow of self-satisfaction. "It came about
+thus. One of my wives had nearly let the fire out. I was very angry, and
+catching up one of the skins of milk, I banged her about the head with
+it till she fell insensible to the earth. The other wives were very
+pleased and applauded. When I came to take a drink, for my exertions had
+heated me, I found that the milk was curdled into butter. At first I did
+not know what it was, so I made one of my other wives taste it, and as
+she pronounced it to be good, I ate the rest myself. That was how butter
+was invented. For four hundred years that was the way it was made, by
+banging a milk-skin about the head of a woman till she was knocked down
+insensible. But at last a woman found out that by churning the milk with
+her hand butter could be made equally well, and then the former process
+was discontinued except by some men who clung to ancestral customs."
+
+"But," said I, "nowadays you would not be suffered to knock your wife
+about, even with a milk-skin."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it is barbarous. You would be sent to gaol."
+
+"But she was my wife."
+
+"Nevertheless it would not be tolerated. The law steps in and protects
+women from ill-usage."
+
+"How shameful! Not allowed to do what you like with your own wife!"
+
+"Most assuredly not. Then you remarked that this was how you dealt with
+one of your wives. How many did you possess?"
+
+"Off and on, seventeen."
+
+"_Now_, no man is suffered to have more than one."
+
+"What--one at a time?"
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"Ah, well. Then if you had an old and ugly wife, or one who was a scold,
+you could kill her and get another, young and pretty."
+
+"That would not be allowed."
+
+"Not even if she were a scold?"
+
+"No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end."
+
+"Humph!" H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently
+he said: "There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop
+overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill
+one another."
+
+"No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off--here in
+France--unless extenuating circumstances were found. With us in England
+he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead."
+
+"Then--what is your sport?"
+
+"We hunt the fox."
+
+"The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I
+made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting
+is business with us--or was so--not sport."
+
+"Nevertheless with us it is our great sport."
+
+"Business is business and sport is sport," he said. "Now, we hunted as
+business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport."
+
+"We are not suffered to kill one another."
+
+"But take the case," said he, "that a man has a nose-ring, or a pretty
+wife, and you want one or the other. Surely you might kill him and
+possess yourself of what you so ardently covet?"
+
+"By no means. Now, to change the topic," I went on, "you are totally
+destitute of clothing. You do not even wear the traditional garment of
+fig leaves."
+
+"What avail fig leaves? There is no warmth in them."
+
+"Perhaps not--but out of delicacy."
+
+"What is that? I don't understand." There was clearly no corresponding
+sensation in the vibrating tympanum of his psychic nature.
+
+"Did you never wear clothes?" I inquired.
+
+"Certainly, when it was cold we wore skins, skins of the beasts we
+killed. But in summer what is the use of clothing? Besides, we only wore
+them out of doors. When we entered our homes, made of skins hitched up
+to the rock overhead, we threw them off. It was hot within, and we
+perspired freely."
+
+"What, were naked in your homes! you and your wives?"
+
+"Of course we were. Why not? It was very warm within with the fire
+always kept up."
+
+"Why--good gracious me!" I exclaimed, "that would never be tolerated
+nowadays. If you attempted to go about the country unclothed, even get
+out of your clothes freely at home, you would be sent to a lunatic
+asylum and kept there."
+
+"Humph!" He again lapsed into silence.
+
+Presently he exclaimed: "After all, I think that we were better off as
+we were eight thousand years ago, even without your matches,
+Benedictine, education, _chocolat menier_, and commercials, for then we
+were able to enjoy real sport--we could kill one another, we could knock
+old wives on the head, we could have a dozen or more squaws according to
+our circumstances, young and pretty, and we could career about the
+country or sit and enjoy a social chat at home, stark naked. We were
+best off as we were. There are compensations in life at every period of
+man. Vive la liberté!"
+
+At that moment I heard a shout--saw a flash of light. The workmen had
+pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. I staggered to my
+feet.
+
+"Oh! mon Dieu! Monsieur vit encore!"
+
+I felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped me. I was dragged forth. Brandy was
+poured down my throat. When I came to myself I gasped: "Fill in the
+hole! Fill it all up. Let H. P. lie where he is. He shall not go to the
+British Museum. I have had enough of prehistoric antiquities. Adieu,
+pour toujours la Vézère."
+
+
+
+
+GLÁMR
+
+     The following story is found in the Gretla, an Icelandic Saga,
+     composed in the thirteenth century, or that comes to us in the
+     form then given to it; but it is a redaction of a Saga of much
+     earlier date. Most of it is thoroughly historical, and its
+     statements are corroborated by other Sagas. The following
+     incident was introduced to account for the fact that the outlaw
+     Grettir would run any risk rather than spend the long winter
+     nights alone in the dark.
+
+
+At the beginning of the eleventh century there stood, a little way up
+the Valley of Shadows in the north of Iceland, a small farm, occupied by
+a worthy bonder, named Thorhall, and his wife. The farmer was not
+exactly a chieftain, but he was well enough connected to be considered
+respectable; to back up his gentility he possessed numerous flocks of
+sheep and a goodly drove of oxen. Thorhall would have been a happy man
+but for one circumstance--his sheepwalks were haunted.
+
+Not a herdsman would remain with him; he bribed, he threatened,
+entreated, all to no purpose; one shepherd after another left his
+service, and things came to such a pass that he determined on asking
+advice at the next annual council. Thorhall saddled his horses, adjusted
+his packs, provided himself with hobbles, cracked his long Icelandic
+whip, and cantered along the road, and in due time reached Thingvellir.
+
+Skapti Thorodd's son was lawgiver at that time, and as everyone
+considered him a man of the utmost prudence and able to give the best
+advice, our friend from the Vale of Shadows made straight for his
+booth.
+
+"An awkward predicament, certainly--to have large droves of sheep and no
+one to look after them," said Skapti, nibbling the nail of his thumb,
+and shaking his wise head--a head as stuffed with law as a ptarmigan's
+crop is stuffed with blaeberries. "Now I'll tell you what--as you have
+asked my advice, I will help you to a shepherd; a character in his way,
+a man of dull intellect, to be sure but strong as a bull."
+
+"I do not care about his wits so long as he can look after sheep,"
+answered Thorhall.
+
+"You may rely on his being able to do that," said Skapti. "He is a
+stout, plucky fellow; a Swede from Sylgsdale, if you know where that
+is."
+
+Towards the break-up of the council--"Thing" they call it in
+Iceland--two greyish-white horses belonging to Thorhall slipped their
+hobbles and strayed; so the good man had to hunt after them himself,
+which shows how short of servants he was. He crossed Sletha-asi, thence
+he bent his way to Armann's-fell, and just by the Priest's Wood he met a
+strange-looking man driving before him a horse laden with faggots. The
+fellow was tall and stalwart; his face involuntarily attracted
+Thorhall's attention, for the eyes, of an ashen grey, were large and
+staring, the powerful jaw was furnished with very white protruding
+teeth, and around the low forehead hung bunches of coarse wolf-grey
+hair.
+
+"Pray, what is your name, my man?" asked the farmer pulling up.
+
+"Glámr, an please you," replied the wood-cutter.
+
+Thorhall stared; then, with a preliminary cough, he asked how Glámr
+liked faggot-picking.
+
+"Not much," was the answer; "I prefer shepherd life."
+
+"Will you come with me?" asked Thorhall; "Skapti has handed you over to
+me, and I want a shepherd this winter uncommonly."
+
+"If I serve you, it is on the understanding that I come or go as it
+pleases me. I tell you I am a bit truculent if things do not go just to
+my thinking."
+
+"I shall not object to this," answered the bonder. "So I may count on
+your services?"
+
+"Wait a moment! You have not told me whether there be any drawback."
+
+"I must acknowledge that there is one," said Thorhall; "in fact, the
+sheepwalks have got a bad name for bogies."
+
+"Pshaw! I'm not the man to be scared at shadows," laughed Glámr; "so
+here's my hand to it; I'll be with you at the beginning of the winter
+night."
+
+Well, after this they parted, and presently the farmer found his ponies.
+Having thanked Skapti for his advice and assistance, he got his horses
+together and trotted home.
+
+Summer, and then autumn passed, but not a word about the new shepherd
+reached the Valley of Shadows. The winter storms began to bluster up the
+glen, driving the flying snow-flakes and massing the white drifts at
+every winding of the vale. Ice formed in the shallows of the river; and
+the streams, which in summer trickled down the ribbed scarps, were now
+transmuted into icicles.
+
+One gusty night a violent blow at the door startled all in the farm. In
+another moment Glámr, tall as a troll, stood in the hall glowering out
+of his wild eyes, his grey hair matted with frost, his teeth rattling
+and snapping with cold, his face blood-red in the glare of the fire
+which smouldered in the centre of the hall. Thorhall jumped up and
+greeted him warmly, but the housewife was too frightened to be very
+cordial.
+
+Weeks passed, and the new shepherd was daily on the moors with his
+flock; his loud and deep-toned voice was often borne down on the blast
+as he shouted to the sheep driving them into fold. His presence in the
+house always produced gloom, and if he spoke it sent a thrill through
+the women, who openly proclaimed their aversion for him.
+
+There was a church near the byre, but Glámr never crossed the threshold;
+he hated psalmody; apparently he was an indifferent Christian. On the
+vigil of the Nativity Glámr rose early and shouted for meat.
+
+"Meat!" exclaimed the housewife; "no man calling himself a Christian
+touches flesh to-day. To-morrow is the holy Christmas Day, and this is a
+fast."
+
+"All superstition!" roared Glámr. "As far as I can see, men are no
+better now than they were in the bonny heathen time. Bring me meat, and
+make no more ado about it."
+
+"You may be quite certain," protested the good wife, "if Church rule be
+not kept, ill-luck will follow."
+
+Glámr ground his teeth and clenched his hands. "Meat! I will have meat,
+or----" In fear and trembling the poor woman obeyed.
+
+The day was raw and windy; masses of grey vapour rolled up from the
+Arctic Ocean, and hung in piles about the mountain-tops. Now and then a
+scud of frozen fog, composed of minute particles of ice, swept along the
+glen, covering bar and beam with feathery hoar-frost. As the day
+declined, snow began to fall in large flakes like the down of the
+eider-duck. One moment there was a lull in the wind, and then the
+deep-toned shout of Glámr, high up the moor slopes, was heard distinctly
+by the congregation assembling for the first vespers of Christmas Day.
+Darkness came on, deep as that in the rayless abysses of the caverns
+under the lava, and still the snow fell thicker. The lights from the
+church windows sent a yellow haze far out into the night, and every
+flake burned golden as it swept within the ray. The bell in the
+lych-gate clanged for evensong, and the wind puffed the sound far up the
+glen; perhaps it reached the herdsman's ear. Hark! Someone caught a
+distant sound or shriek, which it was he could not tell, for the wind
+muttered and mumbled about the church eaves, and then with a fierce
+whistle scudded over the graveyard fence. Glámr had not returned when
+the service was over. Thorhall suggested a search, but no man would
+accompany him; and no wonder! it was not a night for a dog to be out in;
+besides, the tracks were a foot deep in snow. The family sat up all
+night, waiting, listening, trembling; but no Glámr came home. Dawn broke
+at last, wan and blear in the south. The clouds hung down like great
+sheets, full of snow, almost to bursting.
+
+A party was soon formed to search for the missing man. A sharp scramble
+brought them to high land, and the ridge between the two rivers which
+join in Vatnsdalr was thoroughly examined. Here and there were found the
+scattered sheep, shuddering under an icicled rock, or half buried in a
+snow-drift. No trace yet of the keeper. A dead ewe lay at the bottom of
+a crag; it had staggered over in the gloom, and had been dashed to
+pieces.
+
+Presently the whole party were called together about a trampled spot in
+the heath, where evidently a death-struggle had taken place, for earth
+and stone were tossed about, and the snow was blotched with large
+splashes of blood. A gory track led up the mountain, and the
+farm-servants were following it, when a cry, almost of agony, from one
+of the lads, made them turn. In looking behind a rock, the boy had come
+upon the corpse of the shepherd; it was livid and swollen to the size of
+a bullock. It lay on its back with the arms extended. The snow had been
+scrabbled up by the puffed hands in the death-agony, and the staring
+glassy eyes gazed out of the ashen-grey, upturned face into the vaporous
+canopy overhead. From the purple lips lolled the tongue, which in the
+last throes had been bitten through by the white fangs, and a
+discoloured stream which had flowed from it was now an icicle.
+
+With trouble the dead man was raised on a litter, and carried to a
+gill-edge, but beyond this he could not be borne; his weight waxed more
+and more, the bearers toiled beneath their burden, their foreheads
+became beaded with sweat; though strong men they were crushed to the
+ground. Consequently, the corpse was left at the ravine-head, and the
+men returned to the farm. Next day their efforts to lift Glámr's bloated
+carcass, and remove it to consecrated ground, were unavailing. On the
+third day a priest accompanied them, but the body was nowhere to be
+found. Another expedition without the priest was made, and on this
+occasion the corpse was discovered; so a cairn was raised over the spot.
+
+Two nights after this one of the thralls who had gone after the cows
+burst into the hall with a face blank and scared; he staggered to a seat
+and fainted. On recovering his senses, in a broken voice he assured all
+who crowded about him that he had seen Glámr walking past him as he left
+the door of the stable. On the following evening a houseboy was found in
+a fit under the farmyard wall, and he remained an idiot to his dying
+day. Some of the women next saw a face which, though blown out and
+discoloured, they recognised as that of Glámr, looking in upon them
+through a window of the dairy. In the twilight, Thorhall himself met the
+dead man, who stood and glowered at him, but made no attempt to injure
+his master. The haunting did not end there. Nightly a heavy tread was
+heard around the house, and a hand feeling along the walls, sometimes
+thrust in at the windows, at others clutching the woodwork, and breaking
+it to splinters. However, when the spring came round the disturbances
+lessened, and as the sun obtained full power, ceased altogether.
+
+That summer a vessel from Norway dropped anchor in the nearest bay.
+Thorhall visited it, and found on board a man named Thorgaut, who was in
+search of work.
+
+"What do you say to being my shepherd?" asked the bonder.
+
+"I should very much like the office," answered Thorgaut. "I am as strong
+as two ordinary men, and a handy fellow to boot."
+
+"I will not engage you without forewarning you of the terrible things
+you may have to encounter during the winter night."
+
+"Pray, what may they be?"
+
+"Ghosts and hobgoblins," answered the farmer; "a fine dance they lead
+me, I can promise you."
+
+"I fear them not," answered Thorgaut; "I shall be with you at
+cattle-slaughtering time."
+
+At the appointed season the man came, and soon established himself as a
+favourite in the house; he romped with the children, chucked the maidens
+under the chin, helped his fellow-servants, gratified the housewife by
+admiring her curd, and was just as much liked as his predecessor had
+been detested. He was a devil-may-care fellow, too, and made no bones of
+his contempt for the ghost, expressing hopes of meeting him face to
+face, which made his master look grave, and his mistress shudderingly
+cross herself. As the winter came on, strange sights and sounds began to
+alarm the folk, but these never frightened Thorgaut; he slept too
+soundly at night to hear the tread of feet about the door, and was too
+short-sighted to catch glimpses of a grizzly monster striding up and
+down, in the twilight, before its cairn.
+
+At last Christmas Eve came round, and Thorgaut went out as usual with
+his sheep.
+
+"Have a care, man," urged the bonder; "go not near to the gill-head,
+where Glámr lies."
+
+"Tut, tut! fear not for me. I shall be back by vespers."
+
+"God grant it," sighed the housewife; "but 'tis not a day for risks, to
+be sure."
+
+Twilight came on: a feeble light hung over the south, one white streak
+above the heath land to the south. Far off in southern lands it was
+still day, but here the darkness gathered in apace, and men came from
+Vatnsdalr for evensong, to herald in the night when Christ was born.
+Christmas Eve! How different in Saxon England! There the great ashen
+faggot is rolled along the hall with torch and taper; the mummers dance
+with their merry jingling bells; the boar's head, with gilded tusks,
+"bedecked with holly and rosemary," is brought in by the steward to a
+flourish of trumpets.
+
+How different, too, where the Varanger cluster round the imperial throne
+in the mighty church of the Eternal Wisdom at this very hour. Outside,
+the air is soft from breathing over the Bosphorus, which flashes
+tremulously beneath the stars. The orange and laurel leaves in the
+palace gardens are still exhaling fragrance in the hush of the Christmas
+night.
+
+But it is different here. The wind is piercing as a two-edged sword;
+blocks of ice crash and grind along the coast, and the lake waters are
+congealed to stone. Aloft, the Aurora flames crimson, flinging long
+streamers to the zenith, and then suddenly dissolving into a sea of pale
+green light. The natives are waiting round the church-door, but no
+Thorgaut has returned.
+
+They find him next morning, lying across Glámr's cairn, with his spine,
+his leg, and arm-bones shattered. He is conveyed to the churchyard, and
+a cross is set up at his head. He sleeps peacefully. Not so Glámr; he
+becomes more furious than ever. No one will remain with Thorhall now,
+except an old cowherd who has always served the family, and who had long
+ago dandled his present master on his knee.
+
+"All the cattle will be lost if I leave," said the carle; "it shall
+never be told of me that I deserted Thorhall from fear of a spectre."
+
+Matters grew rapidly worse. Outbuildings were broken into of a night,
+and their woodwork was rent and shattered; the house door was violently
+shaken, and great pieces of it were torn away; the gables of the house
+were also pulled furiously to and fro.
+
+One morning before dawn, the old man went to the stable. An hour later,
+his mistress arose, and taking her milking pails, followed him. As she
+reached the door of the stable, a terrible sound from within--the
+bellowing of the cattle, mingled with the deep notes of an unearthly
+voice--sent her back shrieking to the house. Thorhall leaped out of bed,
+caught up a weapon, and hastened to the cow-house. On opening the door,
+he found the cattle goring each other. Slung across the stone that
+separated the stalls was something. Thorhall stepped up to it, felt it,
+looked close; it was the cowherd, perfectly dead, his feet on one side
+of the slab, his head on the other, and his spine snapped in twain. The
+bonder now moved with his family to Tunga, another farm owned by him
+lower down the valley; it was too venturesome living during the
+mid-winter night at the haunted farm; and it was not till the sun had
+returned as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and had dispelled night
+with its phantoms, that he went back to the Vale of Shadows. In the
+meantime, his little girl's health had given way under the repeated
+alarms of the winter; she became paler every day; with the autumn
+flowers she faded, and was laid beneath the mould of the churchyard in
+time for the first snows to spread a virgin pall over her small grave.
+
+At this time Grettir--a hero of great fame, and a native of the north of
+the island--was in Iceland, and as the hauntings of this vale were
+matters of gossip throughout the district, he inquired about them, and
+resolved on visiting the scene. So Grettir busked himself for a cold
+ride, mounted his horse, and in due course of time drew rein at the door
+of Thorhall's farm with the request that he might be accommodated there
+for the night.
+
+"Ahem!" coughed the bonder; "perhaps you are not aware----"
+
+"I am perfectly aware of all. I want to catch sight of the troll."
+
+"But your horse is sure to be killed."
+
+"I will risk it. Glámr I must meet, so there's an end of it."
+
+"I am delighted to see you," spoke the bonder; "at the same time, should
+mischief befall you, don't lay the blame at my door."
+
+"Never fear, man."
+
+So they shook hands; the horse was put into the strongest stable,
+Thorhall made Grettir as good cheer as he was able, and then, as the
+visitor was sleepy, all retired to rest.
+
+The night passed quietly, and no sounds indicated the presence of a
+restless spirit. The horse, moreover, was found next morning in good
+condition, enjoying his hay.
+
+"This is unexpected!" exclaimed the bonder, gleefully. "Now, where's the
+saddle? We'll clap it on, and then good-bye, and a merry journey to
+you."
+
+"Good-bye!" echoed Grettir; "I am going to stay here another night."
+
+"You had best be advised," urged Thorhall; "if misfortune should
+overtake you, I know that all your kinsmen would visit it on my head."
+
+"I have made up my mind to stay," said Grettir, and he looked so dogged
+that Thorhall opposed him no more.
+
+All was quiet next night; not a sound roused Grettir from his slumber.
+Next morning he went with the farmer to the stable. The strong wooden
+door was shivered and driven in. They stepped across it; Grettir called
+to his horse, but there was no responsive whinny.
+
+"I am afraid----" began Thorhall. Grettir leaped in, and found the poor
+brute dead, and with its neck broken.
+
+"Now," said Thorhall quickly, "I've got a capital horse--a
+skewbald--down by Tunga, I shall not be many hours in fetching it; your
+saddle is here, I think, and then you will just have time to reach----"
+
+"I stay here another night," interrupted Grettir.
+
+"I implore you to depart," said Thorhall.
+
+"My horse is slain!"
+
+"But I will provide you with another."
+
+"Friend," answered Grettir, turning so sharply round that the farmer
+jumped back, half frightened, "no man ever did me an injury without
+rueing it. Now, your demon herdsman has been the death of my horse. He
+must be taught a lesson."
+
+"Would that he were!" groaned Thorhall; "but mortal must not face him.
+Go in peace and receive compensation from me for what has happened."
+
+"I must revenge my horse."
+
+"An obstinate man will have his own way! But if you run your head
+against a stone wall, don't be angry because you get a broken pate."
+
+Night came on; Grettir ate a hearty supper and was right jovial; not so
+Thorhall, who had his misgivings. At bedtime the latter crept into his
+crib, which, in the manner of old Icelandic beds, opened out of the
+hall, as berths do out of a cabin. Grettir, however, determined on
+remaining up; so he flung himself on a bench with his feet against the
+posts of the high seat, and his back against Thorhall's crib; then he
+wrapped one lappet of his fur coat round his feet, the other about his
+head, keeping the neck-opening in front of his face, so that he could
+look through into the hall.
+
+There was a fire burning on the hearth, a smouldering heap of red
+embers; every now and then a twig flared up and crackled, giving Grettir
+glimpses of the rafters, as he lay with his eyes wandering among the
+mysteries of the smoke-blackened roof. The wind whistled softly
+overhead. The clerestory windows, covered with the amnion of sheep,
+admitted now and then a sickly yellow glare from the full moon, which,
+however, shot a beam of pure silver through the smoke-hole in the roof.
+A dog without began to howl; the cat, which had long been sitting
+demurely watching the fire, stood up with raised back and bristling
+tail, then darted behind some chests in a corner. The hall door was in a
+sad plight. It had been so riven by the spectre that it was made firm
+by wattles only, and the moon glinted athwart the crevices. Soothingly
+the river, not yet frozen over, prattled over its shingly bed as it
+swept round the knoll on which stood the farm. Grettir heard the
+breathing of the sleeping women in the adjoining chamber, and the sigh
+of the housewife as she turned in her bed.
+
+Click! click!--It is only the frozen turf on the roof cracking with the
+cold. The wind lulls completely. The night is very still without. Hark!
+a heavy tread, beneath which the snow yields. Every footfall goes
+straight to Grettir's heart. A crash on the turf overhead! By all the
+saints in paradise! The monster is treading on the roof. For one moment
+the chimney-gap is completely darkened: Glámr is looking down it; the
+flash of the red ash is reflected in the two lustreless eyes. Then the
+moon glances sweetly in once more, and the heavy tramp of Glámr is
+audibly moving towards the farther end of the hall. A thud--he has
+leaped down. Grettir feels the board at his back quivering, for Thorhall
+is awake and is trembling in his bed. The steps pass round to the back
+of the house, and then the snapping of the wood shows that the creature
+is destroying some of the outhouse doors. He tires of this apparently,
+for his footfall comes clear towards the main entrance to the hall. The
+moon is veiled behind a watery cloud, and by the uncertain glimmer
+Grettir fancies that he sees two dark hands thrust in above the door.
+His apprehensions are verified, for, with a loud snap, a long strip of
+panel breaks, and light is admitted. Snap--snap! another portion gives
+way, and the gap becomes larger. Then the wattles slip from their
+places, and a dark arm rips them out in bunches, and flings them away.
+There is a cross-beam to the door, holding a bolt which slides into a
+stone groove. Against the grey light, Grettir sees a huge black figure
+heaving itself over the bar. Crack! that has given way, and the rest of
+the door falls in shivers to the earth.
+
+"Oh, heavens above!" exclaims the bonder.
+
+Stealthily the dead man creeps on, feeling at the beams as he comes;
+then he stands in the hall, with the firelight on him. A fearful sight;
+the tall figure distended with the corruption of the grave, the nose
+fallen off, the wandering, vacant eyes, with the glaze of death on them,
+the sallow flesh patched with green masses of decay; the wolf-grey hair
+and beard have grown in the tomb, and hang matted about the shoulders
+and breast; the nails, too, they have grown. It is a sickening sight--a
+thing to shudder at, not to see.
+
+Motionless, with no nerve quivering now, Thorhall and Grettir held their
+breath.
+
+Glámr's lifeless glance strayed round the chamber; it rested on the
+shaggy bundle by the high seat. Cautiously he stepped towards it.
+Grettir felt him groping about the lower lappet and pulling at it. The
+cloak did not give way. Another jerk; Grettir kept his feet firmly
+pressed against the posts, so that the rug was not pulled off. The
+vampire seemed puzzled, he plucked at the upper flap and tugged. Grettir
+held to the bench and bed-board, so that he was not moved, but the cloak
+was rent in twain, and the corpse staggered back, holding half in its
+hands, and gazing wonderingly at it. Before it had done examining the
+shred, Grettir started to his feet, bowed his body, flung his arms about
+the carcass, and, driving his head into the chest, strove to bend it
+backward and snap the spine. A vain attempt! The cold hands came down on
+Grettir's arms with diabolical force, riving them from their hold.
+Grettir clasped them about the body again; then the arms closed round
+him, and began dragging him along. The brave man clung by his feet to
+benches and posts, but the strength of the vampire was the greater;
+posts gave way, benches were heaved from their places, and the wrestlers
+at each moment neared the door. Sharply writhing loose, Grettir flung
+his hands round a roof-beam. He was dragged from his feet; the numbing
+arms clenched him round the waist, and tore at him; every tendon in his
+breast was strained; the strain under his shoulders became excruciating,
+the muscles stood out in knots. Still he held on; his fingers were
+bloodless; the pulses of his temples throbbed in jerks; the breath came
+in a whistle through his rigid nostrils. All the while, too, the long
+nails of the dead man cut into his side, and Grettir could feel them
+piercing like knives between his ribs. Then at once his hands gave way,
+and the monster bore him reeling towards the porch, crashing over the
+broken fragments of the door. Hard as the battle had gone with him
+indoors, Grettir knew that it would go worse outside, so he gathered up
+all his remaining strength for one final desperate struggle. The door
+had been shut with a swivel into a groove; this groove was in a stone,
+which formed the jamb on one side, and there was a similar block on the
+other, into which the hinges had been driven. As the wrestlers neared
+the opening, Grettir planted both his feet against the stone posts,
+holding Glámr by the middle. He had the advantage now. The dead man
+writhed in his arms, drove his talons into Grettir's back, and tore up
+great ribbons of flesh, but the stone jambs held firm.
+
+"Now," thought Grettir, "I can break his back," and thrusting his head
+under the chin, so that the grizzly beard covered his eyes, he forced
+the face from him, and the back was bent as a hazel-rod.
+
+"If I can but hold on," thought Grettir, and he tried to shout for
+Thorhall, but his voice was muffled in the hair of the corpse.
+
+Suddenly one or both of the door-posts gave way. Down crashed the gable
+trees, ripping beams and rafters from their beds; frozen clods of earth
+rattled from the roof and thumped into the snow. Glámr fell on his back,
+and Grettir staggered down on top of him. The moon was at her full;
+large white clouds chased each other across the sky, and as they swept
+before her disk she looked through them with a brown halo round her.
+The snow-cap of Jorundarfell, however, glowed like a planet, then the
+white mountain ridge was kindled, the light ran down the hillside, the
+bright disk stared out of the veil and flashed at this moment full on
+the vampire's face. Grettir's strength was failing him, his hands
+quivered in the snow, and he knew that he could not support himself from
+dropping flat on the dead man's face, eye to eye, lip to lip. The eyes
+of the corpse were fixed on him, lit with the cold glare of the moon.
+His head swam as his heart sent a hot stream to his brain. Then a voice
+from the grey lips said--
+
+"Thou hast acted madly in seeking to match thyself with me. Now learn
+that henceforth ill-luck shall constantly attend thee; that thy strength
+shall never exceed what it now is, and that by night these eyes of mine
+shall stare at thee through the darkness till thy dying day, so that for
+very horror thou shalt not endure to be alone."
+
+Grettir at this moment noticed that his dirk had slipped from its sheath
+during the fall, and that it now lay conveniently near his hand. The
+giddiness which had oppressed him passed away, he clutched at the
+sword-haft, and with a blow severed the vampire's throat. Then, kneeling
+on the breast, he hacked till the head came off.
+
+Thorhall appeared now, his face blanched with terror, but when he saw
+how the fray had terminated he assisted Grettir gleefully to roll the
+corpse on the top of a pile of faggots, which had been collected for
+winter fuel. Fire was applied, and soon far down the valley the flames
+of the pyre startled people, and made them wonder what new horror was
+being enacted in the upper portion of the Vale of Shadows.
+
+Next day the charred bones were conveyed to a spot remote from the
+habitations of men, and were there buried.
+
+What Glámr had predicted came to pass. Never after did Grettir dare to
+be alone in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL HALIFAX'S GHOST STORY
+
+
+I had just come back to England, after having been some years in India,
+and was looking forward to meet my friends, among whom there was none I
+was more anxious to see than Sir Francis Lynton. We had been at Eton
+together, and for the short time I had been at Oxford before entering
+the Army we had been at the same college. Then we had been parted. He
+came into the title and estates of the family in Yorkshire on the death
+of his grandfather--his father had predeceased--and I had been over a
+good part of the world. One visit, indeed, I had made him in his
+Yorkshire home, before leaving for India, of but a few days.
+
+It will easily be imagined how pleasant it was, two or three days after
+my arrival in London, to receive a letter from Lynton saying he had just
+seen in the papers that I had arrived, and begging me to come down at
+once to Byfield, his place in Yorkshire.
+
+"You are not to tell me," he said, "that you cannot come. I allow you a
+week in which to order and try on your clothes, to report yourself at
+the War Office, to pay your respects to the Duke, and to see your sister
+at Hampton Court; but after that I shall expect you. In fact, you are to
+come on Monday. I have a couple of horses which will just suit you; the
+carriage shall meet you at Packham, and all you have got to do is to put
+yourself in the train which leaves King's Cross at twelve o'clock."
+
+Accordingly, on the day appointed I started; in due time reached
+Packham, losing much time on a detestable branch line, and there found
+the dogcart of Sir Francis awaiting me. I drove at once to Byfield.
+
+The house I remembered. It was a low, gabled structure of no great size,
+with old-fashioned lattice windows, separated from the park, where were
+deer, by a charming terraced garden.
+
+No sooner did the wheels crunch the gravel by the principal entrance,
+than, almost before the bell was rung, the porch door opened, and there
+stood Lynton himself, whom I had not seen for so many years, hardly
+altered, and with all the joy of welcome beaming in his face. Taking me
+by both hands, he drew me into the house, got rid of my hat and wraps,
+looked me all over, and then, in a breath, began to say how glad he was
+to see me, what a real delight it was to have got me at last under his
+roof, and what a good time we would have together, like the old days
+over again.
+
+He had sent my luggage up to my room, which was ready for me, and he
+bade me make haste and dress for dinner.
+
+So saying, he took me through a panelled hall up an oak staircase, and
+showed me my room, which, hurried as I was, I observed was hung with
+tapestry, and had a large fourpost bed, with velvet curtains, opposite
+the window.
+
+They had gone into dinner when I came down, despite all the haste I made
+in dressing; but a place had been kept for me next Lady Lynton.
+
+Besides my hosts, there were their two daughters, Colonel Lynton, a
+brother of Sir Francis, the chaplain, and some others whom I do not
+remember distinctly.
+
+After dinner there was some music in the hall, and a game of whist in
+the drawing-room, and after the ladies had gone upstairs, Lynton and I
+retired to the smoking-room, where we sat up talking the best part of
+the night. I think it must have been near three when I retired. Once in
+bed, I slept so soundly that my servant's entrance the next morning
+failed to arouse me, and it was past nine when I awoke.
+
+After breakfast and the disposal of the newspapers, Lynton retired to
+his letters, and I asked Lady Lynton if one of her daughters might show
+me the house. Elizabeth, the eldest, was summoned, and seemed in no way
+to dislike the task.
+
+The house was, as already intimated, by no means large; it occupied
+three sides of a square, the entrance and one end of the stables making
+the fourth side. The interior was full of interest--passages, rooms,
+galleries, as well as hall, were panelled in dark wood and hung with
+pictures. I was shown everything on the ground floor, and then on the
+first floor. Then my guide proposed that we should ascend a narrow
+twisting staircase that led to a gallery. We did as proposed, and
+entered a handsome long room or passage, leading to a small chamber at
+one end, in which my guide told me her father kept books and papers.
+
+I asked if anyone slept in this gallery, as I noticed a bed, and
+fireplace, and rods, by means of which curtains might be drawn,
+enclosing one portion where were bed and fireplace, so as to convert it
+into a very cosy chamber.
+
+She answered "No," the place was not really used except as a playroom,
+though sometimes, if the house happened to be very full, in her
+great-grandfather's time, she had heard that it had been occupied.
+
+By the time we had been over the house, and I had also been shown the
+garden and the stables, and introduced to the dogs, it was nearly one
+o'clock. We were to have an early luncheon, and to drive afterwards to
+see the ruins of one of the grand old Yorkshire abbeys.
+
+This was a pleasant expedition, and we got back just in time for tea,
+after which there was some reading aloud. The evening passed much in the
+same way as the preceding one, except that Lynton, who had some
+business, did not go down to the smoking-room, and I took the
+opportunity of retiring early in order to write a letter for the Indian
+mail, something having been said as to the prospect of hunting the next
+day.
+
+I had finished my letter, which was a long one, together with two or
+three others, and had just got into bed when I heard a step overhead as
+of someone walking along the gallery, which I now knew ran immediately
+above my room. It was a slow, heavy, measured tread which I could hear
+getting gradually louder and nearer, and then as gradually fading away
+as it retreated into the distance.
+
+I was startled for a moment, having been informed that the gallery was
+unused; but the next instant it occurred to me that I had been told it
+communicated with a chamber where Sir Francis kept books and papers. I
+knew he had some writing to do, and I thought no more on the matter.
+
+I was down the next morning at breakfast in good time. "How late you
+were last night!" I said to Lynton, in the middle of breakfast. "I heard
+you overhead after one o'clock."
+
+Lynton replied rather shortly, "Indeed you did not, for I was in bed
+last night before twelve."
+
+"There was someone certainly moving overhead last night," I answered,
+"for I heard his steps as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my
+life, going down the gallery."
+
+Upon which Colonel Lynton remarked that he had often fancied he had
+heard steps on his staircase, when he knew that no one was about. He was
+apparently disposed to say more, when his brother interrupted him
+somewhat curtly, as I fancied, and asked me if I should feel inclined
+after breakfast to have a horse and go out and look for the hounds. They
+met a considerable way off, but if they did not find in the coverts they
+should first draw, a thing not improbable, they would come our way, and
+we might fall in with them about one o'clock and have a run. I said
+there was nothing I should like better. Lynton mounted me on a very
+nice chestnut, and the rest of the party having gone out shooting, and
+the young ladies being otherwise engaged, he and I started about eleven
+o'clock for our ride.
+
+The day was beautiful, soft, with a bright sun, one of those delightful
+days which so frequently occur in the early part of November.
+
+On reaching the hilltop where Lynton had expected to meet the hounds no
+trace of them was to be discovered. They must have found at once, and
+run in a different direction. At three o'clock, after we had eaten our
+sandwiches, Lynton reluctantly abandoned all hopes of falling in with
+the hounds, and said we would return home by a slightly different route.
+
+We had not descended the hill before we came on an old chalk quarry and
+the remains of a disused kiln.
+
+I recollected the spot at once. I had been here with Sir Francis on my
+former visit, many years ago. "Why--bless me!" said I. "Do you remember,
+Lynton, what happened here when I was with you before? There had been
+men engaged removing chalk, and they came on a skeleton under some depth
+of rubble. We went together to see it removed, and you said you would
+have it preserved till it could be examined by some ethnologist or
+anthropologist, one or other of those dry-as-dusts, to decide whether
+the remains are dolichocephalous or brachycephalous, whether British,
+Danish, or--modern. What was the result?"
+
+Sir Francis hesitated for a moment, and then answered: "It is true, I
+had the remains removed."
+
+"Was there an inquest?"
+
+"No. I had been opening some of the tumuli on the Wolds. I had sent a
+crouched skeleton and some skulls to the Scarborough Museum. This I was
+doubtful about, whether it was a prehistoric interment--in fact, to what
+date it belonged. No one thought of an inquest."
+
+On reaching the house, one of the grooms who took the horses, in answer
+to a question from Lynton, said that Colonel and Mrs. Hampshire had
+arrived about an hour ago, and that, one of the horses being lame, the
+carriage in which they had driven over from Castle Frampton was to put
+up for the night. In the drawing-room we found Lady Lynton pouring out
+tea for her husband's youngest sister and her husband, who, as we came
+in, exclaimed: "We have come to beg a night's lodging."
+
+It appeared that they had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, and had
+been obliged to leave at a moment's notice in consequence of a sudden
+death in the house where they were staying, and that, in the
+impossibility of getting a fly, their hosts had sent them over to
+Byfield.
+
+"We thought," Mrs. Hampshire went on to say, "that as we were coming
+here the end of next week, you would not mind having us a little sooner;
+or that, if the house were quite full, you would be willing to put us up
+anywhere till Monday, and let us come back later."
+
+Lady Lynton interposed with the remark that it was all settled; and
+then, turning to her husband, added: "But I want to speak to you for a
+moment."
+
+They both left the room together.
+
+Lynton came back almost immediately, and, making an excuse to show me on
+a map in the hall the point to which we had ridden, said as soon as we
+were alone, with a look of considerable annoyance: "I am afraid we must
+ask you to change your room. Shall you mind very much? I think we can
+make you quite comfortable upstairs in the gallery, which is the only
+room available. Lady Lynton has had a good fire lit; the place is really
+not cold, and it will be for only a night or two. Your servant has been
+told to put your things together, but Lady Lynton did not like to give
+orders to have them actually moved before my speaking to you."
+
+I assured him that I did not mind in the very least, that I should be
+quite as comfortable upstairs, but that I did mind very much their
+making such a fuss about a matter of that sort with an old friend like
+myself.
+
+Certainly nothing could look more comfortable than my new lodging when I
+went upstairs to dress. There was a bright fire in the large grate, an
+armchair had been drawn up beside it, and all my books and writing
+things had been put in, with a reading-lamp in the central position, and
+the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn, converting this part of the
+gallery into a room to itself. Indeed, I felt somewhat inclined to
+congratulate myself on the change. The spiral staircase had been one
+reason against this place having been given to the Hampshires. No lady's
+long dress trunk could have mounted it.
+
+Sir Francis was necessarily a good deal occupied in the evening with his
+sister and her husband, whom he had not seen for some time. Colonel
+Hampshire had also just heard that he was likely to be ordered to Egypt,
+and when Lynton and he retired to the smoking-room, instead of going
+there I went upstairs to my own room to finish a book in which I was
+interested. I did not, however, sit up long, and very soon went to bed.
+
+Before doing so, I drew back the curtains on the rod, partly because I
+like plenty of air where I sleep, and partly also because I thought I
+might like to see the play of the moonlight on the floor in the portion
+of the gallery beyond where I lay, and where the blinds had not been
+drawn.
+
+I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire, which I had left in
+full blaze, was gone to a few sparks wandering among the ashes, when I
+suddenly awoke with the impression of having heard a latch click at the
+further extremity of the gallery, where was the chamber containing books
+and papers.
+
+I had always been a light sleeper, but on the present occasion I woke at
+once to complete and acute consciousness, and with a sense of stretched
+attention which seemed to intensify all my faculties. The wind had
+risen, and was blowing in fitful gusts round the house.
+
+A minute or two passed, and I began almost to fancy I must have been
+mistaken, when I distinctly heard the creak of the door, and then the
+click of the latch falling back into its place. Then I heard a sound on
+the boards as of one moving in the gallery. I sat up to listen, and as I
+did so I distinctly heard steps coming down the gallery. I heard them
+approach and pass my bed. I could see nothing, all was dark; but I heard
+the tread proceeding towards the further portion of the gallery where
+were the uncurtained and unshuttered windows, two in number; but the
+moon shone through only one of these, the nearer; the other was dark,
+shadowed by the chapel or some other building at right angles. The tread
+seemed to me to pause now and again, and then continue as before.
+
+I now fixed my eyes intently on the one illumined window, and it
+appeared to me as if some dark body passed across it: but what? I
+listened intently, and heard the step proceed to the end of the gallery
+and then return.
+
+I again watched the lighted window, and immediately that the sound
+reached that portion of the long passage it ceased momentarily, and I
+saw, as distinctly as I ever saw anything in my life, by moonlight, a
+figure of a man with marked features, in what appeared to be a fur cap
+drawn over the brows.
+
+It stood in the embrasure of the window, and the outline of the face was
+in silhouette; then it moved on, and as it moved I again heard the
+tread. I was as certain as I could be that the thing, whatever it was,
+or the person, whoever he was, was approaching my bed.
+
+I threw myself back in the bed, and as I did so a mass of charred wood
+on the hearth fell down and sent up a flash of--I fancy sparks, that
+gave out a glare in the darkness, and by that--red as blood--I saw a
+face near me.
+
+With a cry, over which I had as little control as the scream uttered by
+a sleeper in the agony of a nightmare, I called: "Who are you?"
+
+There was an instant during which my hair bristled on my head, as in the
+horror of the darkness I prepared to grapple with the being at my side;
+when a board creaked as if someone had moved, and I heard the footsteps
+retreat, and again the click of the latch.
+
+The next instant there was a rush on the stairs and Lynton burst into
+the room, just as he had sprung out of bed, crying: "For God's sake,
+what is the matter? Are you ill?"
+
+I could not answer. Lynton struck a light and leant over the bed. Then I
+seized him by the arm, and said without moving: "There has been
+something in this room--gone in thither."
+
+The words were hardly out of my mouth when Lynton, following the
+direction of my eyes, had sprung to the end of the corridor and thrown
+open the door there.
+
+He went into the room beyond, looked round it, returned, and said: "You
+must have been dreaming."
+
+By this time I was out of bed.
+
+"Look for yourself," said he, and he led me into the little room. It was
+bare, with cupboards and boxes, a sort of lumber-place. "There is
+nothing beyond this," said he, "no door, no staircase. It is a
+_cul-de-sac_." Then he added: "Now pull on your dressing-gown and come
+downstairs to my sanctum."
+
+I followed him, and after he had spoken to Lady Lynton, who was standing
+with the door of her room ajar in a state of great agitation, he turned
+to me and said: "No one can have been in your room. You see my and my
+wife's apartments are close below, and no one could come up the spiral
+staircase without passing my door. You must have had a nightmare.
+Directly you screamed I rushed up the steps, and met no one descending;
+and there is no place of concealment in the lumber-room at the end of
+the gallery."
+
+Then he took me into his private snuggery, blew up the fire, lighted a
+lamp, and said: "I shall be really grateful if you will say nothing
+about this. There are some in the house and neighbourhood who are silly
+enough as it is. You stay here, and if you do not feel inclined to go to
+bed, read--here are books. I must go to Lady Lynton, who is a good deal
+frightened, and does not like to be left alone."
+
+He then went to his bedroom.
+
+Sleep, as far as I was concerned, was out of the question, nor do I
+think that Sir Francis or his wife slept much either.
+
+I made up the fire, and after a time took up a book, and tried to read,
+but it was useless.
+
+I sat absorbed in thoughts and questionings till I heard the servants
+stirring in the morning. I then went to my own room, left the candle
+burning, and got into bed. I had just fallen asleep when my servant
+brought me a cup of tea at eight o'clock.
+
+At breakfast Colonel Hampshire and his wife asked if anything had
+happened in the night, as they had been much disturbed by noises
+overhead, to which Lynton replied that I had not been very well, and had
+an attack of cramp, and that he had been upstairs to look after me. From
+his manner I could see that he wished me to be silent, and I said
+nothing accordingly.
+
+In the afternoon, when everyone had gone out, Sir Francis took me into
+his snuggery and said: "Halifax, I am very sorry about that matter last
+night. It is quite true, as my brother said, that steps have been heard
+about this house, but I never gave heed to such things, putting all
+noises down to rats. But after your experiences I feel that it is due to
+you to tell you something, and also to make to you an explanation. There
+is--there was--no one in the room at the end of the corridor, except the
+skeleton that was discovered in the chalk-pit when you were here many
+years ago. I confess I had not paid much heed to it. My archæological
+fancies passed; I had no visits from anthropologists; the bones and
+skull were never shown to experts, but remained packed in a chest in
+that lumber-room. I confess I ought to have buried them, having no more
+scientific use for them, but I did not--on my word, I forgot all about
+them, or, at least, gave no heed to them. However, what you have gone
+through, and have described to me, has made me uneasy, and has also
+given me a suspicion that I can account for that body in a manner that
+had never occurred to me before."
+
+After a pause, he added: "What I am going to tell you is known to no one
+else, and must not be mentioned by you--anyhow, in my lifetime, You know
+now that, owing to the death of my father when quite young, I and my
+brother and sister were brought up here with our grandfather, Sir
+Richard. He was an old, imperious, short-tempered man. I will tell you
+what I have made out of a matter that was a mystery for long, and I will
+tell you afterwards how I came to unravel it. My grandfather was in the
+habit of going out at night with a young under-keeper, of whom he was
+very fond, to look after the game and see if any poachers, whom he
+regarded as his natural enemies, were about.
+
+"One night, as I suppose, my grandfather had been out with the young man
+in question, and, returning by the plantations, where the hill is
+steepest, and not far from that chalk-pit you remarked on yesterday,
+they came upon a man, who, though not actually belonging to the country,
+was well known in it as a sort of travelling tinker of indifferent
+character, and a notorious poacher. Mind this, I am not sure it was at
+the place I mention; I only now surmise it. On the particular night in
+question, my grandfather and the keeper must have caught this man
+setting snares; there must have been a tussle, in the course of which as
+subsequent circumstances have led me to imagine, the man showed fight
+and was knocked down by one or other of the two--my grandfather or the
+keeper. I believe that after having made various attempts to restore
+him, they found that the man was actually dead.
+
+"They were both in great alarm and concern--my grandfather especially.
+He had been prominent in putting down some factory riots, and had acted
+as magistrate with promptitude, and had given orders to the military to
+fire, whereby a couple of lives had been lost. There was a vast outcry
+against him, and a certain political party had denounced him as an
+assassin. No man was more vituperated; yet, in my conscience, I believe
+that he acted with both discretion and pluck, and arrested a mischievous
+movement that might have led to much bloodshed. Be that as it may, my
+impression is that he lost his head over this fatal affair with the
+tinker, and that he and the keeper together buried the body secretly,
+not far from the place where he was killed. I now think it was in the
+chalk-pit, and that the skeleton found years after there belonged to
+this man."
+
+"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, as at once my mind rushed back to the
+figure with the fur cap that I had seen against the window.
+
+Sir Francis went on: "The sudden disappearance of the tramp, in view of
+his well-known habits and wandering mode of life, did not for some time
+excite surprise; but, later on, one or two circumstances having led to
+suspicion, an inquiry was set on foot, and among others, my
+grandfather's keepers were examined before the magistrates. It was
+remembered afterwards that the under-keeper in question was absent at
+the time of the inquiry, my grandfather having sent him with some dogs
+to a brother-in-law of his who lived upon the moors; but whether no one
+noticed the fact, or if they did, preferred to be silent, I know not, no
+observations were made. Nothing came of the investigation, and the whole
+subject would have dropped if it had not been that two years later, for
+some reasons I do not understand, but at the instigation of a magistrate
+recently imported into the division, whom my grandfather greatly
+disliked, and who was opposed to him in politics, a fresh inquiry was
+instituted. In the course of that inquiry it transpired that, owing to
+some unguarded words dropped by the under-keeper, a warrant was about to
+be issued for his arrest. My grandfather, who had had a fit of the gout,
+was away from home at the time, but on hearing the news he came home at
+once. The evening he returned he had a long interview with the young
+man, who left the house after he had supped in the servants' hall. It
+was observed that he looked much depressed. The warrant was issued the
+next day, but in the meantime the keeper had disappeared. My grandfather
+gave orders to all his own people to do everything in their power to
+assist the authorities in the search that was at once set on foot, but
+was unable himself to take any share in it.
+
+"No trace of the keeper was found, although at a subsequent period
+rumours circulated that he had been heard of in America. But the man
+having been unmarried, he gradually dropped out of remembrance, and as
+my grandfather never allowed the subject to be mentioned in his
+presence, I should probably never have known anything about it but for
+the vague tradition which always attaches to such events, and for this
+fact: that after my grandfather's death a letter came addressed to him
+from somewhere in the United States from someone--the name different
+from that of the keeper--but alluding to the past, and implying the
+presence of a common secret, and, of course, with it came a request for
+money. I replied, mentioning the death of Sir Richard, and asking for an
+explanation. I did get an answer, and it is from that that I am able to
+fill in so much of the story. But I never learned _where_ the man had
+been killed and buried, and my next letter to the fellow was returned
+with 'Deceased' written across it. Somehow, it never occurred to me
+till I heard your story that possibly the skeleton in the chalk-pit
+might be that of the poaching tinker. I will now most assuredly have it
+buried in the churchyard."
+
+"That certainly ought to be done," said I.
+
+"And--" said Sir Francis, after a pause, "I give you my word. After the
+burial of the bones, and you are gone, I will sleep for a week in the
+bed in the gallery, and report to you if I see or hear anything. If all
+be quiet, then--well, you form your own conclusions."
+
+I left a day after. Before long I got a letter from my friend, brief but
+to the point: "All quiet, old boy; come again."
+
+
+
+
+THE MEREWIGS
+
+
+During the time that I lived in Essex, I had the pleasure of knowing
+Major Donelly, retired on half-pay, who had spent many years in India;
+he was a man of great powers of observation, and possessed an
+inexhaustible fund of information of the most valuable quality, which he
+was ready to communicate to his intimates, among whom was I.
+
+Major Donelly is now no more, and the world is thereby the poorer. Major
+Donelly took an interest in everything--anthropology, mechanics,
+archæology, physical science, natural history, the stock market,
+politics. In fact, it was not possible in conversation to broach a
+subject with which he was wholly unacquainted, and concerning which he
+was not desirous of acquiring further information. A man of this
+description is not to be held by lightly. I grappled him to my heart.
+
+One day when we were taking a constitutional walk together, I casually
+mentioned the "Red Hills." He had never heard of them, inquired, and I
+told him what little I knew on the matter. The Red Hills are mounds of
+burnt clay of a brick-red colour, found at intervals along the fringe of
+the marshes on the east coast. Of the date of their formation and the
+purpose they were destined to discharge, nothing has been certainly
+ascertained. Theories have been formed, and have been held to with
+tenacity, but these are unsupported by sound evidence. And yet, one
+would have supposed that these mysterious mounds would have been
+subjected to a careful scientific exploration to determine by the
+discovery of flint tools, potsherds, or coins to what epoch they belong,
+and that some clue should be discovered as to their purport. But at the
+time when I was in Essex, no such study had been attempted; whether any
+has been undertaken since I am unable to say.
+
+I mentioned to Donelly some of the suppositions offered as to the origin
+of these Red Hills; that they represented salt-making works, that they
+were funereal erections, that they were artificial bases for the huts of
+fishers.
+
+"That is it," said the major, "no doubt about it. To keep off the ague.
+Do you not know that burnt clay is a sure protection against ague, which
+was the curse of the Essex marsh land? In Central Africa, in the
+districts that lie low and there is morass, the natives are quite aware
+of the fact, and systematically form a bed of burnt clay as a platform
+on which to erect their hovels. Now look here, my dear friend, I'd most
+uncommonly like to take a boat along with you, and explore both sides of
+the Blackwater to begin with, and its inlets, and to tick down on the
+ordnance map every red hill we can find."
+
+"I am quite ready," I replied. "There is one thing to remember. A vast
+number of these hills have been ploughed down, but you can certainly
+detect where they were by the colour of the soil."
+
+Accordingly, on the next fine day we engaged a boat--not a rower--for we
+could manage it between us, and started on our expedition.
+
+The country around the Blackwater is flat, and the land slides into the
+sea and river with so slight an incline, that a good extent of debatable
+ground exists, which may be reckoned as belonging to both. Vast marshes
+are found occasionally flooded, covered with the wild lavender, and in
+June flushed with the seathrift. They nourish a coarse grass, and a
+bastard samphire. These marshes are threaded, cobweb fashion, by myriads
+of lines of water and mud that intercommunicate. Woe to the man who
+either stumbles into, or in jumping falls into, one of these breaks in
+the surface of land. He sinks to his waist in mud. At certain times,
+when no high tides are expected, sheep are driven upon these marshes and
+thrive. They manage to leap the runnels, and the shepherd is aware when
+danger threatens, and they must be driven off.
+
+Nearer the mainland are dykes thrown up, none know when, to reclaim
+certain tracts of soil, and on the land side are invariably stagnant
+ditches, where mosquitoes breed in myriads. Further up grow oak trees,
+and in summer to these the mosquitoes betake themselves in swarms, and
+may be seen in the evening swaying in such dense clouds above the trees
+that these latter seem to be on fire and smoking. Major Donelly and I
+leisurely paddled about, running into creeks, leaving our boat,
+identifying our position on the map, and marking in the position of such
+red hills or their traces as we lighted on.
+
+Major Donelly and I pretty well explored the left bank up to a certain
+point, when he proposed that we should push across to the other.
+
+"I should advise doing thoroughly the upper reach of the Blackwater,"
+said he, "and we shall then have completed one section."
+
+"All right," I responded, and we turned the boat's head to cross.
+Unhappily, we had not calculated that the estuary was full of mudbanks.
+Moreover, the tide was ebbing, and before very long we grounded.
+
+"Confound it!" said the major, "we are on a mudbank. What a fix we are
+in."
+
+We laboured with the oars to thrust off, but could touch no solid
+ground, to obtain purchase sufficient for our purpose.
+
+Then said Donelly: "The only thing to be done is for one of us to step
+onto the bank and thrust the boat off. I will do that. I have on an old
+shabby pair of trousers that don't matter."
+
+"No, indeed, you shall not. I will go," and at the word I sprang
+overboard. But the major had jumped simultaneously, and simultaneously
+we sank in the horrible slime. It had the consistency of spinach. I do
+not mean such as English cooks send us to table, half-mashed and often
+gritty, but the spinach as served at a French table d'hôte, that has
+been pulped through a fine hair sieve. And what is more, it apparently
+had no bottom. For aught I know it might go down a mile in depth towards
+the centre of the globe, and it stank abominably. We both clung to the
+sides of the boat to save ourselves from sinking altogether.
+
+There we were, one on each side, clinging to the bulwarks and looking at
+one another. For a moment or two neither spoke. Donelly was the first to
+recover his presence of mind, and after wiping his mouth on the gunwale
+from the mud that had squirted over it, he said: "Can you get out?"
+
+"Hardly," said I.
+
+We tugged at the boat, it squelched about, splashing the slime over us,
+till it plastered our heads and faces and covered our hands.
+
+"This will never do," said he. "We must get in together, and by
+instalments. Look here! when I say 'three,' throw in your left leg if
+you can get it out of the mud."
+
+"I will do my best."
+
+"And," he said further, "we must do so both at the same moment. Now,
+don't be a sneak and try to get in your body whilst I am putting in my
+leg, or you will upset the boat."
+
+"I never was a sneak," I retorted angrily, "and I certainly will not be
+one in what may be the throes of death."
+
+"All right," said the major. "One--two--three!"
+
+Instantly both of us drew our left legs out of the mud, and projected
+them over the sides into the boat.
+
+"How are you?" asked he. "Got your leg in all right?"
+
+"All but my boot," I replied, "and that has been sucked off my foot."
+
+"Oh, bother the boot," said the major, "so long as your leg is safe
+within, and has not been sucked off. That would have disturbed the
+equipoise. Now then--next we must have our trunks and right legs within.
+Take a long breath, and wait till I call 'three.'"
+
+We paused, panting with the strain; then Donelly, in a stentorian voice,
+shouted: "One--two--three!"
+
+Instantly we writhed and strained, and finally, after a convulsive
+effort, both were landed in the bottom of the boat. We picked ourselves
+up and seated ourselves, each on one bulwark, looking at one another.
+
+We were covered with the foul slime from head to foot, our clothes were
+caked, so were our hands and faces. But we were secure.
+
+"Here," said Donelly, "we shall have to remain for six hours till the
+tide flows, and the boat is lifted. It is of no earthly use for us to
+shout for help. Even if our calls were heard, no one could come out to
+us. Here, then, we stick and must make the best of it. Happily the sun
+is hot, and will cake the mud about us, and then we can pick off some of
+it."
+
+The prospect was not inviting. But I saw no means of escape.
+
+Presently Donelly said: "It is good that we brought our luncheon with
+us, and above all some whisky, which is the staff of life. Look here, my
+dear fellow. I wish it were possible to get this stinking stuff off our
+hands and faces; it smells like the scouring poured down the sink in
+Satan's own back kitchen. Is there not a bottle of claret in the
+basket?"
+
+"Yes, I put one in."
+
+"Then," said he, "the best use we can put it to is to wash our faces and
+hands in it. Claret is poor drink, and there is the whisky to fall back
+on."
+
+"The water has all ebbed away," I remarked "We cannot clean ourselves in
+that."
+
+"Then uncork the _Saint Julien_."
+
+There was really no help for it. The smell of the mud was disgusting,
+and it turned one's stomach. So I pulled out the cork, and we performed
+our ablutions in the claret.
+
+That done, we returned to our seats on the gunwale, one on each side,
+and looked sadly at one another. Six hours! That was an interminable
+time to spend on a mudflat in the Blackwater. Neither of us was much
+inclined to speak. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the major
+proposed refreshments. Accordingly we crept together into the bottom of
+the boat and there discussed the contents of the hamper, and we
+certainly did full justice to the whisky bottle. For we were wet to the
+skin, and beplastered from head to foot in the ill-savoured mud.
+
+When we had done the chicken and ham, and drained the whisky jar, we
+returned to our several positions _vis-à-vis_. It was essential that the
+balance of the boat should be maintained.
+
+Major Donelly was now in a communicative mood.
+
+"I will say this," observed he; "that you are the best-informed and most
+agreeable man I have met with in Colchester and Chelmsford."
+
+I would not record this remark but for what it led up to.
+
+I replied--I dare say I blushed--but the claret in my face made it red,
+anyhow. I replied: "You flatter me."
+
+"Not at all. I always say what I think. You have plenty of information,
+and you'll grow your wings, and put on rainbow colours."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" I inquired.
+
+"Do you not know," said he, "that we shall all of us, some day, develop
+wings? Grow into angels! What do you suppose that ethereal pinions
+spring out of? They do not develop out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.
+You cannot think that they are the ultimate produce of ham and chicken."
+
+"Nor of whisky."
+
+"Nor of whisky," he repeated. "You know it is so with the grub."
+
+"Grub is ambiguous," I observed.
+
+"I do not mean victuals, but the caterpillar. That creature spends its
+short life in eating, eating, eating. Look at a cabbage-leaf, it is
+riddled with holes; the grub has consumed all that vegetable matter, and
+I will inform you for what purpose. It retires into its chrysalis, and
+during the winter a transformation takes place, and in spring it breaks
+forth as a glorious butterfly. The painted wings of the insect in its
+second stage of existence are the sublimated cabbage it has devoured in
+its condition of larva."
+
+"Quite so. What has that to do with me?"
+
+"We are also in our larva condition. But do not for a moment suppose
+that the wings we shall put on with rainbow painting are the produce of
+what we eat here--of ham and chicken, kidneys, beef, and the like. No,
+sir, certainly not. They are fashioned out of the information we have
+absorbed, the knowledge we have acquired during the first stage of
+life."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I will tell you," he answered. "I had a remarkable experience once. It
+is a rather long story, but as we have some five hours and a half to sit
+here looking at one another till the tide rises and floats us, I may as
+well tell you, and it will help to the laying on of the colours on your
+pinions when you acquire them. You would like to hear the tale?"
+
+"Above all things."
+
+"There is a sort of prologue to it," he went on. "I cannot well dispense
+with it as it leads up to what I particularly want to say."
+
+"By all means let me have the prologue, if it be instructive."
+
+"It is eminently instructive," he said. "But before I begin, just pass
+me the bottle, if there is any whisky left."
+
+"It is drained," I said.
+
+"Well, well, it can't be helped. When I was in India, I moved from one
+place to another, and I had pitched my tent in a certain spot. I had a
+native servant. I forget what his real name was, and it does not matter.
+I always called him Alec. He was a curious fellow, and the other
+servants stood in awe of him. They thought that he saw ghosts and had
+familiar dealings with the spiritual world. He was honest as natives go.
+He would not allow anyone else to rob me; but, of course, he filched
+things of mine himself. We are accustomed to that, and think nothing of
+it. But it was a satisfaction that he kept the fingers of the others off
+my property. Well, one night, when, as I have informed you, my tent was
+pitched on a spot I considered eminently convenient, I slept very
+uncomfortably. It was as though a centipede were crawling over me. Next
+morning I spoke to Alec, and told him my experiences, and bade him
+search well my mattress and the floor of my tent. A Hindu's face is
+impassive, but I thought I detected in his eyes a twinkle of
+understanding. Nevertheless I did not give it much thought. Next night
+it was as bad, and in the morning I found my panjams slit from head to
+foot. I called Alec to me and held up the garment, and said how
+uncomfortable I had been. 'Ah! sahib,' said he, 'that is the doings of
+Abdulhamid, the blood-thirsty scoundrel!'"
+
+"Excuse me," I interrupted. "Did he mean the present Sultan of Turkey?"
+
+"No, quite another, of the same name."
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said. "But when you mentioned him as a
+blood-thirsty scoundrel, I supposed it must be he."
+
+"It was not he. It was another. Call him, if you like, the other Abdul.
+But to proceed with my story."
+
+"One inquiry more," said I. "Surely Abdulhamid cannot be a Hindu name?"
+
+"I did not say that it was," retorted the major with a touch of asperity
+in his tone. "He was doubtless a Mohammedan."
+
+"But the name is rather Turkish or Arabic."
+
+"I am not responsible for that; I was not his godfathers and godmothers
+at his baptism. I am merely repeating what Alec told me. If you are so
+captious, I shall shut up and relate no more."
+
+"Do not take umbrage," said I. "I surely have a right to test the
+quality of the material I take in, out of which my wings are to be
+evolved. Go ahead; I will interrupt no further."
+
+"Very well, then, let that be understood between us. Are you caking?"
+
+"Slowly," I replied. "The sun is hot; I am drying up on one side of my
+body."
+
+"I think that we had best shift sides of the boat," said the major. "It
+is the same with me."
+
+Accordingly, with caution, we crossed over, and each took the seat on
+the gunwale lately occupied by the other.
+
+"There," said Donelly. "How goes the enemy? My watch got smothered in
+the mud, and has stopped."
+
+"Mine," I explained, "is plastered into my waistcoat pocket, and I
+cannot get at it without messing my fingers, and there is no more claret
+left for a wash; the whisky is all inside us."
+
+"Well," said the major, "it does not matter; there is plenty of time
+before us for the rest of my story. Let me see--where was I? Oh! where
+Alec mentioned Abdulhamid, the inferior scoundrel, not the Sultan. Alec
+went on to say that he was himself possessed of a remarkably keen scent
+for blood, even though it had been shed a century before his time, and
+that my tent had been pitched and my bed spread over a spot marked by a
+most atrocious crime. That Abdul of whom he had made mention had been a
+man steeped in crimes of the most atrocious character. Of course, he
+did not come up in wickedness to his illustrious namesake, but that was
+because he lacked the opportunities with which the other is so favoured.
+On the very identical spot where I then was, this same bloodstained
+villain had perpetrated his worst iniquity--he had murdered his father
+and mother, and aunt, and his children. After that he was taken and
+hanged. When his soul parted from his body, in the ordinary course it
+would have entered into the shell of a scorpion or some other noxious
+creature, and so have mounted through the scale of beings, by one
+incarnation after another, till he attained once more to the high estate
+of man."
+
+"Excuse the interruption," said I, "but I think you intimated that this
+Abdulhamid was a Mohammedan, and the sons of the Prophet do not believe
+in the transmigration of souls."
+
+"That," said Donelly, "is precisely the objection I raised to Alec. But
+he told me that souls after death are not accommodated with a future
+according to the creeds they hold, but according to Destiny: that
+whatever a man might suppose during life as to the condition of his
+future state, there was but one truth to which they would all have their
+eyes opened--the truth held by the Hindus, viz. the transmigration of
+souls from stage to stage, ever progressing upward to man, and then to
+recommence the interminable circle of reincarnation. 'So,' said I, 'it
+was Abdul in the form of a scorpion who was tickling my ribs all night.'
+'No, sahib,' replied my native servant very gravely. He was too wicked
+to be suffered to set his foot, so to speak, on the lowest rung of the
+ladder of existences. The doom went forth against him that he must haunt
+the scenes of his former crimes, till he found a man sleeping over one
+of them, and on that man must be a mole, and out of that mole must grow
+three hairs. These hairs he must pluck out and plant on the grave of his
+final victims, and water them with his tears. And the flowing of these
+first drops of penitence would enable him to pass at once into the first
+stage of the circle of incarnations.' 'Why,' said I, 'that unredeemed
+ruffian was mole-hunting over me the last two nights! But what do you
+say to these slit panjams?' 'Sahib,' replied Alec, 'he did that with his
+nails. I presume he turned you over, and ripped them so as to get at
+your back and feel for the so-much-desired mole.' 'I'll have the tent
+shifted,' said I. 'Nothing will induce me to sleep another night on this
+accursed spot.'"
+
+Donelly paused, and proceeded to take off some flakes of mud that had
+formed on his sleeve. We really were beginning to get drier, but in
+drying we stiffened, as the mud became hard about us like pie-crust.
+
+"So far," said I, "we have had no wings."
+
+"I am coming to them," replied the major; "I have now concluded the
+prologue."
+
+"Oh! that was the prologue, was it?"
+
+"Yes. Have you anything against it? It was the prologue. Now I will go
+on with the main substance of my story. About a year after that incident
+I retired on half-pay, and returned to England. What became of Alec I
+did not know, nor care a hang. I had been in England for a little over
+two years, when one day I was walking along Great Russell Street, and
+passing the gates of the British Museum, I noticed a Hindu standing
+there, looking wretchedly cold and shabby. He had a tray containing
+bangles and necklaces and gewgaws, made in Germany, which he was selling
+as oriental works of art. As I passed, he saluted me, and, looking
+steadily at him, I recognised Alec. 'Why, what brings you here?' I
+inquired, vastly astonished. 'Sahib may well ask,' he replied. 'I came
+over because I thought I might better my condition. I had heard speak of
+a Psychical Research Society established in London; and with my really
+extraordinary gifts, I thought that I might be of value to it, and be
+taken in and paid an annuity if I supplied it continuously with
+well-authenticated, first-hand ghost stories.' 'Well,' said I, 'and have
+you succeeded?' 'No, sahib. I cannot find it. I have inquired after it
+from several of the crossing-sweepers, and they could not inform me of
+its whereabouts; and if I applied to the police, they bade me take
+myself off, there was no such a thing. I should have starved, sahib, if
+it had not been that I had taken to this line'; he pointed to his tray.
+'Does that pay well?' I asked. He shook his head sadly. 'Very poorly. I
+can live--that is all. There goes in a Merewig.' 'How many of these
+rubbishy bangles can you dispose of in a day?' I inquired. 'That
+depends, sahib. It varies so greatly, and the profits are very small. So
+small that I can barely get along. There goes in another Merewig.'
+'Where are all these things made?' I asked. 'In Germany or in
+Birmingham?' 'Oh, sahib, how can I tell? I get them from a Jew dealer.
+He supplies various street-hawkers. But I shall give it up--it does not
+pay--and shall set up a stall and dispose of Turkish Delight. There is
+always a run on that. You English have a sweet tooth. That's a Merewig,'
+and he pointed to a dowdy female, with a reticule on her arm, who, at
+that moment, went through the painted iron gates. 'What do you mean by
+Merewigs?' said I. 'Does not sahib know?' Alec's face expressed genuine
+surprise. 'If sahib will go into the great reading-room, he will see
+scores of them there. It is their great London haunt; they pass in all
+day, mainly in the morning--some are in very early, so soon as the
+museum is open at nine o'clock. And they usually remain there all day
+picking up information, acquiring knowledge.' 'You mean the students.'
+'Not all the students, but a large percentage of them. I know them in a
+moment. Sahib is aware that I have great gifts for the discernment of
+spirits.'
+
+"By the way," broke off Donelly, "do you understand Hindustani?"
+
+"Not a word of it," I replied.
+
+"I am sorry for that," said he, "because I could tell you what passed
+between us so much easier in Hindustani. I am able to speak and
+understand it as readily as English, and the matter I am going to relate
+would come off my tongue so much easier in that language."
+
+"You might as well speak it in Chinese. I should be none the wiser. Wait
+a moment. I am cracking."
+
+It was so. The heat of the sun was sensibly affecting my crust of mud. I
+think I must have resembled a fine old painting, the varnish of which is
+stained and traversed by an infinity of minute fissures, a perfect
+network of cracks. I stood up and stretched myself, and split in several
+places. Moreover, portions of my muddy envelope began to curl at the
+edges.
+
+"Don't be in too great a hurry to peel," advised Donelly.
+
+"We have abundance of time still before us, and I want to proceed with
+my narrative."
+
+"Go on, then. When are we coming to the wings?"
+
+"Directly," replied he. "Well, then--if you cannot receive what I have
+to say in Hindustani, I must do my best to give you the substance of
+Alec's communication in the vulgar tongue. I will epitomise it. The
+Hindu went on to explain in this fashion. He informed me that with us,
+Christians and white people, it is not the same as with the dusky and
+the yellow races. After death we do not pass into the bodies of the
+lower animals, which is a great privilege and ought to afford us immense
+satisfaction. We at once progress into a higher condition of life. We
+develop wings, as does the butterfly when it emerges from its condition
+of grub. But the matter out of which the wings are produced is nothing
+gross. They are formed, or form themselves, out of the information with
+which we have filled our brains during life. We lay up, during our
+mortal career here, a large amount of knowledge, of scientific,
+historical, philosophic, and like acquisitions, and these form the
+so-to-speak psychic pulp out of which, by an internal and mysterious
+and altogether inexplicable process, the transmutation takes place into
+our future wings. The more we have stored, the larger are our wings; the
+more varied the nature, the more radiant and coloured is their painting.
+When, at death, the brain is empty, there can be no wing-development.
+Out of nothing, nothing can arise. That is a law of nature absolutely
+inexorable in its application. And this is why you will never have to
+regret sticking in the mud to-day, my friend. I have supplied you with
+such an amount of fresh and valuable knowledge, that I believe you will
+have pinions painted hereafter with peacock's eyes."
+
+"I am most obliged to you," said I, splitting into a thousand cakes with
+the emotion that agitated me.
+
+Donelly proceeded. "I was so interested in what Alec told me, that I
+said to him, 'Come along with me into the Nineveh room, and we shall be
+able to thrash this matter out.' 'Ah, sahib,' he replied, 'they will not
+allow me to take in my tray.' 'Very well,' said I, 'then we will find a
+step before the portico, one not too much frequented by the pigeons, and
+will sit there.' He agreed. But the porter at the gate demurred to
+letting the Hindu through. He protested that no trafficking was allowed
+on the premises. I explained that none was purposed; that the man and I
+proposed a discussion on psychological topics. This seemed to content
+the porter, and he suffered Alec to pass through with me. We picked out
+as clean a portion of the steps as we could, and seated ourselves on it
+side by side, and then the Hindu went on with what he was saying."
+
+Donelly and I were now drying rapidly. As we sat facing each other we
+must have looked very much like the chocolate men one sees in
+confectioners' shops--of course, I mean on a much larger scale, and not
+of the same warm tint, and, of course, also, we did not exhale the same
+aromatic odour.
+
+"When we were seated," proceeded Donelly, "I felt the cold of the stone
+steps strike up into my system, and as I have had a touch or two of
+lumbago since I came home, I stood up again, took a copy of the
+_Standard_ out of my pocket, folded it, and placed it between myself and
+the step. I did, however, pull out the inner leaf, that containing the
+leaders, and presented it to Alec for the same purpose. Orientals are
+insensible to kindness, and are deficient in the virtue of gratitude.
+But this delicate trait of attention did touch the benighted heathen.
+His lip quivered, and he became, if possible, more than ever
+communicative. He nudged me with his tray and said, 'There goes out a
+Merewig. I wonder why she leaves so soon?' I saw a middle-aged woman in
+a gown of grey, with greasy splotches on it, and the braid unsewn at the
+skirt trailing in a loop behind. 'What are the Merewigs?' I asked. I
+will give you what I learned in my own words. All men and women--I
+allude only to Europeans and Americans--in the first stage of their life
+are bound morally, and in their own interest, to acquire and store up in
+their brains as much information as these will hold, for it is out of
+this that their wings will be evolved in their second stage of
+existence. Of course, the more varied this information is, the better.
+Men inevitably accumulate knowledge. Even if they assimilate very little
+at school, yet, as young men, they necessarily take in a good deal--of
+course, I exempt the mashers, who never learn anything. Even in sport
+they obtain something; but in business, by reading, by association, by
+travel, they go on piling up a store. You see that in common
+conversation they cannot escape doing this; politics, social questions,
+points of natural history, scientific discoveries form the staple of
+their talk, so that the mind of a man is necessarily kept replenished.
+But with women this is not the case. Young girls read nothing whatever
+but novels--they might as well feed on soap-bubbles. In their
+conversation with one another they twaddle, they do not talk."
+
+"But," protested I, "in our civilised society young women associate
+freely with men."
+
+"That is true," replied he. "But to what is their dialogue limited?--to
+ragging, to frivolous jokes. Men do not talk to them on rational topics,
+for they know well enough that such topics do not interest girls, and
+that they are wholly incapable of applying their minds to them. It is
+wondered why so many Englishmen look out for American wives. That is
+because the American girl takes pains to cultivate her mind, becomes a
+rational and well-educated woman. She can enter into her husband's
+interests, she can converse with him on almost every topic. She becomes
+his companion. That the modern English girl cannot be. Her head is as
+hollow as a drum. Now, if she grows up and marries, or even remains an
+old maid, the case is altered; she takes to keeping poultry, she becomes
+passionately fond of gardening, and she acquires a fund of information
+on the habits and customs of the domestic servant. The consequence of
+this is, that the vast majority of English young women who die early,
+die with nothing stored up in their brains out of which the wings may be
+evolved. In the larva condition they have consumed nothing that can
+serve them to bring them into the higher state."
+
+"So," said I, "we are all, you and I, in the larva condition as well as
+girls."
+
+"Quite so, we are larvæ like them, only they are more so. To proceed.
+When girls die, without having acquired any profitable knowledge, as you
+well see, they cannot rise. They become Merewigs."
+
+"Oh, that is Merewigs," said I, greatly astonished.
+
+"Yes, but the Merewigs I had seen pass in and out of the British Museum,
+whether to study the collections or to work in the reading-room, were
+middle-aged for the most part."
+
+"How do you explain that?" I asked.
+
+"I give you only what I received from Alec. There are male Merewigs, but
+they are few and far between, for the reasons I have given to you. I
+suppose there are ninety-nine female Merewigs to one male."
+
+"You astonish me."
+
+"I was astonished when I learned this from Alec. Now I will tell you
+something further. All the souls of the girls who have died empty-headed
+in the preceding twenty-four hours in England assemble at four o'clock
+every morning, or rather a few minutes before the stroke of the clock,
+about the statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, with a
+possible sprinkling of male masher souls among them. At the stroke of
+the clock, off the whole swarm rushes up Holborn Hill, along Oxford
+Street, whither I cannot certainly say. Alec told me that it is for all
+the world like the rush of an army of rats in the sewers."
+
+"But what can that Hindu know of underground London?"
+
+"He knows because he lodges in the house of a sewer-man, with whom he
+has become on friendly terms."
+
+"Then you do not know whither this galloping legion runs?"
+
+"Not exactly, for Alec was not sure. But he tells me they tear away to
+the great _garde-robe_ of discarded female bodies. They must get into
+these, so as to make up for the past, and acquire knowledge, out of
+which wings may be developed. Of course there is a scramble for these
+bodies, for there are at least half a dozen applicants. At first only
+the abandoned husks of old maids were given them, but the supply having
+proved to be altogether inadequate, they are obliged to put up with
+those of married women and widows. There was some demur as to this, but
+beggars must not be choosers. And so they become Merewigs. There are
+more than a sufficiency of old bachelors' outer cases hanging up in the
+_garde-robe_, but the girls will not get into them at any price. Now you
+understand what Merewigs are, and why they swarm in the reading-room of
+the British Museum. They are there picking up information as hard as
+they can pick."
+
+"This is extremely interesting," said I, "and novel."
+
+"I thought you would say so. How goes on the drying?"
+
+"I have been picking off clots of clay while you have been talking."
+
+"I hope you are interested," said Donelly.
+
+"Interested," I replied, "is not the word for it."
+
+"I am glad you think so," said the major; "I was intensely interested in
+what Alec told me, so much so that I proposed he should come with me
+into the reading-room, and point out to me such as he perceived by his
+remarkable gift of discernment of spirits were actual Merewigs. But
+again the difficulty of his tray was objected, and Alec further
+intimated that he was missing opportunities of disposing of his trinkets
+by spending so much time conversing with me. 'As to that,' said I, 'I
+will buy half a dozen of your bangles and present them to my lady
+friends; as coming from me, an oriental traveller, they will believe
+them to be genuine----'"
+
+"As your experiences," interpolated I.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he inquired sharply.
+
+"Nothing more than this," rejoined I, "that faith is grown weak among
+females nowadays."
+
+"That is certainly true. It is becoming a sadly incredulous sex. I
+further got over Alec's difficulty about the tray by saying that it
+could be left in the custody of one of the officials at the entrance.
+Then he consented. We passed through the swing-door and deposited the
+tray with the functionary who presides over umbrellas and
+walking-sticks. Then I went forward along with my Hindu towards the
+reading-room. But here another hindrance arose. Alec had no ticket, and
+therefore might not enter beyond the glass screen interposed between the
+door and the readers. Some demur was made as to his being allowed to
+remain there for any considerable time, but I got over that by means of
+a little persuasion. 'Sahib,' said Alec 'I should suggest your marking
+the Merewigs, so as to be able to recognise them elsewhere.' 'How can I
+do that?' I inquired. 'I have here with me a piece of French chalk,' he
+answered. 'You go within, sahib, and walk up and down by the tables,
+behind the chairs of the readers, or around the circular cases that
+contain the catalogues, and where the students are looking out for the
+books they desire to consult. When you pass a female, either seated or
+standing, glance towards the glass screen, and when you are by a Merewig
+I will hold up my hand above the screen, and you will know her to be
+one; then just scrawl a W or M, or any letter or cabalistic symbol that
+occurs to you, upon her back with the French chalk. Then whenever you
+meet her in the street, in society, at an A. B. C. place of refreshment,
+on a railway platform, you will recognise her infallibly.' 'Not likely,'
+I objected. 'Of course, so soon as she gets home, she will brush off the
+mark.' 'You do not know much of the Merewigs,' he said. 'When the
+spirits of those frivolous girls were in their first stage of existence,
+they were most particular about their personal appearance, about the
+neatness and stylishness of their dress, and the puffing and piling up
+of their hair. Now all that is changed. They are so disgusted at having
+to get into any unsouled body that they can lay hold of in the
+_garde-robe_, such a body being usually plain in features, middle-aged,
+and with no waist to speak of, or rather too ample in the waist to be
+elegant, that they have abandoned all concern about dress and tidiness.
+Besides, they are engrossed in the acquisition of knowledge, and the
+burning desire that consumes them is to get out of these borrowed cases
+as speedily as may be. Consequently, so long as they are dressed and
+their hair done up anyhow, that is all they care about. As to threads,
+or feathers, or French chalk marks on their clothes, they would not
+think of looking for them.' Then Alec handed to me a little piece of
+French chalk, such as tailors and dressmakers employ to indicate
+alterations when fitting on garments. So provided, I passed wholly into
+the spacious reading-room, leaving the Hindu behind the screen.
+
+"I slowly strayed down the first line of desks and chairs, which were
+fully engaged. There were many men there, with piles of books at their
+sides. There were also some women. I stepped behind one, and turned my
+head towards the screen, but Alec made no sign. At the second, however,
+up went his hand above it, and I hastily scrawled M, on her back as she
+stooped over her studies. I had time, moreover, to see what she was
+engaged upon. She was working up deep-sea soundings, beginning with that
+recorded by Schiller in his ballad of 'The Diver,' down to the last
+scientific researches in the bottom of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and
+the dredgings in the North Sea. She was engrossed in her work, and was
+picking up facts at a prodigious rate. She was a woman of, I should say,
+forty, with a cadaverous face, a shapeless nose, and enormous hands. Her
+dress was grey, badly fitted, and her boots were even worse made. Her
+hair was drawn back and knotted in a bunch behind, with the pins
+sticking out. It might have been better brushed. I passed on behind her
+back; the next occupants of seats were gentlemen, so I stepped to
+another row of desks, and looking round saw Alec's hand go up. I was
+behind a young lady in a felt hat, crunched in at top, and with a
+feather at the side; she wore a pea-jacket, with large smoked buttons,
+and beneath it a dull green gown, very short in the skirt, and brown
+boots. Her hair was cut short like that of a man. As I halted, she
+looked round, and I saw that she had hard, brown eyes, like pebbles,
+without a gleam of tenderness or sympathy in them. I cannot say whether
+this was due to the body she had assumed, or to the soul which had
+entered into the body--whether the lack was in the organ, or in the
+psychic force which employed the organ. I merely state the fact. I
+looked over her shoulder to see what she was engaged upon, and found
+that she was working her way diligently through Herbert Spencer. I
+scored a W on her back and went on. The next Merewig I had to scribble
+on was a wizen old lady, with little grey curls on the temples, very
+shabby in dress, and very antiquated in costume. Her fingers were dirty
+with ink, and the ink did not appear to me to be all of that day's
+application. Besides, I saw that she had been rubbing her nose. I
+presume it had been tickling, and she had done this with a finger still
+wet with ink, so that there was a smear on her face. She was engaged on
+the peerage. She had Dod, Burke, and Foster before her, and was getting
+up the authentic pedigrees of our noble families and their
+ramifications. I noticed with her as with the other Merewigs, that when
+they had swallowed a certain amount of information they held up their
+heads much like fowls after drinking.
+
+"The next that I marked was a very thin woman of an age I was quite
+unable to determine. She had a pointed nose, and was dressed in red. She
+looked like a stick of sealing-wax. The gown had probably enough been
+good and showy at one time, but it was ripped behind now, and the
+stitches showed, besides, a little bit of what was beneath. There was a
+frilling, or ruche, or tucker, about the throat that I think had been
+sewn into it three weeks before. I drew a note of interrogation on her
+back with my bit of French chalk. I wanted much to find out what she was
+studying, but could not. She turned round and asked sharply what I was
+stooping over for and breathing on the back of her neck. So I was forced
+to go on to the next. This was a lady fairly well dressed in the
+dingiest of colours, wearing spectacles. I believe that she wore divided
+skirts, but as she did not stand up and walk, I cannot be certain. I am
+particular never to make a statement of which I am not absolutely
+certain. She was engaged upon the subject of the land laws in various
+countries, on common land, and property in land; and she was at that
+time devoting her special attention to the constitution of the Russian
+_mir_, and the tenure of land under it. I scrawled on her back the
+zodiacal sign for Venus, the Virgin, and went further. But when I had
+marked seventeen I gave it up. I had already gone over the desks to L,
+beginning backward, and that sufficed, so I returned to Alec, paid him
+for the bangles, and we separated. I did, however, give him a letter to
+the Secretary of the Psychical Research Society, and addressed it,
+having found what I wanted in the _London Directory_, which was in the
+reading-room of the British Museum. Two days later I met, by
+appointment, my Hindu once more, and for the last time. He had not been
+received as he had anticipated by the Psychical Research Society, and
+thought of getting back to India at the first opportunity.
+
+"It is remarkable that, a few days later, I saw in the Underground one
+of those I had marked. The chalk mark was still quite distinct. She was
+not in my compartment, but I noticed her as she stepped out on to the
+platform at Baker Street. I suspect she was on her way to Madame
+Tussaud's waxwork exhibition, to instruct her mind there. But I was more
+fortunate a week later when I was at St. Albans. I had an uncle living
+there from whom I had expectations, and I paid him a visit. Whilst
+there, a lecture was to be given on the spectroscope, and as my
+acquaintance with that remarkable invention of modern times was limited,
+I resolved to go. Have you, my friend, ever taken up the subject of the
+photosphere of the sun?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then let me press it upon you. It will really supply a large amount of
+wing-pulp, if properly assimilated. It is a most astonishing thought
+that we are able, at the remote distance at which we are from the solar
+orb, to detect the various incandescent metals which go to make up the
+luminous envelope of the sun. Not only so, but we are able to discover,
+by the bars in the spectroscope, of what Jupiter, Saturn, and so on are
+composed. What a stride astronomy has made since the days of Newton!"
+
+"No doubt about it. But I do not want to hear about the bars, but of the
+chalk marks on the Merewigs."
+
+"Well, then, I noticed two elderly ladies sitting in the row before me,
+and there--as distinctly as if sketched in only yesterday--were the
+symbols I had scribbled on their backs. I did not have an opportunity of
+speaking with them then; indeed, I had no introduction to them, and
+could hardly take on me to address them without it. I was, however, more
+successful a week or two later. There was a meeting of the Hertfordshire
+Archæological Society organised, to last a week, with excursions to
+ancient Verulam and to other objects of interest in the county.
+Hertfordshire is not a large county. It is, in fact, one of the smallest
+in England, but it yields to none in the points of interest that it
+contains, apart from the venerable abbey church that has been so
+fearfully mauled and maltreated by ignorant so-called restoration. One
+must really hope that the next generation, which will be more
+enlightened than our own, will undo all the villainous work that has
+been perpetrated to disfigure it in our own. The local secretaries and
+managers had arranged for char-à-bancs and brakes to take the party
+about, and men--learned, or thinking themselves to be learned, on the
+several antiquities--were to deliver lectures on the spot explanatory of
+what we saw. On three days there were to be evening gatherings, at which
+papers would be read. You may conceive that this was a supreme
+opportunity for storing the mind with information, and knowing what I
+did, I resolved on taking advantage of it. I entered my name as a
+subscriber to all the excursions. On the first day we went over the
+remains of the old Roman city of Verulam, and were shown its plan and
+walls, and further, the spot where the protomartyr of Britain passed
+over the stream, and the hill on which he was martyred. Nothing could
+have been more interesting and more instructive. Among those present
+were three middle-aged personages of the female sex, all of whom were
+chalk-marked on the back. One of these marks was somewhat effaced, as
+though the lady whose gown was scored had made a faint effort to brush
+it off, but had tired of the attempt and had abandoned it. The other two
+scorings were quite distinct.
+
+"On this, the first day, though I sidled up to these three Merewigs, I
+did not succeed in ingratiating myself into their favour sufficiently to
+converse with them. You may well understand, my friend, that such an
+opportunity of getting out of them some of their Merewigian experiences
+was not to be allowed to slip. On the second day I was more successful.
+I managed to obtain a seat in a brake between two of them. We were to
+drive to a distant spot where was a church of considerable architectural
+interest.
+
+"Well, in these excursions a sort of freemasonry exists between the
+archæologists who share in them, and no ceremonious introductions are
+needed. For instance, you say to the lady next to you, 'Am I squeezing
+you?' And the ice is broken. I did not, however, attempt to draw any
+information from those between whom I was seated, till after luncheon, a
+most sumptuous repast, with champagne, liberally given to the Society by
+a gentleman of property, to whose house we drove up just about one
+o'clock. There was plenty of champagne supplied, and I did not stint
+myself. I felt it necessary to take in a certain amount of Dutch courage
+before broaching to my companions in the brake the theme that lay near
+my heart. When, however, we got into the conveyance, all in great
+spirits, after the conclusion of the lunch, I turned to my right-hand
+lady, and said to her: 'Well, miss, I fear it will be a long time before
+you become angelic.' She turned her back upon me and made no reply.
+Somewhat disconcerted, I now addressed myself to the chalk-marked lady
+on my left hand, and asked: 'Have you anything at all in your head
+except archæology?' Instead of answering me in the kindly mood in which
+I spoke, she began at once to enter into a lively discussion with her
+neighbour on the opposite side of the carriage, and ignored me. I was
+not to be done in this way. I wanted information. But, of course, I
+could enter into the feelings of both. Merewigs do not like to converse
+about themselves in their former stage of existence, of which they are
+ashamed, nor of the efforts they are making in this transitional stage
+to acquire a fund of knowledge for the purpose of ultimately discarding
+their acquired bodies, and developing their ethereal wings as they pass
+into the higher and nobler condition.
+
+"We left the carriage to go to a spot about a mile off, through lanes,
+muddy and rutty, for the purpose of inspecting some remarkable stones.
+All the party would not walk, and the conveyances could proceed no
+nearer. The more enthusiastic did go on, and I was of the number. What
+further stimulated me to do so was the fact that the third Merewig, she
+who had partially cleaned my scoring off her back, plucked up her
+skirts, and strode ahead. I hurried after and caught her up. 'I beg your
+pardon,' said I. 'You must excuse the interest I take in antiquities,
+but I suppose it is a long time since you were a girl.' Of course, my
+meaning was obvious; I referred to her earlier existence, before she
+borrowed her present body. But she stopped abruptly, gave me a withering
+look, and went back to rejoin another group of pedestrians. Ha! my
+friend, I verily believe that the boat is being lifted. The tide is
+flowing in."
+
+"The tide is flowing," I said; and then added, "really, Major Donelly,
+your story ought not to be confined to the narrow circle of your
+intimates."
+
+"That is true," he replied. "But my desire to make it known has been
+damped by the way in which Alec was received, or rather rejected, by the
+Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research."
+
+"But I do not mean that you should tell it to the Society for Psychical
+Research."
+
+"To whom, then?"
+
+"Tell it to the Horse Marines."
+
+
+
+
+THE "BOLD VENTURE"
+
+
+The little fisher-town of Portstephen comprised two strings of houses
+facing each other at the bottom of a narrow valley, down which the
+merest trickle of a stream decanted into the harbour. The street was so
+narrow that it was at intervals alone that sufficient space was accorded
+for two wheeled vehicles to pass one another, and the road-way was for
+the most part so narrow that each house door was set back in the depth
+of the wall, to permit the foot-passenger to step into the recess to
+avoid being overrun by the wheels of a cart that ascended or descended
+the street.
+
+The inhabitants lived upon the sea and its produce. Such as were not
+fishers were mariners, and but a small percentage remained that were
+neither--the butcher, the baker, the smith, and the doctor; and these
+also lived by the sea, for they lived upon the sailors and fishermen.
+
+For the most part, the seafaring men were furnished with large families.
+The net in which they drew children was almost as well filled as the
+seine in which they trapped pilchards.
+
+Jonas Rea, however, was an exception; he had been married for ten years,
+and had but one child, and that a son.
+
+"You've a very poor haul, Jonas," said to him his neighbour, Samuel
+Carnsew; "I've been married so long as you and I've twelve. My wife has
+had twins twice."
+
+"It's not a poor haul for me, Samuel," replied Jonas, "I may have but
+one child, but he's a buster."
+
+Jonas had a mother alive, known as Old Betty Rea. When he married, he
+had proposed that his mother, who was a widow, should live with him.
+But man proposes and woman disposes. The arrangement did not commend
+itself to the views of Mrs. Rea, junior--that is to say, of Jane,
+Jonas's wife.
+
+Betty had always been a managing woman. She had managed her house, her
+children, and her husband; but she speedily was made aware that her
+daughter-in-law refused to be managed by her.
+
+Jane was, in her way, also a managing woman: she kept her house clean,
+her husband's clothes in order, her child neat, and herself the very
+pink of tidiness. She was a somewhat hard woman, much given to grumbling
+and finding fault.
+
+Jane and her mother-in-law did not come to an open and flagrant quarrel,
+but the fret between them waxed intolerable; and the curtain-lectures,
+of which the text and topic was Old Betty, were so frequent and so
+protracted that Jonas convinced himself that there was smoother water in
+the worst sea than in his own house.
+
+He was constrained to break to his mother the unpleasant information
+that she must go elsewhere; but he softened the blow by informing her
+that he had secured for her residence a tiny cottage up an alley, that
+consisted of two rooms only, one a kitchen, above that a bedchamber.
+
+The old woman received the communication without annoyance. She rose to
+the offer, for she had also herself considered that the situation had
+become unendurable. Accordingly, with goodwill, she removed to her new
+quarters, and soon made the house look keen and cosy.
+
+But, so soon as Jane gave indications of becoming a mother, it was
+agreed that Betty should attend on her daughter-in-law. To this Jane
+consented. After all, Betty could not be worse than another woman, a
+stranger.
+
+And when Jane was in bed, and unable to quit it, then Betty once more
+reigned supreme in the house and managed everything--even her
+daughter-in-law.
+
+But the time of Jane's lying upstairs was brief, and at the earliest
+possible moment she reappeared in the kitchen, pale indeed and weak, but
+resolute, and with firm hand withdrew the reins from the grasp of Betty.
+
+In leaving her son's house, the only thing that Betty regretted was the
+baby. To that she had taken a mighty affection, and she did not quit
+till she had poured forth into the deaf ear of Jane a thousand
+instructions as to how the babe was to be fed, clothed, and reared.
+
+As a devoted son, Jonas never returned from sea without visiting his
+mother, and when on shore saw her every day. He sat with her by the
+hour, told her of all that concerned him--except about his wife--and
+communicated to her all his hopes and wishes. The babe, whose name was
+Peter, was a topic on which neither wearied of talking or of listening;
+and often did Jonas bring the child over to be kissed and admired by his
+grandmother.
+
+Jane raised objections--the weather was cold and the child would take a
+chill; grandmother was inconsiderate, and upset its stomach with
+sweetstuff; it had not a tidy dress in which to be seen: but Jonas
+overruled all her objections. He was a mild and yielding man, but on
+this one point he was inflexible--his child should grow up to know,
+love, and reverence his mother as sincerely as did he himself. And these
+were delightful hours to the old woman, when she could have the infant
+on her lap, croon to it, and talk to it all the delightful nonsense that
+flows from the lips of a woman when caressing a child.
+
+Moreover, when the boy was not there, Betty was knitting socks or
+contriving pin-cases, or making little garments for him; and all the
+small savings she could gather from the allowance made by her son, and
+from the sale of some of her needlework, were devoted to the same
+grandchild.
+
+As the little fellow found his feet and was allowed to toddle, he often
+wanted to "go to granny," not much to the approval of Mrs. Jane. And,
+later, when he went to school, he found his way to her cottage before he
+returned home so soon as his work hours in class were over. He very
+early developed a love for the sea and ships.
+
+This did not accord with Mrs. Jane's ideas; she came of a family that
+had ever been on the land, and she disapproved of the sea. "But,"
+remonstrated her husband, "he is my son, and I and my father and
+grandfather were all of us sea-dogs, so that, naturally, my part in the
+boy takes to the water."
+
+And now an idea entered the head of Old Betty. She resolved on making a
+ship for Peter. She provided herself with a stout piece of deal of
+suitable size and shape, and proceeded to fashion it into the form of a
+cutter, and to scoop out the interior. At this Peter assisted. After
+school hours he was with his grandmother watching the process, giving
+his opinion as to shape, and how the boat was to be rigged and
+furnished. The aged woman had but an old knife, no proper carpentering
+tools, consequently the progress made was slow. Moreover, she worked at
+the ship only when Peter was by. The interest excited in the child by
+the process was an attraction to her house, and it served to keep him
+there. Further, when he was at home, he was being incessantly scolded by
+his mother, and the preference he developed for granny's cottage caused
+many a pang of jealousy in Jane's heart.
+
+Peter was now nine years old, and remained the only child, when a sad
+thing happened. One evening, when the little ship was rigged and almost
+complete, after leaving his grandmother, Peter went down to the port.
+There happened to be no one about, and in craning over the quay to look
+into his father's boat, he overbalanced, fell in, and was drowned.
+
+The grandmother supposed that the boy had returned home, the mother that
+he was with his grandmother, and a couple of hours passed before search
+for him was instituted, and the body was brought home an hour after
+that. Mrs. Jane's grief at losing her child was united with resentment
+against Old Betty for having drawn the child away from home, and
+against her husband for having encouraged it. She poured forth the vials
+of her wrath upon Jonas. He it was who had done his utmost to have the
+boy killed, because he had allowed him to wander at large, and had
+provided him with an excuse by allowing him to tarry with Old Betty
+after leaving school, so that no one knew where he was. Had Jonas been a
+reasonable man, and a docile husband, he would have insisted on Peter
+returning promptly home every day, in which case this disaster would not
+have occurred. "But," said Jane bitterly, "you never have considered my
+feelings, and I believe you did not love Peter, and wanted to be rid of
+him."
+
+The blow to Betty was terrible; her heart-strings were wrapped about the
+little fellow; and his loss was to her the eclipse of all light, the
+death of all her happiness.
+
+When Peter was in his coffin, then the old woman went to the house,
+carrying the little ship. It was now complete with sails and rigging.
+
+"Jane," said she, "I want thickey ship to be put in with Peter. 'Twere
+made for he, and I can't let another have it, and I can't keep it
+myself."
+
+"Nonsense," retorted Mrs. Rea, junior. "The boat can be no use to he,
+now."
+
+"I wouldn't say that. There's naught revealed on them matters. But I'm
+cruel certain that up aloft there'll be a rumpus if Peter wakes up and
+don't find his ship."
+
+"You may take it away; I'll have none of it," said Jane.
+
+So the old woman departed, but was not disposed to accept discomfiture.
+She went to the undertaker.
+
+"Mr. Matthews, I want you to put this here boat in wi' my gran'child
+Peter. It will go in fitty at his feet."
+
+"Very sorry, ma'am, but not unless I break off the bowsprit. You see the
+coffin is too narrow."
+
+"Then put'n in sideways and longways."
+
+"Very sorry, ma'am, but the mast is in the way. I'd be forced to break
+that so as to get the lid down."
+
+Disconcerted, the old woman retired; she would not suffer Peter's boat
+to be maltreated.
+
+On the occasion of the funeral, the grandmother appeared as one of the
+principal mourners. For certain reasons, Mrs. Jane did not attend at the
+church and grave.
+
+As the procession left the house, Old Betty took her place beside her
+son, and carried the boat in her hand. At the close of the service at
+the grave, she said to the sexton: "I'll trouble you, John Hext, to put
+this here little ship right o' top o' his coffin. I made'n for Peter,
+and Peter'll expect to have'n." This was done, and not a step from the
+grave would the grandmother take till the first shovelfuls had fallen on
+the coffin and had partially buried the white ship.
+
+When Granny Rea returned to her cottage, the fire was out. She seated
+herself beside the dead hearth, with hands folded and the tears coursing
+down her withered cheeks. Her heart was as dead and dreary as that
+hearth. She had now no object in life, and she murmured a prayer that
+the Lord might please to take her, that she might see her Peter sailing
+his boat in paradise.
+
+Her prayer was interrupted by the entry of Jonas, who shouted: "Mother,
+we want your help again. There's Jane took bad; wi' the worrit and the
+sorrow it's come on a bit earlier than she reckoned, and you're to come
+along as quick as you can. 'Tisn't the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
+away, but topsy-turvy, the Lord hath taken away and is givin' again."
+
+Betty rose at once, and went to the house with her son, and again--as
+nine years previously--for a while she assumed the management of the
+house; and when a baby arrived, another boy, she managed that as well.
+
+The reign of Betty in the house of Jonas and Jane was not for long. The
+mother was soon downstairs, and with her reappearance came the departure
+of the grandmother.
+
+And now began once more the same old life as had been initiated nine
+years previously. The child carried to its grandmother, who dandled it,
+crooned and talked to it. Then, as it grew, it was supplied with socks
+and garments knitted and cut out and put together by Betty; there ensued
+the visits of the toddling child, and the remonstrances of the mother.
+School time arrived, and with it a break in the journey to or from
+school at granny's house, to partake of bread and jam, hear stories,
+and, finally, to assist at the making of a new ship.
+
+If, with increase of years, Betty's powers had begun to fail, there had
+been no corresponding decrease in energy of will. Her eyes were not so
+clear as of old, nor her hearing so acute, but her hand was not
+unsteady. She would this time make and rig a schooner and not a cutter.
+
+Experience had made her more able, and she aspired to accomplish a
+greater task than she had previously undertaken. It was really
+remarkable how the old course was resumed almost in every particular.
+But the new grandson was called Jonas, like his father, and Old Betty
+loved him, if possible, with a more intense love than had been given to
+the first child. He closely resembled his father, and to her it was a
+renewal of her life long ago, when she nursed and cared for the first
+Jonas. And, if possible, Jane became more jealous of the aged woman, who
+was drawing to her so large a portion of her child's affection. The
+schooner was nearly complete. It was somewhat rude, having been worked
+with no better tool than a penknife, and its masts being made of
+knitting-pins.
+
+On the day before little Jonas's ninth birthday, Betty carried the ship
+to the painter.
+
+"Mr. Elway," said she, "there be one thing I do want your help in. I
+cannot put the name on the vessel. I can't fashion the letters, and I
+want you to do it for me."
+
+"All right, ma'am. What name?"
+
+"Well, now," said she, "my husband, the father of Jonas, and the
+grandfather of the little Jonas, he always sailed in a schooner, and the
+ship was the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"The _Bonaventura_, I think. I remember her."
+
+"I'm sure she was the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"I think not, Mrs. Rea."
+
+"It must have been the _Bold Venture_ or _Bold Adventurer_. What sense
+is there in such a name as _Boneventure_? I never heard of no such
+venture, unless it were that of Jack Smithson, who jumped out of a
+garret window, and sure enough he broke a bone of his leg. No, Mr.
+Elway, I'll have her entitled the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"I'll not gainsay you. _Bold Venture_ she shall be."
+
+Then the painter very dexterously and daintily put the name in black
+paint on the white strip at the stern.
+
+"Will it be dry by to-morrow?" asked the old woman. "That's the little
+lad's birthday, and I promised to have his schooner ready for him to
+sail her then."
+
+"I've put dryers in the paint," answered Mr. Elway, "and you may reckon
+it will be right for to-morrow."
+
+That night Betty was unable to sleep, so eager was she for the day when
+the little boy would attain his ninth year and become the possessor of
+the beautiful ship she had fashioned for him with her own hands, and on
+which, in fact, she had been engaged for more than a twelvemonth.
+
+Nor was she able to eat her simple breakfast and noonday meal, so
+thrilled was her old heart with love for the child and expectation of
+his delight when the _Bold Venture_ was made over to him as his own.
+
+She heard his little feet on the cobblestones of the alley: he came on,
+dancing, jumping, fidgeted at the lock, threw the door open and burst in
+with a shout--
+
+"See! see, granny! my new ship! Mother has give it me. A real
+frigate--with three masts, all red and green, and cost her seven
+shillings at Camelot Fair yesterday." He bore aloft a very magnificent
+toy ship. It had pennants at the mast-top and a flag at stern. "Granny!
+look! look! ain't she a beauty? Now I shan't want your drashy old
+schooner when I have my grand new frigate."
+
+"Won't you have your ship--the _Bold Venture_?"
+
+"No, granny; chuck it away. It's a shabby bit o' rubbish, mother says;
+and see! there's a brass cannon, a real cannon that will go off with a
+bang, on my frigate. Ain't it a beauty?"
+
+"Oh, Jonas! look at the _Bold Venture_!"
+
+"No, granny, I can't stay. I want to be off and swim my beautiful
+seven-shilling ship."
+
+Then he dashed away as boisterous as he had dashed in, and forgot to
+shut the door. It was evening when the elder Jonas returned home, and he
+was welcomed by his son with exclamations of delight, and was shown the
+new ship.
+
+"But, daddy, her won't sail; over her will flop in the water."
+
+"There is no lead on the keel," remarked the father. "The vessel is
+built for show only."
+
+Then he walked away to his mother's cottage. He was vexed. He knew that
+his wife had bought the toy with the deliberate intent of disappointing
+and wounding her mother-in-law; and he was afraid that he would find the
+old lady deeply mortified and incensed. As he entered the dingy lane, he
+noticed that her door was partly open.
+
+The aged woman was on the seat by the table at the window, lying forward
+clasping the ship, and the two masts were run through her white hair;
+her head rested, partly on the new ship and partly on the table.
+
+"Mother!" said he. "Mother!"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+The feeble old heart had given way under the blow, and had ceased to
+beat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was accustomed, a few summers past, to spend a couple of months at
+Portstephen. Jonas Rea took me often in his boat, either mackerel
+fishing, or on excursions to the islets off the coast, in quest of wild
+birds. We became familiar, and I would now and then spend an evening
+with him in his cottage, and talk about the sea, and the chances of a
+harbour of refuge being made at Portstephen, and sometimes we spoke of
+our own family affairs. Thus it was that, little by little, the story of
+the ship _Bold Venture_ was told me.
+
+Mrs. Jane was no more in the house.
+
+"It's a curious thing," said Jonas Rea, "but the first ship my mother
+made was no sooner done than my boy Peter died, and when she made
+another, with two masts, as soon as ever it was finished she died
+herself, and shortly after my wife, Jane, who took a chill at mother's
+funeral. It settled on her chest, and she died in a fortnight."
+
+"Is that the boat?" I inquired, pointing to a glass case on a cupboard,
+in which was a rudely executed schooner.
+
+"That's her," replied Jonas; "and I'd like you to have a look close at
+her."
+
+I walked to the cupboard and looked.
+
+"Do you see anything particular?" asked the fisherman.
+
+"I can't say that I do."
+
+"Look at her masthead. What is there?"
+
+After a pause I said: "There is a grey hair, that is all, like a
+pennant."
+
+"I mean that," said Jonas. "I can't say whether my old mother put a hair
+from her white head there for the purpose, or whether it caught and
+fixed itself when she fell forward clasping the boat, and the masts and
+spars and shrouds were all tangled in her hair. Anyhow, there it be, and
+that's one reason why I've had the _Bold Venture_ put in a glass
+case--that the white hair may never by no chance get brushed away from
+it. Now, look again. Do you see nothing more?"
+
+"Can't say I do."
+
+"Look at the bows."
+
+I did so. Presently I remarked: "I see nothing except, perhaps, some
+bruises, and a little bit of red paint."
+
+"Ah! that's it, and where did the red paint come from?"
+
+I was, of course, quite unable to suggest an explanation.
+
+Presently, after Mr. Rea had waited--as if to draw from me the answer he
+expected--he said: "Well, no, I reckon you can't tell. It was thus. When
+mother died, I brought the _Bold Venture_ here and set her where she is
+now, on the cupboard, and Jonas, he had set the new ship, all red and
+green, the _Saucy Jane_ it was called, on the bureau. Will you believe
+me, next morning when I came downstairs the frigate was on the floor,
+and some of her spars broken and all the rigging in a muddle."
+
+"There was no lead on the bottom. It fell down."
+
+"It was not once that happened. It came to the same thing every night;
+and what is more, the _Bold Venture_ began to show signs of having
+fouled her."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Run against her. She had bruises, and had brought away some of the
+paint of the _Saucy Jane_. Every morning the frigate, if she were'nt on
+the floor, were rammed into a corner, and battered as if she'd been in a
+bad sea."
+
+"But it is impossible."
+
+"Of course, lots o' things is impossible, but they happen all the same."
+
+"Well, what next?"
+
+"Jane, she was ill, and took wus and wus, and just as she got wus so it
+took wus as well with the _Saucy Jane_. And on the night she died, I
+reckon that there was a reg'lar pitched sea-fight."
+
+"But not at sea."
+
+"Well, no; but the frigate seemed to have been rammed, and she was on
+the floor and split from stem to stern."
+
+"And, pray, has the _Bold Venture_ made no attempt since? The glass case
+is not broken."
+
+"There's been no occasion. I chucked what remained of the _Saucy Jane_
+into the fire."
+
+
+
+
+MUSTAPHA
+
+
+I
+
+Among the many hangers-on at the Hotel de l'Europe at
+Luxor--donkey-boys, porters, guides, antiquity dealers--was one, a young
+man named Mustapha, who proved a general favourite.
+
+I spent three winters at Luxor, partly for my health, partly for
+pleasure, mainly to make artistic studies, as I am by profession a
+painter. So I came to know Mustapha fairly well in three stages, during
+those three winters.
+
+When first I made his acquaintance he was in the transition condition
+from boyhood to manhood. He had an intelligent face, with bright eyes, a
+skin soft as brown silk, with a velvety hue on it. His features were
+regular, and if his face was a little too round to quite satisfy an
+English artistic eye, yet this was a peculiarity to which one soon
+became accustomed. He was unflaggingly good-natured and obliging. A
+mongrel, no doubt, he was; Arab and native Egyptian blood were mingled
+in his veins. But the result was happy; he combined the patience and
+gentleness of the child of Mizraim with the energy and pluck of the son
+of the desert.
+
+Mustapha had been a donkey-boy, but had risen a stage higher, and
+looked, as the object of his supreme ambition, to become some day a
+dragoman, and blaze like one of these gilded beetles in lace and chains,
+rings and weapons. To become a dragoman--one of the most obsequious of
+men till engaged, one of the veriest tyrants when engaged--to what
+higher could an Egyptian boy aspire?
+
+To become a dragoman means to go in broadcloth and with gold chains when
+his fellows are half naked; to lounge and twist the moustache when his
+kinsfolk are toiling under the water-buckets; to be able to extort
+backsheesh from all the tradesmen to whom he can introduce a master; to
+do nothing himself and make others work for him; to be able to look to
+purchase two, three, even four wives when his father contented himself
+with one; to soar out of the region of native virtues into that of
+foreign vices; to be superior to all instilled prejudices against
+spirits and wine--that is the ideal set before young Egypt through
+contact with the English and the American tourist.
+
+We all liked Mustapha. No one had a bad word to say of him. Some pious
+individuals rejoiced to see that he had broken with the Koran, as if
+this were a first step towards taking up with the Bible. A free-thinking
+professor was glad to find that Mustapha had emancipated himself from
+some of those shackles which religion places on august, divine humanity,
+and that by getting drunk he gave pledge that he had risen into a sphere
+of pure emancipation, which eventuates in ideal perfection.
+
+As I made my studies I engaged Mustapha to carry my easel and canvas, or
+camp-stool. I was glad to have him as a study, to make him stand by a
+wall or sit on a pillar that was prostrate, as artistic exigencies
+required. He was always ready to accompany me. There was an
+understanding between us that when a drove of tourists came to Luxor he
+might leave me for the day to pick up what he could then from the
+natural prey; but I found him not always keen to be off duty to me.
+Though he could get more from the occasional visitor than from me, he
+was above the ravenous appetite for backsheesh which consumed his
+fellows.
+
+He who has much to do with the native Egyptian will have discovered
+that there are in him a fund of kindliness and a treasure of good
+qualities. He is delighted to be treated with humanity, pleased to be
+noticed, and ready to repay attention with touching gratitude. He is by
+no means as rapacious for backsheesh as the passing traveller supposes;
+he is shrewd to distinguish between man and man; likes this one, and
+will do anything for him unrewarded, and will do naught for another for
+any bribe.
+
+The Egyptian is now in a transitional state. If it be quite true that
+the touch of England is restoring life to his crippled limbs, and the
+voice of England bidding him rise up and walk, there are occasions on
+which association with Englishmen is a disadvantage to him. Such an
+instance is that of poor, good Mustapha.
+
+It was not my place to caution Mustapha against the pernicious
+influences to which he was subjected, and, to speak plainly, I did not
+know what line to adopt, on what ground to take my stand, if I did. He
+was breaking with the old life, and taking up with what was new,
+retaining of the old only what was bad in it, and acquiring of the new
+none of its good parts. Civilisation--European civilisation--is
+excellent, but cannot be swallowed at a gulp, nor does it wholly suit
+the oriental digestion.
+
+That which impelled Mustapha still further in his course was the
+attitude assumed towards him by his own relatives and the natives of his
+own village. They were strict Moslems, and they regarded him as one on
+the highway to becoming a renegade. They treated him with mistrust,
+showed him aversion, and loaded him with reproaches. Mustapha had a high
+spirit, and he resented rebuke. Let his fellows grumble and objurgate,
+said he; they would cringe to him when he became a dragoman, with his
+pockets stuffed with piastres.
+
+There was in our hotel, the second winter, a young fellow of the name of
+Jameson, a man with plenty of money, superficial good nature, little
+intellect, very conceited and egotistic, and this fellow was Mustapha's
+evil genius. It was Jameson's delight to encourage Mustapha in drinking
+and gambling. Time hung heavy on his hands. He cared nothing for
+hieroglyphics, scenery bored him, antiquities, art, had no charm for
+him. Natural history presented to him no attraction, and the only
+amusement level with his mental faculties was that of hoaxing natives,
+or breaking down their religious prejudices.
+
+Matters were in this condition as regarded Mustapha, when an incident
+occurred during my second winter at Luxor that completely altered the
+tenor of Mustapha's life.
+
+One night a fire broke out in the nearest village. It originated in a
+mud hovel belonging to a fellah; his wife had spilled some oil on the
+hearth, and the flames leaping up had caught the low thatch, which
+immediately burst into a blaze. A wind was blowing from the direction of
+the Arabian desert, and it carried the flames and ignited the thatch
+before it on other roofs; the conflagration spread, and the whole
+village was menaced with destruction. The greatest excitement and alarm
+prevailed. The inhabitants lost their heads. Men ran about rescuing from
+their hovels their only treasures--old sardine tins and empty marmalade
+pots; women wailed, children sobbed; no one made any attempt to stay the
+fire; and, above all, were heard the screams of the woman whose
+incaution had caused the mischief, and who was being beaten unmercifully
+by her husband.
+
+The few English in the hotel came on the scene, and with their
+instinctive energy and system set to work to organise a corps and subdue
+the flames. The women and girls who were rescued from the menaced
+hovels, or plucked out of those already on fire, were in many cases
+unveiled, and so it came to pass that Mustapha, who, under English
+direction, was ablest and most vigorous in his efforts to stop the
+conflagration, met his fate in the shape of the daughter of Ibraim the
+Farrier.
+
+By the light of the flames he saw her, and at once resolved to make that
+fair girl his wife.
+
+No reasonable obstacle intervened, so thought Mustapha. He had amassed a
+sufficient sum to entitle him to buy a wife and set up a household of
+his own. A house consists of four mud walls and a low thatch, and
+housekeeping in an Egyptian house is as elementary and economical as the
+domestic architecture. The maintenance of a wife and family is not
+costly after the first outlay, which consists in indemnifying the father
+for the expense to which he has been put in rearing a daughter.
+
+The ceremony of courting is also elementary, and the addresses of the
+suitor are not paid to the bride, but to her father, and not in person
+by the candidate, but by an intermediary.
+
+Mustapha negotiated with a friend, a fellow hanger-on at the hotel, to
+open proceedings with the farrier. He was to represent to the worthy man
+that the suitor entertained the most ardent admiration for the virtues
+of Ibraim personally, that he was inspired with but one ambition, which
+was alliance with so distinguished a family as his. He was to assure the
+father of the damsel that Mustapha undertook to proclaim through Upper
+and Lower Egypt, in the ears of Egyptians, Arabs, and Europeans, that
+Ibraim was the most remarkable man that ever existed for solidity of
+judgment, excellence of parts, uprightness of dealing, nobility of
+sentiment, strictness in observance of the precepts of the Koran, and
+that finally Mustapha was anxious to indemnify this same paragon of
+genius and virtue for his condescension in having cared to breed and
+clothe and feed for several years a certain girl, his daughter, if
+Mustapha might have that daughter as his wife. Not that he cared for the
+daughter in herself, but as a means whereby he might have the honour of
+entering into alliance with one so distinguished and so esteemed of
+Allah as Ibraim the Farrier.
+
+To the infinite surprise of the intermediary, and to the no less
+surprise and mortification of the suitor, Mustapha was refused. He was a
+bad Moslem. Ibraim would have no alliance with one who had turned his
+back on the Prophet and drunk bottled beer.
+
+Till this moment Mustapha had not realised how great was the alienation
+between his fellows and himself--what a barrier he had set up between
+himself and the men of his own blood. The refusal of his suit struck the
+young man to the quick. He had known and played with the farrier's
+daughter in childhood, till she had come of age to veil her face; now
+that he had seen her in her ripe charms, his heart was deeply stirred
+and engaged. He entered into himself, and going to the mosque he there
+made a solemn vow that if he ever touched wine, ale, or spirits again he
+would cut his throat, and he sent word to Ibraim that he had done so,
+and begged that he would not dispose of his daughter and finally reject
+him till he had seen how that he who had turned in thought and manner of
+life from the Prophet would return with firm resolution to the right
+way.
+
+
+II
+
+From this time Mustapha changed his conduct. He was obliging and
+attentive as before, ready to exert himself to do for me what I wanted,
+ready also to extort money from the ordinary tourist for doing nothing,
+to go with me and carry my tools when I went forth painting, and to joke
+and laugh with Jameson; but, unless he were unavoidably detained, he
+said his prayers five times daily in the mosque, and no inducement
+whatever would make him touch anything save sherbet, milk, or water.
+
+Mustapha had no easy time of it. The strict Mohammedans mistrusted this
+sudden conversion, and believed that he was playing a part. Ibraim gave
+him no encouragement. His relatives maintained their reserve and
+stiffness towards him.
+
+His companions, moreover, who were in the transitional stage, and those
+who had completely shaken off all faith in Allah and trust in the
+Prophet and respect for the Koran, were incensed at his desertion. He
+was ridiculed, insulted; he was waylaid and beaten. The young fellows
+mimicked him, the elder scoffed at him.
+
+Jameson took his change to heart, and laid himself out to bring him out
+of his pot of scruples.
+
+"Mustapha ain't any sport at all now," said he. "I'm hanged if he has
+another para from me." He offered him bribes in gold, he united with the
+others in ridicule, he turned his back on him, and refused to employ
+him. Nothing availed. Mustapha was respectful, courteous, obliging as
+before, but he had returned, he said, to the faith and rule of life in
+which he had been brought up, and he would never again leave it.
+
+"I have sworn," said he, "that if I do I will cut my throat."
+
+I had been, perhaps, negligent in cautioning the young fellow the first
+winter that I knew him against the harm likely to be done him by taking
+up with European habits contrary to his law and the feelings and
+prejudices of his people. Now, however, I had no hesitation in
+expressing to him the satisfaction I felt at the courageous and
+determined manner in which he had broken with acquired habits that could
+do him no good. For one thing, we were now better acquaintances, and I
+felt that as one who had known him for more than a few months in the
+winter, I had a good right to speak. And, again, it is always easier or
+pleasanter to praise than to reprimand.
+
+One day when sketching I cut my pencil with a pruning-knife I happened
+to have in my pocket; my proper knife of many blades had been left
+behind by misadventure.
+
+Mustapha noticed the knife and admired it, and asked if it had cost a
+great sum.
+
+"Not at all," I answered. "I did not even buy it. It was given me. I
+ordered some flower seeds from a seeds-man, and when he sent me the
+consignment he included this knife in the case as a present. It is not
+worth more than a shilling in England."
+
+He turned it about, with looks of admiration.
+
+"It is just the sort that would suit me," he said. "I know your other
+knife with many blades. It is very fine, but it is too small. I do not
+want it to cut pencils. It has other things in it, a hook for taking
+stones from a horse's hoof, a pair of tweezers for removing hairs. I do
+not want such, but a knife such as this, with such a curve, is just the
+thing."
+
+"Then you shall have it," said I. "You are welcome. It was for rough
+work only that I brought the knife to Egypt with me."
+
+I finished a painting that winter that gave me real satisfaction. It was
+of the great court of the temple of Luxor by evening light, with the
+last red glare of the sun over the distant desert hills, and the eastern
+sky above of a purple depth. What colours I used! the intensest on my
+palette, and yet fell short of the effect.
+
+The picture was in the Academy, was well hung, abominably represented in
+one of the illustrated guides to the galleries, as a blotch, by some
+sort of photographic process on gelatine; my picture sold, which
+concerned me most of all, and not only did it sell at a respectable
+figure, but it also brought me two or three orders for Egyptian
+pictures. So many English and Americans go up the Nile, and carry away
+with them pleasant reminiscences of the Land of the Pharaohs, that when
+in England they are fain to buy pictures which shall remind them of
+scenes in that land.
+
+I returned to my hotel at Luxor in November, to spend there a third
+winter. The fellaheen about there saluted me as a friend with an
+affectionate delight, which I am quite certain was not assumed, as they
+got nothing out of me save kindly salutations. I had the Egyptian fever
+on me, which, when once acquired, is not to be shaken off--an enthusiasm
+for everything Egyptian, the antiquities, the history of the Pharaohs,
+the very desert, the brown Nile, the desolate hill ranges, the ever blue
+sky, the marvellous colorations at rise and set of sun, and last, but
+not least, the prosperity of the poor peasants.
+
+I am quite certain that the very warmest welcome accorded to me was from
+Mustapha, and almost the first words he said to me on my meeting him
+again were: "I have been very good. I say my prayers. I drink no wine,
+and Ibraim will give me his daughter in the second Iomada--what you call
+January."
+
+"Not before, Mustapha?"
+
+"No, sir; he says I must be tried for one whole year, and he is right."
+
+"Then soon after Christmas you will be happy!"
+
+"I have got a house and made it ready. Yes. After Christmas there will
+be one very happy man--one very, very happy man in Egypt, and that will
+be your humble servant, Mustapha."
+
+
+III
+
+We were a pleasant party at Luxor, this third winter, not numerous, but
+for the most part of congenial tastes. For the most part we were keen on
+hieroglyphics, we admired Queen Hatasou and we hated Rameses II. We
+could distinguish the artistic work of one dynasty from that of another.
+We were learned on cartouches, and flourished our knowledge before the
+tourists dropping in.
+
+One of those staying in the hotel was an Oxford don, very good company,
+interested in everything, and able to talk well on everything--I mean
+everything more or less remotely connected with Egypt. Another was a
+young fellow who had been an attaché at Berlin, but was out of
+health--nothing organic the matter with his lungs, but they were weak.
+He was keen on the political situation, and very anti-Gallican, as every
+man who has been in Egypt naturally is, who is not a Frenchman.
+
+There was also staying in the hotel an American lady, fresh and
+delightful, whose mind and conversation twinkled like frost crystals in
+the sun, a woman full of good-humour, of the most generous sympathies,
+and so droll that she kept us ever amused.
+
+And, alas! Jameson was back again, not entering into any of our
+pursuits, not understanding our little jokes, not at all content to be
+there. He grumbled at the food--and, indeed, that might have been
+better; at the monotony of the life at Luxor, at his London doctor for
+putting the veto on Cairo because of its drainage, or rather the absence
+of all drainage. I really think we did our utmost to draw Jameson into
+our circle, to amuse him, to interest him in something; but one by one
+we gave him up, and the last to do this was the little American lady.
+
+From the outset he had attacked Mustapha, and endeavoured to persuade
+him to shake off his "squeamish nonsense," as Jameson called his
+resolve. "I'll tell you what it is, old fellow," he said, "life isn't
+worth living without good liquor, and as for that blessed Prophet of
+yours, he showed he was a fool when he put a bar on drinks."
+
+But as Mustapha was not pliable he gave him up. "He's become just as
+great a bore as that old Rameses," said he. "I'm sick of the whole
+concern, and I don't think anything of fresh dates, that you fellows
+make such a fuss about. As for that stupid old Nile--there ain't a fish
+worth eating comes out of it. And those old Egyptians were arrant
+humbugs. I haven't seen a lotus since I came here, and they made such a
+fuss about them too."
+
+The little American lady was not weary of asking questions relative to
+English home life, and especially to country-house living and
+amusements.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said she, "I would give my ears to spend a Christmas in
+the fine old fashion in a good ancient manor-house in the country."
+
+"There is nothing remarkable in that," said an English lady.
+
+"Not to you, maybe; but there would be to us. What we read of and make
+pictures of in our fancies, that is what you live. Your facts are our
+fairy tales. Look at your hunting."
+
+"That, if you like, is fun," threw in Jameson. "But I don't myself think
+anything save Luxor can be a bigger bore than country-house life at
+Christmas time--when all the boys are back from school."
+
+"With us," said the little American, "our sportsmen dress in pink like
+yours--the whole thing--and canter after a bag of anise seed that is
+trailed before them."
+
+"Why do they not import foxes?"
+
+"Because a fox would not keep to the road. Our farmers object pretty
+freely to trespass; so the hunting must of necessity be done on the
+highway, and the game is but a bag of anise seed. I would like to see an
+English meet and a run."
+
+This subject was thrashed out after having been prolonged unduly for the
+sake of Jameson.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" said the Yankee lady. "If but that chef could be
+persuaded to give us plum-puddings for Christmas, I would try to think I
+was in England."
+
+"Plum-pudding is exploded," said Jameson. "Only children ask for it now.
+A good trifle or a tipsy-cake is much more to my taste; but this hanged
+cook here can give us nothing but his blooming custard pudding and burnt
+sugar."
+
+"I do not think it would be wise to let him attempt a plum-pudding,"
+said the English lady. "But if we can persuade him to permit me I will
+mix and make the pudding, and then he cannot go far wrong in the boiling
+and dishing up."
+
+"That is the only thing wanting to make me perfectly happy," said the
+American. "I'll confront monsieur. I am sure I can talk him into a good
+humour, and we shall have our plum-pudding."
+
+No one has yet been found, I do believe, who could resist that little
+woman. She carried everything before her. The cook placed himself and
+all his culinary apparatus at her feet. We took part in the stoning of
+the raisins, and the washing of the currants, even the chopping of the
+suet; we stirred the pudding, threw in sixpence apiece, and a ring, and
+then it was tied up in a cloth, and set aside to be boiled. Christmas
+Day came, and the English chaplain preached us a practical sermon on
+"Goodwill towards men." That was his text, and his sermon was but a
+swelling out of the words just as rice is swelled to thrice its size by
+boiling.
+
+We dined. There was an attempt at roast beef--it was more like baked
+leather. The event of the dinner was to be the bringing in and eating of
+the plum-pudding.
+
+Surely all would be perfect. We could answer for the materials and the
+mixing. The English lady could guarantee the boiling. She had seen the
+plum-pudding "on the boil," and had given strict injunctions as to the
+length of time during which it was to boil.
+
+But, alas! the pudding was not right when brought on the table. It was
+not enveloped in lambent blue flame--it was not crackling in the burning
+brandy. It was sent in dry, and the brandy arrived separate in a white
+sauce-boat, hot indeed, and sugared, but not on fire.
+
+There ensued outcries of disappointment. Attempts were made to redress
+the mistake by setting fire to the brandy in a spoon, but the spoon was
+cold. The flame would not catch, and finally, with a sigh, we had to
+take our plum-pudding as served.
+
+"I say, chaplain!" exclaimed Jameson, "practice is better than precept,
+is it not?"
+
+"To be sure it is."
+
+"You gave us a deuced good sermon. It was short, as it ought to be; but
+I'll go better on it, I'll practise where you preached, and have larks,
+too!"
+
+Then Jameson started from table with a plate of plum-pudding in one hand
+and the sauce-boat in the other. "By Jove!" he said, "I'll teach these
+fellows to open their eyes. I'll show them that we know how to feed. We
+can't turn out scarabs and cartouches in England, that are no good to
+anyone, but we can produce the finest roast beef in the world, and do a
+thing or two in puddings."
+
+And he left the room.
+
+We paid no heed to anything Jameson said or did. We were rather relieved
+that he was out of the room, and did not concern ourselves about the
+"larks" he promised himself, and which we were quite certain would be as
+insipid as were the quails of the Israelites.
+
+In ten minutes he was back, laughing and red in the face.
+
+"I've had splitting fun," he said. "You should have been there."
+
+"Where, Jameson?"
+
+"Why, outside. There were a lot of old moolahs and other hoky-pokies
+sitting and contemplating the setting sun and all that sort of thing,
+and I gave Mustapha the pudding. I told him I wished him to try our
+great national English dish, on which her Majesty the Queen dines daily.
+Well, he ate and enjoyed it, by George. Then I said, 'Old fellow, it's
+uncommonly dry, so you must take the sauce to it.' He asked if it was
+only sauce--flour and water. 'It's sauce, by Jove,' said I, 'a little
+sugar to it; no bar on the sugar, Musty.' So I put the boat to his lips
+and gave him a pull. By George, you should have seen his face! It was
+just thundering fun. 'I've done you at last, old Musty,' I said. 'It is
+best cognac.' He gave me such a look! He'd have eaten me, I believe--and
+he walked away. It was just splitting fun. I wish you had been there to
+see it."
+
+I went out after dinner, to take my usual stroll along the river-bank,
+and to watch the evening lights die away on the columns and obelisk. On
+my return I saw at once that something had happened which had produced
+commotion among the servants of the hotel. I had reached the salon
+before I inquired what was the matter.
+
+The boy who was taking the coffee round said: "Mustapha is dead. He cut
+his throat at the door of the mosque. He could not help himself. He had
+broken his vow."
+
+I looked at Jameson without a word. Indeed, I could not speak; I was
+choking. The little American lady was trembling, the English lady
+crying. The gentlemen stood silent in the windows, not speaking a word.
+
+Jameson's colour changed. He was honestly distressed, uneasy, and tried
+to cover his confusion with bravado and a jest.
+
+"After all," he said, "it is only a nigger the less."
+
+"Nigger!" said the American lady. "He was no nigger, but an Egyptian."
+
+"Oh! I don't pretend to distinguish between your blacks and whity-browns
+any more than I do between your cartouches," returned Jameson.
+
+"He was no black," said the American lady, standing up. "But I do mean
+to say that I consider you an utterly unredeemed black----"
+
+"My dear, don't," said the Englishwoman, drawing the other down. "It's
+no good. The thing is done. He meant no harm."
+
+
+IV
+
+I could not sleep. My blood was in a boil. I felt that I could not speak
+to Jameson again. He would have to leave Luxor. That was tacitly
+understood among us. Coventry was the place to which he would be
+consigned.
+
+I tried to finish in a little sketch I had made in my notebook when I
+was in my room, but my hand shook, and I was constrained to lay my
+pencil aside. Then I took up an Egyptian grammar, but could not fix my
+mind on study. The hotel was very still. Everyone had gone to bed at an
+early hour that night, disinclined for conversation. No one was moving.
+There was a lamp in the passage; it was partly turned down. Jameson's
+room was next to mine. I heard him stir as he undressed, and talk to
+himself. Then he was quiet. I wound up my watch, and emptying my pocket,
+put my purse under the pillow. I was not in the least heavy with sleep.
+If I did go to bed I should not be able to close my eyes. But then--if I
+sat up I could do nothing.
+
+I was about leisurely to undress, when I heard a sharp cry, or
+exclamation of mingled pain and alarm, from the adjoining room. In
+another moment there was a rap at my door. I opened, and Jameson came
+in. He was in his night-shirt, and looking agitated and frightened.
+
+"Look here, old fellow," said he in a shaking voice, "there is Musty in
+my room. He has been hiding there, and just as I dropped asleep he ran
+that knife of yours into my throat."
+
+"My knife?"
+
+"Yes--that pruning-knife you gave him, you know. Look here--I must have
+the place sewn up. Do go for a doctor, there's a good chap."
+
+"Where is the place?"
+
+"Here on my right gill."
+
+Jameson turned his head to the left, and I raised the lamp. There was no
+wound of any sort there.
+
+I told him so.
+
+"Oh, yes! That's fine--I tell you I felt his knife go in."
+
+"Nonsense, you were dreaming."
+
+"Dreaming! Not I. I saw Musty as distinctly as I now see you."
+
+"This is a delusion, Jameson," I replied. "The poor fellow is dead."
+
+"Oh, that's very fine," said Jameson. "It is not the first of April, and
+I don't believe the yarns that you've been spinning. You tried to make
+believe he was dead, but I know he is not. He has got into my room, and
+he made a dig at my throat with your pruning-knife."
+
+"I'll go into your room with you."
+
+"Do so. But he's gone by this time. Trust him to cut and run."
+
+I followed Jameson, and looked about. There was no trace of anyone
+beside himself having been in the room. Moreover, there was no place but
+the nut-wood wardrobe in the bedroom in which anyone could have secreted
+himself. I opened this and showed that it was empty.
+
+After a while I pacified Jameson, and induced him to go to bed again,
+and then I left his room. I did not now attempt to court sleep. I wrote
+letters with a hand not the steadiest, and did my accounts.
+
+As the hour approached midnight I was again startled by a cry from the
+adjoining room, and in another moment Jameson was at my door.
+
+"That blooming fellow Musty is in my room still," said he. "He has been
+at my throat again."
+
+"Nonsense," I said. "You are labouring under hallucinations. You locked
+your door."
+
+"Oh, by Jove, yes--of course I did; but, hang it, in this hole, neither
+doors nor windows fit, and the locks are no good, and the bolts nowhere.
+He got in again somehow, and if I had not started up the moment I felt
+the knife, he'd have done for me. He would, by George. I wish I had a
+revolver."
+
+I went into Jameson's room. Again he insisted on my looking at his
+throat.
+
+"It's very good of you to say there is no wound," said he. "But you
+won't gull me with words. I felt his knife in my windpipe, and if I had
+not jumped out of bed----"
+
+"You locked your door. No one could enter. Look in the glass, there is
+not even a scratch. This is pure imagination."
+
+"I'll tell you what, old fellow, I won't sleep in that room again.
+Change with me, there's a charitable buffer. If you don't believe in
+Musty, Musty won't hurt you, maybe--anyhow you can try if he's solid or
+a phantom. Blow me if the knife felt like a phantom."
+
+"I do not quite see my way to changing rooms," I replied; "but this I
+will do for you. If you like to go to bed again in your own apartment, I
+will sit up with you till morning."
+
+"All right," answered Jameson. "And if Musty comes in again, let out at
+him and do not spare him. Swear that."
+
+I accompanied Jameson once more to his bedroom, Little as I liked the
+man, I could not deny him my presence and assistance at this time. It
+was obvious that his nerves were shaken by what had occurred, and he
+felt his relation to Mustapha much more than he cared to show. The
+thought that he had been the cause of the poor fellow's death preyed on
+his mind, never strong, and now it was upset with imaginary terrors.
+
+I gave up letter writing, and brought my Baedeker's _Upper Egypt_ into
+Jameson's room, one of the best of all guide-books, and one crammed with
+information. I seated myself near the light, and with my back to the
+bed, on which the young man had once more flung himself.
+
+"I say," said Jameson, raising his head, "is it too late for a
+brandy-and-soda?"
+
+"Everyone is in bed."
+
+"What lazy dogs they are. One never can get anything one wants here."
+
+"Well, try to go to sleep."
+
+He tossed from side to side for some time, but after a while, either he
+was quiet, or I was engrossed in my Baedeker, and I heard nothing till a
+clock struck twelve. At the last stroke I heard a snort and then a gasp
+and a cry from the bed. I started up, and looked round. Jameson was
+slipping out with his feet onto the floor.
+
+"Confound you!" said he angrily, "you are a fine watch, you are, to let
+Mustapha steal in on tiptoe whilst you are cartouching and all that sort
+of rubbish. He was at me again, and if I had not been sharp he'd have
+cut my throat. I won't go to bed any more!"
+
+"Well, sit up. But I assure you no one has been here."
+
+"That's fine. How can you tell? You had your back to me, and these
+devils of fellows steal about like cats. You can't hear them till they
+are at you."
+
+It was of no use arguing with Jameson, so I let him have his way.
+
+"I can feel all the three places in my throat where he ran the knife
+in," said he. "And--don't you notice?--I speak with difficulty."
+
+So we sat up together the rest of the night. He became more reasonable
+as dawn came on, and inclined to admit that he had been a prey to
+fancies.
+
+The day passed very much as did others--Jameson was dull and sulky.
+After déjeuner he sat on at table when the ladies had risen and retired,
+and the gentlemen had formed in knots at the window, discussing what was
+to be done in the afternoon.
+
+Suddenly Jameson, whose head had begun to nod, started up with an oath
+and threw down his chair.
+
+"You fellows!" he said, "you are all in league against me. You let that
+Mustapha come in without a word, and try to stick his knife into me."
+
+[Illustration: "YOU LET THAT MUSTAPHA COME IN, AND TRY AND STICK HIS
+KNIFE INTO ME."]
+
+"He has not been here."
+
+"It's a plant. You are combined to bully me and drive me away. You don't
+like me. You have engaged Mustapha to murder me. This is the fourth time
+he has tried to cut my throat, and in the _salle à manger_, too, with
+you all standing round. You ought to be ashamed to call yourselves
+Englishmen. I'll go to Cairo. I'll complain."
+
+It really seemed that the feeble brain of Jameson was affected. The
+Oxford don undertook to sit up in the room the following night.
+
+The young man was fagged and sleep-weary, but no sooner did his eyes
+close, and clouds form about his head, than he was brought to
+wakefulness again by the same fancy or dream. The Oxford don had more
+trouble with him on the second night than I had on the first, for his
+lapses into sleep were more frequent, and each such lapse was succeeded
+by a start and a panic.
+
+The next day he was worse, and we felt that he could no longer be left
+alone. The third night the attaché sat up to watch him.
+
+Jameson had now sunk into a sullen mood. He would not speak, except to
+himself, and then only to grumble.
+
+During the night, without being aware of it, the young attaché, who had
+taken a couple of magazines with him to read, fell asleep. When he went
+off he did not know. He woke just before dawn, and in a spasm of terror
+and self-reproach saw that Jameson's chair was empty.
+
+Jameson was not on his bed. He could not be found in the hotel.
+
+At dawn he was found--dead, at the door of the mosque, with his throat
+cut.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE JOE GANDER
+
+
+"There's no good in him," said his stepmother, "not a mossul!" With
+these words she thrust little Joe forward by applying her knee to the
+small of his back, and thereby jerking him into the middle of the school
+before the master. "There's no making nothing out of him, whack him as
+you will."
+
+Little Joe Lambole was a child of ten, dressed in second-hand, nay,
+third-hand garments that did not fit. His coat had been a soldier's
+scarlet uniform, that had gone when discarded to a dealer, who had dealt
+it to a carter, and when the carter had worn it out it was reduced and
+adapted to the wear of the child. The nether garments had, in like
+manner, served a full-grown man till worn out; then they had been cut
+down at the knees. Though shortened in leg, they maintained their former
+copiousness of seat, and served as an inexhaustible receptacle for dust.
+Often as little Joe was "licked" there issued from the dense mass of
+drapery clouds of dust. It was like beating a puff-ball.
+
+"Only a seven-month child," said Mrs. Lambole contemptuously, "born
+without his nails on fingers and toes; they growed later. His wits have
+never come right, and a deal, a deal of larruping it will take to make
+'em grow. Use the rod; we won't grumble at you for doing so."
+
+Little Joe Lambole when he came into the world had not been expected to
+live. He was a poor, small, miserable baby, that could not roar, but
+whimpered. He had been privately baptised directly he was born, because,
+at the first, Mrs. Lambole said, "The child is mine, though it be such
+a creetur, and I wouldn't like it, according, to be buried like a dog."
+
+He was called Joseph. The scriptural Joseph had been sold as a bondman
+into Egypt; this little Joseph seemed to have been brought into the
+world to be a slave. In all propriety he ought to have died as a baby,
+and that happy consummation was almost desired, but he disappointed
+expectations and lived. His mother died soon after, and his father
+married again, and his father and stepmother loved him, doubtless; but
+love is manifested in many ways, and the Lamboles showed theirs in a
+rough way, by slaps and blows and kicks. The father was ashamed of him
+because he was a weakling, and the stepmother because he was ugly, and
+was not her own child. He was a meagre little fellow, with a long neck
+and a white face and sunken cheeks, a pigeon breast, and a big stomach.
+He walked with his head forward and his great pale blue eyes staring
+before him into the far distance, as if he were always looking out of
+the world. His walk was a waddle, and he tumbled over every obstacle,
+because he never looked where he was going, always looked to something
+beyond the horizon.
+
+Because of his walk and his long neck, and staring eyes and big stomach,
+the village children called him "Gander Joe" or "Joe Gander"; and his
+parents were not sorry, for they were ashamed that such a creature
+should be known as a Lambole.
+
+The Lamboles were a sturdy, hearty people, with cheeks like quarrender
+apples, and bones set firm and knit with iron sinews. They were a
+hard-working, practical people who fattened pigs and kept poultry at
+home. Lambole was a roadmaker. In breaking stones one day a bit of one
+had struck his eye and blinded it. After that he wore a black patch upon
+it. He saw well enough out of the other; he never missed seeing his own
+interests. Lambole could have made a few pence with his son had his son
+been worth anything. He could have sent him to scrape the road, and
+bring the manure off it in a shovel to his garden. But Joe never took
+heartily to scraping the dung up. In a word, the boy was good for
+nothing.
+
+He had hair like tow, and a little straw hat on his head with the top
+torn, so that the hair forced its way out, and as he walked the top
+bobbed about like the lid of a boiling saucepan.
+
+When the whortleberries were ripe in June, Mrs. Lambole sent Joe out
+with other children to collect the berries in a tin can; she sold them
+for fourpence a quart, and any child could earn eightpence a day in
+whortleberry time; one that was active might earn a shilling.
+
+But Joe would not remain with the other children. They teased him,
+imitated ganders and geese, and poked out their necks and uttered sounds
+in imitation of the voices of these birds. Moreover, they stole the
+berries he had picked, and put them into their own cans.
+
+When Joe Gander left them and found himself alone in the woods, then he
+lay down among the brown heather and green fern, and looked up through
+the oak leaves at the sky, and listened to the singing of the birds. Oh,
+wondrous music of the woods! the hum of the summer air among the leaves,
+the drone of the bees about the flowers, the twittering and fluting and
+piping of the finches and blackbirds and thrushes, and the cool soft
+cooing of the wood pigeons, like the lowing of aerial oxen; then the
+tapping of the green woodpecker and a glimpse of its crimson head, like
+a carbuncle running up the tree trunk, and the powdering down of old
+husks of fir cones or of the tender rind of the topmost shoot of a
+Scottish pine; for aloft a red squirrel was barking a beautiful tree out
+of wantonness and frolic. A rabbit would come forth from the bracken and
+sit up in the sun, and clean its face with the fore paws and stroke its
+long ears; then, seeing the soiled red coat, would skip up--little Joe
+lying very still--and screw its nose and turn its eyes from side to
+side, and skip nearer again, till it was quite close to Joe Gander; and
+then the boy laughed, and the rabbit was gone with a flash of white
+tail.
+
+Happy days! days of listening to mysterious music, of looking into
+mysteries of sun and foliage, of spiritual intercourse with the great
+mother-soul of nature.
+
+In the evenings, when Gander Joe came without his can, or with his can
+empty, he would say to his stepmother: "Oh, steppy! it was so nice;
+everything was singing."
+
+"I'll make you sing in the chorus too!" cried Mrs. Lambole, and laid a
+stick across his shoulders. Experience had taught her the futility of
+dusting at a lower level.
+
+Then Gander Joe cried and writhed, and promised to be more diligent in
+picking whortleberries in future. But when he went again into the wood
+it was again the same. The spell of the wood spirits was on him; he
+forgot about the berries at fourpence a quart, and lay on his back and
+listened. And the whole wood whispered and sang to him and consoled him
+for his beating, and the wind played lullabies among the fir spines and
+whistled in the grass, and the aspen clashed its myriad tiny cymbals
+together, producing an orchestra of sound that filled the soul of the
+dreaming boy with love and delight and unutterable yearning.
+
+It fared no better in autumn, when the blackberry season set in. Joe
+went with his can to an old quarry where the brambles sent their runners
+over the masses of rubble thrown out from the pits, and warmed and
+ripened their fruit on the hot stones. It was a marvel to see how the
+blackberries grew in this deserted quarry; how large the fruit swelled,
+how thick they were--like mulberries. On the road side of the quarry was
+a belt of pines, and the sun drew out of their bark scents of
+unsurpassed sweetness. About the blackberries hovered spotted white and
+yellow and black moths, beautiful as butterflies. Butterflies did not
+fail either. The red admiral was there, resting on the bark of the
+trees, asleep in the sun with wings expanded, or drifting about the
+clumps of yellow ragwort, doubtful whether to perch or not.
+
+Here, hidden behind the trees, among the leaves of overgrown rubble, was
+a one-story cottage of wood and clay, covered with thatch, in which
+lived Roger Gale, the postman.
+
+Roger Gale had ten miles to walk every morning, delivering letters, and
+the same number of miles every evening, for which twenty miles he
+received the liberal pay of six shillings a week. He had to be at the
+post office at half-past six in the morning to receive the letters, and
+at seven in the evening to deliver them. His work took him about six
+hours. The middle of the day he had to himself. Roger Gale was an old
+soldier, and enjoyed a pension. He occupied himself, when at home, as a
+shoemaker; but the walks took so much out of him, being an old man, that
+he had not the strength and energy to do much cobbling when at home.
+Therefore he idled a good deal, and he amused his idle hours with a
+violin. Now, when Joe Gander came to the quarry before the return of the
+postman from his rounds, he picked blackberries; but no sooner had Roger
+Gale unlocked his door, taken down his fiddle, and drawn the bow across
+the strings, than Joe set down the can and listened. And when old Roger
+began to play an air from the _Daughter of the Regiment_, then Joe crept
+towards his cottage in little stages of wonderment and hunger to hear
+more and hear better, much in the same way as now and again in the wood
+the inquisitive rabbits had approached his red jacket. Presently Joe was
+seated on the doorstep, with his ear against the wooden door, and the
+blackberries and the can, and stepmother's orders and father's stick,
+and his hard bed and his meagre meals, even the whole world had passed
+away as a scroll that is rolled up and laid aside, and he lived only in
+the world of music.
+
+Though his great eyes were wide he saw nothing through them; though the
+rain began to fall, and the north-east wind to blow, he felt nothing: he
+had but one faculty that was awake, and that was hearing.
+
+One day Roger came to his door and opened it suddenly, so that the
+child, leaning against it, fell across his threshold.
+
+"Whom have we here? What is this? What do you want?" asked the postman.
+
+Then Gander Joe stood up, craning his long neck and staring out of his
+goggle eyes, with his rough flaxen hair standing up in a ruffle above
+his head and his great stomach protruded, and said nothing. So Roger
+burst out laughing. But he did not kick him off the step; he gave him a
+bit of bread and a drop of cider, and presently drew from the boy the
+confession that he had been listening to the fiddle. This was flattering
+to the postman, and it was the initiation of a friendship between them.
+
+But when Joe came home with an empty can and said: "Oh, steppy, Master
+Roger Gale did fiddle so beautiful!" the woman said: "Fiddle! I'll
+fiddle your back pretty smartly, you idle vagabond"; and she was a
+truthful woman who never fell short of her word.
+
+To break him of his bad habits--that is, of his dreaminess and
+uselessness--Mrs. Lambole took Joe to school.
+
+At school he had a bad time of it. He could not learn the letters. He
+was mentally incapable of doing a subtraction sum. He sat on a bench
+staring at the teacher, and was unable to answer an ordinary question
+what the lesson was about. The school-children tormented him, the
+monitor scolded, and the master beat. Then little Joe Gander took to
+absenting himself from school. He was sent off every morning by his
+stepmother, but instead of going to the school he went to the cottage in
+the quarry, and listened to the fiddle of Roger Gale.
+
+Little Joe got hold of an old box, and with a knife he cut holes in it;
+and he fashioned a bridge, and then a handle, and he strung horsehair
+over the latter, and made a bow, and drew very faint sounds from this
+improvised violin, that made the postman laugh, but which gave great
+pleasure to Joe. The sound that issued from his instrument was like the
+humming of flies, but he got distinct notes out of his strings, though
+the notes were faint.
+
+After he had played truant for some time his father heard what he had
+done, and he beat the boy till he was like a battered apple that had
+been flung from the tree by a storm upon a road.
+
+For a while Joe did not venture to the quarry except on Saturdays and
+Sundays. He was forbidden by his father to go to church, because the
+organ and the singing there drove him half crazed. When a beautiful,
+touching melody was played his eyes became clouded and the tears ran
+down his cheeks; and when the organ played the "Hallelujah Chorus," or
+some grand and stirring march, his eyes flashed, and his little body
+quivered, and he made such faces that the congregation were disturbed
+and the parson remonstrated with his mother. The child was clearly
+imbecile, and unfit to attend divine worship.
+
+Mr. Lambole got an idea into his head, he would bring up Joe to be a
+butcher, and he informed Joe that he was going to place him with a
+gentleman of that profession in town. Joe cried. He turned sick at the
+sight of blood, and the smell of raw meat was abhorrent to him. But
+Joe's likings were of no account with his father, and he took him to the
+town and placed him with a butcher there. He was invested in a blue
+smock, and was informed that his duties would consist in taking meat
+about to the customers. Joe was left. It was the first time he had been
+from home, and he cried himself to sleep the first night, and he cried
+all the next day when sent around with meat on his shoulder.
+
+Now on his journey through the streets he had to pass the window of a
+toy-shop. In the window were dolls and horses and little carts. For
+these Joe did not care, but there were also some little violins, some
+high priced, and some very low, and over these Joe lingered with loving,
+covetous eyes. There was one little fiddle to which his heart went out,
+that cost only three shillings and sixpence. Each day, as he passed the
+shop, he was drawn to it, and stood looking in, and longed daily more
+ardently than on the previous day for this three-and-sixpenny violin.
+
+One day he was so lost in admiration and on the schemes he framed as to
+how he might eventually become possessed of the instrument, that he was
+unconscious of some boys stealing the meat out of the sort of trough on
+his shoulder in which he carried it about.
+
+This was the climax of his misdeeds--he had been reprimanded for his
+blunders, delivering the wrong meat at the customers' doors; for his
+dilatory ways in going on his errands. The butcher could endure him no
+more, and sent him home to his father, who thrashed him, as his welcome.
+
+But he carried home with him the haunting recollections of that
+beautiful little red fiddle, with its fine black keys. The bow, he
+remembered, was strung with white horsehair. Joe had now a fixed
+ambition--something to live for. He would be perfectly happy if he could
+have that three-shillings-and-sixpenny fiddle. But how were three
+shillings and sixpence to be earned?
+
+He confided his difficulty to postman Roger Gale, and Roger Gale said he
+would consider the matter.
+
+A couple of days after the postman said to Joe--
+
+"Gander, they want a lad to sweep the leaves in the drive at the great
+house. The squire's coachman told me, and I mentioned you. You'll have
+to do it on Saturday, and be paid sixpence."
+
+Joe's face brightened. He went home and told his stepmother.
+
+"For once you are going to be useful," said Mrs. Lambole. "Very well,
+you shall sweep the drive; then fivepence will come to us, and you shall
+have a penny every week to spend in sweetstuff at the post office."
+
+Joe tried to reckon how long it would be before he could purchase the
+fiddle, but the calculation was beyond his powers; so he asked the
+postman, who assured him it would take him forty weeks--that is, about
+ten months.
+
+Little Joe was not cast down. What was time with such an end in view?
+Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, and this was only forty weeks
+for a fiddle!
+
+Joe was diligent every Saturday sweeping the drive. He was ordered
+whenever a carriage entered to dive behind the rhododendrons and laurels
+and disappear. He was of a too ragged and idiotic appearance to show in
+a gentleman's grounds.
+
+Once or twice he encountered the squire and stood quaking, with his
+fingers spread out, his mouth and eyes open, and the broom at his feet.
+The squire spoke kindly to him, but Joe Gander was too frightened to
+reply.
+
+"Poor fellow," said the squire to the gardener. "I suppose it is a
+charity to employ him, but I must say I should have preferred someone
+else with his wits about him. I will see to having him sent to an asylum
+for idiots in which I have some interest. There's no knowing," said the
+squire, "no knowing but that with wholesome food, cleanliness, and
+kindness his feeble mind may be got to understand that two and two make
+four, which I learn he has not yet mastered."
+
+Every Saturday evening Joe Gander brought his sixpence home to his
+stepmother. The woman was not so regular in allowing him his penny out.
+
+"Your edication costs such a lot of money," she said.
+
+"Steppy, need I go to school any more?" He never could frame his mouth
+to call her mother.
+
+"Of course you must. You haven't passed your standard."
+
+"But I don't think that I ever shall."
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Lambole, "what masses of good food you do eat. You're
+perfectly insatiable. You cost us more than it would to keep a cow."
+
+"Oh, steppy, I won't eat so much if I may have my penny!"
+
+"Very well. Eating such a lot does no one good. If you will be content
+with one slice of bread for breakfast instead of two, and the same for
+supper, you shall have your penny. If you are so very hungry you can
+always get a swede or a mangold out of Farmer Eggins's field. Swedes and
+mangolds are cooling to the blood and sit light on the stomick," said
+Mrs. Lambole.
+
+So the compact was made; but it nearly killed Joe. His cheeks and chest
+fell in deeper and deeper, and his stomach protruded more than ever. His
+legs seemed hardly able to support him, and his great pale blue
+wandering eyes appeared ready to start out of his head like the horns of
+a snail. As for his voice, it was thin and toneless, like the notes on
+his improvised fiddle, on which he played incessantly.
+
+"The child will always be a discredit to us," said Lambole. "He don't
+look like a human child. He don't think and feel like a Christian. The
+shovelfuls of dung he might have brought to cover our garden if he had
+only given his heart to it!"
+
+"I've heard of changelings," said Mrs. Lambole; "and with this creetur
+on our hands I mainly believe the tale. They do say that the pixies
+steal away the babies of Christian folk, and put their own bantlings in
+their stead. The only way to find out is to heat a poker red-hot and ram
+it down the throat of the child; and when you do that the door opens,
+and in comes the pixy mother and runs off with her own child, and leaves
+your proper babe behind. That's what we ought to ha' done wi' Joe."
+
+"I doubt, wife, the law wouldn't have upheld us," said Lambole,
+thrusting hot coals back on to the hearth with his foot.
+
+"I don't suppose it would," said Mrs. Lambole. "And yet we call this a
+land of liberty! Law ain't made for the poor, but for the rich."
+
+"It is wickedness," argued the father. "It is just the same with
+colts--all wickedness. You must drive it out with the stick."
+
+And now a great temptation fell on little Gander Joe. The squire and his
+family were at home, and the daughter of the house, Miss Amory, was
+musical. Her mother played on the piano and the young lady on the
+violin. The fashion for ladies to play on this instrument had come in,
+and Miss Amory had taken lessons from the best masters in town. She
+played vastly better than poor Roger Gale, and she played to an
+accompaniment.
+
+Sometimes whilst Joe was sweeping he heard the music; then he stole
+nearer and nearer to the house, hiding behind rhododendron bushes, and
+listening with eyes and mouth and nostrils and ears. The music exercised
+on him an irresistible attraction. He forgot his obligation to work; he
+forgot the strict orders he had received not to approach the
+garden-front of the house. The music acted on him like a spell.
+Occasionally he was roused from his dream by the gardener, who boxed his
+ears, knocked him over, and bade him get back to his sweeping. Once a
+servant came out from Miss Amory to tell the ragged little boy not to
+stand in front of the drawing-room window staring in. On another
+occasion he was found by Miss Amory crouched behind a rose bush outside
+her boudoir, listening whilst she practised.
+
+No one supposed that the music drew him. They thought him a fool, and
+that he had the inquisitiveness of the half-witted to peer in at windows
+and see the pretty sights within.
+
+He was reprimanded, and threatened with dismissal. The gardener
+complained to the lad's father and advised a good hiding, such as Joe
+should not forget.
+
+"These sort of chaps," said the gardener, "have no senses like rational
+beings, except only the feeling, and you must teach them as you feed the
+Polar bears--with the end of a stick."
+
+One day Miss Amory, seeing how thin and hollow-eyed the child was, and
+hearing him cough, brought him out a cup of hot coffee and some bread.
+
+He took it without a word, only pulling off his torn straw hat and
+throwing it at his feet, exposing the full shock of tow-like hair; then
+he stared at her out of his great eyes, speechless.
+
+"Joe," she said, "poor little man, how old are you?"
+
+"Dun'now," he answered.
+
+"Can you read and write?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor do sums?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"Fiddle."
+
+"Have you got a fiddle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should like to see it, and hear you play."
+
+Next day was Sunday. Little Joe forgot about the day, and forgot that
+Miss Amory would probably be in church in the morning. She had asked to
+see his fiddle, so in the morning he took it and went down with it to
+the park. The church was within the grounds, and he had to pass it. As
+he went by he heard the roll of the organ and the strains of the choir.
+He stopped to hearken, then went up the steps of the churchyard,
+listening. A desire came on him to catch the air on his improvised
+violin, and he put it to his shoulder and drew his bow across the
+slender cords. The sound was very faint, so faint as to be drowned by
+the greater volume of the organ and the choir. Nevertheless he could
+hear the feeble tones close to his ear, and his heart danced at the
+pleasure of playing to an accompaniment, like Miss Amory. The choir, the
+congregation, were singing the Advent hymn to Luther's tune--
+
+    "Great God, what do I see and hear?
+      The end of things created."
+
+Little Joe, playing his inaudible instrument, came creeping up the
+avenue, treading on the fallen yellow lime leaves, passing between the
+tombstones, drawn on by the solemn, beautiful music. Presently he stood
+in the porch, then he went on; he was unconscious of everything but the
+music and the joy of playing with it; he walked on softly into the
+church without even removing his ragged straw cap, though the squire and
+the squire's wife, and the rector and the reverend the Mrs. Rector, and
+the parish churchwarden and the rector's churchwarden, and the overseer
+and the waywarden, and all the farmers and their wives were present. He
+had forgotten about his broken cap in the delight that made the tears
+fill his eyes and trickle over his pale cheeks.
+
+Then when with a shock the parson and the churchwardens saw the ragged
+urchin coming up the nave fiddling, with his hat on, regardless of the
+sacredness of the place, and above all of the sacredness of the presence
+of the squire, J.P. and D.L., the rector coughed very loud and looked
+hard at his churchwarden, Farmer Eggins, who turned red as the sun in a
+November fog, and rose. At the same instant the people's churchwarden
+rose, and both advanced upon Joe Gander from opposite sides of the
+church.
+
+At the moment that they touched him the organ and the singing ceased;
+and it was to Joe a sudden wakening from a golden dream to a black and
+raw reality. He looked up with dazed face first at one man, then at the
+other: both their faces blazed with equal indignation; both were
+equally speechless with wrath. They conducted him, each holding an arm,
+out of the porch and down the avenue. Joe heard indistinctly behind him
+the droning of the rector's voice continuing the prayers. He looked back
+over his shoulder and saw the faces of the school-children straining
+after him through the open door from their places near it. On reaching
+the steps--there was a flight of five leading to the road--the people's
+churchwarden uttered a loud and disgusted "Ugh!" then with his heavy
+hand slapped the head of the child towards the parson's churchwarden,
+who with his still heavier hand boxed it back again; then the people's
+churchwarden gave him a blow which sent him staggering forward, and this
+was supplemented by a kick from the parson's churchwarden, which sent
+Joe Gander spinning down the five steps at once and cast him prostrate
+into the road, where he fell and crushed his extemporised violin.
+
+Then the churchwardens turned, blew their noses, and re-entered the
+church, where they sat out the rest of the service, grateful in their
+hearts that they had been enabled that day to show that their office was
+no sinecure.
+
+The churchwardens were unaware that in banging and kicking the little
+boy out of the churchyard and into the road they had flung him so that
+he fell with his head upon the curbstone of the footpath, which stone
+was of slate, and sharp. They did not find this out through the prayers,
+nor through the sermon. But when the whole congregation left the church
+they were startled to find little Joe Gander insensible, with his head
+cut, and a pool of blood on the footway. The squire was shocked, as were
+his wife and daughter, and the churchwardens were in consternation.
+Fortunately the squire's stables were near the church, and there was a
+running fountain there, so that water was procured, and the child
+revived.
+
+Mrs. Amory had in the meantime hastened home and returned with a roll of
+diachylon plaster and a pair of small scissors. Strips of the adhesive
+plaster were applied to the wound, and the boy was soon sufficiently
+recovered to stand on his feet, when the churchwardens very
+considerately undertook to march him home. On reaching his cottage the
+churchwardens described what had taken place, painting the insult
+offered to the worshippers in the most hideous colours, and representing
+the accident of the cut as due to the violent resistance offered by the
+culprit to their ejectment of him. Then each pressed a half-crown into
+the hand of Mr. Lambole and departed to his dinner.
+
+"Now then, young shaver," exclaimed the father, "at your pranks again!
+How often have I told you not to go intruding into a place of worship?
+Church ain't for such as you. If you had'nt been punished a bit already,
+wouldn't I larrup you neither? Oh, no!"
+
+Little Joe's head was bad for some days. His cheeks were flushed and his
+eyes bright, and he talked strangely--he who was usually so silent. What
+troubled him was the loss of his fiddle; he did not know what had become
+of it, whether it had been stolen or confiscated. He asked after it, and
+when at last it was produced, smashed to chips, with the strings torn
+and hanging loose about it like the cordage of a broken vessel, he cried
+bitterly. Miss Amory came to the cottage to see him, and finding father
+and stepmother out, went in and pressed five shillings into his hand.
+Then he laughed with delight, and clapped his hands, and hid the money
+away in his pocket, but he said nothing, and Miss Amory went away
+convinced that the child was half a fool. But little Joe had sense in
+his head, though his head was different from those of others; he knew
+that now he had the money wherewith to buy the beautiful fiddle he had
+seen in the shop window many months before, and to get which he had
+worked and denied himself food.
+
+When Miss Amory was gone, and his stepmother had not returned, he opened
+the door of the cottage and stole out. He was afraid of being seen, so
+he crept along in the hedge, and when he thought anyone was coming he
+got through a gate or lay down in a ditch, till he was some way on his
+road to the town. Then he ran till he was tired. He had a bandage round
+his head, and, as his head was hot, he took the rag off, dipped it in
+water, and tied it round his head again. Never in his life had his mind
+been clearer than it was now, for now he had a distinct purpose, and an
+object easily attainable, before him. He held the money in his hand, and
+looked at it, and kissed it; then pressed it to his beating heart, then
+ran on. He lost breath. He could run no more. He sat down in the hedge
+and gasped. The perspiration was streaming off his face. Then he thought
+he heard steps coming fast along the road he had run, and as he feared
+pursuit, he got up and ran on.
+
+He went through the village four miles from home just as the children
+were leaving school, and when they saw him some of the elder cried out
+that here was "Gander Joe! quack! quack! Joe the Gander! quack! quack!
+quack!" and the little ones joined in the banter. The boy ran on, though
+hot and exhausted, and with his head swimming, to escape their
+merriment.
+
+He got some way beyond the village when he came to a turnpike. There he
+felt dizzy, and he timidly asked if he might have a piece of bread. He
+would pay for it if they would change a shilling. The woman at the 'pike
+pitied the pale, hollow-eyed child, and questioned him; but her
+questions bewildered him, and he feared she would send him home, so that
+he either answered nothing, or in a way which made her think him
+distraught. She gave him some bread and water, and watched him going on
+towards the town till he was out of sight. The day was already
+declining; it would be dark by the time he reached the town. But he did
+not think of that. He did not consider where he would sleep, whether he
+would have strength to return ten miles to his home. He thought only of
+the beautiful red violin with the yellow bridge hung in the shop window,
+and offered for three shillings and sixpence. Three-and-sixpence! Why,
+he had five shillings. He had money to spend on other things beside the
+fiddle. He had been sadly disappointed about his savings from the weekly
+sixpence. He had asked for them; he had earned them, not by his work
+only, but by his abstention from two pieces of bread per diem. When he
+asked for the money, his stepmother answered that she had put it away in
+the savings bank. If he had it he would waste it on sweetstuff; if it
+were hoarded up it would help him on in life when left to shift for
+himself; and if he died, why it would go towards his burying.
+
+So the child had been disappointed in his calculations, and had worked
+and starved for nothing. Then came Miss Amory with her present, and he
+had run away with that, lest his mother should take it from him to put
+in the savings bank for setting him up in life or for his burying. What
+cared he for either? All his ambition was to have a fiddle, and a fiddle
+was to be had for three-and-sixpence.
+
+Joe Gander was tired. He was fain to sit down at intervals on the heaps
+of stones by the roadside to rest. His shoes were very poor, with soles
+worn through, so that the stones hurt his feet. At this time of the year
+the highways were fresh metalled, and as he stumbled over the newly
+broken stones they cut his soles and his ankles turned. He was footsore
+and weary in body, but his heart never failed him. Before him shone the
+red violin with the yellow bridge, and the beautiful bow strung with
+shining white hair. When he had that all his weariness would pass as a
+dream; he would hunger no more, cry no more, feel no more sickness or
+faintness. He would draw the bow over the strings and play with his
+fingers on the catgut, and the waves of music would thrill and flow,
+and away on those melodious waves his soul would float far from
+trouble, far from want, far from tears, into a shining, sunny world of
+music.
+
+So he picked himself up when he fell, and staggered to his feet from the
+stones on which he rested, and pressed on.
+
+The sun was setting as he entered the town. He went straight to the shop
+he so well remembered, and to his inexpressible delight saw still in the
+window the coveted violin, price three shillings and sixpence.
+
+Then he timidly entered the shop, and with trembling hand held out the
+money.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"It," said the boy. It. To him the shop held but one article. The dolls,
+the wooden horses, the tin steam-engines, the bats, the kites, were
+unconsidered. He had seen and remembered only one thing--the red violin.
+"It," said the boy, and pointed.
+
+When little Joe had got the violin he pressed it to his shoulder, and
+his heart bounded as though it would have burst the pigeon breast. His
+dull eyes lightened, and into his white sunken cheeks shot a hectic
+flame. He went forth with his head erect and with firm foot, holding his
+fiddle to the shoulder and the bow in hand.
+
+He turned his face homeward. Now he would return to father and
+stepmother, to his little bed at the head of the stairs, to his scanty
+meals, to the school, to the sweeping of the park drive, and to his
+stepmother's scoldings and his father's beatings. He had his fiddle, and
+he cared for nothing else.
+
+He waited till he was out of the town before he tried it. Then, when he
+was on a lonely part of the road, he seated himself in the hedge, under
+a holly tree covered with scarlet berries, and tried his instrument.
+Alas! it had hung many years in the shop window, and the catgut was old
+and the glue had lost its tenacity. One string started; then when he
+tried to screw up a second, it sprang as well, and then the bridge
+collapsed and fell. Moreover, the hairs on the bow came out. They were
+unresined.
+
+Then little Joe's spirits gave way. He laid the bow and the violin on
+his knees and began to cry.
+
+As he cried he heard the sound of approaching wheels and the clatter of
+a horse's hoofs.
+
+He heard, but he was immersed in sorrow and did not heed and raise his
+head to see who was coming. Had he done so he would have seen nothing,
+as his eyes were swimming with tears. Looking out of them he saw only as
+one sees who opens his eyes when diving.
+
+"Halloa, young shaver! Dang you! What do you mean giving me such a
+cursed hunt after you as this--you as ain't worth the trouble, eh?"
+
+The voice was that of his father, who drew up before him. Mr. Lambole
+had made inquiries when it was discovered that Joe was lost, first at
+the school, where it was most unlikely he would be found, then at the
+public-house, at the gardener's and the gamekeeper's; then he had looked
+down the well and then up the chimney. After that he went to the cottage
+in the quarry. Roger Gale knew nothing of him. Presently someone coming
+from the nearest village mentioned that he had been seen there;
+whereupon Lambole borrowed Farmer Eggins's trap and went after him,
+peering right and left of the road with his one eye.
+
+Sure enough he had been through the village. He had passed the turnpike.
+The woman there described him accurately as "a sort of a tottle" (fool).
+
+Mr. Lambole was not a pleasant-looking man; he was as solidly built as a
+navvy. The backs of his hands were hairy, and his fist was so hard, and
+his blows so weighty, that for sport he was wont to knock down and kill
+at a blow the oxen sent to Butcher Robbins for slaughter, and that he
+did with his fist alone, hitting the animal on the head between the
+horns, a little forward of the horns. That was a great feat of
+strength, and Lambole was proud of it. He had a long back and short
+legs. The back was not pliable or bending; it was hard, braced with
+sinews tough as hawsers, and supported a pair of shoulders that could
+sustain the weight of an ox.
+
+His face was of a coppery colour, caused by exposure to the air and
+drinking. His hair was light: that was almost the only feature his son
+had derived from him. It was very light, too light for his dark red
+face. It grew about his neck and under his chin as a Newgate collar;
+there was a great deal of it, and his face, encircled by the pale hair,
+looked like an angry moon surrounded by a fog bow.
+
+Mr. Lambole had a queer temper. He bottled up his anger, but when it
+blew the cork out it spurted over and splashed all his home; it flew in
+the faces and soused everyone who came near him.
+
+Mr. Lambole took his son roughly by the arm and lifted him into the tax
+cart. The boy offered no resistance. His spirit was broken, his hopes
+extinguished. For months he had yearned for the red fiddle, price
+three-and-six, and now that, after great pains and privations, he had
+acquired it, the fiddle would not sound.
+
+"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, giving your dear dada such trouble, eh,
+Viper?"
+
+Mr. Lambole turned the horse's head homeward. He had his black patch
+towards the little Gander, seated in the bottom of the cart, hugging his
+wrecked violin. When Mr. Lambole spoke he turned his face round to bring
+the active eye to bear on the shrinking, crouching little figure below.
+
+The Viper made no answer, but looked up. Mr. Lambole turned his face
+away, and the seeing eye watched the horse's ears, and the black patch
+was towards a frightened, piteous, pleading little face, looking up,
+with the light of the evening sky irradiating it, showing how wan it
+was, how hollow were the cheeks, how sunken the eyes, how sharp the
+little pinched nose. The boy put up his arm, that held the bow, and
+wiped his eyes with his sleeve. In so doing he poked his father in the
+ribs with the end of the bow.
+
+"Now, then!" exclaimed Mr. Lambole with an oath, "what darn'd insolence
+be you up to now, Gorilla?"
+
+If he had not held the whip in one hand and the reins in the other he
+would have taken the bow from the child and flung it into the road. He
+contented himself with rapping Joe's head with the end of the whip.
+
+"What's that you've got there, eh?" he asked.
+
+The child replied timidly: "Please, father, a fiddle."
+
+"Where did you get 'un--steal it, eh?"
+
+Joe answered, trembling: "No, dada, I bought it."
+
+"Bought it! Where did you get the money?"
+
+"Miss Amory gave it me."
+
+"How much?"
+
+The Gander answered: "Her gave me five shilling."
+
+"Five shillings! And what did that blessed" (he did not say "blessed,"
+but something quite the reverse) "fiddle cost you?"
+
+"Three-and-sixpence."
+
+"So you've only one-and-six left?"
+
+"I've none, dada."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I spent one shilling on a pipe for you, and sixpence on a
+thimble for stepmother as a present," answered the child, with a flicker
+of hope in his dim eyes that this would propitiate his father.
+
+"Dash me," roared the roadmaker, "if you ain't worse nor Mr.
+Chamberlain, as would rob us of the cheap loaf! What in the name of
+Thunder and Bones do you mean squandering the precious money over
+fooleries like that for? I've got my pipe, black as your back shall be
+before to-morrow, and mother has an old thimble as full o' holes as I'll
+make your skin before the night is much older. Wait till we get home,
+and I'll make pretty music out of that there fiddle! just you see if I
+don't."
+
+Joe shivered in his seat, and his head fell.
+
+Mr. Lambole had a playful wit. He beguiled his journey home by indulging
+in it, and his humour flashed above the head of the child like summer
+lightning. "You're hardly expecting the abundance of the supper that's
+awaiting you," he said, with his black patch glowering down at the
+irresponsive heap in the corner of the cart. "No stinting of the
+dressing, I can tell you. You like your meat well basted, don't you? The
+basting shall not incur your disapproval as insufficient. Underdone? Oh,
+dear, no! Nothing underdone for me. Pickles? I can promise you that
+there is something in pickle for you, hot--very hot and stinging. Plenty
+of capers--mutton and capers. Mashed potatoes? Was the request for that
+on the tip of your tongue? Sorry I can give you only half what you
+want--the mash, not the potatoes. There is nothing comparable in my mind
+to young pig with crackling. The hide is well striped, cut in lines from
+the neck to the tail. I think we'll have crackling on our pig before
+morning."
+
+He now threw his seeing eye into the depths of the cart, to note the
+effect his fun had on the child, but he was disappointed. It had evoked
+no hilarity. Joe had fallen asleep, exhausted by his walk, worn out with
+disappointments, with his head on his fiddle, that lay on his knees. The
+jogging of the cart, the attitude, affected his wound; the plaster had
+given way, and the blood was running over the little red fiddle and
+dripping into its hollow body through the S-hole on each side.
+
+It was too dark for Mr. Lambole to notice this. He set his lips. His
+self-esteem was hurt at the child not relishing his waggery.
+
+Mrs. Lambole observed it when, shortly after, the cart drew up at the
+cottage and she lifted the sleeping child out.
+
+"I must take the cart back to Farmer Eggins," said her husband; "duty
+fust, and pleasure after."
+
+When his father was gone Mrs. Lambole said, "Now then, Joe, you've been
+a very wicked, bad boy, and God will never forgive you for the
+naughtiness you have committed and the trouble to which you have put
+your poor father and me." She would have spoken more sharply but that
+his head needed her care and the sight of the blood disarmed her.
+Moreover, she knew that her husband would not pass over what had
+occurred with a reprimand. "Get off your clothes and go to bed, Joe," she
+said when she had readjusted the plaster. "You may take a piece of dry
+bread with you, and I'll see if I can't persuade your father to put off
+whipping of you for a day or two."
+
+Joe began to cry.
+
+"There," she said, "don't cry. When wicked children do wicked things
+they must suffer for them. It is the law of nature. And," she went on,
+"you ought to be that ashamed of yourself that you'd be glad for the
+earth to open under you and swallow you up like Korah, Dathan, and
+Abiram. Running away from so good and happy a home and such tender
+parents! But I reckon you be lost to natural affection as you be to
+reason."
+
+"May I take my fiddle with me?" asked the boy.
+
+"Oh, take your fiddle if you like," answered his mother. "Much good may
+it do you. Here, it is all smeared wi' blood. Let me wipe it first, or
+you'll mess the bedclothes with it. There," she said as she gave him the
+broken instrument. "Say your prayers and go to sleep; though I reckon
+your prayers will never reach to heaven, coming out of such a wicked
+unnatural heart."
+
+So the little Gander went to his bed. The cottage had but one bedroom
+and a landing above the steep and narrow flight of steps that led to it
+from the kitchen. On this landing was a small truckle bed, on which Joe
+slept. He took off his clothes and stood in his little short shirt of
+very coarse white linen. He knelt down and said his prayers, with both
+his hands spread over his fiddle. Then he got into bed, and until his
+stepmother fetched away the benzoline lamp he examined the instrument.
+He saw that the bridge might be set up again with a little glue, and
+that fresh catgut strings might be supplied. He would take his fiddle
+next day to Roger Gale and ask him to help to mend it for him. He was
+sure Roger would take an interest in it. Roger had been mysterious of
+late, hinting that the time was coming when Joey would have a first-rate
+instrument and learn to play like a Paganini. Yes; the case of the red
+fiddle was not desperate.
+
+Just then he heard the door below open, and his father's step.
+
+"Where is the toad?" said Mr. Lambole.
+
+Joe held his breath, and his blood ran cold. He could hear every word,
+every sound in the room below.
+
+"He's gone to bed," answered Mrs. Lambole. "Leave the poor little
+creetur alone to-night, Samuel; his head has been bad, and he don't look
+well. He's overdone."
+
+"Susan," said the roadmaker, "I've been simmering all the way to town,
+and bubbling and boiling all the way back, and busting is what I be now,
+and bust I will."
+
+Little Joe sat up in bed, hugging the violin, and his tow-like hair
+stood up on his head. His great stupid eyes stared wide with fear; in
+the dark the iris in each had grown big, and deep, and solemn.
+
+"Give me my stick," said Mr. Lambole. "I've promised him a taste of it,
+and a taste won't suffice to-night; he must have a gorge of it."
+
+"I've put it away," said Mrs. Lambole. "Samuel, right is right, and I'm
+not one to stand between the child and what he deserves, but he ain't in
+condition for it to-night. He wants feeding up to it."
+
+Without wasting another word on her the roadmaker went upstairs.
+
+The shuddering, cowering little fellow saw first the red face,
+surrounded by a halo of pale hair, rise above the floor, then the strong
+square shoulders, then the clenched hands, and then his father stood
+before him, revealed down to his thick boots. The child crept back in
+the bed against the wall, and would have disappeared through it had the
+wall been soft-hearted, as in fairy tales, and opened to receive him. He
+clasped his little violin tight to his heart, and then the blood that
+had fallen into it trickled out and ran down his shirt, staining
+it--upon the bedclothes, staining them. But the father did not see this.
+He was effervescing with fury. His pulses went at a gallop, and his
+great fists clutched spasmodically.
+
+"You Judas Iscariot, come here!" he shouted.
+
+But the child only pressed closer against the wall.
+
+"What! disobedient and daring? Do you hear? Come to me!"
+
+The trembling child pointed to a pretty little pipe on the bedclothes.
+He had drawn it from his pocket and taken the paper off it, and laid it
+there, and stuck the silver-headed thimble in the bowl for his
+stepmother when she came upstairs to take the lamp.
+
+"Come here, vagabond!"
+
+He could not; he had not the courage nor the strength.
+
+He still pointed pleadingly to the little presents he had bought with
+his eighteenpence.
+
+"You won't, you dogged, insulting being?" roared the roadmaker, and
+rushed at him, knocking over the pipe, which fell and broke on the
+floor, and trampling flat the thimble. "You won't yet? Always full of
+sulks and defiance! Oh, you ungrateful one, you!" Then he had him by the
+collar of his night-shirt and dragged him from his bed, and with his
+violence tore the button off, and with his other hand he wrenched the
+violin away and beat the child over the back with it as he dragged him
+from the bed.
+
+"Oh, my mammy! my mammy!" cried Joe.
+
+He was not crying out for his stepmother. It was the agonised cry of his
+frightened heart for the one only being who had ever loved him, and whom
+God had removed from him.
+
+Suddenly Samuel Lambole started back.
+
+Before him, and between him and the child, stood a pale, ghostly form,
+and he knew his first wife.
+
+He stood speechless and quaking. Then, gradually recovering himself, he
+stumbled down the stairs, and seated himself, looking pasty and scared,
+by the fire below.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Samuel?" asked his wife.
+
+"I've seen her," he gasped. "Don't ask no more questions."
+
+Now when he was gone, little Joe, filled with terror--not at the
+apparition, which he had not seen, for his eyes were too dazed to behold
+it, but with apprehension of the chastisement that awaited him,
+scrambled out of the window and dropped on the pigsty roof, and from
+thence jumped to the ground.
+
+Then he ran--ran as fast as his legs could carry him, still hugging his
+instrument--to the churchyard; and on reaching that he threw himself on
+his mother's grave and sobbed: "Oh, mammy, mammy! father wants to beat
+me and take away my beautiful violin--but oh, mammy! my violin won't
+play."
+
+And when he had spoken, from out the grave rose the form of his lost
+mother, and looked kindly on him.
+
+Joe saw her, and he had no fear.
+
+"Mammy!" said he, "mammy, my violin cost three shillings and sixpence,
+and I can't make it play no-ways."
+
+[Illustration: "MAMMY," SAID HE, "MAMMY, MY VIOLIN COST THREE SHILLINGS
+AND SIXPENCE, AND I CAN'T MAKE IT PLAY NOWAYS."]
+
+Then the spirit of his mother passed a hand over the the strings, and
+smiled. Joe looked into her eyes, and they were as stars. And he put the
+violin under his chin, and drew the bow across the strings--and lo! they
+sounded wondrously. His soul thrilled, his heart bounded, his dull
+eye brightened. He was as though caught up in a chariot of fire and
+carried to heavenly places. His bow worked rapidly, such strains poured
+from the little instrument as he had never heard before. It was to him
+as though heaven opened, and he heard the angels performing there, and
+he with his fiddle was taking a part in the mighty symphony. He felt not
+the cold, the night was not dark to him. His head no longer ached. It
+was as though after long seeking through life he had gained an
+undreamed-of prize, reached some glorious consummation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a musical party that same evening at the Hall. Miss Amory
+played beautifully, with extraordinary feeling and execution, both with
+and without accompaniment on the piano. Several ladies and gentlemen
+sang and played; there were duets and trios.
+
+During the performances the guests talked to each other in low tones
+about various topics.
+
+Said one lady to Mrs. Amory: "How strange it is that among the English
+lower classes there is no love of music."
+
+"There is none at all," answered Mrs. Amory; "our rector's wife has
+given herself great trouble to get up parochial entertainments, but we
+find that nothing takes with the people but comic songs, and these,
+instead of elevating, vulgarise them."
+
+"They have no music in them. The only people with music in their souls
+are the Germans and the Italians."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Amory with a sigh; "it is sad, but true: there is
+neither poetry, nor picturesqueness, nor music among the English
+peasantry."
+
+"You have never heard of one, self-taught, with a real love of music in
+this country?"
+
+"Never: such do not exist among us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The parish churchwarden was walking along the road on his way to his
+farmhouse, and the road passed under the churchyard wall.
+
+As he walked along the way--with a not too steady step, for he was
+returning from the public-house--he was surprised and frightened to hear
+music proceed from among the graves.
+
+It was too dark for him to see any figure then, only the tombstones
+loomed on him in ghostly shapes. He began to quake, and finally turned
+and ran, nor did he slacken his pace till he reached the tavern, where
+he burst in shouting: "There's ghosts abroad. I've heard 'em in the
+churchyard making music."
+
+The revellers rose from their cups.
+
+"Shall we go and hear?" they asked.
+
+"I'll go for one," said a man; "if others will go with me."
+
+"Ay," said a third, "and if the ghosts be playing a jolly good tune,
+we'll chip in."
+
+So the whole half-tipsy party reeled along the road, talking very loud,
+to encourage themselves and the others, till they approached the church,
+the spire of which stood up dark against the night sky.
+
+"There's no lights in the windows," said one.
+
+"No," observed the churchwarden, "I didn't notice any myself; it was
+from the graves the music came, as if all the dead was squeakin' like
+pigs."
+
+"Hush!" All kept silence--not a sound could be heard.
+
+"I'm sure I heard music afore," said the churchwarden. "I'll bet a
+gallon of ale I did."
+
+"There ain't no music now, though," remarked one of the men.
+
+"Nor more there ain't," said others.
+
+"Well, I don't care--I say I heard it," asseverated the churchwarden.
+"Let's go up closer."
+
+All of the party drew nearer to the wall of the graveyard. One man,
+incapable of maintaining his legs unaided, sustained himself on the arm
+of another.
+
+"Well, I do believe, Churchwarden Eggins, as how you have been leading
+us a wild goose chase!" said a fellow.
+
+Then the clouds broke, and a bright, dazzling pure ray shot down on a
+grave in the churchyard, and revealed a little figure lying on it.
+
+"I do believe," said one man, "as how, if he ain't led us a goose chase,
+he's brought us after a Gander--surely that is little Joe."
+
+Thus encouraged, and their fears dispelled, the whole half-tipsy party
+stumbled up the graveyard steps, staggered among the tombs, some
+tripping on the mounds and falling prostrate. All laughed, talked, joked
+with one another.
+
+The only one silent there was little Joe Gander--and he was gone to join
+in the great symphony above.
+
+
+
+
+A DEAD FINGER
+
+
+I
+
+Why the National Gallery should not attract so many visitors as, say,
+the British Museum, I cannot explain. The latter does not contain much
+that, one would suppose, appeals to the interest of the ordinary
+sightseer. What knows such of prehistoric flints and scratched bones? Of
+Assyrian sculpture? Of Egyptian hieroglyphics? The Greek and Roman
+statuary is cold and dead. The paintings in the National Gallery glow
+with colour, and are instinct with life. Yet, somehow, a few listless
+wanderers saunter yawning through the National Gallery, whereas swarms
+pour through the halls of the British Museum, and talk and pass remarks
+about the objects there exposed, of the date and meaning of which they
+have not the faintest conception.
+
+I was thinking of this problem, and endeavouring to unravel it, one
+morning whilst sitting in the room for English masters at the great
+collection in Trafalgar Square. At the same time another thought forced
+itself upon me. I had been through the rooms devoted to foreign schools,
+and had then come into that given over to Reynolds, Morland,
+Gainsborough, Constable, and Hogarth. The morning had been for a while
+propitious, but towards noon a dense umber-tinted fog had come on,
+making it all but impossible to see the pictures, and quite impossible
+to do them justice. I was tired, and so seated myself on one of the
+chairs, and fell into the consideration first of all of--why the
+National Gallery is not as popular as it should be; and secondly, how it
+was that the British School had no beginnings, like those of Italy and
+the Netherlands. We can see the art of the painter from its first
+initiation in the Italian peninsula, and among the Flemings. It starts
+on its progress like a child, and we can trace every stage of its
+growth. Not so with English art. It springs to life in full and splendid
+maturity. Who were there before Reynolds and Gainsborough and Hogarth?
+The great names of those portrait and subject painters who have left
+their canvases upon the walls of our country houses were those of
+foreigners--Holbein, Kneller, Van Dyck, and Lely for portraits, and
+Monnoyer for flower and fruit pieces. Landscapes, figure subjects were
+all importations, none home-grown. How came that about? Was there no
+limner that was native? Was it that fashion trampled on home-grown
+pictorial beginnings as it flouted and spurned native music?
+
+Here was food for contemplation. Dreaming in the brown fog, looking
+through it without seeing its beauties, at Hogarth's painting of Lavinia
+Fenton as Polly Peachum, without wondering how so indifferent a beauty
+could have captivated the Duke of Bolton and held him for thirty years,
+I was recalled to myself and my surroundings by the strange conduct of a
+lady who had seated herself on a chair near me, also discouraged by the
+fog, and awaiting its dispersion.
+
+I had not noticed her particularly. At the present moment I do not
+remember particularly what she was like. So far as I can recollect she
+was middle-aged, and was quietly yet well dressed. It was not her face
+nor her dress that attracted my attention and disturbed the current of
+my thoughts; the effect I speak of was produced by her strange movements
+and behaviour.
+
+She had been sitting listless, probably thinking of nothing at all, or
+nothing in particular, when, in turning her eyes round, and finding
+that she could see nothing of the paintings, she began to study me. This
+did concern me greatly. A cat may look at the king; but to be
+contemplated by a lady is a compliment sufficient to please any
+gentleman. It was not gratified vanity that troubled my thoughts, but
+the consciousness that my appearance produced--first of all a startled
+surprise, then undisguised alarm, and, finally, indescribable horror.
+
+Now a man can sit quietly leaning on the head of his umbrella, and glow
+internally, warmed and illumined by the consciousness that he is being
+surveyed with admiration by a lovely woman, even when he is middle-aged
+and not fashionably dressed; but no man can maintain his composure when
+he discovers himself to be an object of aversion and terror.
+
+What was it? I passed my hand over my chin and upper lip, thinking it
+not impossible that I might have forgotten to shave that morning, and in
+my confusion not considering that the fog would prevent the lady from
+discovering neglect in this particular, had it occurred, which it had
+not. I am a little careless, perhaps, about shaving when in the country;
+but when in town, never.
+
+The next idea that occurred to me was--a smut. Had a London black,
+curdled in that dense pea-soup atmosphere, descended on my nose and
+blackened it? I hastily drew my silk handkerchief from my pocket,
+moistened it, and passed it over my nose, and then each cheek. I then
+turned my eyes into the corners and looked at the lady, to see whether
+by this means I had got rid of what was objectionable in my personal
+appearance.
+
+Then I saw that her eyes, dilated with horror, were riveted, not on my
+face, but on my leg.
+
+My leg! What on earth could that harmless member have in it so
+terrifying? The morning had been dull; there had been rain in the night,
+and I admit that on leaving my hotel I had turned up the bottoms of my
+trousers. That is a proceeding not so uncommon, not so outrageous as to
+account for the stony stare of this woman's eyes.
+
+If that were all I would turn my trousers down.
+
+Then I saw her shrink from the chair on which she sat to one further
+removed from me, but still with her eyes fixed on my leg--about the
+level of my knee. She had let fall her umbrella, and was grasping the
+seat of her chair with both hands, as she backed from me.
+
+I need hardly say that I was greatly disturbed in mind and feelings, and
+forgot all about the origin of the English schools of painters, and the
+question why the British Museum is more popular than the National
+Gallery.
+
+Thinking that I might have been spattered by a hansom whilst crossing
+Oxford Street, I passed my hand down my side hastily, with a sense of
+annoyance, and all at once touched something cold, clammy, that sent a
+thrill to my heart, and made me start and take a step forward. At the
+same moment, the lady, with a cry of horror, sprang to her feet, and
+with raised hands fled from the room, leaving her umbrella where it had
+fallen.
+
+There were other visitors to the Picture Gallery besides ourselves, who
+had been passing through the saloon, and they turned at her cry, and
+looked in surprise after her.
+
+The policeman stationed in the room came to me and asked what had
+happened. I was in such agitation that I hardly knew what to answer. I
+told him that I could explain what had occurred little better than
+himself. I had noticed that the lady had worn an odd expression, and had
+behaved in most extraordinary fashion, and that he had best take charge
+of her umbrella, and wait for her return to claim it.
+
+This questioning by the official was vexing, as it prevented me from at
+once and on the spot investigating the cause of her alarm and mine--hers
+at something she must have seen on my leg, and mine at something I had
+distinctly felt creeping up my leg.
+
+The numbing and sickening effect on me of the touch of the object I had
+not seen was not to be shaken off at once. Indeed, I felt as though my
+hand were contaminated, and that I could have no rest till I had
+thoroughly washed the hand, and, if possible, washed away the feeling
+that had been produced.
+
+I looked on the floor, I examined my leg, but saw nothing. As I wore my
+overcoat, it was probable that in rising from my seat the skirt had
+fallen over my trousers and hidden the thing, whatever it was. I
+therefore hastily removed my overcoat and shook it, then I looked at my
+trousers. There was nothing whatever on my leg, and nothing fell from my
+overcoat when shaken.
+
+Accordingly I reinvested myself, and hastily left the Gallery; then took
+my way as speedily as I could, without actually running, to Charing
+Cross Station and down the narrow way leading to the Metropolitan, where
+I went into Faulkner's bath and hairdressing establishment, and asked
+for hot water to thoroughly wash my hand and well soap it. I bathed my
+hand in water as hot as I could endure it, employed carbolic soap, and
+then, after having a good brush down, especially on my left side where
+my hand had encountered the object that had so affected me, I left. I
+had entertained the intention of going to the Princess's Theatre that
+evening, and of securing a ticket in the morning; but all thought of
+theatre-going was gone from me. I could not free my heart from the sense
+of nausea and cold that had been produced by the touch. I went into
+Gatti's to have lunch, and ordered something, I forget what, but, when
+served, I found that my appetite was gone. I could eat nothing; the food
+inspired me with disgust. I thrust it from me untasted, and, after
+drinking a couple of glasses of claret, left the restaurant, and
+returned to my hotel.
+
+Feeling sick and faint, I threw my overcoat over the sofa-back, and cast
+myself on my bed.
+
+I do not know that there was any particular reason for my doing so, but
+as I lay my eyes were on my great-coat.
+
+The density of the fog had passed away, and there was light again, not
+of first quality, but sufficient for a Londoner to swear by, so that I
+could see everything in my room, though through a veil, darkly.
+
+I do not think my mind was occupied in any way. About the only occasions
+on which, to my knowledge, my mind is actually passive or inert is when
+crossing the Channel in _The Foam_ from Dover to Calais, when I am
+always, in every weather, abjectly seasick--and thoughtless. But as I
+now lay on my bed, uncomfortable, squeamish, without knowing why--I was
+in the same inactive mental condition. But not for long.
+
+I saw something that startled me.
+
+First, it appeared to me as if the lappet of my overcoat pocket were in
+movement, being raised. I did not pay much attention to this, as I
+supposed that the garment was sliding down on to the seat of the sofa,
+from the back, and that this displacement of gravity caused the movement
+I observed. But this I soon saw was not the case. That which moved the
+lappet was something in the pocket that was struggling to get out. I
+could see now that it was working its way up the inside, and that when
+it reached the opening it lost balance and fell down again. I could make
+this out by the projections and indentations in the cloth; these moved
+as the creature, or whatever it was, worked its way up the lining.
+
+"A mouse," I said, and forgot my seediness; I was interested. "The
+little rascal! However did he contrive to seat himself in my pocket? and
+I have worn that overcoat all the morning!" But no--it was not a mouse.
+I saw something white poke its way out from under the lappet; and in
+another moment an object was revealed that, though revealed, I could not
+understand, nor could I distinguish what it was.
+
+Now roused by curiosity, I raised myself on my elbow. In doing this I
+made some noise, the bed creaked. Instantly the something dropped on the
+floor, lay outstretched for a moment, to recover itself, and then began,
+with the motions of a maggot, to run along the floor.
+
+There is a caterpillar called "The Measurer," because, when it advances,
+it draws its tail up to where its head is and then throws forward its
+full length, and again draws up its extremity, forming at each time a
+loop; and with each step measuring its total length. The object I now
+saw on the floor was advancing precisely like the measuring caterpillar.
+It had the colour of a cheese-maggot, and in length was about three and
+a half inches. It was not, however, like a caterpillar, which is
+flexible throughout its entire length, but this was, as it seemed to me,
+jointed in two places, one joint being more conspicuous than the other.
+For some moments I was so completely paralysed by astonishment that I
+remained motionless, looking at the thing as it crawled along the
+carpet--a dull green carpet with darker green, almost black, flowers in
+it.
+
+It had, as it seemed to me, a glossy head, distinctly marked; but, as
+the light was not brilliant, I could not make out very clearly, and,
+moreover, the rapid movements prevented close scrutiny.
+
+Presently, with a shock still more startling than that produced by its
+apparition at the opening of the pocket of my great-coat, I became
+convinced that what I saw was a finger, a human forefinger, and that the
+glossy head was no other than the nail.
+
+The finger did not seem to have been amputated. There was no sign of
+blood or laceration where the knuckle should be, but the extremity of
+the finger, or root rather, faded away to indistinctness, and I was
+unable to make out the root of the finger.
+
+I could see no hand, no body behind this finger, nothing whatever except
+a finger that had little token of warm life in it, no coloration as
+though blood circulated in it; and this finger was in active motion
+creeping along the carpet towards a wardrobe that stood against the wall
+by the fireplace.
+
+I sprang off the bed and pursued it.
+
+Evidently the finger was alarmed, for it redoubled its pace, reached the
+wardrobe, and went under it. By the time I had arrived at the article of
+furniture it had disappeared. I lit a vesta match and held it beneath
+the wardrobe, that was raised above the carpet by about two inches, on
+turned feet, but I could see nothing more of the finger.
+
+I got my umbrella and thrust it beneath, and raked forwards and
+backwards, right and left, and raked out flue, and nothing more solid.
+
+
+II
+
+I packed my portmanteau next day and returned to my home in the country.
+All desire for amusement in town was gone, and the faculty to transact
+business had departed as well.
+
+A languor and qualms had come over me, and my head was in a maze. I was
+unable to fix my thoughts on anything. At times I was disposed to
+believe that my wits were deserting me, at others that I was on the
+verge of a severe illness. Anyhow, whether likely to go off my head or
+not, or take to my bed, home was the only place for me, and homeward I
+sped, accordingly. On reaching my country habitation, my servant, as
+usual, took my portmanteau to my bedroom, unstrapped it, but did not
+unpack it. I object to his throwing out the contents of my Gladstone
+bag; not that there is anything in it he may not see, but that he puts
+my things where I cannot find them again. My clothes--he is welcome to
+place them where he likes and where they belong, and this latter he
+knows better than I do; but, then, I carry about with me other things
+than a dress suit, and changes of linen and flannel. There are letters,
+papers, books--and the proper destinations of these are known only to
+myself. A servant has a singular and evil knack of putting away literary
+matter and odd volumes in such places that it takes the owner half a day
+to find them again. Although I was uncomfortable, and my head in a
+whirl, I opened and unpacked my own portmanteau. As I was thus engaged I
+saw something curled up in my collar-box, the lid of which had got
+broken in by a boot-heel impinging on it. I had pulled off the damaged
+cover to see if my collars had been spoiled, when something curled up
+inside suddenly rose on end and leapt, just like a cheese-jumper, out of
+the box, over the edge of the Gladstone bag, and scurried away across
+the floor in a manner already familiar to me.
+
+I could not doubt for a moment what it was--here was the finger again.
+It had come with me from London to the country.
+
+Whither it went in its run over the floor I do not know, I was too
+bewildered to observe.
+
+Somewhat later, towards evening, I seated myself in my easy-chair, took
+up a book, and tried to read. I was tired with the journey, with the
+knocking about in town, and the discomfort and alarm produced by the
+apparition of the finger. I felt worn out. I was unable to give my
+attention to what I read, and before I was aware was asleep. Roused for
+an instant by the fall of the book from my hands, I speedily relapsed
+into unconsciousness. I am not sure that a doze in an armchair ever does
+good. It usually leaves me in a semi-stupid condition and with a
+headache. Five minutes in a horizontal position on my bed is worth
+thirty in a chair. That is my experience. In sleeping in a sedentary
+position the head is a difficulty; it drops forward or lolls on one side
+or the other, and has to be brought back into a position in which the
+line to the centre of gravity runs through the trunk, otherwise the head
+carries the body over in a sort of general capsize out of the chair on
+to the floor.
+
+I slept, on the occasion of which I am speaking, pretty healthily,
+because deadly weary; but I was brought to waking, not by my head
+falling over the arm of the chair, and my trunk tumbling after it, but
+by a feeling of cold extending from my throat to my heart. When I awoke
+I was in a diagonal position, with my right ear resting on my right
+shoulder, and exposing the left side of my throat, and it was
+here--where the jugular vein throbs--that I felt the greatest intensity
+of cold. At once I shrugged my left shoulder, rubbing my neck with the
+collar of my coat in so doing. Immediately something fell off, upon the
+floor, and I again saw the finger.
+
+My disgust--horror, were intensified when I perceived that it was
+dragging something after it, which might have been an old stocking, and
+which I took at first glance for something of the sort.
+
+The evening sun shone in through my window, in a brilliant golden ray
+that lighted the object as it scrambled along. With this illumination I
+was able to distinguish what the object was. It is not easy to describe
+it, but I will make the attempt.
+
+The finger I saw was solid and material; what it drew after it was
+neither, or was in a nebulous, protoplasmic condition. The finger was
+attached to a hand that was curdling into matter and in process of
+acquiring solidity; attached to the hand was an arm in a very filmy
+condition, and this arm belonged to a human body in a still more
+vaporous, immaterial condition. This was being dragged along the floor
+by the finger, just as a silkworm might pull after it the tangle of its
+web. I could see legs and arms, and head, and coat-tail tumbling about
+and interlacing and disentangling again in a promiscuous manner. There
+were no bone, no muscle, no substance in the figure; the members were
+attached to the trunk, which was spineless, but they had evidently no
+functions, and were wholly dependent on the finger which pulled them
+along in a jumble of parts as it advanced.
+
+In such confusion did the whole vaporous matter seem, that I think--I
+cannot say for certain it was so, but the impression left on my mind
+was--that one of the eyeballs was looking out at a nostril, and the
+tongue lolling out of one of the ears.
+
+It was, however, only for a moment that I saw this germ-body; I cannot
+call by another name that which had not more substance than smoke. I saw
+it only so long as it was being dragged athwart the ray of sunlight. The
+moment it was pulled jerkily out of the beam into the shadow beyond, I
+could see nothing of it, only the crawling finger.
+
+I had not sufficient moral energy or physical force in me to rise,
+pursue, and stamp on the finger, and grind it with my heel into the
+floor. Both seemed drained out of me. What became of the finger, whither
+it went, how it managed to secrete itself, I do not know. I had lost the
+power to inquire. I sat in my chair, chilled, staring before me into
+space.
+
+"Please, sir," a voice said, "there's Mr. Square below, electrical
+engineer."
+
+"Eh?" I looked dreamily round.
+
+My valet was at the door.
+
+"Please, sir, the gentleman would be glad to be allowed to go over the
+house and see that all the electrical apparatus is in order."
+
+"Oh, indeed! Yes--show him up."
+
+
+III
+
+I had recently placed the lighting of my house in the hands of an
+electrical engineer, a very intelligent man, Mr. Square, for whom I had
+contracted a sincere friendship.
+
+He had built a shed with a dynamo out of sight, and had entrusted the
+laying of the wires to subordinates, as he had been busy with other
+orders and could not personally watch every detail. But he was not the
+man to let anything pass unobserved, and he knew that electricity was
+not a force to be played with. Bad or careless workmen will often
+insufficiently protect the wires, or neglect the insertion of the lead
+which serves as a safety-valve in the event of the current being too
+strong. Houses may be set on fire, human beings fatally shocked, by the
+neglect of a bad or slovenly workman.
+
+The apparatus for my mansion was but just completed, and Mr. Square had
+come to inspect it and make sure that all was right.
+
+He was an enthusiast in the matter of electricity, and saw for it a vast
+perspective, the limits of which could not be predicted.
+
+"All forces," said he, "are correlated. When you have force in one form,
+you may just turn it into this or that, as you like. In one form it is
+motive power, in another it is light, in another heat. Now we have
+electricity for illumination. We employ it, but not as freely as in the
+States, for propelling vehicles. Why should we have horses drawing our
+buses? We should use only electric trams. Why do we burn coal to warm
+our shins? There is electricity, which throws out no filthy smoke as
+does coal. Why should we let the tides waste their energies in the
+Thames? in other estuaries? There we have Nature supplying us--free,
+gratis, and for nothing--with all the force we want for propelling, for
+heating, for lighting. I will tell you something more, my dear sir,"
+said Mr. Square. "I have mentioned but three modes of force, and have
+instanced but a limited number of uses to which electricity may be
+turned. How is it with photography? Is not electric light becoming an
+artistic agent? I bet you," said he, "before long it will become a
+therapeutic agent as well."
+
+"Oh, yes; I have heard of certain impostors with their life-belts."
+
+Mr. Square did not relish this little dig I gave him. He winced, but
+returned to the charge. "We don't know how to direct it aright, that is
+all," said he. "I haven't taken the matter up, but others will, I bet;
+and we shall have electricity used as freely as now we use powders and
+pills. I don't believe in doctors' stuffs myself. I hold that disease
+lays hold of a man because he lacks physical force to resist it. Now, is
+it not obvious that you are beginning at the wrong end when you attack
+the disease? What you want is to supply force, make up for the lack of
+physical power, and force is force wherever you find it--here motive,
+there illuminating, and so on. I don't see why a physician should not
+utilise the tide rushing out under London Bridge for restoring the
+feeble vigour of all who are languid and a prey to disorder in the
+Metropolis. It will come to that, I bet, and that is not all. Force is
+force, everywhere. Political, moral force, physical force, dynamic
+force, heat, light, tidal waves, and so on--all are one, all is one. In
+time we shall know how to galvanise into aptitude and moral energy all
+the limp and crooked consciences and wills that need taking in hand, and
+such there always will be in modern civilisation. I don't know how to do
+it. I don't know how it will be done, but in the future the priest as
+well as the doctor will turn electricity on as his principal, nay, his
+only agent. And he can get his force anywhere, out of the running
+stream, out of the wind, out of the tidal wave.
+
+"I'll give you an instance," continued Mr. Square, chuckling and rubbing
+his hands, "to show you the great possibilities in electricity, used in
+a crude fashion. In a certain great city away far west in the States, a
+go-ahead place, too, more so than New York, they had electric trams all
+up and down and along the roads to everywhere. The union men working for
+the company demanded that the non-unionists should be turned off. But
+the company didn't see it. Instead, it turned off the union men. It had
+up its sleeve a sufficiency of the others, and filled all places at
+once. Union men didn't like it, and passed word that at a given hour on
+a certain day every wire was to be cut. The company knew this by means
+of its spies, and turned on, ready for them, three times the power into
+all the wires. At the fixed moment, up the poles went the strikers to
+cut the cables, and down they came a dozen times quicker than they went
+up, I bet. Then there came wires to the hospitals from all quarters for
+stretchers to carry off the disabled men, some with broken legs, arms,
+ribs; two or three had their necks broken. I reckon the company was
+wonderfully merciful--it didn't put on sufficient force to make cinders
+of them then and there; possibly opinion might not have liked it.
+Stopped the strike, did that. Great moral effect--all done by
+electricity."
+
+In this manner Mr. Square was wont to rattle on. He interested me, and I
+came to think that there might be something in what he said--that his
+suggestions were not mere nonsense. I was glad to see Mr. Square enter
+my room, shown in by my man. I did not rise from my chair to shake his
+hand, for I had not sufficient energy to do so. In a languid tone I
+welcomed him and signed to him to take a seat. Mr. Square looked at me
+with some surprise.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" he said. "You seem unwell. Not got the 'flue,
+have you?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"The influenza. Every third person is crying out that he has it, and the
+sale of eucalyptus is enormous, not that eucalyptus is any good.
+Influenza microbes indeed! What care they for eucalyptus? You've gone
+down some steps of the ladder of life since I saw you last, squire. How
+do you account for that?"
+
+I hesitated about mentioning the extraordinary circumstances that had
+occurred; but Square was a man who would not allow any beating about the
+bush. He was downright and straight, and in ten minutes had got the
+entire story out of me.
+
+"Rather boisterous for your nerves that--a crawling finger," said he.
+"It's a queer story taken on end."
+
+Then he was silent, considering.
+
+After a few minutes he rose, and said: "I'll go and look at the
+fittings, and then I'll turn this little matter of yours over again, and
+see if I can't knock the bottom out of it, I'm kinder fond of these sort
+of things."
+
+Mr. Square was not a Yankee, but he had lived for some time in America,
+and affected to speak like an American. He used expressions, terms of
+speech common in the States, but had none of the Transatlantic twang. He
+was a man absolutely without affectation in every other particular; this
+was his sole weakness, and it was harmless.
+
+The man was so thorough in all he did that I did not expect his return
+immediately. He was certain to examine every portion of the dynamo
+engine, and all the connections and burners. This would necessarily
+engage him for some hours. As the day was nearly done, I knew he could
+not accomplish what he wanted that evening, and accordingly gave orders
+that a room should be prepared for him. Then, as my head was full of
+pain, and my skin was burning, I told my servant to apologise for my
+absence from dinner, and tell Mr. Square that I was really forced to
+return to my bed by sickness, and that I believed I was about to be
+prostrated by an attack of influenza.
+
+The valet--a worthy fellow, who has been with me for six years--was
+concerned at my appearance, and urged me to allow him to send for a
+doctor. I had no confidence in the local practitioner, and if I sent for
+another from the nearest town I should offend him, and a row would
+perhaps ensue, so I declined. If I were really in for an influenza
+attack, I knew about as much as any doctor how to deal with it. Quinine,
+quinine--that was all. I bade my man light a small lamp, lower it, so as
+to give sufficient illumination to enable me to find some lime-juice at
+my bed head, and my pocket-handkerchief, and to be able to read my
+watch. When he had done this, I bade him leave me.
+
+I lay in bed, burning, racked with pain in my head, and with my eyeballs
+on fire.
+
+Whether I fell asleep or went off my head for a while I cannot tell. I
+may have fainted. I have no recollection of anything after having gone
+to bed and taken a sip of lime-juice that tasted to me like soap--till I
+was roused by a sense of pain in my ribs--a slow, gnawing, torturing
+pain, waxing momentarily more intense. In half-consciousness I was
+partly dreaming and partly aware of actual suffering. The pain was real;
+but in my fancy I thought that a great maggot was working its way into
+my side between my ribs. I seemed to see it. It twisted itself half
+round, then reverted to its former position, and again twisted itself,
+moving like a bradawl, not like a gimlet, which latter forms a complete
+revolution.
+
+This, obviously, must have been a dream, hallucination only, as I was
+lying on my back and my eyes were directed towards the bottom of the
+bed, and the coverlet and blankets and sheet intervened between my eyes
+and my side. But in fever one sees without eyes, and in every direction,
+and through all obstructions.
+
+Roused thoroughly by an excruciating twinge, I tried to cry out, and
+succeeded in throwing myself over on my right side, that which was in
+pain. At once I felt the thing withdrawn that was awling--if I may use
+the word--in between my ribs.
+
+And now I saw, standing beside the bed, a figure that had its arm under
+the bedclothes, and was slowly removing it. The hand was leisurely
+drawn from under the coverings and rested on the eider-down coverlet,
+with the forefinger extended.
+
+The figure was that of a man, in shabby clothes, with a sallow, mean
+face, a retreating forehead, with hair cut after the French fashion, and
+a moustache, dark. The jaws and chin were covered with a bristly growth,
+as if shaving had been neglected for a fortnight. The figure did not
+appear to be thoroughly solid, but to be of the consistency of curd, and
+the face was of the complexion of curd. As I looked at this object it
+withdrew, sliding backward in an odd sort of manner, and as though
+overweighted by the hand, which was the most substantial, indeed the
+only substantial portion of it. Though the figure retreated stooping,
+yet it was no longer huddled along by the finger, as if it had no
+material existence. If the same, it had acquired a consistency and a
+solidity which it did not possess before.
+
+How it vanished I do not know, nor whither it went. The door opened, and
+Square came in.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed with cheery voice; "influenza is it?"
+
+"I don't know--I think it's that finger again."
+
+
+IV
+
+"Now, look here," said Square, "I'm not going to have that cuss at its
+pranks any more. Tell me all about it."
+
+I was now so exhausted, so feeble, that I was not able to give a
+connected account of what had taken place, but Square put to me just a
+few pointed questions and elicited the main facts. He pieced them
+together in his own orderly mind, so as to form a connected whole.
+"There is a feature in the case," said he, "that strikes me as
+remarkable and important. At first--a finger only, then a hand, then a
+nebulous figure attached to the hand, without backbone, without
+consistency. Lastly, a complete form, with consistency and with
+backbone, but the latter in a gelatinous condition, and the entire
+figure overweighted by the hand, just as hand and figure were previously
+overweighted by the finger. Simultaneously with this compacting and
+consolidating of the figure, came your degeneration and loss of vital
+force and, in a word, of health. What you lose, that object acquires,
+and what it acquires, it gains by contact with you. That's clear enough,
+is it not?"
+
+"I dare say. I don't know. I can't think."
+
+"I suppose not; the faculty of thought is drained out of you. Very well,
+I must think for you, and I will. Force is force, and see if I can't
+deal with your visitant in such a way as will prove just as truly a
+moral dissuasive as that employed on the union men on strike in--never
+mind where it was. That's not to the point."
+
+"Will you kindly give me some lime-juice?" I entreated.
+
+I sipped the acid draught, but without relief. I listened to Square, but
+without hope. I wanted to be left alone. I was weary of my pain, weary
+of everything, even of life. It was a matter of indifference to me
+whether I recovered or slipped out of existence.
+
+"It will be here again shortly," said the engineer. "As the French say,
+_l'appetit vient en mangeant_. It has been at you thrice, it won't be
+content without another peck. And if it does get another, I guess it
+will pretty well about finish you."
+
+Mr. Square rubbed his chin, and then put his hands into his trouser
+pockets. That also was a trick acquired in the States, an inelegant one.
+His hands, when not actively occupied, went into his pockets, inevitably
+they gravitated thither. Ladies did not like Square; they said he was
+not a gentleman. But it was not that he said or did anything "off
+colour," only he spoke to them, looked at them, walked with them, always
+with his hands in his pockets. I have seen a lady turn her back on him
+deliberately because of this trick.
+
+Standing now with his hands in his pockets, he studied my bed, and said
+contemptuously: "Old-fashioned and bad, fourposter. Oughtn't to be
+allowed, I guess; unwholesome all the way round."
+
+I was not in a condition to dispute this. I like a fourposter with
+curtains at head and feet; not that I ever draw them, but it gives a
+sense of privacy that is wanting in one of your half-tester beds.
+
+If there is a window at one's feet, one can lie in bed without the glare
+in one's eyes, and yet without darkening the room by drawing the blinds.
+There is much to be said for a fourposter, but this is not the place in
+which to say it.
+
+Mr. Square pulled his hands out of his pockets and began fiddling with
+the electric point near the head of my bed, attached a wire, swept it in
+a semicircle along the floor, and then thrust the knob at the end into
+my hand in the bed.
+
+"Keep your eye open," said he, "and your hand shut and covered. If that
+finger comes again tickling your ribs, try it with the point. I'll
+manage the switch, from behind the curtain."
+
+Then he disappeared.
+
+I was too indifferent in my misery to turn my head and observe where he
+was. I remained inert, with the knob in my hand, and my eyes closed,
+suffering and thinking of nothing but the shooting pains through my head
+and the aches in my loins and back and legs.
+
+Some time probably elapsed before I felt the finger again at work at my
+ribs; it groped, but no longer bored. I now felt the entire hand, not a
+single finger, and the hand was substantial, cold, and clammy. I was
+aware, how, I know not, that if the finger-point reached the region of
+my heart, on the left side, the hand would, so to speak, sit down on it,
+with the cold palm over it, and that then immediately my heart would
+cease to beat, and it would be, as Square might express it, "gone coon"
+with me.
+
+In self-preservation I brought up the knob of the electric wire against
+the hand--against one of the ringers, I think--and at once was aware of
+a rapping, squealing noise. I turned my head languidly, and saw the
+form, now more substantial than before, capering in an ecstasy of pain,
+endeavouring fruitlessly to withdraw its arm from under the bedclothes,
+and the hand from the electric point.
+
+At the same moment Square stepped from behind the curtain, with a dry
+laugh, and said: "I thought we should fix him. He has the coil about
+him, and can't escape. Now let us drop to particulars. But I shan't let
+you off till I know all about you."
+
+The last sentence was addressed, not to me, but to the apparition.
+
+Thereupon he bade me take the point away from the hand of the
+figure--being--whatever it was, but to be ready with it at a moment's
+notice. He then proceeded to catechise my visitor, who moved restlessly
+within the circle of wire, but could not escape from it. It replied in a
+thin, squealing voice that sounded as if it came from a distance, and
+had a querulous tone in it. I do not pretend to give all that was said.
+I cannot recollect everything that passed. My memory was affected by my
+illness, as well as my body. Yet I prefer giving the scraps that I
+recollect to what Square told me he had heard.
+
+"Yes--I was unsuccessful, always was. Nothing answered with me. The
+world was against me. Society was. I hate Society. I don't like work
+neither, never did. But I like agitating against what is established. I
+hate the Royal Family, the landed interest, the parsons, everything that
+is, except the people--that is, the unemployed. I always did. I couldn't
+get work as suited me. When I died they buried me in a cheap coffin,
+dirt cheap, and gave me a nasty grave, cheap, and a service rattled
+away cheap, and no monument. Didn't want none. Oh! there are lots of
+us. All discontented. Discontent! That's a passion, it is--it gets into
+the veins, it fills the brain, it occupies the heart; it's a sort of
+divine cancer that takes possession of the entire man, and makes him
+dissatisfied with everything, and hate everybody. But we must have our
+share of happiness at some time. We all crave for it in one way or
+other. Some think there's a future state of blessedness and so have
+hope, and look to attain to it, for hope is a cable and anchor that
+attaches to what is real. But when you have no hope of that sort, don't
+believe in any future state, you must look for happiness in life here.
+We didn't get it when we were alive, so we seek to procure it after we
+are dead. We can do it, if we can get out of our cheap and nasty
+coffins. But not till the greater part of us is mouldered away. If a
+finger or two remains, that can work its way up to the surface, those
+cheap deal coffins go to pieces quick enough. Then the only solid part
+of us left can pull the rest of us that has gone to nothing after it.
+Then we grope about after the living. The well-to-do if we can get at
+them--the honest working poor if we can't--we hate them too, because
+they are content and happy. If we reach any of these, and can touch
+them, then we can draw their vital force out of them into ourselves, and
+recuperate at their expense. That was about what I was going to do with
+you. Getting on famous. Nearly solidified into a new man; and given
+another chance in life. But I've missed it this time. Just like my luck.
+Miss everything. Always have, except misery and disappointment. Get
+plenty of that."
+
+"What are you all?" asked Square. "Anarchists out of employ?"
+
+"Some of us go by that name, some by other designations, but we are all
+one, and own allegiance to but one monarch--Sovereign discontent. We are
+bred to have a distaste for manual work; and we grow up loafers,
+grumbling at everything and quarrelling with Society that is around us
+and the Providence that is above us."
+
+"And what do you call yourselves now?"
+
+"Call ourselves? Nothing; we are the same, in another condition, that is
+all. Folk called us once Anarchists, Nihilists, Socialists, Levellers,
+now they call us the Influenza. The learned talk of microbes, and
+bacilli, and bacteria. Microbes, bacilli, and bacteria be blowed! We are
+the Influenza; we the social failures, the generally discontented,
+coming up out of our cheap and nasty graves in the form of physical
+disease. We are the Influenza."
+
+"There you are, I guess!" exclaimed Square triumphantly. "Did I not say
+that all forces were correlated? If so, then all negations, deficiencies
+of force are one in their several manifestations. Talk of Divine
+discontent as a force impelling to progress! Rubbish, it is a paralysis
+of energy. It turns all it absorbs to acid, to envy, spite, gall. It
+inspires nothing, but rots the whole moral system. Here you have
+it--moral, social, political discontent in another form, nay
+aspect--that is all. What Anarchism is in the body Politic, that
+Influenza is in the body Physical. Do you see that?"
+
+"Ye-e-s-e-s," I believe I answered, and dropped away into the land of
+dreams.
+
+I recovered. What Square did with the Thing I know not, but believe that
+he reduced it again to its former negative and self-decomposing
+condition.
+
+
+
+
+BLACK RAM
+
+
+I do not know when I had spent a more pleasant evening, or had enjoyed a
+dinner more than that at Mr. Weatherwood's hospitable house. For one
+thing, the hostess knew how to keep her guests interested and in
+good-humour. The dinner was all that could be desired, and so were the
+wines. But what conduced above all to my pleasure was that at table I
+sat by Miss Fulton, a bright, intelligent girl, well read and
+entertaining. My wife had a cold, and had sent her excuses by me. Miss
+Fulton and I talked of this, that, and every thing. Towards the end of
+dinner she said: "I shall be obliged to run away so soon as the ladies
+leave the room to you and your cigarettes and gossip. It is rather mean,
+but Mrs. Weatherwood has been forewarned, and understands. To-morrow is
+our village feast at Marksleigh, and I have a host of things on my hand.
+I shall have to be up at seven, and I do object to cut a slice off my
+night's rest at both ends."
+
+"Rather an unusual time of the year for a village feast," said I. "These
+things are generally got over in the summer."
+
+"You see, our church is dedicated to St. Mark, and to-morrow is his
+festival, and it has been observed in one fashion or another in our
+parish from time immemorial. In your parts have they any notions about
+St. Mark's eve?"
+
+"What sort of notions?"
+
+"That if you sit in the church porch from midnight till the clock
+strikes one, you will see the apparitions pass before you of those
+destined to die within the year."
+
+"I fancy our good people see themselves, and nothing but themselves, on
+every day and hour throughout the twelvemonth."
+
+"Joking apart, have you any such superstition hanging on in your
+neighbourhood?"
+
+"Not that I am aware of. That sort of thing belonged to the Golden Age
+that has passed away. Board schools have reduced us to that of lead."
+
+"At Marksleigh the villagers believe in it, and recently their faith has
+received corroboration."
+
+"How so?" I asked.
+
+"Last year, in a fit of bravado, a young carpenter ventured to sit in
+the porch at the witching hour, and saw himself enter the church. He
+came home, looking as blank as a sheet, moped, lost flesh, and died nine
+months later."
+
+"Of course he died, if he had made up his mind to do so."
+
+"Yes--that is explicable. But how do you account for his having seen his
+double?"
+
+"He had been drinking at the public-house. A good many people see double
+after that."
+
+"It was not so. He was perfectly sober at the time."
+
+"Then I give it up."
+
+"Would you venture on a visit to a church porch on this night--St.
+Mark's eve?"
+
+"Certainly I would, if well wrapped up, and I had my pipe."
+
+"I bar the pipe," said Miss Fulton. "No apparition can stand tobacco
+smoke. But there is Lady Eastleigh rising. When you come to rejoin the
+ladies, I shall be gone."
+
+I did not leave the house of the Weatherwoods till late. My dogcart was
+driven by my groom, Richard. The night was cold, or rather chilly, but I
+had my fur-lined overcoat, and did not mind that. The stars shone out of
+a frosty sky. All went smoothly enough till the road dipped into a
+valley, where a dense white fog hung over the river and the
+water-meadows. Anyone who has had much experience in driving at night is
+aware that in such a case the carriage lamps are worse than useless;
+they bewilder the horse and the driver. I cannot blame Dick if he ran
+his wheel over a heap of stones that upset the trap. We were both thrown
+out, and I fell on my head. I sang out: "Mind the cob, Dick; I am all
+right."
+
+The boy at once mastered the horse. I did not rise immediately, for I
+had been somewhat jarred by the fall; when I did I found Dick engaged in
+mending a ruptured trace. One of the shafts was broken, and a carriage
+lamp had been shattered.
+
+"Dick," said I, "there are a couple of steep hills to descend, and that
+is risky with a single shaft. I will lighten the dogcart by walking
+home, and do you take care at the hills."
+
+"I think we can manage, sir."
+
+"I should prefer to walk the rest of the way. I am rather shaken by my
+fall, and a good step out in the cool night will do more to put me to
+rights than anything else. When you get home, send up a message to your
+mistress that she is not to expect me at once. I shall arrive in due
+time, and she is not to be alarmed."
+
+"It's a good trudge before you, sir. And I dare say we could get the
+shaft tied up at Fifewell."
+
+"What--at this time of night? No, Dick, do as I say."
+
+Accordingly the groom drove off, and I started on my walk. I was glad to
+get out of the clinging fog, when I reached higher ground. I looked
+back, and by the starlight saw the river bottom filled with the mist,
+lying apparently dense as snow.
+
+After a swinging walk of a quarter of an hour I entered the outskirts of
+Fifewell, a village of some importance, with shops, the seat of the
+petty sessions, and with a small boot and shoe factory in it.
+
+The street was deserted. Some bedroom windows were lighted, for our
+people have the habit of burning their paraffin lamps all night. Every
+door was shut, no one was stirring.
+
+As I passed along the churchyard wall, the story of the young carpenter,
+told by Miss Fulton, recurred to me.
+
+"By Jove!" thought I, "it is now close upon midnight, a rare opportunity
+for me to see the wonders of St. Mark's eve. I will go into the porch
+and rest there for a few minutes, and then I shall be able, when I meet
+that girl again, to tell her that I had done what she challenged me to
+do, without any idea that I would take her challenge up."
+
+I turned in at the gate, and walked up the pathway. The headstones bore
+a somewhat ghostly look in the starlight. A cross of white stone,
+recently set up, I supposed, had almost the appearance of
+phosphorescence. The church windows were dark.
+
+I seated myself in the roomy porch on a stone bench against the wall,
+and felt for my pipe. I am not sure that I contemplated smoking it then
+and there, partly because Miss Fulton had forbidden it, but also because
+I felt that it was not quite the right thing to do on consecrated
+ground. But it would be a satisfaction to finger it, and I might plug
+it, so as to be ready to light up so soon as I left the churchyard. To
+my vexation I found that I had lost it. The tobacco-pouch was there, and
+the matches. My pipe must have fallen out of my pocket when I was
+pitched from the trap. That pipe was a favourite of mine.
+
+"What a howling nuisance," said I. "If I send Dick back over the road
+to-morrow morning, ten chances to one if he finds it, for to-morrow is
+market-day, and people will be passing early."
+
+As I said this, the clock struck twelve.
+
+I counted each stroke. I wore my fur-lined coat, and was not cold--in
+fact, I had been too warm walking in it. At the last stroke of twelve I
+noticed lines of very brilliant light appear about the door into the
+church. The door must have fitted well, as the light did no more than
+show about it, and did not gush forth at all the crevices. But from the
+keyhole shot a ray of intense brilliancy.
+
+Whether the church windows were illumined I did not see--in fact, it did
+not occur to me to look, either then or later--but I am pretty certain
+that they were not, or the light streaming from them would have brought
+the gravestones into prominence. When you come to think of it, it was
+remarkable that the light of so dazzling a nature should shine through
+the crannies of the door, and that none should issue, as far as I could
+see, from the windows. At the time I did not give this a thought; my
+attention was otherwise taken up. For I saw distinctly Miss Venville, a
+very nice girl of my acquaintance, coming up the path with that swinging
+walk so characteristic of an English young lady.
+
+How often it has happened to me, when I have been sitting in a public
+park or in the gardens of a Cursaal abroad, and some young girls have
+passed by, that I have said to my wife: "I bet you a bob those are
+English."
+
+"Yes, of course," she has replied; "you can see that by their dress."
+
+"I don't know anything about dress," I have said; "I judge by the
+walk."
+
+Well, there was Miss Venville coming towards the porch.
+
+"This is a joke," said I. "She is going to sit here on the look-out for
+ghosts, and if I stand up or speak she will be scared out of her wits.
+Hang it, I wish I had my pipe now; if I gave a whiff it would reveal the
+presence of a mortal, without alarming her. I think I shall whistle."
+
+I had screwed up my lips to begin "Rocked in the cradle of the
+deep"--that is my great song I perform whenever there is a village
+concert, or I am asked out to dinner, and am entreated afterwards to
+sing--I say I had screwed up my lips to whistle, when I saw something
+that scared me so that I made no attempt at the melody.
+
+The ray of light through the keyhole was shut off, and I saw standing in
+the porch before me the form of Mrs. Venville, the girl's mother, who
+had died two years before. The ray of white light arrested by her filled
+her as a lamp--was diffused as a mild glow from her.
+
+"Halloo, mother, what brings you here?" asked the girl.
+
+"Gwendoline, I have come to warn you back. You cannot enter; you have
+not got the key."
+
+"The key, mother?"
+
+"Yes, everyone who would pass within must have his or her own key."
+
+"Well, where am I to get one?"
+
+"It must be forged for you, Gwen. You are wholly unfit to enter. What
+good have you ever done to deserve it?"
+
+"Why, mother, everyone knows I'm an awfully good sort."
+
+"No one in here knows it. That is no qualification."
+
+"And I always dressed in good taste."
+
+"Nor is that."
+
+"And I was splendid at lawn tennis."
+
+Her mother shook her head.
+
+"Look here, little mummy. I won a brooch at the archery match."
+
+"That will not do, Gwendoline. What good have you ever done to anyone
+else beside yourself?"
+
+The girl considered a minute, then laughed, and said: "I put into a
+raffle at a bazaar--no, it was a bran-pie for an orphanage--and I drew
+out a pair of braces. I had rare fun over those braces, I sold them to
+Captain Fitzakerly for half a crown, and that I gave to the charity."
+
+"You went for what you could get, not what you could give."
+
+Then the mother stepped on one side, and the ray shot directly at the
+girl. I saw that it had something of the quality of the X-ray. It was
+not arrested by her garments, or her flesh or muscles. It revealed in
+her breast, in her brain--penetrating her whole body--a hard, dark core.
+
+"Black Ram, I bet," said I.
+
+Now Black Ram is the local name for a substance found in our land,
+especially in the low ground that ought to be the most fertile, but is
+not so, on account of this material found in it.
+
+The substance lies some two or three feet below the surface, and forms a
+crust of the consistency of cast iron. No plough can possibly be driven
+through it. No water can percolate athwart it, and consequently where it
+is, there the superincumbent soil is resolved into a quagmire. No tree
+can grow in it, for the moment the taproot touches the Black Ram the
+tree dies.
+
+Of what Black Ram consists is more than I can say; the popular opinion
+is that it is a bastard manganese. Now I happen to own several fields
+accursed with the presence in them of Black Ram--fields that ought to be
+luxuriant meadows, but which, in consequence of its presence, are worth
+almost nothing at all.
+
+"No, Gwen," said her mother, looking sorrowfully at her, "there is not a
+chance of your admission till you have got rid of the Black Ram that is
+in you."
+
+"Sure," said I, as I slapped my knee, "I thought I knew the article, and
+now my opinion has been confirmed."
+
+"How can I get rid of it?" asked the girl.
+
+"Gwendoline, you will have to pass into little Polly Finch, and work it
+out of your system. She is dying of scarlet fever, and you must enter
+into her body, and so rid yourself in time of the Black Ram."
+
+"Mother!--the Finches are common people."
+
+"So much the better chance for you."
+
+"And I am eighteen, Polly is about ten."
+
+"You will have to become a little child if you would enter her."
+
+"I don't like it. What is the alternative?"
+
+"To remain without in the darkness till you come to a better mind. And
+now, Gwen, no time is to be lost; you must pass into Polly Finch's body
+before it grows cold."
+
+"Well, then--here goes!"
+
+Gwen Venville turned, and her mother accompanied her down the path. The
+girl moved reluctantly, and pouted. Passing out of the churchyard, both
+traversed the street and disappeared within a cottage, from the upper
+window of which light from behind a white blind was diffused.
+
+I did not follow, I leaned back against the wall. I felt that my head
+was throbbing. I was a little afraid lest my fall had done more injury
+than I had at first anticipated. I put my hand to my head, and held it
+there for a moment.
+
+Then it was as though a book were opened before me--the book of the life
+of Polly Finch--or rather of Gwendoline's soul in Polly Finch's body. It
+was but one page that I saw, and the figures in it were moving.
+
+The girl was struggling under the burden of a heavy baby brother. She
+coaxed him, she sang to him, she played with him, talked to him, broke
+off bits of her bread and butter, given to her for breakfast, and made
+him eat them; she wiped his nose and eyes with her pocket-handkerchief,
+she tried to dance him in her arms. He was a fractious urchin, and most
+exacting, but her patience, her good-nature, never failed. The drops
+stood on her brow, and her limbs tottered under the weight, but her
+heart was strong, and her eyes shone with love.
+
+I drew my hand from my head. It was burning. I put my hand to the cold
+stone bench to cool it, and then applied it once more to my brow.
+
+Instantly it was as though another page were revealed. I saw Polly in
+her widowed father's cottage. She was now a grown girl; she was on her
+knees scrubbing the floor. A bell tinkled. Then she put down the soap
+and brush, turned down her sleeves, rose and went into the outer shop to
+serve a customer with half a pound of tea. That done, she was back
+again, and the scrubbing was renewed. Again a tinkle, and again she
+stood up and went into the shop to a child who desired to buy a
+pennyworth of lemon drops.
+
+On her return, in came her little brother crying--he had cut his finger.
+Polly at once applied cobweb, and then stitched a rag about the wounded
+member.
+
+"There, there, Tommy! don't cry any more. I have kissed the bad place,
+and it will soon be well."
+
+"Poll! it hurts! it hurts!" sobbed the boy.
+
+"Come to me," said his sister. She drew a low chair to the fireside,
+took Tommy on her lap, and began to tell him the story of Jack the
+Giant-killer.
+
+I removed my hand, and the vision was gone.
+
+I put my other hand to my head, and at once saw a further scene in the
+life-story of Polly.
+
+She was now a middle-aged woman, and had a cottage of her own. She was
+despatching her children to school. They had bright, rosy faces, their
+hair was neatly combed, their pinafores were white as snow. One after
+another, before leaving, put up the cherry lips to kiss mammy; and when
+they were gone, for a moment she stood in the door looking after them,
+then sharply turned, brought out a basket, and emptied its contents on
+the table. There were little girls' stockings with "potatoes" in them to
+be darned, torn jackets to be mended, a little boy's trousers to be
+reseated, pocket-handkerchiefs to be hemmed. She laboured on with her
+needle the greater part of the day, then put away the garments, some
+finished, others to be finished, and going to the flour-bin took forth
+flour and began to knead dough, and then to roll it out to make pasties
+for her husband and the children.
+
+"Poll!" called a voice from without; she ran to the door.
+
+"Back, Joe! I have your dinner hot in the oven."
+
+"I must say, Poll, you are the best of good wives, and there isn't a
+mother like you in the shire. My word! that was a lucky day when I chose
+you, and didn't take Mary Matters, who was setting her cap at me. See
+what a slattern she has turned out. Why, I do believe, Poll, if I'd took
+her she'd have drove me long ago to the public-house."
+
+I saw the mother of Gwendoline standing by me and looking out on this
+scene, and I heard her say: "The Black Ram is run out, and the key is
+forged."
+
+All had vanished. I thought now I might as well rise and continue my
+journey. But before I had left the bench I observed the rector of
+Fifewell sauntering up the path, with uncertain step, as he fumbled in
+his coat-tail pockets, and said: "Where the deuce is the key?"
+
+The Reverend William Hexworthy was a man of good private means, and was
+just the sort of man that a bishop delights to honour. He was one who
+would never cause him an hour's anxiety; he was not the man to indulge
+in ecclesiastical vagaries. He flattered himself that he was strictly a
+_via media_ man. He kept dogs, he was a good judge of horses, was fond
+of sport. He did not hunt, but he shot and fished. He was a favourite in
+Society, was of irreproachable conduct, and was a magistrate on the
+bench.
+
+As the ray from the keyhole smote on him he seemed to be wholly
+dark,--made up of nothing but Black Ram. He came on slowly, as though
+not very sure of his way.
+
+"Bless me! where can be the key?" he asked.
+
+Then from out of the graves, and from over the wall of the churchyard,
+came rushing up a crowd of his dead parishioners, and blocked his way to
+the porch.
+
+"Please, your reverence!" said one, "you did not visit me when I was
+dying."
+
+"I sent you a bottle of my best port," said the parson.
+
+"Ay, sir, and thank you for it. But that went into my stomick, and what
+I wanted was medicine for my soul. You never said a prayer by me. You
+never urged me to repentance for my bad life, and you let me go out of
+the world with all my sins about me."
+
+"And I, sir," said another, thrusting himself before Mr. Hexworthy--"I
+was a young man, sir, going wild, and you never said a word to restrain
+me; never sent for me and gave me a bit of warning and advice which
+would have checked me. You just shrugged your shoulders and laughed, and
+said that a young chap like me must sow his wild oats."
+
+"And we," shouted the rest--"we were never taught by you anything at
+all."
+
+"Now this is really too bad," said the rector. "I preached twice every
+Sunday."
+
+"Oh, yes--right enough that. But precious little good it did when
+nothing came out of your heart, and all out of your pocket--and that you
+did give us was copied in your library. Why, sir, not one of your
+sermons ever did anybody a farthing of good."
+
+"We were your sheep," protested others, "and you let us wander where we
+would! You didn't seem to know yourself that there was a fold into which
+to draw us."
+
+"And we," said others, "went off to chapel, and all the good we ever got
+was from the dissenting minister--never a mite from you."
+
+"And some of us," cried out others, "went to the bad altogether, through
+your neglect. What did you care about our souls so long as your terriers
+were washed and combed, and your horses well groomed? You were a
+fisherman, but all you fished for were trout--not souls. And if some of
+us turned out well, it was in spite of your neglect--no thanks to you."
+
+Then some children's voices were raised: "Sir, you never taught us no
+Catechism, nor our duty to God and to man, and we grew up regular
+heathens."
+
+"That was your fathers' and mothers' duty."
+
+"But our fathers and mothers never taught us anything."
+
+"Come, this is intolerable," shouted Mr. Hexworthy. "Get out of the way,
+all of you. I can't be bothered with you now. I want to go in there."
+
+"You can't, parson! the door is shut, and you have not got your key."
+
+Mr. Hexworthy stood bewildered and irresolute. He rubbed his chin.
+
+"What the dickens am I to do?" he asked.
+
+Then the crowd closed about him, and thrust him back towards the gate.
+"You must go whither we send you," they said.
+
+I stood up to follow. It was curious to see a flock drive its shepherd,
+who, indeed, had never attempted to lead. I walked in the rear, and it
+seemed as though we were all swept forward as by a mighty wind. I did
+not gain my breath, or realise whither I was going, till I found myself
+in the slums of a large manufacturing town before a mean house such as
+those occupied by artisans, with the conventional one window on one side
+of the door and two windows above. Out of one of these latter shone a
+scarlet glow.
+
+The crowd hustled Mr. Hexworthy in at the door, which was opened by a
+hospital nurse.
+
+I stood hesitating what to do, and not understanding what had taken
+place. On the opposite side of the street was a mission church, and the
+windows were lighted. I entered, and saw that there were at least a
+score of people, shabbily dressed, and belonging to the lowest class, on
+their knees in prayer. There was a sort of door-opener or verger at the
+entrance, and I said to him: "What is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"Oh, sir!" said he, "_he_ is ill, he has been attacked by smallpox. It
+has been raging in the place, and he has been with all the sick, and
+now he has taken it himself, and we are terribly afraid that he is
+dying. So we are praying God to spare him to us."
+
+Then one of those who was kneeling turned to me and said: "I was an
+hungred, and he gave me meat."
+
+And another rose up and said: "I was a stranger, and he took me in."
+
+Then a third said: "I was naked, and he clothed me."
+
+And a fourth: "I was sick, and he visited me."
+
+Then said a fifth, with bowed head, sobbing: "I was in prison, and he
+came to me."
+
+Thereupon I went out and looked up at the red window, and I felt as if I
+must see the man for whom so many prayed. I tapped at the door, and a
+woman opened.
+
+"I should so much like to see him, if I may," said I.
+
+"Well, sir," spoke the woman, a plain, middle-aged, rough creature, but
+her eyes were full of tears: "Oh, sir, I think you may, if you will go
+up softly. There has come over him a great change. It is as though a new
+life had entered into him."
+
+I mounted the narrow staircase of very steep steps and entered the
+sick-room. There was an all-pervading glow of red. The fire was low--no
+flame, and a screen was before it. The lamp had a scarlet shade over it.
+I stepped to the side of the bed, where stood a nurse. I looked on the
+patient. He was an awful object. His face had been smeared over with
+some dark solution, with the purpose of keeping all light from the skin,
+with the object of saving it from permanent disfigurement.
+
+The sick priest lay with eyes raised, and I thought I saw in them those
+of Mr. Hexworthy, but with a new light, a new faith, a new fervour, a
+new love in them. The lips were moving in prayer, and the hands were
+folded over the breast. The nurse whispered to me: "We thought he was
+passing away, but the prayers of those he loved have prevailed. A great
+change has come over him. The last words he spoke were: 'God's will be
+done. If I live, I will live only--only for my dear sheep, and die among
+them'; and now he is in an ecstasy, and says nothing. But he is praying
+still--for his people."
+
+As I stood looking I saw what might have been tears, but seemed to be
+molten Black Ram, roll over the painted cheeks. The spirit of Mr.
+Hexworthy was in this body.
+
+Then, without a word, I turned to the door, went through, groped my way
+down the steps, passed out into the street, and found myself back in the
+porch of Fifewell Church.
+
+"Upon my word," said I, "I have been here long enough." I wrapped my fur
+coat about me, and prepared to go, when I saw a well-known figure, that
+of Mr. Fothergill, advancing up the path.
+
+I knew the old gentleman well. His age must have been seventy. He was a
+spare man, he was rather bald, and had sunken cheeks. He was a bachelor,
+living in a pretty little villa of his own. He had a good fortune, and
+was a harmless, but self-centred, old fellow. He prided himself on his
+cellar and his cook. He always dressed well, and was scrupulously neat.
+I had often played a game of chess with him.
+
+I would have run towards him to remonstrate with him for exposing
+himself to the night air, but I was forestalled. Slipping past me, his
+old manservant, David, went to meet him. David had died three years
+before. Mr. Fothergill had then been dangerously ill with typhoid fever,
+and the man had attended to him night and day. The old gentleman, as I
+heard, had been most irritable and exacting in his illness. When his
+malady took a turn, and he was on the way to convalescence, David had
+succumbed in his turn, and in three days was dead.
+
+This man now met his master, touched his cap, and said: "Beg pardon,
+sir, you will not be admitted."
+
+"Not admitted? Why not, Davie?"
+
+"I really am very sorry, sir. If my key would have availed, you would
+have been welcome to it; but, sir, there's such a terrible lot of Black
+Ram in you, sir. That must be got out first."
+
+"I don't understand, Davie."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, to have to say it; but you've never done anyone any
+good."
+
+"I paid you your wages regularly."
+
+"Yes, sir, to be sure, sir, for my services to yourself."
+
+"And I've always subscribed when asked for money."
+
+"Yes, that is very true, sir, but that was because you thought it was
+expected of you, not because you had any sympathy with those in need,
+and sickness, and suffering."
+
+"I'm sure I never did anyone any harm."
+
+"No, sir, and never anyone any good. You'll excuse me for mentioning
+it."
+
+"But, Davie, what do you mean? I can't get in?"
+
+"No, sir, not till you have the key."
+
+"But, bless my soul! what is to become of me? Am I to stick out here?"
+
+"Yes, sir, unless----"
+
+"In this damp, and cold, and darkness?"
+
+"There is no help for it, Mr. Fothergill, unless----"
+
+"Unless what, Davie?"
+
+"Unless you become a mother, sir!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Of twins, sir."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!"
+
+"Indeed, it is so, sir, and you will have to nurse them."
+
+"I can't do it. I'm physically incapable."
+
+"It must be done, sir. Very sorry to mention it, but there is no
+alternative. There's Sally Bowker is approaching her confinement, and
+it's going terribly hard with her. The doctor thinks she'll never pull
+through. But if you'd consent to pass into her and become a mother----"
+
+"And nurse the twins? Oh, Davie, I shall need a great amount of stout."
+
+"I grieve to say it, Mr. Fothergill, but you'll be too poor to afford
+it."
+
+"Is there no alternative?"
+
+"None in the world, sir."
+
+"I don't know my way to the place."
+
+"If you'd do me the honour, sir, to take my arm, I would lead you to the
+house."
+
+"It's hard--cruel hard on an old bachelor. Must it be twins? It's a
+rather large order."
+
+"It really must, sir."
+
+Then I saw David lend his arm to his former master and conduct him out
+of the churchyard, across the street, into the house of Seth Bowker, the
+shoemaker.
+
+I was so interested in the fate of my old friend, and so curious as to
+the result, that I followed, and went into the cobbler's house. I found
+myself in the little room on the ground floor. Seth Bowker was sitting
+over the fire with his face in his hands, swaying himself, and moaning:
+"Oh dear! dear life! whatever shall I do without her? and she the best
+woman as breathed, and knew all my little ways."
+
+Overhead was a trampling. The doctor and the midwife were with the
+woman. Seth looked up, and listened. Then he flung himself on his knees
+at the deal table, and prayed: "Oh, good God in heaven! have pity on me,
+and spare me my wife. I shall be a lost man without her--and no one to
+sew on my shirt-buttons!"
+
+At the moment I heard a feeble twitter aloft, then it grew in volume,
+and presently became cries. Seth looked up; his face was bathed in
+tears. Still that strange sound like the chirping of sparrows. He rose
+to his feet and made for the stairs, and held on to the banister.
+
+Forth from the chamber above came the doctor, and leisurely descended
+the stairs.
+
+"Well, Bowker," said he, "I congratulate you; you have two fine boys."
+
+"And my Sally--my wife?"
+
+"She has pulled through. But really, upon my soul, I did fear for her at
+one time. But she rallied marvellously."
+
+"Can I go up to her?"
+
+"In a minute or two, not just now, the babes are being washed."
+
+"And my wife will get over it?"
+
+"I trust so, Bowker; a new life came into her as she gave birth to
+twins."
+
+"God be praised!" Seth's mouth quivered, all his face worked, and he
+clasped his hands.
+
+Presently the door of the chamber upstairs was opened, the nurse looked
+down, and said: "Mr. Bowker, you may come up. Your wife wants you. Lawk!
+you will see the beautifullest twins that ever was."
+
+I followed Seth upstairs, and entered the sick-room. It was humble
+enough, with whitewashed walls, all scrupulously clean. The happy mother
+lay in the bed, her pale face on the pillow, but the eyes were lighted
+up with ineffable love and pride.
+
+"Kiss them, Bowker," said she, exhibiting at her side two little pink
+heads, with down on them. But her husband just stooped and pressed his
+lips to her brow, and after that kissed the tiny morsels at her side.
+
+"Ain't they loves!" exclaimed the midwife.
+
+But oh! what a rapture of triumph, pity, fervour, love, was in that
+mother's face, and--the eyes looking on those children were the eyes of
+Mr. Fothergill. Never had I seen such an expression in them, not even
+when he had exclaimed "Checkmate" over a game of chess.
+
+Then I knew what would follow. How night and day that mother would live
+only for her twins, how she would cheerfully sacrifice her night's rest
+to them; how she would go downstairs, even before it was judicious, to
+see to her husband's meals. Verily, with the mother's milk that fed
+those babes, the Black Ram would run out of the Fothergill soul. There
+was no need for me to tarry. I went forth, and as I issued into the
+street heard the clock strike one.
+
+"Bless me!" I exclaimed, "I have spent an hour in the porch. What will
+my wife say?"
+
+I walked home as fast as I could in my fur coat. When I arrived I found
+Bessie up.
+
+"Oh, Bessie!" said I, "with your cold you ought to have been in bed."
+
+"My dear Edward," she replied, "how could I? I had lain down, but when I
+heard of the accident I could not rest. Have you been hurt?"
+
+"My head is somewhat contused," I replied.
+
+"Let me feel. Indeed, it is burning. I will put on some cold
+compresses."
+
+"But, Bessie, I have a story to tell you."
+
+"Oh! never mind the story, we'll have that another day. I'll send for
+some ice from the fishmonger to-morrow for your head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did eventually tell my wife the story of my experience in the porch of
+Fifewell on St. Mark's eve.
+
+I have since regretted that I did so; for whenever I cross her will, or
+express my determination to do something of which she does not approve,
+she says: "Edward, Edward! I very much fear there is still in you too
+much Black Ram."
+
+
+
+
+A HAPPY RELEASE
+
+
+Mr. Benjamin Woolfield was a widower. For twelve months he put on
+mourning. The mourning was external, and by no means represented the
+condition of his feelings; for his married life had not been happy. He
+and Kesiah had been unequally yoked together. The Mosaic law forbade the
+union of the ox and the ass to draw one plough; and two more uncongenial
+creatures than Benjamin and Kesiah could hardly have been coupled to
+draw the matrimonial furrow.
+
+She was a Plymouth Sister, and he, as she repeatedly informed him
+whenever he indulged in light reading, laughed, smoked, went out
+shooting, or drank a glass of wine, was of the earth, earthy, and a
+miserable worldling.
+
+For some years Mr. Woolfield had been made to feel as though he were a
+moral and religious pariah. Kesiah had invited to the house and to
+meals, those of her own way of thinking, and on such occasions had
+spared no pains to have the table well served, for the elect are
+particular about their feeding, if indifferent as to their drinks. On
+such occasions, moreover, when Benjamin had sat at the bottom of his own
+table, he had been made to feel that he was a worm to be trodden on. The
+topics of conversation were such as were far beyond his horizon, and
+concerned matters of which he was ignorant. He attempted at intervals to
+enter into the circle of talk. He knew that such themes as football
+matches, horse races, and cricket were taboo, but he did suppose that
+home or foreign politics might interest the guests of Kesiah. But he
+soon learned that this was not the case, unless such matters tended to
+the fulfilment of prophecy.
+
+When, however, in his turn, Benjamin invited home to dinner some of his
+old friends, he found that all provided for them was hashed mutton,
+cottage pie, and tapioca pudding. But even these could have been
+stomached, had not Mrs. Woolfield sat stern and silent at the head of
+the table, not uttering a word, but giving vent to occasional, very
+audible sighs.
+
+When the year of mourning was well over, Mr. Woolfield put on a light
+suit, and contented himself, as an indication of bereavement, with a
+slight black band round the left arm. He also began to look about him
+for someone who might make up for the years during which he had felt
+like a crushed strawberry.
+
+And in casting his inquiring eye about, it lighted upon Philippa Weston,
+a bright, vigorous young lady, well educated and intelligent. She was
+aged twenty-four and he was but eighteen years older, a difference on
+the right side.
+
+It took Mr. Woolfield but a short courtship to reach an understanding,
+and he became engaged.
+
+On the same evening upon which he had received a satisfactory answer to
+the question put to her, and had pressed for an early marriage, to which
+also consent had been accorded, he sat by his study fire, with his hands
+on his knees, looking into the embers and building love-castles there.
+Then he smiled and patted his knees.
+
+He was startled from his honey reveries by a sniff. He looked round.
+There was a familiar ring in that sniff which was unpleasant to him.
+
+What he then saw dissipated his rosy dreams, and sent his blood to his
+heart.
+
+At the table sat his Kesiah, looking at him with her beady black eyes,
+and with stern lines in her face. He was so startled and shocked that he
+could not speak.
+
+"Benjamin," said the apparition, "I know your purpose. It shall never be
+carried to accomplishment. I will prevent it."
+
+"Prevent what, my love, my treasure?" he gathered up his faculties to
+reply.
+
+"It is in vain that you assume that infantile look of innocence," said
+his deceased wife. "You shall never--never--lead her to the hymeneal
+altar."
+
+"Lead whom, my idol? You astound me."
+
+"I know all. I can read your heart. A lost being though you be, you have
+still me to watch over you. When you quit this earthly tabernacle, if
+you have given up taking in the _Field_, and have come to realise your
+fallen condition, there is a chance--a distant chance--but yet one of
+our union becoming eternal."
+
+"You don't mean to say so," said Mr. Woolfield, his jaw falling.
+
+"There is--there is that to look to. That to lead you to turn over a new
+leaf. But it can never be if you become united to that Flibbertigibbet."
+
+Mentally, Benjamin said: "I must hurry up with my marriage!" Vocally he
+said: "Dear me! Dear me!"
+
+"My care for you is still so great," continued the apparition, "that I
+intend to haunt you by night and by day, till that engagement be broken
+off."
+
+"I would not put you to so much trouble," said he.
+
+"It is my duty," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield sternly.
+
+"You are oppressively kind," sighed the widower.
+
+At dinner that evening Mr. Woolfield had a friend to keep him company, a
+friend to whom he had poured out his heart. To his dismay, he saw seated
+opposite him the form of his deceased wife.
+
+He tried to be lively; he cracked jokes, but the sight of the grim face
+and the stony eyes riveted on him damped his spirits, and all his mirth
+died away.
+
+"You seem to be out of sorts to-night," said his friend.
+
+"I am sorry that I act so bad a host," apologised Mr. Woolfield. "Two is
+company, three is none."
+
+"But we are only two here to-night."
+
+"My wife is with me in spirit."
+
+"Which, she that was, or she that is to be?"
+
+Mr. Woolfield looked with timid eyes towards her who sat at the end of
+the table. She was raising her hands in holy horror, and her face was
+black with frowns.
+
+His friend said to himself when he left: "Oh, these lovers! They are
+never themselves so long as the fit lasts."
+
+Mr. Woolfield retired early to bed. When a man has screwed himself up to
+proposing to a lady, it has taken a great deal out of him, and nature
+demands rest. It was so with Benjamin; he was sleepy. A nice little fire
+burned in his grate. He undressed and slipped between the sheets.
+
+Before he put out the light he became aware that the late Mrs. Woolfield
+was standing by his bedside with a nightcap on her head.
+
+"I am cold," said she, "bitterly cold."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it, my dear," said Benjamin.
+
+"The grave is cold as ice," she said. "I am going to step into bed."
+
+"No--never!" exclaimed the widower, sitting up. "It won't do. It really
+won't. You will draw all the vital heat out of me, and I shall be laid
+up with rheumatic fever. It will be ten times worse than damp sheets."
+
+"I am coming to bed," repeated the deceased lady, inflexible as ever in
+carrying out her will.
+
+As she stepped in Mr. Woolfield crept out on the side of the fire and
+seated himself by the grate.
+
+He sat there some considerable time, and then, feeling cold, he fetched
+his dressing-gown and enveloped himself in that.
+
+He looked at the bed. In it lay the deceased lady with her long slit of
+a mouth shut like a rat-trap, and her hard eyes fixed on him.
+
+"It is of no use your thinking of marrying, Benjamin," she said. "I
+shall haunt you till you give it up."
+
+Mr. Woolfield sat by his fire all night, and only dozed off towards
+morning.
+
+During the day he called at the house of Miss Weston, and was shown into
+the drawing-room. But there, standing behind her chair, was his deceased
+wife with her arms folded on the back of the seat, glowering at him.
+
+It was impossible for the usual tender passages to ensue between the
+lovers with a witness present, expressing by gesture her disapproval of
+such matters and her inflexible determination to force on a rupture.
+
+The dear departed did not attend Mr. Woolfield continuously during the
+day, but appeared at intervals. He could never say when he would be
+free, when she would not turn up.
+
+In the evening he rang for the housemaid. "Jemima," he said, "put two
+hot bottles into my bed to-night. It is somewhat chilly."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And let the water be boiling--not with the chill off."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When somewhat late Mr. Woolfield retired to his room he found, as he had
+feared, that his late wife was there before him. She lay in the bed with
+her mouth snapped, her eyes like black balls, staring at him.
+
+"My dear," said Benjamin, "I hope you are more comfortable."
+
+"I'm cold, deadly cold."
+
+"But I trust you are enjoying the hot bottles."
+
+"I lack animal heat," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield.
+
+Benjamin fled the room and returned to his study, where he unlocked his
+spirit case and filled his pipe. The fire was burning. He made it up. He
+would sit there all night During the passing hours, however, he was not
+left quite alone. At intervals the door was gently opened, and the
+night-capped head of the late Mrs. Woolfield was thrust in.
+
+"Don't think, Benjamin, that your engagement will lead to anything," she
+would say, "because it will not. I shall stop it."
+
+So time passed. Mr. Woolfield found it impossible to escape this
+persecution. He lost spirits; he lost flesh.
+
+At last, after sad thought, he saw but one way of relief, and that was
+to submit. And in order to break off the engagement he must have a
+prolonged interview with Philippa. He went to the theatre and bought two
+stall tickets, and sent one to her with the earnest request that she
+would accept it and meet him that evening at the theatre. He had
+something to communicate of the utmost importance.
+
+At the theatre he knew that he would be safe; the principles of Kesiah
+would not suffer her to enter there.
+
+At the proper time Mr. Woolfield drove round to Miss Weston's, picked
+her up, and together they went to the theatre and took their places in
+the stalls. Their seats were side by side.
+
+"I am so glad you have been able to come," said Benjamin. "I have a most
+shocking disclosure to make to you. I am afraid that--but I hardly know
+how to say it--that--I really must break it off."
+
+"Break what off?"
+
+"Our engagement."
+
+"Nonsense. I have been fitted for my trousseau."
+
+"Your what?"
+
+"My wedding-dresses."
+
+"Oh, I beg pardon. I did not understand your French pronunciation. I
+thought--but it does not matter what I thought."
+
+"Pray what is the sense of this?"
+
+"Philippa, my affection for you is unabated. Do not suppose that I love
+you one whit the less. But I am oppressed by a horrible
+nightmare--daymare as well. I am haunted."
+
+"Haunted, indeed!"
+
+"Yes; by my late wife. She allows me no peace. She has made up her mind
+that I shall not marry you."
+
+"Oh! Is that all? I am haunted also."
+
+"Surely not?"
+
+"It is a fact."
+
+"Hush, hush!" from persons in front and at the side. Neither Ben nor
+Philippa had noticed that the curtain had risen and that the play had
+begun.
+
+"We are disturbing the audience," whispered Mr. Woolfield. "Let us go
+out into the passage and promenade there, and then we can talk freely."
+
+So both rose, left their stalls, and went into the _couloir_.
+
+"Look here, Philippa," said he, offering the girl his arm, which she
+took, "the case is serious. I am badgered out of my reason, out of my
+health, by the late Mrs. Woolfield. She always had an iron will, and she
+has intimated to me that she will force me to give you up."
+
+"Defy her."
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"Tut! these ghosts are exacting. Give them an inch and they take an ell.
+They are like old servants; if you yield to them they tyrannise over
+you."
+
+"But how do you know, Philippa, dearest?"
+
+"Because, as I said, I also am haunted."
+
+"That only makes the matter more hopeless."
+
+"On the contrary, it only shows how well suited we are to each other. We
+are in one box."
+
+"Philippa, it is a dreadful thing. When my wife was dying she told me
+she was going to a better world, and that we should never meet again.
+_And she has not kept her word._"
+
+The girl laughed. "Rag her with it."
+
+"How can I?"
+
+"You can do it perfectly. Ask her why she is left out in the cold. Give
+her a piece of your mind. Make it unpleasant for her. I give Jehu no
+good time."
+
+"Who is Jehu?"
+
+"Jehu Post is the ghost who haunts me. When in the flesh he was a great
+admirer of mine, and in his cumbrous way tried to court me; but I never
+liked him, and gave him no encouragement. I snubbed him unmercifully,
+but he was one of those self-satisfied, self-assured creatures incapable
+of taking a snubbing. He was a Plymouth Brother."
+
+"My wife was a Plymouth Sister."
+
+"I know she was, and I always felt for you. It was so sad. Well, to go
+on with my story. In a frivolous mood Jehu took to a bicycle, and the
+very first time he scorched he was thrown, and so injured his back that
+he died in a week. Before he departed he entreated that I would see him;
+so I could not be nasty, and I went. And he told me then that he was
+about to be wrapped in glory. I asked him if this were so certain.
+'Cocksure' was his reply; and they were his last words. And _he has not
+kept his word_."
+
+"And he haunts you now?"
+
+"Yes. He dangles about with his great ox-eyes fixed on me. But as to his
+envelope of glory I have not seen a fag end of it, and I have told him
+so."
+
+"Do you really mean this, Philippa?"
+
+"I do. He wrings his hands and sighs. He gets no change out of me, I
+promise you."
+
+"This is a very strange condition of affairs."
+
+"It only shows how well matched we are. I do not suppose you will find
+two other people in England so situated as we are, and therefore so
+admirably suited to one another."
+
+"There is much in what you say. But how are we to rid ourselves of the
+nuisance--for it is a nuisance being thus haunted. We cannot spend all
+our time in a theatre."
+
+"We must defy them. Marry in spite of them."
+
+"I never did defy my wife when she was alive. I do not know how to pluck
+up courage now that she is dead. Feel my hand, Philippa, how it
+trembles. She has broken my nerve. When I was young I could play
+spellikins--my hand was so steady. Now I am quite incapable of doing
+anything with the little sticks."
+
+"Well, hearken to what I propose," said Miss Weston. "I will beard the
+old cat----"
+
+"Hush, not so disrespectful; she was my wife."
+
+"Well, then, the ghostly old lady, in her den. You think she will appear
+if I go to pay you a visit?"
+
+"Sure of it. She is consumed with jealousy. She had no personal
+attractions herself, and you have a thousand. I never knew whether she
+loved me, but she was always confoundedly jealous of me."
+
+"Very well, then. You have often spoken to me about changes in the
+decoration of your villa. Suppose I call on you to-morrow afternoon, and
+you shall show me what your schemes are."
+
+"And your ghost, will he attend you?"
+
+"Most probably. He also is as jealous as a ghost can well be."
+
+"Well, so be it. I shall await your coming with impatience. Now, then,
+we may as well go to our respective homes."
+
+A cab was accordingly summoned, and after Mr. Woolfield had handed
+Philippa in, and she had taken her seat in the back, he entered and
+planted himself with his back to the driver.
+
+"Why do you not sit by me?" asked the girl.
+
+"I can't," replied Benjamin. "Perhaps you may not see, but I do, my
+deceased wife is in the cab, and occupies the place on your left."
+
+"Sit on her," urged Philippa.
+
+"I haven't the effrontery to do it," gasped Ben.
+
+"Will you believe me," whispered the young lady, leaning over to speak
+to Mr. Woolfield, "I have seen Jehu Post hovering about the theatre
+door, wringing his white hands and turning up his eyes. I suspect he is
+running after the cab."
+
+As soon as Mr. Woolfield had deposited his bride-elect at her residence
+he ordered the cabman to drive him home. Then he was alone in the
+conveyance with the ghost. As each gaslight was passed the flash came
+over the cadaverous face opposite him, and sparks of fire kindled
+momentarily in the stony eyes.
+
+"Benjamin!" she said, "Benjamin! Oh, Benjamin! Do not suppose that I
+shall permit it. You may writhe and twist, you may plot and contrive how
+you will, I will stand between you and her as a wall of ice."
+
+Next day, in the afternoon, Philippa Weston arrived at the house. The
+late Mrs. Woolfield had, however, apparently obtained an inkling of what
+was intended, for she was already there, in the drawing-room, seated in
+an armchair with her hands raised and clasped, looking stonily before
+her. She had a white face, no lips that showed, and her dark hair was
+dressed in two black slabs, one on each side of the temples. It was done
+in a knot behind. She wore no ornaments of any kind.
+
+In came Miss Weston, a pretty girl, coquettishly dressed in colours,
+with sparkling eyes and laughing lips. As she had predicted, she was
+followed by her attendant spectre, a tall, gaunt young man in a black
+frock-coat, with a melancholy face and large ox-eyes. He shambled in
+shyly, looking from side to side. He had white hands and long, lean
+fingers. Every now and then he put his hands behind him, up his back,
+under the tails of his coat, and rubbed his spine where he had received
+his mortal injury in cycling. Almost as soon as he entered he noticed
+the ghost of Mrs. Woolfield that was, and made an awkward bow. Her
+eyebrows rose, and a faint wintry smile of recognition lighted up her
+cheeks.
+
+"I believe I have the honour of saluting Sister Kesiah," said the ghost
+of Jehu Post, and he assumed a posture of ecstasy.
+
+"It is even so, Brother Jehu."
+
+"And how do you find yourself, sister--out of the flesh?"
+
+The late Mrs. Woolfield looked disconcerted, hesitated a moment, as if
+she found some difficulty in answering, and then, after a while, said:
+"I suppose, much as do you, brother."
+
+"It is a melancholy duty that detains me here below," said Jehu Post's
+ghost.
+
+"The same may be said of me," observed the spirit of the deceased Mrs.
+Woolfield. "Pray take a chair."
+
+"I am greatly obliged, sister. My back----"
+
+Philippa nudged Benjamin, and unobserved by the ghosts, both slipped
+into the adjoining room by a doorway over which hung velvet curtains.
+
+In this room, on the table, Mr. Woolfield had collected patterns of
+chintzes and books of wall-papers.
+
+There the engaged pair remained, discussing what curtains would go with
+the chintz coverings of the sofa and chairs, and what papers would
+harmonise with both.
+
+"I see," said Philippa, "that you have plates hung on the walls. I don't
+like them: it is no longer in good form. If they be worth anything you
+must have a cabinet with glass doors for the china. How about the
+carpets?"
+
+"There is the drawing-room," said Benjamin.
+
+"No, we won't go in there and disturb the ghosts," said Philippa. "We'll
+take the drawing-room for granted."
+
+"Well--come with me to the dining-room. We can reach it by another
+door."
+
+In the room they now entered the carpet was in fairly good condition,
+except at the head and bottom of the table, where it was worn. This was
+especially the case at the bottom, where Mr. Woolfield had usually sat.
+There, when his wife had lectured, moralised, and harangued, he had
+rubbed his feet up and down and had fretted the nap off the Brussels
+carpet.
+
+"I think," remarked Philippa, "that we can turn it about, and by taking
+out one width and putting that under the bookcase and inserting the
+strip that was there in its room, we can save the expense of a new
+carpet. But--the engravings--those Landseers. What do you think of them,
+Ben, dear?"
+
+She pointed to the two familiar engravings of the "Deer in Winter," and
+"Dignity and Impudence."
+
+"Don't you think, Ben, that one has got a little tired of those
+pictures?"
+
+"My late wife did not object to them, they were so perfectly harmless."
+
+"But your coming wife does. We will have something more up-to-date in
+their room. By the way, I wonder how the ghosts are getting on. They
+have let us alone so far. I will run back and have a peep at them
+through the curtains."
+
+The lively girl left the dining apartment, and her husband-elect,
+studying the pictures to which Philippa had objected. Presently she
+returned.
+
+"Oh, Ben! such fun!" she said, laughing. "My ghost has drawn up his
+chair close to that of the late Mrs. Woolfield, and is fondling her
+hand. But I believe that they are only talking goody-goody."
+
+[Illustration: "I BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE TALKING GOODY-GOODY."]
+
+"And now about the china," said Mr. Woolfield. "It is in a closet near
+the pantry--that is to say, the best china. I will get a benzoline lamp,
+and we will examine it. We had it out only when Mrs. Woolfield had a
+party of her elect brothers and sisters. I fear a good deal is broken.
+I know that the soup tureen has lost a lid, and I believe we are short
+of vegetable dishes. How many plates remain I do not know. We had a
+parlourmaid, Dorcas, who was a sad smasher, but as she was one who had
+made her election sure, my late wife would not part with her."
+
+"And how are you off for glass?"
+
+"The wine-glasses are fairly complete. I fancy the cut-glass decanters
+are in a bad way. My late wife chipped them, I really believe out of
+spite."
+
+It took the couple some time to go through the china and the glass.
+
+"And the plate?" asked Philippa.
+
+"Oh, that is right. All the real old silver is at the bank, as Kesiah
+preferred plated goods."
+
+"How about the kitchen utensils?"
+
+"Upon my word I cannot say. We had a rather nice-looking cook, and so my
+late wife never allowed me to step inside the kitchen."
+
+"Is she here still?" inquired Philippa sharply.
+
+"No; my wife, when she was dying, gave her the sack."
+
+"Bless me, Ben!" exclaimed Philippa. "It is growing dark. I have been
+here an age. I really must go home. I wonder the ghosts have not worried
+us. I'll have another look at them."
+
+She tripped off.
+
+In five minutes she was back. She stood for a minute looking at Mr.
+Woolfield, laughing so heartily that she had to hold her sides.
+
+"What is it, Philippa?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, Ben! A happy release. They will never dare to show their faces
+again. They have eloped together."
+
+
+
+
+THE 9.30 UP-TRAIN
+
+
+In a well-authenticated ghost story, names and dates should be
+distinctly specified. In the following story I am unfortunately able to
+give only the year and the month, for I have forgotten the date of the
+day, and I do not keep a diary. With regard to names, my own figures as
+a guarantee as that of the principal personage to whom the following
+extraordinary circumstances occurred, but the minor actors are provided
+with fictitious names, for I am not warranted to make their real ones
+public. I may add that the believer in ghosts may make use of the facts
+which I relate to establish his theories, if he finds that they will be
+of service to him--when he has read through and weighed well the
+startling account which I am about to give from my own experiences.
+
+On a fine evening in June, 1860, I paid a visit to Mrs. Lyons, on my way
+to the Hassocks Gate Station, on the London and Brighton line. This
+station is the first out of Brighton.
+
+As I rose to leave, I mentioned to the lady whom I was visiting that I
+expected a parcel of books from town, and that I was going to the
+station to inquire whether it had arrived.
+
+"Oh!" said she, readily, "I expect Dr. Lyons out from Brighton by the
+9.30 train; if you like to drive the pony chaise down and meet him, you
+are welcome, and you can bring your parcel back with you in it."
+
+I gladly accepted her offer, and in a few minutes I was seated in a
+little low basket-carriage, drawn by a pretty iron-grey Welsh pony.
+
+The station road commands the line of the South Downs from Chantonbury
+Ring, with its cap of dark firs, to Mount Harry, the scene of the
+memorable battle of Lewes. Woolsonbury stands out like a headland above
+the dark Danny woods, over which the rooks were wheeling and cawing
+previous to settling themselves in for the night. Ditchling beacon--its
+steep sides gashed with chalk-pits--was faintly flushed with light. The
+Clayton windmills, with their sails motionless, stood out darkly against
+the green evening sky. Close beneath opens the tunnel in which, not so
+long before, had happened one of the most fearful railway accidents on
+record.
+
+The evening was exquisite. The sky was kindled with light, though the
+sun was set. A few gilded bars of cloud lay in the west. Two or three
+stars looked forth--one I noticed twinkling green, crimson, and gold,
+like a gem. From a field of young wheat hard by I heard the harsh,
+grating note of the corncrake. Mist was lying on the low meadows like a
+mantle of snow, pure, smooth, and white; the cattle stood in it to their
+knees. The effect was so singular that I drew up to look at it
+attentively. At the same moment I heard the scream of an engine, and on
+looking towards the downs I noticed the up-train shooting out of the
+tunnel, its red signal lamps flashing brightly out of the purple gloom
+which bathed the roots of the hills.
+
+Seeing that I was late, I whipped the Welsh pony on, and proceeded at a
+fast trot.
+
+At about a quarter mile from the station there is a turnpike--an
+odd-looking building, tenanted then by a strange old man, usually
+dressed in a white smock, over which his long white beard flowed to his
+breast. This toll-collector--he is dead now--had amused himself in
+bygone days by carving life-size heads out of wood, and these were stuck
+along the eaves. One is the face of a drunkard, round and blotched,
+leering out of misty eyes at the passers-by; the next has the crumpled
+features of a miser, worn out with toil and moil; a third has the wild
+scowl of a maniac; and a fourth the stare of an idiot.
+
+I drove past, flinging the toll to the door, and shouting to the old man
+to pick it up, for I was in a vast hurry to reach the station before Dr.
+Lyons left it. I whipped the little pony on, and he began to trot down a
+cutting in the greensand, through which leads the station road.
+
+Suddenly, Taffy stood still, planted his feet resolutely on the ground,
+threw up his head, snorted, and refused to move a peg. I "gee-uped," and
+"tshed," all to no purpose; not a step would the little fellow advance.
+I saw that he was thoroughly alarmed; his flanks were quivering, and his
+ears were thrown back. I was on the point of leaving the chaise, when
+the pony made a bound on one side and ran the carriage up into the
+hedge, thereby upsetting me on the road. I picked myself up, and took
+the beast's head. I could not conceive what had frightened him; there
+was positively nothing to be seen, except a puff of dust running up the
+road, such as might be blown along by a passing current of air. There
+was nothing to be heard, except the rattle of a gig or tax-cart with one
+wheel loose: probably a vehicle of this kind was being driven down the
+London road, which branches off at the turnpike at right angles. The
+sound became fainter, and at last died away in the distance.
+
+The pony now no longer refused to advance. It trembled violently, and
+was covered with sweat.
+
+"Well, upon my word, you have been driving hard!" exclaimed Dr. Lyons,
+when I met him at the station.
+
+"I have not, indeed," was my reply; "but something has frightened Taffy,
+but what that something was, is more than I can tell."
+
+"Oh, ah!" said the doctor, looking round with a certain degree of
+interest in his face; "so you met it, did you?"
+
+"Met what?"
+
+"Oh, nothing;--only I have heard of horses being frightened along this
+road after the arrival of the 9.30 up-train. Flys never leave the moment
+that the train comes in, or the horses become restive--a wonderful thing
+for a fly-horse to become restive, isn't it?"
+
+"But what causes this alarm? I saw nothing!"
+
+"You ask me more than I can answer. I am as ignorant of the cause as
+yourself. I take things as they stand, and make no inquiries. When the
+flyman tells me that he can't start for a minute or two after the train
+has arrived, or urges on his horses to reach the station before the
+arrival of this train, giving as his reason that his brutes become wild
+if he does not do so, then I merely say, 'Do as you think best, cabby,'
+and bother my head no more about the matter."
+
+"I shall search this matter out," said I resolutely. "What has taken
+place so strangely corroborates the superstition, that I shall not leave
+it uninvestigated."
+
+"Take my advice and banish it from your thoughts. When you have come to
+the end, you will be sadly disappointed, and will find that all the
+mystery evaporates, and leaves a dull, commonplace residuum. It is best
+that the few mysteries which remain to us unexplained should still
+remain mysteries, or we shall disbelieve in supernatural agencies
+altogether. We have searched out the arcana of nature, and exposed all
+her secrets to the garish eye of day, and we find, in despair, that the
+poetry and romance of life are gone. Are we the happier for knowing that
+there are no ghosts, no fairies, no witches, no mermaids, no wood
+spirits? Were not our forefathers happier in thinking every lake to be
+the abode of a fairy, every forest to be a bower of yellow-haired
+sylphs, every moorland sweep to be tripped over by elf and pixie? I
+found my little boy one day lying on his face in a fairy-ring, crying:
+'You dear, dear little fairies, I _will_ believe in you, though papa
+says you are all nonsense.' I used, in my childish days, to think, when
+a silence fell upon a company, that an angel was passing through the
+room. Alas! I now know that it results only from the subject of weather
+having been talked to death, and no new subject having been started.
+Believe me, science has done good to mankind, but it has done mischief
+too. If we wish to be poetical or romantic, we must shut our eyes to
+facts. The head and the heart wage mutual war now. A lover preserves a
+lock of his mistress's hair as a holy relic, yet he must know perfectly
+well that for all practical purposes a bit of rhinoceros hide would do
+as well--the chemical constituents are identical. If I adore a fair
+lady, and feel a thrill through all my veins when I touch her hand, a
+moment's consideration tells me that phosphate of lime No. 1 is touching
+phosphate of lime No. 2--nothing more. If for a moment I forget myself
+so far as to wave my cap and cheer for king, or queen, or prince, I
+laugh at my folly next moment for having paid reverence to one digesting
+machine above another."
+
+I cut the doctor short as he was lapsing into his favourite subject of
+discussion, and asked him whether he would lend me the pony-chaise on
+the following evening, that I might drive to the station again and try
+to unravel the mystery.
+
+"I will lend you the pony," said he, "but not the chaise, as I am afraid
+of its being injured should Taffy take fright and run up into the hedge
+again. I have got a saddle."
+
+Next evening I was on my way to the station considerably before the time
+at which the train was due.
+
+I stopped at the turnpike and chatted with the old man who kept it. I
+asked him whether he could throw any light on the matter which I was
+investigating. He shrugged his shoulders, saying that he "knowed nothink
+about it."
+
+"What! Nothing at all?"
+
+"I don't trouble my head with matters of this sort," was the reply.
+"People _do_ say that something out of the common sort passes along the
+road and turns down the other road leading to Clayton and Brighton; but
+I pays no attention to what them people says."
+
+"Do you ever hear anything?"
+
+"After the arrival of the 9.30 train I does at times hear the rattle as
+of a mail-cart and the trot of a horse along the road; and the sound is
+as though one of the wheels was loose. I've a been out many a time to
+take the toll; but, Lor' bless 'ee! them sperits--if sperits them
+be--don't go for to pay toll."
+
+"Have you never inquired into the matter?"
+
+"Why should I? Anythink as don't go for to pay toll don't concern me. Do
+ye think as I knows 'ow many people and dogs goes through this heer
+geatt in a day? Not I--them don't pay toll, so them's no odds to me."
+
+"Look here, my man!" said I. "Do you object to my putting the bar across
+the road, immediately on the arrival of the train?"
+
+"Not a bit! Please yersel'; but you han't got much time to lose, for
+theer comes thickey train out of Clayton tunnel."
+
+I shut the gate, mounted Taffy, and drew up across the road a little way
+below the turnpike. I heard the train arrive--I saw it puff off. At the
+same moment I distinctly heard a trap coming up the road, one of the
+wheels rattling as though it were loose. I repeat deliberately that I
+_heard_ it--I cannot account for it--but, though I heard it, yet I saw
+nothing whatever.
+
+At the same time the pony became restless, it tossed its head, pricked
+up its ears, it started, pranced, and then made a bound to one side,
+entirely regardless of whip and rein. It tried to scramble up the
+sand-bank in its alarm, and I had to throw myself off and catch its
+head. I then cast a glance behind me at the turnpike. I saw the bar
+bent, as though someone were pressing against it; then, with a click, it
+flew open, and was dashed violently back against the white post to
+which it was usually hasped in the day-time. There it remained,
+quivering from the shock.
+
+Immediately I heard the rattle--rattle--rattle--of the tax-cart. I
+confess that my first impulse was to laugh, the idea of a ghostly
+tax-cart was so essentially ludicrous; but the _reality_ of the whole
+scene soon brought me to a graver mood, and, remounting Taffy, I rode
+down to the station.
+
+The officials were taking their ease, as another train was not due for
+some while; so I stepped up to the station-master and entered into
+conversation with him. After a few desultory remarks, I mentioned the
+circumstances which had occurred to me on the road, and my inability to
+account for them.
+
+"So that's what you're after!" said the master somewhat bluntly. "Well,
+I can tell you nothing about it; sperits don't come in my way, saving
+and excepting those which can be taken inwardly; and mighty comfortable
+warming things they be when so taken. If you ask me about other sorts of
+sperits, I tell you flat I don't believe in 'em, though I don't mind
+drinking the health of them what does."
+
+"Perhaps you may have the chance, if you are a little more
+communicative," said I.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you all I know, and that is precious little," answered
+the worthy man. "I know one thing for certain--that one compartment of a
+second-class carriage is always left vacant between Brighton and
+Hassocks Gate, by the 9.30 up-train."
+
+"For what purpose?"
+
+"Ah! that's more than I can fully explain. Before the orders came to
+this effect, people went into fits and that like, in one of the
+carriages."
+
+"Any particular carriage?"
+
+"The first compartment of the second-class carriage nearest to the
+engine. It is locked at Brighton, and I unlock it at this station."
+
+"What do you mean by saying that people had fits?"
+
+"I mean that I used to find men and women a-screeching and a-hollering
+like mad to be let out; they'd seen some'ut as had frightened them as
+they was passing through the Clayton tunnel. That was before they made
+the arrangement I told y' of."
+
+"Very strange!" said I meditatively.
+
+"Wery much so, but true for all that. _I_ don't believe in nothing but
+sperits of a warming and cheering nature, and them sort ain't to be
+found in Clayton tunn'l to my thinking."
+
+There was evidently nothing more to be got out of my friend. I hope that
+he drank my health that night; if he omitted to do so, it was his fault,
+not mine.
+
+As I rode home revolving in my mind all that I had heard and seen, I
+became more and more settled in my determination to thoroughly
+investigate the matter. The best means that I could adopt for so doing
+would be to come out from Brighton by the 9.30 train in the very
+compartment of the second-class carriage from which the public were
+considerately excluded.
+
+Somehow I felt no shrinking from the attempt; my curiosity was so
+intense that it overcame all apprehension as to the consequences.
+
+My next free day was Thursday, and I hoped then to execute my plan. In
+this, however, I was disappointed, as I found that a battalion drill was
+fixed for that very evening, and I was desirous of attending it, being
+somewhat behindhand in the regulation number of drills. I was
+consequently obliged to postpone my Brighton trip.
+
+On the Thursday evening about five o'clock I started in regimentals with
+my rifle over my shoulder, for the drilling ground--a piece of furzy
+common near the railway station.
+
+I was speedily overtaken by Mr. Ball, a corporal in the rifle corps, a
+capital shot and most efficient in his drill. Mr. Ball was driving his
+gig. He stopped on seeing me and offered me a seat beside him. I gladly
+accepted, as the distance to the station is a mile and three-quarters by
+the road, and two miles by what is commonly supposed to be the short cut
+across the fields.
+
+After some conversation on volunteering matters, about which Corporal
+Ball was an enthusiast, we turned out of the lanes into the station
+road, and I took the opportunity of adverting to the subject which was
+uppermost in my mind.
+
+"Ah! I have heard a good deal about that," said the corporal. "My
+workmen have often told me some cock-and-bull stories of that kind, but
+I can't say has 'ow I believed them. What you tell me is, 'owever, very
+remarkable. I never 'ad it on such good authority afore. Still, I can't
+believe that there's hanything supernatural about it."
+
+"I do not yet know what to believe," I replied, "for the whole matter is
+to me perfectly inexplicable."
+
+"You know, of course, the story which gave rise to the superstition?"
+
+"Not I. Pray tell it me."
+
+"Just about seven years agone--why, you must remember the circumstances
+as well as I do--there was a man druv over from I can't say where, for
+that was never exact-ly hascertained,--but from the Henfield direction,
+in a light cart. He went to the Station Inn, and throwing the reins to
+John Thomas, the ostler, bade him take the trap and bring it round to
+meet the 9.30 train, by which he calculated to return from Brighton.
+John Thomas said as 'ow the stranger was quite unbeknown to him, and
+that he looked as though he 'ad some matter on his mind when he went to
+the train; he was a queer sort of a man, with thick grey hair and beard,
+and delicate white 'ands, jist like a lady's. The trap was round to the
+station door as hordered by the arrival of the 9.30 train. The ostler
+observed then that the man was ashen pale, and that his 'ands trembled
+as he took the reins, that the stranger stared at him in a wild
+habstracted way, and that he would have driven off without tendering
+payment had he not been respectfully reminded that the 'orse had been
+given a feed of hoats. John Thomas made a hobservation to the gent
+relative to the wheel which was loose, but that hobservation met with no
+corresponding hanswer. The driver whipped his 'orse and went off. He
+passed the turnpike, and was seen to take the Brighton road hinstead of
+that by which he had come. A workman hobserved the trap next on the
+downs above Clayton chalk-pits. He didn't pay much attention to it, but
+he saw that the driver was on his legs at the 'ead of the 'orse. Next,
+morning, when the quarrymen went to the pit, they found a shattered
+tax-cart at the bottom, and the 'orse and driver dead, the latter with
+his neck broken. What was curious, too, was that an 'andkerchief was
+bound round the brute's heyes, so that he must have been driven over the
+edge blindfold. Hodd, wasn't it? Well, folks say that the gent and his
+tax-cart pass along the road every hevening after the arrival of the
+9.30 train; but I don't believe it; I ain't a bit superstitious--not I!"
+
+Next week I was again disappointed in my expectation of being able to
+put my scheme in execution; but on the third Saturday after my
+conversation with Corporal Ball, I walked into Brighton in the
+afternoon, the distance being about nine miles. I spent an hour on the
+shore watching the boats, and then I sauntered round the Pavilion,
+ardently longing that fire might break forth and consume that
+architectural monstrosity. I believe that I afterwards had a cup of
+coffee at the refreshment-rooms of the station, and capital
+refreshment-rooms they are, or were--very moderate and very good. I
+think that I partook of a bun, but if put on my oath I could not swear
+to the fact; a floating reminiscence of bun lingers in the chambers of
+memory, but I cannot be positive, and I wish in this paper to advance
+nothing but reliable facts. I squandered precious time in reading the
+advertisements of baby-jumpers--which no mother should be without--which
+are indispensable in the nursery and the greatest acquisition in the
+parlour, the greatest discovery of modern times, etc., etc. I perused a
+notice of the advantage of metallic brushes, and admired the young lady
+with her hair white on one side and black on the other; I studied the
+Chinese letter commendatory of Horniman's tea and the inferior English
+translation, and counted up the number of agents in Great Britain and
+Ireland. At length the ticket-office opened, and I booked for Hassocks
+Gate, second class, fare one shilling.
+
+I ran along the platform till I came to the compartment of the
+second-class carriage which I wanted. The door was locked, so I shouted
+for a guard.
+
+"Put me in here, please."
+
+"Can't there, s'r; next, please, nearly empty, one woman and baby."
+
+"I particularly wish to enter _this_ carriage," said I.
+
+"Can't be, lock'd, orders, comp'ny," replied the guard, turning on his
+heel.
+
+"What reason is there for the public's being excluded, may I ask?"
+
+"Dn'ow, 'spress ord'rs--c'n't let you in; next caridge, pl'se; now then,
+quick, pl'se."
+
+I knew the guard and he knew me--by sight, for I often travelled to and
+fro on the line, so I thought it best to be candid with him. I briefly
+told him my reason for making the request, and begged him to assist me
+in executing my plan. He then consented, though with reluctance.
+
+"'Ave y'r own way," said he; "only if an'thing 'appens, don't blame me!"
+
+"Never fear," laughed I, jumping into the carriage.
+
+The guard left the carriage unlocked, and in two minutes we were off.
+
+I did not feel in the slightest degree nervous. There was no light in
+the carriage, but that did not matter, as there was twilight. I sat
+facing the engine on the left side, and every now and then I looked out
+at the downs with a soft haze of light still hanging over them. We swept
+into a cutting, and I watched the lines of flint in the chalk, and
+longed to be geologising among them with my hammer, picking out
+"shepherds' crowns" and sharks' teeth, the delicate rhynconella and the
+quaint ventriculite. I remembered a not very distant occasion on which I
+had actually ventured there, and been chased off by the guard, after
+having brought down an avalanche of chalk débris in a manner dangerous
+to traffic whilst endeavouring to extricate a magnificent ammonite which
+I found, and--alas! left--protruding from the side of the cutting. I
+wondered whether that ammonite was still there; I looked about to
+identify the exact spot as we whizzed along; and at that moment we shot
+into the tunnel.
+
+There are two tunnels, with a bit of chalk cutting between them. We
+passed through the first, which is short, and in another moment plunged
+into the second.
+
+I cannot explain how it was that _now_, all of a sudden, a feeling of
+terror came over me; it seemed to drop over me like a wet sheet and wrap
+me round and round.
+
+I felt that _someone_ was seated opposite me--someone in the darkness
+with his eyes fixed on me.
+
+Many persons possessed of keen nervous sensibility are well aware when
+they are in the presence of another, even though they can see no one,
+and I believe that I possess this power strongly. If I were blindfolded,
+I think that I should know when anyone was looking fixedly at me, and I
+am certain that I should instinctively know that I was not alone if I
+entered a dark room in which another person was seated, even though he
+made no noise. I remember a college friend of mine, who dabbled in
+anatomy, telling me that a little Italian violinist once called on him
+to give a lesson on his instrument. The foreigner--a singularly nervous
+individual--moved restlessly from the place where he had been standing,
+casting many a furtive glance over his shoulder at a press which was
+behind him. At last the little fellow tossed aside his violin, saying--
+
+"I can note give de lesson if someone weel look at me from behind! Dare
+is somebodee in de cupboard, I know!"
+
+"You are right, there is!" laughed my anatomical friend, flinging open
+the door of the press and discovering a skeleton.
+
+The horror which oppressed me was numbing. For a few moments I could
+neither lift my hands nor stir a finger. I was tongue-tied. I seemed
+paralysed in every member. I fancied that I _felt_ eyes staring at me
+through the gloom. A cold breath seemed to play over my face. I believed
+that fingers touched my chest and plucked at my coat. I drew back
+against the partition; my heart stood still, my flesh became stiff, my
+muscles rigid.
+
+I do not know whether I breathed--a blue mist swam before my eyes, and
+my head span.
+
+The rattle and roar of the train dashing through the tunnel drowned
+every other sound.
+
+Suddenly we rushed past a light fixed against the wall in the side, and
+it sent a flash, instantaneous as that of lightning, through the
+carriage. In that moment I saw what I shall never, never forget. I saw a
+face opposite me, livid as that of a corpse, hideous with passion like
+that of a gorilla.
+
+I cannot describe it accurately, for I saw it but for a second; yet
+there rises before me now, as I write, the low broad brow seamed with
+wrinkles, the shaggy, over-hanging grey eyebrows; the wild ashen eyes,
+which glared as those of a demoniac; the coarse mouth, with its fleshy
+lips compressed till they were white; the profusion of wolf-grey hair
+about the cheeks and chin; the thin, bloodless hands, raised and
+half-open, extended towards me as though they would clutch and tear me.
+
+In the madness of terror, I flung myself along the seat to the further
+window.
+
+Then I felt that _it_ was moving slowly down, and was opposite me again.
+I lifted my hand to let down the window, and I touched something: I
+thought it was a hand--yes, yes! it _was_ a hand, for it folded over
+mine and began to contract on it. I felt each finger separately; they
+were cold, dully cold. I wrenched my hand away. I slipped back to my
+former place in the carriage by the open window, and in frantic horror I
+opened the door, clinging to it with both my hands round the
+window-jamb, swung myself out with my feet on the floor and my head
+turned from the carriage. If the cold fingers had but touched my woven
+hands, mine would have given way; had I but turned my head and seen that
+hellish countenance peering out at me, I must have lost my hold.
+
+Ah! I saw the light from the tunnel mouth; it smote on my face. The
+engine rushed out with a piercing whistle. The roaring echoes of the
+tunnel died away. The cool fresh breeze blew over my face and tossed my
+hair; the speed of the train was relaxed; the lights of the station
+became brighter. I heard the bell ringing loudly; I saw people waiting
+for the train; I felt the vibration as the brake was put on. We stopped;
+and then my fingers gave way. I dropped as a sack on the platform, and
+then, then--not till then--I awoke. There now! from beginning to end the
+whole had been a frightful dream caused by my having too many blankets
+over my bed. If I must append a moral--Don't sleep too hot.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE LEADS
+
+
+Having realised a competence in Australia, and having a hankering after
+country life for the remainder of my days in the old home, on my return
+to England I went to an agent with the object of renting a house with
+shooting attached, over at least three thousand acres, with the option
+of a purchase should the place suit me. I was no more intending to buy a
+country seat without having tried what it was like, than is a king
+disposed to go to war without knowing something of the force that can be
+brought against him. I was rather taken with photographs of a manor
+called Fernwood, and I was still further engaged when I saw the place
+itself on a beautiful October day, when St. Luke's summer was turning
+the country into a world of rainbow tints under a warm sun, and a soft
+vaporous blue haze tinted all shadows cobalt, and gave to the hills a
+stateliness that made them look like mountains. Fernwood was an old
+house, built in the shape of the letter H, and therefore, presumably,
+dating from the time of the early Tudor monarchs. The porch opened into
+the hall which was on the left of the cross-stroke, and the drawing-room
+was on the right. There was one inconvenience about the house; it had a
+staircase at each extremity of the cross-stroke, and there was no
+upstair communication between the two wings of the mansion. But, as a
+practical man, I saw how this might be remedied. The front door faced
+the south, and the hall was windowless on the north. Nothing easier than
+to run a corridor along at the back, giving communication both upstairs
+and downstairs, without passing through the hall. The whole thing could
+be done for, at the outside, two hundred pounds, and would be no
+disfigurement to the place. I agreed to become tenant of Fernwood for a
+twelvemonth, in which time I should be able to judge whether the place
+would suit me, the neighbours be pleasant, and the climate agree with my
+wife. We went down to Fernwood at once, and settled ourselves
+comfortably in by the first week in November.
+
+The house was furnished; it was the property of an elderly gentleman, a
+bachelor named Framett, who lived in rooms in town, and spent most of
+his time at the club. He was supposed to have been jilted by his
+intended, after which he eschewed female society, and remained
+unmarried.
+
+I called on him before taking up our residence at Fernwood, and found
+him a somewhat blasé, languid, cold-blooded creature, not at all proud
+of having a noble manor-house that had belonged to his family for four
+centuries; very willing to sell it, so as to spite a cousin who
+calculated on coming in for the estate, and whom Mr. Framett, with the
+malignity that is sometimes found in old people, was particularly
+desirous of disappointing.
+
+"The house has been let before, I suppose?" said I.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied indifferently, "I believe so, several times."
+
+"For long?"
+
+"No--o. I believe, not for long."
+
+"Have the tenants had any particular reasons for not remaining on
+there--if I may be so bold as to inquire?"
+
+"All people have reasons to offer, but what they offer you are not
+supposed to receive as genuine."
+
+I could get no more from him than this. "I think, sir, if I were you I
+would not go down to Fernwood till after November was out."
+
+"But," said I, "I want the shooting."
+
+"Ah, to be sure--the shooting, ah! I should have preferred if you could
+have waited till December began."
+
+"That would not suit me," I said, and so the matter ended.
+
+When we were settled in, we occupied the right wing of the house. The
+left or west wing was but scantily furnished and looked cheerless, as
+though rarely tenanted. We were not a large family, my wife and myself
+alone; there was consequently ample accommodation in the east wing for
+us. The servants were placed above the kitchen, in a portion of the
+house I have not yet described. It was a half-wing, if I may so describe
+it, built on the north side parallel with the upper arm of the western
+limb of the hall and the [Symbol: H]. This block had a gable to the
+north like the wings, and a broad lead valley was between them, that, as
+I learned from the agent, had to be attended to after the fall of the
+leaf, and in times of snow, to clear it.
+
+Access to this valley could be had from within by means of a little
+window in the roof, formed as a dormer. A short ladder allowed anyone to
+ascend from the passage to this window and open or shut it. The western
+staircase gave access to this passage, from which the servants' rooms in
+the new block were reached, as also the untenanted apartments in the old
+wing. And as there were no windows in the extremities of this passage
+that ran due north and south, it derived all its light from the
+aforementioned dormer window.
+
+One night, after we had been in the house about a week, I was sitting up
+smoking, with a little whisky-and-water at my elbow, reading a review of
+an absurd, ignorantly written book on New South Wales, when I heard a
+tap at the door, and the parlourmaid came in, and said in a nervous tone
+of voice: "Beg your pardon, sir, but cook nor I, nor none of us dare go
+to bed."
+
+"Why not?" I asked, looking up in surprise.
+
+"Please, sir, we dursn't go into the passage to get to our rooms."
+
+"Whatever is the matter with the passage?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, sir, with the passage. Would you mind, sir, just coming to
+see? We don't know what to make of it."
+
+I put down my review with a grunt of dissatisfaction, laid my pipe
+aside, and followed the maid.
+
+She led me through the hall, and up the staircase at the western
+extremity.
+
+On reaching the upper landing I saw all the maids there in a cluster,
+and all evidently much scared.
+
+"Whatever is all this nonsense about?" I asked.
+
+"Please, sir, will you look? We can't say."
+
+The parlourmaid pointed to an oblong patch of moonlight on the wall of
+the passage. The night was cloudless, and the full moon shone slanting
+in through the dormer and painted a brilliant silver strip on the wall
+opposite. The window being on the side of the roof to the east, we could
+not see that, but did see the light thrown through it against the wall.
+This patch of reflected light was about seven feet above the floor.
+
+The window itself was some ten feet up, and the passage was but four
+feet wide. I enter into these particulars for reasons that will
+presently appear.
+
+The window was divided into three parts by wooden mullions, and was
+composed of four panes of glass in each compartment.
+
+Now I could distinctly see the reflection of the moon through the window
+with the black bars up and down, and the division of the panes. But I
+saw more than that: I saw the shadow of a lean arm with a hand and thin,
+lengthy fingers across a portion of the window, apparently groping at
+where was the latch by which the casement could be opened.
+
+My impression at the moment was that there was a burglar on the leads
+trying to enter the house by means of this dormer.
+
+Without a minute's hesitation I ran into the passage and looked up at
+the window, but could see only a portion of it, as in shape it was low,
+though broad, and, as already stated, was set at a great height. But at
+that moment something fluttered past it, like a rush of flapping
+draperies obscuring the light.
+
+I had placed the ladder, which I found hooked up to the wall, in
+position, and planted my foot on the lowest rung, when my wife arrived.
+She had been alarmed by the housemaid, and now she clung to me, and
+protested that I was not to ascend without my pistol.
+
+To satisfy her I got my Colt's revolver that I always kept loaded, and
+then, but only hesitatingly, did she allow me to mount. I ascended to
+the casement, unhasped it, and looked out. I could see nothing. The
+ladder was over-short, and it required an effort to heave oneself from
+it through the casement on to the leads. I am stout, and not so nimble
+as I was when younger. After one or two efforts, and after presenting
+from below an appearance that would have provoked laughter at any other
+time, I succeeded in getting through and upon the leads.
+
+I looked up and down the valley--there was absolutely nothing to be seen
+except an accumulation of leaves carried there from the trees that were
+shedding their foliage.
+
+The situation was vastly puzzling. As far as I could judge there was no
+way off the roof, no other window opening into the valley; I did not go
+along upon the leads, as it was night, and moonlight is treacherous.
+Moreover, I was wholly unacquainted with the arrangement of the roof,
+and had no wish to risk a fall.
+
+I descended from the window with my feet groping for the upper rung of
+the ladder in a manner even more grotesque than my ascent through the
+casement, but neither my wife--usually extremely alive to anything
+ridiculous in my appearance--nor the domestics were in a mood to make
+merry. I fastened the window after me, and had hardly reached the
+bottom of the ladder before again a shadow flickered across the patch of
+moonlight.
+
+I was fairly perplexed, and stood musing. Then I recalled that
+immediately behind the house the ground rose; that, in fact, the house
+lay under a considerable hill. It was just possible by ascending the
+slope to reach the level of the gutter and rake the leads from one
+extremity to the other with my eye.
+
+I mentioned this to my wife, and at once the whole set of maids trailed
+down the stairs after us. They were afraid to remain in the passage, and
+they were curious to see if there was really some person on the leads.
+
+We went out at the back of the house, and ascended the bank till we were
+on a level with the broad gutter between the gables. I now saw that this
+gutter did not run through, but stopped against the hall roof;
+consequently, unless there were some opening of which I knew nothing,
+the person on the leads could not leave the place, save by the dormer
+window, when open, or by swarming down the fall pipe.
+
+It at once occurred to me that if what I had seen were the shadow of a
+burglar, he might have mounted by means of the rain-water pipe. But if
+so--how had he vanished the moment my head was protruded through the
+window? and how was it that I had seen the shadow flicker past the light
+immediately after I had descended the ladder? It was conceivable that
+the man had concealed himself in the shadow of the hall roof, and had
+taken advantage of my withdrawal to run past the window so as to reach
+the fall pipe, and let himself down by that.
+
+I could, however, see no one running away, as I must have done, going
+outside so soon after his supposed descent.
+
+But the whole affair became more perplexing when, looking towards the
+leads, I saw in the moonlight something with fluttering garments running
+up and down them.
+
+There could be no mistake--the object was a woman, and her garments were
+mere tatters. We could not hear a sound.
+
+I looked round at my wife and the servants,--they saw this weird object
+as distinctly as myself. It was more like a gigantic bat than a human
+being, and yet, that it was a woman we could not doubt, for the arms
+were now and then thrown above the head in wild gesticulation, and at
+moments a profile was presented, and then we saw, or thought we saw,
+long flapping hair, unbound.
+
+"I must go back to the ladder," said I; "you remain where you are,
+watching."
+
+"Oh, Edward! not alone," pleaded my wife.
+
+"My dear, who is to go with me?"
+
+I went. I had left the back door unlocked, and I ascended the staircase
+and entered the passage. Again I saw the shadow flicker past the moonlit
+patch on the wall opposite the window.
+
+I ascended the ladder and opened the casement.
+
+Then I heard the clock in the hall strike one.
+
+I heaved myself up to the sill with great labour, and I endeavoured to
+thrust my short body through the window, when I heard feet on the
+stairs, and next moment my wife's voice from below, at the foot of the
+ladder. "Oh, Edward, Edward! please do not go out there again. It has
+vanished. All at once. There is nothing there now to be seen."
+
+I returned, touched the ladder tentatively with my feet, refastened the
+window, and descended--perhaps inelegantly. I then went down with my
+wife, and with her returned up the bank, to the spot where stood
+clustered our servants.
+
+They had seen nothing further; and although I remained on the spot
+watching for half an hour, I also saw nothing more.
+
+The maids were too frightened to go to bed, and so agreed to sit up in
+the kitchen for the rest of the night by a good fire, and I gave them a
+bottle of sherry to mull, and make themselves comfortable upon, and to
+help them to recover their courage.
+
+Although I went to bed, I could not sleep. I was completely baffled by
+what I had seen. I could in no way explain what the object was and how
+it had left the leads.
+
+Next day I sent for the village mason and asked him to set a long ladder
+against the well-head of the fall pipe, and examine the valley between
+the gables. At the same time I would mount to the little window and
+contemplate proceedings through that.
+
+The man had to send for a ladder sufficiently long, and that occupied
+some time. However, at length he had it planted, and then mounted. When
+he approached the dormer window--
+
+"Give me a hand," said I, "and haul me up; I would like to satisfy
+myself with my own eyes that there is no other means of getting upon or
+leaving the leads."
+
+He took me under both shoulders and heaved me out, and I stood with him
+in the broad lead gutter.
+
+"There's no other opening whatever," said he, "and, Lord love you, sir,
+I believe that what you saw was no more than this," and he pointed to a
+branch of a noble cedar that grew hard by the west side of the house.
+
+"I warrant, sir," said he, "that what you saw was this here bough as has
+been carried by a storm and thrown here, and the wind last night swept
+it up and down the leads."
+
+"But was there any wind?" I asked. "I do not remember that there was."
+
+"I can't say," said he; "before twelve o'clock I was fast asleep, and it
+might have blown a gale and I hear nothing of it."
+
+"I suppose there must have been some wind," said I, "and that I was too
+surprised and the women too frightened to observe it," I laughed. "So
+this marvellous spectral phenomenon receives a very prosaic and natural
+explanation. Mason, throw down the bough and we will burn it to-night."
+
+The branch was cast over the edge, and fell at the back of the house. I
+left the leads, descended, and going out picked up the cedar branch,
+brought it into the hall, summoned the servants, and said derisively:
+"Here is an illustration of the way in which weak-minded women get
+scared. Now we will burn the burglar or ghost that we saw. It turns out
+to be nothing but this branch, blown up and down the leads by the wind."
+
+"But, Edward," said my wife, "there was not a breath stirring."
+
+"There must have been. Only where we were we were sheltered and did not
+observe it. Aloft, it blew across the roofs, and formed an eddy that
+caught the broken bough, lifted it, carried it first one way, then spun
+it round and carried it the reverse way. In fact, the wind between the
+two roofs assumed a spiral movement. I hope now you are all satisfied. I
+am."
+
+So the bough was burned, and our fears--I mean those of the
+females--were allayed.
+
+In the evening, after dinner, as I sat with my wife, she said to me:
+"Half a bottle would have been enough, Edward. Indeed, I think half a
+bottle would be too much; you should not give the girls a liking for
+sherry, it may lead to bad results. If it had been elderberry wine, that
+would have been different."
+
+"But there is no elderberry wine in the house," I objected.
+
+"Well, I hope no harm will come of it, but I greatly mistrust----"
+
+"Please, sir, it is there again."
+
+The parlourmaid, with a blanched face, was at the door.
+
+"Nonsense," said I, "we burnt it."
+
+"This comes of the sherry," observed my wife. "They will be seeing
+ghosts every night."
+
+"But, my dear, you saw it as well as myself!"
+
+I rose, my wife followed, and we went to the landing as before, and,
+sure enough, against the patch of moonlight cast through the window in
+the roof, was the arm again, and then a flutter of shadows, as if cast
+by garments.
+
+"It was not the bough," said my wife. "If this had been seen immediately
+after the sherry I should not have been surprised, but--as it is now it
+is most extraordinary."
+
+"I'll have this part of the house shut up," said I. Then I bade the
+maids once more spend the night in the kitchen, "and make yourselves
+lively on tea," I said--for I knew my wife would not allow another
+bottle of sherry to be given them. "To-morrow your beds shall be moved
+to the east wing."
+
+"Beg pardon," said the cook, "I speaks in the name of all. We don't
+think we can remain in the house, but must leave the situation."
+
+"That comes of the tea," said I to my wife. "Now," to the cook, "as you
+have had another fright, I will let you have a bottle of mulled port
+to-night."
+
+"Sir," said the cook, "if you can get rid of the ghost, we don't want to
+leave so good a master. We withdraw the notice."
+
+Next day I had all the servants' goods transferred to the east wing, and
+rooms were fitted up for them to sleep in. As their portion of the house
+was completely cut off from the west wing, the alarm of the domestics
+died away.
+
+A heavy, stormy rain came on next week, the first token of winter
+misery.
+
+I then found that, whether caused by the cedar bough, or by the nailed
+boots of the mason, I cannot say, but the lead of the valley between the
+roofs was torn, and water came in, streaming down the walls, and
+threatening to severely damage the ceilings. I had to send for a
+plumber as soon as the weather mended. At the same time I started for
+town to see Mr. Framett. I had made up my mind that Fernwood was not
+suitable, and by the terms of my agreement I might be off my bargain if
+I gave notice the first month, and then my tenancy would be for the six
+months only. I found the squire at his club.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "I told you not to go there in November. No one likes
+Fernwood in November; it is all right at other times."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There is no bother except in November."
+
+"Why should there be bother, as you term it, then?"
+
+Mr. Framett shrugged his shoulders. "How the deuce can I tell you? I've
+never been a spirit, and all that sort of thing. Mme. Blavatsky might
+possibly tell you. I can't. But it is a fact."
+
+"What is a fact?"
+
+"Why, that there is no apparition at any other time It is only in
+November, when she met with a little misfortune. That is when she is
+seen."
+
+"Who is seen?"
+
+"My aunt Eliza--I mean my great-aunt."
+
+"You speak mysteries."
+
+"I don't know much about it, and care less," said Mr. Framett, and
+called for a lemon squash. "It was this: I had a great-aunt who was
+deranged. The family kept it quiet, and did not send her to an asylum,
+but fastened her in a room in the west wing. You see, that part of the
+house is partially separated from the rest. I believe she was rather
+shabbily treated, but she was difficult to manage, and tore her clothes
+to pieces. Somehow, she succeeded in getting out on the roof, and would
+race up and down there. They allowed her to do so, as by that means she
+obtained fresh air. But one night in November she scrambled up and, I
+believe, tumbled over. It was hushed up. Sorry you went there in
+November. I should have liked you to buy the place. I am sick of it."
+
+I did buy Fernwood. What decided me was this: the plumbers, in mending
+the leads, with that ingenuity to do mischief which they sometimes
+display, succeeded in setting fire to the roof, and the result was that
+the west wing was burnt down. Happily, a wall so completely separated
+the wing from the rest of the house, that the fire was arrested. The
+wing was not rebuilt, and I, thinking that with the disappearance of the
+leads I should be freed from the apparition that haunted them, purchased
+Fernwood. I am happy to say we have been undisturbed since.
+
+
+
+
+AUNT JOANNA
+
+
+In the Land's End district is the little church-town of Zennor. There is
+no village to speak of--a few scattered farms, and here and there a
+cluster of cottages. The district is bleak, the soil does not lie deep
+over granite that peers through the surface on exposed spots, where the
+furious gales from the ocean sweep the land. If trees ever existed
+there, they have been swept away by the blast, but the golden furze or
+gorse defies all winds, and clothes the moorland with a robe of
+splendour, and the heather flushes the slopes with crimson towards the
+decline of summer, and mantles them in soft, warm brown in winter, like
+the fur of an animal.
+
+In Zennor is a little church, built of granite, rude and simple of
+construction, crouching low, to avoid the gales, but with a tower that
+has defied the winds and the lashing rains, because wholly devoid of
+sculptured detail, which would have afforded the blasts something to lay
+hold of and eat away. In Zennor parish is one of the finest cromlechs in
+Cornwall, a huge slab of unwrought stone like a table, poised on the
+points of standing upright blocks as rude as the mass they sustain.
+
+Near this monument of a hoar and indeed unknown antiquity lived an old
+woman by herself, in a small cottage of one story in height, built of
+moor stones set in earth, and pointed only with lime. It was thatched
+with heather, and possessed but a single chimney that rose but little
+above the apex of the roof, and had two slates set on the top to protect
+the rising smoke from being blown down the chimney into the cottage
+when the wind was from the west or from the east. When, however, it
+drove from north or south, then the smoke must take care of itself. On
+such occasions it was wont to find its way out of the door, and little
+or none went up the chimney.
+
+The only fuel burnt in this cottage was peat--not the solid black peat
+from deep bogs, but turf of only a spade graft, taken from the surface,
+and composed of undissolved roots. Such fuel gives flame, which the
+other does not; but, on the other hand, it does not throw out the same
+amount of heat, nor does it last one half the time.
+
+The woman who lived in the cottage was called by the people of the
+neighbourhood Aunt Joanna. What her family name was but few remembered,
+nor did it concern herself much. She had no relations at all, with the
+exception of a grand-niece, who was married to a small tradesman, a
+wheelwright near the church. But Joanna and her great-niece were not on
+speaking terms. The girl had mortally offended the old woman by going to
+a dance at St. Ives, against her express orders. It was at this dance
+that she had met the wheelwright, and this meeting, and the treatment
+the girl had met with from her aunt for having gone to it, had led to
+the marriage. For Aunt Joanna was very strict in her Wesleyanism, and
+bitterly hostile to all such carnal amusements as dancing and
+play-acting. Of the latter there was none in that wild west Cornish
+district, and no temptation ever afforded by a strolling company setting
+up its booth within reach of Zennor. But dancing, though denounced,
+still drew the more independent spirits together. Rose Penaluna had been
+with her great-aunt after her mother's death. She was a lively girl, and
+when she heard of a dance at St. Ives, and had been asked to go to it,
+although forbidden by Aunt Joanna, she stole from the cottage at night,
+and found her way to St. Ives.
+
+Her conduct was reprehensible certainly. But that of Aunt Joanna was
+even more so, for when she discovered that the girl had left the house
+she barred her door, and refused to allow Rose to re-enter it. The poor
+girl had been obliged to take refuge the same night at the nearest farm
+and sleep in an outhouse, and next morning to go into St. Ives and
+entreat an acquaintance to take her in till she could enter into
+service. Into service she did not go, for when Abraham Hext, the
+carpenter, heard how she had been treated, he at once proposed, and in
+three weeks married her. Since then no communication had taken place
+between the old woman and her grand-niece. As Rose knew, Joanna was
+implacable in her resentments, and considered that she had been acting
+aright in what she had done.
+
+The nearest farm to Aunt Joanna's cottage was occupied by the Hockins.
+One day Elizabeth, the farmer's wife, saw the old woman outside the
+cottage as she was herself returning from market; and, noticing how bent
+and feeble Joanna was, she halted, and talked to her, and gave her good
+advice.
+
+"See you now, auntie, you'm gettin' old and crimmed wi' rheumatics. How
+can you get about? An' there's no knowin' but you might be took bad in
+the night. You ought to have some little lass wi' you to mind you."
+
+"I don't want nobody, thank the Lord."
+
+"Not just now, auntie, but suppose any chance ill-luck were to come on
+you. And then, in the bad weather, you'm not fit to go abroad after the
+turves, and you can't get all you want--tay and sugar and milk for
+yourself now. It would be handy to have a little maid by you."
+
+"Who should I have?" asked Joanna.
+
+"Well, now, you couldn't do better than take little Mary, Rose Hext's
+eldest girl. She's a handy maid, and bright and pleasant to speak to."
+
+"No," answered the old woman, "I'll have none o' they Hexts, not I. The
+Lord is agin Rose and all her family, I know it. I'll have none of
+them."
+
+"But, auntie, you must be nigh on ninety."
+
+"I be ower that. But what o' that? Didn't Sarah, the wife of Abraham,
+live to an hundred and seven and twenty years, and that in spite of him
+worritin' of her wi' that owdacious maid of hern, Hagar? If it hadn't
+been for their goings on, of Abraham and Hagar, it's my belief that
+she'd ha' held on to a hundred and fifty-seven. I thank the Lord I've
+never had no man to worrit me. So why I shouldn't equal Sarah's life I
+don't see."
+
+Then she went indoors and shut the door.
+
+After that a week elapsed without Mrs. Hockin seeing the old woman. She
+passed the cottage, but no Joanna was about. The door was not open, and
+usually it was. Elizabeth spoke about this to her husband. "Jabez," said
+she, "I don't like the looks o' this; I've kept my eye open, and there
+be no Auntie Joanna hoppin' about. Whativer can be up? It's my opinion
+us ought to go and see."
+
+"Well, I've naught on my hands now," said the farmer, "so I reckon we
+will go."
+
+The two walked together to the cottage. No smoke issued from the
+chimney, and the door was shut. Jabez knocked, but there came no answer;
+so he entered, followed by his wife.
+
+There was in the cottage but the kitchen, with one bedroom at the side.
+The hearth was cold.
+
+"There's some'ut up," said Mrs. Hockin.
+
+"I reckon it's the old lady be down," replied her husband, and, throwing
+open the bedroom door, he said: "Sure enough, and no mistake--there her
+be, dead as a dried pilchard."
+
+And in fact Auntie Joanna had died in the night, after having so
+confidently affirmed her conviction that she would live to the age of a
+hundred and twenty-seven.
+
+"Whativer shall we do?" asked Mrs. Hockin.
+
+"I reckon," said her husband, "us had better take an inventory of what
+is here, lest wicked rascals come in and steal anything and everything."
+
+"Folks bain't so bad as that, and a corpse in the house," observed Mrs.
+Hockin.
+
+"Don't be sure o' that--these be terrible wicked times," said the
+husband. "And I sez, sez I, no harm is done in seein' what the old
+creetur had got."
+
+"Well, surely," acquiesced Elizabeth, "there is no harm in that."
+
+In the bedroom was an old oak chest, and this the farmer and his wife
+opened. To their surprise they found in it a silver teapot, and half a
+dozen silver spoons.
+
+"Well, now," exclaimed Elizabeth Hockin, "fancy her havin' these--and me
+only Britannia metal."
+
+"I reckon she came of a good family," said Jabez. "Leastwise, I've heard
+as how she were once well off."
+
+"And look here!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "there's fine and beautiful linen
+underneath--sheets and pillow-cases."
+
+"But look here!" cried Jabez, "blessed if the taypot bain't chock-full
+o' money! Whereiver did she get it from?"
+
+"Her's been in the way of showing folk the Zennor Quoit, visitors from
+St. Ives and Penzance, and she's had scores o' shillings that way."
+
+"Lord!" exclaimed Jabez. "I wish she'd left it to me, and I could buy a
+cow; I want another cruel bad."
+
+"Ay, we do, terrible," said Elizabeth. "But just look to her bed, what
+torn and wretched linen be on that--and here these fine bedclothes all
+in the chest."
+
+"Who'll get the silver taypot and spoons, and the money?" inquired
+Jabez.
+
+"Her had no kin--none but Rose Hext, and her couldn't abide her. Last
+words her said to me was that she'd 'have never naught to do wi' the
+Hexts, they and all their belongings.'"
+
+"That was her last words?"
+
+"The very last words her spoke to me--or to anyone."
+
+"Then," said Jabez, "I'll tell ye what, Elizabeth, it's our moral dooty
+to abide by the wishes of Aunt Joanna. It never does to go agin what is
+right. And as her expressed herself that strong, why us, as honest
+folks, must carry out her wishes, and see that none of all her savings
+go to them darned and dratted Hexts."
+
+"But who be they to go to, then?"
+
+"Well--we'll see. Fust us will have her removed, and provide that her be
+daycent buried. Them Hexts be in a poor way, and couldn't afford the
+expense, and it do seem to me, Elizabeth, as it would be a liberal and a
+kindly act in us to take all the charges on ourselves. Us is the closest
+neighbours."
+
+"Ay--and her have had milk of me these ten or twelve years, and I've
+never charged her a penny, thinking her couldn't afford it. But her
+could, her were a-hoardin' of her money--and not paying me. That were
+not honest, and what I say is, that I have a right to some of her
+savin's, to pay the milk bill--and it's butter I've let her have now and
+then in a liberal way."
+
+"Very well, Elizabeth. Fust of all, we'll take the silver taypot and the
+spoons wi' us, to get 'em out of harm's way."
+
+"And I'll carry the linen sheets and pillow-cases. My word!--why didn't
+she use 'em, instead of them rags?"
+
+All Zennor declared that the Hockins were a most neighbourly and
+generous couple, when it was known that they took upon themselves to
+defray the funeral expenses.
+
+Mrs. Hext came to the farm, and said that she was willing to do what she
+could, but Mrs. Hockin replied: "My good Rose, it's no good. I seed your
+aunt when her was ailin', and nigh on death, and her laid it on me
+solemn as could be that we was to bury her, and that she'd have nothin'
+to do wi' the Hexts at no price."
+
+Rose sighed, and went away.
+
+Rose had not expected to receive anything from her aunt. She had never
+been allowed to look at the treasures in the oak chest. As far as she
+had been aware, Aunt Joanna had been extremely poor. But she remembered
+that the old woman had at one time befriended her, and she was ready to
+forgive the harsh treatment to which she had finally been subjected. In
+fact, she had repeatedly made overtures to her great-aunt to be
+reconciled, but these overtures had been always rejected. She was,
+accordingly, not surprised to learn from Mrs. Hockin that the old
+woman's last words had been as reported.
+
+But, although disowned and disinherited, Rose, her husband, and children
+dressed in black, and were chief mourners at the funeral. Now it had so
+happened that when it came to the laying out of Aunt Joanna, Mrs. Hockin
+had looked at the beautiful linen sheets she had found in the oak chest,
+with the object of furnishing the corpse with one as a winding-sheet.
+But--she said to herself--it would really be a shame to spoil a pair,
+and where else could she get such fine and beautiful old linen as was
+this? So she put the sheets away, and furnished for the purpose a clean
+but coarse and ragged sheet such as Aunt Joanna had in common use. That
+was good enough to moulder in the grave. It would be positively sinful,
+because wasteful, to give up to corruption and the worm such fine white
+linen as Aunt Joanna had hoarded. The funeral was conducted, otherwise,
+liberally. Aunt Joanna was given an elm, and not a mean deal board
+coffin, such as is provided for paupers; and a handsome escutcheon of
+white metal was put on the lid.
+
+Moreover, plenty of gin was drunk, and cake and cheese eaten at the
+house, all at the expense of the Hockins. And the conversation among
+those who attended, and ate and drank, and wiped their eyes, was rather
+anent the generosity of the Hockins than of the virtues of the
+departed.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Hockin heard this, and their hearts swelled within them.
+Nothing so swells the heart as the consciousness of virtue being
+recognised. Jabez in an undertone informed a neighbour that he weren't
+goin' to stick at the funeral expenses, not he; he'd have a neat stone
+erected above the grave with work on it, at twopence a letter. The name
+and the date of departure of Aunt Joanna, and her age, and two lines of
+a favourite hymn of his, all about earth being no dwelling-place, heaven
+being properly her home.
+
+It was not often that Elizabeth Hockin cried, but she did this day; she
+wept tears of sympathy with the deceased, and happiness at the ovation
+accorded to herself and her husband. At length, as the short winter day
+closed in, the last of those who had attended the funeral, and had
+returned to the farm to recruit and regale after it, departed, and the
+Hockins were left to themselves.
+
+"It were a beautiful day," said Jabez.
+
+"Ay," responded Elizabeth, "and what a sight o' people came here."
+
+"This here buryin' of Aunt Joanna have set us up tremendous in the
+estimation of the neighbours."
+
+"I'd like to know who else would ha' done it for a poor old creetur as
+is no relation; ay--and one as owed a purty long bill to me for milk and
+butter through ten or twelve years."
+
+"Well," said Jabez, "I've allus heard say that a good deed brings its
+own reward wi' it--and it's a fine proverb. I feels it in my insides."
+
+"P'raps it's the gin, Jabez."
+
+"No--it's virtue. It's warmer nor gin a long sight. Gin gives a
+smouldering spark, but a good conscience is a blaze of furze."
+
+The farm of the Hockins was small, and Hockin looked after his cattle
+himself. One maid was kept, but no man in the house. All were wont to
+retire early to bed; neither Hockin nor his wife had literary tastes,
+and were not disposed to consume much oil, so as to read at night.
+
+During the night, at what time she did not know, Mrs. Hockin awoke with
+a start, and found that her husband was sitting up in bed listening.
+There was a moon that night, and no clouds in the sky. The room was full
+of silver light. Elizabeth Hockin heard a sound of feet in the kitchen,
+which was immediately under the bedroom of the couple.
+
+"There's someone about," she whispered; "go down, Jabez."
+
+"I wonder, now, who it be. P'raps its Sally."
+
+"It can't be Sally--how can it, when she can't get out o' her room
+wi'out passin' through ours?"
+
+"Run down, Elizabeth, and see."
+
+"It's your place to go, Jabez."
+
+"But if it was a woman--and me in my night-shirt?"
+
+"And, Jabez, if it was a man, a robber--and me in my night-shirt? It 'ud
+be shameful."
+
+"I reckon us had best go down together."
+
+"We'll do so--but I hope it's not----"
+
+"What?"
+
+Mrs. Hockin did not answer. She and her husband crept from bed, and,
+treading on tiptoe across the room, descended the stair.
+
+There was no door at the bottom, but the staircase was boarded up at the
+side; it opened into the kitchen.
+
+They descended very softly and cautiously, holding each other, and when
+they reached the bottom, peered timorously into the apartment that
+served many purposes--kitchen, sitting-room, and dining-place. The
+moonlight poured in through the broad, low window.
+
+By it they saw a figure. There could be no mistaking it--it was that of
+Aunt Joanna, clothed in the tattered sheet that Elizabeth Hockin had
+allowed for her grave-clothes. The old woman had taken one of the fine
+linen sheets out of the cupboard in which it had been placed, and had
+spread it over the long table, and was smoothing it down with her bony
+hands.
+
+The Hockins trembled, not with cold, though it was mid-winter, but with
+terror. They dared not advance, and they felt powerless to retreat.
+
+Then they saw Aunt Joanna go to the cupboard, open it, and return with
+the silver spoons; she placed all six on the sheet, and with a lean
+finger counted them.
+
+She turned her face towards those who were watching her proceedings, but
+it was in shadow, and they could not distinguish the features nor note
+the expression with which she regarded them.
+
+Presently she went back to the cupboard, and returned with the silver
+teapot. She stood at one end of the table, and now the reflection of the
+moon on the linen sheet was cast upon her face, and they saw that she
+was moving her lips--but no sound issued from them.
+
+She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table. The Hockins saw the glint of the
+metal, and the shadow cast by each piece of money as it rolled. The
+first coin lodged at the further left-hand corner and the second rested
+near it; and so on, the pieces were rolled, and ranged themselves in
+order, ten in a row. Then the next ten were run across the white cloth
+in the same manner, and dropped over on their sides below the first row;
+thus also the third ten. And all the time the dead woman was mouthing,
+as though counting, but still inaudibly.
+
+[Illustration: SHE THRUST HER HAND INTO THE TEAPOT AND DREW FORTH THE
+COINS, ONE BY ONE, AND ROLLED THEM ALONG THE TABLE.]
+
+The couple stood motionless observing proceedings, till suddenly a cloud
+passed before the face of the moon, so dense as to eclipse the light.
+
+Then in a paroxysm of terror both turned and fled up the stairs, bolted
+their bedroom door, and jumped into bed.
+
+There was no sleep for them that night. In the gloom when the moon was
+concealed, in the glare when it shone forth, it was the same, they
+could hear the light rolling of the coins along the table, and the click
+as they fell over. Was the supply inexhaustible? It was not so, but
+apparently the dead woman did not weary of counting the coins. When all
+had been ranged, she could be heard moving to the further end of the
+table, and there recommencing the same proceeding of coin-rolling.
+
+Not till near daybreak did this sound cease, and not till the maid,
+Sally, had begun to stir in the inner bedchamber did Hockin and his wife
+venture to rise. Neither would suffer the servant girl to descend till
+they had been down to see in what condition the kitchen was. They found
+that the table had been cleared, the coins were all back in the teapot,
+and that and the spoons were where they had themselves placed them. The
+sheet, moreover, was neatly folded, and replaced where it had been
+before.
+
+The Hockins did not speak to one another of their experiences during the
+past night, so long as they were in the house, but when Jabez was in the
+field, Elizabeth went to him and said: "Husband, what about Aunt
+Joanna?"
+
+"I don't know--maybe it were a dream."
+
+"Curious us should ha' dreamed alike."
+
+"I don't know that; 'twere the gin made us dream, and us both had gin,
+so us dreamed the same thing."
+
+"'Twere more like real truth than dream," observed Elizabeth.
+
+"We'll take it as dream," said Jabez. "Mebbe it won't happen again."
+
+But precisely the same sounds were heard on the following night. The
+moon was obscured by thick clouds, and neither of the two had the
+courage to descend to the kitchen. But they could hear the patter of
+feet, and then the roll and click of the coins. Again sleep was
+impossible.
+
+"Whatever shall we do?" asked Elizabeth Hockin next morning of her
+husband. "Us can't go on like this wi' the dead woman about our house
+nightly. There's no tellin' she might take it into her head to come
+upstairs and pull the sheets off us. As we took hers, she may think it
+fair to carry off ours."
+
+"I think," said Jabez sorrowfully, "we'll have to return 'em."
+
+"But how?"
+
+After some consultation the couple resolved on conveying all the
+deceased woman's goods to the churchyard, by night, and placing them on
+her grave.
+
+"I reckon," said Hockin, "we'll bide in the porch and watch what
+happens. If they be left there till mornin', why we may carry 'em back
+wi' an easy conscience. We've spent some pounds over her buryin'."
+
+"What have it come to?"
+
+"Three pounds five and fourpence, as I make it out."
+
+"Well," said Elizabeth, "we must risk it."
+
+When night had fallen murk, the farmer and his wife crept from their
+house, carrying the linen sheets, the teapot, and the silver spoons.
+They did not start till late, for fear of encountering any villagers on
+the way, and not till after the maid, Sally, had gone to bed.
+
+They fastened the farm door behind them. The night was dark and stormy,
+with scudding clouds, so dense as to make deep night, when they did not
+part and allow the moon to peer forth.
+
+They walked timorously, and side by side, looking about them as they
+proceeded, and on reaching the churchyard gate they halted to pluck up
+courage before opening and venturing within. Jabez had furnished himself
+with a bottle of gin, to give courage to himself and his wife.
+
+Together they heaped the articles that had belonged to Aunt Joanna upon
+the fresh grave, but as they did so the wind caught the linen and
+unfurled and flapped it, and they were forced to place stones upon it to
+hold it down.
+
+Then, quaking with fear, they retreated to the church porch, and Jabez,
+uncorking the bottle, first took a long pull himself, and then presented
+it to his wife.
+
+And now down came a tearing rain, driven by a blast from the Atlantic,
+howling among the gravestones, and screaming in the battlements of the
+tower and its bell-chamber windows. The night was so dark, and the rain
+fell so heavily, that they could see nothing for full half an hour. But
+then the clouds were rent asunder, and the moon glared white and ghastly
+over the churchyard.
+
+Elizabeth caught her husband by the arm and pointed. There was, however,
+no need for her to indicate that on which his eyes were fixed already.
+
+Both saw a lean hand come up out of the grave, and lay hold of one of
+the fine linen sheets and drag at it. They saw it drag the sheet by one
+corner, and then it went down underground, and the sheet followed, as
+though sucked down in a vortex; fold on fold it descended, till the
+entire sheet had disappeared.
+
+"Her have taken it for her windin' sheet," whispered Elizabeth.
+"Whativer will her do wi' the rest?"
+
+"Have a drop o' gin; this be terrible tryin'," said Jabez in an
+undertone; and again the couple put their lips to the bottle, which came
+away considerably lighter after the draughts.
+
+"Look!" gasped Elizabeth.
+
+Again the lean hand with long fingers appeared above the soil, and this
+was seen groping about the grass till it laid hold of the teapot. Then
+it groped again, and gathered up the spoons, that flashed in the
+moonbeams. Next, up came the second hand, and a long arm that stretched
+along the grave till it reached the other sheets. At once, on being
+raised, these sheets were caught by the wind, and flapped and fluttered
+like half-hoisted sails. The hands retained them for a while till they
+bellied with the wind, and then let them go, and they were swept away
+by the blast across the churchyard, over the wall, and lodged in the
+carpenter's yard that adjoined, among his timber.
+
+"She have sent 'em to the Hexts," whispered Elizabeth.
+
+Next the hands began to trifle with the teapot, and to shake out some of
+the coins.
+
+In a minute some silver pieces were flung with so true an aim that they
+fell clinking down on the floor of the porch.
+
+How many coins, how much money was cast, the couple were in no mood to
+estimate.
+
+Then they saw the hands collect the pillow-cases, and proceed to roll up
+the teapot and silver spoons in them, and, that done, the white bundle
+was cast into the air, and caught by the wind and carried over the
+churchyard wall into the wheelwright's yard.
+
+At once a curtain of vapour rushed across the face of the moon, and
+again the graveyard was buried in darkness. Half an hour elapsed before
+the moon shone out again. Then the Hockins saw that nothing was stirring
+in the cemetery.
+
+"I reckon us may go now," said Jabez.
+
+"Let us gather up what she chucked to us," advised Elizabeth.
+
+So the couple felt about the floor, and collected a number of coins.
+What they were they could not tell till they reached their home, and had
+lighted a candle.
+
+"How much be it?" asked Elizabeth.
+
+"Three pound five and fourpence, exact," answered Jabez.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE FLAG
+
+
+A percentage of the South African Boers--how large or how small that
+percentage is has not been determined--is possessed of a rudimentary
+conscience, much as the oyster has incipient eyes, and the snake
+initiatory articulations for feet, which in the course of long ages may,
+under suitable conditions, develop into an active faculty.
+
+If Jacob Van Heeren possessed any conscience at all it was the merest
+protoplasm of one.
+
+He occupied Heerendorp, a ramshackle farmhouse under a kopje, and had
+cattle and horses, also a wife and grown-up sons and daughters.
+
+When the war broke out Jacob hoisted the white flag at the gable, and he
+and his sons indulged their sporting instincts by shooting down such
+officers and men of the British army as went to the farm, unsuspecting
+treachery.
+
+Heerendorp by this means obtained an evil notoriety, and it was ordered
+to be burnt, and the women of Jacob's family to be transferred to a
+concentration camp where they would be mollycoddled at the expense of
+the English taxpayer. Thus Jacob and his sons were delivered from all
+anxiety as to their womankind, and were given a free field in which to
+exercise their mischievous ingenuity. As to their cattle and horses that
+had been commandeered, they held receipts which would entitle them to
+claim full value for the beasts at the termination of hostilities.
+
+Jacob and his sons might have joined one of the companies under a Boer
+general, but they preferred independent action, and their peculiar
+tactics, which proved eminently successful.
+
+That achievement in which Jacob exhibited most slimness, and of which he
+was pre-eminently proud, was as follows: feigning himself to be wounded,
+he rolled on the ground, waving a white kerchief, and crying out for
+water. A young English lieutenant at once filled a cup and ran to his
+assistance, when Jacob shot him through the heart.
+
+When the war was over Van Heeren got his farm rebuilt and restocked at
+the expense of the British taxpayer, and received his wife and daughters
+from the concentration camp, plump as partridges.
+
+So soon as the new Heerendorp was ready for occupation, Jacob took a
+large knife and cut seventeen notches in the doorpost.
+
+"What is that for, Jacob?" asked his wife.
+
+"They are reminders of the Britishers I have shot."
+
+"Well," said she, "if I hadn't killed more Rooineks than that, I'd be
+ashamed of myself."
+
+"Oh, I shot more in open fight. I didn't count them; I only reckon such
+as I've been slim enough to befool with the white flag," said the Boer.
+
+Now the lieutenant whom Jacob Van Heeren had killed when bringing him a
+cup of cold water, was Aneurin Jones, and he was the only son of his
+mother, and she a widow in North Wales. On Aneurin her heart had been
+set, in him was all her pride. Beyond him she had no ambition. About him
+every fibre of her heart was entwined. Life had to her no charms apart
+from him. When the news of his death reached her, unaccompanied by
+particulars, she was smitten with a sorrow that almost reached despair.
+The joy was gone out of her life, the light from her sky. The prospect
+was a blank before her. She sank into profound despondency, and would
+have welcomed death as an end to an aimless, a hopeless life.
+
+But when peace was concluded, and some comrades of Aneurin returned
+home, the story of how he had met his death was divulged to her.
+
+Then the passionate Welsh mother's heart became as a live coal within
+her breast. An impotent rage against his murderer consumed her. She did
+not know the name of the man who had killed him, she but ill understood
+where her son had fallen. Had she known, had she been able, she would
+have gone out to South Africa, and have gloried in being able to stab to
+the heart the man who had so treacherously murdered her Aneurin. But how
+was he to be identified?
+
+The fact that she was powerless to avenge his death was a torture to
+her. She could not sleep, she could not eat, she writhed, she moaned,
+she bit her fingers, she chafed at her incapacity to execute justice on
+the murderer. A feverish flame was lit in her hollow cheeks. Her lips
+became parched, her tongue dry, her dark eyes glittered as if sparks of
+unquenchable fire had been kindled in them.
+
+She sat with clenched hands and set teeth before her dead grate, and the
+purple veins swelled and throbbed in her temples.
+
+Oh! if only she knew the name of the man who had shot her Aneurin!
+
+Oh! if only she could find out a way to recompense him for the wrong he
+had done!
+
+These were her only thoughts. And the sole passage in her Bible she
+could read, and which she read over and over again, was the story of the
+Importunate Widow who cried to the judge, "Avenge me of mine adversary!"
+and who was heard for her persistent asking.
+
+Thus passed a fortnight. She was visibly wasting in flesh, but the fire
+within her burned only the fiercer as her bodily strength failed.
+
+Then, all at once, an idea shot like a meteor through her brain. She
+remembered to have heard of the Cursing Well of St. Elian, near Colwyn.
+She recalled the fact that the last "Priest of the Well," an old man who
+had lived hard by, and who had initiated postulants into the mysteries
+of the well, had been brought before the magistrates for obtaining money
+under false pretences, and had been sent to gaol at Chester; and that
+the parson of Llanelian had taken a crowbar and had ripped up the wall
+that enclosed the spring, and had done what lay in his power to destroy
+it and blot out the remembrance of the powers of the well, or to ruin
+its efficacy.
+
+But the spring still flowed. Had it lost its virtues? Could a parson,
+could magistrates bring to naught what had been for centuries?
+
+She remembered, further, that the granddaughter of the "Priest of the
+Well" was then an inmate of the workhouse at Denbigh. Was it not
+possible that she should know the ritual of St. Elian's spring?--should
+be able to assist her in the desire of her heart?
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones resolved on trying. She went to the workhouse and
+sought out the woman, an old and infirm creature, and had a conference
+with her. She found the woman, a poor, decrepit creature, very shy of
+speaking about the well, very unwilling to be drawn into a confession of
+the extent of her knowledge, very much afraid of the magistrates and the
+master of the workhouse punishing her if she had anything to do with the
+well; but the intensity of Mrs. Jones, her vehemence in prosecuting her
+inquiries, and, above all, the gift of half a sovereign pressed into her
+palm, with the promise of another if she assisted Mrs. Winifred in the
+prosecution of her purpose, finally overcame her scruples, and she told
+all that she knew.
+
+"You must visit St. Elian's, madam," said she, "when the moon is at the
+wane. You must write the name of him whose death you desire on a pebble,
+and drop it into the water, and recite the sixty-ninth Psalm."
+
+"But," objected the widow, "I do not know his name, and I have no means
+of discovering it. I want to kill the man who murdered my son."
+
+The old woman considered, and then said: "In this case it is different.
+There is a way under these circumstances. Murdered, was your son?"
+
+"Yes, he was treacherously shot."
+
+"Then you will have to call on your son by name, as you let fall the
+pebble, and say: 'Let him be wiped out of the book of the living. Avenge
+me of mine adversary, O my God.' And you must go on dropping in pebbles,
+reciting the same prayer, till you see the water of the spring boil up
+black as ink. Then you will know that your prayer has been heard, and
+that the curse has wrought."
+
+Winifred Jones departed in some elation.
+
+She waited till the moon changed, and then she went to the spring. It
+was near a hedge; there were trees by it. Apparently it had been
+unsought for many years. But it still flowed. About it lay scattered a
+few stones that had once formed the bounds.
+
+She looked about her. No one was by. The sun was declining, and would
+soon set. She bent over the water--it was perfectly clear. She had
+collected a lapful of rounded stones.
+
+Then she cried out: "Aneurin! come to my aid against your murderer. Let
+him be blotted out of the book of the living. Avenge me on my adversary,
+O my God!" and she dropped a pebble into the water.
+
+Then rose a bubble. That was all.
+
+She paused but for a moment, then again she cried: "Aneurin! come to my
+aid against your murderer. Let him be blotted out of the book of the
+living. Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!"
+
+Once more a pebble was let fall. It splashed into the spring, but there
+was no change save that ripples were sent against the side.
+
+A third--then a fourth--she went on; the sun sent a shaft of yellow
+glory through the trees over the spring.
+
+Then someone passed along the road hard by, and Mrs. Winifred Jones
+held her breath, and desisted till the footfall had died away.
+
+But then she continued, stone after stone was dropped, and the ritual
+was followed, till the seventeenth had disappeared in the well, when up
+rose a column of black fluid boiling as it were from below, the colour
+of ink; and the widow pressed her hands together, and drew a sigh of
+relief; her prayer had been heard, and her curse had taken effect.
+
+She cast away the rest of the pebbles, let down her skirt, and went away
+rejoicing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It so fell out that on this very evening Jacob Van Heeren had gone to
+bed early, as he had risen before daybreak, and had been riding all day.
+His family were in the outer room, when they were startled by a hoarse
+cry from the bedroom. He was a short-tempered, imperious man, accustomed
+to yell at his wife and children when he needed them; but this cry was
+of an unusual character, it had in it the ring of alarm. His wife went
+to him to inquire what was the matter. She found the old Boer sitting up
+in bed with one leg extended, his face like dirty stained leather, his
+eyes starting out of his head, and his mouth opening and shutting,
+lifting and depressing his shaggy, grey beard, as though he were trying
+to speak, but could not utter words.
+
+"Pete!" she called to her eldest son, "come here, and see what ails your
+father."
+
+Pete and others entered, and stood about the bed, staring stupidly at
+the old man, unable to comprehend what had come over him.
+
+"Fetch him some brandy, Pete," said the mother; "he looks as if he had a
+fit."
+
+When some spirits had been poured down his throat the farmer was
+revived, and said huskily: "Take it away! Quick, take it off!"
+
+"Take what away?"
+
+"The white flag."
+
+"There is none here."
+
+"It is there--there, wrapped about my foot."
+
+The wife looked at the outstretched leg, and saw nothing. Jacob became
+angry, he swore at her, and yelled: "Take it off; it is chilling me to
+the bone."
+
+"There is nothing there."
+
+"But I say it is. I saw him come in----"
+
+"Saw whom, father?" asked one of the sons.
+
+"I saw that Rooinek lieutenant I shot when he was bringing me drink,
+thinking I was wounded. He came in through the door----"
+
+"That is not possible--he must have passed us."
+
+"I say he did come. I saw him, and he held the white rag, and he came
+upon me and gave me a twist with the flag about my foot, and there it
+is--it numbs me. I cannot move it. Quick, quick, take it away."
+
+"I repeat there is nothing there," said his wife.
+
+"Pull off his stocking," said Pete Van Heeren; "he has got a chill in
+his foot, and fancies this nonsense. He has been dreaming."
+
+"It was not a dream," roared Jacob; "I saw him as clearly as I see you,
+and he wrapped my foot up in that accursed flag."
+
+"Accursed flag!" exclaimed Samuel, the second son. "That's a fine way to
+speak of it, father, when it served you so well."
+
+"Take it off, you dogs!" yelled the old man, "and don't stand staring
+and barking round me."
+
+The stocking was removed from his leg, and then it was seen that his
+foot--the left foot--had turned a livid white.
+
+"Go and heat a brick," said the housewife to one of her daughters; "it
+is just the circulation has stopped."
+
+But no artificial warmth served to restore the flow of blood, and the
+natural heat.
+
+Jacob passed a sleepless night.
+
+Next morning he rose, but limped; all feeling had gone out of the foot.
+His wife vainly urged him to keep to his bed. He was obstinate, and
+would get up; but he could not walk without the help of a stick. When
+clothed, he hobbled into the kitchen and put the numbed foot to the
+fire, and the stocking sole began to smoke, it was singed and went to
+pieces, but his foot was insensible to the heat. Then he went forth,
+aided by the stick, to his farmyard, hoping that movement would restore
+feeling and warmth; but this also was in vain. In the evening he seated
+himself on a bench outside the door, whilst his family ate supper. He
+ordered them to bring food to him. He felt easier in the open air than
+within doors.
+
+Whilst his wife and children were about the table at their meal, they
+heard a scream without, more like that of a wounded horse than a man,
+and all rushed forth, to find Jacob in a paroxysm of terror only less
+severe than that of the preceding night.
+
+"He came on me again," he gasped; "the same man, I do not know from
+whence--he seemed to spring out of the distance. I saw him first like
+smoke, but with a white flicker in it; and then he got nearer and became
+more distinct, and I knew it was he; and he had another of those white
+napkins in his hand. I could not call for help--I tried, I could utter
+no sound, till he wrapped it--that white rag--round my calf, and then,
+with the cold and pain, I cried out, and he vanished."
+
+"Father," said Pete, "you fell asleep and dreamt this."
+
+"I did not. I saw him, and I felt what he did. Give me your hand. I
+cannot rise. I must go within. Good Lord, when will this come to an
+end?"
+
+When lifted from his seat it was seen that his left leg dragged. He had
+to lean heavily on his son on one side and his wife on the other, and he
+allowed himself, without remonstrance, to be put to bed.
+
+It was then seen that the dead whiteness, as of a corpse, had spread
+from the foot up the calf.
+
+"He is going to have a paralytic stroke, that is it," said Pete. "You,
+Samuel, must ride for a doctor to-morrow morning, not that he can do
+much good, if what I think be the case."
+
+On the second day the old man persisted in his determination to rise. He
+was deaf to all remonstrance, he would get up and go about, as far as he
+was able. But his ability was small. In the evening, as the sun went
+down, he was sitting crouched over the fire. The family had finished
+supper, and all had left the room except his wife, who was removing the
+dishes, when she heard a gasping and struggling by the fire, and,
+turning her head, saw her husband writhing on his stool, clinging to it
+with his hands, with his left leg out, his mouth foaming, and he was
+snorting with terror or pain.
+
+She ran to him at once.
+
+"Jacob, what is it?"
+
+"He is at me again! Beat him off with the broom!" he screamed. "Keep him
+away. He is wrapping the white flag round my knee."
+
+Pete and the others ran in, and raised their father, who was falling out
+of his seat, and conveyed him to bed.
+
+It was now seen that his knee had become hard and stiff, his calf was as
+if frozen; the whiteness had extended upwards to the knee.
+
+Next day a surgeon arrived. He examined the old man, and expressed his
+conviction that he had a stroke. But it was a paralytic attack of an
+unusual character, as it had in no way affected his speech or his left
+arm and hand. He recommended hot fomentations.
+
+Still the farmer would not be confined to bed; he insisted on being
+dressed and assisted into the kitchen.
+
+One stick was not now sufficient for him, and Samuel contrived for him
+crutches. With these he could drag himself about, and on the fourth
+evening he laboriously worked his way to a cowstall to look at one of
+his beasts that was ill.
+
+Whilst there he had a fourth attack. Pete, who was without, heard him
+yell and beat at the door with one of his crutches. He entered, and
+found his father lying on the floor, quivering with terror, and
+spluttering unintelligible words. He lifted him, and drew him without,
+then shouted to Samuel, who came up, and together they carried him to
+the house.
+
+Only when there, and when he had drunk some brandy, was he able to give
+an account of what had taken place. He had been looking at the cow, and
+feeling it, when down out of the hayloft had come leaping the form of
+the Rooinek lieutenant, which had sprung in between him and the cow,
+and, stooping, had wrapped a white rag round his thigh, above the knee.
+And now the whole of his leg was dead and livid.
+
+"There is nothing for it, father, but to have your leg amputated," said
+Pete. "The doctor told me as much. He said that mortification would set
+in if there was no return of circulation."
+
+"I won't have it off! What good shall I be with only one leg?" exclaimed
+the old man.
+
+"But father, it will be the sole means of saving your life."
+
+"I won't have my leg off!" again repeated Jacob.
+
+Pete said in a low tone to his mother: "Have you seen any dark spots on
+his leg? The doctor said we must look for them, and, when they come,
+send for him at once."
+
+"No," she replied, "I have not noticed any, so far."
+
+"Then we will wait till they appear."
+
+On the fifth day the farmer was constrained to keep his bed.
+
+He had now become a prey to abject terror. So sure as the hour of
+sunset came, did a new visitation occur. He listened for the clock to
+sound each hour of the day, and as the afternoon drew on he dreaded with
+unspeakable horror the advent of the moment when again the apparition
+would be seen, and a fresh chill be inflicted. He insisted that his wife
+or Pete should remain in the room with him. They took it in turns to sit
+by his bedside.
+
+Through the little window the fire of the setting sun smote in and fell
+across the suffering man.
+
+It was his wife's turn to be in attendance.
+
+All at once a gurgling sound broke from his throat. His eyes started
+from his face, his hair bristled, and with his hands he worked himself
+into a sitting posture, and he heaved himself on to his pillow, and
+would have broken his way through the backboard of his bed, could he
+have done so.
+
+"What is it, Jacob?" asked his wife, throwing down the garment which she
+was mending, and coming to his assistance. "Lie down again. There is
+nothing here."
+
+He could not speak. His teeth were chattering, and his beard shaking,
+foam-bubbles formed on his lips, and great sweatdrops on his brow.
+
+"Pete! Samuel!" she called, "come to your father."
+
+The young men ran in, and they forcibly laid the old Boer in bed,
+prostrate.
+
+And now it was found that the right foot had turned dead, like the left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of the seventeenth day after the visit to the well of
+Llanelian, Mrs. Winifred Jones was sitting on the side of her bed in the
+twilight. She had lighted no candle. She was musing, always on the same
+engrossing topic, the wrong that had been done to her and her son, and
+thirsting with a feverish thirst for vengeance on the wrongdoer.
+
+Her confidence in the expedient to which she had resorted was beginning
+to fail. What was this recourse to the well but a falling in with an old
+superstition that had died out with the advance of knowledge, and under
+the influence of a wholesome feeling? Was any trust to be placed in that
+woman at the workhouse? Was she deceiving her for the sake of the
+half-sovereign? And yet--she had seen a token that her prayer would
+prove efficacious. There had risen through the crystal water a column of
+black fluid.
+
+Could it be that a widow's prayer should meet with no response? Was
+wrong to prevail in the world? Were the weak and oppressed to have no
+means of procuring the execution of justice on the evildoers? Was not
+God righteous in all His ways? Would it be righteous in Him to suffer
+the murderer of her son to thrive? If God be merciful, He is also just.
+If His ear is open to the prayer for help, He must as well listen to the
+cry for vengeance.
+
+Since that evening at the spring she had been unable to pray as usual,
+to pray for herself--her only cry had been: "Avenge me on my adversary!"
+If she tried to frame the words of the Lord's Prayer, she could not do
+so. They escaped her; her thoughts travelled to the South African veldt.
+Her soul could not rise to God in the ecstasy of love and devotion; it
+was choked with hate--an overwhelming hate.
+
+She was in her black weeds; the hands, thin and white, were on her lap,
+nervously clasping and unclasping the fingers. Had anyone been there, in
+the grey twilight of a summer night, he would have been saddened to see
+how hard and lined the face had become, how all softness had passed from
+the lips, how sunken were the eyes, in which was only a glitter of
+wrath.
+
+Suddenly she saw standing before her, indistinct indeed, but
+unmistakable, the form of her lost son, her Aneurin, and he held a white
+napkin in his right hand, and this napkin emitted a phosphorescent
+glow.
+
+She tried to cry out; to utter the beloved name; she tried to spring to
+her feet and throw herself into his arms! But she was unable to stir
+hand, or foot, or tongue. She was as one paralysed, but her heart
+bounded within her bosom.
+
+"Mother," said the apparition, in a voice that seemed to come from a
+vast distance, yet was articulate and audible--"Mother, you called me
+back from the world of spirits, and sent me to discharge a task. I have
+done it. I have touched him on the foot and calf and knee and thigh, on
+hand and elbow and shoulder, on one side and on the other, on his head,
+and lastly on his heart, with the white flag--and now he is dead. I did
+it in all sixteen times, and with the sixteenth he died. I chilled him
+piecemeal with the white flag; the sixteenth was laid on his heart, and
+that stopped beating."
+
+Then she lifted her hands slightly, and her stiffened tongue relaxed so
+far that she was able to murmur: "God be thanked!"
+
+"Mother," continued the apparition, "there is a seventeenth remaining."
+
+She tried to clasp her hands on her lap, but the fingers were no longer
+under her control; they had fallen to the side of the chair-bed, and
+hung there lifeless. Her eyes stared wildly at the spectre of her son,
+but without love in them; love had faded out of her heart, and given
+place to hate of his murderer.
+
+"Mother," proceeded the vision, "you summoned me, and even in the world
+of spirits the soul of a child must respond to the cry of a mother, and
+I have been permitted to come back and to do your will. And now I am
+suffered to reveal something to you: to show you what my life would have
+been had it not been cut short by the shot of the Boer."
+
+He stepped towards her, and put forth a vaporous hand and touched her
+eyes. She felt as though a feather had been passed over them. Then he
+raised the luminous sheet and shook it. Instantly all about her was
+changed.
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones was not in her little Welsh cottage; nor was it
+night. She was no longer alone. She stood in a court, in full daylight.
+She saw before her the judge on his seat, the barristers in wig and
+gown, the press reporters with their notebooks and pens, a dense crowd
+thronging every portion of the court. And she knew instinctively, before
+a word was spoken, without an intimation from the spirit of her son,
+that she was standing in the Divorce Court. And she saw there as
+co-respondent her son, older, changed in face, but more altered in
+expression. And she heard a tale unfolded--full of dishonour, and
+rousing disgust.
+
+She was now able to raise her hands--she covered her ears; her face,
+crimson with shame, sank on her bosom. She could endure the sight, the
+words spoken, the revelations made, no longer, and she cried out:
+"Aneurin! Aneurin! for the Lord's sake, no more of this! Oh, the day,
+the day, that I have seen you standing here."
+
+At once all passed; and she was again in her bedroom in Honeysuckle
+Cottage, North Wales, seated with folded hands on her lap, and looking
+before her wonderingly at the ghostly form of her son.
+
+"Is that enough, mother?"
+
+She lifted her hands deprecatingly.
+
+Again he shook the glimmering white sheet, and it was as though drops of
+pearly fire fell out of it.
+
+And again--all was changed.
+
+She found herself at Monte Carlo; she knew it instinctively. She was in
+the great saloon, where were the gaming-tables. The electric lights
+glittered, and the decorations were superb. But all her attention was
+engrossed on her son, whom she saw at one of the tables, staking his
+last napoleon.
+
+It was indeed her own Aneurin, but with a face on which vice and its
+consequent degradation were written indelibly.
+
+He lost, and turned away, and left the hall and its lights. His mother
+followed him. He went forth into the gardens. The full moon was shining,
+and the gravel of the terraces was white as snow. The air was fragrant
+with the scent of oranges and myrtles. The palms cast black shadows on
+the soil. The sea lay still as if asleep, with a gleam over it from the
+moon.
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones tracked her son, as he stole in and out among the
+shrubs, amid the trees, with a sickening fear at her heart. Then she saw
+him pause by some oleanders, and draw a revolver from his pocket and
+place it at his ear. She uttered a cry of agony and horror, and tried to
+spring forward to dash the weapon from his hand.
+
+Then all changed.
+
+She was again in her little room in the dusk, and the shadowy form of
+Aneurin was before her.
+
+"Mother," said the spirit, "I have been permitted to come to you and to
+show to you what would have been my career if I had not died whilst
+young, and fresh, and innocent. You have to thank Jacob Van Heeren that
+he saved me from such a life of infamy, and such an evil death by my own
+hand. You should thank, and not curse him." She was breathing heavily.
+Her heart beat so fast that her brain span; she fell on her knees.
+
+"Mother," the apparition continued, "there were seventeen pebbles cast
+into the well."
+
+"Yes, Aneurin," she whispered.
+
+"And there is a seventeenth white flag. With the sixteenth Jacob Van
+Heeren died. The seventeenth is reserved for you."
+
+"Aneurin! I am not fit to die."
+
+"Mother, it must be, I must lay the white flag over your head."
+
+"Oh! my son, my son!"
+
+"It is so ordained," he proceeded; "but there are Love and Mercy on
+high, and you shall not be veiled with it till you have made your peace.
+You have sinned. You have thrust yourself into the council-chamber of
+God. You have claimed to exercise vengeance yourself, and not left it to
+Him to whom vengeance in right belongs."
+
+"I know it now," breathed the widow.
+
+"And now you must atone for the curses by prayers. You have brought
+Jacob Van Heeren to his death by your imprecations, and now, fold your
+hands and pray to God for him--for him, your son's murderer. Little have
+you considered that his acts were due to ignorance, resentment for what
+he fancied were wrongs, and to having been reared in a mutilated and
+debased form of Christianity. Pray for him, that God may pardon his many
+and great transgressions, his falsehood, his treachery, his
+self-righteousness. You who have been so greatly wronged are the right
+person to forgive and to pray for his soul. In no other way can you so
+fully show that your heart is turned from wrath to love. Forgive us our
+trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us."
+
+She breathed a "Yes."
+
+Then she clasped her hands. She was already on her knees, and she prayed
+first the great Exemplar's prayer, and then particularly for the man who
+had wrecked her life, with all its hopes.
+
+And as she prayed the lines in her face softened, and the lips lost
+their hardness, and the fierce light passed utterly away from her eyes,
+in which the lamp of Charity was once more lighted, and the tears formed
+and rolled down her cheeks.
+
+And still she prayed on, bathed in the pearly light from the summer sky
+at night. Without, in the firmament, twinkled a star; and a night-bird
+began to sing.
+
+"And now, mother, pray for yourself."
+
+Then she crossed her hands over her bosom, and bowed her head, full of
+self-reproach and shame; and as she prayed, the spirit of her son raised
+the White Flag above her and let it sail down softly, lightly over the
+loved head, and as it descended there fell from it as it were a dew of
+pale fire, and it rested on her head, and fell about her, and she sank
+forward with her face upon the floor. R.I.P.
+
+
+
+
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Book of Ghosts, by Sabine Baring-Gould</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: A Book of Ghosts</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Sabine Baring-Gould</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: David Murray Smith</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 6, 2011 [eBook #36638]<br />
+[Most recently updated: December 31, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF GHOSTS ***</div>
+
+<h1>A BOOK OF GHOSTS</h1>
+
+<h2>BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.</h2>
+
+<h3>WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY D. MURRAY SMITH</h3>
+
+
+<h3>SECOND EDITION</h3>
+
+<h3>METHUEN &amp; CO.<br />
+36 ESSEX STREET W.C.<br />
+LONDON</h3>
+
+<h3><i>Colonial Library</i></h3>
+
+<h3><i>First Published &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     October 1904</i><br />
+<i>Second Edition  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     December 1904</i></h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a>
+<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"WHO ARE YOU?"</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Some of the stories in this volume have already appeared in print. "The
+Red-haired Girl" in <i>The Windsor Magazine</i>; "Colonel Halifax's Ghost
+Story" in <i>The Illustrated English Magazine</i>; "Glámr" I told in my
+<i>Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas</i>, published in 1863, and long ago out of
+print. "The Bold Venture" appeared in <i>The Graphic</i>; "The 9.30 Up-train"
+as long ago as 1853 in <i>Once a Week</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#JEAN_BOUCHON"><span class="smcap">Jean Bouchon</span></a><br />
+<a href="#POMPS_AND_VANITIES"><span class="smcap">Pomps and Vanities</span></a><br />
+<a href="#McALISTER"><span class="smcap">McAlister</span></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_LEADEN_RING"><span class="smcap">The Leaden Ring</span></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_MOTHER_OF_PANSIES"><span class="smcap">The Mother of Pansies</span></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_RED-HAIRED_GIRL"><span class="smcap">The Red-haired Girl</span></a><br />
+<a href="#A_PROFESSIONAL_SECRET"><span class="smcap">A Professional Secret</span></a><br />
+<a href="#H_P"><span class="smcap">H. P.</span></a><br />
+<a href="#GLAMR"><span class="smcap">Glámr</span></a><br />
+<a href="#COLONEL_HALIFAXS_GHOST_STORY"><span class="smcap">Colonel Halifax's Ghost Story</span></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_MEREWIGS"><span class="smcap">The Merewigs</span></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_BOLD_VENTURE"><span class="smcap">The "Bold Venture"</span></a><br />
+<a href="#MUSTAPHA"><span class="smcap">Mustapha</span></a><br />
+<a href="#LITTLE_JOE_GANDER"><span class="smcap">Little Joe Gander</span></a><br />
+<a href="#A_DEAD_FINGER"><span class="smcap">A Dead Finger</span></a><br />
+<a href="#BLACK_RAM"><span class="smcap">Black Ram</span></a><br />
+<a href="#A_HAPPY_RELEASE"><span class="smcap">A Happy Release</span></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_930_UP-TRAIN"><span class="smcap">The 9.30 Up-train</span></a><br />
+<a href="#ON_THE_LEADS"><span class="smcap">On the Leads</span></a><br />
+<a href="#AUNT_JOANNA"><span class="smcap">Aunt Joanna</span></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_WHITE_FLAG"><span class="smcap">The White Flag</span></a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<p><a href="#illus1">"Who are you?"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus2">"Then the bride put back her veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister Letice"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus3">"Her hat was blown off, and next instant a detonation rang through her
+head as though a gun had been fired into her ear"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus4">"If he went out for a walk they trotted forth with him, some before,
+some following"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus5">"You let that Mustapha come in, and try and stick his knife into me"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus6">"'Mammy!' said he; 'Mammy! my violin cost me three shillings and
+sixpence, and I can't make it play no-ways'"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus7">"I believe that they are talking goody-goody"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus8">"She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table"</a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A BOOK OF GHOSTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JEAN_BOUCHON" id="JEAN_BOUCHON"></a>JEAN BOUCHON</h2>
+
+
+<p>I was in Orléans a good many years ago. At the time it was my purpose to
+write a life of Joan of Arc, and I considered it advisable to visit the
+scenes of her exploits, so as to be able to give to my narrative some
+local colour.</p>
+
+<p>But I did not find Orléans answer to my expectations. It is a dull town,
+very modern in appearance, but with that measly and decrepit look which
+is so general in French towns. There was a Place Jeanne d'Arc, with an
+equestrian statue of her in the midst, flourishing a banner. There was
+the house that the Maid had occupied after the taking of the city, but,
+with the exception of the walls and rafters, it had undergone so much
+alteration and modernisation as to have lost its interest. A museum of
+memorials of la Pucelle had been formed, but possessed no genuine
+relics, only arms and tapestries of a later date.</p>
+
+<p>The city walls she had besieged, the gate through which she had burst,
+had been levelled, and their places taken by boulevards. The very
+cathedral in which she had knelt to return thanks for her victory was
+not the same. That had been blown up by the Huguenots, and the cathedral
+that now stands was erected on its ruins in 1601.</p>
+
+<p>There was an ormolu figure of Jeanne on the clock&mdash;never wound up&mdash;upon
+the mantelshelf in my room at the hotel, and there were chocolate
+figures of her in the confectioners' shop-windows for children to suck.
+When I sat down at 7 p.m. to table d'hôte, at my inn, I was out of
+heart. The result of my exploration of sites had been unsatisfactory;
+but I trusted on the morrow to be able to find material to serve my
+purpose in the municipal archives of the town library.</p>
+
+<p>My dinner ended, I sauntered to a café.</p>
+
+<p>That I selected opened on to the Place, but there was a back entrance
+near to my hotel, leading through a long, stone-paved passage at the
+back of the houses in the street, and by ascending three or four stone
+steps one entered the long, well-lighted café. I came into it from the
+back by this means, and not from the front.</p>
+
+<p>I took my place and called for a café-cognac. Then I picked up a French
+paper and proceeded to read it&mdash;all but the feuilleton. In my experience
+I have never yet come across anyone who reads the feuilletons in a
+French paper; and my impression is that these snippets of novel are
+printed solely for the purpose of filling up space and disguising the
+lack of news at the disposal of the editors. The French papers borrow
+their information relative to foreign affairs largely from the English
+journals, so that they are a day behind ours in the foreign news that
+they publish.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst I was engaged in reading, something caused me to look up, and I
+noticed standing by the white marble-topped table, on which was my
+coffee, a waiter, with a pale face and black whiskers, in an expectant
+attitude.</p>
+
+<p>I was a little nettled at his precipitancy in applying for payment, but
+I put it down to my being a total stranger there; and without a word I
+set down half a franc and a ten centimes coin, the latter as his
+<i>pourboire</i>. Then I proceeded with my reading.</p>
+
+<p>I think a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when I rose to depart, and
+then, to my surprise, I noticed the half-franc still on the table, but
+the sous piece was gone.</p>
+
+<p>I beckoned to a waiter, and said: "One of you came to me a little while
+ago demanding payment. I think he was somewhat hasty in pressing for it;
+however, I set the money down, and the fellow has taken the tip, and has
+neglected the charge for the coffee."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sapristi!</i>" exclaimed the <i>garçon</i>; "Jean Bouchon has been at his
+tricks again."</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing further; asked no questions. The matter did not concern
+me, or indeed interest me in the smallest degree; and I left.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I worked hard in the town library. I cannot say that I lighted
+on any unpublished documents that might serve my purpose.</p>
+
+<p>I had to go through the controversial literature relative to whether
+Jeanne d'Arc was burnt or not, for it has been maintained that a person
+of the same name, and also of Arques, died a natural death some time
+later, and who postured as the original warrior-maid. I read a good many
+monographs on the Pucelle, of various values; some real contributions to
+history, others mere second-hand cookings-up of well-known and
+often-used material. The sauce in these latter was all that was new.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, after dinner, I went back to the same café and called
+for black coffee with a nip of brandy. I drank it leisurely, and then
+retreated to the desk where I could write some letters.</p>
+
+<p>I had finished one, and was folding it, when I saw the same pale-visaged
+waiter standing by with his hand extended for payment. I put my hand
+into my pocket, pulled out a fifty centimes piece and a coin of two
+sous, and placed both beside me, near the man, and proceeded to put my
+letter in an envelope, which I then directed.</p>
+
+<p>Next I wrote a second letter, and that concluded, I rose to go to one of
+the tables and to call for stamps, when I noticed that again the silver
+coin had been left untouched, but the copper piece had been taken away.</p>
+
+<p>I tapped for a waiter.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tiens</i>," said I, "that fellow of yours has been bungling again. He has
+taken the tip and has left the half-franc."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Jean Bouchon once more!"</p>
+
+<p>"But who is Jean Bouchon?"</p>
+
+<p>The man shrugged his shoulders, and, instead of answering my query,
+said: "I should recommend monsieur to refuse to pay Jean Bouchon
+again&mdash;that is, supposing monsieur intends revisiting this café."</p>
+
+<p>"I most assuredly will not pay such a noodle," I said; "and it passes my
+comprehension how you can keep such a fellow on your staff."</p>
+
+<p>I revisited the library next day, and then walked by the Loire, that
+rolls in winter such a full and turbid stream, and in summer, with a
+reduced flood, exposes gravel and sand-banks. I wandered around the
+town, and endeavoured vainly to picture it, enclosed by walls and drums
+of towers, when on April 29th, 1429, Jeanne threw herself into the town
+and forced the English to retire, discomfited and perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I revisited the café and made my wants known as before.
+Then I looked at my notes, and began to arrange them.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst thus engaged I observed the waiter, named Jean Bouchon, standing
+near the table in an expectant attitude as before. I now looked him full
+in the face and observed his countenance. He had puffy white cheeks,
+small black eyes, thick dark mutton-chop whiskers, and a broken nose. He
+was decidedly an ugly man, but not a man with a repulsive expression of
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said I, "I will give you nothing. I will not pay you. Send another
+<i>garçon</i> to me."</p>
+
+<p>As I looked at him to see how he took this refusal, he seemed to fall
+back out of my range, or, to be more exact, the lines of his form and
+features became confused. It was much as though I had been gazing on a
+reflection in still water; that something had ruffled the surface, and
+all was broken up and obliterated. I could see him no more. I was
+puzzled and a bit startled, and I rapped my coffee-cup with the spoon to
+call the attention of a waiter. One sprang to me immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"See!" said I, "Jean Bouchon has been here again; I told him that I
+would not pay him one sou, and he has vanished in a most perplexing
+manner. I do not see him in the room."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he is not in the room."</p>
+
+<p>"When he comes in again, send him to me. I want to have a word with
+him."</p>
+
+<p>The waiter looked confused, and replied: "I do not think that Jean will
+return."</p>
+
+<p>"How long has he been on your staff?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he has not been on our staff for some years."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why does he come here and ask for payment for coffee and what else
+one may order?"</p>
+
+<p>"He never takes payment for anything that has been consumed. He takes
+only the tips."</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you permit him to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"We cannot help ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"He should not be allowed to enter the café."</p>
+
+<p>"No one can keep him out."</p>
+
+<p>"This is surpassing strange. He has no right to the tips. You should
+communicate with the police."</p>
+
+<p>The waiter shook his head. "They can do nothing. Jean Bouchon died in
+1869."</p>
+
+<p>"Died in 1869!" I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so. But he still comes here. He never pesters the old customers,
+the inhabitants of the town&mdash;only visitors, strangers."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me all about him."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur must pardon me now. We have many in the place, and I have my
+duties."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I will drop in here to-morrow morning when you are
+disengaged, and I will ask you to inform me about him. What is your
+name?"</p>
+
+<p>"At monsieur's pleasure&mdash;Alphonse."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, in place of pursuing the traces of the Maid of Orléans, I
+went to the café to hunt up Jean Bouchon. I found Alphonse with a duster
+wiping down the tables. I invited him to a table and made him sit down
+opposite me. I will give his story in substance, only where advisable
+recording his exact words.</p>
+
+<p>Jean Bouchon had been a waiter at this particular café. Now in some of
+these establishments the attendants are wont to have a box, into which
+they drop all the tips that are received; and at the end of the week it
+is opened, and the sum found in it is divided <i>pro rata</i> among the
+waiters, the head waiter receiving a larger portion than the others.
+This is not customary in all such places of refreshment, but it is in
+some, and it was so in this café. The average is pretty constant, except
+on special occasions, as when a fête occurs; and the waiters know within
+a few francs what their perquisites will be.</p>
+
+<p>But in the café where served Jean Bouchon the sum did not reach the
+weekly total that might have been anticipated; and after this deficit
+had been noted for a couple of months the waiters were convinced that
+there was something wrong, somewhere or somehow. Either the common box
+was tampered with, or one of them did not put in his tips received. A
+watch was set, and it was discovered that Jean Bouchon was the
+defaulter. When he had received a gratuity, he went to the box, and
+pretended to put in the coin, but no sound followed, as would have been
+the case had one been dropped in.</p>
+
+<p>There ensued, of course, a great commotion among the waiters when this
+was discovered. Jean Bouchon endeavoured to brave it out, but the
+<i>patron</i> was appealed to, the case stated, and he was dismissed. As he
+left by the back entrance, one of the younger <i>garçons</i> put out his leg
+and tripped Bouchon up, so that he stumbled and fell headlong down the
+steps with a crash on the stone floor of the passage. He fell with such
+violence on his forehead that he was taken up insensible. His bones were
+fractured, there was concussion of the brain, and he died within a few
+hours without recovering consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"We were all very sorry and greatly shocked," said Alphonse; "we did not
+like the man, he had dealt dishonourably by us, but we wished him no
+ill, and our resentment was at an end when he was dead. The waiter who
+had tripped him up was arrested, and was sent to prison for some months,
+but the accident was due to <i>une mauvaise plaisanterie</i> and no malice
+was in it, so that the young fellow got off with a light sentence. He
+afterwards married a widow with a café at Vierzon, and is there, I
+believe, doing well.</p>
+
+<p>"Jean Bouchon was buried," continued Alphonse; "and we waiters attended
+the funeral and held white kerchiefs to our eyes. Our head waiter even
+put a lemon into his, that by squeezing it he might draw tears from his
+eyes. We all subscribed for the interment, that it should be
+dignified&mdash;majestic as becomes a waiter."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you mean to tell me that Jean Bouchon has haunted this café ever
+since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since 1869," replied Alphonse.</p>
+
+<p>"And there is no way of getting rid of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"None at all, monsieur. One of the Canons of Bourges came in here one
+evening. We did suppose that Jean Bouchon would not approach, molest an
+ecclesiastic, but he did. He took his <i>pourboire</i> and left the rest,
+just as he treated monsieur. Ah! monsieur! but Jean Bouchon did well in
+1870 and 1871 when those pigs of Prussians were here in occupation. The
+officers came nightly to our café, and Jean Bouchon was greatly on the
+alert. He must have carried away half of the gratuities they offered. It
+was a sad loss to us."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a very extraordinary story," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"But it is true," replied Alphonse.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I left Orléans. I gave up the notion of writing the life of
+Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be
+gleaned on her history&mdash;in fact, she had been thrashed out.</p>
+
+<p>Years passed, and I had almost forgotten about Jean Bouchon, when, the
+other day, I was in Orléans once more, on my way south, and at once the
+whole story recurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>I went that evening to the same café. It had been smartened up since I
+was there before. There was more plate glass, more gilding; electric
+light had been introduced, there were more mirrors, and there were also
+ornaments that had not been in the café before.</p>
+
+<p>I called for café-cognac and looked at a journal, but turned my eyes on
+one side occasionally, on the look-out for Jean Bouchon. But he did not
+put in an appearance. I waited for a quarter of an hour in expectation,
+but saw no sign of him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently I summoned a waiter, and when he came up I inquired: "But
+where is Jean Bouchon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur asks after Jean Bouchon?" The man looked surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have seen him here previously. Where is he at present?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur has seen Jean Bouchon? Monsieur perhaps knew him. He died in
+1869."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that he died in 1869, but I made his acquaintance in 1874. I saw
+him then thrice, and he accepted some small gratuities of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur tipped Jean Bouchon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and Jean Bouchon accepted my tips."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tiens</i>, and Jean Bouchon died five years before."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and what I want to know is how you have rid yourselves of Jean
+Bouchon, for that you have cleared the place of him is evident, or he
+would have been pestering me this evening." The man looked disconcerted
+and irresolute.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold," said I; "is Alphonse here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, monsieur, Alphonse has left two or three years ago. And monsieur
+saw Jean Bouchon in 1874. I was not then here. I have been here only six
+years."</p>
+
+<p>"But you can in all probability inform me of the manner of getting quit
+of Jean."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur! I am very busy this evening, there are so many gentlemen come
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"I will give you five francs if you will tell me all&mdash;all&mdash;succinctly
+about Jean Bouchon."</p>
+
+<p>"Will monsieur be so good as to come here to-morrow during the morning?
+and then I place myself at the disposition of monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be here at eleven o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>At the appointed time I was at the café. If there is an institution that
+looks ragged and dejected and dissipated, it is a café in the morning,
+when the chairs are turned upside-down, the waiters are in aprons and
+shirt-sleeves, and a smell of stale tobacco lurks about the air, mixed
+with various other unpleasant odours.</p>
+
+<p>The waiter I had spoken to on the previous evening was looking out for
+me. I made him seat himself at a table with me. No one else was in the
+saloon except another <i>garçon</i>, who was dusting with a long
+feather-brush.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," began the waiter, "I will tell you the whole truth. The
+story is curious, and perhaps everyone would not believe it, but it is
+well <i>documentée</i>. Jean Bouchon was at one time in service here. We had
+a box. When I say we, I do not mean myself included, for I was not here
+at the time."</p>
+
+<p>"I know about the common box. I know the story down to my visit to
+Orléans in 1874, when I saw the man."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur has perhaps been informed that he was buried in the
+cemetery?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do know that, at the cost of his fellow-waiters."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, monsieur, he was poor, and his fellow-waiters, though
+well-disposed, were not rich. So he did not have a grave <i>en
+perpétuité</i>. Accordingly, after many years, when the term of consignment
+was expired, and it might well be supposed that Jean Bouchon had
+mouldered away, his grave was cleared out to make room for a fresh
+occupant. Then a very remarkable discovery was made. It was found that
+his corroded coffin was crammed&mdash;literally stuffed&mdash;with five and ten
+centimes pieces, and with them were also some German coins, no doubt
+received from those pigs of Prussians during the occupation of Orléans.
+This discovery was much talked about. Our proprietor of the café and the
+head waiter went to the mayor and represented to him how matters
+stood&mdash;that all this money had been filched during a series of years
+since 1869 from the waiters. And our <i>patron</i> represented to him that it
+should in all propriety and justice be restored to us. The mayor was a
+man of intelligence and heart, and he quite accepted this view of the
+matter, and ordered the surrender of the whole coffin-load of coins to
+us, the waiters of the café."</p>
+
+<p>"So you divided it amongst you."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon, monsieur; we did not. It is true that the money might
+legitimately be regarded as belonging to us. But then those defrauded,
+or most of them, had left long ago, and there were among us some who had
+not been in service in the café more than a year or eighteen months. We
+could not trace the old waiters. Some were dead, some had married and
+left this part of the country. We were not a corporation. So we held a
+meeting to discuss what was to be done with the money. We feared,
+moreover, that unless the spirit of Jean Bouchon were satisfied, he
+might continue revisiting the café and go on sweeping away the tips. It
+was of paramount importance to please Jean Bouchon, to lay out the money
+in such a manner as would commend itself to his feelings. One suggested
+one thing, one another. One proposed that the sum should be expended on
+masses for the repose of Jean's soul. But the head waiter objected to
+that. He said that he thought he knew the mind of Jean Bouchon, and that
+this would not commend itself to it. He said, did our head waiter, that
+he knew Jean Bouchon from head to heels. And he proposed that all the
+coins should be melted up, and that out of them should be cast a statue
+of Jean Bouchon in bronze, to be set up here in the café, as there were
+not enough coins to make one large enough to be erected in a Place. If
+monsieur will step with me he will see the statue; it is a superb work
+of art."</p>
+
+<p>He led the way, and I followed.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the café stood a pedestal, and on this basis a bronze
+figure about four feet high. It represented a man reeling backward, with
+a banner in his left hand, and the right raised towards his brow, as
+though he had been struck there by a bullet. A sabre, apparently fallen
+from his grasp, lay at his feet. I studied the face, and it most
+assuredly was utterly unlike Jean Bouchon with his puffy cheeks,
+mutton-chop whiskers, and broken nose, as I recalled him.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said I, "the features do not&mdash;pardon me&mdash;at all resemble those of
+Jean Bouchon. This might be the young Augustus, or Napoleon I. The
+profile is quite Greek."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be so," replied the waiter. "But we had no photograph to go by.
+We had to allow the artist to exercise his genius, and, above all, we
+had to gratify the spirit of Jean Bouchon."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. But the attitude is inexact. Jean Bouchon fell down the steps
+headlong, and this represents a man staggering backwards."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been inartistic to have shown him precipitated forwards;
+besides, the spirit of Jean might not have liked it."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so. I understand. But the flag?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was an idea of the artist. Jean could not be made holding a
+coffee-cup. You will see the whole makes a superb subject. Art has its
+exigencies. Monsieur will see underneath is an inscription on the
+pedestal."</p>
+
+<p>I stooped, and with some astonishment read&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>"JEAN BOUCHON<br />
+MORT SUR LE CHAMP DE GLOIRE<br />
+1870<br />
+DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI."</h4>
+
+<p>"Why!" objected I, "he died from falling a cropper in the back passage,
+not on the field of glory."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur! all Orléans is a field of glory. Under S. Aignan did we not
+repel Attila and his Huns in 451? Under Jeanne d'Arc did we not repulse
+the English&mdash;monsieur will excuse the allusion&mdash;in 1429. Did we not
+recapture Orléans from the Germans in November, 1870?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is all very true," I broke in. "But Jean Bouchon neither fought
+against Attila nor with la Pucelle, nor against the Prussians. Then
+'<i>Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori</i>' is rather strong, considering
+the facts."</p>
+
+<p>"How? Does not monsieur see that the sentiment is patriotic and
+magnificent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I admit that, but dispute the application."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why apply it? The sentiment is all right."</p>
+
+<p>"But by implication it refers to Jean Bouchon, who died, not for his
+country, but in a sordid coffee-house brawl. Then, again, the date is
+wrong. Jean Bouchon died in 1869, not in 1870."</p>
+
+<p>"That is only out by a year."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but with this mistake of a year, and with the quotation from
+Horace, and with the attitude given to the figure, anyone would suppose
+that Jean Bouchon had fallen in the retaking of Orléans from the
+Prussians."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! monsieur, who looks on a monument and expects to find thereon the
+literal truth relative to the deceased?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is something of a sacrifice to truth," I demurred.</p>
+
+<p>"Sacrifice is superb!" said the waiter. "There is nothing more noble,
+more heroic than sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"But not the sacrifice of truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Sacrifice is always sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said I, unwilling further to dispute, "this is certainly a great
+creation out of nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Not out of nothing; out of the coppers that Jean Bouchon had filched
+from us, and which choked up his coffin."</p>
+
+<p>"Jean Bouchon has been seen no more?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, monsieur. And yet&mdash;yes, once, when the statue was unveiled. Our
+<i>patron</i> did that. The café was crowded. All our <i>habitués</i> were there.
+The <i>patron</i> made a magnificent oration; he drew a superb picture of the
+moral, intellectual, social, and political merits of Jean Bouchon. There
+was not a dry eye among the audience, and the speaker choked with
+emotion. Then, as we stood in a ring, not too near, we saw&mdash;I was there
+and I distinctly saw, so did the others&mdash;Jean Bouchon standing with his
+back to us, looking intently at the statue of himself. Monsieur, as he
+thus stood I could discern his black mutton-chop whiskers projecting
+upon each side of his head. Well, sir, not one word was spoken. A dead
+silence fell upon all. Our <i>patron</i> ceased to speak, and wiped his eyes
+and blew his nose. A sort of holy awe possessed us all. Then, after the
+lapse of some minutes, Jean Bouchon turned himself about, and we all saw
+his puffy pale cheeks, his thick sensual lips, his broken nose, his
+little pig's eyes. He was very unlike his idealised portrait in the
+statue; but what matters that? It gratified the deceased, and it injured
+no one. Well, monsieur, Jean Bouchon stood facing us, and he turned his
+head from one side to another, and gave us all what I may term a greasy
+smile. Then he lifted up his hands as though invoking a blessing on us
+all, and vanished. Since then he has not been seen."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="POMPS_AND_VANITIES" id="POMPS_AND_VANITIES"></a>POMPS AND VANITIES</h2>
+
+
+<p>Colonel Mountjoy had an appointment in India that kept him there
+permanently. Consequently he was constrained to send his two daughters
+to England when they were quite children. His wife had died of cholera
+at Madras. The girls were Letice and Betty. There was a year's
+difference in their ages, but they were extraordinarily alike, so much
+so that they might have been supposed to be twins.</p>
+
+<p>Letice was given up to the charge of Miss Mountjoy, her father's sister,
+and Betty to that of Lady Lacy, her maternal aunt. Their father would
+have preferred that his daughters should have been together, but there
+were difficulties in the way; neither of the ladies was inclined to be
+burdened with both, and if both had been placed with one the other might
+have regarded and resented this as a slight.</p>
+
+<p>As the children grew up their likeness in feature became more close, but
+they diverged exceedingly in expression. A sullenness, an unhappy look,
+a towering fire of resentment characterised that of Letice, whereas the
+face of Betty was open and gay.</p>
+
+<p>This difference was due to the difference in their bringing up.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lacy, who had a small house in North Devon, was a kindly,
+intellectual, and broad-minded old lady, of sweet disposition but a
+decided will. She saw a good deal of society, and did her best to train
+Betty to be an educated and liberal-minded woman of culture and
+graceful manners. She did not send her to school, but had her taught at
+home; and on the excuse that her eyes were weak by artificial light she
+made the girl read to her in the evenings, and always read books that
+were standard and calculated to increase her knowledge and to develop
+her understanding. Lady Lacy detested all shams, and under her influence
+Betty grew up to be thoroughly straightforward, healthy-minded, and
+true.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Miss Mountjoy was, as Letice called her, a Killjoy.
+She had herself been reared in the midst of the Clapham sect; had become
+rigid in all her ideas, narrow in all her sympathies, and a bundle of
+prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>The present generation of young people know nothing of the system of
+repression that was exercised in that of their fathers and mothers. Now
+the tendency is wholly in the other direction, and too greatly so. It is
+possibly due to a revulsion of feeling against a training that is looked
+back upon with a shudder.</p>
+
+<p>To that narrow school there existed but two categories of men and women,
+the Christians and the Worldlings, and those who pertained to it
+arrogated to themselves the former title. The Judgment had already begun
+with the severance of the sheep from the goats, and the saints who
+judged the world had their Jerusalem at Clapham.</p>
+
+<p>In that school the works of the great masters of English literature,
+Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, were taboo; no work of imagination was
+tolerated save the Apocalypse, and that was degraded into a polemic by
+such scribblers as Elliot and Cumming.</p>
+
+<p>No entertainments, not even the oratorios of Handel, were tolerated;
+they savoured of the world. The nearest approach to excitement was found
+in a missionary meeting. The Chinese contract the feet of their
+daughters, but those English Claphamites cramped the minds of their
+children. The Venetians made use of an iron prison, with gradually
+contracting walls, that finally crushed the life out of the captive.
+But these elect Christians put their sons and daughters into a school
+that squeezed their energies and their intelligences to death.</p>
+
+<p>Dickens caricatured such people in Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Chadband; but he
+sketched them only in their external aspect, and left untouched their
+private action in distorting young minds, maiming their wills, damping
+down all youthful buoyancy.</p>
+
+<p>But the result did not answer the expectations of those who adopted this
+system with the young. Some daughters, indeed, of weaker wills were
+permanently stunted and shaped on the approved model, but nearly all the
+sons, and most of the daughters, on obtaining their freedom, broke away
+into utter frivolity and dissipation, or, if they retained any religious
+impressions, galloped through the Church of England, performing strange
+antics on the way, and plunged into the arms of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the system to which the high-spirited, strong-willed Letice was
+subjected, and from which was no escape. The consequence was that Letice
+tossed and bit at her chains, and that there ensued frequent outbreaks
+of resentment against her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Hannah! I want something to read."</p>
+
+<p>After some demur, and disdainful rejection of more serious works, she
+was allowed Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said, "Oh! I do love <i>Comus</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Comus!</i>" gasped Miss Mountjoy.</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>L'Allegro</i> and <i>Il Penseroso</i>, they are not bad."</p>
+
+<p>"My child. These were the compositions of the immortal bard before his
+eyes were opened."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, aunt, that he had dictated the <i>Paradise Lost and Regained</i>
+after he was blind."</p>
+
+<p>"I refer to the eyes of his soul," said the old lady sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"I want a story-book."</p>
+
+<p>"There is the <i>Dairyman's Daughter</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I have read it, and hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear, Leticia, that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of
+iniquity."</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily the sisters very rarely met one another. It was but
+occasionally that Lady Lacy and Betty came to town, and when they did,
+Miss Mountjoy put as many difficulties as she could in the way of their
+associating together.</p>
+
+<p>On one such visit to London, Lady Lacy called and asked if she might
+take Letice with herself to the theatre. Miss Mountjoy shivered with
+horror, reared herself, and expressed her opinion of stage-plays and
+those who went to see them in strong and uncomplimentary terms. As she
+had the custody of Letice, she would by no persuasion be induced to
+allow her to imperil her soul by going to such a wicked place. Lady Lacy
+was fain to withdraw in some dismay and much regret.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Letice, who had heard this offer made, had flashed into sudden
+brightness and a tremor of joy; when it was refused, she burst into a
+flood of tears and an ecstasy of rage. She ran up to her room, and took
+and tore to pieces a volume of <i>Clayton's Sermons</i>, scattered the leaves
+over the floor, and stamped upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"Letice," said Miss Mountjoy, when she saw the devastation, "you are a
+child of wrath."</p>
+
+<p>"Why mayn't I go where there is something pretty to see? Why may I not
+hear good music? Why must I be kept forever in the Doleful Dumps?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because all these things are of the world, worldly."</p>
+
+<p>"If God hates all that is fair and beautiful, why did He create the
+peacock, the humming-bird, and the bird of paradise, instead of filling
+the world with barn-door fowls?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have a carnal mind. You will never go to heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky I&mdash;if the saints there do nothing but hold missionary meetings to
+convert one another. Pray what else can they do?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are engaged in the worship of God."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what that means. All I am acquainted with is the worship
+of the congregation. At Salem Chapel the minister faces it, mouths at
+it, gesticulates to it, harangues, flatters, fawns at it, and, indeed,
+prays at it. If that be all, heaven must be a deadly dull hole."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Mountjoy reared herself, she became livid with wrath. "You wicked
+girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt," said Letice, intent on further incensing her, "I do wish you
+would let me go&mdash;just for once&mdash;to a Catholic church to see what the
+worship of God is."</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather see you dead at my feet!" exclaimed the incensed lady,
+and stalked, rigid as a poker, out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the unhappy girl grew up to woman's estate, her heart seething with
+rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>And then a terrible thing occurred. She caught scarlet fever, which took
+an unfavourable turn, and her life was despaired of. Miss Mountjoy was
+not one to conceal from the girl that her days were few, and her future
+condition hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>Letice fought against the idea of dying so young.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aunt! I won't die! I can't die! I have seen nothing of the pomps
+and vanities. I want to just taste them, and know what they are like.
+Oh! save me, make the doctor give me something to revive me. I want the
+pomps and vanities, oh! so much. I will not, I cannot die!" But her
+will, her struggle, availed nothing, and she passed away into the Great
+Unseen.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Mountjoy wrote a formal letter to her brother, who had now become a
+general, to inform him of the lamented decease of his eldest daughter.
+It was not a comforting letter. It dwelt unnecessarily on the faults of
+Letice, it expressed no hopes as to her happiness in the world to which
+she had passed. There had been no signs of resignation at the last; no
+turning from the world with its pomps and vanities to better things,
+only a vain longing after what she could not have; a bitter resentment
+against Providence for having denied them to her; and a steeling of her
+heart against good and pious influences.</p>
+
+<p>A year had passed.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lacy had come to town along with her niece. A dear friend had
+placed her house at her disposal. She had herself gone to Dresden with
+her daughters to finish them off in music and German. Lady Lacy was very
+glad of the occasion, for Betty was now of an age to be brought out.
+There was to be a great ball at the house of the Countess of Belgrove,
+unto whom Lady Lacy was related, and at the ball Betty was to make her
+début.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was in a condition of boundless excitement. A beautiful
+ball-dress of white satin, trimmed with rich Valenciennes lace, was laid
+over her chair for her to wear. Neat little white satin shoes stood on
+the floor, quite new, for her feet. In a flower-glass stood a red
+camellia that was destined to adorn her hair, and on the dressing-table,
+in a morocco case, was a pearl necklace that had belonged to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>The maid did her hair, but the camellia, which was to be the only point
+of colour about her, except her rosy lips and flushed cheeks&mdash;that
+camellia was not to be put into her hair till the last minute.</p>
+
+<p>The maid offered to help her to dress.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you, Martha; I can do that perfectly well myself. I am
+accustomed to use my own hands, and I can take my own time about it."</p>
+
+<p>"But really, miss, I think you should allow me."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, indeed, no. There is plenty of time, and I shall go leisurely
+to work. When the carriage comes just tap at the door and tell me, and I
+will rejoin my aunt."</p>
+
+<p>When the maid was gone, Betty locked her door. She lighted the candles
+beside the cheval-glass, and looked at herself in the mirror and
+laughed. For the first time, with glad surprise and innocent pleasure,
+she realised how pretty she was. And pretty she was indeed, with her
+pleasant face, honest eyes, finely arched brows, and twinkling smile
+that produced dimples in her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"There is plenty of time," she said. "I shan't take a hundred years in
+dressing now that my hair is done."</p>
+
+<p>She yawned. A great heaviness had come over her.</p>
+
+<p>"I really think I shall have a nap first. I am dead sleepy now, and
+forty winks will set me up for the night."</p>
+
+<p>Then she laid herself upon the bed. A numbing, over-powering lethargy
+weighed on her, and almost at once she sank into a dreamless sleep. So
+unconscious was she that she did not hear Martha's tap at the door nor
+the roll of the carriage as it took her aunt away.</p>
+
+<p>She woke with a start. It was full day.</p>
+
+<p>For some moments she did not realise this fact, nor that she was still
+dressed in the gown in which she had lain down the previous evening.</p>
+
+<p>She rose in dismay. She had slept so soundly that she had missed the
+ball.</p>
+
+<p>She rang her bell and unlocked the door.</p>
+
+<p>"What, miss, up already?" asked the maid, coming in with a tray on which
+were tea and bread and butter.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Martha. Oh! what will aunt say? I have slept so long and like a
+log, and never went to the ball. Why did you not call me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, miss, you have forgotten. You went to the ball last night."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I did not. I overslept myself."</p>
+
+<p>The maid smiled. "If I may be so bold as to say so, I think, Miss Betty,
+you are dreaming still."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I did not go."</p>
+
+<p>The maid took up the satin dress. It was crumpled, the lace was a little
+torn, and the train showed unmistakable signs of having been drawn over
+a floor.</p>
+
+<p>She then held up the shoes. They had been worn, and well worn, as if
+danced in all night.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, miss; here is your programme! Why, deary me! you must have
+had a lot of dancing. It is quite full."</p>
+
+<p>Betty looked at the programme with dazed eyes; then at the camellia. It
+had lost some of its petals, and these had not fallen on the
+toilet-cover. Where were they? What was the meaning of this?</p>
+
+<p>"Martha, bring me my hot water, and leave me alone."</p>
+
+<p>Betty was sorely perplexed. There were evidences that her dress had been
+worn. The pearl necklace was in the case, but not as she had left
+it&mdash;outside. She bathed her head in cold water. She racked her brain.
+She could not recall the smallest particular of the ball. She perused
+the programme. A light colour came into her cheek as she recognised the
+initials "C. F.," those of Captain Charles Fontanel, of whom of late she
+had seen a good deal. Other characters expressed nothing to her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"How very strange!" she said; "and I was lying on the bed in the dress I
+had on yesterday evening. I cannot explain it."</p>
+
+<p>Twenty minutes later, Betty went downstairs and entered the
+breakfast-room. Lady Lacy was there. She went up to her aunt and kissed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry that I overslept myself," she said. "I was like one of
+the Seven Sleepers."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I should not have minded if you had not come down till midday.
+After a first ball you must be tired."</p>
+
+<p>"I meant&mdash;last night."</p>
+
+<p>"How, last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean when I went to dress."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you were punctual enough. When I was ready you were already in the
+hall."</p>
+
+<p>The bewilderment of the girl grew apace.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure," said her aunt, "you enjoyed yourself. But you gave the
+lion's share of the dances to Captain Fontanel. If this had been at
+Exeter, it would have caused talk; but here you are known only to a few;
+however, Lady Belgrove observed it."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you are not very tired, auntie darling," said Betty, to change
+slightly the theme that perplexed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing to speak of. I like to go to a ball; it recalls my old dancing
+days. But I thought you looked white and fagged all the evening. Perhaps
+it was excitement."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as breakfast was concluded, Betty escaped to her room. A fear
+was oppressing her. The only explanation of the mystery was that she had
+been to the dance in her sleep. She was a somnambulist. What had she
+said and done when unconscious? What a dreadful thing it would have been
+had she woke up in the middle of a dance! She must have dressed herself,
+gone to Lady Belgrove's, danced all night, returned, taken off her
+dress, put on her afternoon tea-gown, lain down and concluded her
+sleep&mdash;all in one long tract of unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," said her aunt next day, "I have taken tickets for
+<i>Carmen</i>, at Her Majesty's. You would like to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, delighted, aunt. I know some of the music&mdash;of course, the Toreador
+song; but I have never heard the whole opera. It will be delightful."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are not too tired to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;ten thousand times, no&mdash;I shall love to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"What dress will you go in?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think my black, and put a rose in my hair."</p>
+
+<p>"That will do very well. The black becomes you. I think you could not do
+better."</p>
+
+<p>Betty was highly delighted. She had been to plays, never to a real
+opera.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, dinner was early, unnecessarily early, and Betty knew
+that it would not take her long to dress, so she went into the little
+conservatory and seated herself there. The scent of the heliotropes was
+strong. Betty called them cherry-pie. She had got the libretto, and she
+looked it over; but as she looked, her eyes closed, and without being
+aware that she was going to sleep, in a moment she was completely
+unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>She woke, feeling stiff and cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness!" said she, "I hope I am not late. Why&mdash;what is that light?"</p>
+
+<p>The glimmer of dawn shone in at the conservatory windows.</p>
+
+<p>Much astonished, she left it. The hall, the staircase were dark. She
+groped her way to her room, and switched on the electric light.</p>
+
+<p>Before her lay her black-and-white muslin dress on the bed; on the table
+were her white twelve-button gloves folded about her fan. She took them
+up, and below them, somewhat crumpled, lay the play-bill, scented.</p>
+
+<p>"How very unaccountable this is," she said; and removing the dress,
+seated herself on the bed and thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did they turn out the lights?" she asked herself, then sprang to
+her feet, switched off the electric current, and saw that actually the
+morning light was entering the room. She resumed her seat; put her hands
+to her brow.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot&mdash;it cannot be that this dreadful thing has happened again."</p>
+
+<p>Presently she heard the servants stirring. She hastily undressed and
+retired between the sheets, but not to sleep. Her mind worked. She was
+seriously alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>At the usual time Martha arrived with tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Awake, Miss Betty!" she said. "I hope you had a nice evening. I dare
+say it was beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"But," began the girl, then checked herself, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Is my aunt getting up? Is she very tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, miss, my lady is a wonderful person; she never seems to tire. She
+is always down at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>Betty dressed, but her mind was in a turmoil. On one thing she was
+resolved. She must see a doctor. But she would not frighten her aunt,
+she would keep the matter close from her.</p>
+
+<p>When she came into the breakfast-room, Lady Lacy said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I thought Maas's voice was superb, but I did not so much care for the
+Carmen. What did you think, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt," said Betty, anxious to change the topic, "would you mind my
+seeing a doctor? I don't think I am quite well."</p>
+
+<p>"Not well! Why what is the matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have such dead fits of drowsiness."</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest, is that to be wondered at with this racketing about; balls
+and theatres&mdash;very other than the quiet life at home? But I will admit
+that you struck me as looking very pale last night. You shall certainly
+see Dr. Groves."</p>
+
+<p>When the medical man arrived, Betty intimated that she wished to speak
+with him alone, and he was shown with her into the morning-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dr. Groves," she said nervously, "it is such a strange thing I have
+to say. I believe I walk in my sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"You have eaten something that disagreed with you."</p>
+
+<p>"But it lasted so long."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean? Have you long been subject to it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, no. I never had any signs of it before I came to London this
+season."</p>
+
+<p>"And how were you roused? How did you become aware of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was not roused at all; the fact is I went asleep to Lady Belgrove's
+ball, and danced there and came back, and woke up in the morning without
+knowing I had been."</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>"And then, last night, I went in my sleep to Her Majesty's and heard
+<i>Carmen</i>; but I woke up in the conservatory here at early dawn, and I
+remember nothing about it."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a very extraordinary story. Are you sure you went to the ball
+and to the opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure. My dress had been used on both occasions, and my shoes and
+fan and gloves as well."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you go with Lady Lacy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. I was with her all the time. But I remember nothing about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I must speak to her ladyship."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, please do not. It would frighten her; and I do not wish her to
+suspect anything, except that I am a little out of sorts. She gets
+nervous about me."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Groves mused for some while, then he said: "I cannot see that this
+is at all a case of somnambulism."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lapse of memory. Have you ever suffered from that previously?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing to speak of. Of course I do not always remember everything. I
+do not always recollect commissions given to me, unless I write them
+down. And I cannot say that I remember all the novels I have read, or
+what was the menu at dinner yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"That is quite a different matter. What I refer to is spaces of blank in
+your memory. How often has this occurred?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twice."</p>
+
+<p>"And quite recently?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I never knew anything of the kind before."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that the sooner you return to the country the better. It is
+possible that the strain of coming out and the change of entering into
+gay life in town has been too much for you. Take care and economise your
+pleasures. Do not attempt too much; and if anything of the sort happens
+again, send for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you won't mention this to my aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not this time. I will say that you have been a little over-wrought
+and must be spared too much excitement."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you so much, Dr. Groves."</p>
+
+<p>Now it was that a new mystery came to confound Betty. She rang her bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha," said she, when her maid appeared, "where is that novel I had
+yesterday from the circulating library? I put it on the boudoir table."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not noticed it, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"Please look for it. I have hunted everywhere for it, and it cannot be
+found."</p>
+
+<p>"I will look in the parlour, miss, and the schoolroom."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not been into the schoolroom at all, and I know that it is not
+in the drawing-room."</p>
+
+<p>A search was instituted, but the book could not be found. On the morrow
+it was in the boudoir, where Betty had placed it on her return from
+Mudie's.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the maids took it," was her explanation. She did not much care
+for the book; perhaps that was due to her preoccupation, and not to any
+lack of stirring incident in the story. She sent it back and took out
+another. Next morning that also had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>It now became customary, as surely as she drew a novel from the library,
+that it vanished clean away. Betty was greatly amazed. She could not
+read a novel she had brought home till a day or two later. She took to
+putting the book, so soon as it was in the house, into one of her
+drawers, or into a cupboard. But the result was the same. Finally, when
+she had locked the newly acquired volume in her desk, and it had
+disappeared thence also, her patience gave way. There must be one of the
+domestics with a ravenous appetite for fiction, which drove her to carry
+off a book of the sort whenever it came into the house, and even to
+tamper with a lock to obtain it. Betty had been most reluctant to speak
+of the matter to her aunt, but now she made to her a formal complaint.</p>
+
+<p>The servants were all questioned, and strongly protested their
+innocence. Not one of them had ventured to do such a thing as that with
+which they were charged.</p>
+
+<p>However, from this time forward the annoyance ceased, and Betty and Lady
+Lacy naturally concluded that this was the result of the stir that had
+been made.</p>
+
+<p>"Betty," said Lady Lacy, "what do you say to going to the new play at
+the Gaiety? I hear it very highly spoken of. Mrs. Fontanel has a box and
+has asked if we will join her."</p>
+
+<p>"I should love it," replied the girl; "we have been rather quiet of
+late." But her heart was oppressed with fear.</p>
+
+<p>She said to her maid: "Martha, will you dress me this evening&mdash;and&mdash;pray
+stay with me till my aunt is ready and calls for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss, I shall be pleased to do so." But the girl looked somewhat
+surprised at the latter part of the request.</p>
+
+<p>Betty thought well to explain: "I don't know what it is, but I feel
+somewhat out of spirits and nervous, and am afraid of being left alone,
+lest something should happen."</p>
+
+<p>"Happen, miss! If you are not feeling well, would it not be as well to
+stay at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not for the world! I must go. I shall be all right so soon as I am
+in the carriage. It will pass off then."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I get you a glass of sherry, or anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, it is not that. You remain with me and I shall be myself
+again."</p>
+
+<p>That evening Betty went to the theatre. There was no recurrence of the
+sleeping fit with its concomitants. Captain Fontanel was in the box, and
+made himself vastly agreeable. He had his seat by Betty, and talked to
+her not only between the acts, but also a good deal whilst the actors
+were on the stage. With this she could have dispensed. She was not such
+an <i>habituée</i> of the theatre as not to be intensely interested with what
+was enacted before her.</p>
+
+<p>Between two of the acts he said to her: "My mother is engaging Lady
+Lacy. She has a scheme in her head, but wants her consent to carry it
+out, to make it quite too charming. And I am deputed to get you to
+acquiesce."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We purpose having a boat and going to the Henley Regatta. Will you
+come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should enjoy it above everything. I have never seen a regatta&mdash;that
+is to say, not one so famous, and not of this kind. There were regattas
+at Ilfracombe, but they were different."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then; the party shall consist only of my mother and sister
+and your two selves, and young Fulwell, who is dancing attendance on
+Jannet, and Putsey, who is a tame cat. I am sure my mother will persuade
+your aunt. What a lively old lady she is, and for her years how she does
+enjoy life!"</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a most happy conclusion to our stay in town," said Betty.
+"We are going back to auntie's little cottage in Devon in a few days;
+she wants to be at home for Good Friday and Easter Day."</p>
+
+<p>So it was settled. Lady Lacy had raised no objection, and now she and
+her niece had to consider what Betty should wear. Thin garments were out
+of the question; the weather was too cold, and it would be especially
+chilly on the river. Betty was still in slight mourning, so she chose a
+silver-grey cloth costume, with a black band about her waist, and a
+white straw hat, with a ribbon to match her gown.</p>
+
+<p>On the day of the regatta Betty said to herself; "How ignorant I am!
+Fancy my not knowing where Henley is! That it is on the Thames or Isis I
+really do not know, but I fancy on the former&mdash;yes, I am almost
+positive it is on the Thames. I have seen pictures in the <i>Graphic</i> and
+<i>Illustrated</i> of the race last year, and I know the river was
+represented as broad, and the Isis can only be an insignificant stream.
+I will run into the schoolroom and find a map of the environs of London
+and post myself up in the geography. One hates to look like a fool."</p>
+
+<p>Without a word to anyone, Betty found her way to the apartment given up
+to lessons when children were in the house. It lay at the back, down a
+passage. Since Lady Lacy had occupied the place, neither she nor Betty
+had been in it more than casually and rarely; and accordingly the
+servants had neglected to keep it clean. A good deal of dust lay about,
+and Betty, laughing, wrote her name in the fine powder on the
+school-table, then looked at her finger, found it black, and said, "Oh,
+bother! I forgot that the dust of London is smut."</p>
+
+<p>She went to the bookcase, and groped for a map of the Metropolis and the
+country round, but could not find one. Nor could she lay her hand on a
+gazetteer.</p>
+
+<p>"This must do," said she, drawing out a large, thick <i>Johnston's Atlas</i>,
+"if the scale be not too small to give Henley."</p>
+
+<p>She put the heavy volume on the table and opened it. England, she found,
+was in two parts, one map of the Northern, the second of the Southern
+division. She spread out the latter, placed her finger on the blue line
+of the Thames, and began to trace it up.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst her eyes were on it, searching the small print, they closed, and
+without being conscious that she was sleepy, her head bowed forward on
+the map, and she was breathing evenly, steeped in the most profound
+slumber.</p>
+
+<p>She woke slowly. Her consciousness returned to her little by little. She
+saw the atlas without understanding what it meant. She looked about her,
+and wondered how she could be in the schoolroom, and she then observed
+that darkness was closing in. Only then, suddenly, did she recall what
+had brought her where she was.</p>
+
+<p>Next, with a rush, upon her came the remembrance that she was due at the
+boat-race.</p>
+
+<p>She must again have overslept herself, for the evening had come on, and
+through the window she could see the glimmer of gaslights in the street.
+Was this to be accompanied by her former experiences?</p>
+
+<p>With throbbing heart she went into the passage. Then she noticed that
+the hall was lighted up, and she heard her aunt speaking, and the slam
+of the front door, and the maid say, "Shall I take off your wraps, my
+lady?"</p>
+
+<p>She stepped forth upon the landing and proceeded to descend, when&mdash;with
+a shock that sent the blood coursing to her heart, and that paralysed
+her movements&mdash;she saw <i>herself</i> ascending the stair in her silver-grey
+costume and straw hat.</p>
+
+<p>She clung to the banister, with convulsive grip, lest she should fall,
+and stared, without power to utter a sound, as she saw herself quietly
+mount, step by step, pass her, go beyond to her own room.</p>
+
+<p>For fully ten minutes she remained rooted to the spot, unable to stir
+even a finger. Her tongue was stiff, her muscles set, her heart ceased
+to beat.</p>
+
+<p>Then slowly her blood began again to circulate, her nerves to relax,
+power of movement returned. With a hoarse gasp she reeled from her
+place, and giddy, touching the banister every moment to prevent herself
+from falling, she crept downstairs. But when once in the hall, she had
+recovered flexibility. She ran towards the morning-room, whither Lady
+Lacy had gone to gather up the letters that had arrived by post during
+her absence.</p>
+
+<p>Betty stood looking at her, speechless.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunt raised her face from an envelope she was considering. "Why,
+Betty," said she, "how expeditiously you have changed your dress!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl could not speak, but fell unconscious on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to herself, she was aware of a strong smell of vinegar.
+She was lying on the sofa, and Martha was applying a moistened kerchief
+to her brow. Lady Lacy stood by, alarmed and anxious, with a bottle of
+smelling-salts in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aunt, I saw&mdash;&mdash;" then she ceased. It would not do to tell of the
+apparition. She would not be believed.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling," said Lady Lacy, "you are overdone, and it was foolish of
+you tearing upstairs and scrambling into your morning-gown. I have sent
+for Groves. Are you able now to rise? Can you manage to reach your
+room?"</p>
+
+<p>"My room!" she shuddered. "Let me lie here a little longer. I cannot
+walk. Let me be here till the doctor comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, dearest. I thought you looked very unlike yourself all day
+at the regatta. If you had felt out of sorts you ought not to have
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie! I was quite well in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>Presently the medical man arrived, and was shown in. Betty saw that Lady
+Lacy purposed staying through the interview. Accordingly she said
+nothing to Dr. Groves about what she had seen.</p>
+
+<p>"She is overdone," said he. "The sooner you move her down to Devonshire
+the better. Someone had better be in her room to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Lady Lacy; "I had thought of that and have given orders.
+Martha can make up her bed on the sofa in the adjoining dressing-room or
+boudoir."</p>
+
+<p>This was a relief to Betty, who dreaded a return to her room&mdash;her room
+into which her other self had gone.</p>
+
+<p>"I will call again in the morning," said the medical man; "keep her in
+bed to-morrow, at all events till I have seen her."</p>
+
+<p>When he left, Betty found herself able to ascend the stairs. She cast a
+frightened glance about her room. The straw hat, the grey dress were
+there. No one was in it.</p>
+
+<p>She was helped to bed, and although laid in it with her head among the
+pillows, she could not sleep. Racking thoughts tortured her. What was
+the signification of that encounter? What of her strange sleeps? What of
+those mysterious appearances of herself, where she had not been? The
+theory that she had walked in her sleep was untenable. How was she to
+solve the riddle? That she was going out of her mind was no explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Only towards morning did she doze off.</p>
+
+<p>When Dr. Groves came, about eleven o'clock, Betty made a point of
+speaking to him alone, which was what she greatly desired.</p>
+
+<p>She said to him: "Oh! it has been worse this last occasion, far worse
+than before. I do not walk in my sleep. Whilst I am buried in slumber,
+someone else takes my place."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom do you mean? Surely not one of the maids?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I met her on the stairs last night, that is what made me
+faint."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom did you meet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Myself&mdash;my double."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Miss Mountjoy."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is a fact. I saw myself as clearly as I see you now. I was going
+down into the hall."</p>
+
+<p>"You saw yourself! You saw your own pleasant, pretty face in a
+looking-glass."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no looking-glass on the staircase. Besides, I was in my alpaca
+morning-gown, and my double had on my pearl-grey cloth costume, with my
+straw hat. She was mounting as I was descending."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me the story."</p>
+
+<p>"I went yesterday&mdash;an hour or so before I had to dress&mdash;into the
+schoolroom. I am awfully ignorant, and I did want to see a map and find
+out where was Henley, because, you know, I was going to the boat-race.
+And I dropped off into one of those dreadful dead sleeps, with my head
+on the atlas. When I awoke it was evening, and the gas-lamps were
+lighted. I was frightened, and ran out to the landing and I heard them
+arrive, just come back from Henley, and as I was going down the stairs,
+I saw my double coming up, and we met face to face. She passed me by,
+and went on to my room&mdash;to this room. So you see this is proof pos that
+I am not a somnambulist."</p>
+
+<p>"I never said that you were. I never for a moment admitted the
+supposition. That, if you remember, was your own idea. What I said
+before is what I repeat now, that you suffer from failure of memory."</p>
+
+<p>"But that cannot be so, Dr. Groves."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I saw my double, wearing my regatta costume."</p>
+
+<p>"I hold to my opinion, Miss Mountjoy. If you will listen to me I shall
+be able to offer a satisfactory explanation. Satisfactory, I mean, so
+far as to make your experiences intelligible to you. I do not at all
+imply that your condition is satisfactory."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, tell me. I cannot make heads or tails of this matter."</p>
+
+<p>"It is this, young lady. On several recent occasions you have suffered
+from lapses of memory. All recollection of what you did, where you went,
+what you said, has been clean wiped out. But on this last&mdash;it was
+somewhat different. The failure took place on your return, and you
+forgot everything that had happened since you were engaged in the
+schoolroom looking at the atlas."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, on your arrival here, as Lady Lacy told me, you ran upstairs, and
+in a prodigious hurry changed your clothes and put on your&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My alpaca."</p>
+
+<p>"Your alpaca, yes. Then, in descending to the hall, your memory came
+back, but was still entangled with flying reminiscences of what had
+taken place during the intervening period. Amongst other things&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember no other things."</p>
+
+<p>"You recalled confusedly one thing only, that you had mounted the stairs
+in your&mdash;your&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My pearl-grey cloth, with the straw hat and satin ribbon."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely. Whilst in your morning gown, into which you had scrambled,
+you recalled yourself in your regatta costume going upstairs to change.
+This fragmentary reminiscence presented itself before you as a vision.
+Actually you saw nothing. The impression on your brain of a scrap
+recollected appeared to you as if it had been an actual object depicted
+on the retina of your eye. Such things happen, and happen not
+infrequently. In cases of D. T.&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I haven't D. T. I don't drink."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say that. If you will allow me to proceed. In cases of D. T.
+the patient fancies he sees rats, devils, all sorts of objects. They
+appear to him as obvious realities, he thinks that he sees them with his
+eyes. But he does not. These are mere pictures formed on the brain."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you hold that I really was at the boat-race?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am positive that you were."</p>
+
+<p>"And that I danced at Lady Belgrove's ball?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most assuredly."</p>
+
+<p>"And heard <i>Carmen</i> at Her Majesty's?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not the remotest doubt that you did."</p>
+
+<p>Betty drew a long breath, and remained in consideration.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said very gravely: "I want you to tell me, Dr. Groves, quite
+truthfully, quite frankly&mdash;do not think that I shall be frightened
+whatever you say; I shall merely prepare for what may be&mdash;do you
+consider that I am going out of my mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not the least occasion for supposing so."</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Betty, "would be the most terrible thing of all. If I
+thought that, I would say right out to my aunt that I wished at once to
+be sent to an asylum."</p>
+
+<p>"You may set your mind at rest on that score."</p>
+
+<p>"But loss of memory is bad, but better than the other. Will these fits
+of failure come on again?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is more than I can prognosticate; let us hope for the best. A
+complete change of scene, change of air, change of association&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not to leave auntie!"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I do not mean that, but to get away from London society. It may
+restore you to what you were. You never had those fits before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never, till I came to town."</p>
+
+<p>"And when you have left town they may not recur."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall take precious good care not to revisit London if it is going to
+play these tricks with me."</p>
+
+<p>That day Captain Fontanel called, and was vastly concerned to hear that
+Betty was unwell. She was not looking herself, he said, at the
+boat-race. He feared that the cold on the river had been too much for
+her. But he did trust that he might be allowed to have a word with her
+before she returned to Devonshire.</p>
+
+<p>Although he did not see Betty, he had an hour's conversation with Lady
+Lacy, and he departed with a smile on his face.</p>
+
+<p>On the morrow he called again. Betty had so completely recovered that
+she was cheerful, and the pleasant colour had returned to her cheeks.
+She was in the drawing-room along with her aunt when he arrived.</p>
+
+<p>The captain offered his condolences, and expressed his satisfaction that
+her indisposition had been so quickly got over.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said the girl, "I am as right as a trivet. It has all passed off.
+I need not have soaked in bed all yesterday, but that aunt would have
+it so. We are going down to our home to-morrow. Yesterday auntie was
+scared and thought she would have to postpone our return."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lacy rose, made the excuse that she had the packing to attend to,
+and left the young people alone together. When the door was shut behind
+her, Captain Fontanel drew his chair close to that of the girl and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Betty, you do not know how happy I have felt since you accepted me. It
+was a hurried affair in the boat-house, but really, time was running
+short; as you were off so soon to Devonshire, I had to snatch at the
+occasion when there was no one by, so I seized old Time by the forelock,
+and you were so good as to say 'Yes.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;" stammered Betty.</p>
+
+<p>"But as the thing was done in such haste, I came here to-day to renew my
+offer of myself, and to make sure of my happiness. You have had time to
+reflect, and I trust you do not repent."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are so good and kind to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest Betty, what a thing to say! It is I&mdash;poor, wretched,
+good-for-naught&mdash;who have cause to speak such words to you. Put your
+hand into mine; it is a short courtship of a soldier, like that of Harry
+V. and the fair Maid of France. 'I love you: then if you urge me farther
+than to say, "Do you in faith?" I wear out my suit. Give me your answer;
+i' faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain.' Am I quoting aright?"</p>
+
+<p>Shyly, hesitatingly, she extended her fingers, and he clasped them.
+Then, shrinking back and looking down, she said: "But I ought to tell
+you something first, something very serious, which may make you change
+your mind. I do not, in conscience, feel it right that you should commit
+yourself till you know."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be something very dreadful to make me do that."</p>
+
+<p>"It is dreadful. I am apt to be terribly forgetful."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me! So am I. I have passed several of my acquaintances lately and
+have not recognised them, but that was because I was thinking of you.
+And I fear I have been very oblivious about my bills; and as to
+answering letters&mdash;good heavens! I am a shocking defaulter."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean that. I have lapses of memory. Why, I do not even
+remember&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He sealed her lips with a kiss. "You will not forget this, at any rate,
+Betty."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Charlie, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then consider this, Betty. Our engagement cannot be for long. I am
+ordered to Egypt, and I positively must take my dear little wife with me
+and show her the Pyramids. You would like to see them, would you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should love to."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Sphynx?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I should."</p>
+
+<p>"And Pompey's Pillar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Charlie! I shall love above everything to see you every day."</p>
+
+<p>"That is prettily said. I see we understand one another. Now, hearken to
+me, give me your close attention, and no fits of lapse of memory over
+what I now say, please. We must be married very shortly. I positively
+will not go out without you. I would rather throw up my commission."</p>
+
+<p>"But what about papa's consent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall wire to him full particulars as to my position, income, and
+prospects, also how much I love you, and how I will do my level best to
+make you happy. That is the approved formula in addressing
+paterfamilias, I think. Then he will telegraph back, 'Bless you, my
+boy'; and all is settled. I know that Lady Lacy approves."</p>
+
+<p>"But dear, dear aunt. She will be so awfully lonely without me."</p>
+
+<p>"She shall not be. She has no ties to hold her to the little cottage in
+Devon. She shall come out to us in Cairo, and we will bury the dear old
+girl up to her neck in the sand of the desert, and make a second Sphynx
+of her, and bake the rheumatism out of her bones. It will cure her of
+all her aches, as sure as my name is Charlie, and yours will be
+Fontanel."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be too sure of that."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am sure&mdash;you cannot forget."</p>
+
+<p>"I will try not to do so. Oh, Charlie, don't!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker, and Miss Crock, the milliner, had their
+hands full. Betty's trousseau had to be got ready expeditiously.
+Patterns of materials specially adapted for a hot climate&mdash;light,
+beautiful, artistic, of silks and muslins and prints&mdash;had to be
+commanded from Liberty's. Then came the selection, then the ordering,
+then the discussions with the dressmaker, and the measurings. Next the
+fittings, for which repeated visits had to be made to Mrs. Thomas.
+Adjustments, alterations were made, easements under the arms,
+tightenings about the waist. There were fulnesses to be taken in and
+skimpiness to be redressed. The skirts had to be sufficiently short in
+front and sufficiently long behind.</p>
+
+<p>As for the wedding-dress, Mrs. Thomas was not regarded as quite
+competent to execute such a masterpiece. For that an expedition had to
+be made to Exeter.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding-cake must be ordered from Murch, in the cathedral city. Lady
+Lacy was particular that as much as possible of the outfit should be
+given to county tradesmen. A riding habit, tailor-made, was ordered, to
+fit like a glove, and a lady's saddle must be taken out to Egypt. Boxes,
+basket-trunks were to be procured, and a correspondence carried on as to
+the amount of personal luggage allowed.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lacy and Betty were constantly running up by express to Exeter
+about this, that, and everything.</p>
+
+<p>Then ensued the sending out of the invitations, and the arrival of
+wedding presents, that entailed the writing of gushing letters of
+acknowledgment and thanks, by Betty herself. But these were not allowed
+to interfere with the scribbling of four pages every day to Captain
+Fontanel, intended for his eyes alone.</p>
+
+<p>Interviews were sought by the editors or agents of local newspapers to
+ascertain whether reporters were desired to describe the wedding, and as
+to the length of the notices that were to be inserted, whether all the
+names of the donors of presents were to be included, and their gifts
+registered. Verily Lady Lacy and Betty were kept in a whirl of
+excitement, and their time occupied from morning till night, and their
+brains exercised from night to morning. Glass and china and plate had to
+be hired for the occasion, wine ordered. Fruit, cake, ices commanded.
+But all things come to an end, even the preparations for a wedding.</p>
+
+<p>At last the eventful day arrived, bright and sunny, a true May morning.</p>
+
+<p>The bridesmaids arrived, each wearing the pretty brooch presented by
+Captain Fontanel. Their costume was suitable to the season, of
+primrose-yellow, with hats turned up, white, with primroses. The pages
+were in green velvet, with knee-breeches and three-cornered hats, lace
+ruffles and lace fronts. The butler had made the claret-cup and the
+champagne-cup, and after a skirmish over the neighbourhood some borage
+had been obtained to float on the top. Lady Lacy was to hold a reception
+after the ceremony, and a marquee had been erected in the grounds, as
+the cottage could not contain all the guests invited. The dining-room
+was delivered over for the exposing of the presents. A carriage had been
+commanded to convey the happy couple to the station, horses and driver
+with white favours. With a sigh of relief in the morning, Lady Lacy
+declared that she believed that nothing had been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The trunks stood ready packed, all but one, and labelled with the name
+of Mrs. Fontanel.</p>
+
+<p>A flag flew on the church tower. The villagers had constructed a
+triumphal arch at the entrance to the grounds. The people from farms and
+cottages had all turned out, and were already congregating about the
+churchyard, with smiles and heartfelt wishes for the happiness of the
+bride, who was a mighty favourite with them, as indeed was also Lady
+Lacy.</p>
+
+<p>The Sunday-school children had clubbed their pence, and had presented
+Betty, who had taught them, with a silver set of mustard-pot, pepper
+caster, and salt-cellar.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear!" said Betty, "what shall I do with all these sets of
+mustard- and pepper-pots? I have now received eight."</p>
+
+<p>"A little later, dear," replied her aunt, "you can exchange those that
+you do not require."</p>
+
+<p>"But never that set given me by my Sunday-school pets," said Betty.</p>
+
+<p>Then came in flights of telegrams of congratulation.</p>
+
+<p>And at the last moment arrived some more wedding presents.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious me!" exclaimed the girl, "I really must manage to
+acknowledge these. There will be just time before I begin to dress."</p>
+
+<p>So she tripped upstairs to her boudoir, a little room given over to
+herself in which to do her water-colour painting, her reading, to
+practise her music. A bright little room to which now, as she felt with
+an ache, she was to bid an eternal good-bye!</p>
+
+<p>What happy hours had been spent in it! What day-dreams had been spun
+there!</p>
+
+<p>She opened her writing-case and wrote the required letters of thanks.</p>
+
+<p>"There," said she, when she had signed the fifth. "This is the last time
+I shall subscribe myself Elizabeth Mountjoy, except when I sign my
+name in the church register. Oh! how my back is hurting me. I was not in
+bed till two o'clock and was up again at seven, and I have been on the
+tear for the whole week. There will be just time for me to rest it
+before the business of the dressing begins."</p>
+
+<p>She threw herself on the sofa and put up her feet. Instantly she was
+asleep&mdash;in a sound, dreamless sleep.</p>
+
+<p>When Betty opened her eyes she heard the church bells ringing a merry
+peal. Then she raised her lids, and turning her head on the sofa cushion
+saw&mdash;a bride, herself in full bridal dress, with the white veil and the
+orange-blossoms, seated at her side. The gloves had been removed and lay
+on the lap.</p>
+
+<p>An indescribable terror held her fast. She could not cry out. She could
+not stir. She could only look.</p>
+
+<p>Then the bride put back the veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister, Letice.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a>
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3> THEN THE BRIDE PUT BACK HER VEIL, AND BETTY, STUDYING THE
+WHITE FACE, SAW THAT THIS ACTUALLY WAS NOT HERSELF; IT WAS HER DEAD
+SISTER LETICE.</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>The apparition put forth a hand and laid it on her and spoke: "Do not be
+frightened. I will do you no harm. I love you too dearly for that,
+Betty. I have been married in your name; I have exchanged vows in your
+name; I have received the ring for you; put it on your finger, it is not
+mine; it in no way belongs to me. In your name I signed the register.
+You are married to Charles Fontanel and not I. Listen to me. I will tell
+you all, and when I have told you everything you will see me no more. I
+will trouble you no further; I shall enter into my rest. You will see
+before you only the wedding garments remaining. I shall be gone. Hearken
+to me. When I was dying, I died in frantic despair, because I had never
+known what were the pleasures of life. My last cries, my last regrets,
+my last longings were for the pomps and vanities."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, and slipped the gold hoop on to the forefinger of Betty's
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then she proceeded&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When my spirit parted from my body, it remained a while irresolute
+whither to go. But then, remembering that my aunt had declared that I
+never would go to Heaven, I resolved on forcing my way in there out of
+defiance; and I soared till I reached the gates of Paradise. At them
+stood an angel with a fiery sword drawn in his hand, and he laid it
+athwart the entrance. I approached, but he waved me off, and when the
+point of the flaming blade touched my heart, there passed a pang through
+it, I know not whether of joy or of sorrow. And he said: 'Letice, you
+have not been a good girl; you were sullen, resentful, rebellious, and
+therefore are unfit to enter here. Your longings through life, and to
+the moment of death, were for the world and its pomps and vanities. The
+last throb of your heart was given to repining for them. But your faults
+were due largely to the mistakes of your rearing. And now hear your
+judgment. You shall not pass within these gates till you have returned
+to earth and partaken of and had your fill of its pomps and vanities. As
+for that old cat, your aunt'&mdash;but no, Betty, he did not say quite that;
+I put it in, and I ought not to have done so. I bear her no resentment;
+I wish her no ill. She did by me what she believed to be right. She
+acted towards me up to her lights; alas for me that the light which was
+in her was darkness! The angel said: 'As for your aunt, before she can
+enter here, she will want illumining, enlarging, and sweetening, and
+will have to pass through Purgatory.' And oh, Betty, that will be gall
+and bitterness to her, for she did not believe in Purgatory, and she
+wrote a controversial pamphlet against it. Then said the angel: 'Return,
+return to the pomps and vanities.' I fell on my knees, and said: 'Oh,
+suffer me but to have one glimpse of that which is within!' 'Be it so,'
+he replied. 'One glimpse only whilst I cast my sword on high.' Thereat
+he threw up the flaming brand, and it was as though a glorious flash of
+lightning filled all space. At the same moment the gates swung apart,
+and I saw what was beyond. It was but for one brief moment, for the
+sword came down, and the angel caught it by the handle, and instantly
+the gates were shut. Then, sorrowfully, I turned myself about and went
+back to earth. And, Betty, it was I who took and read your novels. It
+was I who went to Lady Belgrove's ball in your place. It was I who sat
+instead of you at Her Majesty's and heard <i>Carmen</i>. It was I who took
+your place at Henley Regatta, and I&mdash;I, instead of you, received the
+protestation of Charles Fontanel's affection, and there in the
+boat-house I received the first and last kiss of love. And it was I,
+Betty, as I have told you, who took your place at the altar to-day. I
+had the pleasures that were designed for you&mdash;the ball-dress, the
+dances, the fair words, the music of the opera, the courtship, the
+excitement of the regatta, the reading of sensational novels. It was I
+who had what all girls most long for, their most supreme bliss of
+wearing the wedding-veil and the orange-blossoms. But I have reached my
+limit. I am full of the pomps and vanities, and I return on high. You
+will see me no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Letice," said Betty, obtaining her speech, "you do not grudge me
+the joys of life?"</p>
+
+<p>The fair white being at her side shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"And you desire no more of the pomps and vanities?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Betty. I have looked through the gates."</p>
+
+<p>Then Betty put forth her hands to clasp the waist of her sister, as she
+said fervently&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Letice, what you saw beyond."</p>
+
+<p>"Betty&mdash;everything the reverse of Salem Chapel."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="McALISTER" id="McALISTER"></a>McALISTER</h2>
+
+
+<p>The city of Bayonne, lying on the left bank of the Adour, and serving as
+its port, is one that ought to present much interest to the British
+tourist, on account of its associations. For three hundred years, along
+with Bordeaux, it belonged to the English crown. The cathedral, a noble
+structure of the fourteenth century, was reared by the English, and on
+the bosses of its vaulting are carved the arms of England, of the
+Talbots, and of other great English noble families. It was probably
+designed by English architects, for it possesses, in its vaulting, the
+long central rib so characteristic of English architecture, and wholly
+unlike what was the prevailing French fashion of vaulting in
+compartments, and always without that connecting rib, like the inverted
+keel of a ship, with which we are acquainted in our English minsters.
+Under some of the modern houses in the town are cellars of far earlier
+construction, also vaulted, and in them as well may be seen the arms of
+the English noble families which had their dwellings above.</p>
+
+<p>But Bayonne has later associations with us. At the close of the
+Peninsular War, when Wellington had driven Marshal Soult and the French
+out of Spain, and had crossed the Pyrenees, his forces, under Sir John
+Hope, invested the citadel. In February, 1814, Sir John threw a bridge
+of boats across the Adour, boats being provided by the fleet of Admiral
+Penrose, in the teeth of a garrison of 15,000 men, and French gunboats
+which guarded the river and raked the English whilst conducting this
+hazardous and masterly achievement. This brilliant exploit was effected
+whilst Wellington engaged the attention of Soult about the Gaves,
+affluents of the Adour, near Orthez. It is further interesting, with a
+tragic interest, on account of an incident in that campaign which shall
+be referred to presently.</p>
+
+<p>The cathedral of Bayonne, some years ago, possessed no towers&mdash;the
+English were driven out of Aquitaine before these had been completed.
+The west front was mean to the last degree, masked by a shabby
+penthouse, plastered white, or rather dirty white, on which in large
+characters was inscribed, "Liberté égalité et fraternité."</p>
+
+<p>This has now disappeared, and a modern west front and twin towers and
+spires have been added, in passable architecture. When I was at Bayonne,
+more years ago than I care to say, I paid a visit to the little cemetery
+on the north bank of the river, in which were laid the English officers
+who fell during the investment of Bayonne.</p>
+
+<p>The north bank is in the Department of the Landes, whereas that on the
+south is in the Department of the Basses Pyrénées.</p>
+
+<p>About the time when the English were expelled from France, and lost
+Aquitaine, the Adour changed its course. Formerly it had turned sharply
+round at the city, and had flowed north and found an outlet some miles
+away at Cap Breton, but the entrance was choked by the moving
+sand-dunes, and the impatient river burst its way into the Bay of Biscay
+by the mouth through which it still flows. But the old course is marked
+by lagoons of still blue water in the midst of a vast forest of pines
+and cork trees. I had spent a day wandering among these tree-covered
+<i>landes</i>, seeking out the lonely lakes, and in the evening I returned in
+the direction of Bayonne, diverging somewhat from my course to visit the
+cemetery of the English. This was a square walled enclosure with an iron
+gate, rank with weeds, utterly neglected, and with the tombstones, some
+leaning, some prostrate, all covered with lichen and moss. I could not
+get within to decipher the inscriptions, for the gate was locked and I
+had not the key, and was quite ignorant who was the custodian of the
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Being tired with my trudge in the sand, I sat down outside, with my back
+to the wall, and saw the setting sun paint with saffron the boles of the
+pines. I took out my Murray that I had in my knapsack, and read the
+following passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"To the N., rises the citadel, the most formidable of the works
+laid out by Vauban, and greatly strengthened, especially since
+1814, when it formed the key to an entrenched camp of Marshal
+Soult, and was invested by a detachment of the army of the Duke
+of Wellington, but not taken, the peace having put a stop to
+the siege after some bloody encounters. The last of these, a
+dreadful and useless expenditure of human life, took place
+after peace was declared, and the British forces put off their
+guard in consequence. They were thus entirely taken by surprise
+by a sally of the garrison, made early on the morning of April
+14th; which, though repulsed, was attended with the loss of 830
+men of the British, and by the capture of their commander, Sir
+John Hope, whose horse was shot under him, and himself wounded.
+The French attack was supported by the fire of their gunboats
+on the river, which opened indiscriminately on friend and foe.
+Nine hundred and ten of the French were killed."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>When I had concluded, the sun had set, and already a grey mist began to
+form over the course of the Adour. I thought that now it was high time
+for me to return to Bayonne, and to table d'hôte, which is at 7.30 p.m.,
+but for which I knew I should be late. However, before rising, I pulled
+out my flask of Scotch whisky, and drained it to the last drop.</p>
+
+<p>I had scarcely finished, and was about to heave myself to my feet, when
+I heard a voice from behind and above me say&mdash;"It is grateful, varra
+grateful to a Scotchman."</p>
+
+<p>I turned myself about, and drew back from the wall, for I saw a very
+remarkable object perched upon it. It was the upper portion of a man in
+military accoutrements. He was not sitting on the wall, for, if so, his
+legs would have been dangling over on the outside. And yet he could not
+have heaved himself up to the level of the parapet, with the legs
+depending inside, for he appeared to be on the wall itself down to the
+middle.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a Scotchman or an Englishman?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"An Englishman," I replied, hardly knowing what to make of the
+apparition.</p>
+
+<p>"It's mabbe a bit airly in the nicht for me to be stirring," he said;
+"but the smell of the whisky drew me from my grave."</p>
+
+<p>"From your grave!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"And pray, what is the blend?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Weel," said he, "ye might do better, but it's guid enough. I am Captain
+Alister McAlister of Auchimachie, at your service, that is to say, his
+superior half. I fell in one of the attacks on the citadel. Those"&mdash;he
+employed a strong qualification which need not be reproduced&mdash;"those
+Johnny Crapauds used chain-shot; and they cut me in half at the
+waistbelt, and my legs are in Scotland."</p>
+
+<p>Having somewhat recovered from my astonishment, I was able to take a
+further look at him, and could not restrain a laugh. He so much
+resembled Humpty Dumpty, who, as I had learned in childhood, did sit on
+a wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything so rideeculous about me?" asked Captain McAlister in
+a tone of irritation. "You seem to be in a jocular mood, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you," I responded, "I was only laughing from joy of heart at
+the happy chance of meeting you, Alister McAlister."</p>
+
+<p>"Of Auchimachie, and my title is Captain," he said. "There is only half
+of me here&mdash;the etceteras are in the family vault in Scotland."</p>
+
+<p>I expressed my genuine surprise at this announcement. "You must
+understand, sir," continued he, "that I am but the speeritual
+presentment of my buried trunk. The speeritual presentment of my nether
+half is not here, and I should scorn to use those of Captain
+O'Hooligan."</p>
+
+<p>I pressed my hand to my brow. Was I in my right senses? Had the hot sun
+during the day affected my brain, or had the last drain of whisky upset
+my reason?</p>
+
+<p>"You may be pleased to know," said the half-captain, "that my father,
+the Laird of Auchimachie, and Colonel Graham of Ours, were on terms of
+the greatest intimacy. Before I started for the war under Wellington&mdash;he
+was at the time but Sir Arthur Wellesley&mdash;my father took Colonel Graham
+apart and confided to him: 'If anything should happen to my son in the
+campaign, you'll obleege me greatly if you will forward his remains to
+Auchimachie. I am a staunch Presbyterian, and I shouldn't feel happy
+that his poor body should lie in the land of idolaters, who worship the
+Virgin Mary. And as to the expense, I will manage to meet that; but be
+careful not to do the job in an extravagant manner.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And the untoward Fates cut you short?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the chain-shot did, but not in the Peninsula. I passed safely
+through that, but it was here. When we were makin' the bridge, the
+enemy's ships were up the river, and they fired on us with chain-shot,
+which ye ken are mainly used for cutting the rigging of vessels. But
+they employed them on us as we were engaged over the pontoons, and I was
+just cut in half by a pair of these shot at the junction of the tunic
+and the trews."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot understand how that your legs should be in Scotland and your
+trunk here."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I'm aboot to tell you. There was a Captain O'Hooligan
+and I used to meet; we were in the same detachment. I need not inform
+you, if you're a man of understanding, that O'Hooligan is an Irish name,
+and Captain Timothy O'Hooligan was a born Irishman and an ignorant
+papist to boot. Now, I am by education and conveection a staunch
+Presbyterian. I believe in John Calvin, John Knox, and Jeannie Geddes.
+That's my creed; and if ye are disposed for an argument&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least."</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, then, it was other with Captain O'Hooligan, and we often had
+words; but he hadn't any arguments at all, only assertions, and he lost
+his temper accordingly, and I was angry at the unreasonableness of the
+man. I had had an ancestor in Derry at the siege and at the Battle of
+the Boyne, and he spitted three Irish kerns on his sabre. I glory in it,
+and I told O'Hooligan as much, and I drank a glass of toddy to the
+memory of William III., and I shouted out Lillibulero! I believe in the
+end we would have fought a duel, after the siege was over, unless one of
+us had thought better of it. But it was not to be. At the same time that
+I was cut in half, so was he also by chain-shot."</p>
+
+<p>"And is he buried here?"</p>
+
+<p>"The half of him&mdash;his confounded legs, and the knees that have bowed to
+the image of Baal."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, what became of his body?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll pay me reasonable attention, and not interrupt, I'll tell you
+the whole story. But&mdash;sure enough! Here come those legs!"</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the half-man rolled off the wall, on the outside, and heaving
+himself along on his hands, scuttled behind a tree-trunk.</p>
+
+<p>Next moment I saw a pair of nimble lower limbs, in white ducks and
+straps under the boots, leap the wall, and run about, up and down, much
+like a setter after a partridge.</p>
+
+<p>I did not know what to make of this.</p>
+
+<p>Then the head of McAlister peered from behind the tree, and screamed
+"Lillibulero! God save King William!" Instantly the legs went after him,
+and catching him up kicked him like a football about the enclosure. I
+cannot recall precisely how many times the circuit was made, twice or
+thrice, but all the while the head of McAlister kept screaming
+"Lillibulero!" and "D&mdash;&mdash; the Pope!"</p>
+
+<p>Recovering myself from my astonishment, and desirous of putting a term
+to this not very edifying scene, I picked up a leaf of shamrock, that
+grew at my feet, and ran between the legs and the trunk, and presented
+the symbol of St. Patrick to the former. The legs at once desisted from
+pursuit, and made a not ungraceful bow to the leaf, and as I advanced
+they retired, still bowing reverentially, till they reached the wall,
+which they stepped over with the utmost ease.</p>
+
+<p>The half-Scotchman now hobbled up to me on his hands, and said: "I'm
+varra much obleeged to you for your intervention, sir." Then he
+scrambled, by means of the rails of the gate, to his former perch on the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>"You must understand, sir," said McAlister, settling himself
+comfortably, "that this produces no pheesical inconvenience to me at
+all. For O'Hooligan's boots are speeritual, and so is my trunk
+speeritual. And at best it only touches my speeritual feelings. Still, I
+thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly administered to him some spiritual aggravation," I
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir, I did. And I glory in it."</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Captain McAlister, if it is not troubling you too greatly,
+after this interruption would you kindly explain to me how it comes
+about that the nobler part of you is here and the less noble in
+Scotland?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will do so with pleasure. Captain O'Hooligan's upper story is at
+Auchimachie."</p>
+
+<p>"How came that about?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you had a particle of patience, you would not interrupt me in my
+narrative. I told you, did I not, that my dear father had enjoined on
+Colonel Graham, should anything untoward occur, that he should send my
+body home to be interred in the vault of my ancestors? Well, this is
+how it came about that the awkward mistake was made. When it was
+reported that I had been killed, Colonel Graham issued orders that my
+remains should be carefully attended to and put aside to be sent home to
+Scotland."</p>
+
+<p>"By boat, I presume?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, by boat. But, unfortunately, he commissioned some Irishmen
+of his company to attend to it. And whether it was that they wished to
+do honour to their own countryman, or whether it was that, like most
+Irishmen, they could not fail to blunder in the discharge of their duty,
+I cannot say. They might have recognised me, even if they hadn't known
+my face, by my goold repeater watch; but some wretched camp-followers
+had been before them. On the watch were engraved the McAlister arms. But
+the watch had been stolen. So they picked up&mdash;either out of purpose, or
+by mistake&mdash;O'Hooligan's trunk, and my nether portion, and put them
+together into one case. You see, a man's legs are not so easily
+identified. So his body and my lower limbs were made ready together to
+be forwarded to Scotland."</p>
+
+<p>"But how&mdash;did not Colonel Graham see personally to the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"He could not. He was so much engaged over regimental duties. Still, he
+might have stretched a point, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been difficult to send the portions so far. Was the body
+embalmed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Embalmed! no. There was no one in Bayonne who knew how to do it. There
+was a bird-stuffer in the Rue Pannceau, but he had done nothing larger
+than a seagull. So there could be no question of embalming. We, that is,
+the bit of O'Hooligan and the bit of me, were put into a cask of
+eau-de-vie, and so forwarded by a sailing-vessel. And either on the way
+to Southampton, or on another boat from that port to Edinburgh, the
+sailors ran a gimlet into the barrel, and inserted a straw, and drank up
+all the spirits. It was all gone by the time the hogshead reached
+Auchimachie. Whether O'Hooligan gave a smack to the liquor I cannot say,
+but I can answer for my legs, they would impart a grateful flavour of
+whisky. I was always a drinker of whisky, and when I had taken a
+considerable amount it always went to my legs; they swerved, and gave
+way under me. That is proof certain that the liquor went to my
+extremities and not to my head. Trust to a Scotchman's head for standing
+any amount of whisky. When the remains arrived at Auchimachie for
+interment, it was supposed that some mistake had been made. My hair is
+sandy, that of O'Hooligan is black, or nearly so; but there was no
+knowing what chemical action the alcohol might have on the hair in
+altering its colour. But my mother identified the legs past mistake, by
+a mole on the left calf and a varicose vein on the right. Anyhow, half a
+loaf is better than no bread, so all the mortal relics were consigned to
+the McAlister vault. It was aggravating to my feelings that the minister
+should pronounce a varra eloquent and moving discourse on the occasion
+over the trunk of a confounded Irishman and a papist."</p>
+
+<p>"You must really excuse me," interrupted I, "but how the dickens do you
+know all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is always an etherial current of communication between the parts
+of a man's body," replied McAlister, "and there is speeritual
+intercommunication between a man's head and his toes, however pairted
+they may be. I tell you, sir, in the speeritual world we know a thing or
+two."</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said I, "what may be your wishes in this most unfortunate
+matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am coming to that, if you'll exercise a little rational patience.
+This that I tell you of occurred in 1814, a considerable time ago. I
+shall be varra pleased if, on your return to England, you will make it
+your business to run up to Scotland, and interview my great-nephew. I am
+quite sure he will do the right thing by me, for the honour of the
+family, and to ease my soul. He never would have come into the estate at
+all if it had not been for my lamented decease. There's another little
+unpleasantness to which I desire you to call his attention. A tombstone
+has been erected over my trunk and O'Hooligan's legs, here in this
+cemetery, and on it is: 'Sacred to the Memory of Captain Timothy
+O'Hooligan, who fell on the field of Glory. R. I. P.' Now this is liable
+to a misunderstanding for it is me&mdash;I mean I, to be grammatical&mdash;who
+lies underneath. I make no account of the Irishman's nether extremities.
+And being a convinced and zealous Presbyterian, I altogether
+conscientiously object to having 'Requiescat in pace' inscribed over my
+bodily remains. And my great-nephew, the present laird, if he be true to
+the principles of the Covenant, will object just as strongly as myself.
+I know very weel those letters are attached to the name of O'Hooligan,
+but they mark the place of deposition of my body rather than his. So I
+wish you just to put it clearly and logically to the laird, and he will
+take steps, at any cost, to have me transferred to Auchimachie. What he
+may do with the relics of that Irish rogue I don't care for, not one
+stick of barley sugar."</p>
+
+<p>I promised solemnly to fulfil the commission entrusted to me, and then
+Captain McAlister wished me a good night, and retired behind the
+cemetery wall.</p>
+
+<p>I did not quit the South of France that same year, for I spent the
+winter at Pau. In the following May I returned to England, and there
+found that a good many matters connected with my family called for my
+immediate attention. It was accordingly just a year and five months
+after my interview with Captain McAlister that I was able to discharge
+my promise. I had never forgotten my undertaking&mdash;I had merely postponed
+it. Charity begins at home, and my own concerns engrossed my time too
+fully to allow me the leisure for a trip to the North.</p>
+
+<p>However, in the end I did go. I took the express to Edinburgh. That
+city, I think candidly, is the finest for situation in the world, as far
+as I have seen of it. I did not then visit it. I never had previously
+been in the Athens of the North, and I should have liked to spend a
+couple of days at least in it, to look over the castle and to walk
+through Holyrood. But duty stands before pleasure, and I went on
+directly to my destination, postponing acquaintance with Edinburgh till
+I had accomplished my undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>I had written to Mr. Fergus McAlister to inform him of my desire to see
+him. I had not entered into the matter of my communication. I thought it
+best to leave this till I could tell him the whole story by word of
+mouth. I merely informed him by letter that I had something to speak to
+him about that greatly concerned his family.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the station his carriage awaited me, and I was driven to his
+house.</p>
+
+<p>He received me with the greatest cordiality, and offered me the kindest
+hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>The house was large and rambling, not in the best repair, and the
+grounds, as I was driven through them, did not appear to be trimly kept.
+I was introduced to his wife and to his five daughters, fair-haired,
+freckled girls, certainly not beautiful, but pleasing enough in manner.
+His eldest son was away in the army, and his second was in a lawyer's
+office in Edinburgh; so I saw nothing of them.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, when the ladies had retired, I told him the entire story
+as freely and as fully as possible, and he listened to me with courtesy,
+patience, and the deepest attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, when I had concluded, "I was aware that doubts had been
+cast on the genuineness of the trunk. But under the circumstances it was
+considered advisable to allow the matter to stand as it was. There were
+insuperable difficulties in the way of an investigation and a certain
+identification. But the legs were all right. And I hope to show you
+to-morrow, in the kirk, a very handsome tablet against the wall,
+recording the name and the date of decease of my great-uncle, and some
+very laudatory words on his character, beside an appropriate text from
+the Screeptures."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, however, that the facts are known, you will, of course, take steps
+for the translation of the half of Captain Alister to your family
+vault."</p>
+
+<p>"I foresee considerable difficulties in the way," he replied. "The
+authorities at Bayonne might raise objections to the exhuming of the
+remains in the grave marked by the tombstone of Captain O'Hooligan. They
+might very reasonably say: 'What the hang has Mr. Fergus McAlister to do
+with the body of Captain O'Hooligan?' We must consult the family of that
+officer in Ireland."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said I, "a representation of the case&mdash;of the mistake made&mdash;would
+render all clear to them. I do not see that there is any necessity for
+complicating the story by saying that you have only half of your
+relative here, and that the other half is in O'Hooligan's grave. State
+that orders had been given for the transmission of the body of your
+great-uncle to Auchimachie, and that, through error, the corpse of
+Captain O'Hooligan had been sent, and Captain McAlister buried by
+mistake as that of the Irishman. That makes a simple, intelligible, and
+straightforward tale. Then you could dispose of the superfluous legs
+when they arrived in the manner you think best."</p>
+
+<p>The laird remained silent for a while, rubbing his chin, and looking at
+the tablecloth.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he stood up, and going to the sideboard, said: "I'll just
+take a wash of whisky to clear my thoughts. Will you have some?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you; I am enjoying your old and excellent port."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fergus McAlister returned leisurely to the table after his "wash,"
+remained silent a few minutes longer, then lifted his head and said: "I
+don't see that I am called upon to transport those legs."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I answered; "but you had best take the remains in a lump and sort
+them on their arrival."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid it will be seriously expensive. My good sir, the property
+is not now worth what it was in Captain Alister's time. Land has gone
+down in value, and rents have been seriously reduced. Besides, farmers
+are now more exacting than formerly; they will not put up with the byres
+that served their fathers. Then my son in the army is a great expense to
+me, and my second son is not yet earning his livelihood, and my
+daughters have not yet found suitors, so that I shall have to leave them
+something on which to live; besides"&mdash;he drew a long breath&mdash;"I want to
+build on to the house a billiard-room."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think," protested I, "that the cost would be very serious."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by serious?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I think that these relics of humanity might be transported to
+Auchimachie in a hogshead of cognac, much as the others were."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the price of cognac down there?" asked he.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," I replied, "that is more than I can say as to the cask. Best
+cognac, three stars, is five francs fifty centimes a bottle."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a long price. But one star?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say; I never bought that. Possibly three francs and a half."</p>
+
+<p>"And how many bottles to a cask?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure, something over two hundred litres."</p>
+
+<p>"Two hundred three shillings," mused Mr. Fergus; and then looking up,
+"there is the duty in England, very heavy on spirits, and charges for
+the digging-up, and fees to the officials, and the transport by
+water&mdash;&mdash;" He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You must remember," said I, "that your relative is subjected to great
+indignities from those legs, getting toed three or four times round the
+enclosure." I said three or four, but I believe it was only twice or
+thrice. "It hardly comports with the family honour to suffer it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," replied Mr. Fergus, "that you said it was but the speeritual
+presentment of a boot, and that there was no pheesical inconvenience
+felt, only a speeritual impression?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so."</p>
+
+<p>"For my part, judging from my personal experience," said the laird,
+"speeritual impressions are most evanescent."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said I, "Captain Alister's trunk lies in a foreign land."</p>
+
+<p>"But not," replied he, "in Roman Catholic consecrated soil. That is a
+great satisfaction."</p>
+
+<p>"You, however, have the trunk of a Roman Catholic in your family vault."</p>
+
+<p>"It is so, according to what you say. But there are a score of
+McAlisters there, all staunch Presbyterians, and if it came to an
+argument among them&mdash;I won't say he would not have a leg to stand on, as
+he hasn't those anyhow, but he would find himself just nowhere."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Fergus McAlister stood up and said: "Shall we join the ladies?
+As to what you have said, sir, and have recommended, I assure you that I
+will give it my most serious consideration."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_LEADEN_RING" id="THE_LEADEN_RING"></a>THE LEADEN RING</h2>
+
+
+<p>"It is not possible, Julia. I cannot conceive how the idea of attending
+the county ball can have entered your head after what has happened. Poor
+young Hattersley's dreadful death suffices to stop that."</p>
+
+<p>"But, aunt, Mr. Hattersley is no relation of ours."</p>
+
+<p>"No relation&mdash;but you know that the poor fellow would not have shot
+himself if it had not been for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, how can you say so, when the verdict was that he
+committed suicide when in an unsound condition of mind? How could I help
+his blowing out his brains, when those brains were deranged?"</p>
+
+<p>"Julia, do not talk like this. If he did go off his head, it was you who
+upset him by first drawing him on, leading him to believe that you liked
+him, and then throwing him over so soon as the Hon. James Lawlor
+appeared on the <i>tapis</i>. Consider: what will people say if you go to the
+assembly?"</p>
+
+<p>"What will they say if I do not go? They will immediately set it down to
+my caring deeply for James Hattersley, and they will think that there
+was some sort of engagement."</p>
+
+<p>"They are not likely to suppose that. But really, Julia, you were for a
+while all smiles and encouragement. Tell me, now, did Mr. Hattersley
+propose to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;yes, he did, and I refused him."</p>
+
+<p>"And then he went and shot himself in despair. Julia, you cannot with
+any face go to the ball."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody knows that he proposed. And precisely because I do go everyone
+will conclude that he did not propose. I do not wish it to be supposed
+that he did."</p>
+
+<p>"His family, of course, must have been aware. They will see your name
+among those present at the assembly."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt, they are in too great trouble to look at the paper to see who
+were at the dance."</p>
+
+<p>"His terrible death lies at your door. How you can have the heart,
+Julia&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see it. Of course, I feel it. I am awfully sorry, and awfully
+sorry for his father, the admiral. I cannot set him up again. I wish
+that when I rejected him he had gone and done as did Joe Pomeroy, marry
+one of his landlady's daughters."</p>
+
+<p>"There, Julia, is another of your delinquencies. You lured on young
+Pomeroy till he proposed, then you refused him, and in a fit of vexation
+and mortified vanity he married a girl greatly beneath him in social
+position. If the <i>ménage</i> prove a failure you will have it on your
+conscience that you have wrecked his life and perhaps hers as well."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot throw myself away as a charity to save this man or that from
+doing a foolish thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What I complain of, Julia, is that you encouraged young Mr. Pomeroy
+till Mr. Hattersley appeared, whom you thought more eligible, and then
+you tossed him aside; and you did precisely the same with James
+Hattersley as soon as you came to know Mr. Lawlor. After all, Julia, I
+am not so sure that Mr. Pomeroy has not chosen the better part. The
+girl, I dare say, is simple, fresh, and affectionate."</p>
+
+<p>"Your implication is not complimentary, Aunt Elizabeth."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I have no patience with the young lady of the present day, who
+is shallow, self-willed, and indifferent to the feelings and happiness
+of others, who craves for excitement and pleasure, and desires nothing
+that is useful and good. Where now will you see a girl like Viola's
+sister, who let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on her damask
+cheek? Nowadays a girl lays herself at the feet of a man if she likes
+him, turns herself inside-out to let him and all the world read her
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no relish to be like Viola's sister, and have my story&mdash;a blank.
+I never grovelled at the feet of Joe Pomeroy or James Hattersley."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but you led each to consider himself the favoured one till he
+proposed, and then you refused him. It was like smiling at a man and
+then stabbing him to the heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I don't want people to think that James Hattersley cared for
+me&mdash;I certainly never cared for him&mdash;nor that he proposed; so I shall go
+to the ball."</p>
+
+<p>Julia Demant was an orphan. She had been retained at school till she was
+eighteen, and then had been removed just at the age when a girl begins
+to take an interest in her studies, and not to regard them as drudgery.
+On her removal she had cast away all that she had acquired, and had been
+plunged into the whirl of Society. Then suddenly her father died&mdash;she
+had lost her mother some years before&mdash;and she went to live with her
+aunt, Miss Flemming. Julia had inherited a sum of about five hundred
+pounds a year, and would probably come in for a good estate and funds as
+well on the death of her aunt. She had been flattered as a girl at home,
+and at school as a beauty, and she certainly thought no small bones of
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Flemming was an elderly lady with a sharp tongue, very outspoken,
+and very decided in her opinions; but her action was weak, and Julia
+soon discovered that she could bend the aunt to do anything she willed,
+though she could not modify or alter her opinions.</p>
+
+<p>In the matter of Joe Pomeroy and James Hattersley, it was as Miss
+Flemming had said. Julia had encouraged Mr. Pomeroy, and had only cast
+him off because she thought better of the suit of Mr. Hattersley, son
+of an admiral of that name. She had seen a good deal of young
+Hattersley, had given him every encouragement, had so entangled him,
+that he was madly in love with her; and then, when she came to know the
+Hon. James Lawlor, and saw that he was fascinated, she rejected
+Hattersley with the consequences alluded to in the conversation above
+given.</p>
+
+<p>Julia was particularly anxious to be present at the county ball, for she
+had been already booked by Mr. Lawlor for several dances, and she was
+quite resolved to make an attempt to bring him to a declaration.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the ball Miss Flemming and Julia entered the carriage.
+The aunt had given way, as was her wont, but under protest.</p>
+
+<p>For about ten minutes neither spoke, and then Miss Flemming said, "Well,
+you know my feelings about this dance. I do not approve. I distinctly
+disapprove. I do not consider your going to the ball in good taste, or,
+as you would put it, in good form. Poor young Hattersley&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear aunt, do let us put young Hattersley aside. He was buried with
+the regular forms, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Julia."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the rector accepted the verdict of the jury at the inquest. Why
+should not we? A man who is unsound in his mind is not responsible for
+his actions."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not."</p>
+
+<p>"Much less, then, I who live ten miles away."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say that you are responsible for his death, but for the
+condition of mind that led him to do the dreadful deed. Really, Julia,
+you are one of those into whose head or heart only by a surgical
+operation could the thought be introduced that you could be in the
+wrong. A hypodermic syringe would be too weak an instrument to effect
+such a radical change in you. Everyone else may be in the wrong,
+you&mdash;never. As for me, I cannot get young Hattersley out of my head."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," retorted Julia with asperity, for her aunt's words had stung
+her&mdash;"I, for my part, do not give him a thought."</p>
+
+<p>She had hardly spoken the words before a chill wind began to pass round
+her. She drew the Barège shawl that was over her bare shoulders closer
+about her, and said&mdash;"Auntie! is the glass down on your side?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Julia; why do you ask?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is such a draught."</p>
+
+<p>"Draught!&mdash;I do not feel one; perhaps the window on your side hitches."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, that is all right. It is blowing harder and is deadly cold. Can
+one of the front panes be broken?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Rogers would have told me had that been the case. Besides, I can
+see that they are sound."</p>
+
+<p>The wind of which Julia complained swirled and whistled about her. It
+increased in force; it plucked at her shawl and slewed it about her
+throat; it tore at the lace on her dress. It snatched at her hair, it
+wrenched it away from the pins, the combs that held it in place; one
+long tress was lashed across the face of Miss Flemming. Then the hair,
+completely released, eddied up above the girl's head, and next moment
+was carried as a drift before her, blinding her. Then&mdash;a sudden
+explosion, as though a gun had been fired into her ear; and with a
+scream of terror she sank back among the cushions. Miss Flemming, in
+great alarm, pulled the checkstring, and the carriage stopped. The
+footman descended from the box and came to the side. The old lady drew
+down the window and said: "Oh! Phillips, bring the lamp. Something has
+happened to Miss Demant."</p>
+
+<p>The man obeyed, and sent a flood of light into the carriage. Julia was
+lying back, white and senseless. Her hair was scattered over her face,
+neck, and shoulders; the flowers that had been stuck in it, the pins
+that had fastened it in place, the pads that had given shape to the
+convolutions lay strewn, some on her lap, some in the rug at the bottom
+of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Phillips!" ordered the old lady in great agitation, "tell Rogers to
+turn the horses and drive home at once; and do you run as fast as you
+can for Dr. Crate."</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes after the carriage was again in motion, Julia revived. Her
+aunt was chafing her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aunt!" she said, "are all the glasses broken?"</p>
+
+<p>"Broken&mdash;what glasses?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those of the carriage&mdash;with the explosion."</p>
+
+<p>"Explosion, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That gun which was discharged. It stunned me. Were you hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard no gun&mdash;no explosion."</p>
+
+<p>"But I did. It was as though a bullet had been discharged into my brain.
+I wonder that I escaped. Who can have fired at us?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, no one fired. I heard nothing. I know what it was. I had the
+same experience many years ago. I slept in a damp bed, and awoke stone
+deaf in my right ear. I remained so for three weeks. But one night when
+I was at a ball and was dancing, all at once I heard a report as of a
+pistol in my right ear, and immediately heard quite clearly again. It
+was wax."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aunt Elizabeth, I have not been deaf."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not noticed that you were deaf."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! but look at my hair; it was that wind that blew it about."</p>
+
+<p>"You are labouring under a delusion, Julia. There was no wind."</p>
+
+<p>"But look&mdash;feel how my hair is down."</p>
+
+<p>"That has been done by the motion of the carriage. There are many ruts
+in the road."</p>
+
+<p>They reached home, and Julia, feeling sick, frightened, and bewildered,
+retired to bed. Dr. Crate arrived, said that she was hysterical, and
+ordered something to soothe her nerves. Julia was not convinced. The
+explanation offered by Miss Flemming did not satisfy her. That she was a
+victim to hysteria she did not in the least believe. Neither her aunt,
+nor the coachman, nor Phillips had heard the discharge of a gun. As to
+the rushing wind, Julia was satisfied that she had experienced it. The
+lace was ripped, as by a hand, from her dress, and the shawl was twisted
+about her throat; besides, her hair had not been so slightly arranged
+that the jolting of the carnage would completely disarrange it. She was
+vastly perplexed over what she had undergone. She thought and thought,
+but could get no nearer to a solution of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, as she was almost herself again, she rose and went about as
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon the Hon. James Lawlor called and asked after Miss
+Flemming. The butler replied that his mistress was out making calls, but
+that Miss Demant was at home, and he believed was on the terrace. Mr.
+Lawlor at once asked to see her.</p>
+
+<p>He did not find Julia in the parlour or on the terrace, but in a lower
+garden to which she had descended to feed the goldfish in the pond.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Miss Demant," said he, "I was so disappointed not to see you at the
+ball last night."</p>
+
+<p>"I was very unwell; I had a fainting fit and could not go."</p>
+
+<p>"It threw a damp on our spirits&mdash;that is to say, on mine. I had you
+booked for several dances."</p>
+
+<p>"You were able to give them to others."</p>
+
+<p>"But that was not the same to me. I did an act of charity and
+self-denial. I danced instead with the ugly Miss Burgons and with Miss
+Pounding, and that was like dragging about a sack of potatoes. I believe
+it would have been a jolly evening, but for that shocking affair of
+young Hattersley which kept some of the better sort away. I mean
+those who know the Hattersleys. Of course, for me that did not matter,
+we were not acquainted. I never even spoke with the fellow. You knew
+him, I believe? I heard some people say so, and that you had not come
+because of him. The supper, for a subscription ball, was not atrociously
+bad."</p>
+
+<p>"What did they say of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!&mdash;if you will know&mdash;that you did not attend the ball because you
+liked him very much, and were awfully cut up."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I! What a shame that people should talk! I never cared a rush for
+him. He was nice enough in his way, not a bounder, but tolerable as
+young men go."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lawlor laughed. "I should not relish to have such a qualified
+estimate made of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor need you. You are interesting. He became so only when he had shot
+himself. It will be by this alone that he will be remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is no smoke without fire. Did he like you&mdash;much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mr. Lawlor, I am not a clairvoyante, and never was able to see
+into the brains or hearts of people&mdash;least of all of young men. Perhaps
+it is fortunate for me that I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"One lady told me that he had proposed to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was that? The potato-sack?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not give her name. Is there any truth in it? Did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>At the moment she spoke there sounded in her ear a whistle of wind, and
+she felt a current like a cord of ice creep round her throat, increasing
+in force and compression, her hat was blown off, and next instant a
+detonation rang through her head as though a gun had been fired into her
+ear. She uttered a cry and sank upon the ground.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a>
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>HER HAT WAS BLOWN OFF, AND NEXT INSTANT A DETONATION RANG
+THROUGH HER HEAD AS THOUGH A GUN HAD BEEN FIRED INTO HER EAR.</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>James Lawlor was bewildered. His first impulse was to run to the house
+for assistance; then he considered that he could not leave her lying on
+the wet soil, and he stooped to raise her in his arms and to carry her
+within. In novels young men perform such a feat without difficulty; but
+in fact they are not able to do it, especially when the girl is tall and
+big-boned. Moreover, one in a faint is a dead weight. Lawlor staggered
+under his burden to the steps. It was as much as he could perform to
+carry her up to the terrace, and there he placed her on a seat. Panting,
+and with his muscles quivering after the strain, he hastened to the
+drawing-room, rang the bell, and when the butler appeared, he gasped:
+"Miss Demant has fainted; you and I and the footman must carry her
+within."</p>
+
+<p>"She fainted last night in the carriage," said the butler.</p>
+
+<p>When Julia came to her senses, she was in bed attended by the
+housekeeper and her maid. A few moments later Miss Flemming arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aunt! I have heard it again."</p>
+
+<p>"Heard what, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"The discharge of a gun."</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing but wax," said the old lady. "I will drop a little
+sweet-oil into your ear, and then have it syringed with warm water."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to tell you something&mdash;in private."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Flemming signed to the servants to withdraw.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt," said the girl, "I must say something. This is the second time
+that this has happened. I am sure it is significant. James Lawlor was
+with me in the sunken garden, and he began to speak about James
+Hattersley. You know it was when we were talking about him last night
+that I heard that awful noise. It was precisely as if a gun had been
+discharged into my ear. I felt as if all the nerves and tissues of my
+head were being torn, and all the bones of my skull shattered&mdash;just what
+Mr. Hattersley must have undergone when he pulled the trigger. It was
+an agony for a moment perhaps, but it felt as if it lasted an hour. Mr.
+Lawlor had asked me point blank if James Hattersley had proposed to me,
+and I said, 'No.' I was perfectly justified in so answering, because he
+had no right to ask me such a question. It was an impertinence on his
+part, and I answered him shortly and sharply with a negative. But
+actually James Hattersley proposed twice to me. He would not accept a
+first refusal, but came next day bothering me again, and I was pretty
+curt with him. He made some remarks that were rude about how I had
+treated him, and which I will not repeat, and as he left, in a state of
+great agitation, he said, 'Julia, I vow that you shall not forget this,
+and you shall belong to no one but me, alive or dead.' I considered this
+great nonsense, and did not accord it another thought. But, really,
+these terrible annoyances, this wind and the bursts of noise, do seem to
+me to come from him. It is just as though he felt a malignant delight in
+distressing me, now that he is dead. I should like to defy him, and I
+will do it if I can, but I cannot bear more of these experiences&mdash;they
+will kill me."</p>
+
+<p>Several days elapsed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lawlor called repeatedly to inquire, but a week passed before Julia
+was sufficiently recovered to receive him, and then the visit was one of
+courtesy and of sympathy, and the conversation turned upon her health,
+and on indifferent themes.</p>
+
+<p>But some few days later it was otherwise. She was in the conservatory
+alone, pretty much herself again, when Mr. Lawlor was announced.</p>
+
+<p>Physically she had recovered, or believed that she had, but her nerves
+had actually received a severe shock. She had made up her mind that the
+phenomena of the circling wind and the explosion were in some mysterious
+manner connected with Hattersley.</p>
+
+<p>She bitterly resented this, but she was in mortal terror of a
+recurrence; and she felt no compunction for her treatment of the
+unfortunate young man, but rather a sense of deep resentment against
+him. If he were dead, why did he not lie quiet and cease from vexing
+her?</p>
+
+<p>To be a martyr was to her no gratification, for hers was not a martyrdom
+that provoked sympathy, and which could make her interesting.</p>
+
+<p>She had hitherto supposed that when a man died there was an end of him;
+his condition was determined for good or for ill. But that a disembodied
+spirit should hover about and make itself a nuisance to the living, had
+never entered into her calculations.</p>
+
+<p>"Julia&mdash;if I may be allowed so to call you"&mdash;began Mr. Lawlor, "I have
+brought you a bouquet of flowers. Will you accept them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said, as he handed the bunch to her, "how kind of you. At this
+time of the year they are so rare, and aunt's gardener is so miserly
+that he will spare me none for my room but some miserable bits of
+geranium. It is too bad of you wasting your money like this upon me."</p>
+
+<p>"It is no waste, if it afford you pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pleasure. I dearly love flowers."</p>
+
+<p>"To give you pleasure," said Mr. Lawlor, "is the great object of my
+life. If I could assure you happiness&mdash;if you would allow me to hope&mdash;to
+seize this opportunity, now that we are alone together&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He drew near and caught her hand. His features were agitated, his lips
+trembled, there was earnestness in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>At once a cold blast touched Julia and began to circle about her and to
+flutter her hair. She trembled and drew back. That paralysing experience
+was about to be renewed. She turned deadly white, and put her hand to
+her right ear. "Oh, James! James!" she gasped. "Do not, pray do not
+speak what you want to say, or I shall faint. It is coming on. I am not
+yet well enough to hear it. Write to me and I will answer. For pity's
+sake do not speak it." Then she sank upon a seat&mdash;and at that moment her
+aunt entered the conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day a note was put into her hand, containing a formal
+proposal from the Hon. James Lawlor; and by return of post Julia
+answered with an acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>There was no reason whatever why the engagement should be long; and the
+only alternative mooted was whether the wedding should take place before
+Lent or after Easter. Finally, it was settled that it should be
+celebrated on Shrove Tuesday. This left a short time for the necessary
+preparations. Miss Flemming would have to go to town with her niece
+concerning a trousseau, and a trousseau is not turned out rapidly any
+more than an armed cruiser.</p>
+
+<p>There is usually a certain period allowed to young people who have
+become engaged, to see much of each other, to get better acquainted with
+one another, to build their castles in the air, and to indulge in little
+passages of affection, vulgarly called "spooning." But in this case the
+spooning had to be curtailed and postponed.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset, when alone with James, Julia was nervous. She feared a
+recurrence of those phenomena that so affected her. But, although every
+now and then the wind curled and soughed about her, it was not violent,
+nor was it chilling; and she came to regard it as a wail of
+discomfiture. Moreover, there was no recurrence of the detonation, and
+she fondly hoped that with her marriage the vexation would completely
+cease.</p>
+
+<p>In her heart was deep down a sense of exultation. She was defying James
+Hattersley and setting his prediction at naught. She was not in love
+with Mr. Lawlor; she liked him, in her cold manner, and was not
+insensible to the social advantage that would be hers when she became
+the Honourable Mrs. Lawlor.</p>
+
+<p>The day of the wedding arrived. Happily it was fine. "Blessed is the
+bride the sun shines on," said the cheery Miss Flemming; "an omen, I
+trust, of a bright and unruffled life in your new condition."</p>
+
+<p>All the neighbourhood was present at the church. Miss Flemming had many
+friends. Mr. Lawlor had fewer present, as he belonged to a distant
+county. The church path had been laid with red cloth, the church
+decorated with flowers, and a choir was present to twitter "The voice
+that breathed o'er Eden."</p>
+
+<p>The rector stood by the altar, and two cushions had been laid at the
+chancel step. The rector was to be assisted by an uncle of the
+bridegroom who was in Holy Orders; the rector, being old-fashioned, had
+drawn on pale grey kid gloves.</p>
+
+<p>First arrived the bridegroom with his best man, and stood in a nervous
+condition balancing himself first on one foot, then on the other,
+waiting, observed by all eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Next entered the procession of the bride, attended by her maids, to the
+"Wedding March" in <i>Lohengrin</i>, on a wheezy organ. Then Julia and her
+intended took their places at the chancel step for the performance of
+the first portion of the ceremony, and the two clergy descended to them
+from the altar.</p>
+
+<p>"Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will."</p>
+
+<p>"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will."</p>
+
+<p>"I, James, take thee, Julia, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold&mdash;&mdash;"
+and so on.</p>
+
+<p>As the words were being spoken, a cold rush of air passed over the
+clasped hands, numbing them, and began to creep round the bride, and to
+flutter her veil. She set her lips and knitted her brows. In a few
+minutes she would be beyond the reach of these manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>When it came to her turn to speak, she began firmly: "I, Julia, take
+thee, James&mdash;&mdash;" but as she proceeded the wind became fierce; it raged
+about her, it caught her veil on one side and buffeted her cheek; it
+switched the veil about her throat, as though strangling her with a
+drift of snow contracting into ice. But she persevered to the end.</p>
+
+<p>Then James Lawlor produced the ring, and was about to place it on her
+finger with the prescribed words: "With this ring I thee wed&mdash;&mdash;" when a
+report rang in her ear, followed by a heaving of her skull, as though
+the bones were being burst asunder, and she sank unconscious on the
+chancel step.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of profound commotion, she was raised and conveyed to the
+vestry, followed by James Lawlor, trembling and pale. He had slipped the
+ring back into his waistcoat pocket. Dr. Crate, who was present,
+hastened to offer his professional assistance.</p>
+
+<p>In the vestry Julia rested in a Glastonbury chair, white and still, with
+her hands resting in her lap. And to the amazement of those present, it
+was seen that on the third finger of her left hand was a leaden ring,
+rude and solid as though fashioned out of a bullet. Restoratives were
+applied, but full a quarter of an hour elapsed before Julia opened her
+eyes, and a little colour returned to her lips and cheek. But, as she
+raised her hands to her brow to wipe away the damps that had formed on
+it, her eye caught sight of the leaden ring, and with a cry of horror
+she sank again into insensibility.</p>
+
+<p>The congregation slowly left the church, awestruck, whispering, asking
+questions, receiving no satisfactory answers, forming surmises all
+incorrect.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very much afraid, Mr. Lawlor," said the rector, "that it will be
+impossible to proceed with the service to-day; it must be postponed till
+Miss Demant is in a condition to conclude her part, and to sign the
+register. I do not see how it can be gone on with to-day. She is quite
+unequal to the effort."</p>
+
+<p>The carriage which was to have conveyed the couple to Miss Flemming's
+house, and then, later, to have taken them to the station for their
+honeymoon, the horses decorated with white rosettes, the whip adorned
+with a white bow, had now to convey Julia, hardly conscious, supported
+by her aunt, to her home.</p>
+
+<p>No rice could be thrown. The bell-ringers, prepared to give a joyous
+peal, were constrained to depart.</p>
+
+<p>The reception at Miss Flemming's was postponed. No one thought of
+attending. The cakes, the ices, were consumed in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>The bridegroom, bewildered, almost frantic, ran hither and thither, not
+knowing what to do, what to say.</p>
+
+<p>Julia lay as a stone for fully two hours; and when she came to herself
+could not speak. When conscious, she raised her left hand, looked on the
+leaden ring, and sank back again into senselessness.</p>
+
+<p>Not till late in the evening was she sufficiently recovered to speak,
+and then she begged her aunt, who had remained by her bed without
+stirring, to dismiss the attendants. She desired to speak with her
+alone. When no one was in the room with her, save Miss Flemming, she
+said in a whisper: "Oh, Aunt Elizabeth! Oh, auntie! such an awful thing
+has happened. I can never marry Mr. Lawlor, never. I have married James
+Hattersley; I am a dead man's wife. At the time that James Lawlor was
+making the responses, I heard a piping voice in my ear, an unearthly
+voice, saying the same words. When I said: 'I, Julia, take you, James,
+to my wedded husband'&mdash;you know Mr. Hattersley is James as well as Mr.
+Lawlor&mdash;then the words applied to him as much or as well as to the
+other. And then, when it came to the giving of the ring, there was the
+explosion in my ear, as before&mdash;and the leaden ring was forced on to my
+finger, and not James Lawlor's golden ring. It is of no use my resisting
+any more. I am a dead man's wife, and I cannot marry James Lawlor."</p>
+
+<p>Some years have elapsed since that disastrous day and that incomplete
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Demant is Miss Demant still, and she has never been able to remove
+the leaden ring from the third finger of her left hand. Whenever the
+attempt has been made, either to disengage it by drawing it off or by
+cutting through it, there has ensued that terrifying discharge as of a
+gun into her ear, causing insensibility. The prostration that has
+followed, the terror it has inspired, have so affected her nerves, that
+she has desisted from every attempt to rid herself of the ring.</p>
+
+<p>She invariably wears a glove on her left hand, and it is bulged over the
+third finger, where lies that leaden ring.</p>
+
+<p>She is not a happy woman, although her aunt is dead and has left her a
+handsome estate. She has not got many acquaintances. She has no friends;
+for her temper is unamiable, and her tongue is bitter. She supposes that
+the world, as far as she knows it, is in league against her.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the memory of James Hattersley she entertains a deadly hate. If
+an incantation could lay his spirit, if prayer could give him repose,
+she would have recourse to none of these expedients, even though they
+might relieve her, so bitter is her resentment. And she harbours a
+silent wrath against Providence for allowing the dead to walk and to
+molest the living.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_MOTHER_OF_PANSIES" id="THE_MOTHER_OF_PANSIES"></a>THE MOTHER OF PANSIES</h2>
+
+
+<p>Anna Voss, of Siebenstein, was the prettiest girl in her village. Never
+was she absent from a fair or a dance. No one ever saw her abroad
+anything but merry. If she had her fits of bad temper, she kept them for
+her mother, in the secrecy of the house. Her voice was like that of the
+lark, and her smile like the May morning. She had plenty of suitors, for
+she was possessed of what a young peasant desires more in a wife than
+beauty, and that is money.</p>
+
+<p>But of all the young men who hovered about her, and sought her favour,
+none was destined to win it save Joseph Arler, the ranger, a man in a
+government position, whose duty was to watch the frontier against
+smugglers, and to keep an eye on the game against poachers.</p>
+
+<p>The eve of the marriage had come.</p>
+
+<p>One thing weighed on the pleasure-loving mind of Anna. She dreaded
+becoming a mother of a family which would keep her at home, and occupy
+her from morn to eve in attendance on her children, and break the
+sweetness of her sleep at night.</p>
+
+<p>So she visited an old hag named Schändelwein, who was a reputed witch,
+and to whom she confided her trouble.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman said that she had looked into the mirror of destiny,
+before Anna arrived, and she had seen that Providence had ordained that
+Anna should have seven children, three girls and four boys, and that one
+of the latter was destined to be a priest.</p>
+
+<p>But Mother Schändelwein had great powers; she could set at naught the
+determinations of Providence; and she gave to Anna seven pips, very much
+like apple-pips, which she placed in a cornet of paper; and she bade her
+cast these one by one into the mill-race, and as each went over the
+mill-wheel, it ceased to have a future, and in each pip was a child's
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>So Anna put money into Mother Schändelwein's hand and departed, and when
+it was growing dusk she stole to the wooden bridge over the mill-stream,
+and dropped in one pip after another. As each fell into the water she
+heard a little sigh.</p>
+
+<p>But when it came to casting in the last of the seven she felt a sudden
+qualm, and a battle in her soul.</p>
+
+<p>However, she threw it in, and then, overcome by an impulse of remorse,
+threw herself into the stream to recover it, and as she did so she
+uttered a cry.</p>
+
+<p>But the water was dark, the floating pip was small, she could not see
+it, and the current was rapidly carrying her to the mill-wheel, when the
+miller ran out and rescued her.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning she had completely recovered her spirits, and
+laughingly told her bridesmaids how that in the dusk, in crossing the
+wooden bridge, her foot had slipped, she had fallen into the stream, and
+had been nearly drowned. "And then," added she, "if I really had been
+drowned, what would Joseph have done?"</p>
+
+<p>The married life of Anna was not unhappy. It could hardly be that in
+association with so genial, kind, and simple a man as Joseph. But it was
+not altogether the ideal happiness anticipated by both. Joseph had to be
+much away from home, sometimes for days and nights together, and Anna
+found it very tedious to be alone. And Joseph might have calculated on a
+more considerate wife. After a hard day of climbing and chasing in the
+mountains, he might have expected that she would have a good hot supper
+ready for him. But Anna set before him whatever came to hand and cost
+least trouble. A healthy appetite is the best of sauces, she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the nature of his avocation, scrambling up rocks and breaking
+through an undergrowth of brambles and thorns, produced rents and
+fraying of stockings and cloth garments. Instead of cheerfully
+undertaking the repairs, Anna grumbled over each rent, and put out his
+garments to be mended by others. It was only when repair was urgent that
+she consented to undertake it herself, and then it was done with sulky
+looks, muttered reproaches, and was executed so badly that it had to be
+done over again, and by a hired workwoman.</p>
+
+<p>But Joseph's nature was so amiable, and he was so fond of his pretty
+wife, that he bore with those defects, and turned off her murmurs with a
+joke, or sealed her pouting lips with a kiss.</p>
+
+<p>There was one thing about Joseph that Anna could not relish. Whenever he
+came into the village, he was surrounded, besieged by the children.
+Hardly had he turned the corner into the square, before it was known
+that he was there, and the little ones burst out of their parents'
+houses, broke from their sister nurse's arms, to scamper up to Joseph
+and to jump about him. For Joseph somehow always had nuts or almonds or
+sweets in his pockets, and for these he made the children leap, or
+catch, or scramble, or sometimes beg, by putting a sweet on a boy's nose
+and bidding him hold it there, till he said "Catch!"</p>
+
+<p>Joseph had one particular favourite among all this crew, and that was a
+little lame boy with a white, pinched face, who hobbled about on
+crutches.</p>
+
+<p>Him Joseph would single out, take him on his knee, seat himself on the
+steps of the village cross or of the churchyard, and tell him stories of
+his adventures, of the habits of the beasts of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Anna, looking out of her window, could see all this; and see how before
+Joseph set the poor cripple down, the child would throw its arms round
+his neck and kiss him.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joseph would come home with his swinging step and joyous face.</p>
+
+<p>Anna resented that his first attention should be given to the children,
+regarding it as her due, and she often showed her displeasure by the
+chill of her reception of her husband. She did not reproach him in set
+words, but she did not run to meet him, jump into his arms, and respond
+to his warm kisses.</p>
+
+<p>Once he did venture on a mild expostulation. "Annerl, why do you not
+knit my socks or stocking-legs? Home-made is heart-made. It is a pity to
+spend money on buying what is poor stuff, when those made by you would
+not only last on my calves and feet, but warm the cockles of my heart."</p>
+
+<p>To which she replied testily: "It is you who set the example of throwing
+money away on sweet things for those pestilent little village brats."</p>
+
+<p>One evening Anna heard an unusual hubbub in the square, shouts and
+laughter, not of children alone, but of women and men as well, and next
+moment into the house burst Joseph very red, carrying a cradle on his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this fooling for?" asked Anna, turning crimson.</p>
+
+<p>"An experiment, Annerl, dearest," answered Joseph, setting down the
+cradle. "I have heard it said that a wife who rocks an empty cradle soon
+rocks a baby into it. So I have bought this and brought it to you. Rock,
+rock, rock, and when I see a little rosebud in it among the snowy linen,
+I shall cry for joy."</p>
+
+<p>Never before had Anna known how dull and dead life could be in an empty
+house. When she had lived with her mother, that mother had made her do
+much of the necessary work of the house; now there was not much to be
+done, and there was no one to exercise compulsion.</p>
+
+<p>If Anna ran out and visited her neighbours, they proved to be
+disinclined for a gossip. During the day they had to scrub and bake and
+cook, and in the evening they had their husbands and children with them,
+and did not relish the intrusion of a neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>The days were weary days, and Anna had not the energy or the love of
+work to prompt her to occupy herself more than was absolutely necessary.
+Consequently, the house was not kept scrupulously clean. The glass and
+the pewter and the saucepans did not shine. The window-panes were dull.
+The house linen was unhemmed.</p>
+
+<p>One evening Joseph sat in a meditative mood over the fire, looking into
+the red embers, and what was unusual with him, he did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>Anna was inclined to take umbrage at this, when all at once he looked
+round at her with his bright pleasant smile and said, "Annerl! I have
+been thinking. One thing is wanted to make us supremely happy&mdash;a baby in
+the house. It has not pleased God to send us one, so I propose that we
+both go on pilgrimage to Mariahilf to ask for one."</p>
+
+<p>"Go yourself&mdash;I want no baby here," retorted Anna.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after this, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the
+great affliction on Anna of her husband's death.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph had been found shot in the mountains. He was quite dead. The
+bullet had pierced his heart. He was brought home borne on green
+fir-boughs interlaced, by four fellow-jägers, and they carried him into
+his house. He had, in all probability, met his death at the hand of
+smugglers.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of horror and grief Anna threw herself on Joseph's body and
+kissed his pale lips. Now only did she realise how deeply all along she
+had loved him&mdash;now that she had lost him.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph was laid in his coffin preparatory to the interment on the
+morrow. A crucifix and two candles stood at his head on a little table
+covered with a white cloth. On a stool at his feet was a bowl containing
+holy water and a sprig of rue.</p>
+
+<p>A neighbour had volunteered to keep company with Anna during the night,
+but she had impatiently, without speaking, repelled the offer. She would
+spend the last night that he was above ground alone with her dead&mdash;alone
+with her thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>And what were those thoughts?</p>
+
+<p>Now she remembered how indifferent she had been to his wishes, how
+careless of his comforts; how little she had valued his love, had
+appreciated his cheerfulness, his kindness, his forbearance, his equable
+temper.</p>
+
+<p>Now she recalled studied coldness on her part, sharp words, mortifying
+gestures, outbursts of unreasoning and unreasonable petulance.</p>
+
+<p>Now she recalled Joseph scattering nuts among the children, addressing
+kind words to old crones, giving wholesome advice to giddy youths.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered now little endearments shown to her, the presents brought
+her from the fair, the efforts made to cheer her with his pleasant
+stories and quaint jokes. She heard again his cheerful voice as he
+strove to interest her in his adventures of the chase.</p>
+
+<p>As she thus sat silent, numbed by her sorrow, in the faint light cast by
+the two candles, with the shadow of the coffin lying black on the floor
+at her feet, she heard a stumping without; then a hand was laid on the
+latch, the door was timidly opened, and in upon his crutches came the
+crippled boy. He looked wistfully at her, but she made no sign, and then
+he hobbled to the coffin and burst into tears, and stooped and kissed
+the brow of his dead friend.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning on his crutches, he took his rosary and said the prayers for the
+rest of her and his Joseph's soul; then shuffled awkwardly to the foot,
+dipped the spray of rue, and sprinkled the dead with the blessed water.</p>
+
+<p>Next moment the ungainly creature was stumping forth, but after he had
+passed through the door, he turned, looked once more towards the dead,
+put his hand to his lips, and wafted to it his final farewell.</p>
+
+<p>Anna now took her beads and tried to pray, but her prayers would not
+leave her lips; they were choked and driven back by the thoughts which
+crowded up and bewildered her. The chain fell from her fingers upon her
+lap, lay there neglected, and then slipped to the floor. How the time
+passed she knew not, neither did she care. The clock ticked, and she
+heard it not; the hours sounded, and she regarded them not till in at
+her ear and through her brain came clear the call of the wooden cuckoo
+announcing midnight.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes had been closed. Now suddenly she was roused, and they opened
+and saw that all was changed.</p>
+
+<p>The coffin was gone, but by her instead was the cradle that years ago
+Joseph had brought home, and which she had chopped up for firewood. And
+now in that cradle lay a babe asleep, and with her foot she rocked it,
+and found a strange comfort in so doing.</p>
+
+<p>She was conscious of no sense of surprise, only a great welling up of
+joy in her heart. Presently she heard a feeble whimper and saw a
+stirring in the cradle; little hands were put forth gropingly. Then she
+stooped and lifted the child to her lap, and clasped it to her heart.
+Oh, how lovely was that tiny creature! Oh, how sweet in her ears its
+appealing cry! As she held it to her bosom the warm hands touched her
+throat, and the little lips were pressed to her bosom. She pressed it to
+her. She had entered into a new world, a world of love and light and
+beauty and happiness unspeakable. Oh! the babe&mdash;the babe&mdash;the babe! She
+laughed and cried, and cried and laughed and sobbed for very exuberance
+of joy. It brought warmth to her heart, it made every vein tingle, it
+ingrained her brain with pride. It was hers!&mdash;her own!&mdash;her very own!
+She could have been content to spend an eternity thus, with that little
+one close, close to her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Then as suddenly all faded away&mdash;the child in her arms was gone as a
+shadow; her tears congealed, her heart was cramped, and a voice spoke
+within her: "It is not, because you would not. You cast the soul away,
+and it went over the mill-wheel."</p>
+
+<p>Wild with terror, uttering a despairing cry, she started up, straining
+her arms after the lost child, and grasping nothing. She looked about
+her. The light of the candles flickered over the face of her dead
+Joseph. And tick, tick, tick went the clock.</p>
+
+<p>She could endure this no more. She opened the door to leave the room,
+and stepped into the outer chamber and cast herself into a chair. And
+lo! it was no more night. The sun, the red evening sun, shone in at the
+window, and on the sill were pots of pinks and mignonette that filled
+the air with fragrance.</p>
+
+<p>And there at her side stood a little girl with shining fair hair, and
+the evening sun was on it like the glory about a saint. The child raised
+its large blue eyes to her, pure innocent eyes, and said: "Mother, may I
+say my Catechism and prayers before I go to bed?"</p>
+
+<p>Then Anna answered and said: "Oh, my darling! My dearest Bärbchen! All
+the Catechism is comprehended in this: Love God, fear God, always do
+what is your duty. Do His will, and do not seek only your own pleasure
+and ease. And this will give you peace&mdash;peace&mdash;peace."</p>
+
+<p>The little girl knelt and laid her golden head on her folded hands upon
+Anna's knee and began: "God bless dear father, and mother, and all my
+dear brothers and sisters."</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a sharp pang as a knife went through the heart of Anna, and
+she cried: "Thou hast no father and no mother and no brothers and no
+sisters, for thou art not, because I would not have thee. I cast away
+thy soul, and it went over the mill-wheel."</p>
+
+<p>The cuckoo called one. The child had vanished. But the door was thrown
+open, and in the doorway stood a young couple&mdash;one a youth with fair
+hair and the down of a moustache on his lip, and oh, in face so like to
+the dead Joseph. He held by the hand a girl, in black bodice and with
+white sleeves, looking modestly on the ground. At once Anna knew what
+this signified. It was her son Florian come to announce that he was
+engaged, and to ask his mother's sanction.</p>
+
+<p>Then said the young man, as he came forward leading the girl: "Mother,
+sweetest mother, this is Susie, the baker's daughter, and child of your
+old and dear friend Vronie. We love one another; we have loved since we
+were little children together at school, and did our lessons out of one
+book, sitting on one bench. And, mother, the bakehouse is to be passed
+on to me and to Susie, and I shall bake for all the parish. The good
+Jesus fed the multitude, distributing the loaves through the hands of
+His apostles. And I shall be His minister feeding His people here.
+Mother, give us your blessing."</p>
+
+<p>Then Florian and the girl knelt to Anna, and with tears of happiness in
+her eyes she raised her hands over them. But ere she could touch them
+all had vanished. The room was dark, and a voice spake within her:
+"There is no Florian; there would have been, but you would not. You cast
+his soul into the water, and it passed away for ever over the
+mill-wheel."</p>
+
+<p>In an agony of terror Anna sprang from her seat. She could not endure
+the room, the air stifled her; her brain was on fire. She rushed to the
+back door that opened on a kitchen garden, where grew the pot-herbs and
+cabbages for use, tended by Joseph when he returned from his work in the
+mountains.</p>
+
+<p>But she came forth on a strange scene. She was on a battlefield. The air
+was charged with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The roar of cannon
+and the rattle of musketry, the cries of the wounded, and shouts of
+encouragement rang in her ears in a confused din.</p>
+
+<p>As she stood, panting, her hands to her breast, staring with wondering
+eyes, before her charged past a battalion of soldiers, and she knew by
+their uniforms that they were Bavarians. One of them, as he passed,
+turned his face towards her; it was the face of an Arler, fired with
+enthusiasm, she knew it; it was that of her son Fritz.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a withering volley, and many of the gallant fellows fell,
+among them he who carried the standard. Instantly, Fritz snatched it
+from his hand, waved it over his head, shouted, "Charge, brothers, fill
+up the ranks! Charge, and the day is ours!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the remnant closed up and went forward with bayonets fixed, tramp,
+tramp. Again an explosion of firearms and a dense cloud of smoke rolled
+before her and she could not see the result.</p>
+
+<p>She waited, quivering in every limb, holding her breath&mdash;hoping,
+fearing, waiting. And as the smoke cleared she saw men carrying to the
+rear one who had been wounded, and in his hand he grasped the flag. They
+laid him at Anna's feet, and she recognised that it was her Fritz. She
+fell on her knees, and snatching the kerchief from her throat and
+breast, strove to stanch the blood that welled from his heart. He looked
+up into her eyes, with such love in them as made her choke with emotion,
+and he said faintly: "Mütterchen, do not grieve for me; we have stormed
+the redoubt, the day is ours. Be of good cheer. They fly, they fly,
+those French rascals! Mother, remember me&mdash;I die for the dear
+Fatherland."</p>
+
+<p>And a comrade standing by said: "Do not give way to your grief, Anna
+Arler; your son has died the death of a hero."</p>
+
+<p>Then she stooped over him, and saw the glaze of death in his eyes, and
+his lips moved. She bent her ear to them and caught the words: "I am
+not, because you would not. There is no Fritz; you cast my soul into the
+brook and I was carried over the mill-wheel."</p>
+
+<p>All passed away, the smell of the powder, the roar of the cannon, the
+volumes of smoke, the cry of the battle, all&mdash;to a dead hush. Anna
+staggered to her feet, and turned to go back to her cottage, and as she
+opened the door, heard the cuckoo call two.</p>
+
+<p>But, as she entered, she found herself to be, not in her own room and
+house&mdash;she had strayed into another, and she found herself not in a lone
+chamber, not in her desolate home, but in the midst of a strange family
+scene.</p>
+
+<p>A woman, a mother, was dying. Her head reposed on her husband's breast
+as he sat on the bed and held her in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>The man had grey hair, his face was overflowed with tears, and his eyes
+rested with an expression of devouring love on her whom he supported,
+and whose brow he now and again bent over to kiss.</p>
+
+<p>About the bed were gathered her children, ay, and also her
+grandchildren, quite young, looking on with solemn, wondering eyes on
+the last throes of her whom they had learned to cling to and love with
+all the fervour of their simple hearts. One mite held her doll, dangling
+by the arm, and the forefinger of her other hand was in her mouth. Her
+eyes were brimming, and sobs came from her infant breast. She did not
+understand what was being taken from her, but she wept in sympathy with
+the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Kneeling by the bed was the eldest daughter of the expiring woman,
+reciting the Litany of the Dying, and the sons and another daughter and
+a daughter-in-law repeated the responses in voices broken with tears.</p>
+
+<p>When the recitation of the prayers ceased, there ensued for a while a
+great stillness, and all eyes rested on the dying woman. Her lips
+moved, and she poured forth her last petitions, that left her as rising
+flakes of fire, kindled by her pure and ardent soul. "O God, comfort
+and bless my dear husband, and ever keep Thy watchful guard over my
+children and my children's children, that they may walk in the way that
+leads to Thee, and that in Thine own good time we may all&mdash;all be
+gathered in Thy Paradise together, united for evermore. Amen."</p>
+
+<p>A spasm contracted Anna's heart. This woman with ecstatic, upturned
+gaze, this woman breathing forth her peaceful soul on her husband's
+breast, was her own daughter Elizabeth, and in the fine outline of her
+features was Joseph's profile.</p>
+
+<p>All again was hushed. The father slowly rose and quitted his position on
+the bed, gently laid the head on the pillow, put one hand over the eyes
+that still looked up to heaven, and with the fingers of the other
+tenderly arranged the straggling hair on each side of the brow. Then
+standing and turning to the rest, with a subdued voice he said: "My
+children, it has pleased the Lord to take to Himself your dear mother
+and my faithful companion. The Lord's will be done."</p>
+
+<p>Then ensued a great burst of weeping, and Anna's eyes brimmed till she
+could see no more. The church bell began to toll for a departing spirit.
+And following each stroke there came to her, as the after-clang of the
+boom: "There is not, there has not been, an Elizabeth. There would have
+been all this&mdash;but thou wouldest it not. For the soul of thy Elizabeth
+thou didst send down the mill-stream and over the wheel."</p>
+
+<p>Frantic with shame, with sorrow, not knowing what she did, or whither
+she went, Anna made for the front door of the house, ran forth and stood
+in the village square.</p>
+
+<p>To her unutterable amazement it was vastly changed. Moreover, the sun
+was shining brightly, and it gleamed over a new parish church, of cut
+white stone, very stately, with a gilded spire, with windows of
+wondrous lacework. Flags were flying, festoons of flowers hung
+everywhere. A triumphal arch of leaves and young birch trees was at the
+graveyard gate. The square was crowded with the peasants, all in their
+holiday attire.</p>
+
+<p>Silent, Anna stood and looked around. And as she stood she heard the
+talk of the people about her.</p>
+
+<p>One said: "It is a great thing that Johann von Arler has done for his
+native village. But see, he is a good man, and he is a great architect."</p>
+
+<p>"But why," asked another, "do you call him Von Arler? He was the son of
+that Joseph the Jäger who was killed by the smugglers in the mountains."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true. But do you not know that the king has ennobled him? He
+has done such great things in the Residenz. He built the new Town Hall,
+which is thought to be the finest thing in Bavaria. He added a new wing
+to the Palace, and he has rebuilt very many churches, and designed
+mansions for the rich citizens and the nobles. But although he is such a
+famous man his heart is in the right place. He never forgets that he was
+born in Siebenstein. Look what a beautiful house he has built for
+himself and his family on the mountain-side. He is there in summer, and
+it is furnished magnificently. But he will not suffer the old, humble
+Arler cottage here to be meddled with. They say that he values it above
+gold. And this is the new church he has erected in his native
+village&mdash;that is good."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he is a good man is Johann; he was always a good and serious boy,
+and never happy without a pencil in his hand. You mark what I say. Some
+day hence, when he is dead, there will be a statue erected in his honour
+here in this market-place, to commemorate the one famous man that has
+been produced by Siebenstein. But see&mdash;see! Here he comes to the
+dedication of the new church."</p>
+
+<p>Then, through the throng advanced a blonde, middle-aged man, with broad
+forehead, clear, bright blue eyes, and a flowing light beard. All the
+men present plucked off their hats to him, and made way for him as he
+advanced. But, full of smiles, he had a hand and a warm pressure, and a
+kindly word and a question as to family concerns, for each who was near.</p>
+
+<p>All at once his eye encountered that of Anna. A flash of recognition and
+joy kindled it up, and, extending his arms, he thrust his way towards
+her, crying: "My mother! my own mother!"</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;just as she was about to be folded to his heart, all faded away,
+and a voice said in her soul: "He is no son of thine, Anna Arler. He is
+not, because thou wouldest not. He might have been, God had so purposed;
+but thou madest His purpose of none effect. Thou didst send his soul
+over the mill-wheel."</p>
+
+<p>And then faintly, as from a far distance, sounded in her ear the call of
+the cuckoo&mdash;three.</p>
+
+<p>The magnificent new church had shrivelled up to the original mean little
+edifice Anna had known all her life. The square was deserted, the cold
+faint glimmer of coming dawn was visible over the eastern mountain-tops,
+but stars still shone in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of pain, like a wounded beast, Anna ran hither and thither
+seeking a refuge, and then fled to the one home and resting-place of the
+troubled soul&mdash;the church. She thrust open the swing-door, pushed in,
+sped over the uneven floor, and flung herself on her knees before the
+altar.</p>
+
+<p>But see! before that altar stood a priest in a vestment of
+black-and-silver; and a serving-boy knelt on his right hand on a lower
+stage. The candles were lighted, for the priest was about to say Mass.
+There was a rustling of feet, a sound as of people entering, and many
+were kneeling, shortly after, on each side of Anna, and still they came
+on; she turned about and looked and saw a great crowd pressing in, and
+strange did it seem to her eyes that all&mdash;men, women, and children,
+young and old&mdash;seemed to bear in their faces something, a trace only in
+many, of the Arler or the Voss features. And the little serving-boy, as
+he shifted his position, showed her his profile&mdash;it was like her little
+brother who had died when he was sixteen.</p>
+
+<p>Then the priest turned himself about, and said, "Oremus." And she knew
+him&mdash;he was her own son&mdash;her Joseph, named after his dear father.</p>
+
+<p>The Mass began, and proceeded to the "Sursum corda"&mdash;"Lift up your
+hearts!"&mdash;when the celebrant stood facing the congregation with extended
+arms, and all responded: "We lift them up unto the Lord."</p>
+
+<p>But then, instead of proceeding with the accustomed invocation, he
+raised his hands high above his head, with the palms towards the
+congregation, and in a loud, stern voice exclaimed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Cursed is the unfruitful field!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen."</p>
+
+<p>"Cursed is the barren tree!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen."</p>
+
+<p>"Cursed is the empty house!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen."</p>
+
+<p>"Cursed is the fishless lake!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen."</p>
+
+<p>"Forasmuch as Anna Arler, born Voss, might have been the mother of
+countless generations, as the sand of the seashore for number, as the
+stars of heaven for brightness, of generations unto the end of time,
+even of all of us now gathered together here, but she would
+not&mdash;therefore shall she be alone, with none to comfort her; sick, with
+none to minister to her; broken in heart, with none to bind up her
+wounds; feeble, and none to stay her up; dead, and none to pray for her,
+for she would not&mdash;she shall have an unforgotten and unforgettable past,
+and have no future; remorse, but no hope; she shall have tears, but no
+laughter&mdash;for she would not. Woe! woe! woe!"</p>
+
+<p>He lowered his hands, and the tapers were extinguished, the celebrant
+faded as a vision of the night, the server vanished as an incense-cloud,
+the congregation disappeared, melting into shadows, and then from
+shadows to nothingness, without stirring from their places, and without
+a sound.</p>
+
+<p>And Anna, with a scream of despair, flung herself forward with her face
+on the pavement, and her hands extended.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Two years ago, during the first week in June, an English traveller
+arrived at Siebenstein and put up at the "Krone," where, as he was tired
+and hungry, he ordered an early supper. When that was discussed, he
+strolled forth into the village square, and leaned against the wall of
+the churchyard. The sun had set in the valley, but the mountain-peaks
+were still in the glory of its rays, surrounding the place as a golden
+crown. He lighted a cigar, and, looking into the cemetery, observed
+there an old woman, bowed over a grave, above which stood a cross,
+inscribed "Joseph Arler," and she was tending the flowers on it, and
+laying over the arms of the cross a little wreath of heart's-ease or
+pansy. She had in her hand a small basket. Presently she rose and walked
+towards the gate, by which stood the traveller.</p>
+
+<p>As she passed, he said kindly to her: "Grüss Gott, Mütterchen."</p>
+
+<p>She looked steadily at him and replied: "Honoured sir! that which is
+past may be repented of, but can never be undone!" and went on her way.</p>
+
+<p>He was struck with her face. He had never before seen one so full of
+boundless sorrow&mdash;almost of despair.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes followed her as she walked towards the mill-stream, and there
+she took her place on the wooden bridge that crossed it, leaning over
+the handrail, and looking down into the water. An impulse of curiosity
+and of interest led him to follow her at a distance, and he saw her pick
+a flower, a pansy, out of her basket, and drop it into the current,
+which caught and carried it forward. Then she took a second, and allowed
+it to fall into the water. Then, after an interval, a third&mdash;a fourth;
+and he counted seven in all. After that she bowed her head on her hands;
+her grey hair fell over them, and she broke into a paroxysm of weeping.</p>
+
+<p>The traveller, standing by the stream, saw the seven pansies swept down,
+and one by one pass over the revolving wheel and vanish.</p>
+
+<p>He turned himself about to return to his inn, when, seeing a grave
+peasant near, he asked: "Who is that poor old woman who seems so broken
+down with sorrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"That," replied the man, "is the Mother of Pansies."</p>
+
+<p>"The Mother of Pansies!" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;it is the name she has acquired in the place. Actually, she is
+called Anna Arler, and is a widow. She was the wife of one Joseph Arler,
+a jäger, who was shot by smugglers. But that is many, many years ago.
+She is not right in her head, but she is harmless. When her husband was
+brought home dead, she insisted on being left alone in the night by him,
+before he was buried alone,&mdash;with his coffin. And what happened in that
+night no one knows. Some affirm that she saw ghosts. I do not know&mdash;she
+may have had Thoughts. The French word for these flowers is
+<i>pensées</i>&mdash;thoughts&mdash;and she will have none others. When they are in her
+garden she collects them, and does as she has done now. When she has
+none, she goes about to her neighbours and begs them. She comes here
+every evening and throws in seven&mdash;just seven, no more and no less&mdash;and
+then weeps as one whose heart would split. My wife on one occasion
+offered her forget-me-nots. 'No,' she said; 'I cannot send
+forget-me-nots after those who never were, I can send only Pansies.'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_RED-HAIRED_GIRL" id="THE_RED-HAIRED_GIRL"></a>THE RED-HAIRED GIRL</h2>
+
+<h3>A WIFE'S STORY</h3>
+
+
+<p>In 1876 we took a house in one of the best streets and parts of B&mdash;&mdash;. I
+do not give the name of the street or the number of the house, because
+the circumstances that occurred in that place were such as to make
+people nervous, and shy&mdash;unreasonably so&mdash;of taking those lodgings,
+after reading our experiences therein.</p>
+
+<p>We were a small family&mdash;my husband, a grown-up daughter, and myself; and
+we had two maids&mdash;a cook, and the other was house- and parlourmaid in
+one. We had not been a fortnight in the house before my daughter said to
+me one morning: "Mamma, I do not like Jane"&mdash;that was our
+house-parlourmaid.</p>
+
+<p>"Why so?" I asked. "She seems respectable, and she does her work
+systematically. I have no fault to find with her, none whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"She may do her work," said Bessie, my daughter, "but I dislike
+inquisitiveness."</p>
+
+<p>"Inquisitiveness!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean? Has she been looking
+into your drawers?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, mamma, but she watches me. It is hot weather now, and when I am in
+my room, occasionally, I leave my door open whilst writing a letter, or
+doing any little bit of needlework, and then I am almost certain to hear
+her outside. If I turn sharply round, I see her slipping out of sight.
+It is most annoying. I really was unaware that I was such an interesting
+personage as to make it worth anyone's while to spy out my proceedings."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, my dear. You are sure it is Jane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I suppose so." There was a slight hesitation in her voice. "If
+not Jane, who can it be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure it is not cook?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, it is not cook; she is busy in the kitchen. I have heard her
+there, when I have gone outside my room upon the landing, after having
+caught that girl watching me."</p>
+
+<p>"If you have caught her," said I, "I suppose you spoke to her about the
+impropriety of her conduct."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, caught is the wrong word. I have not actually <i>caught</i> her at it.
+Only to-day I distinctly heard her at my door, and I saw her back as she
+turned to run away, when I went towards her."</p>
+
+<p>"But you followed her, of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I did not find her on the landing when I got outside."</p>
+
+<p>"Where was she, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"But did you not go and see?"</p>
+
+<p>"She slipped away with astonishing celerity," said Bessie.</p>
+
+<p>"I can take no steps in the matter. If she does it again, speak to her
+and remonstrate."</p>
+
+<p>"But I never have a chance. She is gone in a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"She cannot get away so quickly as all that."</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow she does."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are sure it is Jane?" again I asked; and again she replied: "If
+not Jane, who else can it be? There is no one else in the house."</p>
+
+<p>So this unpleasant matter ended, for the time. The next intimation of
+something of the sort proceeded from another quarter&mdash;in fact, from Jane
+herself. She came to me some days later and said, with some
+embarrassment in her tone&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, ma'am, if I do not give satisfaction, I would rather
+leave the situation."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave!" I exclaimed. "Why, I have not given you the slightest cause. I
+have not found fault with you for anything as yet, have I, Jane? On the
+contrary, I have been much pleased with the thoroughness of your work.
+And you are always tidy and obliging."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't that, ma'am; but I don't like being watched whatever I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Watched!" I repeated. "What do you mean? You surely do not suppose that
+I am running after you when you are engaged on your occupations. I
+assure you I have other and more important things to do."</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am, I don't suppose you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who watches you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it must be Miss Bessie."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Bessie!" I could say no more, I was so astounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. When I am sweeping out a room, and my back is turned, I
+hear her at the door; and when I turn myself about, I just catch a
+glimpse of her running away. I see her skirts&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Bessie is above doing anything of the sort."</p>
+
+<p>"If it is not Miss Bessie, who is it, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a tone of indecision in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"My good Jane," said I, "set your mind at rest. Miss Bessie could not
+act as you suppose. Have you seen her on these occasions and assured
+yourself that it is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am, I've not, so to speak, seen her face; but I know it ain't
+cook, and I'm sure it ain't you, ma'am; so who else can it be?"</p>
+
+<p>I considered for some moments, and the maid stood before me in dubious
+mood.</p>
+
+<p>"You say you saw her skirts. Did you recognise the gown? What did she
+wear?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was a light cotton print&mdash;more like a maid's morning dress."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, set your mind at ease; Miss Bessie has not got such a frock as
+you describe."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think she has," said Jane; "but there was someone at the door,
+watching me, who ran away when I turned myself about."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she run upstairs or down?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I did go out on the landing, but there was no one there.
+I'm sure it wasn't cook, for I heard her clattering the dishes down in
+the kitchen at the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Jane, there is some mystery in this. I will not accept your
+notice; we will let matters stand over till we can look into this
+complaint of yours and discover the rights of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, ma'am. I'm very comfortable here, but it is unpleasant to
+suppose that one is not trusted, and is spied on wherever one goes and
+whatever one is about."</p>
+
+<p>A week later, after dinner one evening, when Bessie and I had quitted
+the table and left my husband to his smoke, Bessie said to me, when we
+were in the drawing-room together: "Mamma, it is not Jane."</p>
+
+<p>"What is not Jane?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not Jane who watches me."</p>
+
+<p>"Who can it be, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"And how is it that you are confident that you are not being observed by
+Jane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have seen her&mdash;that is to say, her head."</p>
+
+<p>"When? where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whilst dressing for dinner, I was before the glass doing my hair, when
+I saw in the mirror someone behind me. I had only the two candles
+lighted on the table, and the room was otherwise dark. I thought I heard
+someone stirring&mdash;just the sort of stealthy step I have come to
+recognise as having troubled me so often. I did not turn, but looked
+steadily before me into the glass, and I could see reflected therein
+someone&mdash;a woman with red hair. Then I moved from my place quickly. I
+heard steps of some person hurrying away, but I saw no one then."</p>
+
+<p>"The door was open?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it was shut."</p>
+
+<p>"But where did she go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know, mamma. I looked everywhere in the room and could find no
+one. I have been quite upset. I cannot tell what to think of this. I
+feel utterly unhinged."</p>
+
+<p>"I noticed at table that you did not appear well, but I said nothing
+about it. Your father gets so alarmed, and fidgets and fusses, if he
+thinks that there is anything the matter with you. But this is a most
+extraordinary story."</p>
+
+<p>"It is an extraordinary fact," said Bessie.</p>
+
+<p>"You have searched your room thoroughly?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have looked into every corner."</p>
+
+<p>"And there is no one there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one. Would you mind, mamma, sleeping with me to-night? I am so
+frightened. Do you think it can be a ghost?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ghost? Fiddlesticks!"</p>
+
+<p>I made some excuse to my husband and spent the night in Bessie's room.
+There was no disturbance that night of any sort, and although my
+daughter was excited and unable to sleep till long after midnight, she
+did fall into refreshing slumber at last, and in the morning said to me:
+"Mamma, I think I must have fancied that I saw something in the glass. I
+dare say my nerves were over-wrought."</p>
+
+<p>I was greatly relieved to hear this, and I arrived at much the same
+conclusion as did Bessie, but was again bewildered, and my mind
+unsettled by Jane, who came to me just before lunch, when I was alone,
+and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Please, ma'am, it's only fair to say, but it's not Miss Bessie."</p>
+
+<p>"What is not Miss Bessie? I mean, who is not Miss Bessie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her as is spying on me."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you it could not be she. Who is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, ma'am, I don't know. It's a red-haired girl."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Jane, be serious. There is no red-haired girl in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"I know there ain't, ma'am. But for all that, she spies on me."</p>
+
+<p>"Be reasonable, Jane," I said, disguising the shock her words produced
+on me. "If there be no red-haired girl in the house, how can you have
+one watching you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; but one does."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that she is red-haired?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have seen her."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"This morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. I was going upstairs, when I heard steps coming softly
+after me&mdash;the backstairs, ma'am; they're rather dark and steep, and
+there's no carpet on them, as on the front stairs, and I was sure I
+heard someone following me; so I twisted about, thinking it might be
+cook, but it wasn't. I saw a young woman in a print dress, and the light
+as came from the window at the side fell on her head, and it was
+carrots&mdash;reg'lar carrots."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see her face?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am; she put her arm up and turned and ran downstairs, and I went
+after her, but I never found her."</p>
+
+<p>"You followed her&mdash;how far?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the kitchen. Cook was there. And I said to cook, says I: 'Did you
+see a girl come this way?' And she said, short-like: 'No.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And cook saw nothing at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. She didn't seem best pleased at my axing. I suppose I
+frightened her, as I'd been telling her about how I was followed and
+spied on."</p>
+
+<p>I mused a moment only, and then said solemnly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Jane, what you want is a <i>pill</i>. You are suffering from hallucinations.
+I know a case very much like yours; and take my word for it that, in
+your condition of liver or digestion, a pill is a sovereign remedy. Set
+your mind at rest; this is a mere delusion, caused by pressure on the
+optic nerve. I will give you a pill to-night when you go to bed, another
+to-morrow, a third on the day after, and that will settle the red-haired
+girl. You will see no more of her."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure of it."</p>
+
+<p>On consideration, I thought it as well to mention the matter to the
+cook, a strange, reserved woman, not given to talking, who did her work
+admirably, but whom, for some inexplicable reason, I did not like. If I
+had considered a little further as to how to broach the subject, I
+should perhaps have proved more successful; but by not doing so I rushed
+the question and obtained no satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>I had gone down to the kitchen to order dinner, and the difficult
+question had arisen how to dispose of the scraps from yesterday's joint.</p>
+
+<p>"Rissoles, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said I, "not rissoles. Your master objects to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Then perhaps croquettes?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are only rissoles in disguise."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps cottage pie?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; that is inorganic rissole, a sort of protoplasm out of which
+rissoles are developed."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, ma'am, I might make a hash."</p>
+
+<p>"Not an ordinary, barefaced, rudimentary hash?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am, with French mushrooms, or truffles, or tomatoes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;yes&mdash;perhaps. By the way, talking of tomatoes, who is that
+red-haired girl who has been about the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>I noticed at once that the eyes of the cook contracted, her lips
+tightened, and her face assumed a half-defiant, half-terrified look.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not many friends in this place, have you, cook?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am, none."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who can she be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"You can throw no light on the matter? It is very unsatisfactory having
+a person about the house&mdash;and she has been seen upstairs&mdash;of whom one
+knows nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"And you cannot enlighten me?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is no friend of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor is she of Jane's. Jane spoke to me about her. Has she remarked
+concerning this girl to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say, ma'am, as I notice all Jane says. She talks a good deal."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, there must be someone who is a stranger and who has access to
+this house. It is most awkward."</p>
+
+<p>"Very so, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>I could get nothing more from the cook. I might as well have talked to a
+log; and, indeed, her face assumed a wooden look as I continued to speak
+to her on the matter. So I sighed, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, hash with tomato," and went upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later the house-parlourmaid said to me, "Please, ma'am, may I
+have another pill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pill!" I exclaimed. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have seen her again. She was behind the curtains, and I
+caught her putting out her red head to look at me."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see her face?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; she up with her arm over it and scuttled away."</p>
+
+<p>"This is strange. I do not think I have more than two podophyllin pills
+left in the box, but to those you are welcome. Only I should recommend a
+different treatment. Instead of taking them yourself, the moment you
+see, or fancy that you see, the red-haired girl, go at her with the box
+and threaten to administer the pills to her. That will rout her, if
+anything will."</p>
+
+<p>"But she will not stop for the pills."</p>
+
+<p>"The threat of having them forced on her every time she shows herself
+will disconcert her. Conceive, I am supposing, that on each occasion
+Miss Bessie, or I, were to meet you on the stairs, in a room, on the
+landing, in the hall, we were to rush on you and force, let us say,
+castor-oil globules between your lips. You would give notice at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; so I should, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, try this upon the red-haired girl. It will prove infallible."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, ma'am; what you say seems reasonable."</p>
+
+<p>Whether Bessie saw more of the puzzling apparition, I cannot say. She
+spoke no further on the matter to me; but that may have been so as to
+cause me no further uneasiness. I was unable to resolve the question to
+my own satisfaction&mdash;whether what had been seen was a real person, who
+obtained access to the house in some unaccountable manner, or whether it
+was, what I have called it, an apparition.</p>
+
+<p>As far as I could ascertain, nothing had been taken away. The movements
+of the red-haired girl were not those of one who sought to pilfer. They
+seemed to me rather those of one not in her right mind; and on this
+supposition I made inquiries in the neighbourhood as to the existence in
+our street, in any of the adjoining houses, of a person wanting in her
+wits, who was suffered to run about at will. But I could obtain no
+information that at all threw light on a point to me so perplexing.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto I had not mentioned the topic to my husband. I knew so well
+that I should obtain no help from him, that I made no effort to seek it.
+He would "Pish!" and "Pshaw!" and make some slighting reference to
+women's intellects, and not further trouble himself about the matter.</p>
+
+<p>But one day, to my great astonishment, he referred to it himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Julia," said he, "do you observe how I have cut myself in shaving?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," I replied. "You have cotton-wool sticking to your jaw, as
+if you were growing a white whisker on one side."</p>
+
+<p>"It bled a great deal," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"And I mopped up the blood with the new toilet-cover."</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" I exclaimed. "You haven't been so foolish as to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And that is just like you. You are much more concerned about your
+toilet-cover being stained than about my poor cheek which is gashed."</p>
+
+<p>"You were very clumsy to do it," was all I could say. Married people are
+not always careful to preserve the amenities in private life. It is a
+pity, but it is so.</p>
+
+<p>"It was due to no clumsiness on my part," said he; "though I do allow my
+nerves have been so shaken, broken, by married life, that I cannot
+always command my hand, as was the case when I was a bachelor. But this
+time it was due to that new, stupid, red-haired servant you have
+introduced into the house without consulting me or my pocket."</p>
+
+<p>"Red-haired servant!" I echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that red-haired girl I have seen about. She thrusts herself into
+my study in a most offensive and objectionable way. But the climax of
+all was this morning, when I was shaving. I stood in my shirt before the
+glass, and had lathered my face, and was engaged on my right jaw, when
+that red-haired girl rushed between me and the mirror with both her
+elbows up, screening her face with her arms, and her head bowed. I
+started back, and in so doing cut myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did she come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell? I did not expect to see anyone."</p>
+
+<p>"Then where did she go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know; I was too concerned about my bleeding jaw to look about
+me. That girl must be dismissed."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she could be dismissed," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>I did not answer my husband, for I really did not know what answer to
+make.</p>
+
+<p>I was now the only person in the house who had not seen the red-haired
+girl, except possibly the cook, from whom I could gather nothing, but
+whom I suspected of knowing more concerning this mysterious apparition
+than she chose to admit. That what had been seen by Bessie and Jane was
+a supernatural visitant, I now felt convinced, seeing that it had
+appeared to that least imaginative and most commonplace of all
+individuals, my husband. By no mental process could he have been got to
+imagine anything. He certainly did see this red-haired girl, and that no
+living, corporeal maid had been in his dressing-room at the time I was
+perfectly certain.</p>
+
+<p>I was soon, however, myself to be included in the number of those before
+whose eyes she appeared. It was in this wise.</p>
+
+<p>Cook had gone out to do some marketing. I was in the breakfast-room,
+when, wanting a funnel to fill a little phial of brandy I always keep on
+the washstand in case of emergencies, I went to the head of the kitchen
+stairs, to descend and fetch what I required. Then I was aware of a
+great clattering of the fire-irons below, and a banging about of the
+boiler and grate. I went down the steps very hastily and entered the
+kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>There I saw a figure of a short, set girl in a shabby cotton gown, not
+over clean, and slipshod, stooping before the stove, and striking the
+fender with the iron poker. She had fiery red hair, very untidy.</p>
+
+<p>I uttered an exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly she dropped the poker, and covering her face with her arms,
+uttering a strange, low cry, she dashed round the kitchen table, making
+nearly the complete circuit, and then swept past me, and I heard her
+clattering up the kitchen stairs.</p>
+
+<p>I was too much taken aback to follow. I stood as one petrified. I felt
+dazed and unable to trust either my eyes or my ears.</p>
+
+<p>Something like a minute must have elapsed before I had sufficiently
+recovered to turn and leave the kitchen. Then I ascended slowly and, I
+confess, nervously. I was fearful lest I should find the red-haired girl
+cowering against the wall, and that I should have to pass her.</p>
+
+<p>But nothing was to be seen. I reached the hall, and saw that no door was
+open from it except that of the breakfast-room. I entered and thoroughly
+examined every recess, corner, and conceivable hiding-place, but could
+find no one there. Then I ascended the staircase, with my hand on the
+balustrade, and searched all the rooms on the first floor, without the
+least success. Above were the servants' apartments, and I now resolved
+on mounting to them. Here the staircase was uncarpeted. As I was
+ascending, I heard Jane at work in her room. I then heard her come out
+hastily upon the landing. At the same moment, with a rush past me,
+uttering the same moan, went the red-haired girl. I am sure I felt her
+skirts sweep my dress. I did not notice her till she was close upon me,
+but I did distinctly see her as she passed. I turned, and saw no more.</p>
+
+<p>I at once mounted to the landing where was Jane.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, ma'am, I've seen the red-haired girl again, and I did as you
+recommended. I went at her rattling the pill-box, and she turned and ran
+downstairs. Did you see her, ma'am, as you came up?"</p>
+
+<p>"How inexplicable!" I said. I would not admit to Jane that I had seen
+the apparition.</p>
+
+<p>The situation remained unaltered for a week. The mystery was unsolved.
+No fresh light had been thrown on it. I did not again see or hear
+anything out of the way; nor did my husband, I presume, for he made no
+further remarks relative to the extra servant who had caused him so much
+annoyance. I presume he supposed that I had summarily dismissed her.
+This I conjectured from a smugness assumed by his face, such as it
+always acquired when he had carried a point against me&mdash;which was not
+often.</p>
+
+<p>However, one evening, abruptly, we had a new sensation. My husband,
+Bessie, and I were at dinner, and we were partaking of the soup, Jane
+standing by, waiting to change our plates and to remove the tureen, when
+we dropped our spoons, alarmed by fearful screams issuing from the
+kitchen. By the way, characteristically, my husband finished his soup
+before he laid down the spoon and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious! What is that?"</p>
+
+<p>Bessie, Jane, and I were by this time at the door, and we rushed
+together to the kitchen stairs, and one after the other ran down them. I
+was the first to enter, and I saw cook wrapped in flames, and a paraffin
+lamp on the floor broken, and the blazing oil flowing over it.</p>
+
+<p>I had sufficient presence of mind to catch up the cocoanut matting which
+was not impregnated with the oil, and to throw it round cook, wrap her
+tightly in it, and force her down on the floor where not overflowed by
+the oil. I held her thus, and Bessie succoured me. Jane was too
+frightened to do other than scream. The cries of the burnt woman were
+terrible. Presently my husband appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! Bless me! Good gracious!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You go away and fetch a doctor," I called to him; "you can be of no
+possible service here&mdash;you only get in our way."</p>
+
+<p>"But the dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bother the dinner! Run for a surgeon."</p>
+
+<p>In a little while we had removed the poor woman to her room, she
+shrieking the whole way upstairs; and, when there, we laid her on the
+bed, and kept her folded in the cocoanut matting till a medical man
+arrived, in spite of her struggles to be free. My husband, on this
+occasion, acted with commendable promptness; but whether because he was
+impatient for the completion of his meal, or whether his sluggish nature
+was for once touched with human sympathy, it is not for me to say.</p>
+
+<p>All I know is that, so soon as the surgeon was there, I dismissed Jane
+with "There, go and get your master the rest of his dinner, and leave us
+with cook."</p>
+
+<p>The poor creature was frightfully burnt. She was attended to devotedly
+by Bessie and myself, till a nurse was obtained from the hospital. For
+hours she was as one mad with terror as much as with pain.</p>
+
+<p>Next day she was quieter and sent for me. I hastened to her, and she
+begged the nurse to leave the room. I took a chair and seated myself by
+her bedside, and expressed my profound commiseration, and told her that
+I should like to know how the accident had taken place.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am, it was the red-haired girl did it."</p>
+
+<p>"The red-haired girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. I took a lamp to look how the fish was getting on, and all
+at once I saw her rush straight at me, and I&mdash;I backed, thinking she
+would knock me down, and the lamp fell over and smashed, and my clothes
+caught, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, cook! you should not have taken the lamp."</p>
+
+<p>"It's done. And she would never leave me alone till she had burnt or
+scalded me. You needn't be afraid&mdash;she don't haunt the house. It is <i>me</i>
+she has haunted, because of what I did to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you know her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was in service with me, as kitchenmaid, at my last place, near
+Cambridge. I took a sort of hate against her, she was such a slattern
+and so inquisitive. She peeped into my letters, and turned out my box
+and drawers, she was ever prying; and when I spoke to her, she was that
+saucy! I reg'lar hated her. And one day she was kneeling by the stove,
+and I was there, too, and I suppose the devil possessed me, for I upset
+the boiler as was on the hot-plate right upon her, just as she looked
+up, and it poured over her face and bosom, and arms, and scalded her
+that dreadful, she died. And since then she has haunted me. But she'll
+do so no more. She won't trouble you further. She has done for me, as
+she has always minded to do, since I scalded her to death."</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy woman did not recover.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! no hope?" said my husband, when informed that the surgeon
+despaired of her. "And good cooks are so scarce. By the way, that
+red-haired girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone&mdash;gone for ever," I said.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_PROFESSIONAL_SECRET" id="A_PROFESSIONAL_SECRET"></a>A PROFESSIONAL SECRET</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Leveridge was in a solicitor's office at Swanton. Mr. Leveridge had
+been brought up well by a sensible father and an excellent mother. His
+principles left nothing to be desired. His father was now dead, and his
+mother did not reside at Swanton, but near her own relations in another
+part of England. Joseph Leveridge was a mild, inoffensive man, with fair
+hair and a full head. He was so shy that he did not move in Society as
+he might have done had he been self-assertive. But he was fairly
+happy&mdash;not so happy as he might have been, for reasons to be shortly
+given.</p>
+
+<p>Swanton was a small market-town, that woke into life every Friday, which
+was market-day, burst into boisterous levity at the Michaelmas fair, and
+then lapsed back into decorum; it was, except on Fridays, somnolent
+during the day and asleep at night.</p>
+
+<p>Swanton was not a manufacturing town. It possessed one iron foundry and
+a brewery, so that it afforded little employment for the labouring
+classes, yet the labouring classes crowded into it, although cottage
+rents were high, because the farmers could not afford, owing to the hard
+times, to employ many hands on the land, and because their wives and
+daughters desired the distractions and dissipations of a town, and
+supposed that both were to be found in superfluity at Swanton.</p>
+
+<p>There was a large town hall with a magistrates' court, where the bench
+sat every month once. The church, in the centre of the town, was an
+imposing structure of stone, very cold within. The presentation was in
+the hands of the Simeonite Trustees, so that the vicar was of the
+theological school&mdash;if that can be called a school where nothing is
+taught&mdash;called Evangelical. The services ever long and dismal. The Vicar
+slowly and impressively declaimed the prayers, preached lengthy sermons,
+and condemned the congregation to sing out of the Mitre hymnal.</p>
+
+<p>The principal solicitor, Mr. Stork, was clerk of the petty sessions and
+registrar. He did a limited amount of legal work for the landed gentry
+round, was trustee to some widows and orphans, and was consulted by
+tottering yeomen as to their financial difficulties, lent them some
+money to relieve their immediate embarrassments, on the security of
+their land, which ultimately passed into his possession.</p>
+
+<p>To this gentleman Mr. Leveridge had been articled. He had been induced
+to adopt the legal profession, not from any true vocation, but at the
+instigation of his mother, who had urged him to follow in the
+professional footsteps of his revered father. But the occupation was not
+one that accorded with the tastes of the young man, who, notwithstanding
+his apparent mildness and softness, was not deficient in brains. He was
+a shrewd observer, and was endowed with a redundant imagination.</p>
+
+<p>From a child he had scribbled stories, and with his pencil had
+illustrated them; but this had brought upon him severe rebukes from his
+mother, who looked with disfavour on works of imagination, and his
+father had taken him across his knee, of course before he was adult, and
+had castigated him with the flat of the hairbrush for surreptitiously
+reading the <i>Arabian Nights</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Leveridge's days passed evenly enough; there was some business
+coming into the office on Fridays, and none at all on Sundays, on which
+day he wrote a long and affectionate letter to his widowed mother.</p>
+
+<p>He would have been a happy man, happy in a mild, lotus-eating way, but
+for three things. In the first place, he became conscious that he was
+not working in his proper vocation. He took no pleasure in engrossing
+deeds; indentures his soul abhorred. He knew himself to be capable of
+better things, and feared lest the higher faculties of his mind should
+become atrophied by lack of exercise. In the second place, he was not
+satisfied that his superior was a man of strict integrity. He had no
+reason whatever for supposing that anything dishonest went on in the
+office, but he had discovered that his "boss" was a daring and
+venturesome speculator, and he feared lest temptation should induce him
+to speculate with the funds of those to whom he acted as trustee. And
+Joseph, with his high sense of rectitude, was apprehensive lest some day
+something might there be done, which would cause a crash. Lastly, Joseph
+Leveridge had lost his heart. He was consumed by a hopeless passion for
+Miss Asphodel Vincent, a young lady with a small fortune of about £400
+per annum, to whom Mr. Stork was guardian and trustee.</p>
+
+<p>This young lady was tall, slender, willowy, had a sweet, Madonna-like
+face, and like Joseph himself was constitutionally shy; and she was
+unconscious of her personal and pecuniary attractions. She moved in the
+best society, she was taken up by the county people. No doubt she would
+be secured by the son of some squire, and settle down as Lady Bountiful
+in some parish; or else some wily curate with a moustache would step in
+and carry her off. But her bashfulness and her indifference to men's
+society had so far protected her. She loved her garden, cultivated
+herbaceous plants, and was specially addicted to a rockery in which she
+acclimatised flowers from the Alps.</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Stork was her guardian, she often visited the office, when Joseph
+flew, with heightened colour, to offer her a chair till Mr. Stork was
+disengaged. But conversation between them had never passed beyond
+generalities. Mr. Leveridge occasionally met her in his country walks,
+but never advanced in intimacy beyond raising his hat and remarking on
+the weather.</p>
+
+<p>Probably it was the stimulus of this devouring and despairing passion
+which drove Mr. Leveridge to writing a novel, in which he could paint
+Asphodel, under another name, in all her perfections. She should move
+through his story diffusing an atmosphere of sweetness and saintliness,
+but he could not bring himself to provide her with a lover, and to
+conclude his romance with her union to a being of the male sex.</p>
+
+<p>Impressed as he had been in early youth by the admonitions of his
+mother, and the applications of the hairbrush by his father, that the
+imagination was a dangerous and delusive gift, to be restrained, not
+indulged, he resolved that he would create no characters for his story,
+but make direct studies from life. Consequently, when the work was
+completed, it presented the most close portraits of a certain number of
+the residents in Swanton, and the town in which the scene was laid was
+very much like Swanton, though he called it Buzbury.</p>
+
+<p>But to find a publisher was a more difficult work than to write the
+novel. Mr. Leveridge sent his MS. type-written to several firms, and it
+was declined by one after another. At last, however, it fell into the
+hands of an unusually discerning reader, who saw in it distinct tokens
+of ability. It was not one to appeal to the general public. It contained
+no blood-curdling episodes, no hair-breadth escapes, no risky
+situations; it was simply a transcript of life in a little English
+country town. Though not high-spiced to suit the vulgar taste, still the
+reader and the publisher considered that there was a discerning public,
+small and select, that relished good, honest work of the Jane Austen
+kind, and the latter resolved on risking the production. Accordingly he
+offered the author fifty pounds for the work, he buying all rights.
+Joseph Leveridge was overwhelmed at the munificence of the offer, and
+accepted it gratefully and with alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>The next stage in the proceedings consisted in the revision of the
+proofs. And who that has not experienced it can judge of the sensation
+of exquisite delight afforded by this to the young author? After the
+correction of his romance&mdash;if romance such a prosaic tale can be
+called&mdash;in print, with characteristic modesty Leveridge insisted that
+his story should appear under an assumed name. What the name adopted was
+it does not concern the reader of this narrative to know. Some time now
+elapsed before the book appeared, at the usual publishing time, in
+October.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually it came out, and Mr. Leveridge received his six copies,
+neatly and quietly bound in cloth. He cut and read one with avidity, and
+at once perceived that he had overlooked several typographical errors,
+and wrote to the publisher to beg that these might be corrected in the
+event of a second edition being called for.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning following the publication and dissemination of the book,
+Joseph Leveridge lay in bed a little longer than usual, smiling in happy
+self-gratification at the thought that he had become an author. On the
+table by his bed stood his extinguished candle, his watch, and the book.
+He had looked at it the last thing before he closed his eyes in sleep.
+It was moreover the first thing that his eyes rested on when they
+opened. A fond mother could not have gazed on her new-born babe with
+greater pride and affection.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he thus lay and said to himself, "I really must&mdash;I positively
+must get up and dress!" he heard a stumping on the stairs, and a few
+moments later his door was burst open, and in came Major Dolgelly Jones,
+a retired officer, resident in Swanton, who had never before done him
+the honour of a call&mdash;and now he actually penetrated to Joseph's
+bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>The major was hot in the face. He panted for breath, his cheeks
+quivered. The major was a man who, judging by what could be perceived of
+his intellectual gifts, could not have been a great acquisition to the
+Army. He was a man who never could have been trusted to act a brilliant
+part. He was a creature of routine, a martinet; and since his retirement
+to Swanton had been a passionate golf-player and nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, sir? What do you mean?" spluttered he, "by putting me
+into your book?"</p>
+
+<p>"My book!" echoed Joseph, affecting surprise. "What book do you refer
+to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it's all very well your assuming that air of injured innocence,
+your trying to evade my question. Your sheepish expression does not
+deceive me. Why&mdash;there is the book in question by your bedside."</p>
+
+<p>"I have, I admit, been reading that novel, which has recently appeared."</p>
+
+<p>"You wrote it. Everyone in Swanton knows it. I don't object to your
+writing a book; any fool can do that&mdash;especially a novel. What I do
+object to is your putting me into it."</p>
+
+<p>"If I remember rightly," said Joseph, quaking under the bedclothes, and
+then wiping his upper lip on which a dew was forming, "If I remember
+aright, there is in it a major who plays golf, and does nothing else;
+but his name is Piper."</p>
+
+<p>"What do I care about a name? It is I&mdash;I. You have put me in."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Major Jones, you have no justification in thus accusing me. The
+book does not bear my name on the back and title-page."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither does the golfing retired military officer bear my name, but
+that does not matter. It is I myself. I am in your book. I would
+horsewhip you had I any energy left in me, but all is gone, gone with my
+personality into your book. Nothing is left of me&mdash;nothing but a body
+and a light tweed suit. I&mdash;I&mdash;have been taken out of myself and
+transferred to that&mdash;&mdash;" he used a naughty word, "that book. How can I
+golf any more? Walk the links any more with any heart? How can I putt a
+ball and follow it up with any feeling of interest? I am but a carcass.
+My soul, my character, my individuality have been burgled. You have
+broken into my inside, and have despoiled me of my personality." And he
+began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly," suggested Mr. Leveridge, "the author might&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The author can do nothing. I have been robbed&mdash;my fine ethereal self
+has been purloined. I&mdash;Dolgelly Jones&mdash;am only an outside husk. You have
+despoiled me of my richest jewel&mdash;myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I really can do nothing, major."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you can do nothing, that is the pity of it. You have sucked all
+my spiritual being with its concomitants out of me, and cannot put it
+back again. <i>You have used me up.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Then, wringing his hands, the major left the room, stumped slowly
+downstairs, and quitted the house.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Leveridge rose from his bed and dressed in great perturbation of
+mind. Here was a condition of affairs on which he had not reckoned. He
+was so distracted in mind that he forgot to brush his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached his little sitting-room he found that the table was laid
+for his breakfast, and that his landlady had just brought up the usual
+rashers of bacon and two boiled eggs. She was sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, Mrs. Baker?" asked Joseph. "Has Lasinia"&mdash;that was
+the name of the servant&mdash;"broken any more dishes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything has happened," replied the woman; "you have taken away my
+character."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I never did such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, sir, you have. All the time you've been writing, I've felt it
+going out of me like perspiration, and now it is all in your book."</p>
+
+<p>"My book!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, under the name of Mrs. Brooks. But law! sir, what is there in
+a name? You might have taken the name of Baker and used that as you
+likes. There be plenty of Bakers in England and the Colonies. But it's
+my character, sir, you've taken away, and shoved it into your book."
+Then the woman wiped her eyes with her apron.</p>
+
+<p>"But really, Mrs. Baker, if there be a landlady in this novel of which
+you complain&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There is, and it is me."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is a mere work of fiction."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a work of fiction, it is a work of fact, and that a cruel
+fact. What has a poor lorn widow like me got to boast of but her
+character? I'm sure I've done well by you, and never boiled your eggs
+hard&mdash;and to use me like this."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, dear Mrs. Baker!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't dear me, sir. If you had loved me, if you had been decently
+grateful for all I have done for you, and mended your socks too, you'd
+not have stolen my character from me, and put it into your book. Ah,
+sir! you have dealt by me what I call regular shameful, and not like a
+gentleman. You <i>have used me up</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Joseph was silent, cowed. He turned the rashers about on the dish with
+his fork in an abstracted manner. All desire to eat was gone from him.</p>
+
+<p>Then the landlady went on: "And it's not me only as has to complain.
+There are three gentlemen outside, sitting on the doorstep, awaiting of
+you. And they say that there they will remain, till you go out to your
+office. And they intend to have it out with you."</p>
+
+<p>Joseph started from the chair he had taken, and went to the window, and
+threw up the sash.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning out, he saw three hats below. It was as Mrs. Baker had
+intimated. Three gentlemen were seated on the doorstep. One was the
+vicar, another his "boss" Mr. Stork, and the third was Mr. Wotherspoon.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no mistake about the vicar; he wore a chimney-pot hat of
+silk, that had begun to curl at the brim, anticipatory of being adapted
+as that of an archdeacon. Moreover, he wore extensive, well-cultivated
+grey whiskers on each cheek. If we were inclined to adopt the modern
+careless usage, we might say that he grew whiskers on <i>either</i> cheek.
+But in strict accuracy that would mean that the whiskers grew
+indifferently, or alternatively, intermittently on one cheek or the
+other. This, however, was not the case, consequently we say on <i>each</i>
+cheek. These whiskers now waved and fluttered in the light air passing
+up and down the street.</p>
+
+<p>The second was Mr. Stork; he wore a stiff felt hat, his fiery hair
+showed beneath it, behind, and in front; when he lifted his head, the
+end of his pointed nose showed distinctly to Joseph Leveridge who looked
+down from above. The third, Mr. Wotherspoon, had a crushed brown cap on;
+he sat with his hands between his knees, dejected, and looking on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wotherspoon lived in Swanton with his mother and three sisters. The
+mother was the widow of an officer, not well off. He was an agreeable
+man, an excellent player at lawn-tennis, croquet, golf, rackets,
+billiards, and cards. His age was thirty, and he had as yet no
+occupation. His mother gently, his sisters sharply, urged him to do
+something, so as to earn his livelihood. With his mother's death her
+pension would cease, and he could not then depend on his sisters. He
+always answered that something would turn up. Occasionally he ran to
+town to look for employment, but invariably returned without having
+secured any, and with his pockets empty. He was so cheerful, so
+good-natured, was such good company, that everyone liked him, but also
+everyone was provoked at his sponging on his mother and sisters.</p>
+
+<p>"Really," said Mr. Leveridge, "I cannot encounter those three. It is
+true that I have drawn them pretty accurately in my novel, and here they
+are ready to take me to account for so doing. I will leave the house by
+the back door."</p>
+
+<p>Without his breakfast, Joseph fled; and having escaped from those who
+had hoped to intercept him, he made his way to the river. Here were
+pleasant grounds, with walks laid out, and benches provided. The place
+was not likely to be frequented at that time of the morning, and Mr.
+Leveridge had half an hour to spare before he was due at the office.
+There, later, he was likely to meet his "boss"; but it was better to
+face him alone, than him accompanied by two others who had a similar
+grievance against him.</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself on a bench and thought. He did not smoke; he had
+promised his "mamma" not to do so, and he was a dutiful son, and
+regarded his undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>What should he do? He was becoming involved in serious embarrassments.
+Would it be possible to induce the publisher to withdraw the book from
+circulation and to receive back the fifty pounds? That was hardly
+possible. He had signed away all his rights in the novel, and the
+publisher had been to a considerable expense for paper, printing,
+binding, and advertising.</p>
+
+<p>He was roused from his troubled thoughts by seeing Miss Asphodel Vincent
+coming along the walk towards him. Her step had lost its wonted spring,
+her carriage its usual buoyancy. In a minute or two she would reach him.
+Would she deign to speak? He felt no compunction towards her. He had
+made her his heroine in the tale. By not a word had he cast a shadow
+over her character or her abilities. Indeed, he had pictured her as the
+highest ideal of an English girl. She might be flattered, she could not
+be offended. And yet there was no flattery in his pencil&mdash;he had
+sketched her in as she was.</p>
+
+<p>As she approached she noticed the young author. She did not hasten her
+step. She displayed a strange listlessness in her movements, and lack of
+vivacity in her eye.</p>
+
+<p>When she stood over against him, Joseph Leveridge rose and removed his
+hat. "An early promenade, Miss Vincent," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said, "I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be
+overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain
+of a great injury done to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You do me a high honour," exclaimed Joseph. "If I can do anything to
+alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me."</p>
+
+<p>"You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been
+done. You put me into your book."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Vincent," protested Leveridge with vehemence, "if I have, what
+then? I have not in the least overcharged the colours, by a line
+caricatured you." It was in vain for him further to pretend not to be
+the author and to have merely read the book.</p>
+
+<p>"That may be, or it may not. But you have taken strange liberties with
+me in transferring me to your pages."</p>
+
+<p>"And you really recognised yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is myself, my very self, who is there."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you are here, before my humble self."</p>
+
+<p>"That is only my outer shell. All my individuality, all that goes to
+make up the Ego&mdash;I myself&mdash;has been taken from me and put into your
+book."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely that cannot be."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is so. I feel precisely as I suppose felt my doll when I was a
+child, when it became unstitched and all the bran ran out; it hung limp
+like a rag. But it is not bran you have deprived me of, it is my
+personality."</p>
+
+<p>"In my novel is your portraiture indeed&mdash;but you yourself are here,"
+said Leveridge.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my very self, my noblest and best part, my moral and
+intellectual self, which has been carried off and put into your book."</p>
+
+<p>"This is quite impossible, Miss Vincent."</p>
+
+<p>"A moment's thought," said she, "will convince you that it is as I say.
+If I pick an Alpine flower and transfer it to my blotting-book, it
+remains in the herbarium. It is no longer on the Alp where it bloomed."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" urged Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she interrupted, "you cannot undeceive me. No one can be in two
+places at the same time. If I am in your book, I cannot be here&mdash;except
+so far as goes my animal nature and frame. You have subjected me, Mr.
+Leveridge, to the greatest humiliation. I am by you reduced to the level
+of a score of girls that I know, with no pursuits, no fixed principles,
+no opinions of their own, no ideas. They are swayed by every fashion,
+they are moulded by their surroundings; they are destitute of what some
+would call moral fibre, and I would term character. I had all this, but
+you have deprived me of it, by putting it into your book. I shall
+henceforth be the sport of every breath, be influenced by every folly,
+be without self-confidence and decision, the prey to any adventurer."</p>
+
+<p>"For Heaven's sake, do not say that."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say anything other. If I had a sovereign in my purse, and a
+pickpocket stole it, I should no longer have the purse and sovereign,
+only the pocket; and I am a mere pocket now without the coin of my
+personality that you have filched from me. Mr. Leveridge, it was a cruel
+wrong you did me, <i>when you used me up</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Then, sighing, Miss Asphodel went languidly on her way. Joseph was as
+one stunned. He buried his face in his hands. The person of all others
+with whom he desired to stand well, that person looked upon him as her
+most deadly enemy, at all events as the one who had most cruelly
+aggrieved her.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, hearing the clock strike, he started. He was due at the
+office, and Joseph Leveridge had always made a point of punctuality.</p>
+
+<p>He now went to the office, and learned from his fellow-clerk that Mr.
+Stork had not returned; he had been there, and then had gone away to
+seek Leveridge at his lodgings. Joseph considered it incumbent on him to
+resume his hat and go in quest of his "boss."</p>
+
+<p>On his way it occurred to him that there was monotony in bacon and eggs
+for breakfast every morning, and he would like a change. Moreover, he
+was hungry; he had left the house of Mrs. Baker without taking a
+mouthful, and if he returned now for a snack the eggs and the bacon
+would be cold. So he stepped into the shop of Mr. Box, the grocer, for a
+tin of sardines in oil.</p>
+
+<p>When the grocer saw him he said: "Will you favour me with a word, sir,
+in the back shop?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am pressed for time," replied Leveridge nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"But one word; I will not detain you," said Mr. Box, and led the way.
+Joseph walked after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said the grocer, shutting the glass door, "you have done me a
+prodigious wrong. You have deprived me of what I would not have lost for
+a thousand pounds. You have put me into your book. How my business will
+get on without me&mdash;I mean my intellect, my powers of organisation, my
+trade instincts, in a word, myself&mdash;I do not know. You have taken them
+from me and put them into your book. I am consigned to a novel, when I
+want all my powers behind the counter. Possibly my affairs for a while
+will go on by the weight of their own momentum, but it cannot be for
+long without my controlling brain. Sir, you have brought me and my
+family to ruin&mdash;<i>you have used me up</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Leveridge could bear this no more; he seized the handle of the door,
+rushed through the outer shop, precipitated himself into the street,
+carrying the sardine tin in his hand, and hurried to his lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>But there new trouble awaited him. On the doorstep still sat the three
+gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>When they saw him they rose to their feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know what you have to say," gasped Joseph. "In pity do not
+attack me all together. One at a time. With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will
+you step up first into my humble little sanctum, and I will receive the
+others later. I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from
+the room. I left the window open."</p>
+
+<p>"I will most certainly follow you," said the Vicar of Swanton. "This is
+a most serious matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, will you take a chair?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs. I lose impressiveness
+when seated. But I fear, alas! that gift has been taken from me. Sir!
+sir! you have put me into your book. My earthly tabernacle may be here,
+standing on your&mdash;or Mrs. Baker's drugget&mdash;but all my great oratorical
+powers have gone. I have been despoiled of what was in me my highest,
+noblest, most spiritual parts. What my preaching henceforth will be I
+fear to contemplate. I may be able to string together a number of texts,
+and tack on an application, but that is mere mechanical work. I used to
+dredge in much florid eloquence, to stick in the flowers of elocution
+between every joint. And now!&mdash;I am despoiled of all. I, the Vicar of
+Swanton, shall be as a mere stick; I shall no more be a power in the
+pulpit, a force on the platform. My prospects in the diocese are put an
+end to. Miserable, miserable young man, you might have pumped others,
+but why me? I know but too surely that <i>you have used me up</i>." The vicar
+had taken off his hat, his bald forehead was beaded, his bristling grey
+whiskers drooped, his unctuous expression had faded away. His eyes,
+usually bearing the look as though turned inward in ecstatic
+contemplation of his personal piety, with only a watery stare on the
+world without, were now dull.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the door. "I will send up Stork," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do so by all means, sir," was all that Joseph could say.</p>
+
+<p>When the solicitor entered his red hair had assumed a darker dye,
+through the moisture that exuded from his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "this is a scurvy trick you have played me.
+You have put me into your book."</p>
+
+<p>"I only sketched a not over-scrupulous lawyer," protested Joseph. "Why
+should you put the cap on your own head?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it fits. It is myself you have put into your book, and by no
+legal process can I get out of it. I shall not be competent to advise
+the magistrates on the bench, and, good heavens! what a mess they will
+get into. I do not know whether your fellow-clerk can carry on the
+business. <i>I have been used up.</i> I'll tell you what. You go away; I want
+you no more at the office. Whenever you revisit Swanton you will see
+only the ruins of the respected firm of Stork. It cannot go on when I am
+not in it, but in your book."</p>
+
+<p>The last to arrive was Mr. Wotherspoon. He was in a most depressed
+condition. "There was not much in me," said he, "not at any time. You
+might have spared such a trifle as me, and not put me also into your
+book and <i>used me up</i>. Oh, dear, dear! what will my poor mother do! And
+how Sarah and Jane will bully me."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>That same day Mr. Leveridge packed up his traps and departed from
+Swanton for his mother's house.</p>
+
+<p>That she was delighted to see him need not be said; that something was
+wrong, her maternal instinct told her. But it was not for some days that
+he confided to her so much as this: "Oh, mother, I have written a novel,
+and have put into it the people of Swanton&mdash;and so have had to leave."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Joe," said the old lady, "you have done wrong and made a great
+mistake. You never should introduce actual living personages into a work
+of fiction. You should pulp them first, and then run out your characters
+fresh from the pulp."</p>
+
+<p>"I was so afraid of using my imagination," explained Joe.</p>
+
+<p>Some months elapsed, and Leveridge could not resolve on an employment
+that would suit him and at the same time maintain him. The fifty pounds
+he had earned would not last long. He began to be sensible of the
+impulse to be again writing. He resisted it for a while, but when he got
+a letter from his publisher, saying that the novel had sold well, far
+better than had been expected, and that he would be pleased to consider
+another from Mr. Leveridge's pen, and could promise him for it more
+liberal terms, then Joseph's scruples vanished. But on one thing he was
+resolved. He would now create his characters. They should not be taken
+from observation.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, he determined to differentiate his new work from the old in
+other material points. His characters should be the reverse of those in
+the first novel. For his heroine he imagined a girl of boisterous
+spirits, straightforward, true, but somewhat unconventional, and given
+to use slang expressions. He had never met with such a girl, so that she
+would be a pure creation of his brain, and he made up his mind to call
+her Poppy. Then he would avoid drawing the portrait of an Evangelical
+parson, and introduce one decidedly High Church; he would have no heavy,
+narrow tradesman like Box, but a man full of venture and speculative
+push. Moreover, having used up the not over-scrupulous lawyer, he would
+portray one, the soul of honour, the confidant of not only the county
+gentry but of the county nobility. And as he had caused so much trouble
+by the introduction of good old Mother Baker, he would trace the line of
+a lively, skittish young widow, always on the hunt after admirers, and
+endeavouring to entangle the youths who lodged with her.</p>
+
+<p>As he went on with his story, it worked out to his satisfaction, and
+what especially gratified him and gave repose to his mind was the
+consciousness that he was using no one up, with whom he was acquainted,
+and that all his characters were pure creations.</p>
+
+<p>The work was complete, and the publisher agreed to give a hundred pounds
+for it. Then it passed through the press, and in due course Leveridge
+heard from the publisher that his six free copies had been sent off to
+him by train. Joseph was almost as excited over his second novel as he
+was over the first.</p>
+
+<p>He was too impatient to wait till the parcels were sent round in the
+ordinary way. He hurried to the station in the evening, to meet the
+train from town, by which he expected his consignment; and having
+secured it, he hurried home, carrying the heavy parcel.</p>
+
+<p>His mother's house was comparatively large; she occupied but a corner of
+it, and she had given over to her son a little cosy sitting-room, in
+which he might write and read. Into this room Joseph carried his parcel,
+full of impatience to cut the string and disclose the volumes.</p>
+
+<p>But he had hardly passed through his door before he was startled to see
+that his room was full of people; all but one were seated about the
+table. That one who was not, lounged against the bookcase, standing on
+one foot. With a shock of surprise, Joseph recognised all those there
+gathered together. They were the characters in his book, his own
+creations. And that individual who stood, in an indifferent attitude,
+was his new heroine, Poppy. The first shock of surprise rapidly passed.
+Joseph Leveridge felt no fear, but rather a sense of pleasure. He was in
+the presence of his own creations, and knew them familiarly. There were
+seven in all. At his appearance they all saluted him respectfully as
+their creator&mdash;all except Poppy, who gave him a wink and a nod.</p>
+
+<p>At the head of the table sat the High Church parson, shaven, with a
+long coat and a grave face, next to him, on the right, Lady Mabel
+Forraby, a tall, elderly, aristocratic-looking woman, the aunt of Poppy.
+One element of lightness in the book had consisted in the struggles of
+Lady Mabel to control her wayward niece and the revolt of the latter.
+Mr. Leveridge had never known a person of title in his life, so that
+Lady Mabel was a pure creation; so also, brought up, as he had been, by
+a Calvinistic mother, and afterwards thrown under the ministry of the
+Vicar of Swanton, he had not once come across a Ritualist. Consequently
+his parson, in this instance, was also a pure creation. A young
+gentleman, the hero of the novel, a bright intelligent fellow, full of
+vigour and good sense, and highly cultured, sat next to Lady Mabel.
+Joseph had never been thrown into association with men of quite this
+type. He had met nice respectable clerks and amusing and agreeable
+travellers for commercial houses, so that this personage also was a
+creation. So most certainly was the bold, pert little widow who rolled
+her eyes and put on winsome airs. Joseph had kept clear of all such
+instances, but he had heard and read of them. She could look to him as
+her creator.</p>
+
+<p>And that naughty little Poppy! Her naughtiness was all mischief, put on
+to aggravate her staid old aunt, so full of daring, and yet withal so
+steady of heart; so full of frolic, but with principle underlying it
+all. Joseph had never encountered anyone like her, anyone approaching to
+her. The young ladies to whom his mother introduced him were all very
+prim and proper. At Swanton he had been little in society: the vicar's
+daughter was a tract distributer and a mission woman, and Mr. Stork's
+daughter a domestic drudge. Of all the characters in Joseph's book she
+was his most especial and delightful creation.</p>
+
+<p>Then the white-haired family lawyer, fond of his jokes, able to tell a
+good story, close as a walnut relative to all matters communicated to
+him, strict and honourable in all his dealings, content with his small
+earnings, and frugally laying them by. Joseph had not met such a man,
+but he had idealised him as the sort of lawyer he would wish to be
+should he stick to his profession. He also, accordingly, was a creation.
+And last, but not least, was the red-faced, audacious stockbroker; a man
+of sharp and quick determination, who saw a chance in a moment and
+closed on it, who was keen of scent and smelt a risky investment the
+moment it came before him. Joseph knew no stockbroker&mdash;had only heard of
+them by rumour. He, therefore, was a creation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my children, not of my loins, but of my brain," said the author.
+"What do you all want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bodies," they replied with one voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Bodies!" gasped Joseph, stepping backwards. "Why, what possesses you
+all? You can't expect me to furnish you with them."</p>
+
+<p>"But, indeed, we do, old chap," said Poppy.</p>
+
+<p>"Niece!" said Lady Mabel, turning about in her chair, "address your
+creator with more respect."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay, my lady," said the parson. "Allow me to explain matters to Mr.
+Leveridge. He is young and an inexperienced writer of fiction, and is
+therefore unaware of the exigencies of his profession. You must know,
+dear author of our being, that every author of a work of imagination,
+such as you have been, lays himself under a moral and an inexorable
+obligation to find bodies for all those whom he has called into
+existence through his fertile brain. Mr. Leveridge has not mixed in the
+literary world. He does not belong to the Society of Authors. He is&mdash;he
+will excuse the expression&mdash;raw in his profession. It is a well-known
+law among novelists that they must furnish bodies for such as they have
+called into existence out of their pure imagination. For this reason
+they invariably call their observation to their assistance, and they
+balance in their books the creations with the transcripts from life.
+The only exception to this rule that I am aware of," continued the
+parson, "is where the author is able to get his piece dramatised, in
+which case, of course, the difficulty ceases."</p>
+
+<p>"I should love to go on the stage," threw in Poppy.</p>
+
+<p>"Niece, you do not know what you say," remarked Lady Mabel, turning
+herself about.</p>
+
+<p>"Allow me, my lady," said the parson. "What I have said is fact, is it
+not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most certainly," replied all. Lady Mabel said: "I suppose it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," pursued the parson, "the situation is this: Have you secured the
+dramatisation of your novel?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never gave it a thought," said Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, as there is no prospect of our being so accommodated, the
+position is this: We shall have to haunt you night and day, mainly at
+night, till you have accommodated us with bodies; we cannot remain as
+phantom creations of a highly imaginative soul such as is yours, Mr.
+Leveridge. If you have your rights, so have we. And we insist on ours,
+and will insist till we are satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>At once all vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Leveridge felt that he had got himself into a worse hobble than
+before. From his former difficulties he had escaped by flight. But there
+was, he feared, no flying from these seven impatient creations all
+clamouring for bodies, and to provide them with such was beyond his
+powers. All his delight in the publication of his new novel was spent.
+It had brought with it care and perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>He went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>During the night, he was troubled with his characters; they peeped in at
+him. Poppy got a peacock's feather and tickled his nose just as he was
+dropping asleep. "You bounder!" she said; "I shall give you no peace
+till you have settled me into a body&mdash;but oh! get me on to the stage if
+you can."</p>
+
+<p>"Poppy, come away," called Lady Mabel. "Don't be improper. Mr. Leveridge
+will do his best. I want a body quite as much as do you, but I know how
+to ask for it properly."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," said the parson, "should like to have mine before Easter, but
+have one I must."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Leveridge's state now was worse than the first. One or other of his
+creatures was ever watching him. His every movement was spied on. There
+was no escaping their vigilance. Sometimes they attended him in groups
+of two or three; sometimes they were all around him.</p>
+
+<p>At meals not one was missing, and they eyed every mouthful of his food
+as he raised it to his lips. His mother saw nothing&mdash;the creations were
+invisible to all eyes save those of their creator.</p>
+
+<p>If he went out for a country walk, they trotted forth with him, some
+before, looking round at every turn to see which way he purposed going,
+some following. Poppy and the skittish widow managed to attach
+themselves to him, one on each side. "I hate that little woman," said
+Poppy. "Why did you call her into being?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus4" id="illus4"></a>
+<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IF HE WENT OUT FOR A WALK THEY TROTTED FORTH WITH HIM,
+SOME BEFORE, SOME FOLLOWING.</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"I never dreamed that things would come to this pass."</p>
+
+<p>"I am convinced, creator dear, that there is a vein of wickedness in
+your composition, or you would never have imagined such a minx, good and
+amiable and butter-won't-melt-in-your-mouth though you may look. And
+there must be a frolicsome devil in your heart, or I should never have
+become."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, Poppy, I am very glad that I gave you being. But one may have
+too much even of a good thing, and there are moments when I could
+dispense with your presence."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, when you want to carry on with the widow. She is always casting
+sheep's eyes at you."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Poppy, you forget my hero, whom I created on purpose for you."</p>
+
+<p>"All my attention is now engrossed in you, and will be till you provide
+me with a body."</p>
+
+<p>When Leveridge was in his room reading, if he raised his eyes from his
+book they met the stare of one of his characters. If he went up to his
+bedroom, he was followed. If he sat with his mother, one kept guard.</p>
+
+<p>This was become so intolerable, that one evening he protested to the
+stockbroker, who was then in attendance. "Do, I entreat you, leave me to
+myself. You treat me as if I were a lunatic and about to commit <i>felo de
+se</i>, and you were my warders."</p>
+
+<p>"We watch you, sir," said the stockbroker, "in our own interest. We
+cannot suffer you to give us the slip. We are all expectant and
+impatient for the completion of what you have begun."</p>
+
+<p>Then the parson undertook to administer a lecture on Duty, on
+responsibilities contracted to those called into partial existence by a
+writer of fiction. He cannot be allowed to half do his work. His
+creations must be realised, and can only be realised by being given a
+material existence.</p>
+
+<p>"But what the dickens can I do? I cannot fabricate bodies for you. I
+never in my life even made a doll."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no thought of dramatising us?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know no dramatic writers."</p>
+
+<p>"Do it yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Does not this sort of work require a certain familiarity with the
+technique of the stage which I do not possess?"</p>
+
+<p>"That might be attended to later. Pass your MS. through the hands of a
+dramatic expert, and pay him a percentage of your profits in recognition
+of his services. Only one thing I bargain for, do not present me on the
+stage in such a manner as to discredit my cloth."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I done so in my book?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, I have nothing to complain of in that. But there is no
+counting on what Poppy may persuade you into doing, and I fear that she
+is gaining influence over you. Remember, she is your creation, and you
+must not suffer her to mould you."</p>
+
+<p>The idea took root. The suggestion was taken up, and Joseph Leveridge
+applied himself to his task with zest. But he had to conceal what he was
+about from his mother, who had no opinion of the drama, and regarded the
+theatre as a sink of iniquity.</p>
+
+<p>But now new difficulties arose. Joseph's creations would not leave him
+alone for a moment. Each had a suggestion, each wanted his or her own
+part accentuated at the expense of the other. Each desired the
+heightening of the situations in which they severally appeared. The
+clamour, the bickering, the interference made it impossible for Joseph
+to collect his thoughts, keep cool, and proceed with his work.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday arrived, and Joseph drew on his gloves, put on his box-hat, and
+offered his arm to his mother, to conduct her to chapel. All the
+characters were drawn up in the hall to accompany them. Joseph and his
+mother walking down the street to Ebenezer Chapel presented a picture of
+a good and dutiful son and of a pious widow not to be surpassed. Poppy
+and the widow entered into a struggle as to which was to walk on the
+unoccupied side of Joseph. If this had been introduced into the picture
+it would have marred it; but happily this was invisible to all eyes save
+those of Joseph. The rest of the imaginary party walked arm in arm
+behind till the chapel was reached, when the parson started back.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not going in there! It is a schism-shop," he exclaimed. "Nothing
+in the world would induce me to cross the threshold."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," said Lady Mabel, "I have no idea of attending a place of
+worship not of the Established Church."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go in&mdash;if only to protect Creator from the widow," said Poppy.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph and his mother entered, and occupied their pew. The characters,
+with the exception of the parson and the old lady, grouped themselves
+where they were able. The stockbroker stood in the aisle with his arms
+on the pew door, to ensure that Joseph was kept a prisoner there. But
+before the service had advanced far he had gone to sleep. This was the
+more to be regretted, as the minister delivered a very strong appeal to
+the unconverted, and if ever there was an unconverted worldling, it was
+that stockbroker.</p>
+
+<p>The skittish widow was leering at a deacon of an amorous complexion, but
+as he did not, and, in fact, could not see her, all her efforts were
+cast away. The solicitor sat with stolid face and folded hands, and
+allowed the discourse to flow over him like a refreshing douche. Poppy
+had got very tired of the show, and had slunk away to rejoin her aunt.
+The hero closed his eyes and seemed resigned.</p>
+
+<p>After nearly an hour had elapsed, whilst a hymn was being sung, Joseph,
+more to himself than to his mother, said: "Can I escape?"</p>
+
+<p>"Escape what? Wretch?" inquired the widowed lady.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I can do it. There's a room at the side for earnest inquirers,
+or a vestry or something, with an outer door. I will risk it, and make a
+bolt for my liberty."</p>
+
+<p>He very gently and cautiously unhasped the door of the pew, and as he
+slid it open, the sleeping stockbroker, still sleeping and unconscious,
+slipped back, and Joseph was out. He made his way into the room at the
+side, forth from the actual chapel, ran through it, and tried the door
+that opened into a side lane. It was locked, but happily the key was in
+its place. He turned it, plunged forth, and fell into the arms of his
+characters. They were all there. The solicitor had been observing him
+out of the corner of his eye, and had given the alarm. The stockbroker
+was aroused, and he, the solicitor, the hero, ran out, gave the alarm
+to the three without, and Joseph was intercepted, and his attempt at
+escape frustrated. He was reconducted home by them, himself dejected,
+they triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>When his mother returned she was full of solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the matter, Joe dear?" she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't feeling very well," he explained. "But I shall be better
+presently."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it will not interfere with your appetite, Joe. I have cold lamb
+and mint-sauce for our early dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall peck a bit, I trust," said Mr. Leveridge.</p>
+
+<p>But during dinner he was abstracted and silent. All at once he brought
+down his fist on the table. "I've hit it!" he exclaimed, and a flush of
+colour mantled his face to the temples.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," said his mother; "you have made all the plates and dishes
+jump, and have nearly upset the water-bottle."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, mother; I really must go to my room."</p>
+
+<p>He rose, made a sign to his characters, and they all rose and trooped
+after him into his private apartment.</p>
+
+<p>When they were within he said to his hero: "May I trouble you kindly to
+shut the door and turn the key? My mother will be anxious and come after
+me, and I want a word with you all. It will not take two minutes. I see
+my way to our mutual accommodation. Do not be uneasy and suspicious; I
+will make no further attempt at evasion. Meet me to-morrow morning at
+the 9.48 down train. I am going to take you all with me to Swanton."</p>
+
+<p>A tap at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Open&mdash;it is my mother," said Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Leveridge entered with a face of concern. "What is the matter with
+you, Joe?" she said. "If we were not both of us water-drinkers, I should
+say that you had been indulging in&mdash;spirits."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I must positively be off to Swanton to-morrow morning. I see
+my way now, all will come right."</p>
+
+<p>"How, my precious boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot explain. I see my way to clearing up the unpleasantness caused
+by that unfortunate novel of mine. Pack my trunk, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Not on the Sabbath, lovie."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;to-morrow morning. I start by the 9.48 a.m. We all go together."</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;am I to accompany you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. We&mdash;did I say? It is a habit I have got into as an author.
+Authors, like royal personages, speak of themselves as We."</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Leveridge was occupied during the afternoon in writing to his
+victims at Swanton.</p>
+
+<p>First, he penned a notice to Mrs. Baker that he would require his
+lodgings from the morrow, and that he had something to say to her that
+would afford her much gratification.</p>
+
+<p>Then he wrote to the vicar, expressed his regret for having deprived him
+of his personality, and requested him, if he would do him the favour, to
+call in the evening at 7.30, at his lodgings in West Street. He had
+something of special importance to communicate to him. He apologised for
+not himself calling at the vicarage, but said that there were
+circumstances that made it more desirable that he should see his
+reverence privately in his own lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>Next, he addressed an epistle to Mr. Stork. He assured him that he,
+Joseph Leveridge, had felt keenly the wrong he had done him, that he had
+forfeited his esteem, had ill repaid his kindness, had acted in a manner
+towards his employer that was dishonourable. But, he added, he had found
+a means of rectifying what was wrong. He placed himself unreservedly in
+the hands of Mr. Stork, and entreated him to meet him at his rooms in
+West Street on the ensuing Monday evening at 7.45, when he sincerely
+trusted that the past would be forgotten, and a brighter future would be
+assured.</p>
+
+<p>This was followed by a formal letter couched to Mr. Box. He invited him
+to call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings on that same evening at 8 p.m., as he
+had business of an important and far-reaching nature to discuss with
+him. If Mr. Box considered that he, Joseph Leveridge, had done him an
+injury, he was ready to make what reparation lay in his power.</p>
+
+<p>Taking a fresh sheet of notepaper, he now wrote a fifth letter, this to
+Mr. Wotherspoon, requesting the honour of a call at his "diggings" at
+8.15 p.m., when matters of controversy between them could be amicably
+adjusted.</p>
+
+<p>The ensuing letter demanded some deliberation. It was to Asphodel. He
+wrote it out twice before he was satisfied with the mode in which it was
+expressed. He endeavoured to disguise under words full of respect, yet
+not disguise too completely, the sentiments of his heart. But he was
+careful to let drop nothing at which she might take umbrage. He
+entreated her to be so gracious as to allow him an interview by the side
+of the river at the hour of 8.30 on the Monday evening. He apologised
+for venturing to make such a demand, but he intimated that the matter he
+had to communicate was so important and so urgent, that it could not
+well be postponed till Tuesday, and that it was also most necessary that
+the interview should be private. It was something he had to say that
+would materially&mdash;no, not materially, but morally&mdash;affect her, and would
+relieve his mind from a burden of remorse that had become to him wholly
+intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>The final, the seventh letter, was to Major Dolgelly Jones, and was more
+brief. It merely intimated that he had something of the utmost
+importance to communicate to his private ear, and for this purpose he
+desired the favour of a call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings, at 8.45 on Monday
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>These letters despatched, Mr. Leveridge felt easier in mind and lighter
+at heart. He slept well the ensuing night, better than he had for long.
+His creations did not so greatly disturb him. He was aware that he was
+still kept under surveillance, but the watch was not so strict, nor so
+galling as hitherto.</p>
+
+<p>On the Monday morning he was at the station, and took his ticket for
+Swanton. One ticket sufficed, as his companions, who awaited him on the
+platform, were imaginary characters.</p>
+
+<p>When he took his seat, they pressed into the carriage after him. Poppy
+secured the seat next him, but the widow placed herself opposite, and
+exerted all her blandishment with the hope of engrossing his whole
+attention. At a junction all got out, and Joseph provided himself with a
+luncheon-basket and mineral water. The characters watched him discussing
+the half-chicken and slabs of ham, with the liveliest interest, and were
+especially observant of his treatment of the thin paper napkin,
+wherewith he wiped his fingers and mouth.</p>
+
+<p>At last he arrived at Swanton and engaged a cab, as he was encumbered
+with a portmanteau. Lady Mabel, Poppy, and the widow could be easily
+accommodated within, the two latter with their backs to the horses.
+Joseph would willingly have resigned his seat to either of these, but
+they would not hear of it. A gentle altercation ensued between the
+parson and the solicitor, as to which should ride on the box. The lawyer
+desired to yield the place to "the cloth," but the parson would not hear
+of this&mdash;the silver hairs of the other claimed precedence. The
+stockbroker mounted to the roof of the fly and the clerical gentleman
+hung on behind. The hero professed his readiness to walk.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually the cab drew up at Mrs. Baker's door.</p>
+
+<p>That stout, elderly lady received her old lodger without effusion, and
+with languid interest. The look of the house was not what it had been.
+It had deteriorated. The windows had not been cleaned nor the banisters
+dusted.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear old landlady, I am so glad to see you again," said Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir. You ordered no meal, but I have got two mutton chops in
+the larder, and can mash some potatoes. At what time would you like your
+supper, sir?" She had become a machine, a thing of routine.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, thank you. I have business to transact first, and I shall not
+be disengaged before nine o'clock. But I have something to say to you,
+Mrs. Baker, and I will say it at once and get it over, if you will
+kindly step up into my parlour."</p>
+
+<p>She did so, sighing at each step of the stairs as she ascended.</p>
+
+<p>All the characters mounted as well, and entering the little
+sitting-room, ranged themselves against the wall facing the door.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Baker was a portly woman, aged about forty-five, and plain
+featured. She had formerly been neat, now she was dowdy. Before she had
+lost her character she never appeared in that room without removing her
+apron, but on this occasion she wore it, and it was not clean.</p>
+
+<p>"Widow!" said Joseph, addressing his character, "will you kindly step
+forward?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would do anything for <i>you</i>," with a roll of the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge, "I feel that I have done you a
+grievous wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I ain't been myself since you put me into your book."</p>
+
+<p>"My purpose is now to undo the past, and to provide you with a
+character."</p>
+
+<p>Then, turning to the skittish widow of his creation, he said, "Now,
+then, slip into and occupy her."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like the tenement," said the widow, pouting.</p>
+
+<p>"Whether you like it or not," protested Joseph, "you must have that or
+no other." He waved his hand. "Presto!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a wondrous change was effected in Mrs. Baker. She whipped off
+the apron, and crammed it under the sofa cushion. She wriggled in her
+movements, she eyed herself in the glass, and exclaimed: "Oh, my! what a
+fright I am. I'll be back again in a minute when I have changed my gown
+and done up my hair."</p>
+
+<p>"We can dispense with your presence, Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge
+sternly. "I will ring for you when you are wanted."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a rap at the door was heard; and Mrs. Baker, having first
+dropped a coquettish curtsy to her lodger, tripped downstairs to admit
+the vicar, and to show him up to Mr. Leveridge's apartment.</p>
+
+<p>"You may go, Mrs. Baker," said he; for she seemed inclined to linger.</p>
+
+<p>When she had left the room, Joseph contemplated the reverend gentleman.
+He bore a crestfallen appearance. He looked as if he had been out in the
+rain all night without a paletot. His cheeks were flabby, his mouth
+drooped at the corners, his eyes were vacant, and his whiskers no longer
+stuck out horrescent and assertive.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear vicar," said Leveridge, "I cannot forgive myself." In former
+times, Mr. Leveridge would not have dreamed of addressing the reverend
+gentleman in this familiar manner, but it was other now that the latter
+looked so limp and forlorn. "My dear vicar, I cannot forgive myself for
+the trouble I have brought upon you. It has weighed on me as a
+nightmare, for I know that it is not you only who have suffered, but
+also the whole parish of Swanton. Happily a remedy is at hand. I have
+here&mdash;&mdash;" he waved to the parson of his creation, "I have here an
+individuality I can give to you, and henceforth, if you will not be
+precisely yourself again, you will be a personality in your parish and
+the diocese." He waved his hand. "Presto!"</p>
+
+<p>In the twinkling of an eye all was changed in the Vicar of Swanton. He
+straightened himself. His expression altered to what it never had been
+before. The cheeks became firm, and lines formed about the mouth
+indicative of force of character and of self-restraint. The eye assumed
+an eager look as into far distances, as seeking something beyond the
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>The vicar walked to the mirror over the mantelshelf.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me!" he said, "I must go to the barber's and have these whiskers
+off." And he hurried downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>After a little pause in the proceedings, Mrs. Baker, now very trim, with
+a blue ribbon round her neck hanging down in streamers behind, ushered
+up Mr. Stork. The lawyer had a faded appearance, as if he had been
+exposed to too strong sunlight; he walked in with an air of lack of
+interest, and sank into a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear old master," said Leveridge, "it is my purpose to restore to
+you all your former energy, and to supply you with what you may possibly
+have lacked previously."</p>
+
+<p>He signed to the white-haired family solicitor he had called into
+fictitious being, and waved his hand.</p>
+
+<p>At once Mr. Stork stood up and shook his legs, as though shaking out
+crumbs from his trousers. His breast swelled, he threw back his head,
+his eye shone clear and was steady.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "I have long had my eye on you, sir&mdash;had my
+eye on you. I have marked your character as one of uncompromising
+probity. I hate shiftiness, I abhor duplicity. I have been disappointed
+with my clerks. I could not always trust them to do the right thing. I
+want to strengthen and brace my firm. But I will not take into
+partnership with myself any but one of the strictest integrity. Sir! I
+have marked you&mdash;I have marked you, Mr. Leveridge. Call on me to-morrow
+morning, and we will consider the preliminaries for a partnership. Don't
+talk to me of buying a partnership."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not done so, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you have not. I will take you in, sir, for your intrinsic
+value. An honest man is worth his weight in gold, and is as scarce as
+the precious metal."</p>
+
+<p>Then, with dignity, Mr. Stork withdrew, and passed Mr. Box, the grocer,
+mounting the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Box," said Leveridge, "how wags the world with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Badly, sir, badly since you booked me. I mentioned to you, sir, that I
+trusted my little business would for a while go on by its own momentum.
+It has, sir, it has, but the momentum has been downhill. I can't control
+it. I have not the personality to do so, to serve as a drag, to urge it
+upwards. I am in daily expectation, sir, of a regular smash up."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear this," said Leveridge. "But I think I have found a
+means of putting all to rights. Presto!" He waved his hand and the
+imaginary character of the stockbroker had actualised himself in the
+body of Mr. Box.</p>
+
+<p>"I see how to do it. By ginger, I do!" exclaimed the grocer, a spark
+coming into his eye. "I'll run my little concern on quite other lines.
+And look ye here, Mr. Leveridge. I bet you my bottom dollar that I'll
+run it to a tremendous success, become a second Lipton, and keep a
+yacht."</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Box bounced out of the room and proceeded to run downstairs, he
+ran against and nearly knocked over Mrs. Baker; the lady was whispering
+to and coquetting with Mr. Wotherspoon, who was on the landing. That
+gentleman, in his condition of lack of individuality, was like a
+teetotum spun in the hands of the designing Mrs. Baker, who put forth
+all the witchery she possessed, or supposed that she possessed, to
+entangle him in an amorous intrigue.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," shouted Joseph Leveridge, and Mr. Wotherspoon, looking hot
+and frightened and very shy, tottered in and sank into a chair. He was
+too much shaken and perturbed by the advances of Mrs. Baker to be able
+to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"There," said Joseph, addressing his hero. "You cannot do better than
+animate that feeble creature. Go!"</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Mr. Wotherspoon sprang to his feet. "By George!" said he. "I
+wonder that never struck me before. I'll at once volunteer to go out to
+South Africa, and have a shot at those canting, lying, treacherous
+Boers. If I come back with a score of their scalps at my waist, I shall
+have deserved well of my country. I will volunteer at once. But&mdash;I say,
+Leveridge&mdash;clear that hulking, fat old landlady out of the way. She
+blocks the stairs, and I can't kick down a woman."</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Wotherspoon was gone&mdash;"Well," said Poppy, "what have you got
+for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will come with me, Poppy dear, I will serve you as well as the
+rest."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope better than you did that odious little widow. But she is well
+paid out."</p>
+
+<p>"Follow me to the riverside," said Joseph; "at 8.33 p.m. I am due there,
+and so is another&mdash;a lady."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray why did you not make her come here instead of lugging me all
+the way down there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I could not make an appointment with a young lady in my
+bachelor's apartments."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all very fine. But I am there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you&mdash;but you are only an imaginary character, and she is a
+substantial reality."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I had better accompany you," said Lady Mabel.</p>
+
+<p>"I think not. If your ladyship will kindly occupy my fauteuil till I
+return, that chair will ever after be sacred to me. Come along, Poppy."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm game," said she.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the riverside Joseph saw that Miss Vincent was walking there
+in a listless manner, not straight, but swerving from side to side. She
+saw him, but did not quicken her pace, nor did her face light up with
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then," said he to Poppy, "what do you think of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She ain't bad," answered the fictitious character; "she is very pretty
+certainly, but inanimate."</p>
+
+<p>"You will change all that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try&mdash;you bet."</p>
+
+<p>Asphodel came up. She bowed, but did not extend her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Vincent," said Joseph. "How good of you to come."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I could not help. I have no free-will left. When you wrote
+Come&mdash;I came, I could do no other. I have no initiative, no power of
+resistance."</p>
+
+<p>"I do hope, Miss Vincent, that the thing you so feared has not
+happened."</p>
+
+<p>"What thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have not been snapped up by a fortune-hunter?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. People have not as yet found out that I have lost my individuality.
+I have kept very much to myself&mdash;that is to say, not to myself, as I
+have no proper myself left&mdash;I mean to the semblance of myself. People
+have thought I was anæmic."</p>
+
+<p>Leveridge turned aside: "Well, Poppy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are."</p>
+
+<p>Leveridge waved his hand. Instantly all the inertia passed away from the
+girl, she stood erect and firm. A merry twinkle kindled in her eye, a
+flush was on her cheek, and mischievous devilry played about her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel," said she, "as another person."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I am so glad, Miss Vincent."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a pretty speech to make to a lady! Glad I am different from
+what I was before."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not mean that&mdash;I meant&mdash;in fact, I meant that as you were and as
+you are you are always charming."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir!" said Asphodel, curtsying and laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Miss Vincent, at all times you have seemed to me the ideal of
+womanhood. I have worshipped the very ground you have trod upon."</p>
+
+<p>"Fiddlesticks."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her. For the moment he was bewildered, oblivious that the
+old personality of Asphodel had passed into his book and that the new
+personality of Poppy had invaded Asphodel.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said she, "is that all you have to say to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"All?&mdash;oh, no. I could say a great deal&mdash;I have ordered my supper for
+nine o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how obtuse you men are! Come&mdash;is this leap year?"</p>
+
+<p>"I really believe that it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall take the privilege of the year, and offer you my hand and
+heart and fortune&mdash;there! Now it only remains with you to name the day."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Miss Vincent, you overcome me."</p>
+
+<p>"Stuff and nonsense. Call me Asphodel, do Joe."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mr. Leveridge walked back to his lodgings as if he trod on air. As he
+passed by the churchyard, he noticed the vicar, now shaven and shorn,
+labouring at a laden wheelbarrow. He halted at the rails and said: "Why,
+vicar, what are you about?"</p>
+
+<p>"The sexton has begun a grave for old Betty Goodman, and it is
+unfinished. He must dig another." He turned over the wheelbarrow and
+shot its contents into the grave.</p>
+
+<p>"But what are you doing?" again asked Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>"Burying the Mitre hymnals," replied the vicar.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck a quarter to nine.</p>
+
+<p>"I must hurry!" exclaimed Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching his lodgings he found Major Dolgelly Jones in his
+sitting-room, sitting on the edge of his table tossing up a tennis-ball.
+In the armchair, invisible to the major, reclined Lady Mabel.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry to be late," apologised Joseph. "How are you, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Below par. I have been so ever since you put me into your book. I have
+no appetite for golf. I can do nothing to pass the weary hours but toss
+up and down a tennis-ball."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope&mdash;&mdash;" began Joseph; and then a horror seized on him. He had no
+personality of his creation left but that of Lady Mabel. Would it be
+possible to translate that into the major?</p>
+
+<p>He remained silent, musing for a while, and then said hesitatingly to
+the lady: "Here, my lady, is the body you are to individualise."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is that of a man!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no other left."</p>
+
+<p>"It is hardly delicate."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no help for it." Then turning to the major, he said: "I am
+very sorry&mdash;it really is no fault of mine, but I have only a female
+personality to offer to you, and that elderly."</p>
+
+<p>"It is all one to me," replied the major, "catch"&mdash;he caught the ball.
+"Many of our generals are old women. I am agreeable. <i>Place aux dames.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"But," protested Lady Mabel, "you made me a member of a very ancient
+titled house that came over with the Conqueror."</p>
+
+<p>"The personality I offer you," said I to the major, "though female is
+noble; the family is named in the roll of Battle Abbey."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Dolgelly Jones, "I descend from one of the royal families of
+Powys, lineally from Caswallon Llanhir and Maelgwn Gwynedd, long before
+the Conqueror was thought of."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," said Leveridge, and waved his hand.</p>
+
+<p>In Swanton it is known that the major now never plays golf; he keeps
+rabbits.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It is with some scruple that I insert this record in the <i>Book of
+Ghosts</i>, for actually it is not a story of ghosts. But a greater scruple
+moved me as to whether I should be justified in revealing a
+professional secret, known only among such as belong to the
+Confraternity of Writers of Fiction. But I have observed so much
+perplexity arise, so much friction caused, by persons suddenly breaking
+out into a course of conduct, or into actions, so entirely inconsistent
+with their former conduct as to stagger their acquaintances and friends.
+Henceforth, to use a vulgarism, since I have let the cat out of the bag,
+they will know that such persons have been used up by novel writers that
+have known them, and who have replaced the stolen individualities with
+others freshly created. This is the explanation, and the explanation has
+up to the present remained a professional secret.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="H_P" id="H_P"></a>H. P.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The river Vézère leaps to life among the granite of the Limousin, forms
+a fine cascade, the Saut de la Virolle, then after a rapid descent over
+mica-schist, it passes into the region of red sandstone at Brive, and
+swelled with affluents it suddenly penetrates a chalk district, where it
+has scooped out for itself a valley between precipices some two to three
+hundred feet high.</p>
+
+<p>These precipices are not perpendicular, but overhang, because the upper
+crust is harder than the stone it caps; and atmospheric influences, rain
+and frost, have gnawed into the chalk below, so that the cliffs hang
+forward as penthouse roofs, forming shelters beneath them. And these
+shelters have been utilised by man from the period when the first
+occupants of the district arrived at a vastly remote period, almost
+uninterruptedly to the present day. When peasants live beneath these
+roofs of nature's providing, they simply wall up the face and ends to
+form houses of the cheapest description of construction, with the earth
+as the floor, and one wall and the roof of living rock, into which they
+burrow to form cupboards, bedplaces, and cellars.</p>
+
+<p>The refuse of all ages is superposed, like the leaves of a book, one
+stratum above another in orderly succession. If we shear down through
+these beds, we can read the history of the land, so far as its
+manufacture goes, beginning at the present day and going down, down to
+the times of primeval man. Now, after every meal, the peasant casts down
+the bones he has picked, he does not stoop to collect and cast forth
+the sherds of a broken pot, and if a sou falls and rolls away, in the
+dust of these gloomy habitations it gets trampled into the soil, to form
+another token of the period of occupation.</p>
+
+<p>When the first man settled here the climatic conditions were different.
+The mammoth or woolly elephant, the hyæna, the cave bear, and the
+reindeer ranged the land. Then naked savages, using only flint tools,
+crouched under these rocks. They knew nothing of metals and of pottery.
+They hunted and ate the horse; they had no dogs, no oxen, no sheep.
+Glaciers covered the centre of France, and reached down the Vézère
+valley as far as to Brive.</p>
+
+<p>These people passed away, whither we know not. The reindeer retreated to
+the north, the hyæna to Africa, which was then united to Europe. The
+mammoth became extinct altogether.</p>
+
+<p>After long ages another people, in a higher condition of culture, but
+who also used flint tools and weapons, appeared on the scene, and took
+possession of the abandoned rock shelters. They fashioned their
+implements in a different manner by flaking the flint in place of
+chipping it. They understood the art of the potter. They grew flax and
+wove linen. They had domestic animals, and the dog had become the friend
+of man. And their flint weapons they succeeded in bringing to a high
+polish by incredible labour and perseverance.</p>
+
+<p>Then came in the Age of Bronze, introduced from abroad, probably from
+the East, as its great depôt was in the basin of the Po. Next arrived
+the Gauls, armed with weapons of iron. They were subjugated by the
+Romans, and Roman Gaul in turn became a prey to the Goth and the Frank.
+History has begun and is in full swing.</p>
+
+<p>The mediæval period succeeded, and finally the modern age, and man now
+lives on top of the accumulation of all preceding epochs of men and
+stages of civilisation. In no other part of France, indeed of Europe, is
+the story of man told so plainly, that he who runs may read; and ever
+since the middle of last century, when this fact was recognised, the
+district has been studied, and explorations have been made there, some
+slovenly, others scientifically.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago I was induced to visit this remarkable region and to
+examine it attentively. I had been furnished with letters of
+recommendation from the authorities of the great Museum of National
+Antiquities at St. Germain, to enable me to prosecute my researches
+unmolested by over-suspicious gendarmes and ignorant mayors.</p>
+
+<p>Under one over-hanging rock was a cabaret or tavern, announcing that
+wine was sold there, by a withered bush above the door.</p>
+
+<p>The place seemed to me to be a probable spot for my exploration. I
+entered into an arrangement with the proprietor to enable me to dig, he
+stipulating that I should not undermine and throw down his walls. I
+engaged six labourers, and began proceedings by driving a tunnel some
+little way below the tavern into the vast bed of débris.</p>
+
+<p>The upper series of deposits did not concern me much. The point I
+desired to investigate, and if possible to determine, was the
+approximate length of time that had elapsed between the disappearance of
+the reindeer hunters and the coming on the scene of the next race, that
+which used polished stone implements and had domestic animals.</p>
+
+<p>Although it may seem at first sight as if both races had been savage, as
+both lived in the Stone Age, yet an enormous stride forward had been
+taken when men had learned the arts of weaving, of pottery, and had
+tamed the dog, the horse, and the cow. These new folk had passed out of
+the mere wild condition of the hunter, and had become pastoral and to
+some extent agricultural.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the data for determining the length of a period might be few,
+but I could judge whether a very long or a very brief period had elapsed
+between the two occupations by the depth of débris&mdash;chalk fallen from
+the roof, brought down by frost, in which were no traces of human
+workmanship.</p>
+
+<p>It was with this distinct object in view that I drove my adit into the
+slope of rubbish some way below the cabaret, and I chanced to have hit
+on the level of the deposits of the men of bronze. Not that we found
+much bronze&mdash;all we secured was a broken pin&mdash;but we came on fragments
+of pottery marked with the chevron and nail and twisted thong ornament
+peculiar to that people and age.</p>
+
+<p>My men were engaged for about a week before we reached the face of the
+chalk cliff. We found the work not so easy as I had anticipated. Masses
+of rock had become detached from above and had fallen, so that we had
+either to quarry through them or to circumvent them. The soil was of
+that curious coffee colour so inseparable from the chalk formation. We
+found many things brought down from above, a coin commemorative of the
+storming of the Bastille, and some small pieces of the later Roman
+emperors. But all of these were, of course, not in the solid ground
+below, but near the surface.</p>
+
+<p>When we had reached the face of the cliff, instead of sinking a shaft I
+determined on carrying a gallery down an incline, keeping the rock as a
+wall on my right, till I reached the bottom of all.</p>
+
+<p>The advantage of making an incline was that there was no hauling up of
+the earth by a bucket let down over a pulley, and it was easier for
+myself to descend.</p>
+
+<p>I had not made my tunnel wide enough, and it was tortuous. When I began
+to sink, I set two of the men to smash up the masses of fallen chalk
+rock, so as to widen the tunnel, so that I might use barrows. I gave
+strict orders that all the material brought up was to be picked over by
+two of the most intelligent of the men, outside in the blaze of the sun.
+I was not desirous of sinking too expeditiously; I wished to proceed
+slowly, cautiously, observing every stage as we went deeper.</p>
+
+<p>We got below the layer in which were the relics of the Bronze Age and of
+the men of polished stone, and then we passed through many feet of earth
+that rendered nothing, and finally came on the traces of the reindeer
+period.</p>
+
+<p>To understand how that there should be a considerable depth of the
+débris of the men of the rude stone implements, it must be explained
+that these men made their hearths on the bare ground, and feasted around
+their fires, throwing about them the bones they had picked, and the
+ashes, and broken and disused implements, till the ground was
+inconveniently encumbered. Then they swept all the refuse together over
+their old hearth, and established another on top. So the process went on
+from generation to generation.</p>
+
+<p>For the scientific results of my exploration I must refer the reader to
+the journals and memoirs of learned societies. I will not trouble him
+with them here.</p>
+
+<p>On the ninth day after we had come to the face of the cliff, and when we
+had reached a considerable depth, we uncovered some human bones. I
+immediately adopted special precautions, so that these should not be
+disturbed. With the utmost care the soil was removed from over them, and
+it took us half a day to completely clear a perfect skeleton. It was
+that of a full-grown man, lying on his back, with the skull supported
+against the wall of chalk rock. He did not seem to have been buried. Had
+he been so, he would doubtless have been laid on his side in a
+contracted posture, with the chin resting on the knees.</p>
+
+<p>One of the men pointed out to me that a mass of fallen rock lay beyond
+his feet, and had apparently shut him in, so that he had died through
+suffocation, buried under the earth that the rock had brought down with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I at once despatched a man to my hotel to fetch my camera, that I might
+by flashlight take a photograph of the skeleton as it lay; and another I
+sent to get from the chemist and grocer as much gum arabic and
+isinglass as could be procured. My object was to give to the bones a
+bath of gum to render them less brittle when removed, restoring to them
+the gelatine that had been absorbed by the earth and lime in which they
+lay.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I was left alone at the bottom of my passage, the four men above
+being engaged in straightening the adit and sifting the earth.</p>
+
+<p>I was quite content to be alone, so that I might at my ease search for
+traces of personal ornament worn by the man who had thus met his death.
+The place was somewhat cramped, and there really was not room in it for
+more than one person to work freely.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst I was thus engaged, I suddenly heard a shout, followed by a
+crash, and, to my dismay, an avalanche of rubble shot down the inclined
+passage of descent. I at once left the skeleton, and hastened to effect
+my exit, but found that this was impossible. Much of the superincumbent
+earth and stone had fallen, dislodged by the vibrations caused by the
+picks of the men smashing up the chalk blocks, and the passage was
+completely choked. I was sealed up in the hollow where I was, and
+thankful that the earth above me had not fallen as well, and buried me,
+a man of the present enlightened age, along with the primeval savage of
+eight thousand years ago.</p>
+
+<p>A large amount of matter must have fallen, for I could not hear the
+voices of the men.</p>
+
+<p>I was not seriously alarmed. The workmen would procure assistance and
+labour indefatigably to release me; of that I could be certain. But how
+much earth had fallen? How much of the passage was choked, and how long
+would they take before I was released? All that was uncertain. I had a
+candle, or, rather, a bit of one, and it was not probable that it would
+last till the passage was cleared. What made me most anxious was the
+question whether the supply of air in the hollow in which I was enclosed
+would suffice.</p>
+
+<p>My enthusiasm for prehistoric research failed me just then. All my
+interests were concentrated on the present, and I gave up groping about
+the skeleton for relics. I seated myself on a stone, set the candle in a
+socket of chalk I had scooped out with my pocket-knife, and awaited
+events with my eyes on the skeleton.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed somewhat wearily. I could hear an occasional thud, thud,
+when the men were using the pick; but they mostly employed the shovel,
+as I supposed. I set my elbows on my knees and rested my chin in my
+hands. The air was not cold, nor was the soil damp; it was dry as snuff.
+The flicker of my light played over the man of bones, and especially
+illumined the skull. It may have been fancy on my part, it probably was
+fancy, but it seemed to me as though something sparkled in the
+eye-sockets. Drops of water possibly lodged there, or crystals formed
+within the skull; but the effect was much as of eyes leering and winking
+at me. I lighted my pipe, and to my disgust found that my supply of
+matches was running short. In France the manufacture belongs to the
+state, and one gets but sixty <i>allumettes</i> for a penny.</p>
+
+<p>I had not brought my watch with me below ground, fearing lest it might
+meet with an accident; consequently I was unable to reckon how time
+passed. I began counting and ticking off the minutes on my fingers, but
+soon tired of doing this.</p>
+
+<p>My candle was getting short; it would not last much longer, and then I
+should be in the dark. I consoled myself with the thought that with the
+extinction of the light the consumption of the oxygen in the air would
+be less rapid. My eyes now rested on the flame of the candle, and I
+watched the gradual diminution of the composite. It was one of those
+abominable <i>bougies</i> with holes in them to economise the wax, and which
+consequently had less than the proper amount of material for feeding and
+maintaining a flame. At length the light went out, and I was left in
+total darkness. I might have used up the rest of my matches, one after
+another, but to what good?&mdash;they would prolong the period of
+illumination for but a very little while.</p>
+
+<p>A sense of numbness stole over me, but I was not as yet sensible of
+deficiency of air to breathe. I found that the stone on which I was
+seated was pointed and hard, but I did not like to shift my position for
+fear of getting among and disturbing the bones, and I was still desirous
+of having them photographed <i>in situ</i> before they were moved.</p>
+
+<p>I was not alarmed at my situation; I knew that I must be released
+eventually. But the tedium of sitting there in the dark and on a pointed
+stone was becoming intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>Some time must have elapsed before I became, dimly at first, and then
+distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from the
+skeletion. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which
+gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and I saw
+before me the misty, luminous form of a naked man, with wolfish
+countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at me out of eyes deeply sunk
+under projecting brows. Although I thus describe what I saw, yet it gave
+me no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate.
+Indeed, I cannot say at this moment whether I actually saw this
+apparition with my eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the
+brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the walls of the cave; if I
+raised my hand it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to
+me. Then I heard: "I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and
+toes, and rip you with my teeth."</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done to injure and incense you?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>And here I must explain. No word was uttered by either of us; no word
+could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs,
+nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of
+a man. It was a spook, not a human being. But from it proceeded
+thought-waves, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of my mind or
+soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in like manner I
+thought my replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner.
+If vocal words had passed between us neither would have been
+intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be
+compiled, of the tongue of prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the
+speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to man now. But
+thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not
+think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our
+thoughts to other men that we shape them into words and express them
+vocally in structural, grammatical sentences. The beasts have never
+attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by
+language, but by thought vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>I must further remark that when I give what ensued as a conversation, I
+have to render the thought intercommunication that passed between the
+Homo Præhistoricus&mdash;the prehistoric man&mdash;and me, in English as best I
+can render it. I knew as we conversed that I was not speaking to him in
+English, nor in French, nor Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover,
+when I use the words "said" or "spoke," I mean no more than that the
+impression was formed on my brain-pan or the receptive drum of my soul,
+was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. When,
+however, I express the words "screamed" or "shrieked," I signify that
+those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when I say "laughed," that
+they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the
+sound of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about
+this cave!" shrieked the Homo Præhistoricus, or primeval man.</p>
+
+<p>Again I remonstrated, and inquired how I had incensed him. But yelling
+with rage, he threw himself upon me. In a moment I was enveloped in a
+luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about me,
+but I received no injury whatever, only my spiritual nature was
+subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the
+spook disengaged itself from me, and drew back to where it was before,
+screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering
+savagely. It rapidly cooled down.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you wish me ill?" I asked again.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot
+injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can
+lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent
+resentment?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you are a son of the twentieth century, and I lived eight
+thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why do you
+enjoy comforts, a civilisation that we knew nothing of? It is not just.
+It is cruel on us. We had nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even
+lucifer matches!"</p>
+
+<p>Again he fell to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by
+failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these
+things&mdash;we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole
+of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and iron-stone,
+and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our
+knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we had nothing, nothing&mdash;no
+lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery,
+no metal, no education, no elections, no <i>chocolat menier</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried
+under fifty feet of soil for eight thousand years?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always
+remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth heaped
+over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the tavern
+overhead. I have seen men drink there. I have seen a bottle of
+Benedictine. I have applied my psychical lips to it, but I could taste,
+absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the
+patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious,
+marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of
+miraculous. What do you think of doing with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum
+arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum."</p>
+
+<p>He screamed as though with pain, and gasped: "Don't! don't do it. It
+will be torture insufferable."</p>
+
+<p>"But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany
+box."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't! You cannot understand what it will be to me&mdash;a spirit more or
+less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with
+fibulæ, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel
+very far from our bones&mdash;our range is limited. And conceive of my
+feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing
+prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone.
+Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into the
+tavern, and can see men get drunk, and hear commercial travellers
+hoodwink the patron, and then when the taverner finds he has been
+induced to buy what he did not want, I can see him beat his wife and
+smack his children. There is something human, humorous, in that, but
+fibulæ, palstaves, torques&mdash;bah!"</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to have a lively knowledge of antiquities," I observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I have. There come archæologists here and eat their
+sandwiches above me, and talk prehistoric antiquities till I am sick.
+Give me life! Give me something interesting!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what do you mean when you say that you cannot travel far from your
+bones?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that there is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our
+psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web.
+Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you
+break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So
+it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous
+spiritual matter that unites us to our earthly husk. It is liable to
+accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a
+blackbeetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have
+never been to the other side of the river, I have feared to do so,
+though very anxious to look at that creature like a large black
+caterpillar called the Train."</p>
+
+<p>"This is news to me. Do you know of any cases of rupture of connection?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he replied. "My old father, after he was dead some years, got his
+link of attachment broken, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could
+not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of
+seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her
+spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken,
+and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body,
+lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took
+possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became
+chummy. In the world of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up
+spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but
+never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a
+female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken
+up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which sex
+each was. You see they had no education. But I know that my father's
+soul became quite sportive in that young woman's skeleton."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they continue chummy?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; they quarrelled as to which was which, and they are not now on
+speaking terms. I have two great-uncles. Theirs is a sad tale. Their
+souls were out wandering one day, and inadvertently they crossed and
+recrossed each other's tracks so that their spiritual threads of
+attachment got twisted. They found this out, and that they were getting
+tangled up. What one of them should have done would have been to have
+stood still and let the other jump over and dive under his brother's
+thread till he had cleared himself. But my maternal great-uncles&mdash;I
+think I forgot to say they were related to me through my mother&mdash;they
+were men of peppery tempers and they could not understand this. They had
+no education. So they jumped one this way and one another, each abusing
+the other, and made the tangle more complete. That was about six
+thousand years ago, and they are now so knotted up that I do not suppose
+they will be clear of one another till time is no more."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Then I said: "It must have been very hard for you to be without pottery
+of any sort."</p>
+
+<p>"It was," replied H. P. (this stands for Homo Præhistoricus, not for
+House-Parlourmaid or Hardy Perennial), "very hard. We had skins for
+water and milk&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you had milk. I supposed you had no cows."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor had we, but the reindeer were beginning to get docile and be tamed.
+If we caught young deer we brought them up to be pets for our children.
+And so it came about that as they grew up we found out that we could
+milk them into skins. But that gave it a smack, and whenever we desired
+a fresh draught there was nothing for it but to lie flat on the ground
+under a doe reindeer and suck for all we were worth. It was hard. Horses
+were hunted. It did not occur to us that they could be tamed and saddled
+and mounted. Oh! it was not right. It was not fair that you should have
+everything and we nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing! Why should you have all and
+we have had naught?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I belong to the twentieth century. Thirty-three generations go
+to a thousand years. There are some two hundred and sixty-four or two
+hundred and seventy generations intervening between you and me. Each
+generation makes some discovery that advances civilisation a stage, the
+next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so
+culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive, the
+brute beast is not."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," he replied. "I invented butter, which was unknown to my
+ancestors, the unbuttered man."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was so," he said, and I saw a flush of light ripple over the
+emanation. I suppose it was a glow of self-satisfaction. "It came about
+thus. One of my wives had nearly let the fire out. I was very angry, and
+catching up one of the skins of milk, I banged her about the head with
+it till she fell insensible to the earth. The other wives were very
+pleased and applauded. When I came to take a drink, for my exertions had
+heated me, I found that the milk was curdled into butter. At first I did
+not know what it was, so I made one of my other wives taste it, and as
+she pronounced it to be good, I ate the rest myself. That was how butter
+was invented. For four hundred years that was the way it was made, by
+banging a milk-skin about the head of a woman till she was knocked down
+insensible. But at last a woman found out that by churning the milk with
+her hand butter could be made equally well, and then the former process
+was discontinued except by some men who clung to ancestral customs."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said I, "nowadays you would not be suffered to knock your wife
+about, even with a milk-skin."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it is barbarous. You would be sent to gaol."</p>
+
+<p>"But she was my wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless it would not be tolerated. The law steps in and protects
+women from ill-usage."</p>
+
+<p>"How shameful! Not allowed to do what you like with your own wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Most assuredly not. Then you remarked that this was how you dealt with
+one of your wives. How many did you possess?"</p>
+
+<p>"Off and on, seventeen."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i>, no man is suffered to have more than one."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;one at a time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well. Then if you had an old and ugly wife, or one who was a scold,
+you could kill her and get another, young and pretty."</p>
+
+<p>"That would not be allowed."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even if she were a scold?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently
+he said: "There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop
+overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill
+one another."</p>
+
+<p>"No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off&mdash;here in
+France&mdash;unless extenuating circumstances were found. With us in England
+he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;what is your sport?"</p>
+
+<p>"We hunt the fox."</p>
+
+<p>"The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I
+made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting
+is business with us&mdash;or was so&mdash;not sport."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless with us it is our great sport."</p>
+
+<p>"Business is business and sport is sport," he said. "Now, we hunted as
+business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport."</p>
+
+<p>"We are not suffered to kill one another."</p>
+
+<p>"But take the case," said he, "that a man has a nose-ring, or a pretty
+wife, and you want one or the other. Surely you might kill him and
+possess yourself of what you so ardently covet?"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means. Now, to change the topic," I went on, "you are totally
+destitute of clothing. You do not even wear the traditional garment of
+fig leaves."</p>
+
+<p>"What avail fig leaves? There is no warmth in them."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not&mdash;but out of delicacy."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that? I don't understand." There was clearly no corresponding
+sensation in the vibrating tympanum of his psychic nature.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you never wear clothes?" I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, when it was cold we wore skins, skins of the beasts we
+killed. But in summer what is the use of clothing? Besides, we only wore
+them out of doors. When we entered our homes, made of skins hitched up
+to the rock overhead, we threw them off. It was hot within, and we
+perspired freely."</p>
+
+<p>"What, were naked in your homes! you and your wives?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we were. Why not? It was very warm within with the fire
+always kept up."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;good gracious me!" I exclaimed, "that would never be tolerated
+nowadays. If you attempted to go about the country unclothed, even get
+out of your clothes freely at home, you would be sent to a lunatic
+asylum and kept there."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" He again lapsed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he exclaimed: "After all, I think that we were better off as
+we were eight thousand years ago, even without your matches,
+Benedictine, education, <i>chocolat menier</i>, and commercials, for then we
+were able to enjoy real sport&mdash;we could kill one another, we could knock
+old wives on the head, we could have a dozen or more squaws according to
+our circumstances, young and pretty, and we could career about the
+country or sit and enjoy a social chat at home, stark naked. We were
+best off as we were. There are compensations in life at every period of
+man. Vive la liberté!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment I heard a shout&mdash;saw a flash of light. The workmen had
+pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. I staggered to my
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! mon Dieu! Monsieur vit encore!"</p>
+
+<p>I felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped me. I was dragged forth. Brandy was
+poured down my throat. When I came to myself I gasped: "Fill in the
+hole! Fill it all up. Let H. P. lie where he is. He shall not go to the
+British Museum. I have had enough of prehistoric antiquities. Adieu,
+pour toujours la Vézère."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GLAMR" id="GLAMR"></a>GLÁMR</h2>
+
+<blockquote><p>The following story is found in the Gretla, an Icelandic Saga,
+composed in the thirteenth century, or that comes to us in the
+form then given to it; but it is a redaction of a Saga of much
+earlier date. Most of it is thoroughly historical, and its
+statements are corroborated by other Sagas. The following
+incident was introduced to account for the fact that the outlaw
+Grettir would run any risk rather than spend the long winter
+nights alone in the dark.</p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>At the beginning of the eleventh century there stood, a little way up
+the Valley of Shadows in the north of Iceland, a small farm, occupied by
+a worthy bonder, named Thorhall, and his wife. The farmer was not
+exactly a chieftain, but he was well enough connected to be considered
+respectable; to back up his gentility he possessed numerous flocks of
+sheep and a goodly drove of oxen. Thorhall would have been a happy man
+but for one circumstance&mdash;his sheepwalks were haunted.</p>
+
+<p>Not a herdsman would remain with him; he bribed, he threatened,
+entreated, all to no purpose; one shepherd after another left his
+service, and things came to such a pass that he determined on asking
+advice at the next annual council. Thorhall saddled his horses, adjusted
+his packs, provided himself with hobbles, cracked his long Icelandic
+whip, and cantered along the road, and in due time reached Thingvellir.</p>
+
+<p>Skapti Thorodd's son was lawgiver at that time, and as everyone
+considered him a man of the utmost prudence and able to give the best
+advice, our friend from the Vale of Shadows made straight for his
+booth.</p>
+
+<p>"An awkward predicament, certainly&mdash;to have large droves of sheep and no
+one to look after them," said Skapti, nibbling the nail of his thumb,
+and shaking his wise head&mdash;a head as stuffed with law as a ptarmigan's
+crop is stuffed with blaeberries. "Now I'll tell you what&mdash;as you have
+asked my advice, I will help you to a shepherd; a character in his way,
+a man of dull intellect, to be sure but strong as a bull."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not care about his wits so long as he can look after sheep,"
+answered Thorhall.</p>
+
+<p>"You may rely on his being able to do that," said Skapti. "He is a
+stout, plucky fellow; a Swede from Sylgsdale, if you know where that
+is."</p>
+
+<p>Towards the break-up of the council&mdash;"Thing" they call it in
+Iceland&mdash;two greyish-white horses belonging to Thorhall slipped their
+hobbles and strayed; so the good man had to hunt after them himself,
+which shows how short of servants he was. He crossed Sletha-asi, thence
+he bent his way to Armann's-fell, and just by the Priest's Wood he met a
+strange-looking man driving before him a horse laden with faggots. The
+fellow was tall and stalwart; his face involuntarily attracted
+Thorhall's attention, for the eyes, of an ashen grey, were large and
+staring, the powerful jaw was furnished with very white protruding
+teeth, and around the low forehead hung bunches of coarse wolf-grey
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, what is your name, my man?" asked the farmer pulling up.</p>
+
+<p>"Glámr, an please you," replied the wood-cutter.</p>
+
+<p>Thorhall stared; then, with a preliminary cough, he asked how Glámr
+liked faggot-picking.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much," was the answer; "I prefer shepherd life."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come with me?" asked Thorhall; "Skapti has handed you over to
+me, and I want a shepherd this winter uncommonly."</p>
+
+<p>"If I serve you, it is on the understanding that I come or go as it
+pleases me. I tell you I am a bit truculent if things do not go just to
+my thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not object to this," answered the bonder. "So I may count on
+your services?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a moment! You have not told me whether there be any drawback."</p>
+
+<p>"I must acknowledge that there is one," said Thorhall; "in fact, the
+sheepwalks have got a bad name for bogies."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw! I'm not the man to be scared at shadows," laughed Glámr; "so
+here's my hand to it; I'll be with you at the beginning of the winter
+night."</p>
+
+<p>Well, after this they parted, and presently the farmer found his ponies.
+Having thanked Skapti for his advice and assistance, he got his horses
+together and trotted home.</p>
+
+<p>Summer, and then autumn passed, but not a word about the new shepherd
+reached the Valley of Shadows. The winter storms began to bluster up the
+glen, driving the flying snow-flakes and massing the white drifts at
+every winding of the vale. Ice formed in the shallows of the river; and
+the streams, which in summer trickled down the ribbed scarps, were now
+transmuted into icicles.</p>
+
+<p>One gusty night a violent blow at the door startled all in the farm. In
+another moment Glámr, tall as a troll, stood in the hall glowering out
+of his wild eyes, his grey hair matted with frost, his teeth rattling
+and snapping with cold, his face blood-red in the glare of the fire
+which smouldered in the centre of the hall. Thorhall jumped up and
+greeted him warmly, but the housewife was too frightened to be very
+cordial.</p>
+
+<p>Weeks passed, and the new shepherd was daily on the moors with his
+flock; his loud and deep-toned voice was often borne down on the blast
+as he shouted to the sheep driving them into fold. His presence in the
+house always produced gloom, and if he spoke it sent a thrill through
+the women, who openly proclaimed their aversion for him.</p>
+
+<p>There was a church near the byre, but Glámr never crossed the threshold;
+he hated psalmody; apparently he was an indifferent Christian. On the
+vigil of the Nativity Glámr rose early and shouted for meat.</p>
+
+<p>"Meat!" exclaimed the housewife; "no man calling himself a Christian
+touches flesh to-day. To-morrow is the holy Christmas Day, and this is a
+fast."</p>
+
+<p>"All superstition!" roared Glámr. "As far as I can see, men are no
+better now than they were in the bonny heathen time. Bring me meat, and
+make no more ado about it."</p>
+
+<p>"You may be quite certain," protested the good wife, "if Church rule be
+not kept, ill-luck will follow."</p>
+
+<p>Glámr ground his teeth and clenched his hands. "Meat! I will have meat,
+or&mdash;&mdash;" In fear and trembling the poor woman obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>The day was raw and windy; masses of grey vapour rolled up from the
+Arctic Ocean, and hung in piles about the mountain-tops. Now and then a
+scud of frozen fog, composed of minute particles of ice, swept along the
+glen, covering bar and beam with feathery hoar-frost. As the day
+declined, snow began to fall in large flakes like the down of the
+eider-duck. One moment there was a lull in the wind, and then the
+deep-toned shout of Glámr, high up the moor slopes, was heard distinctly
+by the congregation assembling for the first vespers of Christmas Day.
+Darkness came on, deep as that in the rayless abysses of the caverns
+under the lava, and still the snow fell thicker. The lights from the
+church windows sent a yellow haze far out into the night, and every
+flake burned golden as it swept within the ray. The bell in the
+lych-gate clanged for evensong, and the wind puffed the sound far up the
+glen; perhaps it reached the herdsman's ear. Hark! Someone caught a
+distant sound or shriek, which it was he could not tell, for the wind
+muttered and mumbled about the church eaves, and then with a fierce
+whistle scudded over the graveyard fence. Glámr had not returned when
+the service was over. Thorhall suggested a search, but no man would
+accompany him; and no wonder! it was not a night for a dog to be out in;
+besides, the tracks were a foot deep in snow. The family sat up all
+night, waiting, listening, trembling; but no Glámr came home. Dawn broke
+at last, wan and blear in the south. The clouds hung down like great
+sheets, full of snow, almost to bursting.</p>
+
+<p>A party was soon formed to search for the missing man. A sharp scramble
+brought them to high land, and the ridge between the two rivers which
+join in Vatnsdalr was thoroughly examined. Here and there were found the
+scattered sheep, shuddering under an icicled rock, or half buried in a
+snow-drift. No trace yet of the keeper. A dead ewe lay at the bottom of
+a crag; it had staggered over in the gloom, and had been dashed to
+pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the whole party were called together about a trampled spot in
+the heath, where evidently a death-struggle had taken place, for earth
+and stone were tossed about, and the snow was blotched with large
+splashes of blood. A gory track led up the mountain, and the
+farm-servants were following it, when a cry, almost of agony, from one
+of the lads, made them turn. In looking behind a rock, the boy had come
+upon the corpse of the shepherd; it was livid and swollen to the size of
+a bullock. It lay on its back with the arms extended. The snow had been
+scrabbled up by the puffed hands in the death-agony, and the staring
+glassy eyes gazed out of the ashen-grey, upturned face into the vaporous
+canopy overhead. From the purple lips lolled the tongue, which in the
+last throes had been bitten through by the white fangs, and a
+discoloured stream which had flowed from it was now an icicle.</p>
+
+<p>With trouble the dead man was raised on a litter, and carried to a
+gill-edge, but beyond this he could not be borne; his weight waxed more
+and more, the bearers toiled beneath their burden, their foreheads
+became beaded with sweat; though strong men they were crushed to the
+ground. Consequently, the corpse was left at the ravine-head, and the
+men returned to the farm. Next day their efforts to lift Glámr's bloated
+carcass, and remove it to consecrated ground, were unavailing. On the
+third day a priest accompanied them, but the body was nowhere to be
+found. Another expedition without the priest was made, and on this
+occasion the corpse was discovered; so a cairn was raised over the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Two nights after this one of the thralls who had gone after the cows
+burst into the hall with a face blank and scared; he staggered to a seat
+and fainted. On recovering his senses, in a broken voice he assured all
+who crowded about him that he had seen Glámr walking past him as he left
+the door of the stable. On the following evening a houseboy was found in
+a fit under the farmyard wall, and he remained an idiot to his dying
+day. Some of the women next saw a face which, though blown out and
+discoloured, they recognised as that of Glámr, looking in upon them
+through a window of the dairy. In the twilight, Thorhall himself met the
+dead man, who stood and glowered at him, but made no attempt to injure
+his master. The haunting did not end there. Nightly a heavy tread was
+heard around the house, and a hand feeling along the walls, sometimes
+thrust in at the windows, at others clutching the woodwork, and breaking
+it to splinters. However, when the spring came round the disturbances
+lessened, and as the sun obtained full power, ceased altogether.</p>
+
+<p>That summer a vessel from Norway dropped anchor in the nearest bay.
+Thorhall visited it, and found on board a man named Thorgaut, who was in
+search of work.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say to being my shepherd?" asked the bonder.</p>
+
+<p>"I should very much like the office," answered Thorgaut. "I am as strong
+as two ordinary men, and a handy fellow to boot."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not engage you without forewarning you of the terrible things
+you may have to encounter during the winter night."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, what may they be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ghosts and hobgoblins," answered the farmer; "a fine dance they lead
+me, I can promise you."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear them not," answered Thorgaut; "I shall be with you at
+cattle-slaughtering time."</p>
+
+<p>At the appointed season the man came, and soon established himself as a
+favourite in the house; he romped with the children, chucked the maidens
+under the chin, helped his fellow-servants, gratified the housewife by
+admiring her curd, and was just as much liked as his predecessor had
+been detested. He was a devil-may-care fellow, too, and made no bones of
+his contempt for the ghost, expressing hopes of meeting him face to
+face, which made his master look grave, and his mistress shudderingly
+cross herself. As the winter came on, strange sights and sounds began to
+alarm the folk, but these never frightened Thorgaut; he slept too
+soundly at night to hear the tread of feet about the door, and was too
+short-sighted to catch glimpses of a grizzly monster striding up and
+down, in the twilight, before its cairn.</p>
+
+<p>At last Christmas Eve came round, and Thorgaut went out as usual with
+his sheep.</p>
+
+<p>"Have a care, man," urged the bonder; "go not near to the gill-head,
+where Glámr lies."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut! fear not for me. I shall be back by vespers."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant it," sighed the housewife; "but 'tis not a day for risks, to
+be sure."</p>
+
+<p>Twilight came on: a feeble light hung over the south, one white streak
+above the heath land to the south. Far off in southern lands it was
+still day, but here the darkness gathered in apace, and men came from
+Vatnsdalr for evensong, to herald in the night when Christ was born.
+Christmas Eve! How different in Saxon England! There the great ashen
+faggot is rolled along the hall with torch and taper; the mummers dance
+with their merry jingling bells; the boar's head, with gilded tusks,
+"bedecked with holly and rosemary," is brought in by the steward to a
+flourish of trumpets.</p>
+
+<p>How different, too, where the Varanger cluster round the imperial throne
+in the mighty church of the Eternal Wisdom at this very hour. Outside,
+the air is soft from breathing over the Bosphorus, which flashes
+tremulously beneath the stars. The orange and laurel leaves in the
+palace gardens are still exhaling fragrance in the hush of the Christmas
+night.</p>
+
+<p>But it is different here. The wind is piercing as a two-edged sword;
+blocks of ice crash and grind along the coast, and the lake waters are
+congealed to stone. Aloft, the Aurora flames crimson, flinging long
+streamers to the zenith, and then suddenly dissolving into a sea of pale
+green light. The natives are waiting round the church-door, but no
+Thorgaut has returned.</p>
+
+<p>They find him next morning, lying across Glámr's cairn, with his spine,
+his leg, and arm-bones shattered. He is conveyed to the churchyard, and
+a cross is set up at his head. He sleeps peacefully. Not so Glámr; he
+becomes more furious than ever. No one will remain with Thorhall now,
+except an old cowherd who has always served the family, and who had long
+ago dandled his present master on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"All the cattle will be lost if I leave," said the carle; "it shall
+never be told of me that I deserted Thorhall from fear of a spectre."</p>
+
+<p>Matters grew rapidly worse. Outbuildings were broken into of a night,
+and their woodwork was rent and shattered; the house door was violently
+shaken, and great pieces of it were torn away; the gables of the house
+were also pulled furiously to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>One morning before dawn, the old man went to the stable. An hour later,
+his mistress arose, and taking her milking pails, followed him. As she
+reached the door of the stable, a terrible sound from within&mdash;the
+bellowing of the cattle, mingled with the deep notes of an unearthly
+voice&mdash;sent her back shrieking to the house. Thorhall leaped out of bed,
+caught up a weapon, and hastened to the cow-house. On opening the door,
+he found the cattle goring each other. Slung across the stone that
+separated the stalls was something. Thorhall stepped up to it, felt it,
+looked close; it was the cowherd, perfectly dead, his feet on one side
+of the slab, his head on the other, and his spine snapped in twain. The
+bonder now moved with his family to Tunga, another farm owned by him
+lower down the valley; it was too venturesome living during the
+mid-winter night at the haunted farm; and it was not till the sun had
+returned as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and had dispelled night
+with its phantoms, that he went back to the Vale of Shadows. In the
+meantime, his little girl's health had given way under the repeated
+alarms of the winter; she became paler every day; with the autumn
+flowers she faded, and was laid beneath the mould of the churchyard in
+time for the first snows to spread a virgin pall over her small grave.</p>
+
+<p>At this time Grettir&mdash;a hero of great fame, and a native of the north of
+the island&mdash;was in Iceland, and as the hauntings of this vale were
+matters of gossip throughout the district, he inquired about them, and
+resolved on visiting the scene. So Grettir busked himself for a cold
+ride, mounted his horse, and in due course of time drew rein at the door
+of Thorhall's farm with the request that he might be accommodated there
+for the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahem!" coughed the bonder; "perhaps you are not aware&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I am perfectly aware of all. I want to catch sight of the troll."</p>
+
+<p>"But your horse is sure to be killed."</p>
+
+<p>"I will risk it. Glámr I must meet, so there's an end of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am delighted to see you," spoke the bonder; "at the same time, should
+mischief befall you, don't lay the blame at my door."</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear, man."</p>
+
+<p>So they shook hands; the horse was put into the strongest stable,
+Thorhall made Grettir as good cheer as he was able, and then, as the
+visitor was sleepy, all retired to rest.</p>
+
+<p>The night passed quietly, and no sounds indicated the presence of a
+restless spirit. The horse, moreover, was found next morning in good
+condition, enjoying his hay.</p>
+
+<p>"This is unexpected!" exclaimed the bonder, gleefully. "Now, where's the
+saddle? We'll clap it on, and then good-bye, and a merry journey to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye!" echoed Grettir; "I am going to stay here another night."</p>
+
+<p>"You had best be advised," urged Thorhall; "if misfortune should
+overtake you, I know that all your kinsmen would visit it on my head."</p>
+
+<p>"I have made up my mind to stay," said Grettir, and he looked so dogged
+that Thorhall opposed him no more.</p>
+
+<p>All was quiet next night; not a sound roused Grettir from his slumber.
+Next morning he went with the farmer to the stable. The strong wooden
+door was shivered and driven in. They stepped across it; Grettir called
+to his horse, but there was no responsive whinny.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid&mdash;&mdash;" began Thorhall. Grettir leaped in, and found the poor
+brute dead, and with its neck broken.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Thorhall quickly, "I've got a capital horse&mdash;a
+skewbald&mdash;down by Tunga, I shall not be many hours in fetching it; your
+saddle is here, I think, and then you will just have time to reach&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I stay here another night," interrupted Grettir.</p>
+
+<p>"I implore you to depart," said Thorhall.</p>
+
+<p>"My horse is slain!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I will provide you with another."</p>
+
+<p>"Friend," answered Grettir, turning so sharply round that the farmer
+jumped back, half frightened, "no man ever did me an injury without
+rueing it. Now, your demon herdsman has been the death of my horse. He
+must be taught a lesson."</p>
+
+<p>"Would that he were!" groaned Thorhall; "but mortal must not face him.
+Go in peace and receive compensation from me for what has happened."</p>
+
+<p>"I must revenge my horse."</p>
+
+<p>"An obstinate man will have his own way! But if you run your head
+against a stone wall, don't be angry because you get a broken pate."</p>
+
+<p>Night came on; Grettir ate a hearty supper and was right jovial; not so
+Thorhall, who had his misgivings. At bedtime the latter crept into his
+crib, which, in the manner of old Icelandic beds, opened out of the
+hall, as berths do out of a cabin. Grettir, however, determined on
+remaining up; so he flung himself on a bench with his feet against the
+posts of the high seat, and his back against Thorhall's crib; then he
+wrapped one lappet of his fur coat round his feet, the other about his
+head, keeping the neck-opening in front of his face, so that he could
+look through into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>There was a fire burning on the hearth, a smouldering heap of red
+embers; every now and then a twig flared up and crackled, giving Grettir
+glimpses of the rafters, as he lay with his eyes wandering among the
+mysteries of the smoke-blackened roof. The wind whistled softly
+overhead. The clerestory windows, covered with the amnion of sheep,
+admitted now and then a sickly yellow glare from the full moon, which,
+however, shot a beam of pure silver through the smoke-hole in the roof.
+A dog without began to howl; the cat, which had long been sitting
+demurely watching the fire, stood up with raised back and bristling
+tail, then darted behind some chests in a corner. The hall door was in a
+sad plight. It had been so riven by the spectre that it was made firm
+by wattles only, and the moon glinted athwart the crevices. Soothingly
+the river, not yet frozen over, prattled over its shingly bed as it
+swept round the knoll on which stood the farm. Grettir heard the
+breathing of the sleeping women in the adjoining chamber, and the sigh
+of the housewife as she turned in her bed.</p>
+
+<p>Click! click!&mdash;It is only the frozen turf on the roof cracking with the
+cold. The wind lulls completely. The night is very still without. Hark!
+a heavy tread, beneath which the snow yields. Every footfall goes
+straight to Grettir's heart. A crash on the turf overhead! By all the
+saints in paradise! The monster is treading on the roof. For one moment
+the chimney-gap is completely darkened: Glámr is looking down it; the
+flash of the red ash is reflected in the two lustreless eyes. Then the
+moon glances sweetly in once more, and the heavy tramp of Glámr is
+audibly moving towards the farther end of the hall. A thud&mdash;he has
+leaped down. Grettir feels the board at his back quivering, for Thorhall
+is awake and is trembling in his bed. The steps pass round to the back
+of the house, and then the snapping of the wood shows that the creature
+is destroying some of the outhouse doors. He tires of this apparently,
+for his footfall comes clear towards the main entrance to the hall. The
+moon is veiled behind a watery cloud, and by the uncertain glimmer
+Grettir fancies that he sees two dark hands thrust in above the door.
+His apprehensions are verified, for, with a loud snap, a long strip of
+panel breaks, and light is admitted. Snap&mdash;snap! another portion gives
+way, and the gap becomes larger. Then the wattles slip from their
+places, and a dark arm rips them out in bunches, and flings them away.
+There is a cross-beam to the door, holding a bolt which slides into a
+stone groove. Against the grey light, Grettir sees a huge black figure
+heaving itself over the bar. Crack! that has given way, and the rest of
+the door falls in shivers to the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, heavens above!" exclaims the bonder.</p>
+
+<p>Stealthily the dead man creeps on, feeling at the beams as he comes;
+then he stands in the hall, with the firelight on him. A fearful sight;
+the tall figure distended with the corruption of the grave, the nose
+fallen off, the wandering, vacant eyes, with the glaze of death on them,
+the sallow flesh patched with green masses of decay; the wolf-grey hair
+and beard have grown in the tomb, and hang matted about the shoulders
+and breast; the nails, too, they have grown. It is a sickening sight&mdash;a
+thing to shudder at, not to see.</p>
+
+<p>Motionless, with no nerve quivering now, Thorhall and Grettir held their
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>Glámr's lifeless glance strayed round the chamber; it rested on the
+shaggy bundle by the high seat. Cautiously he stepped towards it.
+Grettir felt him groping about the lower lappet and pulling at it. The
+cloak did not give way. Another jerk; Grettir kept his feet firmly
+pressed against the posts, so that the rug was not pulled off. The
+vampire seemed puzzled, he plucked at the upper flap and tugged. Grettir
+held to the bench and bed-board, so that he was not moved, but the cloak
+was rent in twain, and the corpse staggered back, holding half in its
+hands, and gazing wonderingly at it. Before it had done examining the
+shred, Grettir started to his feet, bowed his body, flung his arms about
+the carcass, and, driving his head into the chest, strove to bend it
+backward and snap the spine. A vain attempt! The cold hands came down on
+Grettir's arms with diabolical force, riving them from their hold.
+Grettir clasped them about the body again; then the arms closed round
+him, and began dragging him along. The brave man clung by his feet to
+benches and posts, but the strength of the vampire was the greater;
+posts gave way, benches were heaved from their places, and the wrestlers
+at each moment neared the door. Sharply writhing loose, Grettir flung
+his hands round a roof-beam. He was dragged from his feet; the numbing
+arms clenched him round the waist, and tore at him; every tendon in his
+breast was strained; the strain under his shoulders became excruciating,
+the muscles stood out in knots. Still he held on; his fingers were
+bloodless; the pulses of his temples throbbed in jerks; the breath came
+in a whistle through his rigid nostrils. All the while, too, the long
+nails of the dead man cut into his side, and Grettir could feel them
+piercing like knives between his ribs. Then at once his hands gave way,
+and the monster bore him reeling towards the porch, crashing over the
+broken fragments of the door. Hard as the battle had gone with him
+indoors, Grettir knew that it would go worse outside, so he gathered up
+all his remaining strength for one final desperate struggle. The door
+had been shut with a swivel into a groove; this groove was in a stone,
+which formed the jamb on one side, and there was a similar block on the
+other, into which the hinges had been driven. As the wrestlers neared
+the opening, Grettir planted both his feet against the stone posts,
+holding Glámr by the middle. He had the advantage now. The dead man
+writhed in his arms, drove his talons into Grettir's back, and tore up
+great ribbons of flesh, but the stone jambs held firm.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," thought Grettir, "I can break his back," and thrusting his head
+under the chin, so that the grizzly beard covered his eyes, he forced
+the face from him, and the back was bent as a hazel-rod.</p>
+
+<p>"If I can but hold on," thought Grettir, and he tried to shout for
+Thorhall, but his voice was muffled in the hair of the corpse.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly one or both of the door-posts gave way. Down crashed the gable
+trees, ripping beams and rafters from their beds; frozen clods of earth
+rattled from the roof and thumped into the snow. Glámr fell on his back,
+and Grettir staggered down on top of him. The moon was at her full;
+large white clouds chased each other across the sky, and as they swept
+before her disk she looked through them with a brown halo round her.
+The snow-cap of Jorundarfell, however, glowed like a planet, then the
+white mountain ridge was kindled, the light ran down the hillside, the
+bright disk stared out of the veil and flashed at this moment full on
+the vampire's face. Grettir's strength was failing him, his hands
+quivered in the snow, and he knew that he could not support himself from
+dropping flat on the dead man's face, eye to eye, lip to lip. The eyes
+of the corpse were fixed on him, lit with the cold glare of the moon.
+His head swam as his heart sent a hot stream to his brain. Then a voice
+from the grey lips said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Thou hast acted madly in seeking to match thyself with me. Now learn
+that henceforth ill-luck shall constantly attend thee; that thy strength
+shall never exceed what it now is, and that by night these eyes of mine
+shall stare at thee through the darkness till thy dying day, so that for
+very horror thou shalt not endure to be alone."</p>
+
+<p>Grettir at this moment noticed that his dirk had slipped from its sheath
+during the fall, and that it now lay conveniently near his hand. The
+giddiness which had oppressed him passed away, he clutched at the
+sword-haft, and with a blow severed the vampire's throat. Then, kneeling
+on the breast, he hacked till the head came off.</p>
+
+<p>Thorhall appeared now, his face blanched with terror, but when he saw
+how the fray had terminated he assisted Grettir gleefully to roll the
+corpse on the top of a pile of faggots, which had been collected for
+winter fuel. Fire was applied, and soon far down the valley the flames
+of the pyre startled people, and made them wonder what new horror was
+being enacted in the upper portion of the Vale of Shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the charred bones were conveyed to a spot remote from the
+habitations of men, and were there buried.</p>
+
+<p>What Glámr had predicted came to pass. Never after did Grettir dare to
+be alone in the dark.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="COLONEL_HALIFAXS_GHOST_STORY" id="COLONEL_HALIFAXS_GHOST_STORY"></a>COLONEL HALIFAX'S GHOST STORY</h2>
+
+
+<p>I had just come back to England, after having been some years in India,
+and was looking forward to meet my friends, among whom there was none I
+was more anxious to see than Sir Francis Lynton. We had been at Eton
+together, and for the short time I had been at Oxford before entering
+the Army we had been at the same college. Then we had been parted. He
+came into the title and estates of the family in Yorkshire on the death
+of his grandfather&mdash;his father had predeceased&mdash;and I had been over a
+good part of the world. One visit, indeed, I had made him in his
+Yorkshire home, before leaving for India, of but a few days.</p>
+
+<p>It will easily be imagined how pleasant it was, two or three days after
+my arrival in London, to receive a letter from Lynton saying he had just
+seen in the papers that I had arrived, and begging me to come down at
+once to Byfield, his place in Yorkshire.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not to tell me," he said, "that you cannot come. I allow you a
+week in which to order and try on your clothes, to report yourself at
+the War Office, to pay your respects to the Duke, and to see your sister
+at Hampton Court; but after that I shall expect you. In fact, you are to
+come on Monday. I have a couple of horses which will just suit you; the
+carriage shall meet you at Packham, and all you have got to do is to put
+yourself in the train which leaves King's Cross at twelve o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, on the day appointed I started; in due time reached
+Packham, losing much time on a detestable branch line, and there found
+the dogcart of Sir Francis awaiting me. I drove at once to Byfield.</p>
+
+<p>The house I remembered. It was a low, gabled structure of no great size,
+with old-fashioned lattice windows, separated from the park, where were
+deer, by a charming terraced garden.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner did the wheels crunch the gravel by the principal entrance,
+than, almost before the bell was rung, the porch door opened, and there
+stood Lynton himself, whom I had not seen for so many years, hardly
+altered, and with all the joy of welcome beaming in his face. Taking me
+by both hands, he drew me into the house, got rid of my hat and wraps,
+looked me all over, and then, in a breath, began to say how glad he was
+to see me, what a real delight it was to have got me at last under his
+roof, and what a good time we would have together, like the old days
+over again.</p>
+
+<p>He had sent my luggage up to my room, which was ready for me, and he
+bade me make haste and dress for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he took me through a panelled hall up an oak staircase, and
+showed me my room, which, hurried as I was, I observed was hung with
+tapestry, and had a large fourpost bed, with velvet curtains, opposite
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>They had gone into dinner when I came down, despite all the haste I made
+in dressing; but a place had been kept for me next Lady Lynton.</p>
+
+<p>Besides my hosts, there were their two daughters, Colonel Lynton, a
+brother of Sir Francis, the chaplain, and some others whom I do not
+remember distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner there was some music in the hall, and a game of whist in
+the drawing-room, and after the ladies had gone upstairs, Lynton and I
+retired to the smoking-room, where we sat up talking the best part of
+the night. I think it must have been near three when I retired. Once in
+bed, I slept so soundly that my servant's entrance the next morning
+failed to arouse me, and it was past nine when I awoke.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast and the disposal of the newspapers, Lynton retired to
+his letters, and I asked Lady Lynton if one of her daughters might show
+me the house. Elizabeth, the eldest, was summoned, and seemed in no way
+to dislike the task.</p>
+
+<p>The house was, as already intimated, by no means large; it occupied
+three sides of a square, the entrance and one end of the stables making
+the fourth side. The interior was full of interest&mdash;passages, rooms,
+galleries, as well as hall, were panelled in dark wood and hung with
+pictures. I was shown everything on the ground floor, and then on the
+first floor. Then my guide proposed that we should ascend a narrow
+twisting staircase that led to a gallery. We did as proposed, and
+entered a handsome long room or passage, leading to a small chamber at
+one end, in which my guide told me her father kept books and papers.</p>
+
+<p>I asked if anyone slept in this gallery, as I noticed a bed, and
+fireplace, and rods, by means of which curtains might be drawn,
+enclosing one portion where were bed and fireplace, so as to convert it
+into a very cosy chamber.</p>
+
+<p>She answered "No," the place was not really used except as a playroom,
+though sometimes, if the house happened to be very full, in her
+great-grandfather's time, she had heard that it had been occupied.</p>
+
+<p>By the time we had been over the house, and I had also been shown the
+garden and the stables, and introduced to the dogs, it was nearly one
+o'clock. We were to have an early luncheon, and to drive afterwards to
+see the ruins of one of the grand old Yorkshire abbeys.</p>
+
+<p>This was a pleasant expedition, and we got back just in time for tea,
+after which there was some reading aloud. The evening passed much in the
+same way as the preceding one, except that Lynton, who had some
+business, did not go down to the smoking-room, and I took the
+opportunity of retiring early in order to write a letter for the Indian
+mail, something having been said as to the prospect of hunting the next
+day.</p>
+
+<p>I had finished my letter, which was a long one, together with two or
+three others, and had just got into bed when I heard a step overhead as
+of someone walking along the gallery, which I now knew ran immediately
+above my room. It was a slow, heavy, measured tread which I could hear
+getting gradually louder and nearer, and then as gradually fading away
+as it retreated into the distance.</p>
+
+<p>I was startled for a moment, having been informed that the gallery was
+unused; but the next instant it occurred to me that I had been told it
+communicated with a chamber where Sir Francis kept books and papers. I
+knew he had some writing to do, and I thought no more on the matter.</p>
+
+<p>I was down the next morning at breakfast in good time. "How late you
+were last night!" I said to Lynton, in the middle of breakfast. "I heard
+you overhead after one o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>Lynton replied rather shortly, "Indeed you did not, for I was in bed
+last night before twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"There was someone certainly moving overhead last night," I answered,
+"for I heard his steps as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my
+life, going down the gallery."</p>
+
+<p>Upon which Colonel Lynton remarked that he had often fancied he had
+heard steps on his staircase, when he knew that no one was about. He was
+apparently disposed to say more, when his brother interrupted him
+somewhat curtly, as I fancied, and asked me if I should feel inclined
+after breakfast to have a horse and go out and look for the hounds. They
+met a considerable way off, but if they did not find in the coverts they
+should first draw, a thing not improbable, they would come our way, and
+we might fall in with them about one o'clock and have a run. I said
+there was nothing I should like better. Lynton mounted me on a very
+nice chestnut, and the rest of the party having gone out shooting, and
+the young ladies being otherwise engaged, he and I started about eleven
+o'clock for our ride.</p>
+
+<p>The day was beautiful, soft, with a bright sun, one of those delightful
+days which so frequently occur in the early part of November.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the hilltop where Lynton had expected to meet the hounds no
+trace of them was to be discovered. They must have found at once, and
+run in a different direction. At three o'clock, after we had eaten our
+sandwiches, Lynton reluctantly abandoned all hopes of falling in with
+the hounds, and said we would return home by a slightly different route.</p>
+
+<p>We had not descended the hill before we came on an old chalk quarry and
+the remains of a disused kiln.</p>
+
+<p>I recollected the spot at once. I had been here with Sir Francis on my
+former visit, many years ago. "Why&mdash;bless me!" said I. "Do you remember,
+Lynton, what happened here when I was with you before? There had been
+men engaged removing chalk, and they came on a skeleton under some depth
+of rubble. We went together to see it removed, and you said you would
+have it preserved till it could be examined by some ethnologist or
+anthropologist, one or other of those dry-as-dusts, to decide whether
+the remains are dolichocephalous or brachycephalous, whether British,
+Danish, or&mdash;modern. What was the result?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Francis hesitated for a moment, and then answered: "It is true, I
+had the remains removed."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there an inquest?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I had been opening some of the tumuli on the Wolds. I had sent a
+crouched skeleton and some skulls to the Scarborough Museum. This I was
+doubtful about, whether it was a prehistoric interment&mdash;in fact, to what
+date it belonged. No one thought of an inquest."</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the house, one of the grooms who took the horses, in answer
+to a question from Lynton, said that Colonel and Mrs. Hampshire had
+arrived about an hour ago, and that, one of the horses being lame, the
+carriage in which they had driven over from Castle Frampton was to put
+up for the night. In the drawing-room we found Lady Lynton pouring out
+tea for her husband's youngest sister and her husband, who, as we came
+in, exclaimed: "We have come to beg a night's lodging."</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that they had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, and had
+been obliged to leave at a moment's notice in consequence of a sudden
+death in the house where they were staying, and that, in the
+impossibility of getting a fly, their hosts had sent them over to
+Byfield.</p>
+
+<p>"We thought," Mrs. Hampshire went on to say, "that as we were coming
+here the end of next week, you would not mind having us a little sooner;
+or that, if the house were quite full, you would be willing to put us up
+anywhere till Monday, and let us come back later."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lynton interposed with the remark that it was all settled; and
+then, turning to her husband, added: "But I want to speak to you for a
+moment."</p>
+
+<p>They both left the room together.</p>
+
+<p>Lynton came back almost immediately, and, making an excuse to show me on
+a map in the hall the point to which we had ridden, said as soon as we
+were alone, with a look of considerable annoyance: "I am afraid we must
+ask you to change your room. Shall you mind very much? I think we can
+make you quite comfortable upstairs in the gallery, which is the only
+room available. Lady Lynton has had a good fire lit; the place is really
+not cold, and it will be for only a night or two. Your servant has been
+told to put your things together, but Lady Lynton did not like to give
+orders to have them actually moved before my speaking to you."</p>
+
+<p>I assured him that I did not mind in the very least, that I should be
+quite as comfortable upstairs, but that I did mind very much their
+making such a fuss about a matter of that sort with an old friend like
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly nothing could look more comfortable than my new lodging when I
+went upstairs to dress. There was a bright fire in the large grate, an
+armchair had been drawn up beside it, and all my books and writing
+things had been put in, with a reading-lamp in the central position, and
+the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn, converting this part of the
+gallery into a room to itself. Indeed, I felt somewhat inclined to
+congratulate myself on the change. The spiral staircase had been one
+reason against this place having been given to the Hampshires. No lady's
+long dress trunk could have mounted it.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Francis was necessarily a good deal occupied in the evening with his
+sister and her husband, whom he had not seen for some time. Colonel
+Hampshire had also just heard that he was likely to be ordered to Egypt,
+and when Lynton and he retired to the smoking-room, instead of going
+there I went upstairs to my own room to finish a book in which I was
+interested. I did not, however, sit up long, and very soon went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Before doing so, I drew back the curtains on the rod, partly because I
+like plenty of air where I sleep, and partly also because I thought I
+might like to see the play of the moonlight on the floor in the portion
+of the gallery beyond where I lay, and where the blinds had not been
+drawn.</p>
+
+<p>I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire, which I had left in
+full blaze, was gone to a few sparks wandering among the ashes, when I
+suddenly awoke with the impression of having heard a latch click at the
+further extremity of the gallery, where was the chamber containing books
+and papers.</p>
+
+<p>I had always been a light sleeper, but on the present occasion I woke at
+once to complete and acute consciousness, and with a sense of stretched
+attention which seemed to intensify all my faculties. The wind had
+risen, and was blowing in fitful gusts round the house.</p>
+
+<p>A minute or two passed, and I began almost to fancy I must have been
+mistaken, when I distinctly heard the creak of the door, and then the
+click of the latch falling back into its place. Then I heard a sound on
+the boards as of one moving in the gallery. I sat up to listen, and as I
+did so I distinctly heard steps coming down the gallery. I heard them
+approach and pass my bed. I could see nothing, all was dark; but I heard
+the tread proceeding towards the further portion of the gallery where
+were the uncurtained and unshuttered windows, two in number; but the
+moon shone through only one of these, the nearer; the other was dark,
+shadowed by the chapel or some other building at right angles. The tread
+seemed to me to pause now and again, and then continue as before.</p>
+
+<p>I now fixed my eyes intently on the one illumined window, and it
+appeared to me as if some dark body passed across it: but what? I
+listened intently, and heard the step proceed to the end of the gallery
+and then return.</p>
+
+<p>I again watched the lighted window, and immediately that the sound
+reached that portion of the long passage it ceased momentarily, and I
+saw, as distinctly as I ever saw anything in my life, by moonlight, a
+figure of a man with marked features, in what appeared to be a fur cap
+drawn over the brows.</p>
+
+<p>It stood in the embrasure of the window, and the outline of the face was
+in silhouette; then it moved on, and as it moved I again heard the
+tread. I was as certain as I could be that the thing, whatever it was,
+or the person, whoever he was, was approaching my bed.</p>
+
+<p>I threw myself back in the bed, and as I did so a mass of charred wood
+on the hearth fell down and sent up a flash of&mdash;I fancy sparks, that
+gave out a glare in the darkness, and by that&mdash;red as blood&mdash;I saw a
+face near me.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry, over which I had as little control as the scream uttered by
+a sleeper in the agony of a nightmare, I called: "Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>There was an instant during which my hair bristled on my head, as in the
+horror of the darkness I prepared to grapple with the being at my side;
+when a board creaked as if someone had moved, and I heard the footsteps
+retreat, and again the click of the latch.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant there was a rush on the stairs and Lynton burst into
+the room, just as he had sprung out of bed, crying: "For God's sake,
+what is the matter? Are you ill?"</p>
+
+<p>I could not answer. Lynton struck a light and leant over the bed. Then I
+seized him by the arm, and said without moving: "There has been
+something in this room&mdash;gone in thither."</p>
+
+<p>The words were hardly out of my mouth when Lynton, following the
+direction of my eyes, had sprung to the end of the corridor and thrown
+open the door there.</p>
+
+<p>He went into the room beyond, looked round it, returned, and said: "You
+must have been dreaming."</p>
+
+<p>By this time I was out of bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Look for yourself," said he, and he led me into the little room. It was
+bare, with cupboards and boxes, a sort of lumber-place. "There is
+nothing beyond this," said he, "no door, no staircase. It is a
+<i>cul-de-sac</i>." Then he added: "Now pull on your dressing-gown and come
+downstairs to my sanctum."</p>
+
+<p>I followed him, and after he had spoken to Lady Lynton, who was standing
+with the door of her room ajar in a state of great agitation, he turned
+to me and said: "No one can have been in your room. You see my and my
+wife's apartments are close below, and no one could come up the spiral
+staircase without passing my door. You must have had a nightmare.
+Directly you screamed I rushed up the steps, and met no one descending;
+and there is no place of concealment in the lumber-room at the end of
+the gallery."</p>
+
+<p>Then he took me into his private snuggery, blew up the fire, lighted a
+lamp, and said: "I shall be really grateful if you will say nothing
+about this. There are some in the house and neighbourhood who are silly
+enough as it is. You stay here, and if you do not feel inclined to go to
+bed, read&mdash;here are books. I must go to Lady Lynton, who is a good deal
+frightened, and does not like to be left alone."</p>
+
+<p>He then went to his bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Sleep, as far as I was concerned, was out of the question, nor do I
+think that Sir Francis or his wife slept much either.</p>
+
+<p>I made up the fire, and after a time took up a book, and tried to read,
+but it was useless.</p>
+
+<p>I sat absorbed in thoughts and questionings till I heard the servants
+stirring in the morning. I then went to my own room, left the candle
+burning, and got into bed. I had just fallen asleep when my servant
+brought me a cup of tea at eight o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast Colonel Hampshire and his wife asked if anything had
+happened in the night, as they had been much disturbed by noises
+overhead, to which Lynton replied that I had not been very well, and had
+an attack of cramp, and that he had been upstairs to look after me. From
+his manner I could see that he wished me to be silent, and I said
+nothing accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon, when everyone had gone out, Sir Francis took me into
+his snuggery and said: "Halifax, I am very sorry about that matter last
+night. It is quite true, as my brother said, that steps have been heard
+about this house, but I never gave heed to such things, putting all
+noises down to rats. But after your experiences I feel that it is due to
+you to tell you something, and also to make to you an explanation. There
+is&mdash;there was&mdash;no one in the room at the end of the corridor, except the
+skeleton that was discovered in the chalk-pit when you were here many
+years ago. I confess I had not paid much heed to it. My archæological
+fancies passed; I had no visits from anthropologists; the bones and
+skull were never shown to experts, but remained packed in a chest in
+that lumber-room. I confess I ought to have buried them, having no more
+scientific use for them, but I did not&mdash;on my word, I forgot all about
+them, or, at least, gave no heed to them. However, what you have gone
+through, and have described to me, has made me uneasy, and has also
+given me a suspicion that I can account for that body in a manner that
+had never occurred to me before."</p>
+
+<p>After a pause, he added: "What I am going to tell you is known to no one
+else, and must not be mentioned by you&mdash;anyhow, in my lifetime, You know
+now that, owing to the death of my father when quite young, I and my
+brother and sister were brought up here with our grandfather, Sir
+Richard. He was an old, imperious, short-tempered man. I will tell you
+what I have made out of a matter that was a mystery for long, and I will
+tell you afterwards how I came to unravel it. My grandfather was in the
+habit of going out at night with a young under-keeper, of whom he was
+very fond, to look after the game and see if any poachers, whom he
+regarded as his natural enemies, were about.</p>
+
+<p>"One night, as I suppose, my grandfather had been out with the young man
+in question, and, returning by the plantations, where the hill is
+steepest, and not far from that chalk-pit you remarked on yesterday,
+they came upon a man, who, though not actually belonging to the country,
+was well known in it as a sort of travelling tinker of indifferent
+character, and a notorious poacher. Mind this, I am not sure it was at
+the place I mention; I only now surmise it. On the particular night in
+question, my grandfather and the keeper must have caught this man
+setting snares; there must have been a tussle, in the course of which as
+subsequent circumstances have led me to imagine, the man showed fight
+and was knocked down by one or other of the two&mdash;my grandfather or the
+keeper. I believe that after having made various attempts to restore
+him, they found that the man was actually dead.</p>
+
+<p>"They were both in great alarm and concern&mdash;my grandfather especially.
+He had been prominent in putting down some factory riots, and had acted
+as magistrate with promptitude, and had given orders to the military to
+fire, whereby a couple of lives had been lost. There was a vast outcry
+against him, and a certain political party had denounced him as an
+assassin. No man was more vituperated; yet, in my conscience, I believe
+that he acted with both discretion and pluck, and arrested a mischievous
+movement that might have led to much bloodshed. Be that as it may, my
+impression is that he lost his head over this fatal affair with the
+tinker, and that he and the keeper together buried the body secretly,
+not far from the place where he was killed. I now think it was in the
+chalk-pit, and that the skeleton found years after there belonged to
+this man."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, as at once my mind rushed back to the
+figure with the fur cap that I had seen against the window.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Francis went on: "The sudden disappearance of the tramp, in view of
+his well-known habits and wandering mode of life, did not for some time
+excite surprise; but, later on, one or two circumstances having led to
+suspicion, an inquiry was set on foot, and among others, my
+grandfather's keepers were examined before the magistrates. It was
+remembered afterwards that the under-keeper in question was absent at
+the time of the inquiry, my grandfather having sent him with some dogs
+to a brother-in-law of his who lived upon the moors; but whether no one
+noticed the fact, or if they did, preferred to be silent, I know not, no
+observations were made. Nothing came of the investigation, and the whole
+subject would have dropped if it had not been that two years later, for
+some reasons I do not understand, but at the instigation of a magistrate
+recently imported into the division, whom my grandfather greatly
+disliked, and who was opposed to him in politics, a fresh inquiry was
+instituted. In the course of that inquiry it transpired that, owing to
+some unguarded words dropped by the under-keeper, a warrant was about to
+be issued for his arrest. My grandfather, who had had a fit of the gout,
+was away from home at the time, but on hearing the news he came home at
+once. The evening he returned he had a long interview with the young
+man, who left the house after he had supped in the servants' hall. It
+was observed that he looked much depressed. The warrant was issued the
+next day, but in the meantime the keeper had disappeared. My grandfather
+gave orders to all his own people to do everything in their power to
+assist the authorities in the search that was at once set on foot, but
+was unable himself to take any share in it.</p>
+
+<p>"No trace of the keeper was found, although at a subsequent period
+rumours circulated that he had been heard of in America. But the man
+having been unmarried, he gradually dropped out of remembrance, and as
+my grandfather never allowed the subject to be mentioned in his
+presence, I should probably never have known anything about it but for
+the vague tradition which always attaches to such events, and for this
+fact: that after my grandfather's death a letter came addressed to him
+from somewhere in the United States from someone&mdash;the name different
+from that of the keeper&mdash;but alluding to the past, and implying the
+presence of a common secret, and, of course, with it came a request for
+money. I replied, mentioning the death of Sir Richard, and asking for an
+explanation. I did get an answer, and it is from that that I am able to
+fill in so much of the story. But I never learned <i>where</i> the man had
+been killed and buried, and my next letter to the fellow was returned
+with 'Deceased' written across it. Somehow, it never occurred to me
+till I heard your story that possibly the skeleton in the chalk-pit
+might be that of the poaching tinker. I will now most assuredly have it
+buried in the churchyard."</p>
+
+<p>"That certainly ought to be done," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;" said Sir Francis, after a pause, "I give you my word. After the
+burial of the bones, and you are gone, I will sleep for a week in the
+bed in the gallery, and report to you if I see or hear anything. If all
+be quiet, then&mdash;well, you form your own conclusions."</p>
+
+<p>I left a day after. Before long I got a letter from my friend, brief but
+to the point: "All quiet, old boy; come again."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_MEREWIGS" id="THE_MEREWIGS"></a>THE MEREWIGS</h2>
+
+
+<p>During the time that I lived in Essex, I had the pleasure of knowing
+Major Donelly, retired on half-pay, who had spent many years in India;
+he was a man of great powers of observation, and possessed an
+inexhaustible fund of information of the most valuable quality, which he
+was ready to communicate to his intimates, among whom was I.</p>
+
+<p>Major Donelly is now no more, and the world is thereby the poorer. Major
+Donelly took an interest in everything&mdash;anthropology, mechanics,
+archæology, physical science, natural history, the stock market,
+politics. In fact, it was not possible in conversation to broach a
+subject with which he was wholly unacquainted, and concerning which he
+was not desirous of acquiring further information. A man of this
+description is not to be held by lightly. I grappled him to my heart.</p>
+
+<p>One day when we were taking a constitutional walk together, I casually
+mentioned the "Red Hills." He had never heard of them, inquired, and I
+told him what little I knew on the matter. The Red Hills are mounds of
+burnt clay of a brick-red colour, found at intervals along the fringe of
+the marshes on the east coast. Of the date of their formation and the
+purpose they were destined to discharge, nothing has been certainly
+ascertained. Theories have been formed, and have been held to with
+tenacity, but these are unsupported by sound evidence. And yet, one
+would have supposed that these mysterious mounds would have been
+subjected to a careful scientific exploration to determine by the
+discovery of flint tools, potsherds, or coins to what epoch they belong,
+and that some clue should be discovered as to their purport. But at the
+time when I was in Essex, no such study had been attempted; whether any
+has been undertaken since I am unable to say.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned to Donelly some of the suppositions offered as to the origin
+of these Red Hills; that they represented salt-making works, that they
+were funereal erections, that they were artificial bases for the huts of
+fishers.</p>
+
+<p>"That is it," said the major, "no doubt about it. To keep off the ague.
+Do you not know that burnt clay is a sure protection against ague, which
+was the curse of the Essex marsh land? In Central Africa, in the
+districts that lie low and there is morass, the natives are quite aware
+of the fact, and systematically form a bed of burnt clay as a platform
+on which to erect their hovels. Now look here, my dear friend, I'd most
+uncommonly like to take a boat along with you, and explore both sides of
+the Blackwater to begin with, and its inlets, and to tick down on the
+ordnance map every red hill we can find."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite ready," I replied. "There is one thing to remember. A vast
+number of these hills have been ploughed down, but you can certainly
+detect where they were by the colour of the soil."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, on the next fine day we engaged a boat&mdash;not a rower&mdash;for we
+could manage it between us, and started on our expedition.</p>
+
+<p>The country around the Blackwater is flat, and the land slides into the
+sea and river with so slight an incline, that a good extent of debatable
+ground exists, which may be reckoned as belonging to both. Vast marshes
+are found occasionally flooded, covered with the wild lavender, and in
+June flushed with the seathrift. They nourish a coarse grass, and a
+bastard samphire. These marshes are threaded, cobweb fashion, by myriads
+of lines of water and mud that intercommunicate. Woe to the man who
+either stumbles into, or in jumping falls into, one of these breaks in
+the surface of land. He sinks to his waist in mud. At certain times,
+when no high tides are expected, sheep are driven upon these marshes and
+thrive. They manage to leap the runnels, and the shepherd is aware when
+danger threatens, and they must be driven off.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer the mainland are dykes thrown up, none know when, to reclaim
+certain tracts of soil, and on the land side are invariably stagnant
+ditches, where mosquitoes breed in myriads. Further up grow oak trees,
+and in summer to these the mosquitoes betake themselves in swarms, and
+may be seen in the evening swaying in such dense clouds above the trees
+that these latter seem to be on fire and smoking. Major Donelly and I
+leisurely paddled about, running into creeks, leaving our boat,
+identifying our position on the map, and marking in the position of such
+red hills or their traces as we lighted on.</p>
+
+<p>Major Donelly and I pretty well explored the left bank up to a certain
+point, when he proposed that we should push across to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"I should advise doing thoroughly the upper reach of the Blackwater,"
+said he, "and we shall then have completed one section."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," I responded, and we turned the boat's head to cross.
+Unhappily, we had not calculated that the estuary was full of mudbanks.
+Moreover, the tide was ebbing, and before very long we grounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it!" said the major, "we are on a mudbank. What a fix we are
+in."</p>
+
+<p>We laboured with the oars to thrust off, but could touch no solid
+ground, to obtain purchase sufficient for our purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Then said Donelly: "The only thing to be done is for one of us to step
+onto the bank and thrust the boat off. I will do that. I have on an old
+shabby pair of trousers that don't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, you shall not. I will go," and at the word I sprang
+overboard. But the major had jumped simultaneously, and simultaneously
+we sank in the horrible slime. It had the consistency of spinach. I do
+not mean such as English cooks send us to table, half-mashed and often
+gritty, but the spinach as served at a French table d'hôte, that has
+been pulped through a fine hair sieve. And what is more, it apparently
+had no bottom. For aught I know it might go down a mile in depth towards
+the centre of the globe, and it stank abominably. We both clung to the
+sides of the boat to save ourselves from sinking altogether.</p>
+
+<p>There we were, one on each side, clinging to the bulwarks and looking at
+one another. For a moment or two neither spoke. Donelly was the first to
+recover his presence of mind, and after wiping his mouth on the gunwale
+from the mud that had squirted over it, he said: "Can you get out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly," said I.</p>
+
+<p>We tugged at the boat, it squelched about, splashing the slime over us,
+till it plastered our heads and faces and covered our hands.</p>
+
+<p>"This will never do," said he. "We must get in together, and by
+instalments. Look here! when I say 'three,' throw in your left leg if
+you can get it out of the mud."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do my best."</p>
+
+<p>"And," he said further, "we must do so both at the same moment. Now,
+don't be a sneak and try to get in your body whilst I am putting in my
+leg, or you will upset the boat."</p>
+
+<p>"I never was a sneak," I retorted angrily, "and I certainly will not be
+one in what may be the throes of death."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said the major. "One&mdash;two&mdash;three!"</p>
+
+<p>Instantly both of us drew our left legs out of the mud, and projected
+them over the sides into the boat.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you?" asked he. "Got your leg in all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"All but my boot," I replied, "and that has been sucked off my foot."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, bother the boot," said the major, "so long as your leg is safe
+within, and has not been sucked off. That would have disturbed the
+equipoise. Now then&mdash;next we must have our trunks and right legs within.
+Take a long breath, and wait till I call 'three.'"</p>
+
+<p>We paused, panting with the strain; then Donelly, in a stentorian voice,
+shouted: "One&mdash;two&mdash;three!"</p>
+
+<p>Instantly we writhed and strained, and finally, after a convulsive
+effort, both were landed in the bottom of the boat. We picked ourselves
+up and seated ourselves, each on one bulwark, looking at one another.</p>
+
+<p>We were covered with the foul slime from head to foot, our clothes were
+caked, so were our hands and faces. But we were secure.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said Donelly, "we shall have to remain for six hours till the
+tide flows, and the boat is lifted. It is of no earthly use for us to
+shout for help. Even if our calls were heard, no one could come out to
+us. Here, then, we stick and must make the best of it. Happily the sun
+is hot, and will cake the mud about us, and then we can pick off some of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>The prospect was not inviting. But I saw no means of escape.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Donelly said: "It is good that we brought our luncheon with
+us, and above all some whisky, which is the staff of life. Look here, my
+dear fellow. I wish it were possible to get this stinking stuff off our
+hands and faces; it smells like the scouring poured down the sink in
+Satan's own back kitchen. Is there not a bottle of claret in the
+basket?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I put one in."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said he, "the best use we can put it to is to wash our faces and
+hands in it. Claret is poor drink, and there is the whisky to fall back
+on."</p>
+
+<p>"The water has all ebbed away," I remarked "We cannot clean ourselves in
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then uncork the <i>Saint Julien</i>."</p>
+
+<p>There was really no help for it. The smell of the mud was disgusting,
+and it turned one's stomach. So I pulled out the cork, and we performed
+our ablutions in the claret.</p>
+
+<p>That done, we returned to our seats on the gunwale, one on each side,
+and looked sadly at one another. Six hours! That was an interminable
+time to spend on a mudflat in the Blackwater. Neither of us was much
+inclined to speak. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the major
+proposed refreshments. Accordingly we crept together into the bottom of
+the boat and there discussed the contents of the hamper, and we
+certainly did full justice to the whisky bottle. For we were wet to the
+skin, and beplastered from head to foot in the ill-savoured mud.</p>
+
+<p>When we had done the chicken and ham, and drained the whisky jar, we
+returned to our several positions <i>vis-à-vis</i>. It was essential that the
+balance of the boat should be maintained.</p>
+
+<p>Major Donelly was now in a communicative mood.</p>
+
+<p>"I will say this," observed he; "that you are the best-informed and most
+agreeable man I have met with in Colchester and Chelmsford."</p>
+
+<p>I would not record this remark but for what it led up to.</p>
+
+<p>I replied&mdash;I dare say I blushed&mdash;but the claret in my face made it red,
+anyhow. I replied: "You flatter me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I always say what I think. You have plenty of information,
+and you'll grow your wings, and put on rainbow colours."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth do you mean?" I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not know," said he, "that we shall all of us, some day, develop
+wings? Grow into angels! What do you suppose that ethereal pinions
+spring out of? They do not develop out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.
+You cannot think that they are the ultimate produce of ham and chicken."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor of whisky."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor of whisky," he repeated. "You know it is so with the grub."</p>
+
+<p>"Grub is ambiguous," I observed.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean victuals, but the caterpillar. That creature spends its
+short life in eating, eating, eating. Look at a cabbage-leaf, it is
+riddled with holes; the grub has consumed all that vegetable matter, and
+I will inform you for what purpose. It retires into its chrysalis, and
+during the winter a transformation takes place, and in spring it breaks
+forth as a glorious butterfly. The painted wings of the insect in its
+second stage of existence are the sublimated cabbage it has devoured in
+its condition of larva."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so. What has that to do with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are also in our larva condition. But do not for a moment suppose
+that the wings we shall put on with rainbow painting are the produce of
+what we eat here&mdash;of ham and chicken, kidneys, beef, and the like. No,
+sir, certainly not. They are fashioned out of the information we have
+absorbed, the knowledge we have acquired during the first stage of
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," he answered. "I had a remarkable experience once. It
+is a rather long story, but as we have some five hours and a half to sit
+here looking at one another till the tide rises and floats us, I may as
+well tell you, and it will help to the laying on of the colours on your
+pinions when you acquire them. You would like to hear the tale?"</p>
+
+<p>"Above all things."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a sort of prologue to it," he went on. "I cannot well dispense
+with it as it leads up to what I particularly want to say."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means let me have the prologue, if it be instructive."</p>
+
+<p>"It is eminently instructive," he said. "But before I begin, just pass
+me the bottle, if there is any whisky left."</p>
+
+<p>"It is drained," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, it can't be helped. When I was in India, I moved from one
+place to another, and I had pitched my tent in a certain spot. I had a
+native servant. I forget what his real name was, and it does not matter.
+I always called him Alec. He was a curious fellow, and the other
+servants stood in awe of him. They thought that he saw ghosts and had
+familiar dealings with the spiritual world. He was honest as natives go.
+He would not allow anyone else to rob me; but, of course, he filched
+things of mine himself. We are accustomed to that, and think nothing of
+it. But it was a satisfaction that he kept the fingers of the others off
+my property. Well, one night, when, as I have informed you, my tent was
+pitched on a spot I considered eminently convenient, I slept very
+uncomfortably. It was as though a centipede were crawling over me. Next
+morning I spoke to Alec, and told him my experiences, and bade him
+search well my mattress and the floor of my tent. A Hindu's face is
+impassive, but I thought I detected in his eyes a twinkle of
+understanding. Nevertheless I did not give it much thought. Next night
+it was as bad, and in the morning I found my panjams slit from head to
+foot. I called Alec to me and held up the garment, and said how
+uncomfortable I had been. 'Ah! sahib,' said he, 'that is the doings of
+Abdulhamid, the blood-thirsty scoundrel!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me," I interrupted. "Did he mean the present Sultan of Turkey?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, quite another, of the same name."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," I said. "But when you mentioned him as a
+blood-thirsty scoundrel, I supposed it must be he."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not he. It was another. Call him, if you like, the other Abdul.
+But to proceed with my story."</p>
+
+<p>"One inquiry more," said I. "Surely Abdulhamid cannot be a Hindu name?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not say that it was," retorted the major with a touch of asperity
+in his tone. "He was doubtless a Mohammedan."</p>
+
+<p>"But the name is rather Turkish or Arabic."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not responsible for that; I was not his godfathers and godmothers
+at his baptism. I am merely repeating what Alec told me. If you are so
+captious, I shall shut up and relate no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not take umbrage," said I. "I surely have a right to test the
+quality of the material I take in, out of which my wings are to be
+evolved. Go ahead; I will interrupt no further."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then, let that be understood between us. Are you caking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Slowly," I replied. "The sun is hot; I am drying up on one side of my
+body."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that we had best shift sides of the boat," said the major. "It
+is the same with me."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, with caution, we crossed over, and each took the seat on
+the gunwale lately occupied by the other.</p>
+
+<p>"There," said Donelly. "How goes the enemy? My watch got smothered in
+the mud, and has stopped."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine," I explained, "is plastered into my waistcoat pocket, and I
+cannot get at it without messing my fingers, and there is no more claret
+left for a wash; the whisky is all inside us."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the major, "it does not matter; there is plenty of time
+before us for the rest of my story. Let me see&mdash;where was I? Oh! where
+Alec mentioned Abdulhamid, the inferior scoundrel, not the Sultan. Alec
+went on to say that he was himself possessed of a remarkably keen scent
+for blood, even though it had been shed a century before his time, and
+that my tent had been pitched and my bed spread over a spot marked by a
+most atrocious crime. That Abdul of whom he had made mention had been a
+man steeped in crimes of the most atrocious character. Of course, he
+did not come up in wickedness to his illustrious namesake, but that was
+because he lacked the opportunities with which the other is so favoured.
+On the very identical spot where I then was, this same bloodstained
+villain had perpetrated his worst iniquity&mdash;he had murdered his father
+and mother, and aunt, and his children. After that he was taken and
+hanged. When his soul parted from his body, in the ordinary course it
+would have entered into the shell of a scorpion or some other noxious
+creature, and so have mounted through the scale of beings, by one
+incarnation after another, till he attained once more to the high estate
+of man."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse the interruption," said I, "but I think you intimated that this
+Abdulhamid was a Mohammedan, and the sons of the Prophet do not believe
+in the transmigration of souls."</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Donelly, "is precisely the objection I raised to Alec. But
+he told me that souls after death are not accommodated with a future
+according to the creeds they hold, but according to Destiny: that
+whatever a man might suppose during life as to the condition of his
+future state, there was but one truth to which they would all have their
+eyes opened&mdash;the truth held by the Hindus, viz. the transmigration of
+souls from stage to stage, ever progressing upward to man, and then to
+recommence the interminable circle of reincarnation. 'So,' said I, 'it
+was Abdul in the form of a scorpion who was tickling my ribs all night.'
+'No, sahib,' replied my native servant very gravely. He was too wicked
+to be suffered to set his foot, so to speak, on the lowest rung of the
+ladder of existences. The doom went forth against him that he must haunt
+the scenes of his former crimes, till he found a man sleeping over one
+of them, and on that man must be a mole, and out of that mole must grow
+three hairs. These hairs he must pluck out and plant on the grave of his
+final victims, and water them with his tears. And the flowing of these
+first drops of penitence would enable him to pass at once into the first
+stage of the circle of incarnations.' 'Why,' said I, 'that unredeemed
+ruffian was mole-hunting over me the last two nights! But what do you
+say to these slit panjams?' 'Sahib,' replied Alec, 'he did that with his
+nails. I presume he turned you over, and ripped them so as to get at
+your back and feel for the so-much-desired mole.' 'I'll have the tent
+shifted,' said I. 'Nothing will induce me to sleep another night on this
+accursed spot.'"</p>
+
+<p>Donelly paused, and proceeded to take off some flakes of mud that had
+formed on his sleeve. We really were beginning to get drier, but in
+drying we stiffened, as the mud became hard about us like pie-crust.</p>
+
+<p>"So far," said I, "we have had no wings."</p>
+
+<p>"I am coming to them," replied the major; "I have now concluded the
+prologue."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that was the prologue, was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Have you anything against it? It was the prologue. Now I will go
+on with the main substance of my story. About a year after that incident
+I retired on half-pay, and returned to England. What became of Alec I
+did not know, nor care a hang. I had been in England for a little over
+two years, when one day I was walking along Great Russell Street, and
+passing the gates of the British Museum, I noticed a Hindu standing
+there, looking wretchedly cold and shabby. He had a tray containing
+bangles and necklaces and gewgaws, made in Germany, which he was selling
+as oriental works of art. As I passed, he saluted me, and, looking
+steadily at him, I recognised Alec. 'Why, what brings you here?' I
+inquired, vastly astonished. 'Sahib may well ask,' he replied. 'I came
+over because I thought I might better my condition. I had heard speak of
+a Psychical Research Society established in London; and with my really
+extraordinary gifts, I thought that I might be of value to it, and be
+taken in and paid an annuity if I supplied it continuously with
+well-authenticated, first-hand ghost stories.' 'Well,' said I, 'and have
+you succeeded?' 'No, sahib. I cannot find it. I have inquired after it
+from several of the crossing-sweepers, and they could not inform me of
+its whereabouts; and if I applied to the police, they bade me take
+myself off, there was no such a thing. I should have starved, sahib, if
+it had not been that I had taken to this line'; he pointed to his tray.
+'Does that pay well?' I asked. He shook his head sadly. 'Very poorly. I
+can live&mdash;that is all. There goes in a Merewig.' 'How many of these
+rubbishy bangles can you dispose of in a day?' I inquired. 'That
+depends, sahib. It varies so greatly, and the profits are very small. So
+small that I can barely get along. There goes in another Merewig.'
+'Where are all these things made?' I asked. 'In Germany or in
+Birmingham?' 'Oh, sahib, how can I tell? I get them from a Jew dealer.
+He supplies various street-hawkers. But I shall give it up&mdash;it does not
+pay&mdash;and shall set up a stall and dispose of Turkish Delight. There is
+always a run on that. You English have a sweet tooth. That's a Merewig,'
+and he pointed to a dowdy female, with a reticule on her arm, who, at
+that moment, went through the painted iron gates. 'What do you mean by
+Merewigs?' said I. 'Does not sahib know?' Alec's face expressed genuine
+surprise. 'If sahib will go into the great reading-room, he will see
+scores of them there. It is their great London haunt; they pass in all
+day, mainly in the morning&mdash;some are in very early, so soon as the
+museum is open at nine o'clock. And they usually remain there all day
+picking up information, acquiring knowledge.' 'You mean the students.'
+'Not all the students, but a large percentage of them. I know them in a
+moment. Sahib is aware that I have great gifts for the discernment of
+spirits.'</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," broke off Donelly, "do you understand Hindustani?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word of it," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry for that," said he, "because I could tell you what passed
+between us so much easier in Hindustani. I am able to speak and
+understand it as readily as English, and the matter I am going to relate
+would come off my tongue so much easier in that language."</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well speak it in Chinese. I should be none the wiser. Wait
+a moment. I am cracking."</p>
+
+<p>It was so. The heat of the sun was sensibly affecting my crust of mud. I
+think I must have resembled a fine old painting, the varnish of which is
+stained and traversed by an infinity of minute fissures, a perfect
+network of cracks. I stood up and stretched myself, and split in several
+places. Moreover, portions of my muddy envelope began to curl at the
+edges.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be in too great a hurry to peel," advised Donelly.</p>
+
+<p>"We have abundance of time still before us, and I want to proceed with
+my narrative."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, then. When are we coming to the wings?"</p>
+
+<p>"Directly," replied he. "Well, then&mdash;if you cannot receive what I have
+to say in Hindustani, I must do my best to give you the substance of
+Alec's communication in the vulgar tongue. I will epitomise it. The
+Hindu went on to explain in this fashion. He informed me that with us,
+Christians and white people, it is not the same as with the dusky and
+the yellow races. After death we do not pass into the bodies of the
+lower animals, which is a great privilege and ought to afford us immense
+satisfaction. We at once progress into a higher condition of life. We
+develop wings, as does the butterfly when it emerges from its condition
+of grub. But the matter out of which the wings are produced is nothing
+gross. They are formed, or form themselves, out of the information with
+which we have filled our brains during life. We lay up, during our
+mortal career here, a large amount of knowledge, of scientific,
+historical, philosophic, and like acquisitions, and these form the
+so-to-speak psychic pulp out of which, by an internal and mysterious
+and altogether inexplicable process, the transmutation takes place into
+our future wings. The more we have stored, the larger are our wings; the
+more varied the nature, the more radiant and coloured is their painting.
+When, at death, the brain is empty, there can be no wing-development.
+Out of nothing, nothing can arise. That is a law of nature absolutely
+inexorable in its application. And this is why you will never have to
+regret sticking in the mud to-day, my friend. I have supplied you with
+such an amount of fresh and valuable knowledge, that I believe you will
+have pinions painted hereafter with peacock's eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"I am most obliged to you," said I, splitting into a thousand cakes with
+the emotion that agitated me.</p>
+
+<p>Donelly proceeded. "I was so interested in what Alec told me, that I
+said to him, 'Come along with me into the Nineveh room, and we shall be
+able to thrash this matter out.' 'Ah, sahib,' he replied, 'they will not
+allow me to take in my tray.' 'Very well,' said I, 'then we will find a
+step before the portico, one not too much frequented by the pigeons, and
+will sit there.' He agreed. But the porter at the gate demurred to
+letting the Hindu through. He protested that no trafficking was allowed
+on the premises. I explained that none was purposed; that the man and I
+proposed a discussion on psychological topics. This seemed to content
+the porter, and he suffered Alec to pass through with me. We picked out
+as clean a portion of the steps as we could, and seated ourselves on it
+side by side, and then the Hindu went on with what he was saying."</p>
+
+<p>Donelly and I were now drying rapidly. As we sat facing each other we
+must have looked very much like the chocolate men one sees in
+confectioners' shops&mdash;of course, I mean on a much larger scale, and not
+of the same warm tint, and, of course, also, we did not exhale the same
+aromatic odour.</p>
+
+<p>"When we were seated," proceeded Donelly, "I felt the cold of the stone
+steps strike up into my system, and as I have had a touch or two of
+lumbago since I came home, I stood up again, took a copy of the
+<i>Standard</i> out of my pocket, folded it, and placed it between myself and
+the step. I did, however, pull out the inner leaf, that containing the
+leaders, and presented it to Alec for the same purpose. Orientals are
+insensible to kindness, and are deficient in the virtue of gratitude.
+But this delicate trait of attention did touch the benighted heathen.
+His lip quivered, and he became, if possible, more than ever
+communicative. He nudged me with his tray and said, 'There goes out a
+Merewig. I wonder why she leaves so soon?' I saw a middle-aged woman in
+a gown of grey, with greasy splotches on it, and the braid unsewn at the
+skirt trailing in a loop behind. 'What are the Merewigs?' I asked. I
+will give you what I learned in my own words. All men and women&mdash;I
+allude only to Europeans and Americans&mdash;in the first stage of their life
+are bound morally, and in their own interest, to acquire and store up in
+their brains as much information as these will hold, for it is out of
+this that their wings will be evolved in their second stage of
+existence. Of course, the more varied this information is, the better.
+Men inevitably accumulate knowledge. Even if they assimilate very little
+at school, yet, as young men, they necessarily take in a good deal&mdash;of
+course, I exempt the mashers, who never learn anything. Even in sport
+they obtain something; but in business, by reading, by association, by
+travel, they go on piling up a store. You see that in common
+conversation they cannot escape doing this; politics, social questions,
+points of natural history, scientific discoveries form the staple of
+their talk, so that the mind of a man is necessarily kept replenished.
+But with women this is not the case. Young girls read nothing whatever
+but novels&mdash;they might as well feed on soap-bubbles. In their
+conversation with one another they twaddle, they do not talk."</p>
+
+<p>"But," protested I, "in our civilised society young women associate
+freely with men."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," replied he. "But to what is their dialogue limited?&mdash;to
+ragging, to frivolous jokes. Men do not talk to them on rational topics,
+for they know well enough that such topics do not interest girls, and
+that they are wholly incapable of applying their minds to them. It is
+wondered why so many Englishmen look out for American wives. That is
+because the American girl takes pains to cultivate her mind, becomes a
+rational and well-educated woman. She can enter into her husband's
+interests, she can converse with him on almost every topic. She becomes
+his companion. That the modern English girl cannot be. Her head is as
+hollow as a drum. Now, if she grows up and marries, or even remains an
+old maid, the case is altered; she takes to keeping poultry, she becomes
+passionately fond of gardening, and she acquires a fund of information
+on the habits and customs of the domestic servant. The consequence of
+this is, that the vast majority of English young women who die early,
+die with nothing stored up in their brains out of which the wings may be
+evolved. In the larva condition they have consumed nothing that can
+serve them to bring them into the higher state."</p>
+
+<p>"So," said I, "we are all, you and I, in the larva condition as well as
+girls."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so, we are larvæ like them, only they are more so. To proceed.
+When girls die, without having acquired any profitable knowledge, as you
+well see, they cannot rise. They become Merewigs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is Merewigs," said I, greatly astonished.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the Merewigs I had seen pass in and out of the British Museum,
+whether to study the collections or to work in the reading-room, were
+middle-aged for the most part."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you explain that?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I give you only what I received from Alec. There are male Merewigs, but
+they are few and far between, for the reasons I have given to you. I
+suppose there are ninety-nine female Merewigs to one male."</p>
+
+<p>"You astonish me."</p>
+
+<p>"I was astonished when I learned this from Alec. Now I will tell you
+something further. All the souls of the girls who have died empty-headed
+in the preceding twenty-four hours in England assemble at four o'clock
+every morning, or rather a few minutes before the stroke of the clock,
+about the statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, with a
+possible sprinkling of male masher souls among them. At the stroke of
+the clock, off the whole swarm rushes up Holborn Hill, along Oxford
+Street, whither I cannot certainly say. Alec told me that it is for all
+the world like the rush of an army of rats in the sewers."</p>
+
+<p>"But what can that Hindu know of underground London?"</p>
+
+<p>"He knows because he lodges in the house of a sewer-man, with whom he
+has become on friendly terms."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do not know whither this galloping legion runs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly, for Alec was not sure. But he tells me they tear away to
+the great <i>garde-robe</i> of discarded female bodies. They must get into
+these, so as to make up for the past, and acquire knowledge, out of
+which wings may be developed. Of course there is a scramble for these
+bodies, for there are at least half a dozen applicants. At first only
+the abandoned husks of old maids were given them, but the supply having
+proved to be altogether inadequate, they are obliged to put up with
+those of married women and widows. There was some demur as to this, but
+beggars must not be choosers. And so they become Merewigs. There are
+more than a sufficiency of old bachelors' outer cases hanging up in the
+<i>garde-robe</i>, but the girls will not get into them at any price. Now you
+understand what Merewigs are, and why they swarm in the reading-room of
+the British Museum. They are there picking up information as hard as
+they can pick."</p>
+
+<p>"This is extremely interesting," said I, "and novel."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would say so. How goes on the drying?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been picking off clots of clay while you have been talking."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you are interested," said Donelly.</p>
+
+<p>"Interested," I replied, "is not the word for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you think so," said the major; "I was intensely interested in
+what Alec told me, so much so that I proposed he should come with me
+into the reading-room, and point out to me such as he perceived by his
+remarkable gift of discernment of spirits were actual Merewigs. But
+again the difficulty of his tray was objected, and Alec further
+intimated that he was missing opportunities of disposing of his trinkets
+by spending so much time conversing with me. 'As to that,' said I, 'I
+will buy half a dozen of your bangles and present them to my lady
+friends; as coming from me, an oriental traveller, they will believe
+them to be genuine&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"As your experiences," interpolated I.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?" he inquired sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more than this," rejoined I, "that faith is grown weak among
+females nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>"That is certainly true. It is becoming a sadly incredulous sex. I
+further got over Alec's difficulty about the tray by saying that it
+could be left in the custody of one of the officials at the entrance.
+Then he consented. We passed through the swing-door and deposited the
+tray with the functionary who presides over umbrellas and
+walking-sticks. Then I went forward along with my Hindu towards the
+reading-room. But here another hindrance arose. Alec had no ticket, and
+therefore might not enter beyond the glass screen interposed between the
+door and the readers. Some demur was made as to his being allowed to
+remain there for any considerable time, but I got over that by means of
+a little persuasion. 'Sahib,' said Alec 'I should suggest your marking
+the Merewigs, so as to be able to recognise them elsewhere.' 'How can I
+do that?' I inquired. 'I have here with me a piece of French chalk,' he
+answered. 'You go within, sahib, and walk up and down by the tables,
+behind the chairs of the readers, or around the circular cases that
+contain the catalogues, and where the students are looking out for the
+books they desire to consult. When you pass a female, either seated or
+standing, glance towards the glass screen, and when you are by a Merewig
+I will hold up my hand above the screen, and you will know her to be
+one; then just scrawl a W or M, or any letter or cabalistic symbol that
+occurs to you, upon her back with the French chalk. Then whenever you
+meet her in the street, in society, at an A. B. C. place of refreshment,
+on a railway platform, you will recognise her infallibly.' 'Not likely,'
+I objected. 'Of course, so soon as she gets home, she will brush off the
+mark.' 'You do not know much of the Merewigs,' he said. 'When the
+spirits of those frivolous girls were in their first stage of existence,
+they were most particular about their personal appearance, about the
+neatness and stylishness of their dress, and the puffing and piling up
+of their hair. Now all that is changed. They are so disgusted at having
+to get into any unsouled body that they can lay hold of in the
+<i>garde-robe</i>, such a body being usually plain in features, middle-aged,
+and with no waist to speak of, or rather too ample in the waist to be
+elegant, that they have abandoned all concern about dress and tidiness.
+Besides, they are engrossed in the acquisition of knowledge, and the
+burning desire that consumes them is to get out of these borrowed cases
+as speedily as may be. Consequently, so long as they are dressed and
+their hair done up anyhow, that is all they care about. As to threads,
+or feathers, or French chalk marks on their clothes, they would not
+think of looking for them.' Then Alec handed to me a little piece of
+French chalk, such as tailors and dressmakers employ to indicate
+alterations when fitting on garments. So provided, I passed wholly into
+the spacious reading-room, leaving the Hindu behind the screen.</p>
+
+<p>"I slowly strayed down the first line of desks and chairs, which were
+fully engaged. There were many men there, with piles of books at their
+sides. There were also some women. I stepped behind one, and turned my
+head towards the screen, but Alec made no sign. At the second, however,
+up went his hand above it, and I hastily scrawled M, on her back as she
+stooped over her studies. I had time, moreover, to see what she was
+engaged upon. She was working up deep-sea soundings, beginning with that
+recorded by Schiller in his ballad of 'The Diver,' down to the last
+scientific researches in the bottom of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and
+the dredgings in the North Sea. She was engrossed in her work, and was
+picking up facts at a prodigious rate. She was a woman of, I should say,
+forty, with a cadaverous face, a shapeless nose, and enormous hands. Her
+dress was grey, badly fitted, and her boots were even worse made. Her
+hair was drawn back and knotted in a bunch behind, with the pins
+sticking out. It might have been better brushed. I passed on behind her
+back; the next occupants of seats were gentlemen, so I stepped to
+another row of desks, and looking round saw Alec's hand go up. I was
+behind a young lady in a felt hat, crunched in at top, and with a
+feather at the side; she wore a pea-jacket, with large smoked buttons,
+and beneath it a dull green gown, very short in the skirt, and brown
+boots. Her hair was cut short like that of a man. As I halted, she
+looked round, and I saw that she had hard, brown eyes, like pebbles,
+without a gleam of tenderness or sympathy in them. I cannot say whether
+this was due to the body she had assumed, or to the soul which had
+entered into the body&mdash;whether the lack was in the organ, or in the
+psychic force which employed the organ. I merely state the fact. I
+looked over her shoulder to see what she was engaged upon, and found
+that she was working her way diligently through Herbert Spencer. I
+scored a W on her back and went on. The next Merewig I had to scribble
+on was a wizen old lady, with little grey curls on the temples, very
+shabby in dress, and very antiquated in costume. Her fingers were dirty
+with ink, and the ink did not appear to me to be all of that day's
+application. Besides, I saw that she had been rubbing her nose. I
+presume it had been tickling, and she had done this with a finger still
+wet with ink, so that there was a smear on her face. She was engaged on
+the peerage. She had Dod, Burke, and Foster before her, and was getting
+up the authentic pedigrees of our noble families and their
+ramifications. I noticed with her as with the other Merewigs, that when
+they had swallowed a certain amount of information they held up their
+heads much like fowls after drinking.</p>
+
+<p>"The next that I marked was a very thin woman of an age I was quite
+unable to determine. She had a pointed nose, and was dressed in red. She
+looked like a stick of sealing-wax. The gown had probably enough been
+good and showy at one time, but it was ripped behind now, and the
+stitches showed, besides, a little bit of what was beneath. There was a
+frilling, or ruche, or tucker, about the throat that I think had been
+sewn into it three weeks before. I drew a note of interrogation on her
+back with my bit of French chalk. I wanted much to find out what she was
+studying, but could not. She turned round and asked sharply what I was
+stooping over for and breathing on the back of her neck. So I was forced
+to go on to the next. This was a lady fairly well dressed in the
+dingiest of colours, wearing spectacles. I believe that she wore divided
+skirts, but as she did not stand up and walk, I cannot be certain. I am
+particular never to make a statement of which I am not absolutely
+certain. She was engaged upon the subject of the land laws in various
+countries, on common land, and property in land; and she was at that
+time devoting her special attention to the constitution of the Russian
+<i>mir</i>, and the tenure of land under it. I scrawled on her back the
+zodiacal sign for Venus, the Virgin, and went further. But when I had
+marked seventeen I gave it up. I had already gone over the desks to L,
+beginning backward, and that sufficed, so I returned to Alec, paid him
+for the bangles, and we separated. I did, however, give him a letter to
+the Secretary of the Psychical Research Society, and addressed it,
+having found what I wanted in the <i>London Directory</i>, which was in the
+reading-room of the British Museum. Two days later I met, by
+appointment, my Hindu once more, and for the last time. He had not been
+received as he had anticipated by the Psychical Research Society, and
+thought of getting back to India at the first opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"It is remarkable that, a few days later, I saw in the Underground one
+of those I had marked. The chalk mark was still quite distinct. She was
+not in my compartment, but I noticed her as she stepped out on to the
+platform at Baker Street. I suspect she was on her way to Madame
+Tussaud's waxwork exhibition, to instruct her mind there. But I was more
+fortunate a week later when I was at St. Albans. I had an uncle living
+there from whom I had expectations, and I paid him a visit. Whilst
+there, a lecture was to be given on the spectroscope, and as my
+acquaintance with that remarkable invention of modern times was limited,
+I resolved to go. Have you, my friend, ever taken up the subject of the
+photosphere of the sun?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let me press it upon you. It will really supply a large amount of
+wing-pulp, if properly assimilated. It is a most astonishing thought
+that we are able, at the remote distance at which we are from the solar
+orb, to detect the various incandescent metals which go to make up the
+luminous envelope of the sun. Not only so, but we are able to discover,
+by the bars in the spectroscope, of what Jupiter, Saturn, and so on are
+composed. What a stride astronomy has made since the days of Newton!"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt about it. But I do not want to hear about the bars, but of the
+chalk marks on the Merewigs."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I noticed two elderly ladies sitting in the row before me,
+and there&mdash;as distinctly as if sketched in only yesterday&mdash;were the
+symbols I had scribbled on their backs. I did not have an opportunity of
+speaking with them then; indeed, I had no introduction to them, and
+could hardly take on me to address them without it. I was, however, more
+successful a week or two later. There was a meeting of the Hertfordshire
+Archæological Society organised, to last a week, with excursions to
+ancient Verulam and to other objects of interest in the county.
+Hertfordshire is not a large county. It is, in fact, one of the smallest
+in England, but it yields to none in the points of interest that it
+contains, apart from the venerable abbey church that has been so
+fearfully mauled and maltreated by ignorant so-called restoration. One
+must really hope that the next generation, which will be more
+enlightened than our own, will undo all the villainous work that has
+been perpetrated to disfigure it in our own. The local secretaries and
+managers had arranged for char-à-bancs and brakes to take the party
+about, and men&mdash;learned, or thinking themselves to be learned, on the
+several antiquities&mdash;were to deliver lectures on the spot explanatory of
+what we saw. On three days there were to be evening gatherings, at which
+papers would be read. You may conceive that this was a supreme
+opportunity for storing the mind with information, and knowing what I
+did, I resolved on taking advantage of it. I entered my name as a
+subscriber to all the excursions. On the first day we went over the
+remains of the old Roman city of Verulam, and were shown its plan and
+walls, and further, the spot where the protomartyr of Britain passed
+over the stream, and the hill on which he was martyred. Nothing could
+have been more interesting and more instructive. Among those present
+were three middle-aged personages of the female sex, all of whom were
+chalk-marked on the back. One of these marks was somewhat effaced, as
+though the lady whose gown was scored had made a faint effort to brush
+it off, but had tired of the attempt and had abandoned it. The other two
+scorings were quite distinct.</p>
+
+<p>"On this, the first day, though I sidled up to these three Merewigs, I
+did not succeed in ingratiating myself into their favour sufficiently to
+converse with them. You may well understand, my friend, that such an
+opportunity of getting out of them some of their Merewigian experiences
+was not to be allowed to slip. On the second day I was more successful.
+I managed to obtain a seat in a brake between two of them. We were to
+drive to a distant spot where was a church of considerable architectural
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in these excursions a sort of freemasonry exists between the
+archæologists who share in them, and no ceremonious introductions are
+needed. For instance, you say to the lady next to you, 'Am I squeezing
+you?' And the ice is broken. I did not, however, attempt to draw any
+information from those between whom I was seated, till after luncheon, a
+most sumptuous repast, with champagne, liberally given to the Society by
+a gentleman of property, to whose house we drove up just about one
+o'clock. There was plenty of champagne supplied, and I did not stint
+myself. I felt it necessary to take in a certain amount of Dutch courage
+before broaching to my companions in the brake the theme that lay near
+my heart. When, however, we got into the conveyance, all in great
+spirits, after the conclusion of the lunch, I turned to my right-hand
+lady, and said to her: 'Well, miss, I fear it will be a long time before
+you become angelic.' She turned her back upon me and made no reply.
+Somewhat disconcerted, I now addressed myself to the chalk-marked lady
+on my left hand, and asked: 'Have you anything at all in your head
+except archæology?' Instead of answering me in the kindly mood in which
+I spoke, she began at once to enter into a lively discussion with her
+neighbour on the opposite side of the carriage, and ignored me. I was
+not to be done in this way. I wanted information. But, of course, I
+could enter into the feelings of both. Merewigs do not like to converse
+about themselves in their former stage of existence, of which they are
+ashamed, nor of the efforts they are making in this transitional stage
+to acquire a fund of knowledge for the purpose of ultimately discarding
+their acquired bodies, and developing their ethereal wings as they pass
+into the higher and nobler condition.</p>
+
+<p>"We left the carriage to go to a spot about a mile off, through lanes,
+muddy and rutty, for the purpose of inspecting some remarkable stones.
+All the party would not walk, and the conveyances could proceed no
+nearer. The more enthusiastic did go on, and I was of the number. What
+further stimulated me to do so was the fact that the third Merewig, she
+who had partially cleaned my scoring off her back, plucked up her
+skirts, and strode ahead. I hurried after and caught her up. 'I beg your
+pardon,' said I. 'You must excuse the interest I take in antiquities,
+but I suppose it is a long time since you were a girl.' Of course, my
+meaning was obvious; I referred to her earlier existence, before she
+borrowed her present body. But she stopped abruptly, gave me a withering
+look, and went back to rejoin another group of pedestrians. Ha! my
+friend, I verily believe that the boat is being lifted. The tide is
+flowing in."</p>
+
+<p>"The tide is flowing," I said; and then added, "really, Major Donelly,
+your story ought not to be confined to the narrow circle of your
+intimates."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," he replied. "But my desire to make it known has been
+damped by the way in which Alec was received, or rather rejected, by the
+Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do not mean that you should tell it to the Society for Psychical
+Research."</p>
+
+<p>"To whom, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell it to the Horse Marines."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_BOLD_VENTURE" id="THE_BOLD_VENTURE"></a>THE "BOLD VENTURE"</h2>
+
+
+<p>The little fisher-town of Portstephen comprised two strings of houses
+facing each other at the bottom of a narrow valley, down which the
+merest trickle of a stream decanted into the harbour. The street was so
+narrow that it was at intervals alone that sufficient space was accorded
+for two wheeled vehicles to pass one another, and the road-way was for
+the most part so narrow that each house door was set back in the depth
+of the wall, to permit the foot-passenger to step into the recess to
+avoid being overrun by the wheels of a cart that ascended or descended
+the street.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants lived upon the sea and its produce. Such as were not
+fishers were mariners, and but a small percentage remained that were
+neither&mdash;the butcher, the baker, the smith, and the doctor; and these
+also lived by the sea, for they lived upon the sailors and fishermen.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part, the seafaring men were furnished with large families.
+The net in which they drew children was almost as well filled as the
+seine in which they trapped pilchards.</p>
+
+<p>Jonas Rea, however, was an exception; he had been married for ten years,
+and had but one child, and that a son.</p>
+
+<p>"You've a very poor haul, Jonas," said to him his neighbour, Samuel
+Carnsew; "I've been married so long as you and I've twelve. My wife has
+had twins twice."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not a poor haul for me, Samuel," replied Jonas, "I may have but
+one child, but he's a buster."</p>
+
+<p>Jonas had a mother alive, known as Old Betty Rea. When he married, he
+had proposed that his mother, who was a widow, should live with him.
+But man proposes and woman disposes. The arrangement did not commend
+itself to the views of Mrs. Rea, junior&mdash;that is to say, of Jane,
+Jonas's wife.</p>
+
+<p>Betty had always been a managing woman. She had managed her house, her
+children, and her husband; but she speedily was made aware that her
+daughter-in-law refused to be managed by her.</p>
+
+<p>Jane was, in her way, also a managing woman: she kept her house clean,
+her husband's clothes in order, her child neat, and herself the very
+pink of tidiness. She was a somewhat hard woman, much given to grumbling
+and finding fault.</p>
+
+<p>Jane and her mother-in-law did not come to an open and flagrant quarrel,
+but the fret between them waxed intolerable; and the curtain-lectures,
+of which the text and topic was Old Betty, were so frequent and so
+protracted that Jonas convinced himself that there was smoother water in
+the worst sea than in his own house.</p>
+
+<p>He was constrained to break to his mother the unpleasant information
+that she must go elsewhere; but he softened the blow by informing her
+that he had secured for her residence a tiny cottage up an alley, that
+consisted of two rooms only, one a kitchen, above that a bedchamber.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman received the communication without annoyance. She rose to
+the offer, for she had also herself considered that the situation had
+become unendurable. Accordingly, with goodwill, she removed to her new
+quarters, and soon made the house look keen and cosy.</p>
+
+<p>But, so soon as Jane gave indications of becoming a mother, it was
+agreed that Betty should attend on her daughter-in-law. To this Jane
+consented. After all, Betty could not be worse than another woman, a
+stranger.</p>
+
+<p>And when Jane was in bed, and unable to quit it, then Betty once more
+reigned supreme in the house and managed everything&mdash;even her
+daughter-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>But the time of Jane's lying upstairs was brief, and at the earliest
+possible moment she reappeared in the kitchen, pale indeed and weak, but
+resolute, and with firm hand withdrew the reins from the grasp of Betty.</p>
+
+<p>In leaving her son's house, the only thing that Betty regretted was the
+baby. To that she had taken a mighty affection, and she did not quit
+till she had poured forth into the deaf ear of Jane a thousand
+instructions as to how the babe was to be fed, clothed, and reared.</p>
+
+<p>As a devoted son, Jonas never returned from sea without visiting his
+mother, and when on shore saw her every day. He sat with her by the
+hour, told her of all that concerned him&mdash;except about his wife&mdash;and
+communicated to her all his hopes and wishes. The babe, whose name was
+Peter, was a topic on which neither wearied of talking or of listening;
+and often did Jonas bring the child over to be kissed and admired by his
+grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Jane raised objections&mdash;the weather was cold and the child would take a
+chill; grandmother was inconsiderate, and upset its stomach with
+sweetstuff; it had not a tidy dress in which to be seen: but Jonas
+overruled all her objections. He was a mild and yielding man, but on
+this one point he was inflexible&mdash;his child should grow up to know,
+love, and reverence his mother as sincerely as did he himself. And these
+were delightful hours to the old woman, when she could have the infant
+on her lap, croon to it, and talk to it all the delightful nonsense that
+flows from the lips of a woman when caressing a child.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, when the boy was not there, Betty was knitting socks or
+contriving pin-cases, or making little garments for him; and all the
+small savings she could gather from the allowance made by her son, and
+from the sale of some of her needlework, were devoted to the same
+grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>As the little fellow found his feet and was allowed to toddle, he often
+wanted to "go to granny," not much to the approval of Mrs. Jane. And,
+later, when he went to school, he found his way to her cottage before he
+returned home so soon as his work hours in class were over. He very
+early developed a love for the sea and ships.</p>
+
+<p>This did not accord with Mrs. Jane's ideas; she came of a family that
+had ever been on the land, and she disapproved of the sea. "But,"
+remonstrated her husband, "he is my son, and I and my father and
+grandfather were all of us sea-dogs, so that, naturally, my part in the
+boy takes to the water."</p>
+
+<p>And now an idea entered the head of Old Betty. She resolved on making a
+ship for Peter. She provided herself with a stout piece of deal of
+suitable size and shape, and proceeded to fashion it into the form of a
+cutter, and to scoop out the interior. At this Peter assisted. After
+school hours he was with his grandmother watching the process, giving
+his opinion as to shape, and how the boat was to be rigged and
+furnished. The aged woman had but an old knife, no proper carpentering
+tools, consequently the progress made was slow. Moreover, she worked at
+the ship only when Peter was by. The interest excited in the child by
+the process was an attraction to her house, and it served to keep him
+there. Further, when he was at home, he was being incessantly scolded by
+his mother, and the preference he developed for granny's cottage caused
+many a pang of jealousy in Jane's heart.</p>
+
+<p>Peter was now nine years old, and remained the only child, when a sad
+thing happened. One evening, when the little ship was rigged and almost
+complete, after leaving his grandmother, Peter went down to the port.
+There happened to be no one about, and in craning over the quay to look
+into his father's boat, he overbalanced, fell in, and was drowned.</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother supposed that the boy had returned home, the mother that
+he was with his grandmother, and a couple of hours passed before search
+for him was instituted, and the body was brought home an hour after
+that. Mrs. Jane's grief at losing her child was united with resentment
+against Old Betty for having drawn the child away from home, and
+against her husband for having encouraged it. She poured forth the vials
+of her wrath upon Jonas. He it was who had done his utmost to have the
+boy killed, because he had allowed him to wander at large, and had
+provided him with an excuse by allowing him to tarry with Old Betty
+after leaving school, so that no one knew where he was. Had Jonas been a
+reasonable man, and a docile husband, he would have insisted on Peter
+returning promptly home every day, in which case this disaster would not
+have occurred. "But," said Jane bitterly, "you never have considered my
+feelings, and I believe you did not love Peter, and wanted to be rid of
+him."</p>
+
+<p>The blow to Betty was terrible; her heart-strings were wrapped about the
+little fellow; and his loss was to her the eclipse of all light, the
+death of all her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>When Peter was in his coffin, then the old woman went to the house,
+carrying the little ship. It was now complete with sails and rigging.</p>
+
+<p>"Jane," said she, "I want thickey ship to be put in with Peter. 'Twere
+made for he, and I can't let another have it, and I can't keep it
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," retorted Mrs. Rea, junior. "The boat can be no use to he,
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't say that. There's naught revealed on them matters. But I'm
+cruel certain that up aloft there'll be a rumpus if Peter wakes up and
+don't find his ship."</p>
+
+<p>"You may take it away; I'll have none of it," said Jane.</p>
+
+<p>So the old woman departed, but was not disposed to accept discomfiture.
+She went to the undertaker.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Matthews, I want you to put this here boat in wi' my gran'child
+Peter. It will go in fitty at his feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Very sorry, ma'am, but not unless I break off the bowsprit. You see the
+coffin is too narrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Then put'n in sideways and longways."</p>
+
+<p>"Very sorry, ma'am, but the mast is in the way. I'd be forced to break
+that so as to get the lid down."</p>
+
+<p>Disconcerted, the old woman retired; she would not suffer Peter's boat
+to be maltreated.</p>
+
+<p>On the occasion of the funeral, the grandmother appeared as one of the
+principal mourners. For certain reasons, Mrs. Jane did not attend at the
+church and grave.</p>
+
+<p>As the procession left the house, Old Betty took her place beside her
+son, and carried the boat in her hand. At the close of the service at
+the grave, she said to the sexton: "I'll trouble you, John Hext, to put
+this here little ship right o' top o' his coffin. I made'n for Peter,
+and Peter'll expect to have'n." This was done, and not a step from the
+grave would the grandmother take till the first shovelfuls had fallen on
+the coffin and had partially buried the white ship.</p>
+
+<p>When Granny Rea returned to her cottage, the fire was out. She seated
+herself beside the dead hearth, with hands folded and the tears coursing
+down her withered cheeks. Her heart was as dead and dreary as that
+hearth. She had now no object in life, and she murmured a prayer that
+the Lord might please to take her, that she might see her Peter sailing
+his boat in paradise.</p>
+
+<p>Her prayer was interrupted by the entry of Jonas, who shouted: "Mother,
+we want your help again. There's Jane took bad; wi' the worrit and the
+sorrow it's come on a bit earlier than she reckoned, and you're to come
+along as quick as you can. 'Tisn't the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
+away, but topsy-turvy, the Lord hath taken away and is givin' again."</p>
+
+<p>Betty rose at once, and went to the house with her son, and again&mdash;as
+nine years previously&mdash;for a while she assumed the management of the
+house; and when a baby arrived, another boy, she managed that as well.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of Betty in the house of Jonas and Jane was not for long. The
+mother was soon downstairs, and with her reappearance came the departure
+of the grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>And now began once more the same old life as had been initiated nine
+years previously. The child carried to its grandmother, who dandled it,
+crooned and talked to it. Then, as it grew, it was supplied with socks
+and garments knitted and cut out and put together by Betty; there ensued
+the visits of the toddling child, and the remonstrances of the mother.
+School time arrived, and with it a break in the journey to or from
+school at granny's house, to partake of bread and jam, hear stories,
+and, finally, to assist at the making of a new ship.</p>
+
+<p>If, with increase of years, Betty's powers had begun to fail, there had
+been no corresponding decrease in energy of will. Her eyes were not so
+clear as of old, nor her hearing so acute, but her hand was not
+unsteady. She would this time make and rig a schooner and not a cutter.</p>
+
+<p>Experience had made her more able, and she aspired to accomplish a
+greater task than she had previously undertaken. It was really
+remarkable how the old course was resumed almost in every particular.
+But the new grandson was called Jonas, like his father, and Old Betty
+loved him, if possible, with a more intense love than had been given to
+the first child. He closely resembled his father, and to her it was a
+renewal of her life long ago, when she nursed and cared for the first
+Jonas. And, if possible, Jane became more jealous of the aged woman, who
+was drawing to her so large a portion of her child's affection. The
+schooner was nearly complete. It was somewhat rude, having been worked
+with no better tool than a penknife, and its masts being made of
+knitting-pins.</p>
+
+<p>On the day before little Jonas's ninth birthday, Betty carried the ship
+to the painter.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Elway," said she, "there be one thing I do want your help in. I
+cannot put the name on the vessel. I can't fashion the letters, and I
+want you to do it for me."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, ma'am. What name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now," said she, "my husband, the father of Jonas, and the
+grandfather of the little Jonas, he always sailed in a schooner, and the
+ship was the <i>Bold Venture</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Bonaventura</i>, I think. I remember her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure she was the <i>Bold Venture</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I think not, Mrs. Rea."</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been the <i>Bold Venture</i> or <i>Bold Adventurer</i>. What sense
+is there in such a name as <i>Boneventure</i>? I never heard of no such
+venture, unless it were that of Jack Smithson, who jumped out of a
+garret window, and sure enough he broke a bone of his leg. No, Mr.
+Elway, I'll have her entitled the <i>Bold Venture</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not gainsay you. <i>Bold Venture</i> she shall be."</p>
+
+<p>Then the painter very dexterously and daintily put the name in black
+paint on the white strip at the stern.</p>
+
+<p>"Will it be dry by to-morrow?" asked the old woman. "That's the little
+lad's birthday, and I promised to have his schooner ready for him to
+sail her then."</p>
+
+<p>"I've put dryers in the paint," answered Mr. Elway, "and you may reckon
+it will be right for to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>That night Betty was unable to sleep, so eager was she for the day when
+the little boy would attain his ninth year and become the possessor of
+the beautiful ship she had fashioned for him with her own hands, and on
+which, in fact, she had been engaged for more than a twelvemonth.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was she able to eat her simple breakfast and noonday meal, so
+thrilled was her old heart with love for the child and expectation of
+his delight when the <i>Bold Venture</i> was made over to him as his own.</p>
+
+<p>She heard his little feet on the cobblestones of the alley: he came on,
+dancing, jumping, fidgeted at the lock, threw the door open and burst in
+with a shout&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"See! see, granny! my new ship! Mother has give it me. A real
+frigate&mdash;with three masts, all red and green, and cost her seven
+shillings at Camelot Fair yesterday." He bore aloft a very magnificent
+toy ship. It had pennants at the mast-top and a flag at stern. "Granny!
+look! look! ain't she a beauty? Now I shan't want your drashy old
+schooner when I have my grand new frigate."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you have your ship&mdash;the <i>Bold Venture</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, granny; chuck it away. It's a shabby bit o' rubbish, mother says;
+and see! there's a brass cannon, a real cannon that will go off with a
+bang, on my frigate. Ain't it a beauty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jonas! look at the <i>Bold Venture</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, granny, I can't stay. I want to be off and swim my beautiful
+seven-shilling ship."</p>
+
+<p>Then he dashed away as boisterous as he had dashed in, and forgot to
+shut the door. It was evening when the elder Jonas returned home, and he
+was welcomed by his son with exclamations of delight, and was shown the
+new ship.</p>
+
+<p>"But, daddy, her won't sail; over her will flop in the water."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no lead on the keel," remarked the father. "The vessel is
+built for show only."</p>
+
+<p>Then he walked away to his mother's cottage. He was vexed. He knew that
+his wife had bought the toy with the deliberate intent of disappointing
+and wounding her mother-in-law; and he was afraid that he would find the
+old lady deeply mortified and incensed. As he entered the dingy lane, he
+noticed that her door was partly open.</p>
+
+<p>The aged woman was on the seat by the table at the window, lying forward
+clasping the ship, and the two masts were run through her white hair;
+her head rested, partly on the new ship and partly on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" said he. "Mother!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>The feeble old heart had given way under the blow, and had ceased to
+beat.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I was accustomed, a few summers past, to spend a couple of months at
+Portstephen. Jonas Rea took me often in his boat, either mackerel
+fishing, or on excursions to the islets off the coast, in quest of wild
+birds. We became familiar, and I would now and then spend an evening
+with him in his cottage, and talk about the sea, and the chances of a
+harbour of refuge being made at Portstephen, and sometimes we spoke of
+our own family affairs. Thus it was that, little by little, the story of
+the ship <i>Bold Venture</i> was told me.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jane was no more in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a curious thing," said Jonas Rea, "but the first ship my mother
+made was no sooner done than my boy Peter died, and when she made
+another, with two masts, as soon as ever it was finished she died
+herself, and shortly after my wife, Jane, who took a chill at mother's
+funeral. It settled on her chest, and she died in a fortnight."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the boat?" I inquired, pointing to a glass case on a cupboard,
+in which was a rudely executed schooner.</p>
+
+<p>"That's her," replied Jonas; "and I'd like you to have a look close at
+her."</p>
+
+<p>I walked to the cupboard and looked.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see anything particular?" asked the fisherman.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say that I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Look at her masthead. What is there?"</p>
+
+<p>After a pause I said: "There is a grey hair, that is all, like a
+pennant."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that," said Jonas. "I can't say whether my old mother put a hair
+from her white head there for the purpose, or whether it caught and
+fixed itself when she fell forward clasping the boat, and the masts and
+spars and shrouds were all tangled in her hair. Anyhow, there it be, and
+that's one reason why I've had the <i>Bold Venture</i> put in a glass
+case&mdash;that the white hair may never by no chance get brushed away from
+it. Now, look again. Do you see nothing more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the bows."</p>
+
+<p>I did so. Presently I remarked: "I see nothing except, perhaps, some
+bruises, and a little bit of red paint."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that's it, and where did the red paint come from?"</p>
+
+<p>I was, of course, quite unable to suggest an explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, after Mr. Rea had waited&mdash;as if to draw from me the answer he
+expected&mdash;he said: "Well, no, I reckon you can't tell. It was thus. When
+mother died, I brought the <i>Bold Venture</i> here and set her where she is
+now, on the cupboard, and Jonas, he had set the new ship, all red and
+green, the <i>Saucy Jane</i> it was called, on the bureau. Will you believe
+me, next morning when I came downstairs the frigate was on the floor,
+and some of her spars broken and all the rigging in a muddle."</p>
+
+<p>"There was no lead on the bottom. It fell down."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not once that happened. It came to the same thing every night;
+and what is more, the <i>Bold Venture</i> began to show signs of having
+fouled her."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Run against her. She had bruises, and had brought away some of the
+paint of the <i>Saucy Jane</i>. Every morning the frigate, if she were'nt on
+the floor, were rammed into a corner, and battered as if she'd been in a
+bad sea."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, lots o' things is impossible, but they happen all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what next?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jane, she was ill, and took wus and wus, and just as she got wus so it
+took wus as well with the <i>Saucy Jane</i>. And on the night she died, I
+reckon that there was a reg'lar pitched sea-fight."</p>
+
+<p>"But not at sea."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no; but the frigate seemed to have been rammed, and she was on
+the floor and split from stem to stern."</p>
+
+<p>"And, pray, has the <i>Bold Venture</i> made no attempt since? The glass case
+is not broken."</p>
+
+<p>"There's been no occasion. I chucked what remained of the <i>Saucy Jane</i>
+into the fire."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MUSTAPHA" id="MUSTAPHA"></a>MUSTAPHA</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Among the many hangers-on at the Hotel de l'Europe at
+Luxor&mdash;donkey-boys, porters, guides, antiquity dealers&mdash;was one, a young
+man named Mustapha, who proved a general favourite.</p>
+
+<p>I spent three winters at Luxor, partly for my health, partly for
+pleasure, mainly to make artistic studies, as I am by profession a
+painter. So I came to know Mustapha fairly well in three stages, during
+those three winters.</p>
+
+<p>When first I made his acquaintance he was in the transition condition
+from boyhood to manhood. He had an intelligent face, with bright eyes, a
+skin soft as brown silk, with a velvety hue on it. His features were
+regular, and if his face was a little too round to quite satisfy an
+English artistic eye, yet this was a peculiarity to which one soon
+became accustomed. He was unflaggingly good-natured and obliging. A
+mongrel, no doubt, he was; Arab and native Egyptian blood were mingled
+in his veins. But the result was happy; he combined the patience and
+gentleness of the child of Mizraim with the energy and pluck of the son
+of the desert.</p>
+
+<p>Mustapha had been a donkey-boy, but had risen a stage higher, and
+looked, as the object of his supreme ambition, to become some day a
+dragoman, and blaze like one of these gilded beetles in lace and chains,
+rings and weapons. To become a dragoman&mdash;one of the most obsequious of
+men till engaged, one of the veriest tyrants when engaged&mdash;to what
+higher could an Egyptian boy aspire?</p>
+
+<p>To become a dragoman means to go in broadcloth and with gold chains when
+his fellows are half naked; to lounge and twist the moustache when his
+kinsfolk are toiling under the water-buckets; to be able to extort
+backsheesh from all the tradesmen to whom he can introduce a master; to
+do nothing himself and make others work for him; to be able to look to
+purchase two, three, even four wives when his father contented himself
+with one; to soar out of the region of native virtues into that of
+foreign vices; to be superior to all instilled prejudices against
+spirits and wine&mdash;that is the ideal set before young Egypt through
+contact with the English and the American tourist.</p>
+
+<p>We all liked Mustapha. No one had a bad word to say of him. Some pious
+individuals rejoiced to see that he had broken with the Koran, as if
+this were a first step towards taking up with the Bible. A free-thinking
+professor was glad to find that Mustapha had emancipated himself from
+some of those shackles which religion places on august, divine humanity,
+and that by getting drunk he gave pledge that he had risen into a sphere
+of pure emancipation, which eventuates in ideal perfection.</p>
+
+<p>As I made my studies I engaged Mustapha to carry my easel and canvas, or
+camp-stool. I was glad to have him as a study, to make him stand by a
+wall or sit on a pillar that was prostrate, as artistic exigencies
+required. He was always ready to accompany me. There was an
+understanding between us that when a drove of tourists came to Luxor he
+might leave me for the day to pick up what he could then from the
+natural prey; but I found him not always keen to be off duty to me.
+Though he could get more from the occasional visitor than from me, he
+was above the ravenous appetite for backsheesh which consumed his
+fellows.</p>
+
+<p>He who has much to do with the native Egyptian will have discovered
+that there are in him a fund of kindliness and a treasure of good
+qualities. He is delighted to be treated with humanity, pleased to be
+noticed, and ready to repay attention with touching gratitude. He is by
+no means as rapacious for backsheesh as the passing traveller supposes;
+he is shrewd to distinguish between man and man; likes this one, and
+will do anything for him unrewarded, and will do naught for another for
+any bribe.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian is now in a transitional state. If it be quite true that
+the touch of England is restoring life to his crippled limbs, and the
+voice of England bidding him rise up and walk, there are occasions on
+which association with Englishmen is a disadvantage to him. Such an
+instance is that of poor, good Mustapha.</p>
+
+<p>It was not my place to caution Mustapha against the pernicious
+influences to which he was subjected, and, to speak plainly, I did not
+know what line to adopt, on what ground to take my stand, if I did. He
+was breaking with the old life, and taking up with what was new,
+retaining of the old only what was bad in it, and acquiring of the new
+none of its good parts. Civilisation&mdash;European civilisation&mdash;is
+excellent, but cannot be swallowed at a gulp, nor does it wholly suit
+the oriental digestion.</p>
+
+<p>That which impelled Mustapha still further in his course was the
+attitude assumed towards him by his own relatives and the natives of his
+own village. They were strict Moslems, and they regarded him as one on
+the highway to becoming a renegade. They treated him with mistrust,
+showed him aversion, and loaded him with reproaches. Mustapha had a high
+spirit, and he resented rebuke. Let his fellows grumble and objurgate,
+said he; they would cringe to him when he became a dragoman, with his
+pockets stuffed with piastres.</p>
+
+<p>There was in our hotel, the second winter, a young fellow of the name of
+Jameson, a man with plenty of money, superficial good nature, little
+intellect, very conceited and egotistic, and this fellow was Mustapha's
+evil genius. It was Jameson's delight to encourage Mustapha in drinking
+and gambling. Time hung heavy on his hands. He cared nothing for
+hieroglyphics, scenery bored him, antiquities, art, had no charm for
+him. Natural history presented to him no attraction, and the only
+amusement level with his mental faculties was that of hoaxing natives,
+or breaking down their religious prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>Matters were in this condition as regarded Mustapha, when an incident
+occurred during my second winter at Luxor that completely altered the
+tenor of Mustapha's life.</p>
+
+<p>One night a fire broke out in the nearest village. It originated in a
+mud hovel belonging to a fellah; his wife had spilled some oil on the
+hearth, and the flames leaping up had caught the low thatch, which
+immediately burst into a blaze. A wind was blowing from the direction of
+the Arabian desert, and it carried the flames and ignited the thatch
+before it on other roofs; the conflagration spread, and the whole
+village was menaced with destruction. The greatest excitement and alarm
+prevailed. The inhabitants lost their heads. Men ran about rescuing from
+their hovels their only treasures&mdash;old sardine tins and empty marmalade
+pots; women wailed, children sobbed; no one made any attempt to stay the
+fire; and, above all, were heard the screams of the woman whose
+incaution had caused the mischief, and who was being beaten unmercifully
+by her husband.</p>
+
+<p>The few English in the hotel came on the scene, and with their
+instinctive energy and system set to work to organise a corps and subdue
+the flames. The women and girls who were rescued from the menaced
+hovels, or plucked out of those already on fire, were in many cases
+unveiled, and so it came to pass that Mustapha, who, under English
+direction, was ablest and most vigorous in his efforts to stop the
+conflagration, met his fate in the shape of the daughter of Ibraim the
+Farrier.</p>
+
+<p>By the light of the flames he saw her, and at once resolved to make that
+fair girl his wife.</p>
+
+<p>No reasonable obstacle intervened, so thought Mustapha. He had amassed a
+sufficient sum to entitle him to buy a wife and set up a household of
+his own. A house consists of four mud walls and a low thatch, and
+housekeeping in an Egyptian house is as elementary and economical as the
+domestic architecture. The maintenance of a wife and family is not
+costly after the first outlay, which consists in indemnifying the father
+for the expense to which he has been put in rearing a daughter.</p>
+
+<p>The ceremony of courting is also elementary, and the addresses of the
+suitor are not paid to the bride, but to her father, and not in person
+by the candidate, but by an intermediary.</p>
+
+<p>Mustapha negotiated with a friend, a fellow hanger-on at the hotel, to
+open proceedings with the farrier. He was to represent to the worthy man
+that the suitor entertained the most ardent admiration for the virtues
+of Ibraim personally, that he was inspired with but one ambition, which
+was alliance with so distinguished a family as his. He was to assure the
+father of the damsel that Mustapha undertook to proclaim through Upper
+and Lower Egypt, in the ears of Egyptians, Arabs, and Europeans, that
+Ibraim was the most remarkable man that ever existed for solidity of
+judgment, excellence of parts, uprightness of dealing, nobility of
+sentiment, strictness in observance of the precepts of the Koran, and
+that finally Mustapha was anxious to indemnify this same paragon of
+genius and virtue for his condescension in having cared to breed and
+clothe and feed for several years a certain girl, his daughter, if
+Mustapha might have that daughter as his wife. Not that he cared for the
+daughter in herself, but as a means whereby he might have the honour of
+entering into alliance with one so distinguished and so esteemed of
+Allah as Ibraim the Farrier.</p>
+
+<p>To the infinite surprise of the intermediary, and to the no less
+surprise and mortification of the suitor, Mustapha was refused. He was a
+bad Moslem. Ibraim would have no alliance with one who had turned his
+back on the Prophet and drunk bottled beer.</p>
+
+<p>Till this moment Mustapha had not realised how great was the alienation
+between his fellows and himself&mdash;what a barrier he had set up between
+himself and the men of his own blood. The refusal of his suit struck the
+young man to the quick. He had known and played with the farrier's
+daughter in childhood, till she had come of age to veil her face; now
+that he had seen her in her ripe charms, his heart was deeply stirred
+and engaged. He entered into himself, and going to the mosque he there
+made a solemn vow that if he ever touched wine, ale, or spirits again he
+would cut his throat, and he sent word to Ibraim that he had done so,
+and begged that he would not dispose of his daughter and finally reject
+him till he had seen how that he who had turned in thought and manner of
+life from the Prophet would return with firm resolution to the right
+way.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>From this time Mustapha changed his conduct. He was obliging and
+attentive as before, ready to exert himself to do for me what I wanted,
+ready also to extort money from the ordinary tourist for doing nothing,
+to go with me and carry my tools when I went forth painting, and to joke
+and laugh with Jameson; but, unless he were unavoidably detained, he
+said his prayers five times daily in the mosque, and no inducement
+whatever would make him touch anything save sherbet, milk, or water.</p>
+
+<p>Mustapha had no easy time of it. The strict Mohammedans mistrusted this
+sudden conversion, and believed that he was playing a part. Ibraim gave
+him no encouragement. His relatives maintained their reserve and
+stiffness towards him.</p>
+
+<p>His companions, moreover, who were in the transitional stage, and those
+who had completely shaken off all faith in Allah and trust in the
+Prophet and respect for the Koran, were incensed at his desertion. He
+was ridiculed, insulted; he was waylaid and beaten. The young fellows
+mimicked him, the elder scoffed at him.</p>
+
+<p>Jameson took his change to heart, and laid himself out to bring him out
+of his pot of scruples.</p>
+
+<p>"Mustapha ain't any sport at all now," said he. "I'm hanged if he has
+another para from me." He offered him bribes in gold, he united with the
+others in ridicule, he turned his back on him, and refused to employ
+him. Nothing availed. Mustapha was respectful, courteous, obliging as
+before, but he had returned, he said, to the faith and rule of life in
+which he had been brought up, and he would never again leave it.</p>
+
+<p>"I have sworn," said he, "that if I do I will cut my throat."</p>
+
+<p>I had been, perhaps, negligent in cautioning the young fellow the first
+winter that I knew him against the harm likely to be done him by taking
+up with European habits contrary to his law and the feelings and
+prejudices of his people. Now, however, I had no hesitation in
+expressing to him the satisfaction I felt at the courageous and
+determined manner in which he had broken with acquired habits that could
+do him no good. For one thing, we were now better acquaintances, and I
+felt that as one who had known him for more than a few months in the
+winter, I had a good right to speak. And, again, it is always easier or
+pleasanter to praise than to reprimand.</p>
+
+<p>One day when sketching I cut my pencil with a pruning-knife I happened
+to have in my pocket; my proper knife of many blades had been left
+behind by misadventure.</p>
+
+<p>Mustapha noticed the knife and admired it, and asked if it had cost a
+great sum.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," I answered. "I did not even buy it. It was given me. I
+ordered some flower seeds from a seeds-man, and when he sent me the
+consignment he included this knife in the case as a present. It is not
+worth more than a shilling in England."</p>
+
+<p>He turned it about, with looks of admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"It is just the sort that would suit me," he said. "I know your other
+knife with many blades. It is very fine, but it is too small. I do not
+want it to cut pencils. It has other things in it, a hook for taking
+stones from a horse's hoof, a pair of tweezers for removing hairs. I do
+not want such, but a knife such as this, with such a curve, is just the
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you shall have it," said I. "You are welcome. It was for rough
+work only that I brought the knife to Egypt with me."</p>
+
+<p>I finished a painting that winter that gave me real satisfaction. It was
+of the great court of the temple of Luxor by evening light, with the
+last red glare of the sun over the distant desert hills, and the eastern
+sky above of a purple depth. What colours I used! the intensest on my
+palette, and yet fell short of the effect.</p>
+
+<p>The picture was in the Academy, was well hung, abominably represented in
+one of the illustrated guides to the galleries, as a blotch, by some
+sort of photographic process on gelatine; my picture sold, which
+concerned me most of all, and not only did it sell at a respectable
+figure, but it also brought me two or three orders for Egyptian
+pictures. So many English and Americans go up the Nile, and carry away
+with them pleasant reminiscences of the Land of the Pharaohs, that when
+in England they are fain to buy pictures which shall remind them of
+scenes in that land.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to my hotel at Luxor in November, to spend there a third
+winter. The fellaheen about there saluted me as a friend with an
+affectionate delight, which I am quite certain was not assumed, as they
+got nothing out of me save kindly salutations. I had the Egyptian fever
+on me, which, when once acquired, is not to be shaken off&mdash;an enthusiasm
+for everything Egyptian, the antiquities, the history of the Pharaohs,
+the very desert, the brown Nile, the desolate hill ranges, the ever blue
+sky, the marvellous colorations at rise and set of sun, and last, but
+not least, the prosperity of the poor peasants.</p>
+
+<p>I am quite certain that the very warmest welcome accorded to me was from
+Mustapha, and almost the first words he said to me on my meeting him
+again were: "I have been very good. I say my prayers. I drink no wine,
+and Ibraim will give me his daughter in the second Iomada&mdash;what you call
+January."</p>
+
+<p>"Not before, Mustapha?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; he says I must be tried for one whole year, and he is right."</p>
+
+<p>"Then soon after Christmas you will be happy!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have got a house and made it ready. Yes. After Christmas there will
+be one very happy man&mdash;one very, very happy man in Egypt, and that will
+be your humble servant, Mustapha."</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>We were a pleasant party at Luxor, this third winter, not numerous, but
+for the most part of congenial tastes. For the most part we were keen on
+hieroglyphics, we admired Queen Hatasou and we hated Rameses II. We
+could distinguish the artistic work of one dynasty from that of another.
+We were learned on cartouches, and flourished our knowledge before the
+tourists dropping in.</p>
+
+<p>One of those staying in the hotel was an Oxford don, very good company,
+interested in everything, and able to talk well on everything&mdash;I mean
+everything more or less remotely connected with Egypt. Another was a
+young fellow who had been an attaché at Berlin, but was out of
+health&mdash;nothing organic the matter with his lungs, but they were weak.
+He was keen on the political situation, and very anti-Gallican, as every
+man who has been in Egypt naturally is, who is not a Frenchman.</p>
+
+<p>There was also staying in the hotel an American lady, fresh and
+delightful, whose mind and conversation twinkled like frost crystals in
+the sun, a woman full of good-humour, of the most generous sympathies,
+and so droll that she kept us ever amused.</p>
+
+<p>And, alas! Jameson was back again, not entering into any of our
+pursuits, not understanding our little jokes, not at all content to be
+there. He grumbled at the food&mdash;and, indeed, that might have been
+better; at the monotony of the life at Luxor, at his London doctor for
+putting the veto on Cairo because of its drainage, or rather the absence
+of all drainage. I really think we did our utmost to draw Jameson into
+our circle, to amuse him, to interest him in something; but one by one
+we gave him up, and the last to do this was the little American lady.</p>
+
+<p>From the outset he had attacked Mustapha, and endeavoured to persuade
+him to shake off his "squeamish nonsense," as Jameson called his
+resolve. "I'll tell you what it is, old fellow," he said, "life isn't
+worth living without good liquor, and as for that blessed Prophet of
+yours, he showed he was a fool when he put a bar on drinks."</p>
+
+<p>But as Mustapha was not pliable he gave him up. "He's become just as
+great a bore as that old Rameses," said he. "I'm sick of the whole
+concern, and I don't think anything of fresh dates, that you fellows
+make such a fuss about. As for that stupid old Nile&mdash;there ain't a fish
+worth eating comes out of it. And those old Egyptians were arrant
+humbugs. I haven't seen a lotus since I came here, and they made such a
+fuss about them too."</p>
+
+<p>The little American lady was not weary of asking questions relative to
+English home life, and especially to country-house living and
+amusements.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear!" said she, "I would give my ears to spend a Christmas in
+the fine old fashion in a good ancient manor-house in the country."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing remarkable in that," said an English lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to you, maybe; but there would be to us. What we read of and make
+pictures of in our fancies, that is what you live. Your facts are our
+fairy tales. Look at your hunting."</p>
+
+<p>"That, if you like, is fun," threw in Jameson. "But I don't myself think
+anything save Luxor can be a bigger bore than country-house life at
+Christmas time&mdash;when all the boys are back from school."</p>
+
+<p>"With us," said the little American, "our sportsmen dress in pink like
+yours&mdash;the whole thing&mdash;and canter after a bag of anise seed that is
+trailed before them."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do they not import foxes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because a fox would not keep to the road. Our farmers object pretty
+freely to trespass; so the hunting must of necessity be done on the
+highway, and the game is but a bag of anise seed. I would like to see an
+English meet and a run."</p>
+
+<p>This subject was thrashed out after having been prolonged unduly for the
+sake of Jameson.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me!" said the Yankee lady. "If but that chef could be
+persuaded to give us plum-puddings for Christmas, I would try to think I
+was in England."</p>
+
+<p>"Plum-pudding is exploded," said Jameson. "Only children ask for it now.
+A good trifle or a tipsy-cake is much more to my taste; but this hanged
+cook here can give us nothing but his blooming custard pudding and burnt
+sugar."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think it would be wise to let him attempt a plum-pudding,"
+said the English lady. "But if we can persuade him to permit me I will
+mix and make the pudding, and then he cannot go far wrong in the boiling
+and dishing up."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the only thing wanting to make me perfectly happy," said the
+American. "I'll confront monsieur. I am sure I can talk him into a good
+humour, and we shall have our plum-pudding."</p>
+
+<p>No one has yet been found, I do believe, who could resist that little
+woman. She carried everything before her. The cook placed himself and
+all his culinary apparatus at her feet. We took part in the stoning of
+the raisins, and the washing of the currants, even the chopping of the
+suet; we stirred the pudding, threw in sixpence apiece, and a ring, and
+then it was tied up in a cloth, and set aside to be boiled. Christmas
+Day came, and the English chaplain preached us a practical sermon on
+"Goodwill towards men." That was his text, and his sermon was but a
+swelling out of the words just as rice is swelled to thrice its size by
+boiling.</p>
+
+<p>We dined. There was an attempt at roast beef&mdash;it was more like baked
+leather. The event of the dinner was to be the bringing in and eating of
+the plum-pudding.</p>
+
+<p>Surely all would be perfect. We could answer for the materials and the
+mixing. The English lady could guarantee the boiling. She had seen the
+plum-pudding "on the boil," and had given strict injunctions as to the
+length of time during which it was to boil.</p>
+
+<p>But, alas! the pudding was not right when brought on the table. It was
+not enveloped in lambent blue flame&mdash;it was not crackling in the burning
+brandy. It was sent in dry, and the brandy arrived separate in a white
+sauce-boat, hot indeed, and sugared, but not on fire.</p>
+
+<p>There ensued outcries of disappointment. Attempts were made to redress
+the mistake by setting fire to the brandy in a spoon, but the spoon was
+cold. The flame would not catch, and finally, with a sigh, we had to
+take our plum-pudding as served.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, chaplain!" exclaimed Jameson, "practice is better than precept,
+is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure it is."</p>
+
+<p>"You gave us a deuced good sermon. It was short, as it ought to be; but
+I'll go better on it, I'll practise where you preached, and have larks,
+too!"</p>
+
+<p>Then Jameson started from table with a plate of plum-pudding in one hand
+and the sauce-boat in the other. "By Jove!" he said, "I'll teach these
+fellows to open their eyes. I'll show them that we know how to feed. We
+can't turn out scarabs and cartouches in England, that are no good to
+anyone, but we can produce the finest roast beef in the world, and do a
+thing or two in puddings."</p>
+
+<p>And he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>We paid no heed to anything Jameson said or did. We were rather relieved
+that he was out of the room, and did not concern ourselves about the
+"larks" he promised himself, and which we were quite certain would be as
+insipid as were the quails of the Israelites.</p>
+
+<p>In ten minutes he was back, laughing and red in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had splitting fun," he said. "You should have been there."</p>
+
+<p>"Where, Jameson?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, outside. There were a lot of old moolahs and other hoky-pokies
+sitting and contemplating the setting sun and all that sort of thing,
+and I gave Mustapha the pudding. I told him I wished him to try our
+great national English dish, on which her Majesty the Queen dines daily.
+Well, he ate and enjoyed it, by George. Then I said, 'Old fellow, it's
+uncommonly dry, so you must take the sauce to it.' He asked if it was
+only sauce&mdash;flour and water. 'It's sauce, by Jove,' said I, 'a little
+sugar to it; no bar on the sugar, Musty.' So I put the boat to his lips
+and gave him a pull. By George, you should have seen his face! It was
+just thundering fun. 'I've done you at last, old Musty,' I said. 'It is
+best cognac.' He gave me such a look! He'd have eaten me, I believe&mdash;and
+he walked away. It was just splitting fun. I wish you had been there to
+see it."</p>
+
+<p>I went out after dinner, to take my usual stroll along the river-bank,
+and to watch the evening lights die away on the columns and obelisk. On
+my return I saw at once that something had happened which had produced
+commotion among the servants of the hotel. I had reached the salon
+before I inquired what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>The boy who was taking the coffee round said: "Mustapha is dead. He cut
+his throat at the door of the mosque. He could not help himself. He had
+broken his vow."</p>
+
+<p>I looked at Jameson without a word. Indeed, I could not speak; I was
+choking. The little American lady was trembling, the English lady
+crying. The gentlemen stood silent in the windows, not speaking a word.</p>
+
+<p>Jameson's colour changed. He was honestly distressed, uneasy, and tried
+to cover his confusion with bravado and a jest.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," he said, "it is only a nigger the less."</p>
+
+<p>"Nigger!" said the American lady. "He was no nigger, but an Egyptian."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I don't pretend to distinguish between your blacks and whity-browns
+any more than I do between your cartouches," returned Jameson.</p>
+
+<p>"He was no black," said the American lady, standing up. "But I do mean
+to say that I consider you an utterly unredeemed black&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, don't," said the Englishwoman, drawing the other down. "It's
+no good. The thing is done. He meant no harm."</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>I could not sleep. My blood was in a boil. I felt that I could not speak
+to Jameson again. He would have to leave Luxor. That was tacitly
+understood among us. Coventry was the place to which he would be
+consigned.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to finish in a little sketch I had made in my notebook when I
+was in my room, but my hand shook, and I was constrained to lay my
+pencil aside. Then I took up an Egyptian grammar, but could not fix my
+mind on study. The hotel was very still. Everyone had gone to bed at an
+early hour that night, disinclined for conversation. No one was moving.
+There was a lamp in the passage; it was partly turned down. Jameson's
+room was next to mine. I heard him stir as he undressed, and talk to
+himself. Then he was quiet. I wound up my watch, and emptying my pocket,
+put my purse under the pillow. I was not in the least heavy with sleep.
+If I did go to bed I should not be able to close my eyes. But then&mdash;if I
+sat up I could do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>I was about leisurely to undress, when I heard a sharp cry, or
+exclamation of mingled pain and alarm, from the adjoining room. In
+another moment there was a rap at my door. I opened, and Jameson came
+in. He was in his night-shirt, and looking agitated and frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, old fellow," said he in a shaking voice, "there is Musty in
+my room. He has been hiding there, and just as I dropped asleep he ran
+that knife of yours into my throat."</p>
+
+<p>"My knife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that pruning-knife you gave him, you know. Look here&mdash;I must have
+the place sewn up. Do go for a doctor, there's a good chap."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here on my right gill."</p>
+
+<p>Jameson turned his head to the left, and I raised the lamp. There was no
+wound of any sort there.</p>
+
+<p>I told him so.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! That's fine&mdash;I tell you I felt his knife go in."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, you were dreaming."</p>
+
+<p>"Dreaming! Not I. I saw Musty as distinctly as I now see you."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a delusion, Jameson," I replied. "The poor fellow is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's very fine," said Jameson. "It is not the first of April, and
+I don't believe the yarns that you've been spinning. You tried to make
+believe he was dead, but I know he is not. He has got into my room, and
+he made a dig at my throat with your pruning-knife."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go into your room with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do so. But he's gone by this time. Trust him to cut and run."</p>
+
+<p>I followed Jameson, and looked about. There was no trace of anyone
+beside himself having been in the room. Moreover, there was no place but
+the nut-wood wardrobe in the bedroom in which anyone could have secreted
+himself. I opened this and showed that it was empty.</p>
+
+<p>After a while I pacified Jameson, and induced him to go to bed again,
+and then I left his room. I did not now attempt to court sleep. I wrote
+letters with a hand not the steadiest, and did my accounts.</p>
+
+<p>As the hour approached midnight I was again startled by a cry from the
+adjoining room, and in another moment Jameson was at my door.</p>
+
+<p>"That blooming fellow Musty is in my room still," said he. "He has been
+at my throat again."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," I said. "You are labouring under hallucinations. You locked
+your door."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, by Jove, yes&mdash;of course I did; but, hang it, in this hole, neither
+doors nor windows fit, and the locks are no good, and the bolts nowhere.
+He got in again somehow, and if I had not started up the moment I felt
+the knife, he'd have done for me. He would, by George. I wish I had a
+revolver."</p>
+
+<p>I went into Jameson's room. Again he insisted on my looking at his
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very good of you to say there is no wound," said he. "But you
+won't gull me with words. I felt his knife in my windpipe, and if I had
+not jumped out of bed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You locked your door. No one could enter. Look in the glass, there is
+not even a scratch. This is pure imagination."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what, old fellow, I won't sleep in that room again.
+Change with me, there's a charitable buffer. If you don't believe in
+Musty, Musty won't hurt you, maybe&mdash;anyhow you can try if he's solid or
+a phantom. Blow me if the knife felt like a phantom."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not quite see my way to changing rooms," I replied; "but this I
+will do for you. If you like to go to bed again in your own apartment, I
+will sit up with you till morning."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," answered Jameson. "And if Musty comes in again, let out at
+him and do not spare him. Swear that."</p>
+
+<p>I accompanied Jameson once more to his bedroom, Little as I liked the
+man, I could not deny him my presence and assistance at this time. It
+was obvious that his nerves were shaken by what had occurred, and he
+felt his relation to Mustapha much more than he cared to show. The
+thought that he had been the cause of the poor fellow's death preyed on
+his mind, never strong, and now it was upset with imaginary terrors.</p>
+
+<p>I gave up letter writing, and brought my Baedeker's <i>Upper Egypt</i> into
+Jameson's room, one of the best of all guide-books, and one crammed with
+information. I seated myself near the light, and with my back to the
+bed, on which the young man had once more flung himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," said Jameson, raising his head, "is it too late for a
+brandy-and-soda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everyone is in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"What lazy dogs they are. One never can get anything one wants here."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, try to go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>He tossed from side to side for some time, but after a while, either he
+was quiet, or I was engrossed in my Baedeker, and I heard nothing till a
+clock struck twelve. At the last stroke I heard a snort and then a gasp
+and a cry from the bed. I started up, and looked round. Jameson was
+slipping out with his feet onto the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound you!" said he angrily, "you are a fine watch, you are, to let
+Mustapha steal in on tiptoe whilst you are cartouching and all that sort
+of rubbish. He was at me again, and if I had not been sharp he'd have
+cut my throat. I won't go to bed any more!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sit up. But I assure you no one has been here."</p>
+
+<p>"That's fine. How can you tell? You had your back to me, and these
+devils of fellows steal about like cats. You can't hear them till they
+are at you."</p>
+
+<p>It was of no use arguing with Jameson, so I let him have his way.</p>
+
+<p>"I can feel all the three places in my throat where he ran the knife
+in," said he. "And&mdash;don't you notice?&mdash;I speak with difficulty."</p>
+
+<p>So we sat up together the rest of the night. He became more reasonable
+as dawn came on, and inclined to admit that he had been a prey to
+fancies.</p>
+
+<p>The day passed very much as did others&mdash;Jameson was dull and sulky.
+After déjeuner he sat on at table when the ladies had risen and retired,
+and the gentlemen had formed in knots at the window, discussing what was
+to be done in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Jameson, whose head had begun to nod, started up with an oath
+and threw down his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"You fellows!" he said, "you are all in league against me. You let that
+Mustapha come in without a word, and try to stick his knife into me."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus5" id="illus5"></a>
+<img src="images/illus5.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"YOU LET THAT MUSTAPHA COME IN, AND TRY AND STICK HIS
+KNIFE INTO ME."</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"He has not been here."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a plant. You are combined to bully me and drive me away. You don't
+like me. You have engaged Mustapha to murder me. This is the fourth time
+he has tried to cut my throat, and in the <i>salle à manger</i>, too, with
+you all standing round. You ought to be ashamed to call yourselves
+Englishmen. I'll go to Cairo. I'll complain."</p>
+
+<p>It really seemed that the feeble brain of Jameson was affected. The
+Oxford don undertook to sit up in the room the following night.</p>
+
+<p>The young man was fagged and sleep-weary, but no sooner did his eyes
+close, and clouds form about his head, than he was brought to
+wakefulness again by the same fancy or dream. The Oxford don had more
+trouble with him on the second night than I had on the first, for his
+lapses into sleep were more frequent, and each such lapse was succeeded
+by a start and a panic.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he was worse, and we felt that he could no longer be left
+alone. The third night the attaché sat up to watch him.</p>
+
+<p>Jameson had now sunk into a sullen mood. He would not speak, except to
+himself, and then only to grumble.</p>
+
+<p>During the night, without being aware of it, the young attaché, who had
+taken a couple of magazines with him to read, fell asleep. When he went
+off he did not know. He woke just before dawn, and in a spasm of terror
+and self-reproach saw that Jameson's chair was empty.</p>
+
+<p>Jameson was not on his bed. He could not be found in the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn he was found&mdash;dead, at the door of the mosque, with his throat
+cut.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LITTLE_JOE_GANDER" id="LITTLE_JOE_GANDER"></a>LITTLE JOE GANDER</h2>
+
+
+<p>"There's no good in him," said his stepmother, "not a mossul!" With
+these words she thrust little Joe forward by applying her knee to the
+small of his back, and thereby jerking him into the middle of the school
+before the master. "There's no making nothing out of him, whack him as
+you will."</p>
+
+<p>Little Joe Lambole was a child of ten, dressed in second-hand, nay,
+third-hand garments that did not fit. His coat had been a soldier's
+scarlet uniform, that had gone when discarded to a dealer, who had dealt
+it to a carter, and when the carter had worn it out it was reduced and
+adapted to the wear of the child. The nether garments had, in like
+manner, served a full-grown man till worn out; then they had been cut
+down at the knees. Though shortened in leg, they maintained their former
+copiousness of seat, and served as an inexhaustible receptacle for dust.
+Often as little Joe was "licked" there issued from the dense mass of
+drapery clouds of dust. It was like beating a puff-ball.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a seven-month child," said Mrs. Lambole contemptuously, "born
+without his nails on fingers and toes; they growed later. His wits have
+never come right, and a deal, a deal of larruping it will take to make
+'em grow. Use the rod; we won't grumble at you for doing so."</p>
+
+<p>Little Joe Lambole when he came into the world had not been expected to
+live. He was a poor, small, miserable baby, that could not roar, but
+whimpered. He had been privately baptised directly he was born, because,
+at the first, Mrs. Lambole said, "The child is mine, though it be such
+a creetur, and I wouldn't like it, according, to be buried like a dog."</p>
+
+<p>He was called Joseph. The scriptural Joseph had been sold as a bondman
+into Egypt; this little Joseph seemed to have been brought into the
+world to be a slave. In all propriety he ought to have died as a baby,
+and that happy consummation was almost desired, but he disappointed
+expectations and lived. His mother died soon after, and his father
+married again, and his father and stepmother loved him, doubtless; but
+love is manifested in many ways, and the Lamboles showed theirs in a
+rough way, by slaps and blows and kicks. The father was ashamed of him
+because he was a weakling, and the stepmother because he was ugly, and
+was not her own child. He was a meagre little fellow, with a long neck
+and a white face and sunken cheeks, a pigeon breast, and a big stomach.
+He walked with his head forward and his great pale blue eyes staring
+before him into the far distance, as if he were always looking out of
+the world. His walk was a waddle, and he tumbled over every obstacle,
+because he never looked where he was going, always looked to something
+beyond the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Because of his walk and his long neck, and staring eyes and big stomach,
+the village children called him "Gander Joe" or "Joe Gander"; and his
+parents were not sorry, for they were ashamed that such a creature
+should be known as a Lambole.</p>
+
+<p>The Lamboles were a sturdy, hearty people, with cheeks like quarrender
+apples, and bones set firm and knit with iron sinews. They were a
+hard-working, practical people who fattened pigs and kept poultry at
+home. Lambole was a roadmaker. In breaking stones one day a bit of one
+had struck his eye and blinded it. After that he wore a black patch upon
+it. He saw well enough out of the other; he never missed seeing his own
+interests. Lambole could have made a few pence with his son had his son
+been worth anything. He could have sent him to scrape the road, and
+bring the manure off it in a shovel to his garden. But Joe never took
+heartily to scraping the dung up. In a word, the boy was good for
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He had hair like tow, and a little straw hat on his head with the top
+torn, so that the hair forced its way out, and as he walked the top
+bobbed about like the lid of a boiling saucepan.</p>
+
+<p>When the whortleberries were ripe in June, Mrs. Lambole sent Joe out
+with other children to collect the berries in a tin can; she sold them
+for fourpence a quart, and any child could earn eightpence a day in
+whortleberry time; one that was active might earn a shilling.</p>
+
+<p>But Joe would not remain with the other children. They teased him,
+imitated ganders and geese, and poked out their necks and uttered sounds
+in imitation of the voices of these birds. Moreover, they stole the
+berries he had picked, and put them into their own cans.</p>
+
+<p>When Joe Gander left them and found himself alone in the woods, then he
+lay down among the brown heather and green fern, and looked up through
+the oak leaves at the sky, and listened to the singing of the birds. Oh,
+wondrous music of the woods! the hum of the summer air among the leaves,
+the drone of the bees about the flowers, the twittering and fluting and
+piping of the finches and blackbirds and thrushes, and the cool soft
+cooing of the wood pigeons, like the lowing of aerial oxen; then the
+tapping of the green woodpecker and a glimpse of its crimson head, like
+a carbuncle running up the tree trunk, and the powdering down of old
+husks of fir cones or of the tender rind of the topmost shoot of a
+Scottish pine; for aloft a red squirrel was barking a beautiful tree out
+of wantonness and frolic. A rabbit would come forth from the bracken and
+sit up in the sun, and clean its face with the fore paws and stroke its
+long ears; then, seeing the soiled red coat, would skip up&mdash;little Joe
+lying very still&mdash;and screw its nose and turn its eyes from side to
+side, and skip nearer again, till it was quite close to Joe Gander; and
+then the boy laughed, and the rabbit was gone with a flash of white
+tail.</p>
+
+<p>Happy days! days of listening to mysterious music, of looking into
+mysteries of sun and foliage, of spiritual intercourse with the great
+mother-soul of nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the evenings, when Gander Joe came without his can, or with his can
+empty, he would say to his stepmother: "Oh, steppy! it was so nice;
+everything was singing."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make you sing in the chorus too!" cried Mrs. Lambole, and laid a
+stick across his shoulders. Experience had taught her the futility of
+dusting at a lower level.</p>
+
+<p>Then Gander Joe cried and writhed, and promised to be more diligent in
+picking whortleberries in future. But when he went again into the wood
+it was again the same. The spell of the wood spirits was on him; he
+forgot about the berries at fourpence a quart, and lay on his back and
+listened. And the whole wood whispered and sang to him and consoled him
+for his beating, and the wind played lullabies among the fir spines and
+whistled in the grass, and the aspen clashed its myriad tiny cymbals
+together, producing an orchestra of sound that filled the soul of the
+dreaming boy with love and delight and unutterable yearning.</p>
+
+<p>It fared no better in autumn, when the blackberry season set in. Joe
+went with his can to an old quarry where the brambles sent their runners
+over the masses of rubble thrown out from the pits, and warmed and
+ripened their fruit on the hot stones. It was a marvel to see how the
+blackberries grew in this deserted quarry; how large the fruit swelled,
+how thick they were&mdash;like mulberries. On the road side of the quarry was
+a belt of pines, and the sun drew out of their bark scents of
+unsurpassed sweetness. About the blackberries hovered spotted white and
+yellow and black moths, beautiful as butterflies. Butterflies did not
+fail either. The red admiral was there, resting on the bark of the
+trees, asleep in the sun with wings expanded, or drifting about the
+clumps of yellow ragwort, doubtful whether to perch or not.</p>
+
+<p>Here, hidden behind the trees, among the leaves of overgrown rubble, was
+a one-story cottage of wood and clay, covered with thatch, in which
+lived Roger Gale, the postman.</p>
+
+<p>Roger Gale had ten miles to walk every morning, delivering letters, and
+the same number of miles every evening, for which twenty miles he
+received the liberal pay of six shillings a week. He had to be at the
+post office at half-past six in the morning to receive the letters, and
+at seven in the evening to deliver them. His work took him about six
+hours. The middle of the day he had to himself. Roger Gale was an old
+soldier, and enjoyed a pension. He occupied himself, when at home, as a
+shoemaker; but the walks took so much out of him, being an old man, that
+he had not the strength and energy to do much cobbling when at home.
+Therefore he idled a good deal, and he amused his idle hours with a
+violin. Now, when Joe Gander came to the quarry before the return of the
+postman from his rounds, he picked blackberries; but no sooner had Roger
+Gale unlocked his door, taken down his fiddle, and drawn the bow across
+the strings, than Joe set down the can and listened. And when old Roger
+began to play an air from the <i>Daughter of the Regiment</i>, then Joe crept
+towards his cottage in little stages of wonderment and hunger to hear
+more and hear better, much in the same way as now and again in the wood
+the inquisitive rabbits had approached his red jacket. Presently Joe was
+seated on the doorstep, with his ear against the wooden door, and the
+blackberries and the can, and stepmother's orders and father's stick,
+and his hard bed and his meagre meals, even the whole world had passed
+away as a scroll that is rolled up and laid aside, and he lived only in
+the world of music.</p>
+
+<p>Though his great eyes were wide he saw nothing through them; though the
+rain began to fall, and the north-east wind to blow, he felt nothing: he
+had but one faculty that was awake, and that was hearing.</p>
+
+<p>One day Roger came to his door and opened it suddenly, so that the
+child, leaning against it, fell across his threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom have we here? What is this? What do you want?" asked the postman.</p>
+
+<p>Then Gander Joe stood up, craning his long neck and staring out of his
+goggle eyes, with his rough flaxen hair standing up in a ruffle above
+his head and his great stomach protruded, and said nothing. So Roger
+burst out laughing. But he did not kick him off the step; he gave him a
+bit of bread and a drop of cider, and presently drew from the boy the
+confession that he had been listening to the fiddle. This was flattering
+to the postman, and it was the initiation of a friendship between them.</p>
+
+<p>But when Joe came home with an empty can and said: "Oh, steppy, Master
+Roger Gale did fiddle so beautiful!" the woman said: "Fiddle! I'll
+fiddle your back pretty smartly, you idle vagabond"; and she was a
+truthful woman who never fell short of her word.</p>
+
+<p>To break him of his bad habits&mdash;that is, of his dreaminess and
+uselessness&mdash;Mrs. Lambole took Joe to school.</p>
+
+<p>At school he had a bad time of it. He could not learn the letters. He
+was mentally incapable of doing a subtraction sum. He sat on a bench
+staring at the teacher, and was unable to answer an ordinary question
+what the lesson was about. The school-children tormented him, the
+monitor scolded, and the master beat. Then little Joe Gander took to
+absenting himself from school. He was sent off every morning by his
+stepmother, but instead of going to the school he went to the cottage in
+the quarry, and listened to the fiddle of Roger Gale.</p>
+
+<p>Little Joe got hold of an old box, and with a knife he cut holes in it;
+and he fashioned a bridge, and then a handle, and he strung horsehair
+over the latter, and made a bow, and drew very faint sounds from this
+improvised violin, that made the postman laugh, but which gave great
+pleasure to Joe. The sound that issued from his instrument was like the
+humming of flies, but he got distinct notes out of his strings, though
+the notes were faint.</p>
+
+<p>After he had played truant for some time his father heard what he had
+done, and he beat the boy till he was like a battered apple that had
+been flung from the tree by a storm upon a road.</p>
+
+<p>For a while Joe did not venture to the quarry except on Saturdays and
+Sundays. He was forbidden by his father to go to church, because the
+organ and the singing there drove him half crazed. When a beautiful,
+touching melody was played his eyes became clouded and the tears ran
+down his cheeks; and when the organ played the "Hallelujah Chorus," or
+some grand and stirring march, his eyes flashed, and his little body
+quivered, and he made such faces that the congregation were disturbed
+and the parson remonstrated with his mother. The child was clearly
+imbecile, and unfit to attend divine worship.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lambole got an idea into his head, he would bring up Joe to be a
+butcher, and he informed Joe that he was going to place him with a
+gentleman of that profession in town. Joe cried. He turned sick at the
+sight of blood, and the smell of raw meat was abhorrent to him. But
+Joe's likings were of no account with his father, and he took him to the
+town and placed him with a butcher there. He was invested in a blue
+smock, and was informed that his duties would consist in taking meat
+about to the customers. Joe was left. It was the first time he had been
+from home, and he cried himself to sleep the first night, and he cried
+all the next day when sent around with meat on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Now on his journey through the streets he had to pass the window of a
+toy-shop. In the window were dolls and horses and little carts. For
+these Joe did not care, but there were also some little violins, some
+high priced, and some very low, and over these Joe lingered with loving,
+covetous eyes. There was one little fiddle to which his heart went out,
+that cost only three shillings and sixpence. Each day, as he passed the
+shop, he was drawn to it, and stood looking in, and longed daily more
+ardently than on the previous day for this three-and-sixpenny violin.</p>
+
+<p>One day he was so lost in admiration and on the schemes he framed as to
+how he might eventually become possessed of the instrument, that he was
+unconscious of some boys stealing the meat out of the sort of trough on
+his shoulder in which he carried it about.</p>
+
+<p>This was the climax of his misdeeds&mdash;he had been reprimanded for his
+blunders, delivering the wrong meat at the customers' doors; for his
+dilatory ways in going on his errands. The butcher could endure him no
+more, and sent him home to his father, who thrashed him, as his welcome.</p>
+
+<p>But he carried home with him the haunting recollections of that
+beautiful little red fiddle, with its fine black keys. The bow, he
+remembered, was strung with white horsehair. Joe had now a fixed
+ambition&mdash;something to live for. He would be perfectly happy if he could
+have that three-shillings-and-sixpenny fiddle. But how were three
+shillings and sixpence to be earned?</p>
+
+<p>He confided his difficulty to postman Roger Gale, and Roger Gale said he
+would consider the matter.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of days after the postman said to Joe&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Gander, they want a lad to sweep the leaves in the drive at the great
+house. The squire's coachman told me, and I mentioned you. You'll have
+to do it on Saturday, and be paid sixpence."</p>
+
+<p>Joe's face brightened. He went home and told his stepmother.</p>
+
+<p>"For once you are going to be useful," said Mrs. Lambole. "Very well,
+you shall sweep the drive; then fivepence will come to us, and you shall
+have a penny every week to spend in sweetstuff at the post office."</p>
+
+<p>Joe tried to reckon how long it would be before he could purchase the
+fiddle, but the calculation was beyond his powers; so he asked the
+postman, who assured him it would take him forty weeks&mdash;that is, about
+ten months.</p>
+
+<p>Little Joe was not cast down. What was time with such an end in view?
+Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, and this was only forty weeks
+for a fiddle!</p>
+
+<p>Joe was diligent every Saturday sweeping the drive. He was ordered
+whenever a carriage entered to dive behind the rhododendrons and laurels
+and disappear. He was of a too ragged and idiotic appearance to show in
+a gentleman's grounds.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice he encountered the squire and stood quaking, with his
+fingers spread out, his mouth and eyes open, and the broom at his feet.
+The squire spoke kindly to him, but Joe Gander was too frightened to
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellow," said the squire to the gardener. "I suppose it is a
+charity to employ him, but I must say I should have preferred someone
+else with his wits about him. I will see to having him sent to an asylum
+for idiots in which I have some interest. There's no knowing," said the
+squire, "no knowing but that with wholesome food, cleanliness, and
+kindness his feeble mind may be got to understand that two and two make
+four, which I learn he has not yet mastered."</p>
+
+<p>Every Saturday evening Joe Gander brought his sixpence home to his
+stepmother. The woman was not so regular in allowing him his penny out.</p>
+
+<p>"Your edication costs such a lot of money," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Steppy, need I go to school any more?" He never could frame his mouth
+to call her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you must. You haven't passed your standard."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think that I ever shall."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Mrs. Lambole, "what masses of good food you do eat. You're
+perfectly insatiable. You cost us more than it would to keep a cow."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, steppy, I won't eat so much if I may have my penny!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. Eating such a lot does no one good. If you will be content
+with one slice of bread for breakfast instead of two, and the same for
+supper, you shall have your penny. If you are so very hungry you can
+always get a swede or a mangold out of Farmer Eggins's field. Swedes and
+mangolds are cooling to the blood and sit light on the stomick," said
+Mrs. Lambole.</p>
+
+<p>So the compact was made; but it nearly killed Joe. His cheeks and chest
+fell in deeper and deeper, and his stomach protruded more than ever. His
+legs seemed hardly able to support him, and his great pale blue
+wandering eyes appeared ready to start out of his head like the horns of
+a snail. As for his voice, it was thin and toneless, like the notes on
+his improvised fiddle, on which he played incessantly.</p>
+
+<p>"The child will always be a discredit to us," said Lambole. "He don't
+look like a human child. He don't think and feel like a Christian. The
+shovelfuls of dung he might have brought to cover our garden if he had
+only given his heart to it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard of changelings," said Mrs. Lambole; "and with this creetur
+on our hands I mainly believe the tale. They do say that the pixies
+steal away the babies of Christian folk, and put their own bantlings in
+their stead. The only way to find out is to heat a poker red-hot and ram
+it down the throat of the child; and when you do that the door opens,
+and in comes the pixy mother and runs off with her own child, and leaves
+your proper babe behind. That's what we ought to ha' done wi' Joe."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt, wife, the law wouldn't have upheld us," said Lambole,
+thrusting hot coals back on to the hearth with his foot.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose it would," said Mrs. Lambole. "And yet we call this a
+land of liberty! Law ain't made for the poor, but for the rich."</p>
+
+<p>"It is wickedness," argued the father. "It is just the same with
+colts&mdash;all wickedness. You must drive it out with the stick."</p>
+
+<p>And now a great temptation fell on little Gander Joe. The squire and his
+family were at home, and the daughter of the house, Miss Amory, was
+musical. Her mother played on the piano and the young lady on the
+violin. The fashion for ladies to play on this instrument had come in,
+and Miss Amory had taken lessons from the best masters in town. She
+played vastly better than poor Roger Gale, and she played to an
+accompaniment.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes whilst Joe was sweeping he heard the music; then he stole
+nearer and nearer to the house, hiding behind rhododendron bushes, and
+listening with eyes and mouth and nostrils and ears. The music exercised
+on him an irresistible attraction. He forgot his obligation to work; he
+forgot the strict orders he had received not to approach the
+garden-front of the house. The music acted on him like a spell.
+Occasionally he was roused from his dream by the gardener, who boxed his
+ears, knocked him over, and bade him get back to his sweeping. Once a
+servant came out from Miss Amory to tell the ragged little boy not to
+stand in front of the drawing-room window staring in. On another
+occasion he was found by Miss Amory crouched behind a rose bush outside
+her boudoir, listening whilst she practised.</p>
+
+<p>No one supposed that the music drew him. They thought him a fool, and
+that he had the inquisitiveness of the half-witted to peer in at windows
+and see the pretty sights within.</p>
+
+<p>He was reprimanded, and threatened with dismissal. The gardener
+complained to the lad's father and advised a good hiding, such as Joe
+should not forget.</p>
+
+<p>"These sort of chaps," said the gardener, "have no senses like rational
+beings, except only the feeling, and you must teach them as you feed the
+Polar bears&mdash;with the end of a stick."</p>
+
+<p>One day Miss Amory, seeing how thin and hollow-eyed the child was, and
+hearing him cough, brought him out a cup of hot coffee and some bread.</p>
+
+<p>He took it without a word, only pulling off his torn straw hat and
+throwing it at his feet, exposing the full shock of tow-like hair; then
+he stared at her out of his great eyes, speechless.</p>
+
+<p>"Joe," she said, "poor little man, how old are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dun'now," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you read and write?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor do sums?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"What can you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fiddle."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got a fiddle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see it, and hear you play."</p>
+
+<p>Next day was Sunday. Little Joe forgot about the day, and forgot that
+Miss Amory would probably be in church in the morning. She had asked to
+see his fiddle, so in the morning he took it and went down with it to
+the park. The church was within the grounds, and he had to pass it. As
+he went by he heard the roll of the organ and the strains of the choir.
+He stopped to hearken, then went up the steps of the churchyard,
+listening. A desire came on him to catch the air on his improvised
+violin, and he put it to his shoulder and drew his bow across the
+slender cords. The sound was very faint, so faint as to be drowned by
+the greater volume of the organ and the choir. Nevertheless he could
+hear the feeble tones close to his ear, and his heart danced at the
+pleasure of playing to an accompaniment, like Miss Amory. The choir, the
+congregation, were singing the Advent hymn to Luther's tune&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Great God, what do I see and hear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The end of things created."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Little Joe, playing his inaudible instrument, came creeping up the
+avenue, treading on the fallen yellow lime leaves, passing between the
+tombstones, drawn on by the solemn, beautiful music. Presently he stood
+in the porch, then he went on; he was unconscious of everything but the
+music and the joy of playing with it; he walked on softly into the
+church without even removing his ragged straw cap, though the squire and
+the squire's wife, and the rector and the reverend the Mrs. Rector, and
+the parish churchwarden and the rector's churchwarden, and the overseer
+and the waywarden, and all the farmers and their wives were present. He
+had forgotten about his broken cap in the delight that made the tears
+fill his eyes and trickle over his pale cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Then when with a shock the parson and the churchwardens saw the ragged
+urchin coming up the nave fiddling, with his hat on, regardless of the
+sacredness of the place, and above all of the sacredness of the presence
+of the squire, <span class="smcap">J.P.</span> and <span class="smcap">D.L.</span>, the rector coughed very loud and looked
+hard at his churchwarden, Farmer Eggins, who turned red as the sun in a
+November fog, and rose. At the same instant the people's churchwarden
+rose, and both advanced upon Joe Gander from opposite sides of the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment that they touched him the organ and the singing ceased;
+and it was to Joe a sudden wakening from a golden dream to a black and
+raw reality. He looked up with dazed face first at one man, then at the
+other: both their faces blazed with equal indignation; both were
+equally speechless with wrath. They conducted him, each holding an arm,
+out of the porch and down the avenue. Joe heard indistinctly behind him
+the droning of the rector's voice continuing the prayers. He looked back
+over his shoulder and saw the faces of the school-children straining
+after him through the open door from their places near it. On reaching
+the steps&mdash;there was a flight of five leading to the road&mdash;the people's
+churchwarden uttered a loud and disgusted "Ugh!" then with his heavy
+hand slapped the head of the child towards the parson's churchwarden,
+who with his still heavier hand boxed it back again; then the people's
+churchwarden gave him a blow which sent him staggering forward, and this
+was supplemented by a kick from the parson's churchwarden, which sent
+Joe Gander spinning down the five steps at once and cast him prostrate
+into the road, where he fell and crushed his extemporised violin.</p>
+
+<p>Then the churchwardens turned, blew their noses, and re-entered the
+church, where they sat out the rest of the service, grateful in their
+hearts that they had been enabled that day to show that their office was
+no sinecure.</p>
+
+<p>The churchwardens were unaware that in banging and kicking the little
+boy out of the churchyard and into the road they had flung him so that
+he fell with his head upon the curbstone of the footpath, which stone
+was of slate, and sharp. They did not find this out through the prayers,
+nor through the sermon. But when the whole congregation left the church
+they were startled to find little Joe Gander insensible, with his head
+cut, and a pool of blood on the footway. The squire was shocked, as were
+his wife and daughter, and the churchwardens were in consternation.
+Fortunately the squire's stables were near the church, and there was a
+running fountain there, so that water was procured, and the child
+revived.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Amory had in the meantime hastened home and returned with a roll of
+diachylon plaster and a pair of small scissors. Strips of the adhesive
+plaster were applied to the wound, and the boy was soon sufficiently
+recovered to stand on his feet, when the churchwardens very
+considerately undertook to march him home. On reaching his cottage the
+churchwardens described what had taken place, painting the insult
+offered to the worshippers in the most hideous colours, and representing
+the accident of the cut as due to the violent resistance offered by the
+culprit to their ejectment of him. Then each pressed a half-crown into
+the hand of Mr. Lambole and departed to his dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Now then, young shaver," exclaimed the father, "at your pranks again!
+How often have I told you not to go intruding into a place of worship?
+Church ain't for such as you. If you had'nt been punished a bit already,
+wouldn't I larrup you neither? Oh, no!"</p>
+
+<p>Little Joe's head was bad for some days. His cheeks were flushed and his
+eyes bright, and he talked strangely&mdash;he who was usually so silent. What
+troubled him was the loss of his fiddle; he did not know what had become
+of it, whether it had been stolen or confiscated. He asked after it, and
+when at last it was produced, smashed to chips, with the strings torn
+and hanging loose about it like the cordage of a broken vessel, he cried
+bitterly. Miss Amory came to the cottage to see him, and finding father
+and stepmother out, went in and pressed five shillings into his hand.
+Then he laughed with delight, and clapped his hands, and hid the money
+away in his pocket, but he said nothing, and Miss Amory went away
+convinced that the child was half a fool. But little Joe had sense in
+his head, though his head was different from those of others; he knew
+that now he had the money wherewith to buy the beautiful fiddle he had
+seen in the shop window many months before, and to get which he had
+worked and denied himself food.</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Amory was gone, and his stepmother had not returned, he opened
+the door of the cottage and stole out. He was afraid of being seen, so
+he crept along in the hedge, and when he thought anyone was coming he
+got through a gate or lay down in a ditch, till he was some way on his
+road to the town. Then he ran till he was tired. He had a bandage round
+his head, and, as his head was hot, he took the rag off, dipped it in
+water, and tied it round his head again. Never in his life had his mind
+been clearer than it was now, for now he had a distinct purpose, and an
+object easily attainable, before him. He held the money in his hand, and
+looked at it, and kissed it; then pressed it to his beating heart, then
+ran on. He lost breath. He could run no more. He sat down in the hedge
+and gasped. The perspiration was streaming off his face. Then he thought
+he heard steps coming fast along the road he had run, and as he feared
+pursuit, he got up and ran on.</p>
+
+<p>He went through the village four miles from home just as the children
+were leaving school, and when they saw him some of the elder cried out
+that here was "Gander Joe! quack! quack! Joe the Gander! quack! quack!
+quack!" and the little ones joined in the banter. The boy ran on, though
+hot and exhausted, and with his head swimming, to escape their
+merriment.</p>
+
+<p>He got some way beyond the village when he came to a turnpike. There he
+felt dizzy, and he timidly asked if he might have a piece of bread. He
+would pay for it if they would change a shilling. The woman at the 'pike
+pitied the pale, hollow-eyed child, and questioned him; but her
+questions bewildered him, and he feared she would send him home, so that
+he either answered nothing, or in a way which made her think him
+distraught. She gave him some bread and water, and watched him going on
+towards the town till he was out of sight. The day was already
+declining; it would be dark by the time he reached the town. But he did
+not think of that. He did not consider where he would sleep, whether he
+would have strength to return ten miles to his home. He thought only of
+the beautiful red violin with the yellow bridge hung in the shop window,
+and offered for three shillings and sixpence. Three-and-sixpence! Why,
+he had five shillings. He had money to spend on other things beside the
+fiddle. He had been sadly disappointed about his savings from the weekly
+sixpence. He had asked for them; he had earned them, not by his work
+only, but by his abstention from two pieces of bread per diem. When he
+asked for the money, his stepmother answered that she had put it away in
+the savings bank. If he had it he would waste it on sweetstuff; if it
+were hoarded up it would help him on in life when left to shift for
+himself; and if he died, why it would go towards his burying.</p>
+
+<p>So the child had been disappointed in his calculations, and had worked
+and starved for nothing. Then came Miss Amory with her present, and he
+had run away with that, lest his mother should take it from him to put
+in the savings bank for setting him up in life or for his burying. What
+cared he for either? All his ambition was to have a fiddle, and a fiddle
+was to be had for three-and-sixpence.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Gander was tired. He was fain to sit down at intervals on the heaps
+of stones by the roadside to rest. His shoes were very poor, with soles
+worn through, so that the stones hurt his feet. At this time of the year
+the highways were fresh metalled, and as he stumbled over the newly
+broken stones they cut his soles and his ankles turned. He was footsore
+and weary in body, but his heart never failed him. Before him shone the
+red violin with the yellow bridge, and the beautiful bow strung with
+shining white hair. When he had that all his weariness would pass as a
+dream; he would hunger no more, cry no more, feel no more sickness or
+faintness. He would draw the bow over the strings and play with his
+fingers on the catgut, and the waves of music would thrill and flow,
+and away on those melodious waves his soul would float far from
+trouble, far from want, far from tears, into a shining, sunny world of
+music.</p>
+
+<p>So he picked himself up when he fell, and staggered to his feet from the
+stones on which he rested, and pressed on.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was setting as he entered the town. He went straight to the shop
+he so well remembered, and to his inexpressible delight saw still in the
+window the coveted violin, price three shillings and sixpence.</p>
+
+<p>Then he timidly entered the shop, and with trembling hand held out the
+money.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"It," said the boy. It. To him the shop held but one article. The dolls,
+the wooden horses, the tin steam-engines, the bats, the kites, were
+unconsidered. He had seen and remembered only one thing&mdash;the red violin.
+"It," said the boy, and pointed.</p>
+
+<p>When little Joe had got the violin he pressed it to his shoulder, and
+his heart bounded as though it would have burst the pigeon breast. His
+dull eyes lightened, and into his white sunken cheeks shot a hectic
+flame. He went forth with his head erect and with firm foot, holding his
+fiddle to the shoulder and the bow in hand.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his face homeward. Now he would return to father and
+stepmother, to his little bed at the head of the stairs, to his scanty
+meals, to the school, to the sweeping of the park drive, and to his
+stepmother's scoldings and his father's beatings. He had his fiddle, and
+he cared for nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>He waited till he was out of the town before he tried it. Then, when he
+was on a lonely part of the road, he seated himself in the hedge, under
+a holly tree covered with scarlet berries, and tried his instrument.
+Alas! it had hung many years in the shop window, and the catgut was old
+and the glue had lost its tenacity. One string started; then when he
+tried to screw up a second, it sprang as well, and then the bridge
+collapsed and fell. Moreover, the hairs on the bow came out. They were
+unresined.</p>
+
+<p>Then little Joe's spirits gave way. He laid the bow and the violin on
+his knees and began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>As he cried he heard the sound of approaching wheels and the clatter of
+a horse's hoofs.</p>
+
+<p>He heard, but he was immersed in sorrow and did not heed and raise his
+head to see who was coming. Had he done so he would have seen nothing,
+as his eyes were swimming with tears. Looking out of them he saw only as
+one sees who opens his eyes when diving.</p>
+
+<p>"Halloa, young shaver! Dang you! What do you mean giving me such a
+cursed hunt after you as this&mdash;you as ain't worth the trouble, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The voice was that of his father, who drew up before him. Mr. Lambole
+had made inquiries when it was discovered that Joe was lost, first at
+the school, where it was most unlikely he would be found, then at the
+public-house, at the gardener's and the gamekeeper's; then he had looked
+down the well and then up the chimney. After that he went to the cottage
+in the quarry. Roger Gale knew nothing of him. Presently someone coming
+from the nearest village mentioned that he had been seen there;
+whereupon Lambole borrowed Farmer Eggins's trap and went after him,
+peering right and left of the road with his one eye.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough he had been through the village. He had passed the turnpike.
+The woman there described him accurately as "a sort of a tottle" (fool).</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lambole was not a pleasant-looking man; he was as solidly built as a
+navvy. The backs of his hands were hairy, and his fist was so hard, and
+his blows so weighty, that for sport he was wont to knock down and kill
+at a blow the oxen sent to Butcher Robbins for slaughter, and that he
+did with his fist alone, hitting the animal on the head between the
+horns, a little forward of the horns. That was a great feat of
+strength, and Lambole was proud of it. He had a long back and short
+legs. The back was not pliable or bending; it was hard, braced with
+sinews tough as hawsers, and supported a pair of shoulders that could
+sustain the weight of an ox.</p>
+
+<p>His face was of a coppery colour, caused by exposure to the air and
+drinking. His hair was light: that was almost the only feature his son
+had derived from him. It was very light, too light for his dark red
+face. It grew about his neck and under his chin as a Newgate collar;
+there was a great deal of it, and his face, encircled by the pale hair,
+looked like an angry moon surrounded by a fog bow.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lambole had a queer temper. He bottled up his anger, but when it
+blew the cork out it spurted over and splashed all his home; it flew in
+the faces and soused everyone who came near him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lambole took his son roughly by the arm and lifted him into the tax
+cart. The boy offered no resistance. His spirit was broken, his hopes
+extinguished. For months he had yearned for the red fiddle, price
+three-and-six, and now that, after great pains and privations, he had
+acquired it, the fiddle would not sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, giving your dear dada such trouble, eh,
+Viper?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lambole turned the horse's head homeward. He had his black patch
+towards the little Gander, seated in the bottom of the cart, hugging his
+wrecked violin. When Mr. Lambole spoke he turned his face round to bring
+the active eye to bear on the shrinking, crouching little figure below.</p>
+
+<p>The Viper made no answer, but looked up. Mr. Lambole turned his face
+away, and the seeing eye watched the horse's ears, and the black patch
+was towards a frightened, piteous, pleading little face, looking up,
+with the light of the evening sky irradiating it, showing how wan it
+was, how hollow were the cheeks, how sunken the eyes, how sharp the
+little pinched nose. The boy put up his arm, that held the bow, and
+wiped his eyes with his sleeve. In so doing he poked his father in the
+ribs with the end of the bow.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then!" exclaimed Mr. Lambole with an oath, "what darn'd insolence
+be you up to now, Gorilla?"</p>
+
+<p>If he had not held the whip in one hand and the reins in the other he
+would have taken the bow from the child and flung it into the road. He
+contented himself with rapping Joe's head with the end of the whip.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that you've got there, eh?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The child replied timidly: "Please, father, a fiddle."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you get 'un&mdash;steal it, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Joe answered, trembling: "No, dada, I bought it."</p>
+
+<p>"Bought it! Where did you get the money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Amory gave it me."</p>
+
+<p>"How much?"</p>
+
+<p>The Gander answered: "Her gave me five shilling."</p>
+
+<p>"Five shillings! And what did that blessed" (he did not say "blessed,"
+but something quite the reverse) "fiddle cost you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three-and-sixpence."</p>
+
+<p>"So you've only one-and-six left?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've none, dada."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I spent one shilling on a pipe for you, and sixpence on a
+thimble for stepmother as a present," answered the child, with a flicker
+of hope in his dim eyes that this would propitiate his father.</p>
+
+<p>"Dash me," roared the roadmaker, "if you ain't worse nor Mr.
+Chamberlain, as would rob us of the cheap loaf! What in the name of
+Thunder and Bones do you mean squandering the precious money over
+fooleries like that for? I've got my pipe, black as your back shall be
+before to-morrow, and mother has an old thimble as full o' holes as I'll
+make your skin before the night is much older. Wait till we get home,
+and I'll make pretty music out of that there fiddle! just you see if I
+don't."</p>
+
+<p>Joe shivered in his seat, and his head fell.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lambole had a playful wit. He beguiled his journey home by indulging
+in it, and his humour flashed above the head of the child like summer
+lightning. "You're hardly expecting the abundance of the supper that's
+awaiting you," he said, with his black patch glowering down at the
+irresponsive heap in the corner of the cart. "No stinting of the
+dressing, I can tell you. You like your meat well basted, don't you? The
+basting shall not incur your disapproval as insufficient. Underdone? Oh,
+dear, no! Nothing underdone for me. Pickles? I can promise you that
+there is something in pickle for you, hot&mdash;very hot and stinging. Plenty
+of capers&mdash;mutton and capers. Mashed potatoes? Was the request for that
+on the tip of your tongue? Sorry I can give you only half what you
+want&mdash;the mash, not the potatoes. There is nothing comparable in my mind
+to young pig with crackling. The hide is well striped, cut in lines from
+the neck to the tail. I think we'll have crackling on our pig before
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>He now threw his seeing eye into the depths of the cart, to note the
+effect his fun had on the child, but he was disappointed. It had evoked
+no hilarity. Joe had fallen asleep, exhausted by his walk, worn out with
+disappointments, with his head on his fiddle, that lay on his knees. The
+jogging of the cart, the attitude, affected his wound; the plaster had
+given way, and the blood was running over the little red fiddle and
+dripping into its hollow body through the S-hole on each side.</p>
+
+<p>It was too dark for Mr. Lambole to notice this. He set his lips. His
+self-esteem was hurt at the child not relishing his waggery.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lambole observed it when, shortly after, the cart drew up at the
+cottage and she lifted the sleeping child out.</p>
+
+<p>"I must take the cart back to Farmer Eggins," said her husband; "duty
+fust, and pleasure after."</p>
+
+<p>When his father was gone Mrs. Lambole said, "Now then, Joe, you've been
+a very wicked, bad boy, and God will never forgive you for the
+naughtiness you have committed and the trouble to which you have put
+your poor father and me." She would have spoken more sharply but that
+his head needed her care and the sight of the blood disarmed her.
+Moreover, she knew that her husband would not pass over what had
+occurred with a reprimand. "Get off your clothes and go to bed, Joe," she
+said when she had readjusted the plaster. "You may take a piece of dry
+bread with you, and I'll see if I can't persuade your father to put off
+whipping of you for a day or two."</p>
+
+<p>Joe began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>"There," she said, "don't cry. When wicked children do wicked things
+they must suffer for them. It is the law of nature. And," she went on,
+"you ought to be that ashamed of yourself that you'd be glad for the
+earth to open under you and swallow you up like Korah, Dathan, and
+Abiram. Running away from so good and happy a home and such tender
+parents! But I reckon you be lost to natural affection as you be to
+reason."</p>
+
+<p>"May I take my fiddle with me?" asked the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, take your fiddle if you like," answered his mother. "Much good may
+it do you. Here, it is all smeared wi' blood. Let me wipe it first, or
+you'll mess the bedclothes with it. There," she said as she gave him the
+broken instrument. "Say your prayers and go to sleep; though I reckon
+your prayers will never reach to heaven, coming out of such a wicked
+unnatural heart."</p>
+
+<p>So the little Gander went to his bed. The cottage had but one bedroom
+and a landing above the steep and narrow flight of steps that led to it
+from the kitchen. On this landing was a small truckle bed, on which Joe
+slept. He took off his clothes and stood in his little short shirt of
+very coarse white linen. He knelt down and said his prayers, with both
+his hands spread over his fiddle. Then he got into bed, and until his
+stepmother fetched away the benzoline lamp he examined the instrument.
+He saw that the bridge might be set up again with a little glue, and
+that fresh catgut strings might be supplied. He would take his fiddle
+next day to Roger Gale and ask him to help to mend it for him. He was
+sure Roger would take an interest in it. Roger had been mysterious of
+late, hinting that the time was coming when Joey would have a first-rate
+instrument and learn to play like a Paganini. Yes; the case of the red
+fiddle was not desperate.</p>
+
+<p>Just then he heard the door below open, and his father's step.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the toad?" said Mr. Lambole.</p>
+
+<p>Joe held his breath, and his blood ran cold. He could hear every word,
+every sound in the room below.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone to bed," answered Mrs. Lambole. "Leave the poor little
+creetur alone to-night, Samuel; his head has been bad, and he don't look
+well. He's overdone."</p>
+
+<p>"Susan," said the roadmaker, "I've been simmering all the way to town,
+and bubbling and boiling all the way back, and busting is what I be now,
+and bust I will."</p>
+
+<p>Little Joe sat up in bed, hugging the violin, and his tow-like hair
+stood up on his head. His great stupid eyes stared wide with fear; in
+the dark the iris in each had grown big, and deep, and solemn.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me my stick," said Mr. Lambole. "I've promised him a taste of it,
+and a taste won't suffice to-night; he must have a gorge of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I've put it away," said Mrs. Lambole. "Samuel, right is right, and I'm
+not one to stand between the child and what he deserves, but he ain't in
+condition for it to-night. He wants feeding up to it."</p>
+
+<p>Without wasting another word on her the roadmaker went upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>The shuddering, cowering little fellow saw first the red face,
+surrounded by a halo of pale hair, rise above the floor, then the strong
+square shoulders, then the clenched hands, and then his father stood
+before him, revealed down to his thick boots. The child crept back in
+the bed against the wall, and would have disappeared through it had the
+wall been soft-hearted, as in fairy tales, and opened to receive him. He
+clasped his little violin tight to his heart, and then the blood that
+had fallen into it trickled out and ran down his shirt, staining
+it&mdash;upon the bedclothes, staining them. But the father did not see this.
+He was effervescing with fury. His pulses went at a gallop, and his
+great fists clutched spasmodically.</p>
+
+<p>"You Judas Iscariot, come here!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>But the child only pressed closer against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"What! disobedient and daring? Do you hear? Come to me!"</p>
+
+<p>The trembling child pointed to a pretty little pipe on the bedclothes.
+He had drawn it from his pocket and taken the paper off it, and laid it
+there, and stuck the silver-headed thimble in the bowl for his
+stepmother when she came upstairs to take the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, vagabond!"</p>
+
+<p>He could not; he had not the courage nor the strength.</p>
+
+<p>He still pointed pleadingly to the little presents he had bought with
+his eighteenpence.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't, you dogged, insulting being?" roared the roadmaker, and
+rushed at him, knocking over the pipe, which fell and broke on the
+floor, and trampling flat the thimble. "You won't yet? Always full of
+sulks and defiance! Oh, you ungrateful one, you!" Then he had him by the
+collar of his night-shirt and dragged him from his bed, and with his
+violence tore the button off, and with his other hand he wrenched the
+violin away and beat the child over the back with it as he dragged him
+from the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my mammy! my mammy!" cried Joe.</p>
+
+<p>He was not crying out for his stepmother. It was the agonised cry of his
+frightened heart for the one only being who had ever loved him, and whom
+God had removed from him.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Samuel Lambole started back.</p>
+
+<p>Before him, and between him and the child, stood a pale, ghostly form,
+and he knew his first wife.</p>
+
+<p>He stood speechless and quaking. Then, gradually recovering himself, he
+stumbled down the stairs, and seated himself, looking pasty and scared,
+by the fire below.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you, Samuel?" asked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen her," he gasped. "Don't ask no more questions."</p>
+
+<p>Now when he was gone, little Joe, filled with terror&mdash;not at the
+apparition, which he had not seen, for his eyes were too dazed to behold
+it, but with apprehension of the chastisement that awaited him,
+scrambled out of the window and dropped on the pigsty roof, and from
+thence jumped to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Then he ran&mdash;ran as fast as his legs could carry him, still hugging his
+instrument&mdash;to the churchyard; and on reaching that he threw himself on
+his mother's grave and sobbed: "Oh, mammy, mammy! father wants to beat
+me and take away my beautiful violin&mdash;but oh, mammy! my violin won't
+play."</p>
+
+<p>And when he had spoken, from out the grave rose the form of his lost
+mother, and looked kindly on him.</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw her, and he had no fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Mammy!" said he, "mammy, my violin cost three shillings and sixpence,
+and I can't make it play no-ways."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus6" id="illus6"></a>
+<img src="images/illus6.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"MAMMY," SAID HE, "MAMMY, MY VIOLIN COST THREE SHILLINGS
+AND SIXPENCE, AND I CAN'T MAKE IT PLAY NOWAYS."</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Then the spirit of his mother passed a hand over the the strings, and
+smiled. Joe looked into her eyes, and they were as stars. And he put the
+violin under his chin, and drew the bow across the strings&mdash;and lo! they
+sounded wondrously. His soul thrilled, his heart bounded, his dull
+eye brightened. He was as though caught up in a chariot of fire and
+carried to heavenly places. His bow worked rapidly, such strains poured
+from the little instrument as he had never heard before. It was to him
+as though heaven opened, and he heard the angels performing there, and
+he with his fiddle was taking a part in the mighty symphony. He felt not
+the cold, the night was not dark to him. His head no longer ached. It
+was as though after long seeking through life he had gained an
+undreamed-of prize, reached some glorious consummation.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There was a musical party that same evening at the Hall. Miss Amory
+played beautifully, with extraordinary feeling and execution, both with
+and without accompaniment on the piano. Several ladies and gentlemen
+sang and played; there were duets and trios.</p>
+
+<p>During the performances the guests talked to each other in low tones
+about various topics.</p>
+
+<p>Said one lady to Mrs. Amory: "How strange it is that among the English
+lower classes there is no love of music."</p>
+
+<p>"There is none at all," answered Mrs. Amory; "our rector's wife has
+given herself great trouble to get up parochial entertainments, but we
+find that nothing takes with the people but comic songs, and these,
+instead of elevating, vulgarise them."</p>
+
+<p>"They have no music in them. The only people with music in their souls
+are the Germans and the Italians."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Amory with a sigh; "it is sad, but true: there is
+neither poetry, nor picturesqueness, nor music among the English
+peasantry."</p>
+
+<p>"You have never heard of one, self-taught, with a real love of music in
+this country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never: such do not exist among us."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The parish churchwarden was walking along the road on his way to his
+farmhouse, and the road passed under the churchyard wall.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked along the way&mdash;with a not too steady step, for he was
+returning from the public-house&mdash;he was surprised and frightened to hear
+music proceed from among the graves.</p>
+
+<p>It was too dark for him to see any figure then, only the tombstones
+loomed on him in ghostly shapes. He began to quake, and finally turned
+and ran, nor did he slacken his pace till he reached the tavern, where
+he burst in shouting: "There's ghosts abroad. I've heard 'em in the
+churchyard making music."</p>
+
+<p>The revellers rose from their cups.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go and hear?" they asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go for one," said a man; "if others will go with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said a third, "and if the ghosts be playing a jolly good tune,
+we'll chip in."</p>
+
+<p>So the whole half-tipsy party reeled along the road, talking very loud,
+to encourage themselves and the others, till they approached the church,
+the spire of which stood up dark against the night sky.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no lights in the windows," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"No," observed the churchwarden, "I didn't notice any myself; it was
+from the graves the music came, as if all the dead was squeakin' like
+pigs."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" All kept silence&mdash;not a sound could be heard.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I heard music afore," said the churchwarden. "I'll bet a
+gallon of ale I did."</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no music now, though," remarked one of the men.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor more there ain't," said others.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't care&mdash;I say I heard it," asseverated the churchwarden.
+"Let's go up closer."</p>
+
+<p>All of the party drew nearer to the wall of the graveyard. One man,
+incapable of maintaining his legs unaided, sustained himself on the arm
+of another.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do believe, Churchwarden Eggins, as how you have been leading
+us a wild goose chase!" said a fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Then the clouds broke, and a bright, dazzling pure ray shot down on a
+grave in the churchyard, and revealed a little figure lying on it.</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe," said one man, "as how, if he ain't led us a goose chase,
+he's brought us after a Gander&mdash;surely that is little Joe."</p>
+
+<p>Thus encouraged, and their fears dispelled, the whole half-tipsy party
+stumbled up the graveyard steps, staggered among the tombs, some
+tripping on the mounds and falling prostrate. All laughed, talked, joked
+with one another.</p>
+
+<p>The only one silent there was little Joe Gander&mdash;and he was gone to join
+in the great symphony above.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_DEAD_FINGER" id="A_DEAD_FINGER"></a>A DEAD FINGER</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Why the National Gallery should not attract so many visitors as, say,
+the British Museum, I cannot explain. The latter does not contain much
+that, one would suppose, appeals to the interest of the ordinary
+sightseer. What knows such of prehistoric flints and scratched bones? Of
+Assyrian sculpture? Of Egyptian hieroglyphics? The Greek and Roman
+statuary is cold and dead. The paintings in the National Gallery glow
+with colour, and are instinct with life. Yet, somehow, a few listless
+wanderers saunter yawning through the National Gallery, whereas swarms
+pour through the halls of the British Museum, and talk and pass remarks
+about the objects there exposed, of the date and meaning of which they
+have not the faintest conception.</p>
+
+<p>I was thinking of this problem, and endeavouring to unravel it, one
+morning whilst sitting in the room for English masters at the great
+collection in Trafalgar Square. At the same time another thought forced
+itself upon me. I had been through the rooms devoted to foreign schools,
+and had then come into that given over to Reynolds, Morland,
+Gainsborough, Constable, and Hogarth. The morning had been for a while
+propitious, but towards noon a dense umber-tinted fog had come on,
+making it all but impossible to see the pictures, and quite impossible
+to do them justice. I was tired, and so seated myself on one of the
+chairs, and fell into the consideration first of all of&mdash;why the
+National Gallery is not as popular as it should be; and secondly, how it
+was that the British School had no beginnings, like those of Italy and
+the Netherlands. We can see the art of the painter from its first
+initiation in the Italian peninsula, and among the Flemings. It starts
+on its progress like a child, and we can trace every stage of its
+growth. Not so with English art. It springs to life in full and splendid
+maturity. Who were there before Reynolds and Gainsborough and Hogarth?
+The great names of those portrait and subject painters who have left
+their canvases upon the walls of our country houses were those of
+foreigners&mdash;Holbein, Kneller, Van Dyck, and Lely for portraits, and
+Monnoyer for flower and fruit pieces. Landscapes, figure subjects were
+all importations, none home-grown. How came that about? Was there no
+limner that was native? Was it that fashion trampled on home-grown
+pictorial beginnings as it flouted and spurned native music?</p>
+
+<p>Here was food for contemplation. Dreaming in the brown fog, looking
+through it without seeing its beauties, at Hogarth's painting of Lavinia
+Fenton as Polly Peachum, without wondering how so indifferent a beauty
+could have captivated the Duke of Bolton and held him for thirty years,
+I was recalled to myself and my surroundings by the strange conduct of a
+lady who had seated herself on a chair near me, also discouraged by the
+fog, and awaiting its dispersion.</p>
+
+<p>I had not noticed her particularly. At the present moment I do not
+remember particularly what she was like. So far as I can recollect she
+was middle-aged, and was quietly yet well dressed. It was not her face
+nor her dress that attracted my attention and disturbed the current of
+my thoughts; the effect I speak of was produced by her strange movements
+and behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>She had been sitting listless, probably thinking of nothing at all, or
+nothing in particular, when, in turning her eyes round, and finding
+that she could see nothing of the paintings, she began to study me. This
+did concern me greatly. A cat may look at the king; but to be
+contemplated by a lady is a compliment sufficient to please any
+gentleman. It was not gratified vanity that troubled my thoughts, but
+the consciousness that my appearance produced&mdash;first of all a startled
+surprise, then undisguised alarm, and, finally, indescribable horror.</p>
+
+<p>Now a man can sit quietly leaning on the head of his umbrella, and glow
+internally, warmed and illumined by the consciousness that he is being
+surveyed with admiration by a lovely woman, even when he is middle-aged
+and not fashionably dressed; but no man can maintain his composure when
+he discovers himself to be an object of aversion and terror.</p>
+
+<p>What was it? I passed my hand over my chin and upper lip, thinking it
+not impossible that I might have forgotten to shave that morning, and in
+my confusion not considering that the fog would prevent the lady from
+discovering neglect in this particular, had it occurred, which it had
+not. I am a little careless, perhaps, about shaving when in the country;
+but when in town, never.</p>
+
+<p>The next idea that occurred to me was&mdash;a smut. Had a London black,
+curdled in that dense pea-soup atmosphere, descended on my nose and
+blackened it? I hastily drew my silk handkerchief from my pocket,
+moistened it, and passed it over my nose, and then each cheek. I then
+turned my eyes into the corners and looked at the lady, to see whether
+by this means I had got rid of what was objectionable in my personal
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw that her eyes, dilated with horror, were riveted, not on my
+face, but on my leg.</p>
+
+<p>My leg! What on earth could that harmless member have in it so
+terrifying? The morning had been dull; there had been rain in the night,
+and I admit that on leaving my hotel I had turned up the bottoms of my
+trousers. That is a proceeding not so uncommon, not so outrageous as to
+account for the stony stare of this woman's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>If that were all I would turn my trousers down.</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw her shrink from the chair on which she sat to one further
+removed from me, but still with her eyes fixed on my leg&mdash;about the
+level of my knee. She had let fall her umbrella, and was grasping the
+seat of her chair with both hands, as she backed from me.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly say that I was greatly disturbed in mind and feelings, and
+forgot all about the origin of the English schools of painters, and the
+question why the British Museum is more popular than the National
+Gallery.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking that I might have been spattered by a hansom whilst crossing
+Oxford Street, I passed my hand down my side hastily, with a sense of
+annoyance, and all at once touched something cold, clammy, that sent a
+thrill to my heart, and made me start and take a step forward. At the
+same moment, the lady, with a cry of horror, sprang to her feet, and
+with raised hands fled from the room, leaving her umbrella where it had
+fallen.</p>
+
+<p>There were other visitors to the Picture Gallery besides ourselves, who
+had been passing through the saloon, and they turned at her cry, and
+looked in surprise after her.</p>
+
+<p>The policeman stationed in the room came to me and asked what had
+happened. I was in such agitation that I hardly knew what to answer. I
+told him that I could explain what had occurred little better than
+himself. I had noticed that the lady had worn an odd expression, and had
+behaved in most extraordinary fashion, and that he had best take charge
+of her umbrella, and wait for her return to claim it.</p>
+
+<p>This questioning by the official was vexing, as it prevented me from at
+once and on the spot investigating the cause of her alarm and mine&mdash;hers
+at something she must have seen on my leg, and mine at something I had
+distinctly felt creeping up my leg.</p>
+
+<p>The numbing and sickening effect on me of the touch of the object I had
+not seen was not to be shaken off at once. Indeed, I felt as though my
+hand were contaminated, and that I could have no rest till I had
+thoroughly washed the hand, and, if possible, washed away the feeling
+that had been produced.</p>
+
+<p>I looked on the floor, I examined my leg, but saw nothing. As I wore my
+overcoat, it was probable that in rising from my seat the skirt had
+fallen over my trousers and hidden the thing, whatever it was. I
+therefore hastily removed my overcoat and shook it, then I looked at my
+trousers. There was nothing whatever on my leg, and nothing fell from my
+overcoat when shaken.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly I reinvested myself, and hastily left the Gallery; then took
+my way as speedily as I could, without actually running, to Charing
+Cross Station and down the narrow way leading to the Metropolitan, where
+I went into Faulkner's bath and hairdressing establishment, and asked
+for hot water to thoroughly wash my hand and well soap it. I bathed my
+hand in water as hot as I could endure it, employed carbolic soap, and
+then, after having a good brush down, especially on my left side where
+my hand had encountered the object that had so affected me, I left. I
+had entertained the intention of going to the Princess's Theatre that
+evening, and of securing a ticket in the morning; but all thought of
+theatre-going was gone from me. I could not free my heart from the sense
+of nausea and cold that had been produced by the touch. I went into
+Gatti's to have lunch, and ordered something, I forget what, but, when
+served, I found that my appetite was gone. I could eat nothing; the food
+inspired me with disgust. I thrust it from me untasted, and, after
+drinking a couple of glasses of claret, left the restaurant, and
+returned to my hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling sick and faint, I threw my overcoat over the sofa-back, and cast
+myself on my bed.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know that there was any particular reason for my doing so, but
+as I lay my eyes were on my great-coat.</p>
+
+<p>The density of the fog had passed away, and there was light again, not
+of first quality, but sufficient for a Londoner to swear by, so that I
+could see everything in my room, though through a veil, darkly.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think my mind was occupied in any way. About the only occasions
+on which, to my knowledge, my mind is actually passive or inert is when
+crossing the Channel in <i>The Foam</i> from Dover to Calais, when I am
+always, in every weather, abjectly seasick&mdash;and thoughtless. But as I
+now lay on my bed, uncomfortable, squeamish, without knowing why&mdash;I was
+in the same inactive mental condition. But not for long.</p>
+
+<p>I saw something that startled me.</p>
+
+<p>First, it appeared to me as if the lappet of my overcoat pocket were in
+movement, being raised. I did not pay much attention to this, as I
+supposed that the garment was sliding down on to the seat of the sofa,
+from the back, and that this displacement of gravity caused the movement
+I observed. But this I soon saw was not the case. That which moved the
+lappet was something in the pocket that was struggling to get out. I
+could see now that it was working its way up the inside, and that when
+it reached the opening it lost balance and fell down again. I could make
+this out by the projections and indentations in the cloth; these moved
+as the creature, or whatever it was, worked its way up the lining.</p>
+
+<p>"A mouse," I said, and forgot my seediness; I was interested. "The
+little rascal! However did he contrive to seat himself in my pocket? and
+I have worn that overcoat all the morning!" But no&mdash;it was not a mouse.
+I saw something white poke its way out from under the lappet; and in
+another moment an object was revealed that, though revealed, I could not
+understand, nor could I distinguish what it was.</p>
+
+<p>Now roused by curiosity, I raised myself on my elbow. In doing this I
+made some noise, the bed creaked. Instantly the something dropped on the
+floor, lay outstretched for a moment, to recover itself, and then began,
+with the motions of a maggot, to run along the floor.</p>
+
+<p>There is a caterpillar called "The Measurer," because, when it advances,
+it draws its tail up to where its head is and then throws forward its
+full length, and again draws up its extremity, forming at each time a
+loop; and with each step measuring its total length. The object I now
+saw on the floor was advancing precisely like the measuring caterpillar.
+It had the colour of a cheese-maggot, and in length was about three and
+a half inches. It was not, however, like a caterpillar, which is
+flexible throughout its entire length, but this was, as it seemed to me,
+jointed in two places, one joint being more conspicuous than the other.
+For some moments I was so completely paralysed by astonishment that I
+remained motionless, looking at the thing as it crawled along the
+carpet&mdash;a dull green carpet with darker green, almost black, flowers in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It had, as it seemed to me, a glossy head, distinctly marked; but, as
+the light was not brilliant, I could not make out very clearly, and,
+moreover, the rapid movements prevented close scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, with a shock still more startling than that produced by its
+apparition at the opening of the pocket of my great-coat, I became
+convinced that what I saw was a finger, a human forefinger, and that the
+glossy head was no other than the nail.</p>
+
+<p>The finger did not seem to have been amputated. There was no sign of
+blood or laceration where the knuckle should be, but the extremity of
+the finger, or root rather, faded away to indistinctness, and I was
+unable to make out the root of the finger.</p>
+
+<p>I could see no hand, no body behind this finger, nothing whatever except
+a finger that had little token of warm life in it, no coloration as
+though blood circulated in it; and this finger was in active motion
+creeping along the carpet towards a wardrobe that stood against the wall
+by the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>I sprang off the bed and pursued it.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently the finger was alarmed, for it redoubled its pace, reached the
+wardrobe, and went under it. By the time I had arrived at the article of
+furniture it had disappeared. I lit a vesta match and held it beneath
+the wardrobe, that was raised above the carpet by about two inches, on
+turned feet, but I could see nothing more of the finger.</p>
+
+<p>I got my umbrella and thrust it beneath, and raked forwards and
+backwards, right and left, and raked out flue, and nothing more solid.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>I packed my portmanteau next day and returned to my home in the country.
+All desire for amusement in town was gone, and the faculty to transact
+business had departed as well.</p>
+
+<p>A languor and qualms had come over me, and my head was in a maze. I was
+unable to fix my thoughts on anything. At times I was disposed to
+believe that my wits were deserting me, at others that I was on the
+verge of a severe illness. Anyhow, whether likely to go off my head or
+not, or take to my bed, home was the only place for me, and homeward I
+sped, accordingly. On reaching my country habitation, my servant, as
+usual, took my portmanteau to my bedroom, unstrapped it, but did not
+unpack it. I object to his throwing out the contents of my Gladstone
+bag; not that there is anything in it he may not see, but that he puts
+my things where I cannot find them again. My clothes&mdash;he is welcome to
+place them where he likes and where they belong, and this latter he
+knows better than I do; but, then, I carry about with me other things
+than a dress suit, and changes of linen and flannel. There are letters,
+papers, books&mdash;and the proper destinations of these are known only to
+myself. A servant has a singular and evil knack of putting away literary
+matter and odd volumes in such places that it takes the owner half a day
+to find them again. Although I was uncomfortable, and my head in a
+whirl, I opened and unpacked my own portmanteau. As I was thus engaged I
+saw something curled up in my collar-box, the lid of which had got
+broken in by a boot-heel impinging on it. I had pulled off the damaged
+cover to see if my collars had been spoiled, when something curled up
+inside suddenly rose on end and leapt, just like a cheese-jumper, out of
+the box, over the edge of the Gladstone bag, and scurried away across
+the floor in a manner already familiar to me.</p>
+
+<p>I could not doubt for a moment what it was&mdash;here was the finger again.
+It had come with me from London to the country.</p>
+
+<p>Whither it went in its run over the floor I do not know, I was too
+bewildered to observe.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat later, towards evening, I seated myself in my easy-chair, took
+up a book, and tried to read. I was tired with the journey, with the
+knocking about in town, and the discomfort and alarm produced by the
+apparition of the finger. I felt worn out. I was unable to give my
+attention to what I read, and before I was aware was asleep. Roused for
+an instant by the fall of the book from my hands, I speedily relapsed
+into unconsciousness. I am not sure that a doze in an armchair ever does
+good. It usually leaves me in a semi-stupid condition and with a
+headache. Five minutes in a horizontal position on my bed is worth
+thirty in a chair. That is my experience. In sleeping in a sedentary
+position the head is a difficulty; it drops forward or lolls on one side
+or the other, and has to be brought back into a position in which the
+line to the centre of gravity runs through the trunk, otherwise the head
+carries the body over in a sort of general capsize out of the chair on
+to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>I slept, on the occasion of which I am speaking, pretty healthily,
+because deadly weary; but I was brought to waking, not by my head
+falling over the arm of the chair, and my trunk tumbling after it, but
+by a feeling of cold extending from my throat to my heart. When I awoke
+I was in a diagonal position, with my right ear resting on my right
+shoulder, and exposing the left side of my throat, and it was
+here&mdash;where the jugular vein throbs&mdash;that I felt the greatest intensity
+of cold. At once I shrugged my left shoulder, rubbing my neck with the
+collar of my coat in so doing. Immediately something fell off, upon the
+floor, and I again saw the finger.</p>
+
+<p>My disgust&mdash;horror, were intensified when I perceived that it was
+dragging something after it, which might have been an old stocking, and
+which I took at first glance for something of the sort.</p>
+
+<p>The evening sun shone in through my window, in a brilliant golden ray
+that lighted the object as it scrambled along. With this illumination I
+was able to distinguish what the object was. It is not easy to describe
+it, but I will make the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>The finger I saw was solid and material; what it drew after it was
+neither, or was in a nebulous, protoplasmic condition. The finger was
+attached to a hand that was curdling into matter and in process of
+acquiring solidity; attached to the hand was an arm in a very filmy
+condition, and this arm belonged to a human body in a still more
+vaporous, immaterial condition. This was being dragged along the floor
+by the finger, just as a silkworm might pull after it the tangle of its
+web. I could see legs and arms, and head, and coat-tail tumbling about
+and interlacing and disentangling again in a promiscuous manner. There
+were no bone, no muscle, no substance in the figure; the members were
+attached to the trunk, which was spineless, but they had evidently no
+functions, and were wholly dependent on the finger which pulled them
+along in a jumble of parts as it advanced.</p>
+
+<p>In such confusion did the whole vaporous matter seem, that I think&mdash;I
+cannot say for certain it was so, but the impression left on my mind
+was&mdash;that one of the eyeballs was looking out at a nostril, and the
+tongue lolling out of one of the ears.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, only for a moment that I saw this germ-body; I cannot
+call by another name that which had not more substance than smoke. I saw
+it only so long as it was being dragged athwart the ray of sunlight. The
+moment it was pulled jerkily out of the beam into the shadow beyond, I
+could see nothing of it, only the crawling finger.</p>
+
+<p>I had not sufficient moral energy or physical force in me to rise,
+pursue, and stamp on the finger, and grind it with my heel into the
+floor. Both seemed drained out of me. What became of the finger, whither
+it went, how it managed to secrete itself, I do not know. I had lost the
+power to inquire. I sat in my chair, chilled, staring before me into
+space.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir," a voice said, "there's Mr. Square below, electrical
+engineer."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" I looked dreamily round.</p>
+
+<p>My valet was at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir, the gentleman would be glad to be allowed to go over the
+house and see that all the electrical apparatus is in order."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, indeed! Yes&mdash;show him up."</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>I had recently placed the lighting of my house in the hands of an
+electrical engineer, a very intelligent man, Mr. Square, for whom I had
+contracted a sincere friendship.</p>
+
+<p>He had built a shed with a dynamo out of sight, and had entrusted the
+laying of the wires to subordinates, as he had been busy with other
+orders and could not personally watch every detail. But he was not the
+man to let anything pass unobserved, and he knew that electricity was
+not a force to be played with. Bad or careless workmen will often
+insufficiently protect the wires, or neglect the insertion of the lead
+which serves as a safety-valve in the event of the current being too
+strong. Houses may be set on fire, human beings fatally shocked, by the
+neglect of a bad or slovenly workman.</p>
+
+<p>The apparatus for my mansion was but just completed, and Mr. Square had
+come to inspect it and make sure that all was right.</p>
+
+<p>He was an enthusiast in the matter of electricity, and saw for it a vast
+perspective, the limits of which could not be predicted.</p>
+
+<p>"All forces," said he, "are correlated. When you have force in one form,
+you may just turn it into this or that, as you like. In one form it is
+motive power, in another it is light, in another heat. Now we have
+electricity for illumination. We employ it, but not as freely as in the
+States, for propelling vehicles. Why should we have horses drawing our
+buses? We should use only electric trams. Why do we burn coal to warm
+our shins? There is electricity, which throws out no filthy smoke as
+does coal. Why should we let the tides waste their energies in the
+Thames? in other estuaries? There we have Nature supplying us&mdash;free,
+gratis, and for nothing&mdash;with all the force we want for propelling, for
+heating, for lighting. I will tell you something more, my dear sir,"
+said Mr. Square. "I have mentioned but three modes of force, and have
+instanced but a limited number of uses to which electricity may be
+turned. How is it with photography? Is not electric light becoming an
+artistic agent? I bet you," said he, "before long it will become a
+therapeutic agent as well."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; I have heard of certain impostors with their life-belts."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Square did not relish this little dig I gave him. He winced, but
+returned to the charge. "We don't know how to direct it aright, that is
+all," said he. "I haven't taken the matter up, but others will, I bet;
+and we shall have electricity used as freely as now we use powders and
+pills. I don't believe in doctors' stuffs myself. I hold that disease
+lays hold of a man because he lacks physical force to resist it. Now, is
+it not obvious that you are beginning at the wrong end when you attack
+the disease? What you want is to supply force, make up for the lack of
+physical power, and force is force wherever you find it&mdash;here motive,
+there illuminating, and so on. I don't see why a physician should not
+utilise the tide rushing out under London Bridge for restoring the
+feeble vigour of all who are languid and a prey to disorder in the
+Metropolis. It will come to that, I bet, and that is not all. Force is
+force, everywhere. Political, moral force, physical force, dynamic
+force, heat, light, tidal waves, and so on&mdash;all are one, all is one. In
+time we shall know how to galvanise into aptitude and moral energy all
+the limp and crooked consciences and wills that need taking in hand, and
+such there always will be in modern civilisation. I don't know how to do
+it. I don't know how it will be done, but in the future the priest as
+well as the doctor will turn electricity on as his principal, nay, his
+only agent. And he can get his force anywhere, out of the running
+stream, out of the wind, out of the tidal wave.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give you an instance," continued Mr. Square, chuckling and rubbing
+his hands, "to show you the great possibilities in electricity, used in
+a crude fashion. In a certain great city away far west in the States, a
+go-ahead place, too, more so than New York, they had electric trams all
+up and down and along the roads to everywhere. The union men working for
+the company demanded that the non-unionists should be turned off. But
+the company didn't see it. Instead, it turned off the union men. It had
+up its sleeve a sufficiency of the others, and filled all places at
+once. Union men didn't like it, and passed word that at a given hour on
+a certain day every wire was to be cut. The company knew this by means
+of its spies, and turned on, ready for them, three times the power into
+all the wires. At the fixed moment, up the poles went the strikers to
+cut the cables, and down they came a dozen times quicker than they went
+up, I bet. Then there came wires to the hospitals from all quarters for
+stretchers to carry off the disabled men, some with broken legs, arms,
+ribs; two or three had their necks broken. I reckon the company was
+wonderfully merciful&mdash;it didn't put on sufficient force to make cinders
+of them then and there; possibly opinion might not have liked it.
+Stopped the strike, did that. Great moral effect&mdash;all done by
+electricity."</p>
+
+<p>In this manner Mr. Square was wont to rattle on. He interested me, and I
+came to think that there might be something in what he said&mdash;that his
+suggestions were not mere nonsense. I was glad to see Mr. Square enter
+my room, shown in by my man. I did not rise from my chair to shake his
+hand, for I had not sufficient energy to do so. In a languid tone I
+welcomed him and signed to him to take a seat. Mr. Square looked at me
+with some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter?" he said. "You seem unwell. Not got the 'flue,
+have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon?"</p>
+
+<p>"The influenza. Every third person is crying out that he has it, and the
+sale of eucalyptus is enormous, not that eucalyptus is any good.
+Influenza microbes indeed! What care they for eucalyptus? You've gone
+down some steps of the ladder of life since I saw you last, squire. How
+do you account for that?"</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated about mentioning the extraordinary circumstances that had
+occurred; but Square was a man who would not allow any beating about the
+bush. He was downright and straight, and in ten minutes had got the
+entire story out of me.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather boisterous for your nerves that&mdash;a crawling finger," said he.
+"It's a queer story taken on end."</p>
+
+<p>Then he was silent, considering.</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes he rose, and said: "I'll go and look at the
+fittings, and then I'll turn this little matter of yours over again, and
+see if I can't knock the bottom out of it, I'm kinder fond of these sort
+of things."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Square was not a Yankee, but he had lived for some time in America,
+and affected to speak like an American. He used expressions, terms of
+speech common in the States, but had none of the Transatlantic twang. He
+was a man absolutely without affectation in every other particular; this
+was his sole weakness, and it was harmless.</p>
+
+<p>The man was so thorough in all he did that I did not expect his return
+immediately. He was certain to examine every portion of the dynamo
+engine, and all the connections and burners. This would necessarily
+engage him for some hours. As the day was nearly done, I knew he could
+not accomplish what he wanted that evening, and accordingly gave orders
+that a room should be prepared for him. Then, as my head was full of
+pain, and my skin was burning, I told my servant to apologise for my
+absence from dinner, and tell Mr. Square that I was really forced to
+return to my bed by sickness, and that I believed I was about to be
+prostrated by an attack of influenza.</p>
+
+<p>The valet&mdash;a worthy fellow, who has been with me for six years&mdash;was
+concerned at my appearance, and urged me to allow him to send for a
+doctor. I had no confidence in the local practitioner, and if I sent for
+another from the nearest town I should offend him, and a row would
+perhaps ensue, so I declined. If I were really in for an influenza
+attack, I knew about as much as any doctor how to deal with it. Quinine,
+quinine&mdash;that was all. I bade my man light a small lamp, lower it, so as
+to give sufficient illumination to enable me to find some lime-juice at
+my bed head, and my pocket-handkerchief, and to be able to read my
+watch. When he had done this, I bade him leave me.</p>
+
+<p>I lay in bed, burning, racked with pain in my head, and with my eyeballs
+on fire.</p>
+
+<p>Whether I fell asleep or went off my head for a while I cannot tell. I
+may have fainted. I have no recollection of anything after having gone
+to bed and taken a sip of lime-juice that tasted to me like soap&mdash;till I
+was roused by a sense of pain in my ribs&mdash;a slow, gnawing, torturing
+pain, waxing momentarily more intense. In half-consciousness I was
+partly dreaming and partly aware of actual suffering. The pain was real;
+but in my fancy I thought that a great maggot was working its way into
+my side between my ribs. I seemed to see it. It twisted itself half
+round, then reverted to its former position, and again twisted itself,
+moving like a bradawl, not like a gimlet, which latter forms a complete
+revolution.</p>
+
+<p>This, obviously, must have been a dream, hallucination only, as I was
+lying on my back and my eyes were directed towards the bottom of the
+bed, and the coverlet and blankets and sheet intervened between my eyes
+and my side. But in fever one sees without eyes, and in every direction,
+and through all obstructions.</p>
+
+<p>Roused thoroughly by an excruciating twinge, I tried to cry out, and
+succeeded in throwing myself over on my right side, that which was in
+pain. At once I felt the thing withdrawn that was awling&mdash;if I may use
+the word&mdash;in between my ribs.</p>
+
+<p>And now I saw, standing beside the bed, a figure that had its arm under
+the bedclothes, and was slowly removing it. The hand was leisurely
+drawn from under the coverings and rested on the eider-down coverlet,
+with the forefinger extended.</p>
+
+<p>The figure was that of a man, in shabby clothes, with a sallow, mean
+face, a retreating forehead, with hair cut after the French fashion, and
+a moustache, dark. The jaws and chin were covered with a bristly growth,
+as if shaving had been neglected for a fortnight. The figure did not
+appear to be thoroughly solid, but to be of the consistency of curd, and
+the face was of the complexion of curd. As I looked at this object it
+withdrew, sliding backward in an odd sort of manner, and as though
+overweighted by the hand, which was the most substantial, indeed the
+only substantial portion of it. Though the figure retreated stooping,
+yet it was no longer huddled along by the finger, as if it had no
+material existence. If the same, it had acquired a consistency and a
+solidity which it did not possess before.</p>
+
+<p>How it vanished I do not know, nor whither it went. The door opened, and
+Square came in.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" he exclaimed with cheery voice; "influenza is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I think it's that finger again."</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>"Now, look here," said Square, "I'm not going to have that cuss at its
+pranks any more. Tell me all about it."</p>
+
+<p>I was now so exhausted, so feeble, that I was not able to give a
+connected account of what had taken place, but Square put to me just a
+few pointed questions and elicited the main facts. He pieced them
+together in his own orderly mind, so as to form a connected whole.
+"There is a feature in the case," said he, "that strikes me as
+remarkable and important. At first&mdash;a finger only, then a hand, then a
+nebulous figure attached to the hand, without backbone, without
+consistency. Lastly, a complete form, with consistency and with
+backbone, but the latter in a gelatinous condition, and the entire
+figure overweighted by the hand, just as hand and figure were previously
+overweighted by the finger. Simultaneously with this compacting and
+consolidating of the figure, came your degeneration and loss of vital
+force and, in a word, of health. What you lose, that object acquires,
+and what it acquires, it gains by contact with you. That's clear enough,
+is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. I don't know. I can't think."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not; the faculty of thought is drained out of you. Very well,
+I must think for you, and I will. Force is force, and see if I can't
+deal with your visitant in such a way as will prove just as truly a
+moral dissuasive as that employed on the union men on strike in&mdash;never
+mind where it was. That's not to the point."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you kindly give me some lime-juice?" I entreated.</p>
+
+<p>I sipped the acid draught, but without relief. I listened to Square, but
+without hope. I wanted to be left alone. I was weary of my pain, weary
+of everything, even of life. It was a matter of indifference to me
+whether I recovered or slipped out of existence.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be here again shortly," said the engineer. "As the French say,
+<i>l'appetit vient en mangeant</i>. It has been at you thrice, it won't be
+content without another peck. And if it does get another, I guess it
+will pretty well about finish you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Square rubbed his chin, and then put his hands into his trouser
+pockets. That also was a trick acquired in the States, an inelegant one.
+His hands, when not actively occupied, went into his pockets, inevitably
+they gravitated thither. Ladies did not like Square; they said he was
+not a gentleman. But it was not that he said or did anything "off
+colour," only he spoke to them, looked at them, walked with them, always
+with his hands in his pockets. I have seen a lady turn her back on him
+deliberately because of this trick.</p>
+
+<p>Standing now with his hands in his pockets, he studied my bed, and said
+contemptuously: "Old-fashioned and bad, fourposter. Oughtn't to be
+allowed, I guess; unwholesome all the way round."</p>
+
+<p>I was not in a condition to dispute this. I like a fourposter with
+curtains at head and feet; not that I ever draw them, but it gives a
+sense of privacy that is wanting in one of your half-tester beds.</p>
+
+<p>If there is a window at one's feet, one can lie in bed without the glare
+in one's eyes, and yet without darkening the room by drawing the blinds.
+There is much to be said for a fourposter, but this is not the place in
+which to say it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Square pulled his hands out of his pockets and began fiddling with
+the electric point near the head of my bed, attached a wire, swept it in
+a semicircle along the floor, and then thrust the knob at the end into
+my hand in the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep your eye open," said he, "and your hand shut and covered. If that
+finger comes again tickling your ribs, try it with the point. I'll
+manage the switch, from behind the curtain."</p>
+
+<p>Then he disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>I was too indifferent in my misery to turn my head and observe where he
+was. I remained inert, with the knob in my hand, and my eyes closed,
+suffering and thinking of nothing but the shooting pains through my head
+and the aches in my loins and back and legs.</p>
+
+<p>Some time probably elapsed before I felt the finger again at work at my
+ribs; it groped, but no longer bored. I now felt the entire hand, not a
+single finger, and the hand was substantial, cold, and clammy. I was
+aware, how, I know not, that if the finger-point reached the region of
+my heart, on the left side, the hand would, so to speak, sit down on it,
+with the cold palm over it, and that then immediately my heart would
+cease to beat, and it would be, as Square might express it, "gone coon"
+with me.</p>
+
+<p>In self-preservation I brought up the knob of the electric wire against
+the hand&mdash;against one of the ringers, I think&mdash;and at once was aware of
+a rapping, squealing noise. I turned my head languidly, and saw the
+form, now more substantial than before, capering in an ecstasy of pain,
+endeavouring fruitlessly to withdraw its arm from under the bedclothes,
+and the hand from the electric point.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment Square stepped from behind the curtain, with a dry
+laugh, and said: "I thought we should fix him. He has the coil about
+him, and can't escape. Now let us drop to particulars. But I shan't let
+you off till I know all about you."</p>
+
+<p>The last sentence was addressed, not to me, but to the apparition.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon he bade me take the point away from the hand of the
+figure&mdash;being&mdash;whatever it was, but to be ready with it at a moment's
+notice. He then proceeded to catechise my visitor, who moved restlessly
+within the circle of wire, but could not escape from it. It replied in a
+thin, squealing voice that sounded as if it came from a distance, and
+had a querulous tone in it. I do not pretend to give all that was said.
+I cannot recollect everything that passed. My memory was affected by my
+illness, as well as my body. Yet I prefer giving the scraps that I
+recollect to what Square told me he had heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I was unsuccessful, always was. Nothing answered with me. The
+world was against me. Society was. I hate Society. I don't like work
+neither, never did. But I like agitating against what is established. I
+hate the Royal Family, the landed interest, the parsons, everything that
+is, except the people&mdash;that is, the unemployed. I always did. I couldn't
+get work as suited me. When I died they buried me in a cheap coffin,
+dirt cheap, and gave me a nasty grave, cheap, and a service rattled
+away cheap, and no monument. Didn't want none. Oh! there are lots of
+us. All discontented. Discontent! That's a passion, it is&mdash;it gets into
+the veins, it fills the brain, it occupies the heart; it's a sort of
+divine cancer that takes possession of the entire man, and makes him
+dissatisfied with everything, and hate everybody. But we must have our
+share of happiness at some time. We all crave for it in one way or
+other. Some think there's a future state of blessedness and so have
+hope, and look to attain to it, for hope is a cable and anchor that
+attaches to what is real. But when you have no hope of that sort, don't
+believe in any future state, you must look for happiness in life here.
+We didn't get it when we were alive, so we seek to procure it after we
+are dead. We can do it, if we can get out of our cheap and nasty
+coffins. But not till the greater part of us is mouldered away. If a
+finger or two remains, that can work its way up to the surface, those
+cheap deal coffins go to pieces quick enough. Then the only solid part
+of us left can pull the rest of us that has gone to nothing after it.
+Then we grope about after the living. The well-to-do if we can get at
+them&mdash;the honest working poor if we can't&mdash;we hate them too, because
+they are content and happy. If we reach any of these, and can touch
+them, then we can draw their vital force out of them into ourselves, and
+recuperate at their expense. That was about what I was going to do with
+you. Getting on famous. Nearly solidified into a new man; and given
+another chance in life. But I've missed it this time. Just like my luck.
+Miss everything. Always have, except misery and disappointment. Get
+plenty of that."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you all?" asked Square. "Anarchists out of employ?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some of us go by that name, some by other designations, but we are all
+one, and own allegiance to but one monarch&mdash;Sovereign discontent. We are
+bred to have a distaste for manual work; and we grow up loafers,
+grumbling at everything and quarrelling with Society that is around us
+and the Providence that is above us."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you call yourselves now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Call ourselves? Nothing; we are the same, in another condition, that is
+all. Folk called us once Anarchists, Nihilists, Socialists, Levellers,
+now they call us the Influenza. The learned talk of microbes, and
+bacilli, and bacteria. Microbes, bacilli, and bacteria be blowed! We are
+the Influenza; we the social failures, the generally discontented,
+coming up out of our cheap and nasty graves in the form of physical
+disease. We are the Influenza."</p>
+
+<p>"There you are, I guess!" exclaimed Square triumphantly. "Did I not say
+that all forces were correlated? If so, then all negations, deficiencies
+of force are one in their several manifestations. Talk of Divine
+discontent as a force impelling to progress! Rubbish, it is a paralysis
+of energy. It turns all it absorbs to acid, to envy, spite, gall. It
+inspires nothing, but rots the whole moral system. Here you have
+it&mdash;moral, social, political discontent in another form, nay
+aspect&mdash;that is all. What Anarchism is in the body Politic, that
+Influenza is in the body Physical. Do you see that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-e-s-e-s," I believe I answered, and dropped away into the land of
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>I recovered. What Square did with the Thing I know not, but believe that
+he reduced it again to its former negative and self-decomposing
+condition.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BLACK_RAM" id="BLACK_RAM"></a>BLACK RAM</h2>
+
+
+<p>I do not know when I had spent a more pleasant evening, or had enjoyed a
+dinner more than that at Mr. Weatherwood's hospitable house. For one
+thing, the hostess knew how to keep her guests interested and in
+good-humour. The dinner was all that could be desired, and so were the
+wines. But what conduced above all to my pleasure was that at table I
+sat by Miss Fulton, a bright, intelligent girl, well read and
+entertaining. My wife had a cold, and had sent her excuses by me. Miss
+Fulton and I talked of this, that, and every thing. Towards the end of
+dinner she said: "I shall be obliged to run away so soon as the ladies
+leave the room to you and your cigarettes and gossip. It is rather mean,
+but Mrs. Weatherwood has been forewarned, and understands. To-morrow is
+our village feast at Marksleigh, and I have a host of things on my hand.
+I shall have to be up at seven, and I do object to cut a slice off my
+night's rest at both ends."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather an unusual time of the year for a village feast," said I. "These
+things are generally got over in the summer."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, our church is dedicated to St. Mark, and to-morrow is his
+festival, and it has been observed in one fashion or another in our
+parish from time immemorial. In your parts have they any notions about
+St. Mark's eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of notions?"</p>
+
+<p>"That if you sit in the church porch from midnight till the clock
+strikes one, you will see the apparitions pass before you of those
+destined to die within the year."</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy our good people see themselves, and nothing but themselves, on
+every day and hour throughout the twelvemonth."</p>
+
+<p>"Joking apart, have you any such superstition hanging on in your
+neighbourhood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I am aware of. That sort of thing belonged to the Golden Age
+that has passed away. Board schools have reduced us to that of lead."</p>
+
+<p>"At Marksleigh the villagers believe in it, and recently their faith has
+received corroboration."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Last year, in a fit of bravado, a young carpenter ventured to sit in
+the porch at the witching hour, and saw himself enter the church. He
+came home, looking as blank as a sheet, moped, lost flesh, and died nine
+months later."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he died, if he had made up his mind to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that is explicable. But how do you account for his having seen his
+double?"</p>
+
+<p>"He had been drinking at the public-house. A good many people see double
+after that."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not so. He was perfectly sober at the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I give it up."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you venture on a visit to a church porch on this night&mdash;St.
+Mark's eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I would, if well wrapped up, and I had my pipe."</p>
+
+<p>"I bar the pipe," said Miss Fulton. "No apparition can stand tobacco
+smoke. But there is Lady Eastleigh rising. When you come to rejoin the
+ladies, I shall be gone."</p>
+
+<p>I did not leave the house of the Weatherwoods till late. My dogcart was
+driven by my groom, Richard. The night was cold, or rather chilly, but I
+had my fur-lined overcoat, and did not mind that. The stars shone out of
+a frosty sky. All went smoothly enough till the road dipped into a
+valley, where a dense white fog hung over the river and the
+water-meadows. Anyone who has had much experience in driving at night is
+aware that in such a case the carriage lamps are worse than useless;
+they bewilder the horse and the driver. I cannot blame Dick if he ran
+his wheel over a heap of stones that upset the trap. We were both thrown
+out, and I fell on my head. I sang out: "Mind the cob, Dick; I am all
+right."</p>
+
+<p>The boy at once mastered the horse. I did not rise immediately, for I
+had been somewhat jarred by the fall; when I did I found Dick engaged in
+mending a ruptured trace. One of the shafts was broken, and a carriage
+lamp had been shattered.</p>
+
+<p>"Dick," said I, "there are a couple of steep hills to descend, and that
+is risky with a single shaft. I will lighten the dogcart by walking
+home, and do you take care at the hills."</p>
+
+<p>"I think we can manage, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I should prefer to walk the rest of the way. I am rather shaken by my
+fall, and a good step out in the cool night will do more to put me to
+rights than anything else. When you get home, send up a message to your
+mistress that she is not to expect me at once. I shall arrive in due
+time, and she is not to be alarmed."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good trudge before you, sir. And I dare say we could get the
+shaft tied up at Fifewell."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;at this time of night? No, Dick, do as I say."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly the groom drove off, and I started on my walk. I was glad to
+get out of the clinging fog, when I reached higher ground. I looked
+back, and by the starlight saw the river bottom filled with the mist,
+lying apparently dense as snow.</p>
+
+<p>After a swinging walk of a quarter of an hour I entered the outskirts of
+Fifewell, a village of some importance, with shops, the seat of the
+petty sessions, and with a small boot and shoe factory in it.</p>
+
+<p>The street was deserted. Some bedroom windows were lighted, for our
+people have the habit of burning their paraffin lamps all night. Every
+door was shut, no one was stirring.</p>
+
+<p>As I passed along the churchyard wall, the story of the young carpenter,
+told by Miss Fulton, recurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" thought I, "it is now close upon midnight, a rare opportunity
+for me to see the wonders of St. Mark's eve. I will go into the porch
+and rest there for a few minutes, and then I shall be able, when I meet
+that girl again, to tell her that I had done what she challenged me to
+do, without any idea that I would take her challenge up."</p>
+
+<p>I turned in at the gate, and walked up the pathway. The headstones bore
+a somewhat ghostly look in the starlight. A cross of white stone,
+recently set up, I supposed, had almost the appearance of
+phosphorescence. The church windows were dark.</p>
+
+<p>I seated myself in the roomy porch on a stone bench against the wall,
+and felt for my pipe. I am not sure that I contemplated smoking it then
+and there, partly because Miss Fulton had forbidden it, but also because
+I felt that it was not quite the right thing to do on consecrated
+ground. But it would be a satisfaction to finger it, and I might plug
+it, so as to be ready to light up so soon as I left the churchyard. To
+my vexation I found that I had lost it. The tobacco-pouch was there, and
+the matches. My pipe must have fallen out of my pocket when I was
+pitched from the trap. That pipe was a favourite of mine.</p>
+
+<p>"What a howling nuisance," said I. "If I send Dick back over the road
+to-morrow morning, ten chances to one if he finds it, for to-morrow is
+market-day, and people will be passing early."</p>
+
+<p>As I said this, the clock struck twelve.</p>
+
+<p>I counted each stroke. I wore my fur-lined coat, and was not cold&mdash;in
+fact, I had been too warm walking in it. At the last stroke of twelve I
+noticed lines of very brilliant light appear about the door into the
+church. The door must have fitted well, as the light did no more than
+show about it, and did not gush forth at all the crevices. But from the
+keyhole shot a ray of intense brilliancy.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the church windows were illumined I did not see&mdash;in fact, it did
+not occur to me to look, either then or later&mdash;but I am pretty certain
+that they were not, or the light streaming from them would have brought
+the gravestones into prominence. When you come to think of it, it was
+remarkable that the light of so dazzling a nature should shine through
+the crannies of the door, and that none should issue, as far as I could
+see, from the windows. At the time I did not give this a thought; my
+attention was otherwise taken up. For I saw distinctly Miss Venville, a
+very nice girl of my acquaintance, coming up the path with that swinging
+walk so characteristic of an English young lady.</p>
+
+<p>How often it has happened to me, when I have been sitting in a public
+park or in the gardens of a Cursaal abroad, and some young girls have
+passed by, that I have said to my wife: "I bet you a bob those are
+English."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course," she has replied; "you can see that by their dress."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about dress," I have said; "I judge by the
+walk."</p>
+
+<p>Well, there was Miss Venville coming towards the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a joke," said I. "She is going to sit here on the look-out for
+ghosts, and if I stand up or speak she will be scared out of her wits.
+Hang it, I wish I had my pipe now; if I gave a whiff it would reveal the
+presence of a mortal, without alarming her. I think I shall whistle."</p>
+
+<p>I had screwed up my lips to begin "Rocked in the cradle of the
+deep"&mdash;that is my great song I perform whenever there is a village
+concert, or I am asked out to dinner, and am entreated afterwards to
+sing&mdash;I say I had screwed up my lips to whistle, when I saw something
+that scared me so that I made no attempt at the melody.</p>
+
+<p>The ray of light through the keyhole was shut off, and I saw standing in
+the porch before me the form of Mrs. Venville, the girl's mother, who
+had died two years before. The ray of white light arrested by her filled
+her as a lamp&mdash;was diffused as a mild glow from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Halloo, mother, what brings you here?" asked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Gwendoline, I have come to warn you back. You cannot enter; you have
+not got the key."</p>
+
+<p>"The key, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, everyone who would pass within must have his or her own key."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, where am I to get one?"</p>
+
+<p>"It must be forged for you, Gwen. You are wholly unfit to enter. What
+good have you ever done to deserve it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, mother, everyone knows I'm an awfully good sort."</p>
+
+<p>"No one in here knows it. That is no qualification."</p>
+
+<p>"And I always dressed in good taste."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor is that."</p>
+
+<p>"And I was splendid at lawn tennis."</p>
+
+<p>Her mother shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, little mummy. I won a brooch at the archery match."</p>
+
+<p>"That will not do, Gwendoline. What good have you ever done to anyone
+else beside yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl considered a minute, then laughed, and said: "I put into a
+raffle at a bazaar&mdash;no, it was a bran-pie for an orphanage&mdash;and I drew
+out a pair of braces. I had rare fun over those braces, I sold them to
+Captain Fitzakerly for half a crown, and that I gave to the charity."</p>
+
+<p>"You went for what you could get, not what you could give."</p>
+
+<p>Then the mother stepped on one side, and the ray shot directly at the
+girl. I saw that it had something of the quality of the X-ray. It was
+not arrested by her garments, or her flesh or muscles. It revealed in
+her breast, in her brain&mdash;penetrating her whole body&mdash;a hard, dark core.</p>
+
+<p>"Black Ram, I bet," said I.</p>
+
+<p>Now Black Ram is the local name for a substance found in our land,
+especially in the low ground that ought to be the most fertile, but is
+not so, on account of this material found in it.</p>
+
+<p>The substance lies some two or three feet below the surface, and forms a
+crust of the consistency of cast iron. No plough can possibly be driven
+through it. No water can percolate athwart it, and consequently where it
+is, there the superincumbent soil is resolved into a quagmire. No tree
+can grow in it, for the moment the taproot touches the Black Ram the
+tree dies.</p>
+
+<p>Of what Black Ram consists is more than I can say; the popular opinion
+is that it is a bastard manganese. Now I happen to own several fields
+accursed with the presence in them of Black Ram&mdash;fields that ought to be
+luxuriant meadows, but which, in consequence of its presence, are worth
+almost nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Gwen," said her mother, looking sorrowfully at her, "there is not a
+chance of your admission till you have got rid of the Black Ram that is
+in you."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said I, as I slapped my knee, "I thought I knew the article, and
+now my opinion has been confirmed."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I get rid of it?" asked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Gwendoline, you will have to pass into little Polly Finch, and work it
+out of your system. She is dying of scarlet fever, and you must enter
+into her body, and so rid yourself in time of the Black Ram."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!&mdash;the Finches are common people."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better chance for you."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am eighteen, Polly is about ten."</p>
+
+<p>"You will have to become a little child if you would enter her."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like it. What is the alternative?"</p>
+
+<p>"To remain without in the darkness till you come to a better mind. And
+now, Gwen, no time is to be lost; you must pass into Polly Finch's body
+before it grows cold."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then&mdash;here goes!"</p>
+
+<p>Gwen Venville turned, and her mother accompanied her down the path. The
+girl moved reluctantly, and pouted. Passing out of the churchyard, both
+traversed the street and disappeared within a cottage, from the upper
+window of which light from behind a white blind was diffused.</p>
+
+<p>I did not follow, I leaned back against the wall. I felt that my head
+was throbbing. I was a little afraid lest my fall had done more injury
+than I had at first anticipated. I put my hand to my head, and held it
+there for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was as though a book were opened before me&mdash;the book of the life
+of Polly Finch&mdash;or rather of Gwendoline's soul in Polly Finch's body. It
+was but one page that I saw, and the figures in it were moving.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was struggling under the burden of a heavy baby brother. She
+coaxed him, she sang to him, she played with him, talked to him, broke
+off bits of her bread and butter, given to her for breakfast, and made
+him eat them; she wiped his nose and eyes with her pocket-handkerchief,
+she tried to dance him in her arms. He was a fractious urchin, and most
+exacting, but her patience, her good-nature, never failed. The drops
+stood on her brow, and her limbs tottered under the weight, but her
+heart was strong, and her eyes shone with love.</p>
+
+<p>I drew my hand from my head. It was burning. I put my hand to the cold
+stone bench to cool it, and then applied it once more to my brow.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly it was as though another page were revealed. I saw Polly in
+her widowed father's cottage. She was now a grown girl; she was on her
+knees scrubbing the floor. A bell tinkled. Then she put down the soap
+and brush, turned down her sleeves, rose and went into the outer shop to
+serve a customer with half a pound of tea. That done, she was back
+again, and the scrubbing was renewed. Again a tinkle, and again she
+stood up and went into the shop to a child who desired to buy a
+pennyworth of lemon drops.</p>
+
+<p>On her return, in came her little brother crying&mdash;he had cut his finger.
+Polly at once applied cobweb, and then stitched a rag about the wounded
+member.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, Tommy! don't cry any more. I have kissed the bad place,
+and it will soon be well."</p>
+
+<p>"Poll! it hurts! it hurts!" sobbed the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to me," said his sister. She drew a low chair to the fireside,
+took Tommy on her lap, and began to tell him the story of Jack the
+Giant-killer.</p>
+
+<p>I removed my hand, and the vision was gone.</p>
+
+<p>I put my other hand to my head, and at once saw a further scene in the
+life-story of Polly.</p>
+
+<p>She was now a middle-aged woman, and had a cottage of her own. She was
+despatching her children to school. They had bright, rosy faces, their
+hair was neatly combed, their pinafores were white as snow. One after
+another, before leaving, put up the cherry lips to kiss mammy; and when
+they were gone, for a moment she stood in the door looking after them,
+then sharply turned, brought out a basket, and emptied its contents on
+the table. There were little girls' stockings with "potatoes" in them to
+be darned, torn jackets to be mended, a little boy's trousers to be
+reseated, pocket-handkerchiefs to be hemmed. She laboured on with her
+needle the greater part of the day, then put away the garments, some
+finished, others to be finished, and going to the flour-bin took forth
+flour and began to knead dough, and then to roll it out to make pasties
+for her husband and the children.</p>
+
+<p>"Poll!" called a voice from without; she ran to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Back, Joe! I have your dinner hot in the oven."</p>
+
+<p>"I must say, Poll, you are the best of good wives, and there isn't a
+mother like you in the shire. My word! that was a lucky day when I chose
+you, and didn't take Mary Matters, who was setting her cap at me. See
+what a slattern she has turned out. Why, I do believe, Poll, if I'd took
+her she'd have drove me long ago to the public-house."</p>
+
+<p>I saw the mother of Gwendoline standing by me and looking out on this
+scene, and I heard her say: "The Black Ram is run out, and the key is
+forged."</p>
+
+<p>All had vanished. I thought now I might as well rise and continue my
+journey. But before I had left the bench I observed the rector of
+Fifewell sauntering up the path, with uncertain step, as he fumbled in
+his coat-tail pockets, and said: "Where the deuce is the key?"</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend William Hexworthy was a man of good private means, and was
+just the sort of man that a bishop delights to honour. He was one who
+would never cause him an hour's anxiety; he was not the man to indulge
+in ecclesiastical vagaries. He flattered himself that he was strictly a
+<i>via media</i> man. He kept dogs, he was a good judge of horses, was fond
+of sport. He did not hunt, but he shot and fished. He was a favourite in
+Society, was of irreproachable conduct, and was a magistrate on the
+bench.</p>
+
+<p>As the ray from the keyhole smote on him he seemed to be wholly
+dark,&mdash;made up of nothing but Black Ram. He came on slowly, as though
+not very sure of his way.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me! where can be the key?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Then from out of the graves, and from over the wall of the churchyard,
+came rushing up a crowd of his dead parishioners, and blocked his way to
+the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, your reverence!" said one, "you did not visit me when I was
+dying."</p>
+
+<p>"I sent you a bottle of my best port," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, sir, and thank you for it. But that went into my stomick, and what
+I wanted was medicine for my soul. You never said a prayer by me. You
+never urged me to repentance for my bad life, and you let me go out of
+the world with all my sins about me."</p>
+
+<p>"And I, sir," said another, thrusting himself before Mr. Hexworthy&mdash;"I
+was a young man, sir, going wild, and you never said a word to restrain
+me; never sent for me and gave me a bit of warning and advice which
+would have checked me. You just shrugged your shoulders and laughed, and
+said that a young chap like me must sow his wild oats."</p>
+
+<p>"And we," shouted the rest&mdash;"we were never taught by you anything at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Now this is really too bad," said the rector. "I preached twice every
+Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes&mdash;right enough that. But precious little good it did when
+nothing came out of your heart, and all out of your pocket&mdash;and that you
+did give us was copied in your library. Why, sir, not one of your
+sermons ever did anybody a farthing of good."</p>
+
+<p>"We were your sheep," protested others, "and you let us wander where we
+would! You didn't seem to know yourself that there was a fold into which
+to draw us."</p>
+
+<p>"And we," said others, "went off to chapel, and all the good we ever got
+was from the dissenting minister&mdash;never a mite from you."</p>
+
+<p>"And some of us," cried out others, "went to the bad altogether, through
+your neglect. What did you care about our souls so long as your terriers
+were washed and combed, and your horses well groomed? You were a
+fisherman, but all you fished for were trout&mdash;not souls. And if some of
+us turned out well, it was in spite of your neglect&mdash;no thanks to you."</p>
+
+<p>Then some children's voices were raised: "Sir, you never taught us no
+Catechism, nor our duty to God and to man, and we grew up regular
+heathens."</p>
+
+<p>"That was your fathers' and mothers' duty."</p>
+
+<p>"But our fathers and mothers never taught us anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, this is intolerable," shouted Mr. Hexworthy. "Get out of the way,
+all of you. I can't be bothered with you now. I want to go in there."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't, parson! the door is shut, and you have not got your key."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hexworthy stood bewildered and irresolute. He rubbed his chin.</p>
+
+<p>"What the dickens am I to do?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Then the crowd closed about him, and thrust him back towards the gate.
+"You must go whither we send you," they said.</p>
+
+<p>I stood up to follow. It was curious to see a flock drive its shepherd,
+who, indeed, had never attempted to lead. I walked in the rear, and it
+seemed as though we were all swept forward as by a mighty wind. I did
+not gain my breath, or realise whither I was going, till I found myself
+in the slums of a large manufacturing town before a mean house such as
+those occupied by artisans, with the conventional one window on one side
+of the door and two windows above. Out of one of these latter shone a
+scarlet glow.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd hustled Mr. Hexworthy in at the door, which was opened by a
+hospital nurse.</p>
+
+<p>I stood hesitating what to do, and not understanding what had taken
+place. On the opposite side of the street was a mission church, and the
+windows were lighted. I entered, and saw that there were at least a
+score of people, shabbily dressed, and belonging to the lowest class, on
+their knees in prayer. There was a sort of door-opener or verger at the
+entrance, and I said to him: "What is the meaning of all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sir!" said he, "<i>he</i> is ill, he has been attacked by smallpox. It
+has been raging in the place, and he has been with all the sick, and
+now he has taken it himself, and we are terribly afraid that he is
+dying. So we are praying God to spare him to us."</p>
+
+<p>Then one of those who was kneeling turned to me and said: "I was an
+hungred, and he gave me meat."</p>
+
+<p>And another rose up and said: "I was a stranger, and he took me in."</p>
+
+<p>Then a third said: "I was naked, and he clothed me."</p>
+
+<p>And a fourth: "I was sick, and he visited me."</p>
+
+<p>Then said a fifth, with bowed head, sobbing: "I was in prison, and he
+came to me."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon I went out and looked up at the red window, and I felt as if I
+must see the man for whom so many prayed. I tapped at the door, and a
+woman opened.</p>
+
+<p>"I should so much like to see him, if I may," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," spoke the woman, a plain, middle-aged, rough creature, but
+her eyes were full of tears: "Oh, sir, I think you may, if you will go
+up softly. There has come over him a great change. It is as though a new
+life had entered into him."</p>
+
+<p>I mounted the narrow staircase of very steep steps and entered the
+sick-room. There was an all-pervading glow of red. The fire was low&mdash;no
+flame, and a screen was before it. The lamp had a scarlet shade over it.
+I stepped to the side of the bed, where stood a nurse. I looked on the
+patient. He was an awful object. His face had been smeared over with
+some dark solution, with the purpose of keeping all light from the skin,
+with the object of saving it from permanent disfigurement.</p>
+
+<p>The sick priest lay with eyes raised, and I thought I saw in them those
+of Mr. Hexworthy, but with a new light, a new faith, a new fervour, a
+new love in them. The lips were moving in prayer, and the hands were
+folded over the breast. The nurse whispered to me: "We thought he was
+passing away, but the prayers of those he loved have prevailed. A great
+change has come over him. The last words he spoke were: 'God's will be
+done. If I live, I will live only&mdash;only for my dear sheep, and die among
+them'; and now he is in an ecstasy, and says nothing. But he is praying
+still&mdash;for his people."</p>
+
+<p>As I stood looking I saw what might have been tears, but seemed to be
+molten Black Ram, roll over the painted cheeks. The spirit of Mr.
+Hexworthy was in this body.</p>
+
+<p>Then, without a word, I turned to the door, went through, groped my way
+down the steps, passed out into the street, and found myself back in the
+porch of Fifewell Church.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word," said I, "I have been here long enough." I wrapped my fur
+coat about me, and prepared to go, when I saw a well-known figure, that
+of Mr. Fothergill, advancing up the path.</p>
+
+<p>I knew the old gentleman well. His age must have been seventy. He was a
+spare man, he was rather bald, and had sunken cheeks. He was a bachelor,
+living in a pretty little villa of his own. He had a good fortune, and
+was a harmless, but self-centred, old fellow. He prided himself on his
+cellar and his cook. He always dressed well, and was scrupulously neat.
+I had often played a game of chess with him.</p>
+
+<p>I would have run towards him to remonstrate with him for exposing
+himself to the night air, but I was forestalled. Slipping past me, his
+old manservant, David, went to meet him. David had died three years
+before. Mr. Fothergill had then been dangerously ill with typhoid fever,
+and the man had attended to him night and day. The old gentleman, as I
+heard, had been most irritable and exacting in his illness. When his
+malady took a turn, and he was on the way to convalescence, David had
+succumbed in his turn, and in three days was dead.</p>
+
+<p>This man now met his master, touched his cap, and said: "Beg pardon,
+sir, you will not be admitted."</p>
+
+<p>"Not admitted? Why not, Davie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I really am very sorry, sir. If my key would have availed, you would
+have been welcome to it; but, sir, there's such a terrible lot of Black
+Ram in you, sir. That must be got out first."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, Davie."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, sir, to have to say it; but you've never done anyone any
+good."</p>
+
+<p>"I paid you your wages regularly."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, to be sure, sir, for my services to yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"And I've always subscribed when asked for money."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is very true, sir, but that was because you thought it was
+expected of you, not because you had any sympathy with those in need,
+and sickness, and suffering."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I never did anyone any harm."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, and never anyone any good. You'll excuse me for mentioning
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Davie, what do you mean? I can't get in?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, not till you have the key."</p>
+
+<p>"But, bless my soul! what is to become of me? Am I to stick out here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, unless&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In this damp, and cold, and darkness?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no help for it, Mr. Fothergill, unless&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless what, Davie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless you become a mother, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of twins, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Fiddlesticks!"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, it is so, sir, and you will have to nurse them."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't do it. I'm physically incapable."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be done, sir. Very sorry to mention it, but there is no
+alternative. There's Sally Bowker is approaching her confinement, and
+it's going terribly hard with her. The doctor thinks she'll never pull
+through. But if you'd consent to pass into her and become a mother&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And nurse the twins? Oh, Davie, I shall need a great amount of stout."</p>
+
+<p>"I grieve to say it, Mr. Fothergill, but you'll be too poor to afford
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no alternative?"</p>
+
+<p>"None in the world, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know my way to the place."</p>
+
+<p>"If you'd do me the honour, sir, to take my arm, I would lead you to the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard&mdash;cruel hard on an old bachelor. Must it be twins? It's a
+rather large order."</p>
+
+<p>"It really must, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw David lend his arm to his former master and conduct him out
+of the churchyard, across the street, into the house of Seth Bowker, the
+shoemaker.</p>
+
+<p>I was so interested in the fate of my old friend, and so curious as to
+the result, that I followed, and went into the cobbler's house. I found
+myself in the little room on the ground floor. Seth Bowker was sitting
+over the fire with his face in his hands, swaying himself, and moaning:
+"Oh dear! dear life! whatever shall I do without her? and she the best
+woman as breathed, and knew all my little ways."</p>
+
+<p>Overhead was a trampling. The doctor and the midwife were with the
+woman. Seth looked up, and listened. Then he flung himself on his knees
+at the deal table, and prayed: "Oh, good God in heaven! have pity on me,
+and spare me my wife. I shall be a lost man without her&mdash;and no one to
+sew on my shirt-buttons!"</p>
+
+<p>At the moment I heard a feeble twitter aloft, then it grew in volume,
+and presently became cries. Seth looked up; his face was bathed in
+tears. Still that strange sound like the chirping of sparrows. He rose
+to his feet and made for the stairs, and held on to the banister.</p>
+
+<p>Forth from the chamber above came the doctor, and leisurely descended
+the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Bowker," said he, "I congratulate you; you have two fine boys."</p>
+
+<p>"And my Sally&mdash;my wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has pulled through. But really, upon my soul, I did fear for her at
+one time. But she rallied marvellously."</p>
+
+<p>"Can I go up to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a minute or two, not just now, the babes are being washed."</p>
+
+<p>"And my wife will get over it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I trust so, Bowker; a new life came into her as she gave birth to
+twins."</p>
+
+<p>"God be praised!" Seth's mouth quivered, all his face worked, and he
+clasped his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the door of the chamber upstairs was opened, the nurse looked
+down, and said: "Mr. Bowker, you may come up. Your wife wants you. Lawk!
+you will see the beautifullest twins that ever was."</p>
+
+<p>I followed Seth upstairs, and entered the sick-room. It was humble
+enough, with whitewashed walls, all scrupulously clean. The happy mother
+lay in the bed, her pale face on the pillow, but the eyes were lighted
+up with ineffable love and pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss them, Bowker," said she, exhibiting at her side two little pink
+heads, with down on them. But her husband just stooped and pressed his
+lips to her brow, and after that kissed the tiny morsels at her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't they loves!" exclaimed the midwife.</p>
+
+<p>But oh! what a rapture of triumph, pity, fervour, love, was in that
+mother's face, and&mdash;the eyes looking on those children were the eyes of
+Mr. Fothergill. Never had I seen such an expression in them, not even
+when he had exclaimed "Checkmate" over a game of chess.</p>
+
+<p>Then I knew what would follow. How night and day that mother would live
+only for her twins, how she would cheerfully sacrifice her night's rest
+to them; how she would go downstairs, even before it was judicious, to
+see to her husband's meals. Verily, with the mother's milk that fed
+those babes, the Black Ram would run out of the Fothergill soul. There
+was no need for me to tarry. I went forth, and as I issued into the
+street heard the clock strike one.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me!" I exclaimed, "I have spent an hour in the porch. What will
+my wife say?"</p>
+
+<p>I walked home as fast as I could in my fur coat. When I arrived I found
+Bessie up.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bessie!" said I, "with your cold you ought to have been in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Edward," she replied, "how could I? I had lain down, but when I
+heard of the accident I could not rest. Have you been hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>"My head is somewhat contused," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me feel. Indeed, it is burning. I will put on some cold
+compresses."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Bessie, I have a story to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! never mind the story, we'll have that another day. I'll send for
+some ice from the fishmonger to-morrow for your head."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I did eventually tell my wife the story of my experience in the porch of
+Fifewell on St. Mark's eve.</p>
+
+<p>I have since regretted that I did so; for whenever I cross her will, or
+express my determination to do something of which she does not approve,
+she says: "Edward, Edward! I very much fear there is still in you too
+much Black Ram."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_HAPPY_RELEASE" id="A_HAPPY_RELEASE"></a>A HAPPY RELEASE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Benjamin Woolfield was a widower. For twelve months he put on
+mourning. The mourning was external, and by no means represented the
+condition of his feelings; for his married life had not been happy. He
+and Kesiah had been unequally yoked together. The Mosaic law forbade the
+union of the ox and the ass to draw one plough; and two more uncongenial
+creatures than Benjamin and Kesiah could hardly have been coupled to
+draw the matrimonial furrow.</p>
+
+<p>She was a Plymouth Sister, and he, as she repeatedly informed him
+whenever he indulged in light reading, laughed, smoked, went out
+shooting, or drank a glass of wine, was of the earth, earthy, and a
+miserable worldling.</p>
+
+<p>For some years Mr. Woolfield had been made to feel as though he were a
+moral and religious pariah. Kesiah had invited to the house and to
+meals, those of her own way of thinking, and on such occasions had
+spared no pains to have the table well served, for the elect are
+particular about their feeding, if indifferent as to their drinks. On
+such occasions, moreover, when Benjamin had sat at the bottom of his own
+table, he had been made to feel that he was a worm to be trodden on. The
+topics of conversation were such as were far beyond his horizon, and
+concerned matters of which he was ignorant. He attempted at intervals to
+enter into the circle of talk. He knew that such themes as football
+matches, horse races, and cricket were taboo, but he did suppose that
+home or foreign politics might interest the guests of Kesiah. But he
+soon learned that this was not the case, unless such matters tended to
+the fulfilment of prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>When, however, in his turn, Benjamin invited home to dinner some of his
+old friends, he found that all provided for them was hashed mutton,
+cottage pie, and tapioca pudding. But even these could have been
+stomached, had not Mrs. Woolfield sat stern and silent at the head of
+the table, not uttering a word, but giving vent to occasional, very
+audible sighs.</p>
+
+<p>When the year of mourning was well over, Mr. Woolfield put on a light
+suit, and contented himself, as an indication of bereavement, with a
+slight black band round the left arm. He also began to look about him
+for someone who might make up for the years during which he had felt
+like a crushed strawberry.</p>
+
+<p>And in casting his inquiring eye about, it lighted upon Philippa Weston,
+a bright, vigorous young lady, well educated and intelligent. She was
+aged twenty-four and he was but eighteen years older, a difference on
+the right side.</p>
+
+<p>It took Mr. Woolfield but a short courtship to reach an understanding,
+and he became engaged.</p>
+
+<p>On the same evening upon which he had received a satisfactory answer to
+the question put to her, and had pressed for an early marriage, to which
+also consent had been accorded, he sat by his study fire, with his hands
+on his knees, looking into the embers and building love-castles there.
+Then he smiled and patted his knees.</p>
+
+<p>He was startled from his honey reveries by a sniff. He looked round.
+There was a familiar ring in that sniff which was unpleasant to him.</p>
+
+<p>What he then saw dissipated his rosy dreams, and sent his blood to his
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>At the table sat his Kesiah, looking at him with her beady black eyes,
+and with stern lines in her face. He was so startled and shocked that he
+could not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Benjamin," said the apparition, "I know your purpose. It shall never be
+carried to accomplishment. I will prevent it."</p>
+
+<p>"Prevent what, my love, my treasure?" he gathered up his faculties to
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"It is in vain that you assume that infantile look of innocence," said
+his deceased wife. "You shall never&mdash;never&mdash;lead her to the hymeneal
+altar."</p>
+
+<p>"Lead whom, my idol? You astound me."</p>
+
+<p>"I know all. I can read your heart. A lost being though you be, you have
+still me to watch over you. When you quit this earthly tabernacle, if
+you have given up taking in the <i>Field</i>, and have come to realise your
+fallen condition, there is a chance&mdash;a distant chance&mdash;but yet one of
+our union becoming eternal."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say so," said Mr. Woolfield, his jaw falling.</p>
+
+<p>"There is&mdash;there is that to look to. That to lead you to turn over a new
+leaf. But it can never be if you become united to that Flibbertigibbet."</p>
+
+<p>Mentally, Benjamin said: "I must hurry up with my marriage!" Vocally he
+said: "Dear me! Dear me!"</p>
+
+<p>"My care for you is still so great," continued the apparition, "that I
+intend to haunt you by night and by day, till that engagement be broken
+off."</p>
+
+<p>"I would not put you to so much trouble," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my duty," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are oppressively kind," sighed the widower.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner that evening Mr. Woolfield had a friend to keep him company, a
+friend to whom he had poured out his heart. To his dismay, he saw seated
+opposite him the form of his deceased wife.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to be lively; he cracked jokes, but the sight of the grim face
+and the stony eyes riveted on him damped his spirits, and all his mirth
+died away.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be out of sorts to-night," said his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry that I act so bad a host," apologised Mr. Woolfield. "Two is
+company, three is none."</p>
+
+<p>"But we are only two here to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"My wife is with me in spirit."</p>
+
+<p>"Which, she that was, or she that is to be?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Woolfield looked with timid eyes towards her who sat at the end of
+the table. She was raising her hands in holy horror, and her face was
+black with frowns.</p>
+
+<p>His friend said to himself when he left: "Oh, these lovers! They are
+never themselves so long as the fit lasts."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Woolfield retired early to bed. When a man has screwed himself up to
+proposing to a lady, it has taken a great deal out of him, and nature
+demands rest. It was so with Benjamin; he was sleepy. A nice little fire
+burned in his grate. He undressed and slipped between the sheets.</p>
+
+<p>Before he put out the light he became aware that the late Mrs. Woolfield
+was standing by his bedside with a nightcap on her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I am cold," said she, "bitterly cold."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear it, my dear," said Benjamin.</p>
+
+<p>"The grave is cold as ice," she said. "I am going to step into bed."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;never!" exclaimed the widower, sitting up. "It won't do. It really
+won't. You will draw all the vital heat out of me, and I shall be laid
+up with rheumatic fever. It will be ten times worse than damp sheets."</p>
+
+<p>"I am coming to bed," repeated the deceased lady, inflexible as ever in
+carrying out her will.</p>
+
+<p>As she stepped in Mr. Woolfield crept out on the side of the fire and
+seated himself by the grate.</p>
+
+<p>He sat there some considerable time, and then, feeling cold, he fetched
+his dressing-gown and enveloped himself in that.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the bed. In it lay the deceased lady with her long slit of
+a mouth shut like a rat-trap, and her hard eyes fixed on him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is of no use your thinking of marrying, Benjamin," she said. "I
+shall haunt you till you give it up."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Woolfield sat by his fire all night, and only dozed off towards
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>During the day he called at the house of Miss Weston, and was shown into
+the drawing-room. But there, standing behind her chair, was his deceased
+wife with her arms folded on the back of the seat, glowering at him.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible for the usual tender passages to ensue between the
+lovers with a witness present, expressing by gesture her disapproval of
+such matters and her inflexible determination to force on a rupture.</p>
+
+<p>The dear departed did not attend Mr. Woolfield continuously during the
+day, but appeared at intervals. He could never say when he would be
+free, when she would not turn up.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening he rang for the housemaid. "Jemima," he said, "put two
+hot bottles into my bed to-night. It is somewhat chilly."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And let the water be boiling&mdash;not with the chill off."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>When somewhat late Mr. Woolfield retired to his room he found, as he had
+feared, that his late wife was there before him. She lay in the bed with
+her mouth snapped, her eyes like black balls, staring at him.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," said Benjamin, "I hope you are more comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm cold, deadly cold."</p>
+
+<p>"But I trust you are enjoying the hot bottles."</p>
+
+<p>"I lack animal heat," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin fled the room and returned to his study, where he unlocked his
+spirit case and filled his pipe. The fire was burning. He made it up. He
+would sit there all night During the passing hours, however, he was not
+left quite alone. At intervals the door was gently opened, and the
+night-capped head of the late Mrs. Woolfield was thrust in.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think, Benjamin, that your engagement will lead to anything," she
+would say, "because it will not. I shall stop it."</p>
+
+<p>So time passed. Mr. Woolfield found it impossible to escape this
+persecution. He lost spirits; he lost flesh.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after sad thought, he saw but one way of relief, and that was
+to submit. And in order to break off the engagement he must have a
+prolonged interview with Philippa. He went to the theatre and bought two
+stall tickets, and sent one to her with the earnest request that she
+would accept it and meet him that evening at the theatre. He had
+something to communicate of the utmost importance.</p>
+
+<p>At the theatre he knew that he would be safe; the principles of Kesiah
+would not suffer her to enter there.</p>
+
+<p>At the proper time Mr. Woolfield drove round to Miss Weston's, picked
+her up, and together they went to the theatre and took their places in
+the stalls. Their seats were side by side.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad you have been able to come," said Benjamin. "I have a most
+shocking disclosure to make to you. I am afraid that&mdash;but I hardly know
+how to say it&mdash;that&mdash;I really must break it off."</p>
+
+<p>"Break what off?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our engagement."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense. I have been fitted for my trousseau."</p>
+
+<p>"Your what?"</p>
+
+<p>"My wedding-dresses."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I beg pardon. I did not understand your French pronunciation. I
+thought&mdash;but it does not matter what I thought."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray what is the sense of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Philippa, my affection for you is unabated. Do not suppose that I love
+you one whit the less. But I am oppressed by a horrible
+nightmare&mdash;daymare as well. I am haunted."</p>
+
+<p>"Haunted, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; by my late wife. She allows me no peace. She has made up her mind
+that I shall not marry you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Is that all? I am haunted also."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a fact."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush!" from persons in front and at the side. Neither Ben nor
+Philippa had noticed that the curtain had risen and that the play had
+begun.</p>
+
+<p>"We are disturbing the audience," whispered Mr. Woolfield. "Let us go
+out into the passage and promenade there, and then we can talk freely."</p>
+
+<p>So both rose, left their stalls, and went into the <i>couloir</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Philippa," said he, offering the girl his arm, which she
+took, "the case is serious. I am badgered out of my reason, out of my
+health, by the late Mrs. Woolfield. She always had an iron will, and she
+has intimated to me that she will force me to give you up."</p>
+
+<p>"Defy her."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! these ghosts are exacting. Give them an inch and they take an ell.
+They are like old servants; if you yield to them they tyrannise over
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"But how do you know, Philippa, dearest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because, as I said, I also am haunted."</p>
+
+<p>"That only makes the matter more hopeless."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, it only shows how well suited we are to each other. We
+are in one box."</p>
+
+<p>"Philippa, it is a dreadful thing. When my wife was dying she told me
+she was going to a better world, and that we should never meet again.
+<i>And she has not kept her word.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The girl laughed. "Rag her with it."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can do it perfectly. Ask her why she is left out in the cold. Give
+her a piece of your mind. Make it unpleasant for her. I give Jehu no
+good time."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Jehu?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jehu Post is the ghost who haunts me. When in the flesh he was a great
+admirer of mine, and in his cumbrous way tried to court me; but I never
+liked him, and gave him no encouragement. I snubbed him unmercifully,
+but he was one of those self-satisfied, self-assured creatures incapable
+of taking a snubbing. He was a Plymouth Brother."</p>
+
+<p>"My wife was a Plymouth Sister."</p>
+
+<p>"I know she was, and I always felt for you. It was so sad. Well, to go
+on with my story. In a frivolous mood Jehu took to a bicycle, and the
+very first time he scorched he was thrown, and so injured his back that
+he died in a week. Before he departed he entreated that I would see him;
+so I could not be nasty, and I went. And he told me then that he was
+about to be wrapped in glory. I asked him if this were so certain.
+'Cocksure' was his reply; and they were his last words. And <i>he has not
+kept his word</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And he haunts you now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He dangles about with his great ox-eyes fixed on me. But as to his
+envelope of glory I have not seen a fag end of it, and I have told him
+so."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really mean this, Philippa?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do. He wrings his hands and sighs. He gets no change out of me, I
+promise you."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a very strange condition of affairs."</p>
+
+<p>"It only shows how well matched we are. I do not suppose you will find
+two other people in England so situated as we are, and therefore so
+admirably suited to one another."</p>
+
+<p>"There is much in what you say. But how are we to rid ourselves of the
+nuisance&mdash;for it is a nuisance being thus haunted. We cannot spend all
+our time in a theatre."</p>
+
+<p>"We must defy them. Marry in spite of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I never did defy my wife when she was alive. I do not know how to pluck
+up courage now that she is dead. Feel my hand, Philippa, how it
+trembles. She has broken my nerve. When I was young I could play
+spellikins&mdash;my hand was so steady. Now I am quite incapable of doing
+anything with the little sticks."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, hearken to what I propose," said Miss Weston. "I will beard the
+old cat&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, not so disrespectful; she was my wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, the ghostly old lady, in her den. You think she will appear
+if I go to pay you a visit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure of it. She is consumed with jealousy. She had no personal
+attractions herself, and you have a thousand. I never knew whether she
+loved me, but she was always confoundedly jealous of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then. You have often spoken to me about changes in the
+decoration of your villa. Suppose I call on you to-morrow afternoon, and
+you shall show me what your schemes are."</p>
+
+<p>"And your ghost, will he attend you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most probably. He also is as jealous as a ghost can well be."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so be it. I shall await your coming with impatience. Now, then,
+we may as well go to our respective homes."</p>
+
+<p>A cab was accordingly summoned, and after Mr. Woolfield had handed
+Philippa in, and she had taken her seat in the back, he entered and
+planted himself with his back to the driver.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not sit by me?" asked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't," replied Benjamin. "Perhaps you may not see, but I do, my
+deceased wife is in the cab, and occupies the place on your left."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit on her," urged Philippa.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the effrontery to do it," gasped Ben.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you believe me," whispered the young lady, leaning over to speak
+to Mr. Woolfield, "I have seen Jehu Post hovering about the theatre
+door, wringing his white hands and turning up his eyes. I suspect he is
+running after the cab."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Mr. Woolfield had deposited his bride-elect at her residence
+he ordered the cabman to drive him home. Then he was alone in the
+conveyance with the ghost. As each gaslight was passed the flash came
+over the cadaverous face opposite him, and sparks of fire kindled
+momentarily in the stony eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Benjamin!" she said, "Benjamin! Oh, Benjamin! Do not suppose that I
+shall permit it. You may writhe and twist, you may plot and contrive how
+you will, I will stand between you and her as a wall of ice."</p>
+
+<p>Next day, in the afternoon, Philippa Weston arrived at the house. The
+late Mrs. Woolfield had, however, apparently obtained an inkling of what
+was intended, for she was already there, in the drawing-room, seated in
+an armchair with her hands raised and clasped, looking stonily before
+her. She had a white face, no lips that showed, and her dark hair was
+dressed in two black slabs, one on each side of the temples. It was done
+in a knot behind. She wore no ornaments of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>In came Miss Weston, a pretty girl, coquettishly dressed in colours,
+with sparkling eyes and laughing lips. As she had predicted, she was
+followed by her attendant spectre, a tall, gaunt young man in a black
+frock-coat, with a melancholy face and large ox-eyes. He shambled in
+shyly, looking from side to side. He had white hands and long, lean
+fingers. Every now and then he put his hands behind him, up his back,
+under the tails of his coat, and rubbed his spine where he had received
+his mortal injury in cycling. Almost as soon as he entered he noticed
+the ghost of Mrs. Woolfield that was, and made an awkward bow. Her
+eyebrows rose, and a faint wintry smile of recognition lighted up her
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I have the honour of saluting Sister Kesiah," said the ghost
+of Jehu Post, and he assumed a posture of ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>"It is even so, Brother Jehu."</p>
+
+<p>"And how do you find yourself, sister&mdash;out of the flesh?"</p>
+
+<p>The late Mrs. Woolfield looked disconcerted, hesitated a moment, as if
+she found some difficulty in answering, and then, after a while, said:
+"I suppose, much as do you, brother."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a melancholy duty that detains me here below," said Jehu Post's
+ghost.</p>
+
+<p>"The same may be said of me," observed the spirit of the deceased Mrs.
+Woolfield. "Pray take a chair."</p>
+
+<p>"I am greatly obliged, sister. My back&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Philippa nudged Benjamin, and unobserved by the ghosts, both slipped
+into the adjoining room by a doorway over which hung velvet curtains.</p>
+
+<p>In this room, on the table, Mr. Woolfield had collected patterns of
+chintzes and books of wall-papers.</p>
+
+<p>There the engaged pair remained, discussing what curtains would go with
+the chintz coverings of the sofa and chairs, and what papers would
+harmonise with both.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Philippa, "that you have plates hung on the walls. I don't
+like them: it is no longer in good form. If they be worth anything you
+must have a cabinet with glass doors for the china. How about the
+carpets?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is the drawing-room," said Benjamin.</p>
+
+<p>"No, we won't go in there and disturb the ghosts," said Philippa. "We'll
+take the drawing-room for granted."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;come with me to the dining-room. We can reach it by another
+door."</p>
+
+<p>In the room they now entered the carpet was in fairly good condition,
+except at the head and bottom of the table, where it was worn. This was
+especially the case at the bottom, where Mr. Woolfield had usually sat.
+There, when his wife had lectured, moralised, and harangued, he had
+rubbed his feet up and down and had fretted the nap off the Brussels
+carpet.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," remarked Philippa, "that we can turn it about, and by taking
+out one width and putting that under the bookcase and inserting the
+strip that was there in its room, we can save the expense of a new
+carpet. But&mdash;the engravings&mdash;those Landseers. What do you think of them,
+Ben, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the two familiar engravings of the "Deer in Winter," and
+"Dignity and Impudence."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think, Ben, that one has got a little tired of those
+pictures?"</p>
+
+<p>"My late wife did not object to them, they were so perfectly harmless."</p>
+
+<p>"But your coming wife does. We will have something more up-to-date in
+their room. By the way, I wonder how the ghosts are getting on. They
+have let us alone so far. I will run back and have a peep at them
+through the curtains."</p>
+
+<p>The lively girl left the dining apartment, and her husband-elect,
+studying the pictures to which Philippa had objected. Presently she
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ben! such fun!" she said, laughing. "My ghost has drawn up his
+chair close to that of the late Mrs. Woolfield, and is fondling her
+hand. But I believe that they are only talking goody-goody."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus7" id="illus7"></a>
+<img src="images/illus7.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"I BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE TALKING GOODY-GOODY."</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"And now about the china," said Mr. Woolfield. "It is in a closet near
+the pantry&mdash;that is to say, the best china. I will get a benzoline lamp,
+and we will examine it. We had it out only when Mrs. Woolfield had a
+party of her elect brothers and sisters. I fear a good deal is broken.
+I know that the soup tureen has lost a lid, and I believe we are short
+of vegetable dishes. How many plates remain I do not know. We had a
+parlourmaid, Dorcas, who was a sad smasher, but as she was one who had
+made her election sure, my late wife would not part with her."</p>
+
+<p>"And how are you off for glass?"</p>
+
+<p>"The wine-glasses are fairly complete. I fancy the cut-glass decanters
+are in a bad way. My late wife chipped them, I really believe out of
+spite."</p>
+
+<p>It took the couple some time to go through the china and the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"And the plate?" asked Philippa.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is right. All the real old silver is at the bank, as Kesiah
+preferred plated goods."</p>
+
+<p>"How about the kitchen utensils?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word I cannot say. We had a rather nice-looking cook, and so my
+late wife never allowed me to step inside the kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she here still?" inquired Philippa sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"No; my wife, when she was dying, gave her the sack."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me, Ben!" exclaimed Philippa. "It is growing dark. I have been
+here an age. I really must go home. I wonder the ghosts have not worried
+us. I'll have another look at them."</p>
+
+<p>She tripped off.</p>
+
+<p>In five minutes she was back. She stood for a minute looking at Mr.
+Woolfield, laughing so heartily that she had to hold her sides.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Philippa?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ben! A happy release. They will never dare to show their faces
+again. They have eloped together."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_930_UP-TRAIN" id="THE_930_UP-TRAIN"></a>THE 9.30 UP-TRAIN</h2>
+
+
+<p>In a well-authenticated ghost story, names and dates should be
+distinctly specified. In the following story I am unfortunately able to
+give only the year and the month, for I have forgotten the date of the
+day, and I do not keep a diary. With regard to names, my own figures as
+a guarantee as that of the principal personage to whom the following
+extraordinary circumstances occurred, but the minor actors are provided
+with fictitious names, for I am not warranted to make their real ones
+public. I may add that the believer in ghosts may make use of the facts
+which I relate to establish his theories, if he finds that they will be
+of service to him&mdash;when he has read through and weighed well the
+startling account which I am about to give from my own experiences.</p>
+
+<p>On a fine evening in June, 1860, I paid a visit to Mrs. Lyons, on my way
+to the Hassocks Gate Station, on the London and Brighton line. This
+station is the first out of Brighton.</p>
+
+<p>As I rose to leave, I mentioned to the lady whom I was visiting that I
+expected a parcel of books from town, and that I was going to the
+station to inquire whether it had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said she, readily, "I expect Dr. Lyons out from Brighton by the
+9.30 train; if you like to drive the pony chaise down and meet him, you
+are welcome, and you can bring your parcel back with you in it."</p>
+
+<p>I gladly accepted her offer, and in a few minutes I was seated in a
+little low basket-carriage, drawn by a pretty iron-grey Welsh pony.</p>
+
+<p>The station road commands the line of the South Downs from Chantonbury
+Ring, with its cap of dark firs, to Mount Harry, the scene of the
+memorable battle of Lewes. Woolsonbury stands out like a headland above
+the dark Danny woods, over which the rooks were wheeling and cawing
+previous to settling themselves in for the night. Ditchling beacon&mdash;its
+steep sides gashed with chalk-pits&mdash;was faintly flushed with light. The
+Clayton windmills, with their sails motionless, stood out darkly against
+the green evening sky. Close beneath opens the tunnel in which, not so
+long before, had happened one of the most fearful railway accidents on
+record.</p>
+
+<p>The evening was exquisite. The sky was kindled with light, though the
+sun was set. A few gilded bars of cloud lay in the west. Two or three
+stars looked forth&mdash;one I noticed twinkling green, crimson, and gold,
+like a gem. From a field of young wheat hard by I heard the harsh,
+grating note of the corncrake. Mist was lying on the low meadows like a
+mantle of snow, pure, smooth, and white; the cattle stood in it to their
+knees. The effect was so singular that I drew up to look at it
+attentively. At the same moment I heard the scream of an engine, and on
+looking towards the downs I noticed the up-train shooting out of the
+tunnel, its red signal lamps flashing brightly out of the purple gloom
+which bathed the roots of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that I was late, I whipped the Welsh pony on, and proceeded at a
+fast trot.</p>
+
+<p>At about a quarter mile from the station there is a turnpike&mdash;an
+odd-looking building, tenanted then by a strange old man, usually
+dressed in a white smock, over which his long white beard flowed to his
+breast. This toll-collector&mdash;he is dead now&mdash;had amused himself in
+bygone days by carving life-size heads out of wood, and these were stuck
+along the eaves. One is the face of a drunkard, round and blotched,
+leering out of misty eyes at the passers-by; the next has the crumpled
+features of a miser, worn out with toil and moil; a third has the wild
+scowl of a maniac; and a fourth the stare of an idiot.</p>
+
+<p>I drove past, flinging the toll to the door, and shouting to the old man
+to pick it up, for I was in a vast hurry to reach the station before Dr.
+Lyons left it. I whipped the little pony on, and he began to trot down a
+cutting in the greensand, through which leads the station road.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, Taffy stood still, planted his feet resolutely on the ground,
+threw up his head, snorted, and refused to move a peg. I "gee-uped," and
+"tshed," all to no purpose; not a step would the little fellow advance.
+I saw that he was thoroughly alarmed; his flanks were quivering, and his
+ears were thrown back. I was on the point of leaving the chaise, when
+the pony made a bound on one side and ran the carriage up into the
+hedge, thereby upsetting me on the road. I picked myself up, and took
+the beast's head. I could not conceive what had frightened him; there
+was positively nothing to be seen, except a puff of dust running up the
+road, such as might be blown along by a passing current of air. There
+was nothing to be heard, except the rattle of a gig or tax-cart with one
+wheel loose: probably a vehicle of this kind was being driven down the
+London road, which branches off at the turnpike at right angles. The
+sound became fainter, and at last died away in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>The pony now no longer refused to advance. It trembled violently, and
+was covered with sweat.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, upon my word, you have been driving hard!" exclaimed Dr. Lyons,
+when I met him at the station.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not, indeed," was my reply; "but something has frightened Taffy,
+but what that something was, is more than I can tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ah!" said the doctor, looking round with a certain degree of
+interest in his face; "so you met it, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Met what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing;&mdash;only I have heard of horses being frightened along this
+road after the arrival of the 9.30 up-train. Flys never leave the moment
+that the train comes in, or the horses become restive&mdash;a wonderful thing
+for a fly-horse to become restive, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"But what causes this alarm? I saw nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"You ask me more than I can answer. I am as ignorant of the cause as
+yourself. I take things as they stand, and make no inquiries. When the
+flyman tells me that he can't start for a minute or two after the train
+has arrived, or urges on his horses to reach the station before the
+arrival of this train, giving as his reason that his brutes become wild
+if he does not do so, then I merely say, 'Do as you think best, cabby,'
+and bother my head no more about the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall search this matter out," said I resolutely. "What has taken
+place so strangely corroborates the superstition, that I shall not leave
+it uninvestigated."</p>
+
+<p>"Take my advice and banish it from your thoughts. When you have come to
+the end, you will be sadly disappointed, and will find that all the
+mystery evaporates, and leaves a dull, commonplace residuum. It is best
+that the few mysteries which remain to us unexplained should still
+remain mysteries, or we shall disbelieve in supernatural agencies
+altogether. We have searched out the arcana of nature, and exposed all
+her secrets to the garish eye of day, and we find, in despair, that the
+poetry and romance of life are gone. Are we the happier for knowing that
+there are no ghosts, no fairies, no witches, no mermaids, no wood
+spirits? Were not our forefathers happier in thinking every lake to be
+the abode of a fairy, every forest to be a bower of yellow-haired
+sylphs, every moorland sweep to be tripped over by elf and pixie? I
+found my little boy one day lying on his face in a fairy-ring, crying:
+'You dear, dear little fairies, I <i>will</i> believe in you, though papa
+says you are all nonsense.' I used, in my childish days, to think, when
+a silence fell upon a company, that an angel was passing through the
+room. Alas! I now know that it results only from the subject of weather
+having been talked to death, and no new subject having been started.
+Believe me, science has done good to mankind, but it has done mischief
+too. If we wish to be poetical or romantic, we must shut our eyes to
+facts. The head and the heart wage mutual war now. A lover preserves a
+lock of his mistress's hair as a holy relic, yet he must know perfectly
+well that for all practical purposes a bit of rhinoceros hide would do
+as well&mdash;the chemical constituents are identical. If I adore a fair
+lady, and feel a thrill through all my veins when I touch her hand, a
+moment's consideration tells me that phosphate of lime No. 1 is touching
+phosphate of lime No. 2&mdash;nothing more. If for a moment I forget myself
+so far as to wave my cap and cheer for king, or queen, or prince, I
+laugh at my folly next moment for having paid reverence to one digesting
+machine above another."</p>
+
+<p>I cut the doctor short as he was lapsing into his favourite subject of
+discussion, and asked him whether he would lend me the pony-chaise on
+the following evening, that I might drive to the station again and try
+to unravel the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"I will lend you the pony," said he, "but not the chaise, as I am afraid
+of its being injured should Taffy take fright and run up into the hedge
+again. I have got a saddle."</p>
+
+<p>Next evening I was on my way to the station considerably before the time
+at which the train was due.</p>
+
+<p>I stopped at the turnpike and chatted with the old man who kept it. I
+asked him whether he could throw any light on the matter which I was
+investigating. He shrugged his shoulders, saying that he "knowed nothink
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>"What! Nothing at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't trouble my head with matters of this sort," was the reply.
+"People <i>do</i> say that something out of the common sort passes along the
+road and turns down the other road leading to Clayton and Brighton; but
+I pays no attention to what them people says."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever hear anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"After the arrival of the 9.30 train I does at times hear the rattle as
+of a mail-cart and the trot of a horse along the road; and the sound is
+as though one of the wheels was loose. I've a been out many a time to
+take the toll; but, Lor' bless 'ee! them sperits&mdash;if sperits them
+be&mdash;don't go for to pay toll."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you never inquired into the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I? Anythink as don't go for to pay toll don't concern me. Do
+ye think as I knows 'ow many people and dogs goes through this heer
+geatt in a day? Not I&mdash;them don't pay toll, so them's no odds to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, my man!" said I. "Do you object to my putting the bar across
+the road, immediately on the arrival of the train?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit! Please yersel'; but you han't got much time to lose, for
+theer comes thickey train out of Clayton tunnel."</p>
+
+<p>I shut the gate, mounted Taffy, and drew up across the road a little way
+below the turnpike. I heard the train arrive&mdash;I saw it puff off. At the
+same moment I distinctly heard a trap coming up the road, one of the
+wheels rattling as though it were loose. I repeat deliberately that I
+<i>heard</i> it&mdash;I cannot account for it&mdash;but, though I heard it, yet I saw
+nothing whatever.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the pony became restless, it tossed its head, pricked
+up its ears, it started, pranced, and then made a bound to one side,
+entirely regardless of whip and rein. It tried to scramble up the
+sand-bank in its alarm, and I had to throw myself off and catch its
+head. I then cast a glance behind me at the turnpike. I saw the bar
+bent, as though someone were pressing against it; then, with a click, it
+flew open, and was dashed violently back against the white post to
+which it was usually hasped in the day-time. There it remained,
+quivering from the shock.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately I heard the rattle&mdash;rattle&mdash;rattle&mdash;of the tax-cart. I
+confess that my first impulse was to laugh, the idea of a ghostly
+tax-cart was so essentially ludicrous; but the <i>reality</i> of the whole
+scene soon brought me to a graver mood, and, remounting Taffy, I rode
+down to the station.</p>
+
+<p>The officials were taking their ease, as another train was not due for
+some while; so I stepped up to the station-master and entered into
+conversation with him. After a few desultory remarks, I mentioned the
+circumstances which had occurred to me on the road, and my inability to
+account for them.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's what you're after!" said the master somewhat bluntly. "Well,
+I can tell you nothing about it; sperits don't come in my way, saving
+and excepting those which can be taken inwardly; and mighty comfortable
+warming things they be when so taken. If you ask me about other sorts of
+sperits, I tell you flat I don't believe in 'em, though I don't mind
+drinking the health of them what does."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you may have the chance, if you are a little more
+communicative," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll tell you all I know, and that is precious little," answered
+the worthy man. "I know one thing for certain&mdash;that one compartment of a
+second-class carriage is always left vacant between Brighton and
+Hassocks Gate, by the 9.30 up-train."</p>
+
+<p>"For what purpose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that's more than I can fully explain. Before the orders came to
+this effect, people went into fits and that like, in one of the
+carriages."</p>
+
+<p>"Any particular carriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"The first compartment of the second-class carriage nearest to the
+engine. It is locked at Brighton, and I unlock it at this station."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by saying that people had fits?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that I used to find men and women a-screeching and a-hollering
+like mad to be let out; they'd seen some'ut as had frightened them as
+they was passing through the Clayton tunnel. That was before they made
+the arrangement I told y' of."</p>
+
+<p>"Very strange!" said I meditatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Wery much so, but true for all that. <i>I</i> don't believe in nothing but
+sperits of a warming and cheering nature, and them sort ain't to be
+found in Clayton tunn'l to my thinking."</p>
+
+<p>There was evidently nothing more to be got out of my friend. I hope that
+he drank my health that night; if he omitted to do so, it was his fault,
+not mine.</p>
+
+<p>As I rode home revolving in my mind all that I had heard and seen, I
+became more and more settled in my determination to thoroughly
+investigate the matter. The best means that I could adopt for so doing
+would be to come out from Brighton by the 9.30 train in the very
+compartment of the second-class carriage from which the public were
+considerately excluded.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow I felt no shrinking from the attempt; my curiosity was so
+intense that it overcame all apprehension as to the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>My next free day was Thursday, and I hoped then to execute my plan. In
+this, however, I was disappointed, as I found that a battalion drill was
+fixed for that very evening, and I was desirous of attending it, being
+somewhat behindhand in the regulation number of drills. I was
+consequently obliged to postpone my Brighton trip.</p>
+
+<p>On the Thursday evening about five o'clock I started in regimentals with
+my rifle over my shoulder, for the drilling ground&mdash;a piece of furzy
+common near the railway station.</p>
+
+<p>I was speedily overtaken by Mr. Ball, a corporal in the rifle corps, a
+capital shot and most efficient in his drill. Mr. Ball was driving his
+gig. He stopped on seeing me and offered me a seat beside him. I gladly
+accepted, as the distance to the station is a mile and three-quarters by
+the road, and two miles by what is commonly supposed to be the short cut
+across the fields.</p>
+
+<p>After some conversation on volunteering matters, about which Corporal
+Ball was an enthusiast, we turned out of the lanes into the station
+road, and I took the opportunity of adverting to the subject which was
+uppermost in my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I have heard a good deal about that," said the corporal. "My
+workmen have often told me some cock-and-bull stories of that kind, but
+I can't say has 'ow I believed them. What you tell me is, 'owever, very
+remarkable. I never 'ad it on such good authority afore. Still, I can't
+believe that there's hanything supernatural about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not yet know what to believe," I replied, "for the whole matter is
+to me perfectly inexplicable."</p>
+
+<p>"You know, of course, the story which gave rise to the superstition?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I. Pray tell it me."</p>
+
+<p>"Just about seven years agone&mdash;why, you must remember the circumstances
+as well as I do&mdash;there was a man druv over from I can't say where, for
+that was never exact-ly hascertained,&mdash;but from the Henfield direction,
+in a light cart. He went to the Station Inn, and throwing the reins to
+John Thomas, the ostler, bade him take the trap and bring it round to
+meet the 9.30 train, by which he calculated to return from Brighton.
+John Thomas said as 'ow the stranger was quite unbeknown to him, and
+that he looked as though he 'ad some matter on his mind when he went to
+the train; he was a queer sort of a man, with thick grey hair and beard,
+and delicate white 'ands, jist like a lady's. The trap was round to the
+station door as hordered by the arrival of the 9.30 train. The ostler
+observed then that the man was ashen pale, and that his 'ands trembled
+as he took the reins, that the stranger stared at him in a wild
+habstracted way, and that he would have driven off without tendering
+payment had he not been respectfully reminded that the 'orse had been
+given a feed of hoats. John Thomas made a hobservation to the gent
+relative to the wheel which was loose, but that hobservation met with no
+corresponding hanswer. The driver whipped his 'orse and went off. He
+passed the turnpike, and was seen to take the Brighton road hinstead of
+that by which he had come. A workman hobserved the trap next on the
+downs above Clayton chalk-pits. He didn't pay much attention to it, but
+he saw that the driver was on his legs at the 'ead of the 'orse. Next,
+morning, when the quarrymen went to the pit, they found a shattered
+tax-cart at the bottom, and the 'orse and driver dead, the latter with
+his neck broken. What was curious, too, was that an 'andkerchief was
+bound round the brute's heyes, so that he must have been driven over the
+edge blindfold. Hodd, wasn't it? Well, folks say that the gent and his
+tax-cart pass along the road every hevening after the arrival of the
+9.30 train; but I don't believe it; I ain't a bit superstitious&mdash;not I!"</p>
+
+<p>Next week I was again disappointed in my expectation of being able to
+put my scheme in execution; but on the third Saturday after my
+conversation with Corporal Ball, I walked into Brighton in the
+afternoon, the distance being about nine miles. I spent an hour on the
+shore watching the boats, and then I sauntered round the Pavilion,
+ardently longing that fire might break forth and consume that
+architectural monstrosity. I believe that I afterwards had a cup of
+coffee at the refreshment-rooms of the station, and capital
+refreshment-rooms they are, or were&mdash;very moderate and very good. I
+think that I partook of a bun, but if put on my oath I could not swear
+to the fact; a floating reminiscence of bun lingers in the chambers of
+memory, but I cannot be positive, and I wish in this paper to advance
+nothing but reliable facts. I squandered precious time in reading the
+advertisements of baby-jumpers&mdash;which no mother should be without&mdash;which
+are indispensable in the nursery and the greatest acquisition in the
+parlour, the greatest discovery of modern times, etc., etc. I perused a
+notice of the advantage of metallic brushes, and admired the young lady
+with her hair white on one side and black on the other; I studied the
+Chinese letter commendatory of Horniman's tea and the inferior English
+translation, and counted up the number of agents in Great Britain and
+Ireland. At length the ticket-office opened, and I booked for Hassocks
+Gate, second class, fare one shilling.</p>
+
+<p>I ran along the platform till I came to the compartment of the
+second-class carriage which I wanted. The door was locked, so I shouted
+for a guard.</p>
+
+<p>"Put me in here, please."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't there, s'r; next, please, nearly empty, one woman and baby."</p>
+
+<p>"I particularly wish to enter <i>this</i> carriage," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't be, lock'd, orders, comp'ny," replied the guard, turning on his
+heel.</p>
+
+<p>"What reason is there for the public's being excluded, may I ask?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dn'ow, 'spress ord'rs&mdash;c'n't let you in; next caridge, pl'se; now then,
+quick, pl'se."</p>
+
+<p>I knew the guard and he knew me&mdash;by sight, for I often travelled to and
+fro on the line, so I thought it best to be candid with him. I briefly
+told him my reason for making the request, and begged him to assist me
+in executing my plan. He then consented, though with reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ave y'r own way," said he; "only if an'thing 'appens, don't blame me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear," laughed I, jumping into the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>The guard left the carriage unlocked, and in two minutes we were off.</p>
+
+<p>I did not feel in the slightest degree nervous. There was no light in
+the carriage, but that did not matter, as there was twilight. I sat
+facing the engine on the left side, and every now and then I looked out
+at the downs with a soft haze of light still hanging over them. We swept
+into a cutting, and I watched the lines of flint in the chalk, and
+longed to be geologising among them with my hammer, picking out
+"shepherds' crowns" and sharks' teeth, the delicate rhynconella and the
+quaint ventriculite. I remembered a not very distant occasion on which I
+had actually ventured there, and been chased off by the guard, after
+having brought down an avalanche of chalk débris in a manner dangerous
+to traffic whilst endeavouring to extricate a magnificent ammonite which
+I found, and&mdash;alas! left&mdash;protruding from the side of the cutting. I
+wondered whether that ammonite was still there; I looked about to
+identify the exact spot as we whizzed along; and at that moment we shot
+into the tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>There are two tunnels, with a bit of chalk cutting between them. We
+passed through the first, which is short, and in another moment plunged
+into the second.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot explain how it was that <i>now</i>, all of a sudden, a feeling of
+terror came over me; it seemed to drop over me like a wet sheet and wrap
+me round and round.</p>
+
+<p>I felt that <i>someone</i> was seated opposite me&mdash;someone in the darkness
+with his eyes fixed on me.</p>
+
+<p>Many persons possessed of keen nervous sensibility are well aware when
+they are in the presence of another, even though they can see no one,
+and I believe that I possess this power strongly. If I were blindfolded,
+I think that I should know when anyone was looking fixedly at me, and I
+am certain that I should instinctively know that I was not alone if I
+entered a dark room in which another person was seated, even though he
+made no noise. I remember a college friend of mine, who dabbled in
+anatomy, telling me that a little Italian violinist once called on him
+to give a lesson on his instrument. The foreigner&mdash;a singularly nervous
+individual&mdash;moved restlessly from the place where he had been standing,
+casting many a furtive glance over his shoulder at a press which was
+behind him. At last the little fellow tossed aside his violin, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I can note give de lesson if someone weel look at me from behind! Dare
+is somebodee in de cupboard, I know!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, there is!" laughed my anatomical friend, flinging open
+the door of the press and discovering a skeleton.</p>
+
+<p>The horror which oppressed me was numbing. For a few moments I could
+neither lift my hands nor stir a finger. I was tongue-tied. I seemed
+paralysed in every member. I fancied that I <i>felt</i> eyes staring at me
+through the gloom. A cold breath seemed to play over my face. I believed
+that fingers touched my chest and plucked at my coat. I drew back
+against the partition; my heart stood still, my flesh became stiff, my
+muscles rigid.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know whether I breathed&mdash;a blue mist swam before my eyes, and
+my head span.</p>
+
+<p>The rattle and roar of the train dashing through the tunnel drowned
+every other sound.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we rushed past a light fixed against the wall in the side, and
+it sent a flash, instantaneous as that of lightning, through the
+carriage. In that moment I saw what I shall never, never forget. I saw a
+face opposite me, livid as that of a corpse, hideous with passion like
+that of a gorilla.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot describe it accurately, for I saw it but for a second; yet
+there rises before me now, as I write, the low broad brow seamed with
+wrinkles, the shaggy, over-hanging grey eyebrows; the wild ashen eyes,
+which glared as those of a demoniac; the coarse mouth, with its fleshy
+lips compressed till they were white; the profusion of wolf-grey hair
+about the cheeks and chin; the thin, bloodless hands, raised and
+half-open, extended towards me as though they would clutch and tear me.</p>
+
+<p>In the madness of terror, I flung myself along the seat to the further
+window.</p>
+
+<p>Then I felt that <i>it</i> was moving slowly down, and was opposite me again.
+I lifted my hand to let down the window, and I touched something: I
+thought it was a hand&mdash;yes, yes! it <i>was</i> a hand, for it folded over
+mine and began to contract on it. I felt each finger separately; they
+were cold, dully cold. I wrenched my hand away. I slipped back to my
+former place in the carriage by the open window, and in frantic horror I
+opened the door, clinging to it with both my hands round the
+window-jamb, swung myself out with my feet on the floor and my head
+turned from the carriage. If the cold fingers had but touched my woven
+hands, mine would have given way; had I but turned my head and seen that
+hellish countenance peering out at me, I must have lost my hold.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! I saw the light from the tunnel mouth; it smote on my face. The
+engine rushed out with a piercing whistle. The roaring echoes of the
+tunnel died away. The cool fresh breeze blew over my face and tossed my
+hair; the speed of the train was relaxed; the lights of the station
+became brighter. I heard the bell ringing loudly; I saw people waiting
+for the train; I felt the vibration as the brake was put on. We stopped;
+and then my fingers gave way. I dropped as a sack on the platform, and
+then, then&mdash;not till then&mdash;I awoke. There now! from beginning to end the
+whole had been a frightful dream caused by my having too many blankets
+over my bed. If I must append a moral&mdash;Don't sleep too hot.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ON_THE_LEADS" id="ON_THE_LEADS"></a>ON THE LEADS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Having realised a competence in Australia, and having a hankering after
+country life for the remainder of my days in the old home, on my return
+to England I went to an agent with the object of renting a house with
+shooting attached, over at least three thousand acres, with the option
+of a purchase should the place suit me. I was no more intending to buy a
+country seat without having tried what it was like, than is a king
+disposed to go to war without knowing something of the force that can be
+brought against him. I was rather taken with photographs of a manor
+called Fernwood, and I was still further engaged when I saw the place
+itself on a beautiful October day, when St. Luke's summer was turning
+the country into a world of rainbow tints under a warm sun, and a soft
+vaporous blue haze tinted all shadows cobalt, and gave to the hills a
+stateliness that made them look like mountains. Fernwood was an old
+house, built in the shape of the letter H, and therefore, presumably,
+dating from the time of the early Tudor monarchs. The porch opened into
+the hall which was on the left of the cross-stroke, and the drawing-room
+was on the right. There was one inconvenience about the house; it had a
+staircase at each extremity of the cross-stroke, and there was no
+upstair communication between the two wings of the mansion. But, as a
+practical man, I saw how this might be remedied. The front door faced
+the south, and the hall was windowless on the north. Nothing easier than
+to run a corridor along at the back, giving communication both upstairs
+and downstairs, without passing through the hall. The whole thing could
+be done for, at the outside, two hundred pounds, and would be no
+disfigurement to the place. I agreed to become tenant of Fernwood for a
+twelvemonth, in which time I should be able to judge whether the place
+would suit me, the neighbours be pleasant, and the climate agree with my
+wife. We went down to Fernwood at once, and settled ourselves
+comfortably in by the first week in November.</p>
+
+<p>The house was furnished; it was the property of an elderly gentleman, a
+bachelor named Framett, who lived in rooms in town, and spent most of
+his time at the club. He was supposed to have been jilted by his
+intended, after which he eschewed female society, and remained
+unmarried.</p>
+
+<p>I called on him before taking up our residence at Fernwood, and found
+him a somewhat blasé, languid, cold-blooded creature, not at all proud
+of having a noble manor-house that had belonged to his family for four
+centuries; very willing to sell it, so as to spite a cousin who
+calculated on coming in for the estate, and whom Mr. Framett, with the
+malignity that is sometimes found in old people, was particularly
+desirous of disappointing.</p>
+
+<p>"The house has been let before, I suppose?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," he replied indifferently, "I believe so, several times."</p>
+
+<p>"For long?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;o. I believe, not for long."</p>
+
+<p>"Have the tenants had any particular reasons for not remaining on
+there&mdash;if I may be so bold as to inquire?"</p>
+
+<p>"All people have reasons to offer, but what they offer you are not
+supposed to receive as genuine."</p>
+
+<p>I could get no more from him than this. "I think, sir, if I were you I
+would not go down to Fernwood till after November was out."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said I, "I want the shooting."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, to be sure&mdash;the shooting, ah! I should have preferred if you could
+have waited till December began."</p>
+
+<p>"That would not suit me," I said, and so the matter ended.</p>
+
+<p>When we were settled in, we occupied the right wing of the house. The
+left or west wing was but scantily furnished and looked cheerless, as
+though rarely tenanted. We were not a large family, my wife and myself
+alone; there was consequently ample accommodation in the east wing for
+us. The servants were placed above the kitchen, in a portion of the
+house I have not yet described. It was a half-wing, if I may so describe
+it, built on the north side parallel with the upper arm of the western
+limb of the hall and the [Symbol: H]. This block had a gable to the
+north like the wings, and a broad lead valley was between them, that, as
+I learned from the agent, had to be attended to after the fall of the
+leaf, and in times of snow, to clear it.</p>
+
+<p>Access to this valley could be had from within by means of a little
+window in the roof, formed as a dormer. A short ladder allowed anyone to
+ascend from the passage to this window and open or shut it. The western
+staircase gave access to this passage, from which the servants' rooms in
+the new block were reached, as also the untenanted apartments in the old
+wing. And as there were no windows in the extremities of this passage
+that ran due north and south, it derived all its light from the
+aforementioned dormer window.</p>
+
+<p>One night, after we had been in the house about a week, I was sitting up
+smoking, with a little whisky-and-water at my elbow, reading a review of
+an absurd, ignorantly written book on New South Wales, when I heard a
+tap at the door, and the parlourmaid came in, and said in a nervous tone
+of voice: "Beg your pardon, sir, but cook nor I, nor none of us dare go
+to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" I asked, looking up in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir, we dursn't go into the passage to get to our rooms."</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever is the matter with the passage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing, sir, with the passage. Would you mind, sir, just coming to
+see? We don't know what to make of it."</p>
+
+<p>I put down my review with a grunt of dissatisfaction, laid my pipe
+aside, and followed the maid.</p>
+
+<p>She led me through the hall, and up the staircase at the western
+extremity.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the upper landing I saw all the maids there in a cluster,
+and all evidently much scared.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever is all this nonsense about?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir, will you look? We can't say."</p>
+
+<p>The parlourmaid pointed to an oblong patch of moonlight on the wall of
+the passage. The night was cloudless, and the full moon shone slanting
+in through the dormer and painted a brilliant silver strip on the wall
+opposite. The window being on the side of the roof to the east, we could
+not see that, but did see the light thrown through it against the wall.
+This patch of reflected light was about seven feet above the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The window itself was some ten feet up, and the passage was but four
+feet wide. I enter into these particulars for reasons that will
+presently appear.</p>
+
+<p>The window was divided into three parts by wooden mullions, and was
+composed of four panes of glass in each compartment.</p>
+
+<p>Now I could distinctly see the reflection of the moon through the window
+with the black bars up and down, and the division of the panes. But I
+saw more than that: I saw the shadow of a lean arm with a hand and thin,
+lengthy fingers across a portion of the window, apparently groping at
+where was the latch by which the casement could be opened.</p>
+
+<p>My impression at the moment was that there was a burglar on the leads
+trying to enter the house by means of this dormer.</p>
+
+<p>Without a minute's hesitation I ran into the passage and looked up at
+the window, but could see only a portion of it, as in shape it was low,
+though broad, and, as already stated, was set at a great height. But at
+that moment something fluttered past it, like a rush of flapping
+draperies obscuring the light.</p>
+
+<p>I had placed the ladder, which I found hooked up to the wall, in
+position, and planted my foot on the lowest rung, when my wife arrived.
+She had been alarmed by the housemaid, and now she clung to me, and
+protested that I was not to ascend without my pistol.</p>
+
+<p>To satisfy her I got my Colt's revolver that I always kept loaded, and
+then, but only hesitatingly, did she allow me to mount. I ascended to
+the casement, unhasped it, and looked out. I could see nothing. The
+ladder was over-short, and it required an effort to heave oneself from
+it through the casement on to the leads. I am stout, and not so nimble
+as I was when younger. After one or two efforts, and after presenting
+from below an appearance that would have provoked laughter at any other
+time, I succeeded in getting through and upon the leads.</p>
+
+<p>I looked up and down the valley&mdash;there was absolutely nothing to be seen
+except an accumulation of leaves carried there from the trees that were
+shedding their foliage.</p>
+
+<p>The situation was vastly puzzling. As far as I could judge there was no
+way off the roof, no other window opening into the valley; I did not go
+along upon the leads, as it was night, and moonlight is treacherous.
+Moreover, I was wholly unacquainted with the arrangement of the roof,
+and had no wish to risk a fall.</p>
+
+<p>I descended from the window with my feet groping for the upper rung of
+the ladder in a manner even more grotesque than my ascent through the
+casement, but neither my wife&mdash;usually extremely alive to anything
+ridiculous in my appearance&mdash;nor the domestics were in a mood to make
+merry. I fastened the window after me, and had hardly reached the
+bottom of the ladder before again a shadow flickered across the patch of
+moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>I was fairly perplexed, and stood musing. Then I recalled that
+immediately behind the house the ground rose; that, in fact, the house
+lay under a considerable hill. It was just possible by ascending the
+slope to reach the level of the gutter and rake the leads from one
+extremity to the other with my eye.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned this to my wife, and at once the whole set of maids trailed
+down the stairs after us. They were afraid to remain in the passage, and
+they were curious to see if there was really some person on the leads.</p>
+
+<p>We went out at the back of the house, and ascended the bank till we were
+on a level with the broad gutter between the gables. I now saw that this
+gutter did not run through, but stopped against the hall roof;
+consequently, unless there were some opening of which I knew nothing,
+the person on the leads could not leave the place, save by the dormer
+window, when open, or by swarming down the fall pipe.</p>
+
+<p>It at once occurred to me that if what I had seen were the shadow of a
+burglar, he might have mounted by means of the rain-water pipe. But if
+so&mdash;how had he vanished the moment my head was protruded through the
+window? and how was it that I had seen the shadow flicker past the light
+immediately after I had descended the ladder? It was conceivable that
+the man had concealed himself in the shadow of the hall roof, and had
+taken advantage of my withdrawal to run past the window so as to reach
+the fall pipe, and let himself down by that.</p>
+
+<p>I could, however, see no one running away, as I must have done, going
+outside so soon after his supposed descent.</p>
+
+<p>But the whole affair became more perplexing when, looking towards the
+leads, I saw in the moonlight something with fluttering garments running
+up and down them.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no mistake&mdash;the object was a woman, and her garments were
+mere tatters. We could not hear a sound.</p>
+
+<p>I looked round at my wife and the servants,&mdash;they saw this weird object
+as distinctly as myself. It was more like a gigantic bat than a human
+being, and yet, that it was a woman we could not doubt, for the arms
+were now and then thrown above the head in wild gesticulation, and at
+moments a profile was presented, and then we saw, or thought we saw,
+long flapping hair, unbound.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go back to the ladder," said I; "you remain where you are,
+watching."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Edward! not alone," pleaded my wife.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, who is to go with me?"</p>
+
+<p>I went. I had left the back door unlocked, and I ascended the staircase
+and entered the passage. Again I saw the shadow flicker past the moonlit
+patch on the wall opposite the window.</p>
+
+<p>I ascended the ladder and opened the casement.</p>
+
+<p>Then I heard the clock in the hall strike one.</p>
+
+<p>I heaved myself up to the sill with great labour, and I endeavoured to
+thrust my short body through the window, when I heard feet on the
+stairs, and next moment my wife's voice from below, at the foot of the
+ladder. "Oh, Edward, Edward! please do not go out there again. It has
+vanished. All at once. There is nothing there now to be seen."</p>
+
+<p>I returned, touched the ladder tentatively with my feet, refastened the
+window, and descended&mdash;perhaps inelegantly. I then went down with my
+wife, and with her returned up the bank, to the spot where stood
+clustered our servants.</p>
+
+<p>They had seen nothing further; and although I remained on the spot
+watching for half an hour, I also saw nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>The maids were too frightened to go to bed, and so agreed to sit up in
+the kitchen for the rest of the night by a good fire, and I gave them a
+bottle of sherry to mull, and make themselves comfortable upon, and to
+help them to recover their courage.</p>
+
+<p>Although I went to bed, I could not sleep. I was completely baffled by
+what I had seen. I could in no way explain what the object was and how
+it had left the leads.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I sent for the village mason and asked him to set a long ladder
+against the well-head of the fall pipe, and examine the valley between
+the gables. At the same time I would mount to the little window and
+contemplate proceedings through that.</p>
+
+<p>The man had to send for a ladder sufficiently long, and that occupied
+some time. However, at length he had it planted, and then mounted. When
+he approached the dormer window&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a hand," said I, "and haul me up; I would like to satisfy
+myself with my own eyes that there is no other means of getting upon or
+leaving the leads."</p>
+
+<p>He took me under both shoulders and heaved me out, and I stood with him
+in the broad lead gutter.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no other opening whatever," said he, "and, Lord love you, sir,
+I believe that what you saw was no more than this," and he pointed to a
+branch of a noble cedar that grew hard by the west side of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I warrant, sir," said he, "that what you saw was this here bough as has
+been carried by a storm and thrown here, and the wind last night swept
+it up and down the leads."</p>
+
+<p>"But was there any wind?" I asked. "I do not remember that there was."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say," said he; "before twelve o'clock I was fast asleep, and it
+might have blown a gale and I hear nothing of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose there must have been some wind," said I, "and that I was too
+surprised and the women too frightened to observe it," I laughed. "So
+this marvellous spectral phenomenon receives a very prosaic and natural
+explanation. Mason, throw down the bough and we will burn it to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The branch was cast over the edge, and fell at the back of the house. I
+left the leads, descended, and going out picked up the cedar branch,
+brought it into the hall, summoned the servants, and said derisively:
+"Here is an illustration of the way in which weak-minded women get
+scared. Now we will burn the burglar or ghost that we saw. It turns out
+to be nothing but this branch, blown up and down the leads by the wind."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Edward," said my wife, "there was not a breath stirring."</p>
+
+<p>"There must have been. Only where we were we were sheltered and did not
+observe it. Aloft, it blew across the roofs, and formed an eddy that
+caught the broken bough, lifted it, carried it first one way, then spun
+it round and carried it the reverse way. In fact, the wind between the
+two roofs assumed a spiral movement. I hope now you are all satisfied. I
+am."</p>
+
+<p>So the bough was burned, and our fears&mdash;I mean those of the
+females&mdash;were allayed.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, after dinner, as I sat with my wife, she said to me:
+"Half a bottle would have been enough, Edward. Indeed, I think half a
+bottle would be too much; you should not give the girls a liking for
+sherry, it may lead to bad results. If it had been elderberry wine, that
+would have been different."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is no elderberry wine in the house," I objected.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope no harm will come of it, but I greatly mistrust&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir, it is there again."</p>
+
+<p>The parlourmaid, with a blanched face, was at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said I, "we burnt it."</p>
+
+<p>"This comes of the sherry," observed my wife. "They will be seeing
+ghosts every night."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear, you saw it as well as myself!"</p>
+
+<p>I rose, my wife followed, and we went to the landing as before, and,
+sure enough, against the patch of moonlight cast through the window in
+the roof, was the arm again, and then a flutter of shadows, as if cast
+by garments.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not the bough," said my wife. "If this had been seen immediately
+after the sherry I should not have been surprised, but&mdash;as it is now it
+is most extraordinary."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have this part of the house shut up," said I. Then I bade the
+maids once more spend the night in the kitchen, "and make yourselves
+lively on tea," I said&mdash;for I knew my wife would not allow another
+bottle of sherry to be given them. "To-morrow your beds shall be moved
+to the east wing."</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon," said the cook, "I speaks in the name of all. We don't
+think we can remain in the house, but must leave the situation."</p>
+
+<p>"That comes of the tea," said I to my wife. "Now," to the cook, "as you
+have had another fright, I will let you have a bottle of mulled port
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said the cook, "if you can get rid of the ghost, we don't want to
+leave so good a master. We withdraw the notice."</p>
+
+<p>Next day I had all the servants' goods transferred to the east wing, and
+rooms were fitted up for them to sleep in. As their portion of the house
+was completely cut off from the west wing, the alarm of the domestics
+died away.</p>
+
+<p>A heavy, stormy rain came on next week, the first token of winter
+misery.</p>
+
+<p>I then found that, whether caused by the cedar bough, or by the nailed
+boots of the mason, I cannot say, but the lead of the valley between the
+roofs was torn, and water came in, streaming down the walls, and
+threatening to severely damage the ceilings. I had to send for a
+plumber as soon as the weather mended. At the same time I started for
+town to see Mr. Framett. I had made up my mind that Fernwood was not
+suitable, and by the terms of my agreement I might be off my bargain if
+I gave notice the first month, and then my tenancy would be for the six
+months only. I found the squire at his club.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said he, "I told you not to go there in November. No one likes
+Fernwood in November; it is all right at other times."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no bother except in November."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should there be bother, as you term it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Framett shrugged his shoulders. "How the deuce can I tell you? I've
+never been a spirit, and all that sort of thing. Mme. Blavatsky might
+possibly tell you. I can't. But it is a fact."</p>
+
+<p>"What is a fact?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that there is no apparition at any other time It is only in
+November, when she met with a little misfortune. That is when she is
+seen."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is seen?"</p>
+
+<p>"My aunt Eliza&mdash;I mean my great-aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"You speak mysteries."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know much about it, and care less," said Mr. Framett, and
+called for a lemon squash. "It was this: I had a great-aunt who was
+deranged. The family kept it quiet, and did not send her to an asylum,
+but fastened her in a room in the west wing. You see, that part of the
+house is partially separated from the rest. I believe she was rather
+shabbily treated, but she was difficult to manage, and tore her clothes
+to pieces. Somehow, she succeeded in getting out on the roof, and would
+race up and down there. They allowed her to do so, as by that means she
+obtained fresh air. But one night in November she scrambled up and, I
+believe, tumbled over. It was hushed up. Sorry you went there in
+November. I should have liked you to buy the place. I am sick of it."</p>
+
+<p>I did buy Fernwood. What decided me was this: the plumbers, in mending
+the leads, with that ingenuity to do mischief which they sometimes
+display, succeeded in setting fire to the roof, and the result was that
+the west wing was burnt down. Happily, a wall so completely separated
+the wing from the rest of the house, that the fire was arrested. The
+wing was not rebuilt, and I, thinking that with the disappearance of the
+leads I should be freed from the apparition that haunted them, purchased
+Fernwood. I am happy to say we have been undisturbed since.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AUNT_JOANNA" id="AUNT_JOANNA"></a>AUNT JOANNA</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the Land's End district is the little church-town of Zennor. There is
+no village to speak of&mdash;a few scattered farms, and here and there a
+cluster of cottages. The district is bleak, the soil does not lie deep
+over granite that peers through the surface on exposed spots, where the
+furious gales from the ocean sweep the land. If trees ever existed
+there, they have been swept away by the blast, but the golden furze or
+gorse defies all winds, and clothes the moorland with a robe of
+splendour, and the heather flushes the slopes with crimson towards the
+decline of summer, and mantles them in soft, warm brown in winter, like
+the fur of an animal.</p>
+
+<p>In Zennor is a little church, built of granite, rude and simple of
+construction, crouching low, to avoid the gales, but with a tower that
+has defied the winds and the lashing rains, because wholly devoid of
+sculptured detail, which would have afforded the blasts something to lay
+hold of and eat away. In Zennor parish is one of the finest cromlechs in
+Cornwall, a huge slab of unwrought stone like a table, poised on the
+points of standing upright blocks as rude as the mass they sustain.</p>
+
+<p>Near this monument of a hoar and indeed unknown antiquity lived an old
+woman by herself, in a small cottage of one story in height, built of
+moor stones set in earth, and pointed only with lime. It was thatched
+with heather, and possessed but a single chimney that rose but little
+above the apex of the roof, and had two slates set on the top to protect
+the rising smoke from being blown down the chimney into the cottage
+when the wind was from the west or from the east. When, however, it
+drove from north or south, then the smoke must take care of itself. On
+such occasions it was wont to find its way out of the door, and little
+or none went up the chimney.</p>
+
+<p>The only fuel burnt in this cottage was peat&mdash;not the solid black peat
+from deep bogs, but turf of only a spade graft, taken from the surface,
+and composed of undissolved roots. Such fuel gives flame, which the
+other does not; but, on the other hand, it does not throw out the same
+amount of heat, nor does it last one half the time.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who lived in the cottage was called by the people of the
+neighbourhood Aunt Joanna. What her family name was but few remembered,
+nor did it concern herself much. She had no relations at all, with the
+exception of a grand-niece, who was married to a small tradesman, a
+wheelwright near the church. But Joanna and her great-niece were not on
+speaking terms. The girl had mortally offended the old woman by going to
+a dance at St. Ives, against her express orders. It was at this dance
+that she had met the wheelwright, and this meeting, and the treatment
+the girl had met with from her aunt for having gone to it, had led to
+the marriage. For Aunt Joanna was very strict in her Wesleyanism, and
+bitterly hostile to all such carnal amusements as dancing and
+play-acting. Of the latter there was none in that wild west Cornish
+district, and no temptation ever afforded by a strolling company setting
+up its booth within reach of Zennor. But dancing, though denounced,
+still drew the more independent spirits together. Rose Penaluna had been
+with her great-aunt after her mother's death. She was a lively girl, and
+when she heard of a dance at St. Ives, and had been asked to go to it,
+although forbidden by Aunt Joanna, she stole from the cottage at night,
+and found her way to St. Ives.</p>
+
+<p>Her conduct was reprehensible certainly. But that of Aunt Joanna was
+even more so, for when she discovered that the girl had left the house
+she barred her door, and refused to allow Rose to re-enter it. The poor
+girl had been obliged to take refuge the same night at the nearest farm
+and sleep in an outhouse, and next morning to go into St. Ives and
+entreat an acquaintance to take her in till she could enter into
+service. Into service she did not go, for when Abraham Hext, the
+carpenter, heard how she had been treated, he at once proposed, and in
+three weeks married her. Since then no communication had taken place
+between the old woman and her grand-niece. As Rose knew, Joanna was
+implacable in her resentments, and considered that she had been acting
+aright in what she had done.</p>
+
+<p>The nearest farm to Aunt Joanna's cottage was occupied by the Hockins.
+One day Elizabeth, the farmer's wife, saw the old woman outside the
+cottage as she was herself returning from market; and, noticing how bent
+and feeble Joanna was, she halted, and talked to her, and gave her good
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>"See you now, auntie, you'm gettin' old and crimmed wi' rheumatics. How
+can you get about? An' there's no knowin' but you might be took bad in
+the night. You ought to have some little lass wi' you to mind you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want nobody, thank the Lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Not just now, auntie, but suppose any chance ill-luck were to come on
+you. And then, in the bad weather, you'm not fit to go abroad after the
+turves, and you can't get all you want&mdash;tay and sugar and milk for
+yourself now. It would be handy to have a little maid by you."</p>
+
+<p>"Who should I have?" asked Joanna.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, you couldn't do better than take little Mary, Rose Hext's
+eldest girl. She's a handy maid, and bright and pleasant to speak to."</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered the old woman, "I'll have none o' they Hexts, not I. The
+Lord is agin Rose and all her family, I know it. I'll have none of
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"But, auntie, you must be nigh on ninety."</p>
+
+<p>"I be ower that. But what o' that? Didn't Sarah, the wife of Abraham,
+live to an hundred and seven and twenty years, and that in spite of him
+worritin' of her wi' that owdacious maid of hern, Hagar? If it hadn't
+been for their goings on, of Abraham and Hagar, it's my belief that
+she'd ha' held on to a hundred and fifty-seven. I thank the Lord I've
+never had no man to worrit me. So why I shouldn't equal Sarah's life I
+don't see."</p>
+
+<p>Then she went indoors and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>After that a week elapsed without Mrs. Hockin seeing the old woman. She
+passed the cottage, but no Joanna was about. The door was not open, and
+usually it was. Elizabeth spoke about this to her husband. "Jabez," said
+she, "I don't like the looks o' this; I've kept my eye open, and there
+be no Auntie Joanna hoppin' about. Whativer can be up? It's my opinion
+us ought to go and see."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've naught on my hands now," said the farmer, "so I reckon we
+will go."</p>
+
+<p>The two walked together to the cottage. No smoke issued from the
+chimney, and the door was shut. Jabez knocked, but there came no answer;
+so he entered, followed by his wife.</p>
+
+<p>There was in the cottage but the kitchen, with one bedroom at the side.
+The hearth was cold.</p>
+
+<p>"There's some'ut up," said Mrs. Hockin.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon it's the old lady be down," replied her husband, and, throwing
+open the bedroom door, he said: "Sure enough, and no mistake&mdash;there her
+be, dead as a dried pilchard."</p>
+
+<p>And in fact Auntie Joanna had died in the night, after having so
+confidently affirmed her conviction that she would live to the age of a
+hundred and twenty-seven.</p>
+
+<p>"Whativer shall we do?" asked Mrs. Hockin.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon," said her husband, "us had better take an inventory of what
+is here, lest wicked rascals come in and steal anything and everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Folks bain't so bad as that, and a corpse in the house," observed Mrs.
+Hockin.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be sure o' that&mdash;these be terrible wicked times," said the
+husband. "And I sez, sez I, no harm is done in seein' what the old
+creetur had got."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, surely," acquiesced Elizabeth, "there is no harm in that."</p>
+
+<p>In the bedroom was an old oak chest, and this the farmer and his wife
+opened. To their surprise they found in it a silver teapot, and half a
+dozen silver spoons.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now," exclaimed Elizabeth Hockin, "fancy her havin' these&mdash;and me
+only Britannia metal."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon she came of a good family," said Jabez. "Leastwise, I've heard
+as how she were once well off."</p>
+
+<p>"And look here!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "there's fine and beautiful linen
+underneath&mdash;sheets and pillow-cases."</p>
+
+<p>"But look here!" cried Jabez, "blessed if the taypot bain't chock-full
+o' money! Whereiver did she get it from?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her's been in the way of showing folk the Zennor Quoit, visitors from
+St. Ives and Penzance, and she's had scores o' shillings that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord!" exclaimed Jabez. "I wish she'd left it to me, and I could buy a
+cow; I want another cruel bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, we do, terrible," said Elizabeth. "But just look to her bed, what
+torn and wretched linen be on that&mdash;and here these fine bedclothes all
+in the chest."</p>
+
+<p>"Who'll get the silver taypot and spoons, and the money?" inquired
+Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"Her had no kin&mdash;none but Rose Hext, and her couldn't abide her. Last
+words her said to me was that she'd 'have never naught to do wi' the
+Hexts, they and all their belongings.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That was her last words?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very last words her spoke to me&mdash;or to anyone."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Jabez, "I'll tell ye what, Elizabeth, it's our moral dooty
+to abide by the wishes of Aunt Joanna. It never does to go agin what is
+right. And as her expressed herself that strong, why us, as honest
+folks, must carry out her wishes, and see that none of all her savings
+go to them darned and dratted Hexts."</p>
+
+<p>"But who be they to go to, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;we'll see. Fust us will have her removed, and provide that her be
+daycent buried. Them Hexts be in a poor way, and couldn't afford the
+expense, and it do seem to me, Elizabeth, as it would be a liberal and a
+kindly act in us to take all the charges on ourselves. Us is the closest
+neighbours."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay&mdash;and her have had milk of me these ten or twelve years, and I've
+never charged her a penny, thinking her couldn't afford it. But her
+could, her were a-hoardin' of her money&mdash;and not paying me. That were
+not honest, and what I say is, that I have a right to some of her
+savin's, to pay the milk bill&mdash;and it's butter I've let her have now and
+then in a liberal way."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, Elizabeth. Fust of all, we'll take the silver taypot and the
+spoons wi' us, to get 'em out of harm's way."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll carry the linen sheets and pillow-cases. My word!&mdash;why didn't
+she use 'em, instead of them rags?"</p>
+
+<p>All Zennor declared that the Hockins were a most neighbourly and
+generous couple, when it was known that they took upon themselves to
+defray the funeral expenses.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hext came to the farm, and said that she was willing to do what she
+could, but Mrs. Hockin replied: "My good Rose, it's no good. I seed your
+aunt when her was ailin', and nigh on death, and her laid it on me
+solemn as could be that we was to bury her, and that she'd have nothin'
+to do wi' the Hexts at no price."</p>
+
+<p>Rose sighed, and went away.</p>
+
+<p>Rose had not expected to receive anything from her aunt. She had never
+been allowed to look at the treasures in the oak chest. As far as she
+had been aware, Aunt Joanna had been extremely poor. But she remembered
+that the old woman had at one time befriended her, and she was ready to
+forgive the harsh treatment to which she had finally been subjected. In
+fact, she had repeatedly made overtures to her great-aunt to be
+reconciled, but these overtures had been always rejected. She was,
+accordingly, not surprised to learn from Mrs. Hockin that the old
+woman's last words had been as reported.</p>
+
+<p>But, although disowned and disinherited, Rose, her husband, and children
+dressed in black, and were chief mourners at the funeral. Now it had so
+happened that when it came to the laying out of Aunt Joanna, Mrs. Hockin
+had looked at the beautiful linen sheets she had found in the oak chest,
+with the object of furnishing the corpse with one as a winding-sheet.
+But&mdash;she said to herself&mdash;it would really be a shame to spoil a pair,
+and where else could she get such fine and beautiful old linen as was
+this? So she put the sheets away, and furnished for the purpose a clean
+but coarse and ragged sheet such as Aunt Joanna had in common use. That
+was good enough to moulder in the grave. It would be positively sinful,
+because wasteful, to give up to corruption and the worm such fine white
+linen as Aunt Joanna had hoarded. The funeral was conducted, otherwise,
+liberally. Aunt Joanna was given an elm, and not a mean deal board
+coffin, such as is provided for paupers; and a handsome escutcheon of
+white metal was put on the lid.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, plenty of gin was drunk, and cake and cheese eaten at the
+house, all at the expense of the Hockins. And the conversation among
+those who attended, and ate and drank, and wiped their eyes, was rather
+anent the generosity of the Hockins than of the virtues of the
+departed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Hockin heard this, and their hearts swelled within them.
+Nothing so swells the heart as the consciousness of virtue being
+recognised. Jabez in an undertone informed a neighbour that he weren't
+goin' to stick at the funeral expenses, not he; he'd have a neat stone
+erected above the grave with work on it, at twopence a letter. The name
+and the date of departure of Aunt Joanna, and her age, and two lines of
+a favourite hymn of his, all about earth being no dwelling-place, heaven
+being properly her home.</p>
+
+<p>It was not often that Elizabeth Hockin cried, but she did this day; she
+wept tears of sympathy with the deceased, and happiness at the ovation
+accorded to herself and her husband. At length, as the short winter day
+closed in, the last of those who had attended the funeral, and had
+returned to the farm to recruit and regale after it, departed, and the
+Hockins were left to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"It were a beautiful day," said Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," responded Elizabeth, "and what a sight o' people came here."</p>
+
+<p>"This here buryin' of Aunt Joanna have set us up tremendous in the
+estimation of the neighbours."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to know who else would ha' done it for a poor old creetur as
+is no relation; ay&mdash;and one as owed a purty long bill to me for milk and
+butter through ten or twelve years."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Jabez, "I've allus heard say that a good deed brings its
+own reward wi' it&mdash;and it's a fine proverb. I feels it in my insides."</p>
+
+<p>"P'raps it's the gin, Jabez."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;it's virtue. It's warmer nor gin a long sight. Gin gives a
+smouldering spark, but a good conscience is a blaze of furze."</p>
+
+<p>The farm of the Hockins was small, and Hockin looked after his cattle
+himself. One maid was kept, but no man in the house. All were wont to
+retire early to bed; neither Hockin nor his wife had literary tastes,
+and were not disposed to consume much oil, so as to read at night.</p>
+
+<p>During the night, at what time she did not know, Mrs. Hockin awoke with
+a start, and found that her husband was sitting up in bed listening.
+There was a moon that night, and no clouds in the sky. The room was full
+of silver light. Elizabeth Hockin heard a sound of feet in the kitchen,
+which was immediately under the bedroom of the couple.</p>
+
+<p>"There's someone about," she whispered; "go down, Jabez."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder, now, who it be. P'raps its Sally."</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be Sally&mdash;how can it, when she can't get out o' her room
+wi'out passin' through ours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Run down, Elizabeth, and see."</p>
+
+<p>"It's your place to go, Jabez."</p>
+
+<p>"But if it was a woman&mdash;and me in my night-shirt?"</p>
+
+<p>"And, Jabez, if it was a man, a robber&mdash;and me in my night-shirt? It 'ud
+be shameful."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon us had best go down together."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do so&mdash;but I hope it's not&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hockin did not answer. She and her husband crept from bed, and,
+treading on tiptoe across the room, descended the stair.</p>
+
+<p>There was no door at the bottom, but the staircase was boarded up at the
+side; it opened into the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>They descended very softly and cautiously, holding each other, and when
+they reached the bottom, peered timorously into the apartment that
+served many purposes&mdash;kitchen, sitting-room, and dining-place. The
+moonlight poured in through the broad, low window.</p>
+
+<p>By it they saw a figure. There could be no mistaking it&mdash;it was that of
+Aunt Joanna, clothed in the tattered sheet that Elizabeth Hockin had
+allowed for her grave-clothes. The old woman had taken one of the fine
+linen sheets out of the cupboard in which it had been placed, and had
+spread it over the long table, and was smoothing it down with her bony
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>The Hockins trembled, not with cold, though it was mid-winter, but with
+terror. They dared not advance, and they felt powerless to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Then they saw Aunt Joanna go to the cupboard, open it, and return with
+the silver spoons; she placed all six on the sheet, and with a lean
+finger counted them.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face towards those who were watching her proceedings, but
+it was in shadow, and they could not distinguish the features nor note
+the expression with which she regarded them.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she went back to the cupboard, and returned with the silver
+teapot. She stood at one end of the table, and now the reflection of the
+moon on the linen sheet was cast upon her face, and they saw that she
+was moving her lips&mdash;but no sound issued from them.</p>
+
+<p>She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table. The Hockins saw the glint of the
+metal, and the shadow cast by each piece of money as it rolled. The
+first coin lodged at the further left-hand corner and the second rested
+near it; and so on, the pieces were rolled, and ranged themselves in
+order, ten in a row. Then the next ten were run across the white cloth
+in the same manner, and dropped over on their sides below the first row;
+thus also the third ten. And all the time the dead woman was mouthing,
+as though counting, but still inaudibly.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus8" id="illus8"></a>
+<img src="images/illus8.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>SHE THRUST HER HAND INTO THE TEAPOT AND DREW FORTH THE
+COINS, ONE BY ONE, AND ROLLED THEM ALONG THE TABLE.</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>The couple stood motionless observing proceedings, till suddenly a cloud
+passed before the face of the moon, so dense as to eclipse the light.</p>
+
+<p>Then in a paroxysm of terror both turned and fled up the stairs, bolted
+their bedroom door, and jumped into bed.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sleep for them that night. In the gloom when the moon was
+concealed, in the glare when it shone forth, it was the same, they
+could hear the light rolling of the coins along the table, and the click
+as they fell over. Was the supply inexhaustible? It was not so, but
+apparently the dead woman did not weary of counting the coins. When all
+had been ranged, she could be heard moving to the further end of the
+table, and there recommencing the same proceeding of coin-rolling.</p>
+
+<p>Not till near daybreak did this sound cease, and not till the maid,
+Sally, had begun to stir in the inner bedchamber did Hockin and his wife
+venture to rise. Neither would suffer the servant girl to descend till
+they had been down to see in what condition the kitchen was. They found
+that the table had been cleared, the coins were all back in the teapot,
+and that and the spoons were where they had themselves placed them. The
+sheet, moreover, was neatly folded, and replaced where it had been
+before.</p>
+
+<p>The Hockins did not speak to one another of their experiences during the
+past night, so long as they were in the house, but when Jabez was in the
+field, Elizabeth went to him and said: "Husband, what about Aunt
+Joanna?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;maybe it were a dream."</p>
+
+<p>"Curious us should ha' dreamed alike."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that; 'twere the gin made us dream, and us both had gin,
+so us dreamed the same thing."</p>
+
+<p>"'Twere more like real truth than dream," observed Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take it as dream," said Jabez. "Mebbe it won't happen again."</p>
+
+<p>But precisely the same sounds were heard on the following night. The
+moon was obscured by thick clouds, and neither of the two had the
+courage to descend to the kitchen. But they could hear the patter of
+feet, and then the roll and click of the coins. Again sleep was
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever shall we do?" asked Elizabeth Hockin next morning of her
+husband. "Us can't go on like this wi' the dead woman about our house
+nightly. There's no tellin' she might take it into her head to come
+upstairs and pull the sheets off us. As we took hers, she may think it
+fair to carry off ours."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Jabez sorrowfully, "we'll have to return 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"But how?"</p>
+
+<p>After some consultation the couple resolved on conveying all the
+deceased woman's goods to the churchyard, by night, and placing them on
+her grave.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon," said Hockin, "we'll bide in the porch and watch what
+happens. If they be left there till mornin', why we may carry 'em back
+wi' an easy conscience. We've spent some pounds over her buryin'."</p>
+
+<p>"What have it come to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three pounds five and fourpence, as I make it out."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Elizabeth, "we must risk it."</p>
+
+<p>When night had fallen murk, the farmer and his wife crept from their
+house, carrying the linen sheets, the teapot, and the silver spoons.
+They did not start till late, for fear of encountering any villagers on
+the way, and not till after the maid, Sally, had gone to bed.</p>
+
+<p>They fastened the farm door behind them. The night was dark and stormy,
+with scudding clouds, so dense as to make deep night, when they did not
+part and allow the moon to peer forth.</p>
+
+<p>They walked timorously, and side by side, looking about them as they
+proceeded, and on reaching the churchyard gate they halted to pluck up
+courage before opening and venturing within. Jabez had furnished himself
+with a bottle of gin, to give courage to himself and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Together they heaped the articles that had belonged to Aunt Joanna upon
+the fresh grave, but as they did so the wind caught the linen and
+unfurled and flapped it, and they were forced to place stones upon it to
+hold it down.</p>
+
+<p>Then, quaking with fear, they retreated to the church porch, and Jabez,
+uncorking the bottle, first took a long pull himself, and then presented
+it to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>And now down came a tearing rain, driven by a blast from the Atlantic,
+howling among the gravestones, and screaming in the battlements of the
+tower and its bell-chamber windows. The night was so dark, and the rain
+fell so heavily, that they could see nothing for full half an hour. But
+then the clouds were rent asunder, and the moon glared white and ghastly
+over the churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth caught her husband by the arm and pointed. There was, however,
+no need for her to indicate that on which his eyes were fixed already.</p>
+
+<p>Both saw a lean hand come up out of the grave, and lay hold of one of
+the fine linen sheets and drag at it. They saw it drag the sheet by one
+corner, and then it went down underground, and the sheet followed, as
+though sucked down in a vortex; fold on fold it descended, till the
+entire sheet had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Her have taken it for her windin' sheet," whispered Elizabeth.
+"Whativer will her do wi' the rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have a drop o' gin; this be terrible tryin'," said Jabez in an
+undertone; and again the couple put their lips to the bottle, which came
+away considerably lighter after the draughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" gasped Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>Again the lean hand with long fingers appeared above the soil, and this
+was seen groping about the grass till it laid hold of the teapot. Then
+it groped again, and gathered up the spoons, that flashed in the
+moonbeams. Next, up came the second hand, and a long arm that stretched
+along the grave till it reached the other sheets. At once, on being
+raised, these sheets were caught by the wind, and flapped and fluttered
+like half-hoisted sails. The hands retained them for a while till they
+bellied with the wind, and then let them go, and they were swept away
+by the blast across the churchyard, over the wall, and lodged in the
+carpenter's yard that adjoined, among his timber.</p>
+
+<p>"She have sent 'em to the Hexts," whispered Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>Next the hands began to trifle with the teapot, and to shake out some of
+the coins.</p>
+
+<p>In a minute some silver pieces were flung with so true an aim that they
+fell clinking down on the floor of the porch.</p>
+
+<p>How many coins, how much money was cast, the couple were in no mood to
+estimate.</p>
+
+<p>Then they saw the hands collect the pillow-cases, and proceed to roll up
+the teapot and silver spoons in them, and, that done, the white bundle
+was cast into the air, and caught by the wind and carried over the
+churchyard wall into the wheelwright's yard.</p>
+
+<p>At once a curtain of vapour rushed across the face of the moon, and
+again the graveyard was buried in darkness. Half an hour elapsed before
+the moon shone out again. Then the Hockins saw that nothing was stirring
+in the cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon us may go now," said Jabez.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us gather up what she chucked to us," advised Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>So the couple felt about the floor, and collected a number of coins.
+What they were they could not tell till they reached their home, and had
+lighted a candle.</p>
+
+<p>"How much be it?" asked Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Three pound five and fourpence, exact," answered Jabez.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_WHITE_FLAG" id="THE_WHITE_FLAG"></a>THE WHITE FLAG</h2>
+
+
+<p>A percentage of the South African Boers&mdash;how large or how small that
+percentage is has not been determined&mdash;is possessed of a rudimentary
+conscience, much as the oyster has incipient eyes, and the snake
+initiatory articulations for feet, which in the course of long ages may,
+under suitable conditions, develop into an active faculty.</p>
+
+<p>If Jacob Van Heeren possessed any conscience at all it was the merest
+protoplasm of one.</p>
+
+<p>He occupied Heerendorp, a ramshackle farmhouse under a kopje, and had
+cattle and horses, also a wife and grown-up sons and daughters.</p>
+
+<p>When the war broke out Jacob hoisted the white flag at the gable, and he
+and his sons indulged their sporting instincts by shooting down such
+officers and men of the British army as went to the farm, unsuspecting
+treachery.</p>
+
+<p>Heerendorp by this means obtained an evil notoriety, and it was ordered
+to be burnt, and the women of Jacob's family to be transferred to a
+concentration camp where they would be mollycoddled at the expense of
+the English taxpayer. Thus Jacob and his sons were delivered from all
+anxiety as to their womankind, and were given a free field in which to
+exercise their mischievous ingenuity. As to their cattle and horses that
+had been commandeered, they held receipts which would entitle them to
+claim full value for the beasts at the termination of hostilities.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob and his sons might have joined one of the companies under a Boer
+general, but they preferred independent action, and their peculiar
+tactics, which proved eminently successful.</p>
+
+<p>That achievement in which Jacob exhibited most slimness, and of which he
+was pre-eminently proud, was as follows: feigning himself to be wounded,
+he rolled on the ground, waving a white kerchief, and crying out for
+water. A young English lieutenant at once filled a cup and ran to his
+assistance, when Jacob shot him through the heart.</p>
+
+<p>When the war was over Van Heeren got his farm rebuilt and restocked at
+the expense of the British taxpayer, and received his wife and daughters
+from the concentration camp, plump as partridges.</p>
+
+<p>So soon as the new Heerendorp was ready for occupation, Jacob took a
+large knife and cut seventeen notches in the doorpost.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that for, Jacob?" asked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"They are reminders of the Britishers I have shot."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said she, "if I hadn't killed more Rooineks than that, I'd be
+ashamed of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shot more in open fight. I didn't count them; I only reckon such
+as I've been slim enough to befool with the white flag," said the Boer.</p>
+
+<p>Now the lieutenant whom Jacob Van Heeren had killed when bringing him a
+cup of cold water, was Aneurin Jones, and he was the only son of his
+mother, and she a widow in North Wales. On Aneurin her heart had been
+set, in him was all her pride. Beyond him she had no ambition. About him
+every fibre of her heart was entwined. Life had to her no charms apart
+from him. When the news of his death reached her, unaccompanied by
+particulars, she was smitten with a sorrow that almost reached despair.
+The joy was gone out of her life, the light from her sky. The prospect
+was a blank before her. She sank into profound despondency, and would
+have welcomed death as an end to an aimless, a hopeless life.</p>
+
+<p>But when peace was concluded, and some comrades of Aneurin returned
+home, the story of how he had met his death was divulged to her.</p>
+
+<p>Then the passionate Welsh mother's heart became as a live coal within
+her breast. An impotent rage against his murderer consumed her. She did
+not know the name of the man who had killed him, she but ill understood
+where her son had fallen. Had she known, had she been able, she would
+have gone out to South Africa, and have gloried in being able to stab to
+the heart the man who had so treacherously murdered her Aneurin. But how
+was he to be identified?</p>
+
+<p>The fact that she was powerless to avenge his death was a torture to
+her. She could not sleep, she could not eat, she writhed, she moaned,
+she bit her fingers, she chafed at her incapacity to execute justice on
+the murderer. A feverish flame was lit in her hollow cheeks. Her lips
+became parched, her tongue dry, her dark eyes glittered as if sparks of
+unquenchable fire had been kindled in them.</p>
+
+<p>She sat with clenched hands and set teeth before her dead grate, and the
+purple veins swelled and throbbed in her temples.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! if only she knew the name of the man who had shot her Aneurin!</p>
+
+<p>Oh! if only she could find out a way to recompense him for the wrong he
+had done!</p>
+
+<p>These were her only thoughts. And the sole passage in her Bible she
+could read, and which she read over and over again, was the story of the
+Importunate Widow who cried to the judge, "Avenge me of mine adversary!"
+and who was heard for her persistent asking.</p>
+
+<p>Thus passed a fortnight. She was visibly wasting in flesh, but the fire
+within her burned only the fiercer as her bodily strength failed.</p>
+
+<p>Then, all at once, an idea shot like a meteor through her brain. She
+remembered to have heard of the Cursing Well of St. Elian, near Colwyn.
+She recalled the fact that the last "Priest of the Well," an old man who
+had lived hard by, and who had initiated postulants into the mysteries
+of the well, had been brought before the magistrates for obtaining money
+under false pretences, and had been sent to gaol at Chester; and that
+the parson of Llanelian had taken a crowbar and had ripped up the wall
+that enclosed the spring, and had done what lay in his power to destroy
+it and blot out the remembrance of the powers of the well, or to ruin
+its efficacy.</p>
+
+<p>But the spring still flowed. Had it lost its virtues? Could a parson,
+could magistrates bring to naught what had been for centuries?</p>
+
+<p>She remembered, further, that the granddaughter of the "Priest of the
+Well" was then an inmate of the workhouse at Denbigh. Was it not
+possible that she should know the ritual of St. Elian's spring?&mdash;should
+be able to assist her in the desire of her heart?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Winifred Jones resolved on trying. She went to the workhouse and
+sought out the woman, an old and infirm creature, and had a conference
+with her. She found the woman, a poor, decrepit creature, very shy of
+speaking about the well, very unwilling to be drawn into a confession of
+the extent of her knowledge, very much afraid of the magistrates and the
+master of the workhouse punishing her if she had anything to do with the
+well; but the intensity of Mrs. Jones, her vehemence in prosecuting her
+inquiries, and, above all, the gift of half a sovereign pressed into her
+palm, with the promise of another if she assisted Mrs. Winifred in the
+prosecution of her purpose, finally overcame her scruples, and she told
+all that she knew.</p>
+
+<p>"You must visit St. Elian's, madam," said she, "when the moon is at the
+wane. You must write the name of him whose death you desire on a pebble,
+and drop it into the water, and recite the sixty-ninth Psalm."</p>
+
+<p>"But," objected the widow, "I do not know his name, and I have no means
+of discovering it. I want to kill the man who murdered my son."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman considered, and then said: "In this case it is different.
+There is a way under these circumstances. Murdered, was your son?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he was treacherously shot."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will have to call on your son by name, as you let fall the
+pebble, and say: 'Let him be wiped out of the book of the living. Avenge
+me of mine adversary, O my God.' And you must go on dropping in pebbles,
+reciting the same prayer, till you see the water of the spring boil up
+black as ink. Then you will know that your prayer has been heard, and
+that the curse has wrought."</p>
+
+<p>Winifred Jones departed in some elation.</p>
+
+<p>She waited till the moon changed, and then she went to the spring. It
+was near a hedge; there were trees by it. Apparently it had been
+unsought for many years. But it still flowed. About it lay scattered a
+few stones that had once formed the bounds.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about her. No one was by. The sun was declining, and would
+soon set. She bent over the water&mdash;it was perfectly clear. She had
+collected a lapful of rounded stones.</p>
+
+<p>Then she cried out: "Aneurin! come to my aid against your murderer. Let
+him be blotted out of the book of the living. Avenge me on my adversary,
+O my God!" and she dropped a pebble into the water.</p>
+
+<p>Then rose a bubble. That was all.</p>
+
+<p>She paused but for a moment, then again she cried: "Aneurin! come to my
+aid against your murderer. Let him be blotted out of the book of the
+living. Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!"</p>
+
+<p>Once more a pebble was let fall. It splashed into the spring, but there
+was no change save that ripples were sent against the side.</p>
+
+<p>A third&mdash;then a fourth&mdash;she went on; the sun sent a shaft of yellow
+glory through the trees over the spring.</p>
+
+<p>Then someone passed along the road hard by, and Mrs. Winifred Jones
+held her breath, and desisted till the footfall had died away.</p>
+
+<p>But then she continued, stone after stone was dropped, and the ritual
+was followed, till the seventeenth had disappeared in the well, when up
+rose a column of black fluid boiling as it were from below, the colour
+of ink; and the widow pressed her hands together, and drew a sigh of
+relief; her prayer had been heard, and her curse had taken effect.</p>
+
+<p>She cast away the rest of the pebbles, let down her skirt, and went away
+rejoicing.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It so fell out that on this very evening Jacob Van Heeren had gone to
+bed early, as he had risen before daybreak, and had been riding all day.
+His family were in the outer room, when they were startled by a hoarse
+cry from the bedroom. He was a short-tempered, imperious man, accustomed
+to yell at his wife and children when he needed them; but this cry was
+of an unusual character, it had in it the ring of alarm. His wife went
+to him to inquire what was the matter. She found the old Boer sitting up
+in bed with one leg extended, his face like dirty stained leather, his
+eyes starting out of his head, and his mouth opening and shutting,
+lifting and depressing his shaggy, grey beard, as though he were trying
+to speak, but could not utter words.</p>
+
+<p>"Pete!" she called to her eldest son, "come here, and see what ails your
+father."</p>
+
+<p>Pete and others entered, and stood about the bed, staring stupidly at
+the old man, unable to comprehend what had come over him.</p>
+
+<p>"Fetch him some brandy, Pete," said the mother; "he looks as if he had a
+fit."</p>
+
+<p>When some spirits had been poured down his throat the farmer was
+revived, and said huskily: "Take it away! Quick, take it off!"</p>
+
+<p>"Take what away?"</p>
+
+<p>"The white flag."</p>
+
+<p>"There is none here."</p>
+
+<p>"It is there&mdash;there, wrapped about my foot."</p>
+
+<p>The wife looked at the outstretched leg, and saw nothing. Jacob became
+angry, he swore at her, and yelled: "Take it off; it is chilling me to
+the bone."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing there."</p>
+
+<p>"But I say it is. I saw him come in&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Saw whom, father?" asked one of the sons.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw that Rooinek lieutenant I shot when he was bringing me drink,
+thinking I was wounded. He came in through the door&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That is not possible&mdash;he must have passed us."</p>
+
+<p>"I say he did come. I saw him, and he held the white rag, and he came
+upon me and gave me a twist with the flag about my foot, and there it
+is&mdash;it numbs me. I cannot move it. Quick, quick, take it away."</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat there is nothing there," said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Pull off his stocking," said Pete Van Heeren; "he has got a chill in
+his foot, and fancies this nonsense. He has been dreaming."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not a dream," roared Jacob; "I saw him as clearly as I see you,
+and he wrapped my foot up in that accursed flag."</p>
+
+<p>"Accursed flag!" exclaimed Samuel, the second son. "That's a fine way to
+speak of it, father, when it served you so well."</p>
+
+<p>"Take it off, you dogs!" yelled the old man, "and don't stand staring
+and barking round me."</p>
+
+<p>The stocking was removed from his leg, and then it was seen that his
+foot&mdash;the left foot&mdash;had turned a livid white.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and heat a brick," said the housewife to one of her daughters; "it
+is just the circulation has stopped."</p>
+
+<p>But no artificial warmth served to restore the flow of blood, and the
+natural heat.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob passed a sleepless night.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning he rose, but limped; all feeling had gone out of the foot.
+His wife vainly urged him to keep to his bed. He was obstinate, and
+would get up; but he could not walk without the help of a stick. When
+clothed, he hobbled into the kitchen and put the numbed foot to the
+fire, and the stocking sole began to smoke, it was singed and went to
+pieces, but his foot was insensible to the heat. Then he went forth,
+aided by the stick, to his farmyard, hoping that movement would restore
+feeling and warmth; but this also was in vain. In the evening he seated
+himself on a bench outside the door, whilst his family ate supper. He
+ordered them to bring food to him. He felt easier in the open air than
+within doors.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst his wife and children were about the table at their meal, they
+heard a scream without, more like that of a wounded horse than a man,
+and all rushed forth, to find Jacob in a paroxysm of terror only less
+severe than that of the preceding night.</p>
+
+<p>"He came on me again," he gasped; "the same man, I do not know from
+whence&mdash;he seemed to spring out of the distance. I saw him first like
+smoke, but with a white flicker in it; and then he got nearer and became
+more distinct, and I knew it was he; and he had another of those white
+napkins in his hand. I could not call for help&mdash;I tried, I could utter
+no sound, till he wrapped it&mdash;that white rag&mdash;round my calf, and then,
+with the cold and pain, I cried out, and he vanished."</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Pete, "you fell asleep and dreamt this."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not. I saw him, and I felt what he did. Give me your hand. I
+cannot rise. I must go within. Good Lord, when will this come to an
+end?"</p>
+
+<p>When lifted from his seat it was seen that his left leg dragged. He had
+to lean heavily on his son on one side and his wife on the other, and he
+allowed himself, without remonstrance, to be put to bed.</p>
+
+<p>It was then seen that the dead whiteness, as of a corpse, had spread
+from the foot up the calf.</p>
+
+<p>"He is going to have a paralytic stroke, that is it," said Pete. "You,
+Samuel, must ride for a doctor to-morrow morning, not that he can do
+much good, if what I think be the case."</p>
+
+<p>On the second day the old man persisted in his determination to rise. He
+was deaf to all remonstrance, he would get up and go about, as far as he
+was able. But his ability was small. In the evening, as the sun went
+down, he was sitting crouched over the fire. The family had finished
+supper, and all had left the room except his wife, who was removing the
+dishes, when she heard a gasping and struggling by the fire, and,
+turning her head, saw her husband writhing on his stool, clinging to it
+with his hands, with his left leg out, his mouth foaming, and he was
+snorting with terror or pain.</p>
+
+<p>She ran to him at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacob, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is at me again! Beat him off with the broom!" he screamed. "Keep him
+away. He is wrapping the white flag round my knee."</p>
+
+<p>Pete and the others ran in, and raised their father, who was falling out
+of his seat, and conveyed him to bed.</p>
+
+<p>It was now seen that his knee had become hard and stiff, his calf was as
+if frozen; the whiteness had extended upwards to the knee.</p>
+
+<p>Next day a surgeon arrived. He examined the old man, and expressed his
+conviction that he had a stroke. But it was a paralytic attack of an
+unusual character, as it had in no way affected his speech or his left
+arm and hand. He recommended hot fomentations.</p>
+
+<p>Still the farmer would not be confined to bed; he insisted on being
+dressed and assisted into the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>One stick was not now sufficient for him, and Samuel contrived for him
+crutches. With these he could drag himself about, and on the fourth
+evening he laboriously worked his way to a cowstall to look at one of
+his beasts that was ill.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst there he had a fourth attack. Pete, who was without, heard him
+yell and beat at the door with one of his crutches. He entered, and
+found his father lying on the floor, quivering with terror, and
+spluttering unintelligible words. He lifted him, and drew him without,
+then shouted to Samuel, who came up, and together they carried him to
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>Only when there, and when he had drunk some brandy, was he able to give
+an account of what had taken place. He had been looking at the cow, and
+feeling it, when down out of the hayloft had come leaping the form of
+the Rooinek lieutenant, which had sprung in between him and the cow,
+and, stooping, had wrapped a white rag round his thigh, above the knee.
+And now the whole of his leg was dead and livid.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing for it, father, but to have your leg amputated," said
+Pete. "The doctor told me as much. He said that mortification would set
+in if there was no return of circulation."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have it off! What good shall I be with only one leg?" exclaimed
+the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"But father, it will be the sole means of saving your life."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have my leg off!" again repeated Jacob.</p>
+
+<p>Pete said in a low tone to his mother: "Have you seen any dark spots on
+his leg? The doctor said we must look for them, and, when they come,
+send for him at once."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she replied, "I have not noticed any, so far."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we will wait till they appear."</p>
+
+<p>On the fifth day the farmer was constrained to keep his bed.</p>
+
+<p>He had now become a prey to abject terror. So sure as the hour of
+sunset came, did a new visitation occur. He listened for the clock to
+sound each hour of the day, and as the afternoon drew on he dreaded with
+unspeakable horror the advent of the moment when again the apparition
+would be seen, and a fresh chill be inflicted. He insisted that his wife
+or Pete should remain in the room with him. They took it in turns to sit
+by his bedside.</p>
+
+<p>Through the little window the fire of the setting sun smote in and fell
+across the suffering man.</p>
+
+<p>It was his wife's turn to be in attendance.</p>
+
+<p>All at once a gurgling sound broke from his throat. His eyes started
+from his face, his hair bristled, and with his hands he worked himself
+into a sitting posture, and he heaved himself on to his pillow, and
+would have broken his way through the backboard of his bed, could he
+have done so.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Jacob?" asked his wife, throwing down the garment which she
+was mending, and coming to his assistance. "Lie down again. There is
+nothing here."</p>
+
+<p>He could not speak. His teeth were chattering, and his beard shaking,
+foam-bubbles formed on his lips, and great sweatdrops on his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"Pete! Samuel!" she called, "come to your father."</p>
+
+<p>The young men ran in, and they forcibly laid the old Boer in bed,
+prostrate.</p>
+
+<p>And now it was found that the right foot had turned dead, like the left.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On the evening of the seventeenth day after the visit to the well of
+Llanelian, Mrs. Winifred Jones was sitting on the side of her bed in the
+twilight. She had lighted no candle. She was musing, always on the same
+engrossing topic, the wrong that had been done to her and her son, and
+thirsting with a feverish thirst for vengeance on the wrongdoer.</p>
+
+<p>Her confidence in the expedient to which she had resorted was beginning
+to fail. What was this recourse to the well but a falling in with an old
+superstition that had died out with the advance of knowledge, and under
+the influence of a wholesome feeling? Was any trust to be placed in that
+woman at the workhouse? Was she deceiving her for the sake of the
+half-sovereign? And yet&mdash;she had seen a token that her prayer would
+prove efficacious. There had risen through the crystal water a column of
+black fluid.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be that a widow's prayer should meet with no response? Was
+wrong to prevail in the world? Were the weak and oppressed to have no
+means of procuring the execution of justice on the evildoers? Was not
+God righteous in all His ways? Would it be righteous in Him to suffer
+the murderer of her son to thrive? If God be merciful, He is also just.
+If His ear is open to the prayer for help, He must as well listen to the
+cry for vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>Since that evening at the spring she had been unable to pray as usual,
+to pray for herself&mdash;her only cry had been: "Avenge me on my adversary!"
+If she tried to frame the words of the Lord's Prayer, she could not do
+so. They escaped her; her thoughts travelled to the South African veldt.
+Her soul could not rise to God in the ecstasy of love and devotion; it
+was choked with hate&mdash;an overwhelming hate.</p>
+
+<p>She was in her black weeds; the hands, thin and white, were on her lap,
+nervously clasping and unclasping the fingers. Had anyone been there, in
+the grey twilight of a summer night, he would have been saddened to see
+how hard and lined the face had become, how all softness had passed from
+the lips, how sunken were the eyes, in which was only a glitter of
+wrath.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she saw standing before her, indistinct indeed, but
+unmistakable, the form of her lost son, her Aneurin, and he held a white
+napkin in his right hand, and this napkin emitted a phosphorescent
+glow.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to cry out; to utter the beloved name; she tried to spring to
+her feet and throw herself into his arms! But she was unable to stir
+hand, or foot, or tongue. She was as one paralysed, but her heart
+bounded within her bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," said the apparition, in a voice that seemed to come from a
+vast distance, yet was articulate and audible&mdash;"Mother, you called me
+back from the world of spirits, and sent me to discharge a task. I have
+done it. I have touched him on the foot and calf and knee and thigh, on
+hand and elbow and shoulder, on one side and on the other, on his head,
+and lastly on his heart, with the white flag&mdash;and now he is dead. I did
+it in all sixteen times, and with the sixteenth he died. I chilled him
+piecemeal with the white flag; the sixteenth was laid on his heart, and
+that stopped beating."</p>
+
+<p>Then she lifted her hands slightly, and her stiffened tongue relaxed so
+far that she was able to murmur: "God be thanked!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," continued the apparition, "there is a seventeenth remaining."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to clasp her hands on her lap, but the fingers were no longer
+under her control; they had fallen to the side of the chair-bed, and
+hung there lifeless. Her eyes stared wildly at the spectre of her son,
+but without love in them; love had faded out of her heart, and given
+place to hate of his murderer.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," proceeded the vision, "you summoned me, and even in the world
+of spirits the soul of a child must respond to the cry of a mother, and
+I have been permitted to come back and to do your will. And now I am
+suffered to reveal something to you: to show you what my life would have
+been had it not been cut short by the shot of the Boer."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped towards her, and put forth a vaporous hand and touched her
+eyes. She felt as though a feather had been passed over them. Then he
+raised the luminous sheet and shook it. Instantly all about her was
+changed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Winifred Jones was not in her little Welsh cottage; nor was it
+night. She was no longer alone. She stood in a court, in full daylight.
+She saw before her the judge on his seat, the barristers in wig and
+gown, the press reporters with their notebooks and pens, a dense crowd
+thronging every portion of the court. And she knew instinctively, before
+a word was spoken, without an intimation from the spirit of her son,
+that she was standing in the Divorce Court. And she saw there as
+co-respondent her son, older, changed in face, but more altered in
+expression. And she heard a tale unfolded&mdash;full of dishonour, and
+rousing disgust.</p>
+
+<p>She was now able to raise her hands&mdash;she covered her ears; her face,
+crimson with shame, sank on her bosom. She could endure the sight, the
+words spoken, the revelations made, no longer, and she cried out:
+"Aneurin! Aneurin! for the Lord's sake, no more of this! Oh, the day,
+the day, that I have seen you standing here."</p>
+
+<p>At once all passed; and she was again in her bedroom in Honeysuckle
+Cottage, North Wales, seated with folded hands on her lap, and looking
+before her wonderingly at the ghostly form of her son.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that enough, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her hands deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>Again he shook the glimmering white sheet, and it was as though drops of
+pearly fire fell out of it.</p>
+
+<p>And again&mdash;all was changed.</p>
+
+<p>She found herself at Monte Carlo; she knew it instinctively. She was in
+the great saloon, where were the gaming-tables. The electric lights
+glittered, and the decorations were superb. But all her attention was
+engrossed on her son, whom she saw at one of the tables, staking his
+last napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed her own Aneurin, but with a face on which vice and its
+consequent degradation were written indelibly.</p>
+
+<p>He lost, and turned away, and left the hall and its lights. His mother
+followed him. He went forth into the gardens. The full moon was shining,
+and the gravel of the terraces was white as snow. The air was fragrant
+with the scent of oranges and myrtles. The palms cast black shadows on
+the soil. The sea lay still as if asleep, with a gleam over it from the
+moon.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Winifred Jones tracked her son, as he stole in and out among the
+shrubs, amid the trees, with a sickening fear at her heart. Then she saw
+him pause by some oleanders, and draw a revolver from his pocket and
+place it at his ear. She uttered a cry of agony and horror, and tried to
+spring forward to dash the weapon from his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then all changed.</p>
+
+<p>She was again in her little room in the dusk, and the shadowy form of
+Aneurin was before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," said the spirit, "I have been permitted to come to you and to
+show to you what would have been my career if I had not died whilst
+young, and fresh, and innocent. You have to thank Jacob Van Heeren that
+he saved me from such a life of infamy, and such an evil death by my own
+hand. You should thank, and not curse him." She was breathing heavily.
+Her heart beat so fast that her brain span; she fell on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," the apparition continued, "there were seventeen pebbles cast
+into the well."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Aneurin," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"And there is a seventeenth white flag. With the sixteenth Jacob Van
+Heeren died. The seventeenth is reserved for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Aneurin! I am not fit to die."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, it must be, I must lay the white flag over your head."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my son, my son!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is so ordained," he proceeded; "but there are Love and Mercy on
+high, and you shall not be veiled with it till you have made your peace.
+You have sinned. You have thrust yourself into the council-chamber of
+God. You have claimed to exercise vengeance yourself, and not left it to
+Him to whom vengeance in right belongs."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it now," breathed the widow.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you must atone for the curses by prayers. You have brought
+Jacob Van Heeren to his death by your imprecations, and now, fold your
+hands and pray to God for him&mdash;for him, your son's murderer. Little have
+you considered that his acts were due to ignorance, resentment for what
+he fancied were wrongs, and to having been reared in a mutilated and
+debased form of Christianity. Pray for him, that God may pardon his many
+and great transgressions, his falsehood, his treachery, his
+self-righteousness. You who have been so greatly wronged are the right
+person to forgive and to pray for his soul. In no other way can you so
+fully show that your heart is turned from wrath to love. Forgive us our
+trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us."</p>
+
+<p>She breathed a "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Then she clasped her hands. She was already on her knees, and she prayed
+first the great Exemplar's prayer, and then particularly for the man who
+had wrecked her life, with all its hopes.</p>
+
+<p>And as she prayed the lines in her face softened, and the lips lost
+their hardness, and the fierce light passed utterly away from her eyes,
+in which the lamp of Charity was once more lighted, and the tears formed
+and rolled down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>And still she prayed on, bathed in the pearly light from the summer sky
+at night. Without, in the firmament, twinkled a star; and a night-bird
+began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, mother, pray for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Then she crossed her hands over her bosom, and bowed her head, full of
+self-reproach and shame; and as she prayed, the spirit of her son raised
+the White Flag above her and let it sail down softly, lightly over the
+loved head, and as it descended there fell from it as it were a dew of
+pale fire, and it rested on her head, and fell about her, and she sank
+forward with her face upon the floor. R.I.P.</p>
+
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+eBook #36638 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36638)
diff --git a/old/36638-8.txt b/old/36638-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book of Ghosts, by Sabine Baring-Gould
+
+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: A Book of Ghosts
+
+Author: Sabine Baring-Gould
+
+Illustrator: David Murray Smith
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2011 [EBook #36638]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF GHOSTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       A BOOK OF GHOSTS
+
+                   BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
+
+
+    WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY D. MURRAY SMITH
+
+    SECOND EDITION
+
+    METHUEN & CO.
+    36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+    LONDON
+
+    _Colonial Library_
+
+    _First Published      October 1904_
+    _Second Edition       December 1904_
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "WHO ARE YOU?"]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Some of the stories in this volume have already appeared in print. "The
+Red-haired Girl" in _The Windsor Magazine_; "Colonel Halifax's Ghost
+Story" in _The Illustrated English Magazine_; "Gl�mr" I told in my
+_Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas_, published in 1863, and long ago out of
+print. "The Bold Venture" appeared in _The Graphic_; "The 9.30 Up-train"
+as long ago as 1853 in _Once a Week_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+JEAN BOUCHON
+
+POMPS AND VANITIES
+
+MCALISTER
+
+THE LEADEN RING
+
+THE MOTHER OF PANSIES
+
+THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
+
+A PROFESSIONAL SECRET
+
+H. P.
+
+GL�MR
+
+COLONEL HALIFAX'S GHOST STORY
+
+THE MEREWIGS
+
+THE "BOLD VENTURE"
+
+MUSTAPHA
+
+LITTLE JOE GANDER
+
+A DEAD FINGER
+
+BLACK RAM
+
+A HAPPY RELEASE
+
+THE 9.30 UP-TRAIN
+
+ON THE LEADS
+
+AUNT JOANNA
+
+THE WHITE FLAG
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Then the bride put back her veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister Letice"
+
+"Her hat was blown off, and next instant a detonation rang through her
+head as though a gun had been fired into her ear"
+
+"If he went out for a walk they trotted forth with him, some before,
+some following"
+
+"You let that Mustapha come in, and try and stick his knife into me"
+
+"'Mammy!' said he; 'Mammy! my violin cost me three shillings and
+sixpence, and I can't make it play no-ways'"
+
+"I believe that they are talking goody-goody"
+
+"She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table"
+
+
+
+
+A BOOK OF GHOSTS
+
+
+
+
+JEAN BOUCHON
+
+
+I was in Orl�ans a good many years ago. At the time it was my purpose to
+write a life of Joan of Arc, and I considered it advisable to visit the
+scenes of her exploits, so as to be able to give to my narrative some
+local colour.
+
+But I did not find Orl�ans answer to my expectations. It is a dull town,
+very modern in appearance, but with that measly and decrepit look which
+is so general in French towns. There was a Place Jeanne d'Arc, with an
+equestrian statue of her in the midst, flourishing a banner. There was
+the house that the Maid had occupied after the taking of the city, but,
+with the exception of the walls and rafters, it had undergone so much
+alteration and modernisation as to have lost its interest. A museum of
+memorials of la Pucelle had been formed, but possessed no genuine
+relics, only arms and tapestries of a later date.
+
+The city walls she had besieged, the gate through which she had burst,
+had been levelled, and their places taken by boulevards. The very
+cathedral in which she had knelt to return thanks for her victory was
+not the same. That had been blown up by the Huguenots, and the cathedral
+that now stands was erected on its ruins in 1601.
+
+There was an ormolu figure of Jeanne on the clock--never wound up--upon
+the mantelshelf in my room at the hotel, and there were chocolate
+figures of her in the confectioners' shop-windows for children to suck.
+When I sat down at 7 p.m. to table d'h�te, at my inn, I was out of
+heart. The result of my exploration of sites had been unsatisfactory;
+but I trusted on the morrow to be able to find material to serve my
+purpose in the municipal archives of the town library.
+
+My dinner ended, I sauntered to a caf�.
+
+That I selected opened on to the Place, but there was a back entrance
+near to my hotel, leading through a long, stone-paved passage at the
+back of the houses in the street, and by ascending three or four stone
+steps one entered the long, well-lighted caf�. I came into it from the
+back by this means, and not from the front.
+
+I took my place and called for a caf�-cognac. Then I picked up a French
+paper and proceeded to read it--all but the feuilleton. In my experience
+I have never yet come across anyone who reads the feuilletons in a
+French paper; and my impression is that these snippets of novel are
+printed solely for the purpose of filling up space and disguising the
+lack of news at the disposal of the editors. The French papers borrow
+their information relative to foreign affairs largely from the English
+journals, so that they are a day behind ours in the foreign news that
+they publish.
+
+Whilst I was engaged in reading, something caused me to look up, and I
+noticed standing by the white marble-topped table, on which was my
+coffee, a waiter, with a pale face and black whiskers, in an expectant
+attitude.
+
+I was a little nettled at his precipitancy in applying for payment, but
+I put it down to my being a total stranger there; and without a word I
+set down half a franc and a ten centimes coin, the latter as his
+_pourboire_. Then I proceeded with my reading.
+
+I think a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when I rose to depart, and
+then, to my surprise, I noticed the half-franc still on the table, but
+the sous piece was gone.
+
+I beckoned to a waiter, and said: "One of you came to me a little while
+ago demanding payment. I think he was somewhat hasty in pressing for it;
+however, I set the money down, and the fellow has taken the tip, and has
+neglected the charge for the coffee."
+
+"_Sapristi!_" exclaimed the _gar�on_; "Jean Bouchon has been at his
+tricks again."
+
+I said nothing further; asked no questions. The matter did not concern
+me, or indeed interest me in the smallest degree; and I left.
+
+Next day I worked hard in the town library. I cannot say that I lighted
+on any unpublished documents that might serve my purpose.
+
+I had to go through the controversial literature relative to whether
+Jeanne d'Arc was burnt or not, for it has been maintained that a person
+of the same name, and also of Arques, died a natural death some time
+later, and who postured as the original warrior-maid. I read a good many
+monographs on the Pucelle, of various values; some real contributions to
+history, others mere second-hand cookings-up of well-known and
+often-used material. The sauce in these latter was all that was new.
+
+In the evening, after dinner, I went back to the same caf� and called
+for black coffee with a nip of brandy. I drank it leisurely, and then
+retreated to the desk where I could write some letters.
+
+I had finished one, and was folding it, when I saw the same pale-visaged
+waiter standing by with his hand extended for payment. I put my hand
+into my pocket, pulled out a fifty centimes piece and a coin of two
+sous, and placed both beside me, near the man, and proceeded to put my
+letter in an envelope, which I then directed.
+
+Next I wrote a second letter, and that concluded, I rose to go to one of
+the tables and to call for stamps, when I noticed that again the silver
+coin had been left untouched, but the copper piece had been taken away.
+
+I tapped for a waiter.
+
+"_Tiens_," said I, "that fellow of yours has been bungling again. He has
+taken the tip and has left the half-franc."
+
+"Ah! Jean Bouchon once more!"
+
+"But who is Jean Bouchon?"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders, and, instead of answering my query,
+said: "I should recommend monsieur to refuse to pay Jean Bouchon
+again--that is, supposing monsieur intends revisiting this caf�."
+
+"I most assuredly will not pay such a noodle," I said; "and it passes my
+comprehension how you can keep such a fellow on your staff."
+
+I revisited the library next day, and then walked by the Loire, that
+rolls in winter such a full and turbid stream, and in summer, with a
+reduced flood, exposes gravel and sand-banks. I wandered around the
+town, and endeavoured vainly to picture it, enclosed by walls and drums
+of towers, when on April 29th, 1429, Jeanne threw herself into the town
+and forced the English to retire, discomfited and perplexed.
+
+In the evening I revisited the caf� and made my wants known as before.
+Then I looked at my notes, and began to arrange them.
+
+Whilst thus engaged I observed the waiter, named Jean Bouchon, standing
+near the table in an expectant attitude as before. I now looked him full
+in the face and observed his countenance. He had puffy white cheeks,
+small black eyes, thick dark mutton-chop whiskers, and a broken nose. He
+was decidedly an ugly man, but not a man with a repulsive expression of
+face.
+
+"No," said I, "I will give you nothing. I will not pay you. Send another
+_gar�on_ to me."
+
+As I looked at him to see how he took this refusal, he seemed to fall
+back out of my range, or, to be more exact, the lines of his form and
+features became confused. It was much as though I had been gazing on a
+reflection in still water; that something had ruffled the surface, and
+all was broken up and obliterated. I could see him no more. I was
+puzzled and a bit startled, and I rapped my coffee-cup with the spoon to
+call the attention of a waiter. One sprang to me immediately.
+
+"See!" said I, "Jean Bouchon has been here again; I told him that I
+would not pay him one sou, and he has vanished in a most perplexing
+manner. I do not see him in the room."
+
+"No, he is not in the room."
+
+"When he comes in again, send him to me. I want to have a word with
+him."
+
+The waiter looked confused, and replied: "I do not think that Jean will
+return."
+
+"How long has he been on your staff?"
+
+"Oh! he has not been on our staff for some years."
+
+"Then why does he come here and ask for payment for coffee and what else
+one may order?"
+
+"He never takes payment for anything that has been consumed. He takes
+only the tips."
+
+"But why do you permit him to do that?"
+
+"We cannot help ourselves."
+
+"He should not be allowed to enter the caf�."
+
+"No one can keep him out."
+
+"This is surpassing strange. He has no right to the tips. You should
+communicate with the police."
+
+The waiter shook his head. "They can do nothing. Jean Bouchon died in
+1869."
+
+"Died in 1869!" I repeated.
+
+"It is so. But he still comes here. He never pesters the old customers,
+the inhabitants of the town--only visitors, strangers."
+
+"Tell me all about him."
+
+"Monsieur must pardon me now. We have many in the place, and I have my
+duties."
+
+"In that case I will drop in here to-morrow morning when you are
+disengaged, and I will ask you to inform me about him. What is your
+name?"
+
+"At monsieur's pleasure--Alphonse."
+
+Next morning, in place of pursuing the traces of the Maid of Orl�ans, I
+went to the caf� to hunt up Jean Bouchon. I found Alphonse with a duster
+wiping down the tables. I invited him to a table and made him sit down
+opposite me. I will give his story in substance, only where advisable
+recording his exact words.
+
+Jean Bouchon had been a waiter at this particular caf�. Now in some of
+these establishments the attendants are wont to have a box, into which
+they drop all the tips that are received; and at the end of the week it
+is opened, and the sum found in it is divided _pro rata_ among the
+waiters, the head waiter receiving a larger portion than the others.
+This is not customary in all such places of refreshment, but it is in
+some, and it was so in this caf�. The average is pretty constant, except
+on special occasions, as when a f�te occurs; and the waiters know within
+a few francs what their perquisites will be.
+
+But in the caf� where served Jean Bouchon the sum did not reach the
+weekly total that might have been anticipated; and after this deficit
+had been noted for a couple of months the waiters were convinced that
+there was something wrong, somewhere or somehow. Either the common box
+was tampered with, or one of them did not put in his tips received. A
+watch was set, and it was discovered that Jean Bouchon was the
+defaulter. When he had received a gratuity, he went to the box, and
+pretended to put in the coin, but no sound followed, as would have been
+the case had one been dropped in.
+
+There ensued, of course, a great commotion among the waiters when this
+was discovered. Jean Bouchon endeavoured to brave it out, but the
+_patron_ was appealed to, the case stated, and he was dismissed. As he
+left by the back entrance, one of the younger _gar�ons_ put out his leg
+and tripped Bouchon up, so that he stumbled and fell headlong down the
+steps with a crash on the stone floor of the passage. He fell with such
+violence on his forehead that he was taken up insensible. His bones were
+fractured, there was concussion of the brain, and he died within a few
+hours without recovering consciousness.
+
+"We were all very sorry and greatly shocked," said Alphonse; "we did not
+like the man, he had dealt dishonourably by us, but we wished him no
+ill, and our resentment was at an end when he was dead. The waiter who
+had tripped him up was arrested, and was sent to prison for some months,
+but the accident was due to _une mauvaise plaisanterie_ and no malice
+was in it, so that the young fellow got off with a light sentence. He
+afterwards married a widow with a caf� at Vierzon, and is there, I
+believe, doing well.
+
+"Jean Bouchon was buried," continued Alphonse; "and we waiters attended
+the funeral and held white kerchiefs to our eyes. Our head waiter even
+put a lemon into his, that by squeezing it he might draw tears from his
+eyes. We all subscribed for the interment, that it should be
+dignified--majestic as becomes a waiter."
+
+"And do you mean to tell me that Jean Bouchon has haunted this caf� ever
+since?"
+
+"Ever since 1869," replied Alphonse.
+
+"And there is no way of getting rid of him?"
+
+"None at all, monsieur. One of the Canons of Bourges came in here one
+evening. We did suppose that Jean Bouchon would not approach, molest an
+ecclesiastic, but he did. He took his _pourboire_ and left the rest,
+just as he treated monsieur. Ah! monsieur! but Jean Bouchon did well in
+1870 and 1871 when those pigs of Prussians were here in occupation. The
+officers came nightly to our caf�, and Jean Bouchon was greatly on the
+alert. He must have carried away half of the gratuities they offered. It
+was a sad loss to us."
+
+"This is a very extraordinary story," said I.
+
+"But it is true," replied Alphonse.
+
+Next day I left Orl�ans. I gave up the notion of writing the life of
+Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be
+gleaned on her history--in fact, she had been thrashed out.
+
+Years passed, and I had almost forgotten about Jean Bouchon, when, the
+other day, I was in Orl�ans once more, on my way south, and at once the
+whole story recurred to me.
+
+I went that evening to the same caf�. It had been smartened up since I
+was there before. There was more plate glass, more gilding; electric
+light had been introduced, there were more mirrors, and there were also
+ornaments that had not been in the caf� before.
+
+I called for caf�-cognac and looked at a journal, but turned my eyes on
+one side occasionally, on the look-out for Jean Bouchon. But he did not
+put in an appearance. I waited for a quarter of an hour in expectation,
+but saw no sign of him.
+
+Presently I summoned a waiter, and when he came up I inquired: "But
+where is Jean Bouchon?"
+
+"Monsieur asks after Jean Bouchon?" The man looked surprised.
+
+"Yes, I have seen him here previously. Where is he at present?"
+
+"Monsieur has seen Jean Bouchon? Monsieur perhaps knew him. He died in
+1869."
+
+"I know that he died in 1869, but I made his acquaintance in 1874. I saw
+him then thrice, and he accepted some small gratuities of me."
+
+"Monsieur tipped Jean Bouchon?"
+
+"Yes, and Jean Bouchon accepted my tips."
+
+"_Tiens_, and Jean Bouchon died five years before."
+
+"Yes, and what I want to know is how you have rid yourselves of Jean
+Bouchon, for that you have cleared the place of him is evident, or he
+would have been pestering me this evening." The man looked disconcerted
+and irresolute.
+
+"Hold," said I; "is Alphonse here?"
+
+"No, monsieur, Alphonse has left two or three years ago. And monsieur
+saw Jean Bouchon in 1874. I was not then here. I have been here only six
+years."
+
+"But you can in all probability inform me of the manner of getting quit
+of Jean."
+
+"Monsieur! I am very busy this evening, there are so many gentlemen come
+in."
+
+"I will give you five francs if you will tell me all--all--succinctly
+about Jean Bouchon."
+
+"Will monsieur be so good as to come here to-morrow during the morning?
+and then I place myself at the disposition of monsieur."
+
+"I shall be here at eleven o'clock."
+
+At the appointed time I was at the caf�. If there is an institution that
+looks ragged and dejected and dissipated, it is a caf� in the morning,
+when the chairs are turned upside-down, the waiters are in aprons and
+shirt-sleeves, and a smell of stale tobacco lurks about the air, mixed
+with various other unpleasant odours.
+
+The waiter I had spoken to on the previous evening was looking out for
+me. I made him seat himself at a table with me. No one else was in the
+saloon except another _gar�on_, who was dusting with a long
+feather-brush.
+
+"Monsieur," began the waiter, "I will tell you the whole truth. The
+story is curious, and perhaps everyone would not believe it, but it is
+well _document�e_. Jean Bouchon was at one time in service here. We had
+a box. When I say we, I do not mean myself included, for I was not here
+at the time."
+
+"I know about the common box. I know the story down to my visit to
+Orl�ans in 1874, when I saw the man."
+
+"Monsieur has perhaps been informed that he was buried in the
+cemetery?"
+
+"I do know that, at the cost of his fellow-waiters."
+
+"Well, monsieur, he was poor, and his fellow-waiters, though
+well-disposed, were not rich. So he did not have a grave _en
+perp�tuit�_. Accordingly, after many years, when the term of consignment
+was expired, and it might well be supposed that Jean Bouchon had
+mouldered away, his grave was cleared out to make room for a fresh
+occupant. Then a very remarkable discovery was made. It was found that
+his corroded coffin was crammed--literally stuffed--with five and ten
+centimes pieces, and with them were also some German coins, no doubt
+received from those pigs of Prussians during the occupation of Orl�ans.
+This discovery was much talked about. Our proprietor of the caf� and the
+head waiter went to the mayor and represented to him how matters
+stood--that all this money had been filched during a series of years
+since 1869 from the waiters. And our _patron_ represented to him that it
+should in all propriety and justice be restored to us. The mayor was a
+man of intelligence and heart, and he quite accepted this view of the
+matter, and ordered the surrender of the whole coffin-load of coins to
+us, the waiters of the caf�."
+
+"So you divided it amongst you."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur; we did not. It is true that the money might
+legitimately be regarded as belonging to us. But then those defrauded,
+or most of them, had left long ago, and there were among us some who had
+not been in service in the caf� more than a year or eighteen months. We
+could not trace the old waiters. Some were dead, some had married and
+left this part of the country. We were not a corporation. So we held a
+meeting to discuss what was to be done with the money. We feared,
+moreover, that unless the spirit of Jean Bouchon were satisfied, he
+might continue revisiting the caf� and go on sweeping away the tips. It
+was of paramount importance to please Jean Bouchon, to lay out the money
+in such a manner as would commend itself to his feelings. One suggested
+one thing, one another. One proposed that the sum should be expended on
+masses for the repose of Jean's soul. But the head waiter objected to
+that. He said that he thought he knew the mind of Jean Bouchon, and that
+this would not commend itself to it. He said, did our head waiter, that
+he knew Jean Bouchon from head to heels. And he proposed that all the
+coins should be melted up, and that out of them should be cast a statue
+of Jean Bouchon in bronze, to be set up here in the caf�, as there were
+not enough coins to make one large enough to be erected in a Place. If
+monsieur will step with me he will see the statue; it is a superb work
+of art."
+
+He led the way, and I followed.
+
+In the midst of the caf� stood a pedestal, and on this basis a bronze
+figure about four feet high. It represented a man reeling backward, with
+a banner in his left hand, and the right raised towards his brow, as
+though he had been struck there by a bullet. A sabre, apparently fallen
+from his grasp, lay at his feet. I studied the face, and it most
+assuredly was utterly unlike Jean Bouchon with his puffy cheeks,
+mutton-chop whiskers, and broken nose, as I recalled him.
+
+"But," said I, "the features do not--pardon me--at all resemble those of
+Jean Bouchon. This might be the young Augustus, or Napoleon I. The
+profile is quite Greek."
+
+"It may be so," replied the waiter. "But we had no photograph to go by.
+We had to allow the artist to exercise his genius, and, above all, we
+had to gratify the spirit of Jean Bouchon."
+
+"I see. But the attitude is inexact. Jean Bouchon fell down the steps
+headlong, and this represents a man staggering backwards."
+
+"It would have been inartistic to have shown him precipitated forwards;
+besides, the spirit of Jean might not have liked it."
+
+"Quite so. I understand. But the flag?"
+
+"That was an idea of the artist. Jean could not be made holding a
+coffee-cup. You will see the whole makes a superb subject. Art has its
+exigencies. Monsieur will see underneath is an inscription on the
+pedestal."
+
+I stooped, and with some astonishment read--
+
+              "JEAN BOUCHON
+        MORT SUR LE CHAMP DE GLOIRE
+                   1870
+    DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI."
+
+"Why!" objected I, "he died from falling a cropper in the back passage,
+not on the field of glory."
+
+"Monsieur! all Orl�ans is a field of glory. Under S. Aignan did we not
+repel Attila and his Huns in 451? Under Jeanne d'Arc did we not repulse
+the English--monsieur will excuse the allusion--in 1429. Did we not
+recapture Orl�ans from the Germans in November, 1870?"
+
+"That is all very true," I broke in. "But Jean Bouchon neither fought
+against Attila nor with la Pucelle, nor against the Prussians. Then
+'_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_' is rather strong, considering
+the facts."
+
+"How? Does not monsieur see that the sentiment is patriotic and
+magnificent?"
+
+"I admit that, but dispute the application."
+
+"Then why apply it? The sentiment is all right."
+
+"But by implication it refers to Jean Bouchon, who died, not for his
+country, but in a sordid coffee-house brawl. Then, again, the date is
+wrong. Jean Bouchon died in 1869, not in 1870."
+
+"That is only out by a year."
+
+"Yes, but with this mistake of a year, and with the quotation from
+Horace, and with the attitude given to the figure, anyone would suppose
+that Jean Bouchon had fallen in the retaking of Orl�ans from the
+Prussians."
+
+"Ah! monsieur, who looks on a monument and expects to find thereon the
+literal truth relative to the deceased?"
+
+"This is something of a sacrifice to truth," I demurred.
+
+"Sacrifice is superb!" said the waiter. "There is nothing more noble,
+more heroic than sacrifice."
+
+"But not the sacrifice of truth."
+
+"Sacrifice is always sacrifice."
+
+"Well," said I, unwilling further to dispute, "this is certainly a great
+creation out of nothing."
+
+"Not out of nothing; out of the coppers that Jean Bouchon had filched
+from us, and which choked up his coffin."
+
+"Jean Bouchon has been seen no more?"
+
+"No, monsieur. And yet--yes, once, when the statue was unveiled. Our
+_patron_ did that. The caf� was crowded. All our _habitu�s_ were there.
+The _patron_ made a magnificent oration; he drew a superb picture of the
+moral, intellectual, social, and political merits of Jean Bouchon. There
+was not a dry eye among the audience, and the speaker choked with
+emotion. Then, as we stood in a ring, not too near, we saw--I was there
+and I distinctly saw, so did the others--Jean Bouchon standing with his
+back to us, looking intently at the statue of himself. Monsieur, as he
+thus stood I could discern his black mutton-chop whiskers projecting
+upon each side of his head. Well, sir, not one word was spoken. A dead
+silence fell upon all. Our _patron_ ceased to speak, and wiped his eyes
+and blew his nose. A sort of holy awe possessed us all. Then, after the
+lapse of some minutes, Jean Bouchon turned himself about, and we all saw
+his puffy pale cheeks, his thick sensual lips, his broken nose, his
+little pig's eyes. He was very unlike his idealised portrait in the
+statue; but what matters that? It gratified the deceased, and it injured
+no one. Well, monsieur, Jean Bouchon stood facing us, and he turned his
+head from one side to another, and gave us all what I may term a greasy
+smile. Then he lifted up his hands as though invoking a blessing on us
+all, and vanished. Since then he has not been seen."
+
+
+
+
+POMPS AND VANITIES
+
+
+Colonel Mountjoy had an appointment in India that kept him there
+permanently. Consequently he was constrained to send his two daughters
+to England when they were quite children. His wife had died of cholera
+at Madras. The girls were Letice and Betty. There was a year's
+difference in their ages, but they were extraordinarily alike, so much
+so that they might have been supposed to be twins.
+
+Letice was given up to the charge of Miss Mountjoy, her father's sister,
+and Betty to that of Lady Lacy, her maternal aunt. Their father would
+have preferred that his daughters should have been together, but there
+were difficulties in the way; neither of the ladies was inclined to be
+burdened with both, and if both had been placed with one the other might
+have regarded and resented this as a slight.
+
+As the children grew up their likeness in feature became more close, but
+they diverged exceedingly in expression. A sullenness, an unhappy look,
+a towering fire of resentment characterised that of Letice, whereas the
+face of Betty was open and gay.
+
+This difference was due to the difference in their bringing up.
+
+Lady Lacy, who had a small house in North Devon, was a kindly,
+intellectual, and broad-minded old lady, of sweet disposition but a
+decided will. She saw a good deal of society, and did her best to train
+Betty to be an educated and liberal-minded woman of culture and
+graceful manners. She did not send her to school, but had her taught at
+home; and on the excuse that her eyes were weak by artificial light she
+made the girl read to her in the evenings, and always read books that
+were standard and calculated to increase her knowledge and to develop
+her understanding. Lady Lacy detested all shams, and under her influence
+Betty grew up to be thoroughly straightforward, healthy-minded, and
+true.
+
+On the other hand, Miss Mountjoy was, as Letice called her, a Killjoy.
+She had herself been reared in the midst of the Clapham sect; had become
+rigid in all her ideas, narrow in all her sympathies, and a bundle of
+prejudices.
+
+The present generation of young people know nothing of the system of
+repression that was exercised in that of their fathers and mothers. Now
+the tendency is wholly in the other direction, and too greatly so. It is
+possibly due to a revulsion of feeling against a training that is looked
+back upon with a shudder.
+
+To that narrow school there existed but two categories of men and women,
+the Christians and the Worldlings, and those who pertained to it
+arrogated to themselves the former title. The Judgment had already begun
+with the severance of the sheep from the goats, and the saints who
+judged the world had their Jerusalem at Clapham.
+
+In that school the works of the great masters of English literature,
+Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, were taboo; no work of imagination was
+tolerated save the Apocalypse, and that was degraded into a polemic by
+such scribblers as Elliot and Cumming.
+
+No entertainments, not even the oratorios of Handel, were tolerated;
+they savoured of the world. The nearest approach to excitement was found
+in a missionary meeting. The Chinese contract the feet of their
+daughters, but those English Claphamites cramped the minds of their
+children. The Venetians made use of an iron prison, with gradually
+contracting walls, that finally crushed the life out of the captive.
+But these elect Christians put their sons and daughters into a school
+that squeezed their energies and their intelligences to death.
+
+Dickens caricatured such people in Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Chadband; but he
+sketched them only in their external aspect, and left untouched their
+private action in distorting young minds, maiming their wills, damping
+down all youthful buoyancy.
+
+But the result did not answer the expectations of those who adopted this
+system with the young. Some daughters, indeed, of weaker wills were
+permanently stunted and shaped on the approved model, but nearly all the
+sons, and most of the daughters, on obtaining their freedom, broke away
+into utter frivolity and dissipation, or, if they retained any religious
+impressions, galloped through the Church of England, performing strange
+antics on the way, and plunged into the arms of Rome.
+
+Such was the system to which the high-spirited, strong-willed Letice was
+subjected, and from which was no escape. The consequence was that Letice
+tossed and bit at her chains, and that there ensued frequent outbreaks
+of resentment against her aunt.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Hannah! I want something to read."
+
+After some demur, and disdainful rejection of more serious works, she
+was allowed Milton.
+
+Then she said, "Oh! I do love _Comus_."
+
+"_Comus!_" gasped Miss Mountjoy.
+
+"And _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, they are not bad."
+
+"My child. These were the compositions of the immortal bard before his
+eyes were opened."
+
+"I thought, aunt, that he had dictated the _Paradise Lost and Regained_
+after he was blind."
+
+"I refer to the eyes of his soul," said the old lady sternly.
+
+"I want a story-book."
+
+"There is the _Dairyman's Daughter_."
+
+"I have read it, and hate it."
+
+"I fear, Leticia, that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of
+iniquity."
+
+Unhappily the sisters very rarely met one another. It was but
+occasionally that Lady Lacy and Betty came to town, and when they did,
+Miss Mountjoy put as many difficulties as she could in the way of their
+associating together.
+
+On one such visit to London, Lady Lacy called and asked if she might
+take Letice with herself to the theatre. Miss Mountjoy shivered with
+horror, reared herself, and expressed her opinion of stage-plays and
+those who went to see them in strong and uncomplimentary terms. As she
+had the custody of Letice, she would by no persuasion be induced to
+allow her to imperil her soul by going to such a wicked place. Lady Lacy
+was fain to withdraw in some dismay and much regret.
+
+Poor Letice, who had heard this offer made, had flashed into sudden
+brightness and a tremor of joy; when it was refused, she burst into a
+flood of tears and an ecstasy of rage. She ran up to her room, and took
+and tore to pieces a volume of _Clayton's Sermons_, scattered the leaves
+over the floor, and stamped upon them.
+
+"Letice," said Miss Mountjoy, when she saw the devastation, "you are a
+child of wrath."
+
+"Why mayn't I go where there is something pretty to see? Why may I not
+hear good music? Why must I be kept forever in the Doleful Dumps?"
+
+"Because all these things are of the world, worldly."
+
+"If God hates all that is fair and beautiful, why did He create the
+peacock, the humming-bird, and the bird of paradise, instead of filling
+the world with barn-door fowls?"
+
+"You have a carnal mind. You will never go to heaven."
+
+"Lucky I--if the saints there do nothing but hold missionary meetings to
+convert one another. Pray what else can they do?"
+
+"They are engaged in the worship of God."
+
+"I don't know what that means. All I am acquainted with is the worship
+of the congregation. At Salem Chapel the minister faces it, mouths at
+it, gesticulates to it, harangues, flatters, fawns at it, and, indeed,
+prays at it. If that be all, heaven must be a deadly dull hole."
+
+Miss Mountjoy reared herself, she became livid with wrath. "You wicked
+girl."
+
+"Aunt," said Letice, intent on further incensing her, "I do wish you
+would let me go--just for once--to a Catholic church to see what the
+worship of God is."
+
+"I would rather see you dead at my feet!" exclaimed the incensed lady,
+and stalked, rigid as a poker, out of the room.
+
+Thus the unhappy girl grew up to woman's estate, her heart seething with
+rebellion.
+
+And then a terrible thing occurred. She caught scarlet fever, which took
+an unfavourable turn, and her life was despaired of. Miss Mountjoy was
+not one to conceal from the girl that her days were few, and her future
+condition hopeless.
+
+Letice fought against the idea of dying so young.
+
+"Oh, aunt! I won't die! I can't die! I have seen nothing of the pomps
+and vanities. I want to just taste them, and know what they are like.
+Oh! save me, make the doctor give me something to revive me. I want the
+pomps and vanities, oh! so much. I will not, I cannot die!" But her
+will, her struggle, availed nothing, and she passed away into the Great
+Unseen.
+
+Miss Mountjoy wrote a formal letter to her brother, who had now become a
+general, to inform him of the lamented decease of his eldest daughter.
+It was not a comforting letter. It dwelt unnecessarily on the faults of
+Letice, it expressed no hopes as to her happiness in the world to which
+she had passed. There had been no signs of resignation at the last; no
+turning from the world with its pomps and vanities to better things,
+only a vain longing after what she could not have; a bitter resentment
+against Providence for having denied them to her; and a steeling of her
+heart against good and pious influences.
+
+A year had passed.
+
+Lady Lacy had come to town along with her niece. A dear friend had
+placed her house at her disposal. She had herself gone to Dresden with
+her daughters to finish them off in music and German. Lady Lacy was very
+glad of the occasion, for Betty was now of an age to be brought out.
+There was to be a great ball at the house of the Countess of Belgrove,
+unto whom Lady Lacy was related, and at the ball Betty was to make her
+d�but.
+
+The girl was in a condition of boundless excitement. A beautiful
+ball-dress of white satin, trimmed with rich Valenciennes lace, was laid
+over her chair for her to wear. Neat little white satin shoes stood on
+the floor, quite new, for her feet. In a flower-glass stood a red
+camellia that was destined to adorn her hair, and on the dressing-table,
+in a morocco case, was a pearl necklace that had belonged to her mother.
+
+The maid did her hair, but the camellia, which was to be the only point
+of colour about her, except her rosy lips and flushed cheeks--that
+camellia was not to be put into her hair till the last minute.
+
+The maid offered to help her to dress.
+
+"No, thank you, Martha; I can do that perfectly well myself. I am
+accustomed to use my own hands, and I can take my own time about it."
+
+"But really, miss, I think you should allow me."
+
+"Indeed, indeed, no. There is plenty of time, and I shall go leisurely
+to work. When the carriage comes just tap at the door and tell me, and I
+will rejoin my aunt."
+
+When the maid was gone, Betty locked her door. She lighted the candles
+beside the cheval-glass, and looked at herself in the mirror and
+laughed. For the first time, with glad surprise and innocent pleasure,
+she realised how pretty she was. And pretty she was indeed, with her
+pleasant face, honest eyes, finely arched brows, and twinkling smile
+that produced dimples in her cheeks.
+
+"There is plenty of time," she said. "I shan't take a hundred years in
+dressing now that my hair is done."
+
+She yawned. A great heaviness had come over her.
+
+"I really think I shall have a nap first. I am dead sleepy now, and
+forty winks will set me up for the night."
+
+Then she laid herself upon the bed. A numbing, over-powering lethargy
+weighed on her, and almost at once she sank into a dreamless sleep. So
+unconscious was she that she did not hear Martha's tap at the door nor
+the roll of the carriage as it took her aunt away.
+
+She woke with a start. It was full day.
+
+For some moments she did not realise this fact, nor that she was still
+dressed in the gown in which she had lain down the previous evening.
+
+She rose in dismay. She had slept so soundly that she had missed the
+ball.
+
+She rang her bell and unlocked the door.
+
+"What, miss, up already?" asked the maid, coming in with a tray on which
+were tea and bread and butter.
+
+"Yes, Martha. Oh! what will aunt say? I have slept so long and like a
+log, and never went to the ball. Why did you not call me?"
+
+"Please, miss, you have forgotten. You went to the ball last night."
+
+"No; I did not. I overslept myself."
+
+The maid smiled. "If I may be so bold as to say so, I think, Miss Betty,
+you are dreaming still."
+
+"No; I did not go."
+
+The maid took up the satin dress. It was crumpled, the lace was a little
+torn, and the train showed unmistakable signs of having been drawn over
+a floor.
+
+She then held up the shoes. They had been worn, and well worn, as if
+danced in all night.
+
+"Look here, miss; here is your programme! Why, deary me! you must have
+had a lot of dancing. It is quite full."
+
+Betty looked at the programme with dazed eyes; then at the camellia. It
+had lost some of its petals, and these had not fallen on the
+toilet-cover. Where were they? What was the meaning of this?
+
+"Martha, bring me my hot water, and leave me alone."
+
+Betty was sorely perplexed. There were evidences that her dress had been
+worn. The pearl necklace was in the case, but not as she had left
+it--outside. She bathed her head in cold water. She racked her brain.
+She could not recall the smallest particular of the ball. She perused
+the programme. A light colour came into her cheek as she recognised the
+initials "C. F.," those of Captain Charles Fontanel, of whom of late she
+had seen a good deal. Other characters expressed nothing to her mind.
+
+"How very strange!" she said; "and I was lying on the bed in the dress I
+had on yesterday evening. I cannot explain it."
+
+Twenty minutes later, Betty went downstairs and entered the
+breakfast-room. Lady Lacy was there. She went up to her aunt and kissed
+her.
+
+"I am so sorry that I overslept myself," she said. "I was like one of
+the Seven Sleepers."
+
+"My dear, I should not have minded if you had not come down till midday.
+After a first ball you must be tired."
+
+"I meant--last night."
+
+"How, last night?"
+
+"I mean when I went to dress."
+
+"Oh, you were punctual enough. When I was ready you were already in the
+hall."
+
+The bewilderment of the girl grew apace.
+
+"I am sure," said her aunt, "you enjoyed yourself. But you gave the
+lion's share of the dances to Captain Fontanel. If this had been at
+Exeter, it would have caused talk; but here you are known only to a few;
+however, Lady Belgrove observed it."
+
+"I hope you are not very tired, auntie darling," said Betty, to change
+slightly the theme that perplexed her.
+
+"Nothing to speak of. I like to go to a ball; it recalls my old dancing
+days. But I thought you looked white and fagged all the evening. Perhaps
+it was excitement."
+
+As soon as breakfast was concluded, Betty escaped to her room. A fear
+was oppressing her. The only explanation of the mystery was that she had
+been to the dance in her sleep. She was a somnambulist. What had she
+said and done when unconscious? What a dreadful thing it would have been
+had she woke up in the middle of a dance! She must have dressed herself,
+gone to Lady Belgrove's, danced all night, returned, taken off her
+dress, put on her afternoon tea-gown, lain down and concluded her
+sleep--all in one long tract of unconsciousness.
+
+"By the way," said her aunt next day, "I have taken tickets for
+_Carmen_, at Her Majesty's. You would like to go?"
+
+"Oh, delighted, aunt. I know some of the music--of course, the Toreador
+song; but I have never heard the whole opera. It will be delightful."
+
+"And you are not too tired to go?"
+
+"No--ten thousand times, no--I shall love to see it."
+
+"What dress will you go in?"
+
+"I think my black, and put a rose in my hair."
+
+"That will do very well. The black becomes you. I think you could not do
+better."
+
+Betty was highly delighted. She had been to plays, never to a real
+opera.
+
+In the evening, dinner was early, unnecessarily early, and Betty knew
+that it would not take her long to dress, so she went into the little
+conservatory and seated herself there. The scent of the heliotropes was
+strong. Betty called them cherry-pie. She had got the libretto, and she
+looked it over; but as she looked, her eyes closed, and without being
+aware that she was going to sleep, in a moment she was completely
+unconscious.
+
+She woke, feeling stiff and cold.
+
+"Goodness!" said she, "I hope I am not late. Why--what is that light?"
+
+The glimmer of dawn shone in at the conservatory windows.
+
+Much astonished, she left it. The hall, the staircase were dark. She
+groped her way to her room, and switched on the electric light.
+
+Before her lay her black-and-white muslin dress on the bed; on the table
+were her white twelve-button gloves folded about her fan. She took them
+up, and below them, somewhat crumpled, lay the play-bill, scented.
+
+"How very unaccountable this is," she said; and removing the dress,
+seated herself on the bed and thought.
+
+"Why did they turn out the lights?" she asked herself, then sprang to
+her feet, switched off the electric current, and saw that actually the
+morning light was entering the room. She resumed her seat; put her hands
+to her brow.
+
+"It cannot--it cannot be that this dreadful thing has happened again."
+
+Presently she heard the servants stirring. She hastily undressed and
+retired between the sheets, but not to sleep. Her mind worked. She was
+seriously alarmed.
+
+At the usual time Martha arrived with tea.
+
+"Awake, Miss Betty!" she said. "I hope you had a nice evening. I dare
+say it was beautiful."
+
+"But," began the girl, then checked herself, and said--
+
+"Is my aunt getting up? Is she very tired?"
+
+"Oh, miss, my lady is a wonderful person; she never seems to tire. She
+is always down at the same time."
+
+Betty dressed, but her mind was in a turmoil. On one thing she was
+resolved. She must see a doctor. But she would not frighten her aunt,
+she would keep the matter close from her.
+
+When she came into the breakfast-room, Lady Lacy said--
+
+"I thought Maas's voice was superb, but I did not so much care for the
+Carmen. What did you think, dear?"
+
+"Aunt," said Betty, anxious to change the topic, "would you mind my
+seeing a doctor? I don't think I am quite well."
+
+"Not well! Why what is the matter with you?"
+
+"I have such dead fits of drowsiness."
+
+"My dearest, is that to be wondered at with this racketing about; balls
+and theatres--very other than the quiet life at home? But I will admit
+that you struck me as looking very pale last night. You shall certainly
+see Dr. Groves."
+
+When the medical man arrived, Betty intimated that she wished to speak
+with him alone, and he was shown with her into the morning-room.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Groves," she said nervously, "it is such a strange thing I have
+to say. I believe I walk in my sleep."
+
+"You have eaten something that disagreed with you."
+
+"But it lasted so long."
+
+"How do you mean? Have you long been subject to it?"
+
+"Dear, no. I never had any signs of it before I came to London this
+season."
+
+"And how were you roused? How did you become aware of it?"
+
+"I was not roused at all; the fact is I went asleep to Lady Belgrove's
+ball, and danced there and came back, and woke up in the morning without
+knowing I had been."
+
+"What!"
+
+"And then, last night, I went in my sleep to Her Majesty's and heard
+_Carmen_; but I woke up in the conservatory here at early dawn, and I
+remember nothing about it."
+
+"This is a very extraordinary story. Are you sure you went to the ball
+and to the opera?"
+
+"Quite sure. My dress had been used on both occasions, and my shoes and
+fan and gloves as well."
+
+"Did you go with Lady Lacy?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I was with her all the time. But I remember nothing about it."
+
+"I must speak to her ladyship."
+
+"Please, please do not. It would frighten her; and I do not wish her to
+suspect anything, except that I am a little out of sorts. She gets
+nervous about me."
+
+Dr. Groves mused for some while, then he said: "I cannot see that this
+is at all a case of somnambulism."
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Lapse of memory. Have you ever suffered from that previously?"
+
+"Nothing to speak of. Of course I do not always remember everything. I
+do not always recollect commissions given to me, unless I write them
+down. And I cannot say that I remember all the novels I have read, or
+what was the menu at dinner yesterday."
+
+"That is quite a different matter. What I refer to is spaces of blank in
+your memory. How often has this occurred?"
+
+"Twice."
+
+"And quite recently?"
+
+"Yes, I never knew anything of the kind before."
+
+"I think that the sooner you return to the country the better. It is
+possible that the strain of coming out and the change of entering into
+gay life in town has been too much for you. Take care and economise your
+pleasures. Do not attempt too much; and if anything of the sort happens
+again, send for me."
+
+"Then you won't mention this to my aunt?"
+
+"No, not this time. I will say that you have been a little over-wrought
+and must be spared too much excitement."
+
+"Thank you so much, Dr. Groves."
+
+Now it was that a new mystery came to confound Betty. She rang her bell.
+
+"Martha," said she, when her maid appeared, "where is that novel I had
+yesterday from the circulating library? I put it on the boudoir table."
+
+"I have not noticed it, miss."
+
+"Please look for it. I have hunted everywhere for it, and it cannot be
+found."
+
+"I will look in the parlour, miss, and the schoolroom."
+
+"I have not been into the schoolroom at all, and I know that it is not
+in the drawing-room."
+
+A search was instituted, but the book could not be found. On the morrow
+it was in the boudoir, where Betty had placed it on her return from
+Mudie's.
+
+"One of the maids took it," was her explanation. She did not much care
+for the book; perhaps that was due to her preoccupation, and not to any
+lack of stirring incident in the story. She sent it back and took out
+another. Next morning that also had disappeared.
+
+It now became customary, as surely as she drew a novel from the library,
+that it vanished clean away. Betty was greatly amazed. She could not
+read a novel she had brought home till a day or two later. She took to
+putting the book, so soon as it was in the house, into one of her
+drawers, or into a cupboard. But the result was the same. Finally, when
+she had locked the newly acquired volume in her desk, and it had
+disappeared thence also, her patience gave way. There must be one of the
+domestics with a ravenous appetite for fiction, which drove her to carry
+off a book of the sort whenever it came into the house, and even to
+tamper with a lock to obtain it. Betty had been most reluctant to speak
+of the matter to her aunt, but now she made to her a formal complaint.
+
+The servants were all questioned, and strongly protested their
+innocence. Not one of them had ventured to do such a thing as that with
+which they were charged.
+
+However, from this time forward the annoyance ceased, and Betty and Lady
+Lacy naturally concluded that this was the result of the stir that had
+been made.
+
+"Betty," said Lady Lacy, "what do you say to going to the new play at
+the Gaiety? I hear it very highly spoken of. Mrs. Fontanel has a box and
+has asked if we will join her."
+
+"I should love it," replied the girl; "we have been rather quiet of
+late." But her heart was oppressed with fear.
+
+She said to her maid: "Martha, will you dress me this evening--and--pray
+stay with me till my aunt is ready and calls for me?"
+
+"Yes, miss, I shall be pleased to do so." But the girl looked somewhat
+surprised at the latter part of the request.
+
+Betty thought well to explain: "I don't know what it is, but I feel
+somewhat out of spirits and nervous, and am afraid of being left alone,
+lest something should happen."
+
+"Happen, miss! If you are not feeling well, would it not be as well to
+stay at home?"
+
+"Oh, not for the world! I must go. I shall be all right so soon as I am
+in the carriage. It will pass off then."
+
+"Shall I get you a glass of sherry, or anything?"
+
+"No, no, it is not that. You remain with me and I shall be myself
+again."
+
+That evening Betty went to the theatre. There was no recurrence of the
+sleeping fit with its concomitants. Captain Fontanel was in the box, and
+made himself vastly agreeable. He had his seat by Betty, and talked to
+her not only between the acts, but also a good deal whilst the actors
+were on the stage. With this she could have dispensed. She was not such
+an _habitu�e_ of the theatre as not to be intensely interested with what
+was enacted before her.
+
+Between two of the acts he said to her: "My mother is engaging Lady
+Lacy. She has a scheme in her head, but wants her consent to carry it
+out, to make it quite too charming. And I am deputed to get you to
+acquiesce."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We purpose having a boat and going to the Henley Regatta. Will you
+come?"
+
+"I should enjoy it above everything. I have never seen a regatta--that
+is to say, not one so famous, and not of this kind. There were regattas
+at Ilfracombe, but they were different."
+
+"Very well, then; the party shall consist only of my mother and sister
+and your two selves, and young Fulwell, who is dancing attendance on
+Jannet, and Putsey, who is a tame cat. I am sure my mother will persuade
+your aunt. What a lively old lady she is, and for her years how she does
+enjoy life!"
+
+"It will be a most happy conclusion to our stay in town," said Betty.
+"We are going back to auntie's little cottage in Devon in a few days;
+she wants to be at home for Good Friday and Easter Day."
+
+So it was settled. Lady Lacy had raised no objection, and now she and
+her niece had to consider what Betty should wear. Thin garments were out
+of the question; the weather was too cold, and it would be especially
+chilly on the river. Betty was still in slight mourning, so she chose a
+silver-grey cloth costume, with a black band about her waist, and a
+white straw hat, with a ribbon to match her gown.
+
+On the day of the regatta Betty said to herself; "How ignorant I am!
+Fancy my not knowing where Henley is! That it is on the Thames or Isis I
+really do not know, but I fancy on the former--yes, I am almost
+positive it is on the Thames. I have seen pictures in the _Graphic_ and
+_Illustrated_ of the race last year, and I know the river was
+represented as broad, and the Isis can only be an insignificant stream.
+I will run into the schoolroom and find a map of the environs of London
+and post myself up in the geography. One hates to look like a fool."
+
+Without a word to anyone, Betty found her way to the apartment given up
+to lessons when children were in the house. It lay at the back, down a
+passage. Since Lady Lacy had occupied the place, neither she nor Betty
+had been in it more than casually and rarely; and accordingly the
+servants had neglected to keep it clean. A good deal of dust lay about,
+and Betty, laughing, wrote her name in the fine powder on the
+school-table, then looked at her finger, found it black, and said, "Oh,
+bother! I forgot that the dust of London is smut."
+
+She went to the bookcase, and groped for a map of the Metropolis and the
+country round, but could not find one. Nor could she lay her hand on a
+gazetteer.
+
+"This must do," said she, drawing out a large, thick _Johnston's Atlas_,
+"if the scale be not too small to give Henley."
+
+She put the heavy volume on the table and opened it. England, she found,
+was in two parts, one map of the Northern, the second of the Southern
+division. She spread out the latter, placed her finger on the blue line
+of the Thames, and began to trace it up.
+
+Whilst her eyes were on it, searching the small print, they closed, and
+without being conscious that she was sleepy, her head bowed forward on
+the map, and she was breathing evenly, steeped in the most profound
+slumber.
+
+She woke slowly. Her consciousness returned to her little by little. She
+saw the atlas without understanding what it meant. She looked about her,
+and wondered how she could be in the schoolroom, and she then observed
+that darkness was closing in. Only then, suddenly, did she recall what
+had brought her where she was.
+
+Next, with a rush, upon her came the remembrance that she was due at the
+boat-race.
+
+She must again have overslept herself, for the evening had come on, and
+through the window she could see the glimmer of gaslights in the street.
+Was this to be accompanied by her former experiences?
+
+With throbbing heart she went into the passage. Then she noticed that
+the hall was lighted up, and she heard her aunt speaking, and the slam
+of the front door, and the maid say, "Shall I take off your wraps, my
+lady?"
+
+She stepped forth upon the landing and proceeded to descend, when--with
+a shock that sent the blood coursing to her heart, and that paralysed
+her movements--she saw _herself_ ascending the stair in her silver-grey
+costume and straw hat.
+
+She clung to the banister, with convulsive grip, lest she should fall,
+and stared, without power to utter a sound, as she saw herself quietly
+mount, step by step, pass her, go beyond to her own room.
+
+For fully ten minutes she remained rooted to the spot, unable to stir
+even a finger. Her tongue was stiff, her muscles set, her heart ceased
+to beat.
+
+Then slowly her blood began again to circulate, her nerves to relax,
+power of movement returned. With a hoarse gasp she reeled from her
+place, and giddy, touching the banister every moment to prevent herself
+from falling, she crept downstairs. But when once in the hall, she had
+recovered flexibility. She ran towards the morning-room, whither Lady
+Lacy had gone to gather up the letters that had arrived by post during
+her absence.
+
+Betty stood looking at her, speechless.
+
+Her aunt raised her face from an envelope she was considering. "Why,
+Betty," said she, "how expeditiously you have changed your dress!"
+
+The girl could not speak, but fell unconscious on the floor.
+
+When she came to herself, she was aware of a strong smell of vinegar.
+She was lying on the sofa, and Martha was applying a moistened kerchief
+to her brow. Lady Lacy stood by, alarmed and anxious, with a bottle of
+smelling-salts in her hand.
+
+"Oh, aunt, I saw----" then she ceased. It would not do to tell of the
+apparition. She would not be believed.
+
+"My darling," said Lady Lacy, "you are overdone, and it was foolish of
+you tearing upstairs and scrambling into your morning-gown. I have sent
+for Groves. Are you able now to rise? Can you manage to reach your
+room?"
+
+"My room!" she shuddered. "Let me lie here a little longer. I cannot
+walk. Let me be here till the doctor comes."
+
+"Certainly, dearest. I thought you looked very unlike yourself all day
+at the regatta. If you had felt out of sorts you ought not to have
+gone."
+
+"Auntie! I was quite well in the morning."
+
+Presently the medical man arrived, and was shown in. Betty saw that Lady
+Lacy purposed staying through the interview. Accordingly she said
+nothing to Dr. Groves about what she had seen.
+
+"She is overdone," said he. "The sooner you move her down to Devonshire
+the better. Someone had better be in her room to-night."
+
+"Yes," said Lady Lacy; "I had thought of that and have given orders.
+Martha can make up her bed on the sofa in the adjoining dressing-room or
+boudoir."
+
+This was a relief to Betty, who dreaded a return to her room--her room
+into which her other self had gone.
+
+"I will call again in the morning," said the medical man; "keep her in
+bed to-morrow, at all events till I have seen her."
+
+When he left, Betty found herself able to ascend the stairs. She cast a
+frightened glance about her room. The straw hat, the grey dress were
+there. No one was in it.
+
+She was helped to bed, and although laid in it with her head among the
+pillows, she could not sleep. Racking thoughts tortured her. What was
+the signification of that encounter? What of her strange sleeps? What of
+those mysterious appearances of herself, where she had not been? The
+theory that she had walked in her sleep was untenable. How was she to
+solve the riddle? That she was going out of her mind was no explanation.
+
+Only towards morning did she doze off.
+
+When Dr. Groves came, about eleven o'clock, Betty made a point of
+speaking to him alone, which was what she greatly desired.
+
+She said to him: "Oh! it has been worse this last occasion, far worse
+than before. I do not walk in my sleep. Whilst I am buried in slumber,
+someone else takes my place."
+
+"Whom do you mean? Surely not one of the maids?"
+
+"Oh, no. I met her on the stairs last night, that is what made me
+faint."
+
+"Whom did you meet?"
+
+"Myself--my double."
+
+"Nonsense, Miss Mountjoy."
+
+"But it is a fact. I saw myself as clearly as I see you now. I was going
+down into the hall."
+
+"You saw yourself! You saw your own pleasant, pretty face in a
+looking-glass."
+
+"There is no looking-glass on the staircase. Besides, I was in my alpaca
+morning-gown, and my double had on my pearl-grey cloth costume, with my
+straw hat. She was mounting as I was descending."
+
+"Tell me the story."
+
+"I went yesterday--an hour or so before I had to dress--into the
+schoolroom. I am awfully ignorant, and I did want to see a map and find
+out where was Henley, because, you know, I was going to the boat-race.
+And I dropped off into one of those dreadful dead sleeps, with my head
+on the atlas. When I awoke it was evening, and the gas-lamps were
+lighted. I was frightened, and ran out to the landing and I heard them
+arrive, just come back from Henley, and as I was going down the stairs,
+I saw my double coming up, and we met face to face. She passed me by,
+and went on to my room--to this room. So you see this is proof pos that
+I am not a somnambulist."
+
+"I never said that you were. I never for a moment admitted the
+supposition. That, if you remember, was your own idea. What I said
+before is what I repeat now, that you suffer from failure of memory."
+
+"But that cannot be so, Dr. Groves."
+
+"Pray, why not?"
+
+"Because I saw my double, wearing my regatta costume."
+
+"I hold to my opinion, Miss Mountjoy. If you will listen to me I shall
+be able to offer a satisfactory explanation. Satisfactory, I mean, so
+far as to make your experiences intelligible to you. I do not at all
+imply that your condition is satisfactory."
+
+"Well, tell me. I cannot make heads or tails of this matter."
+
+"It is this, young lady. On several recent occasions you have suffered
+from lapses of memory. All recollection of what you did, where you went,
+what you said, has been clean wiped out. But on this last--it was
+somewhat different. The failure took place on your return, and you
+forgot everything that had happened since you were engaged in the
+schoolroom looking at the atlas."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, on your arrival here, as Lady Lacy told me, you ran upstairs, and
+in a prodigious hurry changed your clothes and put on your----"
+
+"My alpaca."
+
+"Your alpaca, yes. Then, in descending to the hall, your memory came
+back, but was still entangled with flying reminiscences of what had
+taken place during the intervening period. Amongst other things----"
+
+"I remember no other things."
+
+"You recalled confusedly one thing only, that you had mounted the stairs
+in your--your----"
+
+"My pearl-grey cloth, with the straw hat and satin ribbon."
+
+"Precisely. Whilst in your morning gown, into which you had scrambled,
+you recalled yourself in your regatta costume going upstairs to change.
+This fragmentary reminiscence presented itself before you as a vision.
+Actually you saw nothing. The impression on your brain of a scrap
+recollected appeared to you as if it had been an actual object depicted
+on the retina of your eye. Such things happen, and happen not
+infrequently. In cases of D. T.----"
+
+"But I haven't D. T. I don't drink."
+
+"I do not say that. If you will allow me to proceed. In cases of D. T.
+the patient fancies he sees rats, devils, all sorts of objects. They
+appear to him as obvious realities, he thinks that he sees them with his
+eyes. But he does not. These are mere pictures formed on the brain."
+
+"Then you hold that I really was at the boat-race?"
+
+"I am positive that you were."
+
+"And that I danced at Lady Belgrove's ball?"
+
+"Most assuredly."
+
+"And heard _Carmen_ at Her Majesty's?"
+
+"I have not the remotest doubt that you did."
+
+Betty drew a long breath, and remained in consideration.
+
+Then she said very gravely: "I want you to tell me, Dr. Groves, quite
+truthfully, quite frankly--do not think that I shall be frightened
+whatever you say; I shall merely prepare for what may be--do you
+consider that I am going out of my mind?"
+
+"I have not the least occasion for supposing so."
+
+"That," said Betty, "would be the most terrible thing of all. If I
+thought that, I would say right out to my aunt that I wished at once to
+be sent to an asylum."
+
+"You may set your mind at rest on that score."
+
+"But loss of memory is bad, but better than the other. Will these fits
+of failure come on again?"
+
+"That is more than I can prognosticate; let us hope for the best. A
+complete change of scene, change of air, change of association----"
+
+"Not to leave auntie!"
+
+"No. I do not mean that, but to get away from London society. It may
+restore you to what you were. You never had those fits before?"
+
+"Never, never, till I came to town."
+
+"And when you have left town they may not recur."
+
+"I shall take precious good care not to revisit London if it is going to
+play these tricks with me."
+
+That day Captain Fontanel called, and was vastly concerned to hear that
+Betty was unwell. She was not looking herself, he said, at the
+boat-race. He feared that the cold on the river had been too much for
+her. But he did trust that he might be allowed to have a word with her
+before she returned to Devonshire.
+
+Although he did not see Betty, he had an hour's conversation with Lady
+Lacy, and he departed with a smile on his face.
+
+On the morrow he called again. Betty had so completely recovered that
+she was cheerful, and the pleasant colour had returned to her cheeks.
+She was in the drawing-room along with her aunt when he arrived.
+
+The captain offered his condolences, and expressed his satisfaction that
+her indisposition had been so quickly got over.
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, "I am as right as a trivet. It has all passed off.
+I need not have soaked in bed all yesterday, but that aunt would have
+it so. We are going down to our home to-morrow. Yesterday auntie was
+scared and thought she would have to postpone our return."
+
+Lady Lacy rose, made the excuse that she had the packing to attend to,
+and left the young people alone together. When the door was shut behind
+her, Captain Fontanel drew his chair close to that of the girl and
+said--
+
+"Betty, you do not know how happy I have felt since you accepted me. It
+was a hurried affair in the boat-house, but really, time was running
+short; as you were off so soon to Devonshire, I had to snatch at the
+occasion when there was no one by, so I seized old Time by the forelock,
+and you were so good as to say 'Yes.'"
+
+"I--I----" stammered Betty.
+
+"But as the thing was done in such haste, I came here to-day to renew my
+offer of myself, and to make sure of my happiness. You have had time to
+reflect, and I trust you do not repent."
+
+"Oh, you are so good and kind to me!"
+
+"Dearest Betty, what a thing to say! It is I--poor, wretched,
+good-for-naught--who have cause to speak such words to you. Put your
+hand into mine; it is a short courtship of a soldier, like that of Harry
+V. and the fair Maid of France. 'I love you: then if you urge me farther
+than to say, "Do you in faith?" I wear out my suit. Give me your answer;
+i' faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain.' Am I quoting aright?"
+
+Shyly, hesitatingly, she extended her fingers, and he clasped them.
+Then, shrinking back and looking down, she said: "But I ought to tell
+you something first, something very serious, which may make you change
+your mind. I do not, in conscience, feel it right that you should commit
+yourself till you know."
+
+"It must be something very dreadful to make me do that."
+
+"It is dreadful. I am apt to be terribly forgetful."
+
+"Bless me! So am I. I have passed several of my acquaintances lately and
+have not recognised them, but that was because I was thinking of you.
+And I fear I have been very oblivious about my bills; and as to
+answering letters--good heavens! I am a shocking defaulter."
+
+"I do not mean that. I have lapses of memory. Why, I do not even
+remember----"
+
+He sealed her lips with a kiss. "You will not forget this, at any rate,
+Betty."
+
+"Oh, Charlie, no!"
+
+"Then consider this, Betty. Our engagement cannot be for long. I am
+ordered to Egypt, and I positively must take my dear little wife with me
+and show her the Pyramids. You would like to see them, would you not?"
+
+"I should love to."
+
+"And the Sphynx?"
+
+"Indeed I should."
+
+"And Pompey's Pillar?"
+
+"Oh, Charlie! I shall love above everything to see you every day."
+
+"That is prettily said. I see we understand one another. Now, hearken to
+me, give me your close attention, and no fits of lapse of memory over
+what I now say, please. We must be married very shortly. I positively
+will not go out without you. I would rather throw up my commission."
+
+"But what about papa's consent?"
+
+"I shall wire to him full particulars as to my position, income, and
+prospects, also how much I love you, and how I will do my level best to
+make you happy. That is the approved formula in addressing
+paterfamilias, I think. Then he will telegraph back, 'Bless you, my
+boy'; and all is settled. I know that Lady Lacy approves."
+
+"But dear, dear aunt. She will be so awfully lonely without me."
+
+"She shall not be. She has no ties to hold her to the little cottage in
+Devon. She shall come out to us in Cairo, and we will bury the dear old
+girl up to her neck in the sand of the desert, and make a second Sphynx
+of her, and bake the rheumatism out of her bones. It will cure her of
+all her aches, as sure as my name is Charlie, and yours will be
+Fontanel."
+
+"Don't be too sure of that."
+
+"But I am sure--you cannot forget."
+
+"I will try not to do so. Oh, Charlie, don't!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker, and Miss Crock, the milliner, had their
+hands full. Betty's trousseau had to be got ready expeditiously.
+Patterns of materials specially adapted for a hot climate--light,
+beautiful, artistic, of silks and muslins and prints--had to be
+commanded from Liberty's. Then came the selection, then the ordering,
+then the discussions with the dressmaker, and the measurings. Next the
+fittings, for which repeated visits had to be made to Mrs. Thomas.
+Adjustments, alterations were made, easements under the arms,
+tightenings about the waist. There were fulnesses to be taken in and
+skimpiness to be redressed. The skirts had to be sufficiently short in
+front and sufficiently long behind.
+
+As for the wedding-dress, Mrs. Thomas was not regarded as quite
+competent to execute such a masterpiece. For that an expedition had to
+be made to Exeter.
+
+The wedding-cake must be ordered from Murch, in the cathedral city. Lady
+Lacy was particular that as much as possible of the outfit should be
+given to county tradesmen. A riding habit, tailor-made, was ordered, to
+fit like a glove, and a lady's saddle must be taken out to Egypt. Boxes,
+basket-trunks were to be procured, and a correspondence carried on as to
+the amount of personal luggage allowed.
+
+Lady Lacy and Betty were constantly running up by express to Exeter
+about this, that, and everything.
+
+Then ensued the sending out of the invitations, and the arrival of
+wedding presents, that entailed the writing of gushing letters of
+acknowledgment and thanks, by Betty herself. But these were not allowed
+to interfere with the scribbling of four pages every day to Captain
+Fontanel, intended for his eyes alone.
+
+Interviews were sought by the editors or agents of local newspapers to
+ascertain whether reporters were desired to describe the wedding, and as
+to the length of the notices that were to be inserted, whether all the
+names of the donors of presents were to be included, and their gifts
+registered. Verily Lady Lacy and Betty were kept in a whirl of
+excitement, and their time occupied from morning till night, and their
+brains exercised from night to morning. Glass and china and plate had to
+be hired for the occasion, wine ordered. Fruit, cake, ices commanded.
+But all things come to an end, even the preparations for a wedding.
+
+At last the eventful day arrived, bright and sunny, a true May morning.
+
+The bridesmaids arrived, each wearing the pretty brooch presented by
+Captain Fontanel. Their costume was suitable to the season, of
+primrose-yellow, with hats turned up, white, with primroses. The pages
+were in green velvet, with knee-breeches and three-cornered hats, lace
+ruffles and lace fronts. The butler had made the claret-cup and the
+champagne-cup, and after a skirmish over the neighbourhood some borage
+had been obtained to float on the top. Lady Lacy was to hold a reception
+after the ceremony, and a marquee had been erected in the grounds, as
+the cottage could not contain all the guests invited. The dining-room
+was delivered over for the exposing of the presents. A carriage had been
+commanded to convey the happy couple to the station, horses and driver
+with white favours. With a sigh of relief in the morning, Lady Lacy
+declared that she believed that nothing had been forgotten.
+
+The trunks stood ready packed, all but one, and labelled with the name
+of Mrs. Fontanel.
+
+A flag flew on the church tower. The villagers had constructed a
+triumphal arch at the entrance to the grounds. The people from farms and
+cottages had all turned out, and were already congregating about the
+churchyard, with smiles and heartfelt wishes for the happiness of the
+bride, who was a mighty favourite with them, as indeed was also Lady
+Lacy.
+
+The Sunday-school children had clubbed their pence, and had presented
+Betty, who had taught them, with a silver set of mustard-pot, pepper
+caster, and salt-cellar.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Betty, "what shall I do with all these sets of
+mustard- and pepper-pots? I have now received eight."
+
+"A little later, dear," replied her aunt, "you can exchange those that
+you do not require."
+
+"But never that set given me by my Sunday-school pets," said Betty.
+
+Then came in flights of telegrams of congratulation.
+
+And at the last moment arrived some more wedding presents.
+
+"Good gracious me!" exclaimed the girl, "I really must manage to
+acknowledge these. There will be just time before I begin to dress."
+
+So she tripped upstairs to her boudoir, a little room given over to
+herself in which to do her water-colour painting, her reading, to
+practise her music. A bright little room to which now, as she felt with
+an ache, she was to bid an eternal good-bye!
+
+What happy hours had been spent in it! What day-dreams had been spun
+there!
+
+She opened her writing-case and wrote the required letters of thanks.
+
+"There," said she, when she had signed the fifth. "This is the last time
+I shall subscribe myself Elizabeth Mountjoy, except when I sign my
+name in the church register. Oh! how my back is hurting me. I was not in
+bed till two o'clock and was up again at seven, and I have been on the
+tear for the whole week. There will be just time for me to rest it
+before the business of the dressing begins."
+
+She threw herself on the sofa and put up her feet. Instantly she was
+asleep--in a sound, dreamless sleep.
+
+When Betty opened her eyes she heard the church bells ringing a merry
+peal. Then she raised her lids, and turning her head on the sofa cushion
+saw--a bride, herself in full bridal dress, with the white veil and the
+orange-blossoms, seated at her side. The gloves had been removed and lay
+on the lap.
+
+An indescribable terror held her fast. She could not cry out. She could
+not stir. She could only look.
+
+Then the bride put back the veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister, Letice.
+
+[Illustration: THEN THE BRIDE PUT BACK HER VEIL, AND BETTY, STUDYING THE
+WHITE FACE, SAW THAT THIS ACTUALLY WAS NOT HERSELF; IT WAS HER DEAD
+SISTER LETICE.]
+
+The apparition put forth a hand and laid it on her and spoke: "Do not be
+frightened. I will do you no harm. I love you too dearly for that,
+Betty. I have been married in your name; I have exchanged vows in your
+name; I have received the ring for you; put it on your finger, it is not
+mine; it in no way belongs to me. In your name I signed the register.
+You are married to Charles Fontanel and not I. Listen to me. I will tell
+you all, and when I have told you everything you will see me no more. I
+will trouble you no further; I shall enter into my rest. You will see
+before you only the wedding garments remaining. I shall be gone. Hearken
+to me. When I was dying, I died in frantic despair, because I had never
+known what were the pleasures of life. My last cries, my last regrets,
+my last longings were for the pomps and vanities."
+
+She paused, and slipped the gold hoop on to the forefinger of Betty's
+hand.
+
+Then she proceeded--
+
+"When my spirit parted from my body, it remained a while irresolute
+whither to go. But then, remembering that my aunt had declared that I
+never would go to Heaven, I resolved on forcing my way in there out of
+defiance; and I soared till I reached the gates of Paradise. At them
+stood an angel with a fiery sword drawn in his hand, and he laid it
+athwart the entrance. I approached, but he waved me off, and when the
+point of the flaming blade touched my heart, there passed a pang through
+it, I know not whether of joy or of sorrow. And he said: 'Letice, you
+have not been a good girl; you were sullen, resentful, rebellious, and
+therefore are unfit to enter here. Your longings through life, and to
+the moment of death, were for the world and its pomps and vanities. The
+last throb of your heart was given to repining for them. But your faults
+were due largely to the mistakes of your rearing. And now hear your
+judgment. You shall not pass within these gates till you have returned
+to earth and partaken of and had your fill of its pomps and vanities. As
+for that old cat, your aunt'--but no, Betty, he did not say quite that;
+I put it in, and I ought not to have done so. I bear her no resentment;
+I wish her no ill. She did by me what she believed to be right. She
+acted towards me up to her lights; alas for me that the light which was
+in her was darkness! The angel said: 'As for your aunt, before she can
+enter here, she will want illumining, enlarging, and sweetening, and
+will have to pass through Purgatory.' And oh, Betty, that will be gall
+and bitterness to her, for she did not believe in Purgatory, and she
+wrote a controversial pamphlet against it. Then said the angel: 'Return,
+return to the pomps and vanities.' I fell on my knees, and said: 'Oh,
+suffer me but to have one glimpse of that which is within!' 'Be it so,'
+he replied. 'One glimpse only whilst I cast my sword on high.' Thereat
+he threw up the flaming brand, and it was as though a glorious flash of
+lightning filled all space. At the same moment the gates swung apart,
+and I saw what was beyond. It was but for one brief moment, for the
+sword came down, and the angel caught it by the handle, and instantly
+the gates were shut. Then, sorrowfully, I turned myself about and went
+back to earth. And, Betty, it was I who took and read your novels. It
+was I who went to Lady Belgrove's ball in your place. It was I who sat
+instead of you at Her Majesty's and heard _Carmen_. It was I who took
+your place at Henley Regatta, and I--I, instead of you, received the
+protestation of Charles Fontanel's affection, and there in the
+boat-house I received the first and last kiss of love. And it was I,
+Betty, as I have told you, who took your place at the altar to-day. I
+had the pleasures that were designed for you--the ball-dress, the
+dances, the fair words, the music of the opera, the courtship, the
+excitement of the regatta, the reading of sensational novels. It was I
+who had what all girls most long for, their most supreme bliss of
+wearing the wedding-veil and the orange-blossoms. But I have reached my
+limit. I am full of the pomps and vanities, and I return on high. You
+will see me no more."
+
+"Oh, Letice," said Betty, obtaining her speech, "you do not grudge me
+the joys of life?"
+
+The fair white being at her side shook her head.
+
+"And you desire no more of the pomps and vanities?"
+
+"No, Betty. I have looked through the gates."
+
+Then Betty put forth her hands to clasp the waist of her sister, as she
+said fervently--
+
+"Tell me, Letice, what you saw beyond."
+
+"Betty--everything the reverse of Salem Chapel."
+
+
+
+
+McALISTER
+
+
+The city of Bayonne, lying on the left bank of the Adour, and serving as
+its port, is one that ought to present much interest to the British
+tourist, on account of its associations. For three hundred years, along
+with Bordeaux, it belonged to the English crown. The cathedral, a noble
+structure of the fourteenth century, was reared by the English, and on
+the bosses of its vaulting are carved the arms of England, of the
+Talbots, and of other great English noble families. It was probably
+designed by English architects, for it possesses, in its vaulting, the
+long central rib so characteristic of English architecture, and wholly
+unlike what was the prevailing French fashion of vaulting in
+compartments, and always without that connecting rib, like the inverted
+keel of a ship, with which we are acquainted in our English minsters.
+Under some of the modern houses in the town are cellars of far earlier
+construction, also vaulted, and in them as well may be seen the arms of
+the English noble families which had their dwellings above.
+
+But Bayonne has later associations with us. At the close of the
+Peninsular War, when Wellington had driven Marshal Soult and the French
+out of Spain, and had crossed the Pyrenees, his forces, under Sir John
+Hope, invested the citadel. In February, 1814, Sir John threw a bridge
+of boats across the Adour, boats being provided by the fleet of Admiral
+Penrose, in the teeth of a garrison of 15,000 men, and French gunboats
+which guarded the river and raked the English whilst conducting this
+hazardous and masterly achievement. This brilliant exploit was effected
+whilst Wellington engaged the attention of Soult about the Gaves,
+affluents of the Adour, near Orthez. It is further interesting, with a
+tragic interest, on account of an incident in that campaign which shall
+be referred to presently.
+
+The cathedral of Bayonne, some years ago, possessed no towers--the
+English were driven out of Aquitaine before these had been completed.
+The west front was mean to the last degree, masked by a shabby
+penthouse, plastered white, or rather dirty white, on which in large
+characters was inscribed, "Libert� �galit� et fraternit�."
+
+This has now disappeared, and a modern west front and twin towers and
+spires have been added, in passable architecture. When I was at Bayonne,
+more years ago than I care to say, I paid a visit to the little cemetery
+on the north bank of the river, in which were laid the English officers
+who fell during the investment of Bayonne.
+
+The north bank is in the Department of the Landes, whereas that on the
+south is in the Department of the Basses Pyr�n�es.
+
+About the time when the English were expelled from France, and lost
+Aquitaine, the Adour changed its course. Formerly it had turned sharply
+round at the city, and had flowed north and found an outlet some miles
+away at Cap Breton, but the entrance was choked by the moving
+sand-dunes, and the impatient river burst its way into the Bay of Biscay
+by the mouth through which it still flows. But the old course is marked
+by lagoons of still blue water in the midst of a vast forest of pines
+and cork trees. I had spent a day wandering among these tree-covered
+_landes_, seeking out the lonely lakes, and in the evening I returned in
+the direction of Bayonne, diverging somewhat from my course to visit the
+cemetery of the English. This was a square walled enclosure with an iron
+gate, rank with weeds, utterly neglected, and with the tombstones, some
+leaning, some prostrate, all covered with lichen and moss. I could not
+get within to decipher the inscriptions, for the gate was locked and I
+had not the key, and was quite ignorant who was the custodian of the
+place.
+
+Being tired with my trudge in the sand, I sat down outside, with my back
+to the wall, and saw the setting sun paint with saffron the boles of the
+pines. I took out my Murray that I had in my knapsack, and read the
+following passage:--
+
+     "To the N., rises the citadel, the most formidable of the works
+     laid out by Vauban, and greatly strengthened, especially since
+     1814, when it formed the key to an entrenched camp of Marshal
+     Soult, and was invested by a detachment of the army of the Duke
+     of Wellington, but not taken, the peace having put a stop to
+     the siege after some bloody encounters. The last of these, a
+     dreadful and useless expenditure of human life, took place
+     after peace was declared, and the British forces put off their
+     guard in consequence. They were thus entirely taken by surprise
+     by a sally of the garrison, made early on the morning of April
+     14th; which, though repulsed, was attended with the loss of 830
+     men of the British, and by the capture of their commander, Sir
+     John Hope, whose horse was shot under him, and himself wounded.
+     The French attack was supported by the fire of their gunboats
+     on the river, which opened indiscriminately on friend and foe.
+     Nine hundred and ten of the French were killed."
+
+When I had concluded, the sun had set, and already a grey mist began to
+form over the course of the Adour. I thought that now it was high time
+for me to return to Bayonne, and to table d'h�te, which is at 7.30 p.m.,
+but for which I knew I should be late. However, before rising, I pulled
+out my flask of Scotch whisky, and drained it to the last drop.
+
+I had scarcely finished, and was about to heave myself to my feet, when
+I heard a voice from behind and above me say--"It is grateful, varra
+grateful to a Scotchman."
+
+I turned myself about, and drew back from the wall, for I saw a very
+remarkable object perched upon it. It was the upper portion of a man in
+military accoutrements. He was not sitting on the wall, for, if so, his
+legs would have been dangling over on the outside. And yet he could not
+have heaved himself up to the level of the parapet, with the legs
+depending inside, for he appeared to be on the wall itself down to the
+middle.
+
+"Are you a Scotchman or an Englishman?" he inquired.
+
+"An Englishman," I replied, hardly knowing what to make of the
+apparition.
+
+"It's mabbe a bit airly in the nicht for me to be stirring," he said;
+"but the smell of the whisky drew me from my grave."
+
+"From your grave!" I exclaimed.
+
+"And pray, what is the blend?" he asked.
+
+I answered.
+
+"Weel," said he, "ye might do better, but it's guid enough. I am Captain
+Alister McAlister of Auchimachie, at your service, that is to say, his
+superior half. I fell in one of the attacks on the citadel. Those"--he
+employed a strong qualification which need not be reproduced--"those
+Johnny Crapauds used chain-shot; and they cut me in half at the
+waistbelt, and my legs are in Scotland."
+
+Having somewhat recovered from my astonishment, I was able to take a
+further look at him, and could not restrain a laugh. He so much
+resembled Humpty Dumpty, who, as I had learned in childhood, did sit on
+a wall.
+
+"Is there anything so rideeculous about me?" asked Captain McAlister in
+a tone of irritation. "You seem to be in a jocular mood, sir."
+
+"I assure you," I responded, "I was only laughing from joy of heart at
+the happy chance of meeting you, Alister McAlister."
+
+"Of Auchimachie, and my title is Captain," he said. "There is only half
+of me here--the etceteras are in the family vault in Scotland."
+
+I expressed my genuine surprise at this announcement. "You must
+understand, sir," continued he, "that I am but the speeritual
+presentment of my buried trunk. The speeritual presentment of my nether
+half is not here, and I should scorn to use those of Captain
+O'Hooligan."
+
+I pressed my hand to my brow. Was I in my right senses? Had the hot sun
+during the day affected my brain, or had the last drain of whisky upset
+my reason?
+
+"You may be pleased to know," said the half-captain, "that my father,
+the Laird of Auchimachie, and Colonel Graham of Ours, were on terms of
+the greatest intimacy. Before I started for the war under Wellington--he
+was at the time but Sir Arthur Wellesley--my father took Colonel Graham
+apart and confided to him: 'If anything should happen to my son in the
+campaign, you'll obleege me greatly if you will forward his remains to
+Auchimachie. I am a staunch Presbyterian, and I shouldn't feel happy
+that his poor body should lie in the land of idolaters, who worship the
+Virgin Mary. And as to the expense, I will manage to meet that; but be
+careful not to do the job in an extravagant manner.'"
+
+"And the untoward Fates cut you short?"
+
+"Yes, the chain-shot did, but not in the Peninsula. I passed safely
+through that, but it was here. When we were makin' the bridge, the
+enemy's ships were up the river, and they fired on us with chain-shot,
+which ye ken are mainly used for cutting the rigging of vessels. But
+they employed them on us as we were engaged over the pontoons, and I was
+just cut in half by a pair of these shot at the junction of the tunic
+and the trews."
+
+"I cannot understand how that your legs should be in Scotland and your
+trunk here."
+
+"That's just what I'm aboot to tell you. There was a Captain O'Hooligan
+and I used to meet; we were in the same detachment. I need not inform
+you, if you're a man of understanding, that O'Hooligan is an Irish name,
+and Captain Timothy O'Hooligan was a born Irishman and an ignorant
+papist to boot. Now, I am by education and conveection a staunch
+Presbyterian. I believe in John Calvin, John Knox, and Jeannie Geddes.
+That's my creed; and if ye are disposed for an argument----"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"Weel, then, it was other with Captain O'Hooligan, and we often had
+words; but he hadn't any arguments at all, only assertions, and he lost
+his temper accordingly, and I was angry at the unreasonableness of the
+man. I had had an ancestor in Derry at the siege and at the Battle of
+the Boyne, and he spitted three Irish kerns on his sabre. I glory in it,
+and I told O'Hooligan as much, and I drank a glass of toddy to the
+memory of William III., and I shouted out Lillibulero! I believe in the
+end we would have fought a duel, after the siege was over, unless one of
+us had thought better of it. But it was not to be. At the same time that
+I was cut in half, so was he also by chain-shot."
+
+"And is he buried here?"
+
+"The half of him--his confounded legs, and the knees that have bowed to
+the image of Baal."
+
+"Then, what became of his body?"
+
+"If you'll pay me reasonable attention, and not interrupt, I'll tell you
+the whole story. But--sure enough! Here come those legs!"
+
+Instantly the half-man rolled off the wall, on the outside, and heaving
+himself along on his hands, scuttled behind a tree-trunk.
+
+Next moment I saw a pair of nimble lower limbs, in white ducks and
+straps under the boots, leap the wall, and run about, up and down, much
+like a setter after a partridge.
+
+I did not know what to make of this.
+
+Then the head of McAlister peered from behind the tree, and screamed
+"Lillibulero! God save King William!" Instantly the legs went after him,
+and catching him up kicked him like a football about the enclosure. I
+cannot recall precisely how many times the circuit was made, twice or
+thrice, but all the while the head of McAlister kept screaming
+"Lillibulero!" and "D---- the Pope!"
+
+Recovering myself from my astonishment, and desirous of putting a term
+to this not very edifying scene, I picked up a leaf of shamrock, that
+grew at my feet, and ran between the legs and the trunk, and presented
+the symbol of St. Patrick to the former. The legs at once desisted from
+pursuit, and made a not ungraceful bow to the leaf, and as I advanced
+they retired, still bowing reverentially, till they reached the wall,
+which they stepped over with the utmost ease.
+
+The half-Scotchman now hobbled up to me on his hands, and said: "I'm
+varra much obleeged to you for your intervention, sir." Then he
+scrambled, by means of the rails of the gate, to his former perch on the
+wall.
+
+"You must understand, sir," said McAlister, settling himself
+comfortably, "that this produces no pheesical inconvenience to me at
+all. For O'Hooligan's boots are speeritual, and so is my trunk
+speeritual. And at best it only touches my speeritual feelings. Still, I
+thank you."
+
+"You certainly administered to him some spiritual aggravation," I
+observed.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir, I did. And I glory in it."
+
+"And now, Captain McAlister, if it is not troubling you too greatly,
+after this interruption would you kindly explain to me how it comes
+about that the nobler part of you is here and the less noble in
+Scotland?"
+
+"I will do so with pleasure. Captain O'Hooligan's upper story is at
+Auchimachie."
+
+"How came that about?"
+
+"If you had a particle of patience, you would not interrupt me in my
+narrative. I told you, did I not, that my dear father had enjoined on
+Colonel Graham, should anything untoward occur, that he should send my
+body home to be interred in the vault of my ancestors? Well, this is
+how it came about that the awkward mistake was made. When it was
+reported that I had been killed, Colonel Graham issued orders that my
+remains should be carefully attended to and put aside to be sent home to
+Scotland."
+
+"By boat, I presume?"
+
+"Certainly, by boat. But, unfortunately, he commissioned some Irishmen
+of his company to attend to it. And whether it was that they wished to
+do honour to their own countryman, or whether it was that, like most
+Irishmen, they could not fail to blunder in the discharge of their duty,
+I cannot say. They might have recognised me, even if they hadn't known
+my face, by my goold repeater watch; but some wretched camp-followers
+had been before them. On the watch were engraved the McAlister arms. But
+the watch had been stolen. So they picked up--either out of purpose, or
+by mistake--O'Hooligan's trunk, and my nether portion, and put them
+together into one case. You see, a man's legs are not so easily
+identified. So his body and my lower limbs were made ready together to
+be forwarded to Scotland."
+
+"But how--did not Colonel Graham see personally to the matter?"
+
+"He could not. He was so much engaged over regimental duties. Still, he
+might have stretched a point, I think."
+
+"It must have been difficult to send the portions so far. Was the body
+embalmed?"
+
+"Embalmed! no. There was no one in Bayonne who knew how to do it. There
+was a bird-stuffer in the Rue Pannceau, but he had done nothing larger
+than a seagull. So there could be no question of embalming. We, that is,
+the bit of O'Hooligan and the bit of me, were put into a cask of
+eau-de-vie, and so forwarded by a sailing-vessel. And either on the way
+to Southampton, or on another boat from that port to Edinburgh, the
+sailors ran a gimlet into the barrel, and inserted a straw, and drank up
+all the spirits. It was all gone by the time the hogshead reached
+Auchimachie. Whether O'Hooligan gave a smack to the liquor I cannot say,
+but I can answer for my legs, they would impart a grateful flavour of
+whisky. I was always a drinker of whisky, and when I had taken a
+considerable amount it always went to my legs; they swerved, and gave
+way under me. That is proof certain that the liquor went to my
+extremities and not to my head. Trust to a Scotchman's head for standing
+any amount of whisky. When the remains arrived at Auchimachie for
+interment, it was supposed that some mistake had been made. My hair is
+sandy, that of O'Hooligan is black, or nearly so; but there was no
+knowing what chemical action the alcohol might have on the hair in
+altering its colour. But my mother identified the legs past mistake, by
+a mole on the left calf and a varicose vein on the right. Anyhow, half a
+loaf is better than no bread, so all the mortal relics were consigned to
+the McAlister vault. It was aggravating to my feelings that the minister
+should pronounce a varra eloquent and moving discourse on the occasion
+over the trunk of a confounded Irishman and a papist."
+
+"You must really excuse me," interrupted I, "but how the dickens do you
+know all this?"
+
+"There is always an etherial current of communication between the parts
+of a man's body," replied McAlister, "and there is speeritual
+intercommunication between a man's head and his toes, however pairted
+they may be. I tell you, sir, in the speeritual world we know a thing or
+two."
+
+"And now," said I, "what may be your wishes in this most unfortunate
+matter?"
+
+"I am coming to that, if you'll exercise a little rational patience.
+This that I tell you of occurred in 1814, a considerable time ago. I
+shall be varra pleased if, on your return to England, you will make it
+your business to run up to Scotland, and interview my great-nephew. I am
+quite sure he will do the right thing by me, for the honour of the
+family, and to ease my soul. He never would have come into the estate at
+all if it had not been for my lamented decease. There's another little
+unpleasantness to which I desire you to call his attention. A tombstone
+has been erected over my trunk and O'Hooligan's legs, here in this
+cemetery, and on it is: 'Sacred to the Memory of Captain Timothy
+O'Hooligan, who fell on the field of Glory. R. I. P.' Now this is liable
+to a misunderstanding for it is me--I mean I, to be grammatical--who
+lies underneath. I make no account of the Irishman's nether extremities.
+And being a convinced and zealous Presbyterian, I altogether
+conscientiously object to having 'Requiescat in pace' inscribed over my
+bodily remains. And my great-nephew, the present laird, if he be true to
+the principles of the Covenant, will object just as strongly as myself.
+I know very weel those letters are attached to the name of O'Hooligan,
+but they mark the place of deposition of my body rather than his. So I
+wish you just to put it clearly and logically to the laird, and he will
+take steps, at any cost, to have me transferred to Auchimachie. What he
+may do with the relics of that Irish rogue I don't care for, not one
+stick of barley sugar."
+
+I promised solemnly to fulfil the commission entrusted to me, and then
+Captain McAlister wished me a good night, and retired behind the
+cemetery wall.
+
+I did not quit the South of France that same year, for I spent the
+winter at Pau. In the following May I returned to England, and there
+found that a good many matters connected with my family called for my
+immediate attention. It was accordingly just a year and five months
+after my interview with Captain McAlister that I was able to discharge
+my promise. I had never forgotten my undertaking--I had merely postponed
+it. Charity begins at home, and my own concerns engrossed my time too
+fully to allow me the leisure for a trip to the North.
+
+However, in the end I did go. I took the express to Edinburgh. That
+city, I think candidly, is the finest for situation in the world, as far
+as I have seen of it. I did not then visit it. I never had previously
+been in the Athens of the North, and I should have liked to spend a
+couple of days at least in it, to look over the castle and to walk
+through Holyrood. But duty stands before pleasure, and I went on
+directly to my destination, postponing acquaintance with Edinburgh till
+I had accomplished my undertaking.
+
+I had written to Mr. Fergus McAlister to inform him of my desire to see
+him. I had not entered into the matter of my communication. I thought it
+best to leave this till I could tell him the whole story by word of
+mouth. I merely informed him by letter that I had something to speak to
+him about that greatly concerned his family.
+
+On reaching the station his carriage awaited me, and I was driven to his
+house.
+
+He received me with the greatest cordiality, and offered me the kindest
+hospitality.
+
+The house was large and rambling, not in the best repair, and the
+grounds, as I was driven through them, did not appear to be trimly kept.
+I was introduced to his wife and to his five daughters, fair-haired,
+freckled girls, certainly not beautiful, but pleasing enough in manner.
+His eldest son was away in the army, and his second was in a lawyer's
+office in Edinburgh; so I saw nothing of them.
+
+After dinner, when the ladies had retired, I told him the entire story
+as freely and as fully as possible, and he listened to me with courtesy,
+patience, and the deepest attention.
+
+"Yes," he said, when I had concluded, "I was aware that doubts had been
+cast on the genuineness of the trunk. But under the circumstances it was
+considered advisable to allow the matter to stand as it was. There were
+insuperable difficulties in the way of an investigation and a certain
+identification. But the legs were all right. And I hope to show you
+to-morrow, in the kirk, a very handsome tablet against the wall,
+recording the name and the date of decease of my great-uncle, and some
+very laudatory words on his character, beside an appropriate text from
+the Screeptures."
+
+"Now, however, that the facts are known, you will, of course, take steps
+for the translation of the half of Captain Alister to your family
+vault."
+
+"I foresee considerable difficulties in the way," he replied. "The
+authorities at Bayonne might raise objections to the exhuming of the
+remains in the grave marked by the tombstone of Captain O'Hooligan. They
+might very reasonably say: 'What the hang has Mr. Fergus McAlister to do
+with the body of Captain O'Hooligan?' We must consult the family of that
+officer in Ireland."
+
+"But," said I, "a representation of the case--of the mistake made--would
+render all clear to them. I do not see that there is any necessity for
+complicating the story by saying that you have only half of your
+relative here, and that the other half is in O'Hooligan's grave. State
+that orders had been given for the transmission of the body of your
+great-uncle to Auchimachie, and that, through error, the corpse of
+Captain O'Hooligan had been sent, and Captain McAlister buried by
+mistake as that of the Irishman. That makes a simple, intelligible, and
+straightforward tale. Then you could dispose of the superfluous legs
+when they arrived in the manner you think best."
+
+The laird remained silent for a while, rubbing his chin, and looking at
+the tablecloth.
+
+Presently he stood up, and going to the sideboard, said: "I'll just
+take a wash of whisky to clear my thoughts. Will you have some?"
+
+"Thank you; I am enjoying your old and excellent port."
+
+Mr. Fergus McAlister returned leisurely to the table after his "wash,"
+remained silent a few minutes longer, then lifted his head and said: "I
+don't see that I am called upon to transport those legs."
+
+"No," I answered; "but you had best take the remains in a lump and sort
+them on their arrival."
+
+"I am afraid it will be seriously expensive. My good sir, the property
+is not now worth what it was in Captain Alister's time. Land has gone
+down in value, and rents have been seriously reduced. Besides, farmers
+are now more exacting than formerly; they will not put up with the byres
+that served their fathers. Then my son in the army is a great expense to
+me, and my second son is not yet earning his livelihood, and my
+daughters have not yet found suitors, so that I shall have to leave them
+something on which to live; besides"--he drew a long breath--"I want to
+build on to the house a billiard-room."
+
+"I do not think," protested I, "that the cost would be very serious."
+
+"What do you mean by serious?" he asked.
+
+"I think that these relics of humanity might be transported to
+Auchimachie in a hogshead of cognac, much as the others were."
+
+"What is the price of cognac down there?" asked he.
+
+"Well," I replied, "that is more than I can say as to the cask. Best
+cognac, three stars, is five francs fifty centimes a bottle."
+
+"That's a long price. But one star?"
+
+"I cannot say; I never bought that. Possibly three francs and a half."
+
+"And how many bottles to a cask?"
+
+"I am not sure, something over two hundred litres."
+
+"Two hundred three shillings," mused Mr. Fergus; and then looking up,
+"there is the duty in England, very heavy on spirits, and charges for
+the digging-up, and fees to the officials, and the transport by
+water----" He shook his head.
+
+"You must remember," said I, "that your relative is subjected to great
+indignities from those legs, getting toed three or four times round the
+enclosure." I said three or four, but I believe it was only twice or
+thrice. "It hardly comports with the family honour to suffer it."
+
+"I think," replied Mr. Fergus, "that you said it was but the speeritual
+presentment of a boot, and that there was no pheesical inconvenience
+felt, only a speeritual impression?"
+
+"Just so."
+
+"For my part, judging from my personal experience," said the laird,
+"speeritual impressions are most evanescent."
+
+"Then," said I, "Captain Alister's trunk lies in a foreign land."
+
+"But not," replied he, "in Roman Catholic consecrated soil. That is a
+great satisfaction."
+
+"You, however, have the trunk of a Roman Catholic in your family vault."
+
+"It is so, according to what you say. But there are a score of
+McAlisters there, all staunch Presbyterians, and if it came to an
+argument among them--I won't say he would not have a leg to stand on, as
+he hasn't those anyhow, but he would find himself just nowhere."
+
+Then Mr. Fergus McAlister stood up and said: "Shall we join the ladies?
+As to what you have said, sir, and have recommended, I assure you that I
+will give it my most serious consideration."
+
+
+
+
+THE LEADEN RING
+
+
+"It is not possible, Julia. I cannot conceive how the idea of attending
+the county ball can have entered your head after what has happened. Poor
+young Hattersley's dreadful death suffices to stop that."
+
+"But, aunt, Mr. Hattersley is no relation of ours."
+
+"No relation--but you know that the poor fellow would not have shot
+himself if it had not been for you."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, how can you say so, when the verdict was that he
+committed suicide when in an unsound condition of mind? How could I help
+his blowing out his brains, when those brains were deranged?"
+
+"Julia, do not talk like this. If he did go off his head, it was you who
+upset him by first drawing him on, leading him to believe that you liked
+him, and then throwing him over so soon as the Hon. James Lawlor
+appeared on the _tapis_. Consider: what will people say if you go to the
+assembly?"
+
+"What will they say if I do not go? They will immediately set it down to
+my caring deeply for James Hattersley, and they will think that there
+was some sort of engagement."
+
+"They are not likely to suppose that. But really, Julia, you were for a
+while all smiles and encouragement. Tell me, now, did Mr. Hattersley
+propose to you?"
+
+"Well--yes, he did, and I refused him."
+
+"And then he went and shot himself in despair. Julia, you cannot with
+any face go to the ball."
+
+"Nobody knows that he proposed. And precisely because I do go everyone
+will conclude that he did not propose. I do not wish it to be supposed
+that he did."
+
+"His family, of course, must have been aware. They will see your name
+among those present at the assembly."
+
+"Aunt, they are in too great trouble to look at the paper to see who
+were at the dance."
+
+"His terrible death lies at your door. How you can have the heart,
+Julia----"
+
+"I don't see it. Of course, I feel it. I am awfully sorry, and awfully
+sorry for his father, the admiral. I cannot set him up again. I wish
+that when I rejected him he had gone and done as did Joe Pomeroy, marry
+one of his landlady's daughters."
+
+"There, Julia, is another of your delinquencies. You lured on young
+Pomeroy till he proposed, then you refused him, and in a fit of vexation
+and mortified vanity he married a girl greatly beneath him in social
+position. If the _m�nage_ prove a failure you will have it on your
+conscience that you have wrecked his life and perhaps hers as well."
+
+"I cannot throw myself away as a charity to save this man or that from
+doing a foolish thing."
+
+"What I complain of, Julia, is that you encouraged young Mr. Pomeroy
+till Mr. Hattersley appeared, whom you thought more eligible, and then
+you tossed him aside; and you did precisely the same with James
+Hattersley as soon as you came to know Mr. Lawlor. After all, Julia, I
+am not so sure that Mr. Pomeroy has not chosen the better part. The
+girl, I dare say, is simple, fresh, and affectionate."
+
+"Your implication is not complimentary, Aunt Elizabeth."
+
+"My dear, I have no patience with the young lady of the present day, who
+is shallow, self-willed, and indifferent to the feelings and happiness
+of others, who craves for excitement and pleasure, and desires nothing
+that is useful and good. Where now will you see a girl like Viola's
+sister, who let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on her damask
+cheek? Nowadays a girl lays herself at the feet of a man if she likes
+him, turns herself inside-out to let him and all the world read her
+heart."
+
+"I have no relish to be like Viola's sister, and have my story--a blank.
+I never grovelled at the feet of Joe Pomeroy or James Hattersley."
+
+"No, but you led each to consider himself the favoured one till he
+proposed, and then you refused him. It was like smiling at a man and
+then stabbing him to the heart."
+
+"Well--I don't want people to think that James Hattersley cared for
+me--I certainly never cared for him--nor that he proposed; so I shall go
+to the ball."
+
+Julia Demant was an orphan. She had been retained at school till she was
+eighteen, and then had been removed just at the age when a girl begins
+to take an interest in her studies, and not to regard them as drudgery.
+On her removal she had cast away all that she had acquired, and had been
+plunged into the whirl of Society. Then suddenly her father died--she
+had lost her mother some years before--and she went to live with her
+aunt, Miss Flemming. Julia had inherited a sum of about five hundred
+pounds a year, and would probably come in for a good estate and funds as
+well on the death of her aunt. She had been flattered as a girl at home,
+and at school as a beauty, and she certainly thought no small bones of
+herself.
+
+Miss Flemming was an elderly lady with a sharp tongue, very outspoken,
+and very decided in her opinions; but her action was weak, and Julia
+soon discovered that she could bend the aunt to do anything she willed,
+though she could not modify or alter her opinions.
+
+In the matter of Joe Pomeroy and James Hattersley, it was as Miss
+Flemming had said. Julia had encouraged Mr. Pomeroy, and had only cast
+him off because she thought better of the suit of Mr. Hattersley, son
+of an admiral of that name. She had seen a good deal of young
+Hattersley, had given him every encouragement, had so entangled him,
+that he was madly in love with her; and then, when she came to know the
+Hon. James Lawlor, and saw that he was fascinated, she rejected
+Hattersley with the consequences alluded to in the conversation above
+given.
+
+Julia was particularly anxious to be present at the county ball, for she
+had been already booked by Mr. Lawlor for several dances, and she was
+quite resolved to make an attempt to bring him to a declaration.
+
+On the evening of the ball Miss Flemming and Julia entered the carriage.
+The aunt had given way, as was her wont, but under protest.
+
+For about ten minutes neither spoke, and then Miss Flemming said, "Well,
+you know my feelings about this dance. I do not approve. I distinctly
+disapprove. I do not consider your going to the ball in good taste, or,
+as you would put it, in good form. Poor young Hattersley----"
+
+"Oh, dear aunt, do let us put young Hattersley aside. He was buried with
+the regular forms, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, Julia."
+
+"Then the rector accepted the verdict of the jury at the inquest. Why
+should not we? A man who is unsound in his mind is not responsible for
+his actions."
+
+"I suppose not."
+
+"Much less, then, I who live ten miles away."
+
+"I do not say that you are responsible for his death, but for the
+condition of mind that led him to do the dreadful deed. Really, Julia,
+you are one of those into whose head or heart only by a surgical
+operation could the thought be introduced that you could be in the
+wrong. A hypodermic syringe would be too weak an instrument to effect
+such a radical change in you. Everyone else may be in the wrong,
+you--never. As for me, I cannot get young Hattersley out of my head."
+
+"And I," retorted Julia with asperity, for her aunt's words had stung
+her--"I, for my part, do not give him a thought."
+
+She had hardly spoken the words before a chill wind began to pass round
+her. She drew the Bar�ge shawl that was over her bare shoulders closer
+about her, and said--"Auntie! is the glass down on your side?"
+
+"No, Julia; why do you ask?"
+
+"There is such a draught."
+
+"Draught!--I do not feel one; perhaps the window on your side hitches."
+
+"Indeed, that is all right. It is blowing harder and is deadly cold. Can
+one of the front panes be broken?"
+
+"No. Rogers would have told me had that been the case. Besides, I can
+see that they are sound."
+
+The wind of which Julia complained swirled and whistled about her. It
+increased in force; it plucked at her shawl and slewed it about her
+throat; it tore at the lace on her dress. It snatched at her hair, it
+wrenched it away from the pins, the combs that held it in place; one
+long tress was lashed across the face of Miss Flemming. Then the hair,
+completely released, eddied up above the girl's head, and next moment
+was carried as a drift before her, blinding her. Then--a sudden
+explosion, as though a gun had been fired into her ear; and with a
+scream of terror she sank back among the cushions. Miss Flemming, in
+great alarm, pulled the checkstring, and the carriage stopped. The
+footman descended from the box and came to the side. The old lady drew
+down the window and said: "Oh! Phillips, bring the lamp. Something has
+happened to Miss Demant."
+
+The man obeyed, and sent a flood of light into the carriage. Julia was
+lying back, white and senseless. Her hair was scattered over her face,
+neck, and shoulders; the flowers that had been stuck in it, the pins
+that had fastened it in place, the pads that had given shape to the
+convolutions lay strewn, some on her lap, some in the rug at the bottom
+of the carriage.
+
+"Phillips!" ordered the old lady in great agitation, "tell Rogers to
+turn the horses and drive home at once; and do you run as fast as you
+can for Dr. Crate."
+
+A few minutes after the carriage was again in motion, Julia revived. Her
+aunt was chafing her hand.
+
+"Oh, aunt!" she said, "are all the glasses broken?"
+
+"Broken--what glasses?"
+
+"Those of the carriage--with the explosion."
+
+"Explosion, my dear!"
+
+"Yes. That gun which was discharged. It stunned me. Were you hurt?"
+
+"I heard no gun--no explosion."
+
+"But I did. It was as though a bullet had been discharged into my brain.
+I wonder that I escaped. Who can have fired at us?"
+
+"My dear, no one fired. I heard nothing. I know what it was. I had the
+same experience many years ago. I slept in a damp bed, and awoke stone
+deaf in my right ear. I remained so for three weeks. But one night when
+I was at a ball and was dancing, all at once I heard a report as of a
+pistol in my right ear, and immediately heard quite clearly again. It
+was wax."
+
+"But, Aunt Elizabeth, I have not been deaf."
+
+"You have not noticed that you were deaf."
+
+"Oh! but look at my hair; it was that wind that blew it about."
+
+"You are labouring under a delusion, Julia. There was no wind."
+
+"But look--feel how my hair is down."
+
+"That has been done by the motion of the carriage. There are many ruts
+in the road."
+
+They reached home, and Julia, feeling sick, frightened, and bewildered,
+retired to bed. Dr. Crate arrived, said that she was hysterical, and
+ordered something to soothe her nerves. Julia was not convinced. The
+explanation offered by Miss Flemming did not satisfy her. That she was a
+victim to hysteria she did not in the least believe. Neither her aunt,
+nor the coachman, nor Phillips had heard the discharge of a gun. As to
+the rushing wind, Julia was satisfied that she had experienced it. The
+lace was ripped, as by a hand, from her dress, and the shawl was twisted
+about her throat; besides, her hair had not been so slightly arranged
+that the jolting of the carnage would completely disarrange it. She was
+vastly perplexed over what she had undergone. She thought and thought,
+but could get no nearer to a solution of the mystery.
+
+Next day, as she was almost herself again, she rose and went about as
+usual.
+
+In the afternoon the Hon. James Lawlor called and asked after Miss
+Flemming. The butler replied that his mistress was out making calls, but
+that Miss Demant was at home, and he believed was on the terrace. Mr.
+Lawlor at once asked to see her.
+
+He did not find Julia in the parlour or on the terrace, but in a lower
+garden to which she had descended to feed the goldfish in the pond.
+
+"Oh! Miss Demant," said he, "I was so disappointed not to see you at the
+ball last night."
+
+"I was very unwell; I had a fainting fit and could not go."
+
+"It threw a damp on our spirits--that is to say, on mine. I had you
+booked for several dances."
+
+"You were able to give them to others."
+
+"But that was not the same to me. I did an act of charity and
+self-denial. I danced instead with the ugly Miss Burgons and with Miss
+Pounding, and that was like dragging about a sack of potatoes. I believe
+it would have been a jolly evening, but for that shocking affair of
+young Hattersley which kept some of the better sort away. I mean
+those who know the Hattersleys. Of course, for me that did not matter,
+we were not acquainted. I never even spoke with the fellow. You knew
+him, I believe? I heard some people say so, and that you had not come
+because of him. The supper, for a subscription ball, was not atrociously
+bad."
+
+"What did they say of me?"
+
+"Oh!--if you will know--that you did not attend the ball because you
+liked him very much, and were awfully cut up."
+
+"I--I! What a shame that people should talk! I never cared a rush for
+him. He was nice enough in his way, not a bounder, but tolerable as
+young men go."
+
+Mr. Lawlor laughed. "I should not relish to have such a qualified
+estimate made of me."
+
+"Nor need you. You are interesting. He became so only when he had shot
+himself. It will be by this alone that he will be remembered."
+
+"But there is no smoke without fire. Did he like you--much?"
+
+"Dear Mr. Lawlor, I am not a clairvoyante, and never was able to see
+into the brains or hearts of people--least of all of young men. Perhaps
+it is fortunate for me that I cannot."
+
+"One lady told me that he had proposed to you."
+
+"Who was that? The potato-sack?"
+
+"I will not give her name. Is there any truth in it? Did he?"
+
+"No."
+
+At the moment she spoke there sounded in her ear a whistle of wind, and
+she felt a current like a cord of ice creep round her throat, increasing
+in force and compression, her hat was blown off, and next instant a
+detonation rang through her head as though a gun had been fired into her
+ear. She uttered a cry and sank upon the ground.
+
+[Illustration: HER HAT WAS BLOWN OFF, AND NEXT INSTANT A DETONATION RANG
+THROUGH HER HEAD AS THOUGH A GUN HAD BEEN FIRED INTO HER EAR.]
+
+James Lawlor was bewildered. His first impulse was to run to the house
+for assistance; then he considered that he could not leave her lying on
+the wet soil, and he stooped to raise her in his arms and to carry her
+within. In novels young men perform such a feat without difficulty; but
+in fact they are not able to do it, especially when the girl is tall and
+big-boned. Moreover, one in a faint is a dead weight. Lawlor staggered
+under his burden to the steps. It was as much as he could perform to
+carry her up to the terrace, and there he placed her on a seat. Panting,
+and with his muscles quivering after the strain, he hastened to the
+drawing-room, rang the bell, and when the butler appeared, he gasped:
+"Miss Demant has fainted; you and I and the footman must carry her
+within."
+
+"She fainted last night in the carriage," said the butler.
+
+When Julia came to her senses, she was in bed attended by the
+housekeeper and her maid. A few moments later Miss Flemming arrived.
+
+"Oh, aunt! I have heard it again."
+
+"Heard what, dear?"
+
+"The discharge of a gun."
+
+"It is nothing but wax," said the old lady. "I will drop a little
+sweet-oil into your ear, and then have it syringed with warm water."
+
+"I want to tell you something--in private."
+
+Miss Flemming signed to the servants to withdraw.
+
+"Aunt," said the girl, "I must say something. This is the second time
+that this has happened. I am sure it is significant. James Lawlor was
+with me in the sunken garden, and he began to speak about James
+Hattersley. You know it was when we were talking about him last night
+that I heard that awful noise. It was precisely as if a gun had been
+discharged into my ear. I felt as if all the nerves and tissues of my
+head were being torn, and all the bones of my skull shattered--just what
+Mr. Hattersley must have undergone when he pulled the trigger. It was
+an agony for a moment perhaps, but it felt as if it lasted an hour. Mr.
+Lawlor had asked me point blank if James Hattersley had proposed to me,
+and I said, 'No.' I was perfectly justified in so answering, because he
+had no right to ask me such a question. It was an impertinence on his
+part, and I answered him shortly and sharply with a negative. But
+actually James Hattersley proposed twice to me. He would not accept a
+first refusal, but came next day bothering me again, and I was pretty
+curt with him. He made some remarks that were rude about how I had
+treated him, and which I will not repeat, and as he left, in a state of
+great agitation, he said, 'Julia, I vow that you shall not forget this,
+and you shall belong to no one but me, alive or dead.' I considered this
+great nonsense, and did not accord it another thought. But, really,
+these terrible annoyances, this wind and the bursts of noise, do seem to
+me to come from him. It is just as though he felt a malignant delight in
+distressing me, now that he is dead. I should like to defy him, and I
+will do it if I can, but I cannot bear more of these experiences--they
+will kill me."
+
+Several days elapsed.
+
+Mr. Lawlor called repeatedly to inquire, but a week passed before Julia
+was sufficiently recovered to receive him, and then the visit was one of
+courtesy and of sympathy, and the conversation turned upon her health,
+and on indifferent themes.
+
+But some few days later it was otherwise. She was in the conservatory
+alone, pretty much herself again, when Mr. Lawlor was announced.
+
+Physically she had recovered, or believed that she had, but her nerves
+had actually received a severe shock. She had made up her mind that the
+phenomena of the circling wind and the explosion were in some mysterious
+manner connected with Hattersley.
+
+She bitterly resented this, but she was in mortal terror of a
+recurrence; and she felt no compunction for her treatment of the
+unfortunate young man, but rather a sense of deep resentment against
+him. If he were dead, why did he not lie quiet and cease from vexing
+her?
+
+To be a martyr was to her no gratification, for hers was not a martyrdom
+that provoked sympathy, and which could make her interesting.
+
+She had hitherto supposed that when a man died there was an end of him;
+his condition was determined for good or for ill. But that a disembodied
+spirit should hover about and make itself a nuisance to the living, had
+never entered into her calculations.
+
+"Julia--if I may be allowed so to call you"--began Mr. Lawlor, "I have
+brought you a bouquet of flowers. Will you accept them?"
+
+"Oh!" she said, as he handed the bunch to her, "how kind of you. At this
+time of the year they are so rare, and aunt's gardener is so miserly
+that he will spare me none for my room but some miserable bits of
+geranium. It is too bad of you wasting your money like this upon me."
+
+"It is no waste, if it afford you pleasure."
+
+"It is a pleasure. I dearly love flowers."
+
+"To give you pleasure," said Mr. Lawlor, "is the great object of my
+life. If I could assure you happiness--if you would allow me to hope--to
+seize this opportunity, now that we are alone together----"
+
+He drew near and caught her hand. His features were agitated, his lips
+trembled, there was earnestness in his eyes.
+
+At once a cold blast touched Julia and began to circle about her and to
+flutter her hair. She trembled and drew back. That paralysing experience
+was about to be renewed. She turned deadly white, and put her hand to
+her right ear. "Oh, James! James!" she gasped. "Do not, pray do not
+speak what you want to say, or I shall faint. It is coming on. I am not
+yet well enough to hear it. Write to me and I will answer. For pity's
+sake do not speak it." Then she sank upon a seat--and at that moment her
+aunt entered the conservatory.
+
+On the following day a note was put into her hand, containing a formal
+proposal from the Hon. James Lawlor; and by return of post Julia
+answered with an acceptance.
+
+There was no reason whatever why the engagement should be long; and the
+only alternative mooted was whether the wedding should take place before
+Lent or after Easter. Finally, it was settled that it should be
+celebrated on Shrove Tuesday. This left a short time for the necessary
+preparations. Miss Flemming would have to go to town with her niece
+concerning a trousseau, and a trousseau is not turned out rapidly any
+more than an armed cruiser.
+
+There is usually a certain period allowed to young people who have
+become engaged, to see much of each other, to get better acquainted with
+one another, to build their castles in the air, and to indulge in little
+passages of affection, vulgarly called "spooning." But in this case the
+spooning had to be curtailed and postponed.
+
+At the outset, when alone with James, Julia was nervous. She feared a
+recurrence of those phenomena that so affected her. But, although every
+now and then the wind curled and soughed about her, it was not violent,
+nor was it chilling; and she came to regard it as a wail of
+discomfiture. Moreover, there was no recurrence of the detonation, and
+she fondly hoped that with her marriage the vexation would completely
+cease.
+
+In her heart was deep down a sense of exultation. She was defying James
+Hattersley and setting his prediction at naught. She was not in love
+with Mr. Lawlor; she liked him, in her cold manner, and was not
+insensible to the social advantage that would be hers when she became
+the Honourable Mrs. Lawlor.
+
+The day of the wedding arrived. Happily it was fine. "Blessed is the
+bride the sun shines on," said the cheery Miss Flemming; "an omen, I
+trust, of a bright and unruffled life in your new condition."
+
+All the neighbourhood was present at the church. Miss Flemming had many
+friends. Mr. Lawlor had fewer present, as he belonged to a distant
+county. The church path had been laid with red cloth, the church
+decorated with flowers, and a choir was present to twitter "The voice
+that breathed o'er Eden."
+
+The rector stood by the altar, and two cushions had been laid at the
+chancel step. The rector was to be assisted by an uncle of the
+bridegroom who was in Holy Orders; the rector, being old-fashioned, had
+drawn on pale grey kid gloves.
+
+First arrived the bridegroom with his best man, and stood in a nervous
+condition balancing himself first on one foot, then on the other,
+waiting, observed by all eyes.
+
+Next entered the procession of the bride, attended by her maids, to the
+"Wedding March" in _Lohengrin_, on a wheezy organ. Then Julia and her
+intended took their places at the chancel step for the performance of
+the first portion of the ceremony, and the two clergy descended to them
+from the altar.
+
+"Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"I, James, take thee, Julia, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold----"
+and so on.
+
+As the words were being spoken, a cold rush of air passed over the
+clasped hands, numbing them, and began to creep round the bride, and to
+flutter her veil. She set her lips and knitted her brows. In a few
+minutes she would be beyond the reach of these manifestations.
+
+When it came to her turn to speak, she began firmly: "I, Julia, take
+thee, James----" but as she proceeded the wind became fierce; it raged
+about her, it caught her veil on one side and buffeted her cheek; it
+switched the veil about her throat, as though strangling her with a
+drift of snow contracting into ice. But she persevered to the end.
+
+Then James Lawlor produced the ring, and was about to place it on her
+finger with the prescribed words: "With this ring I thee wed----" when a
+report rang in her ear, followed by a heaving of her skull, as though
+the bones were being burst asunder, and she sank unconscious on the
+chancel step.
+
+In the midst of profound commotion, she was raised and conveyed to the
+vestry, followed by James Lawlor, trembling and pale. He had slipped the
+ring back into his waistcoat pocket. Dr. Crate, who was present,
+hastened to offer his professional assistance.
+
+In the vestry Julia rested in a Glastonbury chair, white and still, with
+her hands resting in her lap. And to the amazement of those present, it
+was seen that on the third finger of her left hand was a leaden ring,
+rude and solid as though fashioned out of a bullet. Restoratives were
+applied, but full a quarter of an hour elapsed before Julia opened her
+eyes, and a little colour returned to her lips and cheek. But, as she
+raised her hands to her brow to wipe away the damps that had formed on
+it, her eye caught sight of the leaden ring, and with a cry of horror
+she sank again into insensibility.
+
+The congregation slowly left the church, awestruck, whispering, asking
+questions, receiving no satisfactory answers, forming surmises all
+incorrect.
+
+"I am very much afraid, Mr. Lawlor," said the rector, "that it will be
+impossible to proceed with the service to-day; it must be postponed till
+Miss Demant is in a condition to conclude her part, and to sign the
+register. I do not see how it can be gone on with to-day. She is quite
+unequal to the effort."
+
+The carriage which was to have conveyed the couple to Miss Flemming's
+house, and then, later, to have taken them to the station for their
+honeymoon, the horses decorated with white rosettes, the whip adorned
+with a white bow, had now to convey Julia, hardly conscious, supported
+by her aunt, to her home.
+
+No rice could be thrown. The bell-ringers, prepared to give a joyous
+peal, were constrained to depart.
+
+The reception at Miss Flemming's was postponed. No one thought of
+attending. The cakes, the ices, were consumed in the kitchen.
+
+The bridegroom, bewildered, almost frantic, ran hither and thither, not
+knowing what to do, what to say.
+
+Julia lay as a stone for fully two hours; and when she came to herself
+could not speak. When conscious, she raised her left hand, looked on the
+leaden ring, and sank back again into senselessness.
+
+Not till late in the evening was she sufficiently recovered to speak,
+and then she begged her aunt, who had remained by her bed without
+stirring, to dismiss the attendants. She desired to speak with her
+alone. When no one was in the room with her, save Miss Flemming, she
+said in a whisper: "Oh, Aunt Elizabeth! Oh, auntie! such an awful thing
+has happened. I can never marry Mr. Lawlor, never. I have married James
+Hattersley; I am a dead man's wife. At the time that James Lawlor was
+making the responses, I heard a piping voice in my ear, an unearthly
+voice, saying the same words. When I said: 'I, Julia, take you, James,
+to my wedded husband'--you know Mr. Hattersley is James as well as Mr.
+Lawlor--then the words applied to him as much or as well as to the
+other. And then, when it came to the giving of the ring, there was the
+explosion in my ear, as before--and the leaden ring was forced on to my
+finger, and not James Lawlor's golden ring. It is of no use my resisting
+any more. I am a dead man's wife, and I cannot marry James Lawlor."
+
+Some years have elapsed since that disastrous day and that incomplete
+marriage.
+
+Miss Demant is Miss Demant still, and she has never been able to remove
+the leaden ring from the third finger of her left hand. Whenever the
+attempt has been made, either to disengage it by drawing it off or by
+cutting through it, there has ensued that terrifying discharge as of a
+gun into her ear, causing insensibility. The prostration that has
+followed, the terror it has inspired, have so affected her nerves, that
+she has desisted from every attempt to rid herself of the ring.
+
+She invariably wears a glove on her left hand, and it is bulged over the
+third finger, where lies that leaden ring.
+
+She is not a happy woman, although her aunt is dead and has left her a
+handsome estate. She has not got many acquaintances. She has no friends;
+for her temper is unamiable, and her tongue is bitter. She supposes that
+the world, as far as she knows it, is in league against her.
+
+Towards the memory of James Hattersley she entertains a deadly hate. If
+an incantation could lay his spirit, if prayer could give him repose,
+she would have recourse to none of these expedients, even though they
+might relieve her, so bitter is her resentment. And she harbours a
+silent wrath against Providence for allowing the dead to walk and to
+molest the living.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER OF PANSIES
+
+
+Anna Voss, of Siebenstein, was the prettiest girl in her village. Never
+was she absent from a fair or a dance. No one ever saw her abroad
+anything but merry. If she had her fits of bad temper, she kept them for
+her mother, in the secrecy of the house. Her voice was like that of the
+lark, and her smile like the May morning. She had plenty of suitors, for
+she was possessed of what a young peasant desires more in a wife than
+beauty, and that is money.
+
+But of all the young men who hovered about her, and sought her favour,
+none was destined to win it save Joseph Arler, the ranger, a man in a
+government position, whose duty was to watch the frontier against
+smugglers, and to keep an eye on the game against poachers.
+
+The eve of the marriage had come.
+
+One thing weighed on the pleasure-loving mind of Anna. She dreaded
+becoming a mother of a family which would keep her at home, and occupy
+her from morn to eve in attendance on her children, and break the
+sweetness of her sleep at night.
+
+So she visited an old hag named Sch�ndelwein, who was a reputed witch,
+and to whom she confided her trouble.
+
+The old woman said that she had looked into the mirror of destiny,
+before Anna arrived, and she had seen that Providence had ordained that
+Anna should have seven children, three girls and four boys, and that one
+of the latter was destined to be a priest.
+
+But Mother Sch�ndelwein had great powers; she could set at naught the
+determinations of Providence; and she gave to Anna seven pips, very much
+like apple-pips, which she placed in a cornet of paper; and she bade her
+cast these one by one into the mill-race, and as each went over the
+mill-wheel, it ceased to have a future, and in each pip was a child's
+soul.
+
+So Anna put money into Mother Sch�ndelwein's hand and departed, and when
+it was growing dusk she stole to the wooden bridge over the mill-stream,
+and dropped in one pip after another. As each fell into the water she
+heard a little sigh.
+
+But when it came to casting in the last of the seven she felt a sudden
+qualm, and a battle in her soul.
+
+However, she threw it in, and then, overcome by an impulse of remorse,
+threw herself into the stream to recover it, and as she did so she
+uttered a cry.
+
+But the water was dark, the floating pip was small, she could not see
+it, and the current was rapidly carrying her to the mill-wheel, when the
+miller ran out and rescued her.
+
+On the following morning she had completely recovered her spirits, and
+laughingly told her bridesmaids how that in the dusk, in crossing the
+wooden bridge, her foot had slipped, she had fallen into the stream, and
+had been nearly drowned. "And then," added she, "if I really had been
+drowned, what would Joseph have done?"
+
+The married life of Anna was not unhappy. It could hardly be that in
+association with so genial, kind, and simple a man as Joseph. But it was
+not altogether the ideal happiness anticipated by both. Joseph had to be
+much away from home, sometimes for days and nights together, and Anna
+found it very tedious to be alone. And Joseph might have calculated on a
+more considerate wife. After a hard day of climbing and chasing in the
+mountains, he might have expected that she would have a good hot supper
+ready for him. But Anna set before him whatever came to hand and cost
+least trouble. A healthy appetite is the best of sauces, she remarked.
+
+Moreover, the nature of his avocation, scrambling up rocks and breaking
+through an undergrowth of brambles and thorns, produced rents and
+fraying of stockings and cloth garments. Instead of cheerfully
+undertaking the repairs, Anna grumbled over each rent, and put out his
+garments to be mended by others. It was only when repair was urgent that
+she consented to undertake it herself, and then it was done with sulky
+looks, muttered reproaches, and was executed so badly that it had to be
+done over again, and by a hired workwoman.
+
+But Joseph's nature was so amiable, and he was so fond of his pretty
+wife, that he bore with those defects, and turned off her murmurs with a
+joke, or sealed her pouting lips with a kiss.
+
+There was one thing about Joseph that Anna could not relish. Whenever he
+came into the village, he was surrounded, besieged by the children.
+Hardly had he turned the corner into the square, before it was known
+that he was there, and the little ones burst out of their parents'
+houses, broke from their sister nurse's arms, to scamper up to Joseph
+and to jump about him. For Joseph somehow always had nuts or almonds or
+sweets in his pockets, and for these he made the children leap, or
+catch, or scramble, or sometimes beg, by putting a sweet on a boy's nose
+and bidding him hold it there, till he said "Catch!"
+
+Joseph had one particular favourite among all this crew, and that was a
+little lame boy with a white, pinched face, who hobbled about on
+crutches.
+
+Him Joseph would single out, take him on his knee, seat himself on the
+steps of the village cross or of the churchyard, and tell him stories of
+his adventures, of the habits of the beasts of the forest.
+
+Anna, looking out of her window, could see all this; and see how before
+Joseph set the poor cripple down, the child would throw its arms round
+his neck and kiss him.
+
+Then Joseph would come home with his swinging step and joyous face.
+
+Anna resented that his first attention should be given to the children,
+regarding it as her due, and she often showed her displeasure by the
+chill of her reception of her husband. She did not reproach him in set
+words, but she did not run to meet him, jump into his arms, and respond
+to his warm kisses.
+
+Once he did venture on a mild expostulation. "Annerl, why do you not
+knit my socks or stocking-legs? Home-made is heart-made. It is a pity to
+spend money on buying what is poor stuff, when those made by you would
+not only last on my calves and feet, but warm the cockles of my heart."
+
+To which she replied testily: "It is you who set the example of throwing
+money away on sweet things for those pestilent little village brats."
+
+One evening Anna heard an unusual hubbub in the square, shouts and
+laughter, not of children alone, but of women and men as well, and next
+moment into the house burst Joseph very red, carrying a cradle on his
+head.
+
+"What is this fooling for?" asked Anna, turning crimson.
+
+"An experiment, Annerl, dearest," answered Joseph, setting down the
+cradle. "I have heard it said that a wife who rocks an empty cradle soon
+rocks a baby into it. So I have bought this and brought it to you. Rock,
+rock, rock, and when I see a little rosebud in it among the snowy linen,
+I shall cry for joy."
+
+Never before had Anna known how dull and dead life could be in an empty
+house. When she had lived with her mother, that mother had made her do
+much of the necessary work of the house; now there was not much to be
+done, and there was no one to exercise compulsion.
+
+If Anna ran out and visited her neighbours, they proved to be
+disinclined for a gossip. During the day they had to scrub and bake and
+cook, and in the evening they had their husbands and children with them,
+and did not relish the intrusion of a neighbour.
+
+The days were weary days, and Anna had not the energy or the love of
+work to prompt her to occupy herself more than was absolutely necessary.
+Consequently, the house was not kept scrupulously clean. The glass and
+the pewter and the saucepans did not shine. The window-panes were dull.
+The house linen was unhemmed.
+
+One evening Joseph sat in a meditative mood over the fire, looking into
+the red embers, and what was unusual with him, he did not speak.
+
+Anna was inclined to take umbrage at this, when all at once he looked
+round at her with his bright pleasant smile and said, "Annerl! I have
+been thinking. One thing is wanted to make us supremely happy--a baby in
+the house. It has not pleased God to send us one, so I propose that we
+both go on pilgrimage to Mariahilf to ask for one."
+
+"Go yourself--I want no baby here," retorted Anna.
+
+A few days after this, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the
+great affliction on Anna of her husband's death.
+
+Joseph had been found shot in the mountains. He was quite dead. The
+bullet had pierced his heart. He was brought home borne on green
+fir-boughs interlaced, by four fellow-j�gers, and they carried him into
+his house. He had, in all probability, met his death at the hand of
+smugglers.
+
+With a cry of horror and grief Anna threw herself on Joseph's body and
+kissed his pale lips. Now only did she realise how deeply all along she
+had loved him--now that she had lost him.
+
+Joseph was laid in his coffin preparatory to the interment on the
+morrow. A crucifix and two candles stood at his head on a little table
+covered with a white cloth. On a stool at his feet was a bowl containing
+holy water and a sprig of rue.
+
+A neighbour had volunteered to keep company with Anna during the night,
+but she had impatiently, without speaking, repelled the offer. She would
+spend the last night that he was above ground alone with her dead--alone
+with her thoughts.
+
+And what were those thoughts?
+
+Now she remembered how indifferent she had been to his wishes, how
+careless of his comforts; how little she had valued his love, had
+appreciated his cheerfulness, his kindness, his forbearance, his equable
+temper.
+
+Now she recalled studied coldness on her part, sharp words, mortifying
+gestures, outbursts of unreasoning and unreasonable petulance.
+
+Now she recalled Joseph scattering nuts among the children, addressing
+kind words to old crones, giving wholesome advice to giddy youths.
+
+She remembered now little endearments shown to her, the presents brought
+her from the fair, the efforts made to cheer her with his pleasant
+stories and quaint jokes. She heard again his cheerful voice as he
+strove to interest her in his adventures of the chase.
+
+As she thus sat silent, numbed by her sorrow, in the faint light cast by
+the two candles, with the shadow of the coffin lying black on the floor
+at her feet, she heard a stumping without; then a hand was laid on the
+latch, the door was timidly opened, and in upon his crutches came the
+crippled boy. He looked wistfully at her, but she made no sign, and then
+he hobbled to the coffin and burst into tears, and stooped and kissed
+the brow of his dead friend.
+
+Leaning on his crutches, he took his rosary and said the prayers for the
+rest of her and his Joseph's soul; then shuffled awkwardly to the foot,
+dipped the spray of rue, and sprinkled the dead with the blessed water.
+
+Next moment the ungainly creature was stumping forth, but after he had
+passed through the door, he turned, looked once more towards the dead,
+put his hand to his lips, and wafted to it his final farewell.
+
+Anna now took her beads and tried to pray, but her prayers would not
+leave her lips; they were choked and driven back by the thoughts which
+crowded up and bewildered her. The chain fell from her fingers upon her
+lap, lay there neglected, and then slipped to the floor. How the time
+passed she knew not, neither did she care. The clock ticked, and she
+heard it not; the hours sounded, and she regarded them not till in at
+her ear and through her brain came clear the call of the wooden cuckoo
+announcing midnight.
+
+Her eyes had been closed. Now suddenly she was roused, and they opened
+and saw that all was changed.
+
+The coffin was gone, but by her instead was the cradle that years ago
+Joseph had brought home, and which she had chopped up for firewood. And
+now in that cradle lay a babe asleep, and with her foot she rocked it,
+and found a strange comfort in so doing.
+
+She was conscious of no sense of surprise, only a great welling up of
+joy in her heart. Presently she heard a feeble whimper and saw a
+stirring in the cradle; little hands were put forth gropingly. Then she
+stooped and lifted the child to her lap, and clasped it to her heart.
+Oh, how lovely was that tiny creature! Oh, how sweet in her ears its
+appealing cry! As she held it to her bosom the warm hands touched her
+throat, and the little lips were pressed to her bosom. She pressed it to
+her. She had entered into a new world, a world of love and light and
+beauty and happiness unspeakable. Oh! the babe--the babe--the babe! She
+laughed and cried, and cried and laughed and sobbed for very exuberance
+of joy. It brought warmth to her heart, it made every vein tingle, it
+ingrained her brain with pride. It was hers!--her own!--her very own!
+She could have been content to spend an eternity thus, with that little
+one close, close to her heart.
+
+Then as suddenly all faded away--the child in her arms was gone as a
+shadow; her tears congealed, her heart was cramped, and a voice spoke
+within her: "It is not, because you would not. You cast the soul away,
+and it went over the mill-wheel."
+
+Wild with terror, uttering a despairing cry, she started up, straining
+her arms after the lost child, and grasping nothing. She looked about
+her. The light of the candles flickered over the face of her dead
+Joseph. And tick, tick, tick went the clock.
+
+She could endure this no more. She opened the door to leave the room,
+and stepped into the outer chamber and cast herself into a chair. And
+lo! it was no more night. The sun, the red evening sun, shone in at the
+window, and on the sill were pots of pinks and mignonette that filled
+the air with fragrance.
+
+And there at her side stood a little girl with shining fair hair, and
+the evening sun was on it like the glory about a saint. The child raised
+its large blue eyes to her, pure innocent eyes, and said: "Mother, may I
+say my Catechism and prayers before I go to bed?"
+
+Then Anna answered and said: "Oh, my darling! My dearest B�rbchen! All
+the Catechism is comprehended in this: Love God, fear God, always do
+what is your duty. Do His will, and do not seek only your own pleasure
+and ease. And this will give you peace--peace--peace."
+
+The little girl knelt and laid her golden head on her folded hands upon
+Anna's knee and began: "God bless dear father, and mother, and all my
+dear brothers and sisters."
+
+Instantly a sharp pang as a knife went through the heart of Anna, and
+she cried: "Thou hast no father and no mother and no brothers and no
+sisters, for thou art not, because I would not have thee. I cast away
+thy soul, and it went over the mill-wheel."
+
+The cuckoo called one. The child had vanished. But the door was thrown
+open, and in the doorway stood a young couple--one a youth with fair
+hair and the down of a moustache on his lip, and oh, in face so like to
+the dead Joseph. He held by the hand a girl, in black bodice and with
+white sleeves, looking modestly on the ground. At once Anna knew what
+this signified. It was her son Florian come to announce that he was
+engaged, and to ask his mother's sanction.
+
+Then said the young man, as he came forward leading the girl: "Mother,
+sweetest mother, this is Susie, the baker's daughter, and child of your
+old and dear friend Vronie. We love one another; we have loved since we
+were little children together at school, and did our lessons out of one
+book, sitting on one bench. And, mother, the bakehouse is to be passed
+on to me and to Susie, and I shall bake for all the parish. The good
+Jesus fed the multitude, distributing the loaves through the hands of
+His apostles. And I shall be His minister feeding His people here.
+Mother, give us your blessing."
+
+Then Florian and the girl knelt to Anna, and with tears of happiness in
+her eyes she raised her hands over them. But ere she could touch them
+all had vanished. The room was dark, and a voice spake within her:
+"There is no Florian; there would have been, but you would not. You cast
+his soul into the water, and it passed away for ever over the
+mill-wheel."
+
+In an agony of terror Anna sprang from her seat. She could not endure
+the room, the air stifled her; her brain was on fire. She rushed to the
+back door that opened on a kitchen garden, where grew the pot-herbs and
+cabbages for use, tended by Joseph when he returned from his work in the
+mountains.
+
+But she came forth on a strange scene. She was on a battlefield. The air
+was charged with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The roar of cannon
+and the rattle of musketry, the cries of the wounded, and shouts of
+encouragement rang in her ears in a confused din.
+
+As she stood, panting, her hands to her breast, staring with wondering
+eyes, before her charged past a battalion of soldiers, and she knew by
+their uniforms that they were Bavarians. One of them, as he passed,
+turned his face towards her; it was the face of an Arler, fired with
+enthusiasm, she knew it; it was that of her son Fritz.
+
+Then came a withering volley, and many of the gallant fellows fell,
+among them he who carried the standard. Instantly, Fritz snatched it
+from his hand, waved it over his head, shouted, "Charge, brothers, fill
+up the ranks! Charge, and the day is ours!"
+
+Then the remnant closed up and went forward with bayonets fixed, tramp,
+tramp. Again an explosion of firearms and a dense cloud of smoke rolled
+before her and she could not see the result.
+
+She waited, quivering in every limb, holding her breath--hoping,
+fearing, waiting. And as the smoke cleared she saw men carrying to the
+rear one who had been wounded, and in his hand he grasped the flag. They
+laid him at Anna's feet, and she recognised that it was her Fritz. She
+fell on her knees, and snatching the kerchief from her throat and
+breast, strove to stanch the blood that welled from his heart. He looked
+up into her eyes, with such love in them as made her choke with emotion,
+and he said faintly: "M�tterchen, do not grieve for me; we have stormed
+the redoubt, the day is ours. Be of good cheer. They fly, they fly,
+those French rascals! Mother, remember me--I die for the dear
+Fatherland."
+
+And a comrade standing by said: "Do not give way to your grief, Anna
+Arler; your son has died the death of a hero."
+
+Then she stooped over him, and saw the glaze of death in his eyes, and
+his lips moved. She bent her ear to them and caught the words: "I am
+not, because you would not. There is no Fritz; you cast my soul into the
+brook and I was carried over the mill-wheel."
+
+All passed away, the smell of the powder, the roar of the cannon, the
+volumes of smoke, the cry of the battle, all--to a dead hush. Anna
+staggered to her feet, and turned to go back to her cottage, and as she
+opened the door, heard the cuckoo call two.
+
+But, as she entered, she found herself to be, not in her own room and
+house--she had strayed into another, and she found herself not in a lone
+chamber, not in her desolate home, but in the midst of a strange family
+scene.
+
+A woman, a mother, was dying. Her head reposed on her husband's breast
+as he sat on the bed and held her in his arms.
+
+The man had grey hair, his face was overflowed with tears, and his eyes
+rested with an expression of devouring love on her whom he supported,
+and whose brow he now and again bent over to kiss.
+
+About the bed were gathered her children, ay, and also her
+grandchildren, quite young, looking on with solemn, wondering eyes on
+the last throes of her whom they had learned to cling to and love with
+all the fervour of their simple hearts. One mite held her doll, dangling
+by the arm, and the forefinger of her other hand was in her mouth. Her
+eyes were brimming, and sobs came from her infant breast. She did not
+understand what was being taken from her, but she wept in sympathy with
+the rest.
+
+Kneeling by the bed was the eldest daughter of the expiring woman,
+reciting the Litany of the Dying, and the sons and another daughter and
+a daughter-in-law repeated the responses in voices broken with tears.
+
+When the recitation of the prayers ceased, there ensued for a while a
+great stillness, and all eyes rested on the dying woman. Her lips
+moved, and she poured forth her last petitions, that left her as rising
+flakes of fire, kindled by her pure and ardent soul. "O God, comfort
+and bless my dear husband, and ever keep Thy watchful guard over my
+children and my children's children, that they may walk in the way that
+leads to Thee, and that in Thine own good time we may all--all be
+gathered in Thy Paradise together, united for evermore. Amen."
+
+A spasm contracted Anna's heart. This woman with ecstatic, upturned
+gaze, this woman breathing forth her peaceful soul on her husband's
+breast, was her own daughter Elizabeth, and in the fine outline of her
+features was Joseph's profile.
+
+All again was hushed. The father slowly rose and quitted his position on
+the bed, gently laid the head on the pillow, put one hand over the eyes
+that still looked up to heaven, and with the fingers of the other
+tenderly arranged the straggling hair on each side of the brow. Then
+standing and turning to the rest, with a subdued voice he said: "My
+children, it has pleased the Lord to take to Himself your dear mother
+and my faithful companion. The Lord's will be done."
+
+Then ensued a great burst of weeping, and Anna's eyes brimmed till she
+could see no more. The church bell began to toll for a departing spirit.
+And following each stroke there came to her, as the after-clang of the
+boom: "There is not, there has not been, an Elizabeth. There would have
+been all this--but thou wouldest it not. For the soul of thy Elizabeth
+thou didst send down the mill-stream and over the wheel."
+
+Frantic with shame, with sorrow, not knowing what she did, or whither
+she went, Anna made for the front door of the house, ran forth and stood
+in the village square.
+
+To her unutterable amazement it was vastly changed. Moreover, the sun
+was shining brightly, and it gleamed over a new parish church, of cut
+white stone, very stately, with a gilded spire, with windows of
+wondrous lacework. Flags were flying, festoons of flowers hung
+everywhere. A triumphal arch of leaves and young birch trees was at the
+graveyard gate. The square was crowded with the peasants, all in their
+holiday attire.
+
+Silent, Anna stood and looked around. And as she stood she heard the
+talk of the people about her.
+
+One said: "It is a great thing that Johann von Arler has done for his
+native village. But see, he is a good man, and he is a great architect."
+
+"But why," asked another, "do you call him Von Arler? He was the son of
+that Joseph the J�ger who was killed by the smugglers in the mountains."
+
+"That is true. But do you not know that the king has ennobled him? He
+has done such great things in the Residenz. He built the new Town Hall,
+which is thought to be the finest thing in Bavaria. He added a new wing
+to the Palace, and he has rebuilt very many churches, and designed
+mansions for the rich citizens and the nobles. But although he is such a
+famous man his heart is in the right place. He never forgets that he was
+born in Siebenstein. Look what a beautiful house he has built for
+himself and his family on the mountain-side. He is there in summer, and
+it is furnished magnificently. But he will not suffer the old, humble
+Arler cottage here to be meddled with. They say that he values it above
+gold. And this is the new church he has erected in his native
+village--that is good."
+
+"Oh! he is a good man is Johann; he was always a good and serious boy,
+and never happy without a pencil in his hand. You mark what I say. Some
+day hence, when he is dead, there will be a statue erected in his honour
+here in this market-place, to commemorate the one famous man that has
+been produced by Siebenstein. But see--see! Here he comes to the
+dedication of the new church."
+
+Then, through the throng advanced a blonde, middle-aged man, with broad
+forehead, clear, bright blue eyes, and a flowing light beard. All the
+men present plucked off their hats to him, and made way for him as he
+advanced. But, full of smiles, he had a hand and a warm pressure, and a
+kindly word and a question as to family concerns, for each who was near.
+
+All at once his eye encountered that of Anna. A flash of recognition and
+joy kindled it up, and, extending his arms, he thrust his way towards
+her, crying: "My mother! my own mother!"
+
+Then--just as she was about to be folded to his heart, all faded away,
+and a voice said in her soul: "He is no son of thine, Anna Arler. He is
+not, because thou wouldest not. He might have been, God had so purposed;
+but thou madest His purpose of none effect. Thou didst send his soul
+over the mill-wheel."
+
+And then faintly, as from a far distance, sounded in her ear the call of
+the cuckoo--three.
+
+The magnificent new church had shrivelled up to the original mean little
+edifice Anna had known all her life. The square was deserted, the cold
+faint glimmer of coming dawn was visible over the eastern mountain-tops,
+but stars still shone in the sky.
+
+With a cry of pain, like a wounded beast, Anna ran hither and thither
+seeking a refuge, and then fled to the one home and resting-place of the
+troubled soul--the church. She thrust open the swing-door, pushed in,
+sped over the uneven floor, and flung herself on her knees before the
+altar.
+
+But see! before that altar stood a priest in a vestment of
+black-and-silver; and a serving-boy knelt on his right hand on a lower
+stage. The candles were lighted, for the priest was about to say Mass.
+There was a rustling of feet, a sound as of people entering, and many
+were kneeling, shortly after, on each side of Anna, and still they came
+on; she turned about and looked and saw a great crowd pressing in, and
+strange did it seem to her eyes that all--men, women, and children,
+young and old--seemed to bear in their faces something, a trace only in
+many, of the Arler or the Voss features. And the little serving-boy, as
+he shifted his position, showed her his profile--it was like her little
+brother who had died when he was sixteen.
+
+Then the priest turned himself about, and said, "Oremus." And she knew
+him--he was her own son--her Joseph, named after his dear father.
+
+The Mass began, and proceeded to the "Sursum corda"--"Lift up your
+hearts!"--when the celebrant stood facing the congregation with extended
+arms, and all responded: "We lift them up unto the Lord."
+
+But then, instead of proceeding with the accustomed invocation, he
+raised his hands high above his head, with the palms towards the
+congregation, and in a loud, stern voice exclaimed--
+
+"Cursed is the unfruitful field!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the barren tree!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the empty house!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the fishless lake!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Forasmuch as Anna Arler, born Voss, might have been the mother of
+countless generations, as the sand of the seashore for number, as the
+stars of heaven for brightness, of generations unto the end of time,
+even of all of us now gathered together here, but she would
+not--therefore shall she be alone, with none to comfort her; sick, with
+none to minister to her; broken in heart, with none to bind up her
+wounds; feeble, and none to stay her up; dead, and none to pray for her,
+for she would not--she shall have an unforgotten and unforgettable past,
+and have no future; remorse, but no hope; she shall have tears, but no
+laughter--for she would not. Woe! woe! woe!"
+
+He lowered his hands, and the tapers were extinguished, the celebrant
+faded as a vision of the night, the server vanished as an incense-cloud,
+the congregation disappeared, melting into shadows, and then from
+shadows to nothingness, without stirring from their places, and without
+a sound.
+
+And Anna, with a scream of despair, flung herself forward with her face
+on the pavement, and her hands extended.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two years ago, during the first week in June, an English traveller
+arrived at Siebenstein and put up at the "Krone," where, as he was tired
+and hungry, he ordered an early supper. When that was discussed, he
+strolled forth into the village square, and leaned against the wall of
+the churchyard. The sun had set in the valley, but the mountain-peaks
+were still in the glory of its rays, surrounding the place as a golden
+crown. He lighted a cigar, and, looking into the cemetery, observed
+there an old woman, bowed over a grave, above which stood a cross,
+inscribed "Joseph Arler," and she was tending the flowers on it, and
+laying over the arms of the cross a little wreath of heart's-ease or
+pansy. She had in her hand a small basket. Presently she rose and walked
+towards the gate, by which stood the traveller.
+
+As she passed, he said kindly to her: "Gr�ss Gott, M�tterchen."
+
+She looked steadily at him and replied: "Honoured sir! that which is
+past may be repented of, but can never be undone!" and went on her way.
+
+He was struck with her face. He had never before seen one so full of
+boundless sorrow--almost of despair.
+
+His eyes followed her as she walked towards the mill-stream, and there
+she took her place on the wooden bridge that crossed it, leaning over
+the handrail, and looking down into the water. An impulse of curiosity
+and of interest led him to follow her at a distance, and he saw her pick
+a flower, a pansy, out of her basket, and drop it into the current,
+which caught and carried it forward. Then she took a second, and allowed
+it to fall into the water. Then, after an interval, a third--a fourth;
+and he counted seven in all. After that she bowed her head on her hands;
+her grey hair fell over them, and she broke into a paroxysm of weeping.
+
+The traveller, standing by the stream, saw the seven pansies swept down,
+and one by one pass over the revolving wheel and vanish.
+
+He turned himself about to return to his inn, when, seeing a grave
+peasant near, he asked: "Who is that poor old woman who seems so broken
+down with sorrow?"
+
+"That," replied the man, "is the Mother of Pansies."
+
+"The Mother of Pansies!" he repeated.
+
+"Well--it is the name she has acquired in the place. Actually, she is
+called Anna Arler, and is a widow. She was the wife of one Joseph Arler,
+a j�ger, who was shot by smugglers. But that is many, many years ago.
+She is not right in her head, but she is harmless. When her husband was
+brought home dead, she insisted on being left alone in the night by him,
+before he was buried alone,--with his coffin. And what happened in that
+night no one knows. Some affirm that she saw ghosts. I do not know--she
+may have had Thoughts. The French word for these flowers is
+_pens�es_--thoughts--and she will have none others. When they are in her
+garden she collects them, and does as she has done now. When she has
+none, she goes about to her neighbours and begs them. She comes here
+every evening and throws in seven--just seven, no more and no less--and
+then weeps as one whose heart would split. My wife on one occasion
+offered her forget-me-nots. 'No,' she said; 'I cannot send
+forget-me-nots after those who never were, I can send only Pansies.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
+
+A WIFE'S STORY
+
+
+In 1876 we took a house in one of the best streets and parts of B----. I
+do not give the name of the street or the number of the house, because
+the circumstances that occurred in that place were such as to make
+people nervous, and shy--unreasonably so--of taking those lodgings,
+after reading our experiences therein.
+
+We were a small family--my husband, a grown-up daughter, and myself; and
+we had two maids--a cook, and the other was house- and parlourmaid in
+one. We had not been a fortnight in the house before my daughter said to
+me one morning: "Mamma, I do not like Jane"--that was our
+house-parlourmaid.
+
+"Why so?" I asked. "She seems respectable, and she does her work
+systematically. I have no fault to find with her, none whatever."
+
+"She may do her work," said Bessie, my daughter, "but I dislike
+inquisitiveness."
+
+"Inquisitiveness!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean? Has she been looking
+into your drawers?"
+
+"No, mamma, but she watches me. It is hot weather now, and when I am in
+my room, occasionally, I leave my door open whilst writing a letter, or
+doing any little bit of needlework, and then I am almost certain to hear
+her outside. If I turn sharply round, I see her slipping out of sight.
+It is most annoying. I really was unaware that I was such an interesting
+personage as to make it worth anyone's while to spy out my proceedings."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear. You are sure it is Jane?"
+
+"Well--I suppose so." There was a slight hesitation in her voice. "If
+not Jane, who can it be?"
+
+"Are you sure it is not cook?"
+
+"Oh, no, it is not cook; she is busy in the kitchen. I have heard her
+there, when I have gone outside my room upon the landing, after having
+caught that girl watching me."
+
+"If you have caught her," said I, "I suppose you spoke to her about the
+impropriety of her conduct."
+
+"Well, caught is the wrong word. I have not actually _caught_ her at it.
+Only to-day I distinctly heard her at my door, and I saw her back as she
+turned to run away, when I went towards her."
+
+"But you followed her, of course?"
+
+"Yes, but I did not find her on the landing when I got outside."
+
+"Where was she, then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But did you not go and see?"
+
+"She slipped away with astonishing celerity," said Bessie.
+
+"I can take no steps in the matter. If she does it again, speak to her
+and remonstrate."
+
+"But I never have a chance. She is gone in a moment."
+
+"She cannot get away so quickly as all that."
+
+"Somehow she does."
+
+"And you are sure it is Jane?" again I asked; and again she replied: "If
+not Jane, who else can it be? There is no one else in the house."
+
+So this unpleasant matter ended, for the time. The next intimation of
+something of the sort proceeded from another quarter--in fact, from Jane
+herself. She came to me some days later and said, with some
+embarrassment in her tone--
+
+"If you please, ma'am, if I do not give satisfaction, I would rather
+leave the situation."
+
+"Leave!" I exclaimed. "Why, I have not given you the slightest cause. I
+have not found fault with you for anything as yet, have I, Jane? On the
+contrary, I have been much pleased with the thoroughness of your work.
+And you are always tidy and obliging."
+
+"It isn't that, ma'am; but I don't like being watched whatever I do."
+
+"Watched!" I repeated. "What do you mean? You surely do not suppose that
+I am running after you when you are engaged on your occupations. I
+assure you I have other and more important things to do."
+
+"No, ma'am, I don't suppose you do."
+
+"Then who watches you?"
+
+"I think it must be Miss Bessie."
+
+"Miss Bessie!" I could say no more, I was so astounded.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. When I am sweeping out a room, and my back is turned, I
+hear her at the door; and when I turn myself about, I just catch a
+glimpse of her running away. I see her skirts----"
+
+"Miss Bessie is above doing anything of the sort."
+
+"If it is not Miss Bessie, who is it, ma'am?"
+
+There was a tone of indecision in her voice.
+
+"My good Jane," said I, "set your mind at rest. Miss Bessie could not
+act as you suppose. Have you seen her on these occasions and assured
+yourself that it is she?"
+
+"No, ma'am, I've not, so to speak, seen her face; but I know it ain't
+cook, and I'm sure it ain't you, ma'am; so who else can it be?"
+
+I considered for some moments, and the maid stood before me in dubious
+mood.
+
+"You say you saw her skirts. Did you recognise the gown? What did she
+wear?"
+
+"It was a light cotton print--more like a maid's morning dress."
+
+"Well, set your mind at ease; Miss Bessie has not got such a frock as
+you describe."
+
+"I don't think she has," said Jane; "but there was someone at the door,
+watching me, who ran away when I turned myself about."
+
+"Did she run upstairs or down?"
+
+"I don't know. I did go out on the landing, but there was no one there.
+I'm sure it wasn't cook, for I heard her clattering the dishes down in
+the kitchen at the time."
+
+"Well, Jane, there is some mystery in this. I will not accept your
+notice; we will let matters stand over till we can look into this
+complaint of yours and discover the rights of it."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am. I'm very comfortable here, but it is unpleasant to
+suppose that one is not trusted, and is spied on wherever one goes and
+whatever one is about."
+
+A week later, after dinner one evening, when Bessie and I had quitted
+the table and left my husband to his smoke, Bessie said to me, when we
+were in the drawing-room together: "Mamma, it is not Jane."
+
+"What is not Jane?" I asked.
+
+"It is not Jane who watches me."
+
+"Who can it be, then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"And how is it that you are confident that you are not being observed by
+Jane?"
+
+"Because I have seen her--that is to say, her head."
+
+"When? where?"
+
+"Whilst dressing for dinner, I was before the glass doing my hair, when
+I saw in the mirror someone behind me. I had only the two candles
+lighted on the table, and the room was otherwise dark. I thought I heard
+someone stirring--just the sort of stealthy step I have come to
+recognise as having troubled me so often. I did not turn, but looked
+steadily before me into the glass, and I could see reflected therein
+someone--a woman with red hair. Then I moved from my place quickly. I
+heard steps of some person hurrying away, but I saw no one then."
+
+"The door was open?"
+
+"No, it was shut."
+
+"But where did she go?"
+
+"I do not know, mamma. I looked everywhere in the room and could find no
+one. I have been quite upset. I cannot tell what to think of this. I
+feel utterly unhinged."
+
+"I noticed at table that you did not appear well, but I said nothing
+about it. Your father gets so alarmed, and fidgets and fusses, if he
+thinks that there is anything the matter with you. But this is a most
+extraordinary story."
+
+"It is an extraordinary fact," said Bessie.
+
+"You have searched your room thoroughly?"
+
+"I have looked into every corner."
+
+"And there is no one there?"
+
+"No one. Would you mind, mamma, sleeping with me to-night? I am so
+frightened. Do you think it can be a ghost?"
+
+"Ghost? Fiddlesticks!"
+
+I made some excuse to my husband and spent the night in Bessie's room.
+There was no disturbance that night of any sort, and although my
+daughter was excited and unable to sleep till long after midnight, she
+did fall into refreshing slumber at last, and in the morning said to me:
+"Mamma, I think I must have fancied that I saw something in the glass. I
+dare say my nerves were over-wrought."
+
+I was greatly relieved to hear this, and I arrived at much the same
+conclusion as did Bessie, but was again bewildered, and my mind
+unsettled by Jane, who came to me just before lunch, when I was alone,
+and said--
+
+"Please, ma'am, it's only fair to say, but it's not Miss Bessie."
+
+"What is not Miss Bessie? I mean, who is not Miss Bessie?"
+
+"Her as is spying on me."
+
+"I told you it could not be she. Who is it?"
+
+"Please, ma'am, I don't know. It's a red-haired girl."
+
+"But, Jane, be serious. There is no red-haired girl in the house."
+
+"I know there ain't, ma'am. But for all that, she spies on me."
+
+"Be reasonable, Jane," I said, disguising the shock her words produced
+on me. "If there be no red-haired girl in the house, how can you have
+one watching you?"
+
+"I don't know; but one does."
+
+"How do you know that she is red-haired?"
+
+"Because I have seen her."
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I was going upstairs, when I heard steps coming softly
+after me--the backstairs, ma'am; they're rather dark and steep, and
+there's no carpet on them, as on the front stairs, and I was sure I
+heard someone following me; so I twisted about, thinking it might be
+cook, but it wasn't. I saw a young woman in a print dress, and the light
+as came from the window at the side fell on her head, and it was
+carrots--reg'lar carrots."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"No, ma'am; she put her arm up and turned and ran downstairs, and I went
+after her, but I never found her."
+
+"You followed her--how far?"
+
+"To the kitchen. Cook was there. And I said to cook, says I: 'Did you
+see a girl come this way?' And she said, short-like: 'No.'"
+
+"And cook saw nothing at all?"
+
+"Nothing. She didn't seem best pleased at my axing. I suppose I
+frightened her, as I'd been telling her about how I was followed and
+spied on."
+
+I mused a moment only, and then said solemnly--
+
+"Jane, what you want is a _pill_. You are suffering from hallucinations.
+I know a case very much like yours; and take my word for it that, in
+your condition of liver or digestion, a pill is a sovereign remedy. Set
+your mind at rest; this is a mere delusion, caused by pressure on the
+optic nerve. I will give you a pill to-night when you go to bed, another
+to-morrow, a third on the day after, and that will settle the red-haired
+girl. You will see no more of her."
+
+"You think so, ma'am?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+On consideration, I thought it as well to mention the matter to the
+cook, a strange, reserved woman, not given to talking, who did her work
+admirably, but whom, for some inexplicable reason, I did not like. If I
+had considered a little further as to how to broach the subject, I
+should perhaps have proved more successful; but by not doing so I rushed
+the question and obtained no satisfaction.
+
+I had gone down to the kitchen to order dinner, and the difficult
+question had arisen how to dispose of the scraps from yesterday's joint.
+
+"Rissoles, ma'am?"
+
+"No," said I, "not rissoles. Your master objects to them."
+
+"Then perhaps croquettes?"
+
+"They are only rissoles in disguise."
+
+"Perhaps cottage pie?"
+
+"No; that is inorganic rissole, a sort of protoplasm out of which
+rissoles are developed."
+
+"Then, ma'am, I might make a hash."
+
+"Not an ordinary, barefaced, rudimentary hash?"
+
+"No, ma'am, with French mushrooms, or truffles, or tomatoes."
+
+"Well--yes--perhaps. By the way, talking of tomatoes, who is that
+red-haired girl who has been about the house?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am."
+
+I noticed at once that the eyes of the cook contracted, her lips
+tightened, and her face assumed a half-defiant, half-terrified look.
+
+"You have not many friends in this place, have you, cook?"
+
+"No, ma'am, none."
+
+"Then who can she be?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am."
+
+"You can throw no light on the matter? It is very unsatisfactory having
+a person about the house--and she has been seen upstairs--of whom one
+knows nothing."
+
+"No doubt, ma'am."
+
+"And you cannot enlighten me?"
+
+"She is no friend of mine."
+
+"Nor is she of Jane's. Jane spoke to me about her. Has she remarked
+concerning this girl to you?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am, as I notice all Jane says. She talks a good deal."
+
+"You see, there must be someone who is a stranger and who has access to
+this house. It is most awkward."
+
+"Very so, ma'am."
+
+I could get nothing more from the cook. I might as well have talked to a
+log; and, indeed, her face assumed a wooden look as I continued to speak
+to her on the matter. So I sighed, and said--
+
+"Very well, hash with tomato," and went upstairs.
+
+A few days later the house-parlourmaid said to me, "Please, ma'am, may I
+have another pill?"
+
+"Pill!" I exclaimed. "Why?"
+
+"Because I have seen her again. She was behind the curtains, and I
+caught her putting out her red head to look at me."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"No; she up with her arm over it and scuttled away."
+
+"This is strange. I do not think I have more than two podophyllin pills
+left in the box, but to those you are welcome. Only I should recommend a
+different treatment. Instead of taking them yourself, the moment you
+see, or fancy that you see, the red-haired girl, go at her with the box
+and threaten to administer the pills to her. That will rout her, if
+anything will."
+
+"But she will not stop for the pills."
+
+"The threat of having them forced on her every time she shows herself
+will disconcert her. Conceive, I am supposing, that on each occasion
+Miss Bessie, or I, were to meet you on the stairs, in a room, on the
+landing, in the hall, we were to rush on you and force, let us say,
+castor-oil globules between your lips. You would give notice at once."
+
+"Yes; so I should, ma'am."
+
+"Well, try this upon the red-haired girl. It will prove infallible."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am; what you say seems reasonable."
+
+Whether Bessie saw more of the puzzling apparition, I cannot say. She
+spoke no further on the matter to me; but that may have been so as to
+cause me no further uneasiness. I was unable to resolve the question to
+my own satisfaction--whether what had been seen was a real person, who
+obtained access to the house in some unaccountable manner, or whether it
+was, what I have called it, an apparition.
+
+As far as I could ascertain, nothing had been taken away. The movements
+of the red-haired girl were not those of one who sought to pilfer. They
+seemed to me rather those of one not in her right mind; and on this
+supposition I made inquiries in the neighbourhood as to the existence in
+our street, in any of the adjoining houses, of a person wanting in her
+wits, who was suffered to run about at will. But I could obtain no
+information that at all threw light on a point to me so perplexing.
+
+Hitherto I had not mentioned the topic to my husband. I knew so well
+that I should obtain no help from him, that I made no effort to seek it.
+He would "Pish!" and "Pshaw!" and make some slighting reference to
+women's intellects, and not further trouble himself about the matter.
+
+But one day, to my great astonishment, he referred to it himself.
+
+"Julia," said he, "do you observe how I have cut myself in shaving?"
+
+"Yes, dear," I replied. "You have cotton-wool sticking to your jaw, as
+if you were growing a white whisker on one side."
+
+"It bled a great deal," said he.
+
+"I am sorry to hear it."
+
+"And I mopped up the blood with the new toilet-cover."
+
+"Never!" I exclaimed. "You haven't been so foolish as to do that?"
+
+"Yes. And that is just like you. You are much more concerned about your
+toilet-cover being stained than about my poor cheek which is gashed."
+
+"You were very clumsy to do it," was all I could say. Married people are
+not always careful to preserve the amenities in private life. It is a
+pity, but it is so.
+
+"It was due to no clumsiness on my part," said he; "though I do allow my
+nerves have been so shaken, broken, by married life, that I cannot
+always command my hand, as was the case when I was a bachelor. But this
+time it was due to that new, stupid, red-haired servant you have
+introduced into the house without consulting me or my pocket."
+
+"Red-haired servant!" I echoed.
+
+"Yes, that red-haired girl I have seen about. She thrusts herself into
+my study in a most offensive and objectionable way. But the climax of
+all was this morning, when I was shaving. I stood in my shirt before the
+glass, and had lathered my face, and was engaged on my right jaw, when
+that red-haired girl rushed between me and the mirror with both her
+elbows up, screening her face with her arms, and her head bowed. I
+started back, and in so doing cut myself."
+
+"Where did she come from?"
+
+"How can I tell? I did not expect to see anyone."
+
+"Then where did she go?"
+
+"I do not know; I was too concerned about my bleeding jaw to look about
+me. That girl must be dismissed."
+
+"I wish she could be dismissed," I said.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+I did not answer my husband, for I really did not know what answer to
+make.
+
+I was now the only person in the house who had not seen the red-haired
+girl, except possibly the cook, from whom I could gather nothing, but
+whom I suspected of knowing more concerning this mysterious apparition
+than she chose to admit. That what had been seen by Bessie and Jane was
+a supernatural visitant, I now felt convinced, seeing that it had
+appeared to that least imaginative and most commonplace of all
+individuals, my husband. By no mental process could he have been got to
+imagine anything. He certainly did see this red-haired girl, and that no
+living, corporeal maid had been in his dressing-room at the time I was
+perfectly certain.
+
+I was soon, however, myself to be included in the number of those before
+whose eyes she appeared. It was in this wise.
+
+Cook had gone out to do some marketing. I was in the breakfast-room,
+when, wanting a funnel to fill a little phial of brandy I always keep on
+the washstand in case of emergencies, I went to the head of the kitchen
+stairs, to descend and fetch what I required. Then I was aware of a
+great clattering of the fire-irons below, and a banging about of the
+boiler and grate. I went down the steps very hastily and entered the
+kitchen.
+
+There I saw a figure of a short, set girl in a shabby cotton gown, not
+over clean, and slipshod, stooping before the stove, and striking the
+fender with the iron poker. She had fiery red hair, very untidy.
+
+I uttered an exclamation.
+
+Instantly she dropped the poker, and covering her face with her arms,
+uttering a strange, low cry, she dashed round the kitchen table, making
+nearly the complete circuit, and then swept past me, and I heard her
+clattering up the kitchen stairs.
+
+I was too much taken aback to follow. I stood as one petrified. I felt
+dazed and unable to trust either my eyes or my ears.
+
+Something like a minute must have elapsed before I had sufficiently
+recovered to turn and leave the kitchen. Then I ascended slowly and, I
+confess, nervously. I was fearful lest I should find the red-haired girl
+cowering against the wall, and that I should have to pass her.
+
+But nothing was to be seen. I reached the hall, and saw that no door was
+open from it except that of the breakfast-room. I entered and thoroughly
+examined every recess, corner, and conceivable hiding-place, but could
+find no one there. Then I ascended the staircase, with my hand on the
+balustrade, and searched all the rooms on the first floor, without the
+least success. Above were the servants' apartments, and I now resolved
+on mounting to them. Here the staircase was uncarpeted. As I was
+ascending, I heard Jane at work in her room. I then heard her come out
+hastily upon the landing. At the same moment, with a rush past me,
+uttering the same moan, went the red-haired girl. I am sure I felt her
+skirts sweep my dress. I did not notice her till she was close upon me,
+but I did distinctly see her as she passed. I turned, and saw no more.
+
+I at once mounted to the landing where was Jane.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+"Please, ma'am, I've seen the red-haired girl again, and I did as you
+recommended. I went at her rattling the pill-box, and she turned and ran
+downstairs. Did you see her, ma'am, as you came up?"
+
+"How inexplicable!" I said. I would not admit to Jane that I had seen
+the apparition.
+
+The situation remained unaltered for a week. The mystery was unsolved.
+No fresh light had been thrown on it. I did not again see or hear
+anything out of the way; nor did my husband, I presume, for he made no
+further remarks relative to the extra servant who had caused him so much
+annoyance. I presume he supposed that I had summarily dismissed her.
+This I conjectured from a smugness assumed by his face, such as it
+always acquired when he had carried a point against me--which was not
+often.
+
+However, one evening, abruptly, we had a new sensation. My husband,
+Bessie, and I were at dinner, and we were partaking of the soup, Jane
+standing by, waiting to change our plates and to remove the tureen, when
+we dropped our spoons, alarmed by fearful screams issuing from the
+kitchen. By the way, characteristically, my husband finished his soup
+before he laid down the spoon and said--
+
+"Good gracious! What is that?"
+
+Bessie, Jane, and I were by this time at the door, and we rushed
+together to the kitchen stairs, and one after the other ran down them. I
+was the first to enter, and I saw cook wrapped in flames, and a paraffin
+lamp on the floor broken, and the blazing oil flowing over it.
+
+I had sufficient presence of mind to catch up the cocoanut matting which
+was not impregnated with the oil, and to throw it round cook, wrap her
+tightly in it, and force her down on the floor where not overflowed by
+the oil. I held her thus, and Bessie succoured me. Jane was too
+frightened to do other than scream. The cries of the burnt woman were
+terrible. Presently my husband appeared.
+
+"Dear me! Bless me! Good gracious!" he said.
+
+"You go away and fetch a doctor," I called to him; "you can be of no
+possible service here--you only get in our way."
+
+"But the dinner?"
+
+"Bother the dinner! Run for a surgeon."
+
+In a little while we had removed the poor woman to her room, she
+shrieking the whole way upstairs; and, when there, we laid her on the
+bed, and kept her folded in the cocoanut matting till a medical man
+arrived, in spite of her struggles to be free. My husband, on this
+occasion, acted with commendable promptness; but whether because he was
+impatient for the completion of his meal, or whether his sluggish nature
+was for once touched with human sympathy, it is not for me to say.
+
+All I know is that, so soon as the surgeon was there, I dismissed Jane
+with "There, go and get your master the rest of his dinner, and leave us
+with cook."
+
+The poor creature was frightfully burnt. She was attended to devotedly
+by Bessie and myself, till a nurse was obtained from the hospital. For
+hours she was as one mad with terror as much as with pain.
+
+Next day she was quieter and sent for me. I hastened to her, and she
+begged the nurse to leave the room. I took a chair and seated myself by
+her bedside, and expressed my profound commiseration, and told her that
+I should like to know how the accident had taken place.
+
+"Ma'am, it was the red-haired girl did it."
+
+"The red-haired girl!"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I took a lamp to look how the fish was getting on, and all
+at once I saw her rush straight at me, and I--I backed, thinking she
+would knock me down, and the lamp fell over and smashed, and my clothes
+caught, and----"
+
+"Oh, cook! you should not have taken the lamp."
+
+"It's done. And she would never leave me alone till she had burnt or
+scalded me. You needn't be afraid--she don't haunt the house. It is _me_
+she has haunted, because of what I did to her."
+
+"Then you know her?"
+
+"She was in service with me, as kitchenmaid, at my last place, near
+Cambridge. I took a sort of hate against her, she was such a slattern
+and so inquisitive. She peeped into my letters, and turned out my box
+and drawers, she was ever prying; and when I spoke to her, she was that
+saucy! I reg'lar hated her. And one day she was kneeling by the stove,
+and I was there, too, and I suppose the devil possessed me, for I upset
+the boiler as was on the hot-plate right upon her, just as she looked
+up, and it poured over her face and bosom, and arms, and scalded her
+that dreadful, she died. And since then she has haunted me. But she'll
+do so no more. She won't trouble you further. She has done for me, as
+she has always minded to do, since I scalded her to death."
+
+The unhappy woman did not recover.
+
+"Dear me! no hope?" said my husband, when informed that the surgeon
+despaired of her. "And good cooks are so scarce. By the way, that
+red-haired girl?"
+
+"Gone--gone for ever," I said.
+
+
+
+
+A PROFESSIONAL SECRET
+
+
+Mr. Leveridge was in a solicitor's office at Swanton. Mr. Leveridge had
+been brought up well by a sensible father and an excellent mother. His
+principles left nothing to be desired. His father was now dead, and his
+mother did not reside at Swanton, but near her own relations in another
+part of England. Joseph Leveridge was a mild, inoffensive man, with fair
+hair and a full head. He was so shy that he did not move in Society as
+he might have done had he been self-assertive. But he was fairly
+happy--not so happy as he might have been, for reasons to be shortly
+given.
+
+Swanton was a small market-town, that woke into life every Friday, which
+was market-day, burst into boisterous levity at the Michaelmas fair, and
+then lapsed back into decorum; it was, except on Fridays, somnolent
+during the day and asleep at night.
+
+Swanton was not a manufacturing town. It possessed one iron foundry and
+a brewery, so that it afforded little employment for the labouring
+classes, yet the labouring classes crowded into it, although cottage
+rents were high, because the farmers could not afford, owing to the hard
+times, to employ many hands on the land, and because their wives and
+daughters desired the distractions and dissipations of a town, and
+supposed that both were to be found in superfluity at Swanton.
+
+There was a large town hall with a magistrates' court, where the bench
+sat every month once. The church, in the centre of the town, was an
+imposing structure of stone, very cold within. The presentation was in
+the hands of the Simeonite Trustees, so that the vicar was of the
+theological school--if that can be called a school where nothing is
+taught--called Evangelical. The services ever long and dismal. The Vicar
+slowly and impressively declaimed the prayers, preached lengthy sermons,
+and condemned the congregation to sing out of the Mitre hymnal.
+
+The principal solicitor, Mr. Stork, was clerk of the petty sessions and
+registrar. He did a limited amount of legal work for the landed gentry
+round, was trustee to some widows and orphans, and was consulted by
+tottering yeomen as to their financial difficulties, lent them some
+money to relieve their immediate embarrassments, on the security of
+their land, which ultimately passed into his possession.
+
+To this gentleman Mr. Leveridge had been articled. He had been induced
+to adopt the legal profession, not from any true vocation, but at the
+instigation of his mother, who had urged him to follow in the
+professional footsteps of his revered father. But the occupation was not
+one that accorded with the tastes of the young man, who, notwithstanding
+his apparent mildness and softness, was not deficient in brains. He was
+a shrewd observer, and was endowed with a redundant imagination.
+
+From a child he had scribbled stories, and with his pencil had
+illustrated them; but this had brought upon him severe rebukes from his
+mother, who looked with disfavour on works of imagination, and his
+father had taken him across his knee, of course before he was adult, and
+had castigated him with the flat of the hairbrush for surreptitiously
+reading the _Arabian Nights_.
+
+Mr. Leveridge's days passed evenly enough; there was some business
+coming into the office on Fridays, and none at all on Sundays, on which
+day he wrote a long and affectionate letter to his widowed mother.
+
+He would have been a happy man, happy in a mild, lotus-eating way, but
+for three things. In the first place, he became conscious that he was
+not working in his proper vocation. He took no pleasure in engrossing
+deeds; indentures his soul abhorred. He knew himself to be capable of
+better things, and feared lest the higher faculties of his mind should
+become atrophied by lack of exercise. In the second place, he was not
+satisfied that his superior was a man of strict integrity. He had no
+reason whatever for supposing that anything dishonest went on in the
+office, but he had discovered that his "boss" was a daring and
+venturesome speculator, and he feared lest temptation should induce him
+to speculate with the funds of those to whom he acted as trustee. And
+Joseph, with his high sense of rectitude, was apprehensive lest some day
+something might there be done, which would cause a crash. Lastly, Joseph
+Leveridge had lost his heart. He was consumed by a hopeless passion for
+Miss Asphodel Vincent, a young lady with a small fortune of about �400
+per annum, to whom Mr. Stork was guardian and trustee.
+
+This young lady was tall, slender, willowy, had a sweet, Madonna-like
+face, and like Joseph himself was constitutionally shy; and she was
+unconscious of her personal and pecuniary attractions. She moved in the
+best society, she was taken up by the county people. No doubt she would
+be secured by the son of some squire, and settle down as Lady Bountiful
+in some parish; or else some wily curate with a moustache would step in
+and carry her off. But her bashfulness and her indifference to men's
+society had so far protected her. She loved her garden, cultivated
+herbaceous plants, and was specially addicted to a rockery in which she
+acclimatised flowers from the Alps.
+
+As Mr. Stork was her guardian, she often visited the office, when Joseph
+flew, with heightened colour, to offer her a chair till Mr. Stork was
+disengaged. But conversation between them had never passed beyond
+generalities. Mr. Leveridge occasionally met her in his country walks,
+but never advanced in intimacy beyond raising his hat and remarking on
+the weather.
+
+Probably it was the stimulus of this devouring and despairing passion
+which drove Mr. Leveridge to writing a novel, in which he could paint
+Asphodel, under another name, in all her perfections. She should move
+through his story diffusing an atmosphere of sweetness and saintliness,
+but he could not bring himself to provide her with a lover, and to
+conclude his romance with her union to a being of the male sex.
+
+Impressed as he had been in early youth by the admonitions of his
+mother, and the applications of the hairbrush by his father, that the
+imagination was a dangerous and delusive gift, to be restrained, not
+indulged, he resolved that he would create no characters for his story,
+but make direct studies from life. Consequently, when the work was
+completed, it presented the most close portraits of a certain number of
+the residents in Swanton, and the town in which the scene was laid was
+very much like Swanton, though he called it Buzbury.
+
+But to find a publisher was a more difficult work than to write the
+novel. Mr. Leveridge sent his MS. type-written to several firms, and it
+was declined by one after another. At last, however, it fell into the
+hands of an unusually discerning reader, who saw in it distinct tokens
+of ability. It was not one to appeal to the general public. It contained
+no blood-curdling episodes, no hair-breadth escapes, no risky
+situations; it was simply a transcript of life in a little English
+country town. Though not high-spiced to suit the vulgar taste, still the
+reader and the publisher considered that there was a discerning public,
+small and select, that relished good, honest work of the Jane Austen
+kind, and the latter resolved on risking the production. Accordingly he
+offered the author fifty pounds for the work, he buying all rights.
+Joseph Leveridge was overwhelmed at the munificence of the offer, and
+accepted it gratefully and with alacrity.
+
+The next stage in the proceedings consisted in the revision of the
+proofs. And who that has not experienced it can judge of the sensation
+of exquisite delight afforded by this to the young author? After the
+correction of his romance--if romance such a prosaic tale can be
+called--in print, with characteristic modesty Leveridge insisted that
+his story should appear under an assumed name. What the name adopted was
+it does not concern the reader of this narrative to know. Some time now
+elapsed before the book appeared, at the usual publishing time, in
+October.
+
+Eventually it came out, and Mr. Leveridge received his six copies,
+neatly and quietly bound in cloth. He cut and read one with avidity, and
+at once perceived that he had overlooked several typographical errors,
+and wrote to the publisher to beg that these might be corrected in the
+event of a second edition being called for.
+
+On the morning following the publication and dissemination of the book,
+Joseph Leveridge lay in bed a little longer than usual, smiling in happy
+self-gratification at the thought that he had become an author. On the
+table by his bed stood his extinguished candle, his watch, and the book.
+He had looked at it the last thing before he closed his eyes in sleep.
+It was moreover the first thing that his eyes rested on when they
+opened. A fond mother could not have gazed on her new-born babe with
+greater pride and affection.
+
+Whilst he thus lay and said to himself, "I really must--I positively
+must get up and dress!" he heard a stumping on the stairs, and a few
+moments later his door was burst open, and in came Major Dolgelly Jones,
+a retired officer, resident in Swanton, who had never before done him
+the honour of a call--and now he actually penetrated to Joseph's
+bedroom.
+
+The major was hot in the face. He panted for breath, his cheeks
+quivered. The major was a man who, judging by what could be perceived of
+his intellectual gifts, could not have been a great acquisition to the
+Army. He was a man who never could have been trusted to act a brilliant
+part. He was a creature of routine, a martinet; and since his retirement
+to Swanton had been a passionate golf-player and nothing else.
+
+"What do you mean, sir? What do you mean?" spluttered he, "by putting me
+into your book?"
+
+"My book!" echoed Joseph, affecting surprise. "What book do you refer
+to?"
+
+"Oh! it's all very well your assuming that air of injured innocence,
+your trying to evade my question. Your sheepish expression does not
+deceive me. Why--there is the book in question by your bedside."
+
+"I have, I admit, been reading that novel, which has recently appeared."
+
+"You wrote it. Everyone in Swanton knows it. I don't object to your
+writing a book; any fool can do that--especially a novel. What I do
+object to is your putting me into it."
+
+"If I remember rightly," said Joseph, quaking under the bedclothes, and
+then wiping his upper lip on which a dew was forming, "If I remember
+aright, there is in it a major who plays golf, and does nothing else;
+but his name is Piper."
+
+"What do I care about a name? It is I--I. You have put me in."
+
+"Really, Major Jones, you have no justification in thus accusing me. The
+book does not bear my name on the back and title-page."
+
+"Neither does the golfing retired military officer bear my name, but
+that does not matter. It is I myself. I am in your book. I would
+horsewhip you had I any energy left in me, but all is gone, gone with my
+personality into your book. Nothing is left of me--nothing but a body
+and a light tweed suit. I--I--have been taken out of myself and
+transferred to that----" he used a naughty word, "that book. How can I
+golf any more? Walk the links any more with any heart? How can I putt a
+ball and follow it up with any feeling of interest? I am but a carcass.
+My soul, my character, my individuality have been burgled. You have
+broken into my inside, and have despoiled me of my personality." And he
+began to cry.
+
+"Possibly," suggested Mr. Leveridge, "the author might----"
+
+"The author can do nothing. I have been robbed--my fine ethereal self
+has been purloined. I--Dolgelly Jones--am only an outside husk. You have
+despoiled me of my richest jewel--myself."
+
+"I really can do nothing, major."
+
+"I know you can do nothing, that is the pity of it. You have sucked all
+my spiritual being with its concomitants out of me, and cannot put it
+back again. _You have used me up._"
+
+Then, wringing his hands, the major left the room, stumped slowly
+downstairs, and quitted the house.
+
+Joseph Leveridge rose from his bed and dressed in great perturbation of
+mind. Here was a condition of affairs on which he had not reckoned. He
+was so distracted in mind that he forgot to brush his teeth.
+
+When he reached his little sitting-room he found that the table was laid
+for his breakfast, and that his landlady had just brought up the usual
+rashers of bacon and two boiled eggs. She was sobbing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Baker?" asked Joseph. "Has Lasinia"--that was
+the name of the servant--"broken any more dishes?"
+
+"Everything has happened," replied the woman; "you have taken away my
+character."
+
+"I--I never did such a thing."
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, you have. All the time you've been writing, I've felt it
+going out of me like perspiration, and now it is all in your book."
+
+"My book!"
+
+"Yes, sir, under the name of Mrs. Brooks. But law! sir, what is there in
+a name? You might have taken the name of Baker and used that as you
+likes. There be plenty of Bakers in England and the Colonies. But it's
+my character, sir, you've taken away, and shoved it into your book."
+Then the woman wiped her eyes with her apron.
+
+"But really, Mrs. Baker, if there be a landlady in this novel of which
+you complain----"
+
+"There is, and it is me."
+
+"But it is a mere work of fiction."
+
+"It is not a work of fiction, it is a work of fact, and that a cruel
+fact. What has a poor lorn widow like me got to boast of but her
+character? I'm sure I've done well by you, and never boiled your eggs
+hard--and to use me like this."
+
+"Good gracious, dear Mrs. Baker!"
+
+"Don't dear me, sir. If you had loved me, if you had been decently
+grateful for all I have done for you, and mended your socks too, you'd
+not have stolen my character from me, and put it into your book. Ah,
+sir! you have dealt by me what I call regular shameful, and not like a
+gentleman. You _have used me up_."
+
+Joseph was silent, cowed. He turned the rashers about on the dish with
+his fork in an abstracted manner. All desire to eat was gone from him.
+
+Then the landlady went on: "And it's not me only as has to complain.
+There are three gentlemen outside, sitting on the doorstep, awaiting of
+you. And they say that there they will remain, till you go out to your
+office. And they intend to have it out with you."
+
+Joseph started from the chair he had taken, and went to the window, and
+threw up the sash.
+
+Leaning out, he saw three hats below. It was as Mrs. Baker had
+intimated. Three gentlemen were seated on the doorstep. One was the
+vicar, another his "boss" Mr. Stork, and the third was Mr. Wotherspoon.
+
+There could be no mistake about the vicar; he wore a chimney-pot hat of
+silk, that had begun to curl at the brim, anticipatory of being adapted
+as that of an archdeacon. Moreover, he wore extensive, well-cultivated
+grey whiskers on each cheek. If we were inclined to adopt the modern
+careless usage, we might say that he grew whiskers on _either_ cheek.
+But in strict accuracy that would mean that the whiskers grew
+indifferently, or alternatively, intermittently on one cheek or the
+other. This, however, was not the case, consequently we say on _each_
+cheek. These whiskers now waved and fluttered in the light air passing
+up and down the street.
+
+The second was Mr. Stork; he wore a stiff felt hat, his fiery hair
+showed beneath it, behind, and in front; when he lifted his head, the
+end of his pointed nose showed distinctly to Joseph Leveridge who looked
+down from above. The third, Mr. Wotherspoon, had a crushed brown cap on;
+he sat with his hands between his knees, dejected, and looking on the
+ground.
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon lived in Swanton with his mother and three sisters. The
+mother was the widow of an officer, not well off. He was an agreeable
+man, an excellent player at lawn-tennis, croquet, golf, rackets,
+billiards, and cards. His age was thirty, and he had as yet no
+occupation. His mother gently, his sisters sharply, urged him to do
+something, so as to earn his livelihood. With his mother's death her
+pension would cease, and he could not then depend on his sisters. He
+always answered that something would turn up. Occasionally he ran to
+town to look for employment, but invariably returned without having
+secured any, and with his pockets empty. He was so cheerful, so
+good-natured, was such good company, that everyone liked him, but also
+everyone was provoked at his sponging on his mother and sisters.
+
+"Really," said Mr. Leveridge, "I cannot encounter those three. It is
+true that I have drawn them pretty accurately in my novel, and here they
+are ready to take me to account for so doing. I will leave the house by
+the back door."
+
+Without his breakfast, Joseph fled; and having escaped from those who
+had hoped to intercept him, he made his way to the river. Here were
+pleasant grounds, with walks laid out, and benches provided. The place
+was not likely to be frequented at that time of the morning, and Mr.
+Leveridge had half an hour to spare before he was due at the office.
+There, later, he was likely to meet his "boss"; but it was better to
+face him alone, than him accompanied by two others who had a similar
+grievance against him.
+
+He seated himself on a bench and thought. He did not smoke; he had
+promised his "mamma" not to do so, and he was a dutiful son, and
+regarded his undertaking.
+
+What should he do? He was becoming involved in serious embarrassments.
+Would it be possible to induce the publisher to withdraw the book from
+circulation and to receive back the fifty pounds? That was hardly
+possible. He had signed away all his rights in the novel, and the
+publisher had been to a considerable expense for paper, printing,
+binding, and advertising.
+
+He was roused from his troubled thoughts by seeing Miss Asphodel Vincent
+coming along the walk towards him. Her step had lost its wonted spring,
+her carriage its usual buoyancy. In a minute or two she would reach him.
+Would she deign to speak? He felt no compunction towards her. He had
+made her his heroine in the tale. By not a word had he cast a shadow
+over her character or her abilities. Indeed, he had pictured her as the
+highest ideal of an English girl. She might be flattered, she could not
+be offended. And yet there was no flattery in his pencil--he had
+sketched her in as she was.
+
+As she approached she noticed the young author. She did not hasten her
+step. She displayed a strange listlessness in her movements, and lack of
+vivacity in her eye.
+
+When she stood over against him, Joseph Leveridge rose and removed his
+hat. "An early promenade, Miss Vincent," he said.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be
+overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain
+of a great injury done to me."
+
+"You do me a high honour," exclaimed Joseph. "If I can do anything to
+alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me."
+
+"You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been
+done. You put me into your book."
+
+"Miss Vincent," protested Leveridge with vehemence, "if I have, what
+then? I have not in the least overcharged the colours, by a line
+caricatured you." It was in vain for him further to pretend not to be
+the author and to have merely read the book.
+
+"That may be, or it may not. But you have taken strange liberties with
+me in transferring me to your pages."
+
+"And you really recognised yourself?"
+
+"It is myself, my very self, who is there."
+
+"And yet you are here, before my humble self."
+
+"That is only my outer shell. All my individuality, all that goes to
+make up the Ego--I myself--has been taken from me and put into your
+book."
+
+"Surely that cannot be."
+
+"But it is so. I feel precisely as I suppose felt my doll when I was a
+child, when it became unstitched and all the bran ran out; it hung limp
+like a rag. But it is not bran you have deprived me of, it is my
+personality."
+
+"In my novel is your portraiture indeed--but you yourself are here,"
+said Leveridge.
+
+"It is my very self, my noblest and best part, my moral and
+intellectual self, which has been carried off and put into your book."
+
+"This is quite impossible, Miss Vincent."
+
+"A moment's thought," said she, "will convince you that it is as I say.
+If I pick an Alpine flower and transfer it to my blotting-book, it
+remains in the herbarium. It is no longer on the Alp where it bloomed."
+
+"But----" urged Joseph.
+
+"No," she interrupted, "you cannot undeceive me. No one can be in two
+places at the same time. If I am in your book, I cannot be here--except
+so far as goes my animal nature and frame. You have subjected me, Mr.
+Leveridge, to the greatest humiliation. I am by you reduced to the level
+of a score of girls that I know, with no pursuits, no fixed principles,
+no opinions of their own, no ideas. They are swayed by every fashion,
+they are moulded by their surroundings; they are destitute of what some
+would call moral fibre, and I would term character. I had all this, but
+you have deprived me of it, by putting it into your book. I shall
+henceforth be the sport of every breath, be influenced by every folly,
+be without self-confidence and decision, the prey to any adventurer."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, do not say that."
+
+"I cannot say anything other. If I had a sovereign in my purse, and a
+pickpocket stole it, I should no longer have the purse and sovereign,
+only the pocket; and I am a mere pocket now without the coin of my
+personality that you have filched from me. Mr. Leveridge, it was a cruel
+wrong you did me, _when you used me up_."
+
+Then, sighing, Miss Asphodel went languidly on her way. Joseph was as
+one stunned. He buried his face in his hands. The person of all others
+with whom he desired to stand well, that person looked upon him as her
+most deadly enemy, at all events as the one who had most cruelly
+aggrieved her.
+
+Presently, hearing the clock strike, he started. He was due at the
+office, and Joseph Leveridge had always made a point of punctuality.
+
+He now went to the office, and learned from his fellow-clerk that Mr.
+Stork had not returned; he had been there, and then had gone away to
+seek Leveridge at his lodgings. Joseph considered it incumbent on him to
+resume his hat and go in quest of his "boss."
+
+On his way it occurred to him that there was monotony in bacon and eggs
+for breakfast every morning, and he would like a change. Moreover, he
+was hungry; he had left the house of Mrs. Baker without taking a
+mouthful, and if he returned now for a snack the eggs and the bacon
+would be cold. So he stepped into the shop of Mr. Box, the grocer, for a
+tin of sardines in oil.
+
+When the grocer saw him he said: "Will you favour me with a word, sir,
+in the back shop?"
+
+"I am pressed for time," replied Leveridge nervously.
+
+"But one word; I will not detain you," said Mr. Box, and led the way.
+Joseph walked after him.
+
+"Sir," said the grocer, shutting the glass door, "you have done me a
+prodigious wrong. You have deprived me of what I would not have lost for
+a thousand pounds. You have put me into your book. How my business will
+get on without me--I mean my intellect, my powers of organisation, my
+trade instincts, in a word, myself--I do not know. You have taken them
+from me and put them into your book. I am consigned to a novel, when I
+want all my powers behind the counter. Possibly my affairs for a while
+will go on by the weight of their own momentum, but it cannot be for
+long without my controlling brain. Sir, you have brought me and my
+family to ruin--_you have used me up_."
+
+Leveridge could bear this no more; he seized the handle of the door,
+rushed through the outer shop, precipitated himself into the street,
+carrying the sardine tin in his hand, and hurried to his lodgings.
+
+But there new trouble awaited him. On the doorstep still sat the three
+gentlemen.
+
+When they saw him they rose to their feet.
+
+"I know, I know what you have to say," gasped Joseph. "In pity do not
+attack me all together. One at a time. With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will
+you step up first into my humble little sanctum, and I will receive the
+others later. I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from
+the room. I left the window open."
+
+"I will most certainly follow you," said the Vicar of Swanton. "This is
+a most serious matter."
+
+"Excuse me, will you take a chair?"
+
+"No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs. I lose impressiveness
+when seated. But I fear, alas! that gift has been taken from me. Sir!
+sir! you have put me into your book. My earthly tabernacle may be here,
+standing on your--or Mrs. Baker's drugget--but all my great oratorical
+powers have gone. I have been despoiled of what was in me my highest,
+noblest, most spiritual parts. What my preaching henceforth will be I
+fear to contemplate. I may be able to string together a number of texts,
+and tack on an application, but that is mere mechanical work. I used to
+dredge in much florid eloquence, to stick in the flowers of elocution
+between every joint. And now!--I am despoiled of all. I, the Vicar of
+Swanton, shall be as a mere stick; I shall no more be a power in the
+pulpit, a force on the platform. My prospects in the diocese are put an
+end to. Miserable, miserable young man, you might have pumped others,
+but why me? I know but too surely that _you have used me up_." The vicar
+had taken off his hat, his bald forehead was beaded, his bristling grey
+whiskers drooped, his unctuous expression had faded away. His eyes,
+usually bearing the look as though turned inward in ecstatic
+contemplation of his personal piety, with only a watery stare on the
+world without, were now dull.
+
+He turned to the door. "I will send up Stork," he said.
+
+"Do so by all means, sir," was all that Joseph could say.
+
+When the solicitor entered his red hair had assumed a darker dye,
+through the moisture that exuded from his head.
+
+"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "this is a scurvy trick you have played me.
+You have put me into your book."
+
+"I only sketched a not over-scrupulous lawyer," protested Joseph. "Why
+should you put the cap on your own head?"
+
+"Because it fits. It is myself you have put into your book, and by no
+legal process can I get out of it. I shall not be competent to advise
+the magistrates on the bench, and, good heavens! what a mess they will
+get into. I do not know whether your fellow-clerk can carry on the
+business. _I have been used up._ I'll tell you what. You go away; I want
+you no more at the office. Whenever you revisit Swanton you will see
+only the ruins of the respected firm of Stork. It cannot go on when I am
+not in it, but in your book."
+
+The last to arrive was Mr. Wotherspoon. He was in a most depressed
+condition. "There was not much in me," said he, "not at any time. You
+might have spared such a trifle as me, and not put me also into your
+book and _used me up_. Oh, dear, dear! what will my poor mother do! And
+how Sarah and Jane will bully me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That same day Mr. Leveridge packed up his traps and departed from
+Swanton for his mother's house.
+
+That she was delighted to see him need not be said; that something was
+wrong, her maternal instinct told her. But it was not for some days that
+he confided to her so much as this: "Oh, mother, I have written a novel,
+and have put into it the people of Swanton--and so have had to leave."
+
+"My dear Joe," said the old lady, "you have done wrong and made a great
+mistake. You never should introduce actual living personages into a work
+of fiction. You should pulp them first, and then run out your characters
+fresh from the pulp."
+
+"I was so afraid of using my imagination," explained Joe.
+
+Some months elapsed, and Leveridge could not resolve on an employment
+that would suit him and at the same time maintain him. The fifty pounds
+he had earned would not last long. He began to be sensible of the
+impulse to be again writing. He resisted it for a while, but when he got
+a letter from his publisher, saying that the novel had sold well, far
+better than had been expected, and that he would be pleased to consider
+another from Mr. Leveridge's pen, and could promise him for it more
+liberal terms, then Joseph's scruples vanished. But on one thing he was
+resolved. He would now create his characters. They should not be taken
+from observation.
+
+Moreover, he determined to differentiate his new work from the old in
+other material points. His characters should be the reverse of those in
+the first novel. For his heroine he imagined a girl of boisterous
+spirits, straightforward, true, but somewhat unconventional, and given
+to use slang expressions. He had never met with such a girl, so that she
+would be a pure creation of his brain, and he made up his mind to call
+her Poppy. Then he would avoid drawing the portrait of an Evangelical
+parson, and introduce one decidedly High Church; he would have no heavy,
+narrow tradesman like Box, but a man full of venture and speculative
+push. Moreover, having used up the not over-scrupulous lawyer, he would
+portray one, the soul of honour, the confidant of not only the county
+gentry but of the county nobility. And as he had caused so much trouble
+by the introduction of good old Mother Baker, he would trace the line of
+a lively, skittish young widow, always on the hunt after admirers, and
+endeavouring to entangle the youths who lodged with her.
+
+As he went on with his story, it worked out to his satisfaction, and
+what especially gratified him and gave repose to his mind was the
+consciousness that he was using no one up, with whom he was acquainted,
+and that all his characters were pure creations.
+
+The work was complete, and the publisher agreed to give a hundred pounds
+for it. Then it passed through the press, and in due course Leveridge
+heard from the publisher that his six free copies had been sent off to
+him by train. Joseph was almost as excited over his second novel as he
+was over the first.
+
+He was too impatient to wait till the parcels were sent round in the
+ordinary way. He hurried to the station in the evening, to meet the
+train from town, by which he expected his consignment; and having
+secured it, he hurried home, carrying the heavy parcel.
+
+His mother's house was comparatively large; she occupied but a corner of
+it, and she had given over to her son a little cosy sitting-room, in
+which he might write and read. Into this room Joseph carried his parcel,
+full of impatience to cut the string and disclose the volumes.
+
+But he had hardly passed through his door before he was startled to see
+that his room was full of people; all but one were seated about the
+table. That one who was not, lounged against the bookcase, standing on
+one foot. With a shock of surprise, Joseph recognised all those there
+gathered together. They were the characters in his book, his own
+creations. And that individual who stood, in an indifferent attitude,
+was his new heroine, Poppy. The first shock of surprise rapidly passed.
+Joseph Leveridge felt no fear, but rather a sense of pleasure. He was in
+the presence of his own creations, and knew them familiarly. There were
+seven in all. At his appearance they all saluted him respectfully as
+their creator--all except Poppy, who gave him a wink and a nod.
+
+At the head of the table sat the High Church parson, shaven, with a
+long coat and a grave face, next to him, on the right, Lady Mabel
+Forraby, a tall, elderly, aristocratic-looking woman, the aunt of Poppy.
+One element of lightness in the book had consisted in the struggles of
+Lady Mabel to control her wayward niece and the revolt of the latter.
+Mr. Leveridge had never known a person of title in his life, so that
+Lady Mabel was a pure creation; so also, brought up, as he had been, by
+a Calvinistic mother, and afterwards thrown under the ministry of the
+Vicar of Swanton, he had not once come across a Ritualist. Consequently
+his parson, in this instance, was also a pure creation. A young
+gentleman, the hero of the novel, a bright intelligent fellow, full of
+vigour and good sense, and highly cultured, sat next to Lady Mabel.
+Joseph had never been thrown into association with men of quite this
+type. He had met nice respectable clerks and amusing and agreeable
+travellers for commercial houses, so that this personage also was a
+creation. So most certainly was the bold, pert little widow who rolled
+her eyes and put on winsome airs. Joseph had kept clear of all such
+instances, but he had heard and read of them. She could look to him as
+her creator.
+
+And that naughty little Poppy! Her naughtiness was all mischief, put on
+to aggravate her staid old aunt, so full of daring, and yet withal so
+steady of heart; so full of frolic, but with principle underlying it
+all. Joseph had never encountered anyone like her, anyone approaching to
+her. The young ladies to whom his mother introduced him were all very
+prim and proper. At Swanton he had been little in society: the vicar's
+daughter was a tract distributer and a mission woman, and Mr. Stork's
+daughter a domestic drudge. Of all the characters in Joseph's book she
+was his most especial and delightful creation.
+
+Then the white-haired family lawyer, fond of his jokes, able to tell a
+good story, close as a walnut relative to all matters communicated to
+him, strict and honourable in all his dealings, content with his small
+earnings, and frugally laying them by. Joseph had not met such a man,
+but he had idealised him as the sort of lawyer he would wish to be
+should he stick to his profession. He also, accordingly, was a creation.
+And last, but not least, was the red-faced, audacious stockbroker; a man
+of sharp and quick determination, who saw a chance in a moment and
+closed on it, who was keen of scent and smelt a risky investment the
+moment it came before him. Joseph knew no stockbroker--had only heard of
+them by rumour. He, therefore, was a creation.
+
+"Well, my children, not of my loins, but of my brain," said the author.
+"What do you all want?"
+
+"Bodies," they replied with one voice.
+
+"Bodies!" gasped Joseph, stepping backwards. "Why, what possesses you
+all? You can't expect me to furnish you with them."
+
+"But, indeed, we do, old chap," said Poppy.
+
+"Niece!" said Lady Mabel, turning about in her chair, "address your
+creator with more respect."
+
+"Stay, my lady," said the parson. "Allow me to explain matters to Mr.
+Leveridge. He is young and an inexperienced writer of fiction, and is
+therefore unaware of the exigencies of his profession. You must know,
+dear author of our being, that every author of a work of imagination,
+such as you have been, lays himself under a moral and an inexorable
+obligation to find bodies for all those whom he has called into
+existence through his fertile brain. Mr. Leveridge has not mixed in the
+literary world. He does not belong to the Society of Authors. He is--he
+will excuse the expression--raw in his profession. It is a well-known
+law among novelists that they must furnish bodies for such as they have
+called into existence out of their pure imagination. For this reason
+they invariably call their observation to their assistance, and they
+balance in their books the creations with the transcripts from life.
+The only exception to this rule that I am aware of," continued the
+parson, "is where the author is able to get his piece dramatised, in
+which case, of course, the difficulty ceases."
+
+"I should love to go on the stage," threw in Poppy.
+
+"Niece, you do not know what you say," remarked Lady Mabel, turning
+herself about.
+
+"Allow me, my lady," said the parson. "What I have said is fact, is it
+not?"
+
+"Most certainly," replied all. Lady Mabel said: "I suppose it is."
+
+"Then," pursued the parson, "the situation is this: Have you secured the
+dramatisation of your novel?"
+
+"I never gave it a thought," said Joseph.
+
+"In that case, as there is no prospect of our being so accommodated, the
+position is this: We shall have to haunt you night and day, mainly at
+night, till you have accommodated us with bodies; we cannot remain as
+phantom creations of a highly imaginative soul such as is yours, Mr.
+Leveridge. If you have your rights, so have we. And we insist on ours,
+and will insist till we are satisfied."
+
+At once all vanished.
+
+Joseph Leveridge felt that he had got himself into a worse hobble than
+before. From his former difficulties he had escaped by flight. But there
+was, he feared, no flying from these seven impatient creations all
+clamouring for bodies, and to provide them with such was beyond his
+powers. All his delight in the publication of his new novel was spent.
+It had brought with it care and perplexity.
+
+He went to bed.
+
+During the night, he was troubled with his characters; they peeped in at
+him. Poppy got a peacock's feather and tickled his nose just as he was
+dropping asleep. "You bounder!" she said; "I shall give you no peace
+till you have settled me into a body--but oh! get me on to the stage if
+you can."
+
+"Poppy, come away," called Lady Mabel. "Don't be improper. Mr. Leveridge
+will do his best. I want a body quite as much as do you, but I know how
+to ask for it properly."
+
+"And I," said the parson, "should like to have mine before Easter, but
+have one I must."
+
+Mr. Leveridge's state now was worse than the first. One or other of his
+creatures was ever watching him. His every movement was spied on. There
+was no escaping their vigilance. Sometimes they attended him in groups
+of two or three; sometimes they were all around him.
+
+At meals not one was missing, and they eyed every mouthful of his food
+as he raised it to his lips. His mother saw nothing--the creations were
+invisible to all eyes save those of their creator.
+
+If he went out for a country walk, they trotted forth with him, some
+before, looking round at every turn to see which way he purposed going,
+some following. Poppy and the skittish widow managed to attach
+themselves to him, one on each side. "I hate that little woman," said
+Poppy. "Why did you call her into being?"
+
+[Illustration: IF HE WENT OUT FOR A WALK THEY TROTTED FORTH WITH HIM,
+SOME BEFORE, SOME FOLLOWING.]
+
+"I never dreamed that things would come to this pass."
+
+"I am convinced, creator dear, that there is a vein of wickedness in
+your composition, or you would never have imagined such a minx, good and
+amiable and butter-won't-melt-in-your-mouth though you may look. And
+there must be a frolicsome devil in your heart, or I should never have
+become."
+
+"Indeed, Poppy, I am very glad that I gave you being. But one may have
+too much even of a good thing, and there are moments when I could
+dispense with your presence."
+
+"I know, when you want to carry on with the widow. She is always casting
+sheep's eyes at you."
+
+"But, Poppy, you forget my hero, whom I created on purpose for you."
+
+"All my attention is now engrossed in you, and will be till you provide
+me with a body."
+
+When Leveridge was in his room reading, if he raised his eyes from his
+book they met the stare of one of his characters. If he went up to his
+bedroom, he was followed. If he sat with his mother, one kept guard.
+
+This was become so intolerable, that one evening he protested to the
+stockbroker, who was then in attendance. "Do, I entreat you, leave me to
+myself. You treat me as if I were a lunatic and about to commit _felo de
+se_, and you were my warders."
+
+"We watch you, sir," said the stockbroker, "in our own interest. We
+cannot suffer you to give us the slip. We are all expectant and
+impatient for the completion of what you have begun."
+
+Then the parson undertook to administer a lecture on Duty, on
+responsibilities contracted to those called into partial existence by a
+writer of fiction. He cannot be allowed to half do his work. His
+creations must be realised, and can only be realised by being given a
+material existence.
+
+"But what the dickens can I do? I cannot fabricate bodies for you. I
+never in my life even made a doll."
+
+"Have you no thought of dramatising us?"
+
+"I know no dramatic writers."
+
+"Do it yourself."
+
+"Does not this sort of work require a certain familiarity with the
+technique of the stage which I do not possess?"
+
+"That might be attended to later. Pass your MS. through the hands of a
+dramatic expert, and pay him a percentage of your profits in recognition
+of his services. Only one thing I bargain for, do not present me on the
+stage in such a manner as to discredit my cloth."
+
+"Have I done so in my book?"
+
+"No, indeed, I have nothing to complain of in that. But there is no
+counting on what Poppy may persuade you into doing, and I fear that she
+is gaining influence over you. Remember, she is your creation, and you
+must not suffer her to mould you."
+
+The idea took root. The suggestion was taken up, and Joseph Leveridge
+applied himself to his task with zest. But he had to conceal what he was
+about from his mother, who had no opinion of the drama, and regarded the
+theatre as a sink of iniquity.
+
+But now new difficulties arose. Joseph's creations would not leave him
+alone for a moment. Each had a suggestion, each wanted his or her own
+part accentuated at the expense of the other. Each desired the
+heightening of the situations in which they severally appeared. The
+clamour, the bickering, the interference made it impossible for Joseph
+to collect his thoughts, keep cool, and proceed with his work.
+
+Sunday arrived, and Joseph drew on his gloves, put on his box-hat, and
+offered his arm to his mother, to conduct her to chapel. All the
+characters were drawn up in the hall to accompany them. Joseph and his
+mother walking down the street to Ebenezer Chapel presented a picture of
+a good and dutiful son and of a pious widow not to be surpassed. Poppy
+and the widow entered into a struggle as to which was to walk on the
+unoccupied side of Joseph. If this had been introduced into the picture
+it would have marred it; but happily this was invisible to all eyes save
+those of Joseph. The rest of the imaginary party walked arm in arm
+behind till the chapel was reached, when the parson started back.
+
+"I am not going in there! It is a schism-shop," he exclaimed. "Nothing
+in the world would induce me to cross the threshold."
+
+"And I," said Lady Mabel, "I have no idea of attending a place of
+worship not of the Established Church."
+
+"I'll go in--if only to protect Creator from the widow," said Poppy.
+
+Joseph and his mother entered, and occupied their pew. The characters,
+with the exception of the parson and the old lady, grouped themselves
+where they were able. The stockbroker stood in the aisle with his arms
+on the pew door, to ensure that Joseph was kept a prisoner there. But
+before the service had advanced far he had gone to sleep. This was the
+more to be regretted, as the minister delivered a very strong appeal to
+the unconverted, and if ever there was an unconverted worldling, it was
+that stockbroker.
+
+The skittish widow was leering at a deacon of an amorous complexion, but
+as he did not, and, in fact, could not see her, all her efforts were
+cast away. The solicitor sat with stolid face and folded hands, and
+allowed the discourse to flow over him like a refreshing douche. Poppy
+had got very tired of the show, and had slunk away to rejoin her aunt.
+The hero closed his eyes and seemed resigned.
+
+After nearly an hour had elapsed, whilst a hymn was being sung, Joseph,
+more to himself than to his mother, said: "Can I escape?"
+
+"Escape what? Wretch?" inquired the widowed lady.
+
+"I think I can do it. There's a room at the side for earnest inquirers,
+or a vestry or something, with an outer door. I will risk it, and make a
+bolt for my liberty."
+
+He very gently and cautiously unhasped the door of the pew, and as he
+slid it open, the sleeping stockbroker, still sleeping and unconscious,
+slipped back, and Joseph was out. He made his way into the room at the
+side, forth from the actual chapel, ran through it, and tried the door
+that opened into a side lane. It was locked, but happily the key was in
+its place. He turned it, plunged forth, and fell into the arms of his
+characters. They were all there. The solicitor had been observing him
+out of the corner of his eye, and had given the alarm. The stockbroker
+was aroused, and he, the solicitor, the hero, ran out, gave the alarm
+to the three without, and Joseph was intercepted, and his attempt at
+escape frustrated. He was reconducted home by them, himself dejected,
+they triumphant.
+
+When his mother returned she was full of solicitude.
+
+"What was the matter, Joe dear?" she inquired.
+
+"I wasn't feeling very well," he explained. "But I shall be better
+presently."
+
+"I hope it will not interfere with your appetite, Joe. I have cold lamb
+and mint-sauce for our early dinner."
+
+"I shall peck a bit, I trust," said Mr. Leveridge.
+
+But during dinner he was abstracted and silent. All at once he brought
+down his fist on the table. "I've hit it!" he exclaimed, and a flush of
+colour mantled his face to the temples.
+
+"My dear," said his mother; "you have made all the plates and dishes
+jump, and have nearly upset the water-bottle."
+
+"Excuse me, mother; I really must go to my room."
+
+He rose, made a sign to his characters, and they all rose and trooped
+after him into his private apartment.
+
+When they were within he said to his hero: "May I trouble you kindly to
+shut the door and turn the key? My mother will be anxious and come after
+me, and I want a word with you all. It will not take two minutes. I see
+my way to our mutual accommodation. Do not be uneasy and suspicious; I
+will make no further attempt at evasion. Meet me to-morrow morning at
+the 9.48 down train. I am going to take you all with me to Swanton."
+
+A tap at the door.
+
+"Open--it is my mother," said Joseph.
+
+Mrs. Leveridge entered with a face of concern. "What is the matter with
+you, Joe?" she said. "If we were not both of us water-drinkers, I should
+say that you had been indulging in--spirits."
+
+"Mother, I must positively be off to Swanton to-morrow morning. I see
+my way now, all will come right."
+
+"How, my precious boy?"
+
+"I cannot explain. I see my way to clearing up the unpleasantness caused
+by that unfortunate novel of mine. Pack my trunk, mother."
+
+"Not on the Sabbath, lovie."
+
+"No--to-morrow morning. I start by the 9.48 a.m. We all go together."
+
+"We--am I to accompany you?"
+
+"No, no. We--did I say? It is a habit I have got into as an author.
+Authors, like royal personages, speak of themselves as We."
+
+Joseph Leveridge was occupied during the afternoon in writing to his
+victims at Swanton.
+
+First, he penned a notice to Mrs. Baker that he would require his
+lodgings from the morrow, and that he had something to say to her that
+would afford her much gratification.
+
+Then he wrote to the vicar, expressed his regret for having deprived him
+of his personality, and requested him, if he would do him the favour, to
+call in the evening at 7.30, at his lodgings in West Street. He had
+something of special importance to communicate to him. He apologised for
+not himself calling at the vicarage, but said that there were
+circumstances that made it more desirable that he should see his
+reverence privately in his own lodgings.
+
+Next, he addressed an epistle to Mr. Stork. He assured him that he,
+Joseph Leveridge, had felt keenly the wrong he had done him, that he had
+forfeited his esteem, had ill repaid his kindness, had acted in a manner
+towards his employer that was dishonourable. But, he added, he had found
+a means of rectifying what was wrong. He placed himself unreservedly in
+the hands of Mr. Stork, and entreated him to meet him at his rooms in
+West Street on the ensuing Monday evening at 7.45, when he sincerely
+trusted that the past would be forgotten, and a brighter future would be
+assured.
+
+This was followed by a formal letter couched to Mr. Box. He invited him
+to call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings on that same evening at 8 p.m., as he
+had business of an important and far-reaching nature to discuss with
+him. If Mr. Box considered that he, Joseph Leveridge, had done him an
+injury, he was ready to make what reparation lay in his power.
+
+Taking a fresh sheet of notepaper, he now wrote a fifth letter, this to
+Mr. Wotherspoon, requesting the honour of a call at his "diggings" at
+8.15 p.m., when matters of controversy between them could be amicably
+adjusted.
+
+The ensuing letter demanded some deliberation. It was to Asphodel. He
+wrote it out twice before he was satisfied with the mode in which it was
+expressed. He endeavoured to disguise under words full of respect, yet
+not disguise too completely, the sentiments of his heart. But he was
+careful to let drop nothing at which she might take umbrage. He
+entreated her to be so gracious as to allow him an interview by the side
+of the river at the hour of 8.30 on the Monday evening. He apologised
+for venturing to make such a demand, but he intimated that the matter he
+had to communicate was so important and so urgent, that it could not
+well be postponed till Tuesday, and that it was also most necessary that
+the interview should be private. It was something he had to say that
+would materially--no, not materially, but morally--affect her, and would
+relieve his mind from a burden of remorse that had become to him wholly
+intolerable.
+
+The final, the seventh letter, was to Major Dolgelly Jones, and was more
+brief. It merely intimated that he had something of the utmost
+importance to communicate to his private ear, and for this purpose he
+desired the favour of a call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings, at 8.45 on Monday
+evening.
+
+These letters despatched, Mr. Leveridge felt easier in mind and lighter
+at heart. He slept well the ensuing night, better than he had for long.
+His creations did not so greatly disturb him. He was aware that he was
+still kept under surveillance, but the watch was not so strict, nor so
+galling as hitherto.
+
+On the Monday morning he was at the station, and took his ticket for
+Swanton. One ticket sufficed, as his companions, who awaited him on the
+platform, were imaginary characters.
+
+When he took his seat, they pressed into the carriage after him. Poppy
+secured the seat next him, but the widow placed herself opposite, and
+exerted all her blandishment with the hope of engrossing his whole
+attention. At a junction all got out, and Joseph provided himself with a
+luncheon-basket and mineral water. The characters watched him discussing
+the half-chicken and slabs of ham, with the liveliest interest, and were
+especially observant of his treatment of the thin paper napkin,
+wherewith he wiped his fingers and mouth.
+
+At last he arrived at Swanton and engaged a cab, as he was encumbered
+with a portmanteau. Lady Mabel, Poppy, and the widow could be easily
+accommodated within, the two latter with their backs to the horses.
+Joseph would willingly have resigned his seat to either of these, but
+they would not hear of it. A gentle altercation ensued between the
+parson and the solicitor, as to which should ride on the box. The lawyer
+desired to yield the place to "the cloth," but the parson would not hear
+of this--the silver hairs of the other claimed precedence. The
+stockbroker mounted to the roof of the fly and the clerical gentleman
+hung on behind. The hero professed his readiness to walk.
+
+Eventually the cab drew up at Mrs. Baker's door.
+
+That stout, elderly lady received her old lodger without effusion, and
+with languid interest. The look of the house was not what it had been.
+It had deteriorated. The windows had not been cleaned nor the banisters
+dusted.
+
+"My dear old landlady, I am so glad to see you again," said Joseph.
+
+"Thank you, sir. You ordered no meal, but I have got two mutton chops in
+the larder, and can mash some potatoes. At what time would you like your
+supper, sir?" She had become a machine, a thing of routine.
+
+"Not yet, thank you. I have business to transact first, and I shall not
+be disengaged before nine o'clock. But I have something to say to you,
+Mrs. Baker, and I will say it at once and get it over, if you will
+kindly step up into my parlour."
+
+She did so, sighing at each step of the stairs as she ascended.
+
+All the characters mounted as well, and entering the little
+sitting-room, ranged themselves against the wall facing the door.
+
+Mrs. Baker was a portly woman, aged about forty-five, and plain
+featured. She had formerly been neat, now she was dowdy. Before she had
+lost her character she never appeared in that room without removing her
+apron, but on this occasion she wore it, and it was not clean.
+
+"Widow!" said Joseph, addressing his character, "will you kindly step
+forward?"
+
+"I would do anything for _you_," with a roll of the eyes.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge, "I feel that I have done you a
+grievous wrong."
+
+"Well, sir, I ain't been myself since you put me into your book."
+
+"My purpose is now to undo the past, and to provide you with a
+character."
+
+Then, turning to the skittish widow of his creation, he said, "Now,
+then, slip into and occupy her."
+
+"I don't like the tenement," said the widow, pouting.
+
+"Whether you like it or not," protested Joseph, "you must have that or
+no other." He waved his hand. "Presto!" he exclaimed.
+
+Instantly a wondrous change was effected in Mrs. Baker. She whipped off
+the apron, and crammed it under the sofa cushion. She wriggled in her
+movements, she eyed herself in the glass, and exclaimed: "Oh, my! what a
+fright I am. I'll be back again in a minute when I have changed my gown
+and done up my hair."
+
+"We can dispense with your presence, Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge
+sternly. "I will ring for you when you are wanted."
+
+At that moment a rap at the door was heard; and Mrs. Baker, having first
+dropped a coquettish curtsy to her lodger, tripped downstairs to admit
+the vicar, and to show him up to Mr. Leveridge's apartment.
+
+"You may go, Mrs. Baker," said he; for she seemed inclined to linger.
+
+When she had left the room, Joseph contemplated the reverend gentleman.
+He bore a crestfallen appearance. He looked as if he had been out in the
+rain all night without a paletot. His cheeks were flabby, his mouth
+drooped at the corners, his eyes were vacant, and his whiskers no longer
+stuck out horrescent and assertive.
+
+"Dear vicar," said Leveridge, "I cannot forgive myself." In former
+times, Mr. Leveridge would not have dreamed of addressing the reverend
+gentleman in this familiar manner, but it was other now that the latter
+looked so limp and forlorn. "My dear vicar, I cannot forgive myself for
+the trouble I have brought upon you. It has weighed on me as a
+nightmare, for I know that it is not you only who have suffered, but
+also the whole parish of Swanton. Happily a remedy is at hand. I have
+here----" he waved to the parson of his creation, "I have here an
+individuality I can give to you, and henceforth, if you will not be
+precisely yourself again, you will be a personality in your parish and
+the diocese." He waved his hand. "Presto!"
+
+In the twinkling of an eye all was changed in the Vicar of Swanton. He
+straightened himself. His expression altered to what it never had been
+before. The cheeks became firm, and lines formed about the mouth
+indicative of force of character and of self-restraint. The eye assumed
+an eager look as into far distances, as seeking something beyond the
+horizon.
+
+The vicar walked to the mirror over the mantelshelf.
+
+"Bless me!" he said, "I must go to the barber's and have these whiskers
+off." And he hurried downstairs.
+
+After a little pause in the proceedings, Mrs. Baker, now very trim, with
+a blue ribbon round her neck hanging down in streamers behind, ushered
+up Mr. Stork. The lawyer had a faded appearance, as if he had been
+exposed to too strong sunlight; he walked in with an air of lack of
+interest, and sank into a chair.
+
+"My dear old master," said Leveridge, "it is my purpose to restore to
+you all your former energy, and to supply you with what you may possibly
+have lacked previously."
+
+He signed to the white-haired family solicitor he had called into
+fictitious being, and waved his hand.
+
+At once Mr. Stork stood up and shook his legs, as though shaking out
+crumbs from his trousers. His breast swelled, he threw back his head,
+his eye shone clear and was steady.
+
+"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "I have long had my eye on you, sir--had my
+eye on you. I have marked your character as one of uncompromising
+probity. I hate shiftiness, I abhor duplicity. I have been disappointed
+with my clerks. I could not always trust them to do the right thing. I
+want to strengthen and brace my firm. But I will not take into
+partnership with myself any but one of the strictest integrity. Sir! I
+have marked you--I have marked you, Mr. Leveridge. Call on me to-morrow
+morning, and we will consider the preliminaries for a partnership. Don't
+talk to me of buying a partnership."
+
+"I have not done so, sir."
+
+"I know you have not. I will take you in, sir, for your intrinsic
+value. An honest man is worth his weight in gold, and is as scarce as
+the precious metal."
+
+Then, with dignity, Mr. Stork withdrew, and passed Mr. Box, the grocer,
+mounting the stairs.
+
+"Well, Mr. Box," said Leveridge, "how wags the world with you?"
+
+"Badly, sir, badly since you booked me. I mentioned to you, sir, that I
+trusted my little business would for a while go on by its own momentum.
+It has, sir, it has, but the momentum has been downhill. I can't control
+it. I have not the personality to do so, to serve as a drag, to urge it
+upwards. I am in daily expectation, sir, of a regular smash up."
+
+"I am sorry to hear this," said Leveridge. "But I think I have found a
+means of putting all to rights. Presto!" He waved his hand and the
+imaginary character of the stockbroker had actualised himself in the
+body of Mr. Box.
+
+"I see how to do it. By ginger, I do!" exclaimed the grocer, a spark
+coming into his eye. "I'll run my little concern on quite other lines.
+And look ye here, Mr. Leveridge. I bet you my bottom dollar that I'll
+run it to a tremendous success, become a second Lipton, and keep a
+yacht."
+
+As Mr. Box bounced out of the room and proceeded to run downstairs, he
+ran against and nearly knocked over Mrs. Baker; the lady was whispering
+to and coquetting with Mr. Wotherspoon, who was on the landing. That
+gentleman, in his condition of lack of individuality, was like a
+teetotum spun in the hands of the designing Mrs. Baker, who put forth
+all the witchery she possessed, or supposed that she possessed, to
+entangle him in an amorous intrigue.
+
+"Come in," shouted Joseph Leveridge, and Mr. Wotherspoon, looking hot
+and frightened and very shy, tottered in and sank into a chair. He was
+too much shaken and perturbed by the advances of Mrs. Baker to be able
+to speak.
+
+"There," said Joseph, addressing his hero. "You cannot do better than
+animate that feeble creature. Go!"
+
+Instantly Mr. Wotherspoon sprang to his feet. "By George!" said he. "I
+wonder that never struck me before. I'll at once volunteer to go out to
+South Africa, and have a shot at those canting, lying, treacherous
+Boers. If I come back with a score of their scalps at my waist, I shall
+have deserved well of my country. I will volunteer at once. But--I say,
+Leveridge--clear that hulking, fat old landlady out of the way. She
+blocks the stairs, and I can't kick down a woman."
+
+When Mr. Wotherspoon was gone--"Well," said Poppy, "what have you got
+for me?"
+
+"If you will come with me, Poppy dear, I will serve you as well as the
+rest."
+
+"I hope better than you did that odious little widow. But she is well
+paid out."
+
+"Follow me to the riverside," said Joseph; "at 8.33 p.m. I am due there,
+and so is another--a lady."
+
+"And pray why did you not make her come here instead of lugging me all
+the way down there?"
+
+"Because I could not make an appointment with a young lady in my
+bachelor's apartments."
+
+"That's all very fine. But I am there."
+
+"Yes, you--but you are only an imaginary character, and she is a
+substantial reality."
+
+"I think I had better accompany you," said Lady Mabel.
+
+"I think not. If your ladyship will kindly occupy my fauteuil till I
+return, that chair will ever after be sacred to me. Come along, Poppy."
+
+"I'm game," said she.
+
+On reaching the riverside Joseph saw that Miss Vincent was walking there
+in a listless manner, not straight, but swerving from side to side. She
+saw him, but did not quicken her pace, nor did her face light up with
+interest.
+
+"Now, then," said he to Poppy, "what do you think of her?"
+
+"She ain't bad," answered the fictitious character; "she is very pretty
+certainly, but inanimate."
+
+"You will change all that."
+
+"I'll try--you bet."
+
+Asphodel came up. She bowed, but did not extend her hand.
+
+"Miss Vincent," said Joseph. "How good of you to come."
+
+"Not at all. I could not help. I have no free-will left. When you wrote
+Come--I came, I could do no other. I have no initiative, no power of
+resistance."
+
+"I do hope, Miss Vincent, that the thing you so feared has not
+happened."
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"You have not been snapped up by a fortune-hunter?"
+
+"No. People have not as yet found out that I have lost my individuality.
+I have kept very much to myself--that is to say, not to myself, as I
+have no proper myself left--I mean to the semblance of myself. People
+have thought I was an�mic."
+
+Leveridge turned aside: "Well, Poppy!"
+
+"Right you are."
+
+Leveridge waved his hand. Instantly all the inertia passed away from the
+girl, she stood erect and firm. A merry twinkle kindled in her eye, a
+flush was on her cheek, and mischievous devilry played about her lips.
+
+"I feel," said she, "as another person."
+
+"Oh! I am so glad, Miss Vincent."
+
+"That is a pretty speech to make to a lady! Glad I am different from
+what I was before."
+
+"I did not mean that--I meant--in fact, I meant that as you were and as
+you are you are always charming."
+
+"Thank you, sir!" said Asphodel, curtsying and laughing.
+
+"Ah! Miss Vincent, at all times you have seemed to me the ideal of
+womanhood. I have worshipped the very ground you have trod upon."
+
+"Fiddlesticks."
+
+He looked at her. For the moment he was bewildered, oblivious that the
+old personality of Asphodel had passed into his book and that the new
+personality of Poppy had invaded Asphodel.
+
+"Well," said she, "is that all you have to say to me?"
+
+"All?--oh, no. I could say a great deal--I have ordered my supper for
+nine o'clock."
+
+"Oh, how obtuse you men are! Come--is this leap year?"
+
+"I really believe that it is."
+
+"Then I shall take the privilege of the year, and offer you my hand and
+heart and fortune--there! Now it only remains with you to name the day."
+
+"Oh! Miss Vincent, you overcome me."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense. Call me Asphodel, do Joe."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Leveridge walked back to his lodgings as if he trod on air. As he
+passed by the churchyard, he noticed the vicar, now shaven and shorn,
+labouring at a laden wheelbarrow. He halted at the rails and said: "Why,
+vicar, what are you about?"
+
+"The sexton has begun a grave for old Betty Goodman, and it is
+unfinished. He must dig another." He turned over the wheelbarrow and
+shot its contents into the grave.
+
+"But what are you doing?" again asked Joseph.
+
+"Burying the Mitre hymnals," replied the vicar.
+
+The clock struck a quarter to nine.
+
+"I must hurry!" exclaimed Joseph.
+
+On reaching his lodgings he found Major Dolgelly Jones in his
+sitting-room, sitting on the edge of his table tossing up a tennis-ball.
+In the armchair, invisible to the major, reclined Lady Mabel.
+
+"I am so sorry to be late," apologised Joseph. "How are you, sir?"
+
+"Below par. I have been so ever since you put me into your book. I have
+no appetite for golf. I can do nothing to pass the weary hours but toss
+up and down a tennis-ball."
+
+"I hope----" began Joseph; and then a horror seized on him. He had no
+personality of his creation left but that of Lady Mabel. Would it be
+possible to translate that into the major?
+
+He remained silent, musing for a while, and then said hesitatingly to
+the lady: "Here, my lady, is the body you are to individualise."
+
+"But it is that of a man!"
+
+"There is no other left."
+
+"It is hardly delicate."
+
+"There is no help for it." Then turning to the major, he said: "I am
+very sorry--it really is no fault of mine, but I have only a female
+personality to offer to you, and that elderly."
+
+"It is all one to me," replied the major, "catch"--he caught the ball.
+"Many of our generals are old women. I am agreeable. _Place aux dames._"
+
+"But," protested Lady Mabel, "you made me a member of a very ancient
+titled house that came over with the Conqueror."
+
+"The personality I offer you," said I to the major, "though female is
+noble; the family is named in the roll of Battle Abbey."
+
+"Oh!" said Dolgelly Jones, "I descend from one of the royal families of
+Powys, lineally from Caswallon Llanhir and Maelgwn Gwynedd, long before
+the Conqueror was thought of."
+
+"Well, then," said Leveridge, and waved his hand.
+
+In Swanton it is known that the major now never plays golf; he keeps
+rabbits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is with some scruple that I insert this record in the _Book of
+Ghosts_, for actually it is not a story of ghosts. But a greater scruple
+moved me as to whether I should be justified in revealing a
+professional secret, known only among such as belong to the
+Confraternity of Writers of Fiction. But I have observed so much
+perplexity arise, so much friction caused, by persons suddenly breaking
+out into a course of conduct, or into actions, so entirely inconsistent
+with their former conduct as to stagger their acquaintances and friends.
+Henceforth, to use a vulgarism, since I have let the cat out of the bag,
+they will know that such persons have been used up by novel writers that
+have known them, and who have replaced the stolen individualities with
+others freshly created. This is the explanation, and the explanation has
+up to the present remained a professional secret.
+
+
+
+
+H. P.
+
+
+The river V�z�re leaps to life among the granite of the Limousin, forms
+a fine cascade, the Saut de la Virolle, then after a rapid descent over
+mica-schist, it passes into the region of red sandstone at Brive, and
+swelled with affluents it suddenly penetrates a chalk district, where it
+has scooped out for itself a valley between precipices some two to three
+hundred feet high.
+
+These precipices are not perpendicular, but overhang, because the upper
+crust is harder than the stone it caps; and atmospheric influences, rain
+and frost, have gnawed into the chalk below, so that the cliffs hang
+forward as penthouse roofs, forming shelters beneath them. And these
+shelters have been utilised by man from the period when the first
+occupants of the district arrived at a vastly remote period, almost
+uninterruptedly to the present day. When peasants live beneath these
+roofs of nature's providing, they simply wall up the face and ends to
+form houses of the cheapest description of construction, with the earth
+as the floor, and one wall and the roof of living rock, into which they
+burrow to form cupboards, bedplaces, and cellars.
+
+The refuse of all ages is superposed, like the leaves of a book, one
+stratum above another in orderly succession. If we shear down through
+these beds, we can read the history of the land, so far as its
+manufacture goes, beginning at the present day and going down, down to
+the times of primeval man. Now, after every meal, the peasant casts down
+the bones he has picked, he does not stoop to collect and cast forth
+the sherds of a broken pot, and if a sou falls and rolls away, in the
+dust of these gloomy habitations it gets trampled into the soil, to form
+another token of the period of occupation.
+
+When the first man settled here the climatic conditions were different.
+The mammoth or woolly elephant, the hy�na, the cave bear, and the
+reindeer ranged the land. Then naked savages, using only flint tools,
+crouched under these rocks. They knew nothing of metals and of pottery.
+They hunted and ate the horse; they had no dogs, no oxen, no sheep.
+Glaciers covered the centre of France, and reached down the V�z�re
+valley as far as to Brive.
+
+These people passed away, whither we know not. The reindeer retreated to
+the north, the hy�na to Africa, which was then united to Europe. The
+mammoth became extinct altogether.
+
+After long ages another people, in a higher condition of culture, but
+who also used flint tools and weapons, appeared on the scene, and took
+possession of the abandoned rock shelters. They fashioned their
+implements in a different manner by flaking the flint in place of
+chipping it. They understood the art of the potter. They grew flax and
+wove linen. They had domestic animals, and the dog had become the friend
+of man. And their flint weapons they succeeded in bringing to a high
+polish by incredible labour and perseverance.
+
+Then came in the Age of Bronze, introduced from abroad, probably from
+the East, as its great dep�t was in the basin of the Po. Next arrived
+the Gauls, armed with weapons of iron. They were subjugated by the
+Romans, and Roman Gaul in turn became a prey to the Goth and the Frank.
+History has begun and is in full swing.
+
+The medi�val period succeeded, and finally the modern age, and man now
+lives on top of the accumulation of all preceding epochs of men and
+stages of civilisation. In no other part of France, indeed of Europe, is
+the story of man told so plainly, that he who runs may read; and ever
+since the middle of last century, when this fact was recognised, the
+district has been studied, and explorations have been made there, some
+slovenly, others scientifically.
+
+A few years ago I was induced to visit this remarkable region and to
+examine it attentively. I had been furnished with letters of
+recommendation from the authorities of the great Museum of National
+Antiquities at St. Germain, to enable me to prosecute my researches
+unmolested by over-suspicious gendarmes and ignorant mayors.
+
+Under one over-hanging rock was a cabaret or tavern, announcing that
+wine was sold there, by a withered bush above the door.
+
+The place seemed to me to be a probable spot for my exploration. I
+entered into an arrangement with the proprietor to enable me to dig, he
+stipulating that I should not undermine and throw down his walls. I
+engaged six labourers, and began proceedings by driving a tunnel some
+little way below the tavern into the vast bed of d�bris.
+
+The upper series of deposits did not concern me much. The point I
+desired to investigate, and if possible to determine, was the
+approximate length of time that had elapsed between the disappearance of
+the reindeer hunters and the coming on the scene of the next race, that
+which used polished stone implements and had domestic animals.
+
+Although it may seem at first sight as if both races had been savage, as
+both lived in the Stone Age, yet an enormous stride forward had been
+taken when men had learned the arts of weaving, of pottery, and had
+tamed the dog, the horse, and the cow. These new folk had passed out of
+the mere wild condition of the hunter, and had become pastoral and to
+some extent agricultural.
+
+Of course, the data for determining the length of a period might be few,
+but I could judge whether a very long or a very brief period had elapsed
+between the two occupations by the depth of d�bris--chalk fallen from
+the roof, brought down by frost, in which were no traces of human
+workmanship.
+
+It was with this distinct object in view that I drove my adit into the
+slope of rubbish some way below the cabaret, and I chanced to have hit
+on the level of the deposits of the men of bronze. Not that we found
+much bronze--all we secured was a broken pin--but we came on fragments
+of pottery marked with the chevron and nail and twisted thong ornament
+peculiar to that people and age.
+
+My men were engaged for about a week before we reached the face of the
+chalk cliff. We found the work not so easy as I had anticipated. Masses
+of rock had become detached from above and had fallen, so that we had
+either to quarry through them or to circumvent them. The soil was of
+that curious coffee colour so inseparable from the chalk formation. We
+found many things brought down from above, a coin commemorative of the
+storming of the Bastille, and some small pieces of the later Roman
+emperors. But all of these were, of course, not in the solid ground
+below, but near the surface.
+
+When we had reached the face of the cliff, instead of sinking a shaft I
+determined on carrying a gallery down an incline, keeping the rock as a
+wall on my right, till I reached the bottom of all.
+
+The advantage of making an incline was that there was no hauling up of
+the earth by a bucket let down over a pulley, and it was easier for
+myself to descend.
+
+I had not made my tunnel wide enough, and it was tortuous. When I began
+to sink, I set two of the men to smash up the masses of fallen chalk
+rock, so as to widen the tunnel, so that I might use barrows. I gave
+strict orders that all the material brought up was to be picked over by
+two of the most intelligent of the men, outside in the blaze of the sun.
+I was not desirous of sinking too expeditiously; I wished to proceed
+slowly, cautiously, observing every stage as we went deeper.
+
+We got below the layer in which were the relics of the Bronze Age and of
+the men of polished stone, and then we passed through many feet of earth
+that rendered nothing, and finally came on the traces of the reindeer
+period.
+
+To understand how that there should be a considerable depth of the
+d�bris of the men of the rude stone implements, it must be explained
+that these men made their hearths on the bare ground, and feasted around
+their fires, throwing about them the bones they had picked, and the
+ashes, and broken and disused implements, till the ground was
+inconveniently encumbered. Then they swept all the refuse together over
+their old hearth, and established another on top. So the process went on
+from generation to generation.
+
+For the scientific results of my exploration I must refer the reader to
+the journals and memoirs of learned societies. I will not trouble him
+with them here.
+
+On the ninth day after we had come to the face of the cliff, and when we
+had reached a considerable depth, we uncovered some human bones. I
+immediately adopted special precautions, so that these should not be
+disturbed. With the utmost care the soil was removed from over them, and
+it took us half a day to completely clear a perfect skeleton. It was
+that of a full-grown man, lying on his back, with the skull supported
+against the wall of chalk rock. He did not seem to have been buried. Had
+he been so, he would doubtless have been laid on his side in a
+contracted posture, with the chin resting on the knees.
+
+One of the men pointed out to me that a mass of fallen rock lay beyond
+his feet, and had apparently shut him in, so that he had died through
+suffocation, buried under the earth that the rock had brought down with
+it.
+
+I at once despatched a man to my hotel to fetch my camera, that I might
+by flashlight take a photograph of the skeleton as it lay; and another I
+sent to get from the chemist and grocer as much gum arabic and
+isinglass as could be procured. My object was to give to the bones a
+bath of gum to render them less brittle when removed, restoring to them
+the gelatine that had been absorbed by the earth and lime in which they
+lay.
+
+Thus I was left alone at the bottom of my passage, the four men above
+being engaged in straightening the adit and sifting the earth.
+
+I was quite content to be alone, so that I might at my ease search for
+traces of personal ornament worn by the man who had thus met his death.
+The place was somewhat cramped, and there really was not room in it for
+more than one person to work freely.
+
+Whilst I was thus engaged, I suddenly heard a shout, followed by a
+crash, and, to my dismay, an avalanche of rubble shot down the inclined
+passage of descent. I at once left the skeleton, and hastened to effect
+my exit, but found that this was impossible. Much of the superincumbent
+earth and stone had fallen, dislodged by the vibrations caused by the
+picks of the men smashing up the chalk blocks, and the passage was
+completely choked. I was sealed up in the hollow where I was, and
+thankful that the earth above me had not fallen as well, and buried me,
+a man of the present enlightened age, along with the primeval savage of
+eight thousand years ago.
+
+A large amount of matter must have fallen, for I could not hear the
+voices of the men.
+
+I was not seriously alarmed. The workmen would procure assistance and
+labour indefatigably to release me; of that I could be certain. But how
+much earth had fallen? How much of the passage was choked, and how long
+would they take before I was released? All that was uncertain. I had a
+candle, or, rather, a bit of one, and it was not probable that it would
+last till the passage was cleared. What made me most anxious was the
+question whether the supply of air in the hollow in which I was enclosed
+would suffice.
+
+My enthusiasm for prehistoric research failed me just then. All my
+interests were concentrated on the present, and I gave up groping about
+the skeleton for relics. I seated myself on a stone, set the candle in a
+socket of chalk I had scooped out with my pocket-knife, and awaited
+events with my eyes on the skeleton.
+
+Time passed somewhat wearily. I could hear an occasional thud, thud,
+when the men were using the pick; but they mostly employed the shovel,
+as I supposed. I set my elbows on my knees and rested my chin in my
+hands. The air was not cold, nor was the soil damp; it was dry as snuff.
+The flicker of my light played over the man of bones, and especially
+illumined the skull. It may have been fancy on my part, it probably was
+fancy, but it seemed to me as though something sparkled in the
+eye-sockets. Drops of water possibly lodged there, or crystals formed
+within the skull; but the effect was much as of eyes leering and winking
+at me. I lighted my pipe, and to my disgust found that my supply of
+matches was running short. In France the manufacture belongs to the
+state, and one gets but sixty _allumettes_ for a penny.
+
+I had not brought my watch with me below ground, fearing lest it might
+meet with an accident; consequently I was unable to reckon how time
+passed. I began counting and ticking off the minutes on my fingers, but
+soon tired of doing this.
+
+My candle was getting short; it would not last much longer, and then I
+should be in the dark. I consoled myself with the thought that with the
+extinction of the light the consumption of the oxygen in the air would
+be less rapid. My eyes now rested on the flame of the candle, and I
+watched the gradual diminution of the composite. It was one of those
+abominable _bougies_ with holes in them to economise the wax, and which
+consequently had less than the proper amount of material for feeding and
+maintaining a flame. At length the light went out, and I was left in
+total darkness. I might have used up the rest of my matches, one after
+another, but to what good?--they would prolong the period of
+illumination for but a very little while.
+
+A sense of numbness stole over me, but I was not as yet sensible of
+deficiency of air to breathe. I found that the stone on which I was
+seated was pointed and hard, but I did not like to shift my position for
+fear of getting among and disturbing the bones, and I was still desirous
+of having them photographed _in situ_ before they were moved.
+
+I was not alarmed at my situation; I knew that I must be released
+eventually. But the tedium of sitting there in the dark and on a pointed
+stone was becoming intolerable.
+
+Some time must have elapsed before I became, dimly at first, and then
+distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from the
+skeletion. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which
+gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and I saw
+before me the misty, luminous form of a naked man, with wolfish
+countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at me out of eyes deeply sunk
+under projecting brows. Although I thus describe what I saw, yet it gave
+me no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate.
+Indeed, I cannot say at this moment whether I actually saw this
+apparition with my eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the
+brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the walls of the cave; if I
+raised my hand it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to
+me. Then I heard: "I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and
+toes, and rip you with my teeth."
+
+"What have I done to injure and incense you?" I asked.
+
+And here I must explain. No word was uttered by either of us; no word
+could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs,
+nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of
+a man. It was a spook, not a human being. But from it proceeded
+thought-waves, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of my mind or
+soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in like manner I
+thought my replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner.
+If vocal words had passed between us neither would have been
+intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be
+compiled, of the tongue of prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the
+speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to man now. But
+thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not
+think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our
+thoughts to other men that we shape them into words and express them
+vocally in structural, grammatical sentences. The beasts have never
+attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by
+language, but by thought vibrations.
+
+I must further remark that when I give what ensued as a conversation, I
+have to render the thought intercommunication that passed between the
+Homo Pr�historicus--the prehistoric man--and me, in English as best I
+can render it. I knew as we conversed that I was not speaking to him in
+English, nor in French, nor Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover,
+when I use the words "said" or "spoke," I mean no more than that the
+impression was formed on my brain-pan or the receptive drum of my soul,
+was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. When,
+however, I express the words "screamed" or "shrieked," I signify that
+those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when I say "laughed," that
+they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the
+sound of laughter.
+
+"I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about
+this cave!" shrieked the Homo Pr�historicus, or primeval man.
+
+Again I remonstrated, and inquired how I had incensed him. But yelling
+with rage, he threw himself upon me. In a moment I was enveloped in a
+luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about me,
+but I received no injury whatever, only my spiritual nature was
+subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the
+spook disengaged itself from me, and drew back to where it was before,
+screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering
+savagely. It rapidly cooled down.
+
+"Why do you wish me ill?" I asked again.
+
+"I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot
+injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can
+lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing."
+
+"Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent
+resentment?"
+
+"Because you are a son of the twentieth century, and I lived eight
+thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why do you
+enjoy comforts, a civilisation that we knew nothing of? It is not just.
+It is cruel on us. We had nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even
+lucifer matches!"
+
+Again he fell to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by
+failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach.
+
+"I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine."
+
+"Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these
+things--we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole
+of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and iron-stone,
+and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our
+knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we had nothing, nothing--no
+lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery,
+no metal, no education, no elections, no _chocolat menier_."
+
+"How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried
+under fifty feet of soil for eight thousand years?"
+
+"It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always
+remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth heaped
+over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the tavern
+overhead. I have seen men drink there. I have seen a bottle of
+Benedictine. I have applied my psychical lips to it, but I could taste,
+absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the
+patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious,
+marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of
+miraculous. What do you think of doing with me?"
+
+"Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum
+arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum."
+
+He screamed as though with pain, and gasped: "Don't! don't do it. It
+will be torture insufferable."
+
+"But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany
+box."
+
+"Don't! You cannot understand what it will be to me--a spirit more or
+less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with
+fibul�, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel
+very far from our bones--our range is limited. And conceive of my
+feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing
+prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone.
+Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into the
+tavern, and can see men get drunk, and hear commercial travellers
+hoodwink the patron, and then when the taverner finds he has been
+induced to buy what he did not want, I can see him beat his wife and
+smack his children. There is something human, humorous, in that, but
+fibul�, palstaves, torques--bah!"
+
+"You seem to have a lively knowledge of antiquities," I observed.
+
+"Of course I have. There come arch�ologists here and eat their
+sandwiches above me, and talk prehistoric antiquities till I am sick.
+Give me life! Give me something interesting!"
+
+"But what do you mean when you say that you cannot travel far from your
+bones?"
+
+"I mean that there is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our
+psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web.
+Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you
+break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So
+it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous
+spiritual matter that unites us to our earthly husk. It is liable to
+accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a
+blackbeetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have
+never been to the other side of the river, I have feared to do so,
+though very anxious to look at that creature like a large black
+caterpillar called the Train."
+
+"This is news to me. Do you know of any cases of rupture of connection?"
+
+"Yes," he replied. "My old father, after he was dead some years, got his
+link of attachment broken, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could
+not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of
+seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her
+spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken,
+and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body,
+lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took
+possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became
+chummy. In the world of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up
+spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but
+never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a
+female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken
+up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which sex
+each was. You see they had no education. But I know that my father's
+soul became quite sportive in that young woman's skeleton."
+
+"Did they continue chummy?"
+
+"No; they quarrelled as to which was which, and they are not now on
+speaking terms. I have two great-uncles. Theirs is a sad tale. Their
+souls were out wandering one day, and inadvertently they crossed and
+recrossed each other's tracks so that their spiritual threads of
+attachment got twisted. They found this out, and that they were getting
+tangled up. What one of them should have done would have been to have
+stood still and let the other jump over and dive under his brother's
+thread till he had cleared himself. But my maternal great-uncles--I
+think I forgot to say they were related to me through my mother--they
+were men of peppery tempers and they could not understand this. They had
+no education. So they jumped one this way and one another, each abusing
+the other, and made the tangle more complete. That was about six
+thousand years ago, and they are now so knotted up that I do not suppose
+they will be clear of one another till time is no more."
+
+He paused and laughed.
+
+Then I said: "It must have been very hard for you to be without pottery
+of any sort."
+
+"It was," replied H. P. (this stands for Homo Pr�historicus, not for
+House-Parlourmaid or Hardy Perennial), "very hard. We had skins for
+water and milk----"
+
+"Oh! you had milk. I supposed you had no cows."
+
+"Nor had we, but the reindeer were beginning to get docile and be tamed.
+If we caught young deer we brought them up to be pets for our children.
+And so it came about that as they grew up we found out that we could
+milk them into skins. But that gave it a smack, and whenever we desired
+a fresh draught there was nothing for it but to lie flat on the ground
+under a doe reindeer and suck for all we were worth. It was hard. Horses
+were hunted. It did not occur to us that they could be tamed and saddled
+and mounted. Oh! it was not right. It was not fair that you should have
+everything and we nothing--nothing--nothing! Why should you have all and
+we have had naught?"
+
+"Because I belong to the twentieth century. Thirty-three generations go
+to a thousand years. There are some two hundred and sixty-four or two
+hundred and seventy generations intervening between you and me. Each
+generation makes some discovery that advances civilisation a stage, the
+next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so
+culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive, the
+brute beast is not."
+
+"That is true," he replied. "I invented butter, which was unknown to my
+ancestors, the unbuttered man."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"It was so," he said, and I saw a flush of light ripple over the
+emanation. I suppose it was a glow of self-satisfaction. "It came about
+thus. One of my wives had nearly let the fire out. I was very angry, and
+catching up one of the skins of milk, I banged her about the head with
+it till she fell insensible to the earth. The other wives were very
+pleased and applauded. When I came to take a drink, for my exertions had
+heated me, I found that the milk was curdled into butter. At first I did
+not know what it was, so I made one of my other wives taste it, and as
+she pronounced it to be good, I ate the rest myself. That was how butter
+was invented. For four hundred years that was the way it was made, by
+banging a milk-skin about the head of a woman till she was knocked down
+insensible. But at last a woman found out that by churning the milk with
+her hand butter could be made equally well, and then the former process
+was discontinued except by some men who clung to ancestral customs."
+
+"But," said I, "nowadays you would not be suffered to knock your wife
+about, even with a milk-skin."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it is barbarous. You would be sent to gaol."
+
+"But she was my wife."
+
+"Nevertheless it would not be tolerated. The law steps in and protects
+women from ill-usage."
+
+"How shameful! Not allowed to do what you like with your own wife!"
+
+"Most assuredly not. Then you remarked that this was how you dealt with
+one of your wives. How many did you possess?"
+
+"Off and on, seventeen."
+
+"_Now_, no man is suffered to have more than one."
+
+"What--one at a time?"
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"Ah, well. Then if you had an old and ugly wife, or one who was a scold,
+you could kill her and get another, young and pretty."
+
+"That would not be allowed."
+
+"Not even if she were a scold?"
+
+"No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end."
+
+"Humph!" H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently
+he said: "There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop
+overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill
+one another."
+
+"No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off--here in
+France--unless extenuating circumstances were found. With us in England
+he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead."
+
+"Then--what is your sport?"
+
+"We hunt the fox."
+
+"The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I
+made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting
+is business with us--or was so--not sport."
+
+"Nevertheless with us it is our great sport."
+
+"Business is business and sport is sport," he said. "Now, we hunted as
+business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport."
+
+"We are not suffered to kill one another."
+
+"But take the case," said he, "that a man has a nose-ring, or a pretty
+wife, and you want one or the other. Surely you might kill him and
+possess yourself of what you so ardently covet?"
+
+"By no means. Now, to change the topic," I went on, "you are totally
+destitute of clothing. You do not even wear the traditional garment of
+fig leaves."
+
+"What avail fig leaves? There is no warmth in them."
+
+"Perhaps not--but out of delicacy."
+
+"What is that? I don't understand." There was clearly no corresponding
+sensation in the vibrating tympanum of his psychic nature.
+
+"Did you never wear clothes?" I inquired.
+
+"Certainly, when it was cold we wore skins, skins of the beasts we
+killed. But in summer what is the use of clothing? Besides, we only wore
+them out of doors. When we entered our homes, made of skins hitched up
+to the rock overhead, we threw them off. It was hot within, and we
+perspired freely."
+
+"What, were naked in your homes! you and your wives?"
+
+"Of course we were. Why not? It was very warm within with the fire
+always kept up."
+
+"Why--good gracious me!" I exclaimed, "that would never be tolerated
+nowadays. If you attempted to go about the country unclothed, even get
+out of your clothes freely at home, you would be sent to a lunatic
+asylum and kept there."
+
+"Humph!" He again lapsed into silence.
+
+Presently he exclaimed: "After all, I think that we were better off as
+we were eight thousand years ago, even without your matches,
+Benedictine, education, _chocolat menier_, and commercials, for then we
+were able to enjoy real sport--we could kill one another, we could knock
+old wives on the head, we could have a dozen or more squaws according to
+our circumstances, young and pretty, and we could career about the
+country or sit and enjoy a social chat at home, stark naked. We were
+best off as we were. There are compensations in life at every period of
+man. Vive la libert�!"
+
+At that moment I heard a shout--saw a flash of light. The workmen had
+pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. I staggered to my
+feet.
+
+"Oh! mon Dieu! Monsieur vit encore!"
+
+I felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped me. I was dragged forth. Brandy was
+poured down my throat. When I came to myself I gasped: "Fill in the
+hole! Fill it all up. Let H. P. lie where he is. He shall not go to the
+British Museum. I have had enough of prehistoric antiquities. Adieu,
+pour toujours la V�z�re."
+
+
+
+
+GL�MR
+
+     The following story is found in the Gretla, an Icelandic Saga,
+     composed in the thirteenth century, or that comes to us in the
+     form then given to it; but it is a redaction of a Saga of much
+     earlier date. Most of it is thoroughly historical, and its
+     statements are corroborated by other Sagas. The following
+     incident was introduced to account for the fact that the outlaw
+     Grettir would run any risk rather than spend the long winter
+     nights alone in the dark.
+
+
+At the beginning of the eleventh century there stood, a little way up
+the Valley of Shadows in the north of Iceland, a small farm, occupied by
+a worthy bonder, named Thorhall, and his wife. The farmer was not
+exactly a chieftain, but he was well enough connected to be considered
+respectable; to back up his gentility he possessed numerous flocks of
+sheep and a goodly drove of oxen. Thorhall would have been a happy man
+but for one circumstance--his sheepwalks were haunted.
+
+Not a herdsman would remain with him; he bribed, he threatened,
+entreated, all to no purpose; one shepherd after another left his
+service, and things came to such a pass that he determined on asking
+advice at the next annual council. Thorhall saddled his horses, adjusted
+his packs, provided himself with hobbles, cracked his long Icelandic
+whip, and cantered along the road, and in due time reached Thingvellir.
+
+Skapti Thorodd's son was lawgiver at that time, and as everyone
+considered him a man of the utmost prudence and able to give the best
+advice, our friend from the Vale of Shadows made straight for his
+booth.
+
+"An awkward predicament, certainly--to have large droves of sheep and no
+one to look after them," said Skapti, nibbling the nail of his thumb,
+and shaking his wise head--a head as stuffed with law as a ptarmigan's
+crop is stuffed with blaeberries. "Now I'll tell you what--as you have
+asked my advice, I will help you to a shepherd; a character in his way,
+a man of dull intellect, to be sure but strong as a bull."
+
+"I do not care about his wits so long as he can look after sheep,"
+answered Thorhall.
+
+"You may rely on his being able to do that," said Skapti. "He is a
+stout, plucky fellow; a Swede from Sylgsdale, if you know where that
+is."
+
+Towards the break-up of the council--"Thing" they call it in
+Iceland--two greyish-white horses belonging to Thorhall slipped their
+hobbles and strayed; so the good man had to hunt after them himself,
+which shows how short of servants he was. He crossed Sletha-asi, thence
+he bent his way to Armann's-fell, and just by the Priest's Wood he met a
+strange-looking man driving before him a horse laden with faggots. The
+fellow was tall and stalwart; his face involuntarily attracted
+Thorhall's attention, for the eyes, of an ashen grey, were large and
+staring, the powerful jaw was furnished with very white protruding
+teeth, and around the low forehead hung bunches of coarse wolf-grey
+hair.
+
+"Pray, what is your name, my man?" asked the farmer pulling up.
+
+"Gl�mr, an please you," replied the wood-cutter.
+
+Thorhall stared; then, with a preliminary cough, he asked how Gl�mr
+liked faggot-picking.
+
+"Not much," was the answer; "I prefer shepherd life."
+
+"Will you come with me?" asked Thorhall; "Skapti has handed you over to
+me, and I want a shepherd this winter uncommonly."
+
+"If I serve you, it is on the understanding that I come or go as it
+pleases me. I tell you I am a bit truculent if things do not go just to
+my thinking."
+
+"I shall not object to this," answered the bonder. "So I may count on
+your services?"
+
+"Wait a moment! You have not told me whether there be any drawback."
+
+"I must acknowledge that there is one," said Thorhall; "in fact, the
+sheepwalks have got a bad name for bogies."
+
+"Pshaw! I'm not the man to be scared at shadows," laughed Gl�mr; "so
+here's my hand to it; I'll be with you at the beginning of the winter
+night."
+
+Well, after this they parted, and presently the farmer found his ponies.
+Having thanked Skapti for his advice and assistance, he got his horses
+together and trotted home.
+
+Summer, and then autumn passed, but not a word about the new shepherd
+reached the Valley of Shadows. The winter storms began to bluster up the
+glen, driving the flying snow-flakes and massing the white drifts at
+every winding of the vale. Ice formed in the shallows of the river; and
+the streams, which in summer trickled down the ribbed scarps, were now
+transmuted into icicles.
+
+One gusty night a violent blow at the door startled all in the farm. In
+another moment Gl�mr, tall as a troll, stood in the hall glowering out
+of his wild eyes, his grey hair matted with frost, his teeth rattling
+and snapping with cold, his face blood-red in the glare of the fire
+which smouldered in the centre of the hall. Thorhall jumped up and
+greeted him warmly, but the housewife was too frightened to be very
+cordial.
+
+Weeks passed, and the new shepherd was daily on the moors with his
+flock; his loud and deep-toned voice was often borne down on the blast
+as he shouted to the sheep driving them into fold. His presence in the
+house always produced gloom, and if he spoke it sent a thrill through
+the women, who openly proclaimed their aversion for him.
+
+There was a church near the byre, but Gl�mr never crossed the threshold;
+he hated psalmody; apparently he was an indifferent Christian. On the
+vigil of the Nativity Gl�mr rose early and shouted for meat.
+
+"Meat!" exclaimed the housewife; "no man calling himself a Christian
+touches flesh to-day. To-morrow is the holy Christmas Day, and this is a
+fast."
+
+"All superstition!" roared Gl�mr. "As far as I can see, men are no
+better now than they were in the bonny heathen time. Bring me meat, and
+make no more ado about it."
+
+"You may be quite certain," protested the good wife, "if Church rule be
+not kept, ill-luck will follow."
+
+Gl�mr ground his teeth and clenched his hands. "Meat! I will have meat,
+or----" In fear and trembling the poor woman obeyed.
+
+The day was raw and windy; masses of grey vapour rolled up from the
+Arctic Ocean, and hung in piles about the mountain-tops. Now and then a
+scud of frozen fog, composed of minute particles of ice, swept along the
+glen, covering bar and beam with feathery hoar-frost. As the day
+declined, snow began to fall in large flakes like the down of the
+eider-duck. One moment there was a lull in the wind, and then the
+deep-toned shout of Gl�mr, high up the moor slopes, was heard distinctly
+by the congregation assembling for the first vespers of Christmas Day.
+Darkness came on, deep as that in the rayless abysses of the caverns
+under the lava, and still the snow fell thicker. The lights from the
+church windows sent a yellow haze far out into the night, and every
+flake burned golden as it swept within the ray. The bell in the
+lych-gate clanged for evensong, and the wind puffed the sound far up the
+glen; perhaps it reached the herdsman's ear. Hark! Someone caught a
+distant sound or shriek, which it was he could not tell, for the wind
+muttered and mumbled about the church eaves, and then with a fierce
+whistle scudded over the graveyard fence. Gl�mr had not returned when
+the service was over. Thorhall suggested a search, but no man would
+accompany him; and no wonder! it was not a night for a dog to be out in;
+besides, the tracks were a foot deep in snow. The family sat up all
+night, waiting, listening, trembling; but no Gl�mr came home. Dawn broke
+at last, wan and blear in the south. The clouds hung down like great
+sheets, full of snow, almost to bursting.
+
+A party was soon formed to search for the missing man. A sharp scramble
+brought them to high land, and the ridge between the two rivers which
+join in Vatnsdalr was thoroughly examined. Here and there were found the
+scattered sheep, shuddering under an icicled rock, or half buried in a
+snow-drift. No trace yet of the keeper. A dead ewe lay at the bottom of
+a crag; it had staggered over in the gloom, and had been dashed to
+pieces.
+
+Presently the whole party were called together about a trampled spot in
+the heath, where evidently a death-struggle had taken place, for earth
+and stone were tossed about, and the snow was blotched with large
+splashes of blood. A gory track led up the mountain, and the
+farm-servants were following it, when a cry, almost of agony, from one
+of the lads, made them turn. In looking behind a rock, the boy had come
+upon the corpse of the shepherd; it was livid and swollen to the size of
+a bullock. It lay on its back with the arms extended. The snow had been
+scrabbled up by the puffed hands in the death-agony, and the staring
+glassy eyes gazed out of the ashen-grey, upturned face into the vaporous
+canopy overhead. From the purple lips lolled the tongue, which in the
+last throes had been bitten through by the white fangs, and a
+discoloured stream which had flowed from it was now an icicle.
+
+With trouble the dead man was raised on a litter, and carried to a
+gill-edge, but beyond this he could not be borne; his weight waxed more
+and more, the bearers toiled beneath their burden, their foreheads
+became beaded with sweat; though strong men they were crushed to the
+ground. Consequently, the corpse was left at the ravine-head, and the
+men returned to the farm. Next day their efforts to lift Gl�mr's bloated
+carcass, and remove it to consecrated ground, were unavailing. On the
+third day a priest accompanied them, but the body was nowhere to be
+found. Another expedition without the priest was made, and on this
+occasion the corpse was discovered; so a cairn was raised over the spot.
+
+Two nights after this one of the thralls who had gone after the cows
+burst into the hall with a face blank and scared; he staggered to a seat
+and fainted. On recovering his senses, in a broken voice he assured all
+who crowded about him that he had seen Gl�mr walking past him as he left
+the door of the stable. On the following evening a houseboy was found in
+a fit under the farmyard wall, and he remained an idiot to his dying
+day. Some of the women next saw a face which, though blown out and
+discoloured, they recognised as that of Gl�mr, looking in upon them
+through a window of the dairy. In the twilight, Thorhall himself met the
+dead man, who stood and glowered at him, but made no attempt to injure
+his master. The haunting did not end there. Nightly a heavy tread was
+heard around the house, and a hand feeling along the walls, sometimes
+thrust in at the windows, at others clutching the woodwork, and breaking
+it to splinters. However, when the spring came round the disturbances
+lessened, and as the sun obtained full power, ceased altogether.
+
+That summer a vessel from Norway dropped anchor in the nearest bay.
+Thorhall visited it, and found on board a man named Thorgaut, who was in
+search of work.
+
+"What do you say to being my shepherd?" asked the bonder.
+
+"I should very much like the office," answered Thorgaut. "I am as strong
+as two ordinary men, and a handy fellow to boot."
+
+"I will not engage you without forewarning you of the terrible things
+you may have to encounter during the winter night."
+
+"Pray, what may they be?"
+
+"Ghosts and hobgoblins," answered the farmer; "a fine dance they lead
+me, I can promise you."
+
+"I fear them not," answered Thorgaut; "I shall be with you at
+cattle-slaughtering time."
+
+At the appointed season the man came, and soon established himself as a
+favourite in the house; he romped with the children, chucked the maidens
+under the chin, helped his fellow-servants, gratified the housewife by
+admiring her curd, and was just as much liked as his predecessor had
+been detested. He was a devil-may-care fellow, too, and made no bones of
+his contempt for the ghost, expressing hopes of meeting him face to
+face, which made his master look grave, and his mistress shudderingly
+cross herself. As the winter came on, strange sights and sounds began to
+alarm the folk, but these never frightened Thorgaut; he slept too
+soundly at night to hear the tread of feet about the door, and was too
+short-sighted to catch glimpses of a grizzly monster striding up and
+down, in the twilight, before its cairn.
+
+At last Christmas Eve came round, and Thorgaut went out as usual with
+his sheep.
+
+"Have a care, man," urged the bonder; "go not near to the gill-head,
+where Gl�mr lies."
+
+"Tut, tut! fear not for me. I shall be back by vespers."
+
+"God grant it," sighed the housewife; "but 'tis not a day for risks, to
+be sure."
+
+Twilight came on: a feeble light hung over the south, one white streak
+above the heath land to the south. Far off in southern lands it was
+still day, but here the darkness gathered in apace, and men came from
+Vatnsdalr for evensong, to herald in the night when Christ was born.
+Christmas Eve! How different in Saxon England! There the great ashen
+faggot is rolled along the hall with torch and taper; the mummers dance
+with their merry jingling bells; the boar's head, with gilded tusks,
+"bedecked with holly and rosemary," is brought in by the steward to a
+flourish of trumpets.
+
+How different, too, where the Varanger cluster round the imperial throne
+in the mighty church of the Eternal Wisdom at this very hour. Outside,
+the air is soft from breathing over the Bosphorus, which flashes
+tremulously beneath the stars. The orange and laurel leaves in the
+palace gardens are still exhaling fragrance in the hush of the Christmas
+night.
+
+But it is different here. The wind is piercing as a two-edged sword;
+blocks of ice crash and grind along the coast, and the lake waters are
+congealed to stone. Aloft, the Aurora flames crimson, flinging long
+streamers to the zenith, and then suddenly dissolving into a sea of pale
+green light. The natives are waiting round the church-door, but no
+Thorgaut has returned.
+
+They find him next morning, lying across Gl�mr's cairn, with his spine,
+his leg, and arm-bones shattered. He is conveyed to the churchyard, and
+a cross is set up at his head. He sleeps peacefully. Not so Gl�mr; he
+becomes more furious than ever. No one will remain with Thorhall now,
+except an old cowherd who has always served the family, and who had long
+ago dandled his present master on his knee.
+
+"All the cattle will be lost if I leave," said the carle; "it shall
+never be told of me that I deserted Thorhall from fear of a spectre."
+
+Matters grew rapidly worse. Outbuildings were broken into of a night,
+and their woodwork was rent and shattered; the house door was violently
+shaken, and great pieces of it were torn away; the gables of the house
+were also pulled furiously to and fro.
+
+One morning before dawn, the old man went to the stable. An hour later,
+his mistress arose, and taking her milking pails, followed him. As she
+reached the door of the stable, a terrible sound from within--the
+bellowing of the cattle, mingled with the deep notes of an unearthly
+voice--sent her back shrieking to the house. Thorhall leaped out of bed,
+caught up a weapon, and hastened to the cow-house. On opening the door,
+he found the cattle goring each other. Slung across the stone that
+separated the stalls was something. Thorhall stepped up to it, felt it,
+looked close; it was the cowherd, perfectly dead, his feet on one side
+of the slab, his head on the other, and his spine snapped in twain. The
+bonder now moved with his family to Tunga, another farm owned by him
+lower down the valley; it was too venturesome living during the
+mid-winter night at the haunted farm; and it was not till the sun had
+returned as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and had dispelled night
+with its phantoms, that he went back to the Vale of Shadows. In the
+meantime, his little girl's health had given way under the repeated
+alarms of the winter; she became paler every day; with the autumn
+flowers she faded, and was laid beneath the mould of the churchyard in
+time for the first snows to spread a virgin pall over her small grave.
+
+At this time Grettir--a hero of great fame, and a native of the north of
+the island--was in Iceland, and as the hauntings of this vale were
+matters of gossip throughout the district, he inquired about them, and
+resolved on visiting the scene. So Grettir busked himself for a cold
+ride, mounted his horse, and in due course of time drew rein at the door
+of Thorhall's farm with the request that he might be accommodated there
+for the night.
+
+"Ahem!" coughed the bonder; "perhaps you are not aware----"
+
+"I am perfectly aware of all. I want to catch sight of the troll."
+
+"But your horse is sure to be killed."
+
+"I will risk it. Gl�mr I must meet, so there's an end of it."
+
+"I am delighted to see you," spoke the bonder; "at the same time, should
+mischief befall you, don't lay the blame at my door."
+
+"Never fear, man."
+
+So they shook hands; the horse was put into the strongest stable,
+Thorhall made Grettir as good cheer as he was able, and then, as the
+visitor was sleepy, all retired to rest.
+
+The night passed quietly, and no sounds indicated the presence of a
+restless spirit. The horse, moreover, was found next morning in good
+condition, enjoying his hay.
+
+"This is unexpected!" exclaimed the bonder, gleefully. "Now, where's the
+saddle? We'll clap it on, and then good-bye, and a merry journey to
+you."
+
+"Good-bye!" echoed Grettir; "I am going to stay here another night."
+
+"You had best be advised," urged Thorhall; "if misfortune should
+overtake you, I know that all your kinsmen would visit it on my head."
+
+"I have made up my mind to stay," said Grettir, and he looked so dogged
+that Thorhall opposed him no more.
+
+All was quiet next night; not a sound roused Grettir from his slumber.
+Next morning he went with the farmer to the stable. The strong wooden
+door was shivered and driven in. They stepped across it; Grettir called
+to his horse, but there was no responsive whinny.
+
+"I am afraid----" began Thorhall. Grettir leaped in, and found the poor
+brute dead, and with its neck broken.
+
+"Now," said Thorhall quickly, "I've got a capital horse--a
+skewbald--down by Tunga, I shall not be many hours in fetching it; your
+saddle is here, I think, and then you will just have time to reach----"
+
+"I stay here another night," interrupted Grettir.
+
+"I implore you to depart," said Thorhall.
+
+"My horse is slain!"
+
+"But I will provide you with another."
+
+"Friend," answered Grettir, turning so sharply round that the farmer
+jumped back, half frightened, "no man ever did me an injury without
+rueing it. Now, your demon herdsman has been the death of my horse. He
+must be taught a lesson."
+
+"Would that he were!" groaned Thorhall; "but mortal must not face him.
+Go in peace and receive compensation from me for what has happened."
+
+"I must revenge my horse."
+
+"An obstinate man will have his own way! But if you run your head
+against a stone wall, don't be angry because you get a broken pate."
+
+Night came on; Grettir ate a hearty supper and was right jovial; not so
+Thorhall, who had his misgivings. At bedtime the latter crept into his
+crib, which, in the manner of old Icelandic beds, opened out of the
+hall, as berths do out of a cabin. Grettir, however, determined on
+remaining up; so he flung himself on a bench with his feet against the
+posts of the high seat, and his back against Thorhall's crib; then he
+wrapped one lappet of his fur coat round his feet, the other about his
+head, keeping the neck-opening in front of his face, so that he could
+look through into the hall.
+
+There was a fire burning on the hearth, a smouldering heap of red
+embers; every now and then a twig flared up and crackled, giving Grettir
+glimpses of the rafters, as he lay with his eyes wandering among the
+mysteries of the smoke-blackened roof. The wind whistled softly
+overhead. The clerestory windows, covered with the amnion of sheep,
+admitted now and then a sickly yellow glare from the full moon, which,
+however, shot a beam of pure silver through the smoke-hole in the roof.
+A dog without began to howl; the cat, which had long been sitting
+demurely watching the fire, stood up with raised back and bristling
+tail, then darted behind some chests in a corner. The hall door was in a
+sad plight. It had been so riven by the spectre that it was made firm
+by wattles only, and the moon glinted athwart the crevices. Soothingly
+the river, not yet frozen over, prattled over its shingly bed as it
+swept round the knoll on which stood the farm. Grettir heard the
+breathing of the sleeping women in the adjoining chamber, and the sigh
+of the housewife as she turned in her bed.
+
+Click! click!--It is only the frozen turf on the roof cracking with the
+cold. The wind lulls completely. The night is very still without. Hark!
+a heavy tread, beneath which the snow yields. Every footfall goes
+straight to Grettir's heart. A crash on the turf overhead! By all the
+saints in paradise! The monster is treading on the roof. For one moment
+the chimney-gap is completely darkened: Gl�mr is looking down it; the
+flash of the red ash is reflected in the two lustreless eyes. Then the
+moon glances sweetly in once more, and the heavy tramp of Gl�mr is
+audibly moving towards the farther end of the hall. A thud--he has
+leaped down. Grettir feels the board at his back quivering, for Thorhall
+is awake and is trembling in his bed. The steps pass round to the back
+of the house, and then the snapping of the wood shows that the creature
+is destroying some of the outhouse doors. He tires of this apparently,
+for his footfall comes clear towards the main entrance to the hall. The
+moon is veiled behind a watery cloud, and by the uncertain glimmer
+Grettir fancies that he sees two dark hands thrust in above the door.
+His apprehensions are verified, for, with a loud snap, a long strip of
+panel breaks, and light is admitted. Snap--snap! another portion gives
+way, and the gap becomes larger. Then the wattles slip from their
+places, and a dark arm rips them out in bunches, and flings them away.
+There is a cross-beam to the door, holding a bolt which slides into a
+stone groove. Against the grey light, Grettir sees a huge black figure
+heaving itself over the bar. Crack! that has given way, and the rest of
+the door falls in shivers to the earth.
+
+"Oh, heavens above!" exclaims the bonder.
+
+Stealthily the dead man creeps on, feeling at the beams as he comes;
+then he stands in the hall, with the firelight on him. A fearful sight;
+the tall figure distended with the corruption of the grave, the nose
+fallen off, the wandering, vacant eyes, with the glaze of death on them,
+the sallow flesh patched with green masses of decay; the wolf-grey hair
+and beard have grown in the tomb, and hang matted about the shoulders
+and breast; the nails, too, they have grown. It is a sickening sight--a
+thing to shudder at, not to see.
+
+Motionless, with no nerve quivering now, Thorhall and Grettir held their
+breath.
+
+Gl�mr's lifeless glance strayed round the chamber; it rested on the
+shaggy bundle by the high seat. Cautiously he stepped towards it.
+Grettir felt him groping about the lower lappet and pulling at it. The
+cloak did not give way. Another jerk; Grettir kept his feet firmly
+pressed against the posts, so that the rug was not pulled off. The
+vampire seemed puzzled, he plucked at the upper flap and tugged. Grettir
+held to the bench and bed-board, so that he was not moved, but the cloak
+was rent in twain, and the corpse staggered back, holding half in its
+hands, and gazing wonderingly at it. Before it had done examining the
+shred, Grettir started to his feet, bowed his body, flung his arms about
+the carcass, and, driving his head into the chest, strove to bend it
+backward and snap the spine. A vain attempt! The cold hands came down on
+Grettir's arms with diabolical force, riving them from their hold.
+Grettir clasped them about the body again; then the arms closed round
+him, and began dragging him along. The brave man clung by his feet to
+benches and posts, but the strength of the vampire was the greater;
+posts gave way, benches were heaved from their places, and the wrestlers
+at each moment neared the door. Sharply writhing loose, Grettir flung
+his hands round a roof-beam. He was dragged from his feet; the numbing
+arms clenched him round the waist, and tore at him; every tendon in his
+breast was strained; the strain under his shoulders became excruciating,
+the muscles stood out in knots. Still he held on; his fingers were
+bloodless; the pulses of his temples throbbed in jerks; the breath came
+in a whistle through his rigid nostrils. All the while, too, the long
+nails of the dead man cut into his side, and Grettir could feel them
+piercing like knives between his ribs. Then at once his hands gave way,
+and the monster bore him reeling towards the porch, crashing over the
+broken fragments of the door. Hard as the battle had gone with him
+indoors, Grettir knew that it would go worse outside, so he gathered up
+all his remaining strength for one final desperate struggle. The door
+had been shut with a swivel into a groove; this groove was in a stone,
+which formed the jamb on one side, and there was a similar block on the
+other, into which the hinges had been driven. As the wrestlers neared
+the opening, Grettir planted both his feet against the stone posts,
+holding Gl�mr by the middle. He had the advantage now. The dead man
+writhed in his arms, drove his talons into Grettir's back, and tore up
+great ribbons of flesh, but the stone jambs held firm.
+
+"Now," thought Grettir, "I can break his back," and thrusting his head
+under the chin, so that the grizzly beard covered his eyes, he forced
+the face from him, and the back was bent as a hazel-rod.
+
+"If I can but hold on," thought Grettir, and he tried to shout for
+Thorhall, but his voice was muffled in the hair of the corpse.
+
+Suddenly one or both of the door-posts gave way. Down crashed the gable
+trees, ripping beams and rafters from their beds; frozen clods of earth
+rattled from the roof and thumped into the snow. Gl�mr fell on his back,
+and Grettir staggered down on top of him. The moon was at her full;
+large white clouds chased each other across the sky, and as they swept
+before her disk she looked through them with a brown halo round her.
+The snow-cap of Jorundarfell, however, glowed like a planet, then the
+white mountain ridge was kindled, the light ran down the hillside, the
+bright disk stared out of the veil and flashed at this moment full on
+the vampire's face. Grettir's strength was failing him, his hands
+quivered in the snow, and he knew that he could not support himself from
+dropping flat on the dead man's face, eye to eye, lip to lip. The eyes
+of the corpse were fixed on him, lit with the cold glare of the moon.
+His head swam as his heart sent a hot stream to his brain. Then a voice
+from the grey lips said--
+
+"Thou hast acted madly in seeking to match thyself with me. Now learn
+that henceforth ill-luck shall constantly attend thee; that thy strength
+shall never exceed what it now is, and that by night these eyes of mine
+shall stare at thee through the darkness till thy dying day, so that for
+very horror thou shalt not endure to be alone."
+
+Grettir at this moment noticed that his dirk had slipped from its sheath
+during the fall, and that it now lay conveniently near his hand. The
+giddiness which had oppressed him passed away, he clutched at the
+sword-haft, and with a blow severed the vampire's throat. Then, kneeling
+on the breast, he hacked till the head came off.
+
+Thorhall appeared now, his face blanched with terror, but when he saw
+how the fray had terminated he assisted Grettir gleefully to roll the
+corpse on the top of a pile of faggots, which had been collected for
+winter fuel. Fire was applied, and soon far down the valley the flames
+of the pyre startled people, and made them wonder what new horror was
+being enacted in the upper portion of the Vale of Shadows.
+
+Next day the charred bones were conveyed to a spot remote from the
+habitations of men, and were there buried.
+
+What Gl�mr had predicted came to pass. Never after did Grettir dare to
+be alone in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL HALIFAX'S GHOST STORY
+
+
+I had just come back to England, after having been some years in India,
+and was looking forward to meet my friends, among whom there was none I
+was more anxious to see than Sir Francis Lynton. We had been at Eton
+together, and for the short time I had been at Oxford before entering
+the Army we had been at the same college. Then we had been parted. He
+came into the title and estates of the family in Yorkshire on the death
+of his grandfather--his father had predeceased--and I had been over a
+good part of the world. One visit, indeed, I had made him in his
+Yorkshire home, before leaving for India, of but a few days.
+
+It will easily be imagined how pleasant it was, two or three days after
+my arrival in London, to receive a letter from Lynton saying he had just
+seen in the papers that I had arrived, and begging me to come down at
+once to Byfield, his place in Yorkshire.
+
+"You are not to tell me," he said, "that you cannot come. I allow you a
+week in which to order and try on your clothes, to report yourself at
+the War Office, to pay your respects to the Duke, and to see your sister
+at Hampton Court; but after that I shall expect you. In fact, you are to
+come on Monday. I have a couple of horses which will just suit you; the
+carriage shall meet you at Packham, and all you have got to do is to put
+yourself in the train which leaves King's Cross at twelve o'clock."
+
+Accordingly, on the day appointed I started; in due time reached
+Packham, losing much time on a detestable branch line, and there found
+the dogcart of Sir Francis awaiting me. I drove at once to Byfield.
+
+The house I remembered. It was a low, gabled structure of no great size,
+with old-fashioned lattice windows, separated from the park, where were
+deer, by a charming terraced garden.
+
+No sooner did the wheels crunch the gravel by the principal entrance,
+than, almost before the bell was rung, the porch door opened, and there
+stood Lynton himself, whom I had not seen for so many years, hardly
+altered, and with all the joy of welcome beaming in his face. Taking me
+by both hands, he drew me into the house, got rid of my hat and wraps,
+looked me all over, and then, in a breath, began to say how glad he was
+to see me, what a real delight it was to have got me at last under his
+roof, and what a good time we would have together, like the old days
+over again.
+
+He had sent my luggage up to my room, which was ready for me, and he
+bade me make haste and dress for dinner.
+
+So saying, he took me through a panelled hall up an oak staircase, and
+showed me my room, which, hurried as I was, I observed was hung with
+tapestry, and had a large fourpost bed, with velvet curtains, opposite
+the window.
+
+They had gone into dinner when I came down, despite all the haste I made
+in dressing; but a place had been kept for me next Lady Lynton.
+
+Besides my hosts, there were their two daughters, Colonel Lynton, a
+brother of Sir Francis, the chaplain, and some others whom I do not
+remember distinctly.
+
+After dinner there was some music in the hall, and a game of whist in
+the drawing-room, and after the ladies had gone upstairs, Lynton and I
+retired to the smoking-room, where we sat up talking the best part of
+the night. I think it must have been near three when I retired. Once in
+bed, I slept so soundly that my servant's entrance the next morning
+failed to arouse me, and it was past nine when I awoke.
+
+After breakfast and the disposal of the newspapers, Lynton retired to
+his letters, and I asked Lady Lynton if one of her daughters might show
+me the house. Elizabeth, the eldest, was summoned, and seemed in no way
+to dislike the task.
+
+The house was, as already intimated, by no means large; it occupied
+three sides of a square, the entrance and one end of the stables making
+the fourth side. The interior was full of interest--passages, rooms,
+galleries, as well as hall, were panelled in dark wood and hung with
+pictures. I was shown everything on the ground floor, and then on the
+first floor. Then my guide proposed that we should ascend a narrow
+twisting staircase that led to a gallery. We did as proposed, and
+entered a handsome long room or passage, leading to a small chamber at
+one end, in which my guide told me her father kept books and papers.
+
+I asked if anyone slept in this gallery, as I noticed a bed, and
+fireplace, and rods, by means of which curtains might be drawn,
+enclosing one portion where were bed and fireplace, so as to convert it
+into a very cosy chamber.
+
+She answered "No," the place was not really used except as a playroom,
+though sometimes, if the house happened to be very full, in her
+great-grandfather's time, she had heard that it had been occupied.
+
+By the time we had been over the house, and I had also been shown the
+garden and the stables, and introduced to the dogs, it was nearly one
+o'clock. We were to have an early luncheon, and to drive afterwards to
+see the ruins of one of the grand old Yorkshire abbeys.
+
+This was a pleasant expedition, and we got back just in time for tea,
+after which there was some reading aloud. The evening passed much in the
+same way as the preceding one, except that Lynton, who had some
+business, did not go down to the smoking-room, and I took the
+opportunity of retiring early in order to write a letter for the Indian
+mail, something having been said as to the prospect of hunting the next
+day.
+
+I had finished my letter, which was a long one, together with two or
+three others, and had just got into bed when I heard a step overhead as
+of someone walking along the gallery, which I now knew ran immediately
+above my room. It was a slow, heavy, measured tread which I could hear
+getting gradually louder and nearer, and then as gradually fading away
+as it retreated into the distance.
+
+I was startled for a moment, having been informed that the gallery was
+unused; but the next instant it occurred to me that I had been told it
+communicated with a chamber where Sir Francis kept books and papers. I
+knew he had some writing to do, and I thought no more on the matter.
+
+I was down the next morning at breakfast in good time. "How late you
+were last night!" I said to Lynton, in the middle of breakfast. "I heard
+you overhead after one o'clock."
+
+Lynton replied rather shortly, "Indeed you did not, for I was in bed
+last night before twelve."
+
+"There was someone certainly moving overhead last night," I answered,
+"for I heard his steps as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my
+life, going down the gallery."
+
+Upon which Colonel Lynton remarked that he had often fancied he had
+heard steps on his staircase, when he knew that no one was about. He was
+apparently disposed to say more, when his brother interrupted him
+somewhat curtly, as I fancied, and asked me if I should feel inclined
+after breakfast to have a horse and go out and look for the hounds. They
+met a considerable way off, but if they did not find in the coverts they
+should first draw, a thing not improbable, they would come our way, and
+we might fall in with them about one o'clock and have a run. I said
+there was nothing I should like better. Lynton mounted me on a very
+nice chestnut, and the rest of the party having gone out shooting, and
+the young ladies being otherwise engaged, he and I started about eleven
+o'clock for our ride.
+
+The day was beautiful, soft, with a bright sun, one of those delightful
+days which so frequently occur in the early part of November.
+
+On reaching the hilltop where Lynton had expected to meet the hounds no
+trace of them was to be discovered. They must have found at once, and
+run in a different direction. At three o'clock, after we had eaten our
+sandwiches, Lynton reluctantly abandoned all hopes of falling in with
+the hounds, and said we would return home by a slightly different route.
+
+We had not descended the hill before we came on an old chalk quarry and
+the remains of a disused kiln.
+
+I recollected the spot at once. I had been here with Sir Francis on my
+former visit, many years ago. "Why--bless me!" said I. "Do you remember,
+Lynton, what happened here when I was with you before? There had been
+men engaged removing chalk, and they came on a skeleton under some depth
+of rubble. We went together to see it removed, and you said you would
+have it preserved till it could be examined by some ethnologist or
+anthropologist, one or other of those dry-as-dusts, to decide whether
+the remains are dolichocephalous or brachycephalous, whether British,
+Danish, or--modern. What was the result?"
+
+Sir Francis hesitated for a moment, and then answered: "It is true, I
+had the remains removed."
+
+"Was there an inquest?"
+
+"No. I had been opening some of the tumuli on the Wolds. I had sent a
+crouched skeleton and some skulls to the Scarborough Museum. This I was
+doubtful about, whether it was a prehistoric interment--in fact, to what
+date it belonged. No one thought of an inquest."
+
+On reaching the house, one of the grooms who took the horses, in answer
+to a question from Lynton, said that Colonel and Mrs. Hampshire had
+arrived about an hour ago, and that, one of the horses being lame, the
+carriage in which they had driven over from Castle Frampton was to put
+up for the night. In the drawing-room we found Lady Lynton pouring out
+tea for her husband's youngest sister and her husband, who, as we came
+in, exclaimed: "We have come to beg a night's lodging."
+
+It appeared that they had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, and had
+been obliged to leave at a moment's notice in consequence of a sudden
+death in the house where they were staying, and that, in the
+impossibility of getting a fly, their hosts had sent them over to
+Byfield.
+
+"We thought," Mrs. Hampshire went on to say, "that as we were coming
+here the end of next week, you would not mind having us a little sooner;
+or that, if the house were quite full, you would be willing to put us up
+anywhere till Monday, and let us come back later."
+
+Lady Lynton interposed with the remark that it was all settled; and
+then, turning to her husband, added: "But I want to speak to you for a
+moment."
+
+They both left the room together.
+
+Lynton came back almost immediately, and, making an excuse to show me on
+a map in the hall the point to which we had ridden, said as soon as we
+were alone, with a look of considerable annoyance: "I am afraid we must
+ask you to change your room. Shall you mind very much? I think we can
+make you quite comfortable upstairs in the gallery, which is the only
+room available. Lady Lynton has had a good fire lit; the place is really
+not cold, and it will be for only a night or two. Your servant has been
+told to put your things together, but Lady Lynton did not like to give
+orders to have them actually moved before my speaking to you."
+
+I assured him that I did not mind in the very least, that I should be
+quite as comfortable upstairs, but that I did mind very much their
+making such a fuss about a matter of that sort with an old friend like
+myself.
+
+Certainly nothing could look more comfortable than my new lodging when I
+went upstairs to dress. There was a bright fire in the large grate, an
+armchair had been drawn up beside it, and all my books and writing
+things had been put in, with a reading-lamp in the central position, and
+the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn, converting this part of the
+gallery into a room to itself. Indeed, I felt somewhat inclined to
+congratulate myself on the change. The spiral staircase had been one
+reason against this place having been given to the Hampshires. No lady's
+long dress trunk could have mounted it.
+
+Sir Francis was necessarily a good deal occupied in the evening with his
+sister and her husband, whom he had not seen for some time. Colonel
+Hampshire had also just heard that he was likely to be ordered to Egypt,
+and when Lynton and he retired to the smoking-room, instead of going
+there I went upstairs to my own room to finish a book in which I was
+interested. I did not, however, sit up long, and very soon went to bed.
+
+Before doing so, I drew back the curtains on the rod, partly because I
+like plenty of air where I sleep, and partly also because I thought I
+might like to see the play of the moonlight on the floor in the portion
+of the gallery beyond where I lay, and where the blinds had not been
+drawn.
+
+I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire, which I had left in
+full blaze, was gone to a few sparks wandering among the ashes, when I
+suddenly awoke with the impression of having heard a latch click at the
+further extremity of the gallery, where was the chamber containing books
+and papers.
+
+I had always been a light sleeper, but on the present occasion I woke at
+once to complete and acute consciousness, and with a sense of stretched
+attention which seemed to intensify all my faculties. The wind had
+risen, and was blowing in fitful gusts round the house.
+
+A minute or two passed, and I began almost to fancy I must have been
+mistaken, when I distinctly heard the creak of the door, and then the
+click of the latch falling back into its place. Then I heard a sound on
+the boards as of one moving in the gallery. I sat up to listen, and as I
+did so I distinctly heard steps coming down the gallery. I heard them
+approach and pass my bed. I could see nothing, all was dark; but I heard
+the tread proceeding towards the further portion of the gallery where
+were the uncurtained and unshuttered windows, two in number; but the
+moon shone through only one of these, the nearer; the other was dark,
+shadowed by the chapel or some other building at right angles. The tread
+seemed to me to pause now and again, and then continue as before.
+
+I now fixed my eyes intently on the one illumined window, and it
+appeared to me as if some dark body passed across it: but what? I
+listened intently, and heard the step proceed to the end of the gallery
+and then return.
+
+I again watched the lighted window, and immediately that the sound
+reached that portion of the long passage it ceased momentarily, and I
+saw, as distinctly as I ever saw anything in my life, by moonlight, a
+figure of a man with marked features, in what appeared to be a fur cap
+drawn over the brows.
+
+It stood in the embrasure of the window, and the outline of the face was
+in silhouette; then it moved on, and as it moved I again heard the
+tread. I was as certain as I could be that the thing, whatever it was,
+or the person, whoever he was, was approaching my bed.
+
+I threw myself back in the bed, and as I did so a mass of charred wood
+on the hearth fell down and sent up a flash of--I fancy sparks, that
+gave out a glare in the darkness, and by that--red as blood--I saw a
+face near me.
+
+With a cry, over which I had as little control as the scream uttered by
+a sleeper in the agony of a nightmare, I called: "Who are you?"
+
+There was an instant during which my hair bristled on my head, as in the
+horror of the darkness I prepared to grapple with the being at my side;
+when a board creaked as if someone had moved, and I heard the footsteps
+retreat, and again the click of the latch.
+
+The next instant there was a rush on the stairs and Lynton burst into
+the room, just as he had sprung out of bed, crying: "For God's sake,
+what is the matter? Are you ill?"
+
+I could not answer. Lynton struck a light and leant over the bed. Then I
+seized him by the arm, and said without moving: "There has been
+something in this room--gone in thither."
+
+The words were hardly out of my mouth when Lynton, following the
+direction of my eyes, had sprung to the end of the corridor and thrown
+open the door there.
+
+He went into the room beyond, looked round it, returned, and said: "You
+must have been dreaming."
+
+By this time I was out of bed.
+
+"Look for yourself," said he, and he led me into the little room. It was
+bare, with cupboards and boxes, a sort of lumber-place. "There is
+nothing beyond this," said he, "no door, no staircase. It is a
+_cul-de-sac_." Then he added: "Now pull on your dressing-gown and come
+downstairs to my sanctum."
+
+I followed him, and after he had spoken to Lady Lynton, who was standing
+with the door of her room ajar in a state of great agitation, he turned
+to me and said: "No one can have been in your room. You see my and my
+wife's apartments are close below, and no one could come up the spiral
+staircase without passing my door. You must have had a nightmare.
+Directly you screamed I rushed up the steps, and met no one descending;
+and there is no place of concealment in the lumber-room at the end of
+the gallery."
+
+Then he took me into his private snuggery, blew up the fire, lighted a
+lamp, and said: "I shall be really grateful if you will say nothing
+about this. There are some in the house and neighbourhood who are silly
+enough as it is. You stay here, and if you do not feel inclined to go to
+bed, read--here are books. I must go to Lady Lynton, who is a good deal
+frightened, and does not like to be left alone."
+
+He then went to his bedroom.
+
+Sleep, as far as I was concerned, was out of the question, nor do I
+think that Sir Francis or his wife slept much either.
+
+I made up the fire, and after a time took up a book, and tried to read,
+but it was useless.
+
+I sat absorbed in thoughts and questionings till I heard the servants
+stirring in the morning. I then went to my own room, left the candle
+burning, and got into bed. I had just fallen asleep when my servant
+brought me a cup of tea at eight o'clock.
+
+At breakfast Colonel Hampshire and his wife asked if anything had
+happened in the night, as they had been much disturbed by noises
+overhead, to which Lynton replied that I had not been very well, and had
+an attack of cramp, and that he had been upstairs to look after me. From
+his manner I could see that he wished me to be silent, and I said
+nothing accordingly.
+
+In the afternoon, when everyone had gone out, Sir Francis took me into
+his snuggery and said: "Halifax, I am very sorry about that matter last
+night. It is quite true, as my brother said, that steps have been heard
+about this house, but I never gave heed to such things, putting all
+noises down to rats. But after your experiences I feel that it is due to
+you to tell you something, and also to make to you an explanation. There
+is--there was--no one in the room at the end of the corridor, except the
+skeleton that was discovered in the chalk-pit when you were here many
+years ago. I confess I had not paid much heed to it. My arch�ological
+fancies passed; I had no visits from anthropologists; the bones and
+skull were never shown to experts, but remained packed in a chest in
+that lumber-room. I confess I ought to have buried them, having no more
+scientific use for them, but I did not--on my word, I forgot all about
+them, or, at least, gave no heed to them. However, what you have gone
+through, and have described to me, has made me uneasy, and has also
+given me a suspicion that I can account for that body in a manner that
+had never occurred to me before."
+
+After a pause, he added: "What I am going to tell you is known to no one
+else, and must not be mentioned by you--anyhow, in my lifetime, You know
+now that, owing to the death of my father when quite young, I and my
+brother and sister were brought up here with our grandfather, Sir
+Richard. He was an old, imperious, short-tempered man. I will tell you
+what I have made out of a matter that was a mystery for long, and I will
+tell you afterwards how I came to unravel it. My grandfather was in the
+habit of going out at night with a young under-keeper, of whom he was
+very fond, to look after the game and see if any poachers, whom he
+regarded as his natural enemies, were about.
+
+"One night, as I suppose, my grandfather had been out with the young man
+in question, and, returning by the plantations, where the hill is
+steepest, and not far from that chalk-pit you remarked on yesterday,
+they came upon a man, who, though not actually belonging to the country,
+was well known in it as a sort of travelling tinker of indifferent
+character, and a notorious poacher. Mind this, I am not sure it was at
+the place I mention; I only now surmise it. On the particular night in
+question, my grandfather and the keeper must have caught this man
+setting snares; there must have been a tussle, in the course of which as
+subsequent circumstances have led me to imagine, the man showed fight
+and was knocked down by one or other of the two--my grandfather or the
+keeper. I believe that after having made various attempts to restore
+him, they found that the man was actually dead.
+
+"They were both in great alarm and concern--my grandfather especially.
+He had been prominent in putting down some factory riots, and had acted
+as magistrate with promptitude, and had given orders to the military to
+fire, whereby a couple of lives had been lost. There was a vast outcry
+against him, and a certain political party had denounced him as an
+assassin. No man was more vituperated; yet, in my conscience, I believe
+that he acted with both discretion and pluck, and arrested a mischievous
+movement that might have led to much bloodshed. Be that as it may, my
+impression is that he lost his head over this fatal affair with the
+tinker, and that he and the keeper together buried the body secretly,
+not far from the place where he was killed. I now think it was in the
+chalk-pit, and that the skeleton found years after there belonged to
+this man."
+
+"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, as at once my mind rushed back to the
+figure with the fur cap that I had seen against the window.
+
+Sir Francis went on: "The sudden disappearance of the tramp, in view of
+his well-known habits and wandering mode of life, did not for some time
+excite surprise; but, later on, one or two circumstances having led to
+suspicion, an inquiry was set on foot, and among others, my
+grandfather's keepers were examined before the magistrates. It was
+remembered afterwards that the under-keeper in question was absent at
+the time of the inquiry, my grandfather having sent him with some dogs
+to a brother-in-law of his who lived upon the moors; but whether no one
+noticed the fact, or if they did, preferred to be silent, I know not, no
+observations were made. Nothing came of the investigation, and the whole
+subject would have dropped if it had not been that two years later, for
+some reasons I do not understand, but at the instigation of a magistrate
+recently imported into the division, whom my grandfather greatly
+disliked, and who was opposed to him in politics, a fresh inquiry was
+instituted. In the course of that inquiry it transpired that, owing to
+some unguarded words dropped by the under-keeper, a warrant was about to
+be issued for his arrest. My grandfather, who had had a fit of the gout,
+was away from home at the time, but on hearing the news he came home at
+once. The evening he returned he had a long interview with the young
+man, who left the house after he had supped in the servants' hall. It
+was observed that he looked much depressed. The warrant was issued the
+next day, but in the meantime the keeper had disappeared. My grandfather
+gave orders to all his own people to do everything in their power to
+assist the authorities in the search that was at once set on foot, but
+was unable himself to take any share in it.
+
+"No trace of the keeper was found, although at a subsequent period
+rumours circulated that he had been heard of in America. But the man
+having been unmarried, he gradually dropped out of remembrance, and as
+my grandfather never allowed the subject to be mentioned in his
+presence, I should probably never have known anything about it but for
+the vague tradition which always attaches to such events, and for this
+fact: that after my grandfather's death a letter came addressed to him
+from somewhere in the United States from someone--the name different
+from that of the keeper--but alluding to the past, and implying the
+presence of a common secret, and, of course, with it came a request for
+money. I replied, mentioning the death of Sir Richard, and asking for an
+explanation. I did get an answer, and it is from that that I am able to
+fill in so much of the story. But I never learned _where_ the man had
+been killed and buried, and my next letter to the fellow was returned
+with 'Deceased' written across it. Somehow, it never occurred to me
+till I heard your story that possibly the skeleton in the chalk-pit
+might be that of the poaching tinker. I will now most assuredly have it
+buried in the churchyard."
+
+"That certainly ought to be done," said I.
+
+"And--" said Sir Francis, after a pause, "I give you my word. After the
+burial of the bones, and you are gone, I will sleep for a week in the
+bed in the gallery, and report to you if I see or hear anything. If all
+be quiet, then--well, you form your own conclusions."
+
+I left a day after. Before long I got a letter from my friend, brief but
+to the point: "All quiet, old boy; come again."
+
+
+
+
+THE MEREWIGS
+
+
+During the time that I lived in Essex, I had the pleasure of knowing
+Major Donelly, retired on half-pay, who had spent many years in India;
+he was a man of great powers of observation, and possessed an
+inexhaustible fund of information of the most valuable quality, which he
+was ready to communicate to his intimates, among whom was I.
+
+Major Donelly is now no more, and the world is thereby the poorer. Major
+Donelly took an interest in everything--anthropology, mechanics,
+arch�ology, physical science, natural history, the stock market,
+politics. In fact, it was not possible in conversation to broach a
+subject with which he was wholly unacquainted, and concerning which he
+was not desirous of acquiring further information. A man of this
+description is not to be held by lightly. I grappled him to my heart.
+
+One day when we were taking a constitutional walk together, I casually
+mentioned the "Red Hills." He had never heard of them, inquired, and I
+told him what little I knew on the matter. The Red Hills are mounds of
+burnt clay of a brick-red colour, found at intervals along the fringe of
+the marshes on the east coast. Of the date of their formation and the
+purpose they were destined to discharge, nothing has been certainly
+ascertained. Theories have been formed, and have been held to with
+tenacity, but these are unsupported by sound evidence. And yet, one
+would have supposed that these mysterious mounds would have been
+subjected to a careful scientific exploration to determine by the
+discovery of flint tools, potsherds, or coins to what epoch they belong,
+and that some clue should be discovered as to their purport. But at the
+time when I was in Essex, no such study had been attempted; whether any
+has been undertaken since I am unable to say.
+
+I mentioned to Donelly some of the suppositions offered as to the origin
+of these Red Hills; that they represented salt-making works, that they
+were funereal erections, that they were artificial bases for the huts of
+fishers.
+
+"That is it," said the major, "no doubt about it. To keep off the ague.
+Do you not know that burnt clay is a sure protection against ague, which
+was the curse of the Essex marsh land? In Central Africa, in the
+districts that lie low and there is morass, the natives are quite aware
+of the fact, and systematically form a bed of burnt clay as a platform
+on which to erect their hovels. Now look here, my dear friend, I'd most
+uncommonly like to take a boat along with you, and explore both sides of
+the Blackwater to begin with, and its inlets, and to tick down on the
+ordnance map every red hill we can find."
+
+"I am quite ready," I replied. "There is one thing to remember. A vast
+number of these hills have been ploughed down, but you can certainly
+detect where they were by the colour of the soil."
+
+Accordingly, on the next fine day we engaged a boat--not a rower--for we
+could manage it between us, and started on our expedition.
+
+The country around the Blackwater is flat, and the land slides into the
+sea and river with so slight an incline, that a good extent of debatable
+ground exists, which may be reckoned as belonging to both. Vast marshes
+are found occasionally flooded, covered with the wild lavender, and in
+June flushed with the seathrift. They nourish a coarse grass, and a
+bastard samphire. These marshes are threaded, cobweb fashion, by myriads
+of lines of water and mud that intercommunicate. Woe to the man who
+either stumbles into, or in jumping falls into, one of these breaks in
+the surface of land. He sinks to his waist in mud. At certain times,
+when no high tides are expected, sheep are driven upon these marshes and
+thrive. They manage to leap the runnels, and the shepherd is aware when
+danger threatens, and they must be driven off.
+
+Nearer the mainland are dykes thrown up, none know when, to reclaim
+certain tracts of soil, and on the land side are invariably stagnant
+ditches, where mosquitoes breed in myriads. Further up grow oak trees,
+and in summer to these the mosquitoes betake themselves in swarms, and
+may be seen in the evening swaying in such dense clouds above the trees
+that these latter seem to be on fire and smoking. Major Donelly and I
+leisurely paddled about, running into creeks, leaving our boat,
+identifying our position on the map, and marking in the position of such
+red hills or their traces as we lighted on.
+
+Major Donelly and I pretty well explored the left bank up to a certain
+point, when he proposed that we should push across to the other.
+
+"I should advise doing thoroughly the upper reach of the Blackwater,"
+said he, "and we shall then have completed one section."
+
+"All right," I responded, and we turned the boat's head to cross.
+Unhappily, we had not calculated that the estuary was full of mudbanks.
+Moreover, the tide was ebbing, and before very long we grounded.
+
+"Confound it!" said the major, "we are on a mudbank. What a fix we are
+in."
+
+We laboured with the oars to thrust off, but could touch no solid
+ground, to obtain purchase sufficient for our purpose.
+
+Then said Donelly: "The only thing to be done is for one of us to step
+onto the bank and thrust the boat off. I will do that. I have on an old
+shabby pair of trousers that don't matter."
+
+"No, indeed, you shall not. I will go," and at the word I sprang
+overboard. But the major had jumped simultaneously, and simultaneously
+we sank in the horrible slime. It had the consistency of spinach. I do
+not mean such as English cooks send us to table, half-mashed and often
+gritty, but the spinach as served at a French table d'h�te, that has
+been pulped through a fine hair sieve. And what is more, it apparently
+had no bottom. For aught I know it might go down a mile in depth towards
+the centre of the globe, and it stank abominably. We both clung to the
+sides of the boat to save ourselves from sinking altogether.
+
+There we were, one on each side, clinging to the bulwarks and looking at
+one another. For a moment or two neither spoke. Donelly was the first to
+recover his presence of mind, and after wiping his mouth on the gunwale
+from the mud that had squirted over it, he said: "Can you get out?"
+
+"Hardly," said I.
+
+We tugged at the boat, it squelched about, splashing the slime over us,
+till it plastered our heads and faces and covered our hands.
+
+"This will never do," said he. "We must get in together, and by
+instalments. Look here! when I say 'three,' throw in your left leg if
+you can get it out of the mud."
+
+"I will do my best."
+
+"And," he said further, "we must do so both at the same moment. Now,
+don't be a sneak and try to get in your body whilst I am putting in my
+leg, or you will upset the boat."
+
+"I never was a sneak," I retorted angrily, "and I certainly will not be
+one in what may be the throes of death."
+
+"All right," said the major. "One--two--three!"
+
+Instantly both of us drew our left legs out of the mud, and projected
+them over the sides into the boat.
+
+"How are you?" asked he. "Got your leg in all right?"
+
+"All but my boot," I replied, "and that has been sucked off my foot."
+
+"Oh, bother the boot," said the major, "so long as your leg is safe
+within, and has not been sucked off. That would have disturbed the
+equipoise. Now then--next we must have our trunks and right legs within.
+Take a long breath, and wait till I call 'three.'"
+
+We paused, panting with the strain; then Donelly, in a stentorian voice,
+shouted: "One--two--three!"
+
+Instantly we writhed and strained, and finally, after a convulsive
+effort, both were landed in the bottom of the boat. We picked ourselves
+up and seated ourselves, each on one bulwark, looking at one another.
+
+We were covered with the foul slime from head to foot, our clothes were
+caked, so were our hands and faces. But we were secure.
+
+"Here," said Donelly, "we shall have to remain for six hours till the
+tide flows, and the boat is lifted. It is of no earthly use for us to
+shout for help. Even if our calls were heard, no one could come out to
+us. Here, then, we stick and must make the best of it. Happily the sun
+is hot, and will cake the mud about us, and then we can pick off some of
+it."
+
+The prospect was not inviting. But I saw no means of escape.
+
+Presently Donelly said: "It is good that we brought our luncheon with
+us, and above all some whisky, which is the staff of life. Look here, my
+dear fellow. I wish it were possible to get this stinking stuff off our
+hands and faces; it smells like the scouring poured down the sink in
+Satan's own back kitchen. Is there not a bottle of claret in the
+basket?"
+
+"Yes, I put one in."
+
+"Then," said he, "the best use we can put it to is to wash our faces and
+hands in it. Claret is poor drink, and there is the whisky to fall back
+on."
+
+"The water has all ebbed away," I remarked "We cannot clean ourselves in
+that."
+
+"Then uncork the _Saint Julien_."
+
+There was really no help for it. The smell of the mud was disgusting,
+and it turned one's stomach. So I pulled out the cork, and we performed
+our ablutions in the claret.
+
+That done, we returned to our seats on the gunwale, one on each side,
+and looked sadly at one another. Six hours! That was an interminable
+time to spend on a mudflat in the Blackwater. Neither of us was much
+inclined to speak. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the major
+proposed refreshments. Accordingly we crept together into the bottom of
+the boat and there discussed the contents of the hamper, and we
+certainly did full justice to the whisky bottle. For we were wet to the
+skin, and beplastered from head to foot in the ill-savoured mud.
+
+When we had done the chicken and ham, and drained the whisky jar, we
+returned to our several positions _vis-�-vis_. It was essential that the
+balance of the boat should be maintained.
+
+Major Donelly was now in a communicative mood.
+
+"I will say this," observed he; "that you are the best-informed and most
+agreeable man I have met with in Colchester and Chelmsford."
+
+I would not record this remark but for what it led up to.
+
+I replied--I dare say I blushed--but the claret in my face made it red,
+anyhow. I replied: "You flatter me."
+
+"Not at all. I always say what I think. You have plenty of information,
+and you'll grow your wings, and put on rainbow colours."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" I inquired.
+
+"Do you not know," said he, "that we shall all of us, some day, develop
+wings? Grow into angels! What do you suppose that ethereal pinions
+spring out of? They do not develop out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.
+You cannot think that they are the ultimate produce of ham and chicken."
+
+"Nor of whisky."
+
+"Nor of whisky," he repeated. "You know it is so with the grub."
+
+"Grub is ambiguous," I observed.
+
+"I do not mean victuals, but the caterpillar. That creature spends its
+short life in eating, eating, eating. Look at a cabbage-leaf, it is
+riddled with holes; the grub has consumed all that vegetable matter, and
+I will inform you for what purpose. It retires into its chrysalis, and
+during the winter a transformation takes place, and in spring it breaks
+forth as a glorious butterfly. The painted wings of the insect in its
+second stage of existence are the sublimated cabbage it has devoured in
+its condition of larva."
+
+"Quite so. What has that to do with me?"
+
+"We are also in our larva condition. But do not for a moment suppose
+that the wings we shall put on with rainbow painting are the produce of
+what we eat here--of ham and chicken, kidneys, beef, and the like. No,
+sir, certainly not. They are fashioned out of the information we have
+absorbed, the knowledge we have acquired during the first stage of
+life."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I will tell you," he answered. "I had a remarkable experience once. It
+is a rather long story, but as we have some five hours and a half to sit
+here looking at one another till the tide rises and floats us, I may as
+well tell you, and it will help to the laying on of the colours on your
+pinions when you acquire them. You would like to hear the tale?"
+
+"Above all things."
+
+"There is a sort of prologue to it," he went on. "I cannot well dispense
+with it as it leads up to what I particularly want to say."
+
+"By all means let me have the prologue, if it be instructive."
+
+"It is eminently instructive," he said. "But before I begin, just pass
+me the bottle, if there is any whisky left."
+
+"It is drained," I said.
+
+"Well, well, it can't be helped. When I was in India, I moved from one
+place to another, and I had pitched my tent in a certain spot. I had a
+native servant. I forget what his real name was, and it does not matter.
+I always called him Alec. He was a curious fellow, and the other
+servants stood in awe of him. They thought that he saw ghosts and had
+familiar dealings with the spiritual world. He was honest as natives go.
+He would not allow anyone else to rob me; but, of course, he filched
+things of mine himself. We are accustomed to that, and think nothing of
+it. But it was a satisfaction that he kept the fingers of the others off
+my property. Well, one night, when, as I have informed you, my tent was
+pitched on a spot I considered eminently convenient, I slept very
+uncomfortably. It was as though a centipede were crawling over me. Next
+morning I spoke to Alec, and told him my experiences, and bade him
+search well my mattress and the floor of my tent. A Hindu's face is
+impassive, but I thought I detected in his eyes a twinkle of
+understanding. Nevertheless I did not give it much thought. Next night
+it was as bad, and in the morning I found my panjams slit from head to
+foot. I called Alec to me and held up the garment, and said how
+uncomfortable I had been. 'Ah! sahib,' said he, 'that is the doings of
+Abdulhamid, the blood-thirsty scoundrel!'"
+
+"Excuse me," I interrupted. "Did he mean the present Sultan of Turkey?"
+
+"No, quite another, of the same name."
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said. "But when you mentioned him as a
+blood-thirsty scoundrel, I supposed it must be he."
+
+"It was not he. It was another. Call him, if you like, the other Abdul.
+But to proceed with my story."
+
+"One inquiry more," said I. "Surely Abdulhamid cannot be a Hindu name?"
+
+"I did not say that it was," retorted the major with a touch of asperity
+in his tone. "He was doubtless a Mohammedan."
+
+"But the name is rather Turkish or Arabic."
+
+"I am not responsible for that; I was not his godfathers and godmothers
+at his baptism. I am merely repeating what Alec told me. If you are so
+captious, I shall shut up and relate no more."
+
+"Do not take umbrage," said I. "I surely have a right to test the
+quality of the material I take in, out of which my wings are to be
+evolved. Go ahead; I will interrupt no further."
+
+"Very well, then, let that be understood between us. Are you caking?"
+
+"Slowly," I replied. "The sun is hot; I am drying up on one side of my
+body."
+
+"I think that we had best shift sides of the boat," said the major. "It
+is the same with me."
+
+Accordingly, with caution, we crossed over, and each took the seat on
+the gunwale lately occupied by the other.
+
+"There," said Donelly. "How goes the enemy? My watch got smothered in
+the mud, and has stopped."
+
+"Mine," I explained, "is plastered into my waistcoat pocket, and I
+cannot get at it without messing my fingers, and there is no more claret
+left for a wash; the whisky is all inside us."
+
+"Well," said the major, "it does not matter; there is plenty of time
+before us for the rest of my story. Let me see--where was I? Oh! where
+Alec mentioned Abdulhamid, the inferior scoundrel, not the Sultan. Alec
+went on to say that he was himself possessed of a remarkably keen scent
+for blood, even though it had been shed a century before his time, and
+that my tent had been pitched and my bed spread over a spot marked by a
+most atrocious crime. That Abdul of whom he had made mention had been a
+man steeped in crimes of the most atrocious character. Of course, he
+did not come up in wickedness to his illustrious namesake, but that was
+because he lacked the opportunities with which the other is so favoured.
+On the very identical spot where I then was, this same bloodstained
+villain had perpetrated his worst iniquity--he had murdered his father
+and mother, and aunt, and his children. After that he was taken and
+hanged. When his soul parted from his body, in the ordinary course it
+would have entered into the shell of a scorpion or some other noxious
+creature, and so have mounted through the scale of beings, by one
+incarnation after another, till he attained once more to the high estate
+of man."
+
+"Excuse the interruption," said I, "but I think you intimated that this
+Abdulhamid was a Mohammedan, and the sons of the Prophet do not believe
+in the transmigration of souls."
+
+"That," said Donelly, "is precisely the objection I raised to Alec. But
+he told me that souls after death are not accommodated with a future
+according to the creeds they hold, but according to Destiny: that
+whatever a man might suppose during life as to the condition of his
+future state, there was but one truth to which they would all have their
+eyes opened--the truth held by the Hindus, viz. the transmigration of
+souls from stage to stage, ever progressing upward to man, and then to
+recommence the interminable circle of reincarnation. 'So,' said I, 'it
+was Abdul in the form of a scorpion who was tickling my ribs all night.'
+'No, sahib,' replied my native servant very gravely. He was too wicked
+to be suffered to set his foot, so to speak, on the lowest rung of the
+ladder of existences. The doom went forth against him that he must haunt
+the scenes of his former crimes, till he found a man sleeping over one
+of them, and on that man must be a mole, and out of that mole must grow
+three hairs. These hairs he must pluck out and plant on the grave of his
+final victims, and water them with his tears. And the flowing of these
+first drops of penitence would enable him to pass at once into the first
+stage of the circle of incarnations.' 'Why,' said I, 'that unredeemed
+ruffian was mole-hunting over me the last two nights! But what do you
+say to these slit panjams?' 'Sahib,' replied Alec, 'he did that with his
+nails. I presume he turned you over, and ripped them so as to get at
+your back and feel for the so-much-desired mole.' 'I'll have the tent
+shifted,' said I. 'Nothing will induce me to sleep another night on this
+accursed spot.'"
+
+Donelly paused, and proceeded to take off some flakes of mud that had
+formed on his sleeve. We really were beginning to get drier, but in
+drying we stiffened, as the mud became hard about us like pie-crust.
+
+"So far," said I, "we have had no wings."
+
+"I am coming to them," replied the major; "I have now concluded the
+prologue."
+
+"Oh! that was the prologue, was it?"
+
+"Yes. Have you anything against it? It was the prologue. Now I will go
+on with the main substance of my story. About a year after that incident
+I retired on half-pay, and returned to England. What became of Alec I
+did not know, nor care a hang. I had been in England for a little over
+two years, when one day I was walking along Great Russell Street, and
+passing the gates of the British Museum, I noticed a Hindu standing
+there, looking wretchedly cold and shabby. He had a tray containing
+bangles and necklaces and gewgaws, made in Germany, which he was selling
+as oriental works of art. As I passed, he saluted me, and, looking
+steadily at him, I recognised Alec. 'Why, what brings you here?' I
+inquired, vastly astonished. 'Sahib may well ask,' he replied. 'I came
+over because I thought I might better my condition. I had heard speak of
+a Psychical Research Society established in London; and with my really
+extraordinary gifts, I thought that I might be of value to it, and be
+taken in and paid an annuity if I supplied it continuously with
+well-authenticated, first-hand ghost stories.' 'Well,' said I, 'and have
+you succeeded?' 'No, sahib. I cannot find it. I have inquired after it
+from several of the crossing-sweepers, and they could not inform me of
+its whereabouts; and if I applied to the police, they bade me take
+myself off, there was no such a thing. I should have starved, sahib, if
+it had not been that I had taken to this line'; he pointed to his tray.
+'Does that pay well?' I asked. He shook his head sadly. 'Very poorly. I
+can live--that is all. There goes in a Merewig.' 'How many of these
+rubbishy bangles can you dispose of in a day?' I inquired. 'That
+depends, sahib. It varies so greatly, and the profits are very small. So
+small that I can barely get along. There goes in another Merewig.'
+'Where are all these things made?' I asked. 'In Germany or in
+Birmingham?' 'Oh, sahib, how can I tell? I get them from a Jew dealer.
+He supplies various street-hawkers. But I shall give it up--it does not
+pay--and shall set up a stall and dispose of Turkish Delight. There is
+always a run on that. You English have a sweet tooth. That's a Merewig,'
+and he pointed to a dowdy female, with a reticule on her arm, who, at
+that moment, went through the painted iron gates. 'What do you mean by
+Merewigs?' said I. 'Does not sahib know?' Alec's face expressed genuine
+surprise. 'If sahib will go into the great reading-room, he will see
+scores of them there. It is their great London haunt; they pass in all
+day, mainly in the morning--some are in very early, so soon as the
+museum is open at nine o'clock. And they usually remain there all day
+picking up information, acquiring knowledge.' 'You mean the students.'
+'Not all the students, but a large percentage of them. I know them in a
+moment. Sahib is aware that I have great gifts for the discernment of
+spirits.'
+
+"By the way," broke off Donelly, "do you understand Hindustani?"
+
+"Not a word of it," I replied.
+
+"I am sorry for that," said he, "because I could tell you what passed
+between us so much easier in Hindustani. I am able to speak and
+understand it as readily as English, and the matter I am going to relate
+would come off my tongue so much easier in that language."
+
+"You might as well speak it in Chinese. I should be none the wiser. Wait
+a moment. I am cracking."
+
+It was so. The heat of the sun was sensibly affecting my crust of mud. I
+think I must have resembled a fine old painting, the varnish of which is
+stained and traversed by an infinity of minute fissures, a perfect
+network of cracks. I stood up and stretched myself, and split in several
+places. Moreover, portions of my muddy envelope began to curl at the
+edges.
+
+"Don't be in too great a hurry to peel," advised Donelly.
+
+"We have abundance of time still before us, and I want to proceed with
+my narrative."
+
+"Go on, then. When are we coming to the wings?"
+
+"Directly," replied he. "Well, then--if you cannot receive what I have
+to say in Hindustani, I must do my best to give you the substance of
+Alec's communication in the vulgar tongue. I will epitomise it. The
+Hindu went on to explain in this fashion. He informed me that with us,
+Christians and white people, it is not the same as with the dusky and
+the yellow races. After death we do not pass into the bodies of the
+lower animals, which is a great privilege and ought to afford us immense
+satisfaction. We at once progress into a higher condition of life. We
+develop wings, as does the butterfly when it emerges from its condition
+of grub. But the matter out of which the wings are produced is nothing
+gross. They are formed, or form themselves, out of the information with
+which we have filled our brains during life. We lay up, during our
+mortal career here, a large amount of knowledge, of scientific,
+historical, philosophic, and like acquisitions, and these form the
+so-to-speak psychic pulp out of which, by an internal and mysterious
+and altogether inexplicable process, the transmutation takes place into
+our future wings. The more we have stored, the larger are our wings; the
+more varied the nature, the more radiant and coloured is their painting.
+When, at death, the brain is empty, there can be no wing-development.
+Out of nothing, nothing can arise. That is a law of nature absolutely
+inexorable in its application. And this is why you will never have to
+regret sticking in the mud to-day, my friend. I have supplied you with
+such an amount of fresh and valuable knowledge, that I believe you will
+have pinions painted hereafter with peacock's eyes."
+
+"I am most obliged to you," said I, splitting into a thousand cakes with
+the emotion that agitated me.
+
+Donelly proceeded. "I was so interested in what Alec told me, that I
+said to him, 'Come along with me into the Nineveh room, and we shall be
+able to thrash this matter out.' 'Ah, sahib,' he replied, 'they will not
+allow me to take in my tray.' 'Very well,' said I, 'then we will find a
+step before the portico, one not too much frequented by the pigeons, and
+will sit there.' He agreed. But the porter at the gate demurred to
+letting the Hindu through. He protested that no trafficking was allowed
+on the premises. I explained that none was purposed; that the man and I
+proposed a discussion on psychological topics. This seemed to content
+the porter, and he suffered Alec to pass through with me. We picked out
+as clean a portion of the steps as we could, and seated ourselves on it
+side by side, and then the Hindu went on with what he was saying."
+
+Donelly and I were now drying rapidly. As we sat facing each other we
+must have looked very much like the chocolate men one sees in
+confectioners' shops--of course, I mean on a much larger scale, and not
+of the same warm tint, and, of course, also, we did not exhale the same
+aromatic odour.
+
+"When we were seated," proceeded Donelly, "I felt the cold of the stone
+steps strike up into my system, and as I have had a touch or two of
+lumbago since I came home, I stood up again, took a copy of the
+_Standard_ out of my pocket, folded it, and placed it between myself and
+the step. I did, however, pull out the inner leaf, that containing the
+leaders, and presented it to Alec for the same purpose. Orientals are
+insensible to kindness, and are deficient in the virtue of gratitude.
+But this delicate trait of attention did touch the benighted heathen.
+His lip quivered, and he became, if possible, more than ever
+communicative. He nudged me with his tray and said, 'There goes out a
+Merewig. I wonder why she leaves so soon?' I saw a middle-aged woman in
+a gown of grey, with greasy splotches on it, and the braid unsewn at the
+skirt trailing in a loop behind. 'What are the Merewigs?' I asked. I
+will give you what I learned in my own words. All men and women--I
+allude only to Europeans and Americans--in the first stage of their life
+are bound morally, and in their own interest, to acquire and store up in
+their brains as much information as these will hold, for it is out of
+this that their wings will be evolved in their second stage of
+existence. Of course, the more varied this information is, the better.
+Men inevitably accumulate knowledge. Even if they assimilate very little
+at school, yet, as young men, they necessarily take in a good deal--of
+course, I exempt the mashers, who never learn anything. Even in sport
+they obtain something; but in business, by reading, by association, by
+travel, they go on piling up a store. You see that in common
+conversation they cannot escape doing this; politics, social questions,
+points of natural history, scientific discoveries form the staple of
+their talk, so that the mind of a man is necessarily kept replenished.
+But with women this is not the case. Young girls read nothing whatever
+but novels--they might as well feed on soap-bubbles. In their
+conversation with one another they twaddle, they do not talk."
+
+"But," protested I, "in our civilised society young women associate
+freely with men."
+
+"That is true," replied he. "But to what is their dialogue limited?--to
+ragging, to frivolous jokes. Men do not talk to them on rational topics,
+for they know well enough that such topics do not interest girls, and
+that they are wholly incapable of applying their minds to them. It is
+wondered why so many Englishmen look out for American wives. That is
+because the American girl takes pains to cultivate her mind, becomes a
+rational and well-educated woman. She can enter into her husband's
+interests, she can converse with him on almost every topic. She becomes
+his companion. That the modern English girl cannot be. Her head is as
+hollow as a drum. Now, if she grows up and marries, or even remains an
+old maid, the case is altered; she takes to keeping poultry, she becomes
+passionately fond of gardening, and she acquires a fund of information
+on the habits and customs of the domestic servant. The consequence of
+this is, that the vast majority of English young women who die early,
+die with nothing stored up in their brains out of which the wings may be
+evolved. In the larva condition they have consumed nothing that can
+serve them to bring them into the higher state."
+
+"So," said I, "we are all, you and I, in the larva condition as well as
+girls."
+
+"Quite so, we are larv� like them, only they are more so. To proceed.
+When girls die, without having acquired any profitable knowledge, as you
+well see, they cannot rise. They become Merewigs."
+
+"Oh, that is Merewigs," said I, greatly astonished.
+
+"Yes, but the Merewigs I had seen pass in and out of the British Museum,
+whether to study the collections or to work in the reading-room, were
+middle-aged for the most part."
+
+"How do you explain that?" I asked.
+
+"I give you only what I received from Alec. There are male Merewigs, but
+they are few and far between, for the reasons I have given to you. I
+suppose there are ninety-nine female Merewigs to one male."
+
+"You astonish me."
+
+"I was astonished when I learned this from Alec. Now I will tell you
+something further. All the souls of the girls who have died empty-headed
+in the preceding twenty-four hours in England assemble at four o'clock
+every morning, or rather a few minutes before the stroke of the clock,
+about the statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, with a
+possible sprinkling of male masher souls among them. At the stroke of
+the clock, off the whole swarm rushes up Holborn Hill, along Oxford
+Street, whither I cannot certainly say. Alec told me that it is for all
+the world like the rush of an army of rats in the sewers."
+
+"But what can that Hindu know of underground London?"
+
+"He knows because he lodges in the house of a sewer-man, with whom he
+has become on friendly terms."
+
+"Then you do not know whither this galloping legion runs?"
+
+"Not exactly, for Alec was not sure. But he tells me they tear away to
+the great _garde-robe_ of discarded female bodies. They must get into
+these, so as to make up for the past, and acquire knowledge, out of
+which wings may be developed. Of course there is a scramble for these
+bodies, for there are at least half a dozen applicants. At first only
+the abandoned husks of old maids were given them, but the supply having
+proved to be altogether inadequate, they are obliged to put up with
+those of married women and widows. There was some demur as to this, but
+beggars must not be choosers. And so they become Merewigs. There are
+more than a sufficiency of old bachelors' outer cases hanging up in the
+_garde-robe_, but the girls will not get into them at any price. Now you
+understand what Merewigs are, and why they swarm in the reading-room of
+the British Museum. They are there picking up information as hard as
+they can pick."
+
+"This is extremely interesting," said I, "and novel."
+
+"I thought you would say so. How goes on the drying?"
+
+"I have been picking off clots of clay while you have been talking."
+
+"I hope you are interested," said Donelly.
+
+"Interested," I replied, "is not the word for it."
+
+"I am glad you think so," said the major; "I was intensely interested in
+what Alec told me, so much so that I proposed he should come with me
+into the reading-room, and point out to me such as he perceived by his
+remarkable gift of discernment of spirits were actual Merewigs. But
+again the difficulty of his tray was objected, and Alec further
+intimated that he was missing opportunities of disposing of his trinkets
+by spending so much time conversing with me. 'As to that,' said I, 'I
+will buy half a dozen of your bangles and present them to my lady
+friends; as coming from me, an oriental traveller, they will believe
+them to be genuine----'"
+
+"As your experiences," interpolated I.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he inquired sharply.
+
+"Nothing more than this," rejoined I, "that faith is grown weak among
+females nowadays."
+
+"That is certainly true. It is becoming a sadly incredulous sex. I
+further got over Alec's difficulty about the tray by saying that it
+could be left in the custody of one of the officials at the entrance.
+Then he consented. We passed through the swing-door and deposited the
+tray with the functionary who presides over umbrellas and
+walking-sticks. Then I went forward along with my Hindu towards the
+reading-room. But here another hindrance arose. Alec had no ticket, and
+therefore might not enter beyond the glass screen interposed between the
+door and the readers. Some demur was made as to his being allowed to
+remain there for any considerable time, but I got over that by means of
+a little persuasion. 'Sahib,' said Alec 'I should suggest your marking
+the Merewigs, so as to be able to recognise them elsewhere.' 'How can I
+do that?' I inquired. 'I have here with me a piece of French chalk,' he
+answered. 'You go within, sahib, and walk up and down by the tables,
+behind the chairs of the readers, or around the circular cases that
+contain the catalogues, and where the students are looking out for the
+books they desire to consult. When you pass a female, either seated or
+standing, glance towards the glass screen, and when you are by a Merewig
+I will hold up my hand above the screen, and you will know her to be
+one; then just scrawl a W or M, or any letter or cabalistic symbol that
+occurs to you, upon her back with the French chalk. Then whenever you
+meet her in the street, in society, at an A. B. C. place of refreshment,
+on a railway platform, you will recognise her infallibly.' 'Not likely,'
+I objected. 'Of course, so soon as she gets home, she will brush off the
+mark.' 'You do not know much of the Merewigs,' he said. 'When the
+spirits of those frivolous girls were in their first stage of existence,
+they were most particular about their personal appearance, about the
+neatness and stylishness of their dress, and the puffing and piling up
+of their hair. Now all that is changed. They are so disgusted at having
+to get into any unsouled body that they can lay hold of in the
+_garde-robe_, such a body being usually plain in features, middle-aged,
+and with no waist to speak of, or rather too ample in the waist to be
+elegant, that they have abandoned all concern about dress and tidiness.
+Besides, they are engrossed in the acquisition of knowledge, and the
+burning desire that consumes them is to get out of these borrowed cases
+as speedily as may be. Consequently, so long as they are dressed and
+their hair done up anyhow, that is all they care about. As to threads,
+or feathers, or French chalk marks on their clothes, they would not
+think of looking for them.' Then Alec handed to me a little piece of
+French chalk, such as tailors and dressmakers employ to indicate
+alterations when fitting on garments. So provided, I passed wholly into
+the spacious reading-room, leaving the Hindu behind the screen.
+
+"I slowly strayed down the first line of desks and chairs, which were
+fully engaged. There were many men there, with piles of books at their
+sides. There were also some women. I stepped behind one, and turned my
+head towards the screen, but Alec made no sign. At the second, however,
+up went his hand above it, and I hastily scrawled M, on her back as she
+stooped over her studies. I had time, moreover, to see what she was
+engaged upon. She was working up deep-sea soundings, beginning with that
+recorded by Schiller in his ballad of 'The Diver,' down to the last
+scientific researches in the bottom of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and
+the dredgings in the North Sea. She was engrossed in her work, and was
+picking up facts at a prodigious rate. She was a woman of, I should say,
+forty, with a cadaverous face, a shapeless nose, and enormous hands. Her
+dress was grey, badly fitted, and her boots were even worse made. Her
+hair was drawn back and knotted in a bunch behind, with the pins
+sticking out. It might have been better brushed. I passed on behind her
+back; the next occupants of seats were gentlemen, so I stepped to
+another row of desks, and looking round saw Alec's hand go up. I was
+behind a young lady in a felt hat, crunched in at top, and with a
+feather at the side; she wore a pea-jacket, with large smoked buttons,
+and beneath it a dull green gown, very short in the skirt, and brown
+boots. Her hair was cut short like that of a man. As I halted, she
+looked round, and I saw that she had hard, brown eyes, like pebbles,
+without a gleam of tenderness or sympathy in them. I cannot say whether
+this was due to the body she had assumed, or to the soul which had
+entered into the body--whether the lack was in the organ, or in the
+psychic force which employed the organ. I merely state the fact. I
+looked over her shoulder to see what she was engaged upon, and found
+that she was working her way diligently through Herbert Spencer. I
+scored a W on her back and went on. The next Merewig I had to scribble
+on was a wizen old lady, with little grey curls on the temples, very
+shabby in dress, and very antiquated in costume. Her fingers were dirty
+with ink, and the ink did not appear to me to be all of that day's
+application. Besides, I saw that she had been rubbing her nose. I
+presume it had been tickling, and she had done this with a finger still
+wet with ink, so that there was a smear on her face. She was engaged on
+the peerage. She had Dod, Burke, and Foster before her, and was getting
+up the authentic pedigrees of our noble families and their
+ramifications. I noticed with her as with the other Merewigs, that when
+they had swallowed a certain amount of information they held up their
+heads much like fowls after drinking.
+
+"The next that I marked was a very thin woman of an age I was quite
+unable to determine. She had a pointed nose, and was dressed in red. She
+looked like a stick of sealing-wax. The gown had probably enough been
+good and showy at one time, but it was ripped behind now, and the
+stitches showed, besides, a little bit of what was beneath. There was a
+frilling, or ruche, or tucker, about the throat that I think had been
+sewn into it three weeks before. I drew a note of interrogation on her
+back with my bit of French chalk. I wanted much to find out what she was
+studying, but could not. She turned round and asked sharply what I was
+stooping over for and breathing on the back of her neck. So I was forced
+to go on to the next. This was a lady fairly well dressed in the
+dingiest of colours, wearing spectacles. I believe that she wore divided
+skirts, but as she did not stand up and walk, I cannot be certain. I am
+particular never to make a statement of which I am not absolutely
+certain. She was engaged upon the subject of the land laws in various
+countries, on common land, and property in land; and she was at that
+time devoting her special attention to the constitution of the Russian
+_mir_, and the tenure of land under it. I scrawled on her back the
+zodiacal sign for Venus, the Virgin, and went further. But when I had
+marked seventeen I gave it up. I had already gone over the desks to L,
+beginning backward, and that sufficed, so I returned to Alec, paid him
+for the bangles, and we separated. I did, however, give him a letter to
+the Secretary of the Psychical Research Society, and addressed it,
+having found what I wanted in the _London Directory_, which was in the
+reading-room of the British Museum. Two days later I met, by
+appointment, my Hindu once more, and for the last time. He had not been
+received as he had anticipated by the Psychical Research Society, and
+thought of getting back to India at the first opportunity.
+
+"It is remarkable that, a few days later, I saw in the Underground one
+of those I had marked. The chalk mark was still quite distinct. She was
+not in my compartment, but I noticed her as she stepped out on to the
+platform at Baker Street. I suspect she was on her way to Madame
+Tussaud's waxwork exhibition, to instruct her mind there. But I was more
+fortunate a week later when I was at St. Albans. I had an uncle living
+there from whom I had expectations, and I paid him a visit. Whilst
+there, a lecture was to be given on the spectroscope, and as my
+acquaintance with that remarkable invention of modern times was limited,
+I resolved to go. Have you, my friend, ever taken up the subject of the
+photosphere of the sun?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then let me press it upon you. It will really supply a large amount of
+wing-pulp, if properly assimilated. It is a most astonishing thought
+that we are able, at the remote distance at which we are from the solar
+orb, to detect the various incandescent metals which go to make up the
+luminous envelope of the sun. Not only so, but we are able to discover,
+by the bars in the spectroscope, of what Jupiter, Saturn, and so on are
+composed. What a stride astronomy has made since the days of Newton!"
+
+"No doubt about it. But I do not want to hear about the bars, but of the
+chalk marks on the Merewigs."
+
+"Well, then, I noticed two elderly ladies sitting in the row before me,
+and there--as distinctly as if sketched in only yesterday--were the
+symbols I had scribbled on their backs. I did not have an opportunity of
+speaking with them then; indeed, I had no introduction to them, and
+could hardly take on me to address them without it. I was, however, more
+successful a week or two later. There was a meeting of the Hertfordshire
+Arch�ological Society organised, to last a week, with excursions to
+ancient Verulam and to other objects of interest in the county.
+Hertfordshire is not a large county. It is, in fact, one of the smallest
+in England, but it yields to none in the points of interest that it
+contains, apart from the venerable abbey church that has been so
+fearfully mauled and maltreated by ignorant so-called restoration. One
+must really hope that the next generation, which will be more
+enlightened than our own, will undo all the villainous work that has
+been perpetrated to disfigure it in our own. The local secretaries and
+managers had arranged for char-�-bancs and brakes to take the party
+about, and men--learned, or thinking themselves to be learned, on the
+several antiquities--were to deliver lectures on the spot explanatory of
+what we saw. On three days there were to be evening gatherings, at which
+papers would be read. You may conceive that this was a supreme
+opportunity for storing the mind with information, and knowing what I
+did, I resolved on taking advantage of it. I entered my name as a
+subscriber to all the excursions. On the first day we went over the
+remains of the old Roman city of Verulam, and were shown its plan and
+walls, and further, the spot where the protomartyr of Britain passed
+over the stream, and the hill on which he was martyred. Nothing could
+have been more interesting and more instructive. Among those present
+were three middle-aged personages of the female sex, all of whom were
+chalk-marked on the back. One of these marks was somewhat effaced, as
+though the lady whose gown was scored had made a faint effort to brush
+it off, but had tired of the attempt and had abandoned it. The other two
+scorings were quite distinct.
+
+"On this, the first day, though I sidled up to these three Merewigs, I
+did not succeed in ingratiating myself into their favour sufficiently to
+converse with them. You may well understand, my friend, that such an
+opportunity of getting out of them some of their Merewigian experiences
+was not to be allowed to slip. On the second day I was more successful.
+I managed to obtain a seat in a brake between two of them. We were to
+drive to a distant spot where was a church of considerable architectural
+interest.
+
+"Well, in these excursions a sort of freemasonry exists between the
+arch�ologists who share in them, and no ceremonious introductions are
+needed. For instance, you say to the lady next to you, 'Am I squeezing
+you?' And the ice is broken. I did not, however, attempt to draw any
+information from those between whom I was seated, till after luncheon, a
+most sumptuous repast, with champagne, liberally given to the Society by
+a gentleman of property, to whose house we drove up just about one
+o'clock. There was plenty of champagne supplied, and I did not stint
+myself. I felt it necessary to take in a certain amount of Dutch courage
+before broaching to my companions in the brake the theme that lay near
+my heart. When, however, we got into the conveyance, all in great
+spirits, after the conclusion of the lunch, I turned to my right-hand
+lady, and said to her: 'Well, miss, I fear it will be a long time before
+you become angelic.' She turned her back upon me and made no reply.
+Somewhat disconcerted, I now addressed myself to the chalk-marked lady
+on my left hand, and asked: 'Have you anything at all in your head
+except arch�ology?' Instead of answering me in the kindly mood in which
+I spoke, she began at once to enter into a lively discussion with her
+neighbour on the opposite side of the carriage, and ignored me. I was
+not to be done in this way. I wanted information. But, of course, I
+could enter into the feelings of both. Merewigs do not like to converse
+about themselves in their former stage of existence, of which they are
+ashamed, nor of the efforts they are making in this transitional stage
+to acquire a fund of knowledge for the purpose of ultimately discarding
+their acquired bodies, and developing their ethereal wings as they pass
+into the higher and nobler condition.
+
+"We left the carriage to go to a spot about a mile off, through lanes,
+muddy and rutty, for the purpose of inspecting some remarkable stones.
+All the party would not walk, and the conveyances could proceed no
+nearer. The more enthusiastic did go on, and I was of the number. What
+further stimulated me to do so was the fact that the third Merewig, she
+who had partially cleaned my scoring off her back, plucked up her
+skirts, and strode ahead. I hurried after and caught her up. 'I beg your
+pardon,' said I. 'You must excuse the interest I take in antiquities,
+but I suppose it is a long time since you were a girl.' Of course, my
+meaning was obvious; I referred to her earlier existence, before she
+borrowed her present body. But she stopped abruptly, gave me a withering
+look, and went back to rejoin another group of pedestrians. Ha! my
+friend, I verily believe that the boat is being lifted. The tide is
+flowing in."
+
+"The tide is flowing," I said; and then added, "really, Major Donelly,
+your story ought not to be confined to the narrow circle of your
+intimates."
+
+"That is true," he replied. "But my desire to make it known has been
+damped by the way in which Alec was received, or rather rejected, by the
+Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research."
+
+"But I do not mean that you should tell it to the Society for Psychical
+Research."
+
+"To whom, then?"
+
+"Tell it to the Horse Marines."
+
+
+
+
+THE "BOLD VENTURE"
+
+
+The little fisher-town of Portstephen comprised two strings of houses
+facing each other at the bottom of a narrow valley, down which the
+merest trickle of a stream decanted into the harbour. The street was so
+narrow that it was at intervals alone that sufficient space was accorded
+for two wheeled vehicles to pass one another, and the road-way was for
+the most part so narrow that each house door was set back in the depth
+of the wall, to permit the foot-passenger to step into the recess to
+avoid being overrun by the wheels of a cart that ascended or descended
+the street.
+
+The inhabitants lived upon the sea and its produce. Such as were not
+fishers were mariners, and but a small percentage remained that were
+neither--the butcher, the baker, the smith, and the doctor; and these
+also lived by the sea, for they lived upon the sailors and fishermen.
+
+For the most part, the seafaring men were furnished with large families.
+The net in which they drew children was almost as well filled as the
+seine in which they trapped pilchards.
+
+Jonas Rea, however, was an exception; he had been married for ten years,
+and had but one child, and that a son.
+
+"You've a very poor haul, Jonas," said to him his neighbour, Samuel
+Carnsew; "I've been married so long as you and I've twelve. My wife has
+had twins twice."
+
+"It's not a poor haul for me, Samuel," replied Jonas, "I may have but
+one child, but he's a buster."
+
+Jonas had a mother alive, known as Old Betty Rea. When he married, he
+had proposed that his mother, who was a widow, should live with him.
+But man proposes and woman disposes. The arrangement did not commend
+itself to the views of Mrs. Rea, junior--that is to say, of Jane,
+Jonas's wife.
+
+Betty had always been a managing woman. She had managed her house, her
+children, and her husband; but she speedily was made aware that her
+daughter-in-law refused to be managed by her.
+
+Jane was, in her way, also a managing woman: she kept her house clean,
+her husband's clothes in order, her child neat, and herself the very
+pink of tidiness. She was a somewhat hard woman, much given to grumbling
+and finding fault.
+
+Jane and her mother-in-law did not come to an open and flagrant quarrel,
+but the fret between them waxed intolerable; and the curtain-lectures,
+of which the text and topic was Old Betty, were so frequent and so
+protracted that Jonas convinced himself that there was smoother water in
+the worst sea than in his own house.
+
+He was constrained to break to his mother the unpleasant information
+that she must go elsewhere; but he softened the blow by informing her
+that he had secured for her residence a tiny cottage up an alley, that
+consisted of two rooms only, one a kitchen, above that a bedchamber.
+
+The old woman received the communication without annoyance. She rose to
+the offer, for she had also herself considered that the situation had
+become unendurable. Accordingly, with goodwill, she removed to her new
+quarters, and soon made the house look keen and cosy.
+
+But, so soon as Jane gave indications of becoming a mother, it was
+agreed that Betty should attend on her daughter-in-law. To this Jane
+consented. After all, Betty could not be worse than another woman, a
+stranger.
+
+And when Jane was in bed, and unable to quit it, then Betty once more
+reigned supreme in the house and managed everything--even her
+daughter-in-law.
+
+But the time of Jane's lying upstairs was brief, and at the earliest
+possible moment she reappeared in the kitchen, pale indeed and weak, but
+resolute, and with firm hand withdrew the reins from the grasp of Betty.
+
+In leaving her son's house, the only thing that Betty regretted was the
+baby. To that she had taken a mighty affection, and she did not quit
+till she had poured forth into the deaf ear of Jane a thousand
+instructions as to how the babe was to be fed, clothed, and reared.
+
+As a devoted son, Jonas never returned from sea without visiting his
+mother, and when on shore saw her every day. He sat with her by the
+hour, told her of all that concerned him--except about his wife--and
+communicated to her all his hopes and wishes. The babe, whose name was
+Peter, was a topic on which neither weaned of talking or of listening;
+and often did Jonas bring the child over to be kissed and admired by his
+grandmother.
+
+Jane raised objections--the weather was cold and the child would take a
+chill; grandmother was inconsiderate, and upset its stomach with
+sweetstuff; it had not a tidy dress in which to be seen: but Jonas
+overruled all her objections. He was a mild and yielding man, but on
+this one point he was inflexible--his child should grow up to know,
+love, and reverence his mother as sincerely as did he himself. And these
+were delightful hours to the old woman, when she could have the infant
+on her lap, croon to it, and talk to it all the delightful nonsense that
+flows from the lips of a woman when caressing a child.
+
+Moreover, when the boy was not there, Betty was knitting socks or
+contriving pin-cases, or making little garments for him; and all the
+small savings she could gather from the allowance made by her son, and
+from the sale of some of her needlework, were devoted to the same
+grandchild.
+
+As the little fellow found his feet and was allowed to toddle, he often
+wanted to "go to granny," not much to the approval of Mrs. Jane. And,
+later, when he went to school, he found his way to her cottage before he
+returned home so soon as his work hours in class were over. He very
+early developed a love for the sea and ships.
+
+This did not accord with Mrs. Jane's ideas; she came of a family that
+had ever been on the land, and she disapproved of the sea. "But,"
+remonstrated her husband, "he is my son, and I and my father and
+grandfather were all of us sea-dogs, so that, naturally, my part in the
+boy takes to the water."
+
+And now an idea entered the head of Old Betty. She resolved on making a
+ship for Peter. She provided herself with a stout piece of deal of
+suitable size and shape, and proceeded to fashion it into the form of a
+cutter, and to scoop out the interior. At this Peter assisted. After
+school hours he was with his grandmother watching the process, giving
+his opinion as to shape, and how the boat was to be rigged and
+furnished. The aged woman had but an old knife, no proper carpentering
+tools, consequently the progress made was slow. Moreover, she worked at
+the ship only when Peter was by. The interest excited in the child by
+the process was an attraction to her house, and it served to keep him
+there. Further, when he was at home, he was being incessantly scolded by
+his mother, and the preference he developed for granny's cottage caused
+many a pang of jealousy in Jane's heart.
+
+Peter was now nine years old, and remained the only child, when a sad
+thing happened. One evening, when the little ship was rigged and almost
+complete, after leaving his grandmother, Peter went down to the port.
+There happened to be no one about, and in craning over the quay to look
+into his father's boat, he overbalanced, fell in, and was drowned.
+
+The grandmother supposed that the boy had returned home, the mother that
+he was with his grandmother, and a couple of hours passed before search
+for him was instituted, and the body was brought home an hour after
+that. Mrs. Jane's grief at losing her child was united with resentment
+against Old Betty for having drawn the child away from home, and
+against her husband for having encouraged it. She poured forth the vials
+of her wrath upon Jonas. He it was who had done his utmost to have the
+boy killed, because he had allowed him to wander at large, and had
+provided him with an excuse by allowing him to tarry with Old Betty
+after leaving school, so that no one knew where he was. Had Jonas been a
+reasonable man, and a docile husband, he would have insisted on Peter
+returning promptly home every day, in which case this disaster would not
+have occurred. "But," said Jane bitterly, "you never have considered my
+feelings, and I believe you did not love Peter, and wanted to be rid of
+him."
+
+The blow to Betty was terrible; her heart-strings were wrapped about the
+little fellow; and his loss was to her the eclipse of all light, the
+death of all her happiness.
+
+When Peter was in his coffin, then the old woman went to the house,
+carrying the little ship. It was now complete with sails and rigging.
+
+"Jane," said she, "I want thickey ship to be put in with Peter. 'Twere
+made for he, and I can't let another have it, and I can't keep it
+myself."
+
+"Nonsense," retorted Mrs. Rea, junior. "The boat can be no use to he,
+now."
+
+"I wouldn't say that. There's naught revealed on them matters. But I'm
+cruel certain that up aloft there'll be a rumpus if Peter wakes up and
+don't find his ship."
+
+"You may take it away; I'll have none of it," said Jane.
+
+So the old woman departed, but was not disposed to accept discomfiture.
+She went to the undertaker.
+
+"Mr. Matthews, I want you to put this here boat in wi' my gran'child
+Peter. It will go in fitty at his feet."
+
+"Very sorry, ma'am, but not unless I break off the bowsprit. You see the
+coffin is too narrow."
+
+"Then put'n in sideways and longways."
+
+"Very sorry, ma'am, but the mast is in the way. I'd be forced to break
+that so as to get the lid down."
+
+Disconcerted, the old woman retired; she would not suffer Peter's boat
+to be maltreated.
+
+On the occasion of the funeral, the grandmother appeared as one of the
+principal mourners. For certain reasons, Mrs. Jane did not attend at the
+church and grave.
+
+As the procession left the house, Old Betty took her place beside her
+son, and carried the boat in her hand. At the close of the service at
+the grave, she said to the sexton: "I'll trouble you, John Hext, to put
+this here little ship right o' top o' his coffin. I made'n for Peter,
+and Peter'll expect to have'n." This was done, and not a step from the
+grave would the grandmother take till the first shovelfuls had fallen on
+the coffin and had partially buried the white ship.
+
+When Granny Rea returned to her cottage, the fire was out. She seated
+herself beside the dead hearth, with hands folded and the tears coursing
+down her withered cheeks. Her heart was as dead and dreary as that
+hearth. She had now no object in life, and she murmured a prayer that
+the Lord might please to take her, that she might see her Peter sailing
+his boat in paradise.
+
+Her prayer was interrupted by the entry of Jonas, who shouted: "Mother,
+we want your help again. There's Jane took bad; wi' the worrit and the
+sorrow it's come on a bit earlier than she reckoned, and you're to come
+along as quick as you can. 'Tisn't the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
+away, but topsy-turvy, the Lord hath taken away and is givin' again."
+
+Betty rose at once, and went to the house with her son, and again--as
+nine years previously--for a while she assumed the management of the
+house; and when a baby arrived, another boy, she managed that as well.
+
+The reign of Betty in the house of Jonas and Jane was not for long. The
+mother was soon downstairs, and with her reappearance came the departure
+of the grandmother.
+
+And now began once more the same old life as had been initiated nine
+years previously. The child carried to its grandmother, who dandled it,
+crooned and talked to it. Then, as it grew, it was supplied with socks
+and garments knitted and cut out and put together by Betty; there ensued
+the visits of the toddling child, and the remonstrances of the mother.
+School time arrived, and with it a break in the journey to or from
+school at granny's house, to partake of bread and jam, hear stories,
+and, finally, to assist at the making of a new ship.
+
+If, with increase of years, Betty's powers had begun to fail, there had
+been no corresponding decrease in energy of will. Her eyes were not so
+clear as of old, nor her hearing so acute, but her hand was not
+unsteady. She would this time make and rig a schooner and not a cutter.
+
+Experience had made her more able, and she aspired to accomplish a
+greater task than she had previously undertaken. It was really
+remarkable how the old course was resumed almost in every particular.
+But the new grandson was called Jonas, like his father, and Old Betty
+loved him, if possible, with a more intense love than had been given to
+the first child. He closely resembled his father, and to her it was a
+renewal of her life long ago, when she nursed and cared for the first
+Jonas. And, if possible, Jane became more jealous of the aged woman, who
+was drawing to her so large a portion of her child's affection. The
+schooner was nearly complete. It was somewhat rude, having been worked
+with no better tool than a penknife, and its masts being made of
+knitting-pins.
+
+On the day before little Jonas's ninth birthday, Betty carried the ship
+to the painter.
+
+"Mr. Elway," said she, "there be one thing I do want your help in. I
+cannot put the name on the vessel. I can't fashion the letters, and I
+want you to do it for me."
+
+"All right, ma'am. What name?"
+
+"Well, now," said she, "my husband, the father of Jonas, and the
+grandfather of the little Jonas, he always sailed in a schooner, and the
+ship was the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"The _Bonaventura_, I think. I remember her."
+
+"I'm sure she was the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"I think not, Mrs. Rea."
+
+"It must have been the _Bold Venture_ or _Bold Adventurer_. What sense
+is there in such a name as _Boneventure_? I never heard of no such
+venture, unless it were that of Jack Smithson, who jumped out of a
+garret window, and sure enough he broke a bone of his leg. No, Mr.
+Elway, I'll have her entitled the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"I'll not gainsay you. _Bold Venture_ she shall be."
+
+Then the painter very dexterously and daintily put the name in black
+paint on the white strip at the stern.
+
+"Will it be dry by to-morrow?" asked the old woman. "That's the little
+lad's birthday, and I promised to have his schooner ready for him to
+sail her then."
+
+"I've put dryers in the paint," answered Mr. Elway, "and you may reckon
+it will be right for to-morrow."
+
+That night Betty was unable to sleep, so eager was she for the day when
+the little boy would attain his ninth year and become the possessor of
+the beautiful ship she had fashioned for him with her own hands, and on
+which, in fact, she had been engaged for more than a twelvemonth.
+
+Nor was she able to eat her simple breakfast and noonday meal, so
+thrilled was her old heart with love for the child and expectation of
+his delight when the _Bold Venture_ was made over to him as his own.
+
+She heard his little feet on the cobblestones of the alley: he came on,
+dancing, jumping, fidgeted at the lock, threw the door open and burst in
+with a shout--
+
+"See! see, granny! my new ship! Mother has give it me. A real
+frigate--with three masts, all red and green, and cost her seven
+shillings at Camelot Fair yesterday." He bore aloft a very magnificent
+toy ship. It had pennants at the mast-top and a flag at stern. "Granny!
+look! look! ain't she a beauty? Now I shan't want your drashy old
+schooner when I have my grand new frigate."
+
+"Won't you have your ship--the _Bold Venture_?"
+
+"No, granny; chuck it away. It's a shabby bit o' rubbish, mother says;
+and see! there's a brass cannon, a real cannon that will go off with a
+bang, on my frigate. Ain't it a beauty?"
+
+"Oh, Jonas! look at the _Bold Venture_!"
+
+"No, granny, I can't stay. I want to be off and swim my beautiful
+seven-shilling ship."
+
+Then he dashed away as boisterous as he had dashed in, and forgot to
+shut the door. It was evening when the elder Jonas returned home, and he
+was welcomed by his son with exclamations of delight, and was shown the
+new ship.
+
+"But, daddy, her won't sail; over her will flop in the water."
+
+"There is no lead on the keel," remarked the father. "The vessel is
+built for show only."
+
+Then he walked away to his mother's cottage. He was vexed. He knew that
+his wife had bought the toy with the deliberate intent of disappointing
+and wounding her mother-in-law; and he was afraid that he would find the
+old lady deeply mortified and incensed. As he entered the dingy lane, he
+noticed that her door was partly open.
+
+The aged woman was on the seat by the table at the window, lying forward
+clasping the ship, and the two masts were run through her white hair;
+her head rested, partly on the new ship and partly on the table.
+
+"Mother!" said he. "Mother!"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+The feeble old heart had given way under the blow, and had ceased to
+beat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was accustomed, a few summers past, to spend a couple of months at
+Portstephen. Jonas Rea took me often in his boat, either mackerel
+fishing, or on excursions to the islets off the coast, in quest of wild
+birds. We became familiar, and I would now and then spend an evening
+with him in his cottage, and talk about the sea, and the chances of a
+harbour of refuge being made at Portstephen, and sometimes we spoke of
+our own family affairs. Thus it was that, little by little, the story of
+the ship _Bold Venture_ was told me.
+
+Mrs. Jane was no more in the house.
+
+"It's a curious thing," said Jonas Rea, "but the first ship my mother
+made was no sooner done than my boy Peter died, and when she made
+another, with two masts, as soon as ever it was finished she died
+herself, and shortly after my wife, Jane, who took a chill at mother's
+funeral. It settled on her chest, and she died in a fortnight."
+
+"Is that the boat?" I inquired, pointing to a glass case on a cupboard,
+in which was a rudely executed schooner.
+
+"That's her," replied Jonas; "and I'd like you to have a look close at
+her."
+
+I walked to the cupboard and looked.
+
+"Do you see anything particular?" asked the fisherman.
+
+"I can't say that I do."
+
+"Look at her masthead. What is there?"
+
+After a pause I said: "There is a grey hair, that is all, like a
+pennant."
+
+"I mean that," said Jonas. "I can't say whether my old mother put a hair
+from her white head there for the purpose, or whether it caught and
+fixed itself when she fell forward clasping the boat, and the masts and
+spars and shrouds were all tangled in her hair. Anyhow, there it be, and
+that's one reason why I've had the _Bold Venture_ put in a glass
+case--that the white hair may never by no chance get brushed away from
+it. Now, look again. Do you see nothing more?"
+
+"Can't say I do."
+
+"Look at the bows."
+
+I did so. Presently I remarked: "I see nothing except, perhaps, some
+bruises, and a little bit of red paint."
+
+"Ah! that's it, and where did the red paint come from?"
+
+I was, of course, quite unable to suggest an explanation.
+
+Presently, after Mr. Rea had waited--as if to draw from me the answer he
+expected--he said: "Well, no, I reckon you can't tell. It was thus. When
+mother died, I brought the _Bold Venture_ here and set her where she is
+now, on the cupboard, and Jonas, he had set the new ship, all red and
+green, the _Saucy Jane_ it was called, on the bureau. Will you believe
+me, next morning when I came downstairs the frigate was on the floor,
+and some of her spars broken and all the rigging in a muddle."
+
+"There was no lead on the bottom. It fell down."
+
+"It was not once that happened. It came to the same thing every night;
+and what is more, the _Bold Venture_ began to show signs of having
+fouled her."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Run against her. She had bruises, and had brought away some of the
+paint of the _Saucy Jane_. Every morning the frigate, if she were'nt on
+the floor, were rammed into a corner, and battered as if she'd been in a
+bad sea."
+
+"But it is impossible."
+
+"Of course, lots o' things is impossible, but they happen all the same."
+
+"Well, what next?"
+
+"Jane, she was ill, and took wus and wus, and just as she got wus so it
+took wus as well with the _Saucy Jane_. And on the night she died, I
+reckon that there was a reg'lar pitched sea-fight."
+
+"But not at sea."
+
+"Well, no; but the frigate seemed to have been rammed, and she was on
+the floor and split from stem to stern."
+
+"And, pray, has the _Bold Venture_ made no attempt since? The glass case
+is not broken."
+
+"There's been no occasion. I chucked what remained of the _Saucy Jane_
+into the fire."
+
+
+
+
+MUSTAPHA
+
+
+I
+
+Among the many hangers-on at the Hotel de l'Europe at
+Luxor--donkey-boys, porters, guides, antiquity dealers--was one, a young
+man named Mustapha, who proved a general favourite.
+
+I spent three winters at Luxor, partly for my health, partly for
+pleasure, mainly to make artistic studies, as I am by profession a
+painter. So I came to know Mustapha fairly well in three stages, during
+those three winters.
+
+When first I made his acquaintance he was in the transition condition
+from boyhood to manhood. He had an intelligent face, with bright eyes, a
+skin soft as brown silk, with a velvety hue on it. His features were
+regular, and if his face was a little too round to quite satisfy an
+English artistic eye, yet this was a peculiarity to which one soon
+became accustomed. He was unflaggingly good-natured and obliging. A
+mongrel, no doubt, he was; Arab and native Egyptian blood were mingled
+in his veins. But the result was happy; he combined the patience and
+gentleness of the child of Mizraim with the energy and pluck of the son
+of the desert.
+
+Mustapha had been a donkey-boy, but had risen a stage higher, and
+looked, as the object of his supreme ambition, to become some day a
+dragoman, and blaze like one of these gilded beetles in lace and chains,
+rings and weapons. To become a dragoman--one of the most obsequious of
+men till engaged, one of the veriest tyrants when engaged--to what
+higher could an Egyptian boy aspire?
+
+To become a dragoman means to go in broadcloth and with gold chains when
+his fellows are half naked; to lounge and twist the moustache when his
+kinsfolk are toiling under the water-buckets; to be able to extort
+backsheesh from all the tradesmen to whom he can introduce a master; to
+do nothing himself and make others work for him; to be able to look to
+purchase two, three, even four wives when his father contented himself
+with one; to soar out of the region of native virtues into that of
+foreign vices; to be superior to all instilled prejudices against
+spirits and wine--that is the ideal set before young Egypt through
+contact with the English and the American tourist.
+
+We all liked Mustapha. No one had a bad word to say of him. Some pious
+individuals rejoiced to see that he had broken with the Koran, as if
+this were a first step towards taking up with the Bible. A free-thinking
+professor was glad to find that Mustapha had emancipated himself from
+some of those shackles which religion places on august, divine humanity,
+and that by getting drunk he gave pledge that he had risen into a sphere
+of pure emancipation, which eventuates in ideal perfection.
+
+As I made my studies I engaged Mustapha to carry my easel and canvas, or
+camp-stool. I was glad to have him as a study, to make him stand by a
+wall or sit on a pillar that was prostrate, as artistic exigencies
+required. He was always ready to accompany me. There was an
+understanding between us that when a drove of tourists came to Luxor he
+might leave me for the day to pick up what he could then from the
+natural prey; but I found him not always keen to be off duty to me.
+Though he could get more from the occasional visitor than from me, he
+was above the ravenous appetite for backsheesh which consumed his
+fellows.
+
+He who has much to do with the native Egyptian will have discovered
+that there are in him a fund of kindliness and a treasure of good
+qualities. He is delighted to be treated with humanity, pleased to be
+noticed, and ready to repay attention with touching gratitude. He is by
+no means as rapacious for backsheesh as the passing traveller supposes;
+he is shrewd to distinguish between man and man; likes this one, and
+will do anything for him unrewarded, and will do naught for another for
+any bribe.
+
+The Egyptian is now in a transitional state. If it be quite true that
+the touch of England is restoring life to his crippled limbs, and the
+voice of England bidding him rise up and walk, there are occasions on
+which association with Englishmen is a disadvantage to him. Such an
+instance is that of poor, good Mustapha.
+
+It was not my place to caution Mustapha against the pernicious
+influences to which he was subjected, and, to speak plainly, I did not
+know what line to adopt, on what ground to take my stand, if I did. He
+was breaking with the old life, and taking up with what was new,
+retaining of the old only what was bad in it, and acquiring of the new
+none of its good parts. Civilisation--European civilisation--is
+excellent, but cannot be swallowed at a gulp, nor does it wholly suit
+the oriental digestion.
+
+That which impelled Mustapha still further in his course was the
+attitude assumed towards him by his own relatives and the natives of his
+own village. They were strict Moslems, and they regarded him as one on
+the highway to becoming a renegade. They treated him with mistrust,
+showed him aversion, and loaded him with reproaches. Mustapha had a high
+spirit, and he resented rebuke. Let his fellows grumble and objurgate,
+said he; they would cringe to him when he became a dragoman, with his
+pockets stuffed with piastres.
+
+There was in our hotel, the second winter, a young fellow of the name of
+Jameson, a man with plenty of money, superficial good nature, little
+intellect, very conceited and egotistic, and this fellow was Mustapha's
+evil genius. It was Jameson's delight to encourage Mustapha in drinking
+and gambling. Time hung heavy on his hands. He cared nothing for
+hieroglyphics, scenery bored him, antiquities, art, had no charm for
+him. Natural history presented to him no attraction, and the only
+amusement level with his mental faculties was that of hoaxing natives,
+or breaking down their religious prejudices.
+
+Matters were in this condition as regarded Mustapha, when an incident
+occurred during my second winter at Luxor that completely altered the
+tenor of Mustapha's life.
+
+One night a fire broke out in the nearest village. It originated in a
+mud hovel belonging to a fellah; his wife had spilled some oil on the
+hearth, and the flames leaping up had caught the low thatch, which
+immediately burst into a blaze. A wind was blowing from the direction of
+the Arabian desert, and it carried the flames and ignited the thatch
+before it on other roofs; the conflagration spread, and the whole
+village was menaced with destruction. The greatest excitement and alarm
+prevailed. The inhabitants lost their heads. Men ran about rescuing from
+their hovels their only treasures--old sardine tins and empty marmalade
+pots; women wailed, children sobbed; no one made any attempt to stay the
+fire; and, above all, were heard the screams of the woman whose
+incaution had caused the mischief, and who was being beaten unmercifully
+by her husband.
+
+The few English in the hotel came on the scene, and with their
+instinctive energy and system set to work to organise a corps and subdue
+the flames. The women and girls who were rescued from the menaced
+hovels, or plucked out of those already on fire, were in many cases
+unveiled, and so it came to pass that Mustapha, who, under English
+direction, was ablest and most vigorous in his efforts to stop the
+conflagration, met his fate in the shape of the daughter of Ibraim the
+Farrier.
+
+By the light of the flames he saw her, and at once resolved to make that
+fair girl his wife.
+
+No reasonable obstacle intervened, so thought Mustapha. He had amassed a
+sufficient sum to entitle him to buy a wife and set up a household of
+his own. A house consists of four mud walls and a low thatch, and
+housekeeping in an Egyptian house is as elementary and economical as the
+domestic architecture. The maintenance of a wife and family is not
+costly after the first outlay, which consists in indemnifying the father
+for the expense to which he has been put in rearing a daughter.
+
+The ceremony of courting is also elementary, and the addresses of the
+suitor are not paid to the bride, but to her father, and not in person
+by the candidate, but by an intermediary.
+
+Mustapha negotiated with a friend, a fellow hanger-on at the hotel, to
+open proceedings with the farrier. He was to represent to the worthy man
+that the suitor entertained the most ardent admiration for the virtues
+of Ibraim personally, that he was inspired with but one ambition, which
+was alliance with so distinguished a family as his. He was to assure the
+father of the damsel that Mustapha undertook to proclaim through Upper
+and Lower Egypt, in the ears of Egyptians, Arabs, and Europeans, that
+Ibraim was the most remarkable man that ever existed for solidity of
+judgment, excellence of parts, uprightness of dealing, nobility of
+sentiment, strictness in observance of the precepts of the Koran, and
+that finally Mustapha was anxious to indemnify this same paragon of
+genius and virtue for his condescension in having cared to breed and
+clothe and feed for several years a certain girl, his daughter, if
+Mustapha might have that daughter as his wife. Not that he cared for the
+daughter in herself, but as a means whereby he might have the honour of
+entering into alliance with one so distinguished and so esteemed of
+Allah as Ibraim the Farrier.
+
+To the infinite surprise of the intermediary, and to the no less
+surprise and mortification of the suitor, Mustapha was refused. He was a
+bad Moslem. Ibraim would have no alliance with one who had turned his
+back on the Prophet and drunk bottled beer.
+
+Till this moment Mustapha had not realised how great was the alienation
+between his fellows and himself--what a barrier he had set up between
+himself and the men of his own blood. The refusal of his suit struck the
+young man to the quick. He had known and played with the farrier's
+daughter in childhood, till she had come of age to veil her face; now
+that he had seen her in her ripe charms, his heart was deeply stirred
+and engaged. He entered into himself, and going to the mosque he there
+made a solemn vow that if he ever touched wine, ale, or spirits again he
+would cut his throat, and he sent word to Ibraim that he had done so,
+and begged that he would not dispose of his daughter and finally reject
+him till he had seen how that he who had turned in thought and manner of
+life from the Prophet would return with firm resolution to the right
+way.
+
+
+II
+
+From this time Mustapha changed his conduct. He was obliging and
+attentive as before, ready to exert himself to do for me what I wanted,
+ready also to extort money from the ordinary tourist for doing nothing,
+to go with me and carry my tools when I went forth painting, and to joke
+and laugh with Jameson; but, unless he were unavoidably detained, he
+said his prayers five times daily in the mosque, and no inducement
+whatever would make him touch anything save sherbet, milk, or water.
+
+Mustapha had no easy time of it. The strict Mohammedans mistrusted this
+sudden conversion, and believed that he was playing a part. Ibraim gave
+him no encouragement. His relatives maintained their reserve and
+stiffness towards him.
+
+His companions, moreover, who were in the transitional stage, and those
+who had completely shaken off all faith in Allah and trust in the
+Prophet and respect for the Koran, were incensed at his desertion. He
+was ridiculed, insulted; he was waylaid and beaten. The young fellows
+mimicked him, the elder scoffed at him.
+
+Jameson took his change to heart, and laid himself out to bring him out
+of his pot of scruples.
+
+"Mustapha ain't any sport at all now," said he. "I'm hanged if he has
+another para from me." He offered him bribes in gold, he united with the
+others in ridicule, he turned his back on him, and refused to employ
+him. Nothing availed. Mustapha was respectful, courteous, obliging as
+before, but he had returned, he said, to the faith and rule of life in
+which he had been brought up, and he would never again leave it.
+
+"I have sworn," said he, "that if I do I will cut my throat."
+
+I had been, perhaps, negligent in cautioning the young fellow the first
+winter that I knew him against the harm likely to be done him by taking
+up with European habits contrary to his law and the feelings and
+prejudices of his people. Now, however, I had no hesitation in
+expressing to him the satisfaction I felt at the courageous and
+determined manner in which he had broken with acquired habits that could
+do him no good. For one thing, we were now better acquaintances, and I
+felt that as one who had known him for more than a few months in the
+winter, I had a good right to speak. And, again, it is always easier or
+pleasanter to praise than to reprimand.
+
+One day when sketching I cut my pencil with a pruning-knife I happened
+to have in my pocket; my proper knife of many blades had been left
+behind by misadventure.
+
+Mustapha noticed the knife and admired it, and asked if it had cost a
+great sum.
+
+"Not at all," I answered. "I did not even buy it. It was given me. I
+ordered some flower seeds from a seeds-man, and when he sent me the
+consignment he included this knife in the case as a present. It is not
+worth more than a shilling in England."
+
+He turned it about, with looks of admiration.
+
+"It is just the sort that would suit me," he said. "I know your other
+knife with many blades. It is very fine, but it is too small. I do not
+want it to cut pencils. It has other things in it, a hook for taking
+stones from a horse's hoof, a pair of tweezers for removing hairs. I do
+not want such, but a knife such as this, with such a curve, is just the
+thing."
+
+"Then you shall have it," said I. "You are welcome. It was for rough
+work only that I brought the knife to Egypt with me."
+
+I finished a painting that winter that gave me real satisfaction. It was
+of the great court of the temple of Luxor by evening light, with the
+last red glare of the sun over the distant desert hills, and the eastern
+sky above of a purple depth. What colours I used! the intensest on my
+palette, and yet fell short of the effect.
+
+The picture was in the Academy, was well hung, abominably represented in
+one of the illustrated guides to the galleries, as a blotch, by some
+sort of photographic process on gelatine; my picture sold, which
+concerned me most of all, and not only did it sell at a respectable
+figure, but it also brought me two or three orders for Egyptian
+pictures. So many English and Americans go up the Nile, and carry away
+with them pleasant reminiscences of the Land of the Pharaohs, that when
+in England they are fain to buy pictures which shall remind them of
+scenes in that land.
+
+I returned to my hotel at Luxor in November, to spend there a third
+winter. The fellaheen about there saluted me as a friend with an
+affectionate delight, which I am quite certain was not assumed, as they
+got nothing out of me save kindly salutations. I had the Egyptian fever
+on me, which, when once acquired, is not to be shaken off--an enthusiasm
+for everything Egyptian, the antiquities, the history of the Pharaohs,
+the very desert, the brown Nile, the desolate hill ranges, the ever blue
+sky, the marvellous colorations at rise and set of sun, and last, but
+not least, the prosperity of the poor peasants.
+
+I am quite certain that the very warmest welcome accorded to me was from
+Mustapha, and almost the first words he said to me on my meeting him
+again were: "I have been very good. I say my prayers. I drink no wine,
+and Ibraim will give me his daughter in the second Iomada--what you call
+January."
+
+"Not before, Mustapha?"
+
+"No, sir; he says I must be tried for one whole year, and he is right."
+
+"Then soon after Christmas you will be happy!"
+
+"I have got a house and made it ready. Yes. After Christmas there will
+be one very happy man--one very, very happy man in Egypt, and that will
+be your humble servant, Mustapha."
+
+
+III
+
+We were a pleasant party at Luxor, this third winter, not numerous, but
+for the most part of congenial tastes. For the most part we were keen on
+hieroglyphics, we admired Queen Hatasou and we hated Rameses II. We
+could distinguish the artistic work of one dynasty from that of another.
+We were learned on cartouches, and flourished our knowledge before the
+tourists dropping in.
+
+One of those staying in the hotel was an Oxford don, very good company,
+interested in everything, and able to talk well on everything--I mean
+everything more or less remotely connected with Egypt. Another was a
+young fellow who had been an attach� at Berlin, but was out of
+health--nothing organic the matter with his lungs, but they were weak.
+He was keen on the political situation, and very anti-Gallican, as every
+man who has been in Egypt naturally is, who is not a Frenchman.
+
+There was also staying in the hotel an American lady, fresh and
+delightful, whose mind and conversation twinkled like frost crystals in
+the sun, a woman full of good-humour, of the most generous sympathies,
+and so droll that she kept us ever amused.
+
+And, alas! Jameson was back again, not entering into any of our
+pursuits, not understanding our little jokes, not at all content to be
+there. He grumbled at the food--and, indeed, that might have been
+better; at the monotony of the life at Luxor, at his London doctor for
+putting the veto on Cairo because of its drainage, or rather the absence
+of all drainage. I really think we did our utmost to draw Jameson into
+our circle, to amuse him, to interest him in something; but one by one
+we gave him up, and the last to do this was the little American lady.
+
+From the outset he had attacked Mustapha, and endeavoured to persuade
+him to shake off his "squeamish nonsense," as Jameson called his
+resolve. "I'll tell you what it is, old fellow," he said, "life isn't
+worth living without good liquor, and as for that blessed Prophet of
+yours, he showed he was a fool when he put a bar on drinks."
+
+But as Mustapha was not pliable he gave him up. "He's become just as
+great a bore as that old Rameses," said he. "I'm sick of the whole
+concern, and I don't think anything of fresh dates, that you fellows
+make such a fuss about. As for that stupid old Nile--there ain't a fish
+worth eating comes out of it. And those old Egyptians were arrant
+humbugs. I haven't seen a lotus since I came here, and they made such a
+fuss about them too."
+
+The little American lady was not weary of asking questions relative to
+English home life, and especially to country-house living and
+amusements.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said she, "I would give my ears to spend a Christmas in
+the fine old fashion in a good ancient manor-house in the country."
+
+"There is nothing remarkable in that," said an English lady.
+
+"Not to you, maybe; but there would be to us. What we read of and make
+pictures of in our fancies, that is what you live. Your facts are our
+fairy tales. Look at your hunting."
+
+"That, if you like, is fun," threw in Jameson. "But I don't myself think
+anything save Luxor can be a bigger bore than country-house life at
+Christmas time--when all the boys are back from school."
+
+"With us," said the little American, "our sportsmen dress in pink like
+yours--the whole thing--and canter after a bag of anise seed that is
+trailed before them."
+
+"Why do they not import foxes?"
+
+"Because a fox would not keep to the road. Our farmers object pretty
+freely to trespass; so the hunting must of necessity be done on the
+highway, and the game is but a bag of anise seed. I would like to see an
+English meet and a run."
+
+This subject was thrashed out after having been prolonged unduly for the
+sake of Jameson.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" said the Yankee lady. "If but that chef could be
+persuaded to give us plum-puddings for Christmas, I would try to think I
+was in England."
+
+"Plum-pudding is exploded," said Jameson. "Only children ask for it now.
+A good trifle or a tipsy-cake is much more to my taste; but this hanged
+cook here can give us nothing but his blooming custard pudding and burnt
+sugar."
+
+"I do not think it would be wise to let him attempt a plum-pudding,"
+said the English lady. "But if we can persuade him to permit me I will
+mix and make the pudding, and then he cannot go far wrong in the boiling
+and dishing up."
+
+"That is the only thing wanting to make me perfectly happy," said the
+American. "I'll confront monsieur. I am sure I can talk him into a good
+humour, and we shall have our plum-pudding."
+
+No one has yet been found, I do believe, who could resist that little
+woman. She carried everything before her. The cook placed himself and
+all his culinary apparatus at her feet. We took part in the stoning of
+the raisins, and the washing of the currants, even the chopping of the
+suet; we stirred the pudding, threw in sixpence apiece, and a ring, and
+then it was tied up in a cloth, and set aside to be boiled. Christmas
+Day came, and the English chaplain preached us a practical sermon on
+"Goodwill towards men." That was his text, and his sermon was but a
+swelling out of the words just as rice is swelled to thrice its size by
+boiling.
+
+We dined. There was an attempt at roast beef--it was more like baked
+leather. The event of the dinner was to be the bringing in and eating of
+the plum-pudding.
+
+Surely all would be perfect. We could answer for the materials and the
+mixing. The English lady could guarantee the boiling. She had seen the
+plum-pudding "on the boil," and had given strict injunctions as to the
+length of time during which it was to boil.
+
+But, alas! the pudding was not right when brought on the table. It was
+not enveloped in lambent blue flame--it was not crackling in the burning
+brandy. It was sent in dry, and the brandy arrived separate in a white
+sauce-boat, hot indeed, and sugared, but not on fire.
+
+There ensued outcries of disappointment. Attempts were made to redress
+the mistake by setting fire to the brandy in a spoon, but the spoon was
+cold. The flame would not catch, and finally, with a sigh, we had to
+take our plum-pudding as served.
+
+"I say, chaplain!" exclaimed Jameson, "practice is better than precept,
+is it not?"
+
+"To be sure it is."
+
+"You gave us a deuced good sermon. It was short, as it ought to be; but
+I'll go better on it, I'll practise where you preached, and have larks,
+too!"
+
+Then Jameson started from table with a plate of plum-pudding in one hand
+and the sauce-boat in the other. "By Jove!" he said, "I'll teach these
+fellows to open their eyes. I'll show them that we know how to feed. We
+can't turn out scarabs and cartouches in England, that are no good to
+anyone, but we can produce the finest roast beef in the world, and do a
+thing or two in puddings."
+
+And he left the room.
+
+We paid no heed to anything Jameson said or did. We were rather relieved
+that he was out of the room, and did not concern ourselves about the
+"larks" he promised himself, and which we were quite certain would be as
+insipid as were the quails of the Israelites.
+
+In ten minutes he was back, laughing and red in the face.
+
+"I've had splitting fun," he said. "You should have been there."
+
+"Where, Jameson?"
+
+"Why, outside. There were a lot of old moolahs and other hoky-pokies
+sitting and contemplating the setting sun and all that sort of thing,
+and I gave Mustapha the pudding. I told him I wished him to try our
+great national English dish, on which her Majesty the Queen dines daily.
+Well, he ate and enjoyed it, by George. Then I said, 'Old fellow, it's
+uncommonly dry, so you must take the sauce to it.' He asked if it was
+only sauce--flour and water. 'It's sauce, by Jove,' said I, 'a little
+sugar to it; no bar on the sugar, Musty.' So I put the boat to his lips
+and gave him a pull. By George, you should have seen his face! It was
+just thundering fun. 'I've done you at last, old Musty,' I said. 'It is
+best cognac.' He gave me such a look! He'd have eaten me, I believe--and
+he walked away. It was just splitting fun. I wish you had been there to
+see it."
+
+I went out after dinner, to take my usual stroll along the river-bank,
+and to watch the evening lights die away on the columns and obelisk. On
+my return I saw at once that something had happened which had produced
+commotion among the servants of the hotel. I had reached the salon
+before I inquired what was the matter.
+
+The boy who was taking the coffee round said: "Mustapha is dead. He cut
+his throat at the door of the mosque. He could not help himself. He had
+broken his vow."
+
+I looked at Jameson without a word. Indeed, I could not speak; I was
+choking. The little American lady was trembling, the English lady
+crying. The gentlemen stood silent in the windows, not speaking a word.
+
+Jameson's colour changed. He was honestly distressed, uneasy, and tried
+to cover his confusion with bravado and a jest.
+
+"After all," he said, "it is only a nigger the less."
+
+"Nigger!" said the American lady. "He was no nigger, but an Egyptian."
+
+"Oh! I don't pretend to distinguish between your blacks and whity-browns
+any more than I do between your cartouches," returned Jameson.
+
+"He was no black," said the American lady, standing up. "But I do mean
+to say that I consider you an utterly unredeemed black----"
+
+"My dear, don't," said the Englishwoman, drawing the other down. "It's
+no good. The thing is done. He meant no harm."
+
+
+IV
+
+I could not sleep. My blood was in a boil. I felt that I could not speak
+to Jameson again. He would have to leave Luxor. That was tacitly
+understood among us. Coventry was the place to which he would be
+consigned.
+
+I tried to finish in a little sketch I had made in my notebook when I
+was in my room, but my hand shook, and I was constrained to lay my
+pencil aside. Then I took up an Egyptian grammar, but could not fix my
+mind on study. The hotel was very still. Everyone had gone to bed at an
+early hour that night, disinclined for conversation. No one was moving.
+There was a lamp in the passage; it was partly turned down. Jameson's
+room was next to mine. I heard him stir as he undressed, and talk to
+himself. Then he was quiet. I wound up my watch, and emptying my pocket,
+put my purse under the pillow. I was not in the least heavy with sleep.
+If I did go to bed I should not be able to close my eyes. But then--if I
+sat up I could do nothing.
+
+I was about leisurely to undress, when I heard a sharp cry, or
+exclamation of mingled pain and alarm, from the adjoining room. In
+another moment there was a rap at my door. I opened, and Jameson came
+in. He was in his night-shirt, and looking agitated and frightened.
+
+"Look here, old fellow," said he in a shaking voice, "there is Musty in
+my room. He has been hiding there, and just as I dropped asleep he ran
+that knife of yours into my throat."
+
+"My knife?"
+
+"Yes--that pruning-knife you gave him, you know. Look here--I must have
+the place sewn up. Do go for a doctor, there's a good chap."
+
+"Where is the place?"
+
+"Here on my right gill."
+
+Jameson turned his head to the left, and I raised the lamp. There was no
+wound of any sort there.
+
+I told him so.
+
+"Oh, yes! That's fine--I tell you I felt his knife go in."
+
+"Nonsense, you were dreaming."
+
+"Dreaming! Not I. I saw Musty as distinctly as I now see you."
+
+"This is a delusion, Jameson," I replied. "The poor fellow is dead."
+
+"Oh, that's very fine," said Jameson. "It is not the first of April, and
+I don't believe the yarns that you've been spinning. You tried to make
+believe he was dead, but I know he is not. He has got into my room, and
+he made a dig at my throat with your pruning-knife."
+
+"I'll go into your room with you."
+
+"Do so. But he's gone by this time. Trust him to cut and run."
+
+I followed Jameson, and looked about. There was no trace of anyone
+beside himself having been in the room. Moreover, there was no place but
+the nut-wood wardrobe in the bedroom in which anyone could have secreted
+himself. I opened this and showed that it was empty.
+
+After a while I pacified Jameson, and induced him to go to bed again,
+and then I left his room. I did not now attempt to court sleep. I wrote
+letters with a hand not the steadiest, and did my accounts.
+
+As the hour approached midnight I was again startled by a cry from the
+adjoining room, and in another moment Jameson was at my door.
+
+"That blooming fellow Musty is in my room still," said he. "He has been
+at my throat again."
+
+"Nonsense," I said. "You are labouring under hallucinations. You locked
+your door."
+
+"Oh, by Jove, yes--of course I did; but, hang it, in this hole, neither
+doors nor windows fit, and the locks are no good, and the bolts nowhere.
+He got in again somehow, and if I had not started up the moment I felt
+the knife, he'd have done for me. He would, by George. I wish I had a
+revolver."
+
+I went into Jameson's room. Again he insisted on my looking at his
+throat.
+
+"It's very good of you to say there is no wound," said he. "But you
+won't gull me with words. I felt his knife in my windpipe, and if I had
+not jumped out of bed----"
+
+"You locked your door. No one could enter. Look in the glass, there is
+not even a scratch. This is pure imagination."
+
+"I'll tell you what, old fellow, I won't sleep in that room again.
+Change with me, there's a charitable buffer. If you don't believe in
+Musty, Musty won't hurt you, maybe--anyhow you can try if he's solid or
+a phantom. Blow me if the knife felt like a phantom."
+
+"I do not quite see my way to changing rooms," I replied; "but this I
+will do for you. If you like to go to bed again in your own apartment, I
+will sit up with you till morning."
+
+"All right," answered Jameson. "And if Musty comes in again, let out at
+him and do not spare him. Swear that."
+
+I accompanied Jameson once more to his bedroom, Little as I liked the
+man, I could not deny him my presence and assistance at this time. It
+was obvious that his nerves were shaken by what had occurred, and he
+felt his relation to Mustapha much more than he cared to show. The
+thought that he had been the cause of the poor fellow's death preyed on
+his mind, never strong, and now it was upset with imaginary terrors.
+
+I gave up letter writing, and brought my Baedeker's _Upper Egypt_ into
+Jameson's room, one of the best of all guide-books, and one crammed with
+information. I seated myself near the light, and with my back to the
+bed, on which the young man had once more flung himself.
+
+"I say," said Jameson, raising his head, "is it too late for a
+brandy-and-soda?"
+
+"Everyone is in bed."
+
+"What lazy dogs they are. One never can get anything one wants here."
+
+"Well, try to go to sleep."
+
+He tossed from side to side for some time, but after a while, either he
+was quiet, or I was engrossed in my Baedeker, and I heard nothing till a
+clock struck twelve. At the last stroke I heard a snort and then a gasp
+and a cry from the bed. I started up, and looked round. Jameson was
+slipping out with his feet onto the floor.
+
+"Confound you!" said he angrily, "you are a fine watch, you are, to let
+Mustapha steal in on tiptoe whilst you are cartouching and all that sort
+of rubbish. He was at me again, and if I had not been sharp he'd have
+cut my throat. I won't go to bed any more!"
+
+"Well, sit up. But I assure you no one has been here."
+
+"That's fine. How can you tell? You had your back to me, and these
+devils of fellows steal about like cats. You can't hear them till they
+are at you."
+
+It was of no use arguing with Jameson, so I let him have his way.
+
+"I can feel all the three places in my throat where he ran the knife
+in," said he. "And--don't you notice?--I speak with difficulty."
+
+So we sat up together the rest of the night. He became more reasonable
+as dawn came on, and inclined to admit that he had been a prey to
+fancies.
+
+The day passed very much as did others--Jameson was dull and sulky.
+After d�jeuner he sat on at table when the ladies had risen and retired,
+and the gentlemen had formed in knots at the window, discussing what was
+to be done in the afternoon.
+
+Suddenly Jameson, whose head had begun to nod, started up with an oath
+and threw down his chair.
+
+"You fellows!" he said, "you are all in league against me. You let that
+Mustapha come in without a word, and try to stick his knife into me."
+
+[Illustration: "YOU LET THAT MUSTAPHA COME IN, AND TRY AND STICK HIS
+KNIFE INTO ME."]
+
+"He has not been here."
+
+"It's a plant. You are combined to bully me and drive me away. You don't
+like me. You have engaged Mustapha to murder me. This is the fourth time
+he has tried to cut my throat, and in the _salle � manger_, too, with
+you all standing round. You ought to be ashamed to call yourselves
+Englishmen. I'll go to Cairo. I'll complain."
+
+It really seemed that the feeble brain of Jameson was affected. The
+Oxford don undertook to sit up in the room the following night.
+
+The young man was fagged and sleep-weary, but no sooner did his eyes
+close, and clouds form about his head, than he was brought to
+wakefulness again by the same fancy or dream. The Oxford don had more
+trouble with him on the second night than I had on the first, for his
+lapses into sleep were more frequent, and each such lapse was succeeded
+by a start and a panic.
+
+The next day he was worse, and we felt that he could no longer be left
+alone. The third night the attach� sat up to watch him.
+
+Jameson had now sunk into a sullen mood. He would not speak, except to
+himself, and then only to grumble.
+
+During the night, without being aware of it, the young attach�, who had
+taken a couple of magazines with him to read, fell asleep. When he went
+off he did not know. He woke just before dawn, and in a spasm of terror
+and self-reproach saw that Jameson's chair was empty.
+
+Jameson was not on his bed. He could not be found in the hotel.
+
+At dawn he was found--dead, at the door of the mosque, with his throat
+cut.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE JOE GANDER
+
+
+"There's no good in him," said his stepmother, "not a mossul!" With
+these words she thrust little Joe forward by applying her knee to the
+small of his back, and thereby jerking him into the middle of the school
+before the master. "There's no making nothing out of him, whack him as
+you will."
+
+Little Joe Lambole was a child of ten, dressed in second-hand, nay,
+third-hand garments that did not fit. His coat had been a soldier's
+scarlet uniform, that had gone when discarded to a dealer, who had dealt
+it to a carter, and when the carter had worn it out it was reduced and
+adapted to the wear of the child. The nether garments had, in like
+manner, served a full-grown man till worn out; then they had been cut
+down at the knees. Though shortened in leg, they maintained their former
+copiousness of seat, and served as an inexhaustible receptacle for dust.
+Often as little Joe was "licked" there issued from the dense mass of
+drapery clouds of dust. It was like beating a puff-ball.
+
+"Only a seven-month child," said Mrs. Lambole contemptuously, "born
+without his nails on fingers and toes; they growed later. His wits have
+never come right, and a deal, a deal of larruping it will take to make
+'em grow. Use the rod; we won't grumble at you for doing so."
+
+Little Joe Lambole when he came into the world had not been expected to
+live. He was a poor, small, miserable baby, that could not roar, but
+whimpered. He had been privately baptised directly he was born, because,
+at the first, Mrs. Lambole said, "The child is mine, though it be such
+a creetur, and I wouldn't like it, according, to be buried like a dog."
+
+He was called Joseph. The scriptural Joseph had been sold as a bondman
+into Egypt; this little Joseph seemed to have been brought into the
+world to be a slave. In all propriety he ought to have died as a baby,
+and that happy consummation was almost desired, but he disappointed
+expectations and lived. His mother died soon after, and his father
+married again, and his father and stepmother loved him, doubtless; but
+love is manifested in many ways, and the Lamboles showed theirs in a
+rough way, by slaps and blows and kicks. The father was ashamed of him
+because he was a weakling, and the stepmother because he was ugly, and
+was not her own child. He was a meagre little fellow, with a long neck
+and a white face and sunken cheeks, a pigeon breast, and a big stomach.
+He walked with his head forward and his great pale blue eyes staring
+before him into the far distance, as if he were always looking out of
+the world. His walk was a waddle, and he tumbled over every obstacle,
+because he never looked where he was going, always looked to something
+beyond the horizon.
+
+Because of his walk and his long neck, and staring eyes and big stomach,
+the village children called him "Gander Joe" or "Joe Gander"; and his
+parents were not sorry, for they were ashamed that such a creature
+should be known as a Lambole.
+
+The Lamboles were a sturdy, hearty people, with cheeks like quarrender
+apples, and bones set firm and knit with iron sinews. They were a
+hard-working, practical people who fattened pigs and kept poultry at
+home. Lambole was a roadmaker. In breaking stones one day a bit of one
+had struck his eye and blinded it. After that he wore a black patch upon
+it. He saw well enough out of the other; he never missed seeing his own
+interests. Lambole could have made a few pence with his son had his son
+been worth anything. He could have sent him to scrape the road, and
+bring the manure off it in a shovel to his garden. But Joe never took
+heartily to scraping the dung up. In a word, the boy was good for
+nothing.
+
+He had hair like tow, and a little straw hat on his head with the top
+torn, so that the hair forced its way out, and as he walked the top
+bobbed about like the lid of a boiling saucepan.
+
+When the whortleberries were ripe in June, Mrs. Lambole sent Joe out
+with other children to collect the berries in a tin can; she sold them
+for fourpence a quart, and any child could earn eightpence a day in
+whortleberry time; one that was active might earn a shilling.
+
+But Joe would not remain with the other children. They teased him,
+imitated ganders and geese, and poked out their necks and uttered sounds
+in imitation of the voices of these birds. Moreover, they stole the
+berries he had picked, and put them into their own cans.
+
+When Joe Gander left them and found himself alone in the woods, then he
+lay down among the brown heather and green fern, and looked up through
+the oak leaves at the sky, and listened to the singing of the birds. Oh,
+wondrous music of the woods! the hum of the summer air among the leaves,
+the drone of the bees about the flowers, the twittering and fluting and
+piping of the finches and blackbirds and thrushes, and the cool soft
+cooing of the wood pigeons, like the lowing of aerial oxen; then the
+tapping of the green woodpecker and a glimpse of its crimson head, like
+a carbuncle running up the tree trunk, and the powdering down of old
+husks of fir cones or of the tender rind of the topmost shoot of a
+Scottish pine; for aloft a red squirrel was barking a beautiful tree out
+of wantonness and frolic. A rabbit would come forth from the bracken and
+sit up in the sun, and clean its face with the fore paws and stroke its
+long ears; then, seeing the soiled red coat, would skip up--little Joe
+lying very still--and screw its nose and turn its eyes from side to
+side, and skip nearer again, till it was quite close to Joe Gander; and
+then the boy laughed, and the rabbit was gone with a flash of white
+tail.
+
+Happy days! days of listening to mysterious music, of looking into
+mysteries of sun and foliage, of spiritual intercourse with the great
+mother-soul of nature.
+
+In the evenings, when Gander Joe came without his can, or with his can
+empty, he would say to his stepmother: "Oh, steppy! it was so nice;
+everything was singing."
+
+"I'll make you sing in the chorus too!" cried Mrs. Lambole, and laid a
+stick across his shoulders. Experience had taught her the futility of
+dusting at a lower level.
+
+Then Gander Joe cried and writhed, and promised to be more diligent in
+picking whortleberries in future. But when he went again into the wood
+it was again the same. The spell of the wood spirits was on him; he
+forgot about the berries at fourpence a quart, and lay on his back and
+listened. And the whole wood whispered and sang to him and consoled him
+for his beating, and the wind played lullabies among the fir spines and
+whistled in the grass, and the aspen clashed its myriad tiny cymbals
+together, producing an orchestra of sound that filled the soul of the
+dreaming boy with love and delight and unutterable yearning.
+
+It fared no better in autumn, when the blackberry season set in. Joe
+went with his can to an old quarry where the brambles sent their runners
+over the masses of rubble thrown out from the pits, and warmed and
+ripened their fruit on the hot stones. It was a marvel to see how the
+blackberries grew in this deserted quarry; how large the fruit swelled,
+how thick they were--like mulberries. On the road side of the quarry was
+a belt of pines, and the sun drew out of their bark scents of
+unsurpassed sweetness. About the blackberries hovered spotted white and
+yellow and black moths, beautiful as butterflies. Butterflies did not
+fail either. The red admiral was there, resting on the bark of the
+trees, asleep in the sun with wings expanded, or drifting about the
+clumps of yellow ragwort, doubtful whether to perch or not.
+
+Here, hidden behind the trees, among the leaves of overgrown rubble, was
+a one-story cottage of wood and clay, covered with thatch, in which
+lived Roger Gale, the postman.
+
+Roger Gale had ten miles to walk every morning, delivering letters, and
+the same number of miles every evening, for which twenty miles he
+received the liberal pay of six shillings a week. He had to be at the
+post office at half-past six in the morning to receive the letters, and
+at seven in the evening to deliver them. His work took him about six
+hours. The middle of the day he had to himself. Roger Gale was an old
+soldier, and enjoyed a pension. He occupied himself, when at home, as a
+shoemaker; but the walks took so much out of him, being an old man, that
+he had not the strength and energy to do much cobbling when at home.
+Therefore he idled a good deal, and he amused his idle hours with a
+violin. Now, when Joe Gander came to the quarry before the return of the
+postman from his rounds, he picked blackberries; but no sooner had Roger
+Gale unlocked his door, taken down his fiddle, and drawn the bow across
+the strings, than Joe set down the can and listened. And when old Roger
+began to play an air from the _Daughter of the Regiment_, then Joe crept
+towards his cottage in little stages of wonderment and hunger to hear
+more and hear better, much in the same way as now and again in the wood
+the inquisitive rabbits had approached his red jacket. Presently Joe was
+seated on the doorstep, with his ear against the wooden door, and the
+blackberries and the can, and stepmother's orders and father's stick,
+and his hard bed and his meagre meals, even the whole world had passed
+away as a scroll that is rolled up and laid aside, and he lived only in
+the world of music.
+
+Though his great eyes were wide he saw nothing through them; though the
+rain began to fall, and the north-east wind to blow, he felt nothing: he
+had but one faculty that was awake, and that was hearing.
+
+One day Roger came to his door and opened it suddenly, so that the
+child, leaning against it, fell across his threshold.
+
+"Whom have we here? What is this? What do you want?" asked the postman.
+
+Then Gander Joe stood up, craning his long neck and staring out of his
+goggle eyes, with his rough flaxen hair standing up in a ruffle above
+his head and his great stomach protruded, and said nothing. So Roger
+burst out laughing. But he did not kick him off the step; he gave him a
+bit of bread and a drop of cider, and presently drew from the boy the
+confession that he had been listening to the fiddle. This was flattering
+to the postman, and it was the initiation of a friendship between them.
+
+But when Joe came home with an empty can and said: "Oh, steppy, Master
+Roger Gale did fiddle so beautiful!" the woman said: "Fiddle! I'll
+fiddle your back pretty smartly, you idle vagabond"; and she was a
+truthful woman who never fell short of her word.
+
+To break him of his bad habits--that is, of his dreaminess and
+uselessness--Mrs. Lambole took Joe to school.
+
+At school he had a bad time of it. He could not learn the letters. He
+was mentally incapable of doing a subtraction sum. He sat on a bench
+staring at the teacher, and was unable to answer an ordinary question
+what the lesson was about. The school-children tormented him, the
+monitor scolded, and the master beat. Then little Joe Gander took to
+absenting himself from school. He was sent off every morning by his
+stepmother, but instead of going to the school he went to the cottage in
+the quarry, and listened to the fiddle of Roger Gale.
+
+Little Joe got hold of an old box, and with a knife he cut holes in it;
+and he fashioned a bridge, and then a handle, and he strung horsehair
+over the latter, and made a bow, and drew very faint sounds from this
+improvised violin, that made the postman laugh, but which gave great
+pleasure to Joe. The sound that issued from his instrument was like the
+humming of flies, but he got distinct notes out of his strings, though
+the notes were faint.
+
+After he had played truant for some time his father heard what he had
+done, and he beat the boy till he was like a battered apple that had
+been flung from the tree by a storm upon a road.
+
+For a while Joe did not venture to the quarry except on Saturdays and
+Sundays. He was forbidden by his father to go to church, because the
+organ and the singing there drove him half crazed. When a beautiful,
+touching melody was played his eyes became clouded and the tears ran
+down his cheeks; and when the organ played the "Hallelujah Chorus," or
+some grand and stirring march, his eyes flashed, and his little body
+quivered, and he made such faces that the congregation were disturbed
+and the parson remonstrated with his mother. The child was clearly
+imbecile, and unfit to attend divine worship.
+
+Mr. Lambole got an idea into his head, he would bring up Joe to be a
+butcher, and he informed Joe that he was going to place him with a
+gentleman of that profession in town. Joe cried. He turned sick at the
+sight of blood, and the smell of raw meat was abhorrent to him. But
+Joe's likings were of no account with his father, and he took him to the
+town and placed him with a butcher there. He was invested in a blue
+smock, and was informed that his duties would consist in taking meat
+about to the customers. Joe was left. It was the first time he had been
+from home, and he cried himself to sleep the first night, and he cried
+all the next day when sent around with meat on his shoulder.
+
+Now on his journey through the streets he had to pass the window of a
+toy-shop. In the window were dolls and horses and little carts. For
+these Joe did not care, but there were also some little violins, some
+high priced, and some very low, and over these Joe lingered with loving,
+covetous eyes. There was one little fiddle to which his heart went out,
+that cost only three shillings and sixpence. Each day, as he passed the
+shop, he was drawn to it, and stood looking in, and longed daily more
+ardently than on the previous day for this three-and-sixpenny violin.
+
+One day he was so lost in admiration and on the schemes he framed as to
+how he might eventually become possessed of the instrument, that he was
+unconscious of some boys stealing the meat out of the sort of trough on
+his shoulder in which he carried it about.
+
+This was the climax of his misdeeds--he had been reprimanded for his
+blunders, delivering the wrong meat at the customers' doors; for his
+dilatory ways in going on his errands. The butcher could endure him no
+more, and sent him home to his father, who thrashed him, as his welcome.
+
+But he carried home with him the haunting recollections of that
+beautiful little red fiddle, with its fine black keys. The bow, he
+remembered, was strung with white horsehair. Joe had now a fixed
+ambition--something to live for. He would be perfectly happy if he could
+have that three-shillings-and-sixpenny fiddle. But how were three
+shillings and sixpence to be earned?
+
+He confided his difficulty to postman Roger Gale, and Roger Gale said he
+would consider the matter.
+
+A couple of days after the postman said to Joe--
+
+"Gander, they want a lad to sweep the leaves in the drive at the great
+house. The squire's coachman told me, and I mentioned you. You'll have
+to do it on Saturday, and be paid sixpence."
+
+Joe's face brightened. He went home and told his stepmother.
+
+"For once you are going to be useful," said Mrs. Lambole. "Very well,
+you shall sweep the drive; then fivepence will come to us, and you shall
+have a penny every week to spend in sweetstuff at the post office."
+
+Joe tried to reckon how long it would be before he could purchase the
+fiddle, but the calculation was beyond his powers; so he asked the
+postman, who assured him it would take him forty weeks--that is, about
+ten months.
+
+Little Joe was not cast down. What was time with such an end in view?
+Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, and this was only forty weeks
+for a fiddle!
+
+Joe was diligent every Saturday sweeping the drive. He was ordered
+whenever a carriage entered to dive behind the rhododendrons and laurels
+and disappear. He was of a too ragged and idiotic appearance to show in
+a gentleman's grounds.
+
+Once or twice he encountered the squire and stood quaking, with his
+fingers spread out, his mouth and eyes open, and the broom at his feet.
+The squire spoke kindly to him, but Joe Gander was too frightened to
+reply.
+
+"Poor fellow," said the squire to the gardener. "I suppose it is a
+charity to employ him, but I must say I should have preferred someone
+else with his wits about him. I will see to having him sent to an asylum
+for idiots in which I have some interest. There's no knowing," said the
+squire, "no knowing but that with wholesome food, cleanliness, and
+kindness his feeble mind may be got to understand that two and two make
+four, which I learn he has not yet mastered."
+
+Every Saturday evening Joe Gander brought his sixpence home to his
+stepmother. The woman was not so regular in allowing him his penny out.
+
+"Your edication costs such a lot of money," she said.
+
+"Steppy, need I go to school any more?" He never could frame his mouth
+to call her mother.
+
+"Of course you must. You haven't passed your standard."
+
+"But I don't think that I ever shall."
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Lambole, "what masses of good food you do eat. You're
+perfectly insatiable. You cost us more than it would to keep a cow."
+
+"Oh, steppy, I won't eat so much if I may have my penny!"
+
+"Very well. Eating such a lot does no one good. If you will be content
+with one slice of bread for breakfast instead of two, and the same for
+supper, you shall have your penny. If you are so very hungry you can
+always get a swede or a mangold out of Farmer Eggins's field. Swedes and
+mangolds are cooling to the blood and sit light on the stomick," said
+Mrs. Lambole.
+
+So the compact was made; but it nearly killed Joe. His cheeks and chest
+fell in deeper and deeper, and his stomach protruded more than ever. His
+legs seemed hardly able to support him, and his great pale blue
+wandering eyes appeared ready to start out of his head like the horns of
+a snail. As for his voice, it was thin and toneless, like the notes on
+his improvised fiddle, on which he played incessantly.
+
+"The child will always be a discredit to us," said Lambole. "He don't
+look like a human child. He don't think and feel like a Christian. The
+shovelfuls of dung he might have brought to cover our garden if he had
+only given his heart to it!"
+
+"I've heard of changelings," said Mrs. Lambole; "and with this creetur
+on our hands I mainly believe the tale. They do say that the pixies
+steal away the babies of Christian folk, and put their own bantlings in
+their stead. The only way to find out is to heat a poker red-hot and ram
+it down the throat of the child; and when you do that the door opens,
+and in comes the pixy mother and runs off with her own child, and leaves
+your proper babe behind. That's what we ought to ha' done wi' Joe."
+
+"I doubt, wife, the law wouldn't have upheld us," said Lambole,
+thrusting hot coals back on to the hearth with his foot.
+
+"I don't suppose it would," said Mrs. Lambole. "And yet we call this a
+land of liberty! Law ain't made for the poor, but for the rich."
+
+"It is wickedness," argued the father. "It is just the same with
+colts--all wickedness. You must drive it out with the stick."
+
+And now a great temptation fell on little Gander Joe. The squire and his
+family were at home, and the daughter of the house, Miss Amory, was
+musical. Her mother played on the piano and the young lady on the
+violin. The fashion for ladies to play on this instrument had come in,
+and Miss Amory had taken lessons from the best masters in town. She
+played vastly better than poor Roger Gale, and she played to an
+accompaniment.
+
+Sometimes whilst Joe was sweeping he heard the music; then he stole
+nearer and nearer to the house, hiding behind rhododendron bushes, and
+listening with eyes and mouth and nostrils and ears. The music exercised
+on him an irresistible attraction. He forgot his obligation to work; he
+forgot the strict orders he had received not to approach the
+garden-front of the house. The music acted on him like a spell.
+Occasionally he was roused from his dream by the gardener, who boxed his
+ears, knocked him over, and bade him get back to his sweeping. Once a
+servant came out from Miss Amory to tell the ragged little boy not to
+stand in front of the drawing-room window staring in. On another
+occasion he was found by Miss Amory crouched behind a rose bush outside
+her boudoir, listening whilst she practised.
+
+No one supposed that the music drew him. They thought him a fool, and
+that he had the inquisitiveness of the half-witted to peer in at windows
+and see the pretty sights within.
+
+He was reprimanded, and threatened with dismissal. The gardener
+complained to the lad's father and advised a good hiding, such as Joe
+should not forget.
+
+"These sort of chaps," said the gardener, "have no senses like rational
+beings, except only the feeling, and you must teach them as you feed the
+Polar bears--with the end of a stick."
+
+One day Miss Amory, seeing how thin and hollow-eyed the child was, and
+hearing him cough, brought him out a cup of hot coffee and some bread.
+
+He took it without a word, only pulling off his torn straw hat and
+throwing it at his feet, exposing the full shock of tow-like hair; then
+he stared at her out of his great eyes, speechless.
+
+"Joe," she said, "poor little man, how old are you?"
+
+"Dun'now," he answered.
+
+"Can you read and write?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor do sums?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"Fiddle."
+
+"Have you got a fiddle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should like to see it, and hear you play."
+
+Next day was Sunday. Little Joe forgot about the day, and forgot that
+Miss Amory would probably be in church in the morning. She had asked to
+see his fiddle, so in the morning he took it and went down with it to
+the park. The church was within the grounds, and he had to pass it. As
+he went by he heard the roll of the organ and the strains of the choir.
+He stopped to hearken, then went up the steps of the churchyard,
+listening. A desire came on him to catch the air on his improvised
+violin, and he put it to his shoulder and drew his bow across the
+slender cords. The sound was very faint, so faint as to be drowned by
+the greater volume of the organ and the choir. Nevertheless he could
+hear the feeble tones close to his ear, and his heart danced at the
+pleasure of playing to an accompaniment, like Miss Amory. The choir, the
+congregation, were singing the Advent hymn to Luther's tune--
+
+    "Great God, what do I see and hear?
+      The end of things created."
+
+Little Joe, playing his inaudible instrument, came creeping up the
+avenue, treading on the fallen yellow lime leaves, passing between the
+tombstones, drawn on by the solemn, beautiful music. Presently he stood
+in the porch, then he went on; he was unconscious of everything but the
+music and the joy of playing with it; he walked on softly into the
+church without even removing his ragged straw cap, though the squire and
+the squire's wife, and the rector and the reverend the Mrs. Rector, and
+the parish churchwarden and the rector's churchwarden, and the overseer
+and the waywarden, and all the farmers and their wives were present. He
+had forgotten about his broken cap in the delight that made the tears
+fill his eyes and trickle over his pale cheeks.
+
+Then when with a shock the parson and the churchwardens saw the ragged
+urchin coming up the nave fiddling, with his hat on, regardless of the
+sacredness of the place, and above all of the sacredness of the presence
+of the squire, J.P. and D.L., the rector coughed very loud and looked
+hard at his churchwarden, Farmer Eggins, who turned red as the sun in a
+November fog, and rose. At the same instant the people's churchwarden
+rose, and both advanced upon Joe Gander from opposite sides of the
+church.
+
+At the moment that they touched him the organ and the singing ceased;
+and it was to Joe a sudden wakening from a golden dream to a black and
+raw reality. He looked up with dazed face first at one man, then at the
+other: both their faces blazed with equal indignation; both were
+equally speechless with wrath. They conducted him, each holding an arm,
+out of the porch and down the avenue. Joe heard indistinctly behind him
+the droning of the rector's voice continuing the prayers. He looked back
+over his shoulder and saw the faces of the school-children straining
+after him through the open door from their places near it. On reaching
+the steps--there was a flight of five leading to the road--the people's
+churchwarden uttered a loud and disgusted "Ugh!" then with his heavy
+hand slapped the head of the child towards the parson's churchwarden,
+who with his still heavier hand boxed it back again; then the people's
+churchwarden gave him a blow which sent him staggering forward, and this
+was supplemented by a kick from the parson's churchwarden, which sent
+Joe Gander spinning down the five steps at once and cast him prostrate
+into the road, where he fell and crushed his extemporised violin.
+
+Then the churchwardens turned, blew their noses, and re-entered the
+church, where they sat out the rest of the service, grateful in their
+hearts that they had been enabled that day to show that their office was
+no sinecure.
+
+The churchwardens were unaware that in banging and kicking the little
+boy out of the churchyard and into the road they had flung him so that
+he fell with his head upon the curbstone of the footpath, which stone
+was of slate, and sharp. They did not find this out through the prayers,
+nor through the sermon. But when the whole congregation left the church
+they were startled to find little Joe Gander insensible, with his head
+cut, and a pool of blood on the footway. The squire was shocked, as were
+his wife and daughter, and the churchwardens were in consternation.
+Fortunately the squire's stables were near the church, and there was a
+running fountain there, so that water was procured, and the child
+revived.
+
+Mrs. Amory had in the meantime hastened home and returned with a roll of
+diachylon plaster and a pair of small scissors. Strips of the adhesive
+plaster were applied to the wound, and the boy was soon sufficiently
+recovered to stand on his feet, when the churchwardens very
+considerately undertook to march him home. On reaching his cottage the
+churchwardens described what had taken place, painting the insult
+offered to the worshippers in the most hideous colours, and representing
+the accident of the cut as due to the violent resistance offered by the
+culprit to their ejectment of him. Then each pressed a half-crown into
+the hand of Mr. Lambole and departed to his dinner.
+
+"Now then, young shaver," exclaimed the father, "at your pranks again!
+How often have I told you not to go intruding into a place of worship?
+Church ain't for such as you. If you had'nt been punished a bit already,
+wouldn't I larrup you neither? Oh, no!"
+
+Little Joe's head was bad for some days. His cheeks were flushed and his
+eyes bright, and he talked strangely--he who was usually so silent. What
+troubled him was the loss of his fiddle; he did not know what had become
+of it, whether it had been stolen or confiscated. He asked after it, and
+when at last it was produced, smashed to chips, with the strings torn
+and hanging loose about it like the cordage of a broken vessel, he cried
+bitterly. Miss Amory came to the cottage to see him, and finding father
+and stepmother out, went in and pressed five shillings into his hand.
+Then he laughed with delight, and clapped his hands, and hid the money
+away in his pocket, but he said nothing, and Miss Amory went away
+convinced that the child was half a fool. But little Joe had sense in
+his head, though his head was different from those of others; he knew
+that now he had the money wherewith to buy the beautiful fiddle he had
+seen in the shop window many months before, and to get which he had
+worked and denied himself food.
+
+When Miss Amory was gone, and his stepmother had not returned, he opened
+the door of the cottage and stole out. He was afraid of being seen, so
+he crept along in the hedge, and when he thought anyone was coming he
+got through a gate or lay down in a ditch, till he was some way on his
+road to the town. Then he ran till he was tired. He had a bandage round
+his head, and, as his head was hot, he took the rag off, dipped it in
+water, and tied it round his head again. Never in his life had his mind
+been clearer than it was now, for now he had a distinct purpose, and an
+object easily attainable, before him. He held the money in his hand, and
+looked at it, and kissed it; then pressed it to his beating heart, then
+ran on. He lost breath. He could run no more. He sat down in the hedge
+and gasped. The perspiration was streaming off his face. Then he thought
+he heard steps coming fast along the road he had run, and as he feared
+pursuit, he got up and ran on.
+
+He went through the village four miles from home just as the children
+were leaving school, and when they saw him some of the elder cried out
+that here was "Gander Joe! quack! quack! Joe the Gander! quack! quack!
+quack!" and the little ones joined in the banter. The boy ran on, though
+hot and exhausted, and with his head swimming, to escape their
+merriment.
+
+He got some way beyond the village when he came to a turnpike. There he
+felt dizzy, and he timidly asked if he might have a piece of bread. He
+would pay for it if they would change a shilling. The woman at the 'pike
+pitied the pale, hollow-eyed child, and questioned him; but her
+questions bewildered him, and he feared she would send him home, so that
+he either answered nothing, or in a way which made her think him
+distraught. She gave him some bread and water, and watched him going on
+towards the town till he was out of sight. The day was already
+declining; it would be dark by the time he reached the town. But he did
+not think of that. He did not consider where he would sleep, whether he
+would have strength to return ten miles to his home. He thought only of
+the beautiful red violin with the yellow bridge hung in the shop window,
+and offered for three shillings and sixpence. Three-and-sixpence! Why,
+he had five shillings. He had money to spend on other things beside the
+fiddle. He had been sadly disappointed about his savings from the weekly
+sixpence. He had asked for them; he had earned them, not by his work
+only, but by his abstention from two pieces of bread per diem. When he
+asked for the money, his stepmother answered that she had put it away in
+the savings bank. If he had it he would waste it on sweetstuff; if it
+were hoarded up it would help him on in life when left to shift for
+himself; and if he died, why it would go towards his burying.
+
+So the child had been disappointed in his calculations, and had worked
+and starved for nothing. Then came Miss Amory with her present, and he
+had run away with that, lest his mother should take it from him to put
+in the savings bank for setting him up in life or for his burying. What
+cared he for either? All his ambition was to have a fiddle, and a fiddle
+was to be had for three-and-sixpence.
+
+Joe Gander was tired. He was fain to sit down at intervals on the heaps
+of stones by the roadside to rest. His shoes were very poor, with soles
+worn through, so that the stones hurt his feet. At this time of the year
+the highways were fresh metalled, and as he stumbled over the newly
+broken stones they cut his soles and his ankles turned. He was footsore
+and weary in body, but his heart never failed him. Before him shone the
+red violin with the yellow bridge, and the beautiful bow strung with
+shining white hair. When he had that all his weariness would pass as a
+dream; he would hunger no more, cry no more, feel no more sickness or
+faintness. He would draw the bow over the strings and play with his
+fingers on the catgut, and the waves of music would thrill and flow,
+and away on those melodious waves his soul would float far from
+trouble, far from want, far from tears, into a shining, sunny world of
+music.
+
+So he picked himself up when he fell, and staggered to his feet from the
+stones on which he rested, and pressed on.
+
+The sun was setting as he entered the town. He went straight to the shop
+he so well remembered, and to his inexpressible delight saw still in the
+window the coveted violin, price three shillings and sixpence.
+
+Then he timidly entered the shop, and with trembling hand held out the
+money.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"It," said the boy. It. To him the shop held but one article. The dolls,
+the wooden horses, the tin steam-engines, the bats, the kites, were
+unconsidered. He had seen and remembered only one thing--the red violin.
+"It," said the boy, and pointed.
+
+When little Joe had got the violin he pressed it to his shoulder, and
+his heart bounded as though it would have burst the pigeon breast. His
+dull eyes lightened, and into his white sunken cheeks shot a hectic
+flame. He went forth with his head erect and with firm foot, holding his
+fiddle to the shoulder and the bow in hand.
+
+He turned his face homeward. Now he would return to father and
+stepmother, to his little bed at the head of the stairs, to his scanty
+meals, to the school, to the sweeping of the park drive, and to his
+stepmother's scoldings and his father's beatings. He had his fiddle, and
+he cared for nothing else.
+
+He waited till he was out of the town before he tried it. Then, when he
+was on a lonely part of the road, he seated himself in the hedge, under
+a holly tree covered with scarlet berries, and tried his instrument.
+Alas! it had hung many years in the shop window, and the catgut was old
+and the glue had lost its tenacity. One string started; then when he
+tried to screw up a second, it sprang as well, and then the bridge
+collapsed and fell. Moreover, the hairs on the bow came out. They were
+unresined.
+
+Then little Joe's spirits gave way. He laid the bow and the violin on
+his knees and began to cry.
+
+As he cried he heard the sound of approaching wheels and the clatter of
+a horse's hoofs.
+
+He heard, but he was immersed in sorrow and did not heed and raise his
+head to see who was coming. Had he done so he would have seen nothing,
+as his eyes were swimming with tears. Looking out of them he saw only as
+one sees who opens his eyes when diving.
+
+"Halloa, young shaver! Dang you! What do you mean giving me such a
+cursed hunt after you as this--you as ain't worth the trouble, eh?"
+
+The voice was that of his father, who drew up before him. Mr. Lambole
+had made inquiries when it was discovered that Joe was lost, first at
+the school, where it was most unlikely he would be found, then at the
+public-house, at the gardener's and the gamekeeper's; then he had looked
+down the well and then up the chimney. After that he went to the cottage
+in the quarry. Roger Gale knew nothing of him. Presently someone coming
+from the nearest village mentioned that he had been seen there;
+whereupon Lambole borrowed Farmer Eggins's trap and went after him,
+peering right and left of the road with his one eye.
+
+Sure enough he had been through the village. He had passed the turnpike.
+The woman there described him accurately as "a sort of a tottle" (fool).
+
+Mr. Lambole was not a pleasant-looking man; he was as solidly built as a
+navvy. The backs of his hands were hairy, and his fist was so hard, and
+his blows so weighty, that for sport he was wont to knock down and kill
+at a blow the oxen sent to Butcher Robbins for slaughter, and that he
+did with his fist alone, hitting the animal on the head between the
+horns, a little forward of the horns. That was a great feat of
+strength, and Lambole was proud of it. He had a long back and short
+legs. The back was not pliable or bending; it was hard, braced with
+sinews tough as hawsers, and supported a pair of shoulders that could
+sustain the weight of an ox.
+
+His face was of a coppery colour, caused by exposure to the air and
+drinking. His hair was light: that was almost the only feature his son
+had derived from him. It was very light, too light for his dark red
+face. It grew about his neck and under his chin as a Newgate collar;
+there was a great deal of it, and his face, encircled by the pale hair,
+looked like an angry moon surrounded by a fog bow.
+
+Mr. Lambole had a queer temper. He bottled up his anger, but when it
+blew the cork out it spurted over and splashed all his home; it flew in
+the faces and soused everyone who came near him.
+
+Mr. Lambole took his son roughly by the arm and lifted him into the tax
+cart. The boy offered no resistance. His spirit was broken, his hopes
+extinguished. For months he had yearned for the red fiddle, price
+three-and-six, and now that, after great pains and privations, he had
+acquired it, the fiddle would not sound.
+
+"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, giving your dear dada such trouble, eh,
+Viper?"
+
+Mr. Lambole turned the horse's head homeward. He had his black patch
+towards the little Gander, seated in the bottom of the cart, hugging his
+wrecked violin. When Mr. Lambole spoke he turned his face round to bring
+the active eye to bear on the shrinking, crouching little figure below.
+
+The Viper made no answer, but looked up. Mr. Lambole turned his face
+away, and the seeing eye watched the horse's ears, and the black patch
+was towards a frightened, piteous, pleading little face, looking up,
+with the light of the evening sky irradiating it, showing how wan it
+was, how hollow were the cheeks, how sunken the eyes, how sharp the
+little pinched nose. The boy put up his arm, that held the bow, and
+wiped his eyes with his sleeve. In so doing he poked his father in the
+ribs with the end of the bow.
+
+"Now, then!" exclaimed Mr. Lambole with an oath, "what darn'd insolence
+be you up to now, Gorilla?"
+
+If he had not held the whip in one hand and the reins in the other he
+would have taken the bow from the child and flung it into the road. He
+contented himself with rapping Joe's head with the end of the whip.
+
+"What's that you've got there, eh?" he asked.
+
+The child replied timidly: "Please, father, a fiddle."
+
+"Where did you get 'un--steal it, eh?"
+
+Joe answered, trembling: "No, dada, I bought it."
+
+"Bought it! Where did you get the money?"
+
+"Miss Amory gave it me."
+
+"How much?"
+
+The Gander answered: "Her gave me five shilling."
+
+"Five shillings! And what did that blessed" (he did not say "blessed,"
+but something quite the reverse) "fiddle cost you?"
+
+"Three-and-sixpence."
+
+"So you've only one-and-six left?"
+
+"I've none, dada."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I spent one shilling on a pipe for you, and sixpence on a
+thimble for stepmother as a present," answered the child, with a flicker
+of hope in his dim eyes that this would propitiate his father.
+
+"Dash me," roared the roadmaker, "if you ain't worse nor Mr.
+Chamberlain, as would rob us of the cheap loaf! What in the name of
+Thunder and Bones do you mean squandering the precious money over
+fooleries like that for? I've got my pipe, black as your back shall be
+before to-morrow, and mother has an old thimble as full o' holes as I'll
+make your skin before the night is much older. Wait till we get home,
+and I'll make pretty music out of that there fiddle! just you see if I
+don't."
+
+Joe shivered in his seat, and his head fell.
+
+Mr. Lambole had a playful wit. He beguiled his journey home by indulging
+in it, and his humour flashed above the head of the child like summer
+lightning. "You're hardly expecting the abundance of the supper that's
+awaiting you," he said, with his black patch glowering down at the
+irresponsive heap in the corner of the cart. "No stinting of the
+dressing, I can tell you. You like your meat well basted, don't you? The
+basting shall not incur your disapproval as insufficient. Underdone? Oh,
+dear, no! Nothing underdone for me. Pickles? I can promise you that
+there is something in pickle for you, hot--very hot and stinging. Plenty
+of capers--mutton and capers. Mashed potatoes? Was the request for that
+on the tip of your tongue? Sorry I can give you only half what you
+want--the mash, not the potatoes. There is nothing comparable in my mind
+to young pig with crackling. The hide is well striped, cut in lines from
+the neck to the tail. I think we'll have crackling on our pig before
+morning."
+
+He now threw his seeing eye into the depths of the cart, to note the
+effect his fun had on the child, but he was disappointed. It had evoked
+no hilarity. Joe had fallen asleep, exhausted by his walk, worn out with
+disappointments, with his head on his fiddle, that lay on his knees. The
+jogging of the cart, the attitude, affected his wound; the plaster had
+given way, and the blood was running over the little red fiddle and
+dripping into its hollow body through the S-hole on each side.
+
+It was too dark for Mr. Lambole to notice this. He set his lips. His
+self-esteem was hurt at the child not relishing his waggery.
+
+Mrs. Lambole observed it when, shortly after, the cart drew up at the
+cottage and she lifted the sleeping child out.
+
+"I must take the cart back to Farmer Eggins," said her husband; "duty
+fust, and pleasure after."
+
+When his father was gone Mrs. Lambole said, "Now then, Joe, you've been
+a very wicked, bad boy, and God will never forgive you for the
+naughtiness you have committed and the trouble to which you have put
+your poor father and me." She would have spoken more sharply but that
+his head needed her care and the sight of the blood disarmed her.
+Moreover, she knew that her husband would not pass over what had
+occurred with a reprimand. "Get off your clothes and go to bed, Joe," she
+said when she had readjusted the plaster. "You may take a piece of dry
+bread with you, and I'll see if I can't persuade your father to put off
+whipping of you for a day or two."
+
+Joe began to cry.
+
+"There," she said, "don't cry. When wicked children do wicked things
+they must suffer for them. It is the law of nature. And," she went on,
+"you ought to be that ashamed of yourself that you'd be glad for the
+earth to open under you and swallow you up like Korah, Dathan, and
+Abiram. Running away from so good and happy a home and such tender
+parents! But I reckon you be lost to natural affection as you be to
+reason."
+
+"May I take my fiddle with me?" asked the boy.
+
+"Oh, take your fiddle if you like," answered his mother. "Much good may
+it do you. Here, it is all smeared wi' blood. Let me wipe it first, or
+you'll mess the bedclothes with it. There," she said as she gave him the
+broken instrument. "Say your prayers and go to sleep; though I reckon
+your prayers will never reach to heaven, coming out of such a wicked
+unnatural heart."
+
+So the little Gander went to his bed. The cottage had but one bedroom
+and a landing above the steep and narrow flight of steps that led to it
+from the kitchen. On this landing was a small truckle bed, on which Joe
+slept. He took off his clothes and stood in his little short shirt of
+very coarse white linen. He knelt down and said his prayers, with both
+his hands spread over his fiddle. Then he got into bed, and until his
+stepmother fetched away the benzoline lamp he examined the instrument.
+He saw that the bridge might be set up again with a little glue, and
+that fresh catgut strings might be supplied. He would take his fiddle
+next day to Roger Gale and ask him to help to mend it for him. He was
+sure Roger would take an interest in it. Roger had been mysterious of
+late, hinting that the time was coming when Joey would have a first-rate
+instrument and learn to play like a Paganini. Yes; the case of the red
+fiddle was not desperate.
+
+Just then he heard the door below open, and his father's step.
+
+"Where is the toad?" said Mr. Lambole.
+
+Joe held his breath, and his blood ran cold. He could hear every word,
+every sound in the room below.
+
+"He's gone to bed," answered Mrs. Lambole. "Leave the poor little
+creetur alone to-night, Samuel; his head has been bad, and he don't look
+well. He's overdone."
+
+"Susan," said the roadmaker, "I've been simmering all the way to town,
+and bubbling and boiling all the way back, and busting is what I be now,
+and bust I will."
+
+Little Joe sat up in bed, hugging the violin, and his tow-like hair
+stood up on his head. His great stupid eyes stared wide with fear; in
+the dark the iris in each had grown big, and deep, and solemn.
+
+"Give me my stick," said Mr. Lambole. "I've promised him a taste of it,
+and a taste won't suffice to-night; he must have a gorge of it."
+
+"I've put it away," said Mrs. Lambole. "Samuel, right is right, and I'm
+not one to stand between the child and what he deserves, but he ain't in
+condition for it to-night. He wants feeding up to it."
+
+Without wasting another word on her the roadmaker went upstairs.
+
+The shuddering, cowering little fellow saw first the red face,
+surrounded by a halo of pale hair, rise above the floor, then the strong
+square shoulders, then the clenched hands, and then his father stood
+before him, revealed down to his thick boots. The child crept back in
+the bed against the wall, and would have disappeared through it had the
+wall been soft-hearted, as in fairy tales, and opened to receive him. He
+clasped his little violin tight to his heart, and then the blood that
+had fallen into it trickled out and ran down his shirt, staining
+it--upon the bedclothes, staining them. But the father did not see this.
+He was effervescing with fury. His pulses went at a gallop, and his
+great fists clutched spasmodically.
+
+"You Judas Iscariot, come here!" he shouted.
+
+But the child only pressed closer against the wall.
+
+"What! disobedient and daring? Do you hear? Come to me!"
+
+The trembling child pointed to a pretty little pipe on the bedclothes.
+He had drawn it from his pocket and taken the paper off it, and laid it
+there, and stuck the silver-headed thimble in the bowl for his
+stepmother when she came upstairs to take the lamp.
+
+"Come here, vagabond!"
+
+He could not; he had not the courage nor the strength.
+
+He still pointed pleadingly to the little presents he had bought with
+his eighteenpence.
+
+"You won't, you dogged, insulting being?" roared the roadmaker, and
+rushed at him, knocking over the pipe, which fell and broke on the
+floor, and trampling flat the thimble. "You won't yet? Always full of
+sulks and defiance! Oh, you ungrateful one, you!" Then he had him by the
+collar of his night-shirt and dragged him from his bed, and with his
+violence tore the button off, and with his other hand he wrenched the
+violin away and beat the child over the back with it as he dragged him
+from the bed.
+
+"Oh, my mammy! my mammy!" cried Joe.
+
+He was not crying out for his stepmother. It was the agonised cry of his
+frightened heart for the one only being who had ever loved him, and whom
+God had removed from him.
+
+Suddenly Samuel Lambole started back.
+
+Before him, and between him and the child, stood a pale, ghostly form,
+and he knew his first wife.
+
+He stood speechless and quaking. Then, gradually recovering himself, he
+stumbled down the stairs, and seated himself, looking pasty and scared,
+by the fire below.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Samuel?" asked his wife.
+
+"I've seen her," he gasped. "Don't ask no more questions."
+
+Now when he was gone, little Joe, filled with terror--not at the
+apparition, which he had not seen, for his eyes were too dazed to behold
+it, but with apprehension of the chastisement that awaited him,
+scrambled out of the window and dropped on the pigsty roof, and from
+thence jumped to the ground.
+
+Then he ran--ran as fast as his legs could carry him, still hugging his
+instrument--to the churchyard; and on reaching that he threw himself on
+his mother's grave and sobbed: "Oh, mammy, mammy! father wants to beat
+me and take away my beautiful violin--but oh, mammy! my violin won't
+play."
+
+And when he had spoken, from out the grave rose the form of his lost
+mother, and looked kindly on him.
+
+Joe saw her, and he had no fear.
+
+"Mammy!" said he, "mammy, my violin cost three shillings and sixpence,
+and I can't make it play no-ways."
+
+[Illustration: "MAMMY," SAID HE, "MAMMY, MY VIOLIN COST THREE SHILLINGS
+AND SIXPENCE, AND I CAN'T MAKE IT PLAY NOWAYS."]
+
+Then the spirit of his mother passed a hand over the the strings, and
+smiled. Joe looked into her eyes, and they were as stars. And he put the
+violin under his chin, and drew the bow across the strings--and lo! they
+sounded wondrously. His soul thrilled, his heart bounded, his dull
+eye brightened. He was as though caught up in a chariot of fire and
+carried to heavenly places. His bow worked rapidly, such strains poured
+from the little instrument as he had never heard before. It was to him
+as though heaven opened, and he heard the angels performing there, and
+he with his fiddle was taking a part in the mighty symphony. He felt not
+the cold, the night was not dark to him. His head no longer ached. It
+was as though after long seeking through life he had gained an
+undreamed-of prize, reached some glorious consummation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a musical party that same evening at the Hall. Miss Amory
+played beautifully, with extraordinary feeling and execution, both with
+and without accompaniment on the piano. Several ladies and gentlemen
+sang and played; there were duets and trios.
+
+During the performances the guests talked to each other in low tones
+about various topics.
+
+Said one lady to Mrs. Amory: "How strange it is that among the English
+lower classes there is no love of music."
+
+"There is none at all," answered Mrs. Amory; "our rector's wife has
+given herself great trouble to get up parochial entertainments, but we
+find that nothing takes with the people but comic songs, and these,
+instead of elevating, vulgarise them."
+
+"They have no music in them. The only people with music in their souls
+are the Germans and the Italians."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Amory with a sigh; "it is sad, but true: there is
+neither poetry, nor picturesqueness, nor music among the English
+peasantry."
+
+"You have never heard of one, self-taught, with a real love of music in
+this country?"
+
+"Never: such do not exist among us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The parish churchwarden was walking along the road on his way to his
+farmhouse, and the road passed under the churchyard wall.
+
+As he walked along the way--with a not too steady step, for he was
+returning from the public-house--he was surprised and frightened to hear
+music proceed from among the graves.
+
+It was too dark for him to see any figure then, only the tombstones
+loomed on him in ghostly shapes. He began to quake, and finally turned
+and ran, nor did he slacken his pace till he reached the tavern, where
+he burst in shouting: "There's ghosts abroad. I've heard 'em in the
+churchyard making music."
+
+The revellers rose from their cups.
+
+"Shall we go and hear?" they asked.
+
+"I'll go for one," said a man; "if others will go with me."
+
+"Ay," said a third, "and if the ghosts be playing a jolly good tune,
+we'll chip in."
+
+So the whole half-tipsy party reeled along the road, talking very loud,
+to encourage themselves and the others, till they approached the church,
+the spire of which stood up dark against the night sky.
+
+"There's no lights in the windows," said one.
+
+"No," observed the churchwarden, "I didn't notice any myself; it was
+from the graves the music came, as if all the dead was squeakin' like
+pigs."
+
+"Hush!" All kept silence--not a sound could be heard.
+
+"I'm sure I heard music afore," said the churchwarden. "I'll bet a
+gallon of ale I did."
+
+"There ain't no music now, though," remarked one of the men.
+
+"Nor more there ain't," said others.
+
+"Well, I don't care--I say I heard it," asseverated the churchwarden.
+"Let's go up closer."
+
+All of the party drew nearer to the wall of the graveyard. One man,
+incapable of maintaining his legs unaided, sustained himself on the arm
+of another.
+
+"Well, I do believe, Churchwarden Eggins, as how you have been leading
+us a wild goose chase!" said a fellow.
+
+Then the clouds broke, and a bright, dazzling pure ray shot down on a
+grave in the churchyard, and revealed a little figure lying on it.
+
+"I do believe," said one man, "as how, if he ain't led us a goose chase,
+he's brought us after a Gander--surely that is little Joe."
+
+Thus encouraged, and their fears dispelled, the whole half-tipsy party
+stumbled up the graveyard steps, staggered among the tombs, some
+tripping on the mounds and falling prostrate. All laughed, talked, joked
+with one another.
+
+The only one silent there was little Joe Gander--and he was gone to join
+in the great symphony above.
+
+
+
+
+A DEAD FINGER
+
+
+I
+
+Why the National Gallery should not attract so many visitors as, say,
+the British Museum, I cannot explain. The latter does not contain much
+that, one would suppose, appeals to the interest of the ordinary
+sightseer. What knows such of prehistoric flints and scratched bones? Of
+Assyrian sculpture? Of Egyptian hieroglyphics? The Greek and Roman
+statuary is cold and dead. The paintings in the National Gallery glow
+with colour, and are instinct with life. Yet, somehow, a few listless
+wanderers saunter yawning through the National Gallery, whereas swarms
+pour through the halls of the British Museum, and talk and pass remarks
+about the objects there exposed, of the date and meaning of which they
+have not the faintest conception.
+
+I was thinking of this problem, and endeavouring to unravel it, one
+morning whilst sitting in the room for English masters at the great
+collection in Trafalgar Square. At the same time another thought forced
+itself upon me. I had been through the rooms devoted to foreign schools,
+and had then come into that given over to Reynolds, Morland,
+Gainsborough, Constable, and Hogarth. The morning had been for a while
+propitious, but towards noon a dense umber-tinted fog had come on,
+making it all but impossible to see the pictures, and quite impossible
+to do them justice. I was tired, and so seated myself on one of the
+chairs, and fell into the consideration first of all of--why the
+National Gallery is not as popular as it should be; and secondly, how it
+was that the British School had no beginnings, like those of Italy and
+the Netherlands. We can see the art of the painter from its first
+initiation in the Italian peninsula, and among the Flemings. It starts
+on its progress like a child, and we can trace every stage of its
+growth. Not so with English art. It springs to life in full and splendid
+maturity. Who were there before Reynolds and Gainsborough and Hogarth?
+The great names of those portrait and subject painters who have left
+their canvases upon the walls of our country houses were those of
+foreigners--Holbein, Kneller, Van Dyck, and Lely for portraits, and
+Monnoyer for flower and fruit pieces. Landscapes, figure subjects were
+all importations, none home-grown. How came that about? Was there no
+limner that was native? Was it that fashion trampled on home-grown
+pictorial beginnings as it flouted and spurned native music?
+
+Here was food for contemplation. Dreaming in the brown fog, looking
+through it without seeing its beauties, at Hogarth's painting of Lavinia
+Fenton as Polly Peachum, without wondering how so indifferent a beauty
+could have captivated the Duke of Bolton and held him for thirty years,
+I was recalled to myself and my surroundings by the strange conduct of a
+lady who had seated herself on a chair near me, also discouraged by the
+fog, and awaiting its dispersion.
+
+I had not noticed her particularly. At the present moment I do not
+remember particularly what she was like. So far as I can recollect she
+was middle-aged, and was quietly yet well dressed. It was not her face
+nor her dress that attracted my attention and disturbed the current of
+my thoughts; the effect I speak of was produced by her strange movements
+and behaviour.
+
+She had been sitting listless, probably thinking of nothing at all, or
+nothing in particular, when, in turning her eyes round, and finding
+that she could see nothing of the paintings, she began to study me. This
+did concern me greatly. A cat may look at the king; but to be
+contemplated by a lady is a compliment sufficient to please any
+gentleman. It was not gratified vanity that troubled my thoughts, but
+the consciousness that my appearance produced--first of all a startled
+surprise, then undisguised alarm, and, finally, indescribable horror.
+
+Now a man can sit quietly leaning on the head of his umbrella, and glow
+internally, warmed and illumined by the consciousness that he is being
+surveyed with admiration by a lovely woman, even when he is middle-aged
+and not fashionably dressed; but no man can maintain his composure when
+he discovers himself to be an object of aversion and terror.
+
+What was it? I passed my hand over my chin and upper lip, thinking it
+not impossible that I might have forgotten to shave that morning, and in
+my confusion not considering that the fog would prevent the lady from
+discovering neglect in this particular, had it occurred, which it had
+not. I am a little careless, perhaps, about shaving when in the country;
+but when in town, never.
+
+The next idea that occurred to me was--a smut. Had a London black,
+curdled in that dense pea-soup atmosphere, descended on my nose and
+blackened it? I hastily drew my silk handkerchief from my pocket,
+moistened it, and passed it over my nose, and then each cheek. I then
+turned my eyes into the corners and looked at the lady, to see whether
+by this means I had got rid of what was objectionable in my personal
+appearance.
+
+Then I saw that her eyes, dilated with horror, were riveted, not on my
+face, but on my leg.
+
+My leg! What on earth could that harmless member have in it so
+terrifying? The morning had been dull; there had been rain in the night,
+and I admit that on leaving my hotel I had turned up the bottoms of my
+trousers. That is a proceeding not so uncommon, not so outrageous as to
+account for the stony stare of this woman's eyes.
+
+If that were all I would turn my trousers down.
+
+Then I saw her shrink from the chair on which she sat to one further
+removed from me, but still with her eyes fixed on my leg--about the
+level of my knee. She had let fall her umbrella, and was grasping the
+seat of her chair with both hands, as she backed from me.
+
+I need hardly say that I was greatly disturbed in mind and feelings, and
+forgot all about the origin of the English schools of painters, and the
+question why the British Museum is more popular than the National
+Gallery.
+
+Thinking that I might have been spattered by a hansom whilst crossing
+Oxford Street, I passed my hand down my side hastily, with a sense of
+annoyance, and all at once touched something cold, clammy, that sent a
+thrill to my heart, and made me start and take a step forward. At the
+same moment, the lady, with a cry of horror, sprang to her feet, and
+with raised hands fled from the room, leaving her umbrella where it had
+fallen.
+
+There were other visitors to the Picture Gallery besides ourselves, who
+had been passing through the saloon, and they turned at her cry, and
+looked in surprise after her.
+
+The policeman stationed in the room came to me and asked what had
+happened. I was in such agitation that I hardly knew what to answer. I
+told him that I could explain what had occurred little better than
+himself. I had noticed that the lady had worn an odd expression, and had
+behaved in most extraordinary fashion, and that he had best take charge
+of her umbrella, and wait for her return to claim it.
+
+This questioning by the official was vexing, as it prevented me from at
+once and on the spot investigating the cause of her alarm and mine--hers
+at something she must have seen on my leg, and mine at something I had
+distinctly felt creeping up my leg.
+
+The numbing and sickening effect on me of the touch of the object I had
+not seen was not to be shaken off at once. Indeed, I felt as though my
+hand were contaminated, and that I could have no rest till I had
+thoroughly washed the hand, and, if possible, washed away the feeling
+that had been produced.
+
+I looked on the floor, I examined my leg, but saw nothing. As I wore my
+overcoat, it was probable that in rising from my seat the skirt had
+fallen over my trousers and hidden the thing, whatever it was. I
+therefore hastily removed my overcoat and shook it, then I looked at my
+trousers. There was nothing whatever on my leg, and nothing fell from my
+overcoat when shaken.
+
+Accordingly I reinvested myself, and hastily left the Gallery; then took
+my way as speedily as I could, without actually running, to Charing
+Cross Station and down the narrow way leading to the Metropolitan, where
+I went into Faulkner's bath and hairdressing establishment, and asked
+for hot water to thoroughly wash my hand and well soap it. I bathed my
+hand in water as hot as I could endure it, employed carbolic soap, and
+then, after having a good brush down, especially on my left side where
+my hand had encountered the object that had so affected me, I left. I
+had entertained the intention of going to the Princess's Theatre that
+evening, and of securing a ticket in the morning; but all thought of
+theatre-going was gone from me. I could not free my heart from the sense
+of nausea and cold that had been produced by the touch. I went into
+Gatti's to have lunch, and ordered something, I forget what, but, when
+served, I found that my appetite was gone. I could eat nothing; the food
+inspired me with disgust. I thrust it from me untasted, and, after
+drinking a couple of glasses of claret, left the restaurant, and
+returned to my hotel.
+
+Feeling sick and faint, I threw my overcoat over the sofa-back, and cast
+myself on my bed.
+
+I do not know that there was any particular reason for my doing so, but
+as I lay my eyes were on my great-coat.
+
+The density of the fog had passed away, and there was light again, not
+of first quality, but sufficient for a Londoner to swear by, so that I
+could see everything in my room, though through a veil, darkly.
+
+I do not think my mind was occupied in any way. About the only occasions
+on which, to my knowledge, my mind is actually passive or inert is when
+crossing the Channel in _The Foam_ from Dover to Calais, when I am
+always, in every weather, abjectly seasick--and thoughtless. But as I
+now lay on my bed, uncomfortable, squeamish, without knowing why--I was
+in the same inactive mental condition. But not for long.
+
+I saw something that startled me.
+
+First, it appeared to me as if the lappet of my overcoat pocket were in
+movement, being raised. I did not pay much attention to this, as I
+supposed that the garment was sliding down on to the seat of the sofa,
+from the back, and that this displacement of gravity caused the movement
+I observed. But this I soon saw was not the case. That which moved the
+lappet was something in the pocket that was struggling to get out. I
+could see now that it was working its way up the inside, and that when
+it reached the opening it lost balance and fell down again. I could make
+this out by the projections and indentations in the cloth; these moved
+as the creature, or whatever it was, worked its way up the lining.
+
+"A mouse," I said, and forgot my seediness; I was interested. "The
+little rascal! However did he contrive to seat himself in my pocket? and
+I have worn that overcoat all the morning!" But no--it was not a mouse.
+I saw something white poke its way out from under the lappet; and in
+another moment an object was revealed that, though revealed, I could not
+understand, nor could I distinguish what it was.
+
+Now roused by curiosity, I raised myself on my elbow. In doing this I
+made some noise, the bed creaked. Instantly the something dropped on the
+floor, lay outstretched for a moment, to recover itself, and then began,
+with the motions of a maggot, to run along the floor.
+
+There is a caterpillar called "The Measurer," because, when it advances,
+it draws its tail up to where its head is and then throws forward its
+full length, and again draws up its extremity, forming at each time a
+loop; and with each step measuring its total length. The object I now
+saw on the floor was advancing precisely like the measuring caterpillar.
+It had the colour of a cheese-maggot, and in length was about three and
+a half inches. It was not, however, like a caterpillar, which is
+flexible throughout its entire length, but this was, as it seemed to me,
+jointed in two places, one joint being more conspicuous than the other.
+For some moments I was so completely paralysed by astonishment that I
+remained motionless, looking at the thing as it crawled along the
+carpet--a dull green carpet with darker green, almost black, flowers in
+it.
+
+It had, as it seemed to me, a glossy head, distinctly marked; but, as
+the light was not brilliant, I could not make out very clearly, and,
+moreover, the rapid movements prevented close scrutiny.
+
+Presently, with a shock still more startling than that produced by its
+apparition at the opening of the pocket of my great-coat, I became
+convinced that what I saw was a finger, a human forefinger, and that the
+glossy head was no other than the nail.
+
+The finger did not seem to have been amputated. There was no sign of
+blood or laceration where the knuckle should be, but the extremity of
+the finger, or root rather, faded away to indistinctness, and I was
+unable to make out the root of the finger.
+
+I could see no hand, no body behind this finger, nothing whatever except
+a finger that had little token of warm life in it, no coloration as
+though blood circulated in it; and this finger was in active motion
+creeping along the carpet towards a wardrobe that stood against the wall
+by the fireplace.
+
+I sprang off the bed and pursued it.
+
+Evidently the finger was alarmed, for it redoubled its pace, reached the
+wardrobe, and went under it. By the time I had arrived at the article of
+furniture it had disappeared. I lit a vesta match and held it beneath
+the wardrobe, that was raised above the carpet by about two inches, on
+turned feet, but I could see nothing more of the finger.
+
+I got my umbrella and thrust it beneath, and raked forwards and
+backwards, right and left, and raked out flue, and nothing more solid.
+
+
+II
+
+I packed my portmanteau next day and returned to my home in the country.
+All desire for amusement in town was gone, and the faculty to transact
+business had departed as well.
+
+A languor and qualms had come over me, and my head was in a maze. I was
+unable to fix my thoughts on anything. At times I was disposed to
+believe that my wits were deserting me, at others that I was on the
+verge of a severe illness. Anyhow, whether likely to go off my head or
+not, or take to my bed, home was the only place for me, and homeward I
+sped, accordingly. On reaching my country habitation, my servant, as
+usual, took my portmanteau to my bedroom, unstrapped it, but did not
+unpack it. I object to his throwing out the contents of my Gladstone
+bag; not that there is anything in it he may not see, but that he puts
+my things where I cannot find them again. My clothes--he is welcome to
+place them where he likes and where they belong, and this latter he
+knows better than I do; but, then, I carry about with me other things
+than a dress suit, and changes of linen and flannel. There are letters,
+papers, books--and the proper destinations of these are known only to
+myself. A servant has a singular and evil knack of putting away literary
+matter and odd volumes in such places that it takes the owner half a day
+to find them again. Although I was uncomfortable, and my head in a
+whirl, I opened and unpacked my own portmanteau. As I was thus engaged I
+saw something curled up in my collar-box, the lid of which had got
+broken in by a boot-heel impinging on it. I had pulled off the damaged
+cover to see if my collars had been spoiled, when something curled up
+inside suddenly rose on end and leapt, just like a cheese-jumper, out of
+the box, over the edge of the Gladstone bag, and scurried away across
+the floor in a manner already familiar to me.
+
+I could not doubt for a moment what it was--here was the finger again.
+It had come with me from London to the country.
+
+Whither it went in its run over the floor I do not know, I was too
+bewildered to observe.
+
+Somewhat later, towards evening, I seated myself in my easy-chair, took
+up a book, and tried to read. I was tired with the journey, with the
+knocking about in town, and the discomfort and alarm produced by the
+apparition of the finger. I felt worn out. I was unable to give my
+attention to what I read, and before I was aware was asleep. Roused for
+an instant by the fall of the book from my hands, I speedily relapsed
+into unconsciousness. I am not sure that a doze in an armchair ever does
+good. It usually leaves me in a semi-stupid condition and with a
+headache. Five minutes in a horizontal position on my bed is worth
+thirty in a chair. That is my experience. In sleeping in a sedentary
+position the head is a difficulty; it drops forward or lolls on one side
+or the other, and has to be brought back into a position in which the
+line to the centre of gravity runs through the trunk, otherwise the head
+carries the body over in a sort of general capsize out of the chair on
+to the floor.
+
+I slept, on the occasion of which I am speaking, pretty healthily,
+because deadly weary; but I was brought to waking, not by my head
+falling over the arm of the chair, and my trunk tumbling after it, but
+by a feeling of cold extending from my throat to my heart. When I awoke
+I was in a diagonal position, with my right ear resting on my right
+shoulder, and exposing the left side of my throat, and it was
+here--where the jugular vein throbs--that I felt the greatest intensity
+of cold. At once I shrugged my left shoulder, rubbing my neck with the
+collar of my coat in so doing. Immediately something fell off, upon the
+floor, and I again saw the finger.
+
+My disgust--horror, were intensified when I perceived that it was
+dragging something after it, which might have been an old stocking, and
+which I took at first glance for something of the sort.
+
+The evening sun shone in through my window, in a brilliant golden ray
+that lighted the object as it scrambled along. With this illumination I
+was able to distinguish what the object was. It is not easy to describe
+it, but I will make the attempt.
+
+The finger I saw was solid and material; what it drew after it was
+neither, or was in a nebulous, protoplasmic condition. The finger was
+attached to a hand that was curdling into matter and in process of
+acquiring solidity; attached to the hand was an arm in a very filmy
+condition, and this arm belonged to a human body in a still more
+vaporous, immaterial condition. This was being dragged along the floor
+by the finger, just as a silkworm might pull after it the tangle of its
+web. I could see legs and arms, and head, and coat-tail tumbling about
+and interlacing and disentangling again in a promiscuous manner. There
+were no bone, no muscle, no substance in the figure; the members were
+attached to the trunk, which was spineless, but they had evidently no
+functions, and were wholly dependent on the finger which pulled them
+along in a jumble of parts as it advanced.
+
+In such confusion did the whole vaporous matter seem, that I think--I
+cannot say for certain it was so, but the impression left on my mind
+was--that one of the eyeballs was looking out at a nostril, and the
+tongue lolling out of one of the ears.
+
+It was, however, only for a moment that I saw this germ-body; I cannot
+call by another name that which had not more substance than smoke. I saw
+it only so long as it was being dragged athwart the ray of sunlight. The
+moment it was pulled jerkily out of the beam into the shadow beyond, I
+could see nothing of it, only the crawling finger.
+
+I had not sufficient moral energy or physical force in me to rise,
+pursue, and stamp on the finger, and grind it with my heel into the
+floor. Both seemed drained out of me. What became of the finger, whither
+it went, how it managed to secrete itself, I do not know. I had lost the
+power to inquire. I sat in my chair, chilled, staring before me into
+space.
+
+"Please, sir," a voice said, "there's Mr. Square below, electrical
+engineer."
+
+"Eh?" I looked dreamily round.
+
+My valet was at the door.
+
+"Please, sir, the gentleman would be glad to be allowed to go over the
+house and see that all the electrical apparatus is in order."
+
+"Oh, indeed! Yes--show him up."
+
+
+III
+
+I had recently placed the lighting of my house in the hands of an
+electrical engineer, a very intelligent man, Mr. Square, for whom I had
+contracted a sincere friendship.
+
+He had built a shed with a dynamo out of sight, and had entrusted the
+laying of the wires to subordinates, as he had been busy with other
+orders and could not personally watch every detail. But he was not the
+man to let anything pass unobserved, and he knew that electricity was
+not a force to be played with. Bad or careless workmen will often
+insufficiently protect the wires, or neglect the insertion of the lead
+which serves as a safety-valve in the event of the current being too
+strong. Houses may be set on fire, human beings fatally shocked, by the
+neglect of a bad or slovenly workman.
+
+The apparatus for my mansion was but just completed, and Mr. Square had
+come to inspect it and make sure that all was right.
+
+He was an enthusiast in the matter of electricity, and saw for it a vast
+perspective, the limits of which could not be predicted.
+
+"All forces," said he, "are correlated. When you have force in one form,
+you may just turn it into this or that, as you like. In one form it is
+motive power, in another it is light, in another heat. Now we have
+electricity for illumination. We employ it, but not as freely as in the
+States, for propelling vehicles. Why should we have horses drawing our
+buses? We should use only electric trams. Why do we burn coal to warm
+our shins? There is electricity, which throws out no filthy smoke as
+does coal. Why should we let the tides waste their energies in the
+Thames? in other estuaries? There we have Nature supplying us--free,
+gratis, and for nothing--with all the force we want for propelling, for
+heating, for lighting. I will tell you something more, my dear sir,"
+said Mr. Square. "I have mentioned but three modes of force, and have
+instanced but a limited number of uses to which electricity may be
+turned. How is it with photography? Is not electric light becoming an
+artistic agent? I bet you," said he, "before long it will become a
+therapeutic agent as well."
+
+"Oh, yes; I have heard of certain impostors with their life-belts."
+
+Mr. Square did not relish this little dig I gave him. He winced, but
+returned to the charge. "We don't know how to direct it aright, that is
+all," said he. "I haven't taken the matter up, but others will, I bet;
+and we shall have electricity used as freely as now we use powders and
+pills. I don't believe in doctors' stuffs myself. I hold that disease
+lays hold of a man because he lacks physical force to resist it. Now, is
+it not obvious that you are beginning at the wrong end when you attack
+the disease? What you want is to supply force, make up for the lack of
+physical power, and force is force wherever you find it--here motive,
+there illuminating, and so on. I don't see why a physician should not
+utilise the tide rushing out under London Bridge for restoring the
+feeble vigour of all who are languid and a prey to disorder in the
+Metropolis. It will come to that, I bet, and that is not all. Force is
+force, everywhere. Political, moral force, physical force, dynamic
+force, heat, light, tidal waves, and so on--all are one, all is one. In
+time we shall know how to galvanise into aptitude and moral energy all
+the limp and crooked consciences and wills that need taking in hand, and
+such there always will be in modern civilisation. I don't know how to do
+it. I don't know how it will be done, but in the future the priest as
+well as the doctor will turn electricity on as his principal, nay, his
+only agent. And he can get his force anywhere, out of the running
+stream, out of the wind, out of the tidal wave.
+
+"I'll give you an instance," continued Mr. Square, chuckling and rubbing
+his hands, "to show you the great possibilities in electricity, used in
+a crude fashion. In a certain great city away far west in the States, a
+go-ahead place, too, more so than New York, they had electric trams all
+up and down and along the roads to everywhere. The union men working for
+the company demanded that the non-unionists should be turned off. But
+the company didn't see it. Instead, it turned off the union men. It had
+up its sleeve a sufficiency of the others, and filled all places at
+once. Union men didn't like it, and passed word that at a given hour on
+a certain day every wire was to be cut. The company knew this by means
+of its spies, and turned on, ready for them, three times the power into
+all the wires. At the fixed moment, up the poles went the strikers to
+cut the cables, and down they came a dozen times quicker than they went
+up, I bet. Then there came wires to the hospitals from all quarters for
+stretchers to carry off the disabled men, some with broken legs, arms,
+ribs; two or three had their necks broken. I reckon the company was
+wonderfully merciful--it didn't put on sufficient force to make cinders
+of them then and there; possibly opinion might not have liked it.
+Stopped the strike, did that. Great moral effect--all done by
+electricity."
+
+In this manner Mr. Square was wont to rattle on. He interested me, and I
+came to think that there might be something in what he said--that his
+suggestions were not mere nonsense. I was glad to see Mr. Square enter
+my room, shown in by my man. I did not rise from my chair to shake his
+hand, for I had not sufficient energy to do so. In a languid tone I
+welcomed him and signed to him to take a seat. Mr. Square looked at me
+with some surprise.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" he said. "You seem unwell. Not got the 'flue,
+have you?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"The influenza. Every third person is crying out that he has it, and the
+sale of eucalyptus is enormous, not that eucalyptus is any good.
+Influenza microbes indeed! What care they for eucalyptus? You've gone
+down some steps of the ladder of life since I saw you last, squire. How
+do you account for that?"
+
+I hesitated about mentioning the extraordinary circumstances that had
+occurred; but Square was a man who would not allow any beating about the
+bush. He was downright and straight, and in ten minutes had got the
+entire story out of me.
+
+"Rather boisterous for your nerves that--a crawling finger," said he.
+"It's a queer story taken on end."
+
+Then he was silent, considering.
+
+After a few minutes he rose, and said: "I'll go and look at the
+fittings, and then I'll turn this little matter of yours over again, and
+see if I can't knock the bottom out of it, I'm kinder fond of these sort
+of things."
+
+Mr. Square was not a Yankee, but he had lived for some time in America,
+and affected to speak like an American. He used expressions, terms of
+speech common in the States, but had none of the Transatlantic twang. He
+was a man absolutely without affectation in every other particular; this
+was his sole weakness, and it was harmless.
+
+The man was so thorough in all he did that I did not expect his return
+immediately. He was certain to examine every portion of the dynamo
+engine, and all the connections and burners. This would necessarily
+engage him for some hours. As the day was nearly done, I knew he could
+not accomplish what he wanted that evening, and accordingly gave orders
+that a room should be prepared for him. Then, as my head was full of
+pain, and my skin was burning, I told my servant to apologise for my
+absence from dinner, and tell Mr. Square that I was really forced to
+return to my bed by sickness, and that I believed I was about to be
+prostrated by an attack of influenza.
+
+The valet--a worthy fellow, who has been with me for six years--was
+concerned at my appearance, and urged me to allow him to send for a
+doctor. I had no confidence in the local practitioner, and if I sent for
+another from the nearest town I should offend him, and a row would
+perhaps ensue, so I declined. If I were really in for an influenza
+attack, I knew about as much as any doctor how to deal with it. Quinine,
+quinine--that was all. I bade my man light a small lamp, lower it, so as
+to give sufficient illumination to enable me to find some lime-juice at
+my bed head, and my pocket-handkerchief, and to be able to read my
+watch. When he had done this, I bade him leave me.
+
+I lay in bed, burning, racked with pain in my head, and with my eyeballs
+on fire.
+
+Whether I fell asleep or went off my head for a while I cannot tell. I
+may have fainted. I have no recollection of anything after having gone
+to bed and taken a sip of lime-juice that tasted to me like soap--till I
+was roused by a sense of pain in my ribs--a slow, gnawing, torturing
+pain, waxing momentarily more intense. In half-consciousness I was
+partly dreaming and partly aware of actual suffering. The pain was real;
+but in my fancy I thought that a great maggot was working its way into
+my side between my ribs. I seemed to see it. It twisted itself half
+round, then reverted to its former position, and again twisted itself,
+moving like a bradawl, not like a gimlet, which latter forms a complete
+revolution.
+
+This, obviously, must have been a dream, hallucination only, as I was
+lying on my back and my eyes were directed towards the bottom of the
+bed, and the coverlet and blankets and sheet intervened between my eyes
+and my side. But in fever one sees without eyes, and in every direction,
+and through all obstructions.
+
+Roused thoroughly by an excruciating twinge, I tried to cry out, and
+succeeded in throwing myself over on my right side, that which was in
+pain. At once I felt the thing withdrawn that was awling--if I may use
+the word--in between my ribs.
+
+And now I saw, standing beside the bed, a figure that had its arm under
+the bedclothes, and was slowly removing it. The hand was leisurely
+drawn from under the coverings and rested on the eider-down coverlet,
+with the forefinger extended.
+
+The figure was that of a man, in shabby clothes, with a sallow, mean
+face, a retreating forehead, with hair cut after the French fashion, and
+a moustache, dark. The jaws and chin were covered with a bristly growth,
+as if shaving had been neglected for a fortnight. The figure did not
+appear to be thoroughly solid, but to be of the consistency of curd, and
+the face was of the complexion of curd. As I looked at this object it
+withdrew, sliding backward in an odd sort of manner, and as though
+overweighted by the hand, which was the most substantial, indeed the
+only substantial portion of it. Though the figure retreated stooping,
+yet it was no longer huddled along by the finger, as if it had no
+material existence. If the same, it had acquired a consistency and a
+solidity which it did not possess before.
+
+How it vanished I do not know, nor whither it went. The door opened, and
+Square came in.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed with cheery voice; "influenza is it?"
+
+"I don't know--I think it's that finger again."
+
+
+IV
+
+"Now, look here," said Square, "I'm not going to have that cuss at its
+pranks any more. Tell me all about it."
+
+I was now so exhausted, so feeble, that I was not able to give a
+connected account of what had taken place, but Square put to me just a
+few pointed questions and elicited the main facts. He pieced them
+together in his own orderly mind, so as to form a connected whole.
+"There is a feature in the case," said he, "that strikes me as
+remarkable and important. At first--a finger only, then a hand, then a
+nebulous figure attached to the hand, without backbone, without
+consistency. Lastly, a complete form, with consistency and with
+backbone, but the latter in a gelatinous condition, and the entire
+figure overweighted by the hand, just as hand and figure were previously
+overweighted by the finger. Simultaneously with this compacting and
+consolidating of the figure, came your degeneration and loss of vital
+force and, in a word, of health. What you lose, that object acquires,
+and what it acquires, it gains by contact with you. That's clear enough,
+is it not?"
+
+"I dare say. I don't know. I can't think."
+
+"I suppose not; the faculty of thought is drained out of you. Very well,
+I must think for you, and I will. Force is force, and see if I can't
+deal with your visitant in such a way as will prove just as truly a
+moral dissuasive as that employed on the union men on strike in--never
+mind where it was. That's not to the point."
+
+"Will you kindly give me some lime-juice?" I entreated.
+
+I sipped the acid draught, but without relief. I listened to Square, but
+without hope. I wanted to be left alone. I was weary of my pain, weary
+of everything, even of life. It was a matter of indifference to me
+whether I recovered or slipped out of existence.
+
+"It will be here again shortly," said the engineer. "As the French say,
+_l'appetit vient en mangeant_. It has been at you thrice, it won't be
+content without another peck. And if it does get another, I guess it
+will pretty well about finish you."
+
+Mr. Square rubbed his chin, and then put his hands into his trouser
+pockets. That also was a trick acquired in the States, an inelegant one.
+His hands, when not actively occupied, went into his pockets, inevitably
+they gravitated thither. Ladies did not like Square; they said he was
+not a gentleman. But it was not that he said or did anything "off
+colour," only he spoke to them, looked at them, walked with them, always
+with his hands in his pockets. I have seen a lady turn her back on him
+deliberately because of this trick.
+
+Standing now with his hands in his pockets, he studied my bed, and said
+contemptuously: "Old-fashioned and bad, fourposter. Oughtn't to be
+allowed, I guess; unwholesome all the way round."
+
+I was not in a condition to dispute this. I like a fourposter with
+curtains at head and feet; not that I ever draw them, but it gives a
+sense of privacy that is wanting in one of your half-tester beds.
+
+If there is a window at one's feet, one can lie in bed without the glare
+in one's eyes, and yet without darkening the room by drawing the blinds.
+There is much to be said for a fourposter, but this is not the place in
+which to say it.
+
+Mr. Square pulled his hands out of his pockets and began fiddling with
+the electric point near the head of my bed, attached a wire, swept it in
+a semicircle along the floor, and then thrust the knob at the end into
+my hand in the bed.
+
+"Keep your eye open," said he, "and your hand shut and covered. If that
+finger comes again tickling your ribs, try it with the point. I'll
+manage the switch, from behind the curtain."
+
+Then he disappeared.
+
+I was too indifferent in my misery to turn my head and observe where he
+was. I remained inert, with the knob in my hand, and my eyes closed,
+suffering and thinking of nothing but the shooting pains through my head
+and the aches in my loins and back and legs.
+
+Some time probably elapsed before I felt the finger again at work at my
+ribs; it groped, but no longer bored. I now felt the entire hand, not a
+single finger, and the hand was substantial, cold, and clammy. I was
+aware, how, I know not, that if the finger-point reached the region of
+my heart, on the left side, the hand would, so to speak, sit down on it,
+with the cold palm over it, and that then immediately my heart would
+cease to beat, and it would be, as Square might express it, "gone coon"
+with me.
+
+In self-preservation I brought up the knob of the electric wire against
+the hand--against one of the ringers, I think--and at once was aware of
+a rapping, squealing noise. I turned my head languidly, and saw the
+form, now more substantial than before, capering in an ecstasy of pain,
+endeavouring fruitlessly to withdraw its arm from under the bedclothes,
+and the hand from the electric point.
+
+At the same moment Square stepped from behind the curtain, with a dry
+laugh, and said: "I thought we should fix him. He has the coil about
+him, and can't escape. Now let us drop to particulars. But I shan't let
+you off till I know all about you."
+
+The last sentence was addressed, not to me, but to the apparition.
+
+Thereupon he bade me take the point away from the hand of the
+figure--being--whatever it was, but to be ready with it at a moment's
+notice. He then proceeded to catechise my visitor, who moved restlessly
+within the circle of wire, but could not escape from it. It replied in a
+thin, squealing voice that sounded as if it came from a distance, and
+had a querulous tone in it. I do not pretend to give all that was said.
+I cannot recollect everything that passed. My memory was affected by my
+illness, as well as my body. Yet I prefer giving the scraps that I
+recollect to what Square told me he had heard.
+
+"Yes--I was unsuccessful, always was. Nothing answered with me. The
+world was against me. Society was. I hate Society. I don't like work
+neither, never did. But I like agitating against what is established. I
+hate the Royal Family, the landed interest, the parsons, everything that
+is, except the people--that is, the unemployed. I always did. I couldn't
+get work as suited me. When I died they buried me in a cheap coffin,
+dirt cheap, and gave me a nasty grave, cheap, and a service rattled
+away cheap, and no monument. Didn't want none. Oh! there are lots of
+us. All discontented. Discontent! That's a passion, it is--it gets into
+the veins, it fills the brain, it occupies the heart; it's a sort of
+divine cancer that takes possession of the entire man, and makes him
+dissatisfied with everything, and hate everybody. But we must have our
+share of happiness at some time. We all crave for it in one way or
+other. Some think there's a future state of blessedness and so have
+hope, and look to attain to it, for hope is a cable and anchor that
+attaches to what is real. But when you have no hope of that sort, don't
+believe in any future state, you must look for happiness in life here.
+We didn't get it when we were alive, so we seek to procure it after we
+are dead. We can do it, if we can get out of our cheap and nasty
+coffins. But not till the greater part of us is mouldered away. If a
+finger or two remains, that can work its way up to the surface, those
+cheap deal coffins go to pieces quick enough. Then the only solid part
+of us left can pull the rest of us that has gone to nothing after it.
+Then we grope about after the living. The well-to-do if we can get at
+them--the honest working poor if we can't--we hate them too, because
+they are content and happy. If we reach any of these, and can touch
+them, then we can draw their vital force out of them into ourselves, and
+recuperate at their expense. That was about what I was going to do with
+you. Getting on famous. Nearly solidified into a new man; and given
+another chance in life. But I've missed it this time. Just like my luck.
+Miss everything. Always have, except misery and disappointment. Get
+plenty of that."
+
+"What are you all?" asked Square. "Anarchists out of employ?"
+
+"Some of us go by that name, some by other designations, but we are all
+one, and own allegiance to but one monarch--Sovereign discontent. We are
+bred to have a distaste for manual work; and we grow up loafers,
+grumbling at everything and quarrelling with Society that is around us
+and the Providence that is above us."
+
+"And what do you call yourselves now?"
+
+"Call ourselves? Nothing; we are the same, in another condition, that is
+all. Folk called us once Anarchists, Nihilists, Socialists, Levellers,
+now they call us the Influenza. The learned talk of microbes, and
+bacilli, and bacteria. Microbes, bacilli, and bacteria be blowed! We are
+the Influenza; we the social failures, the generally discontented,
+coming up out of our cheap and nasty graves in the form of physical
+disease. We are the Influenza."
+
+"There you are, I guess!" exclaimed Square triumphantly. "Did I not say
+that all forces were correlated? If so, then all negations, deficiencies
+of force are one in their several manifestations. Talk of Divine
+discontent as a force impelling to progress! Rubbish, it is a paralysis
+of energy. It turns all it absorbs to acid, to envy, spite, gall. It
+inspires nothing, but rots the whole moral system. Here you have
+it--moral, social, political discontent in another form, nay
+aspect--that is all. What Anarchism is in the body Politic, that
+Influenza is in the body Physical. Do you see that?"
+
+"Ye-e-s-e-s," I believe I answered, and dropped away into the land of
+dreams.
+
+I recovered. What Square did with the Thing I know not, but believe that
+he reduced it again to its former negative and self-decomposing
+condition.
+
+
+
+
+BLACK RAM
+
+
+I do not know when I had spent a more pleasant evening, or had enjoyed a
+dinner more than that at Mr. Weatherwood's hospitable house. For one
+thing, the hostess knew how to keep her guests interested and in
+good-humour. The dinner was all that could be desired, and so were the
+wines. But what conduced above all to my pleasure was that at table I
+sat by Miss Fulton, a bright, intelligent girl, well read and
+entertaining. My wife had a cold, and had sent her excuses by me. Miss
+Fulton and I talked of this, that, and every thing. Towards the end of
+dinner she said: "I shall be obliged to run away so soon as the ladies
+leave the room to you and your cigarettes and gossip. It is rather mean,
+but Mrs. Weatherwood has been forewarned, and understands. To-morrow is
+our village feast at Marksleigh, and I have a host of things on my hand.
+I shall have to be up at seven, and I do object to cut a slice off my
+night's rest at both ends."
+
+"Rather an unusual time of the year for a village feast," said I. "These
+things are generally got over in the summer."
+
+"You see, our church is dedicated to St. Mark, and to-morrow is his
+festival, and it has been observed in one fashion or another in our
+parish from time immemorial. In your parts have they any notions about
+St. Mark's eve?"
+
+"What sort of notions?"
+
+"That if you sit in the church porch from midnight till the clock
+strikes one, you will see the apparitions pass before you of those
+destined to die within the year."
+
+"I fancy our good people see themselves, and nothing but themselves, on
+every day and hour throughout the twelvemonth."
+
+"Joking apart, have you any such superstition hanging on in your
+neighbourhood?"
+
+"Not that I am aware of. That sort of thing belonged to the Golden Age
+that has passed away. Board schools have reduced us to that of lead."
+
+"At Marksleigh the villagers believe in it, and recently their faith has
+received corroboration."
+
+"How so?" I asked.
+
+"Last year, in a fit of bravado, a young carpenter ventured to sit in
+the porch at the witching hour, and saw himself enter the church. He
+came home, looking as blank as a sheet, moped, lost flesh, and died nine
+months later."
+
+"Of course he died, if he had made up his mind to do so."
+
+"Yes--that is explicable. But how do you account for his having seen his
+double?"
+
+"He had been drinking at the public-house. A good many people see double
+after that."
+
+"It was not so. He was perfectly sober at the time."
+
+"Then I give it up."
+
+"Would you venture on a visit to a church porch on this night--St.
+Mark's eve?"
+
+"Certainly I would, if well wrapped up, and I had my pipe."
+
+"I bar the pipe," said Miss Fulton. "No apparition can stand tobacco
+smoke. But there is Lady Eastleigh rising. When you come to rejoin the
+ladies, I shall be gone."
+
+I did not leave the house of the Weatherwoods till late. My dogcart was
+driven by my groom, Richard. The night was cold, or rather chilly, but I
+had my fur-lined overcoat, and did not mind that. The stars shone out of
+a frosty sky. All went smoothly enough till the road dipped into a
+valley, where a dense white fog hung over the river and the
+water-meadows. Anyone who has had much experience in driving at night is
+aware that in such a case the carriage lamps are worse than useless;
+they bewilder the horse and the driver. I cannot blame Dick if he ran
+his wheel over a heap of stones that upset the trap. We were both thrown
+out, and I fell on my head. I sang out: "Mind the cob, Dick; I am all
+right."
+
+The boy at once mastered the horse. I did not rise immediately, for I
+had been somewhat jarred by the fall; when I did I found Dick engaged in
+mending a ruptured trace. One of the shafts was broken, and a carriage
+lamp had been shattered.
+
+"Dick," said I, "there are a couple of steep hills to descend, and that
+is risky with a single shaft. I will lighten the dogcart by walking
+home, and do you take care at the hills."
+
+"I think we can manage, sir."
+
+"I should prefer to walk the rest of the way. I am rather shaken by my
+fall, and a good step out in the cool night will do more to put me to
+rights than anything else. When you get home, send up a message to your
+mistress that she is not to expect me at once. I shall arrive in due
+time, and she is not to be alarmed."
+
+"It's a good trudge before you, sir. And I dare say we could get the
+shaft tied up at Fifewell."
+
+"What--at this time of night? No, Dick, do as I say."
+
+Accordingly the groom drove off, and I started on my walk. I was glad to
+get out of the clinging fog, when I reached higher ground. I looked
+back, and by the starlight saw the river bottom filled with the mist,
+lying apparently dense as snow.
+
+After a swinging walk of a quarter of an hour I entered the outskirts of
+Fifewell, a village of some importance, with shops, the seat of the
+petty sessions, and with a small boot and shoe factory in it.
+
+The street was deserted. Some bedroom windows were lighted, for our
+people have the habit of burning their paraffin lamps all night. Every
+door was shut, no one was stirring.
+
+As I passed along the churchyard wall, the story of the young carpenter,
+told by Miss Fulton, recurred to me.
+
+"By Jove!" thought I, "it is now close upon midnight, a rare opportunity
+for me to see the wonders of St. Mark's eve. I will go into the porch
+and rest there for a few minutes, and then I shall be able, when I meet
+that girl again, to tell her that I had done what she challenged me to
+do, without any idea that I would take her challenge up."
+
+I turned in at the gate, and walked up the pathway. The headstones bore
+a somewhat ghostly look in the starlight. A cross of white stone,
+recently set up, I supposed, had almost the appearance of
+phosphorescence. The church windows were dark.
+
+I seated myself in the roomy porch on a stone bench against the wall,
+and felt for my pipe. I am not sure that I contemplated smoking it then
+and there, partly because Miss Fulton had forbidden it, but also because
+I felt that it was not quite the right thing to do on consecrated
+ground. But it would be a satisfaction to finger it, and I might plug
+it, so as to be ready to light up so soon as I left the churchyard. To
+my vexation I found that I had lost it. The tobacco-pouch was there, and
+the matches. My pipe must have fallen out of my pocket when I was
+pitched from the trap. That pipe was a favourite of mine.
+
+"What a howling nuisance," said I. "If I send Dick back over the road
+to-morrow morning, ten chances to one if he finds it, for to-morrow is
+market-day, and people will be passing early."
+
+As I said this, the clock struck twelve.
+
+I counted each stroke. I wore my fur-lined coat, and was not cold--in
+fact, I had been too warm walking in it. At the last stroke of twelve I
+noticed lines of very brilliant light appear about the door into the
+church. The door must have fitted well, as the light did no more than
+show about it, and did not gush forth at all the crevices. But from the
+keyhole shot a ray of intense brilliancy.
+
+Whether the church windows were illumined I did not see--in fact, it did
+not occur to me to look, either then or later--but I am pretty certain
+that they were not, or the light streaming from them would have brought
+the gravestones into prominence. When you come to think of it, it was
+remarkable that the light of so dazzling a nature should shine through
+the crannies of the door, and that none should issue, as far as I could
+see, from the windows. At the time I did not give this a thought; my
+attention was otherwise taken up. For I saw distinctly Miss Venville, a
+very nice girl of my acquaintance, coming up the path with that swinging
+walk so characteristic of an English young lady.
+
+How often it has happened to me, when I have been sitting in a public
+park or in the gardens of a Cursaal abroad, and some young girls have
+passed by, that I have said to my wife: "I bet you a bob those are
+English."
+
+"Yes, of course," she has replied; "you can see that by their dress."
+
+"I don't know anything about dress," I have said; "I judge by the
+walk."
+
+Well, there was Miss Venville coming towards the porch.
+
+"This is a joke," said I. "She is going to sit here on the look-out for
+ghosts, and if I stand up or speak she will be scared out of her wits.
+Hang it, I wish I had my pipe now; if I gave a whiff it would reveal the
+presence of a mortal, without alarming her. I think I shall whistle."
+
+I had screwed up my lips to begin "Rocked in the cradle of the
+deep"--that is my great song I perform whenever there is a village
+concert, or I am asked out to dinner, and am entreated afterwards to
+sing--I say I had screwed up my lips to whistle, when I saw something
+that scared me so that I made no attempt at the melody.
+
+The ray of light through the keyhole was shut off, and I saw standing in
+the porch before me the form of Mrs. Venville, the girl's mother, who
+had died two years before. The ray of white light arrested by her filled
+her as a lamp--was diffused as a mild glow from her.
+
+"Halloo, mother, what brings you here?" asked the girl.
+
+"Gwendoline, I have come to warn you back. You cannot enter; you have
+not got the key."
+
+"The key, mother?"
+
+"Yes, everyone who would pass within must have his or her own key."
+
+"Well, where am I to get one?"
+
+"It must be forged for you, Gwen. You are wholly unfit to enter. What
+good have you ever done to deserve it?"
+
+"Why, mother, everyone knows I'm an awfully good sort."
+
+"No one in here knows it. That is no qualification."
+
+"And I always dressed in good taste."
+
+"Nor is that."
+
+"And I was splendid at lawn tennis."
+
+Her mother shook her head.
+
+"Look here, little mummy. I won a brooch at the archery match."
+
+"That will not do, Gwendoline. What good have you ever done to anyone
+else beside yourself?"
+
+The girl considered a minute, then laughed, and said: "I put into a
+raffle at a bazaar--no, it was a bran-pie for an orphanage--and I drew
+out a pair of braces. I had rare fun over those braces, I sold them to
+Captain Fitzakerly for half a crown, and that I gave to the charity."
+
+"You went for what you could get, not what you could give."
+
+Then the mother stepped on one side, and the ray shot directly at the
+girl. I saw that it had something of the quality of the X-ray. It was
+not arrested by her garments, or her flesh or muscles. It revealed in
+her breast, in her brain--penetrating her whole body--a hard, dark core.
+
+"Black Ram, I bet," said I.
+
+Now Black Ram is the local name for a substance found in our land,
+especially in the low ground that ought to be the most fertile, but is
+not so, on account of this material found in it.
+
+The substance lies some two or three feet below the surface, and forms a
+crust of the consistency of cast iron. No plough can possibly be driven
+through it. No water can percolate athwart it, and consequently where it
+is, there the superincumbent soil is resolved into a quagmire. No tree
+can grow in it, for the moment the taproot touches the Black Ram the
+tree dies.
+
+Of what Black Ram consists is more than I can say; the popular opinion
+is that it is a bastard manganese. Now I happen to own several fields
+accursed with the presence in them of Black Ram--fields that ought to be
+luxuriant meadows, but which, in consequence of its presence, are worth
+almost nothing at all.
+
+"No, Gwen," said her mother, looking sorrowfully at her, "there is not a
+chance of your admission till you have got rid of the Black Ram that is
+in you."
+
+"Sure," said I, as I slapped my knee, "I thought I knew the article, and
+now my opinion has been confirmed."
+
+"How can I get rid of it?" asked the girl.
+
+"Gwendoline, you will have to pass into little Polly Finch, and work it
+out of your system. She is dying of scarlet fever, and you must enter
+into her body, and so rid yourself in time of the Black Ram."
+
+"Mother!--the Finches are common people."
+
+"So much the better chance for you."
+
+"And I am eighteen, Polly is about ten."
+
+"You will have to become a little child if you would enter her."
+
+"I don't like it. What is the alternative?"
+
+"To remain without in the darkness till you come to a better mind. And
+now, Gwen, no time is to be lost; you must pass into Polly Finch's body
+before it grows cold."
+
+"Well, then--here goes!"
+
+Gwen Venville turned, and her mother accompanied her down the path. The
+girl moved reluctantly, and pouted. Passing out of the churchyard, both
+traversed the street and disappeared within a cottage, from the upper
+window of which light from behind a white blind was diffused.
+
+I did not follow, I leaned back against the wall. I felt that my head
+was throbbing. I was a little afraid lest my fall had done more injury
+than I had at first anticipated. I put my hand to my head, and held it
+there for a moment.
+
+Then it was as though a book were opened before me--the book of the life
+of Polly Finch--or rather of Gwendoline's soul in Polly Finch's body. It
+was but one page that I saw, and the figures in it were moving.
+
+The girl was struggling under the burden of a heavy baby brother. She
+coaxed him, she sang to him, she played with him, talked to him, broke
+off bits of her bread and butter, given to her for breakfast, and made
+him eat them; she wiped his nose and eyes with her pocket-handkerchief,
+she tried to dance him in her arms. He was a fractious urchin, and most
+exacting, but her patience, her good-nature, never failed. The drops
+stood on her brow, and her limbs tottered under the weight, but her
+heart was strong, and her eyes shone with love.
+
+I drew my hand from my head. It was burning. I put my hand to the cold
+stone bench to cool it, and then applied it once more to my brow.
+
+Instantly it was as though another page were revealed. I saw Polly in
+her widowed father's cottage. She was now a grown girl; she was on her
+knees scrubbing the floor. A bell tinkled. Then she put down the soap
+and brush, turned down her sleeves, rose and went into the outer shop to
+serve a customer with half a pound of tea. That done, she was back
+again, and the scrubbing was renewed. Again a tinkle, and again she
+stood up and went into the shop to a child who desired to buy a
+pennyworth of lemon drops.
+
+On her return, in came her little brother crying--he had cut his finger.
+Polly at once applied cobweb, and then stitched a rag about the wounded
+member.
+
+"There, there, Tommy! don't cry any more. I have kissed the bad place,
+and it will soon be well."
+
+"Poll! it hurts! it hurts!" sobbed the boy.
+
+"Come to me," said his sister. She drew a low chair to the fireside,
+took Tommy on her lap, and began to tell him the story of Jack the
+Giant-killer.
+
+I removed my hand, and the vision was gone.
+
+I put my other hand to my head, and at once saw a further scene in the
+life-story of Polly.
+
+She was now a middle-aged woman, and had a cottage of her own. She was
+despatching her children to school. They had bright, rosy faces, their
+hair was neatly combed, their pinafores were white as snow. One after
+another, before leaving, put up the cherry lips to kiss mammy; and when
+they were gone, for a moment she stood in the door looking after them,
+then sharply turned, brought out a basket, and emptied its contents on
+the table. There were little girls' stockings with "potatoes" in them to
+be darned, torn jackets to be mended, a little boy's trousers to be
+reseated, pocket-handkerchiefs to be hemmed. She laboured on with her
+needle the greater part of the day, then put away the garments, some
+finished, others to be finished, and going to the flour-bin took forth
+flour and began to knead dough, and then to roll it out to make pasties
+for her husband and the children.
+
+"Poll!" called a voice from without; she ran to the door.
+
+"Back, Joe! I have your dinner hot in the oven."
+
+"I must say, Poll, you are the best of good wives, and there isn't a
+mother like you in the shire. My word! that was a lucky day when I chose
+you, and didn't take Mary Matters, who was setting her cap at me. See
+what a slattern she has turned out. Why, I do believe, Poll, if I'd took
+her she'd have drove me long ago to the public-house."
+
+I saw the mother of Gwendoline standing by me and looking out on this
+scene, and I heard her say: "The Black Ram is run out, and the key is
+forged."
+
+All had vanished. I thought now I might as well rise and continue my
+journey. But before I had left the bench I observed the rector of
+Fifewell sauntering up the path, with uncertain step, as he fumbled in
+his coat-tail pockets, and said: "Where the deuce is the key?"
+
+The Reverend William Hexworthy was a man of good private means, and was
+just the sort of man that a bishop delights to honour. He was one who
+would never cause him an hour's anxiety; he was not the man to indulge
+in ecclesiastical vagaries. He flattered himself that he was strictly a
+_via media_ man. He kept dogs, he was a good judge of horses, was fond
+of sport. He did not hunt, but he shot and fished. He was a favourite in
+Society, was of irreproachable conduct, and was a magistrate on the
+bench.
+
+As the ray from the keyhole smote on him he seemed to be wholly
+dark,--made up of nothing but Black Ram. He came on slowly, as though
+not very sure of his way.
+
+"Bless me! where can be the key?" he asked.
+
+Then from out of the graves, and from over the wall of the churchyard,
+came rushing up a crowd of his dead parishioners, and blocked his way to
+the porch.
+
+"Please, your reverence!" said one, "you did not visit me when I was
+dying."
+
+"I sent you a bottle of my best port," said the parson.
+
+"Ay, sir, and thank you for it. But that went into my stomick, and what
+I wanted was medicine for my soul. You never said a prayer by me. You
+never urged me to repentance for my bad life, and you let me go out of
+the world with all my sins about me."
+
+"And I, sir," said another, thrusting himself before Mr. Hexworthy--"I
+was a young man, sir, going wild, and you never said a word to restrain
+me; never sent for me and gave me a bit of warning and advice which
+would have checked me. You just shrugged your shoulders and laughed, and
+said that a young chap like me must sow his wild oats."
+
+"And we," shouted the rest--"we were never taught by you anything at
+all."
+
+"Now this is really too bad," said the rector. "I preached twice every
+Sunday."
+
+"Oh, yes--right enough that. But precious little good it did when
+nothing came out of your heart, and all out of your pocket--and that you
+did give us was copied in your library. Why, sir, not one of your
+sermons ever did anybody a farthing of good."
+
+"We were your sheep," protested others, "and you let us wander where we
+would! You didn't seem to know yourself that there was a fold into which
+to draw us."
+
+"And we," said others, "went off to chapel, and all the good we ever got
+was from the dissenting minister--never a mite from you."
+
+"And some of us," cried out others, "went to the bad altogether, through
+your neglect. What did you care about our souls so long as your terriers
+were washed and combed, and your horses well groomed? You were a
+fisherman, but all you fished for were trout--not souls. And if some of
+us turned out well, it was in spite of your neglect--no thanks to you."
+
+Then some children's voices were raised: "Sir, you never taught us no
+Catechism, nor our duty to God and to man, and we grew up regular
+heathens."
+
+"That was your fathers' and mothers' duty."
+
+"But our fathers and mothers never taught us anything."
+
+"Come, this is intolerable," shouted Mr. Hexworthy. "Get out of the way,
+all of you. I can't be bothered with you now. I want to go in there."
+
+"You can't, parson! the door is shut, and you have not got your key."
+
+Mr. Hexworthy stood bewildered and irresolute. He rubbed his chin.
+
+"What the dickens am I to do?" he asked.
+
+Then the crowd closed about him, and thrust him back towards the gate.
+"You must go whither we send you," they said.
+
+I stood up to follow. It was curious to see a flock drive its shepherd,
+who, indeed, had never attempted to lead. I walked in the rear, and it
+seemed as though we were all swept forward as by a mighty wind. I did
+not gain my breath, or realise whither I was going, till I found myself
+in the slums of a large manufacturing town before a mean house such as
+those occupied by artisans, with the conventional one window on one side
+of the door and two windows above. Out of one of these latter shone a
+scarlet glow.
+
+The crowd hustled Mr. Hexworthy in at the door, which was opened by a
+hospital nurse.
+
+I stood hesitating what to do, and not understanding what had taken
+place. On the opposite side of the street was a mission church, and the
+windows were lighted. I entered, and saw that there were at least a
+score of people, shabbily dressed, and belonging to the lowest class, on
+their knees in prayer. There was a sort of door-opener or verger at the
+entrance, and I said to him: "What is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"Oh, sir!" said he, "_he_ is ill, he has been attacked by smallpox. It
+has been raging in the place, and he has been with all the sick, and
+now he has taken it himself, and we are terribly afraid that he is
+dying. So we are praying God to spare him to us."
+
+Then one of those who was kneeling turned to me and said: "I was an
+hungred, and he gave me meat."
+
+And another rose up and said: "I was a stranger, and he took me in."
+
+Then a third said: "I was naked, and he clothed me."
+
+And a fourth: "I was sick, and he visited me."
+
+Then said a fifth, with bowed head, sobbing: "I was in prison, and he
+came to me."
+
+Thereupon I went out and looked up at the red window, and I felt as if I
+must see the man for whom so many prayed. I tapped at the door, and a
+woman opened.
+
+"I should so much like to see him, if I may," said I.
+
+"Well, sir," spoke the woman, a plain, middle-aged, rough creature, but
+her eyes were full of tears: "Oh, sir, I think you may, if you will go
+up softly. There has come over him a great change. It is as though a new
+life had entered into him."
+
+I mounted the narrow staircase of very steep steps and entered the
+sick-room. There was an all-pervading glow of red. The fire was low--no
+flame, and a screen was before it. The lamp had a scarlet shade over it.
+I stepped to the side of the bed, where stood a nurse. I looked on the
+patient. He was an awful object. His face had been smeared over with
+some dark solution, with the purpose of keeping all light from the skin,
+with the object of saving it from permanent disfigurement.
+
+The sick priest lay with eyes raised, and I thought I saw in them those
+of Mr. Hexworthy, but with a new light, a new faith, a new fervour, a
+new love in them. The lips were moving in prayer, and the hands were
+folded over the breast. The nurse whispered to me: "We thought he was
+passing away, but the prayers of those he loved have prevailed. A great
+change has come over him. The last words he spoke were: 'God's will be
+done. If I live, I will live only--only for my dear sheep, and die among
+them'; and now he is in an ecstasy, and says nothing. But he is praying
+still--for his people."
+
+As I stood looking I saw what might have been tears, but seemed to be
+molten Black Ram, roll over the painted cheeks. The spirit of Mr.
+Hexworthy was in this body.
+
+Then, without a word, I turned to the door, went through, groped my way
+down the steps, passed out into the street, and found myself back in the
+porch of Fifewell Church.
+
+"Upon my word," said I, "I have been here long enough." I wrapped my fur
+coat about me, and prepared to go, when I saw a well-known figure, that
+of Mr. Fothergill, advancing up the path.
+
+I knew the old gentleman well. His age must have been seventy. He was a
+spare man, he was rather bald, and had sunken cheeks. He was a bachelor,
+living in a pretty little villa of his own. He had a good fortune, and
+was a harmless, but self-centred, old fellow. He prided himself on his
+cellar and his cook. He always dressed well, and was scrupulously neat.
+I had often played a game of chess with him.
+
+I would have run towards him to remonstrate with him for exposing
+himself to the night air, but I was forestalled. Slipping past me, his
+old manservant, David, went to meet him. David had died three years
+before. Mr. Fothergill had then been dangerously ill with typhoid fever,
+and the man had attended to him night and day. The old gentleman, as I
+heard, had been most irritable and exacting in his illness. When his
+malady took a turn, and he was on the way to convalescence, David had
+succumbed in his turn, and in three days was dead.
+
+This man now met his master, touched his cap, and said: "Beg pardon,
+sir, you will not be admitted."
+
+"Not admitted? Why not, Davie?"
+
+"I really am very sorry, sir. If my key would have availed, you would
+have been welcome to it; but, sir, there's such a terrible lot of Black
+Ram in you, sir. That must be got out first."
+
+"I don't understand, Davie."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, to have to say it; but you've never done anyone any
+good."
+
+"I paid you your wages regularly."
+
+"Yes, sir, to be sure, sir, for my services to yourself."
+
+"And I've always subscribed when asked for money."
+
+"Yes, that is very true, sir, but that was because you thought it was
+expected of you, not because you had any sympathy with those in need,
+and sickness, and suffering."
+
+"I'm sure I never did anyone any harm."
+
+"No, sir, and never anyone any good. You'll excuse me for mentioning
+it."
+
+"But, Davie, what do you mean? I can't get in?"
+
+"No, sir, not till you have the key."
+
+"But, bless my soul! what is to become of me? Am I to stick out here?"
+
+"Yes, sir, unless----"
+
+"In this damp, and cold, and darkness?"
+
+"There is no help for it, Mr. Fothergill, unless----"
+
+"Unless what, Davie?"
+
+"Unless you become a mother, sir!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Of twins, sir."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!"
+
+"Indeed, it is so, sir, and you will have to nurse them."
+
+"I can't do it. I'm physically incapable."
+
+"It must be done, sir. Very sorry to mention it, but there is no
+alternative. There's Sally Bowker is approaching her confinement, and
+it's going terribly hard with her. The doctor thinks she'll never pull
+through. But if you'd consent to pass into her and become a mother----"
+
+"And nurse the twins? Oh, Davie, I shall need a great amount of stout."
+
+"I grieve to say it, Mr. Fothergill, but you'll be too poor to afford
+it."
+
+"Is there no alternative?"
+
+"None in the world, sir."
+
+"I don't know my way to the place."
+
+"If you'd do me the honour, sir, to take my arm, I would lead you to the
+house."
+
+"It's hard--cruel hard on an old bachelor. Must it be twins? It's a
+rather large order."
+
+"It really must, sir."
+
+Then I saw David lend his arm to his former master and conduct him out
+of the churchyard, across the street, into the house of Seth Bowker, the
+shoemaker.
+
+I was so interested in the fate of my old friend, and so curious as to
+the result, that I followed, and went into the cobbler's house. I found
+myself in the little room on the ground floor. Seth Bowker was sitting
+over the fire with his face in his hands, swaying himself, and moaning:
+"Oh dear! dear life! whatever shall I do without her? and she the best
+woman as breathed, and knew all my little ways."
+
+Overhead was a trampling. The doctor and the midwife were with the
+woman. Seth looked up, and listened. Then he flung himself on his knees
+at the deal table, and prayed: "Oh, good God in heaven! have pity on me,
+and spare me my wife. I shall be a lost man without her--and no one to
+sew on my shirt-buttons!"
+
+At the moment I heard a feeble twitter aloft, then it grew in volume,
+and presently became cries. Seth looked up; his face was bathed in
+tears. Still that strange sound like the chirping of sparrows. He rose
+to his feet and made for the stairs, and held on to the banister.
+
+Forth from the chamber above came the doctor, and leisurely descended
+the stairs.
+
+"Well, Bowker," said he, "I congratulate you; you have two fine boys."
+
+"And my Sally--my wife?"
+
+"She has pulled through. But really, upon my soul, I did fear for her at
+one time. But she rallied marvellously."
+
+"Can I go up to her?"
+
+"In a minute or two, not just now, the babes are being washed."
+
+"And my wife will get over it?"
+
+"I trust so, Bowker; a new life came into her as she gave birth to
+twins."
+
+"God be praised!" Seth's mouth quivered, all his face worked, and he
+clasped his hands.
+
+Presently the door of the chamber upstairs was opened, the nurse looked
+down, and said: "Mr. Bowker, you may come up. Your wife wants you. Lawk!
+you will see the beautifullest twins that ever was."
+
+I followed Seth upstairs, and entered the sick-room. It was humble
+enough, with whitewashed walls, all scrupulously clean. The happy mother
+lay in the bed, her pale face on the pillow, but the eyes were lighted
+up with ineffable love and pride.
+
+"Kiss them, Bowker," said she, exhibiting at her side two little pink
+heads, with down on them. But her husband just stooped and pressed his
+lips to her brow, and after that kissed the tiny morsels at her side.
+
+"Ain't they loves!" exclaimed the midwife.
+
+But oh! what a rapture of triumph, pity, fervour, love, was in that
+mother's face, and--the eyes looking on those children were the eyes of
+Mr. Fothergill. Never had I seen such an expression in them, not even
+when he had exclaimed "Checkmate" over a game of chess.
+
+Then I knew what would follow. How night and day that mother would live
+only for her twins, how she would cheerfully sacrifice her night's rest
+to them; how she would go downstairs, even before it was judicious, to
+see to her husband's meals. Verily, with the mother's milk that fed
+those babes, the Black Ram would run out of the Fothergill soul. There
+was no need for me to tarry. I went forth, and as I issued into the
+street heard the clock strike one.
+
+"Bless me!" I exclaimed, "I have spent an hour in the porch. What will
+my wife say?"
+
+I walked home as fast as I could in my fur coat. When I arrived I found
+Bessie up.
+
+"Oh, Bessie!" said I, "with your cold you ought to have been in bed."
+
+"My dear Edward," she replied, "how could I? I had lain down, but when I
+heard of the accident I could not rest. Have you been hurt?"
+
+"My head is somewhat contused," I replied.
+
+"Let me feel. Indeed, it is burning. I will put on some cold
+compresses."
+
+"But, Bessie, I have a story to tell you."
+
+"Oh! never mind the story, we'll have that another day. I'll send for
+some ice from the fishmonger to-morrow for your head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did eventually tell my wife the story of my experience in the porch of
+Fifewell on St. Mark's eve.
+
+I have since regretted that I did so; for whenever I cross her will, or
+express my determination to do something of which she does not approve,
+she says: "Edward, Edward! I very much fear there is still in you too
+much Black Ram."
+
+
+
+
+A HAPPY RELEASE
+
+
+Mr. Benjamin Woolfield was a widower. For twelve months he put on
+mourning. The mourning was external, and by no means represented the
+condition of his feelings; for his married life had not been happy. He
+and Kesiah had been unequally yoked together. The Mosaic law forbade the
+union of the ox and the ass to draw one plough; and two more uncongenial
+creatures than Benjamin and Kesiah could hardly have been coupled to
+draw the matrimonial furrow.
+
+She was a Plymouth Sister, and he, as she repeatedly informed him
+whenever he indulged in light reading, laughed, smoked, went out
+shooting, or drank a glass of wine, was of the earth, earthy, and a
+miserable worldling.
+
+For some years Mr. Woolfield had been made to feel as though he were a
+moral and religious pariah. Kesiah had invited to the house and to
+meals, those of her own way of thinking, and on such occasions had
+spared no pains to have the table well served, for the elect are
+particular about their feeding, if indifferent as to their drinks. On
+such occasions, moreover, when Benjamin had sat at the bottom of his own
+table, he had been made to feel that he was a worm to be trodden on. The
+topics of conversation were such as were far beyond his horizon, and
+concerned matters of which he was ignorant. He attempted at intervals to
+enter into the circle of talk. He knew that such themes as football
+matches, horse races, and cricket were taboo, but he did suppose that
+home or foreign politics might interest the guests of Kesiah. But he
+soon learned that this was not the case, unless such matters tended to
+the fulfilment of prophecy.
+
+When, however, in his turn, Benjamin invited home to dinner some of his
+old friends, he found that all provided for them was hashed mutton,
+cottage pie, and tapioca pudding. But even these could have been
+stomached, had not Mrs. Woolfield sat stern and silent at the head of
+the table, not uttering a word, but giving vent to occasional, very
+audible sighs.
+
+When the year of mourning was well over, Mr. Woolfield put on a light
+suit, and contented himself, as an indication of bereavement, with a
+slight black band round the left arm. He also began to look about him
+for someone who might make up for the years during which he had felt
+like a crushed strawberry.
+
+And in casting his inquiring eye about, it lighted upon Philippa Weston,
+a bright, vigorous young lady, well educated and intelligent. She was
+aged twenty-four and he was but eighteen years older, a difference on
+the right side.
+
+It took Mr. Woolfield but a short courtship to reach an understanding,
+and he became engaged.
+
+On the same evening upon which he had received a satisfactory answer to
+the question put to her, and had pressed for an early marriage, to which
+also consent had been accorded, he sat by his study fire, with his hands
+on his knees, looking into the embers and building love-castles there.
+Then he smiled and patted his knees.
+
+He was startled from his honey reveries by a sniff. He looked round.
+There was a familiar ring in that sniff which was unpleasant to him.
+
+What he then saw dissipated his rosy dreams, and sent his blood to his
+heart.
+
+At the table sat his Kesiah, looking at him with her beady black eyes,
+and with stern lines in her face. He was so startled and shocked that he
+could not speak.
+
+"Benjamin," said the apparition, "I know your purpose. It shall never be
+carried to accomplishment. I will prevent it."
+
+"Prevent what, my love, my treasure?" he gathered up his faculties to
+reply.
+
+"It is in vain that you assume that infantile look of innocence," said
+his deceased wife. "You shall never--never--lead her to the hymeneal
+altar."
+
+"Lead whom, my idol? You astound me."
+
+"I know all. I can read your heart. A lost being though you be, you have
+still me to watch over you. When you quit this earthly tabernacle, if
+you have given up taking in the _Field_, and have come to realise your
+fallen condition, there is a chance--a distant chance--but yet one of
+our union becoming eternal."
+
+"You don't mean to say so," said Mr. Woolfield, his jaw falling.
+
+"There is--there is that to look to. That to lead you to turn over a new
+leaf. But it can never be if you become united to that Flibbertigibbet."
+
+Mentally, Benjamin said: "I must hurry up with my marriage!" Vocally he
+said: "Dear me! Dear me!"
+
+"My care for you is still so great," continued the apparition, "that I
+intend to haunt you by night and by day, till that engagement be broken
+off."
+
+"I would not put you to so much trouble," said he.
+
+"It is my duty," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield sternly.
+
+"You are oppressively kind," sighed the widower.
+
+At dinner that evening Mr. Woolfield had a friend to keep him company, a
+friend to whom he had poured out his heart. To his dismay, he saw seated
+opposite him the form of his deceased wife.
+
+He tried to be lively; he cracked jokes, but the sight of the grim face
+and the stony eyes riveted on him damped his spirits, and all his mirth
+died away.
+
+"You seem to be out of sorts to-night," said his friend.
+
+"I am sorry that I act so bad a host," apologised Mr. Woolfield. "Two is
+company, three is none."
+
+"But we are only two here to-night."
+
+"My wife is with me in spirit."
+
+"Which, she that was, or she that is to be?"
+
+Mr. Woolfield looked with timid eyes towards her who sat at the end of
+the table. She was raising her hands in holy horror, and her face was
+black with frowns.
+
+His friend said to himself when he left: "Oh, these lovers! They are
+never themselves so long as the fit lasts."
+
+Mr. Woolfield retired early to bed. When a man has screwed himself up to
+proposing to a lady, it has taken a great deal out of him, and nature
+demands rest. It was so with Benjamin; he was sleepy. A nice little fire
+burned in his grate. He undressed and slipped between the sheets.
+
+Before he put out the light he became aware that the late Mrs. Woolfield
+was standing by his bedside with a nightcap on her head.
+
+"I am cold," said she, "bitterly cold."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it, my dear," said Benjamin.
+
+"The grave is cold as ice," she said. "I am going to step into bed."
+
+"No--never!" exclaimed the widower, sitting up. "It won't do. It really
+won't. You will draw all the vital heat out of me, and I shall be laid
+up with rheumatic fever. It will be ten times worse than damp sheets."
+
+"I am coming to bed," repeated the deceased lady, inflexible as ever in
+carrying out her will.
+
+As she stepped in Mr. Woolfield crept out on the side of the fire and
+seated himself by the grate.
+
+He sat there some considerable time, and then, feeling cold, he fetched
+his dressing-gown and enveloped himself in that.
+
+He looked at the bed. In it lay the deceased lady with her long slit of
+a mouth shut like a rat-trap, and her hard eyes fixed on him.
+
+"It is of no use your thinking of marrying, Benjamin," she said. "I
+shall haunt you till you give it up."
+
+Mr. Woolfield sat by his fire all night, and only dozed off towards
+morning.
+
+During the day he called at the house of Miss Weston, and was shown into
+the drawing-room. But there, standing behind her chair, was his deceased
+wife with her arms folded on the back of the seat, glowering at him.
+
+It was impossible for the usual tender passages to ensue between the
+lovers with a witness present, expressing by gesture her disapproval of
+such matters and her inflexible determination to force on a rupture.
+
+The dear departed did not attend Mr. Woolfield continuously during the
+day, but appeared at intervals. He could never say when he would be
+free, when she would not turn up.
+
+In the evening he rang for the housemaid. "Jemima," he said, "put two
+hot bottles into my bed to-night. It is somewhat chilly."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And let the water be boiling--not with the chill off."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When somewhat late Mr. Woolfield retired to his room he found, as he had
+feared, that his late wife was there before him. She lay in the bed with
+her mouth snapped, her eyes like black balls, staring at him.
+
+"My dear," said Benjamin, "I hope you are more comfortable."
+
+"I'm cold, deadly cold."
+
+"But I trust you are enjoying the hot bottles."
+
+"I lack animal heat," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield.
+
+Benjamin fled the room and returned to his study, where he unlocked his
+spirit case and filled his pipe. The fire was burning. He made it up. He
+would sit there all night During the passing hours, however, he was not
+left quite alone. At intervals the door was gently opened, and the
+night-capped head of the late Mrs. Woolfield was thrust in.
+
+"Don't think, Benjamin, that your engagement will lead to anything," she
+would say, "because it will not. I shall stop it."
+
+So time passed. Mr. Woolfield found it impossible to escape this
+persecution. He lost spirits; he lost flesh.
+
+At last, after sad thought, he saw but one way of relief, and that was
+to submit. And in order to break off the engagement he must have a
+prolonged interview with Philippa. He went to the theatre and bought two
+stall tickets, and sent one to her with the earnest request that she
+would accept it and meet him that evening at the theatre. He had
+something to communicate of the utmost importance.
+
+At the theatre he knew that he would be safe; the principles of Kesiah
+would not suffer her to enter there.
+
+At the proper time Mr. Woolfield drove round to Miss Weston's, picked
+her up, and together they went to the theatre and took their places in
+the stalls. Their seats were side by side.
+
+"I am so glad you have been able to come," said Benjamin. "I have a most
+shocking disclosure to make to you. I am afraid that--but I hardly know
+how to say it--that--I really must break it off."
+
+"Break what off?"
+
+"Our engagement."
+
+"Nonsense. I have been fitted for my trousseau."
+
+"Your what?"
+
+"My wedding-dresses."
+
+"Oh, I beg pardon. I did not understand your French pronunciation. I
+thought--but it does not matter what I thought."
+
+"Pray what is the sense of this?"
+
+"Philippa, my affection for you is unabated. Do not suppose that I love
+you one whit the less. But I am oppressed by a horrible
+nightmare--daymare as well. I am haunted."
+
+"Haunted, indeed!"
+
+"Yes; by my late wife. She allows me no peace. She has made up her mind
+that I shall not marry you."
+
+"Oh! Is that all? I am haunted also."
+
+"Surely not?"
+
+"It is a fact."
+
+"Hush, hush!" from persons in front and at the side. Neither Ben nor
+Philippa had noticed that the curtain had risen and that the play had
+begun.
+
+"We are disturbing the audience," whispered Mr. Woolfield. "Let us go
+out into the passage and promenade there, and then we can talk freely."
+
+So both rose, left their stalls, and went into the _couloir_.
+
+"Look here, Philippa," said he, offering the girl his arm, which she
+took, "the case is serious. I am badgered out of my reason, out of my
+health, by the late Mrs. Woolfield. She always had an iron will, and she
+has intimated to me that she will force me to give you up."
+
+"Defy her."
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"Tut! these ghosts are exacting. Give them an inch and they take an ell.
+They are like old servants; if you yield to them they tyrannise over
+you."
+
+"But how do you know, Philippa, dearest?"
+
+"Because, as I said, I also am haunted."
+
+"That only makes the matter more hopeless."
+
+"On the contrary, it only shows how well suited we are to each other. We
+are in one box."
+
+"Philippa, it is a dreadful thing. When my wife was dying she told me
+she was going to a better world, and that we should never meet again.
+_And she has not kept her word._"
+
+The girl laughed. "Rag her with it."
+
+"How can I?"
+
+"You can do it perfectly. Ask her why she is left out in the cold. Give
+her a piece of your mind. Make it unpleasant for her. I give Jehu no
+good time."
+
+"Who is Jehu?"
+
+"Jehu Post is the ghost who haunts me. When in the flesh he was a great
+admirer of mine, and in his cumbrous way tried to court me; but I never
+liked him, and gave him no encouragement. I snubbed him unmercifully,
+but he was one of those self-satisfied, self-assured creatures incapable
+of taking a snubbing. He was a Plymouth Brother."
+
+"My wife was a Plymouth Sister."
+
+"I know she was, and I always felt for you. It was so sad. Well, to go
+on with my story. In a frivolous mood Jehu took to a bicycle, and the
+very first time he scorched he was thrown, and so injured his back that
+he died in a week. Before he departed he entreated that I would see him;
+so I could not be nasty, and I went. And he told me then that he was
+about to be wrapped in glory. I asked him if this were so certain.
+'Cocksure' was his reply; and they were his last words. And _he has not
+kept his word_."
+
+"And he haunts you now?"
+
+"Yes. He dangles about with his great ox-eyes fixed on me. But as to his
+envelope of glory I have not seen a fag end of it, and I have told him
+so."
+
+"Do you really mean this, Philippa?"
+
+"I do. He wrings his hands and sighs. He gets no change out of me, I
+promise you."
+
+"This is a very strange condition of affairs."
+
+"It only shows how well matched we are. I do not suppose you will find
+two other people in England so situated as we are, and therefore so
+admirably suited to one another."
+
+"There is much in what you say. But how are we to rid ourselves of the
+nuisance--for it is a nuisance being thus haunted. We cannot spend all
+our time in a theatre."
+
+"We must defy them. Marry in spite of them."
+
+"I never did defy my wife when she was alive. I do not know how to pluck
+up courage now that she is dead. Feel my hand, Philippa, how it
+trembles. She has broken my nerve. When I was young I could play
+spellikins--my hand was so steady. Now I am quite incapable of doing
+anything with the little sticks."
+
+"Well, hearken to what I propose," said Miss Weston. "I will beard the
+old cat----"
+
+"Hush, not so disrespectful; she was my wife."
+
+"Well, then, the ghostly old lady, in her den. You think she will appear
+if I go to pay you a visit?"
+
+"Sure of it. She is consumed with jealousy. She had no personal
+attractions herself, and you have a thousand. I never knew whether she
+loved me, but she was always confoundedly jealous of me."
+
+"Very well, then. You have often spoken to me about changes in the
+decoration of your villa. Suppose I call on you to-morrow afternoon, and
+you shall show me what your schemes are."
+
+"And your ghost, will he attend you?"
+
+"Most probably. He also is as jealous as a ghost can well be."
+
+"Well, so be it. I shall await your coming with impatience. Now, then,
+we may as well go to our respective homes."
+
+A cab was accordingly summoned, and after Mr. Woolfield had handed
+Philippa in, and she had taken her seat in the back, he entered and
+planted himself with his back to the driver.
+
+"Why do you not sit by me?" asked the girl.
+
+"I can't," replied Benjamin. "Perhaps you may not see, but I do, my
+deceased wife is in the cab, and occupies the place on your left."
+
+"Sit on her," urged Philippa.
+
+"I haven't the effrontery to do it," gasped Ben.
+
+"Will you believe me," whispered the young lady, leaning over to speak
+to Mr. Woolfield, "I have seen Jehu Post hovering about the theatre
+door, wringing his white hands and turning up his eyes. I suspect he is
+running after the cab."
+
+As soon as Mr. Woolfield had deposited his bride-elect at her residence
+he ordered the cabman to drive him home. Then he was alone in the
+conveyance with the ghost. As each gaslight was passed the flash came
+over the cadaverous face opposite him, and sparks of fire kindled
+momentarily in the stony eyes.
+
+"Benjamin!" she said, "Benjamin! Oh, Benjamin! Do not suppose that I
+shall permit it. You may writhe and twist, you may plot and contrive how
+you will, I will stand between you and her as a wall of ice."
+
+Next day, in the afternoon, Philippa Weston arrived at the house. The
+late Mrs. Woolfield had, however, apparently obtained an inkling of what
+was intended, for she was already there, in the drawing-room, seated in
+an armchair with her hands raised and clasped, looking stonily before
+her. She had a white face, no lips that showed, and her dark hair was
+dressed in two black slabs, one on each side of the temples. It was done
+in a knot behind. She wore no ornaments of any kind.
+
+In came Miss Weston, a pretty girl, coquettishly dressed in colours,
+with sparkling eyes and laughing lips. As she had predicted, she was
+followed by her attendant spectre, a tall, gaunt young man in a black
+frock-coat, with a melancholy face and large ox-eyes. He shambled in
+shyly, looking from side to side. He had white hands and long, lean
+fingers. Every now and then he put his hands behind him, up his back,
+under the tails of his coat, and rubbed his spine where he had received
+his mortal injury in cycling. Almost as soon as he entered he noticed
+the ghost of Mrs. Woolfield that was, and made an awkward bow. Her
+eyebrows rose, and a faint wintry smile of recognition lighted up her
+cheeks.
+
+"I believe I have the honour of saluting Sister Kesiah," said the ghost
+of Jehu Post, and he assumed a posture of ecstasy.
+
+"It is even so, Brother Jehu."
+
+"And how do you find yourself, sister--out of the flesh?"
+
+The late Mrs. Woolfield looked disconcerted, hesitated a moment, as if
+she found some difficulty in answering, and then, after a while, said:
+"I suppose, much as do you, brother."
+
+"It is a melancholy duty that detains me here below," said Jehu Post's
+ghost.
+
+"The same may be said of me," observed the spirit of the deceased Mrs.
+Woolfield. "Pray take a chair."
+
+"I am greatly obliged, sister. My back----"
+
+Philippa nudged Benjamin, and unobserved by the ghosts, both slipped
+into the adjoining room by a doorway over which hung velvet curtains.
+
+In this room, on the table, Mr. Woolfield had collected patterns of
+chintzes and books of wall-papers.
+
+There the engaged pair remained, discussing what curtains would go with
+the chintz coverings of the sofa and chairs, and what papers would
+harmonise with both.
+
+"I see," said Philippa, "that you have plates hung on the walls. I don't
+like them: it is no longer in good form. If they be worth anything you
+must have a cabinet with glass doors for the china. How about the
+carpets?"
+
+"There is the drawing-room," said Benjamin.
+
+"No, we won't go in there and disturb the ghosts," said Philippa. "We'll
+take the drawing-room for granted."
+
+"Well--come with me to the dining-room. We can reach it by another
+door."
+
+In the room they now entered the carpet was in fairly good condition,
+except at the head and bottom of the table, where it was worn. This was
+especially the case at the bottom, where Mr. Woolfield had usually sat.
+There, when his wife had lectured, moralised, and harangued, he had
+rubbed his feet up and down and had fretted the nap off the Brussels
+carpet.
+
+"I think," remarked Philippa, "that we can turn it about, and by taking
+out one width and putting that under the bookcase and inserting the
+strip that was there in its room, we can save the expense of a new
+carpet. But--the engravings--those Landseers. What do you think of them,
+Ben, dear?"
+
+She pointed to the two familiar engravings of the "Deer in Winter," and
+"Dignity and Impudence."
+
+"Don't you think, Ben, that one has got a little tired of those
+pictures?"
+
+"My late wife did not object to them, they were so perfectly harmless."
+
+"But your coming wife does. We will have something more up-to-date in
+their room. By the way, I wonder how the ghosts are getting on. They
+have let us alone so far. I will run back and have a peep at them
+through the curtains."
+
+The lively girl left the dining apartment, and her husband-elect,
+studying the pictures to which Philippa had objected. Presently she
+returned.
+
+"Oh, Ben! such fun!" she said, laughing. "My ghost has drawn up his
+chair close to that of the late Mrs. Woolfield, and is fondling her
+hand. But I believe that they are only talking goody-goody."
+
+[Illustration: "I BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE TALKING GOODY-GOODY."]
+
+"And now about the china," said Mr. Woolfield. "It is in a closet near
+the pantry--that is to say, the best china. I will get a benzoline lamp,
+and we will examine it. We had it out only when Mrs. Woolfield had a
+party of her elect brothers and sisters. I fear a good deal is broken.
+I know that the soup tureen has lost a lid, and I believe we are short
+of vegetable dishes. How many plates remain I do not know. We had a
+parlourmaid, Dorcas, who was a sad smasher, but as she was one who had
+made her election sure, my late wife would not part with her."
+
+"And how are you off for glass?"
+
+"The wine-glasses are fairly complete. I fancy the cut-glass decanters
+are in a bad way. My late wife chipped them, I really believe out of
+spite."
+
+It took the couple some time to go through the china and the glass.
+
+"And the plate?" asked Philippa.
+
+"Oh, that is right. All the real old silver is at the bank, as Kesiah
+preferred plated goods."
+
+"How about the kitchen utensils?"
+
+"Upon my word I cannot say. We had a rather nice-looking cook, and so my
+late wife never allowed me to step inside the kitchen."
+
+"Is she here still?" inquired Philippa sharply.
+
+"No; my wife, when she was dying, gave her the sack."
+
+"Bless me, Ben!" exclaimed Philippa. "It is growing dark. I have been
+here an age. I really must go home. I wonder the ghosts have not worried
+us. I'll have another look at them."
+
+She tripped off.
+
+In five minutes she was back. She stood for a minute looking at Mr.
+Woolfield, laughing so heartily that she had to hold her sides.
+
+"What is it, Philippa?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, Ben! A happy release. They will never dare to show their faces
+again. They have eloped together."
+
+
+
+
+THE 9.30 UP-TRAIN
+
+
+In a well-authenticated ghost story, names and dates should be
+distinctly specified. In the following story I am unfortunately able to
+give only the year and the month, for I have forgotten the date of the
+day, and I do not keep a diary. With regard to names, my own figures as
+a guarantee as that of the principal personage to whom the following
+extraordinary circumstances occurred, but the minor actors are provided
+with fictitious names, for I am not warranted to make their real ones
+public. I may add that the believer in ghosts may make use of the facts
+which I relate to establish his theories, if he finds that they will be
+of service to him--when he has read through and weighed well the
+startling account which I am about to give from my own experiences.
+
+On a fine evening in June, 1860, I paid a visit to Mrs. Lyons, on my way
+to the Hassocks Gate Station, on the London and Brighton line. This
+station is the first out of Brighton.
+
+As I rose to leave, I mentioned to the lady whom I was visiting that I
+expected a parcel of books from town, and that I was going to the
+station to inquire whether it had arrived.
+
+"Oh!" said she, readily, "I expect Dr. Lyons out from Brighton by the
+9.30 train; if you like to drive the pony chaise down and meet him, you
+are welcome, and you can bring your parcel back with you in it."
+
+I gladly accepted her offer, and in a few minutes I was seated in a
+little low basket-carriage, drawn by a pretty iron-grey Welsh pony.
+
+The station road commands the line of the South Downs from Chantonbury
+Ring, with its cap of dark firs, to Mount Harry, the scene of the
+memorable battle of Lewes. Woolsonbury stands out like a headland above
+the dark Danny woods, over which the rooks were wheeling and cawing
+previous to settling themselves in for the night. Ditchling beacon--its
+steep sides gashed with chalk-pits--was faintly flushed with light. The
+Clayton windmills, with their sails motionless, stood out darkly against
+the green evening sky. Close beneath opens the tunnel in which, not so
+long before, had happened one of the most fearful railway accidents on
+record.
+
+The evening was exquisite. The sky was kindled with light, though the
+sun was set. A few gilded bars of cloud lay in the west. Two or three
+stars looked forth--one I noticed twinkling green, crimson, and gold,
+like a gem. From a field of young wheat hard by I heard the harsh,
+grating note of the corncrake. Mist was lying on the low meadows like a
+mantle of snow, pure, smooth, and white; the cattle stood in it to their
+knees. The effect was so singular that I drew up to look at it
+attentively. At the same moment I heard the scream of an engine, and on
+looking towards the downs I noticed the up-train shooting out of the
+tunnel, its red signal lamps flashing brightly out of the purple gloom
+which bathed the roots of the hills.
+
+Seeing that I was late, I whipped the Welsh pony on, and proceeded at a
+fast trot.
+
+At about a quarter mile from the station there is a turnpike--an
+odd-looking building, tenanted then by a strange old man, usually
+dressed in a white smock, over which his long white beard flowed to his
+breast. This toll-collector--he is dead now--had amused himself in
+bygone days by carving life-size heads out of wood, and these were stuck
+along the eaves. One is the face of a drunkard, round and blotched,
+leering out of misty eyes at the passers-by; the next has the crumpled
+features of a miser, worn out with toil and moil; a third has the wild
+scowl of a maniac; and a fourth the stare of an idiot.
+
+I drove past, flinging the toll to the door, and shouting to the old man
+to pick it up, for I was in a vast hurry to reach the station before Dr.
+Lyons left it. I whipped the little pony on, and he began to trot down a
+cutting in the greensand, through which leads the station road.
+
+Suddenly, Taffy stood still, planted his feet resolutely on the ground,
+threw up his head, snorted, and refused to move a peg. I "gee-uped," and
+"tshed," all to no purpose; not a step would the little fellow advance.
+I saw that he was thoroughly alarmed; his flanks were quivering, and his
+ears were thrown back. I was on the point of leaving the chaise, when
+the pony made a bound on one side and ran the carriage up into the
+hedge, thereby upsetting me on the road. I picked myself up, and took
+the beast's head. I could not conceive what had frightened him; there
+was positively nothing to be seen, except a puff of dust running up the
+road, such as might be blown along by a passing current of air. There
+was nothing to be heard, except the rattle of a gig or tax-cart with one
+wheel loose: probably a vehicle of this kind was being driven down the
+London road, which branches off at the turnpike at right angles. The
+sound became fainter, and at last died away in the distance.
+
+The pony now no longer refused to advance. It trembled violently, and
+was covered with sweat.
+
+"Well, upon my word, you have been driving hard!" exclaimed Dr. Lyons,
+when I met him at the station.
+
+"I have not, indeed," was my reply; "but something has frightened Taffy,
+but what that something was, is more than I can tell."
+
+"Oh, ah!" said the doctor, looking round with a certain degree of
+interest in his face; "so you met it, did you?"
+
+"Met what?"
+
+"Oh, nothing;--only I have heard of horses being frightened along this
+road after the arrival of the 9.30 up-train. Flys never leave the moment
+that the train comes in, or the horses become restive--a wonderful thing
+for a fly-horse to become restive, isn't it?"
+
+"But what causes this alarm? I saw nothing!"
+
+"You ask me more than I can answer. I am as ignorant of the cause as
+yourself. I take things as they stand, and make no inquiries. When the
+flyman tells me that he can't start for a minute or two after the train
+has arrived, or urges on his horses to reach the station before the
+arrival of this train, giving as his reason that his brutes become wild
+if he does not do so, then I merely say, 'Do as you think best, cabby,'
+and bother my head no more about the matter."
+
+"I shall search this matter out," said I resolutely. "What has taken
+place so strangely corroborates the superstition, that I shall not leave
+it uninvestigated."
+
+"Take my advice and banish it from your thoughts. When you have come to
+the end, you will be sadly disappointed, and will find that all the
+mystery evaporates, and leaves a dull, commonplace residuum. It is best
+that the few mysteries which remain to us unexplained should still
+remain mysteries, or we shall disbelieve in supernatural agencies
+altogether. We have searched out the arcana of nature, and exposed all
+her secrets to the garish eye of day, and we find, in despair, that the
+poetry and romance of life are gone. Are we the happier for knowing that
+there are no ghosts, no fairies, no witches, no mermaids, no wood
+spirits? Were not our forefathers happier in thinking every lake to be
+the abode of a fairy, every forest to be a bower of yellow-haired
+sylphs, every moorland sweep to be tripped over by elf and pixie? I
+found my little boy one day lying on his face in a fairy-ring, crying:
+'You dear, dear little fairies, I _will_ believe in you, though papa
+says you are all nonsense.' I used, in my childish days, to think, when
+a silence fell upon a company, that an angel was passing through the
+room. Alas! I now know that it results only from the subject of weather
+having been talked to death, and no new subject having been started.
+Believe me, science has done good to mankind, but it has done mischief
+too. If we wish to be poetical or romantic, we must shut our eyes to
+facts. The head and the heart wage mutual war now. A lover preserves a
+lock of his mistress's hair as a holy relic, yet he must know perfectly
+well that for all practical purposes a bit of rhinoceros hide would do
+as well--the chemical constituents are identical. If I adore a fair
+lady, and feel a thrill through all my veins when I touch her hand, a
+moment's consideration tells me that phosphate of lime No. 1 is touching
+phosphate of lime No. 2--nothing more. If for a moment I forget myself
+so far as to wave my cap and cheer for king, or queen, or prince, I
+laugh at my folly next moment for having paid reverence to one digesting
+machine above another."
+
+I cut the doctor short as he was lapsing into his favourite subject of
+discussion, and asked him whether he would lend me the pony-chaise on
+the following evening, that I might drive to the station again and try
+to unravel the mystery.
+
+"I will lend you the pony," said he, "but not the chaise, as I am afraid
+of its being injured should Taffy take fright and run up into the hedge
+again. I have got a saddle."
+
+Next evening I was on my way to the station considerably before the time
+at which the train was due.
+
+I stopped at the turnpike and chatted with the old man who kept it. I
+asked him whether he could throw any light on the matter which I was
+investigating. He shrugged his shoulders, saying that he "knowed nothink
+about it."
+
+"What! Nothing at all?"
+
+"I don't trouble my head with matters of this sort," was the reply.
+"People _do_ say that something out of the common sort passes along the
+road and turns down the other road leading to Clayton and Brighton; but
+I pays no attention to what them people says."
+
+"Do you ever hear anything?"
+
+"After the arrival of the 9.30 train I does at times hear the rattle as
+of a mail-cart and the trot of a horse along the road; and the sound is
+as though one of the wheels was loose. I've a been out many a time to
+take the toll; but, Lor' bless 'ee! them sperits--if sperits them
+be--don't go for to pay toll."
+
+"Have you never inquired into the matter?"
+
+"Why should I? Anythink as don't go for to pay toll don't concern me. Do
+ye think as I knows 'ow many people and dogs goes through this heer
+geatt in a day? Not I--them don't pay toll, so them's no odds to me."
+
+"Look here, my man!" said I. "Do you object to my putting the bar across
+the road, immediately on the arrival of the train?"
+
+"Not a bit! Please yersel'; but you han't got much time to lose, for
+theer comes thickey train out of Clayton tunnel."
+
+I shut the gate, mounted Taffy, and drew up across the road a little way
+below the turnpike. I heard the train arrive--I saw it puff off. At the
+same moment I distinctly heard a trap coming up the road, one of the
+wheels rattling as though it were loose. I repeat deliberately that I
+_heard_ it--I cannot account for it--but, though I heard it, yet I saw
+nothing whatever.
+
+At the same time the pony became restless, it tossed its head, pricked
+up its ears, it started, pranced, and then made a bound to one side,
+entirely regardless of whip and rein. It tried to scramble up the
+sand-bank in its alarm, and I had to throw myself off and catch its
+head. I then cast a glance behind me at the turnpike. I saw the bar
+bent, as though someone were pressing against it; then, with a click, it
+flew open, and was dashed violently back against the white post to
+which it was usually hasped in the day-time. There it remained,
+quivering from the shock.
+
+Immediately I heard the rattle--rattle--rattle--of the tax-cart. I
+confess that my first impulse was to laugh, the idea of a ghostly
+tax-cart was so essentially ludicrous; but the _reality_ of the whole
+scene soon brought me to a graver mood, and, remounting Taffy, I rode
+down to the station.
+
+The officials were taking their ease, as another train was not due for
+some while; so I stepped up to the station-master and entered into
+conversation with him. After a few desultory remarks, I mentioned the
+circumstances which had occurred to me on the road, and my inability to
+account for them.
+
+"So that's what you're after!" said the master somewhat bluntly. "Well,
+I can tell you nothing about it; sperits don't come in my way, saving
+and excepting those which can be taken inwardly; and mighty comfortable
+warming things they be when so taken. If you ask me about other sorts of
+sperits, I tell you flat I don't believe in 'em, though I don't mind
+drinking the health of them what does."
+
+"Perhaps you may have the chance, if you are a little more
+communicative," said I.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you all I know, and that is precious little," answered
+the worthy man. "I know one thing for certain--that one compartment of a
+second-class carriage is always left vacant between Brighton and
+Hassocks Gate, by the 9.30 up-train."
+
+"For what purpose?"
+
+"Ah! that's more than I can fully explain. Before the orders came to
+this effect, people went into fits and that like, in one of the
+carriages."
+
+"Any particular carriage?"
+
+"The first compartment of the second-class carriage nearest to the
+engine. It is locked at Brighton, and I unlock it at this station."
+
+"What do you mean by saying that people had fits?"
+
+"I mean that I used to find men and women a-screeching and a-hollering
+like mad to be let out; they'd seen some'ut as had frightened them as
+they was passing through the Clayton tunnel. That was before they made
+the arrangement I told y' of."
+
+"Very strange!" said I meditatively.
+
+"Wery much so, but true for all that. _I_ don't believe in nothing but
+sperits of a warming and cheering nature, and them sort ain't to be
+found in Clayton tunn'l to my thinking."
+
+There was evidently nothing more to be got out of my friend. I hope that
+he drank my health that night; if he omitted to do so, it was his fault,
+not mine.
+
+As I rode home revolving in my mind all that I had heard and seen, I
+became more and more settled in my determination to thoroughly
+investigate the matter. The best means that I could adopt for so doing
+would be to come out from Brighton by the 9.30 train in the very
+compartment of the second-class carriage from which the public were
+considerately excluded.
+
+Somehow I felt no shrinking from the attempt; my curiosity was so
+intense that it overcame all apprehension as to the consequences.
+
+My next free day was Thursday, and I hoped then to execute my plan. In
+this, however, I was disappointed, as I found that a battalion drill was
+fixed for that very evening, and I was desirous of attending it, being
+somewhat behindhand in the regulation number of drills. I was
+consequently obliged to postpone my Brighton trip.
+
+On the Thursday evening about five o'clock I started in regimentals with
+my rifle over my shoulder, for the drilling ground--a piece of furzy
+common near the railway station.
+
+I was speedily overtaken by Mr. Ball, a corporal in the rifle corps, a
+capital shot and most efficient in his drill. Mr. Ball was driving his
+gig. He stopped on seeing me and offered me a seat beside him. I gladly
+accepted, as the distance to the station is a mile and three-quarters by
+the road, and two miles by what is commonly supposed to be the short cut
+across the fields.
+
+After some conversation on volunteering matters, about which Corporal
+Ball was an enthusiast, we turned out of the lanes into the station
+road, and I took the opportunity of adverting to the subject which was
+uppermost in my mind.
+
+"Ah! I have heard a good deal about that," said the corporal. "My
+workmen have often told me some cock-and-bull stories of that kind, but
+I can't say has 'ow I believed them. What you tell me is, 'owever, very
+remarkable. I never 'ad it on such good authority afore. Still, I can't
+believe that there's hanything supernatural about it."
+
+"I do not yet know what to believe," I replied, "for the whole matter is
+to me perfectly inexplicable."
+
+"You know, of course, the story which gave rise to the superstition?"
+
+"Not I. Pray tell it me."
+
+"Just about seven years agone--why, you must remember the circumstances
+as well as I do--there was a man druv over from I can't say where, for
+that was never exact-ly hascertained,--but from the Henfield direction,
+in a light cart. He went to the Station Inn, and throwing the reins to
+John Thomas, the ostler, bade him take the trap and bring it round to
+meet the 9.30 train, by which he calculated to return from Brighton.
+John Thomas said as 'ow the stranger was quite unbeknown to him, and
+that he looked as though he 'ad some matter on his mind when he went to
+the train; he was a queer sort of a man, with thick grey hair and beard,
+and delicate white 'ands, jist like a lady's. The trap was round to the
+station door as hordered by the arrival of the 9.30 train. The ostler
+observed then that the man was ashen pale, and that his 'ands trembled
+as he took the reins, that the stranger stared at him in a wild
+habstracted way, and that he would have driven off without tendering
+payment had he not been respectfully reminded that the 'orse had been
+given a feed of hoats. John Thomas made a hobservation to the gent
+relative to the wheel which was loose, but that hobservation met with no
+corresponding hanswer. The driver whipped his 'orse and went off. He
+passed the turnpike, and was seen to take the Brighton road hinstead of
+that by which he had come. A workman hobserved the trap next on the
+downs above Clayton chalk-pits. He didn't pay much attention to it, but
+he saw that the driver was on his legs at the 'ead of the 'orse. Next,
+morning, when the quarrymen went to the pit, they found a shattered
+tax-cart at the bottom, and the 'orse and driver dead, the latter with
+his neck broken. What was curious, too, was that an 'andkerchief was
+bound round the brute's heyes, so that he must have been driven over the
+edge blindfold. Hodd, wasn't it? Well, folks say that the gent and his
+tax-cart pass along the road every hevening after the arrival of the
+9.30 train; but I don't believe it; I ain't a bit superstitious--not I!"
+
+Next week I was again disappointed in my expectation of being able to
+put my scheme in execution; but on the third Saturday after my
+conversation with Corporal Ball, I walked into Brighton in the
+afternoon, the distance being about nine miles. I spent an hour on the
+shore watching the boats, and then I sauntered round the Pavilion,
+ardently longing that fire might break forth and consume that
+architectural monstrosity. I believe that I afterwards had a cup of
+coffee at the refreshment-rooms of the station, and capital
+refreshment-rooms they are, or were--very moderate and very good. I
+think that I partook of a bun, but if put on my oath I could not swear
+to the fact; a floating reminiscence of bun lingers in the chambers of
+memory, but I cannot be positive, and I wish in this paper to advance
+nothing but reliable facts. I squandered precious time in reading the
+advertisements of baby-jumpers--which no mother should be without--which
+are indispensable in the nursery and the greatest acquisition in the
+parlour, the greatest discovery of modern times, etc., etc. I perused a
+notice of the advantage of metallic brushes, and admired the young lady
+with her hair white on one side and black on the other; I studied the
+Chinese letter commendatory of Horniman's tea and the inferior English
+translation, and counted up the number of agents in Great Britain and
+Ireland. At length the ticket-office opened, and I booked for Hassocks
+Gate, second class, fare one shilling.
+
+I ran along the platform till I came to the compartment of the
+second-class carriage which I wanted. The door was locked, so I shouted
+for a guard.
+
+"Put me in here, please."
+
+"Can't there, s'r; next, please, nearly empty, one woman and baby."
+
+"I particularly wish to enter _this_ carriage," said I.
+
+"Can't be, lock'd, orders, comp'ny," replied the guard, turning on his
+heel.
+
+"What reason is there for the public's being excluded, may I ask?"
+
+"Dn'ow, 'spress ord'rs--c'n't let you in; next caridge, pl'se; now then,
+quick, pl'se."
+
+I knew the guard and he knew me--by sight, for I often travelled to and
+fro on the line, so I thought it best to be candid with him. I briefly
+told him my reason for making the request, and begged him to assist me
+in executing my plan. He then consented, though with reluctance.
+
+"'Ave y'r own way," said he; "only if an'thing 'appens, don't blame me!"
+
+"Never fear," laughed I, jumping into the carriage.
+
+The guard left the carriage unlocked, and in two minutes we were off.
+
+I did not feel in the slightest degree nervous. There was no light in
+the carriage, but that did not matter, as there was twilight. I sat
+facing the engine on the left side, and every now and then I looked out
+at the downs with a soft haze of light still hanging over them. We swept
+into a cutting, and I watched the lines of flint in the chalk, and
+longed to be geologising among them with my hammer, picking out
+"shepherds' crowns" and sharks' teeth, the delicate rhynconella and the
+quaint ventriculite. I remembered a not very distant occasion on which I
+had actually ventured there, and been chased off by the guard, after
+having brought down an avalanche of chalk d�bris in a manner dangerous
+to traffic whilst endeavouring to extricate a magnificent ammonite which
+I found, and--alas! left--protruding from the side of the cutting. I
+wondered whether that ammonite was still there; I looked about to
+identify the exact spot as we whizzed along; and at that moment we shot
+into the tunnel.
+
+There are two tunnels, with a bit of chalk cutting between them. We
+passed through the first, which is short, and in another moment plunged
+into the second.
+
+I cannot explain how it was that _now_, all of a sudden, a feeling of
+terror came over me; it seemed to drop over me like a wet sheet and wrap
+me round and round.
+
+I felt that _someone_ was seated opposite me--someone in the darkness
+with his eyes fixed on me.
+
+Many persons possessed of keen nervous sensibility are well aware when
+they are in the presence of another, even though they can see no one,
+and I believe that I possess this power strongly. If I were blindfolded,
+I think that I should know when anyone was looking fixedly at me, and I
+am certain that I should instinctively know that I was not alone if I
+entered a dark room in which another person was seated, even though he
+made no noise. I remember a college friend of mine, who dabbled in
+anatomy, telling me that a little Italian violinist once called on him
+to give a lesson on his instrument. The foreigner--a singularly nervous
+individual--moved restlessly from the place where he had been standing,
+casting many a furtive glance over his shoulder at a press which was
+behind him. At last the little fellow tossed aside his violin, saying--
+
+"I can note give de lesson if someone weel look at me from behind! Dare
+is somebodee in de cupboard, I know!"
+
+"You are right, there is!" laughed my anatomical friend, flinging open
+the door of the press and discovering a skeleton.
+
+The horror which oppressed me was numbing. For a few moments I could
+neither lift my hands nor stir a finger. I was tongue-tied. I seemed
+paralysed in every member. I fancied that I _felt_ eyes staring at me
+through the gloom. A cold breath seemed to play over my face. I believed
+that fingers touched my chest and plucked at my coat. I drew back
+against the partition; my heart stood still, my flesh became stiff, my
+muscles rigid.
+
+I do not know whether I breathed--a blue mist swam before my eyes, and
+my head span.
+
+The rattle and roar of the train dashing through the tunnel drowned
+every other sound.
+
+Suddenly we rushed past a light fixed against the wall in the side, and
+it sent a flash, instantaneous as that of lightning, through the
+carriage. In that moment I saw what I shall never, never forget. I saw a
+face opposite me, livid as that of a corpse, hideous with passion like
+that of a gorilla.
+
+I cannot describe it accurately, for I saw it but for a second; yet
+there rises before me now, as I write, the low broad brow seamed with
+wrinkles, the shaggy, over-hanging grey eyebrows; the wild ashen eyes,
+which glared as those of a demoniac; the coarse mouth, with its fleshy
+lips compressed till they were white; the profusion of wolf-grey hair
+about the cheeks and chin; the thin, bloodless hands, raised and
+half-open, extended towards me as though they would clutch and tear me.
+
+In the madness of terror, I flung myself along the seat to the further
+window.
+
+Then I felt that _it_ was moving slowly down, and was opposite me again.
+I lifted my hand to let down the window, and I touched something: I
+thought it was a hand--yes, yes! it _was_ a hand, for it folded over
+mine and began to contract on it. I felt each finger separately; they
+were cold, dully cold. I wrenched my hand away. I slipped back to my
+former place in the carriage by the open window, and in frantic horror I
+opened the door, clinging to it with both my hands round the
+window-jamb, swung myself out with my feet on the floor and my head
+turned from the carriage. If the cold fingers had but touched my woven
+hands, mine would have given way; had I but turned my head and seen that
+hellish countenance peering out at me, I must have lost my hold.
+
+Ah! I saw the light from the tunnel mouth; it smote on my face. The
+engine rushed out with a piercing whistle. The roaring echoes of the
+tunnel died away. The cool fresh breeze blew over my face and tossed my
+hair; the speed of the train was relaxed; the lights of the station
+became brighter. I heard the bell ringing loudly; I saw people waiting
+for the train; I felt the vibration as the brake was put on. We stopped;
+and then my fingers gave way. I dropped as a sack on the platform, and
+then, then--not till then--I awoke. There now! from beginning to end the
+whole had been a frightful dream caused by my having too many blankets
+over my bed. If I must append a moral--Don't sleep too hot.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE LEADS
+
+
+Having realised a competence in Australia, and having a hankering after
+country life for the remainder of my days in the old home, on my return
+to England I went to an agent with the object of renting a house with
+shooting attached, over at least three thousand acres, with the option
+of a purchase should the place suit me. I was no more intending to buy a
+country seat without having tried what it was like, than is a king
+disposed to go to war without knowing something of the force that can be
+brought against him. I was rather taken with photographs of a manor
+called Fernwood, and I was still further engaged when I saw the place
+itself on a beautiful October day, when St. Luke's summer was turning
+the country into a world of rainbow tints under a warm sun, and a soft
+vaporous blue haze tinted all shadows cobalt, and gave to the hills a
+stateliness that made them look like mountains. Fernwood was an old
+house, built in the shape of the letter H, and therefore, presumably,
+dating from the time of the early Tudor monarchs. The porch opened into
+the hall which was on the left of the cross-stroke, and the drawing-room
+was on the right. There was one inconvenience about the house; it had a
+staircase at each extremity of the cross-stroke, and there was no
+upstair communication between the two wings of the mansion. But, as a
+practical man, I saw how this might be remedied. The front door faced
+the south, and the hall was windowless on the north. Nothing easier than
+to run a corridor along at the back, giving communication both upstairs
+and downstairs, without passing through the hall. The whole thing could
+be done for, at the outside, two hundred pounds, and would be no
+disfigurement to the place. I agreed to become tenant of Fernwood for a
+twelvemonth, in which time I should be able to judge whether the place
+would suit me, the neighbours be pleasant, and the climate agree with my
+wife. We went down to Fernwood at once, and settled ourselves
+comfortably in by the first week in November.
+
+The house was furnished; it was the property of an elderly gentleman, a
+bachelor named Framett, who lived in rooms in town, and spent most of
+his time at the club. He was supposed to have been jilted by his
+intended, after which he eschewed female society, and remained
+unmarried.
+
+I called on him before taking up our residence at Fernwood, and found
+him a somewhat blas�, languid, cold-blooded creature, not at all proud
+of having a noble manor-house that had belonged to his family for four
+centuries; very willing to sell it, so as to spite a cousin who
+calculated on coming in for the estate, and whom Mr. Framett, with the
+malignity that is sometimes found in old people, was particularly
+desirous of disappointing.
+
+"The house has been let before, I suppose?" said I.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied indifferently, "I believe so, several times."
+
+"For long?"
+
+"No--o. I believe, not for long."
+
+"Have the tenants had any particular reasons for not remaining on
+there--if I may be so bold as to inquire?"
+
+"All people have reasons to offer, but what they offer you are not
+supposed to receive as genuine."
+
+I could get no more from him than this. "I think, sir, if I were you I
+would not go down to Fernwood till after November was out."
+
+"But," said I, "I want the shooting."
+
+"Ah, to be sure--the shooting, ah! I should have preferred if you could
+have waited till December began."
+
+"That would not suit me," I said, and so the matter ended.
+
+When we were settled in, we occupied the right wing of the house. The
+left or west wing was but scantily furnished and looked cheerless, as
+though rarely tenanted. We were not a large family, my wife and myself
+alone; there was consequently ample accommodation in the east wing for
+us. The servants were placed above the kitchen, in a portion of the
+house I have not yet described. It was a half-wing, if I may so describe
+it, built on the north side parallel with the upper arm of the western
+limb of the hall and the [Symbol: H]. This block had a gable to the
+north like the wings, and a broad lead valley was between them, that, as
+I learned from the agent, had to be attended to after the fall of the
+leaf, and in times of snow, to clear it.
+
+Access to this valley could be had from within by means of a little
+window in the roof, formed as a dormer. A short ladder allowed anyone to
+ascend from the passage to this window and open or shut it. The western
+staircase gave access to this passage, from which the servants' rooms in
+the new block were reached, as also the untenanted apartments in the old
+wing. And as there were no windows in the extremities of this passage
+that ran due north and south, it derived all its light from the
+aforementioned dormer window.
+
+One night, after we had been in the house about a week, I was sitting up
+smoking, with a little whisky-and-water at my elbow, reading a review of
+an absurd, ignorantly written book on New South Wales, when I heard a
+tap at the door, and the parlourmaid came in, and said in a nervous tone
+of voice: "Beg your pardon, sir, but cook nor I, nor none of us dare go
+to bed."
+
+"Why not?" I asked, looking up in surprise.
+
+"Please, sir, we dursn't go into the passage to get to our rooms."
+
+"Whatever is the matter with the passage?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, sir, with the passage. Would you mind, sir, just coming to
+see? We don't know what to make of it."
+
+I put down my review with a grunt of dissatisfaction, laid my pipe
+aside, and followed the maid.
+
+She led me through the hall, and up the staircase at the western
+extremity.
+
+On reaching the upper landing I saw all the maids there in a cluster,
+and all evidently much scared.
+
+"Whatever is all this nonsense about?" I asked.
+
+"Please, sir, will you look? We can't say."
+
+The parlourmaid pointed to an oblong patch of moonlight on the wall of
+the passage. The night was cloudless, and the full moon shone slanting
+in through the dormer and painted a brilliant silver strip on the wall
+opposite. The window being on the side of the roof to the east, we could
+not see that, but did see the light thrown through it against the wall.
+This patch of reflected light was about seven feet above the floor.
+
+The window itself was some ten feet up, and the passage was but four
+feet wide. I enter into these particulars for reasons that will
+presently appear.
+
+The window was divided into three parts by wooden mullions, and was
+composed of four panes of glass in each compartment.
+
+Now I could distinctly see the reflection of the moon through the window
+with the black bars up and down, and the division of the panes. But I
+saw more than that: I saw the shadow of a lean arm with a hand and thin,
+lengthy fingers across a portion of the window, apparently groping at
+where was the latch by which the casement could be opened.
+
+My impression at the moment was that there was a burglar on the leads
+trying to enter the house by means of this dormer.
+
+Without a minute's hesitation I ran into the passage and looked up at
+the window, but could see only a portion of it, as in shape it was low,
+though broad, and, as already stated, was set at a great height. But at
+that moment something fluttered past it, like a rush of flapping
+draperies obscuring the light.
+
+I had placed the ladder, which I found hooked up to the wall, in
+position, and planted my foot on the lowest rung, when my wife arrived.
+She had been alarmed by the housemaid, and now she clung to me, and
+protested that I was not to ascend without my pistol.
+
+To satisfy her I got my Colt's revolver that I always kept loaded, and
+then, but only hesitatingly, did she allow me to mount. I ascended to
+the casement, unhasped it, and looked out. I could see nothing. The
+ladder was over-short, and it required an effort to heave oneself from
+it through the casement on to the leads. I am stout, and not so nimble
+as I was when younger. After one or two efforts, and after presenting
+from below an appearance that would have provoked laughter at any other
+time, I succeeded in getting through and upon the leads.
+
+I looked up and down the valley--there was absolutely nothing to be seen
+except an accumulation of leaves carried there from the trees that were
+shedding their foliage.
+
+The situation was vastly puzzling. As far as I could judge there was no
+way off the roof, no other window opening into the valley; I did not go
+along upon the leads, as it was night, and moonlight is treacherous.
+Moreover, I was wholly unacquainted with the arrangement of the roof,
+and had no wish to risk a fall.
+
+I descended from the window with my feet groping for the upper rung of
+the ladder in a manner even more grotesque than my ascent through the
+casement, but neither my wife--usually extremely alive to anything
+ridiculous in my appearance--nor the domestics were in a mood to make
+merry. I fastened the window after me, and had hardly reached the
+bottom of the ladder before again a shadow flickered across the patch of
+moonlight.
+
+I was fairly perplexed, and stood musing. Then I recalled that
+immediately behind the house the ground rose; that, in fact, the house
+lay under a considerable hill. It was just possible by ascending the
+slope to reach the level of the gutter and rake the leads from one
+extremity to the other with my eye.
+
+I mentioned this to my wife, and at once the whole set of maids trailed
+down the stairs after us. They were afraid to remain in the passage, and
+they were curious to see if there was really some person on the leads.
+
+We went out at the back of the house, and ascended the bank till we were
+on a level with the broad gutter between the gables. I now saw that this
+gutter did not run through, but stopped against the hall roof;
+consequently, unless there were some opening of which I knew nothing,
+the person on the leads could not leave the place, save by the dormer
+window, when open, or by swarming down the fall pipe.
+
+It at once occurred to me that if what I had seen were the shadow of a
+burglar, he might have mounted by means of the rain-water pipe. But if
+so--how had he vanished the moment my head was protruded through the
+window? and how was it that I had seen the shadow flicker past the light
+immediately after I had descended the ladder? It was conceivable that
+the man had concealed himself in the shadow of the hall roof, and had
+taken advantage of my withdrawal to run past the window so as to reach
+the fall pipe, and let himself down by that.
+
+I could, however, see no one running away, as I must have done, going
+outside so soon after his supposed descent.
+
+But the whole affair became more perplexing when, looking towards the
+leads, I saw in the moonlight something with fluttering garments running
+up and down them.
+
+There could be no mistake--the object was a woman, and her garments were
+mere tatters. We could not hear a sound.
+
+I looked round at my wife and the servants,--they saw this weird object
+as distinctly as myself. It was more like a gigantic bat than a human
+being, and yet, that it was a woman we could not doubt, for the arms
+were now and then thrown above the head in wild gesticulation, and at
+moments a profile was presented, and then we saw, or thought we saw,
+long flapping hair, unbound.
+
+"I must go back to the ladder," said I; "you remain where you are,
+watching."
+
+"Oh, Edward! not alone," pleaded my wife.
+
+"My dear, who is to go with me?"
+
+I went. I had left the back door unlocked, and I ascended the staircase
+and entered the passage. Again I saw the shadow flicker past the moonlit
+patch on the wall opposite the window.
+
+I ascended the ladder and opened the casement.
+
+Then I heard the clock in the hall strike one.
+
+I heaved myself up to the sill with great labour, and I endeavoured to
+thrust my short body through the window, when I heard feet on the
+stairs, and next moment my wife's voice from below, at the foot of the
+ladder. "Oh, Edward, Edward! please do not go out there again. It has
+vanished. All at once. There is nothing there now to be seen."
+
+I returned, touched the ladder tentatively with my feet, refastened the
+window, and descended--perhaps inelegantly. I then went down with my
+wife, and with her returned up the bank, to the spot where stood
+clustered our servants.
+
+They had seen nothing further; and although I remained on the spot
+watching for half an hour, I also saw nothing more.
+
+The maids were too frightened to go to bed, and so agreed to sit up in
+the kitchen for the rest of the night by a good fire, and I gave them a
+bottle of sherry to mull, and make themselves comfortable upon, and to
+help them to recover their courage.
+
+Although I went to bed, I could not sleep. I was completely baffled by
+what I had seen. I could in no way explain what the object was and how
+it had left the leads.
+
+Next day I sent for the village mason and asked him to set a long ladder
+against the well-head of the fall pipe, and examine the valley between
+the gables. At the same time I would mount to the little window and
+contemplate proceedings through that.
+
+The man had to send for a ladder sufficiently long, and that occupied
+some time. However, at length he had it planted, and then mounted. When
+he approached the dormer window--
+
+"Give me a hand," said I, "and haul me up; I would like to satisfy
+myself with my own eyes that there is no other means of getting upon or
+leaving the leads."
+
+He took me under both shoulders and heaved me out, and I stood with him
+in the broad lead gutter.
+
+"There's no other opening whatever," said he, "and, Lord love you, sir,
+I believe that what you saw was no more than this," and he pointed to a
+branch of a noble cedar that grew hard by the west side of the house.
+
+"I warrant, sir," said he, "that what you saw was this here bough as has
+been carried by a storm and thrown here, and the wind last night swept
+it up and down the leads."
+
+"But was there any wind?" I asked. "I do not remember that there was."
+
+"I can't say," said he; "before twelve o'clock I was fast asleep, and it
+might have blown a gale and I hear nothing of it."
+
+"I suppose there must have been some wind," said I, "and that I was too
+surprised and the women too frightened to observe it," I laughed. "So
+this marvellous spectral phenomenon receives a very prosaic and natural
+explanation. Mason, throw down the bough and we will burn it to-night."
+
+The branch was cast over the edge, and fell at the back of the house. I
+left the leads, descended, and going out picked up the cedar branch,
+brought it into the hall, summoned the servants, and said derisively:
+"Here is an illustration of the way in which weak-minded women get
+scared. Now we will burn the burglar or ghost that we saw. It turns out
+to be nothing but this branch, blown up and down the leads by the wind."
+
+"But, Edward," said my wife, "there was not a breath stirring."
+
+"There must have been. Only where we were we were sheltered and did not
+observe it. Aloft, it blew across the roofs, and formed an eddy that
+caught the broken bough, lifted it, carried it first one way, then spun
+it round and carried it the reverse way. In fact, the wind between the
+two roofs assumed a spiral movement. I hope now you are all satisfied. I
+am."
+
+So the bough was burned, and our fears--I mean those of the
+females--were allayed.
+
+In the evening, after dinner, as I sat with my wife, she said to me:
+"Half a bottle would have been enough, Edward. Indeed, I think half a
+bottle would be too much; you should not give the girls a liking for
+sherry, it may lead to bad results. If it had been elderberry wine, that
+would have been different."
+
+"But there is no elderberry wine in the house," I objected.
+
+"Well, I hope no harm will come of it, but I greatly mistrust----"
+
+"Please, sir, it is there again."
+
+The parlourmaid, with a blanched face, was at the door.
+
+"Nonsense," said I, "we burnt it."
+
+"This comes of the sherry," observed my wife. "They will be seeing
+ghosts every night."
+
+"But, my dear, you saw it as well as myself!"
+
+I rose, my wife followed, and we went to the landing as before, and,
+sure enough, against the patch of moonlight cast through the window in
+the roof, was the arm again, and then a flutter of shadows, as if cast
+by garments.
+
+"It was not the bough," said my wife. "If this had been seen immediately
+after the sherry I should not have been surprised, but--as it is now it
+is most extraordinary."
+
+"I'll have this part of the house shut up," said I. Then I bade the
+maids once more spend the night in the kitchen, "and make yourselves
+lively on tea," I said--for I knew my wife would not allow another
+bottle of sherry to be given them. "To-morrow your beds shall be moved
+to the east wing."
+
+"Beg pardon," said the cook, "I speaks in the name of all. We don't
+think we can remain in the house, but must leave the situation."
+
+"That comes of the tea," said I to my wife. "Now," to the cook, "as you
+have had another fright, I will let you have a bottle of mulled port
+to-night."
+
+"Sir," said the cook, "if you can get rid of the ghost, we don't want to
+leave so good a master. We withdraw the notice."
+
+Next day I had all the servants' goods transferred to the east wing, and
+rooms were fitted up for them to sleep in. As their portion of the house
+was completely cut off from the west wing, the alarm of the domestics
+died away.
+
+A heavy, stormy rain came on next week, the first token of winter
+misery.
+
+I then found that, whether caused by the cedar bough, or by the nailed
+boots of the mason, I cannot say, but the lead of the valley between the
+roofs was torn, and water came in, streaming down the walls, and
+threatening to severely damage the ceilings. I had to send for a
+plumber as soon as the weather mended. At the same time I started for
+town to see Mr. Framett. I had made up my mind that Fernwood was not
+suitable, and by the terms of my agreement I might be off my bargain if
+I gave notice the first month, and then my tenancy would be for the six
+months only. I found the squire at his club.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "I told you not to go there in November. No one likes
+Fernwood in November; it is all right at other times."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There is no bother except in November."
+
+"Why should there be bother, as you term it, then?"
+
+Mr. Framett shrugged his shoulders. "How the deuce can I tell you? I've
+never been a spirit, and all that sort of thing. Mme. Blavatsky might
+possibly tell you. I can't. But it is a fact."
+
+"What is a fact?"
+
+"Why, that there is no apparition at any other time It is only in
+November, when she met with a little misfortune. That is when she is
+seen."
+
+"Who is seen?"
+
+"My aunt Eliza--I mean my great-aunt."
+
+"You speak mysteries."
+
+"I don't know much about it, and care less," said Mr. Framett, and
+called for a lemon squash. "It was this: I had a great-aunt who was
+deranged. The family kept it quiet, and did not send her to an asylum,
+but fastened her in a room in the west wing. You see, that part of the
+house is partially separated from the rest. I believe she was rather
+shabbily treated, but she was difficult to manage, and tore her clothes
+to pieces. Somehow, she succeeded in getting out on the roof, and would
+race up and down there. They allowed her to do so, as by that means she
+obtained fresh air. But one night in November she scrambled up and, I
+believe, tumbled over. It was hushed up. Sorry you went there in
+November. I should have liked you to buy the place. I am sick of it."
+
+I did buy Fernwood. What decided me was this: the plumbers, in mending
+the leads, with that ingenuity to do mischief which they sometimes
+display, succeeded in setting fire to the roof, and the result was that
+the west wing was burnt down. Happily, a wall so completely separated
+the wing from the rest of the house, that the fire was arrested. The
+wing was not rebuilt, and I, thinking that with the disappearance of the
+leads I should be freed from the apparition that haunted them, purchased
+Fernwood. I am happy to say we have been undisturbed since.
+
+
+
+
+AUNT JOANNA
+
+
+In the Land's End district is the little church-town of Zennor. There is
+no village to speak of--a few scattered farms, and here and there a
+cluster of cottages. The district is bleak, the soil does not lie deep
+over granite that peers through the surface on exposed spots, where the
+furious gales from the ocean sweep the land. If trees ever existed
+there, they have been swept away by the blast, but the golden furze or
+gorse defies all winds, and clothes the moorland with a robe of
+splendour, and the heather flushes the slopes with crimson towards the
+decline of summer, and mantles them in soft, warm brown in winter, like
+the fur of an animal.
+
+In Zennor is a little church, built of granite, rude and simple of
+construction, crouching low, to avoid the gales, but with a tower that
+has defied the winds and the lashing rains, because wholly devoid of
+sculptured detail, which would have afforded the blasts something to lay
+hold of and eat away. In Zennor parish is one of the finest cromlechs in
+Cornwall, a huge slab of unwrought stone like a table, poised on the
+points of standing upright blocks as rude as the mass they sustain.
+
+Near this monument of a hoar and indeed unknown antiquity lived an old
+woman by herself, in a small cottage of one story in height, built of
+moor stones set in earth, and pointed only with lime. It was thatched
+with heather, and possessed but a single chimney that rose but little
+above the apex of the roof, and had two slates set on the top to protect
+the rising smoke from being blown down the chimney into the cottage
+when the wind was from the west or from the east. When, however, it
+drove from north or south, then the smoke must take care of itself. On
+such occasions it was wont to find its way out of the door, and little
+or none went up the chimney.
+
+The only fuel burnt in this cottage was peat--not the solid black peat
+from deep bogs, but turf of only a spade graft, taken from the surface,
+and composed of undissolved roots. Such fuel gives flame, which the
+other does not; but, on the other hand, it does not throw out the same
+amount of heat, nor does it last one half the time.
+
+The woman who lived in the cottage was called by the people of the
+neighbourhood Aunt Joanna. What her family name was but few remembered,
+nor did it concern herself much. She had no relations at all, with the
+exception of a grand-niece, who was married to a small tradesman, a
+wheelwright near the church. But Joanna and her great-niece were not on
+speaking terms. The girl had mortally offended the old woman by going to
+a dance at St. Ives, against her express orders. It was at this dance
+that she had met the wheelwright, and this meeting, and the treatment
+the girl had met with from her aunt for having gone to it, had led to
+the marriage. For Aunt Joanna was very strict in her Wesleyanism, and
+bitterly hostile to all such carnal amusements as dancing and
+play-acting. Of the latter there was none in that wild west Cornish
+district, and no temptation ever afforded by a strolling company setting
+up its booth within reach of Zennor. But dancing, though denounced,
+still drew the more independent spirits together. Rose Penaluna had been
+with her great-aunt after her mother's death. She was a lively girl, and
+when she heard of a dance at St. Ives, and had been asked to go to it,
+although forbidden by Aunt Joanna, she stole from the cottage at night,
+and found her way to St. Ives.
+
+Her conduct was reprehensible certainly. But that of Aunt Joanna was
+even more so, for when she discovered that the girl had left the house
+she barred her door, and refused to allow Rose to re-enter it. The poor
+girl had been obliged to take refuge the same night at the nearest farm
+and sleep in an outhouse, and next morning to go into St. Ives and
+entreat an acquaintance to take her in till she could enter into
+service. Into service she did not go, for when Abraham Hext, the
+carpenter, heard how she had been treated, he at once proposed, and in
+three weeks married her. Since then no communication had taken place
+between the old woman and her grand-niece. As Rose knew, Joanna was
+implacable in her resentments, and considered that she had been acting
+aright in what she had done.
+
+The nearest farm to Aunt Joanna's cottage was occupied by the Hockins.
+One day Elizabeth, the farmer's wife, saw the old woman outside the
+cottage as she was herself returning from market; and, noticing how bent
+and feeble Joanna was, she halted, and talked to her, and gave her good
+advice.
+
+"See you now, auntie, you'm gettin' old and crimmed wi' rheumatics. How
+can you get about? An' there's no knowin' but you might be took bad in
+the night. You ought to have some little lass wi' you to mind you."
+
+"I don't want nobody, thank the Lord."
+
+"Not just now, auntie, but suppose any chance ill-luck were to come on
+you. And then, in the bad weather, you'm not fit to go abroad after the
+turves, and you can't get all you want--tay and sugar and milk for
+yourself now. It would be handy to have a little maid by you."
+
+"Who should I have?" asked Joanna.
+
+"Well, now, you couldn't do better than take little Mary, Rose Hext's
+eldest girl. She's a handy maid, and bright and pleasant to speak to."
+
+"No," answered the old woman, "I'll have none o' they Hexts, not I. The
+Lord is agin Rose and all her family, I know it. I'll have none of
+them."
+
+"But, auntie, you must be nigh on ninety."
+
+"I be ower that. But what o' that? Didn't Sarah, the wife of Abraham,
+live to an hundred and seven and twenty years, and that in spite of him
+worritin' of her wi' that owdacious maid of hern, Hagar? If it hadn't
+been for their goings on, of Abraham and Hagar, it's my belief that
+she'd ha' held on to a hundred and fifty-seven. I thank the Lord I've
+never had no man to worrit me. So why I shouldn't equal Sarah's life I
+don't see."
+
+Then she went indoors and shut the door.
+
+After that a week elapsed without Mrs. Hockin seeing the old woman. She
+passed the cottage, but no Joanna was about. The door was not open, and
+usually it was. Elizabeth spoke about this to her husband. "Jabez," said
+she, "I don't like the looks o' this; I've kept my eye open, and there
+be no Auntie Joanna hoppin' about. Whativer can be up? It's my opinion
+us ought to go and see."
+
+"Well, I've naught on my hands now," said the farmer, "so I reckon we
+will go."
+
+The two walked together to the cottage. No smoke issued from the
+chimney, and the door was shut. Jabez knocked, but there came no answer;
+so he entered, followed by his wife.
+
+There was in the cottage but the kitchen, with one bedroom at the side.
+The hearth was cold.
+
+"There's some'ut up," said Mrs. Hockin.
+
+"I reckon it's the old lady be down," replied her husband, and, throwing
+open the bedroom door, he said: "Sure enough, and no mistake--there her
+be, dead as a dried pilchard."
+
+And in fact Auntie Joanna had died in the night, after having so
+confidently affirmed her conviction that she would live to the age of a
+hundred and twenty-seven.
+
+"Whativer shall we do?" asked Mrs. Hockin.
+
+"I reckon," said her husband, "us had better take an inventory of what
+is here, lest wicked rascals come in and steal anything and everything."
+
+"Folks bain't so bad as that, and a corpse in the house," observed Mrs.
+Hockin.
+
+"Don't be sure o' that--these be terrible wicked times," said the
+husband. "And I sez, sez I, no harm is done in seein' what the old
+creetur had got."
+
+"Well, surely," acquiesced Elizabeth, "there is no harm in that."
+
+In the bedroom was an old oak chest, and this the farmer and his wife
+opened. To their surprise they found in it a silver teapot, and half a
+dozen silver spoons.
+
+"Well, now," exclaimed Elizabeth Hockin, "fancy her havin' these--and me
+only Britannia metal."
+
+"I reckon she came of a good family," said Jabez. "Leastwise, I've heard
+as how she were once well off."
+
+"And look here!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "there's fine and beautiful linen
+underneath--sheets and pillow-cases."
+
+"But look here!" cried Jabez, "blessed if the taypot bain't chock-full
+o' money! Whereiver did she get it from?"
+
+"Her's been in the way of showing folk the Zennor Quoit, visitors from
+St. Ives and Penzance, and she's had scores o' shillings that way."
+
+"Lord!" exclaimed Jabez. "I wish she'd left it to me, and I could buy a
+cow; I want another cruel bad."
+
+"Ay, we do, terrible," said Elizabeth. "But just look to her bed, what
+torn and wretched linen be on that--and here these fine bedclothes all
+in the chest."
+
+"Who'll get the silver taypot and spoons, and the money?" inquired
+Jabez.
+
+"Her had no kin--none but Rose Hext, and her couldn't abide her. Last
+words her said to me was that she'd 'have never naught to do wi' the
+Hexts, they and all their belongings.'"
+
+"That was her last words?"
+
+"The very last words her spoke to me--or to anyone."
+
+"Then," said Jabez, "I'll tell ye what, Elizabeth, it's our moral dooty
+to abide by the wishes of Aunt Joanna. It never does to go agin what is
+right. And as her expressed herself that strong, why us, as honest
+folks, must carry out her wishes, and see that none of all her savings
+go to them darned and dratted Hexts."
+
+"But who be they to go to, then?"
+
+"Well--we'll see. Fust us will have her removed, and provide that her be
+daycent buried. Them Hexts be in a poor way, and couldn't afford the
+expense, and it do seem to me, Elizabeth, as it would be a liberal and a
+kindly act in us to take all the charges on ourselves. Us is the closest
+neighbours."
+
+"Ay--and her have had milk of me these ten or twelve years, and I've
+never charged her a penny, thinking her couldn't afford it. But her
+could, her were a-hoardin' of her money--and not paying me. That were
+not honest, and what I say is, that I have a right to some of her
+savin's, to pay the milk bill--and it's butter I've let her have now and
+then in a liberal way."
+
+"Very well, Elizabeth. Fust of all, we'll take the silver taypot and the
+spoons wi' us, to get 'em out of harm's way."
+
+"And I'll carry the linen sheets and pillow-cases. My word!--why didn't
+she use 'em, instead of them rags?"
+
+All Zennor declared that the Hockins were a most neighbourly and
+generous couple, when it was known that they took upon themselves to
+defray the funeral expenses.
+
+Mrs. Hext came to the farm, and said that she was willing to do what she
+could, but Mrs. Hockin replied: "My good Rose, it's no good. I seed your
+aunt when her was ailin', and nigh on death, and her laid it on me
+solemn as could be that we was to bury her, and that she'd have nothin'
+to do wi' the Hexts at no price."
+
+Rose sighed, and went away.
+
+Rose had not expected to receive anything from her aunt. She had never
+been allowed to look at the treasures in the oak chest. As far as she
+had been aware, Aunt Joanna had been extremely poor. But she remembered
+that the old woman had at one time befriended her, and she was ready to
+forgive the harsh treatment to which she had finally been subjected. In
+fact, she had repeatedly made overtures to her great-aunt to be
+reconciled, but these overtures had been always rejected. She was,
+accordingly, not surprised to learn from Mrs. Hockin that the old
+woman's last words had been as reported.
+
+But, although disowned and disinherited, Rose, her husband, and children
+dressed in black, and were chief mourners at the funeral. Now it had so
+happened that when it came to the laying out of Aunt Joanna, Mrs. Hockin
+had looked at the beautiful linen sheets she had found in the oak chest,
+with the object of furnishing the corpse with one as a winding-sheet.
+But--she said to herself--it would really be a shame to spoil a pair,
+and where else could she get such fine and beautiful old linen as was
+this? So she put the sheets away, and furnished for the purpose a clean
+but coarse and ragged sheet such as Aunt Joanna had in common use. That
+was good enough to moulder in the grave. It would be positively sinful,
+because wasteful, to give up to corruption and the worm such fine white
+linen as Aunt Joanna had hoarded. The funeral was conducted, otherwise,
+liberally. Aunt Joanna was given an elm, and not a mean deal board
+coffin, such as is provided for paupers; and a handsome escutcheon of
+white metal was put on the lid.
+
+Moreover, plenty of gin was drunk, and cake and cheese eaten at the
+house, all at the expense of the Hockins. And the conversation among
+those who attended, and ate and drank, and wiped their eyes, was rather
+anent the generosity of the Hockins than of the virtues of the
+departed.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Hockin heard this, and their hearts swelled within them.
+Nothing so swells the heart as the consciousness of virtue being
+recognised. Jabez in an undertone informed a neighbour that he weren't
+goin' to stick at the funeral expenses, not he; he'd have a neat stone
+erected above the grave with work on it, at twopence a letter. The name
+and the date of departure of Aunt Joanna, and her age, and two lines of
+a favourite hymn of his, all about earth being no dwelling-place, heaven
+being properly her home.
+
+It was not often that Elizabeth Hockin cried, but she did this day; she
+wept tears of sympathy with the deceased, and happiness at the ovation
+accorded to herself and her husband. At length, as the short winter day
+closed in, the last of those who had attended the funeral, and had
+returned to the farm to recruit and regale after it, departed, and the
+Hockins were left to themselves.
+
+"It were a beautiful day," said Jabez.
+
+"Ay," responded Elizabeth, "and what a sight o' people came here."
+
+"This here buryin' of Aunt Joanna have set us up tremendous in the
+estimation of the neighbours."
+
+"I'd like to know who else would ha' done it for a poor old creetur as
+is no relation; ay--and one as owed a purty long bill to me for milk and
+butter through ten or twelve years."
+
+"Well," said Jabez, "I've allus heard say that a good deed brings its
+own reward wi' it--and it's a fine proverb. I feels it in my insides."
+
+"P'raps it's the gin, Jabez."
+
+"No--it's virtue. It's warmer nor gin a long sight. Gin gives a
+smouldering spark, but a good conscience is a blaze of furze."
+
+The farm of the Hockins was small, and Hockin looked after his cattle
+himself. One maid was kept, but no man in the house. All were wont to
+retire early to bed; neither Hockin nor his wife had literary tastes,
+and were not disposed to consume much oil, so as to read at night.
+
+During the night, at what time she did not know, Mrs. Hockin awoke with
+a start, and found that her husband was sitting up in bed listening.
+There was a moon that night, and no clouds in the sky. The room was full
+of silver light. Elizabeth Hockin heard a sound of feet in the kitchen,
+which was immediately under the bedroom of the couple.
+
+"There's someone about," she whispered; "go down, Jabez."
+
+"I wonder, now, who it be. P'raps its Sally."
+
+"It can't be Sally--how can it, when she can't get out o' her room
+wi'out passin' through ours?"
+
+"Run down, Elizabeth, and see."
+
+"It's your place to go, Jabez."
+
+"But if it was a woman--and me in my night-shirt?"
+
+"And, Jabez, if it was a man, a robber--and me in my night-shirt? It 'ud
+be shameful."
+
+"I reckon us had best go down together."
+
+"We'll do so--but I hope it's not----"
+
+"What?"
+
+Mrs. Hockin did not answer. She and her husband crept from bed, and,
+treading on tiptoe across the room, descended the stair.
+
+There was no door at the bottom, but the staircase was boarded up at the
+side; it opened into the kitchen.
+
+They descended very softly and cautiously, holding each other, and when
+they reached the bottom, peered timorously into the apartment that
+served many purposes--kitchen, sitting-room, and dining-place. The
+moonlight poured in through the broad, low window.
+
+By it they saw a figure. There could be no mistaking it--it was that of
+Aunt Joanna, clothed in the tattered sheet that Elizabeth Hockin had
+allowed for her grave-clothes. The old woman had taken one of the fine
+linen sheets out of the cupboard in which it had been placed, and had
+spread it over the long table, and was smoothing it down with her bony
+hands.
+
+The Hockins trembled, not with cold, though it was mid-winter, but with
+terror. They dared not advance, and they felt powerless to retreat.
+
+Then they saw Aunt Joanna go to the cupboard, open it, and return with
+the silver spoons; she placed all six on the sheet, and with a lean
+finger counted them.
+
+She turned her face towards those who were watching her proceedings, but
+it was in shadow, and they could not distinguish the features nor note
+the expression with which she regarded them.
+
+Presently she went back to the cupboard, and returned with the silver
+teapot. She stood at one end of the table, and now the reflection of the
+moon on the linen sheet was cast upon her face, and they saw that she
+was moving her lips--but no sound issued from them.
+
+She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table. The Hockins saw the glint of the
+metal, and the shadow cast by each piece of money as it rolled. The
+first coin lodged at the further left-hand corner and the second rested
+near it; and so on, the pieces were rolled, and ranged themselves in
+order, ten in a row. Then the next ten were run across the white cloth
+in the same manner, and dropped over on their sides below the first row;
+thus also the third ten. And all the time the dead woman was mouthing,
+as though counting, but still inaudibly.
+
+[Illustration: SHE THRUST HER HAND INTO THE TEAPOT AND DREW FORTH THE
+COINS, ONE BY ONE, AND ROLLED THEM ALONG THE TABLE.]
+
+The couple stood motionless observing proceedings, till suddenly a cloud
+passed before the face of the moon, so dense as to eclipse the light.
+
+Then in a paroxysm of terror both turned and fled up the stairs, bolted
+their bedroom door, and jumped into bed.
+
+There was no sleep for them that night. In the gloom when the moon was
+concealed, in the glare when it shone forth, it was the same, they
+could hear the light rolling of the coins along the table, and the click
+as they fell over. Was the supply inexhaustible? It was not so, but
+apparently the dead woman did not weary of counting the coins. When all
+had been ranged, she could be heard moving to the further end of the
+table, and there recommencing the same proceeding of coin-rolling.
+
+Not till near daybreak did this sound cease, and not till the maid,
+Sally, had begun to stir in the inner bedchamber did Hockin and his wife
+venture to rise. Neither would suffer the servant girl to descend till
+they had been down to see in what condition the kitchen was. They found
+that the table had been cleared, the coins were all back in the teapot,
+and that and the spoons were where they had themselves placed them. The
+sheet, moreover, was neatly folded, and replaced where it had been
+before.
+
+The Hockins did not speak to one another of their experiences during the
+past night, so long as they were in the house, but when Jabez was in the
+field, Elizabeth went to him and said: "Husband, what about Aunt
+Joanna?"
+
+"I don't know--maybe it were a dream."
+
+"Curious us should ha' dreamed alike."
+
+"I don't know that; 'twere the gin made us dream, and us both had gin,
+so us dreamed the same thing."
+
+"'Twere more like real truth than dream," observed Elizabeth.
+
+"We'll take it as dream," said Jabez. "Mebbe it won't happen again."
+
+But precisely the same sounds were heard on the following night. The
+moon was obscured by thick clouds, and neither of the two had the
+courage to descend to the kitchen. But they could hear the patter of
+feet, and then the roll and click of the coins. Again sleep was
+impossible.
+
+"Whatever shall we do?" asked Elizabeth Hockin next morning of her
+husband. "Us can't go on like this wi' the dead woman about our house
+nightly. There's no tellin' she might take it into her head to come
+upstairs and pull the sheets off us. As we took hers, she may think it
+fair to carry off ours."
+
+"I think," said Jabez sorrowfully, "we'll have to return 'em."
+
+"But how?"
+
+After some consultation the couple resolved on conveying all the
+deceased woman's goods to the churchyard, by night, and placing them on
+her grave.
+
+"I reckon," said Hockin, "we'll bide in the porch and watch what
+happens. If they be left there till mornin', why we may carry 'em back
+wi' an easy conscience. We've spent some pounds over her buryin'."
+
+"What have it come to?"
+
+"Three pounds five and fourpence, as I make it out."
+
+"Well," said Elizabeth, "we must risk it."
+
+When night had fallen murk, the farmer and his wife crept from their
+house, carrying the linen sheets, the teapot, and the silver spoons.
+They did not start till late, for fear of encountering any villagers on
+the way, and not till after the maid, Sally, had gone to bed.
+
+They fastened the farm door behind them. The night was dark and stormy,
+with scudding clouds, so dense as to make deep night, when they did not
+part and allow the moon to peer forth.
+
+They walked timorously, and side by side, looking about them as they
+proceeded, and on reaching the churchyard gate they halted to pluck up
+courage before opening and venturing within. Jabez had furnished himself
+with a bottle of gin, to give courage to himself and his wife.
+
+Together they heaped the articles that had belonged to Aunt Joanna upon
+the fresh grave, but as they did so the wind caught the linen and
+unfurled and flapped it, and they were forced to place stones upon it to
+hold it down.
+
+Then, quaking with fear, they retreated to the church porch, and Jabez,
+uncorking the bottle, first took a long pull himself, and then presented
+it to his wife.
+
+And now down came a tearing rain, driven by a blast from the Atlantic,
+howling among the gravestones, and screaming in the battlements of the
+tower and its bell-chamber windows. The night was so dark, and the rain
+fell so heavily, that they could see nothing for full half an hour. But
+then the clouds were rent asunder, and the moon glared white and ghastly
+over the churchyard.
+
+Elizabeth caught her husband by the arm and pointed. There was, however,
+no need for her to indicate that on which his eyes were fixed already.
+
+Both saw a lean hand come up out of the grave, and lay hold of one of
+the fine linen sheets and drag at it. They saw it drag the sheet by one
+corner, and then it went down underground, and the sheet followed, as
+though sucked down in a vortex; fold on fold it descended, till the
+entire sheet had disappeared.
+
+"Her have taken it for her windin' sheet," whispered Elizabeth.
+"Whativer will her do wi' the rest?"
+
+"Have a drop o' gin; this be terrible tryin'," said Jabez in an
+undertone; and again the couple put their lips to the bottle, which came
+away considerably lighter after the draughts.
+
+"Look!" gasped Elizabeth.
+
+Again the lean hand with long fingers appeared above the soil, and this
+was seen groping about the grass till it laid hold of the teapot. Then
+it groped again, and gathered up the spoons, that flashed in the
+moonbeams. Next, up came the second hand, and a long arm that stretched
+along the grave till it reached the other sheets. At once, on being
+raised, these sheets were caught by the wind, and flapped and fluttered
+like half-hoisted sails. The hands retained them for a while till they
+bellied with the wind, and then let them go, and they were swept away
+by the blast across the churchyard, over the wall, and lodged in the
+carpenter's yard that adjoined, among his timber.
+
+"She have sent 'em to the Hexts," whispered Elizabeth.
+
+Next the hands began to trifle with the teapot, and to shake out some of
+the coins.
+
+In a minute some silver pieces were flung with so true an aim that they
+fell clinking down on the floor of the porch.
+
+How many coins, how much money was cast, the couple were in no mood to
+estimate.
+
+Then they saw the hands collect the pillow-cases, and proceed to roll up
+the teapot and silver spoons in them, and, that done, the white bundle
+was cast into the air, and caught by the wind and carried over the
+churchyard wall into the wheelwright's yard.
+
+At once a curtain of vapour rushed across the face of the moon, and
+again the graveyard was buried in darkness. Half an hour elapsed before
+the moon shone out again. Then the Hockins saw that nothing was stirring
+in the cemetery.
+
+"I reckon us may go now," said Jabez.
+
+"Let us gather up what she chucked to us," advised Elizabeth.
+
+So the couple felt about the floor, and collected a number of coins.
+What they were they could not tell till they reached their home, and had
+lighted a candle.
+
+"How much be it?" asked Elizabeth.
+
+"Three pound five and fourpence, exact," answered Jabez.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE FLAG
+
+
+A percentage of the South African Boers--how large or how small that
+percentage is has not been determined--is possessed of a rudimentary
+conscience, much as the oyster has incipient eyes, and the snake
+initiatory articulations for feet, which in the course of long ages may,
+under suitable conditions, develop into an active faculty.
+
+If Jacob Van Heeren possessed any conscience at all it was the merest
+protoplasm of one.
+
+He occupied Heerendorp, a ramshackle farmhouse under a kopje, and had
+cattle and horses, also a wife and grown-up sons and daughters.
+
+When the war broke out Jacob hoisted the white flag at the gable, and he
+and his sons indulged their sporting instincts by shooting down such
+officers and men of the British army as went to the farm, unsuspecting
+treachery.
+
+Heerendorp by this means obtained an evil notoriety, and it was ordered
+to be burnt, and the women of Jacob's family to be transferred to a
+concentration camp where they would be mollycoddled at the expense of
+the English taxpayer. Thus Jacob and his sons were delivered from all
+anxiety as to their womankind, and were given a free field in which to
+exercise their mischievous ingenuity. As to their cattle and horses that
+had been commandeered, they held receipts which would entitle them to
+claim full value for the beasts at the termination of hostilities.
+
+Jacob and his sons might have joined one of the companies under a Boer
+general, but they preferred independent action, and their peculiar
+tactics, which proved eminently successful.
+
+That achievement in which Jacob exhibited most slimness, and of which he
+was pre-eminently proud, was as follows: feigning himself to be wounded,
+he rolled on the ground, waving a white kerchief, and crying out for
+water. A young English lieutenant at once filled a cup and ran to his
+assistance, when Jacob shot him through the heart.
+
+When the war was over Van Heeren got his farm rebuilt and restocked at
+the expense of the British taxpayer, and received his wife and daughters
+from the concentration camp, plump as partridges.
+
+So soon as the new Heerendorp was ready for occupation, Jacob took a
+large knife and cut seventeen notches in the doorpost.
+
+"What is that for, Jacob?" asked his wife.
+
+"They are reminders of the Britishers I have shot."
+
+"Well," said she, "if I hadn't killed more Rooineks than that, I'd be
+ashamed of myself."
+
+"Oh, I shot more in open fight. I didn't count them; I only reckon such
+as I've been slim enough to befool with the white flag," said the Boer.
+
+Now the lieutenant whom Jacob Van Heeren had killed when bringing him a
+cup of cold water, was Aneurin Jones, and he was the only son of his
+mother, and she a widow in North Wales. On Aneurin her heart had been
+set, in him was all her pride. Beyond him she had no ambition. About him
+every fibre of her heart was entwined. Life had to her no charms apart
+from him. When the news of his death reached her, unaccompanied by
+particulars, she was smitten with a sorrow that almost reached despair.
+The joy was gone out of her life, the light from her sky. The prospect
+was a blank before her. She sank into profound despondency, and would
+have welcomed death as an end to an aimless, a hopeless life.
+
+But when peace was concluded, and some comrades of Aneurin returned
+home, the story of how he had met his death was divulged to her.
+
+Then the passionate Welsh mother's heart became as a live coal within
+her breast. An impotent rage against his murderer consumed her. She did
+not know the name of the man who had killed him, she but ill understood
+where her son had fallen. Had she known, had she been able, she would
+have gone out to South Africa, and have gloried in being able to stab to
+the heart the man who had so treacherously murdered her Aneurin. But how
+was he to be identified?
+
+The fact that she was powerless to avenge his death was a torture to
+her. She could not sleep, she could not eat, she writhed, she moaned,
+she bit her fingers, she chafed at her incapacity to execute justice on
+the murderer. A feverish flame was lit in her hollow cheeks. Her lips
+became parched, her tongue dry, her dark eyes glittered as if sparks of
+unquenchable fire had been kindled in them.
+
+She sat with clenched hands and set teeth before her dead grate, and the
+purple veins swelled and throbbed in her temples.
+
+Oh! if only she knew the name of the man who had shot her Aneurin!
+
+Oh! if only she could find out a way to recompense him for the wrong he
+had done!
+
+These were her only thoughts. And the sole passage in her Bible she
+could read, and which she read over and over again, was the story of the
+Importunate Widow who cried to the judge, "Avenge me of mine adversary!"
+and who was heard for her persistent asking.
+
+Thus passed a fortnight. She was visibly wasting in flesh, but the fire
+within her burned only the fiercer as her bodily strength failed.
+
+Then, all at once, an idea shot like a meteor through her brain. She
+remembered to have heard of the Cursing Well of St. Elian, near Colwyn.
+She recalled the fact that the last "Priest of the Well," an old man who
+had lived hard by, and who had initiated postulants into the mysteries
+of the well, had been brought before the magistrates for obtaining money
+under false pretences, and had been sent to gaol at Chester; and that
+the parson of Llanelian had taken a crowbar and had ripped up the wall
+that enclosed the spring, and had done what lay in his power to destroy
+it and blot out the remembrance of the powers of the well, or to ruin
+its efficacy.
+
+But the spring still flowed. Had it lost its virtues? Could a parson,
+could magistrates bring to naught what had been for centuries?
+
+She remembered, further, that the granddaughter of the "Priest of the
+Well" was then an inmate of the workhouse at Denbigh. Was it not
+possible that she should know the ritual of St. Elian's spring?--should
+be able to assist her in the desire of her heart?
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones resolved on trying. She went to the workhouse and
+sought out the woman, an old and infirm creature, and had a conference
+with her. She found the woman, a poor, decrepit creature, very shy of
+speaking about the well, very unwilling to be drawn into a confession of
+the extent of her knowledge, very much afraid of the magistrates and the
+master of the workhouse punishing her if she had anything to do with the
+well; but the intensity of Mrs. Jones, her vehemence in prosecuting her
+inquiries, and, above all, the gift of half a sovereign pressed into her
+palm, with the promise of another if she assisted Mrs. Winifred in the
+prosecution of her purpose, finally overcame her scruples, and she told
+all that she knew.
+
+"You must visit St. Elian's, madam," said she, "when the moon is at the
+wane. You must write the name of him whose death you desire on a pebble,
+and drop it into the water, and recite the sixty-ninth Psalm."
+
+"But," objected the widow, "I do not know his name, and I have no means
+of discovering it. I want to kill the man who murdered my son."
+
+The old woman considered, and then said: "In this case it is different.
+There is a way under these circumstances. Murdered, was your son?"
+
+"Yes, he was treacherously shot."
+
+"Then you will have to call on your son by name, as you let fall the
+pebble, and say: 'Let him be wiped out of the book of the living. Avenge
+me of mine adversary, O my God.' And you must go on dropping in pebbles,
+reciting the same prayer, till you see the water of the spring boil up
+black as ink. Then you will know that your prayer has been heard, and
+that the curse has wrought."
+
+Winifred Jones departed in some elation.
+
+She waited till the moon changed, and then she went to the spring. It
+was near a hedge; there were trees by it. Apparently it had been
+unsought for many years. But it still flowed. About it lay scattered a
+few stones that had once formed the bounds.
+
+She looked about her. No one was by. The sun was declining, and would
+soon set. She bent over the water--it was perfectly clear. She had
+collected a lapful of rounded stones.
+
+Then she cried out: "Aneurin! come to my aid against your murderer. Let
+him be blotted out of the book of the living. Avenge me on my adversary,
+O my God!" and she dropped a pebble into the water.
+
+Then rose a bubble. That was all.
+
+She paused but for a moment, then again she cried: "Aneurin! come to my
+aid against your murderer. Let him be blotted out of the book of the
+living. Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!"
+
+Once more a pebble was let fall. It splashed into the spring, but there
+was no change save that ripples were sent against the side.
+
+A third--then a fourth--she went on; the sun sent a shaft of yellow
+glory through the trees over the spring.
+
+Then someone passed along the road hard by, and Mrs. Winifred Jones
+held her breath, and desisted till the footfall had died away.
+
+But then she continued, stone after stone was dropped, and the ritual
+was followed, till the seventeenth had disappeared in the well, when up
+rose a column of black fluid boiling as it were from below, the colour
+of ink; and the widow pressed her hands together, and drew a sigh of
+relief; her prayer had been heard, and her curse had taken effect.
+
+She cast away the rest of the pebbles, let down her skirt, and went away
+rejoicing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It so fell out that on this very evening Jacob Van Heeren had gone to
+bed early, as he had risen before daybreak, and had been riding all day.
+His family were in the outer room, when they were startled by a hoarse
+cry from the bedroom. He was a short-tempered, imperious man, accustomed
+to yell at his wife and children when he needed them; but this cry was
+of an unusual character, it had in it the ring of alarm. His wife went
+to him to inquire what was the matter. She found the old Boer sitting up
+in bed with one leg extended, his face like dirty stained leather, his
+eyes starting out of his head, and his mouth opening and shutting,
+lifting and depressing his shaggy, grey beard, as though he were trying
+to speak, but could not utter words.
+
+"Pete!" she called to her eldest son, "come here, and see what ails your
+father."
+
+Pete and others entered, and stood about the bed, staring stupidly at
+the old man, unable to comprehend what had come over him.
+
+"Fetch him some brandy, Pete," said the mother; "he looks as if he had a
+fit."
+
+When some spirits had been poured down his throat the farmer was
+revived, and said huskily: "Take it away! Quick, take it off!"
+
+"Take what away?"
+
+"The white flag."
+
+"There is none here."
+
+"It is there--there, wrapped about my foot."
+
+The wife looked at the outstretched leg, and saw nothing. Jacob became
+angry, he swore at her, and yelled: "Take it off; it is chilling me to
+the bone."
+
+"There is nothing there."
+
+"But I say it is. I saw him come in----"
+
+"Saw whom, father?" asked one of the sons.
+
+"I saw that Rooinek lieutenant I shot when he was bringing me drink,
+thinking I was wounded. He came in through the door----"
+
+"That is not possible--he must have passed us."
+
+"I say he did come. I saw him, and he held the white rag, and he came
+upon me and gave me a twist with the flag about my foot, and there it
+is--it numbs me. I cannot move it. Quick, quick, take it away."
+
+"I repeat there is nothing there," said his wife.
+
+"Pull off his stocking," said Pete Van Heeren; "he has got a chill in
+his foot, and fancies this nonsense. He has been dreaming."
+
+"It was not a dream," roared Jacob; "I saw him as clearly as I see you,
+and he wrapped my foot up in that accursed flag."
+
+"Accursed flag!" exclaimed Samuel, the second son. "That's a fine way to
+speak of it, father, when it served you so well."
+
+"Take it off, you dogs!" yelled the old man, "and don't stand staring
+and barking round me."
+
+The stocking was removed from his leg, and then it was seen that his
+foot--the left foot--had turned a livid white.
+
+"Go and heat a brick," said the housewife to one of her daughters; "it
+is just the circulation has stopped."
+
+But no artificial warmth served to restore the flow of blood, and the
+natural heat.
+
+Jacob passed a sleepless night.
+
+Next morning he rose, but limped; all feeling had gone out of the foot.
+His wife vainly urged him to keep to his bed. He was obstinate, and
+would get up; but he could not walk without the help of a stick. When
+clothed, he hobbled into the kitchen and put the numbed foot to the
+fire, and the stocking sole began to smoke, it was singed and went to
+pieces, but his foot was insensible to the heat. Then he went forth,
+aided by the stick, to his farmyard, hoping that movement would restore
+feeling and warmth; but this also was in vain. In the evening he seated
+himself on a bench outside the door, whilst his family ate supper. He
+ordered them to bring food to him. He felt easier in the open air than
+within doors.
+
+Whilst his wife and children were about the table at their meal, they
+heard a scream without, more like that of a wounded horse than a man,
+and all rushed forth, to find Jacob in a paroxysm of terror only less
+severe than that of the preceding night.
+
+"He came on me again," he gasped; "the same man, I do not know from
+whence--he seemed to spring out of the distance. I saw him first like
+smoke, but with a white flicker in it; and then he got nearer and became
+more distinct, and I knew it was he; and he had another of those white
+napkins in his hand. I could not call for help--I tried, I could utter
+no sound, till he wrapped it--that white rag--round my calf, and then,
+with the cold and pain, I cried out, and he vanished."
+
+"Father," said Pete, "you fell asleep and dreamt this."
+
+"I did not. I saw him, and I felt what he did. Give me your hand. I
+cannot rise. I must go within. Good Lord, when will this come to an
+end?"
+
+When lifted from his seat it was seen that his left leg dragged. He had
+to lean heavily on his son on one side and his wife on the other, and he
+allowed himself, without remonstrance, to be put to bed.
+
+It was then seen that the dead whiteness, as of a corpse, had spread
+from the foot up the calf.
+
+"He is going to have a paralytic stroke, that is it," said Pete. "You,
+Samuel, must ride for a doctor to-morrow morning, not that he can do
+much good, if what I think be the case."
+
+On the second day the old man persisted in his determination to rise. He
+was deaf to all remonstrance, he would get up and go about, as far as he
+was able. But his ability was small. In the evening, as the sun went
+down, he was sitting crouched over the fire. The family had finished
+supper, and all had left the room except his wife, who was removing the
+dishes, when she heard a gasping and struggling by the fire, and,
+turning her head, saw her husband writhing on his stool, clinging to it
+with his hands, with his left leg out, his mouth foaming, and he was
+snorting with terror or pain.
+
+She ran to him at once.
+
+"Jacob, what is it?"
+
+"He is at me again! Beat him off with the broom!" he screamed. "Keep him
+away. He is wrapping the white flag round my knee."
+
+Pete and the others ran in, and raised their father, who was falling out
+of his seat, and conveyed him to bed.
+
+It was now seen that his knee had become hard and stiff, his calf was as
+if frozen; the whiteness had extended upwards to the knee.
+
+Next day a surgeon arrived. He examined the old man, and expressed his
+conviction that he had a stroke. But it was a paralytic attack of an
+unusual character, as it had in no way affected his speech or his left
+arm and hand. He recommended hot fomentations.
+
+Still the farmer would not be confined to bed; he insisted on being
+dressed and assisted into the kitchen.
+
+One stick was not now sufficient for him, and Samuel contrived for him
+crutches. With these he could drag himself about, and on the fourth
+evening he laboriously worked his way to a cowstall to look at one of
+his beasts that was ill.
+
+Whilst there he had a fourth attack. Pete, who was without, heard him
+yell and beat at the door with one of his crutches. He entered, and
+found his father lying on the floor, quivering with terror, and
+spluttering unintelligible words. He lifted him, and drew him without,
+then shouted to Samuel, who came up, and together they carried him to
+the house.
+
+Only when there, and when he had drunk some brandy, was he able to give
+an account of what had taken place. He had been looking at the cow, and
+feeling it, when down out of the hayloft had come leaping the form of
+the Rooinek lieutenant, which had sprung in between him and the cow,
+and, stooping, had wrapped a white rag round his thigh, above the knee.
+And now the whole of his leg was dead and livid.
+
+"There is nothing for it, father, but to have your leg amputated," said
+Pete. "The doctor told me as much. He said that mortification would set
+in if there was no return of circulation."
+
+"I won't have it off! What good shall I be with only one leg?" exclaimed
+the old man.
+
+"But father, it will be the sole means of saving your life."
+
+"I won't have my leg off!" again repeated Jacob.
+
+Pete said in a low tone to his mother: "Have you seen any dark spots on
+his leg? The doctor said we must look for them, and, when they come,
+send for him at once."
+
+"No," she replied, "I have not noticed any, so far."
+
+"Then we will wait till they appear."
+
+On the fifth day the farmer was constrained to keep his bed.
+
+He had now become a prey to abject terror. So sure as the hour of
+sunset came, did a new visitation occur. He listened for the clock to
+sound each hour of the day, and as the afternoon drew on he dreaded with
+unspeakable horror the advent of the moment when again the apparition
+would be seen, and a fresh chill be inflicted. He insisted that his wife
+or Pete should remain in the room with him. They took it in turns to sit
+by his bedside.
+
+Through the little window the fire of the setting sun smote in and fell
+across the suffering man.
+
+It was his wife's turn to be in attendance.
+
+All at once a gurgling sound broke from his throat. His eyes started
+from his face, his hair bristled, and with his hands he worked himself
+into a sitting posture, and he heaved himself on to his pillow, and
+would have broken his way through the backboard of his bed, could he
+have done so.
+
+"What is it, Jacob?" asked his wife, throwing down the garment which she
+was mending, and coming to his assistance. "Lie down again. There is
+nothing here."
+
+He could not speak. His teeth were chattering, and his beard shaking,
+foam-bubbles formed on his lips, and great sweatdrops on his brow.
+
+"Pete! Samuel!" she called, "come to your father."
+
+The young men ran in, and they forcibly laid the old Boer in bed,
+prostrate.
+
+And now it was found that the right foot had turned dead, like the left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of the seventeenth day after the visit to the well of
+Llanelian, Mrs. Winifred Jones was sitting on the side of her bed in the
+twilight. She had lighted no candle. She was musing, always on the same
+engrossing topic, the wrong that had been done to her and her son, and
+thirsting with a feverish thirst for vengeance on the wrongdoer.
+
+Her confidence in the expedient to which she had resorted was beginning
+to fail. What was this recourse to the well but a falling in with an old
+superstition that had died out with the advance of knowledge, and under
+the influence of a wholesome feeling? Was any trust to be placed in that
+woman at the workhouse? Was she deceiving her for the sake of the
+half-sovereign? And yet--she had seen a token that her prayer would
+prove efficacious. There had risen through the crystal water a column of
+black fluid.
+
+Could it be that a widow's prayer should meet with no response? Was
+wrong to prevail in the world? Were the weak and oppressed to have no
+means of procuring the execution of justice on the evildoers? Was not
+God righteous in all His ways? Would it be righteous in Him to suffer
+the murderer of her son to thrive? If God be merciful, He is also just.
+If His ear is open to the prayer for help, He must as well listen to the
+cry for vengeance.
+
+Since that evening at the spring she had been unable to pray as usual,
+to pray for herself--her only cry had been: "Avenge me on my adversary!"
+If she tried to frame the words of the Lord's Prayer, she could not do
+so. They escaped her; her thoughts travelled to the South African veldt.
+Her soul could not rise to God in the ecstasy of love and devotion; it
+was choked with hate--an overwhelming hate.
+
+She was in her black weeds; the hands, thin and white, were on her lap,
+nervously clasping and unclasping the fingers. Had anyone been there, in
+the grey twilight of a summer night, he would have been saddened to see
+how hard and lined the face had become, how all softness had passed from
+the lips, how sunken were the eyes, in which was only a glitter of
+wrath.
+
+Suddenly she saw standing before her, indistinct indeed, but
+unmistakable, the form of her lost son, her Aneurin, and he held a white
+napkin in his right hand, and this napkin emitted a phosphorescent
+glow.
+
+She tried to cry out; to utter the beloved name; she tried to spring to
+her feet and throw herself into his arms! But she was unable to stir
+hand, or foot, or tongue. She was as one paralysed, but her heart
+bounded within her bosom.
+
+"Mother," said the apparition, in a voice that seemed to come from a
+vast distance, yet was articulate and audible--"Mother, you called me
+back from the world of spirits, and sent me to discharge a task. I have
+done it. I have touched him on the foot and calf and knee and thigh, on
+hand and elbow and shoulder, on one side and on the other, on his head,
+and lastly on his heart, with the white flag--and now he is dead. I did
+it in all sixteen times, and with the sixteenth he died. I chilled him
+piecemeal with the white flag; the sixteenth was laid on his heart, and
+that stopped beating."
+
+Then she lifted her hands slightly, and her stiffened tongue relaxed so
+far that she was able to murmur: "God be thanked!"
+
+"Mother," continued the apparition, "there is a seventeenth remaining."
+
+She tried to clasp her hands on her lap, but the fingers were no longer
+under her control; they had fallen to the side of the chair-bed, and
+hung there lifeless. Her eyes stared wildly at the spectre of her son,
+but without love in them; love had faded out of her heart, and given
+place to hate of his murderer.
+
+"Mother," proceeded the vision, "you summoned me, and even in the world
+of spirits the soul of a child must respond to the cry of a mother, and
+I have been permitted to come back and to do your will. And now I am
+suffered to reveal something to you: to show you what my life would have
+been had it not been cut short by the shot of the Boer."
+
+He stepped towards her, and put forth a vaporous hand and touched her
+eyes. She felt as though a feather had been passed over them. Then he
+raised the luminous sheet and shook it. Instantly all about her was
+changed.
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones was not in her little Welsh cottage; nor was it
+night. She was no longer alone. She stood in a court, in full daylight.
+She saw before her the judge on his seat, the barristers in wig and
+gown, the press reporters with their notebooks and pens, a dense crowd
+thronging every portion of the court. And she knew instinctively, before
+a word was spoken, without an intimation from the spirit of her son,
+that she was standing in the Divorce Court. And she saw there as
+co-respondent her son, older, changed in face, but more altered in
+expression. And she heard a tale unfolded--full of dishonour, and
+rousing disgust.
+
+She was now able to raise her hands--she covered her ears; her face,
+crimson with shame, sank on her bosom. She could endure the sight, the
+words spoken, the revelations made, no longer, and she cried out:
+"Aneurin! Aneurin! for the Lord's sake, no more of this! Oh, the day,
+the day, that I have seen you standing here."
+
+At once all passed; and she was again in her bedroom in Honeysuckle
+Cottage, North Wales, seated with folded hands on her lap, and looking
+before her wonderingly at the ghostly form of her son.
+
+"Is that enough, mother?"
+
+She lifted her hands deprecatingly.
+
+Again he shook the glimmering white sheet, and it was as though drops of
+pearly fire fell out of it.
+
+And again--all was changed.
+
+She found herself at Monte Carlo; she knew it instinctively. She was in
+the great saloon, where were the gaming-tables. The electric lights
+glittered, and the decorations were superb. But all her attention was
+engrossed on her son, whom she saw at one of the tables, staking his
+last napoleon.
+
+It was indeed her own Aneurin, but with a face on which vice and its
+consequent degradation were written indelibly.
+
+He lost, and turned away, and left the hall and its lights. His mother
+followed him. He went forth into the gardens. The full moon was shining,
+and the gravel of the terraces was white as snow. The air was fragrant
+with the scent of oranges and myrtles. The palms cast black shadows on
+the soil. The sea lay still as if asleep, with a gleam over it from the
+moon.
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones tracked her son, as he stole in and out among the
+shrubs, amid the trees, with a sickening fear at her heart. Then she saw
+him pause by some oleanders, and draw a revolver from his pocket and
+place it at his ear. She uttered a cry of agony and horror, and tried to
+spring forward to dash the weapon from his hand.
+
+Then all changed.
+
+She was again in her little room in the dusk, and the shadowy form of
+Aneurin was before her.
+
+"Mother," said the spirit, "I have been permitted to come to you and to
+show to you what would have been my career if I had not died whilst
+young, and fresh, and innocent. You have to thank Jacob Van Heeren that
+he saved me from such a life of infamy, and such an evil death by my own
+hand. You should thank, and not curse him." She was breathing heavily.
+Her heart beat so fast that her brain span; she fell on her knees.
+
+"Mother," the apparition continued, "there were seventeen pebbles cast
+into the well."
+
+"Yes, Aneurin," she whispered.
+
+"And there is a seventeenth white flag. With the sixteenth Jacob Van
+Heeren died. The seventeenth is reserved for you."
+
+"Aneurin! I am not fit to die."
+
+"Mother, it must be, I must lay the white flag over your head."
+
+"Oh! my son, my son!"
+
+"It is so ordained," he proceeded; "but there are Love and Mercy on
+high, and you shall not be veiled with it till you have made your peace.
+You have sinned. You have thrust yourself into the council-chamber of
+God. You have claimed to exercise vengeance yourself, and not left it to
+Him to whom vengeance in right belongs."
+
+"I know it now," breathed the widow.
+
+"And now you must atone for the curses by prayers. You have brought
+Jacob Van Heeren to his death by your imprecations, and now, fold your
+hands and pray to God for him--for him, your son's murderer. Little have
+you considered that his acts were due to ignorance, resentment for what
+he fancied were wrongs, and to having been reared in a mutilated and
+debased form of Christianity. Pray for him, that God may pardon his many
+and great transgressions, his falsehood, his treachery, his
+self-righteousness. You who have been so greatly wronged are the right
+person to forgive and to pray for his soul. In no other way can you so
+fully show that your heart is turned from wrath to love. Forgive us our
+trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us."
+
+She breathed a "Yes."
+
+Then she clasped her hands. She was already on her knees, and she prayed
+first the great Exemplar's prayer, and then particularly for the man who
+had wrecked her life, with all its hopes.
+
+And as she prayed the lines in her face softened, and the lips lost
+their hardness, and the fierce light passed utterly away from her eyes,
+in which the lamp of Charity was once more lighted, and the tears formed
+and rolled down her cheeks.
+
+And still she prayed on, bathed in the pearly light from the summer sky
+at night. Without, in the firmament, twinkled a star; and a night-bird
+began to sing.
+
+"And now, mother, pray for yourself."
+
+Then she crossed her hands over her bosom, and bowed her head, full of
+self-reproach and shame; and as she prayed, the spirit of her son raised
+the White Flag above her and let it sail down softly, lightly over the
+loved head, and as it descended there fell from it as it were a dew of
+pale fire, and it rested on her head, and fell about her, and she sank
+forward with her face upon the floor. R.I.P.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book of Ghosts, by Sabine Baring-Gould
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book of Ghosts, by Sabine Baring-Gould
+
+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: A Book of Ghosts
+
+Author: Sabine Baring-Gould
+
+Illustrator: David Murray Smith
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2011 [EBook #36638]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF GHOSTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       A BOOK OF GHOSTS
+
+                   BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
+
+
+    WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY D. MURRAY SMITH
+
+    SECOND EDITION
+
+    METHUEN & CO.
+    36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+    LONDON
+
+    _Colonial Library_
+
+    _First Published      October 1904_
+    _Second Edition       December 1904_
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "WHO ARE YOU?"]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Some of the stories in this volume have already appeared in print. "The
+Red-haired Girl" in _The Windsor Magazine_; "Colonel Halifax's Ghost
+Story" in _The Illustrated English Magazine_; "Glamr" I told in my
+_Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas_, published in 1863, and long ago out of
+print. "The Bold Venture" appeared in _The Graphic_; "The 9.30 Up-train"
+as long ago as 1853 in _Once a Week_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+JEAN BOUCHON
+
+POMPS AND VANITIES
+
+MCALISTER
+
+THE LEADEN RING
+
+THE MOTHER OF PANSIES
+
+THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
+
+A PROFESSIONAL SECRET
+
+H. P.
+
+GLAMR
+
+COLONEL HALIFAX'S GHOST STORY
+
+THE MEREWIGS
+
+THE "BOLD VENTURE"
+
+MUSTAPHA
+
+LITTLE JOE GANDER
+
+A DEAD FINGER
+
+BLACK RAM
+
+A HAPPY RELEASE
+
+THE 9.30 UP-TRAIN
+
+ON THE LEADS
+
+AUNT JOANNA
+
+THE WHITE FLAG
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Then the bride put back her veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister Letice"
+
+"Her hat was blown off, and next instant a detonation rang through her
+head as though a gun had been fired into her ear"
+
+"If he went out for a walk they trotted forth with him, some before,
+some following"
+
+"You let that Mustapha come in, and try and stick his knife into me"
+
+"'Mammy!' said he; 'Mammy! my violin cost me three shillings and
+sixpence, and I can't make it play no-ways'"
+
+"I believe that they are talking goody-goody"
+
+"She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table"
+
+
+
+
+A BOOK OF GHOSTS
+
+
+
+
+JEAN BOUCHON
+
+
+I was in Orleans a good many years ago. At the time it was my purpose to
+write a life of Joan of Arc, and I considered it advisable to visit the
+scenes of her exploits, so as to be able to give to my narrative some
+local colour.
+
+But I did not find Orleans answer to my expectations. It is a dull town,
+very modern in appearance, but with that measly and decrepit look which
+is so general in French towns. There was a Place Jeanne d'Arc, with an
+equestrian statue of her in the midst, flourishing a banner. There was
+the house that the Maid had occupied after the taking of the city, but,
+with the exception of the walls and rafters, it had undergone so much
+alteration and modernisation as to have lost its interest. A museum of
+memorials of la Pucelle had been formed, but possessed no genuine
+relics, only arms and tapestries of a later date.
+
+The city walls she had besieged, the gate through which she had burst,
+had been levelled, and their places taken by boulevards. The very
+cathedral in which she had knelt to return thanks for her victory was
+not the same. That had been blown up by the Huguenots, and the cathedral
+that now stands was erected on its ruins in 1601.
+
+There was an ormolu figure of Jeanne on the clock--never wound up--upon
+the mantelshelf in my room at the hotel, and there were chocolate
+figures of her in the confectioners' shop-windows for children to suck.
+When I sat down at 7 p.m. to table d'hote, at my inn, I was out of
+heart. The result of my exploration of sites had been unsatisfactory;
+but I trusted on the morrow to be able to find material to serve my
+purpose in the municipal archives of the town library.
+
+My dinner ended, I sauntered to a cafe.
+
+That I selected opened on to the Place, but there was a back entrance
+near to my hotel, leading through a long, stone-paved passage at the
+back of the houses in the street, and by ascending three or four stone
+steps one entered the long, well-lighted cafe. I came into it from the
+back by this means, and not from the front.
+
+I took my place and called for a cafe-cognac. Then I picked up a French
+paper and proceeded to read it--all but the feuilleton. In my experience
+I have never yet come across anyone who reads the feuilletons in a
+French paper; and my impression is that these snippets of novel are
+printed solely for the purpose of filling up space and disguising the
+lack of news at the disposal of the editors. The French papers borrow
+their information relative to foreign affairs largely from the English
+journals, so that they are a day behind ours in the foreign news that
+they publish.
+
+Whilst I was engaged in reading, something caused me to look up, and I
+noticed standing by the white marble-topped table, on which was my
+coffee, a waiter, with a pale face and black whiskers, in an expectant
+attitude.
+
+I was a little nettled at his precipitancy in applying for payment, but
+I put it down to my being a total stranger there; and without a word I
+set down half a franc and a ten centimes coin, the latter as his
+_pourboire_. Then I proceeded with my reading.
+
+I think a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when I rose to depart, and
+then, to my surprise, I noticed the half-franc still on the table, but
+the sous piece was gone.
+
+I beckoned to a waiter, and said: "One of you came to me a little while
+ago demanding payment. I think he was somewhat hasty in pressing for it;
+however, I set the money down, and the fellow has taken the tip, and has
+neglected the charge for the coffee."
+
+"_Sapristi!_" exclaimed the _garcon_; "Jean Bouchon has been at his
+tricks again."
+
+I said nothing further; asked no questions. The matter did not concern
+me, or indeed interest me in the smallest degree; and I left.
+
+Next day I worked hard in the town library. I cannot say that I lighted
+on any unpublished documents that might serve my purpose.
+
+I had to go through the controversial literature relative to whether
+Jeanne d'Arc was burnt or not, for it has been maintained that a person
+of the same name, and also of Arques, died a natural death some time
+later, and who postured as the original warrior-maid. I read a good many
+monographs on the Pucelle, of various values; some real contributions to
+history, others mere second-hand cookings-up of well-known and
+often-used material. The sauce in these latter was all that was new.
+
+In the evening, after dinner, I went back to the same cafe and called
+for black coffee with a nip of brandy. I drank it leisurely, and then
+retreated to the desk where I could write some letters.
+
+I had finished one, and was folding it, when I saw the same pale-visaged
+waiter standing by with his hand extended for payment. I put my hand
+into my pocket, pulled out a fifty centimes piece and a coin of two
+sous, and placed both beside me, near the man, and proceeded to put my
+letter in an envelope, which I then directed.
+
+Next I wrote a second letter, and that concluded, I rose to go to one of
+the tables and to call for stamps, when I noticed that again the silver
+coin had been left untouched, but the copper piece had been taken away.
+
+I tapped for a waiter.
+
+"_Tiens_," said I, "that fellow of yours has been bungling again. He has
+taken the tip and has left the half-franc."
+
+"Ah! Jean Bouchon once more!"
+
+"But who is Jean Bouchon?"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders, and, instead of answering my query,
+said: "I should recommend monsieur to refuse to pay Jean Bouchon
+again--that is, supposing monsieur intends revisiting this cafe."
+
+"I most assuredly will not pay such a noodle," I said; "and it passes my
+comprehension how you can keep such a fellow on your staff."
+
+I revisited the library next day, and then walked by the Loire, that
+rolls in winter such a full and turbid stream, and in summer, with a
+reduced flood, exposes gravel and sand-banks. I wandered around the
+town, and endeavoured vainly to picture it, enclosed by walls and drums
+of towers, when on April 29th, 1429, Jeanne threw herself into the town
+and forced the English to retire, discomfited and perplexed.
+
+In the evening I revisited the cafe and made my wants known as before.
+Then I looked at my notes, and began to arrange them.
+
+Whilst thus engaged I observed the waiter, named Jean Bouchon, standing
+near the table in an expectant attitude as before. I now looked him full
+in the face and observed his countenance. He had puffy white cheeks,
+small black eyes, thick dark mutton-chop whiskers, and a broken nose. He
+was decidedly an ugly man, but not a man with a repulsive expression of
+face.
+
+"No," said I, "I will give you nothing. I will not pay you. Send another
+_garcon_ to me."
+
+As I looked at him to see how he took this refusal, he seemed to fall
+back out of my range, or, to be more exact, the lines of his form and
+features became confused. It was much as though I had been gazing on a
+reflection in still water; that something had ruffled the surface, and
+all was broken up and obliterated. I could see him no more. I was
+puzzled and a bit startled, and I rapped my coffee-cup with the spoon to
+call the attention of a waiter. One sprang to me immediately.
+
+"See!" said I, "Jean Bouchon has been here again; I told him that I
+would not pay him one sou, and he has vanished in a most perplexing
+manner. I do not see him in the room."
+
+"No, he is not in the room."
+
+"When he comes in again, send him to me. I want to have a word with
+him."
+
+The waiter looked confused, and replied: "I do not think that Jean will
+return."
+
+"How long has he been on your staff?"
+
+"Oh! he has not been on our staff for some years."
+
+"Then why does he come here and ask for payment for coffee and what else
+one may order?"
+
+"He never takes payment for anything that has been consumed. He takes
+only the tips."
+
+"But why do you permit him to do that?"
+
+"We cannot help ourselves."
+
+"He should not be allowed to enter the cafe."
+
+"No one can keep him out."
+
+"This is surpassing strange. He has no right to the tips. You should
+communicate with the police."
+
+The waiter shook his head. "They can do nothing. Jean Bouchon died in
+1869."
+
+"Died in 1869!" I repeated.
+
+"It is so. But he still comes here. He never pesters the old customers,
+the inhabitants of the town--only visitors, strangers."
+
+"Tell me all about him."
+
+"Monsieur must pardon me now. We have many in the place, and I have my
+duties."
+
+"In that case I will drop in here to-morrow morning when you are
+disengaged, and I will ask you to inform me about him. What is your
+name?"
+
+"At monsieur's pleasure--Alphonse."
+
+Next morning, in place of pursuing the traces of the Maid of Orleans, I
+went to the cafe to hunt up Jean Bouchon. I found Alphonse with a duster
+wiping down the tables. I invited him to a table and made him sit down
+opposite me. I will give his story in substance, only where advisable
+recording his exact words.
+
+Jean Bouchon had been a waiter at this particular cafe. Now in some of
+these establishments the attendants are wont to have a box, into which
+they drop all the tips that are received; and at the end of the week it
+is opened, and the sum found in it is divided _pro rata_ among the
+waiters, the head waiter receiving a larger portion than the others.
+This is not customary in all such places of refreshment, but it is in
+some, and it was so in this cafe. The average is pretty constant, except
+on special occasions, as when a fete occurs; and the waiters know within
+a few francs what their perquisites will be.
+
+But in the cafe where served Jean Bouchon the sum did not reach the
+weekly total that might have been anticipated; and after this deficit
+had been noted for a couple of months the waiters were convinced that
+there was something wrong, somewhere or somehow. Either the common box
+was tampered with, or one of them did not put in his tips received. A
+watch was set, and it was discovered that Jean Bouchon was the
+defaulter. When he had received a gratuity, he went to the box, and
+pretended to put in the coin, but no sound followed, as would have been
+the case had one been dropped in.
+
+There ensued, of course, a great commotion among the waiters when this
+was discovered. Jean Bouchon endeavoured to brave it out, but the
+_patron_ was appealed to, the case stated, and he was dismissed. As he
+left by the back entrance, one of the younger _garcons_ put out his leg
+and tripped Bouchon up, so that he stumbled and fell headlong down the
+steps with a crash on the stone floor of the passage. He fell with such
+violence on his forehead that he was taken up insensible. His bones were
+fractured, there was concussion of the brain, and he died within a few
+hours without recovering consciousness.
+
+"We were all very sorry and greatly shocked," said Alphonse; "we did not
+like the man, he had dealt dishonourably by us, but we wished him no
+ill, and our resentment was at an end when he was dead. The waiter who
+had tripped him up was arrested, and was sent to prison for some months,
+but the accident was due to _une mauvaise plaisanterie_ and no malice
+was in it, so that the young fellow got off with a light sentence. He
+afterwards married a widow with a cafe at Vierzon, and is there, I
+believe, doing well.
+
+"Jean Bouchon was buried," continued Alphonse; "and we waiters attended
+the funeral and held white kerchiefs to our eyes. Our head waiter even
+put a lemon into his, that by squeezing it he might draw tears from his
+eyes. We all subscribed for the interment, that it should be
+dignified--majestic as becomes a waiter."
+
+"And do you mean to tell me that Jean Bouchon has haunted this cafe ever
+since?"
+
+"Ever since 1869," replied Alphonse.
+
+"And there is no way of getting rid of him?"
+
+"None at all, monsieur. One of the Canons of Bourges came in here one
+evening. We did suppose that Jean Bouchon would not approach, molest an
+ecclesiastic, but he did. He took his _pourboire_ and left the rest,
+just as he treated monsieur. Ah! monsieur! but Jean Bouchon did well in
+1870 and 1871 when those pigs of Prussians were here in occupation. The
+officers came nightly to our cafe, and Jean Bouchon was greatly on the
+alert. He must have carried away half of the gratuities they offered. It
+was a sad loss to us."
+
+"This is a very extraordinary story," said I.
+
+"But it is true," replied Alphonse.
+
+Next day I left Orleans. I gave up the notion of writing the life of
+Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be
+gleaned on her history--in fact, she had been thrashed out.
+
+Years passed, and I had almost forgotten about Jean Bouchon, when, the
+other day, I was in Orleans once more, on my way south, and at once the
+whole story recurred to me.
+
+I went that evening to the same cafe. It had been smartened up since I
+was there before. There was more plate glass, more gilding; electric
+light had been introduced, there were more mirrors, and there were also
+ornaments that had not been in the cafe before.
+
+I called for cafe-cognac and looked at a journal, but turned my eyes on
+one side occasionally, on the look-out for Jean Bouchon. But he did not
+put in an appearance. I waited for a quarter of an hour in expectation,
+but saw no sign of him.
+
+Presently I summoned a waiter, and when he came up I inquired: "But
+where is Jean Bouchon?"
+
+"Monsieur asks after Jean Bouchon?" The man looked surprised.
+
+"Yes, I have seen him here previously. Where is he at present?"
+
+"Monsieur has seen Jean Bouchon? Monsieur perhaps knew him. He died in
+1869."
+
+"I know that he died in 1869, but I made his acquaintance in 1874. I saw
+him then thrice, and he accepted some small gratuities of me."
+
+"Monsieur tipped Jean Bouchon?"
+
+"Yes, and Jean Bouchon accepted my tips."
+
+"_Tiens_, and Jean Bouchon died five years before."
+
+"Yes, and what I want to know is how you have rid yourselves of Jean
+Bouchon, for that you have cleared the place of him is evident, or he
+would have been pestering me this evening." The man looked disconcerted
+and irresolute.
+
+"Hold," said I; "is Alphonse here?"
+
+"No, monsieur, Alphonse has left two or three years ago. And monsieur
+saw Jean Bouchon in 1874. I was not then here. I have been here only six
+years."
+
+"But you can in all probability inform me of the manner of getting quit
+of Jean."
+
+"Monsieur! I am very busy this evening, there are so many gentlemen come
+in."
+
+"I will give you five francs if you will tell me all--all--succinctly
+about Jean Bouchon."
+
+"Will monsieur be so good as to come here to-morrow during the morning?
+and then I place myself at the disposition of monsieur."
+
+"I shall be here at eleven o'clock."
+
+At the appointed time I was at the cafe. If there is an institution that
+looks ragged and dejected and dissipated, it is a cafe in the morning,
+when the chairs are turned upside-down, the waiters are in aprons and
+shirt-sleeves, and a smell of stale tobacco lurks about the air, mixed
+with various other unpleasant odours.
+
+The waiter I had spoken to on the previous evening was looking out for
+me. I made him seat himself at a table with me. No one else was in the
+saloon except another _garcon_, who was dusting with a long
+feather-brush.
+
+"Monsieur," began the waiter, "I will tell you the whole truth. The
+story is curious, and perhaps everyone would not believe it, but it is
+well _documentee_. Jean Bouchon was at one time in service here. We had
+a box. When I say we, I do not mean myself included, for I was not here
+at the time."
+
+"I know about the common box. I know the story down to my visit to
+Orleans in 1874, when I saw the man."
+
+"Monsieur has perhaps been informed that he was buried in the
+cemetery?"
+
+"I do know that, at the cost of his fellow-waiters."
+
+"Well, monsieur, he was poor, and his fellow-waiters, though
+well-disposed, were not rich. So he did not have a grave _en
+perpetuite_. Accordingly, after many years, when the term of consignment
+was expired, and it might well be supposed that Jean Bouchon had
+mouldered away, his grave was cleared out to make room for a fresh
+occupant. Then a very remarkable discovery was made. It was found that
+his corroded coffin was crammed--literally stuffed--with five and ten
+centimes pieces, and with them were also some German coins, no doubt
+received from those pigs of Prussians during the occupation of Orleans.
+This discovery was much talked about. Our proprietor of the cafe and the
+head waiter went to the mayor and represented to him how matters
+stood--that all this money had been filched during a series of years
+since 1869 from the waiters. And our _patron_ represented to him that it
+should in all propriety and justice be restored to us. The mayor was a
+man of intelligence and heart, and he quite accepted this view of the
+matter, and ordered the surrender of the whole coffin-load of coins to
+us, the waiters of the cafe."
+
+"So you divided it amongst you."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur; we did not. It is true that the money might
+legitimately be regarded as belonging to us. But then those defrauded,
+or most of them, had left long ago, and there were among us some who had
+not been in service in the cafe more than a year or eighteen months. We
+could not trace the old waiters. Some were dead, some had married and
+left this part of the country. We were not a corporation. So we held a
+meeting to discuss what was to be done with the money. We feared,
+moreover, that unless the spirit of Jean Bouchon were satisfied, he
+might continue revisiting the cafe and go on sweeping away the tips. It
+was of paramount importance to please Jean Bouchon, to lay out the money
+in such a manner as would commend itself to his feelings. One suggested
+one thing, one another. One proposed that the sum should be expended on
+masses for the repose of Jean's soul. But the head waiter objected to
+that. He said that he thought he knew the mind of Jean Bouchon, and that
+this would not commend itself to it. He said, did our head waiter, that
+he knew Jean Bouchon from head to heels. And he proposed that all the
+coins should be melted up, and that out of them should be cast a statue
+of Jean Bouchon in bronze, to be set up here in the cafe, as there were
+not enough coins to make one large enough to be erected in a Place. If
+monsieur will step with me he will see the statue; it is a superb work
+of art."
+
+He led the way, and I followed.
+
+In the midst of the cafe stood a pedestal, and on this basis a bronze
+figure about four feet high. It represented a man reeling backward, with
+a banner in his left hand, and the right raised towards his brow, as
+though he had been struck there by a bullet. A sabre, apparently fallen
+from his grasp, lay at his feet. I studied the face, and it most
+assuredly was utterly unlike Jean Bouchon with his puffy cheeks,
+mutton-chop whiskers, and broken nose, as I recalled him.
+
+"But," said I, "the features do not--pardon me--at all resemble those of
+Jean Bouchon. This might be the young Augustus, or Napoleon I. The
+profile is quite Greek."
+
+"It may be so," replied the waiter. "But we had no photograph to go by.
+We had to allow the artist to exercise his genius, and, above all, we
+had to gratify the spirit of Jean Bouchon."
+
+"I see. But the attitude is inexact. Jean Bouchon fell down the steps
+headlong, and this represents a man staggering backwards."
+
+"It would have been inartistic to have shown him precipitated forwards;
+besides, the spirit of Jean might not have liked it."
+
+"Quite so. I understand. But the flag?"
+
+"That was an idea of the artist. Jean could not be made holding a
+coffee-cup. You will see the whole makes a superb subject. Art has its
+exigencies. Monsieur will see underneath is an inscription on the
+pedestal."
+
+I stooped, and with some astonishment read--
+
+              "JEAN BOUCHON
+        MORT SUR LE CHAMP DE GLOIRE
+                   1870
+    DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI."
+
+"Why!" objected I, "he died from falling a cropper in the back passage,
+not on the field of glory."
+
+"Monsieur! all Orleans is a field of glory. Under S. Aignan did we not
+repel Attila and his Huns in 451? Under Jeanne d'Arc did we not repulse
+the English--monsieur will excuse the allusion--in 1429. Did we not
+recapture Orleans from the Germans in November, 1870?"
+
+"That is all very true," I broke in. "But Jean Bouchon neither fought
+against Attila nor with la Pucelle, nor against the Prussians. Then
+'_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_' is rather strong, considering
+the facts."
+
+"How? Does not monsieur see that the sentiment is patriotic and
+magnificent?"
+
+"I admit that, but dispute the application."
+
+"Then why apply it? The sentiment is all right."
+
+"But by implication it refers to Jean Bouchon, who died, not for his
+country, but in a sordid coffee-house brawl. Then, again, the date is
+wrong. Jean Bouchon died in 1869, not in 1870."
+
+"That is only out by a year."
+
+"Yes, but with this mistake of a year, and with the quotation from
+Horace, and with the attitude given to the figure, anyone would suppose
+that Jean Bouchon had fallen in the retaking of Orleans from the
+Prussians."
+
+"Ah! monsieur, who looks on a monument and expects to find thereon the
+literal truth relative to the deceased?"
+
+"This is something of a sacrifice to truth," I demurred.
+
+"Sacrifice is superb!" said the waiter. "There is nothing more noble,
+more heroic than sacrifice."
+
+"But not the sacrifice of truth."
+
+"Sacrifice is always sacrifice."
+
+"Well," said I, unwilling further to dispute, "this is certainly a great
+creation out of nothing."
+
+"Not out of nothing; out of the coppers that Jean Bouchon had filched
+from us, and which choked up his coffin."
+
+"Jean Bouchon has been seen no more?"
+
+"No, monsieur. And yet--yes, once, when the statue was unveiled. Our
+_patron_ did that. The cafe was crowded. All our _habitues_ were there.
+The _patron_ made a magnificent oration; he drew a superb picture of the
+moral, intellectual, social, and political merits of Jean Bouchon. There
+was not a dry eye among the audience, and the speaker choked with
+emotion. Then, as we stood in a ring, not too near, we saw--I was there
+and I distinctly saw, so did the others--Jean Bouchon standing with his
+back to us, looking intently at the statue of himself. Monsieur, as he
+thus stood I could discern his black mutton-chop whiskers projecting
+upon each side of his head. Well, sir, not one word was spoken. A dead
+silence fell upon all. Our _patron_ ceased to speak, and wiped his eyes
+and blew his nose. A sort of holy awe possessed us all. Then, after the
+lapse of some minutes, Jean Bouchon turned himself about, and we all saw
+his puffy pale cheeks, his thick sensual lips, his broken nose, his
+little pig's eyes. He was very unlike his idealised portrait in the
+statue; but what matters that? It gratified the deceased, and it injured
+no one. Well, monsieur, Jean Bouchon stood facing us, and he turned his
+head from one side to another, and gave us all what I may term a greasy
+smile. Then he lifted up his hands as though invoking a blessing on us
+all, and vanished. Since then he has not been seen."
+
+
+
+
+POMPS AND VANITIES
+
+
+Colonel Mountjoy had an appointment in India that kept him there
+permanently. Consequently he was constrained to send his two daughters
+to England when they were quite children. His wife had died of cholera
+at Madras. The girls were Letice and Betty. There was a year's
+difference in their ages, but they were extraordinarily alike, so much
+so that they might have been supposed to be twins.
+
+Letice was given up to the charge of Miss Mountjoy, her father's sister,
+and Betty to that of Lady Lacy, her maternal aunt. Their father would
+have preferred that his daughters should have been together, but there
+were difficulties in the way; neither of the ladies was inclined to be
+burdened with both, and if both had been placed with one the other might
+have regarded and resented this as a slight.
+
+As the children grew up their likeness in feature became more close, but
+they diverged exceedingly in expression. A sullenness, an unhappy look,
+a towering fire of resentment characterised that of Letice, whereas the
+face of Betty was open and gay.
+
+This difference was due to the difference in their bringing up.
+
+Lady Lacy, who had a small house in North Devon, was a kindly,
+intellectual, and broad-minded old lady, of sweet disposition but a
+decided will. She saw a good deal of society, and did her best to train
+Betty to be an educated and liberal-minded woman of culture and
+graceful manners. She did not send her to school, but had her taught at
+home; and on the excuse that her eyes were weak by artificial light she
+made the girl read to her in the evenings, and always read books that
+were standard and calculated to increase her knowledge and to develop
+her understanding. Lady Lacy detested all shams, and under her influence
+Betty grew up to be thoroughly straightforward, healthy-minded, and
+true.
+
+On the other hand, Miss Mountjoy was, as Letice called her, a Killjoy.
+She had herself been reared in the midst of the Clapham sect; had become
+rigid in all her ideas, narrow in all her sympathies, and a bundle of
+prejudices.
+
+The present generation of young people know nothing of the system of
+repression that was exercised in that of their fathers and mothers. Now
+the tendency is wholly in the other direction, and too greatly so. It is
+possibly due to a revulsion of feeling against a training that is looked
+back upon with a shudder.
+
+To that narrow school there existed but two categories of men and women,
+the Christians and the Worldlings, and those who pertained to it
+arrogated to themselves the former title. The Judgment had already begun
+with the severance of the sheep from the goats, and the saints who
+judged the world had their Jerusalem at Clapham.
+
+In that school the works of the great masters of English literature,
+Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, were taboo; no work of imagination was
+tolerated save the Apocalypse, and that was degraded into a polemic by
+such scribblers as Elliot and Cumming.
+
+No entertainments, not even the oratorios of Handel, were tolerated;
+they savoured of the world. The nearest approach to excitement was found
+in a missionary meeting. The Chinese contract the feet of their
+daughters, but those English Claphamites cramped the minds of their
+children. The Venetians made use of an iron prison, with gradually
+contracting walls, that finally crushed the life out of the captive.
+But these elect Christians put their sons and daughters into a school
+that squeezed their energies and their intelligences to death.
+
+Dickens caricatured such people in Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Chadband; but he
+sketched them only in their external aspect, and left untouched their
+private action in distorting young minds, maiming their wills, damping
+down all youthful buoyancy.
+
+But the result did not answer the expectations of those who adopted this
+system with the young. Some daughters, indeed, of weaker wills were
+permanently stunted and shaped on the approved model, but nearly all the
+sons, and most of the daughters, on obtaining their freedom, broke away
+into utter frivolity and dissipation, or, if they retained any religious
+impressions, galloped through the Church of England, performing strange
+antics on the way, and plunged into the arms of Rome.
+
+Such was the system to which the high-spirited, strong-willed Letice was
+subjected, and from which was no escape. The consequence was that Letice
+tossed and bit at her chains, and that there ensued frequent outbreaks
+of resentment against her aunt.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Hannah! I want something to read."
+
+After some demur, and disdainful rejection of more serious works, she
+was allowed Milton.
+
+Then she said, "Oh! I do love _Comus_."
+
+"_Comus!_" gasped Miss Mountjoy.
+
+"And _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, they are not bad."
+
+"My child. These were the compositions of the immortal bard before his
+eyes were opened."
+
+"I thought, aunt, that he had dictated the _Paradise Lost and Regained_
+after he was blind."
+
+"I refer to the eyes of his soul," said the old lady sternly.
+
+"I want a story-book."
+
+"There is the _Dairyman's Daughter_."
+
+"I have read it, and hate it."
+
+"I fear, Leticia, that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of
+iniquity."
+
+Unhappily the sisters very rarely met one another. It was but
+occasionally that Lady Lacy and Betty came to town, and when they did,
+Miss Mountjoy put as many difficulties as she could in the way of their
+associating together.
+
+On one such visit to London, Lady Lacy called and asked if she might
+take Letice with herself to the theatre. Miss Mountjoy shivered with
+horror, reared herself, and expressed her opinion of stage-plays and
+those who went to see them in strong and uncomplimentary terms. As she
+had the custody of Letice, she would by no persuasion be induced to
+allow her to imperil her soul by going to such a wicked place. Lady Lacy
+was fain to withdraw in some dismay and much regret.
+
+Poor Letice, who had heard this offer made, had flashed into sudden
+brightness and a tremor of joy; when it was refused, she burst into a
+flood of tears and an ecstasy of rage. She ran up to her room, and took
+and tore to pieces a volume of _Clayton's Sermons_, scattered the leaves
+over the floor, and stamped upon them.
+
+"Letice," said Miss Mountjoy, when she saw the devastation, "you are a
+child of wrath."
+
+"Why mayn't I go where there is something pretty to see? Why may I not
+hear good music? Why must I be kept forever in the Doleful Dumps?"
+
+"Because all these things are of the world, worldly."
+
+"If God hates all that is fair and beautiful, why did He create the
+peacock, the humming-bird, and the bird of paradise, instead of filling
+the world with barn-door fowls?"
+
+"You have a carnal mind. You will never go to heaven."
+
+"Lucky I--if the saints there do nothing but hold missionary meetings to
+convert one another. Pray what else can they do?"
+
+"They are engaged in the worship of God."
+
+"I don't know what that means. All I am acquainted with is the worship
+of the congregation. At Salem Chapel the minister faces it, mouths at
+it, gesticulates to it, harangues, flatters, fawns at it, and, indeed,
+prays at it. If that be all, heaven must be a deadly dull hole."
+
+Miss Mountjoy reared herself, she became livid with wrath. "You wicked
+girl."
+
+"Aunt," said Letice, intent on further incensing her, "I do wish you
+would let me go--just for once--to a Catholic church to see what the
+worship of God is."
+
+"I would rather see you dead at my feet!" exclaimed the incensed lady,
+and stalked, rigid as a poker, out of the room.
+
+Thus the unhappy girl grew up to woman's estate, her heart seething with
+rebellion.
+
+And then a terrible thing occurred. She caught scarlet fever, which took
+an unfavourable turn, and her life was despaired of. Miss Mountjoy was
+not one to conceal from the girl that her days were few, and her future
+condition hopeless.
+
+Letice fought against the idea of dying so young.
+
+"Oh, aunt! I won't die! I can't die! I have seen nothing of the pomps
+and vanities. I want to just taste them, and know what they are like.
+Oh! save me, make the doctor give me something to revive me. I want the
+pomps and vanities, oh! so much. I will not, I cannot die!" But her
+will, her struggle, availed nothing, and she passed away into the Great
+Unseen.
+
+Miss Mountjoy wrote a formal letter to her brother, who had now become a
+general, to inform him of the lamented decease of his eldest daughter.
+It was not a comforting letter. It dwelt unnecessarily on the faults of
+Letice, it expressed no hopes as to her happiness in the world to which
+she had passed. There had been no signs of resignation at the last; no
+turning from the world with its pomps and vanities to better things,
+only a vain longing after what she could not have; a bitter resentment
+against Providence for having denied them to her; and a steeling of her
+heart against good and pious influences.
+
+A year had passed.
+
+Lady Lacy had come to town along with her niece. A dear friend had
+placed her house at her disposal. She had herself gone to Dresden with
+her daughters to finish them off in music and German. Lady Lacy was very
+glad of the occasion, for Betty was now of an age to be brought out.
+There was to be a great ball at the house of the Countess of Belgrove,
+unto whom Lady Lacy was related, and at the ball Betty was to make her
+debut.
+
+The girl was in a condition of boundless excitement. A beautiful
+ball-dress of white satin, trimmed with rich Valenciennes lace, was laid
+over her chair for her to wear. Neat little white satin shoes stood on
+the floor, quite new, for her feet. In a flower-glass stood a red
+camellia that was destined to adorn her hair, and on the dressing-table,
+in a morocco case, was a pearl necklace that had belonged to her mother.
+
+The maid did her hair, but the camellia, which was to be the only point
+of colour about her, except her rosy lips and flushed cheeks--that
+camellia was not to be put into her hair till the last minute.
+
+The maid offered to help her to dress.
+
+"No, thank you, Martha; I can do that perfectly well myself. I am
+accustomed to use my own hands, and I can take my own time about it."
+
+"But really, miss, I think you should allow me."
+
+"Indeed, indeed, no. There is plenty of time, and I shall go leisurely
+to work. When the carriage comes just tap at the door and tell me, and I
+will rejoin my aunt."
+
+When the maid was gone, Betty locked her door. She lighted the candles
+beside the cheval-glass, and looked at herself in the mirror and
+laughed. For the first time, with glad surprise and innocent pleasure,
+she realised how pretty she was. And pretty she was indeed, with her
+pleasant face, honest eyes, finely arched brows, and twinkling smile
+that produced dimples in her cheeks.
+
+"There is plenty of time," she said. "I shan't take a hundred years in
+dressing now that my hair is done."
+
+She yawned. A great heaviness had come over her.
+
+"I really think I shall have a nap first. I am dead sleepy now, and
+forty winks will set me up for the night."
+
+Then she laid herself upon the bed. A numbing, over-powering lethargy
+weighed on her, and almost at once she sank into a dreamless sleep. So
+unconscious was she that she did not hear Martha's tap at the door nor
+the roll of the carriage as it took her aunt away.
+
+She woke with a start. It was full day.
+
+For some moments she did not realise this fact, nor that she was still
+dressed in the gown in which she had lain down the previous evening.
+
+She rose in dismay. She had slept so soundly that she had missed the
+ball.
+
+She rang her bell and unlocked the door.
+
+"What, miss, up already?" asked the maid, coming in with a tray on which
+were tea and bread and butter.
+
+"Yes, Martha. Oh! what will aunt say? I have slept so long and like a
+log, and never went to the ball. Why did you not call me?"
+
+"Please, miss, you have forgotten. You went to the ball last night."
+
+"No; I did not. I overslept myself."
+
+The maid smiled. "If I may be so bold as to say so, I think, Miss Betty,
+you are dreaming still."
+
+"No; I did not go."
+
+The maid took up the satin dress. It was crumpled, the lace was a little
+torn, and the train showed unmistakable signs of having been drawn over
+a floor.
+
+She then held up the shoes. They had been worn, and well worn, as if
+danced in all night.
+
+"Look here, miss; here is your programme! Why, deary me! you must have
+had a lot of dancing. It is quite full."
+
+Betty looked at the programme with dazed eyes; then at the camellia. It
+had lost some of its petals, and these had not fallen on the
+toilet-cover. Where were they? What was the meaning of this?
+
+"Martha, bring me my hot water, and leave me alone."
+
+Betty was sorely perplexed. There were evidences that her dress had been
+worn. The pearl necklace was in the case, but not as she had left
+it--outside. She bathed her head in cold water. She racked her brain.
+She could not recall the smallest particular of the ball. She perused
+the programme. A light colour came into her cheek as she recognised the
+initials "C. F.," those of Captain Charles Fontanel, of whom of late she
+had seen a good deal. Other characters expressed nothing to her mind.
+
+"How very strange!" she said; "and I was lying on the bed in the dress I
+had on yesterday evening. I cannot explain it."
+
+Twenty minutes later, Betty went downstairs and entered the
+breakfast-room. Lady Lacy was there. She went up to her aunt and kissed
+her.
+
+"I am so sorry that I overslept myself," she said. "I was like one of
+the Seven Sleepers."
+
+"My dear, I should not have minded if you had not come down till midday.
+After a first ball you must be tired."
+
+"I meant--last night."
+
+"How, last night?"
+
+"I mean when I went to dress."
+
+"Oh, you were punctual enough. When I was ready you were already in the
+hall."
+
+The bewilderment of the girl grew apace.
+
+"I am sure," said her aunt, "you enjoyed yourself. But you gave the
+lion's share of the dances to Captain Fontanel. If this had been at
+Exeter, it would have caused talk; but here you are known only to a few;
+however, Lady Belgrove observed it."
+
+"I hope you are not very tired, auntie darling," said Betty, to change
+slightly the theme that perplexed her.
+
+"Nothing to speak of. I like to go to a ball; it recalls my old dancing
+days. But I thought you looked white and fagged all the evening. Perhaps
+it was excitement."
+
+As soon as breakfast was concluded, Betty escaped to her room. A fear
+was oppressing her. The only explanation of the mystery was that she had
+been to the dance in her sleep. She was a somnambulist. What had she
+said and done when unconscious? What a dreadful thing it would have been
+had she woke up in the middle of a dance! She must have dressed herself,
+gone to Lady Belgrove's, danced all night, returned, taken off her
+dress, put on her afternoon tea-gown, lain down and concluded her
+sleep--all in one long tract of unconsciousness.
+
+"By the way," said her aunt next day, "I have taken tickets for
+_Carmen_, at Her Majesty's. You would like to go?"
+
+"Oh, delighted, aunt. I know some of the music--of course, the Toreador
+song; but I have never heard the whole opera. It will be delightful."
+
+"And you are not too tired to go?"
+
+"No--ten thousand times, no--I shall love to see it."
+
+"What dress will you go in?"
+
+"I think my black, and put a rose in my hair."
+
+"That will do very well. The black becomes you. I think you could not do
+better."
+
+Betty was highly delighted. She had been to plays, never to a real
+opera.
+
+In the evening, dinner was early, unnecessarily early, and Betty knew
+that it would not take her long to dress, so she went into the little
+conservatory and seated herself there. The scent of the heliotropes was
+strong. Betty called them cherry-pie. She had got the libretto, and she
+looked it over; but as she looked, her eyes closed, and without being
+aware that she was going to sleep, in a moment she was completely
+unconscious.
+
+She woke, feeling stiff and cold.
+
+"Goodness!" said she, "I hope I am not late. Why--what is that light?"
+
+The glimmer of dawn shone in at the conservatory windows.
+
+Much astonished, she left it. The hall, the staircase were dark. She
+groped her way to her room, and switched on the electric light.
+
+Before her lay her black-and-white muslin dress on the bed; on the table
+were her white twelve-button gloves folded about her fan. She took them
+up, and below them, somewhat crumpled, lay the play-bill, scented.
+
+"How very unaccountable this is," she said; and removing the dress,
+seated herself on the bed and thought.
+
+"Why did they turn out the lights?" she asked herself, then sprang to
+her feet, switched off the electric current, and saw that actually the
+morning light was entering the room. She resumed her seat; put her hands
+to her brow.
+
+"It cannot--it cannot be that this dreadful thing has happened again."
+
+Presently she heard the servants stirring. She hastily undressed and
+retired between the sheets, but not to sleep. Her mind worked. She was
+seriously alarmed.
+
+At the usual time Martha arrived with tea.
+
+"Awake, Miss Betty!" she said. "I hope you had a nice evening. I dare
+say it was beautiful."
+
+"But," began the girl, then checked herself, and said--
+
+"Is my aunt getting up? Is she very tired?"
+
+"Oh, miss, my lady is a wonderful person; she never seems to tire. She
+is always down at the same time."
+
+Betty dressed, but her mind was in a turmoil. On one thing she was
+resolved. She must see a doctor. But she would not frighten her aunt,
+she would keep the matter close from her.
+
+When she came into the breakfast-room, Lady Lacy said--
+
+"I thought Maas's voice was superb, but I did not so much care for the
+Carmen. What did you think, dear?"
+
+"Aunt," said Betty, anxious to change the topic, "would you mind my
+seeing a doctor? I don't think I am quite well."
+
+"Not well! Why what is the matter with you?"
+
+"I have such dead fits of drowsiness."
+
+"My dearest, is that to be wondered at with this racketing about; balls
+and theatres--very other than the quiet life at home? But I will admit
+that you struck me as looking very pale last night. You shall certainly
+see Dr. Groves."
+
+When the medical man arrived, Betty intimated that she wished to speak
+with him alone, and he was shown with her into the morning-room.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Groves," she said nervously, "it is such a strange thing I have
+to say. I believe I walk in my sleep."
+
+"You have eaten something that disagreed with you."
+
+"But it lasted so long."
+
+"How do you mean? Have you long been subject to it?"
+
+"Dear, no. I never had any signs of it before I came to London this
+season."
+
+"And how were you roused? How did you become aware of it?"
+
+"I was not roused at all; the fact is I went asleep to Lady Belgrove's
+ball, and danced there and came back, and woke up in the morning without
+knowing I had been."
+
+"What!"
+
+"And then, last night, I went in my sleep to Her Majesty's and heard
+_Carmen_; but I woke up in the conservatory here at early dawn, and I
+remember nothing about it."
+
+"This is a very extraordinary story. Are you sure you went to the ball
+and to the opera?"
+
+"Quite sure. My dress had been used on both occasions, and my shoes and
+fan and gloves as well."
+
+"Did you go with Lady Lacy?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I was with her all the time. But I remember nothing about it."
+
+"I must speak to her ladyship."
+
+"Please, please do not. It would frighten her; and I do not wish her to
+suspect anything, except that I am a little out of sorts. She gets
+nervous about me."
+
+Dr. Groves mused for some while, then he said: "I cannot see that this
+is at all a case of somnambulism."
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Lapse of memory. Have you ever suffered from that previously?"
+
+"Nothing to speak of. Of course I do not always remember everything. I
+do not always recollect commissions given to me, unless I write them
+down. And I cannot say that I remember all the novels I have read, or
+what was the menu at dinner yesterday."
+
+"That is quite a different matter. What I refer to is spaces of blank in
+your memory. How often has this occurred?"
+
+"Twice."
+
+"And quite recently?"
+
+"Yes, I never knew anything of the kind before."
+
+"I think that the sooner you return to the country the better. It is
+possible that the strain of coming out and the change of entering into
+gay life in town has been too much for you. Take care and economise your
+pleasures. Do not attempt too much; and if anything of the sort happens
+again, send for me."
+
+"Then you won't mention this to my aunt?"
+
+"No, not this time. I will say that you have been a little over-wrought
+and must be spared too much excitement."
+
+"Thank you so much, Dr. Groves."
+
+Now it was that a new mystery came to confound Betty. She rang her bell.
+
+"Martha," said she, when her maid appeared, "where is that novel I had
+yesterday from the circulating library? I put it on the boudoir table."
+
+"I have not noticed it, miss."
+
+"Please look for it. I have hunted everywhere for it, and it cannot be
+found."
+
+"I will look in the parlour, miss, and the schoolroom."
+
+"I have not been into the schoolroom at all, and I know that it is not
+in the drawing-room."
+
+A search was instituted, but the book could not be found. On the morrow
+it was in the boudoir, where Betty had placed it on her return from
+Mudie's.
+
+"One of the maids took it," was her explanation. She did not much care
+for the book; perhaps that was due to her preoccupation, and not to any
+lack of stirring incident in the story. She sent it back and took out
+another. Next morning that also had disappeared.
+
+It now became customary, as surely as she drew a novel from the library,
+that it vanished clean away. Betty was greatly amazed. She could not
+read a novel she had brought home till a day or two later. She took to
+putting the book, so soon as it was in the house, into one of her
+drawers, or into a cupboard. But the result was the same. Finally, when
+she had locked the newly acquired volume in her desk, and it had
+disappeared thence also, her patience gave way. There must be one of the
+domestics with a ravenous appetite for fiction, which drove her to carry
+off a book of the sort whenever it came into the house, and even to
+tamper with a lock to obtain it. Betty had been most reluctant to speak
+of the matter to her aunt, but now she made to her a formal complaint.
+
+The servants were all questioned, and strongly protested their
+innocence. Not one of them had ventured to do such a thing as that with
+which they were charged.
+
+However, from this time forward the annoyance ceased, and Betty and Lady
+Lacy naturally concluded that this was the result of the stir that had
+been made.
+
+"Betty," said Lady Lacy, "what do you say to going to the new play at
+the Gaiety? I hear it very highly spoken of. Mrs. Fontanel has a box and
+has asked if we will join her."
+
+"I should love it," replied the girl; "we have been rather quiet of
+late." But her heart was oppressed with fear.
+
+She said to her maid: "Martha, will you dress me this evening--and--pray
+stay with me till my aunt is ready and calls for me?"
+
+"Yes, miss, I shall be pleased to do so." But the girl looked somewhat
+surprised at the latter part of the request.
+
+Betty thought well to explain: "I don't know what it is, but I feel
+somewhat out of spirits and nervous, and am afraid of being left alone,
+lest something should happen."
+
+"Happen, miss! If you are not feeling well, would it not be as well to
+stay at home?"
+
+"Oh, not for the world! I must go. I shall be all right so soon as I am
+in the carriage. It will pass off then."
+
+"Shall I get you a glass of sherry, or anything?"
+
+"No, no, it is not that. You remain with me and I shall be myself
+again."
+
+That evening Betty went to the theatre. There was no recurrence of the
+sleeping fit with its concomitants. Captain Fontanel was in the box, and
+made himself vastly agreeable. He had his seat by Betty, and talked to
+her not only between the acts, but also a good deal whilst the actors
+were on the stage. With this she could have dispensed. She was not such
+an _habituee_ of the theatre as not to be intensely interested with what
+was enacted before her.
+
+Between two of the acts he said to her: "My mother is engaging Lady
+Lacy. She has a scheme in her head, but wants her consent to carry it
+out, to make it quite too charming. And I am deputed to get you to
+acquiesce."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We purpose having a boat and going to the Henley Regatta. Will you
+come?"
+
+"I should enjoy it above everything. I have never seen a regatta--that
+is to say, not one so famous, and not of this kind. There were regattas
+at Ilfracombe, but they were different."
+
+"Very well, then; the party shall consist only of my mother and sister
+and your two selves, and young Fulwell, who is dancing attendance on
+Jannet, and Putsey, who is a tame cat. I am sure my mother will persuade
+your aunt. What a lively old lady she is, and for her years how she does
+enjoy life!"
+
+"It will be a most happy conclusion to our stay in town," said Betty.
+"We are going back to auntie's little cottage in Devon in a few days;
+she wants to be at home for Good Friday and Easter Day."
+
+So it was settled. Lady Lacy had raised no objection, and now she and
+her niece had to consider what Betty should wear. Thin garments were out
+of the question; the weather was too cold, and it would be especially
+chilly on the river. Betty was still in slight mourning, so she chose a
+silver-grey cloth costume, with a black band about her waist, and a
+white straw hat, with a ribbon to match her gown.
+
+On the day of the regatta Betty said to herself; "How ignorant I am!
+Fancy my not knowing where Henley is! That it is on the Thames or Isis I
+really do not know, but I fancy on the former--yes, I am almost
+positive it is on the Thames. I have seen pictures in the _Graphic_ and
+_Illustrated_ of the race last year, and I know the river was
+represented as broad, and the Isis can only be an insignificant stream.
+I will run into the schoolroom and find a map of the environs of London
+and post myself up in the geography. One hates to look like a fool."
+
+Without a word to anyone, Betty found her way to the apartment given up
+to lessons when children were in the house. It lay at the back, down a
+passage. Since Lady Lacy had occupied the place, neither she nor Betty
+had been in it more than casually and rarely; and accordingly the
+servants had neglected to keep it clean. A good deal of dust lay about,
+and Betty, laughing, wrote her name in the fine powder on the
+school-table, then looked at her finger, found it black, and said, "Oh,
+bother! I forgot that the dust of London is smut."
+
+She went to the bookcase, and groped for a map of the Metropolis and the
+country round, but could not find one. Nor could she lay her hand on a
+gazetteer.
+
+"This must do," said she, drawing out a large, thick _Johnston's Atlas_,
+"if the scale be not too small to give Henley."
+
+She put the heavy volume on the table and opened it. England, she found,
+was in two parts, one map of the Northern, the second of the Southern
+division. She spread out the latter, placed her finger on the blue line
+of the Thames, and began to trace it up.
+
+Whilst her eyes were on it, searching the small print, they closed, and
+without being conscious that she was sleepy, her head bowed forward on
+the map, and she was breathing evenly, steeped in the most profound
+slumber.
+
+She woke slowly. Her consciousness returned to her little by little. She
+saw the atlas without understanding what it meant. She looked about her,
+and wondered how she could be in the schoolroom, and she then observed
+that darkness was closing in. Only then, suddenly, did she recall what
+had brought her where she was.
+
+Next, with a rush, upon her came the remembrance that she was due at the
+boat-race.
+
+She must again have overslept herself, for the evening had come on, and
+through the window she could see the glimmer of gaslights in the street.
+Was this to be accompanied by her former experiences?
+
+With throbbing heart she went into the passage. Then she noticed that
+the hall was lighted up, and she heard her aunt speaking, and the slam
+of the front door, and the maid say, "Shall I take off your wraps, my
+lady?"
+
+She stepped forth upon the landing and proceeded to descend, when--with
+a shock that sent the blood coursing to her heart, and that paralysed
+her movements--she saw _herself_ ascending the stair in her silver-grey
+costume and straw hat.
+
+She clung to the banister, with convulsive grip, lest she should fall,
+and stared, without power to utter a sound, as she saw herself quietly
+mount, step by step, pass her, go beyond to her own room.
+
+For fully ten minutes she remained rooted to the spot, unable to stir
+even a finger. Her tongue was stiff, her muscles set, her heart ceased
+to beat.
+
+Then slowly her blood began again to circulate, her nerves to relax,
+power of movement returned. With a hoarse gasp she reeled from her
+place, and giddy, touching the banister every moment to prevent herself
+from falling, she crept downstairs. But when once in the hall, she had
+recovered flexibility. She ran towards the morning-room, whither Lady
+Lacy had gone to gather up the letters that had arrived by post during
+her absence.
+
+Betty stood looking at her, speechless.
+
+Her aunt raised her face from an envelope she was considering. "Why,
+Betty," said she, "how expeditiously you have changed your dress!"
+
+The girl could not speak, but fell unconscious on the floor.
+
+When she came to herself, she was aware of a strong smell of vinegar.
+She was lying on the sofa, and Martha was applying a moistened kerchief
+to her brow. Lady Lacy stood by, alarmed and anxious, with a bottle of
+smelling-salts in her hand.
+
+"Oh, aunt, I saw----" then she ceased. It would not do to tell of the
+apparition. She would not be believed.
+
+"My darling," said Lady Lacy, "you are overdone, and it was foolish of
+you tearing upstairs and scrambling into your morning-gown. I have sent
+for Groves. Are you able now to rise? Can you manage to reach your
+room?"
+
+"My room!" she shuddered. "Let me lie here a little longer. I cannot
+walk. Let me be here till the doctor comes."
+
+"Certainly, dearest. I thought you looked very unlike yourself all day
+at the regatta. If you had felt out of sorts you ought not to have
+gone."
+
+"Auntie! I was quite well in the morning."
+
+Presently the medical man arrived, and was shown in. Betty saw that Lady
+Lacy purposed staying through the interview. Accordingly she said
+nothing to Dr. Groves about what she had seen.
+
+"She is overdone," said he. "The sooner you move her down to Devonshire
+the better. Someone had better be in her room to-night."
+
+"Yes," said Lady Lacy; "I had thought of that and have given orders.
+Martha can make up her bed on the sofa in the adjoining dressing-room or
+boudoir."
+
+This was a relief to Betty, who dreaded a return to her room--her room
+into which her other self had gone.
+
+"I will call again in the morning," said the medical man; "keep her in
+bed to-morrow, at all events till I have seen her."
+
+When he left, Betty found herself able to ascend the stairs. She cast a
+frightened glance about her room. The straw hat, the grey dress were
+there. No one was in it.
+
+She was helped to bed, and although laid in it with her head among the
+pillows, she could not sleep. Racking thoughts tortured her. What was
+the signification of that encounter? What of her strange sleeps? What of
+those mysterious appearances of herself, where she had not been? The
+theory that she had walked in her sleep was untenable. How was she to
+solve the riddle? That she was going out of her mind was no explanation.
+
+Only towards morning did she doze off.
+
+When Dr. Groves came, about eleven o'clock, Betty made a point of
+speaking to him alone, which was what she greatly desired.
+
+She said to him: "Oh! it has been worse this last occasion, far worse
+than before. I do not walk in my sleep. Whilst I am buried in slumber,
+someone else takes my place."
+
+"Whom do you mean? Surely not one of the maids?"
+
+"Oh, no. I met her on the stairs last night, that is what made me
+faint."
+
+"Whom did you meet?"
+
+"Myself--my double."
+
+"Nonsense, Miss Mountjoy."
+
+"But it is a fact. I saw myself as clearly as I see you now. I was going
+down into the hall."
+
+"You saw yourself! You saw your own pleasant, pretty face in a
+looking-glass."
+
+"There is no looking-glass on the staircase. Besides, I was in my alpaca
+morning-gown, and my double had on my pearl-grey cloth costume, with my
+straw hat. She was mounting as I was descending."
+
+"Tell me the story."
+
+"I went yesterday--an hour or so before I had to dress--into the
+schoolroom. I am awfully ignorant, and I did want to see a map and find
+out where was Henley, because, you know, I was going to the boat-race.
+And I dropped off into one of those dreadful dead sleeps, with my head
+on the atlas. When I awoke it was evening, and the gas-lamps were
+lighted. I was frightened, and ran out to the landing and I heard them
+arrive, just come back from Henley, and as I was going down the stairs,
+I saw my double coming up, and we met face to face. She passed me by,
+and went on to my room--to this room. So you see this is proof pos that
+I am not a somnambulist."
+
+"I never said that you were. I never for a moment admitted the
+supposition. That, if you remember, was your own idea. What I said
+before is what I repeat now, that you suffer from failure of memory."
+
+"But that cannot be so, Dr. Groves."
+
+"Pray, why not?"
+
+"Because I saw my double, wearing my regatta costume."
+
+"I hold to my opinion, Miss Mountjoy. If you will listen to me I shall
+be able to offer a satisfactory explanation. Satisfactory, I mean, so
+far as to make your experiences intelligible to you. I do not at all
+imply that your condition is satisfactory."
+
+"Well, tell me. I cannot make heads or tails of this matter."
+
+"It is this, young lady. On several recent occasions you have suffered
+from lapses of memory. All recollection of what you did, where you went,
+what you said, has been clean wiped out. But on this last--it was
+somewhat different. The failure took place on your return, and you
+forgot everything that had happened since you were engaged in the
+schoolroom looking at the atlas."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, on your arrival here, as Lady Lacy told me, you ran upstairs, and
+in a prodigious hurry changed your clothes and put on your----"
+
+"My alpaca."
+
+"Your alpaca, yes. Then, in descending to the hall, your memory came
+back, but was still entangled with flying reminiscences of what had
+taken place during the intervening period. Amongst other things----"
+
+"I remember no other things."
+
+"You recalled confusedly one thing only, that you had mounted the stairs
+in your--your----"
+
+"My pearl-grey cloth, with the straw hat and satin ribbon."
+
+"Precisely. Whilst in your morning gown, into which you had scrambled,
+you recalled yourself in your regatta costume going upstairs to change.
+This fragmentary reminiscence presented itself before you as a vision.
+Actually you saw nothing. The impression on your brain of a scrap
+recollected appeared to you as if it had been an actual object depicted
+on the retina of your eye. Such things happen, and happen not
+infrequently. In cases of D. T.----"
+
+"But I haven't D. T. I don't drink."
+
+"I do not say that. If you will allow me to proceed. In cases of D. T.
+the patient fancies he sees rats, devils, all sorts of objects. They
+appear to him as obvious realities, he thinks that he sees them with his
+eyes. But he does not. These are mere pictures formed on the brain."
+
+"Then you hold that I really was at the boat-race?"
+
+"I am positive that you were."
+
+"And that I danced at Lady Belgrove's ball?"
+
+"Most assuredly."
+
+"And heard _Carmen_ at Her Majesty's?"
+
+"I have not the remotest doubt that you did."
+
+Betty drew a long breath, and remained in consideration.
+
+Then she said very gravely: "I want you to tell me, Dr. Groves, quite
+truthfully, quite frankly--do not think that I shall be frightened
+whatever you say; I shall merely prepare for what may be--do you
+consider that I am going out of my mind?"
+
+"I have not the least occasion for supposing so."
+
+"That," said Betty, "would be the most terrible thing of all. If I
+thought that, I would say right out to my aunt that I wished at once to
+be sent to an asylum."
+
+"You may set your mind at rest on that score."
+
+"But loss of memory is bad, but better than the other. Will these fits
+of failure come on again?"
+
+"That is more than I can prognosticate; let us hope for the best. A
+complete change of scene, change of air, change of association----"
+
+"Not to leave auntie!"
+
+"No. I do not mean that, but to get away from London society. It may
+restore you to what you were. You never had those fits before?"
+
+"Never, never, till I came to town."
+
+"And when you have left town they may not recur."
+
+"I shall take precious good care not to revisit London if it is going to
+play these tricks with me."
+
+That day Captain Fontanel called, and was vastly concerned to hear that
+Betty was unwell. She was not looking herself, he said, at the
+boat-race. He feared that the cold on the river had been too much for
+her. But he did trust that he might be allowed to have a word with her
+before she returned to Devonshire.
+
+Although he did not see Betty, he had an hour's conversation with Lady
+Lacy, and he departed with a smile on his face.
+
+On the morrow he called again. Betty had so completely recovered that
+she was cheerful, and the pleasant colour had returned to her cheeks.
+She was in the drawing-room along with her aunt when he arrived.
+
+The captain offered his condolences, and expressed his satisfaction that
+her indisposition had been so quickly got over.
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, "I am as right as a trivet. It has all passed off.
+I need not have soaked in bed all yesterday, but that aunt would have
+it so. We are going down to our home to-morrow. Yesterday auntie was
+scared and thought she would have to postpone our return."
+
+Lady Lacy rose, made the excuse that she had the packing to attend to,
+and left the young people alone together. When the door was shut behind
+her, Captain Fontanel drew his chair close to that of the girl and
+said--
+
+"Betty, you do not know how happy I have felt since you accepted me. It
+was a hurried affair in the boat-house, but really, time was running
+short; as you were off so soon to Devonshire, I had to snatch at the
+occasion when there was no one by, so I seized old Time by the forelock,
+and you were so good as to say 'Yes.'"
+
+"I--I----" stammered Betty.
+
+"But as the thing was done in such haste, I came here to-day to renew my
+offer of myself, and to make sure of my happiness. You have had time to
+reflect, and I trust you do not repent."
+
+"Oh, you are so good and kind to me!"
+
+"Dearest Betty, what a thing to say! It is I--poor, wretched,
+good-for-naught--who have cause to speak such words to you. Put your
+hand into mine; it is a short courtship of a soldier, like that of Harry
+V. and the fair Maid of France. 'I love you: then if you urge me farther
+than to say, "Do you in faith?" I wear out my suit. Give me your answer;
+i' faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain.' Am I quoting aright?"
+
+Shyly, hesitatingly, she extended her fingers, and he clasped them.
+Then, shrinking back and looking down, she said: "But I ought to tell
+you something first, something very serious, which may make you change
+your mind. I do not, in conscience, feel it right that you should commit
+yourself till you know."
+
+"It must be something very dreadful to make me do that."
+
+"It is dreadful. I am apt to be terribly forgetful."
+
+"Bless me! So am I. I have passed several of my acquaintances lately and
+have not recognised them, but that was because I was thinking of you.
+And I fear I have been very oblivious about my bills; and as to
+answering letters--good heavens! I am a shocking defaulter."
+
+"I do not mean that. I have lapses of memory. Why, I do not even
+remember----"
+
+He sealed her lips with a kiss. "You will not forget this, at any rate,
+Betty."
+
+"Oh, Charlie, no!"
+
+"Then consider this, Betty. Our engagement cannot be for long. I am
+ordered to Egypt, and I positively must take my dear little wife with me
+and show her the Pyramids. You would like to see them, would you not?"
+
+"I should love to."
+
+"And the Sphynx?"
+
+"Indeed I should."
+
+"And Pompey's Pillar?"
+
+"Oh, Charlie! I shall love above everything to see you every day."
+
+"That is prettily said. I see we understand one another. Now, hearken to
+me, give me your close attention, and no fits of lapse of memory over
+what I now say, please. We must be married very shortly. I positively
+will not go out without you. I would rather throw up my commission."
+
+"But what about papa's consent?"
+
+"I shall wire to him full particulars as to my position, income, and
+prospects, also how much I love you, and how I will do my level best to
+make you happy. That is the approved formula in addressing
+paterfamilias, I think. Then he will telegraph back, 'Bless you, my
+boy'; and all is settled. I know that Lady Lacy approves."
+
+"But dear, dear aunt. She will be so awfully lonely without me."
+
+"She shall not be. She has no ties to hold her to the little cottage in
+Devon. She shall come out to us in Cairo, and we will bury the dear old
+girl up to her neck in the sand of the desert, and make a second Sphynx
+of her, and bake the rheumatism out of her bones. It will cure her of
+all her aches, as sure as my name is Charlie, and yours will be
+Fontanel."
+
+"Don't be too sure of that."
+
+"But I am sure--you cannot forget."
+
+"I will try not to do so. Oh, Charlie, don't!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker, and Miss Crock, the milliner, had their
+hands full. Betty's trousseau had to be got ready expeditiously.
+Patterns of materials specially adapted for a hot climate--light,
+beautiful, artistic, of silks and muslins and prints--had to be
+commanded from Liberty's. Then came the selection, then the ordering,
+then the discussions with the dressmaker, and the measurings. Next the
+fittings, for which repeated visits had to be made to Mrs. Thomas.
+Adjustments, alterations were made, easements under the arms,
+tightenings about the waist. There were fulnesses to be taken in and
+skimpiness to be redressed. The skirts had to be sufficiently short in
+front and sufficiently long behind.
+
+As for the wedding-dress, Mrs. Thomas was not regarded as quite
+competent to execute such a masterpiece. For that an expedition had to
+be made to Exeter.
+
+The wedding-cake must be ordered from Murch, in the cathedral city. Lady
+Lacy was particular that as much as possible of the outfit should be
+given to county tradesmen. A riding habit, tailor-made, was ordered, to
+fit like a glove, and a lady's saddle must be taken out to Egypt. Boxes,
+basket-trunks were to be procured, and a correspondence carried on as to
+the amount of personal luggage allowed.
+
+Lady Lacy and Betty were constantly running up by express to Exeter
+about this, that, and everything.
+
+Then ensued the sending out of the invitations, and the arrival of
+wedding presents, that entailed the writing of gushing letters of
+acknowledgment and thanks, by Betty herself. But these were not allowed
+to interfere with the scribbling of four pages every day to Captain
+Fontanel, intended for his eyes alone.
+
+Interviews were sought by the editors or agents of local newspapers to
+ascertain whether reporters were desired to describe the wedding, and as
+to the length of the notices that were to be inserted, whether all the
+names of the donors of presents were to be included, and their gifts
+registered. Verily Lady Lacy and Betty were kept in a whirl of
+excitement, and their time occupied from morning till night, and their
+brains exercised from night to morning. Glass and china and plate had to
+be hired for the occasion, wine ordered. Fruit, cake, ices commanded.
+But all things come to an end, even the preparations for a wedding.
+
+At last the eventful day arrived, bright and sunny, a true May morning.
+
+The bridesmaids arrived, each wearing the pretty brooch presented by
+Captain Fontanel. Their costume was suitable to the season, of
+primrose-yellow, with hats turned up, white, with primroses. The pages
+were in green velvet, with knee-breeches and three-cornered hats, lace
+ruffles and lace fronts. The butler had made the claret-cup and the
+champagne-cup, and after a skirmish over the neighbourhood some borage
+had been obtained to float on the top. Lady Lacy was to hold a reception
+after the ceremony, and a marquee had been erected in the grounds, as
+the cottage could not contain all the guests invited. The dining-room
+was delivered over for the exposing of the presents. A carriage had been
+commanded to convey the happy couple to the station, horses and driver
+with white favours. With a sigh of relief in the morning, Lady Lacy
+declared that she believed that nothing had been forgotten.
+
+The trunks stood ready packed, all but one, and labelled with the name
+of Mrs. Fontanel.
+
+A flag flew on the church tower. The villagers had constructed a
+triumphal arch at the entrance to the grounds. The people from farms and
+cottages had all turned out, and were already congregating about the
+churchyard, with smiles and heartfelt wishes for the happiness of the
+bride, who was a mighty favourite with them, as indeed was also Lady
+Lacy.
+
+The Sunday-school children had clubbed their pence, and had presented
+Betty, who had taught them, with a silver set of mustard-pot, pepper
+caster, and salt-cellar.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Betty, "what shall I do with all these sets of
+mustard- and pepper-pots? I have now received eight."
+
+"A little later, dear," replied her aunt, "you can exchange those that
+you do not require."
+
+"But never that set given me by my Sunday-school pets," said Betty.
+
+Then came in flights of telegrams of congratulation.
+
+And at the last moment arrived some more wedding presents.
+
+"Good gracious me!" exclaimed the girl, "I really must manage to
+acknowledge these. There will be just time before I begin to dress."
+
+So she tripped upstairs to her boudoir, a little room given over to
+herself in which to do her water-colour painting, her reading, to
+practise her music. A bright little room to which now, as she felt with
+an ache, she was to bid an eternal good-bye!
+
+What happy hours had been spent in it! What day-dreams had been spun
+there!
+
+She opened her writing-case and wrote the required letters of thanks.
+
+"There," said she, when she had signed the fifth. "This is the last time
+I shall subscribe myself Elizabeth Mountjoy, except when I sign my
+name in the church register. Oh! how my back is hurting me. I was not in
+bed till two o'clock and was up again at seven, and I have been on the
+tear for the whole week. There will be just time for me to rest it
+before the business of the dressing begins."
+
+She threw herself on the sofa and put up her feet. Instantly she was
+asleep--in a sound, dreamless sleep.
+
+When Betty opened her eyes she heard the church bells ringing a merry
+peal. Then she raised her lids, and turning her head on the sofa cushion
+saw--a bride, herself in full bridal dress, with the white veil and the
+orange-blossoms, seated at her side. The gloves had been removed and lay
+on the lap.
+
+An indescribable terror held her fast. She could not cry out. She could
+not stir. She could only look.
+
+Then the bride put back the veil, and Betty, studying the white face,
+saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister, Letice.
+
+[Illustration: THEN THE BRIDE PUT BACK HER VEIL, AND BETTY, STUDYING THE
+WHITE FACE, SAW THAT THIS ACTUALLY WAS NOT HERSELF; IT WAS HER DEAD
+SISTER LETICE.]
+
+The apparition put forth a hand and laid it on her and spoke: "Do not be
+frightened. I will do you no harm. I love you too dearly for that,
+Betty. I have been married in your name; I have exchanged vows in your
+name; I have received the ring for you; put it on your finger, it is not
+mine; it in no way belongs to me. In your name I signed the register.
+You are married to Charles Fontanel and not I. Listen to me. I will tell
+you all, and when I have told you everything you will see me no more. I
+will trouble you no further; I shall enter into my rest. You will see
+before you only the wedding garments remaining. I shall be gone. Hearken
+to me. When I was dying, I died in frantic despair, because I had never
+known what were the pleasures of life. My last cries, my last regrets,
+my last longings were for the pomps and vanities."
+
+She paused, and slipped the gold hoop on to the forefinger of Betty's
+hand.
+
+Then she proceeded--
+
+"When my spirit parted from my body, it remained a while irresolute
+whither to go. But then, remembering that my aunt had declared that I
+never would go to Heaven, I resolved on forcing my way in there out of
+defiance; and I soared till I reached the gates of Paradise. At them
+stood an angel with a fiery sword drawn in his hand, and he laid it
+athwart the entrance. I approached, but he waved me off, and when the
+point of the flaming blade touched my heart, there passed a pang through
+it, I know not whether of joy or of sorrow. And he said: 'Letice, you
+have not been a good girl; you were sullen, resentful, rebellious, and
+therefore are unfit to enter here. Your longings through life, and to
+the moment of death, were for the world and its pomps and vanities. The
+last throb of your heart was given to repining for them. But your faults
+were due largely to the mistakes of your rearing. And now hear your
+judgment. You shall not pass within these gates till you have returned
+to earth and partaken of and had your fill of its pomps and vanities. As
+for that old cat, your aunt'--but no, Betty, he did not say quite that;
+I put it in, and I ought not to have done so. I bear her no resentment;
+I wish her no ill. She did by me what she believed to be right. She
+acted towards me up to her lights; alas for me that the light which was
+in her was darkness! The angel said: 'As for your aunt, before she can
+enter here, she will want illumining, enlarging, and sweetening, and
+will have to pass through Purgatory.' And oh, Betty, that will be gall
+and bitterness to her, for she did not believe in Purgatory, and she
+wrote a controversial pamphlet against it. Then said the angel: 'Return,
+return to the pomps and vanities.' I fell on my knees, and said: 'Oh,
+suffer me but to have one glimpse of that which is within!' 'Be it so,'
+he replied. 'One glimpse only whilst I cast my sword on high.' Thereat
+he threw up the flaming brand, and it was as though a glorious flash of
+lightning filled all space. At the same moment the gates swung apart,
+and I saw what was beyond. It was but for one brief moment, for the
+sword came down, and the angel caught it by the handle, and instantly
+the gates were shut. Then, sorrowfully, I turned myself about and went
+back to earth. And, Betty, it was I who took and read your novels. It
+was I who went to Lady Belgrove's ball in your place. It was I who sat
+instead of you at Her Majesty's and heard _Carmen_. It was I who took
+your place at Henley Regatta, and I--I, instead of you, received the
+protestation of Charles Fontanel's affection, and there in the
+boat-house I received the first and last kiss of love. And it was I,
+Betty, as I have told you, who took your place at the altar to-day. I
+had the pleasures that were designed for you--the ball-dress, the
+dances, the fair words, the music of the opera, the courtship, the
+excitement of the regatta, the reading of sensational novels. It was I
+who had what all girls most long for, their most supreme bliss of
+wearing the wedding-veil and the orange-blossoms. But I have reached my
+limit. I am full of the pomps and vanities, and I return on high. You
+will see me no more."
+
+"Oh, Letice," said Betty, obtaining her speech, "you do not grudge me
+the joys of life?"
+
+The fair white being at her side shook her head.
+
+"And you desire no more of the pomps and vanities?"
+
+"No, Betty. I have looked through the gates."
+
+Then Betty put forth her hands to clasp the waist of her sister, as she
+said fervently--
+
+"Tell me, Letice, what you saw beyond."
+
+"Betty--everything the reverse of Salem Chapel."
+
+
+
+
+McALISTER
+
+
+The city of Bayonne, lying on the left bank of the Adour, and serving as
+its port, is one that ought to present much interest to the British
+tourist, on account of its associations. For three hundred years, along
+with Bordeaux, it belonged to the English crown. The cathedral, a noble
+structure of the fourteenth century, was reared by the English, and on
+the bosses of its vaulting are carved the arms of England, of the
+Talbots, and of other great English noble families. It was probably
+designed by English architects, for it possesses, in its vaulting, the
+long central rib so characteristic of English architecture, and wholly
+unlike what was the prevailing French fashion of vaulting in
+compartments, and always without that connecting rib, like the inverted
+keel of a ship, with which we are acquainted in our English minsters.
+Under some of the modern houses in the town are cellars of far earlier
+construction, also vaulted, and in them as well may be seen the arms of
+the English noble families which had their dwellings above.
+
+But Bayonne has later associations with us. At the close of the
+Peninsular War, when Wellington had driven Marshal Soult and the French
+out of Spain, and had crossed the Pyrenees, his forces, under Sir John
+Hope, invested the citadel. In February, 1814, Sir John threw a bridge
+of boats across the Adour, boats being provided by the fleet of Admiral
+Penrose, in the teeth of a garrison of 15,000 men, and French gunboats
+which guarded the river and raked the English whilst conducting this
+hazardous and masterly achievement. This brilliant exploit was effected
+whilst Wellington engaged the attention of Soult about the Gaves,
+affluents of the Adour, near Orthez. It is further interesting, with a
+tragic interest, on account of an incident in that campaign which shall
+be referred to presently.
+
+The cathedral of Bayonne, some years ago, possessed no towers--the
+English were driven out of Aquitaine before these had been completed.
+The west front was mean to the last degree, masked by a shabby
+penthouse, plastered white, or rather dirty white, on which in large
+characters was inscribed, "Liberte egalite et fraternite."
+
+This has now disappeared, and a modern west front and twin towers and
+spires have been added, in passable architecture. When I was at Bayonne,
+more years ago than I care to say, I paid a visit to the little cemetery
+on the north bank of the river, in which were laid the English officers
+who fell during the investment of Bayonne.
+
+The north bank is in the Department of the Landes, whereas that on the
+south is in the Department of the Basses Pyrenees.
+
+About the time when the English were expelled from France, and lost
+Aquitaine, the Adour changed its course. Formerly it had turned sharply
+round at the city, and had flowed north and found an outlet some miles
+away at Cap Breton, but the entrance was choked by the moving
+sand-dunes, and the impatient river burst its way into the Bay of Biscay
+by the mouth through which it still flows. But the old course is marked
+by lagoons of still blue water in the midst of a vast forest of pines
+and cork trees. I had spent a day wandering among these tree-covered
+_landes_, seeking out the lonely lakes, and in the evening I returned in
+the direction of Bayonne, diverging somewhat from my course to visit the
+cemetery of the English. This was a square walled enclosure with an iron
+gate, rank with weeds, utterly neglected, and with the tombstones, some
+leaning, some prostrate, all covered with lichen and moss. I could not
+get within to decipher the inscriptions, for the gate was locked and I
+had not the key, and was quite ignorant who was the custodian of the
+place.
+
+Being tired with my trudge in the sand, I sat down outside, with my back
+to the wall, and saw the setting sun paint with saffron the boles of the
+pines. I took out my Murray that I had in my knapsack, and read the
+following passage:--
+
+     "To the N., rises the citadel, the most formidable of the works
+     laid out by Vauban, and greatly strengthened, especially since
+     1814, when it formed the key to an entrenched camp of Marshal
+     Soult, and was invested by a detachment of the army of the Duke
+     of Wellington, but not taken, the peace having put a stop to
+     the siege after some bloody encounters. The last of these, a
+     dreadful and useless expenditure of human life, took place
+     after peace was declared, and the British forces put off their
+     guard in consequence. They were thus entirely taken by surprise
+     by a sally of the garrison, made early on the morning of April
+     14th; which, though repulsed, was attended with the loss of 830
+     men of the British, and by the capture of their commander, Sir
+     John Hope, whose horse was shot under him, and himself wounded.
+     The French attack was supported by the fire of their gunboats
+     on the river, which opened indiscriminately on friend and foe.
+     Nine hundred and ten of the French were killed."
+
+When I had concluded, the sun had set, and already a grey mist began to
+form over the course of the Adour. I thought that now it was high time
+for me to return to Bayonne, and to table d'hote, which is at 7.30 p.m.,
+but for which I knew I should be late. However, before rising, I pulled
+out my flask of Scotch whisky, and drained it to the last drop.
+
+I had scarcely finished, and was about to heave myself to my feet, when
+I heard a voice from behind and above me say--"It is grateful, varra
+grateful to a Scotchman."
+
+I turned myself about, and drew back from the wall, for I saw a very
+remarkable object perched upon it. It was the upper portion of a man in
+military accoutrements. He was not sitting on the wall, for, if so, his
+legs would have been dangling over on the outside. And yet he could not
+have heaved himself up to the level of the parapet, with the legs
+depending inside, for he appeared to be on the wall itself down to the
+middle.
+
+"Are you a Scotchman or an Englishman?" he inquired.
+
+"An Englishman," I replied, hardly knowing what to make of the
+apparition.
+
+"It's mabbe a bit airly in the nicht for me to be stirring," he said;
+"but the smell of the whisky drew me from my grave."
+
+"From your grave!" I exclaimed.
+
+"And pray, what is the blend?" he asked.
+
+I answered.
+
+"Weel," said he, "ye might do better, but it's guid enough. I am Captain
+Alister McAlister of Auchimachie, at your service, that is to say, his
+superior half. I fell in one of the attacks on the citadel. Those"--he
+employed a strong qualification which need not be reproduced--"those
+Johnny Crapauds used chain-shot; and they cut me in half at the
+waistbelt, and my legs are in Scotland."
+
+Having somewhat recovered from my astonishment, I was able to take a
+further look at him, and could not restrain a laugh. He so much
+resembled Humpty Dumpty, who, as I had learned in childhood, did sit on
+a wall.
+
+"Is there anything so rideeculous about me?" asked Captain McAlister in
+a tone of irritation. "You seem to be in a jocular mood, sir."
+
+"I assure you," I responded, "I was only laughing from joy of heart at
+the happy chance of meeting you, Alister McAlister."
+
+"Of Auchimachie, and my title is Captain," he said. "There is only half
+of me here--the etceteras are in the family vault in Scotland."
+
+I expressed my genuine surprise at this announcement. "You must
+understand, sir," continued he, "that I am but the speeritual
+presentment of my buried trunk. The speeritual presentment of my nether
+half is not here, and I should scorn to use those of Captain
+O'Hooligan."
+
+I pressed my hand to my brow. Was I in my right senses? Had the hot sun
+during the day affected my brain, or had the last drain of whisky upset
+my reason?
+
+"You may be pleased to know," said the half-captain, "that my father,
+the Laird of Auchimachie, and Colonel Graham of Ours, were on terms of
+the greatest intimacy. Before I started for the war under Wellington--he
+was at the time but Sir Arthur Wellesley--my father took Colonel Graham
+apart and confided to him: 'If anything should happen to my son in the
+campaign, you'll obleege me greatly if you will forward his remains to
+Auchimachie. I am a staunch Presbyterian, and I shouldn't feel happy
+that his poor body should lie in the land of idolaters, who worship the
+Virgin Mary. And as to the expense, I will manage to meet that; but be
+careful not to do the job in an extravagant manner.'"
+
+"And the untoward Fates cut you short?"
+
+"Yes, the chain-shot did, but not in the Peninsula. I passed safely
+through that, but it was here. When we were makin' the bridge, the
+enemy's ships were up the river, and they fired on us with chain-shot,
+which ye ken are mainly used for cutting the rigging of vessels. But
+they employed them on us as we were engaged over the pontoons, and I was
+just cut in half by a pair of these shot at the junction of the tunic
+and the trews."
+
+"I cannot understand how that your legs should be in Scotland and your
+trunk here."
+
+"That's just what I'm aboot to tell you. There was a Captain O'Hooligan
+and I used to meet; we were in the same detachment. I need not inform
+you, if you're a man of understanding, that O'Hooligan is an Irish name,
+and Captain Timothy O'Hooligan was a born Irishman and an ignorant
+papist to boot. Now, I am by education and conveection a staunch
+Presbyterian. I believe in John Calvin, John Knox, and Jeannie Geddes.
+That's my creed; and if ye are disposed for an argument----"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"Weel, then, it was other with Captain O'Hooligan, and we often had
+words; but he hadn't any arguments at all, only assertions, and he lost
+his temper accordingly, and I was angry at the unreasonableness of the
+man. I had had an ancestor in Derry at the siege and at the Battle of
+the Boyne, and he spitted three Irish kerns on his sabre. I glory in it,
+and I told O'Hooligan as much, and I drank a glass of toddy to the
+memory of William III., and I shouted out Lillibulero! I believe in the
+end we would have fought a duel, after the siege was over, unless one of
+us had thought better of it. But it was not to be. At the same time that
+I was cut in half, so was he also by chain-shot."
+
+"And is he buried here?"
+
+"The half of him--his confounded legs, and the knees that have bowed to
+the image of Baal."
+
+"Then, what became of his body?"
+
+"If you'll pay me reasonable attention, and not interrupt, I'll tell you
+the whole story. But--sure enough! Here come those legs!"
+
+Instantly the half-man rolled off the wall, on the outside, and heaving
+himself along on his hands, scuttled behind a tree-trunk.
+
+Next moment I saw a pair of nimble lower limbs, in white ducks and
+straps under the boots, leap the wall, and run about, up and down, much
+like a setter after a partridge.
+
+I did not know what to make of this.
+
+Then the head of McAlister peered from behind the tree, and screamed
+"Lillibulero! God save King William!" Instantly the legs went after him,
+and catching him up kicked him like a football about the enclosure. I
+cannot recall precisely how many times the circuit was made, twice or
+thrice, but all the while the head of McAlister kept screaming
+"Lillibulero!" and "D---- the Pope!"
+
+Recovering myself from my astonishment, and desirous of putting a term
+to this not very edifying scene, I picked up a leaf of shamrock, that
+grew at my feet, and ran between the legs and the trunk, and presented
+the symbol of St. Patrick to the former. The legs at once desisted from
+pursuit, and made a not ungraceful bow to the leaf, and as I advanced
+they retired, still bowing reverentially, till they reached the wall,
+which they stepped over with the utmost ease.
+
+The half-Scotchman now hobbled up to me on his hands, and said: "I'm
+varra much obleeged to you for your intervention, sir." Then he
+scrambled, by means of the rails of the gate, to his former perch on the
+wall.
+
+"You must understand, sir," said McAlister, settling himself
+comfortably, "that this produces no pheesical inconvenience to me at
+all. For O'Hooligan's boots are speeritual, and so is my trunk
+speeritual. And at best it only touches my speeritual feelings. Still, I
+thank you."
+
+"You certainly administered to him some spiritual aggravation," I
+observed.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir, I did. And I glory in it."
+
+"And now, Captain McAlister, if it is not troubling you too greatly,
+after this interruption would you kindly explain to me how it comes
+about that the nobler part of you is here and the less noble in
+Scotland?"
+
+"I will do so with pleasure. Captain O'Hooligan's upper story is at
+Auchimachie."
+
+"How came that about?"
+
+"If you had a particle of patience, you would not interrupt me in my
+narrative. I told you, did I not, that my dear father had enjoined on
+Colonel Graham, should anything untoward occur, that he should send my
+body home to be interred in the vault of my ancestors? Well, this is
+how it came about that the awkward mistake was made. When it was
+reported that I had been killed, Colonel Graham issued orders that my
+remains should be carefully attended to and put aside to be sent home to
+Scotland."
+
+"By boat, I presume?"
+
+"Certainly, by boat. But, unfortunately, he commissioned some Irishmen
+of his company to attend to it. And whether it was that they wished to
+do honour to their own countryman, or whether it was that, like most
+Irishmen, they could not fail to blunder in the discharge of their duty,
+I cannot say. They might have recognised me, even if they hadn't known
+my face, by my goold repeater watch; but some wretched camp-followers
+had been before them. On the watch were engraved the McAlister arms. But
+the watch had been stolen. So they picked up--either out of purpose, or
+by mistake--O'Hooligan's trunk, and my nether portion, and put them
+together into one case. You see, a man's legs are not so easily
+identified. So his body and my lower limbs were made ready together to
+be forwarded to Scotland."
+
+"But how--did not Colonel Graham see personally to the matter?"
+
+"He could not. He was so much engaged over regimental duties. Still, he
+might have stretched a point, I think."
+
+"It must have been difficult to send the portions so far. Was the body
+embalmed?"
+
+"Embalmed! no. There was no one in Bayonne who knew how to do it. There
+was a bird-stuffer in the Rue Pannceau, but he had done nothing larger
+than a seagull. So there could be no question of embalming. We, that is,
+the bit of O'Hooligan and the bit of me, were put into a cask of
+eau-de-vie, and so forwarded by a sailing-vessel. And either on the way
+to Southampton, or on another boat from that port to Edinburgh, the
+sailors ran a gimlet into the barrel, and inserted a straw, and drank up
+all the spirits. It was all gone by the time the hogshead reached
+Auchimachie. Whether O'Hooligan gave a smack to the liquor I cannot say,
+but I can answer for my legs, they would impart a grateful flavour of
+whisky. I was always a drinker of whisky, and when I had taken a
+considerable amount it always went to my legs; they swerved, and gave
+way under me. That is proof certain that the liquor went to my
+extremities and not to my head. Trust to a Scotchman's head for standing
+any amount of whisky. When the remains arrived at Auchimachie for
+interment, it was supposed that some mistake had been made. My hair is
+sandy, that of O'Hooligan is black, or nearly so; but there was no
+knowing what chemical action the alcohol might have on the hair in
+altering its colour. But my mother identified the legs past mistake, by
+a mole on the left calf and a varicose vein on the right. Anyhow, half a
+loaf is better than no bread, so all the mortal relics were consigned to
+the McAlister vault. It was aggravating to my feelings that the minister
+should pronounce a varra eloquent and moving discourse on the occasion
+over the trunk of a confounded Irishman and a papist."
+
+"You must really excuse me," interrupted I, "but how the dickens do you
+know all this?"
+
+"There is always an etherial current of communication between the parts
+of a man's body," replied McAlister, "and there is speeritual
+intercommunication between a man's head and his toes, however pairted
+they may be. I tell you, sir, in the speeritual world we know a thing or
+two."
+
+"And now," said I, "what may be your wishes in this most unfortunate
+matter?"
+
+"I am coming to that, if you'll exercise a little rational patience.
+This that I tell you of occurred in 1814, a considerable time ago. I
+shall be varra pleased if, on your return to England, you will make it
+your business to run up to Scotland, and interview my great-nephew. I am
+quite sure he will do the right thing by me, for the honour of the
+family, and to ease my soul. He never would have come into the estate at
+all if it had not been for my lamented decease. There's another little
+unpleasantness to which I desire you to call his attention. A tombstone
+has been erected over my trunk and O'Hooligan's legs, here in this
+cemetery, and on it is: 'Sacred to the Memory of Captain Timothy
+O'Hooligan, who fell on the field of Glory. R. I. P.' Now this is liable
+to a misunderstanding for it is me--I mean I, to be grammatical--who
+lies underneath. I make no account of the Irishman's nether extremities.
+And being a convinced and zealous Presbyterian, I altogether
+conscientiously object to having 'Requiescat in pace' inscribed over my
+bodily remains. And my great-nephew, the present laird, if he be true to
+the principles of the Covenant, will object just as strongly as myself.
+I know very weel those letters are attached to the name of O'Hooligan,
+but they mark the place of deposition of my body rather than his. So I
+wish you just to put it clearly and logically to the laird, and he will
+take steps, at any cost, to have me transferred to Auchimachie. What he
+may do with the relics of that Irish rogue I don't care for, not one
+stick of barley sugar."
+
+I promised solemnly to fulfil the commission entrusted to me, and then
+Captain McAlister wished me a good night, and retired behind the
+cemetery wall.
+
+I did not quit the South of France that same year, for I spent the
+winter at Pau. In the following May I returned to England, and there
+found that a good many matters connected with my family called for my
+immediate attention. It was accordingly just a year and five months
+after my interview with Captain McAlister that I was able to discharge
+my promise. I had never forgotten my undertaking--I had merely postponed
+it. Charity begins at home, and my own concerns engrossed my time too
+fully to allow me the leisure for a trip to the North.
+
+However, in the end I did go. I took the express to Edinburgh. That
+city, I think candidly, is the finest for situation in the world, as far
+as I have seen of it. I did not then visit it. I never had previously
+been in the Athens of the North, and I should have liked to spend a
+couple of days at least in it, to look over the castle and to walk
+through Holyrood. But duty stands before pleasure, and I went on
+directly to my destination, postponing acquaintance with Edinburgh till
+I had accomplished my undertaking.
+
+I had written to Mr. Fergus McAlister to inform him of my desire to see
+him. I had not entered into the matter of my communication. I thought it
+best to leave this till I could tell him the whole story by word of
+mouth. I merely informed him by letter that I had something to speak to
+him about that greatly concerned his family.
+
+On reaching the station his carriage awaited me, and I was driven to his
+house.
+
+He received me with the greatest cordiality, and offered me the kindest
+hospitality.
+
+The house was large and rambling, not in the best repair, and the
+grounds, as I was driven through them, did not appear to be trimly kept.
+I was introduced to his wife and to his five daughters, fair-haired,
+freckled girls, certainly not beautiful, but pleasing enough in manner.
+His eldest son was away in the army, and his second was in a lawyer's
+office in Edinburgh; so I saw nothing of them.
+
+After dinner, when the ladies had retired, I told him the entire story
+as freely and as fully as possible, and he listened to me with courtesy,
+patience, and the deepest attention.
+
+"Yes," he said, when I had concluded, "I was aware that doubts had been
+cast on the genuineness of the trunk. But under the circumstances it was
+considered advisable to allow the matter to stand as it was. There were
+insuperable difficulties in the way of an investigation and a certain
+identification. But the legs were all right. And I hope to show you
+to-morrow, in the kirk, a very handsome tablet against the wall,
+recording the name and the date of decease of my great-uncle, and some
+very laudatory words on his character, beside an appropriate text from
+the Screeptures."
+
+"Now, however, that the facts are known, you will, of course, take steps
+for the translation of the half of Captain Alister to your family
+vault."
+
+"I foresee considerable difficulties in the way," he replied. "The
+authorities at Bayonne might raise objections to the exhuming of the
+remains in the grave marked by the tombstone of Captain O'Hooligan. They
+might very reasonably say: 'What the hang has Mr. Fergus McAlister to do
+with the body of Captain O'Hooligan?' We must consult the family of that
+officer in Ireland."
+
+"But," said I, "a representation of the case--of the mistake made--would
+render all clear to them. I do not see that there is any necessity for
+complicating the story by saying that you have only half of your
+relative here, and that the other half is in O'Hooligan's grave. State
+that orders had been given for the transmission of the body of your
+great-uncle to Auchimachie, and that, through error, the corpse of
+Captain O'Hooligan had been sent, and Captain McAlister buried by
+mistake as that of the Irishman. That makes a simple, intelligible, and
+straightforward tale. Then you could dispose of the superfluous legs
+when they arrived in the manner you think best."
+
+The laird remained silent for a while, rubbing his chin, and looking at
+the tablecloth.
+
+Presently he stood up, and going to the sideboard, said: "I'll just
+take a wash of whisky to clear my thoughts. Will you have some?"
+
+"Thank you; I am enjoying your old and excellent port."
+
+Mr. Fergus McAlister returned leisurely to the table after his "wash,"
+remained silent a few minutes longer, then lifted his head and said: "I
+don't see that I am called upon to transport those legs."
+
+"No," I answered; "but you had best take the remains in a lump and sort
+them on their arrival."
+
+"I am afraid it will be seriously expensive. My good sir, the property
+is not now worth what it was in Captain Alister's time. Land has gone
+down in value, and rents have been seriously reduced. Besides, farmers
+are now more exacting than formerly; they will not put up with the byres
+that served their fathers. Then my son in the army is a great expense to
+me, and my second son is not yet earning his livelihood, and my
+daughters have not yet found suitors, so that I shall have to leave them
+something on which to live; besides"--he drew a long breath--"I want to
+build on to the house a billiard-room."
+
+"I do not think," protested I, "that the cost would be very serious."
+
+"What do you mean by serious?" he asked.
+
+"I think that these relics of humanity might be transported to
+Auchimachie in a hogshead of cognac, much as the others were."
+
+"What is the price of cognac down there?" asked he.
+
+"Well," I replied, "that is more than I can say as to the cask. Best
+cognac, three stars, is five francs fifty centimes a bottle."
+
+"That's a long price. But one star?"
+
+"I cannot say; I never bought that. Possibly three francs and a half."
+
+"And how many bottles to a cask?"
+
+"I am not sure, something over two hundred litres."
+
+"Two hundred three shillings," mused Mr. Fergus; and then looking up,
+"there is the duty in England, very heavy on spirits, and charges for
+the digging-up, and fees to the officials, and the transport by
+water----" He shook his head.
+
+"You must remember," said I, "that your relative is subjected to great
+indignities from those legs, getting toed three or four times round the
+enclosure." I said three or four, but I believe it was only twice or
+thrice. "It hardly comports with the family honour to suffer it."
+
+"I think," replied Mr. Fergus, "that you said it was but the speeritual
+presentment of a boot, and that there was no pheesical inconvenience
+felt, only a speeritual impression?"
+
+"Just so."
+
+"For my part, judging from my personal experience," said the laird,
+"speeritual impressions are most evanescent."
+
+"Then," said I, "Captain Alister's trunk lies in a foreign land."
+
+"But not," replied he, "in Roman Catholic consecrated soil. That is a
+great satisfaction."
+
+"You, however, have the trunk of a Roman Catholic in your family vault."
+
+"It is so, according to what you say. But there are a score of
+McAlisters there, all staunch Presbyterians, and if it came to an
+argument among them--I won't say he would not have a leg to stand on, as
+he hasn't those anyhow, but he would find himself just nowhere."
+
+Then Mr. Fergus McAlister stood up and said: "Shall we join the ladies?
+As to what you have said, sir, and have recommended, I assure you that I
+will give it my most serious consideration."
+
+
+
+
+THE LEADEN RING
+
+
+"It is not possible, Julia. I cannot conceive how the idea of attending
+the county ball can have entered your head after what has happened. Poor
+young Hattersley's dreadful death suffices to stop that."
+
+"But, aunt, Mr. Hattersley is no relation of ours."
+
+"No relation--but you know that the poor fellow would not have shot
+himself if it had not been for you."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, how can you say so, when the verdict was that he
+committed suicide when in an unsound condition of mind? How could I help
+his blowing out his brains, when those brains were deranged?"
+
+"Julia, do not talk like this. If he did go off his head, it was you who
+upset him by first drawing him on, leading him to believe that you liked
+him, and then throwing him over so soon as the Hon. James Lawlor
+appeared on the _tapis_. Consider: what will people say if you go to the
+assembly?"
+
+"What will they say if I do not go? They will immediately set it down to
+my caring deeply for James Hattersley, and they will think that there
+was some sort of engagement."
+
+"They are not likely to suppose that. But really, Julia, you were for a
+while all smiles and encouragement. Tell me, now, did Mr. Hattersley
+propose to you?"
+
+"Well--yes, he did, and I refused him."
+
+"And then he went and shot himself in despair. Julia, you cannot with
+any face go to the ball."
+
+"Nobody knows that he proposed. And precisely because I do go everyone
+will conclude that he did not propose. I do not wish it to be supposed
+that he did."
+
+"His family, of course, must have been aware. They will see your name
+among those present at the assembly."
+
+"Aunt, they are in too great trouble to look at the paper to see who
+were at the dance."
+
+"His terrible death lies at your door. How you can have the heart,
+Julia----"
+
+"I don't see it. Of course, I feel it. I am awfully sorry, and awfully
+sorry for his father, the admiral. I cannot set him up again. I wish
+that when I rejected him he had gone and done as did Joe Pomeroy, marry
+one of his landlady's daughters."
+
+"There, Julia, is another of your delinquencies. You lured on young
+Pomeroy till he proposed, then you refused him, and in a fit of vexation
+and mortified vanity he married a girl greatly beneath him in social
+position. If the _menage_ prove a failure you will have it on your
+conscience that you have wrecked his life and perhaps hers as well."
+
+"I cannot throw myself away as a charity to save this man or that from
+doing a foolish thing."
+
+"What I complain of, Julia, is that you encouraged young Mr. Pomeroy
+till Mr. Hattersley appeared, whom you thought more eligible, and then
+you tossed him aside; and you did precisely the same with James
+Hattersley as soon as you came to know Mr. Lawlor. After all, Julia, I
+am not so sure that Mr. Pomeroy has not chosen the better part. The
+girl, I dare say, is simple, fresh, and affectionate."
+
+"Your implication is not complimentary, Aunt Elizabeth."
+
+"My dear, I have no patience with the young lady of the present day, who
+is shallow, self-willed, and indifferent to the feelings and happiness
+of others, who craves for excitement and pleasure, and desires nothing
+that is useful and good. Where now will you see a girl like Viola's
+sister, who let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on her damask
+cheek? Nowadays a girl lays herself at the feet of a man if she likes
+him, turns herself inside-out to let him and all the world read her
+heart."
+
+"I have no relish to be like Viola's sister, and have my story--a blank.
+I never grovelled at the feet of Joe Pomeroy or James Hattersley."
+
+"No, but you led each to consider himself the favoured one till he
+proposed, and then you refused him. It was like smiling at a man and
+then stabbing him to the heart."
+
+"Well--I don't want people to think that James Hattersley cared for
+me--I certainly never cared for him--nor that he proposed; so I shall go
+to the ball."
+
+Julia Demant was an orphan. She had been retained at school till she was
+eighteen, and then had been removed just at the age when a girl begins
+to take an interest in her studies, and not to regard them as drudgery.
+On her removal she had cast away all that she had acquired, and had been
+plunged into the whirl of Society. Then suddenly her father died--she
+had lost her mother some years before--and she went to live with her
+aunt, Miss Flemming. Julia had inherited a sum of about five hundred
+pounds a year, and would probably come in for a good estate and funds as
+well on the death of her aunt. She had been flattered as a girl at home,
+and at school as a beauty, and she certainly thought no small bones of
+herself.
+
+Miss Flemming was an elderly lady with a sharp tongue, very outspoken,
+and very decided in her opinions; but her action was weak, and Julia
+soon discovered that she could bend the aunt to do anything she willed,
+though she could not modify or alter her opinions.
+
+In the matter of Joe Pomeroy and James Hattersley, it was as Miss
+Flemming had said. Julia had encouraged Mr. Pomeroy, and had only cast
+him off because she thought better of the suit of Mr. Hattersley, son
+of an admiral of that name. She had seen a good deal of young
+Hattersley, had given him every encouragement, had so entangled him,
+that he was madly in love with her; and then, when she came to know the
+Hon. James Lawlor, and saw that he was fascinated, she rejected
+Hattersley with the consequences alluded to in the conversation above
+given.
+
+Julia was particularly anxious to be present at the county ball, for she
+had been already booked by Mr. Lawlor for several dances, and she was
+quite resolved to make an attempt to bring him to a declaration.
+
+On the evening of the ball Miss Flemming and Julia entered the carriage.
+The aunt had given way, as was her wont, but under protest.
+
+For about ten minutes neither spoke, and then Miss Flemming said, "Well,
+you know my feelings about this dance. I do not approve. I distinctly
+disapprove. I do not consider your going to the ball in good taste, or,
+as you would put it, in good form. Poor young Hattersley----"
+
+"Oh, dear aunt, do let us put young Hattersley aside. He was buried with
+the regular forms, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, Julia."
+
+"Then the rector accepted the verdict of the jury at the inquest. Why
+should not we? A man who is unsound in his mind is not responsible for
+his actions."
+
+"I suppose not."
+
+"Much less, then, I who live ten miles away."
+
+"I do not say that you are responsible for his death, but for the
+condition of mind that led him to do the dreadful deed. Really, Julia,
+you are one of those into whose head or heart only by a surgical
+operation could the thought be introduced that you could be in the
+wrong. A hypodermic syringe would be too weak an instrument to effect
+such a radical change in you. Everyone else may be in the wrong,
+you--never. As for me, I cannot get young Hattersley out of my head."
+
+"And I," retorted Julia with asperity, for her aunt's words had stung
+her--"I, for my part, do not give him a thought."
+
+She had hardly spoken the words before a chill wind began to pass round
+her. She drew the Barege shawl that was over her bare shoulders closer
+about her, and said--"Auntie! is the glass down on your side?"
+
+"No, Julia; why do you ask?"
+
+"There is such a draught."
+
+"Draught!--I do not feel one; perhaps the window on your side hitches."
+
+"Indeed, that is all right. It is blowing harder and is deadly cold. Can
+one of the front panes be broken?"
+
+"No. Rogers would have told me had that been the case. Besides, I can
+see that they are sound."
+
+The wind of which Julia complained swirled and whistled about her. It
+increased in force; it plucked at her shawl and slewed it about her
+throat; it tore at the lace on her dress. It snatched at her hair, it
+wrenched it away from the pins, the combs that held it in place; one
+long tress was lashed across the face of Miss Flemming. Then the hair,
+completely released, eddied up above the girl's head, and next moment
+was carried as a drift before her, blinding her. Then--a sudden
+explosion, as though a gun had been fired into her ear; and with a
+scream of terror she sank back among the cushions. Miss Flemming, in
+great alarm, pulled the checkstring, and the carriage stopped. The
+footman descended from the box and came to the side. The old lady drew
+down the window and said: "Oh! Phillips, bring the lamp. Something has
+happened to Miss Demant."
+
+The man obeyed, and sent a flood of light into the carriage. Julia was
+lying back, white and senseless. Her hair was scattered over her face,
+neck, and shoulders; the flowers that had been stuck in it, the pins
+that had fastened it in place, the pads that had given shape to the
+convolutions lay strewn, some on her lap, some in the rug at the bottom
+of the carriage.
+
+"Phillips!" ordered the old lady in great agitation, "tell Rogers to
+turn the horses and drive home at once; and do you run as fast as you
+can for Dr. Crate."
+
+A few minutes after the carriage was again in motion, Julia revived. Her
+aunt was chafing her hand.
+
+"Oh, aunt!" she said, "are all the glasses broken?"
+
+"Broken--what glasses?"
+
+"Those of the carriage--with the explosion."
+
+"Explosion, my dear!"
+
+"Yes. That gun which was discharged. It stunned me. Were you hurt?"
+
+"I heard no gun--no explosion."
+
+"But I did. It was as though a bullet had been discharged into my brain.
+I wonder that I escaped. Who can have fired at us?"
+
+"My dear, no one fired. I heard nothing. I know what it was. I had the
+same experience many years ago. I slept in a damp bed, and awoke stone
+deaf in my right ear. I remained so for three weeks. But one night when
+I was at a ball and was dancing, all at once I heard a report as of a
+pistol in my right ear, and immediately heard quite clearly again. It
+was wax."
+
+"But, Aunt Elizabeth, I have not been deaf."
+
+"You have not noticed that you were deaf."
+
+"Oh! but look at my hair; it was that wind that blew it about."
+
+"You are labouring under a delusion, Julia. There was no wind."
+
+"But look--feel how my hair is down."
+
+"That has been done by the motion of the carriage. There are many ruts
+in the road."
+
+They reached home, and Julia, feeling sick, frightened, and bewildered,
+retired to bed. Dr. Crate arrived, said that she was hysterical, and
+ordered something to soothe her nerves. Julia was not convinced. The
+explanation offered by Miss Flemming did not satisfy her. That she was a
+victim to hysteria she did not in the least believe. Neither her aunt,
+nor the coachman, nor Phillips had heard the discharge of a gun. As to
+the rushing wind, Julia was satisfied that she had experienced it. The
+lace was ripped, as by a hand, from her dress, and the shawl was twisted
+about her throat; besides, her hair had not been so slightly arranged
+that the jolting of the carnage would completely disarrange it. She was
+vastly perplexed over what she had undergone. She thought and thought,
+but could get no nearer to a solution of the mystery.
+
+Next day, as she was almost herself again, she rose and went about as
+usual.
+
+In the afternoon the Hon. James Lawlor called and asked after Miss
+Flemming. The butler replied that his mistress was out making calls, but
+that Miss Demant was at home, and he believed was on the terrace. Mr.
+Lawlor at once asked to see her.
+
+He did not find Julia in the parlour or on the terrace, but in a lower
+garden to which she had descended to feed the goldfish in the pond.
+
+"Oh! Miss Demant," said he, "I was so disappointed not to see you at the
+ball last night."
+
+"I was very unwell; I had a fainting fit and could not go."
+
+"It threw a damp on our spirits--that is to say, on mine. I had you
+booked for several dances."
+
+"You were able to give them to others."
+
+"But that was not the same to me. I did an act of charity and
+self-denial. I danced instead with the ugly Miss Burgons and with Miss
+Pounding, and that was like dragging about a sack of potatoes. I believe
+it would have been a jolly evening, but for that shocking affair of
+young Hattersley which kept some of the better sort away. I mean
+those who know the Hattersleys. Of course, for me that did not matter,
+we were not acquainted. I never even spoke with the fellow. You knew
+him, I believe? I heard some people say so, and that you had not come
+because of him. The supper, for a subscription ball, was not atrociously
+bad."
+
+"What did they say of me?"
+
+"Oh!--if you will know--that you did not attend the ball because you
+liked him very much, and were awfully cut up."
+
+"I--I! What a shame that people should talk! I never cared a rush for
+him. He was nice enough in his way, not a bounder, but tolerable as
+young men go."
+
+Mr. Lawlor laughed. "I should not relish to have such a qualified
+estimate made of me."
+
+"Nor need you. You are interesting. He became so only when he had shot
+himself. It will be by this alone that he will be remembered."
+
+"But there is no smoke without fire. Did he like you--much?"
+
+"Dear Mr. Lawlor, I am not a clairvoyante, and never was able to see
+into the brains or hearts of people--least of all of young men. Perhaps
+it is fortunate for me that I cannot."
+
+"One lady told me that he had proposed to you."
+
+"Who was that? The potato-sack?"
+
+"I will not give her name. Is there any truth in it? Did he?"
+
+"No."
+
+At the moment she spoke there sounded in her ear a whistle of wind, and
+she felt a current like a cord of ice creep round her throat, increasing
+in force and compression, her hat was blown off, and next instant a
+detonation rang through her head as though a gun had been fired into her
+ear. She uttered a cry and sank upon the ground.
+
+[Illustration: HER HAT WAS BLOWN OFF, AND NEXT INSTANT A DETONATION RANG
+THROUGH HER HEAD AS THOUGH A GUN HAD BEEN FIRED INTO HER EAR.]
+
+James Lawlor was bewildered. His first impulse was to run to the house
+for assistance; then he considered that he could not leave her lying on
+the wet soil, and he stooped to raise her in his arms and to carry her
+within. In novels young men perform such a feat without difficulty; but
+in fact they are not able to do it, especially when the girl is tall and
+big-boned. Moreover, one in a faint is a dead weight. Lawlor staggered
+under his burden to the steps. It was as much as he could perform to
+carry her up to the terrace, and there he placed her on a seat. Panting,
+and with his muscles quivering after the strain, he hastened to the
+drawing-room, rang the bell, and when the butler appeared, he gasped:
+"Miss Demant has fainted; you and I and the footman must carry her
+within."
+
+"She fainted last night in the carriage," said the butler.
+
+When Julia came to her senses, she was in bed attended by the
+housekeeper and her maid. A few moments later Miss Flemming arrived.
+
+"Oh, aunt! I have heard it again."
+
+"Heard what, dear?"
+
+"The discharge of a gun."
+
+"It is nothing but wax," said the old lady. "I will drop a little
+sweet-oil into your ear, and then have it syringed with warm water."
+
+"I want to tell you something--in private."
+
+Miss Flemming signed to the servants to withdraw.
+
+"Aunt," said the girl, "I must say something. This is the second time
+that this has happened. I am sure it is significant. James Lawlor was
+with me in the sunken garden, and he began to speak about James
+Hattersley. You know it was when we were talking about him last night
+that I heard that awful noise. It was precisely as if a gun had been
+discharged into my ear. I felt as if all the nerves and tissues of my
+head were being torn, and all the bones of my skull shattered--just what
+Mr. Hattersley must have undergone when he pulled the trigger. It was
+an agony for a moment perhaps, but it felt as if it lasted an hour. Mr.
+Lawlor had asked me point blank if James Hattersley had proposed to me,
+and I said, 'No.' I was perfectly justified in so answering, because he
+had no right to ask me such a question. It was an impertinence on his
+part, and I answered him shortly and sharply with a negative. But
+actually James Hattersley proposed twice to me. He would not accept a
+first refusal, but came next day bothering me again, and I was pretty
+curt with him. He made some remarks that were rude about how I had
+treated him, and which I will not repeat, and as he left, in a state of
+great agitation, he said, 'Julia, I vow that you shall not forget this,
+and you shall belong to no one but me, alive or dead.' I considered this
+great nonsense, and did not accord it another thought. But, really,
+these terrible annoyances, this wind and the bursts of noise, do seem to
+me to come from him. It is just as though he felt a malignant delight in
+distressing me, now that he is dead. I should like to defy him, and I
+will do it if I can, but I cannot bear more of these experiences--they
+will kill me."
+
+Several days elapsed.
+
+Mr. Lawlor called repeatedly to inquire, but a week passed before Julia
+was sufficiently recovered to receive him, and then the visit was one of
+courtesy and of sympathy, and the conversation turned upon her health,
+and on indifferent themes.
+
+But some few days later it was otherwise. She was in the conservatory
+alone, pretty much herself again, when Mr. Lawlor was announced.
+
+Physically she had recovered, or believed that she had, but her nerves
+had actually received a severe shock. She had made up her mind that the
+phenomena of the circling wind and the explosion were in some mysterious
+manner connected with Hattersley.
+
+She bitterly resented this, but she was in mortal terror of a
+recurrence; and she felt no compunction for her treatment of the
+unfortunate young man, but rather a sense of deep resentment against
+him. If he were dead, why did he not lie quiet and cease from vexing
+her?
+
+To be a martyr was to her no gratification, for hers was not a martyrdom
+that provoked sympathy, and which could make her interesting.
+
+She had hitherto supposed that when a man died there was an end of him;
+his condition was determined for good or for ill. But that a disembodied
+spirit should hover about and make itself a nuisance to the living, had
+never entered into her calculations.
+
+"Julia--if I may be allowed so to call you"--began Mr. Lawlor, "I have
+brought you a bouquet of flowers. Will you accept them?"
+
+"Oh!" she said, as he handed the bunch to her, "how kind of you. At this
+time of the year they are so rare, and aunt's gardener is so miserly
+that he will spare me none for my room but some miserable bits of
+geranium. It is too bad of you wasting your money like this upon me."
+
+"It is no waste, if it afford you pleasure."
+
+"It is a pleasure. I dearly love flowers."
+
+"To give you pleasure," said Mr. Lawlor, "is the great object of my
+life. If I could assure you happiness--if you would allow me to hope--to
+seize this opportunity, now that we are alone together----"
+
+He drew near and caught her hand. His features were agitated, his lips
+trembled, there was earnestness in his eyes.
+
+At once a cold blast touched Julia and began to circle about her and to
+flutter her hair. She trembled and drew back. That paralysing experience
+was about to be renewed. She turned deadly white, and put her hand to
+her right ear. "Oh, James! James!" she gasped. "Do not, pray do not
+speak what you want to say, or I shall faint. It is coming on. I am not
+yet well enough to hear it. Write to me and I will answer. For pity's
+sake do not speak it." Then she sank upon a seat--and at that moment her
+aunt entered the conservatory.
+
+On the following day a note was put into her hand, containing a formal
+proposal from the Hon. James Lawlor; and by return of post Julia
+answered with an acceptance.
+
+There was no reason whatever why the engagement should be long; and the
+only alternative mooted was whether the wedding should take place before
+Lent or after Easter. Finally, it was settled that it should be
+celebrated on Shrove Tuesday. This left a short time for the necessary
+preparations. Miss Flemming would have to go to town with her niece
+concerning a trousseau, and a trousseau is not turned out rapidly any
+more than an armed cruiser.
+
+There is usually a certain period allowed to young people who have
+become engaged, to see much of each other, to get better acquainted with
+one another, to build their castles in the air, and to indulge in little
+passages of affection, vulgarly called "spooning." But in this case the
+spooning had to be curtailed and postponed.
+
+At the outset, when alone with James, Julia was nervous. She feared a
+recurrence of those phenomena that so affected her. But, although every
+now and then the wind curled and soughed about her, it was not violent,
+nor was it chilling; and she came to regard it as a wail of
+discomfiture. Moreover, there was no recurrence of the detonation, and
+she fondly hoped that with her marriage the vexation would completely
+cease.
+
+In her heart was deep down a sense of exultation. She was defying James
+Hattersley and setting his prediction at naught. She was not in love
+with Mr. Lawlor; she liked him, in her cold manner, and was not
+insensible to the social advantage that would be hers when she became
+the Honourable Mrs. Lawlor.
+
+The day of the wedding arrived. Happily it was fine. "Blessed is the
+bride the sun shines on," said the cheery Miss Flemming; "an omen, I
+trust, of a bright and unruffled life in your new condition."
+
+All the neighbourhood was present at the church. Miss Flemming had many
+friends. Mr. Lawlor had fewer present, as he belonged to a distant
+county. The church path had been laid with red cloth, the church
+decorated with flowers, and a choir was present to twitter "The voice
+that breathed o'er Eden."
+
+The rector stood by the altar, and two cushions had been laid at the
+chancel step. The rector was to be assisted by an uncle of the
+bridegroom who was in Holy Orders; the rector, being old-fashioned, had
+drawn on pale grey kid gloves.
+
+First arrived the bridegroom with his best man, and stood in a nervous
+condition balancing himself first on one foot, then on the other,
+waiting, observed by all eyes.
+
+Next entered the procession of the bride, attended by her maids, to the
+"Wedding March" in _Lohengrin_, on a wheezy organ. Then Julia and her
+intended took their places at the chancel step for the performance of
+the first portion of the ceremony, and the two clergy descended to them
+from the altar.
+
+"Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"I, James, take thee, Julia, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold----"
+and so on.
+
+As the words were being spoken, a cold rush of air passed over the
+clasped hands, numbing them, and began to creep round the bride, and to
+flutter her veil. She set her lips and knitted her brows. In a few
+minutes she would be beyond the reach of these manifestations.
+
+When it came to her turn to speak, she began firmly: "I, Julia, take
+thee, James----" but as she proceeded the wind became fierce; it raged
+about her, it caught her veil on one side and buffeted her cheek; it
+switched the veil about her throat, as though strangling her with a
+drift of snow contracting into ice. But she persevered to the end.
+
+Then James Lawlor produced the ring, and was about to place it on her
+finger with the prescribed words: "With this ring I thee wed----" when a
+report rang in her ear, followed by a heaving of her skull, as though
+the bones were being burst asunder, and she sank unconscious on the
+chancel step.
+
+In the midst of profound commotion, she was raised and conveyed to the
+vestry, followed by James Lawlor, trembling and pale. He had slipped the
+ring back into his waistcoat pocket. Dr. Crate, who was present,
+hastened to offer his professional assistance.
+
+In the vestry Julia rested in a Glastonbury chair, white and still, with
+her hands resting in her lap. And to the amazement of those present, it
+was seen that on the third finger of her left hand was a leaden ring,
+rude and solid as though fashioned out of a bullet. Restoratives were
+applied, but full a quarter of an hour elapsed before Julia opened her
+eyes, and a little colour returned to her lips and cheek. But, as she
+raised her hands to her brow to wipe away the damps that had formed on
+it, her eye caught sight of the leaden ring, and with a cry of horror
+she sank again into insensibility.
+
+The congregation slowly left the church, awestruck, whispering, asking
+questions, receiving no satisfactory answers, forming surmises all
+incorrect.
+
+"I am very much afraid, Mr. Lawlor," said the rector, "that it will be
+impossible to proceed with the service to-day; it must be postponed till
+Miss Demant is in a condition to conclude her part, and to sign the
+register. I do not see how it can be gone on with to-day. She is quite
+unequal to the effort."
+
+The carriage which was to have conveyed the couple to Miss Flemming's
+house, and then, later, to have taken them to the station for their
+honeymoon, the horses decorated with white rosettes, the whip adorned
+with a white bow, had now to convey Julia, hardly conscious, supported
+by her aunt, to her home.
+
+No rice could be thrown. The bell-ringers, prepared to give a joyous
+peal, were constrained to depart.
+
+The reception at Miss Flemming's was postponed. No one thought of
+attending. The cakes, the ices, were consumed in the kitchen.
+
+The bridegroom, bewildered, almost frantic, ran hither and thither, not
+knowing what to do, what to say.
+
+Julia lay as a stone for fully two hours; and when she came to herself
+could not speak. When conscious, she raised her left hand, looked on the
+leaden ring, and sank back again into senselessness.
+
+Not till late in the evening was she sufficiently recovered to speak,
+and then she begged her aunt, who had remained by her bed without
+stirring, to dismiss the attendants. She desired to speak with her
+alone. When no one was in the room with her, save Miss Flemming, she
+said in a whisper: "Oh, Aunt Elizabeth! Oh, auntie! such an awful thing
+has happened. I can never marry Mr. Lawlor, never. I have married James
+Hattersley; I am a dead man's wife. At the time that James Lawlor was
+making the responses, I heard a piping voice in my ear, an unearthly
+voice, saying the same words. When I said: 'I, Julia, take you, James,
+to my wedded husband'--you know Mr. Hattersley is James as well as Mr.
+Lawlor--then the words applied to him as much or as well as to the
+other. And then, when it came to the giving of the ring, there was the
+explosion in my ear, as before--and the leaden ring was forced on to my
+finger, and not James Lawlor's golden ring. It is of no use my resisting
+any more. I am a dead man's wife, and I cannot marry James Lawlor."
+
+Some years have elapsed since that disastrous day and that incomplete
+marriage.
+
+Miss Demant is Miss Demant still, and she has never been able to remove
+the leaden ring from the third finger of her left hand. Whenever the
+attempt has been made, either to disengage it by drawing it off or by
+cutting through it, there has ensued that terrifying discharge as of a
+gun into her ear, causing insensibility. The prostration that has
+followed, the terror it has inspired, have so affected her nerves, that
+she has desisted from every attempt to rid herself of the ring.
+
+She invariably wears a glove on her left hand, and it is bulged over the
+third finger, where lies that leaden ring.
+
+She is not a happy woman, although her aunt is dead and has left her a
+handsome estate. She has not got many acquaintances. She has no friends;
+for her temper is unamiable, and her tongue is bitter. She supposes that
+the world, as far as she knows it, is in league against her.
+
+Towards the memory of James Hattersley she entertains a deadly hate. If
+an incantation could lay his spirit, if prayer could give him repose,
+she would have recourse to none of these expedients, even though they
+might relieve her, so bitter is her resentment. And she harbours a
+silent wrath against Providence for allowing the dead to walk and to
+molest the living.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER OF PANSIES
+
+
+Anna Voss, of Siebenstein, was the prettiest girl in her village. Never
+was she absent from a fair or a dance. No one ever saw her abroad
+anything but merry. If she had her fits of bad temper, she kept them for
+her mother, in the secrecy of the house. Her voice was like that of the
+lark, and her smile like the May morning. She had plenty of suitors, for
+she was possessed of what a young peasant desires more in a wife than
+beauty, and that is money.
+
+But of all the young men who hovered about her, and sought her favour,
+none was destined to win it save Joseph Arler, the ranger, a man in a
+government position, whose duty was to watch the frontier against
+smugglers, and to keep an eye on the game against poachers.
+
+The eve of the marriage had come.
+
+One thing weighed on the pleasure-loving mind of Anna. She dreaded
+becoming a mother of a family which would keep her at home, and occupy
+her from morn to eve in attendance on her children, and break the
+sweetness of her sleep at night.
+
+So she visited an old hag named Schaendelwein, who was a reputed witch,
+and to whom she confided her trouble.
+
+The old woman said that she had looked into the mirror of destiny,
+before Anna arrived, and she had seen that Providence had ordained that
+Anna should have seven children, three girls and four boys, and that one
+of the latter was destined to be a priest.
+
+But Mother Schaendelwein had great powers; she could set at naught the
+determinations of Providence; and she gave to Anna seven pips, very much
+like apple-pips, which she placed in a cornet of paper; and she bade her
+cast these one by one into the mill-race, and as each went over the
+mill-wheel, it ceased to have a future, and in each pip was a child's
+soul.
+
+So Anna put money into Mother Schaendelwein's hand and departed, and when
+it was growing dusk she stole to the wooden bridge over the mill-stream,
+and dropped in one pip after another. As each fell into the water she
+heard a little sigh.
+
+But when it came to casting in the last of the seven she felt a sudden
+qualm, and a battle in her soul.
+
+However, she threw it in, and then, overcome by an impulse of remorse,
+threw herself into the stream to recover it, and as she did so she
+uttered a cry.
+
+But the water was dark, the floating pip was small, she could not see
+it, and the current was rapidly carrying her to the mill-wheel, when the
+miller ran out and rescued her.
+
+On the following morning she had completely recovered her spirits, and
+laughingly told her bridesmaids how that in the dusk, in crossing the
+wooden bridge, her foot had slipped, she had fallen into the stream, and
+had been nearly drowned. "And then," added she, "if I really had been
+drowned, what would Joseph have done?"
+
+The married life of Anna was not unhappy. It could hardly be that in
+association with so genial, kind, and simple a man as Joseph. But it was
+not altogether the ideal happiness anticipated by both. Joseph had to be
+much away from home, sometimes for days and nights together, and Anna
+found it very tedious to be alone. And Joseph might have calculated on a
+more considerate wife. After a hard day of climbing and chasing in the
+mountains, he might have expected that she would have a good hot supper
+ready for him. But Anna set before him whatever came to hand and cost
+least trouble. A healthy appetite is the best of sauces, she remarked.
+
+Moreover, the nature of his avocation, scrambling up rocks and breaking
+through an undergrowth of brambles and thorns, produced rents and
+fraying of stockings and cloth garments. Instead of cheerfully
+undertaking the repairs, Anna grumbled over each rent, and put out his
+garments to be mended by others. It was only when repair was urgent that
+she consented to undertake it herself, and then it was done with sulky
+looks, muttered reproaches, and was executed so badly that it had to be
+done over again, and by a hired workwoman.
+
+But Joseph's nature was so amiable, and he was so fond of his pretty
+wife, that he bore with those defects, and turned off her murmurs with a
+joke, or sealed her pouting lips with a kiss.
+
+There was one thing about Joseph that Anna could not relish. Whenever he
+came into the village, he was surrounded, besieged by the children.
+Hardly had he turned the corner into the square, before it was known
+that he was there, and the little ones burst out of their parents'
+houses, broke from their sister nurse's arms, to scamper up to Joseph
+and to jump about him. For Joseph somehow always had nuts or almonds or
+sweets in his pockets, and for these he made the children leap, or
+catch, or scramble, or sometimes beg, by putting a sweet on a boy's nose
+and bidding him hold it there, till he said "Catch!"
+
+Joseph had one particular favourite among all this crew, and that was a
+little lame boy with a white, pinched face, who hobbled about on
+crutches.
+
+Him Joseph would single out, take him on his knee, seat himself on the
+steps of the village cross or of the churchyard, and tell him stories of
+his adventures, of the habits of the beasts of the forest.
+
+Anna, looking out of her window, could see all this; and see how before
+Joseph set the poor cripple down, the child would throw its arms round
+his neck and kiss him.
+
+Then Joseph would come home with his swinging step and joyous face.
+
+Anna resented that his first attention should be given to the children,
+regarding it as her due, and she often showed her displeasure by the
+chill of her reception of her husband. She did not reproach him in set
+words, but she did not run to meet him, jump into his arms, and respond
+to his warm kisses.
+
+Once he did venture on a mild expostulation. "Annerl, why do you not
+knit my socks or stocking-legs? Home-made is heart-made. It is a pity to
+spend money on buying what is poor stuff, when those made by you would
+not only last on my calves and feet, but warm the cockles of my heart."
+
+To which she replied testily: "It is you who set the example of throwing
+money away on sweet things for those pestilent little village brats."
+
+One evening Anna heard an unusual hubbub in the square, shouts and
+laughter, not of children alone, but of women and men as well, and next
+moment into the house burst Joseph very red, carrying a cradle on his
+head.
+
+"What is this fooling for?" asked Anna, turning crimson.
+
+"An experiment, Annerl, dearest," answered Joseph, setting down the
+cradle. "I have heard it said that a wife who rocks an empty cradle soon
+rocks a baby into it. So I have bought this and brought it to you. Rock,
+rock, rock, and when I see a little rosebud in it among the snowy linen,
+I shall cry for joy."
+
+Never before had Anna known how dull and dead life could be in an empty
+house. When she had lived with her mother, that mother had made her do
+much of the necessary work of the house; now there was not much to be
+done, and there was no one to exercise compulsion.
+
+If Anna ran out and visited her neighbours, they proved to be
+disinclined for a gossip. During the day they had to scrub and bake and
+cook, and in the evening they had their husbands and children with them,
+and did not relish the intrusion of a neighbour.
+
+The days were weary days, and Anna had not the energy or the love of
+work to prompt her to occupy herself more than was absolutely necessary.
+Consequently, the house was not kept scrupulously clean. The glass and
+the pewter and the saucepans did not shine. The window-panes were dull.
+The house linen was unhemmed.
+
+One evening Joseph sat in a meditative mood over the fire, looking into
+the red embers, and what was unusual with him, he did not speak.
+
+Anna was inclined to take umbrage at this, when all at once he looked
+round at her with his bright pleasant smile and said, "Annerl! I have
+been thinking. One thing is wanted to make us supremely happy--a baby in
+the house. It has not pleased God to send us one, so I propose that we
+both go on pilgrimage to Mariahilf to ask for one."
+
+"Go yourself--I want no baby here," retorted Anna.
+
+A few days after this, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the
+great affliction on Anna of her husband's death.
+
+Joseph had been found shot in the mountains. He was quite dead. The
+bullet had pierced his heart. He was brought home borne on green
+fir-boughs interlaced, by four fellow-jaegers, and they carried him into
+his house. He had, in all probability, met his death at the hand of
+smugglers.
+
+With a cry of horror and grief Anna threw herself on Joseph's body and
+kissed his pale lips. Now only did she realise how deeply all along she
+had loved him--now that she had lost him.
+
+Joseph was laid in his coffin preparatory to the interment on the
+morrow. A crucifix and two candles stood at his head on a little table
+covered with a white cloth. On a stool at his feet was a bowl containing
+holy water and a sprig of rue.
+
+A neighbour had volunteered to keep company with Anna during the night,
+but she had impatiently, without speaking, repelled the offer. She would
+spend the last night that he was above ground alone with her dead--alone
+with her thoughts.
+
+And what were those thoughts?
+
+Now she remembered how indifferent she had been to his wishes, how
+careless of his comforts; how little she had valued his love, had
+appreciated his cheerfulness, his kindness, his forbearance, his equable
+temper.
+
+Now she recalled studied coldness on her part, sharp words, mortifying
+gestures, outbursts of unreasoning and unreasonable petulance.
+
+Now she recalled Joseph scattering nuts among the children, addressing
+kind words to old crones, giving wholesome advice to giddy youths.
+
+She remembered now little endearments shown to her, the presents brought
+her from the fair, the efforts made to cheer her with his pleasant
+stories and quaint jokes. She heard again his cheerful voice as he
+strove to interest her in his adventures of the chase.
+
+As she thus sat silent, numbed by her sorrow, in the faint light cast by
+the two candles, with the shadow of the coffin lying black on the floor
+at her feet, she heard a stumping without; then a hand was laid on the
+latch, the door was timidly opened, and in upon his crutches came the
+crippled boy. He looked wistfully at her, but she made no sign, and then
+he hobbled to the coffin and burst into tears, and stooped and kissed
+the brow of his dead friend.
+
+Leaning on his crutches, he took his rosary and said the prayers for the
+rest of her and his Joseph's soul; then shuffled awkwardly to the foot,
+dipped the spray of rue, and sprinkled the dead with the blessed water.
+
+Next moment the ungainly creature was stumping forth, but after he had
+passed through the door, he turned, looked once more towards the dead,
+put his hand to his lips, and wafted to it his final farewell.
+
+Anna now took her beads and tried to pray, but her prayers would not
+leave her lips; they were choked and driven back by the thoughts which
+crowded up and bewildered her. The chain fell from her fingers upon her
+lap, lay there neglected, and then slipped to the floor. How the time
+passed she knew not, neither did she care. The clock ticked, and she
+heard it not; the hours sounded, and she regarded them not till in at
+her ear and through her brain came clear the call of the wooden cuckoo
+announcing midnight.
+
+Her eyes had been closed. Now suddenly she was roused, and they opened
+and saw that all was changed.
+
+The coffin was gone, but by her instead was the cradle that years ago
+Joseph had brought home, and which she had chopped up for firewood. And
+now in that cradle lay a babe asleep, and with her foot she rocked it,
+and found a strange comfort in so doing.
+
+She was conscious of no sense of surprise, only a great welling up of
+joy in her heart. Presently she heard a feeble whimper and saw a
+stirring in the cradle; little hands were put forth gropingly. Then she
+stooped and lifted the child to her lap, and clasped it to her heart.
+Oh, how lovely was that tiny creature! Oh, how sweet in her ears its
+appealing cry! As she held it to her bosom the warm hands touched her
+throat, and the little lips were pressed to her bosom. She pressed it to
+her. She had entered into a new world, a world of love and light and
+beauty and happiness unspeakable. Oh! the babe--the babe--the babe! She
+laughed and cried, and cried and laughed and sobbed for very exuberance
+of joy. It brought warmth to her heart, it made every vein tingle, it
+ingrained her brain with pride. It was hers!--her own!--her very own!
+She could have been content to spend an eternity thus, with that little
+one close, close to her heart.
+
+Then as suddenly all faded away--the child in her arms was gone as a
+shadow; her tears congealed, her heart was cramped, and a voice spoke
+within her: "It is not, because you would not. You cast the soul away,
+and it went over the mill-wheel."
+
+Wild with terror, uttering a despairing cry, she started up, straining
+her arms after the lost child, and grasping nothing. She looked about
+her. The light of the candles flickered over the face of her dead
+Joseph. And tick, tick, tick went the clock.
+
+She could endure this no more. She opened the door to leave the room,
+and stepped into the outer chamber and cast herself into a chair. And
+lo! it was no more night. The sun, the red evening sun, shone in at the
+window, and on the sill were pots of pinks and mignonette that filled
+the air with fragrance.
+
+And there at her side stood a little girl with shining fair hair, and
+the evening sun was on it like the glory about a saint. The child raised
+its large blue eyes to her, pure innocent eyes, and said: "Mother, may I
+say my Catechism and prayers before I go to bed?"
+
+Then Anna answered and said: "Oh, my darling! My dearest Baerbchen! All
+the Catechism is comprehended in this: Love God, fear God, always do
+what is your duty. Do His will, and do not seek only your own pleasure
+and ease. And this will give you peace--peace--peace."
+
+The little girl knelt and laid her golden head on her folded hands upon
+Anna's knee and began: "God bless dear father, and mother, and all my
+dear brothers and sisters."
+
+Instantly a sharp pang as a knife went through the heart of Anna, and
+she cried: "Thou hast no father and no mother and no brothers and no
+sisters, for thou art not, because I would not have thee. I cast away
+thy soul, and it went over the mill-wheel."
+
+The cuckoo called one. The child had vanished. But the door was thrown
+open, and in the doorway stood a young couple--one a youth with fair
+hair and the down of a moustache on his lip, and oh, in face so like to
+the dead Joseph. He held by the hand a girl, in black bodice and with
+white sleeves, looking modestly on the ground. At once Anna knew what
+this signified. It was her son Florian come to announce that he was
+engaged, and to ask his mother's sanction.
+
+Then said the young man, as he came forward leading the girl: "Mother,
+sweetest mother, this is Susie, the baker's daughter, and child of your
+old and dear friend Vronie. We love one another; we have loved since we
+were little children together at school, and did our lessons out of one
+book, sitting on one bench. And, mother, the bakehouse is to be passed
+on to me and to Susie, and I shall bake for all the parish. The good
+Jesus fed the multitude, distributing the loaves through the hands of
+His apostles. And I shall be His minister feeding His people here.
+Mother, give us your blessing."
+
+Then Florian and the girl knelt to Anna, and with tears of happiness in
+her eyes she raised her hands over them. But ere she could touch them
+all had vanished. The room was dark, and a voice spake within her:
+"There is no Florian; there would have been, but you would not. You cast
+his soul into the water, and it passed away for ever over the
+mill-wheel."
+
+In an agony of terror Anna sprang from her seat. She could not endure
+the room, the air stifled her; her brain was on fire. She rushed to the
+back door that opened on a kitchen garden, where grew the pot-herbs and
+cabbages for use, tended by Joseph when he returned from his work in the
+mountains.
+
+But she came forth on a strange scene. She was on a battlefield. The air
+was charged with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The roar of cannon
+and the rattle of musketry, the cries of the wounded, and shouts of
+encouragement rang in her ears in a confused din.
+
+As she stood, panting, her hands to her breast, staring with wondering
+eyes, before her charged past a battalion of soldiers, and she knew by
+their uniforms that they were Bavarians. One of them, as he passed,
+turned his face towards her; it was the face of an Arler, fired with
+enthusiasm, she knew it; it was that of her son Fritz.
+
+Then came a withering volley, and many of the gallant fellows fell,
+among them he who carried the standard. Instantly, Fritz snatched it
+from his hand, waved it over his head, shouted, "Charge, brothers, fill
+up the ranks! Charge, and the day is ours!"
+
+Then the remnant closed up and went forward with bayonets fixed, tramp,
+tramp. Again an explosion of firearms and a dense cloud of smoke rolled
+before her and she could not see the result.
+
+She waited, quivering in every limb, holding her breath--hoping,
+fearing, waiting. And as the smoke cleared she saw men carrying to the
+rear one who had been wounded, and in his hand he grasped the flag. They
+laid him at Anna's feet, and she recognised that it was her Fritz. She
+fell on her knees, and snatching the kerchief from her throat and
+breast, strove to stanch the blood that welled from his heart. He looked
+up into her eyes, with such love in them as made her choke with emotion,
+and he said faintly: "Muetterchen, do not grieve for me; we have stormed
+the redoubt, the day is ours. Be of good cheer. They fly, they fly,
+those French rascals! Mother, remember me--I die for the dear
+Fatherland."
+
+And a comrade standing by said: "Do not give way to your grief, Anna
+Arler; your son has died the death of a hero."
+
+Then she stooped over him, and saw the glaze of death in his eyes, and
+his lips moved. She bent her ear to them and caught the words: "I am
+not, because you would not. There is no Fritz; you cast my soul into the
+brook and I was carried over the mill-wheel."
+
+All passed away, the smell of the powder, the roar of the cannon, the
+volumes of smoke, the cry of the battle, all--to a dead hush. Anna
+staggered to her feet, and turned to go back to her cottage, and as she
+opened the door, heard the cuckoo call two.
+
+But, as she entered, she found herself to be, not in her own room and
+house--she had strayed into another, and she found herself not in a lone
+chamber, not in her desolate home, but in the midst of a strange family
+scene.
+
+A woman, a mother, was dying. Her head reposed on her husband's breast
+as he sat on the bed and held her in his arms.
+
+The man had grey hair, his face was overflowed with tears, and his eyes
+rested with an expression of devouring love on her whom he supported,
+and whose brow he now and again bent over to kiss.
+
+About the bed were gathered her children, ay, and also her
+grandchildren, quite young, looking on with solemn, wondering eyes on
+the last throes of her whom they had learned to cling to and love with
+all the fervour of their simple hearts. One mite held her doll, dangling
+by the arm, and the forefinger of her other hand was in her mouth. Her
+eyes were brimming, and sobs came from her infant breast. She did not
+understand what was being taken from her, but she wept in sympathy with
+the rest.
+
+Kneeling by the bed was the eldest daughter of the expiring woman,
+reciting the Litany of the Dying, and the sons and another daughter and
+a daughter-in-law repeated the responses in voices broken with tears.
+
+When the recitation of the prayers ceased, there ensued for a while a
+great stillness, and all eyes rested on the dying woman. Her lips
+moved, and she poured forth her last petitions, that left her as rising
+flakes of fire, kindled by her pure and ardent soul. "O God, comfort
+and bless my dear husband, and ever keep Thy watchful guard over my
+children and my children's children, that they may walk in the way that
+leads to Thee, and that in Thine own good time we may all--all be
+gathered in Thy Paradise together, united for evermore. Amen."
+
+A spasm contracted Anna's heart. This woman with ecstatic, upturned
+gaze, this woman breathing forth her peaceful soul on her husband's
+breast, was her own daughter Elizabeth, and in the fine outline of her
+features was Joseph's profile.
+
+All again was hushed. The father slowly rose and quitted his position on
+the bed, gently laid the head on the pillow, put one hand over the eyes
+that still looked up to heaven, and with the fingers of the other
+tenderly arranged the straggling hair on each side of the brow. Then
+standing and turning to the rest, with a subdued voice he said: "My
+children, it has pleased the Lord to take to Himself your dear mother
+and my faithful companion. The Lord's will be done."
+
+Then ensued a great burst of weeping, and Anna's eyes brimmed till she
+could see no more. The church bell began to toll for a departing spirit.
+And following each stroke there came to her, as the after-clang of the
+boom: "There is not, there has not been, an Elizabeth. There would have
+been all this--but thou wouldest it not. For the soul of thy Elizabeth
+thou didst send down the mill-stream and over the wheel."
+
+Frantic with shame, with sorrow, not knowing what she did, or whither
+she went, Anna made for the front door of the house, ran forth and stood
+in the village square.
+
+To her unutterable amazement it was vastly changed. Moreover, the sun
+was shining brightly, and it gleamed over a new parish church, of cut
+white stone, very stately, with a gilded spire, with windows of
+wondrous lacework. Flags were flying, festoons of flowers hung
+everywhere. A triumphal arch of leaves and young birch trees was at the
+graveyard gate. The square was crowded with the peasants, all in their
+holiday attire.
+
+Silent, Anna stood and looked around. And as she stood she heard the
+talk of the people about her.
+
+One said: "It is a great thing that Johann von Arler has done for his
+native village. But see, he is a good man, and he is a great architect."
+
+"But why," asked another, "do you call him Von Arler? He was the son of
+that Joseph the Jaeger who was killed by the smugglers in the mountains."
+
+"That is true. But do you not know that the king has ennobled him? He
+has done such great things in the Residenz. He built the new Town Hall,
+which is thought to be the finest thing in Bavaria. He added a new wing
+to the Palace, and he has rebuilt very many churches, and designed
+mansions for the rich citizens and the nobles. But although he is such a
+famous man his heart is in the right place. He never forgets that he was
+born in Siebenstein. Look what a beautiful house he has built for
+himself and his family on the mountain-side. He is there in summer, and
+it is furnished magnificently. But he will not suffer the old, humble
+Arler cottage here to be meddled with. They say that he values it above
+gold. And this is the new church he has erected in his native
+village--that is good."
+
+"Oh! he is a good man is Johann; he was always a good and serious boy,
+and never happy without a pencil in his hand. You mark what I say. Some
+day hence, when he is dead, there will be a statue erected in his honour
+here in this market-place, to commemorate the one famous man that has
+been produced by Siebenstein. But see--see! Here he comes to the
+dedication of the new church."
+
+Then, through the throng advanced a blonde, middle-aged man, with broad
+forehead, clear, bright blue eyes, and a flowing light beard. All the
+men present plucked off their hats to him, and made way for him as he
+advanced. But, full of smiles, he had a hand and a warm pressure, and a
+kindly word and a question as to family concerns, for each who was near.
+
+All at once his eye encountered that of Anna. A flash of recognition and
+joy kindled it up, and, extending his arms, he thrust his way towards
+her, crying: "My mother! my own mother!"
+
+Then--just as she was about to be folded to his heart, all faded away,
+and a voice said in her soul: "He is no son of thine, Anna Arler. He is
+not, because thou wouldest not. He might have been, God had so purposed;
+but thou madest His purpose of none effect. Thou didst send his soul
+over the mill-wheel."
+
+And then faintly, as from a far distance, sounded in her ear the call of
+the cuckoo--three.
+
+The magnificent new church had shrivelled up to the original mean little
+edifice Anna had known all her life. The square was deserted, the cold
+faint glimmer of coming dawn was visible over the eastern mountain-tops,
+but stars still shone in the sky.
+
+With a cry of pain, like a wounded beast, Anna ran hither and thither
+seeking a refuge, and then fled to the one home and resting-place of the
+troubled soul--the church. She thrust open the swing-door, pushed in,
+sped over the uneven floor, and flung herself on her knees before the
+altar.
+
+But see! before that altar stood a priest in a vestment of
+black-and-silver; and a serving-boy knelt on his right hand on a lower
+stage. The candles were lighted, for the priest was about to say Mass.
+There was a rustling of feet, a sound as of people entering, and many
+were kneeling, shortly after, on each side of Anna, and still they came
+on; she turned about and looked and saw a great crowd pressing in, and
+strange did it seem to her eyes that all--men, women, and children,
+young and old--seemed to bear in their faces something, a trace only in
+many, of the Arler or the Voss features. And the little serving-boy, as
+he shifted his position, showed her his profile--it was like her little
+brother who had died when he was sixteen.
+
+Then the priest turned himself about, and said, "Oremus." And she knew
+him--he was her own son--her Joseph, named after his dear father.
+
+The Mass began, and proceeded to the "Sursum corda"--"Lift up your
+hearts!"--when the celebrant stood facing the congregation with extended
+arms, and all responded: "We lift them up unto the Lord."
+
+But then, instead of proceeding with the accustomed invocation, he
+raised his hands high above his head, with the palms towards the
+congregation, and in a loud, stern voice exclaimed--
+
+"Cursed is the unfruitful field!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the barren tree!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the empty house!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Cursed is the fishless lake!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+"Forasmuch as Anna Arler, born Voss, might have been the mother of
+countless generations, as the sand of the seashore for number, as the
+stars of heaven for brightness, of generations unto the end of time,
+even of all of us now gathered together here, but she would
+not--therefore shall she be alone, with none to comfort her; sick, with
+none to minister to her; broken in heart, with none to bind up her
+wounds; feeble, and none to stay her up; dead, and none to pray for her,
+for she would not--she shall have an unforgotten and unforgettable past,
+and have no future; remorse, but no hope; she shall have tears, but no
+laughter--for she would not. Woe! woe! woe!"
+
+He lowered his hands, and the tapers were extinguished, the celebrant
+faded as a vision of the night, the server vanished as an incense-cloud,
+the congregation disappeared, melting into shadows, and then from
+shadows to nothingness, without stirring from their places, and without
+a sound.
+
+And Anna, with a scream of despair, flung herself forward with her face
+on the pavement, and her hands extended.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two years ago, during the first week in June, an English traveller
+arrived at Siebenstein and put up at the "Krone," where, as he was tired
+and hungry, he ordered an early supper. When that was discussed, he
+strolled forth into the village square, and leaned against the wall of
+the churchyard. The sun had set in the valley, but the mountain-peaks
+were still in the glory of its rays, surrounding the place as a golden
+crown. He lighted a cigar, and, looking into the cemetery, observed
+there an old woman, bowed over a grave, above which stood a cross,
+inscribed "Joseph Arler," and she was tending the flowers on it, and
+laying over the arms of the cross a little wreath of heart's-ease or
+pansy. She had in her hand a small basket. Presently she rose and walked
+towards the gate, by which stood the traveller.
+
+As she passed, he said kindly to her: "Gruess Gott, Muetterchen."
+
+She looked steadily at him and replied: "Honoured sir! that which is
+past may be repented of, but can never be undone!" and went on her way.
+
+He was struck with her face. He had never before seen one so full of
+boundless sorrow--almost of despair.
+
+His eyes followed her as she walked towards the mill-stream, and there
+she took her place on the wooden bridge that crossed it, leaning over
+the handrail, and looking down into the water. An impulse of curiosity
+and of interest led him to follow her at a distance, and he saw her pick
+a flower, a pansy, out of her basket, and drop it into the current,
+which caught and carried it forward. Then she took a second, and allowed
+it to fall into the water. Then, after an interval, a third--a fourth;
+and he counted seven in all. After that she bowed her head on her hands;
+her grey hair fell over them, and she broke into a paroxysm of weeping.
+
+The traveller, standing by the stream, saw the seven pansies swept down,
+and one by one pass over the revolving wheel and vanish.
+
+He turned himself about to return to his inn, when, seeing a grave
+peasant near, he asked: "Who is that poor old woman who seems so broken
+down with sorrow?"
+
+"That," replied the man, "is the Mother of Pansies."
+
+"The Mother of Pansies!" he repeated.
+
+"Well--it is the name she has acquired in the place. Actually, she is
+called Anna Arler, and is a widow. She was the wife of one Joseph Arler,
+a jaeger, who was shot by smugglers. But that is many, many years ago.
+She is not right in her head, but she is harmless. When her husband was
+brought home dead, she insisted on being left alone in the night by him,
+before he was buried alone,--with his coffin. And what happened in that
+night no one knows. Some affirm that she saw ghosts. I do not know--she
+may have had Thoughts. The French word for these flowers is
+_pensees_--thoughts--and she will have none others. When they are in her
+garden she collects them, and does as she has done now. When she has
+none, she goes about to her neighbours and begs them. She comes here
+every evening and throws in seven--just seven, no more and no less--and
+then weeps as one whose heart would split. My wife on one occasion
+offered her forget-me-nots. 'No,' she said; 'I cannot send
+forget-me-nots after those who never were, I can send only Pansies.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
+
+A WIFE'S STORY
+
+
+In 1876 we took a house in one of the best streets and parts of B----. I
+do not give the name of the street or the number of the house, because
+the circumstances that occurred in that place were such as to make
+people nervous, and shy--unreasonably so--of taking those lodgings,
+after reading our experiences therein.
+
+We were a small family--my husband, a grown-up daughter, and myself; and
+we had two maids--a cook, and the other was house- and parlourmaid in
+one. We had not been a fortnight in the house before my daughter said to
+me one morning: "Mamma, I do not like Jane"--that was our
+house-parlourmaid.
+
+"Why so?" I asked. "She seems respectable, and she does her work
+systematically. I have no fault to find with her, none whatever."
+
+"She may do her work," said Bessie, my daughter, "but I dislike
+inquisitiveness."
+
+"Inquisitiveness!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean? Has she been looking
+into your drawers?"
+
+"No, mamma, but she watches me. It is hot weather now, and when I am in
+my room, occasionally, I leave my door open whilst writing a letter, or
+doing any little bit of needlework, and then I am almost certain to hear
+her outside. If I turn sharply round, I see her slipping out of sight.
+It is most annoying. I really was unaware that I was such an interesting
+personage as to make it worth anyone's while to spy out my proceedings."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear. You are sure it is Jane?"
+
+"Well--I suppose so." There was a slight hesitation in her voice. "If
+not Jane, who can it be?"
+
+"Are you sure it is not cook?"
+
+"Oh, no, it is not cook; she is busy in the kitchen. I have heard her
+there, when I have gone outside my room upon the landing, after having
+caught that girl watching me."
+
+"If you have caught her," said I, "I suppose you spoke to her about the
+impropriety of her conduct."
+
+"Well, caught is the wrong word. I have not actually _caught_ her at it.
+Only to-day I distinctly heard her at my door, and I saw her back as she
+turned to run away, when I went towards her."
+
+"But you followed her, of course?"
+
+"Yes, but I did not find her on the landing when I got outside."
+
+"Where was she, then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But did you not go and see?"
+
+"She slipped away with astonishing celerity," said Bessie.
+
+"I can take no steps in the matter. If she does it again, speak to her
+and remonstrate."
+
+"But I never have a chance. She is gone in a moment."
+
+"She cannot get away so quickly as all that."
+
+"Somehow she does."
+
+"And you are sure it is Jane?" again I asked; and again she replied: "If
+not Jane, who else can it be? There is no one else in the house."
+
+So this unpleasant matter ended, for the time. The next intimation of
+something of the sort proceeded from another quarter--in fact, from Jane
+herself. She came to me some days later and said, with some
+embarrassment in her tone--
+
+"If you please, ma'am, if I do not give satisfaction, I would rather
+leave the situation."
+
+"Leave!" I exclaimed. "Why, I have not given you the slightest cause. I
+have not found fault with you for anything as yet, have I, Jane? On the
+contrary, I have been much pleased with the thoroughness of your work.
+And you are always tidy and obliging."
+
+"It isn't that, ma'am; but I don't like being watched whatever I do."
+
+"Watched!" I repeated. "What do you mean? You surely do not suppose that
+I am running after you when you are engaged on your occupations. I
+assure you I have other and more important things to do."
+
+"No, ma'am, I don't suppose you do."
+
+"Then who watches you?"
+
+"I think it must be Miss Bessie."
+
+"Miss Bessie!" I could say no more, I was so astounded.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. When I am sweeping out a room, and my back is turned, I
+hear her at the door; and when I turn myself about, I just catch a
+glimpse of her running away. I see her skirts----"
+
+"Miss Bessie is above doing anything of the sort."
+
+"If it is not Miss Bessie, who is it, ma'am?"
+
+There was a tone of indecision in her voice.
+
+"My good Jane," said I, "set your mind at rest. Miss Bessie could not
+act as you suppose. Have you seen her on these occasions and assured
+yourself that it is she?"
+
+"No, ma'am, I've not, so to speak, seen her face; but I know it ain't
+cook, and I'm sure it ain't you, ma'am; so who else can it be?"
+
+I considered for some moments, and the maid stood before me in dubious
+mood.
+
+"You say you saw her skirts. Did you recognise the gown? What did she
+wear?"
+
+"It was a light cotton print--more like a maid's morning dress."
+
+"Well, set your mind at ease; Miss Bessie has not got such a frock as
+you describe."
+
+"I don't think she has," said Jane; "but there was someone at the door,
+watching me, who ran away when I turned myself about."
+
+"Did she run upstairs or down?"
+
+"I don't know. I did go out on the landing, but there was no one there.
+I'm sure it wasn't cook, for I heard her clattering the dishes down in
+the kitchen at the time."
+
+"Well, Jane, there is some mystery in this. I will not accept your
+notice; we will let matters stand over till we can look into this
+complaint of yours and discover the rights of it."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am. I'm very comfortable here, but it is unpleasant to
+suppose that one is not trusted, and is spied on wherever one goes and
+whatever one is about."
+
+A week later, after dinner one evening, when Bessie and I had quitted
+the table and left my husband to his smoke, Bessie said to me, when we
+were in the drawing-room together: "Mamma, it is not Jane."
+
+"What is not Jane?" I asked.
+
+"It is not Jane who watches me."
+
+"Who can it be, then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"And how is it that you are confident that you are not being observed by
+Jane?"
+
+"Because I have seen her--that is to say, her head."
+
+"When? where?"
+
+"Whilst dressing for dinner, I was before the glass doing my hair, when
+I saw in the mirror someone behind me. I had only the two candles
+lighted on the table, and the room was otherwise dark. I thought I heard
+someone stirring--just the sort of stealthy step I have come to
+recognise as having troubled me so often. I did not turn, but looked
+steadily before me into the glass, and I could see reflected therein
+someone--a woman with red hair. Then I moved from my place quickly. I
+heard steps of some person hurrying away, but I saw no one then."
+
+"The door was open?"
+
+"No, it was shut."
+
+"But where did she go?"
+
+"I do not know, mamma. I looked everywhere in the room and could find no
+one. I have been quite upset. I cannot tell what to think of this. I
+feel utterly unhinged."
+
+"I noticed at table that you did not appear well, but I said nothing
+about it. Your father gets so alarmed, and fidgets and fusses, if he
+thinks that there is anything the matter with you. But this is a most
+extraordinary story."
+
+"It is an extraordinary fact," said Bessie.
+
+"You have searched your room thoroughly?"
+
+"I have looked into every corner."
+
+"And there is no one there?"
+
+"No one. Would you mind, mamma, sleeping with me to-night? I am so
+frightened. Do you think it can be a ghost?"
+
+"Ghost? Fiddlesticks!"
+
+I made some excuse to my husband and spent the night in Bessie's room.
+There was no disturbance that night of any sort, and although my
+daughter was excited and unable to sleep till long after midnight, she
+did fall into refreshing slumber at last, and in the morning said to me:
+"Mamma, I think I must have fancied that I saw something in the glass. I
+dare say my nerves were over-wrought."
+
+I was greatly relieved to hear this, and I arrived at much the same
+conclusion as did Bessie, but was again bewildered, and my mind
+unsettled by Jane, who came to me just before lunch, when I was alone,
+and said--
+
+"Please, ma'am, it's only fair to say, but it's not Miss Bessie."
+
+"What is not Miss Bessie? I mean, who is not Miss Bessie?"
+
+"Her as is spying on me."
+
+"I told you it could not be she. Who is it?"
+
+"Please, ma'am, I don't know. It's a red-haired girl."
+
+"But, Jane, be serious. There is no red-haired girl in the house."
+
+"I know there ain't, ma'am. But for all that, she spies on me."
+
+"Be reasonable, Jane," I said, disguising the shock her words produced
+on me. "If there be no red-haired girl in the house, how can you have
+one watching you?"
+
+"I don't know; but one does."
+
+"How do you know that she is red-haired?"
+
+"Because I have seen her."
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I was going upstairs, when I heard steps coming softly
+after me--the backstairs, ma'am; they're rather dark and steep, and
+there's no carpet on them, as on the front stairs, and I was sure I
+heard someone following me; so I twisted about, thinking it might be
+cook, but it wasn't. I saw a young woman in a print dress, and the light
+as came from the window at the side fell on her head, and it was
+carrots--reg'lar carrots."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"No, ma'am; she put her arm up and turned and ran downstairs, and I went
+after her, but I never found her."
+
+"You followed her--how far?"
+
+"To the kitchen. Cook was there. And I said to cook, says I: 'Did you
+see a girl come this way?' And she said, short-like: 'No.'"
+
+"And cook saw nothing at all?"
+
+"Nothing. She didn't seem best pleased at my axing. I suppose I
+frightened her, as I'd been telling her about how I was followed and
+spied on."
+
+I mused a moment only, and then said solemnly--
+
+"Jane, what you want is a _pill_. You are suffering from hallucinations.
+I know a case very much like yours; and take my word for it that, in
+your condition of liver or digestion, a pill is a sovereign remedy. Set
+your mind at rest; this is a mere delusion, caused by pressure on the
+optic nerve. I will give you a pill to-night when you go to bed, another
+to-morrow, a third on the day after, and that will settle the red-haired
+girl. You will see no more of her."
+
+"You think so, ma'am?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+On consideration, I thought it as well to mention the matter to the
+cook, a strange, reserved woman, not given to talking, who did her work
+admirably, but whom, for some inexplicable reason, I did not like. If I
+had considered a little further as to how to broach the subject, I
+should perhaps have proved more successful; but by not doing so I rushed
+the question and obtained no satisfaction.
+
+I had gone down to the kitchen to order dinner, and the difficult
+question had arisen how to dispose of the scraps from yesterday's joint.
+
+"Rissoles, ma'am?"
+
+"No," said I, "not rissoles. Your master objects to them."
+
+"Then perhaps croquettes?"
+
+"They are only rissoles in disguise."
+
+"Perhaps cottage pie?"
+
+"No; that is inorganic rissole, a sort of protoplasm out of which
+rissoles are developed."
+
+"Then, ma'am, I might make a hash."
+
+"Not an ordinary, barefaced, rudimentary hash?"
+
+"No, ma'am, with French mushrooms, or truffles, or tomatoes."
+
+"Well--yes--perhaps. By the way, talking of tomatoes, who is that
+red-haired girl who has been about the house?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am."
+
+I noticed at once that the eyes of the cook contracted, her lips
+tightened, and her face assumed a half-defiant, half-terrified look.
+
+"You have not many friends in this place, have you, cook?"
+
+"No, ma'am, none."
+
+"Then who can she be?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am."
+
+"You can throw no light on the matter? It is very unsatisfactory having
+a person about the house--and she has been seen upstairs--of whom one
+knows nothing."
+
+"No doubt, ma'am."
+
+"And you cannot enlighten me?"
+
+"She is no friend of mine."
+
+"Nor is she of Jane's. Jane spoke to me about her. Has she remarked
+concerning this girl to you?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am, as I notice all Jane says. She talks a good deal."
+
+"You see, there must be someone who is a stranger and who has access to
+this house. It is most awkward."
+
+"Very so, ma'am."
+
+I could get nothing more from the cook. I might as well have talked to a
+log; and, indeed, her face assumed a wooden look as I continued to speak
+to her on the matter. So I sighed, and said--
+
+"Very well, hash with tomato," and went upstairs.
+
+A few days later the house-parlourmaid said to me, "Please, ma'am, may I
+have another pill?"
+
+"Pill!" I exclaimed. "Why?"
+
+"Because I have seen her again. She was behind the curtains, and I
+caught her putting out her red head to look at me."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"No; she up with her arm over it and scuttled away."
+
+"This is strange. I do not think I have more than two podophyllin pills
+left in the box, but to those you are welcome. Only I should recommend a
+different treatment. Instead of taking them yourself, the moment you
+see, or fancy that you see, the red-haired girl, go at her with the box
+and threaten to administer the pills to her. That will rout her, if
+anything will."
+
+"But she will not stop for the pills."
+
+"The threat of having them forced on her every time she shows herself
+will disconcert her. Conceive, I am supposing, that on each occasion
+Miss Bessie, or I, were to meet you on the stairs, in a room, on the
+landing, in the hall, we were to rush on you and force, let us say,
+castor-oil globules between your lips. You would give notice at once."
+
+"Yes; so I should, ma'am."
+
+"Well, try this upon the red-haired girl. It will prove infallible."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am; what you say seems reasonable."
+
+Whether Bessie saw more of the puzzling apparition, I cannot say. She
+spoke no further on the matter to me; but that may have been so as to
+cause me no further uneasiness. I was unable to resolve the question to
+my own satisfaction--whether what had been seen was a real person, who
+obtained access to the house in some unaccountable manner, or whether it
+was, what I have called it, an apparition.
+
+As far as I could ascertain, nothing had been taken away. The movements
+of the red-haired girl were not those of one who sought to pilfer. They
+seemed to me rather those of one not in her right mind; and on this
+supposition I made inquiries in the neighbourhood as to the existence in
+our street, in any of the adjoining houses, of a person wanting in her
+wits, who was suffered to run about at will. But I could obtain no
+information that at all threw light on a point to me so perplexing.
+
+Hitherto I had not mentioned the topic to my husband. I knew so well
+that I should obtain no help from him, that I made no effort to seek it.
+He would "Pish!" and "Pshaw!" and make some slighting reference to
+women's intellects, and not further trouble himself about the matter.
+
+But one day, to my great astonishment, he referred to it himself.
+
+"Julia," said he, "do you observe how I have cut myself in shaving?"
+
+"Yes, dear," I replied. "You have cotton-wool sticking to your jaw, as
+if you were growing a white whisker on one side."
+
+"It bled a great deal," said he.
+
+"I am sorry to hear it."
+
+"And I mopped up the blood with the new toilet-cover."
+
+"Never!" I exclaimed. "You haven't been so foolish as to do that?"
+
+"Yes. And that is just like you. You are much more concerned about your
+toilet-cover being stained than about my poor cheek which is gashed."
+
+"You were very clumsy to do it," was all I could say. Married people are
+not always careful to preserve the amenities in private life. It is a
+pity, but it is so.
+
+"It was due to no clumsiness on my part," said he; "though I do allow my
+nerves have been so shaken, broken, by married life, that I cannot
+always command my hand, as was the case when I was a bachelor. But this
+time it was due to that new, stupid, red-haired servant you have
+introduced into the house without consulting me or my pocket."
+
+"Red-haired servant!" I echoed.
+
+"Yes, that red-haired girl I have seen about. She thrusts herself into
+my study in a most offensive and objectionable way. But the climax of
+all was this morning, when I was shaving. I stood in my shirt before the
+glass, and had lathered my face, and was engaged on my right jaw, when
+that red-haired girl rushed between me and the mirror with both her
+elbows up, screening her face with her arms, and her head bowed. I
+started back, and in so doing cut myself."
+
+"Where did she come from?"
+
+"How can I tell? I did not expect to see anyone."
+
+"Then where did she go?"
+
+"I do not know; I was too concerned about my bleeding jaw to look about
+me. That girl must be dismissed."
+
+"I wish she could be dismissed," I said.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+I did not answer my husband, for I really did not know what answer to
+make.
+
+I was now the only person in the house who had not seen the red-haired
+girl, except possibly the cook, from whom I could gather nothing, but
+whom I suspected of knowing more concerning this mysterious apparition
+than she chose to admit. That what had been seen by Bessie and Jane was
+a supernatural visitant, I now felt convinced, seeing that it had
+appeared to that least imaginative and most commonplace of all
+individuals, my husband. By no mental process could he have been got to
+imagine anything. He certainly did see this red-haired girl, and that no
+living, corporeal maid had been in his dressing-room at the time I was
+perfectly certain.
+
+I was soon, however, myself to be included in the number of those before
+whose eyes she appeared. It was in this wise.
+
+Cook had gone out to do some marketing. I was in the breakfast-room,
+when, wanting a funnel to fill a little phial of brandy I always keep on
+the washstand in case of emergencies, I went to the head of the kitchen
+stairs, to descend and fetch what I required. Then I was aware of a
+great clattering of the fire-irons below, and a banging about of the
+boiler and grate. I went down the steps very hastily and entered the
+kitchen.
+
+There I saw a figure of a short, set girl in a shabby cotton gown, not
+over clean, and slipshod, stooping before the stove, and striking the
+fender with the iron poker. She had fiery red hair, very untidy.
+
+I uttered an exclamation.
+
+Instantly she dropped the poker, and covering her face with her arms,
+uttering a strange, low cry, she dashed round the kitchen table, making
+nearly the complete circuit, and then swept past me, and I heard her
+clattering up the kitchen stairs.
+
+I was too much taken aback to follow. I stood as one petrified. I felt
+dazed and unable to trust either my eyes or my ears.
+
+Something like a minute must have elapsed before I had sufficiently
+recovered to turn and leave the kitchen. Then I ascended slowly and, I
+confess, nervously. I was fearful lest I should find the red-haired girl
+cowering against the wall, and that I should have to pass her.
+
+But nothing was to be seen. I reached the hall, and saw that no door was
+open from it except that of the breakfast-room. I entered and thoroughly
+examined every recess, corner, and conceivable hiding-place, but could
+find no one there. Then I ascended the staircase, with my hand on the
+balustrade, and searched all the rooms on the first floor, without the
+least success. Above were the servants' apartments, and I now resolved
+on mounting to them. Here the staircase was uncarpeted. As I was
+ascending, I heard Jane at work in her room. I then heard her come out
+hastily upon the landing. At the same moment, with a rush past me,
+uttering the same moan, went the red-haired girl. I am sure I felt her
+skirts sweep my dress. I did not notice her till she was close upon me,
+but I did distinctly see her as she passed. I turned, and saw no more.
+
+I at once mounted to the landing where was Jane.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+"Please, ma'am, I've seen the red-haired girl again, and I did as you
+recommended. I went at her rattling the pill-box, and she turned and ran
+downstairs. Did you see her, ma'am, as you came up?"
+
+"How inexplicable!" I said. I would not admit to Jane that I had seen
+the apparition.
+
+The situation remained unaltered for a week. The mystery was unsolved.
+No fresh light had been thrown on it. I did not again see or hear
+anything out of the way; nor did my husband, I presume, for he made no
+further remarks relative to the extra servant who had caused him so much
+annoyance. I presume he supposed that I had summarily dismissed her.
+This I conjectured from a smugness assumed by his face, such as it
+always acquired when he had carried a point against me--which was not
+often.
+
+However, one evening, abruptly, we had a new sensation. My husband,
+Bessie, and I were at dinner, and we were partaking of the soup, Jane
+standing by, waiting to change our plates and to remove the tureen, when
+we dropped our spoons, alarmed by fearful screams issuing from the
+kitchen. By the way, characteristically, my husband finished his soup
+before he laid down the spoon and said--
+
+"Good gracious! What is that?"
+
+Bessie, Jane, and I were by this time at the door, and we rushed
+together to the kitchen stairs, and one after the other ran down them. I
+was the first to enter, and I saw cook wrapped in flames, and a paraffin
+lamp on the floor broken, and the blazing oil flowing over it.
+
+I had sufficient presence of mind to catch up the cocoanut matting which
+was not impregnated with the oil, and to throw it round cook, wrap her
+tightly in it, and force her down on the floor where not overflowed by
+the oil. I held her thus, and Bessie succoured me. Jane was too
+frightened to do other than scream. The cries of the burnt woman were
+terrible. Presently my husband appeared.
+
+"Dear me! Bless me! Good gracious!" he said.
+
+"You go away and fetch a doctor," I called to him; "you can be of no
+possible service here--you only get in our way."
+
+"But the dinner?"
+
+"Bother the dinner! Run for a surgeon."
+
+In a little while we had removed the poor woman to her room, she
+shrieking the whole way upstairs; and, when there, we laid her on the
+bed, and kept her folded in the cocoanut matting till a medical man
+arrived, in spite of her struggles to be free. My husband, on this
+occasion, acted with commendable promptness; but whether because he was
+impatient for the completion of his meal, or whether his sluggish nature
+was for once touched with human sympathy, it is not for me to say.
+
+All I know is that, so soon as the surgeon was there, I dismissed Jane
+with "There, go and get your master the rest of his dinner, and leave us
+with cook."
+
+The poor creature was frightfully burnt. She was attended to devotedly
+by Bessie and myself, till a nurse was obtained from the hospital. For
+hours she was as one mad with terror as much as with pain.
+
+Next day she was quieter and sent for me. I hastened to her, and she
+begged the nurse to leave the room. I took a chair and seated myself by
+her bedside, and expressed my profound commiseration, and told her that
+I should like to know how the accident had taken place.
+
+"Ma'am, it was the red-haired girl did it."
+
+"The red-haired girl!"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I took a lamp to look how the fish was getting on, and all
+at once I saw her rush straight at me, and I--I backed, thinking she
+would knock me down, and the lamp fell over and smashed, and my clothes
+caught, and----"
+
+"Oh, cook! you should not have taken the lamp."
+
+"It's done. And she would never leave me alone till she had burnt or
+scalded me. You needn't be afraid--she don't haunt the house. It is _me_
+she has haunted, because of what I did to her."
+
+"Then you know her?"
+
+"She was in service with me, as kitchenmaid, at my last place, near
+Cambridge. I took a sort of hate against her, she was such a slattern
+and so inquisitive. She peeped into my letters, and turned out my box
+and drawers, she was ever prying; and when I spoke to her, she was that
+saucy! I reg'lar hated her. And one day she was kneeling by the stove,
+and I was there, too, and I suppose the devil possessed me, for I upset
+the boiler as was on the hot-plate right upon her, just as she looked
+up, and it poured over her face and bosom, and arms, and scalded her
+that dreadful, she died. And since then she has haunted me. But she'll
+do so no more. She won't trouble you further. She has done for me, as
+she has always minded to do, since I scalded her to death."
+
+The unhappy woman did not recover.
+
+"Dear me! no hope?" said my husband, when informed that the surgeon
+despaired of her. "And good cooks are so scarce. By the way, that
+red-haired girl?"
+
+"Gone--gone for ever," I said.
+
+
+
+
+A PROFESSIONAL SECRET
+
+
+Mr. Leveridge was in a solicitor's office at Swanton. Mr. Leveridge had
+been brought up well by a sensible father and an excellent mother. His
+principles left nothing to be desired. His father was now dead, and his
+mother did not reside at Swanton, but near her own relations in another
+part of England. Joseph Leveridge was a mild, inoffensive man, with fair
+hair and a full head. He was so shy that he did not move in Society as
+he might have done had he been self-assertive. But he was fairly
+happy--not so happy as he might have been, for reasons to be shortly
+given.
+
+Swanton was a small market-town, that woke into life every Friday, which
+was market-day, burst into boisterous levity at the Michaelmas fair, and
+then lapsed back into decorum; it was, except on Fridays, somnolent
+during the day and asleep at night.
+
+Swanton was not a manufacturing town. It possessed one iron foundry and
+a brewery, so that it afforded little employment for the labouring
+classes, yet the labouring classes crowded into it, although cottage
+rents were high, because the farmers could not afford, owing to the hard
+times, to employ many hands on the land, and because their wives and
+daughters desired the distractions and dissipations of a town, and
+supposed that both were to be found in superfluity at Swanton.
+
+There was a large town hall with a magistrates' court, where the bench
+sat every month once. The church, in the centre of the town, was an
+imposing structure of stone, very cold within. The presentation was in
+the hands of the Simeonite Trustees, so that the vicar was of the
+theological school--if that can be called a school where nothing is
+taught--called Evangelical. The services ever long and dismal. The Vicar
+slowly and impressively declaimed the prayers, preached lengthy sermons,
+and condemned the congregation to sing out of the Mitre hymnal.
+
+The principal solicitor, Mr. Stork, was clerk of the petty sessions and
+registrar. He did a limited amount of legal work for the landed gentry
+round, was trustee to some widows and orphans, and was consulted by
+tottering yeomen as to their financial difficulties, lent them some
+money to relieve their immediate embarrassments, on the security of
+their land, which ultimately passed into his possession.
+
+To this gentleman Mr. Leveridge had been articled. He had been induced
+to adopt the legal profession, not from any true vocation, but at the
+instigation of his mother, who had urged him to follow in the
+professional footsteps of his revered father. But the occupation was not
+one that accorded with the tastes of the young man, who, notwithstanding
+his apparent mildness and softness, was not deficient in brains. He was
+a shrewd observer, and was endowed with a redundant imagination.
+
+From a child he had scribbled stories, and with his pencil had
+illustrated them; but this had brought upon him severe rebukes from his
+mother, who looked with disfavour on works of imagination, and his
+father had taken him across his knee, of course before he was adult, and
+had castigated him with the flat of the hairbrush for surreptitiously
+reading the _Arabian Nights_.
+
+Mr. Leveridge's days passed evenly enough; there was some business
+coming into the office on Fridays, and none at all on Sundays, on which
+day he wrote a long and affectionate letter to his widowed mother.
+
+He would have been a happy man, happy in a mild, lotus-eating way, but
+for three things. In the first place, he became conscious that he was
+not working in his proper vocation. He took no pleasure in engrossing
+deeds; indentures his soul abhorred. He knew himself to be capable of
+better things, and feared lest the higher faculties of his mind should
+become atrophied by lack of exercise. In the second place, he was not
+satisfied that his superior was a man of strict integrity. He had no
+reason whatever for supposing that anything dishonest went on in the
+office, but he had discovered that his "boss" was a daring and
+venturesome speculator, and he feared lest temptation should induce him
+to speculate with the funds of those to whom he acted as trustee. And
+Joseph, with his high sense of rectitude, was apprehensive lest some day
+something might there be done, which would cause a crash. Lastly, Joseph
+Leveridge had lost his heart. He was consumed by a hopeless passion for
+Miss Asphodel Vincent, a young lady with a small fortune of about L400
+per annum, to whom Mr. Stork was guardian and trustee.
+
+This young lady was tall, slender, willowy, had a sweet, Madonna-like
+face, and like Joseph himself was constitutionally shy; and she was
+unconscious of her personal and pecuniary attractions. She moved in the
+best society, she was taken up by the county people. No doubt she would
+be secured by the son of some squire, and settle down as Lady Bountiful
+in some parish; or else some wily curate with a moustache would step in
+and carry her off. But her bashfulness and her indifference to men's
+society had so far protected her. She loved her garden, cultivated
+herbaceous plants, and was specially addicted to a rockery in which she
+acclimatised flowers from the Alps.
+
+As Mr. Stork was her guardian, she often visited the office, when Joseph
+flew, with heightened colour, to offer her a chair till Mr. Stork was
+disengaged. But conversation between them had never passed beyond
+generalities. Mr. Leveridge occasionally met her in his country walks,
+but never advanced in intimacy beyond raising his hat and remarking on
+the weather.
+
+Probably it was the stimulus of this devouring and despairing passion
+which drove Mr. Leveridge to writing a novel, in which he could paint
+Asphodel, under another name, in all her perfections. She should move
+through his story diffusing an atmosphere of sweetness and saintliness,
+but he could not bring himself to provide her with a lover, and to
+conclude his romance with her union to a being of the male sex.
+
+Impressed as he had been in early youth by the admonitions of his
+mother, and the applications of the hairbrush by his father, that the
+imagination was a dangerous and delusive gift, to be restrained, not
+indulged, he resolved that he would create no characters for his story,
+but make direct studies from life. Consequently, when the work was
+completed, it presented the most close portraits of a certain number of
+the residents in Swanton, and the town in which the scene was laid was
+very much like Swanton, though he called it Buzbury.
+
+But to find a publisher was a more difficult work than to write the
+novel. Mr. Leveridge sent his MS. type-written to several firms, and it
+was declined by one after another. At last, however, it fell into the
+hands of an unusually discerning reader, who saw in it distinct tokens
+of ability. It was not one to appeal to the general public. It contained
+no blood-curdling episodes, no hair-breadth escapes, no risky
+situations; it was simply a transcript of life in a little English
+country town. Though not high-spiced to suit the vulgar taste, still the
+reader and the publisher considered that there was a discerning public,
+small and select, that relished good, honest work of the Jane Austen
+kind, and the latter resolved on risking the production. Accordingly he
+offered the author fifty pounds for the work, he buying all rights.
+Joseph Leveridge was overwhelmed at the munificence of the offer, and
+accepted it gratefully and with alacrity.
+
+The next stage in the proceedings consisted in the revision of the
+proofs. And who that has not experienced it can judge of the sensation
+of exquisite delight afforded by this to the young author? After the
+correction of his romance--if romance such a prosaic tale can be
+called--in print, with characteristic modesty Leveridge insisted that
+his story should appear under an assumed name. What the name adopted was
+it does not concern the reader of this narrative to know. Some time now
+elapsed before the book appeared, at the usual publishing time, in
+October.
+
+Eventually it came out, and Mr. Leveridge received his six copies,
+neatly and quietly bound in cloth. He cut and read one with avidity, and
+at once perceived that he had overlooked several typographical errors,
+and wrote to the publisher to beg that these might be corrected in the
+event of a second edition being called for.
+
+On the morning following the publication and dissemination of the book,
+Joseph Leveridge lay in bed a little longer than usual, smiling in happy
+self-gratification at the thought that he had become an author. On the
+table by his bed stood his extinguished candle, his watch, and the book.
+He had looked at it the last thing before he closed his eyes in sleep.
+It was moreover the first thing that his eyes rested on when they
+opened. A fond mother could not have gazed on her new-born babe with
+greater pride and affection.
+
+Whilst he thus lay and said to himself, "I really must--I positively
+must get up and dress!" he heard a stumping on the stairs, and a few
+moments later his door was burst open, and in came Major Dolgelly Jones,
+a retired officer, resident in Swanton, who had never before done him
+the honour of a call--and now he actually penetrated to Joseph's
+bedroom.
+
+The major was hot in the face. He panted for breath, his cheeks
+quivered. The major was a man who, judging by what could be perceived of
+his intellectual gifts, could not have been a great acquisition to the
+Army. He was a man who never could have been trusted to act a brilliant
+part. He was a creature of routine, a martinet; and since his retirement
+to Swanton had been a passionate golf-player and nothing else.
+
+"What do you mean, sir? What do you mean?" spluttered he, "by putting me
+into your book?"
+
+"My book!" echoed Joseph, affecting surprise. "What book do you refer
+to?"
+
+"Oh! it's all very well your assuming that air of injured innocence,
+your trying to evade my question. Your sheepish expression does not
+deceive me. Why--there is the book in question by your bedside."
+
+"I have, I admit, been reading that novel, which has recently appeared."
+
+"You wrote it. Everyone in Swanton knows it. I don't object to your
+writing a book; any fool can do that--especially a novel. What I do
+object to is your putting me into it."
+
+"If I remember rightly," said Joseph, quaking under the bedclothes, and
+then wiping his upper lip on which a dew was forming, "If I remember
+aright, there is in it a major who plays golf, and does nothing else;
+but his name is Piper."
+
+"What do I care about a name? It is I--I. You have put me in."
+
+"Really, Major Jones, you have no justification in thus accusing me. The
+book does not bear my name on the back and title-page."
+
+"Neither does the golfing retired military officer bear my name, but
+that does not matter. It is I myself. I am in your book. I would
+horsewhip you had I any energy left in me, but all is gone, gone with my
+personality into your book. Nothing is left of me--nothing but a body
+and a light tweed suit. I--I--have been taken out of myself and
+transferred to that----" he used a naughty word, "that book. How can I
+golf any more? Walk the links any more with any heart? How can I putt a
+ball and follow it up with any feeling of interest? I am but a carcass.
+My soul, my character, my individuality have been burgled. You have
+broken into my inside, and have despoiled me of my personality." And he
+began to cry.
+
+"Possibly," suggested Mr. Leveridge, "the author might----"
+
+"The author can do nothing. I have been robbed--my fine ethereal self
+has been purloined. I--Dolgelly Jones--am only an outside husk. You have
+despoiled me of my richest jewel--myself."
+
+"I really can do nothing, major."
+
+"I know you can do nothing, that is the pity of it. You have sucked all
+my spiritual being with its concomitants out of me, and cannot put it
+back again. _You have used me up._"
+
+Then, wringing his hands, the major left the room, stumped slowly
+downstairs, and quitted the house.
+
+Joseph Leveridge rose from his bed and dressed in great perturbation of
+mind. Here was a condition of affairs on which he had not reckoned. He
+was so distracted in mind that he forgot to brush his teeth.
+
+When he reached his little sitting-room he found that the table was laid
+for his breakfast, and that his landlady had just brought up the usual
+rashers of bacon and two boiled eggs. She was sobbing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Baker?" asked Joseph. "Has Lasinia"--that was
+the name of the servant--"broken any more dishes?"
+
+"Everything has happened," replied the woman; "you have taken away my
+character."
+
+"I--I never did such a thing."
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, you have. All the time you've been writing, I've felt it
+going out of me like perspiration, and now it is all in your book."
+
+"My book!"
+
+"Yes, sir, under the name of Mrs. Brooks. But law! sir, what is there in
+a name? You might have taken the name of Baker and used that as you
+likes. There be plenty of Bakers in England and the Colonies. But it's
+my character, sir, you've taken away, and shoved it into your book."
+Then the woman wiped her eyes with her apron.
+
+"But really, Mrs. Baker, if there be a landlady in this novel of which
+you complain----"
+
+"There is, and it is me."
+
+"But it is a mere work of fiction."
+
+"It is not a work of fiction, it is a work of fact, and that a cruel
+fact. What has a poor lorn widow like me got to boast of but her
+character? I'm sure I've done well by you, and never boiled your eggs
+hard--and to use me like this."
+
+"Good gracious, dear Mrs. Baker!"
+
+"Don't dear me, sir. If you had loved me, if you had been decently
+grateful for all I have done for you, and mended your socks too, you'd
+not have stolen my character from me, and put it into your book. Ah,
+sir! you have dealt by me what I call regular shameful, and not like a
+gentleman. You _have used me up_."
+
+Joseph was silent, cowed. He turned the rashers about on the dish with
+his fork in an abstracted manner. All desire to eat was gone from him.
+
+Then the landlady went on: "And it's not me only as has to complain.
+There are three gentlemen outside, sitting on the doorstep, awaiting of
+you. And they say that there they will remain, till you go out to your
+office. And they intend to have it out with you."
+
+Joseph started from the chair he had taken, and went to the window, and
+threw up the sash.
+
+Leaning out, he saw three hats below. It was as Mrs. Baker had
+intimated. Three gentlemen were seated on the doorstep. One was the
+vicar, another his "boss" Mr. Stork, and the third was Mr. Wotherspoon.
+
+There could be no mistake about the vicar; he wore a chimney-pot hat of
+silk, that had begun to curl at the brim, anticipatory of being adapted
+as that of an archdeacon. Moreover, he wore extensive, well-cultivated
+grey whiskers on each cheek. If we were inclined to adopt the modern
+careless usage, we might say that he grew whiskers on _either_ cheek.
+But in strict accuracy that would mean that the whiskers grew
+indifferently, or alternatively, intermittently on one cheek or the
+other. This, however, was not the case, consequently we say on _each_
+cheek. These whiskers now waved and fluttered in the light air passing
+up and down the street.
+
+The second was Mr. Stork; he wore a stiff felt hat, his fiery hair
+showed beneath it, behind, and in front; when he lifted his head, the
+end of his pointed nose showed distinctly to Joseph Leveridge who looked
+down from above. The third, Mr. Wotherspoon, had a crushed brown cap on;
+he sat with his hands between his knees, dejected, and looking on the
+ground.
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon lived in Swanton with his mother and three sisters. The
+mother was the widow of an officer, not well off. He was an agreeable
+man, an excellent player at lawn-tennis, croquet, golf, rackets,
+billiards, and cards. His age was thirty, and he had as yet no
+occupation. His mother gently, his sisters sharply, urged him to do
+something, so as to earn his livelihood. With his mother's death her
+pension would cease, and he could not then depend on his sisters. He
+always answered that something would turn up. Occasionally he ran to
+town to look for employment, but invariably returned without having
+secured any, and with his pockets empty. He was so cheerful, so
+good-natured, was such good company, that everyone liked him, but also
+everyone was provoked at his sponging on his mother and sisters.
+
+"Really," said Mr. Leveridge, "I cannot encounter those three. It is
+true that I have drawn them pretty accurately in my novel, and here they
+are ready to take me to account for so doing. I will leave the house by
+the back door."
+
+Without his breakfast, Joseph fled; and having escaped from those who
+had hoped to intercept him, he made his way to the river. Here were
+pleasant grounds, with walks laid out, and benches provided. The place
+was not likely to be frequented at that time of the morning, and Mr.
+Leveridge had half an hour to spare before he was due at the office.
+There, later, he was likely to meet his "boss"; but it was better to
+face him alone, than him accompanied by two others who had a similar
+grievance against him.
+
+He seated himself on a bench and thought. He did not smoke; he had
+promised his "mamma" not to do so, and he was a dutiful son, and
+regarded his undertaking.
+
+What should he do? He was becoming involved in serious embarrassments.
+Would it be possible to induce the publisher to withdraw the book from
+circulation and to receive back the fifty pounds? That was hardly
+possible. He had signed away all his rights in the novel, and the
+publisher had been to a considerable expense for paper, printing,
+binding, and advertising.
+
+He was roused from his troubled thoughts by seeing Miss Asphodel Vincent
+coming along the walk towards him. Her step had lost its wonted spring,
+her carriage its usual buoyancy. In a minute or two she would reach him.
+Would she deign to speak? He felt no compunction towards her. He had
+made her his heroine in the tale. By not a word had he cast a shadow
+over her character or her abilities. Indeed, he had pictured her as the
+highest ideal of an English girl. She might be flattered, she could not
+be offended. And yet there was no flattery in his pencil--he had
+sketched her in as she was.
+
+As she approached she noticed the young author. She did not hasten her
+step. She displayed a strange listlessness in her movements, and lack of
+vivacity in her eye.
+
+When she stood over against him, Joseph Leveridge rose and removed his
+hat. "An early promenade, Miss Vincent," he said.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be
+overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain
+of a great injury done to me."
+
+"You do me a high honour," exclaimed Joseph. "If I can do anything to
+alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me."
+
+"You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been
+done. You put me into your book."
+
+"Miss Vincent," protested Leveridge with vehemence, "if I have, what
+then? I have not in the least overcharged the colours, by a line
+caricatured you." It was in vain for him further to pretend not to be
+the author and to have merely read the book.
+
+"That may be, or it may not. But you have taken strange liberties with
+me in transferring me to your pages."
+
+"And you really recognised yourself?"
+
+"It is myself, my very self, who is there."
+
+"And yet you are here, before my humble self."
+
+"That is only my outer shell. All my individuality, all that goes to
+make up the Ego--I myself--has been taken from me and put into your
+book."
+
+"Surely that cannot be."
+
+"But it is so. I feel precisely as I suppose felt my doll when I was a
+child, when it became unstitched and all the bran ran out; it hung limp
+like a rag. But it is not bran you have deprived me of, it is my
+personality."
+
+"In my novel is your portraiture indeed--but you yourself are here,"
+said Leveridge.
+
+"It is my very self, my noblest and best part, my moral and
+intellectual self, which has been carried off and put into your book."
+
+"This is quite impossible, Miss Vincent."
+
+"A moment's thought," said she, "will convince you that it is as I say.
+If I pick an Alpine flower and transfer it to my blotting-book, it
+remains in the herbarium. It is no longer on the Alp where it bloomed."
+
+"But----" urged Joseph.
+
+"No," she interrupted, "you cannot undeceive me. No one can be in two
+places at the same time. If I am in your book, I cannot be here--except
+so far as goes my animal nature and frame. You have subjected me, Mr.
+Leveridge, to the greatest humiliation. I am by you reduced to the level
+of a score of girls that I know, with no pursuits, no fixed principles,
+no opinions of their own, no ideas. They are swayed by every fashion,
+they are moulded by their surroundings; they are destitute of what some
+would call moral fibre, and I would term character. I had all this, but
+you have deprived me of it, by putting it into your book. I shall
+henceforth be the sport of every breath, be influenced by every folly,
+be without self-confidence and decision, the prey to any adventurer."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, do not say that."
+
+"I cannot say anything other. If I had a sovereign in my purse, and a
+pickpocket stole it, I should no longer have the purse and sovereign,
+only the pocket; and I am a mere pocket now without the coin of my
+personality that you have filched from me. Mr. Leveridge, it was a cruel
+wrong you did me, _when you used me up_."
+
+Then, sighing, Miss Asphodel went languidly on her way. Joseph was as
+one stunned. He buried his face in his hands. The person of all others
+with whom he desired to stand well, that person looked upon him as her
+most deadly enemy, at all events as the one who had most cruelly
+aggrieved her.
+
+Presently, hearing the clock strike, he started. He was due at the
+office, and Joseph Leveridge had always made a point of punctuality.
+
+He now went to the office, and learned from his fellow-clerk that Mr.
+Stork had not returned; he had been there, and then had gone away to
+seek Leveridge at his lodgings. Joseph considered it incumbent on him to
+resume his hat and go in quest of his "boss."
+
+On his way it occurred to him that there was monotony in bacon and eggs
+for breakfast every morning, and he would like a change. Moreover, he
+was hungry; he had left the house of Mrs. Baker without taking a
+mouthful, and if he returned now for a snack the eggs and the bacon
+would be cold. So he stepped into the shop of Mr. Box, the grocer, for a
+tin of sardines in oil.
+
+When the grocer saw him he said: "Will you favour me with a word, sir,
+in the back shop?"
+
+"I am pressed for time," replied Leveridge nervously.
+
+"But one word; I will not detain you," said Mr. Box, and led the way.
+Joseph walked after him.
+
+"Sir," said the grocer, shutting the glass door, "you have done me a
+prodigious wrong. You have deprived me of what I would not have lost for
+a thousand pounds. You have put me into your book. How my business will
+get on without me--I mean my intellect, my powers of organisation, my
+trade instincts, in a word, myself--I do not know. You have taken them
+from me and put them into your book. I am consigned to a novel, when I
+want all my powers behind the counter. Possibly my affairs for a while
+will go on by the weight of their own momentum, but it cannot be for
+long without my controlling brain. Sir, you have brought me and my
+family to ruin--_you have used me up_."
+
+Leveridge could bear this no more; he seized the handle of the door,
+rushed through the outer shop, precipitated himself into the street,
+carrying the sardine tin in his hand, and hurried to his lodgings.
+
+But there new trouble awaited him. On the doorstep still sat the three
+gentlemen.
+
+When they saw him they rose to their feet.
+
+"I know, I know what you have to say," gasped Joseph. "In pity do not
+attack me all together. One at a time. With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will
+you step up first into my humble little sanctum, and I will receive the
+others later. I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from
+the room. I left the window open."
+
+"I will most certainly follow you," said the Vicar of Swanton. "This is
+a most serious matter."
+
+"Excuse me, will you take a chair?"
+
+"No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs. I lose impressiveness
+when seated. But I fear, alas! that gift has been taken from me. Sir!
+sir! you have put me into your book. My earthly tabernacle may be here,
+standing on your--or Mrs. Baker's drugget--but all my great oratorical
+powers have gone. I have been despoiled of what was in me my highest,
+noblest, most spiritual parts. What my preaching henceforth will be I
+fear to contemplate. I may be able to string together a number of texts,
+and tack on an application, but that is mere mechanical work. I used to
+dredge in much florid eloquence, to stick in the flowers of elocution
+between every joint. And now!--I am despoiled of all. I, the Vicar of
+Swanton, shall be as a mere stick; I shall no more be a power in the
+pulpit, a force on the platform. My prospects in the diocese are put an
+end to. Miserable, miserable young man, you might have pumped others,
+but why me? I know but too surely that _you have used me up_." The vicar
+had taken off his hat, his bald forehead was beaded, his bristling grey
+whiskers drooped, his unctuous expression had faded away. His eyes,
+usually bearing the look as though turned inward in ecstatic
+contemplation of his personal piety, with only a watery stare on the
+world without, were now dull.
+
+He turned to the door. "I will send up Stork," he said.
+
+"Do so by all means, sir," was all that Joseph could say.
+
+When the solicitor entered his red hair had assumed a darker dye,
+through the moisture that exuded from his head.
+
+"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "this is a scurvy trick you have played me.
+You have put me into your book."
+
+"I only sketched a not over-scrupulous lawyer," protested Joseph. "Why
+should you put the cap on your own head?"
+
+"Because it fits. It is myself you have put into your book, and by no
+legal process can I get out of it. I shall not be competent to advise
+the magistrates on the bench, and, good heavens! what a mess they will
+get into. I do not know whether your fellow-clerk can carry on the
+business. _I have been used up._ I'll tell you what. You go away; I want
+you no more at the office. Whenever you revisit Swanton you will see
+only the ruins of the respected firm of Stork. It cannot go on when I am
+not in it, but in your book."
+
+The last to arrive was Mr. Wotherspoon. He was in a most depressed
+condition. "There was not much in me," said he, "not at any time. You
+might have spared such a trifle as me, and not put me also into your
+book and _used me up_. Oh, dear, dear! what will my poor mother do! And
+how Sarah and Jane will bully me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That same day Mr. Leveridge packed up his traps and departed from
+Swanton for his mother's house.
+
+That she was delighted to see him need not be said; that something was
+wrong, her maternal instinct told her. But it was not for some days that
+he confided to her so much as this: "Oh, mother, I have written a novel,
+and have put into it the people of Swanton--and so have had to leave."
+
+"My dear Joe," said the old lady, "you have done wrong and made a great
+mistake. You never should introduce actual living personages into a work
+of fiction. You should pulp them first, and then run out your characters
+fresh from the pulp."
+
+"I was so afraid of using my imagination," explained Joe.
+
+Some months elapsed, and Leveridge could not resolve on an employment
+that would suit him and at the same time maintain him. The fifty pounds
+he had earned would not last long. He began to be sensible of the
+impulse to be again writing. He resisted it for a while, but when he got
+a letter from his publisher, saying that the novel had sold well, far
+better than had been expected, and that he would be pleased to consider
+another from Mr. Leveridge's pen, and could promise him for it more
+liberal terms, then Joseph's scruples vanished. But on one thing he was
+resolved. He would now create his characters. They should not be taken
+from observation.
+
+Moreover, he determined to differentiate his new work from the old in
+other material points. His characters should be the reverse of those in
+the first novel. For his heroine he imagined a girl of boisterous
+spirits, straightforward, true, but somewhat unconventional, and given
+to use slang expressions. He had never met with such a girl, so that she
+would be a pure creation of his brain, and he made up his mind to call
+her Poppy. Then he would avoid drawing the portrait of an Evangelical
+parson, and introduce one decidedly High Church; he would have no heavy,
+narrow tradesman like Box, but a man full of venture and speculative
+push. Moreover, having used up the not over-scrupulous lawyer, he would
+portray one, the soul of honour, the confidant of not only the county
+gentry but of the county nobility. And as he had caused so much trouble
+by the introduction of good old Mother Baker, he would trace the line of
+a lively, skittish young widow, always on the hunt after admirers, and
+endeavouring to entangle the youths who lodged with her.
+
+As he went on with his story, it worked out to his satisfaction, and
+what especially gratified him and gave repose to his mind was the
+consciousness that he was using no one up, with whom he was acquainted,
+and that all his characters were pure creations.
+
+The work was complete, and the publisher agreed to give a hundred pounds
+for it. Then it passed through the press, and in due course Leveridge
+heard from the publisher that his six free copies had been sent off to
+him by train. Joseph was almost as excited over his second novel as he
+was over the first.
+
+He was too impatient to wait till the parcels were sent round in the
+ordinary way. He hurried to the station in the evening, to meet the
+train from town, by which he expected his consignment; and having
+secured it, he hurried home, carrying the heavy parcel.
+
+His mother's house was comparatively large; she occupied but a corner of
+it, and she had given over to her son a little cosy sitting-room, in
+which he might write and read. Into this room Joseph carried his parcel,
+full of impatience to cut the string and disclose the volumes.
+
+But he had hardly passed through his door before he was startled to see
+that his room was full of people; all but one were seated about the
+table. That one who was not, lounged against the bookcase, standing on
+one foot. With a shock of surprise, Joseph recognised all those there
+gathered together. They were the characters in his book, his own
+creations. And that individual who stood, in an indifferent attitude,
+was his new heroine, Poppy. The first shock of surprise rapidly passed.
+Joseph Leveridge felt no fear, but rather a sense of pleasure. He was in
+the presence of his own creations, and knew them familiarly. There were
+seven in all. At his appearance they all saluted him respectfully as
+their creator--all except Poppy, who gave him a wink and a nod.
+
+At the head of the table sat the High Church parson, shaven, with a
+long coat and a grave face, next to him, on the right, Lady Mabel
+Forraby, a tall, elderly, aristocratic-looking woman, the aunt of Poppy.
+One element of lightness in the book had consisted in the struggles of
+Lady Mabel to control her wayward niece and the revolt of the latter.
+Mr. Leveridge had never known a person of title in his life, so that
+Lady Mabel was a pure creation; so also, brought up, as he had been, by
+a Calvinistic mother, and afterwards thrown under the ministry of the
+Vicar of Swanton, he had not once come across a Ritualist. Consequently
+his parson, in this instance, was also a pure creation. A young
+gentleman, the hero of the novel, a bright intelligent fellow, full of
+vigour and good sense, and highly cultured, sat next to Lady Mabel.
+Joseph had never been thrown into association with men of quite this
+type. He had met nice respectable clerks and amusing and agreeable
+travellers for commercial houses, so that this personage also was a
+creation. So most certainly was the bold, pert little widow who rolled
+her eyes and put on winsome airs. Joseph had kept clear of all such
+instances, but he had heard and read of them. She could look to him as
+her creator.
+
+And that naughty little Poppy! Her naughtiness was all mischief, put on
+to aggravate her staid old aunt, so full of daring, and yet withal so
+steady of heart; so full of frolic, but with principle underlying it
+all. Joseph had never encountered anyone like her, anyone approaching to
+her. The young ladies to whom his mother introduced him were all very
+prim and proper. At Swanton he had been little in society: the vicar's
+daughter was a tract distributer and a mission woman, and Mr. Stork's
+daughter a domestic drudge. Of all the characters in Joseph's book she
+was his most especial and delightful creation.
+
+Then the white-haired family lawyer, fond of his jokes, able to tell a
+good story, close as a walnut relative to all matters communicated to
+him, strict and honourable in all his dealings, content with his small
+earnings, and frugally laying them by. Joseph had not met such a man,
+but he had idealised him as the sort of lawyer he would wish to be
+should he stick to his profession. He also, accordingly, was a creation.
+And last, but not least, was the red-faced, audacious stockbroker; a man
+of sharp and quick determination, who saw a chance in a moment and
+closed on it, who was keen of scent and smelt a risky investment the
+moment it came before him. Joseph knew no stockbroker--had only heard of
+them by rumour. He, therefore, was a creation.
+
+"Well, my children, not of my loins, but of my brain," said the author.
+"What do you all want?"
+
+"Bodies," they replied with one voice.
+
+"Bodies!" gasped Joseph, stepping backwards. "Why, what possesses you
+all? You can't expect me to furnish you with them."
+
+"But, indeed, we do, old chap," said Poppy.
+
+"Niece!" said Lady Mabel, turning about in her chair, "address your
+creator with more respect."
+
+"Stay, my lady," said the parson. "Allow me to explain matters to Mr.
+Leveridge. He is young and an inexperienced writer of fiction, and is
+therefore unaware of the exigencies of his profession. You must know,
+dear author of our being, that every author of a work of imagination,
+such as you have been, lays himself under a moral and an inexorable
+obligation to find bodies for all those whom he has called into
+existence through his fertile brain. Mr. Leveridge has not mixed in the
+literary world. He does not belong to the Society of Authors. He is--he
+will excuse the expression--raw in his profession. It is a well-known
+law among novelists that they must furnish bodies for such as they have
+called into existence out of their pure imagination. For this reason
+they invariably call their observation to their assistance, and they
+balance in their books the creations with the transcripts from life.
+The only exception to this rule that I am aware of," continued the
+parson, "is where the author is able to get his piece dramatised, in
+which case, of course, the difficulty ceases."
+
+"I should love to go on the stage," threw in Poppy.
+
+"Niece, you do not know what you say," remarked Lady Mabel, turning
+herself about.
+
+"Allow me, my lady," said the parson. "What I have said is fact, is it
+not?"
+
+"Most certainly," replied all. Lady Mabel said: "I suppose it is."
+
+"Then," pursued the parson, "the situation is this: Have you secured the
+dramatisation of your novel?"
+
+"I never gave it a thought," said Joseph.
+
+"In that case, as there is no prospect of our being so accommodated, the
+position is this: We shall have to haunt you night and day, mainly at
+night, till you have accommodated us with bodies; we cannot remain as
+phantom creations of a highly imaginative soul such as is yours, Mr.
+Leveridge. If you have your rights, so have we. And we insist on ours,
+and will insist till we are satisfied."
+
+At once all vanished.
+
+Joseph Leveridge felt that he had got himself into a worse hobble than
+before. From his former difficulties he had escaped by flight. But there
+was, he feared, no flying from these seven impatient creations all
+clamouring for bodies, and to provide them with such was beyond his
+powers. All his delight in the publication of his new novel was spent.
+It had brought with it care and perplexity.
+
+He went to bed.
+
+During the night, he was troubled with his characters; they peeped in at
+him. Poppy got a peacock's feather and tickled his nose just as he was
+dropping asleep. "You bounder!" she said; "I shall give you no peace
+till you have settled me into a body--but oh! get me on to the stage if
+you can."
+
+"Poppy, come away," called Lady Mabel. "Don't be improper. Mr. Leveridge
+will do his best. I want a body quite as much as do you, but I know how
+to ask for it properly."
+
+"And I," said the parson, "should like to have mine before Easter, but
+have one I must."
+
+Mr. Leveridge's state now was worse than the first. One or other of his
+creatures was ever watching him. His every movement was spied on. There
+was no escaping their vigilance. Sometimes they attended him in groups
+of two or three; sometimes they were all around him.
+
+At meals not one was missing, and they eyed every mouthful of his food
+as he raised it to his lips. His mother saw nothing--the creations were
+invisible to all eyes save those of their creator.
+
+If he went out for a country walk, they trotted forth with him, some
+before, looking round at every turn to see which way he purposed going,
+some following. Poppy and the skittish widow managed to attach
+themselves to him, one on each side. "I hate that little woman," said
+Poppy. "Why did you call her into being?"
+
+[Illustration: IF HE WENT OUT FOR A WALK THEY TROTTED FORTH WITH HIM,
+SOME BEFORE, SOME FOLLOWING.]
+
+"I never dreamed that things would come to this pass."
+
+"I am convinced, creator dear, that there is a vein of wickedness in
+your composition, or you would never have imagined such a minx, good and
+amiable and butter-won't-melt-in-your-mouth though you may look. And
+there must be a frolicsome devil in your heart, or I should never have
+become."
+
+"Indeed, Poppy, I am very glad that I gave you being. But one may have
+too much even of a good thing, and there are moments when I could
+dispense with your presence."
+
+"I know, when you want to carry on with the widow. She is always casting
+sheep's eyes at you."
+
+"But, Poppy, you forget my hero, whom I created on purpose for you."
+
+"All my attention is now engrossed in you, and will be till you provide
+me with a body."
+
+When Leveridge was in his room reading, if he raised his eyes from his
+book they met the stare of one of his characters. If he went up to his
+bedroom, he was followed. If he sat with his mother, one kept guard.
+
+This was become so intolerable, that one evening he protested to the
+stockbroker, who was then in attendance. "Do, I entreat you, leave me to
+myself. You treat me as if I were a lunatic and about to commit _felo de
+se_, and you were my warders."
+
+"We watch you, sir," said the stockbroker, "in our own interest. We
+cannot suffer you to give us the slip. We are all expectant and
+impatient for the completion of what you have begun."
+
+Then the parson undertook to administer a lecture on Duty, on
+responsibilities contracted to those called into partial existence by a
+writer of fiction. He cannot be allowed to half do his work. His
+creations must be realised, and can only be realised by being given a
+material existence.
+
+"But what the dickens can I do? I cannot fabricate bodies for you. I
+never in my life even made a doll."
+
+"Have you no thought of dramatising us?"
+
+"I know no dramatic writers."
+
+"Do it yourself."
+
+"Does not this sort of work require a certain familiarity with the
+technique of the stage which I do not possess?"
+
+"That might be attended to later. Pass your MS. through the hands of a
+dramatic expert, and pay him a percentage of your profits in recognition
+of his services. Only one thing I bargain for, do not present me on the
+stage in such a manner as to discredit my cloth."
+
+"Have I done so in my book?"
+
+"No, indeed, I have nothing to complain of in that. But there is no
+counting on what Poppy may persuade you into doing, and I fear that she
+is gaining influence over you. Remember, she is your creation, and you
+must not suffer her to mould you."
+
+The idea took root. The suggestion was taken up, and Joseph Leveridge
+applied himself to his task with zest. But he had to conceal what he was
+about from his mother, who had no opinion of the drama, and regarded the
+theatre as a sink of iniquity.
+
+But now new difficulties arose. Joseph's creations would not leave him
+alone for a moment. Each had a suggestion, each wanted his or her own
+part accentuated at the expense of the other. Each desired the
+heightening of the situations in which they severally appeared. The
+clamour, the bickering, the interference made it impossible for Joseph
+to collect his thoughts, keep cool, and proceed with his work.
+
+Sunday arrived, and Joseph drew on his gloves, put on his box-hat, and
+offered his arm to his mother, to conduct her to chapel. All the
+characters were drawn up in the hall to accompany them. Joseph and his
+mother walking down the street to Ebenezer Chapel presented a picture of
+a good and dutiful son and of a pious widow not to be surpassed. Poppy
+and the widow entered into a struggle as to which was to walk on the
+unoccupied side of Joseph. If this had been introduced into the picture
+it would have marred it; but happily this was invisible to all eyes save
+those of Joseph. The rest of the imaginary party walked arm in arm
+behind till the chapel was reached, when the parson started back.
+
+"I am not going in there! It is a schism-shop," he exclaimed. "Nothing
+in the world would induce me to cross the threshold."
+
+"And I," said Lady Mabel, "I have no idea of attending a place of
+worship not of the Established Church."
+
+"I'll go in--if only to protect Creator from the widow," said Poppy.
+
+Joseph and his mother entered, and occupied their pew. The characters,
+with the exception of the parson and the old lady, grouped themselves
+where they were able. The stockbroker stood in the aisle with his arms
+on the pew door, to ensure that Joseph was kept a prisoner there. But
+before the service had advanced far he had gone to sleep. This was the
+more to be regretted, as the minister delivered a very strong appeal to
+the unconverted, and if ever there was an unconverted worldling, it was
+that stockbroker.
+
+The skittish widow was leering at a deacon of an amorous complexion, but
+as he did not, and, in fact, could not see her, all her efforts were
+cast away. The solicitor sat with stolid face and folded hands, and
+allowed the discourse to flow over him like a refreshing douche. Poppy
+had got very tired of the show, and had slunk away to rejoin her aunt.
+The hero closed his eyes and seemed resigned.
+
+After nearly an hour had elapsed, whilst a hymn was being sung, Joseph,
+more to himself than to his mother, said: "Can I escape?"
+
+"Escape what? Wretch?" inquired the widowed lady.
+
+"I think I can do it. There's a room at the side for earnest inquirers,
+or a vestry or something, with an outer door. I will risk it, and make a
+bolt for my liberty."
+
+He very gently and cautiously unhasped the door of the pew, and as he
+slid it open, the sleeping stockbroker, still sleeping and unconscious,
+slipped back, and Joseph was out. He made his way into the room at the
+side, forth from the actual chapel, ran through it, and tried the door
+that opened into a side lane. It was locked, but happily the key was in
+its place. He turned it, plunged forth, and fell into the arms of his
+characters. They were all there. The solicitor had been observing him
+out of the corner of his eye, and had given the alarm. The stockbroker
+was aroused, and he, the solicitor, the hero, ran out, gave the alarm
+to the three without, and Joseph was intercepted, and his attempt at
+escape frustrated. He was reconducted home by them, himself dejected,
+they triumphant.
+
+When his mother returned she was full of solicitude.
+
+"What was the matter, Joe dear?" she inquired.
+
+"I wasn't feeling very well," he explained. "But I shall be better
+presently."
+
+"I hope it will not interfere with your appetite, Joe. I have cold lamb
+and mint-sauce for our early dinner."
+
+"I shall peck a bit, I trust," said Mr. Leveridge.
+
+But during dinner he was abstracted and silent. All at once he brought
+down his fist on the table. "I've hit it!" he exclaimed, and a flush of
+colour mantled his face to the temples.
+
+"My dear," said his mother; "you have made all the plates and dishes
+jump, and have nearly upset the water-bottle."
+
+"Excuse me, mother; I really must go to my room."
+
+He rose, made a sign to his characters, and they all rose and trooped
+after him into his private apartment.
+
+When they were within he said to his hero: "May I trouble you kindly to
+shut the door and turn the key? My mother will be anxious and come after
+me, and I want a word with you all. It will not take two minutes. I see
+my way to our mutual accommodation. Do not be uneasy and suspicious; I
+will make no further attempt at evasion. Meet me to-morrow morning at
+the 9.48 down train. I am going to take you all with me to Swanton."
+
+A tap at the door.
+
+"Open--it is my mother," said Joseph.
+
+Mrs. Leveridge entered with a face of concern. "What is the matter with
+you, Joe?" she said. "If we were not both of us water-drinkers, I should
+say that you had been indulging in--spirits."
+
+"Mother, I must positively be off to Swanton to-morrow morning. I see
+my way now, all will come right."
+
+"How, my precious boy?"
+
+"I cannot explain. I see my way to clearing up the unpleasantness caused
+by that unfortunate novel of mine. Pack my trunk, mother."
+
+"Not on the Sabbath, lovie."
+
+"No--to-morrow morning. I start by the 9.48 a.m. We all go together."
+
+"We--am I to accompany you?"
+
+"No, no. We--did I say? It is a habit I have got into as an author.
+Authors, like royal personages, speak of themselves as We."
+
+Joseph Leveridge was occupied during the afternoon in writing to his
+victims at Swanton.
+
+First, he penned a notice to Mrs. Baker that he would require his
+lodgings from the morrow, and that he had something to say to her that
+would afford her much gratification.
+
+Then he wrote to the vicar, expressed his regret for having deprived him
+of his personality, and requested him, if he would do him the favour, to
+call in the evening at 7.30, at his lodgings in West Street. He had
+something of special importance to communicate to him. He apologised for
+not himself calling at the vicarage, but said that there were
+circumstances that made it more desirable that he should see his
+reverence privately in his own lodgings.
+
+Next, he addressed an epistle to Mr. Stork. He assured him that he,
+Joseph Leveridge, had felt keenly the wrong he had done him, that he had
+forfeited his esteem, had ill repaid his kindness, had acted in a manner
+towards his employer that was dishonourable. But, he added, he had found
+a means of rectifying what was wrong. He placed himself unreservedly in
+the hands of Mr. Stork, and entreated him to meet him at his rooms in
+West Street on the ensuing Monday evening at 7.45, when he sincerely
+trusted that the past would be forgotten, and a brighter future would be
+assured.
+
+This was followed by a formal letter couched to Mr. Box. He invited him
+to call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings on that same evening at 8 p.m., as he
+had business of an important and far-reaching nature to discuss with
+him. If Mr. Box considered that he, Joseph Leveridge, had done him an
+injury, he was ready to make what reparation lay in his power.
+
+Taking a fresh sheet of notepaper, he now wrote a fifth letter, this to
+Mr. Wotherspoon, requesting the honour of a call at his "diggings" at
+8.15 p.m., when matters of controversy between them could be amicably
+adjusted.
+
+The ensuing letter demanded some deliberation. It was to Asphodel. He
+wrote it out twice before he was satisfied with the mode in which it was
+expressed. He endeavoured to disguise under words full of respect, yet
+not disguise too completely, the sentiments of his heart. But he was
+careful to let drop nothing at which she might take umbrage. He
+entreated her to be so gracious as to allow him an interview by the side
+of the river at the hour of 8.30 on the Monday evening. He apologised
+for venturing to make such a demand, but he intimated that the matter he
+had to communicate was so important and so urgent, that it could not
+well be postponed till Tuesday, and that it was also most necessary that
+the interview should be private. It was something he had to say that
+would materially--no, not materially, but morally--affect her, and would
+relieve his mind from a burden of remorse that had become to him wholly
+intolerable.
+
+The final, the seventh letter, was to Major Dolgelly Jones, and was more
+brief. It merely intimated that he had something of the utmost
+importance to communicate to his private ear, and for this purpose he
+desired the favour of a call at Mrs. Baker's lodgings, at 8.45 on Monday
+evening.
+
+These letters despatched, Mr. Leveridge felt easier in mind and lighter
+at heart. He slept well the ensuing night, better than he had for long.
+His creations did not so greatly disturb him. He was aware that he was
+still kept under surveillance, but the watch was not so strict, nor so
+galling as hitherto.
+
+On the Monday morning he was at the station, and took his ticket for
+Swanton. One ticket sufficed, as his companions, who awaited him on the
+platform, were imaginary characters.
+
+When he took his seat, they pressed into the carriage after him. Poppy
+secured the seat next him, but the widow placed herself opposite, and
+exerted all her blandishment with the hope of engrossing his whole
+attention. At a junction all got out, and Joseph provided himself with a
+luncheon-basket and mineral water. The characters watched him discussing
+the half-chicken and slabs of ham, with the liveliest interest, and were
+especially observant of his treatment of the thin paper napkin,
+wherewith he wiped his fingers and mouth.
+
+At last he arrived at Swanton and engaged a cab, as he was encumbered
+with a portmanteau. Lady Mabel, Poppy, and the widow could be easily
+accommodated within, the two latter with their backs to the horses.
+Joseph would willingly have resigned his seat to either of these, but
+they would not hear of it. A gentle altercation ensued between the
+parson and the solicitor, as to which should ride on the box. The lawyer
+desired to yield the place to "the cloth," but the parson would not hear
+of this--the silver hairs of the other claimed precedence. The
+stockbroker mounted to the roof of the fly and the clerical gentleman
+hung on behind. The hero professed his readiness to walk.
+
+Eventually the cab drew up at Mrs. Baker's door.
+
+That stout, elderly lady received her old lodger without effusion, and
+with languid interest. The look of the house was not what it had been.
+It had deteriorated. The windows had not been cleaned nor the banisters
+dusted.
+
+"My dear old landlady, I am so glad to see you again," said Joseph.
+
+"Thank you, sir. You ordered no meal, but I have got two mutton chops in
+the larder, and can mash some potatoes. At what time would you like your
+supper, sir?" She had become a machine, a thing of routine.
+
+"Not yet, thank you. I have business to transact first, and I shall not
+be disengaged before nine o'clock. But I have something to say to you,
+Mrs. Baker, and I will say it at once and get it over, if you will
+kindly step up into my parlour."
+
+She did so, sighing at each step of the stairs as she ascended.
+
+All the characters mounted as well, and entering the little
+sitting-room, ranged themselves against the wall facing the door.
+
+Mrs. Baker was a portly woman, aged about forty-five, and plain
+featured. She had formerly been neat, now she was dowdy. Before she had
+lost her character she never appeared in that room without removing her
+apron, but on this occasion she wore it, and it was not clean.
+
+"Widow!" said Joseph, addressing his character, "will you kindly step
+forward?"
+
+"I would do anything for _you_," with a roll of the eyes.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge, "I feel that I have done you a
+grievous wrong."
+
+"Well, sir, I ain't been myself since you put me into your book."
+
+"My purpose is now to undo the past, and to provide you with a
+character."
+
+Then, turning to the skittish widow of his creation, he said, "Now,
+then, slip into and occupy her."
+
+"I don't like the tenement," said the widow, pouting.
+
+"Whether you like it or not," protested Joseph, "you must have that or
+no other." He waved his hand. "Presto!" he exclaimed.
+
+Instantly a wondrous change was effected in Mrs. Baker. She whipped off
+the apron, and crammed it under the sofa cushion. She wriggled in her
+movements, she eyed herself in the glass, and exclaimed: "Oh, my! what a
+fright I am. I'll be back again in a minute when I have changed my gown
+and done up my hair."
+
+"We can dispense with your presence, Mrs. Baker," said Leveridge
+sternly. "I will ring for you when you are wanted."
+
+At that moment a rap at the door was heard; and Mrs. Baker, having first
+dropped a coquettish curtsy to her lodger, tripped downstairs to admit
+the vicar, and to show him up to Mr. Leveridge's apartment.
+
+"You may go, Mrs. Baker," said he; for she seemed inclined to linger.
+
+When she had left the room, Joseph contemplated the reverend gentleman.
+He bore a crestfallen appearance. He looked as if he had been out in the
+rain all night without a paletot. His cheeks were flabby, his mouth
+drooped at the corners, his eyes were vacant, and his whiskers no longer
+stuck out horrescent and assertive.
+
+"Dear vicar," said Leveridge, "I cannot forgive myself." In former
+times, Mr. Leveridge would not have dreamed of addressing the reverend
+gentleman in this familiar manner, but it was other now that the latter
+looked so limp and forlorn. "My dear vicar, I cannot forgive myself for
+the trouble I have brought upon you. It has weighed on me as a
+nightmare, for I know that it is not you only who have suffered, but
+also the whole parish of Swanton. Happily a remedy is at hand. I have
+here----" he waved to the parson of his creation, "I have here an
+individuality I can give to you, and henceforth, if you will not be
+precisely yourself again, you will be a personality in your parish and
+the diocese." He waved his hand. "Presto!"
+
+In the twinkling of an eye all was changed in the Vicar of Swanton. He
+straightened himself. His expression altered to what it never had been
+before. The cheeks became firm, and lines formed about the mouth
+indicative of force of character and of self-restraint. The eye assumed
+an eager look as into far distances, as seeking something beyond the
+horizon.
+
+The vicar walked to the mirror over the mantelshelf.
+
+"Bless me!" he said, "I must go to the barber's and have these whiskers
+off." And he hurried downstairs.
+
+After a little pause in the proceedings, Mrs. Baker, now very trim, with
+a blue ribbon round her neck hanging down in streamers behind, ushered
+up Mr. Stork. The lawyer had a faded appearance, as if he had been
+exposed to too strong sunlight; he walked in with an air of lack of
+interest, and sank into a chair.
+
+"My dear old master," said Leveridge, "it is my purpose to restore to
+you all your former energy, and to supply you with what you may possibly
+have lacked previously."
+
+He signed to the white-haired family solicitor he had called into
+fictitious being, and waved his hand.
+
+At once Mr. Stork stood up and shook his legs, as though shaking out
+crumbs from his trousers. His breast swelled, he threw back his head,
+his eye shone clear and was steady.
+
+"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "I have long had my eye on you, sir--had my
+eye on you. I have marked your character as one of uncompromising
+probity. I hate shiftiness, I abhor duplicity. I have been disappointed
+with my clerks. I could not always trust them to do the right thing. I
+want to strengthen and brace my firm. But I will not take into
+partnership with myself any but one of the strictest integrity. Sir! I
+have marked you--I have marked you, Mr. Leveridge. Call on me to-morrow
+morning, and we will consider the preliminaries for a partnership. Don't
+talk to me of buying a partnership."
+
+"I have not done so, sir."
+
+"I know you have not. I will take you in, sir, for your intrinsic
+value. An honest man is worth his weight in gold, and is as scarce as
+the precious metal."
+
+Then, with dignity, Mr. Stork withdrew, and passed Mr. Box, the grocer,
+mounting the stairs.
+
+"Well, Mr. Box," said Leveridge, "how wags the world with you?"
+
+"Badly, sir, badly since you booked me. I mentioned to you, sir, that I
+trusted my little business would for a while go on by its own momentum.
+It has, sir, it has, but the momentum has been downhill. I can't control
+it. I have not the personality to do so, to serve as a drag, to urge it
+upwards. I am in daily expectation, sir, of a regular smash up."
+
+"I am sorry to hear this," said Leveridge. "But I think I have found a
+means of putting all to rights. Presto!" He waved his hand and the
+imaginary character of the stockbroker had actualised himself in the
+body of Mr. Box.
+
+"I see how to do it. By ginger, I do!" exclaimed the grocer, a spark
+coming into his eye. "I'll run my little concern on quite other lines.
+And look ye here, Mr. Leveridge. I bet you my bottom dollar that I'll
+run it to a tremendous success, become a second Lipton, and keep a
+yacht."
+
+As Mr. Box bounced out of the room and proceeded to run downstairs, he
+ran against and nearly knocked over Mrs. Baker; the lady was whispering
+to and coquetting with Mr. Wotherspoon, who was on the landing. That
+gentleman, in his condition of lack of individuality, was like a
+teetotum spun in the hands of the designing Mrs. Baker, who put forth
+all the witchery she possessed, or supposed that she possessed, to
+entangle him in an amorous intrigue.
+
+"Come in," shouted Joseph Leveridge, and Mr. Wotherspoon, looking hot
+and frightened and very shy, tottered in and sank into a chair. He was
+too much shaken and perturbed by the advances of Mrs. Baker to be able
+to speak.
+
+"There," said Joseph, addressing his hero. "You cannot do better than
+animate that feeble creature. Go!"
+
+Instantly Mr. Wotherspoon sprang to his feet. "By George!" said he. "I
+wonder that never struck me before. I'll at once volunteer to go out to
+South Africa, and have a shot at those canting, lying, treacherous
+Boers. If I come back with a score of their scalps at my waist, I shall
+have deserved well of my country. I will volunteer at once. But--I say,
+Leveridge--clear that hulking, fat old landlady out of the way. She
+blocks the stairs, and I can't kick down a woman."
+
+When Mr. Wotherspoon was gone--"Well," said Poppy, "what have you got
+for me?"
+
+"If you will come with me, Poppy dear, I will serve you as well as the
+rest."
+
+"I hope better than you did that odious little widow. But she is well
+paid out."
+
+"Follow me to the riverside," said Joseph; "at 8.33 p.m. I am due there,
+and so is another--a lady."
+
+"And pray why did you not make her come here instead of lugging me all
+the way down there?"
+
+"Because I could not make an appointment with a young lady in my
+bachelor's apartments."
+
+"That's all very fine. But I am there."
+
+"Yes, you--but you are only an imaginary character, and she is a
+substantial reality."
+
+"I think I had better accompany you," said Lady Mabel.
+
+"I think not. If your ladyship will kindly occupy my fauteuil till I
+return, that chair will ever after be sacred to me. Come along, Poppy."
+
+"I'm game," said she.
+
+On reaching the riverside Joseph saw that Miss Vincent was walking there
+in a listless manner, not straight, but swerving from side to side. She
+saw him, but did not quicken her pace, nor did her face light up with
+interest.
+
+"Now, then," said he to Poppy, "what do you think of her?"
+
+"She ain't bad," answered the fictitious character; "she is very pretty
+certainly, but inanimate."
+
+"You will change all that."
+
+"I'll try--you bet."
+
+Asphodel came up. She bowed, but did not extend her hand.
+
+"Miss Vincent," said Joseph. "How good of you to come."
+
+"Not at all. I could not help. I have no free-will left. When you wrote
+Come--I came, I could do no other. I have no initiative, no power of
+resistance."
+
+"I do hope, Miss Vincent, that the thing you so feared has not
+happened."
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"You have not been snapped up by a fortune-hunter?"
+
+"No. People have not as yet found out that I have lost my individuality.
+I have kept very much to myself--that is to say, not to myself, as I
+have no proper myself left--I mean to the semblance of myself. People
+have thought I was anaemic."
+
+Leveridge turned aside: "Well, Poppy!"
+
+"Right you are."
+
+Leveridge waved his hand. Instantly all the inertia passed away from the
+girl, she stood erect and firm. A merry twinkle kindled in her eye, a
+flush was on her cheek, and mischievous devilry played about her lips.
+
+"I feel," said she, "as another person."
+
+"Oh! I am so glad, Miss Vincent."
+
+"That is a pretty speech to make to a lady! Glad I am different from
+what I was before."
+
+"I did not mean that--I meant--in fact, I meant that as you were and as
+you are you are always charming."
+
+"Thank you, sir!" said Asphodel, curtsying and laughing.
+
+"Ah! Miss Vincent, at all times you have seemed to me the ideal of
+womanhood. I have worshipped the very ground you have trod upon."
+
+"Fiddlesticks."
+
+He looked at her. For the moment he was bewildered, oblivious that the
+old personality of Asphodel had passed into his book and that the new
+personality of Poppy had invaded Asphodel.
+
+"Well," said she, "is that all you have to say to me?"
+
+"All?--oh, no. I could say a great deal--I have ordered my supper for
+nine o'clock."
+
+"Oh, how obtuse you men are! Come--is this leap year?"
+
+"I really believe that it is."
+
+"Then I shall take the privilege of the year, and offer you my hand and
+heart and fortune--there! Now it only remains with you to name the day."
+
+"Oh! Miss Vincent, you overcome me."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense. Call me Asphodel, do Joe."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Leveridge walked back to his lodgings as if he trod on air. As he
+passed by the churchyard, he noticed the vicar, now shaven and shorn,
+labouring at a laden wheelbarrow. He halted at the rails and said: "Why,
+vicar, what are you about?"
+
+"The sexton has begun a grave for old Betty Goodman, and it is
+unfinished. He must dig another." He turned over the wheelbarrow and
+shot its contents into the grave.
+
+"But what are you doing?" again asked Joseph.
+
+"Burying the Mitre hymnals," replied the vicar.
+
+The clock struck a quarter to nine.
+
+"I must hurry!" exclaimed Joseph.
+
+On reaching his lodgings he found Major Dolgelly Jones in his
+sitting-room, sitting on the edge of his table tossing up a tennis-ball.
+In the armchair, invisible to the major, reclined Lady Mabel.
+
+"I am so sorry to be late," apologised Joseph. "How are you, sir?"
+
+"Below par. I have been so ever since you put me into your book. I have
+no appetite for golf. I can do nothing to pass the weary hours but toss
+up and down a tennis-ball."
+
+"I hope----" began Joseph; and then a horror seized on him. He had no
+personality of his creation left but that of Lady Mabel. Would it be
+possible to translate that into the major?
+
+He remained silent, musing for a while, and then said hesitatingly to
+the lady: "Here, my lady, is the body you are to individualise."
+
+"But it is that of a man!"
+
+"There is no other left."
+
+"It is hardly delicate."
+
+"There is no help for it." Then turning to the major, he said: "I am
+very sorry--it really is no fault of mine, but I have only a female
+personality to offer to you, and that elderly."
+
+"It is all one to me," replied the major, "catch"--he caught the ball.
+"Many of our generals are old women. I am agreeable. _Place aux dames._"
+
+"But," protested Lady Mabel, "you made me a member of a very ancient
+titled house that came over with the Conqueror."
+
+"The personality I offer you," said I to the major, "though female is
+noble; the family is named in the roll of Battle Abbey."
+
+"Oh!" said Dolgelly Jones, "I descend from one of the royal families of
+Powys, lineally from Caswallon Llanhir and Maelgwn Gwynedd, long before
+the Conqueror was thought of."
+
+"Well, then," said Leveridge, and waved his hand.
+
+In Swanton it is known that the major now never plays golf; he keeps
+rabbits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is with some scruple that I insert this record in the _Book of
+Ghosts_, for actually it is not a story of ghosts. But a greater scruple
+moved me as to whether I should be justified in revealing a
+professional secret, known only among such as belong to the
+Confraternity of Writers of Fiction. But I have observed so much
+perplexity arise, so much friction caused, by persons suddenly breaking
+out into a course of conduct, or into actions, so entirely inconsistent
+with their former conduct as to stagger their acquaintances and friends.
+Henceforth, to use a vulgarism, since I have let the cat out of the bag,
+they will know that such persons have been used up by novel writers that
+have known them, and who have replaced the stolen individualities with
+others freshly created. This is the explanation, and the explanation has
+up to the present remained a professional secret.
+
+
+
+
+H. P.
+
+
+The river Vezere leaps to life among the granite of the Limousin, forms
+a fine cascade, the Saut de la Virolle, then after a rapid descent over
+mica-schist, it passes into the region of red sandstone at Brive, and
+swelled with affluents it suddenly penetrates a chalk district, where it
+has scooped out for itself a valley between precipices some two to three
+hundred feet high.
+
+These precipices are not perpendicular, but overhang, because the upper
+crust is harder than the stone it caps; and atmospheric influences, rain
+and frost, have gnawed into the chalk below, so that the cliffs hang
+forward as penthouse roofs, forming shelters beneath them. And these
+shelters have been utilised by man from the period when the first
+occupants of the district arrived at a vastly remote period, almost
+uninterruptedly to the present day. When peasants live beneath these
+roofs of nature's providing, they simply wall up the face and ends to
+form houses of the cheapest description of construction, with the earth
+as the floor, and one wall and the roof of living rock, into which they
+burrow to form cupboards, bedplaces, and cellars.
+
+The refuse of all ages is superposed, like the leaves of a book, one
+stratum above another in orderly succession. If we shear down through
+these beds, we can read the history of the land, so far as its
+manufacture goes, beginning at the present day and going down, down to
+the times of primeval man. Now, after every meal, the peasant casts down
+the bones he has picked, he does not stoop to collect and cast forth
+the sherds of a broken pot, and if a sou falls and rolls away, in the
+dust of these gloomy habitations it gets trampled into the soil, to form
+another token of the period of occupation.
+
+When the first man settled here the climatic conditions were different.
+The mammoth or woolly elephant, the hyaena, the cave bear, and the
+reindeer ranged the land. Then naked savages, using only flint tools,
+crouched under these rocks. They knew nothing of metals and of pottery.
+They hunted and ate the horse; they had no dogs, no oxen, no sheep.
+Glaciers covered the centre of France, and reached down the Vezere
+valley as far as to Brive.
+
+These people passed away, whither we know not. The reindeer retreated to
+the north, the hyaena to Africa, which was then united to Europe. The
+mammoth became extinct altogether.
+
+After long ages another people, in a higher condition of culture, but
+who also used flint tools and weapons, appeared on the scene, and took
+possession of the abandoned rock shelters. They fashioned their
+implements in a different manner by flaking the flint in place of
+chipping it. They understood the art of the potter. They grew flax and
+wove linen. They had domestic animals, and the dog had become the friend
+of man. And their flint weapons they succeeded in bringing to a high
+polish by incredible labour and perseverance.
+
+Then came in the Age of Bronze, introduced from abroad, probably from
+the East, as its great depot was in the basin of the Po. Next arrived
+the Gauls, armed with weapons of iron. They were subjugated by the
+Romans, and Roman Gaul in turn became a prey to the Goth and the Frank.
+History has begun and is in full swing.
+
+The mediaeval period succeeded, and finally the modern age, and man now
+lives on top of the accumulation of all preceding epochs of men and
+stages of civilisation. In no other part of France, indeed of Europe, is
+the story of man told so plainly, that he who runs may read; and ever
+since the middle of last century, when this fact was recognised, the
+district has been studied, and explorations have been made there, some
+slovenly, others scientifically.
+
+A few years ago I was induced to visit this remarkable region and to
+examine it attentively. I had been furnished with letters of
+recommendation from the authorities of the great Museum of National
+Antiquities at St. Germain, to enable me to prosecute my researches
+unmolested by over-suspicious gendarmes and ignorant mayors.
+
+Under one over-hanging rock was a cabaret or tavern, announcing that
+wine was sold there, by a withered bush above the door.
+
+The place seemed to me to be a probable spot for my exploration. I
+entered into an arrangement with the proprietor to enable me to dig, he
+stipulating that I should not undermine and throw down his walls. I
+engaged six labourers, and began proceedings by driving a tunnel some
+little way below the tavern into the vast bed of debris.
+
+The upper series of deposits did not concern me much. The point I
+desired to investigate, and if possible to determine, was the
+approximate length of time that had elapsed between the disappearance of
+the reindeer hunters and the coming on the scene of the next race, that
+which used polished stone implements and had domestic animals.
+
+Although it may seem at first sight as if both races had been savage, as
+both lived in the Stone Age, yet an enormous stride forward had been
+taken when men had learned the arts of weaving, of pottery, and had
+tamed the dog, the horse, and the cow. These new folk had passed out of
+the mere wild condition of the hunter, and had become pastoral and to
+some extent agricultural.
+
+Of course, the data for determining the length of a period might be few,
+but I could judge whether a very long or a very brief period had elapsed
+between the two occupations by the depth of debris--chalk fallen from
+the roof, brought down by frost, in which were no traces of human
+workmanship.
+
+It was with this distinct object in view that I drove my adit into the
+slope of rubbish some way below the cabaret, and I chanced to have hit
+on the level of the deposits of the men of bronze. Not that we found
+much bronze--all we secured was a broken pin--but we came on fragments
+of pottery marked with the chevron and nail and twisted thong ornament
+peculiar to that people and age.
+
+My men were engaged for about a week before we reached the face of the
+chalk cliff. We found the work not so easy as I had anticipated. Masses
+of rock had become detached from above and had fallen, so that we had
+either to quarry through them or to circumvent them. The soil was of
+that curious coffee colour so inseparable from the chalk formation. We
+found many things brought down from above, a coin commemorative of the
+storming of the Bastille, and some small pieces of the later Roman
+emperors. But all of these were, of course, not in the solid ground
+below, but near the surface.
+
+When we had reached the face of the cliff, instead of sinking a shaft I
+determined on carrying a gallery down an incline, keeping the rock as a
+wall on my right, till I reached the bottom of all.
+
+The advantage of making an incline was that there was no hauling up of
+the earth by a bucket let down over a pulley, and it was easier for
+myself to descend.
+
+I had not made my tunnel wide enough, and it was tortuous. When I began
+to sink, I set two of the men to smash up the masses of fallen chalk
+rock, so as to widen the tunnel, so that I might use barrows. I gave
+strict orders that all the material brought up was to be picked over by
+two of the most intelligent of the men, outside in the blaze of the sun.
+I was not desirous of sinking too expeditiously; I wished to proceed
+slowly, cautiously, observing every stage as we went deeper.
+
+We got below the layer in which were the relics of the Bronze Age and of
+the men of polished stone, and then we passed through many feet of earth
+that rendered nothing, and finally came on the traces of the reindeer
+period.
+
+To understand how that there should be a considerable depth of the
+debris of the men of the rude stone implements, it must be explained
+that these men made their hearths on the bare ground, and feasted around
+their fires, throwing about them the bones they had picked, and the
+ashes, and broken and disused implements, till the ground was
+inconveniently encumbered. Then they swept all the refuse together over
+their old hearth, and established another on top. So the process went on
+from generation to generation.
+
+For the scientific results of my exploration I must refer the reader to
+the journals and memoirs of learned societies. I will not trouble him
+with them here.
+
+On the ninth day after we had come to the face of the cliff, and when we
+had reached a considerable depth, we uncovered some human bones. I
+immediately adopted special precautions, so that these should not be
+disturbed. With the utmost care the soil was removed from over them, and
+it took us half a day to completely clear a perfect skeleton. It was
+that of a full-grown man, lying on his back, with the skull supported
+against the wall of chalk rock. He did not seem to have been buried. Had
+he been so, he would doubtless have been laid on his side in a
+contracted posture, with the chin resting on the knees.
+
+One of the men pointed out to me that a mass of fallen rock lay beyond
+his feet, and had apparently shut him in, so that he had died through
+suffocation, buried under the earth that the rock had brought down with
+it.
+
+I at once despatched a man to my hotel to fetch my camera, that I might
+by flashlight take a photograph of the skeleton as it lay; and another I
+sent to get from the chemist and grocer as much gum arabic and
+isinglass as could be procured. My object was to give to the bones a
+bath of gum to render them less brittle when removed, restoring to them
+the gelatine that had been absorbed by the earth and lime in which they
+lay.
+
+Thus I was left alone at the bottom of my passage, the four men above
+being engaged in straightening the adit and sifting the earth.
+
+I was quite content to be alone, so that I might at my ease search for
+traces of personal ornament worn by the man who had thus met his death.
+The place was somewhat cramped, and there really was not room in it for
+more than one person to work freely.
+
+Whilst I was thus engaged, I suddenly heard a shout, followed by a
+crash, and, to my dismay, an avalanche of rubble shot down the inclined
+passage of descent. I at once left the skeleton, and hastened to effect
+my exit, but found that this was impossible. Much of the superincumbent
+earth and stone had fallen, dislodged by the vibrations caused by the
+picks of the men smashing up the chalk blocks, and the passage was
+completely choked. I was sealed up in the hollow where I was, and
+thankful that the earth above me had not fallen as well, and buried me,
+a man of the present enlightened age, along with the primeval savage of
+eight thousand years ago.
+
+A large amount of matter must have fallen, for I could not hear the
+voices of the men.
+
+I was not seriously alarmed. The workmen would procure assistance and
+labour indefatigably to release me; of that I could be certain. But how
+much earth had fallen? How much of the passage was choked, and how long
+would they take before I was released? All that was uncertain. I had a
+candle, or, rather, a bit of one, and it was not probable that it would
+last till the passage was cleared. What made me most anxious was the
+question whether the supply of air in the hollow in which I was enclosed
+would suffice.
+
+My enthusiasm for prehistoric research failed me just then. All my
+interests were concentrated on the present, and I gave up groping about
+the skeleton for relics. I seated myself on a stone, set the candle in a
+socket of chalk I had scooped out with my pocket-knife, and awaited
+events with my eyes on the skeleton.
+
+Time passed somewhat wearily. I could hear an occasional thud, thud,
+when the men were using the pick; but they mostly employed the shovel,
+as I supposed. I set my elbows on my knees and rested my chin in my
+hands. The air was not cold, nor was the soil damp; it was dry as snuff.
+The flicker of my light played over the man of bones, and especially
+illumined the skull. It may have been fancy on my part, it probably was
+fancy, but it seemed to me as though something sparkled in the
+eye-sockets. Drops of water possibly lodged there, or crystals formed
+within the skull; but the effect was much as of eyes leering and winking
+at me. I lighted my pipe, and to my disgust found that my supply of
+matches was running short. In France the manufacture belongs to the
+state, and one gets but sixty _allumettes_ for a penny.
+
+I had not brought my watch with me below ground, fearing lest it might
+meet with an accident; consequently I was unable to reckon how time
+passed. I began counting and ticking off the minutes on my fingers, but
+soon tired of doing this.
+
+My candle was getting short; it would not last much longer, and then I
+should be in the dark. I consoled myself with the thought that with the
+extinction of the light the consumption of the oxygen in the air would
+be less rapid. My eyes now rested on the flame of the candle, and I
+watched the gradual diminution of the composite. It was one of those
+abominable _bougies_ with holes in them to economise the wax, and which
+consequently had less than the proper amount of material for feeding and
+maintaining a flame. At length the light went out, and I was left in
+total darkness. I might have used up the rest of my matches, one after
+another, but to what good?--they would prolong the period of
+illumination for but a very little while.
+
+A sense of numbness stole over me, but I was not as yet sensible of
+deficiency of air to breathe. I found that the stone on which I was
+seated was pointed and hard, but I did not like to shift my position for
+fear of getting among and disturbing the bones, and I was still desirous
+of having them photographed _in situ_ before they were moved.
+
+I was not alarmed at my situation; I knew that I must be released
+eventually. But the tedium of sitting there in the dark and on a pointed
+stone was becoming intolerable.
+
+Some time must have elapsed before I became, dimly at first, and then
+distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from the
+skeletion. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which
+gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and I saw
+before me the misty, luminous form of a naked man, with wolfish
+countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at me out of eyes deeply sunk
+under projecting brows. Although I thus describe what I saw, yet it gave
+me no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate.
+Indeed, I cannot say at this moment whether I actually saw this
+apparition with my eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the
+brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the walls of the cave; if I
+raised my hand it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to
+me. Then I heard: "I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and
+toes, and rip you with my teeth."
+
+"What have I done to injure and incense you?" I asked.
+
+And here I must explain. No word was uttered by either of us; no word
+could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs,
+nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of
+a man. It was a spook, not a human being. But from it proceeded
+thought-waves, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of my mind or
+soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in like manner I
+thought my replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner.
+If vocal words had passed between us neither would have been
+intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be
+compiled, of the tongue of prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the
+speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to man now. But
+thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not
+think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our
+thoughts to other men that we shape them into words and express them
+vocally in structural, grammatical sentences. The beasts have never
+attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by
+language, but by thought vibrations.
+
+I must further remark that when I give what ensued as a conversation, I
+have to render the thought intercommunication that passed between the
+Homo Praehistoricus--the prehistoric man--and me, in English as best I
+can render it. I knew as we conversed that I was not speaking to him in
+English, nor in French, nor Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover,
+when I use the words "said" or "spoke," I mean no more than that the
+impression was formed on my brain-pan or the receptive drum of my soul,
+was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. When,
+however, I express the words "screamed" or "shrieked," I signify that
+those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when I say "laughed," that
+they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the
+sound of laughter.
+
+"I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about
+this cave!" shrieked the Homo Praehistoricus, or primeval man.
+
+Again I remonstrated, and inquired how I had incensed him. But yelling
+with rage, he threw himself upon me. In a moment I was enveloped in a
+luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about me,
+but I received no injury whatever, only my spiritual nature was
+subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the
+spook disengaged itself from me, and drew back to where it was before,
+screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering
+savagely. It rapidly cooled down.
+
+"Why do you wish me ill?" I asked again.
+
+"I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot
+injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can
+lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing."
+
+"Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent
+resentment?"
+
+"Because you are a son of the twentieth century, and I lived eight
+thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why do you
+enjoy comforts, a civilisation that we knew nothing of? It is not just.
+It is cruel on us. We had nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even
+lucifer matches!"
+
+Again he fell to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by
+failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach.
+
+"I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine."
+
+"Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these
+things--we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole
+of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and iron-stone,
+and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our
+knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we had nothing, nothing--no
+lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery,
+no metal, no education, no elections, no _chocolat menier_."
+
+"How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried
+under fifty feet of soil for eight thousand years?"
+
+"It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always
+remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth heaped
+over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the tavern
+overhead. I have seen men drink there. I have seen a bottle of
+Benedictine. I have applied my psychical lips to it, but I could taste,
+absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the
+patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious,
+marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of
+miraculous. What do you think of doing with me?"
+
+"Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum
+arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum."
+
+He screamed as though with pain, and gasped: "Don't! don't do it. It
+will be torture insufferable."
+
+"But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany
+box."
+
+"Don't! You cannot understand what it will be to me--a spirit more or
+less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with
+fibulae, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel
+very far from our bones--our range is limited. And conceive of my
+feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing
+prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone.
+Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into the
+tavern, and can see men get drunk, and hear commercial travellers
+hoodwink the patron, and then when the taverner finds he has been
+induced to buy what he did not want, I can see him beat his wife and
+smack his children. There is something human, humorous, in that, but
+fibulae, palstaves, torques--bah!"
+
+"You seem to have a lively knowledge of antiquities," I observed.
+
+"Of course I have. There come archaeologists here and eat their
+sandwiches above me, and talk prehistoric antiquities till I am sick.
+Give me life! Give me something interesting!"
+
+"But what do you mean when you say that you cannot travel far from your
+bones?"
+
+"I mean that there is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our
+psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web.
+Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you
+break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So
+it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous
+spiritual matter that unites us to our earthly husk. It is liable to
+accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a
+blackbeetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have
+never been to the other side of the river, I have feared to do so,
+though very anxious to look at that creature like a large black
+caterpillar called the Train."
+
+"This is news to me. Do you know of any cases of rupture of connection?"
+
+"Yes," he replied. "My old father, after he was dead some years, got his
+link of attachment broken, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could
+not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of
+seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her
+spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken,
+and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body,
+lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took
+possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became
+chummy. In the world of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up
+spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but
+never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a
+female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken
+up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which sex
+each was. You see they had no education. But I know that my father's
+soul became quite sportive in that young woman's skeleton."
+
+"Did they continue chummy?"
+
+"No; they quarrelled as to which was which, and they are not now on
+speaking terms. I have two great-uncles. Theirs is a sad tale. Their
+souls were out wandering one day, and inadvertently they crossed and
+recrossed each other's tracks so that their spiritual threads of
+attachment got twisted. They found this out, and that they were getting
+tangled up. What one of them should have done would have been to have
+stood still and let the other jump over and dive under his brother's
+thread till he had cleared himself. But my maternal great-uncles--I
+think I forgot to say they were related to me through my mother--they
+were men of peppery tempers and they could not understand this. They had
+no education. So they jumped one this way and one another, each abusing
+the other, and made the tangle more complete. That was about six
+thousand years ago, and they are now so knotted up that I do not suppose
+they will be clear of one another till time is no more."
+
+He paused and laughed.
+
+Then I said: "It must have been very hard for you to be without pottery
+of any sort."
+
+"It was," replied H. P. (this stands for Homo Praehistoricus, not for
+House-Parlourmaid or Hardy Perennial), "very hard. We had skins for
+water and milk----"
+
+"Oh! you had milk. I supposed you had no cows."
+
+"Nor had we, but the reindeer were beginning to get docile and be tamed.
+If we caught young deer we brought them up to be pets for our children.
+And so it came about that as they grew up we found out that we could
+milk them into skins. But that gave it a smack, and whenever we desired
+a fresh draught there was nothing for it but to lie flat on the ground
+under a doe reindeer and suck for all we were worth. It was hard. Horses
+were hunted. It did not occur to us that they could be tamed and saddled
+and mounted. Oh! it was not right. It was not fair that you should have
+everything and we nothing--nothing--nothing! Why should you have all and
+we have had naught?"
+
+"Because I belong to the twentieth century. Thirty-three generations go
+to a thousand years. There are some two hundred and sixty-four or two
+hundred and seventy generations intervening between you and me. Each
+generation makes some discovery that advances civilisation a stage, the
+next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so
+culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive, the
+brute beast is not."
+
+"That is true," he replied. "I invented butter, which was unknown to my
+ancestors, the unbuttered man."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"It was so," he said, and I saw a flush of light ripple over the
+emanation. I suppose it was a glow of self-satisfaction. "It came about
+thus. One of my wives had nearly let the fire out. I was very angry, and
+catching up one of the skins of milk, I banged her about the head with
+it till she fell insensible to the earth. The other wives were very
+pleased and applauded. When I came to take a drink, for my exertions had
+heated me, I found that the milk was curdled into butter. At first I did
+not know what it was, so I made one of my other wives taste it, and as
+she pronounced it to be good, I ate the rest myself. That was how butter
+was invented. For four hundred years that was the way it was made, by
+banging a milk-skin about the head of a woman till she was knocked down
+insensible. But at last a woman found out that by churning the milk with
+her hand butter could be made equally well, and then the former process
+was discontinued except by some men who clung to ancestral customs."
+
+"But," said I, "nowadays you would not be suffered to knock your wife
+about, even with a milk-skin."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it is barbarous. You would be sent to gaol."
+
+"But she was my wife."
+
+"Nevertheless it would not be tolerated. The law steps in and protects
+women from ill-usage."
+
+"How shameful! Not allowed to do what you like with your own wife!"
+
+"Most assuredly not. Then you remarked that this was how you dealt with
+one of your wives. How many did you possess?"
+
+"Off and on, seventeen."
+
+"_Now_, no man is suffered to have more than one."
+
+"What--one at a time?"
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"Ah, well. Then if you had an old and ugly wife, or one who was a scold,
+you could kill her and get another, young and pretty."
+
+"That would not be allowed."
+
+"Not even if she were a scold?"
+
+"No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end."
+
+"Humph!" H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently
+he said: "There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop
+overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill
+one another."
+
+"No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off--here in
+France--unless extenuating circumstances were found. With us in England
+he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead."
+
+"Then--what is your sport?"
+
+"We hunt the fox."
+
+"The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I
+made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting
+is business with us--or was so--not sport."
+
+"Nevertheless with us it is our great sport."
+
+"Business is business and sport is sport," he said. "Now, we hunted as
+business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport."
+
+"We are not suffered to kill one another."
+
+"But take the case," said he, "that a man has a nose-ring, or a pretty
+wife, and you want one or the other. Surely you might kill him and
+possess yourself of what you so ardently covet?"
+
+"By no means. Now, to change the topic," I went on, "you are totally
+destitute of clothing. You do not even wear the traditional garment of
+fig leaves."
+
+"What avail fig leaves? There is no warmth in them."
+
+"Perhaps not--but out of delicacy."
+
+"What is that? I don't understand." There was clearly no corresponding
+sensation in the vibrating tympanum of his psychic nature.
+
+"Did you never wear clothes?" I inquired.
+
+"Certainly, when it was cold we wore skins, skins of the beasts we
+killed. But in summer what is the use of clothing? Besides, we only wore
+them out of doors. When we entered our homes, made of skins hitched up
+to the rock overhead, we threw them off. It was hot within, and we
+perspired freely."
+
+"What, were naked in your homes! you and your wives?"
+
+"Of course we were. Why not? It was very warm within with the fire
+always kept up."
+
+"Why--good gracious me!" I exclaimed, "that would never be tolerated
+nowadays. If you attempted to go about the country unclothed, even get
+out of your clothes freely at home, you would be sent to a lunatic
+asylum and kept there."
+
+"Humph!" He again lapsed into silence.
+
+Presently he exclaimed: "After all, I think that we were better off as
+we were eight thousand years ago, even without your matches,
+Benedictine, education, _chocolat menier_, and commercials, for then we
+were able to enjoy real sport--we could kill one another, we could knock
+old wives on the head, we could have a dozen or more squaws according to
+our circumstances, young and pretty, and we could career about the
+country or sit and enjoy a social chat at home, stark naked. We were
+best off as we were. There are compensations in life at every period of
+man. Vive la liberte!"
+
+At that moment I heard a shout--saw a flash of light. The workmen had
+pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. I staggered to my
+feet.
+
+"Oh! mon Dieu! Monsieur vit encore!"
+
+I felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped me. I was dragged forth. Brandy was
+poured down my throat. When I came to myself I gasped: "Fill in the
+hole! Fill it all up. Let H. P. lie where he is. He shall not go to the
+British Museum. I have had enough of prehistoric antiquities. Adieu,
+pour toujours la Vezere."
+
+
+
+
+GLAMR
+
+     The following story is found in the Gretla, an Icelandic Saga,
+     composed in the thirteenth century, or that comes to us in the
+     form then given to it; but it is a redaction of a Saga of much
+     earlier date. Most of it is thoroughly historical, and its
+     statements are corroborated by other Sagas. The following
+     incident was introduced to account for the fact that the outlaw
+     Grettir would run any risk rather than spend the long winter
+     nights alone in the dark.
+
+
+At the beginning of the eleventh century there stood, a little way up
+the Valley of Shadows in the north of Iceland, a small farm, occupied by
+a worthy bonder, named Thorhall, and his wife. The farmer was not
+exactly a chieftain, but he was well enough connected to be considered
+respectable; to back up his gentility he possessed numerous flocks of
+sheep and a goodly drove of oxen. Thorhall would have been a happy man
+but for one circumstance--his sheepwalks were haunted.
+
+Not a herdsman would remain with him; he bribed, he threatened,
+entreated, all to no purpose; one shepherd after another left his
+service, and things came to such a pass that he determined on asking
+advice at the next annual council. Thorhall saddled his horses, adjusted
+his packs, provided himself with hobbles, cracked his long Icelandic
+whip, and cantered along the road, and in due time reached Thingvellir.
+
+Skapti Thorodd's son was lawgiver at that time, and as everyone
+considered him a man of the utmost prudence and able to give the best
+advice, our friend from the Vale of Shadows made straight for his
+booth.
+
+"An awkward predicament, certainly--to have large droves of sheep and no
+one to look after them," said Skapti, nibbling the nail of his thumb,
+and shaking his wise head--a head as stuffed with law as a ptarmigan's
+crop is stuffed with blaeberries. "Now I'll tell you what--as you have
+asked my advice, I will help you to a shepherd; a character in his way,
+a man of dull intellect, to be sure but strong as a bull."
+
+"I do not care about his wits so long as he can look after sheep,"
+answered Thorhall.
+
+"You may rely on his being able to do that," said Skapti. "He is a
+stout, plucky fellow; a Swede from Sylgsdale, if you know where that
+is."
+
+Towards the break-up of the council--"Thing" they call it in
+Iceland--two greyish-white horses belonging to Thorhall slipped their
+hobbles and strayed; so the good man had to hunt after them himself,
+which shows how short of servants he was. He crossed Sletha-asi, thence
+he bent his way to Armann's-fell, and just by the Priest's Wood he met a
+strange-looking man driving before him a horse laden with faggots. The
+fellow was tall and stalwart; his face involuntarily attracted
+Thorhall's attention, for the eyes, of an ashen grey, were large and
+staring, the powerful jaw was furnished with very white protruding
+teeth, and around the low forehead hung bunches of coarse wolf-grey
+hair.
+
+"Pray, what is your name, my man?" asked the farmer pulling up.
+
+"Glamr, an please you," replied the wood-cutter.
+
+Thorhall stared; then, with a preliminary cough, he asked how Glamr
+liked faggot-picking.
+
+"Not much," was the answer; "I prefer shepherd life."
+
+"Will you come with me?" asked Thorhall; "Skapti has handed you over to
+me, and I want a shepherd this winter uncommonly."
+
+"If I serve you, it is on the understanding that I come or go as it
+pleases me. I tell you I am a bit truculent if things do not go just to
+my thinking."
+
+"I shall not object to this," answered the bonder. "So I may count on
+your services?"
+
+"Wait a moment! You have not told me whether there be any drawback."
+
+"I must acknowledge that there is one," said Thorhall; "in fact, the
+sheepwalks have got a bad name for bogies."
+
+"Pshaw! I'm not the man to be scared at shadows," laughed Glamr; "so
+here's my hand to it; I'll be with you at the beginning of the winter
+night."
+
+Well, after this they parted, and presently the farmer found his ponies.
+Having thanked Skapti for his advice and assistance, he got his horses
+together and trotted home.
+
+Summer, and then autumn passed, but not a word about the new shepherd
+reached the Valley of Shadows. The winter storms began to bluster up the
+glen, driving the flying snow-flakes and massing the white drifts at
+every winding of the vale. Ice formed in the shallows of the river; and
+the streams, which in summer trickled down the ribbed scarps, were now
+transmuted into icicles.
+
+One gusty night a violent blow at the door startled all in the farm. In
+another moment Glamr, tall as a troll, stood in the hall glowering out
+of his wild eyes, his grey hair matted with frost, his teeth rattling
+and snapping with cold, his face blood-red in the glare of the fire
+which smouldered in the centre of the hall. Thorhall jumped up and
+greeted him warmly, but the housewife was too frightened to be very
+cordial.
+
+Weeks passed, and the new shepherd was daily on the moors with his
+flock; his loud and deep-toned voice was often borne down on the blast
+as he shouted to the sheep driving them into fold. His presence in the
+house always produced gloom, and if he spoke it sent a thrill through
+the women, who openly proclaimed their aversion for him.
+
+There was a church near the byre, but Glamr never crossed the threshold;
+he hated psalmody; apparently he was an indifferent Christian. On the
+vigil of the Nativity Glamr rose early and shouted for meat.
+
+"Meat!" exclaimed the housewife; "no man calling himself a Christian
+touches flesh to-day. To-morrow is the holy Christmas Day, and this is a
+fast."
+
+"All superstition!" roared Glamr. "As far as I can see, men are no
+better now than they were in the bonny heathen time. Bring me meat, and
+make no more ado about it."
+
+"You may be quite certain," protested the good wife, "if Church rule be
+not kept, ill-luck will follow."
+
+Glamr ground his teeth and clenched his hands. "Meat! I will have meat,
+or----" In fear and trembling the poor woman obeyed.
+
+The day was raw and windy; masses of grey vapour rolled up from the
+Arctic Ocean, and hung in piles about the mountain-tops. Now and then a
+scud of frozen fog, composed of minute particles of ice, swept along the
+glen, covering bar and beam with feathery hoar-frost. As the day
+declined, snow began to fall in large flakes like the down of the
+eider-duck. One moment there was a lull in the wind, and then the
+deep-toned shout of Glamr, high up the moor slopes, was heard distinctly
+by the congregation assembling for the first vespers of Christmas Day.
+Darkness came on, deep as that in the rayless abysses of the caverns
+under the lava, and still the snow fell thicker. The lights from the
+church windows sent a yellow haze far out into the night, and every
+flake burned golden as it swept within the ray. The bell in the
+lych-gate clanged for evensong, and the wind puffed the sound far up the
+glen; perhaps it reached the herdsman's ear. Hark! Someone caught a
+distant sound or shriek, which it was he could not tell, for the wind
+muttered and mumbled about the church eaves, and then with a fierce
+whistle scudded over the graveyard fence. Glamr had not returned when
+the service was over. Thorhall suggested a search, but no man would
+accompany him; and no wonder! it was not a night for a dog to be out in;
+besides, the tracks were a foot deep in snow. The family sat up all
+night, waiting, listening, trembling; but no Glamr came home. Dawn broke
+at last, wan and blear in the south. The clouds hung down like great
+sheets, full of snow, almost to bursting.
+
+A party was soon formed to search for the missing man. A sharp scramble
+brought them to high land, and the ridge between the two rivers which
+join in Vatnsdalr was thoroughly examined. Here and there were found the
+scattered sheep, shuddering under an icicled rock, or half buried in a
+snow-drift. No trace yet of the keeper. A dead ewe lay at the bottom of
+a crag; it had staggered over in the gloom, and had been dashed to
+pieces.
+
+Presently the whole party were called together about a trampled spot in
+the heath, where evidently a death-struggle had taken place, for earth
+and stone were tossed about, and the snow was blotched with large
+splashes of blood. A gory track led up the mountain, and the
+farm-servants were following it, when a cry, almost of agony, from one
+of the lads, made them turn. In looking behind a rock, the boy had come
+upon the corpse of the shepherd; it was livid and swollen to the size of
+a bullock. It lay on its back with the arms extended. The snow had been
+scrabbled up by the puffed hands in the death-agony, and the staring
+glassy eyes gazed out of the ashen-grey, upturned face into the vaporous
+canopy overhead. From the purple lips lolled the tongue, which in the
+last throes had been bitten through by the white fangs, and a
+discoloured stream which had flowed from it was now an icicle.
+
+With trouble the dead man was raised on a litter, and carried to a
+gill-edge, but beyond this he could not be borne; his weight waxed more
+and more, the bearers toiled beneath their burden, their foreheads
+became beaded with sweat; though strong men they were crushed to the
+ground. Consequently, the corpse was left at the ravine-head, and the
+men returned to the farm. Next day their efforts to lift Glamr's bloated
+carcass, and remove it to consecrated ground, were unavailing. On the
+third day a priest accompanied them, but the body was nowhere to be
+found. Another expedition without the priest was made, and on this
+occasion the corpse was discovered; so a cairn was raised over the spot.
+
+Two nights after this one of the thralls who had gone after the cows
+burst into the hall with a face blank and scared; he staggered to a seat
+and fainted. On recovering his senses, in a broken voice he assured all
+who crowded about him that he had seen Glamr walking past him as he left
+the door of the stable. On the following evening a houseboy was found in
+a fit under the farmyard wall, and he remained an idiot to his dying
+day. Some of the women next saw a face which, though blown out and
+discoloured, they recognised as that of Glamr, looking in upon them
+through a window of the dairy. In the twilight, Thorhall himself met the
+dead man, who stood and glowered at him, but made no attempt to injure
+his master. The haunting did not end there. Nightly a heavy tread was
+heard around the house, and a hand feeling along the walls, sometimes
+thrust in at the windows, at others clutching the woodwork, and breaking
+it to splinters. However, when the spring came round the disturbances
+lessened, and as the sun obtained full power, ceased altogether.
+
+That summer a vessel from Norway dropped anchor in the nearest bay.
+Thorhall visited it, and found on board a man named Thorgaut, who was in
+search of work.
+
+"What do you say to being my shepherd?" asked the bonder.
+
+"I should very much like the office," answered Thorgaut. "I am as strong
+as two ordinary men, and a handy fellow to boot."
+
+"I will not engage you without forewarning you of the terrible things
+you may have to encounter during the winter night."
+
+"Pray, what may they be?"
+
+"Ghosts and hobgoblins," answered the farmer; "a fine dance they lead
+me, I can promise you."
+
+"I fear them not," answered Thorgaut; "I shall be with you at
+cattle-slaughtering time."
+
+At the appointed season the man came, and soon established himself as a
+favourite in the house; he romped with the children, chucked the maidens
+under the chin, helped his fellow-servants, gratified the housewife by
+admiring her curd, and was just as much liked as his predecessor had
+been detested. He was a devil-may-care fellow, too, and made no bones of
+his contempt for the ghost, expressing hopes of meeting him face to
+face, which made his master look grave, and his mistress shudderingly
+cross herself. As the winter came on, strange sights and sounds began to
+alarm the folk, but these never frightened Thorgaut; he slept too
+soundly at night to hear the tread of feet about the door, and was too
+short-sighted to catch glimpses of a grizzly monster striding up and
+down, in the twilight, before its cairn.
+
+At last Christmas Eve came round, and Thorgaut went out as usual with
+his sheep.
+
+"Have a care, man," urged the bonder; "go not near to the gill-head,
+where Glamr lies."
+
+"Tut, tut! fear not for me. I shall be back by vespers."
+
+"God grant it," sighed the housewife; "but 'tis not a day for risks, to
+be sure."
+
+Twilight came on: a feeble light hung over the south, one white streak
+above the heath land to the south. Far off in southern lands it was
+still day, but here the darkness gathered in apace, and men came from
+Vatnsdalr for evensong, to herald in the night when Christ was born.
+Christmas Eve! How different in Saxon England! There the great ashen
+faggot is rolled along the hall with torch and taper; the mummers dance
+with their merry jingling bells; the boar's head, with gilded tusks,
+"bedecked with holly and rosemary," is brought in by the steward to a
+flourish of trumpets.
+
+How different, too, where the Varanger cluster round the imperial throne
+in the mighty church of the Eternal Wisdom at this very hour. Outside,
+the air is soft from breathing over the Bosphorus, which flashes
+tremulously beneath the stars. The orange and laurel leaves in the
+palace gardens are still exhaling fragrance in the hush of the Christmas
+night.
+
+But it is different here. The wind is piercing as a two-edged sword;
+blocks of ice crash and grind along the coast, and the lake waters are
+congealed to stone. Aloft, the Aurora flames crimson, flinging long
+streamers to the zenith, and then suddenly dissolving into a sea of pale
+green light. The natives are waiting round the church-door, but no
+Thorgaut has returned.
+
+They find him next morning, lying across Glamr's cairn, with his spine,
+his leg, and arm-bones shattered. He is conveyed to the churchyard, and
+a cross is set up at his head. He sleeps peacefully. Not so Glamr; he
+becomes more furious than ever. No one will remain with Thorhall now,
+except an old cowherd who has always served the family, and who had long
+ago dandled his present master on his knee.
+
+"All the cattle will be lost if I leave," said the carle; "it shall
+never be told of me that I deserted Thorhall from fear of a spectre."
+
+Matters grew rapidly worse. Outbuildings were broken into of a night,
+and their woodwork was rent and shattered; the house door was violently
+shaken, and great pieces of it were torn away; the gables of the house
+were also pulled furiously to and fro.
+
+One morning before dawn, the old man went to the stable. An hour later,
+his mistress arose, and taking her milking pails, followed him. As she
+reached the door of the stable, a terrible sound from within--the
+bellowing of the cattle, mingled with the deep notes of an unearthly
+voice--sent her back shrieking to the house. Thorhall leaped out of bed,
+caught up a weapon, and hastened to the cow-house. On opening the door,
+he found the cattle goring each other. Slung across the stone that
+separated the stalls was something. Thorhall stepped up to it, felt it,
+looked close; it was the cowherd, perfectly dead, his feet on one side
+of the slab, his head on the other, and his spine snapped in twain. The
+bonder now moved with his family to Tunga, another farm owned by him
+lower down the valley; it was too venturesome living during the
+mid-winter night at the haunted farm; and it was not till the sun had
+returned as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and had dispelled night
+with its phantoms, that he went back to the Vale of Shadows. In the
+meantime, his little girl's health had given way under the repeated
+alarms of the winter; she became paler every day; with the autumn
+flowers she faded, and was laid beneath the mould of the churchyard in
+time for the first snows to spread a virgin pall over her small grave.
+
+At this time Grettir--a hero of great fame, and a native of the north of
+the island--was in Iceland, and as the hauntings of this vale were
+matters of gossip throughout the district, he inquired about them, and
+resolved on visiting the scene. So Grettir busked himself for a cold
+ride, mounted his horse, and in due course of time drew rein at the door
+of Thorhall's farm with the request that he might be accommodated there
+for the night.
+
+"Ahem!" coughed the bonder; "perhaps you are not aware----"
+
+"I am perfectly aware of all. I want to catch sight of the troll."
+
+"But your horse is sure to be killed."
+
+"I will risk it. Glamr I must meet, so there's an end of it."
+
+"I am delighted to see you," spoke the bonder; "at the same time, should
+mischief befall you, don't lay the blame at my door."
+
+"Never fear, man."
+
+So they shook hands; the horse was put into the strongest stable,
+Thorhall made Grettir as good cheer as he was able, and then, as the
+visitor was sleepy, all retired to rest.
+
+The night passed quietly, and no sounds indicated the presence of a
+restless spirit. The horse, moreover, was found next morning in good
+condition, enjoying his hay.
+
+"This is unexpected!" exclaimed the bonder, gleefully. "Now, where's the
+saddle? We'll clap it on, and then good-bye, and a merry journey to
+you."
+
+"Good-bye!" echoed Grettir; "I am going to stay here another night."
+
+"You had best be advised," urged Thorhall; "if misfortune should
+overtake you, I know that all your kinsmen would visit it on my head."
+
+"I have made up my mind to stay," said Grettir, and he looked so dogged
+that Thorhall opposed him no more.
+
+All was quiet next night; not a sound roused Grettir from his slumber.
+Next morning he went with the farmer to the stable. The strong wooden
+door was shivered and driven in. They stepped across it; Grettir called
+to his horse, but there was no responsive whinny.
+
+"I am afraid----" began Thorhall. Grettir leaped in, and found the poor
+brute dead, and with its neck broken.
+
+"Now," said Thorhall quickly, "I've got a capital horse--a
+skewbald--down by Tunga, I shall not be many hours in fetching it; your
+saddle is here, I think, and then you will just have time to reach----"
+
+"I stay here another night," interrupted Grettir.
+
+"I implore you to depart," said Thorhall.
+
+"My horse is slain!"
+
+"But I will provide you with another."
+
+"Friend," answered Grettir, turning so sharply round that the farmer
+jumped back, half frightened, "no man ever did me an injury without
+rueing it. Now, your demon herdsman has been the death of my horse. He
+must be taught a lesson."
+
+"Would that he were!" groaned Thorhall; "but mortal must not face him.
+Go in peace and receive compensation from me for what has happened."
+
+"I must revenge my horse."
+
+"An obstinate man will have his own way! But if you run your head
+against a stone wall, don't be angry because you get a broken pate."
+
+Night came on; Grettir ate a hearty supper and was right jovial; not so
+Thorhall, who had his misgivings. At bedtime the latter crept into his
+crib, which, in the manner of old Icelandic beds, opened out of the
+hall, as berths do out of a cabin. Grettir, however, determined on
+remaining up; so he flung himself on a bench with his feet against the
+posts of the high seat, and his back against Thorhall's crib; then he
+wrapped one lappet of his fur coat round his feet, the other about his
+head, keeping the neck-opening in front of his face, so that he could
+look through into the hall.
+
+There was a fire burning on the hearth, a smouldering heap of red
+embers; every now and then a twig flared up and crackled, giving Grettir
+glimpses of the rafters, as he lay with his eyes wandering among the
+mysteries of the smoke-blackened roof. The wind whistled softly
+overhead. The clerestory windows, covered with the amnion of sheep,
+admitted now and then a sickly yellow glare from the full moon, which,
+however, shot a beam of pure silver through the smoke-hole in the roof.
+A dog without began to howl; the cat, which had long been sitting
+demurely watching the fire, stood up with raised back and bristling
+tail, then darted behind some chests in a corner. The hall door was in a
+sad plight. It had been so riven by the spectre that it was made firm
+by wattles only, and the moon glinted athwart the crevices. Soothingly
+the river, not yet frozen over, prattled over its shingly bed as it
+swept round the knoll on which stood the farm. Grettir heard the
+breathing of the sleeping women in the adjoining chamber, and the sigh
+of the housewife as she turned in her bed.
+
+Click! click!--It is only the frozen turf on the roof cracking with the
+cold. The wind lulls completely. The night is very still without. Hark!
+a heavy tread, beneath which the snow yields. Every footfall goes
+straight to Grettir's heart. A crash on the turf overhead! By all the
+saints in paradise! The monster is treading on the roof. For one moment
+the chimney-gap is completely darkened: Glamr is looking down it; the
+flash of the red ash is reflected in the two lustreless eyes. Then the
+moon glances sweetly in once more, and the heavy tramp of Glamr is
+audibly moving towards the farther end of the hall. A thud--he has
+leaped down. Grettir feels the board at his back quivering, for Thorhall
+is awake and is trembling in his bed. The steps pass round to the back
+of the house, and then the snapping of the wood shows that the creature
+is destroying some of the outhouse doors. He tires of this apparently,
+for his footfall comes clear towards the main entrance to the hall. The
+moon is veiled behind a watery cloud, and by the uncertain glimmer
+Grettir fancies that he sees two dark hands thrust in above the door.
+His apprehensions are verified, for, with a loud snap, a long strip of
+panel breaks, and light is admitted. Snap--snap! another portion gives
+way, and the gap becomes larger. Then the wattles slip from their
+places, and a dark arm rips them out in bunches, and flings them away.
+There is a cross-beam to the door, holding a bolt which slides into a
+stone groove. Against the grey light, Grettir sees a huge black figure
+heaving itself over the bar. Crack! that has given way, and the rest of
+the door falls in shivers to the earth.
+
+"Oh, heavens above!" exclaims the bonder.
+
+Stealthily the dead man creeps on, feeling at the beams as he comes;
+then he stands in the hall, with the firelight on him. A fearful sight;
+the tall figure distended with the corruption of the grave, the nose
+fallen off, the wandering, vacant eyes, with the glaze of death on them,
+the sallow flesh patched with green masses of decay; the wolf-grey hair
+and beard have grown in the tomb, and hang matted about the shoulders
+and breast; the nails, too, they have grown. It is a sickening sight--a
+thing to shudder at, not to see.
+
+Motionless, with no nerve quivering now, Thorhall and Grettir held their
+breath.
+
+Glamr's lifeless glance strayed round the chamber; it rested on the
+shaggy bundle by the high seat. Cautiously he stepped towards it.
+Grettir felt him groping about the lower lappet and pulling at it. The
+cloak did not give way. Another jerk; Grettir kept his feet firmly
+pressed against the posts, so that the rug was not pulled off. The
+vampire seemed puzzled, he plucked at the upper flap and tugged. Grettir
+held to the bench and bed-board, so that he was not moved, but the cloak
+was rent in twain, and the corpse staggered back, holding half in its
+hands, and gazing wonderingly at it. Before it had done examining the
+shred, Grettir started to his feet, bowed his body, flung his arms about
+the carcass, and, driving his head into the chest, strove to bend it
+backward and snap the spine. A vain attempt! The cold hands came down on
+Grettir's arms with diabolical force, riving them from their hold.
+Grettir clasped them about the body again; then the arms closed round
+him, and began dragging him along. The brave man clung by his feet to
+benches and posts, but the strength of the vampire was the greater;
+posts gave way, benches were heaved from their places, and the wrestlers
+at each moment neared the door. Sharply writhing loose, Grettir flung
+his hands round a roof-beam. He was dragged from his feet; the numbing
+arms clenched him round the waist, and tore at him; every tendon in his
+breast was strained; the strain under his shoulders became excruciating,
+the muscles stood out in knots. Still he held on; his fingers were
+bloodless; the pulses of his temples throbbed in jerks; the breath came
+in a whistle through his rigid nostrils. All the while, too, the long
+nails of the dead man cut into his side, and Grettir could feel them
+piercing like knives between his ribs. Then at once his hands gave way,
+and the monster bore him reeling towards the porch, crashing over the
+broken fragments of the door. Hard as the battle had gone with him
+indoors, Grettir knew that it would go worse outside, so he gathered up
+all his remaining strength for one final desperate struggle. The door
+had been shut with a swivel into a groove; this groove was in a stone,
+which formed the jamb on one side, and there was a similar block on the
+other, into which the hinges had been driven. As the wrestlers neared
+the opening, Grettir planted both his feet against the stone posts,
+holding Glamr by the middle. He had the advantage now. The dead man
+writhed in his arms, drove his talons into Grettir's back, and tore up
+great ribbons of flesh, but the stone jambs held firm.
+
+"Now," thought Grettir, "I can break his back," and thrusting his head
+under the chin, so that the grizzly beard covered his eyes, he forced
+the face from him, and the back was bent as a hazel-rod.
+
+"If I can but hold on," thought Grettir, and he tried to shout for
+Thorhall, but his voice was muffled in the hair of the corpse.
+
+Suddenly one or both of the door-posts gave way. Down crashed the gable
+trees, ripping beams and rafters from their beds; frozen clods of earth
+rattled from the roof and thumped into the snow. Glamr fell on his back,
+and Grettir staggered down on top of him. The moon was at her full;
+large white clouds chased each other across the sky, and as they swept
+before her disk she looked through them with a brown halo round her.
+The snow-cap of Jorundarfell, however, glowed like a planet, then the
+white mountain ridge was kindled, the light ran down the hillside, the
+bright disk stared out of the veil and flashed at this moment full on
+the vampire's face. Grettir's strength was failing him, his hands
+quivered in the snow, and he knew that he could not support himself from
+dropping flat on the dead man's face, eye to eye, lip to lip. The eyes
+of the corpse were fixed on him, lit with the cold glare of the moon.
+His head swam as his heart sent a hot stream to his brain. Then a voice
+from the grey lips said--
+
+"Thou hast acted madly in seeking to match thyself with me. Now learn
+that henceforth ill-luck shall constantly attend thee; that thy strength
+shall never exceed what it now is, and that by night these eyes of mine
+shall stare at thee through the darkness till thy dying day, so that for
+very horror thou shalt not endure to be alone."
+
+Grettir at this moment noticed that his dirk had slipped from its sheath
+during the fall, and that it now lay conveniently near his hand. The
+giddiness which had oppressed him passed away, he clutched at the
+sword-haft, and with a blow severed the vampire's throat. Then, kneeling
+on the breast, he hacked till the head came off.
+
+Thorhall appeared now, his face blanched with terror, but when he saw
+how the fray had terminated he assisted Grettir gleefully to roll the
+corpse on the top of a pile of faggots, which had been collected for
+winter fuel. Fire was applied, and soon far down the valley the flames
+of the pyre startled people, and made them wonder what new horror was
+being enacted in the upper portion of the Vale of Shadows.
+
+Next day the charred bones were conveyed to a spot remote from the
+habitations of men, and were there buried.
+
+What Glamr had predicted came to pass. Never after did Grettir dare to
+be alone in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL HALIFAX'S GHOST STORY
+
+
+I had just come back to England, after having been some years in India,
+and was looking forward to meet my friends, among whom there was none I
+was more anxious to see than Sir Francis Lynton. We had been at Eton
+together, and for the short time I had been at Oxford before entering
+the Army we had been at the same college. Then we had been parted. He
+came into the title and estates of the family in Yorkshire on the death
+of his grandfather--his father had predeceased--and I had been over a
+good part of the world. One visit, indeed, I had made him in his
+Yorkshire home, before leaving for India, of but a few days.
+
+It will easily be imagined how pleasant it was, two or three days after
+my arrival in London, to receive a letter from Lynton saying he had just
+seen in the papers that I had arrived, and begging me to come down at
+once to Byfield, his place in Yorkshire.
+
+"You are not to tell me," he said, "that you cannot come. I allow you a
+week in which to order and try on your clothes, to report yourself at
+the War Office, to pay your respects to the Duke, and to see your sister
+at Hampton Court; but after that I shall expect you. In fact, you are to
+come on Monday. I have a couple of horses which will just suit you; the
+carriage shall meet you at Packham, and all you have got to do is to put
+yourself in the train which leaves King's Cross at twelve o'clock."
+
+Accordingly, on the day appointed I started; in due time reached
+Packham, losing much time on a detestable branch line, and there found
+the dogcart of Sir Francis awaiting me. I drove at once to Byfield.
+
+The house I remembered. It was a low, gabled structure of no great size,
+with old-fashioned lattice windows, separated from the park, where were
+deer, by a charming terraced garden.
+
+No sooner did the wheels crunch the gravel by the principal entrance,
+than, almost before the bell was rung, the porch door opened, and there
+stood Lynton himself, whom I had not seen for so many years, hardly
+altered, and with all the joy of welcome beaming in his face. Taking me
+by both hands, he drew me into the house, got rid of my hat and wraps,
+looked me all over, and then, in a breath, began to say how glad he was
+to see me, what a real delight it was to have got me at last under his
+roof, and what a good time we would have together, like the old days
+over again.
+
+He had sent my luggage up to my room, which was ready for me, and he
+bade me make haste and dress for dinner.
+
+So saying, he took me through a panelled hall up an oak staircase, and
+showed me my room, which, hurried as I was, I observed was hung with
+tapestry, and had a large fourpost bed, with velvet curtains, opposite
+the window.
+
+They had gone into dinner when I came down, despite all the haste I made
+in dressing; but a place had been kept for me next Lady Lynton.
+
+Besides my hosts, there were their two daughters, Colonel Lynton, a
+brother of Sir Francis, the chaplain, and some others whom I do not
+remember distinctly.
+
+After dinner there was some music in the hall, and a game of whist in
+the drawing-room, and after the ladies had gone upstairs, Lynton and I
+retired to the smoking-room, where we sat up talking the best part of
+the night. I think it must have been near three when I retired. Once in
+bed, I slept so soundly that my servant's entrance the next morning
+failed to arouse me, and it was past nine when I awoke.
+
+After breakfast and the disposal of the newspapers, Lynton retired to
+his letters, and I asked Lady Lynton if one of her daughters might show
+me the house. Elizabeth, the eldest, was summoned, and seemed in no way
+to dislike the task.
+
+The house was, as already intimated, by no means large; it occupied
+three sides of a square, the entrance and one end of the stables making
+the fourth side. The interior was full of interest--passages, rooms,
+galleries, as well as hall, were panelled in dark wood and hung with
+pictures. I was shown everything on the ground floor, and then on the
+first floor. Then my guide proposed that we should ascend a narrow
+twisting staircase that led to a gallery. We did as proposed, and
+entered a handsome long room or passage, leading to a small chamber at
+one end, in which my guide told me her father kept books and papers.
+
+I asked if anyone slept in this gallery, as I noticed a bed, and
+fireplace, and rods, by means of which curtains might be drawn,
+enclosing one portion where were bed and fireplace, so as to convert it
+into a very cosy chamber.
+
+She answered "No," the place was not really used except as a playroom,
+though sometimes, if the house happened to be very full, in her
+great-grandfather's time, she had heard that it had been occupied.
+
+By the time we had been over the house, and I had also been shown the
+garden and the stables, and introduced to the dogs, it was nearly one
+o'clock. We were to have an early luncheon, and to drive afterwards to
+see the ruins of one of the grand old Yorkshire abbeys.
+
+This was a pleasant expedition, and we got back just in time for tea,
+after which there was some reading aloud. The evening passed much in the
+same way as the preceding one, except that Lynton, who had some
+business, did not go down to the smoking-room, and I took the
+opportunity of retiring early in order to write a letter for the Indian
+mail, something having been said as to the prospect of hunting the next
+day.
+
+I had finished my letter, which was a long one, together with two or
+three others, and had just got into bed when I heard a step overhead as
+of someone walking along the gallery, which I now knew ran immediately
+above my room. It was a slow, heavy, measured tread which I could hear
+getting gradually louder and nearer, and then as gradually fading away
+as it retreated into the distance.
+
+I was startled for a moment, having been informed that the gallery was
+unused; but the next instant it occurred to me that I had been told it
+communicated with a chamber where Sir Francis kept books and papers. I
+knew he had some writing to do, and I thought no more on the matter.
+
+I was down the next morning at breakfast in good time. "How late you
+were last night!" I said to Lynton, in the middle of breakfast. "I heard
+you overhead after one o'clock."
+
+Lynton replied rather shortly, "Indeed you did not, for I was in bed
+last night before twelve."
+
+"There was someone certainly moving overhead last night," I answered,
+"for I heard his steps as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my
+life, going down the gallery."
+
+Upon which Colonel Lynton remarked that he had often fancied he had
+heard steps on his staircase, when he knew that no one was about. He was
+apparently disposed to say more, when his brother interrupted him
+somewhat curtly, as I fancied, and asked me if I should feel inclined
+after breakfast to have a horse and go out and look for the hounds. They
+met a considerable way off, but if they did not find in the coverts they
+should first draw, a thing not improbable, they would come our way, and
+we might fall in with them about one o'clock and have a run. I said
+there was nothing I should like better. Lynton mounted me on a very
+nice chestnut, and the rest of the party having gone out shooting, and
+the young ladies being otherwise engaged, he and I started about eleven
+o'clock for our ride.
+
+The day was beautiful, soft, with a bright sun, one of those delightful
+days which so frequently occur in the early part of November.
+
+On reaching the hilltop where Lynton had expected to meet the hounds no
+trace of them was to be discovered. They must have found at once, and
+run in a different direction. At three o'clock, after we had eaten our
+sandwiches, Lynton reluctantly abandoned all hopes of falling in with
+the hounds, and said we would return home by a slightly different route.
+
+We had not descended the hill before we came on an old chalk quarry and
+the remains of a disused kiln.
+
+I recollected the spot at once. I had been here with Sir Francis on my
+former visit, many years ago. "Why--bless me!" said I. "Do you remember,
+Lynton, what happened here when I was with you before? There had been
+men engaged removing chalk, and they came on a skeleton under some depth
+of rubble. We went together to see it removed, and you said you would
+have it preserved till it could be examined by some ethnologist or
+anthropologist, one or other of those dry-as-dusts, to decide whether
+the remains are dolichocephalous or brachycephalous, whether British,
+Danish, or--modern. What was the result?"
+
+Sir Francis hesitated for a moment, and then answered: "It is true, I
+had the remains removed."
+
+"Was there an inquest?"
+
+"No. I had been opening some of the tumuli on the Wolds. I had sent a
+crouched skeleton and some skulls to the Scarborough Museum. This I was
+doubtful about, whether it was a prehistoric interment--in fact, to what
+date it belonged. No one thought of an inquest."
+
+On reaching the house, one of the grooms who took the horses, in answer
+to a question from Lynton, said that Colonel and Mrs. Hampshire had
+arrived about an hour ago, and that, one of the horses being lame, the
+carriage in which they had driven over from Castle Frampton was to put
+up for the night. In the drawing-room we found Lady Lynton pouring out
+tea for her husband's youngest sister and her husband, who, as we came
+in, exclaimed: "We have come to beg a night's lodging."
+
+It appeared that they had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, and had
+been obliged to leave at a moment's notice in consequence of a sudden
+death in the house where they were staying, and that, in the
+impossibility of getting a fly, their hosts had sent them over to
+Byfield.
+
+"We thought," Mrs. Hampshire went on to say, "that as we were coming
+here the end of next week, you would not mind having us a little sooner;
+or that, if the house were quite full, you would be willing to put us up
+anywhere till Monday, and let us come back later."
+
+Lady Lynton interposed with the remark that it was all settled; and
+then, turning to her husband, added: "But I want to speak to you for a
+moment."
+
+They both left the room together.
+
+Lynton came back almost immediately, and, making an excuse to show me on
+a map in the hall the point to which we had ridden, said as soon as we
+were alone, with a look of considerable annoyance: "I am afraid we must
+ask you to change your room. Shall you mind very much? I think we can
+make you quite comfortable upstairs in the gallery, which is the only
+room available. Lady Lynton has had a good fire lit; the place is really
+not cold, and it will be for only a night or two. Your servant has been
+told to put your things together, but Lady Lynton did not like to give
+orders to have them actually moved before my speaking to you."
+
+I assured him that I did not mind in the very least, that I should be
+quite as comfortable upstairs, but that I did mind very much their
+making such a fuss about a matter of that sort with an old friend like
+myself.
+
+Certainly nothing could look more comfortable than my new lodging when I
+went upstairs to dress. There was a bright fire in the large grate, an
+armchair had been drawn up beside it, and all my books and writing
+things had been put in, with a reading-lamp in the central position, and
+the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn, converting this part of the
+gallery into a room to itself. Indeed, I felt somewhat inclined to
+congratulate myself on the change. The spiral staircase had been one
+reason against this place having been given to the Hampshires. No lady's
+long dress trunk could have mounted it.
+
+Sir Francis was necessarily a good deal occupied in the evening with his
+sister and her husband, whom he had not seen for some time. Colonel
+Hampshire had also just heard that he was likely to be ordered to Egypt,
+and when Lynton and he retired to the smoking-room, instead of going
+there I went upstairs to my own room to finish a book in which I was
+interested. I did not, however, sit up long, and very soon went to bed.
+
+Before doing so, I drew back the curtains on the rod, partly because I
+like plenty of air where I sleep, and partly also because I thought I
+might like to see the play of the moonlight on the floor in the portion
+of the gallery beyond where I lay, and where the blinds had not been
+drawn.
+
+I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire, which I had left in
+full blaze, was gone to a few sparks wandering among the ashes, when I
+suddenly awoke with the impression of having heard a latch click at the
+further extremity of the gallery, where was the chamber containing books
+and papers.
+
+I had always been a light sleeper, but on the present occasion I woke at
+once to complete and acute consciousness, and with a sense of stretched
+attention which seemed to intensify all my faculties. The wind had
+risen, and was blowing in fitful gusts round the house.
+
+A minute or two passed, and I began almost to fancy I must have been
+mistaken, when I distinctly heard the creak of the door, and then the
+click of the latch falling back into its place. Then I heard a sound on
+the boards as of one moving in the gallery. I sat up to listen, and as I
+did so I distinctly heard steps coming down the gallery. I heard them
+approach and pass my bed. I could see nothing, all was dark; but I heard
+the tread proceeding towards the further portion of the gallery where
+were the uncurtained and unshuttered windows, two in number; but the
+moon shone through only one of these, the nearer; the other was dark,
+shadowed by the chapel or some other building at right angles. The tread
+seemed to me to pause now and again, and then continue as before.
+
+I now fixed my eyes intently on the one illumined window, and it
+appeared to me as if some dark body passed across it: but what? I
+listened intently, and heard the step proceed to the end of the gallery
+and then return.
+
+I again watched the lighted window, and immediately that the sound
+reached that portion of the long passage it ceased momentarily, and I
+saw, as distinctly as I ever saw anything in my life, by moonlight, a
+figure of a man with marked features, in what appeared to be a fur cap
+drawn over the brows.
+
+It stood in the embrasure of the window, and the outline of the face was
+in silhouette; then it moved on, and as it moved I again heard the
+tread. I was as certain as I could be that the thing, whatever it was,
+or the person, whoever he was, was approaching my bed.
+
+I threw myself back in the bed, and as I did so a mass of charred wood
+on the hearth fell down and sent up a flash of--I fancy sparks, that
+gave out a glare in the darkness, and by that--red as blood--I saw a
+face near me.
+
+With a cry, over which I had as little control as the scream uttered by
+a sleeper in the agony of a nightmare, I called: "Who are you?"
+
+There was an instant during which my hair bristled on my head, as in the
+horror of the darkness I prepared to grapple with the being at my side;
+when a board creaked as if someone had moved, and I heard the footsteps
+retreat, and again the click of the latch.
+
+The next instant there was a rush on the stairs and Lynton burst into
+the room, just as he had sprung out of bed, crying: "For God's sake,
+what is the matter? Are you ill?"
+
+I could not answer. Lynton struck a light and leant over the bed. Then I
+seized him by the arm, and said without moving: "There has been
+something in this room--gone in thither."
+
+The words were hardly out of my mouth when Lynton, following the
+direction of my eyes, had sprung to the end of the corridor and thrown
+open the door there.
+
+He went into the room beyond, looked round it, returned, and said: "You
+must have been dreaming."
+
+By this time I was out of bed.
+
+"Look for yourself," said he, and he led me into the little room. It was
+bare, with cupboards and boxes, a sort of lumber-place. "There is
+nothing beyond this," said he, "no door, no staircase. It is a
+_cul-de-sac_." Then he added: "Now pull on your dressing-gown and come
+downstairs to my sanctum."
+
+I followed him, and after he had spoken to Lady Lynton, who was standing
+with the door of her room ajar in a state of great agitation, he turned
+to me and said: "No one can have been in your room. You see my and my
+wife's apartments are close below, and no one could come up the spiral
+staircase without passing my door. You must have had a nightmare.
+Directly you screamed I rushed up the steps, and met no one descending;
+and there is no place of concealment in the lumber-room at the end of
+the gallery."
+
+Then he took me into his private snuggery, blew up the fire, lighted a
+lamp, and said: "I shall be really grateful if you will say nothing
+about this. There are some in the house and neighbourhood who are silly
+enough as it is. You stay here, and if you do not feel inclined to go to
+bed, read--here are books. I must go to Lady Lynton, who is a good deal
+frightened, and does not like to be left alone."
+
+He then went to his bedroom.
+
+Sleep, as far as I was concerned, was out of the question, nor do I
+think that Sir Francis or his wife slept much either.
+
+I made up the fire, and after a time took up a book, and tried to read,
+but it was useless.
+
+I sat absorbed in thoughts and questionings till I heard the servants
+stirring in the morning. I then went to my own room, left the candle
+burning, and got into bed. I had just fallen asleep when my servant
+brought me a cup of tea at eight o'clock.
+
+At breakfast Colonel Hampshire and his wife asked if anything had
+happened in the night, as they had been much disturbed by noises
+overhead, to which Lynton replied that I had not been very well, and had
+an attack of cramp, and that he had been upstairs to look after me. From
+his manner I could see that he wished me to be silent, and I said
+nothing accordingly.
+
+In the afternoon, when everyone had gone out, Sir Francis took me into
+his snuggery and said: "Halifax, I am very sorry about that matter last
+night. It is quite true, as my brother said, that steps have been heard
+about this house, but I never gave heed to such things, putting all
+noises down to rats. But after your experiences I feel that it is due to
+you to tell you something, and also to make to you an explanation. There
+is--there was--no one in the room at the end of the corridor, except the
+skeleton that was discovered in the chalk-pit when you were here many
+years ago. I confess I had not paid much heed to it. My archaeological
+fancies passed; I had no visits from anthropologists; the bones and
+skull were never shown to experts, but remained packed in a chest in
+that lumber-room. I confess I ought to have buried them, having no more
+scientific use for them, but I did not--on my word, I forgot all about
+them, or, at least, gave no heed to them. However, what you have gone
+through, and have described to me, has made me uneasy, and has also
+given me a suspicion that I can account for that body in a manner that
+had never occurred to me before."
+
+After a pause, he added: "What I am going to tell you is known to no one
+else, and must not be mentioned by you--anyhow, in my lifetime, You know
+now that, owing to the death of my father when quite young, I and my
+brother and sister were brought up here with our grandfather, Sir
+Richard. He was an old, imperious, short-tempered man. I will tell you
+what I have made out of a matter that was a mystery for long, and I will
+tell you afterwards how I came to unravel it. My grandfather was in the
+habit of going out at night with a young under-keeper, of whom he was
+very fond, to look after the game and see if any poachers, whom he
+regarded as his natural enemies, were about.
+
+"One night, as I suppose, my grandfather had been out with the young man
+in question, and, returning by the plantations, where the hill is
+steepest, and not far from that chalk-pit you remarked on yesterday,
+they came upon a man, who, though not actually belonging to the country,
+was well known in it as a sort of travelling tinker of indifferent
+character, and a notorious poacher. Mind this, I am not sure it was at
+the place I mention; I only now surmise it. On the particular night in
+question, my grandfather and the keeper must have caught this man
+setting snares; there must have been a tussle, in the course of which as
+subsequent circumstances have led me to imagine, the man showed fight
+and was knocked down by one or other of the two--my grandfather or the
+keeper. I believe that after having made various attempts to restore
+him, they found that the man was actually dead.
+
+"They were both in great alarm and concern--my grandfather especially.
+He had been prominent in putting down some factory riots, and had acted
+as magistrate with promptitude, and had given orders to the military to
+fire, whereby a couple of lives had been lost. There was a vast outcry
+against him, and a certain political party had denounced him as an
+assassin. No man was more vituperated; yet, in my conscience, I believe
+that he acted with both discretion and pluck, and arrested a mischievous
+movement that might have led to much bloodshed. Be that as it may, my
+impression is that he lost his head over this fatal affair with the
+tinker, and that he and the keeper together buried the body secretly,
+not far from the place where he was killed. I now think it was in the
+chalk-pit, and that the skeleton found years after there belonged to
+this man."
+
+"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, as at once my mind rushed back to the
+figure with the fur cap that I had seen against the window.
+
+Sir Francis went on: "The sudden disappearance of the tramp, in view of
+his well-known habits and wandering mode of life, did not for some time
+excite surprise; but, later on, one or two circumstances having led to
+suspicion, an inquiry was set on foot, and among others, my
+grandfather's keepers were examined before the magistrates. It was
+remembered afterwards that the under-keeper in question was absent at
+the time of the inquiry, my grandfather having sent him with some dogs
+to a brother-in-law of his who lived upon the moors; but whether no one
+noticed the fact, or if they did, preferred to be silent, I know not, no
+observations were made. Nothing came of the investigation, and the whole
+subject would have dropped if it had not been that two years later, for
+some reasons I do not understand, but at the instigation of a magistrate
+recently imported into the division, whom my grandfather greatly
+disliked, and who was opposed to him in politics, a fresh inquiry was
+instituted. In the course of that inquiry it transpired that, owing to
+some unguarded words dropped by the under-keeper, a warrant was about to
+be issued for his arrest. My grandfather, who had had a fit of the gout,
+was away from home at the time, but on hearing the news he came home at
+once. The evening he returned he had a long interview with the young
+man, who left the house after he had supped in the servants' hall. It
+was observed that he looked much depressed. The warrant was issued the
+next day, but in the meantime the keeper had disappeared. My grandfather
+gave orders to all his own people to do everything in their power to
+assist the authorities in the search that was at once set on foot, but
+was unable himself to take any share in it.
+
+"No trace of the keeper was found, although at a subsequent period
+rumours circulated that he had been heard of in America. But the man
+having been unmarried, he gradually dropped out of remembrance, and as
+my grandfather never allowed the subject to be mentioned in his
+presence, I should probably never have known anything about it but for
+the vague tradition which always attaches to such events, and for this
+fact: that after my grandfather's death a letter came addressed to him
+from somewhere in the United States from someone--the name different
+from that of the keeper--but alluding to the past, and implying the
+presence of a common secret, and, of course, with it came a request for
+money. I replied, mentioning the death of Sir Richard, and asking for an
+explanation. I did get an answer, and it is from that that I am able to
+fill in so much of the story. But I never learned _where_ the man had
+been killed and buried, and my next letter to the fellow was returned
+with 'Deceased' written across it. Somehow, it never occurred to me
+till I heard your story that possibly the skeleton in the chalk-pit
+might be that of the poaching tinker. I will now most assuredly have it
+buried in the churchyard."
+
+"That certainly ought to be done," said I.
+
+"And--" said Sir Francis, after a pause, "I give you my word. After the
+burial of the bones, and you are gone, I will sleep for a week in the
+bed in the gallery, and report to you if I see or hear anything. If all
+be quiet, then--well, you form your own conclusions."
+
+I left a day after. Before long I got a letter from my friend, brief but
+to the point: "All quiet, old boy; come again."
+
+
+
+
+THE MEREWIGS
+
+
+During the time that I lived in Essex, I had the pleasure of knowing
+Major Donelly, retired on half-pay, who had spent many years in India;
+he was a man of great powers of observation, and possessed an
+inexhaustible fund of information of the most valuable quality, which he
+was ready to communicate to his intimates, among whom was I.
+
+Major Donelly is now no more, and the world is thereby the poorer. Major
+Donelly took an interest in everything--anthropology, mechanics,
+archaeology, physical science, natural history, the stock market,
+politics. In fact, it was not possible in conversation to broach a
+subject with which he was wholly unacquainted, and concerning which he
+was not desirous of acquiring further information. A man of this
+description is not to be held by lightly. I grappled him to my heart.
+
+One day when we were taking a constitutional walk together, I casually
+mentioned the "Red Hills." He had never heard of them, inquired, and I
+told him what little I knew on the matter. The Red Hills are mounds of
+burnt clay of a brick-red colour, found at intervals along the fringe of
+the marshes on the east coast. Of the date of their formation and the
+purpose they were destined to discharge, nothing has been certainly
+ascertained. Theories have been formed, and have been held to with
+tenacity, but these are unsupported by sound evidence. And yet, one
+would have supposed that these mysterious mounds would have been
+subjected to a careful scientific exploration to determine by the
+discovery of flint tools, potsherds, or coins to what epoch they belong,
+and that some clue should be discovered as to their purport. But at the
+time when I was in Essex, no such study had been attempted; whether any
+has been undertaken since I am unable to say.
+
+I mentioned to Donelly some of the suppositions offered as to the origin
+of these Red Hills; that they represented salt-making works, that they
+were funereal erections, that they were artificial bases for the huts of
+fishers.
+
+"That is it," said the major, "no doubt about it. To keep off the ague.
+Do you not know that burnt clay is a sure protection against ague, which
+was the curse of the Essex marsh land? In Central Africa, in the
+districts that lie low and there is morass, the natives are quite aware
+of the fact, and systematically form a bed of burnt clay as a platform
+on which to erect their hovels. Now look here, my dear friend, I'd most
+uncommonly like to take a boat along with you, and explore both sides of
+the Blackwater to begin with, and its inlets, and to tick down on the
+ordnance map every red hill we can find."
+
+"I am quite ready," I replied. "There is one thing to remember. A vast
+number of these hills have been ploughed down, but you can certainly
+detect where they were by the colour of the soil."
+
+Accordingly, on the next fine day we engaged a boat--not a rower--for we
+could manage it between us, and started on our expedition.
+
+The country around the Blackwater is flat, and the land slides into the
+sea and river with so slight an incline, that a good extent of debatable
+ground exists, which may be reckoned as belonging to both. Vast marshes
+are found occasionally flooded, covered with the wild lavender, and in
+June flushed with the seathrift. They nourish a coarse grass, and a
+bastard samphire. These marshes are threaded, cobweb fashion, by myriads
+of lines of water and mud that intercommunicate. Woe to the man who
+either stumbles into, or in jumping falls into, one of these breaks in
+the surface of land. He sinks to his waist in mud. At certain times,
+when no high tides are expected, sheep are driven upon these marshes and
+thrive. They manage to leap the runnels, and the shepherd is aware when
+danger threatens, and they must be driven off.
+
+Nearer the mainland are dykes thrown up, none know when, to reclaim
+certain tracts of soil, and on the land side are invariably stagnant
+ditches, where mosquitoes breed in myriads. Further up grow oak trees,
+and in summer to these the mosquitoes betake themselves in swarms, and
+may be seen in the evening swaying in such dense clouds above the trees
+that these latter seem to be on fire and smoking. Major Donelly and I
+leisurely paddled about, running into creeks, leaving our boat,
+identifying our position on the map, and marking in the position of such
+red hills or their traces as we lighted on.
+
+Major Donelly and I pretty well explored the left bank up to a certain
+point, when he proposed that we should push across to the other.
+
+"I should advise doing thoroughly the upper reach of the Blackwater,"
+said he, "and we shall then have completed one section."
+
+"All right," I responded, and we turned the boat's head to cross.
+Unhappily, we had not calculated that the estuary was full of mudbanks.
+Moreover, the tide was ebbing, and before very long we grounded.
+
+"Confound it!" said the major, "we are on a mudbank. What a fix we are
+in."
+
+We laboured with the oars to thrust off, but could touch no solid
+ground, to obtain purchase sufficient for our purpose.
+
+Then said Donelly: "The only thing to be done is for one of us to step
+onto the bank and thrust the boat off. I will do that. I have on an old
+shabby pair of trousers that don't matter."
+
+"No, indeed, you shall not. I will go," and at the word I sprang
+overboard. But the major had jumped simultaneously, and simultaneously
+we sank in the horrible slime. It had the consistency of spinach. I do
+not mean such as English cooks send us to table, half-mashed and often
+gritty, but the spinach as served at a French table d'hote, that has
+been pulped through a fine hair sieve. And what is more, it apparently
+had no bottom. For aught I know it might go down a mile in depth towards
+the centre of the globe, and it stank abominably. We both clung to the
+sides of the boat to save ourselves from sinking altogether.
+
+There we were, one on each side, clinging to the bulwarks and looking at
+one another. For a moment or two neither spoke. Donelly was the first to
+recover his presence of mind, and after wiping his mouth on the gunwale
+from the mud that had squirted over it, he said: "Can you get out?"
+
+"Hardly," said I.
+
+We tugged at the boat, it squelched about, splashing the slime over us,
+till it plastered our heads and faces and covered our hands.
+
+"This will never do," said he. "We must get in together, and by
+instalments. Look here! when I say 'three,' throw in your left leg if
+you can get it out of the mud."
+
+"I will do my best."
+
+"And," he said further, "we must do so both at the same moment. Now,
+don't be a sneak and try to get in your body whilst I am putting in my
+leg, or you will upset the boat."
+
+"I never was a sneak," I retorted angrily, "and I certainly will not be
+one in what may be the throes of death."
+
+"All right," said the major. "One--two--three!"
+
+Instantly both of us drew our left legs out of the mud, and projected
+them over the sides into the boat.
+
+"How are you?" asked he. "Got your leg in all right?"
+
+"All but my boot," I replied, "and that has been sucked off my foot."
+
+"Oh, bother the boot," said the major, "so long as your leg is safe
+within, and has not been sucked off. That would have disturbed the
+equipoise. Now then--next we must have our trunks and right legs within.
+Take a long breath, and wait till I call 'three.'"
+
+We paused, panting with the strain; then Donelly, in a stentorian voice,
+shouted: "One--two--three!"
+
+Instantly we writhed and strained, and finally, after a convulsive
+effort, both were landed in the bottom of the boat. We picked ourselves
+up and seated ourselves, each on one bulwark, looking at one another.
+
+We were covered with the foul slime from head to foot, our clothes were
+caked, so were our hands and faces. But we were secure.
+
+"Here," said Donelly, "we shall have to remain for six hours till the
+tide flows, and the boat is lifted. It is of no earthly use for us to
+shout for help. Even if our calls were heard, no one could come out to
+us. Here, then, we stick and must make the best of it. Happily the sun
+is hot, and will cake the mud about us, and then we can pick off some of
+it."
+
+The prospect was not inviting. But I saw no means of escape.
+
+Presently Donelly said: "It is good that we brought our luncheon with
+us, and above all some whisky, which is the staff of life. Look here, my
+dear fellow. I wish it were possible to get this stinking stuff off our
+hands and faces; it smells like the scouring poured down the sink in
+Satan's own back kitchen. Is there not a bottle of claret in the
+basket?"
+
+"Yes, I put one in."
+
+"Then," said he, "the best use we can put it to is to wash our faces and
+hands in it. Claret is poor drink, and there is the whisky to fall back
+on."
+
+"The water has all ebbed away," I remarked "We cannot clean ourselves in
+that."
+
+"Then uncork the _Saint Julien_."
+
+There was really no help for it. The smell of the mud was disgusting,
+and it turned one's stomach. So I pulled out the cork, and we performed
+our ablutions in the claret.
+
+That done, we returned to our seats on the gunwale, one on each side,
+and looked sadly at one another. Six hours! That was an interminable
+time to spend on a mudflat in the Blackwater. Neither of us was much
+inclined to speak. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the major
+proposed refreshments. Accordingly we crept together into the bottom of
+the boat and there discussed the contents of the hamper, and we
+certainly did full justice to the whisky bottle. For we were wet to the
+skin, and beplastered from head to foot in the ill-savoured mud.
+
+When we had done the chicken and ham, and drained the whisky jar, we
+returned to our several positions _vis-a-vis_. It was essential that the
+balance of the boat should be maintained.
+
+Major Donelly was now in a communicative mood.
+
+"I will say this," observed he; "that you are the best-informed and most
+agreeable man I have met with in Colchester and Chelmsford."
+
+I would not record this remark but for what it led up to.
+
+I replied--I dare say I blushed--but the claret in my face made it red,
+anyhow. I replied: "You flatter me."
+
+"Not at all. I always say what I think. You have plenty of information,
+and you'll grow your wings, and put on rainbow colours."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" I inquired.
+
+"Do you not know," said he, "that we shall all of us, some day, develop
+wings? Grow into angels! What do you suppose that ethereal pinions
+spring out of? They do not develop out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.
+You cannot think that they are the ultimate produce of ham and chicken."
+
+"Nor of whisky."
+
+"Nor of whisky," he repeated. "You know it is so with the grub."
+
+"Grub is ambiguous," I observed.
+
+"I do not mean victuals, but the caterpillar. That creature spends its
+short life in eating, eating, eating. Look at a cabbage-leaf, it is
+riddled with holes; the grub has consumed all that vegetable matter, and
+I will inform you for what purpose. It retires into its chrysalis, and
+during the winter a transformation takes place, and in spring it breaks
+forth as a glorious butterfly. The painted wings of the insect in its
+second stage of existence are the sublimated cabbage it has devoured in
+its condition of larva."
+
+"Quite so. What has that to do with me?"
+
+"We are also in our larva condition. But do not for a moment suppose
+that the wings we shall put on with rainbow painting are the produce of
+what we eat here--of ham and chicken, kidneys, beef, and the like. No,
+sir, certainly not. They are fashioned out of the information we have
+absorbed, the knowledge we have acquired during the first stage of
+life."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I will tell you," he answered. "I had a remarkable experience once. It
+is a rather long story, but as we have some five hours and a half to sit
+here looking at one another till the tide rises and floats us, I may as
+well tell you, and it will help to the laying on of the colours on your
+pinions when you acquire them. You would like to hear the tale?"
+
+"Above all things."
+
+"There is a sort of prologue to it," he went on. "I cannot well dispense
+with it as it leads up to what I particularly want to say."
+
+"By all means let me have the prologue, if it be instructive."
+
+"It is eminently instructive," he said. "But before I begin, just pass
+me the bottle, if there is any whisky left."
+
+"It is drained," I said.
+
+"Well, well, it can't be helped. When I was in India, I moved from one
+place to another, and I had pitched my tent in a certain spot. I had a
+native servant. I forget what his real name was, and it does not matter.
+I always called him Alec. He was a curious fellow, and the other
+servants stood in awe of him. They thought that he saw ghosts and had
+familiar dealings with the spiritual world. He was honest as natives go.
+He would not allow anyone else to rob me; but, of course, he filched
+things of mine himself. We are accustomed to that, and think nothing of
+it. But it was a satisfaction that he kept the fingers of the others off
+my property. Well, one night, when, as I have informed you, my tent was
+pitched on a spot I considered eminently convenient, I slept very
+uncomfortably. It was as though a centipede were crawling over me. Next
+morning I spoke to Alec, and told him my experiences, and bade him
+search well my mattress and the floor of my tent. A Hindu's face is
+impassive, but I thought I detected in his eyes a twinkle of
+understanding. Nevertheless I did not give it much thought. Next night
+it was as bad, and in the morning I found my panjams slit from head to
+foot. I called Alec to me and held up the garment, and said how
+uncomfortable I had been. 'Ah! sahib,' said he, 'that is the doings of
+Abdulhamid, the blood-thirsty scoundrel!'"
+
+"Excuse me," I interrupted. "Did he mean the present Sultan of Turkey?"
+
+"No, quite another, of the same name."
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said. "But when you mentioned him as a
+blood-thirsty scoundrel, I supposed it must be he."
+
+"It was not he. It was another. Call him, if you like, the other Abdul.
+But to proceed with my story."
+
+"One inquiry more," said I. "Surely Abdulhamid cannot be a Hindu name?"
+
+"I did not say that it was," retorted the major with a touch of asperity
+in his tone. "He was doubtless a Mohammedan."
+
+"But the name is rather Turkish or Arabic."
+
+"I am not responsible for that; I was not his godfathers and godmothers
+at his baptism. I am merely repeating what Alec told me. If you are so
+captious, I shall shut up and relate no more."
+
+"Do not take umbrage," said I. "I surely have a right to test the
+quality of the material I take in, out of which my wings are to be
+evolved. Go ahead; I will interrupt no further."
+
+"Very well, then, let that be understood between us. Are you caking?"
+
+"Slowly," I replied. "The sun is hot; I am drying up on one side of my
+body."
+
+"I think that we had best shift sides of the boat," said the major. "It
+is the same with me."
+
+Accordingly, with caution, we crossed over, and each took the seat on
+the gunwale lately occupied by the other.
+
+"There," said Donelly. "How goes the enemy? My watch got smothered in
+the mud, and has stopped."
+
+"Mine," I explained, "is plastered into my waistcoat pocket, and I
+cannot get at it without messing my fingers, and there is no more claret
+left for a wash; the whisky is all inside us."
+
+"Well," said the major, "it does not matter; there is plenty of time
+before us for the rest of my story. Let me see--where was I? Oh! where
+Alec mentioned Abdulhamid, the inferior scoundrel, not the Sultan. Alec
+went on to say that he was himself possessed of a remarkably keen scent
+for blood, even though it had been shed a century before his time, and
+that my tent had been pitched and my bed spread over a spot marked by a
+most atrocious crime. That Abdul of whom he had made mention had been a
+man steeped in crimes of the most atrocious character. Of course, he
+did not come up in wickedness to his illustrious namesake, but that was
+because he lacked the opportunities with which the other is so favoured.
+On the very identical spot where I then was, this same bloodstained
+villain had perpetrated his worst iniquity--he had murdered his father
+and mother, and aunt, and his children. After that he was taken and
+hanged. When his soul parted from his body, in the ordinary course it
+would have entered into the shell of a scorpion or some other noxious
+creature, and so have mounted through the scale of beings, by one
+incarnation after another, till he attained once more to the high estate
+of man."
+
+"Excuse the interruption," said I, "but I think you intimated that this
+Abdulhamid was a Mohammedan, and the sons of the Prophet do not believe
+in the transmigration of souls."
+
+"That," said Donelly, "is precisely the objection I raised to Alec. But
+he told me that souls after death are not accommodated with a future
+according to the creeds they hold, but according to Destiny: that
+whatever a man might suppose during life as to the condition of his
+future state, there was but one truth to which they would all have their
+eyes opened--the truth held by the Hindus, viz. the transmigration of
+souls from stage to stage, ever progressing upward to man, and then to
+recommence the interminable circle of reincarnation. 'So,' said I, 'it
+was Abdul in the form of a scorpion who was tickling my ribs all night.'
+'No, sahib,' replied my native servant very gravely. He was too wicked
+to be suffered to set his foot, so to speak, on the lowest rung of the
+ladder of existences. The doom went forth against him that he must haunt
+the scenes of his former crimes, till he found a man sleeping over one
+of them, and on that man must be a mole, and out of that mole must grow
+three hairs. These hairs he must pluck out and plant on the grave of his
+final victims, and water them with his tears. And the flowing of these
+first drops of penitence would enable him to pass at once into the first
+stage of the circle of incarnations.' 'Why,' said I, 'that unredeemed
+ruffian was mole-hunting over me the last two nights! But what do you
+say to these slit panjams?' 'Sahib,' replied Alec, 'he did that with his
+nails. I presume he turned you over, and ripped them so as to get at
+your back and feel for the so-much-desired mole.' 'I'll have the tent
+shifted,' said I. 'Nothing will induce me to sleep another night on this
+accursed spot.'"
+
+Donelly paused, and proceeded to take off some flakes of mud that had
+formed on his sleeve. We really were beginning to get drier, but in
+drying we stiffened, as the mud became hard about us like pie-crust.
+
+"So far," said I, "we have had no wings."
+
+"I am coming to them," replied the major; "I have now concluded the
+prologue."
+
+"Oh! that was the prologue, was it?"
+
+"Yes. Have you anything against it? It was the prologue. Now I will go
+on with the main substance of my story. About a year after that incident
+I retired on half-pay, and returned to England. What became of Alec I
+did not know, nor care a hang. I had been in England for a little over
+two years, when one day I was walking along Great Russell Street, and
+passing the gates of the British Museum, I noticed a Hindu standing
+there, looking wretchedly cold and shabby. He had a tray containing
+bangles and necklaces and gewgaws, made in Germany, which he was selling
+as oriental works of art. As I passed, he saluted me, and, looking
+steadily at him, I recognised Alec. 'Why, what brings you here?' I
+inquired, vastly astonished. 'Sahib may well ask,' he replied. 'I came
+over because I thought I might better my condition. I had heard speak of
+a Psychical Research Society established in London; and with my really
+extraordinary gifts, I thought that I might be of value to it, and be
+taken in and paid an annuity if I supplied it continuously with
+well-authenticated, first-hand ghost stories.' 'Well,' said I, 'and have
+you succeeded?' 'No, sahib. I cannot find it. I have inquired after it
+from several of the crossing-sweepers, and they could not inform me of
+its whereabouts; and if I applied to the police, they bade me take
+myself off, there was no such a thing. I should have starved, sahib, if
+it had not been that I had taken to this line'; he pointed to his tray.
+'Does that pay well?' I asked. He shook his head sadly. 'Very poorly. I
+can live--that is all. There goes in a Merewig.' 'How many of these
+rubbishy bangles can you dispose of in a day?' I inquired. 'That
+depends, sahib. It varies so greatly, and the profits are very small. So
+small that I can barely get along. There goes in another Merewig.'
+'Where are all these things made?' I asked. 'In Germany or in
+Birmingham?' 'Oh, sahib, how can I tell? I get them from a Jew dealer.
+He supplies various street-hawkers. But I shall give it up--it does not
+pay--and shall set up a stall and dispose of Turkish Delight. There is
+always a run on that. You English have a sweet tooth. That's a Merewig,'
+and he pointed to a dowdy female, with a reticule on her arm, who, at
+that moment, went through the painted iron gates. 'What do you mean by
+Merewigs?' said I. 'Does not sahib know?' Alec's face expressed genuine
+surprise. 'If sahib will go into the great reading-room, he will see
+scores of them there. It is their great London haunt; they pass in all
+day, mainly in the morning--some are in very early, so soon as the
+museum is open at nine o'clock. And they usually remain there all day
+picking up information, acquiring knowledge.' 'You mean the students.'
+'Not all the students, but a large percentage of them. I know them in a
+moment. Sahib is aware that I have great gifts for the discernment of
+spirits.'
+
+"By the way," broke off Donelly, "do you understand Hindustani?"
+
+"Not a word of it," I replied.
+
+"I am sorry for that," said he, "because I could tell you what passed
+between us so much easier in Hindustani. I am able to speak and
+understand it as readily as English, and the matter I am going to relate
+would come off my tongue so much easier in that language."
+
+"You might as well speak it in Chinese. I should be none the wiser. Wait
+a moment. I am cracking."
+
+It was so. The heat of the sun was sensibly affecting my crust of mud. I
+think I must have resembled a fine old painting, the varnish of which is
+stained and traversed by an infinity of minute fissures, a perfect
+network of cracks. I stood up and stretched myself, and split in several
+places. Moreover, portions of my muddy envelope began to curl at the
+edges.
+
+"Don't be in too great a hurry to peel," advised Donelly.
+
+"We have abundance of time still before us, and I want to proceed with
+my narrative."
+
+"Go on, then. When are we coming to the wings?"
+
+"Directly," replied he. "Well, then--if you cannot receive what I have
+to say in Hindustani, I must do my best to give you the substance of
+Alec's communication in the vulgar tongue. I will epitomise it. The
+Hindu went on to explain in this fashion. He informed me that with us,
+Christians and white people, it is not the same as with the dusky and
+the yellow races. After death we do not pass into the bodies of the
+lower animals, which is a great privilege and ought to afford us immense
+satisfaction. We at once progress into a higher condition of life. We
+develop wings, as does the butterfly when it emerges from its condition
+of grub. But the matter out of which the wings are produced is nothing
+gross. They are formed, or form themselves, out of the information with
+which we have filled our brains during life. We lay up, during our
+mortal career here, a large amount of knowledge, of scientific,
+historical, philosophic, and like acquisitions, and these form the
+so-to-speak psychic pulp out of which, by an internal and mysterious
+and altogether inexplicable process, the transmutation takes place into
+our future wings. The more we have stored, the larger are our wings; the
+more varied the nature, the more radiant and coloured is their painting.
+When, at death, the brain is empty, there can be no wing-development.
+Out of nothing, nothing can arise. That is a law of nature absolutely
+inexorable in its application. And this is why you will never have to
+regret sticking in the mud to-day, my friend. I have supplied you with
+such an amount of fresh and valuable knowledge, that I believe you will
+have pinions painted hereafter with peacock's eyes."
+
+"I am most obliged to you," said I, splitting into a thousand cakes with
+the emotion that agitated me.
+
+Donelly proceeded. "I was so interested in what Alec told me, that I
+said to him, 'Come along with me into the Nineveh room, and we shall be
+able to thrash this matter out.' 'Ah, sahib,' he replied, 'they will not
+allow me to take in my tray.' 'Very well,' said I, 'then we will find a
+step before the portico, one not too much frequented by the pigeons, and
+will sit there.' He agreed. But the porter at the gate demurred to
+letting the Hindu through. He protested that no trafficking was allowed
+on the premises. I explained that none was purposed; that the man and I
+proposed a discussion on psychological topics. This seemed to content
+the porter, and he suffered Alec to pass through with me. We picked out
+as clean a portion of the steps as we could, and seated ourselves on it
+side by side, and then the Hindu went on with what he was saying."
+
+Donelly and I were now drying rapidly. As we sat facing each other we
+must have looked very much like the chocolate men one sees in
+confectioners' shops--of course, I mean on a much larger scale, and not
+of the same warm tint, and, of course, also, we did not exhale the same
+aromatic odour.
+
+"When we were seated," proceeded Donelly, "I felt the cold of the stone
+steps strike up into my system, and as I have had a touch or two of
+lumbago since I came home, I stood up again, took a copy of the
+_Standard_ out of my pocket, folded it, and placed it between myself and
+the step. I did, however, pull out the inner leaf, that containing the
+leaders, and presented it to Alec for the same purpose. Orientals are
+insensible to kindness, and are deficient in the virtue of gratitude.
+But this delicate trait of attention did touch the benighted heathen.
+His lip quivered, and he became, if possible, more than ever
+communicative. He nudged me with his tray and said, 'There goes out a
+Merewig. I wonder why she leaves so soon?' I saw a middle-aged woman in
+a gown of grey, with greasy splotches on it, and the braid unsewn at the
+skirt trailing in a loop behind. 'What are the Merewigs?' I asked. I
+will give you what I learned in my own words. All men and women--I
+allude only to Europeans and Americans--in the first stage of their life
+are bound morally, and in their own interest, to acquire and store up in
+their brains as much information as these will hold, for it is out of
+this that their wings will be evolved in their second stage of
+existence. Of course, the more varied this information is, the better.
+Men inevitably accumulate knowledge. Even if they assimilate very little
+at school, yet, as young men, they necessarily take in a good deal--of
+course, I exempt the mashers, who never learn anything. Even in sport
+they obtain something; but in business, by reading, by association, by
+travel, they go on piling up a store. You see that in common
+conversation they cannot escape doing this; politics, social questions,
+points of natural history, scientific discoveries form the staple of
+their talk, so that the mind of a man is necessarily kept replenished.
+But with women this is not the case. Young girls read nothing whatever
+but novels--they might as well feed on soap-bubbles. In their
+conversation with one another they twaddle, they do not talk."
+
+"But," protested I, "in our civilised society young women associate
+freely with men."
+
+"That is true," replied he. "But to what is their dialogue limited?--to
+ragging, to frivolous jokes. Men do not talk to them on rational topics,
+for they know well enough that such topics do not interest girls, and
+that they are wholly incapable of applying their minds to them. It is
+wondered why so many Englishmen look out for American wives. That is
+because the American girl takes pains to cultivate her mind, becomes a
+rational and well-educated woman. She can enter into her husband's
+interests, she can converse with him on almost every topic. She becomes
+his companion. That the modern English girl cannot be. Her head is as
+hollow as a drum. Now, if she grows up and marries, or even remains an
+old maid, the case is altered; she takes to keeping poultry, she becomes
+passionately fond of gardening, and she acquires a fund of information
+on the habits and customs of the domestic servant. The consequence of
+this is, that the vast majority of English young women who die early,
+die with nothing stored up in their brains out of which the wings may be
+evolved. In the larva condition they have consumed nothing that can
+serve them to bring them into the higher state."
+
+"So," said I, "we are all, you and I, in the larva condition as well as
+girls."
+
+"Quite so, we are larvae like them, only they are more so. To proceed.
+When girls die, without having acquired any profitable knowledge, as you
+well see, they cannot rise. They become Merewigs."
+
+"Oh, that is Merewigs," said I, greatly astonished.
+
+"Yes, but the Merewigs I had seen pass in and out of the British Museum,
+whether to study the collections or to work in the reading-room, were
+middle-aged for the most part."
+
+"How do you explain that?" I asked.
+
+"I give you only what I received from Alec. There are male Merewigs, but
+they are few and far between, for the reasons I have given to you. I
+suppose there are ninety-nine female Merewigs to one male."
+
+"You astonish me."
+
+"I was astonished when I learned this from Alec. Now I will tell you
+something further. All the souls of the girls who have died empty-headed
+in the preceding twenty-four hours in England assemble at four o'clock
+every morning, or rather a few minutes before the stroke of the clock,
+about the statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, with a
+possible sprinkling of male masher souls among them. At the stroke of
+the clock, off the whole swarm rushes up Holborn Hill, along Oxford
+Street, whither I cannot certainly say. Alec told me that it is for all
+the world like the rush of an army of rats in the sewers."
+
+"But what can that Hindu know of underground London?"
+
+"He knows because he lodges in the house of a sewer-man, with whom he
+has become on friendly terms."
+
+"Then you do not know whither this galloping legion runs?"
+
+"Not exactly, for Alec was not sure. But he tells me they tear away to
+the great _garde-robe_ of discarded female bodies. They must get into
+these, so as to make up for the past, and acquire knowledge, out of
+which wings may be developed. Of course there is a scramble for these
+bodies, for there are at least half a dozen applicants. At first only
+the abandoned husks of old maids were given them, but the supply having
+proved to be altogether inadequate, they are obliged to put up with
+those of married women and widows. There was some demur as to this, but
+beggars must not be choosers. And so they become Merewigs. There are
+more than a sufficiency of old bachelors' outer cases hanging up in the
+_garde-robe_, but the girls will not get into them at any price. Now you
+understand what Merewigs are, and why they swarm in the reading-room of
+the British Museum. They are there picking up information as hard as
+they can pick."
+
+"This is extremely interesting," said I, "and novel."
+
+"I thought you would say so. How goes on the drying?"
+
+"I have been picking off clots of clay while you have been talking."
+
+"I hope you are interested," said Donelly.
+
+"Interested," I replied, "is not the word for it."
+
+"I am glad you think so," said the major; "I was intensely interested in
+what Alec told me, so much so that I proposed he should come with me
+into the reading-room, and point out to me such as he perceived by his
+remarkable gift of discernment of spirits were actual Merewigs. But
+again the difficulty of his tray was objected, and Alec further
+intimated that he was missing opportunities of disposing of his trinkets
+by spending so much time conversing with me. 'As to that,' said I, 'I
+will buy half a dozen of your bangles and present them to my lady
+friends; as coming from me, an oriental traveller, they will believe
+them to be genuine----'"
+
+"As your experiences," interpolated I.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he inquired sharply.
+
+"Nothing more than this," rejoined I, "that faith is grown weak among
+females nowadays."
+
+"That is certainly true. It is becoming a sadly incredulous sex. I
+further got over Alec's difficulty about the tray by saying that it
+could be left in the custody of one of the officials at the entrance.
+Then he consented. We passed through the swing-door and deposited the
+tray with the functionary who presides over umbrellas and
+walking-sticks. Then I went forward along with my Hindu towards the
+reading-room. But here another hindrance arose. Alec had no ticket, and
+therefore might not enter beyond the glass screen interposed between the
+door and the readers. Some demur was made as to his being allowed to
+remain there for any considerable time, but I got over that by means of
+a little persuasion. 'Sahib,' said Alec 'I should suggest your marking
+the Merewigs, so as to be able to recognise them elsewhere.' 'How can I
+do that?' I inquired. 'I have here with me a piece of French chalk,' he
+answered. 'You go within, sahib, and walk up and down by the tables,
+behind the chairs of the readers, or around the circular cases that
+contain the catalogues, and where the students are looking out for the
+books they desire to consult. When you pass a female, either seated or
+standing, glance towards the glass screen, and when you are by a Merewig
+I will hold up my hand above the screen, and you will know her to be
+one; then just scrawl a W or M, or any letter or cabalistic symbol that
+occurs to you, upon her back with the French chalk. Then whenever you
+meet her in the street, in society, at an A. B. C. place of refreshment,
+on a railway platform, you will recognise her infallibly.' 'Not likely,'
+I objected. 'Of course, so soon as she gets home, she will brush off the
+mark.' 'You do not know much of the Merewigs,' he said. 'When the
+spirits of those frivolous girls were in their first stage of existence,
+they were most particular about their personal appearance, about the
+neatness and stylishness of their dress, and the puffing and piling up
+of their hair. Now all that is changed. They are so disgusted at having
+to get into any unsouled body that they can lay hold of in the
+_garde-robe_, such a body being usually plain in features, middle-aged,
+and with no waist to speak of, or rather too ample in the waist to be
+elegant, that they have abandoned all concern about dress and tidiness.
+Besides, they are engrossed in the acquisition of knowledge, and the
+burning desire that consumes them is to get out of these borrowed cases
+as speedily as may be. Consequently, so long as they are dressed and
+their hair done up anyhow, that is all they care about. As to threads,
+or feathers, or French chalk marks on their clothes, they would not
+think of looking for them.' Then Alec handed to me a little piece of
+French chalk, such as tailors and dressmakers employ to indicate
+alterations when fitting on garments. So provided, I passed wholly into
+the spacious reading-room, leaving the Hindu behind the screen.
+
+"I slowly strayed down the first line of desks and chairs, which were
+fully engaged. There were many men there, with piles of books at their
+sides. There were also some women. I stepped behind one, and turned my
+head towards the screen, but Alec made no sign. At the second, however,
+up went his hand above it, and I hastily scrawled M, on her back as she
+stooped over her studies. I had time, moreover, to see what she was
+engaged upon. She was working up deep-sea soundings, beginning with that
+recorded by Schiller in his ballad of 'The Diver,' down to the last
+scientific researches in the bottom of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and
+the dredgings in the North Sea. She was engrossed in her work, and was
+picking up facts at a prodigious rate. She was a woman of, I should say,
+forty, with a cadaverous face, a shapeless nose, and enormous hands. Her
+dress was grey, badly fitted, and her boots were even worse made. Her
+hair was drawn back and knotted in a bunch behind, with the pins
+sticking out. It might have been better brushed. I passed on behind her
+back; the next occupants of seats were gentlemen, so I stepped to
+another row of desks, and looking round saw Alec's hand go up. I was
+behind a young lady in a felt hat, crunched in at top, and with a
+feather at the side; she wore a pea-jacket, with large smoked buttons,
+and beneath it a dull green gown, very short in the skirt, and brown
+boots. Her hair was cut short like that of a man. As I halted, she
+looked round, and I saw that she had hard, brown eyes, like pebbles,
+without a gleam of tenderness or sympathy in them. I cannot say whether
+this was due to the body she had assumed, or to the soul which had
+entered into the body--whether the lack was in the organ, or in the
+psychic force which employed the organ. I merely state the fact. I
+looked over her shoulder to see what she was engaged upon, and found
+that she was working her way diligently through Herbert Spencer. I
+scored a W on her back and went on. The next Merewig I had to scribble
+on was a wizen old lady, with little grey curls on the temples, very
+shabby in dress, and very antiquated in costume. Her fingers were dirty
+with ink, and the ink did not appear to me to be all of that day's
+application. Besides, I saw that she had been rubbing her nose. I
+presume it had been tickling, and she had done this with a finger still
+wet with ink, so that there was a smear on her face. She was engaged on
+the peerage. She had Dod, Burke, and Foster before her, and was getting
+up the authentic pedigrees of our noble families and their
+ramifications. I noticed with her as with the other Merewigs, that when
+they had swallowed a certain amount of information they held up their
+heads much like fowls after drinking.
+
+"The next that I marked was a very thin woman of an age I was quite
+unable to determine. She had a pointed nose, and was dressed in red. She
+looked like a stick of sealing-wax. The gown had probably enough been
+good and showy at one time, but it was ripped behind now, and the
+stitches showed, besides, a little bit of what was beneath. There was a
+frilling, or ruche, or tucker, about the throat that I think had been
+sewn into it three weeks before. I drew a note of interrogation on her
+back with my bit of French chalk. I wanted much to find out what she was
+studying, but could not. She turned round and asked sharply what I was
+stooping over for and breathing on the back of her neck. So I was forced
+to go on to the next. This was a lady fairly well dressed in the
+dingiest of colours, wearing spectacles. I believe that she wore divided
+skirts, but as she did not stand up and walk, I cannot be certain. I am
+particular never to make a statement of which I am not absolutely
+certain. She was engaged upon the subject of the land laws in various
+countries, on common land, and property in land; and she was at that
+time devoting her special attention to the constitution of the Russian
+_mir_, and the tenure of land under it. I scrawled on her back the
+zodiacal sign for Venus, the Virgin, and went further. But when I had
+marked seventeen I gave it up. I had already gone over the desks to L,
+beginning backward, and that sufficed, so I returned to Alec, paid him
+for the bangles, and we separated. I did, however, give him a letter to
+the Secretary of the Psychical Research Society, and addressed it,
+having found what I wanted in the _London Directory_, which was in the
+reading-room of the British Museum. Two days later I met, by
+appointment, my Hindu once more, and for the last time. He had not been
+received as he had anticipated by the Psychical Research Society, and
+thought of getting back to India at the first opportunity.
+
+"It is remarkable that, a few days later, I saw in the Underground one
+of those I had marked. The chalk mark was still quite distinct. She was
+not in my compartment, but I noticed her as she stepped out on to the
+platform at Baker Street. I suspect she was on her way to Madame
+Tussaud's waxwork exhibition, to instruct her mind there. But I was more
+fortunate a week later when I was at St. Albans. I had an uncle living
+there from whom I had expectations, and I paid him a visit. Whilst
+there, a lecture was to be given on the spectroscope, and as my
+acquaintance with that remarkable invention of modern times was limited,
+I resolved to go. Have you, my friend, ever taken up the subject of the
+photosphere of the sun?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then let me press it upon you. It will really supply a large amount of
+wing-pulp, if properly assimilated. It is a most astonishing thought
+that we are able, at the remote distance at which we are from the solar
+orb, to detect the various incandescent metals which go to make up the
+luminous envelope of the sun. Not only so, but we are able to discover,
+by the bars in the spectroscope, of what Jupiter, Saturn, and so on are
+composed. What a stride astronomy has made since the days of Newton!"
+
+"No doubt about it. But I do not want to hear about the bars, but of the
+chalk marks on the Merewigs."
+
+"Well, then, I noticed two elderly ladies sitting in the row before me,
+and there--as distinctly as if sketched in only yesterday--were the
+symbols I had scribbled on their backs. I did not have an opportunity of
+speaking with them then; indeed, I had no introduction to them, and
+could hardly take on me to address them without it. I was, however, more
+successful a week or two later. There was a meeting of the Hertfordshire
+Archaeological Society organised, to last a week, with excursions to
+ancient Verulam and to other objects of interest in the county.
+Hertfordshire is not a large county. It is, in fact, one of the smallest
+in England, but it yields to none in the points of interest that it
+contains, apart from the venerable abbey church that has been so
+fearfully mauled and maltreated by ignorant so-called restoration. One
+must really hope that the next generation, which will be more
+enlightened than our own, will undo all the villainous work that has
+been perpetrated to disfigure it in our own. The local secretaries and
+managers had arranged for char-a-bancs and brakes to take the party
+about, and men--learned, or thinking themselves to be learned, on the
+several antiquities--were to deliver lectures on the spot explanatory of
+what we saw. On three days there were to be evening gatherings, at which
+papers would be read. You may conceive that this was a supreme
+opportunity for storing the mind with information, and knowing what I
+did, I resolved on taking advantage of it. I entered my name as a
+subscriber to all the excursions. On the first day we went over the
+remains of the old Roman city of Verulam, and were shown its plan and
+walls, and further, the spot where the protomartyr of Britain passed
+over the stream, and the hill on which he was martyred. Nothing could
+have been more interesting and more instructive. Among those present
+were three middle-aged personages of the female sex, all of whom were
+chalk-marked on the back. One of these marks was somewhat effaced, as
+though the lady whose gown was scored had made a faint effort to brush
+it off, but had tired of the attempt and had abandoned it. The other two
+scorings were quite distinct.
+
+"On this, the first day, though I sidled up to these three Merewigs, I
+did not succeed in ingratiating myself into their favour sufficiently to
+converse with them. You may well understand, my friend, that such an
+opportunity of getting out of them some of their Merewigian experiences
+was not to be allowed to slip. On the second day I was more successful.
+I managed to obtain a seat in a brake between two of them. We were to
+drive to a distant spot where was a church of considerable architectural
+interest.
+
+"Well, in these excursions a sort of freemasonry exists between the
+archaeologists who share in them, and no ceremonious introductions are
+needed. For instance, you say to the lady next to you, 'Am I squeezing
+you?' And the ice is broken. I did not, however, attempt to draw any
+information from those between whom I was seated, till after luncheon, a
+most sumptuous repast, with champagne, liberally given to the Society by
+a gentleman of property, to whose house we drove up just about one
+o'clock. There was plenty of champagne supplied, and I did not stint
+myself. I felt it necessary to take in a certain amount of Dutch courage
+before broaching to my companions in the brake the theme that lay near
+my heart. When, however, we got into the conveyance, all in great
+spirits, after the conclusion of the lunch, I turned to my right-hand
+lady, and said to her: 'Well, miss, I fear it will be a long time before
+you become angelic.' She turned her back upon me and made no reply.
+Somewhat disconcerted, I now addressed myself to the chalk-marked lady
+on my left hand, and asked: 'Have you anything at all in your head
+except archaeology?' Instead of answering me in the kindly mood in which
+I spoke, she began at once to enter into a lively discussion with her
+neighbour on the opposite side of the carriage, and ignored me. I was
+not to be done in this way. I wanted information. But, of course, I
+could enter into the feelings of both. Merewigs do not like to converse
+about themselves in their former stage of existence, of which they are
+ashamed, nor of the efforts they are making in this transitional stage
+to acquire a fund of knowledge for the purpose of ultimately discarding
+their acquired bodies, and developing their ethereal wings as they pass
+into the higher and nobler condition.
+
+"We left the carriage to go to a spot about a mile off, through lanes,
+muddy and rutty, for the purpose of inspecting some remarkable stones.
+All the party would not walk, and the conveyances could proceed no
+nearer. The more enthusiastic did go on, and I was of the number. What
+further stimulated me to do so was the fact that the third Merewig, she
+who had partially cleaned my scoring off her back, plucked up her
+skirts, and strode ahead. I hurried after and caught her up. 'I beg your
+pardon,' said I. 'You must excuse the interest I take in antiquities,
+but I suppose it is a long time since you were a girl.' Of course, my
+meaning was obvious; I referred to her earlier existence, before she
+borrowed her present body. But she stopped abruptly, gave me a withering
+look, and went back to rejoin another group of pedestrians. Ha! my
+friend, I verily believe that the boat is being lifted. The tide is
+flowing in."
+
+"The tide is flowing," I said; and then added, "really, Major Donelly,
+your story ought not to be confined to the narrow circle of your
+intimates."
+
+"That is true," he replied. "But my desire to make it known has been
+damped by the way in which Alec was received, or rather rejected, by the
+Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research."
+
+"But I do not mean that you should tell it to the Society for Psychical
+Research."
+
+"To whom, then?"
+
+"Tell it to the Horse Marines."
+
+
+
+
+THE "BOLD VENTURE"
+
+
+The little fisher-town of Portstephen comprised two strings of houses
+facing each other at the bottom of a narrow valley, down which the
+merest trickle of a stream decanted into the harbour. The street was so
+narrow that it was at intervals alone that sufficient space was accorded
+for two wheeled vehicles to pass one another, and the road-way was for
+the most part so narrow that each house door was set back in the depth
+of the wall, to permit the foot-passenger to step into the recess to
+avoid being overrun by the wheels of a cart that ascended or descended
+the street.
+
+The inhabitants lived upon the sea and its produce. Such as were not
+fishers were mariners, and but a small percentage remained that were
+neither--the butcher, the baker, the smith, and the doctor; and these
+also lived by the sea, for they lived upon the sailors and fishermen.
+
+For the most part, the seafaring men were furnished with large families.
+The net in which they drew children was almost as well filled as the
+seine in which they trapped pilchards.
+
+Jonas Rea, however, was an exception; he had been married for ten years,
+and had but one child, and that a son.
+
+"You've a very poor haul, Jonas," said to him his neighbour, Samuel
+Carnsew; "I've been married so long as you and I've twelve. My wife has
+had twins twice."
+
+"It's not a poor haul for me, Samuel," replied Jonas, "I may have but
+one child, but he's a buster."
+
+Jonas had a mother alive, known as Old Betty Rea. When he married, he
+had proposed that his mother, who was a widow, should live with him.
+But man proposes and woman disposes. The arrangement did not commend
+itself to the views of Mrs. Rea, junior--that is to say, of Jane,
+Jonas's wife.
+
+Betty had always been a managing woman. She had managed her house, her
+children, and her husband; but she speedily was made aware that her
+daughter-in-law refused to be managed by her.
+
+Jane was, in her way, also a managing woman: she kept her house clean,
+her husband's clothes in order, her child neat, and herself the very
+pink of tidiness. She was a somewhat hard woman, much given to grumbling
+and finding fault.
+
+Jane and her mother-in-law did not come to an open and flagrant quarrel,
+but the fret between them waxed intolerable; and the curtain-lectures,
+of which the text and topic was Old Betty, were so frequent and so
+protracted that Jonas convinced himself that there was smoother water in
+the worst sea than in his own house.
+
+He was constrained to break to his mother the unpleasant information
+that she must go elsewhere; but he softened the blow by informing her
+that he had secured for her residence a tiny cottage up an alley, that
+consisted of two rooms only, one a kitchen, above that a bedchamber.
+
+The old woman received the communication without annoyance. She rose to
+the offer, for she had also herself considered that the situation had
+become unendurable. Accordingly, with goodwill, she removed to her new
+quarters, and soon made the house look keen and cosy.
+
+But, so soon as Jane gave indications of becoming a mother, it was
+agreed that Betty should attend on her daughter-in-law. To this Jane
+consented. After all, Betty could not be worse than another woman, a
+stranger.
+
+And when Jane was in bed, and unable to quit it, then Betty once more
+reigned supreme in the house and managed everything--even her
+daughter-in-law.
+
+But the time of Jane's lying upstairs was brief, and at the earliest
+possible moment she reappeared in the kitchen, pale indeed and weak, but
+resolute, and with firm hand withdrew the reins from the grasp of Betty.
+
+In leaving her son's house, the only thing that Betty regretted was the
+baby. To that she had taken a mighty affection, and she did not quit
+till she had poured forth into the deaf ear of Jane a thousand
+instructions as to how the babe was to be fed, clothed, and reared.
+
+As a devoted son, Jonas never returned from sea without visiting his
+mother, and when on shore saw her every day. He sat with her by the
+hour, told her of all that concerned him--except about his wife--and
+communicated to her all his hopes and wishes. The babe, whose name was
+Peter, was a topic on which neither weaned of talking or of listening;
+and often did Jonas bring the child over to be kissed and admired by his
+grandmother.
+
+Jane raised objections--the weather was cold and the child would take a
+chill; grandmother was inconsiderate, and upset its stomach with
+sweetstuff; it had not a tidy dress in which to be seen: but Jonas
+overruled all her objections. He was a mild and yielding man, but on
+this one point he was inflexible--his child should grow up to know,
+love, and reverence his mother as sincerely as did he himself. And these
+were delightful hours to the old woman, when she could have the infant
+on her lap, croon to it, and talk to it all the delightful nonsense that
+flows from the lips of a woman when caressing a child.
+
+Moreover, when the boy was not there, Betty was knitting socks or
+contriving pin-cases, or making little garments for him; and all the
+small savings she could gather from the allowance made by her son, and
+from the sale of some of her needlework, were devoted to the same
+grandchild.
+
+As the little fellow found his feet and was allowed to toddle, he often
+wanted to "go to granny," not much to the approval of Mrs. Jane. And,
+later, when he went to school, he found his way to her cottage before he
+returned home so soon as his work hours in class were over. He very
+early developed a love for the sea and ships.
+
+This did not accord with Mrs. Jane's ideas; she came of a family that
+had ever been on the land, and she disapproved of the sea. "But,"
+remonstrated her husband, "he is my son, and I and my father and
+grandfather were all of us sea-dogs, so that, naturally, my part in the
+boy takes to the water."
+
+And now an idea entered the head of Old Betty. She resolved on making a
+ship for Peter. She provided herself with a stout piece of deal of
+suitable size and shape, and proceeded to fashion it into the form of a
+cutter, and to scoop out the interior. At this Peter assisted. After
+school hours he was with his grandmother watching the process, giving
+his opinion as to shape, and how the boat was to be rigged and
+furnished. The aged woman had but an old knife, no proper carpentering
+tools, consequently the progress made was slow. Moreover, she worked at
+the ship only when Peter was by. The interest excited in the child by
+the process was an attraction to her house, and it served to keep him
+there. Further, when he was at home, he was being incessantly scolded by
+his mother, and the preference he developed for granny's cottage caused
+many a pang of jealousy in Jane's heart.
+
+Peter was now nine years old, and remained the only child, when a sad
+thing happened. One evening, when the little ship was rigged and almost
+complete, after leaving his grandmother, Peter went down to the port.
+There happened to be no one about, and in craning over the quay to look
+into his father's boat, he overbalanced, fell in, and was drowned.
+
+The grandmother supposed that the boy had returned home, the mother that
+he was with his grandmother, and a couple of hours passed before search
+for him was instituted, and the body was brought home an hour after
+that. Mrs. Jane's grief at losing her child was united with resentment
+against Old Betty for having drawn the child away from home, and
+against her husband for having encouraged it. She poured forth the vials
+of her wrath upon Jonas. He it was who had done his utmost to have the
+boy killed, because he had allowed him to wander at large, and had
+provided him with an excuse by allowing him to tarry with Old Betty
+after leaving school, so that no one knew where he was. Had Jonas been a
+reasonable man, and a docile husband, he would have insisted on Peter
+returning promptly home every day, in which case this disaster would not
+have occurred. "But," said Jane bitterly, "you never have considered my
+feelings, and I believe you did not love Peter, and wanted to be rid of
+him."
+
+The blow to Betty was terrible; her heart-strings were wrapped about the
+little fellow; and his loss was to her the eclipse of all light, the
+death of all her happiness.
+
+When Peter was in his coffin, then the old woman went to the house,
+carrying the little ship. It was now complete with sails and rigging.
+
+"Jane," said she, "I want thickey ship to be put in with Peter. 'Twere
+made for he, and I can't let another have it, and I can't keep it
+myself."
+
+"Nonsense," retorted Mrs. Rea, junior. "The boat can be no use to he,
+now."
+
+"I wouldn't say that. There's naught revealed on them matters. But I'm
+cruel certain that up aloft there'll be a rumpus if Peter wakes up and
+don't find his ship."
+
+"You may take it away; I'll have none of it," said Jane.
+
+So the old woman departed, but was not disposed to accept discomfiture.
+She went to the undertaker.
+
+"Mr. Matthews, I want you to put this here boat in wi' my gran'child
+Peter. It will go in fitty at his feet."
+
+"Very sorry, ma'am, but not unless I break off the bowsprit. You see the
+coffin is too narrow."
+
+"Then put'n in sideways and longways."
+
+"Very sorry, ma'am, but the mast is in the way. I'd be forced to break
+that so as to get the lid down."
+
+Disconcerted, the old woman retired; she would not suffer Peter's boat
+to be maltreated.
+
+On the occasion of the funeral, the grandmother appeared as one of the
+principal mourners. For certain reasons, Mrs. Jane did not attend at the
+church and grave.
+
+As the procession left the house, Old Betty took her place beside her
+son, and carried the boat in her hand. At the close of the service at
+the grave, she said to the sexton: "I'll trouble you, John Hext, to put
+this here little ship right o' top o' his coffin. I made'n for Peter,
+and Peter'll expect to have'n." This was done, and not a step from the
+grave would the grandmother take till the first shovelfuls had fallen on
+the coffin and had partially buried the white ship.
+
+When Granny Rea returned to her cottage, the fire was out. She seated
+herself beside the dead hearth, with hands folded and the tears coursing
+down her withered cheeks. Her heart was as dead and dreary as that
+hearth. She had now no object in life, and she murmured a prayer that
+the Lord might please to take her, that she might see her Peter sailing
+his boat in paradise.
+
+Her prayer was interrupted by the entry of Jonas, who shouted: "Mother,
+we want your help again. There's Jane took bad; wi' the worrit and the
+sorrow it's come on a bit earlier than she reckoned, and you're to come
+along as quick as you can. 'Tisn't the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
+away, but topsy-turvy, the Lord hath taken away and is givin' again."
+
+Betty rose at once, and went to the house with her son, and again--as
+nine years previously--for a while she assumed the management of the
+house; and when a baby arrived, another boy, she managed that as well.
+
+The reign of Betty in the house of Jonas and Jane was not for long. The
+mother was soon downstairs, and with her reappearance came the departure
+of the grandmother.
+
+And now began once more the same old life as had been initiated nine
+years previously. The child carried to its grandmother, who dandled it,
+crooned and talked to it. Then, as it grew, it was supplied with socks
+and garments knitted and cut out and put together by Betty; there ensued
+the visits of the toddling child, and the remonstrances of the mother.
+School time arrived, and with it a break in the journey to or from
+school at granny's house, to partake of bread and jam, hear stories,
+and, finally, to assist at the making of a new ship.
+
+If, with increase of years, Betty's powers had begun to fail, there had
+been no corresponding decrease in energy of will. Her eyes were not so
+clear as of old, nor her hearing so acute, but her hand was not
+unsteady. She would this time make and rig a schooner and not a cutter.
+
+Experience had made her more able, and she aspired to accomplish a
+greater task than she had previously undertaken. It was really
+remarkable how the old course was resumed almost in every particular.
+But the new grandson was called Jonas, like his father, and Old Betty
+loved him, if possible, with a more intense love than had been given to
+the first child. He closely resembled his father, and to her it was a
+renewal of her life long ago, when she nursed and cared for the first
+Jonas. And, if possible, Jane became more jealous of the aged woman, who
+was drawing to her so large a portion of her child's affection. The
+schooner was nearly complete. It was somewhat rude, having been worked
+with no better tool than a penknife, and its masts being made of
+knitting-pins.
+
+On the day before little Jonas's ninth birthday, Betty carried the ship
+to the painter.
+
+"Mr. Elway," said she, "there be one thing I do want your help in. I
+cannot put the name on the vessel. I can't fashion the letters, and I
+want you to do it for me."
+
+"All right, ma'am. What name?"
+
+"Well, now," said she, "my husband, the father of Jonas, and the
+grandfather of the little Jonas, he always sailed in a schooner, and the
+ship was the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"The _Bonaventura_, I think. I remember her."
+
+"I'm sure she was the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"I think not, Mrs. Rea."
+
+"It must have been the _Bold Venture_ or _Bold Adventurer_. What sense
+is there in such a name as _Boneventure_? I never heard of no such
+venture, unless it were that of Jack Smithson, who jumped out of a
+garret window, and sure enough he broke a bone of his leg. No, Mr.
+Elway, I'll have her entitled the _Bold Venture_."
+
+"I'll not gainsay you. _Bold Venture_ she shall be."
+
+Then the painter very dexterously and daintily put the name in black
+paint on the white strip at the stern.
+
+"Will it be dry by to-morrow?" asked the old woman. "That's the little
+lad's birthday, and I promised to have his schooner ready for him to
+sail her then."
+
+"I've put dryers in the paint," answered Mr. Elway, "and you may reckon
+it will be right for to-morrow."
+
+That night Betty was unable to sleep, so eager was she for the day when
+the little boy would attain his ninth year and become the possessor of
+the beautiful ship she had fashioned for him with her own hands, and on
+which, in fact, she had been engaged for more than a twelvemonth.
+
+Nor was she able to eat her simple breakfast and noonday meal, so
+thrilled was her old heart with love for the child and expectation of
+his delight when the _Bold Venture_ was made over to him as his own.
+
+She heard his little feet on the cobblestones of the alley: he came on,
+dancing, jumping, fidgeted at the lock, threw the door open and burst in
+with a shout--
+
+"See! see, granny! my new ship! Mother has give it me. A real
+frigate--with three masts, all red and green, and cost her seven
+shillings at Camelot Fair yesterday." He bore aloft a very magnificent
+toy ship. It had pennants at the mast-top and a flag at stern. "Granny!
+look! look! ain't she a beauty? Now I shan't want your drashy old
+schooner when I have my grand new frigate."
+
+"Won't you have your ship--the _Bold Venture_?"
+
+"No, granny; chuck it away. It's a shabby bit o' rubbish, mother says;
+and see! there's a brass cannon, a real cannon that will go off with a
+bang, on my frigate. Ain't it a beauty?"
+
+"Oh, Jonas! look at the _Bold Venture_!"
+
+"No, granny, I can't stay. I want to be off and swim my beautiful
+seven-shilling ship."
+
+Then he dashed away as boisterous as he had dashed in, and forgot to
+shut the door. It was evening when the elder Jonas returned home, and he
+was welcomed by his son with exclamations of delight, and was shown the
+new ship.
+
+"But, daddy, her won't sail; over her will flop in the water."
+
+"There is no lead on the keel," remarked the father. "The vessel is
+built for show only."
+
+Then he walked away to his mother's cottage. He was vexed. He knew that
+his wife had bought the toy with the deliberate intent of disappointing
+and wounding her mother-in-law; and he was afraid that he would find the
+old lady deeply mortified and incensed. As he entered the dingy lane, he
+noticed that her door was partly open.
+
+The aged woman was on the seat by the table at the window, lying forward
+clasping the ship, and the two masts were run through her white hair;
+her head rested, partly on the new ship and partly on the table.
+
+"Mother!" said he. "Mother!"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+The feeble old heart had given way under the blow, and had ceased to
+beat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was accustomed, a few summers past, to spend a couple of months at
+Portstephen. Jonas Rea took me often in his boat, either mackerel
+fishing, or on excursions to the islets off the coast, in quest of wild
+birds. We became familiar, and I would now and then spend an evening
+with him in his cottage, and talk about the sea, and the chances of a
+harbour of refuge being made at Portstephen, and sometimes we spoke of
+our own family affairs. Thus it was that, little by little, the story of
+the ship _Bold Venture_ was told me.
+
+Mrs. Jane was no more in the house.
+
+"It's a curious thing," said Jonas Rea, "but the first ship my mother
+made was no sooner done than my boy Peter died, and when she made
+another, with two masts, as soon as ever it was finished she died
+herself, and shortly after my wife, Jane, who took a chill at mother's
+funeral. It settled on her chest, and she died in a fortnight."
+
+"Is that the boat?" I inquired, pointing to a glass case on a cupboard,
+in which was a rudely executed schooner.
+
+"That's her," replied Jonas; "and I'd like you to have a look close at
+her."
+
+I walked to the cupboard and looked.
+
+"Do you see anything particular?" asked the fisherman.
+
+"I can't say that I do."
+
+"Look at her masthead. What is there?"
+
+After a pause I said: "There is a grey hair, that is all, like a
+pennant."
+
+"I mean that," said Jonas. "I can't say whether my old mother put a hair
+from her white head there for the purpose, or whether it caught and
+fixed itself when she fell forward clasping the boat, and the masts and
+spars and shrouds were all tangled in her hair. Anyhow, there it be, and
+that's one reason why I've had the _Bold Venture_ put in a glass
+case--that the white hair may never by no chance get brushed away from
+it. Now, look again. Do you see nothing more?"
+
+"Can't say I do."
+
+"Look at the bows."
+
+I did so. Presently I remarked: "I see nothing except, perhaps, some
+bruises, and a little bit of red paint."
+
+"Ah! that's it, and where did the red paint come from?"
+
+I was, of course, quite unable to suggest an explanation.
+
+Presently, after Mr. Rea had waited--as if to draw from me the answer he
+expected--he said: "Well, no, I reckon you can't tell. It was thus. When
+mother died, I brought the _Bold Venture_ here and set her where she is
+now, on the cupboard, and Jonas, he had set the new ship, all red and
+green, the _Saucy Jane_ it was called, on the bureau. Will you believe
+me, next morning when I came downstairs the frigate was on the floor,
+and some of her spars broken and all the rigging in a muddle."
+
+"There was no lead on the bottom. It fell down."
+
+"It was not once that happened. It came to the same thing every night;
+and what is more, the _Bold Venture_ began to show signs of having
+fouled her."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Run against her. She had bruises, and had brought away some of the
+paint of the _Saucy Jane_. Every morning the frigate, if she were'nt on
+the floor, were rammed into a corner, and battered as if she'd been in a
+bad sea."
+
+"But it is impossible."
+
+"Of course, lots o' things is impossible, but they happen all the same."
+
+"Well, what next?"
+
+"Jane, she was ill, and took wus and wus, and just as she got wus so it
+took wus as well with the _Saucy Jane_. And on the night she died, I
+reckon that there was a reg'lar pitched sea-fight."
+
+"But not at sea."
+
+"Well, no; but the frigate seemed to have been rammed, and she was on
+the floor and split from stem to stern."
+
+"And, pray, has the _Bold Venture_ made no attempt since? The glass case
+is not broken."
+
+"There's been no occasion. I chucked what remained of the _Saucy Jane_
+into the fire."
+
+
+
+
+MUSTAPHA
+
+
+I
+
+Among the many hangers-on at the Hotel de l'Europe at
+Luxor--donkey-boys, porters, guides, antiquity dealers--was one, a young
+man named Mustapha, who proved a general favourite.
+
+I spent three winters at Luxor, partly for my health, partly for
+pleasure, mainly to make artistic studies, as I am by profession a
+painter. So I came to know Mustapha fairly well in three stages, during
+those three winters.
+
+When first I made his acquaintance he was in the transition condition
+from boyhood to manhood. He had an intelligent face, with bright eyes, a
+skin soft as brown silk, with a velvety hue on it. His features were
+regular, and if his face was a little too round to quite satisfy an
+English artistic eye, yet this was a peculiarity to which one soon
+became accustomed. He was unflaggingly good-natured and obliging. A
+mongrel, no doubt, he was; Arab and native Egyptian blood were mingled
+in his veins. But the result was happy; he combined the patience and
+gentleness of the child of Mizraim with the energy and pluck of the son
+of the desert.
+
+Mustapha had been a donkey-boy, but had risen a stage higher, and
+looked, as the object of his supreme ambition, to become some day a
+dragoman, and blaze like one of these gilded beetles in lace and chains,
+rings and weapons. To become a dragoman--one of the most obsequious of
+men till engaged, one of the veriest tyrants when engaged--to what
+higher could an Egyptian boy aspire?
+
+To become a dragoman means to go in broadcloth and with gold chains when
+his fellows are half naked; to lounge and twist the moustache when his
+kinsfolk are toiling under the water-buckets; to be able to extort
+backsheesh from all the tradesmen to whom he can introduce a master; to
+do nothing himself and make others work for him; to be able to look to
+purchase two, three, even four wives when his father contented himself
+with one; to soar out of the region of native virtues into that of
+foreign vices; to be superior to all instilled prejudices against
+spirits and wine--that is the ideal set before young Egypt through
+contact with the English and the American tourist.
+
+We all liked Mustapha. No one had a bad word to say of him. Some pious
+individuals rejoiced to see that he had broken with the Koran, as if
+this were a first step towards taking up with the Bible. A free-thinking
+professor was glad to find that Mustapha had emancipated himself from
+some of those shackles which religion places on august, divine humanity,
+and that by getting drunk he gave pledge that he had risen into a sphere
+of pure emancipation, which eventuates in ideal perfection.
+
+As I made my studies I engaged Mustapha to carry my easel and canvas, or
+camp-stool. I was glad to have him as a study, to make him stand by a
+wall or sit on a pillar that was prostrate, as artistic exigencies
+required. He was always ready to accompany me. There was an
+understanding between us that when a drove of tourists came to Luxor he
+might leave me for the day to pick up what he could then from the
+natural prey; but I found him not always keen to be off duty to me.
+Though he could get more from the occasional visitor than from me, he
+was above the ravenous appetite for backsheesh which consumed his
+fellows.
+
+He who has much to do with the native Egyptian will have discovered
+that there are in him a fund of kindliness and a treasure of good
+qualities. He is delighted to be treated with humanity, pleased to be
+noticed, and ready to repay attention with touching gratitude. He is by
+no means as rapacious for backsheesh as the passing traveller supposes;
+he is shrewd to distinguish between man and man; likes this one, and
+will do anything for him unrewarded, and will do naught for another for
+any bribe.
+
+The Egyptian is now in a transitional state. If it be quite true that
+the touch of England is restoring life to his crippled limbs, and the
+voice of England bidding him rise up and walk, there are occasions on
+which association with Englishmen is a disadvantage to him. Such an
+instance is that of poor, good Mustapha.
+
+It was not my place to caution Mustapha against the pernicious
+influences to which he was subjected, and, to speak plainly, I did not
+know what line to adopt, on what ground to take my stand, if I did. He
+was breaking with the old life, and taking up with what was new,
+retaining of the old only what was bad in it, and acquiring of the new
+none of its good parts. Civilisation--European civilisation--is
+excellent, but cannot be swallowed at a gulp, nor does it wholly suit
+the oriental digestion.
+
+That which impelled Mustapha still further in his course was the
+attitude assumed towards him by his own relatives and the natives of his
+own village. They were strict Moslems, and they regarded him as one on
+the highway to becoming a renegade. They treated him with mistrust,
+showed him aversion, and loaded him with reproaches. Mustapha had a high
+spirit, and he resented rebuke. Let his fellows grumble and objurgate,
+said he; they would cringe to him when he became a dragoman, with his
+pockets stuffed with piastres.
+
+There was in our hotel, the second winter, a young fellow of the name of
+Jameson, a man with plenty of money, superficial good nature, little
+intellect, very conceited and egotistic, and this fellow was Mustapha's
+evil genius. It was Jameson's delight to encourage Mustapha in drinking
+and gambling. Time hung heavy on his hands. He cared nothing for
+hieroglyphics, scenery bored him, antiquities, art, had no charm for
+him. Natural history presented to him no attraction, and the only
+amusement level with his mental faculties was that of hoaxing natives,
+or breaking down their religious prejudices.
+
+Matters were in this condition as regarded Mustapha, when an incident
+occurred during my second winter at Luxor that completely altered the
+tenor of Mustapha's life.
+
+One night a fire broke out in the nearest village. It originated in a
+mud hovel belonging to a fellah; his wife had spilled some oil on the
+hearth, and the flames leaping up had caught the low thatch, which
+immediately burst into a blaze. A wind was blowing from the direction of
+the Arabian desert, and it carried the flames and ignited the thatch
+before it on other roofs; the conflagration spread, and the whole
+village was menaced with destruction. The greatest excitement and alarm
+prevailed. The inhabitants lost their heads. Men ran about rescuing from
+their hovels their only treasures--old sardine tins and empty marmalade
+pots; women wailed, children sobbed; no one made any attempt to stay the
+fire; and, above all, were heard the screams of the woman whose
+incaution had caused the mischief, and who was being beaten unmercifully
+by her husband.
+
+The few English in the hotel came on the scene, and with their
+instinctive energy and system set to work to organise a corps and subdue
+the flames. The women and girls who were rescued from the menaced
+hovels, or plucked out of those already on fire, were in many cases
+unveiled, and so it came to pass that Mustapha, who, under English
+direction, was ablest and most vigorous in his efforts to stop the
+conflagration, met his fate in the shape of the daughter of Ibraim the
+Farrier.
+
+By the light of the flames he saw her, and at once resolved to make that
+fair girl his wife.
+
+No reasonable obstacle intervened, so thought Mustapha. He had amassed a
+sufficient sum to entitle him to buy a wife and set up a household of
+his own. A house consists of four mud walls and a low thatch, and
+housekeeping in an Egyptian house is as elementary and economical as the
+domestic architecture. The maintenance of a wife and family is not
+costly after the first outlay, which consists in indemnifying the father
+for the expense to which he has been put in rearing a daughter.
+
+The ceremony of courting is also elementary, and the addresses of the
+suitor are not paid to the bride, but to her father, and not in person
+by the candidate, but by an intermediary.
+
+Mustapha negotiated with a friend, a fellow hanger-on at the hotel, to
+open proceedings with the farrier. He was to represent to the worthy man
+that the suitor entertained the most ardent admiration for the virtues
+of Ibraim personally, that he was inspired with but one ambition, which
+was alliance with so distinguished a family as his. He was to assure the
+father of the damsel that Mustapha undertook to proclaim through Upper
+and Lower Egypt, in the ears of Egyptians, Arabs, and Europeans, that
+Ibraim was the most remarkable man that ever existed for solidity of
+judgment, excellence of parts, uprightness of dealing, nobility of
+sentiment, strictness in observance of the precepts of the Koran, and
+that finally Mustapha was anxious to indemnify this same paragon of
+genius and virtue for his condescension in having cared to breed and
+clothe and feed for several years a certain girl, his daughter, if
+Mustapha might have that daughter as his wife. Not that he cared for the
+daughter in herself, but as a means whereby he might have the honour of
+entering into alliance with one so distinguished and so esteemed of
+Allah as Ibraim the Farrier.
+
+To the infinite surprise of the intermediary, and to the no less
+surprise and mortification of the suitor, Mustapha was refused. He was a
+bad Moslem. Ibraim would have no alliance with one who had turned his
+back on the Prophet and drunk bottled beer.
+
+Till this moment Mustapha had not realised how great was the alienation
+between his fellows and himself--what a barrier he had set up between
+himself and the men of his own blood. The refusal of his suit struck the
+young man to the quick. He had known and played with the farrier's
+daughter in childhood, till she had come of age to veil her face; now
+that he had seen her in her ripe charms, his heart was deeply stirred
+and engaged. He entered into himself, and going to the mosque he there
+made a solemn vow that if he ever touched wine, ale, or spirits again he
+would cut his throat, and he sent word to Ibraim that he had done so,
+and begged that he would not dispose of his daughter and finally reject
+him till he had seen how that he who had turned in thought and manner of
+life from the Prophet would return with firm resolution to the right
+way.
+
+
+II
+
+From this time Mustapha changed his conduct. He was obliging and
+attentive as before, ready to exert himself to do for me what I wanted,
+ready also to extort money from the ordinary tourist for doing nothing,
+to go with me and carry my tools when I went forth painting, and to joke
+and laugh with Jameson; but, unless he were unavoidably detained, he
+said his prayers five times daily in the mosque, and no inducement
+whatever would make him touch anything save sherbet, milk, or water.
+
+Mustapha had no easy time of it. The strict Mohammedans mistrusted this
+sudden conversion, and believed that he was playing a part. Ibraim gave
+him no encouragement. His relatives maintained their reserve and
+stiffness towards him.
+
+His companions, moreover, who were in the transitional stage, and those
+who had completely shaken off all faith in Allah and trust in the
+Prophet and respect for the Koran, were incensed at his desertion. He
+was ridiculed, insulted; he was waylaid and beaten. The young fellows
+mimicked him, the elder scoffed at him.
+
+Jameson took his change to heart, and laid himself out to bring him out
+of his pot of scruples.
+
+"Mustapha ain't any sport at all now," said he. "I'm hanged if he has
+another para from me." He offered him bribes in gold, he united with the
+others in ridicule, he turned his back on him, and refused to employ
+him. Nothing availed. Mustapha was respectful, courteous, obliging as
+before, but he had returned, he said, to the faith and rule of life in
+which he had been brought up, and he would never again leave it.
+
+"I have sworn," said he, "that if I do I will cut my throat."
+
+I had been, perhaps, negligent in cautioning the young fellow the first
+winter that I knew him against the harm likely to be done him by taking
+up with European habits contrary to his law and the feelings and
+prejudices of his people. Now, however, I had no hesitation in
+expressing to him the satisfaction I felt at the courageous and
+determined manner in which he had broken with acquired habits that could
+do him no good. For one thing, we were now better acquaintances, and I
+felt that as one who had known him for more than a few months in the
+winter, I had a good right to speak. And, again, it is always easier or
+pleasanter to praise than to reprimand.
+
+One day when sketching I cut my pencil with a pruning-knife I happened
+to have in my pocket; my proper knife of many blades had been left
+behind by misadventure.
+
+Mustapha noticed the knife and admired it, and asked if it had cost a
+great sum.
+
+"Not at all," I answered. "I did not even buy it. It was given me. I
+ordered some flower seeds from a seeds-man, and when he sent me the
+consignment he included this knife in the case as a present. It is not
+worth more than a shilling in England."
+
+He turned it about, with looks of admiration.
+
+"It is just the sort that would suit me," he said. "I know your other
+knife with many blades. It is very fine, but it is too small. I do not
+want it to cut pencils. It has other things in it, a hook for taking
+stones from a horse's hoof, a pair of tweezers for removing hairs. I do
+not want such, but a knife such as this, with such a curve, is just the
+thing."
+
+"Then you shall have it," said I. "You are welcome. It was for rough
+work only that I brought the knife to Egypt with me."
+
+I finished a painting that winter that gave me real satisfaction. It was
+of the great court of the temple of Luxor by evening light, with the
+last red glare of the sun over the distant desert hills, and the eastern
+sky above of a purple depth. What colours I used! the intensest on my
+palette, and yet fell short of the effect.
+
+The picture was in the Academy, was well hung, abominably represented in
+one of the illustrated guides to the galleries, as a blotch, by some
+sort of photographic process on gelatine; my picture sold, which
+concerned me most of all, and not only did it sell at a respectable
+figure, but it also brought me two or three orders for Egyptian
+pictures. So many English and Americans go up the Nile, and carry away
+with them pleasant reminiscences of the Land of the Pharaohs, that when
+in England they are fain to buy pictures which shall remind them of
+scenes in that land.
+
+I returned to my hotel at Luxor in November, to spend there a third
+winter. The fellaheen about there saluted me as a friend with an
+affectionate delight, which I am quite certain was not assumed, as they
+got nothing out of me save kindly salutations. I had the Egyptian fever
+on me, which, when once acquired, is not to be shaken off--an enthusiasm
+for everything Egyptian, the antiquities, the history of the Pharaohs,
+the very desert, the brown Nile, the desolate hill ranges, the ever blue
+sky, the marvellous colorations at rise and set of sun, and last, but
+not least, the prosperity of the poor peasants.
+
+I am quite certain that the very warmest welcome accorded to me was from
+Mustapha, and almost the first words he said to me on my meeting him
+again were: "I have been very good. I say my prayers. I drink no wine,
+and Ibraim will give me his daughter in the second Iomada--what you call
+January."
+
+"Not before, Mustapha?"
+
+"No, sir; he says I must be tried for one whole year, and he is right."
+
+"Then soon after Christmas you will be happy!"
+
+"I have got a house and made it ready. Yes. After Christmas there will
+be one very happy man--one very, very happy man in Egypt, and that will
+be your humble servant, Mustapha."
+
+
+III
+
+We were a pleasant party at Luxor, this third winter, not numerous, but
+for the most part of congenial tastes. For the most part we were keen on
+hieroglyphics, we admired Queen Hatasou and we hated Rameses II. We
+could distinguish the artistic work of one dynasty from that of another.
+We were learned on cartouches, and flourished our knowledge before the
+tourists dropping in.
+
+One of those staying in the hotel was an Oxford don, very good company,
+interested in everything, and able to talk well on everything--I mean
+everything more or less remotely connected with Egypt. Another was a
+young fellow who had been an attache at Berlin, but was out of
+health--nothing organic the matter with his lungs, but they were weak.
+He was keen on the political situation, and very anti-Gallican, as every
+man who has been in Egypt naturally is, who is not a Frenchman.
+
+There was also staying in the hotel an American lady, fresh and
+delightful, whose mind and conversation twinkled like frost crystals in
+the sun, a woman full of good-humour, of the most generous sympathies,
+and so droll that she kept us ever amused.
+
+And, alas! Jameson was back again, not entering into any of our
+pursuits, not understanding our little jokes, not at all content to be
+there. He grumbled at the food--and, indeed, that might have been
+better; at the monotony of the life at Luxor, at his London doctor for
+putting the veto on Cairo because of its drainage, or rather the absence
+of all drainage. I really think we did our utmost to draw Jameson into
+our circle, to amuse him, to interest him in something; but one by one
+we gave him up, and the last to do this was the little American lady.
+
+From the outset he had attacked Mustapha, and endeavoured to persuade
+him to shake off his "squeamish nonsense," as Jameson called his
+resolve. "I'll tell you what it is, old fellow," he said, "life isn't
+worth living without good liquor, and as for that blessed Prophet of
+yours, he showed he was a fool when he put a bar on drinks."
+
+But as Mustapha was not pliable he gave him up. "He's become just as
+great a bore as that old Rameses," said he. "I'm sick of the whole
+concern, and I don't think anything of fresh dates, that you fellows
+make such a fuss about. As for that stupid old Nile--there ain't a fish
+worth eating comes out of it. And those old Egyptians were arrant
+humbugs. I haven't seen a lotus since I came here, and they made such a
+fuss about them too."
+
+The little American lady was not weary of asking questions relative to
+English home life, and especially to country-house living and
+amusements.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said she, "I would give my ears to spend a Christmas in
+the fine old fashion in a good ancient manor-house in the country."
+
+"There is nothing remarkable in that," said an English lady.
+
+"Not to you, maybe; but there would be to us. What we read of and make
+pictures of in our fancies, that is what you live. Your facts are our
+fairy tales. Look at your hunting."
+
+"That, if you like, is fun," threw in Jameson. "But I don't myself think
+anything save Luxor can be a bigger bore than country-house life at
+Christmas time--when all the boys are back from school."
+
+"With us," said the little American, "our sportsmen dress in pink like
+yours--the whole thing--and canter after a bag of anise seed that is
+trailed before them."
+
+"Why do they not import foxes?"
+
+"Because a fox would not keep to the road. Our farmers object pretty
+freely to trespass; so the hunting must of necessity be done on the
+highway, and the game is but a bag of anise seed. I would like to see an
+English meet and a run."
+
+This subject was thrashed out after having been prolonged unduly for the
+sake of Jameson.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" said the Yankee lady. "If but that chef could be
+persuaded to give us plum-puddings for Christmas, I would try to think I
+was in England."
+
+"Plum-pudding is exploded," said Jameson. "Only children ask for it now.
+A good trifle or a tipsy-cake is much more to my taste; but this hanged
+cook here can give us nothing but his blooming custard pudding and burnt
+sugar."
+
+"I do not think it would be wise to let him attempt a plum-pudding,"
+said the English lady. "But if we can persuade him to permit me I will
+mix and make the pudding, and then he cannot go far wrong in the boiling
+and dishing up."
+
+"That is the only thing wanting to make me perfectly happy," said the
+American. "I'll confront monsieur. I am sure I can talk him into a good
+humour, and we shall have our plum-pudding."
+
+No one has yet been found, I do believe, who could resist that little
+woman. She carried everything before her. The cook placed himself and
+all his culinary apparatus at her feet. We took part in the stoning of
+the raisins, and the washing of the currants, even the chopping of the
+suet; we stirred the pudding, threw in sixpence apiece, and a ring, and
+then it was tied up in a cloth, and set aside to be boiled. Christmas
+Day came, and the English chaplain preached us a practical sermon on
+"Goodwill towards men." That was his text, and his sermon was but a
+swelling out of the words just as rice is swelled to thrice its size by
+boiling.
+
+We dined. There was an attempt at roast beef--it was more like baked
+leather. The event of the dinner was to be the bringing in and eating of
+the plum-pudding.
+
+Surely all would be perfect. We could answer for the materials and the
+mixing. The English lady could guarantee the boiling. She had seen the
+plum-pudding "on the boil," and had given strict injunctions as to the
+length of time during which it was to boil.
+
+But, alas! the pudding was not right when brought on the table. It was
+not enveloped in lambent blue flame--it was not crackling in the burning
+brandy. It was sent in dry, and the brandy arrived separate in a white
+sauce-boat, hot indeed, and sugared, but not on fire.
+
+There ensued outcries of disappointment. Attempts were made to redress
+the mistake by setting fire to the brandy in a spoon, but the spoon was
+cold. The flame would not catch, and finally, with a sigh, we had to
+take our plum-pudding as served.
+
+"I say, chaplain!" exclaimed Jameson, "practice is better than precept,
+is it not?"
+
+"To be sure it is."
+
+"You gave us a deuced good sermon. It was short, as it ought to be; but
+I'll go better on it, I'll practise where you preached, and have larks,
+too!"
+
+Then Jameson started from table with a plate of plum-pudding in one hand
+and the sauce-boat in the other. "By Jove!" he said, "I'll teach these
+fellows to open their eyes. I'll show them that we know how to feed. We
+can't turn out scarabs and cartouches in England, that are no good to
+anyone, but we can produce the finest roast beef in the world, and do a
+thing or two in puddings."
+
+And he left the room.
+
+We paid no heed to anything Jameson said or did. We were rather relieved
+that he was out of the room, and did not concern ourselves about the
+"larks" he promised himself, and which we were quite certain would be as
+insipid as were the quails of the Israelites.
+
+In ten minutes he was back, laughing and red in the face.
+
+"I've had splitting fun," he said. "You should have been there."
+
+"Where, Jameson?"
+
+"Why, outside. There were a lot of old moolahs and other hoky-pokies
+sitting and contemplating the setting sun and all that sort of thing,
+and I gave Mustapha the pudding. I told him I wished him to try our
+great national English dish, on which her Majesty the Queen dines daily.
+Well, he ate and enjoyed it, by George. Then I said, 'Old fellow, it's
+uncommonly dry, so you must take the sauce to it.' He asked if it was
+only sauce--flour and water. 'It's sauce, by Jove,' said I, 'a little
+sugar to it; no bar on the sugar, Musty.' So I put the boat to his lips
+and gave him a pull. By George, you should have seen his face! It was
+just thundering fun. 'I've done you at last, old Musty,' I said. 'It is
+best cognac.' He gave me such a look! He'd have eaten me, I believe--and
+he walked away. It was just splitting fun. I wish you had been there to
+see it."
+
+I went out after dinner, to take my usual stroll along the river-bank,
+and to watch the evening lights die away on the columns and obelisk. On
+my return I saw at once that something had happened which had produced
+commotion among the servants of the hotel. I had reached the salon
+before I inquired what was the matter.
+
+The boy who was taking the coffee round said: "Mustapha is dead. He cut
+his throat at the door of the mosque. He could not help himself. He had
+broken his vow."
+
+I looked at Jameson without a word. Indeed, I could not speak; I was
+choking. The little American lady was trembling, the English lady
+crying. The gentlemen stood silent in the windows, not speaking a word.
+
+Jameson's colour changed. He was honestly distressed, uneasy, and tried
+to cover his confusion with bravado and a jest.
+
+"After all," he said, "it is only a nigger the less."
+
+"Nigger!" said the American lady. "He was no nigger, but an Egyptian."
+
+"Oh! I don't pretend to distinguish between your blacks and whity-browns
+any more than I do between your cartouches," returned Jameson.
+
+"He was no black," said the American lady, standing up. "But I do mean
+to say that I consider you an utterly unredeemed black----"
+
+"My dear, don't," said the Englishwoman, drawing the other down. "It's
+no good. The thing is done. He meant no harm."
+
+
+IV
+
+I could not sleep. My blood was in a boil. I felt that I could not speak
+to Jameson again. He would have to leave Luxor. That was tacitly
+understood among us. Coventry was the place to which he would be
+consigned.
+
+I tried to finish in a little sketch I had made in my notebook when I
+was in my room, but my hand shook, and I was constrained to lay my
+pencil aside. Then I took up an Egyptian grammar, but could not fix my
+mind on study. The hotel was very still. Everyone had gone to bed at an
+early hour that night, disinclined for conversation. No one was moving.
+There was a lamp in the passage; it was partly turned down. Jameson's
+room was next to mine. I heard him stir as he undressed, and talk to
+himself. Then he was quiet. I wound up my watch, and emptying my pocket,
+put my purse under the pillow. I was not in the least heavy with sleep.
+If I did go to bed I should not be able to close my eyes. But then--if I
+sat up I could do nothing.
+
+I was about leisurely to undress, when I heard a sharp cry, or
+exclamation of mingled pain and alarm, from the adjoining room. In
+another moment there was a rap at my door. I opened, and Jameson came
+in. He was in his night-shirt, and looking agitated and frightened.
+
+"Look here, old fellow," said he in a shaking voice, "there is Musty in
+my room. He has been hiding there, and just as I dropped asleep he ran
+that knife of yours into my throat."
+
+"My knife?"
+
+"Yes--that pruning-knife you gave him, you know. Look here--I must have
+the place sewn up. Do go for a doctor, there's a good chap."
+
+"Where is the place?"
+
+"Here on my right gill."
+
+Jameson turned his head to the left, and I raised the lamp. There was no
+wound of any sort there.
+
+I told him so.
+
+"Oh, yes! That's fine--I tell you I felt his knife go in."
+
+"Nonsense, you were dreaming."
+
+"Dreaming! Not I. I saw Musty as distinctly as I now see you."
+
+"This is a delusion, Jameson," I replied. "The poor fellow is dead."
+
+"Oh, that's very fine," said Jameson. "It is not the first of April, and
+I don't believe the yarns that you've been spinning. You tried to make
+believe he was dead, but I know he is not. He has got into my room, and
+he made a dig at my throat with your pruning-knife."
+
+"I'll go into your room with you."
+
+"Do so. But he's gone by this time. Trust him to cut and run."
+
+I followed Jameson, and looked about. There was no trace of anyone
+beside himself having been in the room. Moreover, there was no place but
+the nut-wood wardrobe in the bedroom in which anyone could have secreted
+himself. I opened this and showed that it was empty.
+
+After a while I pacified Jameson, and induced him to go to bed again,
+and then I left his room. I did not now attempt to court sleep. I wrote
+letters with a hand not the steadiest, and did my accounts.
+
+As the hour approached midnight I was again startled by a cry from the
+adjoining room, and in another moment Jameson was at my door.
+
+"That blooming fellow Musty is in my room still," said he. "He has been
+at my throat again."
+
+"Nonsense," I said. "You are labouring under hallucinations. You locked
+your door."
+
+"Oh, by Jove, yes--of course I did; but, hang it, in this hole, neither
+doors nor windows fit, and the locks are no good, and the bolts nowhere.
+He got in again somehow, and if I had not started up the moment I felt
+the knife, he'd have done for me. He would, by George. I wish I had a
+revolver."
+
+I went into Jameson's room. Again he insisted on my looking at his
+throat.
+
+"It's very good of you to say there is no wound," said he. "But you
+won't gull me with words. I felt his knife in my windpipe, and if I had
+not jumped out of bed----"
+
+"You locked your door. No one could enter. Look in the glass, there is
+not even a scratch. This is pure imagination."
+
+"I'll tell you what, old fellow, I won't sleep in that room again.
+Change with me, there's a charitable buffer. If you don't believe in
+Musty, Musty won't hurt you, maybe--anyhow you can try if he's solid or
+a phantom. Blow me if the knife felt like a phantom."
+
+"I do not quite see my way to changing rooms," I replied; "but this I
+will do for you. If you like to go to bed again in your own apartment, I
+will sit up with you till morning."
+
+"All right," answered Jameson. "And if Musty comes in again, let out at
+him and do not spare him. Swear that."
+
+I accompanied Jameson once more to his bedroom, Little as I liked the
+man, I could not deny him my presence and assistance at this time. It
+was obvious that his nerves were shaken by what had occurred, and he
+felt his relation to Mustapha much more than he cared to show. The
+thought that he had been the cause of the poor fellow's death preyed on
+his mind, never strong, and now it was upset with imaginary terrors.
+
+I gave up letter writing, and brought my Baedeker's _Upper Egypt_ into
+Jameson's room, one of the best of all guide-books, and one crammed with
+information. I seated myself near the light, and with my back to the
+bed, on which the young man had once more flung himself.
+
+"I say," said Jameson, raising his head, "is it too late for a
+brandy-and-soda?"
+
+"Everyone is in bed."
+
+"What lazy dogs they are. One never can get anything one wants here."
+
+"Well, try to go to sleep."
+
+He tossed from side to side for some time, but after a while, either he
+was quiet, or I was engrossed in my Baedeker, and I heard nothing till a
+clock struck twelve. At the last stroke I heard a snort and then a gasp
+and a cry from the bed. I started up, and looked round. Jameson was
+slipping out with his feet onto the floor.
+
+"Confound you!" said he angrily, "you are a fine watch, you are, to let
+Mustapha steal in on tiptoe whilst you are cartouching and all that sort
+of rubbish. He was at me again, and if I had not been sharp he'd have
+cut my throat. I won't go to bed any more!"
+
+"Well, sit up. But I assure you no one has been here."
+
+"That's fine. How can you tell? You had your back to me, and these
+devils of fellows steal about like cats. You can't hear them till they
+are at you."
+
+It was of no use arguing with Jameson, so I let him have his way.
+
+"I can feel all the three places in my throat where he ran the knife
+in," said he. "And--don't you notice?--I speak with difficulty."
+
+So we sat up together the rest of the night. He became more reasonable
+as dawn came on, and inclined to admit that he had been a prey to
+fancies.
+
+The day passed very much as did others--Jameson was dull and sulky.
+After dejeuner he sat on at table when the ladies had risen and retired,
+and the gentlemen had formed in knots at the window, discussing what was
+to be done in the afternoon.
+
+Suddenly Jameson, whose head had begun to nod, started up with an oath
+and threw down his chair.
+
+"You fellows!" he said, "you are all in league against me. You let that
+Mustapha come in without a word, and try to stick his knife into me."
+
+[Illustration: "YOU LET THAT MUSTAPHA COME IN, AND TRY AND STICK HIS
+KNIFE INTO ME."]
+
+"He has not been here."
+
+"It's a plant. You are combined to bully me and drive me away. You don't
+like me. You have engaged Mustapha to murder me. This is the fourth time
+he has tried to cut my throat, and in the _salle a manger_, too, with
+you all standing round. You ought to be ashamed to call yourselves
+Englishmen. I'll go to Cairo. I'll complain."
+
+It really seemed that the feeble brain of Jameson was affected. The
+Oxford don undertook to sit up in the room the following night.
+
+The young man was fagged and sleep-weary, but no sooner did his eyes
+close, and clouds form about his head, than he was brought to
+wakefulness again by the same fancy or dream. The Oxford don had more
+trouble with him on the second night than I had on the first, for his
+lapses into sleep were more frequent, and each such lapse was succeeded
+by a start and a panic.
+
+The next day he was worse, and we felt that he could no longer be left
+alone. The third night the attache sat up to watch him.
+
+Jameson had now sunk into a sullen mood. He would not speak, except to
+himself, and then only to grumble.
+
+During the night, without being aware of it, the young attache, who had
+taken a couple of magazines with him to read, fell asleep. When he went
+off he did not know. He woke just before dawn, and in a spasm of terror
+and self-reproach saw that Jameson's chair was empty.
+
+Jameson was not on his bed. He could not be found in the hotel.
+
+At dawn he was found--dead, at the door of the mosque, with his throat
+cut.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE JOE GANDER
+
+
+"There's no good in him," said his stepmother, "not a mossul!" With
+these words she thrust little Joe forward by applying her knee to the
+small of his back, and thereby jerking him into the middle of the school
+before the master. "There's no making nothing out of him, whack him as
+you will."
+
+Little Joe Lambole was a child of ten, dressed in second-hand, nay,
+third-hand garments that did not fit. His coat had been a soldier's
+scarlet uniform, that had gone when discarded to a dealer, who had dealt
+it to a carter, and when the carter had worn it out it was reduced and
+adapted to the wear of the child. The nether garments had, in like
+manner, served a full-grown man till worn out; then they had been cut
+down at the knees. Though shortened in leg, they maintained their former
+copiousness of seat, and served as an inexhaustible receptacle for dust.
+Often as little Joe was "licked" there issued from the dense mass of
+drapery clouds of dust. It was like beating a puff-ball.
+
+"Only a seven-month child," said Mrs. Lambole contemptuously, "born
+without his nails on fingers and toes; they growed later. His wits have
+never come right, and a deal, a deal of larruping it will take to make
+'em grow. Use the rod; we won't grumble at you for doing so."
+
+Little Joe Lambole when he came into the world had not been expected to
+live. He was a poor, small, miserable baby, that could not roar, but
+whimpered. He had been privately baptised directly he was born, because,
+at the first, Mrs. Lambole said, "The child is mine, though it be such
+a creetur, and I wouldn't like it, according, to be buried like a dog."
+
+He was called Joseph. The scriptural Joseph had been sold as a bondman
+into Egypt; this little Joseph seemed to have been brought into the
+world to be a slave. In all propriety he ought to have died as a baby,
+and that happy consummation was almost desired, but he disappointed
+expectations and lived. His mother died soon after, and his father
+married again, and his father and stepmother loved him, doubtless; but
+love is manifested in many ways, and the Lamboles showed theirs in a
+rough way, by slaps and blows and kicks. The father was ashamed of him
+because he was a weakling, and the stepmother because he was ugly, and
+was not her own child. He was a meagre little fellow, with a long neck
+and a white face and sunken cheeks, a pigeon breast, and a big stomach.
+He walked with his head forward and his great pale blue eyes staring
+before him into the far distance, as if he were always looking out of
+the world. His walk was a waddle, and he tumbled over every obstacle,
+because he never looked where he was going, always looked to something
+beyond the horizon.
+
+Because of his walk and his long neck, and staring eyes and big stomach,
+the village children called him "Gander Joe" or "Joe Gander"; and his
+parents were not sorry, for they were ashamed that such a creature
+should be known as a Lambole.
+
+The Lamboles were a sturdy, hearty people, with cheeks like quarrender
+apples, and bones set firm and knit with iron sinews. They were a
+hard-working, practical people who fattened pigs and kept poultry at
+home. Lambole was a roadmaker. In breaking stones one day a bit of one
+had struck his eye and blinded it. After that he wore a black patch upon
+it. He saw well enough out of the other; he never missed seeing his own
+interests. Lambole could have made a few pence with his son had his son
+been worth anything. He could have sent him to scrape the road, and
+bring the manure off it in a shovel to his garden. But Joe never took
+heartily to scraping the dung up. In a word, the boy was good for
+nothing.
+
+He had hair like tow, and a little straw hat on his head with the top
+torn, so that the hair forced its way out, and as he walked the top
+bobbed about like the lid of a boiling saucepan.
+
+When the whortleberries were ripe in June, Mrs. Lambole sent Joe out
+with other children to collect the berries in a tin can; she sold them
+for fourpence a quart, and any child could earn eightpence a day in
+whortleberry time; one that was active might earn a shilling.
+
+But Joe would not remain with the other children. They teased him,
+imitated ganders and geese, and poked out their necks and uttered sounds
+in imitation of the voices of these birds. Moreover, they stole the
+berries he had picked, and put them into their own cans.
+
+When Joe Gander left them and found himself alone in the woods, then he
+lay down among the brown heather and green fern, and looked up through
+the oak leaves at the sky, and listened to the singing of the birds. Oh,
+wondrous music of the woods! the hum of the summer air among the leaves,
+the drone of the bees about the flowers, the twittering and fluting and
+piping of the finches and blackbirds and thrushes, and the cool soft
+cooing of the wood pigeons, like the lowing of aerial oxen; then the
+tapping of the green woodpecker and a glimpse of its crimson head, like
+a carbuncle running up the tree trunk, and the powdering down of old
+husks of fir cones or of the tender rind of the topmost shoot of a
+Scottish pine; for aloft a red squirrel was barking a beautiful tree out
+of wantonness and frolic. A rabbit would come forth from the bracken and
+sit up in the sun, and clean its face with the fore paws and stroke its
+long ears; then, seeing the soiled red coat, would skip up--little Joe
+lying very still--and screw its nose and turn its eyes from side to
+side, and skip nearer again, till it was quite close to Joe Gander; and
+then the boy laughed, and the rabbit was gone with a flash of white
+tail.
+
+Happy days! days of listening to mysterious music, of looking into
+mysteries of sun and foliage, of spiritual intercourse with the great
+mother-soul of nature.
+
+In the evenings, when Gander Joe came without his can, or with his can
+empty, he would say to his stepmother: "Oh, steppy! it was so nice;
+everything was singing."
+
+"I'll make you sing in the chorus too!" cried Mrs. Lambole, and laid a
+stick across his shoulders. Experience had taught her the futility of
+dusting at a lower level.
+
+Then Gander Joe cried and writhed, and promised to be more diligent in
+picking whortleberries in future. But when he went again into the wood
+it was again the same. The spell of the wood spirits was on him; he
+forgot about the berries at fourpence a quart, and lay on his back and
+listened. And the whole wood whispered and sang to him and consoled him
+for his beating, and the wind played lullabies among the fir spines and
+whistled in the grass, and the aspen clashed its myriad tiny cymbals
+together, producing an orchestra of sound that filled the soul of the
+dreaming boy with love and delight and unutterable yearning.
+
+It fared no better in autumn, when the blackberry season set in. Joe
+went with his can to an old quarry where the brambles sent their runners
+over the masses of rubble thrown out from the pits, and warmed and
+ripened their fruit on the hot stones. It was a marvel to see how the
+blackberries grew in this deserted quarry; how large the fruit swelled,
+how thick they were--like mulberries. On the road side of the quarry was
+a belt of pines, and the sun drew out of their bark scents of
+unsurpassed sweetness. About the blackberries hovered spotted white and
+yellow and black moths, beautiful as butterflies. Butterflies did not
+fail either. The red admiral was there, resting on the bark of the
+trees, asleep in the sun with wings expanded, or drifting about the
+clumps of yellow ragwort, doubtful whether to perch or not.
+
+Here, hidden behind the trees, among the leaves of overgrown rubble, was
+a one-story cottage of wood and clay, covered with thatch, in which
+lived Roger Gale, the postman.
+
+Roger Gale had ten miles to walk every morning, delivering letters, and
+the same number of miles every evening, for which twenty miles he
+received the liberal pay of six shillings a week. He had to be at the
+post office at half-past six in the morning to receive the letters, and
+at seven in the evening to deliver them. His work took him about six
+hours. The middle of the day he had to himself. Roger Gale was an old
+soldier, and enjoyed a pension. He occupied himself, when at home, as a
+shoemaker; but the walks took so much out of him, being an old man, that
+he had not the strength and energy to do much cobbling when at home.
+Therefore he idled a good deal, and he amused his idle hours with a
+violin. Now, when Joe Gander came to the quarry before the return of the
+postman from his rounds, he picked blackberries; but no sooner had Roger
+Gale unlocked his door, taken down his fiddle, and drawn the bow across
+the strings, than Joe set down the can and listened. And when old Roger
+began to play an air from the _Daughter of the Regiment_, then Joe crept
+towards his cottage in little stages of wonderment and hunger to hear
+more and hear better, much in the same way as now and again in the wood
+the inquisitive rabbits had approached his red jacket. Presently Joe was
+seated on the doorstep, with his ear against the wooden door, and the
+blackberries and the can, and stepmother's orders and father's stick,
+and his hard bed and his meagre meals, even the whole world had passed
+away as a scroll that is rolled up and laid aside, and he lived only in
+the world of music.
+
+Though his great eyes were wide he saw nothing through them; though the
+rain began to fall, and the north-east wind to blow, he felt nothing: he
+had but one faculty that was awake, and that was hearing.
+
+One day Roger came to his door and opened it suddenly, so that the
+child, leaning against it, fell across his threshold.
+
+"Whom have we here? What is this? What do you want?" asked the postman.
+
+Then Gander Joe stood up, craning his long neck and staring out of his
+goggle eyes, with his rough flaxen hair standing up in a ruffle above
+his head and his great stomach protruded, and said nothing. So Roger
+burst out laughing. But he did not kick him off the step; he gave him a
+bit of bread and a drop of cider, and presently drew from the boy the
+confession that he had been listening to the fiddle. This was flattering
+to the postman, and it was the initiation of a friendship between them.
+
+But when Joe came home with an empty can and said: "Oh, steppy, Master
+Roger Gale did fiddle so beautiful!" the woman said: "Fiddle! I'll
+fiddle your back pretty smartly, you idle vagabond"; and she was a
+truthful woman who never fell short of her word.
+
+To break him of his bad habits--that is, of his dreaminess and
+uselessness--Mrs. Lambole took Joe to school.
+
+At school he had a bad time of it. He could not learn the letters. He
+was mentally incapable of doing a subtraction sum. He sat on a bench
+staring at the teacher, and was unable to answer an ordinary question
+what the lesson was about. The school-children tormented him, the
+monitor scolded, and the master beat. Then little Joe Gander took to
+absenting himself from school. He was sent off every morning by his
+stepmother, but instead of going to the school he went to the cottage in
+the quarry, and listened to the fiddle of Roger Gale.
+
+Little Joe got hold of an old box, and with a knife he cut holes in it;
+and he fashioned a bridge, and then a handle, and he strung horsehair
+over the latter, and made a bow, and drew very faint sounds from this
+improvised violin, that made the postman laugh, but which gave great
+pleasure to Joe. The sound that issued from his instrument was like the
+humming of flies, but he got distinct notes out of his strings, though
+the notes were faint.
+
+After he had played truant for some time his father heard what he had
+done, and he beat the boy till he was like a battered apple that had
+been flung from the tree by a storm upon a road.
+
+For a while Joe did not venture to the quarry except on Saturdays and
+Sundays. He was forbidden by his father to go to church, because the
+organ and the singing there drove him half crazed. When a beautiful,
+touching melody was played his eyes became clouded and the tears ran
+down his cheeks; and when the organ played the "Hallelujah Chorus," or
+some grand and stirring march, his eyes flashed, and his little body
+quivered, and he made such faces that the congregation were disturbed
+and the parson remonstrated with his mother. The child was clearly
+imbecile, and unfit to attend divine worship.
+
+Mr. Lambole got an idea into his head, he would bring up Joe to be a
+butcher, and he informed Joe that he was going to place him with a
+gentleman of that profession in town. Joe cried. He turned sick at the
+sight of blood, and the smell of raw meat was abhorrent to him. But
+Joe's likings were of no account with his father, and he took him to the
+town and placed him with a butcher there. He was invested in a blue
+smock, and was informed that his duties would consist in taking meat
+about to the customers. Joe was left. It was the first time he had been
+from home, and he cried himself to sleep the first night, and he cried
+all the next day when sent around with meat on his shoulder.
+
+Now on his journey through the streets he had to pass the window of a
+toy-shop. In the window were dolls and horses and little carts. For
+these Joe did not care, but there were also some little violins, some
+high priced, and some very low, and over these Joe lingered with loving,
+covetous eyes. There was one little fiddle to which his heart went out,
+that cost only three shillings and sixpence. Each day, as he passed the
+shop, he was drawn to it, and stood looking in, and longed daily more
+ardently than on the previous day for this three-and-sixpenny violin.
+
+One day he was so lost in admiration and on the schemes he framed as to
+how he might eventually become possessed of the instrument, that he was
+unconscious of some boys stealing the meat out of the sort of trough on
+his shoulder in which he carried it about.
+
+This was the climax of his misdeeds--he had been reprimanded for his
+blunders, delivering the wrong meat at the customers' doors; for his
+dilatory ways in going on his errands. The butcher could endure him no
+more, and sent him home to his father, who thrashed him, as his welcome.
+
+But he carried home with him the haunting recollections of that
+beautiful little red fiddle, with its fine black keys. The bow, he
+remembered, was strung with white horsehair. Joe had now a fixed
+ambition--something to live for. He would be perfectly happy if he could
+have that three-shillings-and-sixpenny fiddle. But how were three
+shillings and sixpence to be earned?
+
+He confided his difficulty to postman Roger Gale, and Roger Gale said he
+would consider the matter.
+
+A couple of days after the postman said to Joe--
+
+"Gander, they want a lad to sweep the leaves in the drive at the great
+house. The squire's coachman told me, and I mentioned you. You'll have
+to do it on Saturday, and be paid sixpence."
+
+Joe's face brightened. He went home and told his stepmother.
+
+"For once you are going to be useful," said Mrs. Lambole. "Very well,
+you shall sweep the drive; then fivepence will come to us, and you shall
+have a penny every week to spend in sweetstuff at the post office."
+
+Joe tried to reckon how long it would be before he could purchase the
+fiddle, but the calculation was beyond his powers; so he asked the
+postman, who assured him it would take him forty weeks--that is, about
+ten months.
+
+Little Joe was not cast down. What was time with such an end in view?
+Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, and this was only forty weeks
+for a fiddle!
+
+Joe was diligent every Saturday sweeping the drive. He was ordered
+whenever a carriage entered to dive behind the rhododendrons and laurels
+and disappear. He was of a too ragged and idiotic appearance to show in
+a gentleman's grounds.
+
+Once or twice he encountered the squire and stood quaking, with his
+fingers spread out, his mouth and eyes open, and the broom at his feet.
+The squire spoke kindly to him, but Joe Gander was too frightened to
+reply.
+
+"Poor fellow," said the squire to the gardener. "I suppose it is a
+charity to employ him, but I must say I should have preferred someone
+else with his wits about him. I will see to having him sent to an asylum
+for idiots in which I have some interest. There's no knowing," said the
+squire, "no knowing but that with wholesome food, cleanliness, and
+kindness his feeble mind may be got to understand that two and two make
+four, which I learn he has not yet mastered."
+
+Every Saturday evening Joe Gander brought his sixpence home to his
+stepmother. The woman was not so regular in allowing him his penny out.
+
+"Your edication costs such a lot of money," she said.
+
+"Steppy, need I go to school any more?" He never could frame his mouth
+to call her mother.
+
+"Of course you must. You haven't passed your standard."
+
+"But I don't think that I ever shall."
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Lambole, "what masses of good food you do eat. You're
+perfectly insatiable. You cost us more than it would to keep a cow."
+
+"Oh, steppy, I won't eat so much if I may have my penny!"
+
+"Very well. Eating such a lot does no one good. If you will be content
+with one slice of bread for breakfast instead of two, and the same for
+supper, you shall have your penny. If you are so very hungry you can
+always get a swede or a mangold out of Farmer Eggins's field. Swedes and
+mangolds are cooling to the blood and sit light on the stomick," said
+Mrs. Lambole.
+
+So the compact was made; but it nearly killed Joe. His cheeks and chest
+fell in deeper and deeper, and his stomach protruded more than ever. His
+legs seemed hardly able to support him, and his great pale blue
+wandering eyes appeared ready to start out of his head like the horns of
+a snail. As for his voice, it was thin and toneless, like the notes on
+his improvised fiddle, on which he played incessantly.
+
+"The child will always be a discredit to us," said Lambole. "He don't
+look like a human child. He don't think and feel like a Christian. The
+shovelfuls of dung he might have brought to cover our garden if he had
+only given his heart to it!"
+
+"I've heard of changelings," said Mrs. Lambole; "and with this creetur
+on our hands I mainly believe the tale. They do say that the pixies
+steal away the babies of Christian folk, and put their own bantlings in
+their stead. The only way to find out is to heat a poker red-hot and ram
+it down the throat of the child; and when you do that the door opens,
+and in comes the pixy mother and runs off with her own child, and leaves
+your proper babe behind. That's what we ought to ha' done wi' Joe."
+
+"I doubt, wife, the law wouldn't have upheld us," said Lambole,
+thrusting hot coals back on to the hearth with his foot.
+
+"I don't suppose it would," said Mrs. Lambole. "And yet we call this a
+land of liberty! Law ain't made for the poor, but for the rich."
+
+"It is wickedness," argued the father. "It is just the same with
+colts--all wickedness. You must drive it out with the stick."
+
+And now a great temptation fell on little Gander Joe. The squire and his
+family were at home, and the daughter of the house, Miss Amory, was
+musical. Her mother played on the piano and the young lady on the
+violin. The fashion for ladies to play on this instrument had come in,
+and Miss Amory had taken lessons from the best masters in town. She
+played vastly better than poor Roger Gale, and she played to an
+accompaniment.
+
+Sometimes whilst Joe was sweeping he heard the music; then he stole
+nearer and nearer to the house, hiding behind rhododendron bushes, and
+listening with eyes and mouth and nostrils and ears. The music exercised
+on him an irresistible attraction. He forgot his obligation to work; he
+forgot the strict orders he had received not to approach the
+garden-front of the house. The music acted on him like a spell.
+Occasionally he was roused from his dream by the gardener, who boxed his
+ears, knocked him over, and bade him get back to his sweeping. Once a
+servant came out from Miss Amory to tell the ragged little boy not to
+stand in front of the drawing-room window staring in. On another
+occasion he was found by Miss Amory crouched behind a rose bush outside
+her boudoir, listening whilst she practised.
+
+No one supposed that the music drew him. They thought him a fool, and
+that he had the inquisitiveness of the half-witted to peer in at windows
+and see the pretty sights within.
+
+He was reprimanded, and threatened with dismissal. The gardener
+complained to the lad's father and advised a good hiding, such as Joe
+should not forget.
+
+"These sort of chaps," said the gardener, "have no senses like rational
+beings, except only the feeling, and you must teach them as you feed the
+Polar bears--with the end of a stick."
+
+One day Miss Amory, seeing how thin and hollow-eyed the child was, and
+hearing him cough, brought him out a cup of hot coffee and some bread.
+
+He took it without a word, only pulling off his torn straw hat and
+throwing it at his feet, exposing the full shock of tow-like hair; then
+he stared at her out of his great eyes, speechless.
+
+"Joe," she said, "poor little man, how old are you?"
+
+"Dun'now," he answered.
+
+"Can you read and write?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor do sums?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"Fiddle."
+
+"Have you got a fiddle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should like to see it, and hear you play."
+
+Next day was Sunday. Little Joe forgot about the day, and forgot that
+Miss Amory would probably be in church in the morning. She had asked to
+see his fiddle, so in the morning he took it and went down with it to
+the park. The church was within the grounds, and he had to pass it. As
+he went by he heard the roll of the organ and the strains of the choir.
+He stopped to hearken, then went up the steps of the churchyard,
+listening. A desire came on him to catch the air on his improvised
+violin, and he put it to his shoulder and drew his bow across the
+slender cords. The sound was very faint, so faint as to be drowned by
+the greater volume of the organ and the choir. Nevertheless he could
+hear the feeble tones close to his ear, and his heart danced at the
+pleasure of playing to an accompaniment, like Miss Amory. The choir, the
+congregation, were singing the Advent hymn to Luther's tune--
+
+    "Great God, what do I see and hear?
+      The end of things created."
+
+Little Joe, playing his inaudible instrument, came creeping up the
+avenue, treading on the fallen yellow lime leaves, passing between the
+tombstones, drawn on by the solemn, beautiful music. Presently he stood
+in the porch, then he went on; he was unconscious of everything but the
+music and the joy of playing with it; he walked on softly into the
+church without even removing his ragged straw cap, though the squire and
+the squire's wife, and the rector and the reverend the Mrs. Rector, and
+the parish churchwarden and the rector's churchwarden, and the overseer
+and the waywarden, and all the farmers and their wives were present. He
+had forgotten about his broken cap in the delight that made the tears
+fill his eyes and trickle over his pale cheeks.
+
+Then when with a shock the parson and the churchwardens saw the ragged
+urchin coming up the nave fiddling, with his hat on, regardless of the
+sacredness of the place, and above all of the sacredness of the presence
+of the squire, J.P. and D.L., the rector coughed very loud and looked
+hard at his churchwarden, Farmer Eggins, who turned red as the sun in a
+November fog, and rose. At the same instant the people's churchwarden
+rose, and both advanced upon Joe Gander from opposite sides of the
+church.
+
+At the moment that they touched him the organ and the singing ceased;
+and it was to Joe a sudden wakening from a golden dream to a black and
+raw reality. He looked up with dazed face first at one man, then at the
+other: both their faces blazed with equal indignation; both were
+equally speechless with wrath. They conducted him, each holding an arm,
+out of the porch and down the avenue. Joe heard indistinctly behind him
+the droning of the rector's voice continuing the prayers. He looked back
+over his shoulder and saw the faces of the school-children straining
+after him through the open door from their places near it. On reaching
+the steps--there was a flight of five leading to the road--the people's
+churchwarden uttered a loud and disgusted "Ugh!" then with his heavy
+hand slapped the head of the child towards the parson's churchwarden,
+who with his still heavier hand boxed it back again; then the people's
+churchwarden gave him a blow which sent him staggering forward, and this
+was supplemented by a kick from the parson's churchwarden, which sent
+Joe Gander spinning down the five steps at once and cast him prostrate
+into the road, where he fell and crushed his extemporised violin.
+
+Then the churchwardens turned, blew their noses, and re-entered the
+church, where they sat out the rest of the service, grateful in their
+hearts that they had been enabled that day to show that their office was
+no sinecure.
+
+The churchwardens were unaware that in banging and kicking the little
+boy out of the churchyard and into the road they had flung him so that
+he fell with his head upon the curbstone of the footpath, which stone
+was of slate, and sharp. They did not find this out through the prayers,
+nor through the sermon. But when the whole congregation left the church
+they were startled to find little Joe Gander insensible, with his head
+cut, and a pool of blood on the footway. The squire was shocked, as were
+his wife and daughter, and the churchwardens were in consternation.
+Fortunately the squire's stables were near the church, and there was a
+running fountain there, so that water was procured, and the child
+revived.
+
+Mrs. Amory had in the meantime hastened home and returned with a roll of
+diachylon plaster and a pair of small scissors. Strips of the adhesive
+plaster were applied to the wound, and the boy was soon sufficiently
+recovered to stand on his feet, when the churchwardens very
+considerately undertook to march him home. On reaching his cottage the
+churchwardens described what had taken place, painting the insult
+offered to the worshippers in the most hideous colours, and representing
+the accident of the cut as due to the violent resistance offered by the
+culprit to their ejectment of him. Then each pressed a half-crown into
+the hand of Mr. Lambole and departed to his dinner.
+
+"Now then, young shaver," exclaimed the father, "at your pranks again!
+How often have I told you not to go intruding into a place of worship?
+Church ain't for such as you. If you had'nt been punished a bit already,
+wouldn't I larrup you neither? Oh, no!"
+
+Little Joe's head was bad for some days. His cheeks were flushed and his
+eyes bright, and he talked strangely--he who was usually so silent. What
+troubled him was the loss of his fiddle; he did not know what had become
+of it, whether it had been stolen or confiscated. He asked after it, and
+when at last it was produced, smashed to chips, with the strings torn
+and hanging loose about it like the cordage of a broken vessel, he cried
+bitterly. Miss Amory came to the cottage to see him, and finding father
+and stepmother out, went in and pressed five shillings into his hand.
+Then he laughed with delight, and clapped his hands, and hid the money
+away in his pocket, but he said nothing, and Miss Amory went away
+convinced that the child was half a fool. But little Joe had sense in
+his head, though his head was different from those of others; he knew
+that now he had the money wherewith to buy the beautiful fiddle he had
+seen in the shop window many months before, and to get which he had
+worked and denied himself food.
+
+When Miss Amory was gone, and his stepmother had not returned, he opened
+the door of the cottage and stole out. He was afraid of being seen, so
+he crept along in the hedge, and when he thought anyone was coming he
+got through a gate or lay down in a ditch, till he was some way on his
+road to the town. Then he ran till he was tired. He had a bandage round
+his head, and, as his head was hot, he took the rag off, dipped it in
+water, and tied it round his head again. Never in his life had his mind
+been clearer than it was now, for now he had a distinct purpose, and an
+object easily attainable, before him. He held the money in his hand, and
+looked at it, and kissed it; then pressed it to his beating heart, then
+ran on. He lost breath. He could run no more. He sat down in the hedge
+and gasped. The perspiration was streaming off his face. Then he thought
+he heard steps coming fast along the road he had run, and as he feared
+pursuit, he got up and ran on.
+
+He went through the village four miles from home just as the children
+were leaving school, and when they saw him some of the elder cried out
+that here was "Gander Joe! quack! quack! Joe the Gander! quack! quack!
+quack!" and the little ones joined in the banter. The boy ran on, though
+hot and exhausted, and with his head swimming, to escape their
+merriment.
+
+He got some way beyond the village when he came to a turnpike. There he
+felt dizzy, and he timidly asked if he might have a piece of bread. He
+would pay for it if they would change a shilling. The woman at the 'pike
+pitied the pale, hollow-eyed child, and questioned him; but her
+questions bewildered him, and he feared she would send him home, so that
+he either answered nothing, or in a way which made her think him
+distraught. She gave him some bread and water, and watched him going on
+towards the town till he was out of sight. The day was already
+declining; it would be dark by the time he reached the town. But he did
+not think of that. He did not consider where he would sleep, whether he
+would have strength to return ten miles to his home. He thought only of
+the beautiful red violin with the yellow bridge hung in the shop window,
+and offered for three shillings and sixpence. Three-and-sixpence! Why,
+he had five shillings. He had money to spend on other things beside the
+fiddle. He had been sadly disappointed about his savings from the weekly
+sixpence. He had asked for them; he had earned them, not by his work
+only, but by his abstention from two pieces of bread per diem. When he
+asked for the money, his stepmother answered that she had put it away in
+the savings bank. If he had it he would waste it on sweetstuff; if it
+were hoarded up it would help him on in life when left to shift for
+himself; and if he died, why it would go towards his burying.
+
+So the child had been disappointed in his calculations, and had worked
+and starved for nothing. Then came Miss Amory with her present, and he
+had run away with that, lest his mother should take it from him to put
+in the savings bank for setting him up in life or for his burying. What
+cared he for either? All his ambition was to have a fiddle, and a fiddle
+was to be had for three-and-sixpence.
+
+Joe Gander was tired. He was fain to sit down at intervals on the heaps
+of stones by the roadside to rest. His shoes were very poor, with soles
+worn through, so that the stones hurt his feet. At this time of the year
+the highways were fresh metalled, and as he stumbled over the newly
+broken stones they cut his soles and his ankles turned. He was footsore
+and weary in body, but his heart never failed him. Before him shone the
+red violin with the yellow bridge, and the beautiful bow strung with
+shining white hair. When he had that all his weariness would pass as a
+dream; he would hunger no more, cry no more, feel no more sickness or
+faintness. He would draw the bow over the strings and play with his
+fingers on the catgut, and the waves of music would thrill and flow,
+and away on those melodious waves his soul would float far from
+trouble, far from want, far from tears, into a shining, sunny world of
+music.
+
+So he picked himself up when he fell, and staggered to his feet from the
+stones on which he rested, and pressed on.
+
+The sun was setting as he entered the town. He went straight to the shop
+he so well remembered, and to his inexpressible delight saw still in the
+window the coveted violin, price three shillings and sixpence.
+
+Then he timidly entered the shop, and with trembling hand held out the
+money.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"It," said the boy. It. To him the shop held but one article. The dolls,
+the wooden horses, the tin steam-engines, the bats, the kites, were
+unconsidered. He had seen and remembered only one thing--the red violin.
+"It," said the boy, and pointed.
+
+When little Joe had got the violin he pressed it to his shoulder, and
+his heart bounded as though it would have burst the pigeon breast. His
+dull eyes lightened, and into his white sunken cheeks shot a hectic
+flame. He went forth with his head erect and with firm foot, holding his
+fiddle to the shoulder and the bow in hand.
+
+He turned his face homeward. Now he would return to father and
+stepmother, to his little bed at the head of the stairs, to his scanty
+meals, to the school, to the sweeping of the park drive, and to his
+stepmother's scoldings and his father's beatings. He had his fiddle, and
+he cared for nothing else.
+
+He waited till he was out of the town before he tried it. Then, when he
+was on a lonely part of the road, he seated himself in the hedge, under
+a holly tree covered with scarlet berries, and tried his instrument.
+Alas! it had hung many years in the shop window, and the catgut was old
+and the glue had lost its tenacity. One string started; then when he
+tried to screw up a second, it sprang as well, and then the bridge
+collapsed and fell. Moreover, the hairs on the bow came out. They were
+unresined.
+
+Then little Joe's spirits gave way. He laid the bow and the violin on
+his knees and began to cry.
+
+As he cried he heard the sound of approaching wheels and the clatter of
+a horse's hoofs.
+
+He heard, but he was immersed in sorrow and did not heed and raise his
+head to see who was coming. Had he done so he would have seen nothing,
+as his eyes were swimming with tears. Looking out of them he saw only as
+one sees who opens his eyes when diving.
+
+"Halloa, young shaver! Dang you! What do you mean giving me such a
+cursed hunt after you as this--you as ain't worth the trouble, eh?"
+
+The voice was that of his father, who drew up before him. Mr. Lambole
+had made inquiries when it was discovered that Joe was lost, first at
+the school, where it was most unlikely he would be found, then at the
+public-house, at the gardener's and the gamekeeper's; then he had looked
+down the well and then up the chimney. After that he went to the cottage
+in the quarry. Roger Gale knew nothing of him. Presently someone coming
+from the nearest village mentioned that he had been seen there;
+whereupon Lambole borrowed Farmer Eggins's trap and went after him,
+peering right and left of the road with his one eye.
+
+Sure enough he had been through the village. He had passed the turnpike.
+The woman there described him accurately as "a sort of a tottle" (fool).
+
+Mr. Lambole was not a pleasant-looking man; he was as solidly built as a
+navvy. The backs of his hands were hairy, and his fist was so hard, and
+his blows so weighty, that for sport he was wont to knock down and kill
+at a blow the oxen sent to Butcher Robbins for slaughter, and that he
+did with his fist alone, hitting the animal on the head between the
+horns, a little forward of the horns. That was a great feat of
+strength, and Lambole was proud of it. He had a long back and short
+legs. The back was not pliable or bending; it was hard, braced with
+sinews tough as hawsers, and supported a pair of shoulders that could
+sustain the weight of an ox.
+
+His face was of a coppery colour, caused by exposure to the air and
+drinking. His hair was light: that was almost the only feature his son
+had derived from him. It was very light, too light for his dark red
+face. It grew about his neck and under his chin as a Newgate collar;
+there was a great deal of it, and his face, encircled by the pale hair,
+looked like an angry moon surrounded by a fog bow.
+
+Mr. Lambole had a queer temper. He bottled up his anger, but when it
+blew the cork out it spurted over and splashed all his home; it flew in
+the faces and soused everyone who came near him.
+
+Mr. Lambole took his son roughly by the arm and lifted him into the tax
+cart. The boy offered no resistance. His spirit was broken, his hopes
+extinguished. For months he had yearned for the red fiddle, price
+three-and-six, and now that, after great pains and privations, he had
+acquired it, the fiddle would not sound.
+
+"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, giving your dear dada such trouble, eh,
+Viper?"
+
+Mr. Lambole turned the horse's head homeward. He had his black patch
+towards the little Gander, seated in the bottom of the cart, hugging his
+wrecked violin. When Mr. Lambole spoke he turned his face round to bring
+the active eye to bear on the shrinking, crouching little figure below.
+
+The Viper made no answer, but looked up. Mr. Lambole turned his face
+away, and the seeing eye watched the horse's ears, and the black patch
+was towards a frightened, piteous, pleading little face, looking up,
+with the light of the evening sky irradiating it, showing how wan it
+was, how hollow were the cheeks, how sunken the eyes, how sharp the
+little pinched nose. The boy put up his arm, that held the bow, and
+wiped his eyes with his sleeve. In so doing he poked his father in the
+ribs with the end of the bow.
+
+"Now, then!" exclaimed Mr. Lambole with an oath, "what darn'd insolence
+be you up to now, Gorilla?"
+
+If he had not held the whip in one hand and the reins in the other he
+would have taken the bow from the child and flung it into the road. He
+contented himself with rapping Joe's head with the end of the whip.
+
+"What's that you've got there, eh?" he asked.
+
+The child replied timidly: "Please, father, a fiddle."
+
+"Where did you get 'un--steal it, eh?"
+
+Joe answered, trembling: "No, dada, I bought it."
+
+"Bought it! Where did you get the money?"
+
+"Miss Amory gave it me."
+
+"How much?"
+
+The Gander answered: "Her gave me five shilling."
+
+"Five shillings! And what did that blessed" (he did not say "blessed,"
+but something quite the reverse) "fiddle cost you?"
+
+"Three-and-sixpence."
+
+"So you've only one-and-six left?"
+
+"I've none, dada."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I spent one shilling on a pipe for you, and sixpence on a
+thimble for stepmother as a present," answered the child, with a flicker
+of hope in his dim eyes that this would propitiate his father.
+
+"Dash me," roared the roadmaker, "if you ain't worse nor Mr.
+Chamberlain, as would rob us of the cheap loaf! What in the name of
+Thunder and Bones do you mean squandering the precious money over
+fooleries like that for? I've got my pipe, black as your back shall be
+before to-morrow, and mother has an old thimble as full o' holes as I'll
+make your skin before the night is much older. Wait till we get home,
+and I'll make pretty music out of that there fiddle! just you see if I
+don't."
+
+Joe shivered in his seat, and his head fell.
+
+Mr. Lambole had a playful wit. He beguiled his journey home by indulging
+in it, and his humour flashed above the head of the child like summer
+lightning. "You're hardly expecting the abundance of the supper that's
+awaiting you," he said, with his black patch glowering down at the
+irresponsive heap in the corner of the cart. "No stinting of the
+dressing, I can tell you. You like your meat well basted, don't you? The
+basting shall not incur your disapproval as insufficient. Underdone? Oh,
+dear, no! Nothing underdone for me. Pickles? I can promise you that
+there is something in pickle for you, hot--very hot and stinging. Plenty
+of capers--mutton and capers. Mashed potatoes? Was the request for that
+on the tip of your tongue? Sorry I can give you only half what you
+want--the mash, not the potatoes. There is nothing comparable in my mind
+to young pig with crackling. The hide is well striped, cut in lines from
+the neck to the tail. I think we'll have crackling on our pig before
+morning."
+
+He now threw his seeing eye into the depths of the cart, to note the
+effect his fun had on the child, but he was disappointed. It had evoked
+no hilarity. Joe had fallen asleep, exhausted by his walk, worn out with
+disappointments, with his head on his fiddle, that lay on his knees. The
+jogging of the cart, the attitude, affected his wound; the plaster had
+given way, and the blood was running over the little red fiddle and
+dripping into its hollow body through the S-hole on each side.
+
+It was too dark for Mr. Lambole to notice this. He set his lips. His
+self-esteem was hurt at the child not relishing his waggery.
+
+Mrs. Lambole observed it when, shortly after, the cart drew up at the
+cottage and she lifted the sleeping child out.
+
+"I must take the cart back to Farmer Eggins," said her husband; "duty
+fust, and pleasure after."
+
+When his father was gone Mrs. Lambole said, "Now then, Joe, you've been
+a very wicked, bad boy, and God will never forgive you for the
+naughtiness you have committed and the trouble to which you have put
+your poor father and me." She would have spoken more sharply but that
+his head needed her care and the sight of the blood disarmed her.
+Moreover, she knew that her husband would not pass over what had
+occurred with a reprimand. "Get off your clothes and go to bed, Joe," she
+said when she had readjusted the plaster. "You may take a piece of dry
+bread with you, and I'll see if I can't persuade your father to put off
+whipping of you for a day or two."
+
+Joe began to cry.
+
+"There," she said, "don't cry. When wicked children do wicked things
+they must suffer for them. It is the law of nature. And," she went on,
+"you ought to be that ashamed of yourself that you'd be glad for the
+earth to open under you and swallow you up like Korah, Dathan, and
+Abiram. Running away from so good and happy a home and such tender
+parents! But I reckon you be lost to natural affection as you be to
+reason."
+
+"May I take my fiddle with me?" asked the boy.
+
+"Oh, take your fiddle if you like," answered his mother. "Much good may
+it do you. Here, it is all smeared wi' blood. Let me wipe it first, or
+you'll mess the bedclothes with it. There," she said as she gave him the
+broken instrument. "Say your prayers and go to sleep; though I reckon
+your prayers will never reach to heaven, coming out of such a wicked
+unnatural heart."
+
+So the little Gander went to his bed. The cottage had but one bedroom
+and a landing above the steep and narrow flight of steps that led to it
+from the kitchen. On this landing was a small truckle bed, on which Joe
+slept. He took off his clothes and stood in his little short shirt of
+very coarse white linen. He knelt down and said his prayers, with both
+his hands spread over his fiddle. Then he got into bed, and until his
+stepmother fetched away the benzoline lamp he examined the instrument.
+He saw that the bridge might be set up again with a little glue, and
+that fresh catgut strings might be supplied. He would take his fiddle
+next day to Roger Gale and ask him to help to mend it for him. He was
+sure Roger would take an interest in it. Roger had been mysterious of
+late, hinting that the time was coming when Joey would have a first-rate
+instrument and learn to play like a Paganini. Yes; the case of the red
+fiddle was not desperate.
+
+Just then he heard the door below open, and his father's step.
+
+"Where is the toad?" said Mr. Lambole.
+
+Joe held his breath, and his blood ran cold. He could hear every word,
+every sound in the room below.
+
+"He's gone to bed," answered Mrs. Lambole. "Leave the poor little
+creetur alone to-night, Samuel; his head has been bad, and he don't look
+well. He's overdone."
+
+"Susan," said the roadmaker, "I've been simmering all the way to town,
+and bubbling and boiling all the way back, and busting is what I be now,
+and bust I will."
+
+Little Joe sat up in bed, hugging the violin, and his tow-like hair
+stood up on his head. His great stupid eyes stared wide with fear; in
+the dark the iris in each had grown big, and deep, and solemn.
+
+"Give me my stick," said Mr. Lambole. "I've promised him a taste of it,
+and a taste won't suffice to-night; he must have a gorge of it."
+
+"I've put it away," said Mrs. Lambole. "Samuel, right is right, and I'm
+not one to stand between the child and what he deserves, but he ain't in
+condition for it to-night. He wants feeding up to it."
+
+Without wasting another word on her the roadmaker went upstairs.
+
+The shuddering, cowering little fellow saw first the red face,
+surrounded by a halo of pale hair, rise above the floor, then the strong
+square shoulders, then the clenched hands, and then his father stood
+before him, revealed down to his thick boots. The child crept back in
+the bed against the wall, and would have disappeared through it had the
+wall been soft-hearted, as in fairy tales, and opened to receive him. He
+clasped his little violin tight to his heart, and then the blood that
+had fallen into it trickled out and ran down his shirt, staining
+it--upon the bedclothes, staining them. But the father did not see this.
+He was effervescing with fury. His pulses went at a gallop, and his
+great fists clutched spasmodically.
+
+"You Judas Iscariot, come here!" he shouted.
+
+But the child only pressed closer against the wall.
+
+"What! disobedient and daring? Do you hear? Come to me!"
+
+The trembling child pointed to a pretty little pipe on the bedclothes.
+He had drawn it from his pocket and taken the paper off it, and laid it
+there, and stuck the silver-headed thimble in the bowl for his
+stepmother when she came upstairs to take the lamp.
+
+"Come here, vagabond!"
+
+He could not; he had not the courage nor the strength.
+
+He still pointed pleadingly to the little presents he had bought with
+his eighteenpence.
+
+"You won't, you dogged, insulting being?" roared the roadmaker, and
+rushed at him, knocking over the pipe, which fell and broke on the
+floor, and trampling flat the thimble. "You won't yet? Always full of
+sulks and defiance! Oh, you ungrateful one, you!" Then he had him by the
+collar of his night-shirt and dragged him from his bed, and with his
+violence tore the button off, and with his other hand he wrenched the
+violin away and beat the child over the back with it as he dragged him
+from the bed.
+
+"Oh, my mammy! my mammy!" cried Joe.
+
+He was not crying out for his stepmother. It was the agonised cry of his
+frightened heart for the one only being who had ever loved him, and whom
+God had removed from him.
+
+Suddenly Samuel Lambole started back.
+
+Before him, and between him and the child, stood a pale, ghostly form,
+and he knew his first wife.
+
+He stood speechless and quaking. Then, gradually recovering himself, he
+stumbled down the stairs, and seated himself, looking pasty and scared,
+by the fire below.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Samuel?" asked his wife.
+
+"I've seen her," he gasped. "Don't ask no more questions."
+
+Now when he was gone, little Joe, filled with terror--not at the
+apparition, which he had not seen, for his eyes were too dazed to behold
+it, but with apprehension of the chastisement that awaited him,
+scrambled out of the window and dropped on the pigsty roof, and from
+thence jumped to the ground.
+
+Then he ran--ran as fast as his legs could carry him, still hugging his
+instrument--to the churchyard; and on reaching that he threw himself on
+his mother's grave and sobbed: "Oh, mammy, mammy! father wants to beat
+me and take away my beautiful violin--but oh, mammy! my violin won't
+play."
+
+And when he had spoken, from out the grave rose the form of his lost
+mother, and looked kindly on him.
+
+Joe saw her, and he had no fear.
+
+"Mammy!" said he, "mammy, my violin cost three shillings and sixpence,
+and I can't make it play no-ways."
+
+[Illustration: "MAMMY," SAID HE, "MAMMY, MY VIOLIN COST THREE SHILLINGS
+AND SIXPENCE, AND I CAN'T MAKE IT PLAY NOWAYS."]
+
+Then the spirit of his mother passed a hand over the the strings, and
+smiled. Joe looked into her eyes, and they were as stars. And he put the
+violin under his chin, and drew the bow across the strings--and lo! they
+sounded wondrously. His soul thrilled, his heart bounded, his dull
+eye brightened. He was as though caught up in a chariot of fire and
+carried to heavenly places. His bow worked rapidly, such strains poured
+from the little instrument as he had never heard before. It was to him
+as though heaven opened, and he heard the angels performing there, and
+he with his fiddle was taking a part in the mighty symphony. He felt not
+the cold, the night was not dark to him. His head no longer ached. It
+was as though after long seeking through life he had gained an
+undreamed-of prize, reached some glorious consummation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a musical party that same evening at the Hall. Miss Amory
+played beautifully, with extraordinary feeling and execution, both with
+and without accompaniment on the piano. Several ladies and gentlemen
+sang and played; there were duets and trios.
+
+During the performances the guests talked to each other in low tones
+about various topics.
+
+Said one lady to Mrs. Amory: "How strange it is that among the English
+lower classes there is no love of music."
+
+"There is none at all," answered Mrs. Amory; "our rector's wife has
+given herself great trouble to get up parochial entertainments, but we
+find that nothing takes with the people but comic songs, and these,
+instead of elevating, vulgarise them."
+
+"They have no music in them. The only people with music in their souls
+are the Germans and the Italians."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Amory with a sigh; "it is sad, but true: there is
+neither poetry, nor picturesqueness, nor music among the English
+peasantry."
+
+"You have never heard of one, self-taught, with a real love of music in
+this country?"
+
+"Never: such do not exist among us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The parish churchwarden was walking along the road on his way to his
+farmhouse, and the road passed under the churchyard wall.
+
+As he walked along the way--with a not too steady step, for he was
+returning from the public-house--he was surprised and frightened to hear
+music proceed from among the graves.
+
+It was too dark for him to see any figure then, only the tombstones
+loomed on him in ghostly shapes. He began to quake, and finally turned
+and ran, nor did he slacken his pace till he reached the tavern, where
+he burst in shouting: "There's ghosts abroad. I've heard 'em in the
+churchyard making music."
+
+The revellers rose from their cups.
+
+"Shall we go and hear?" they asked.
+
+"I'll go for one," said a man; "if others will go with me."
+
+"Ay," said a third, "and if the ghosts be playing a jolly good tune,
+we'll chip in."
+
+So the whole half-tipsy party reeled along the road, talking very loud,
+to encourage themselves and the others, till they approached the church,
+the spire of which stood up dark against the night sky.
+
+"There's no lights in the windows," said one.
+
+"No," observed the churchwarden, "I didn't notice any myself; it was
+from the graves the music came, as if all the dead was squeakin' like
+pigs."
+
+"Hush!" All kept silence--not a sound could be heard.
+
+"I'm sure I heard music afore," said the churchwarden. "I'll bet a
+gallon of ale I did."
+
+"There ain't no music now, though," remarked one of the men.
+
+"Nor more there ain't," said others.
+
+"Well, I don't care--I say I heard it," asseverated the churchwarden.
+"Let's go up closer."
+
+All of the party drew nearer to the wall of the graveyard. One man,
+incapable of maintaining his legs unaided, sustained himself on the arm
+of another.
+
+"Well, I do believe, Churchwarden Eggins, as how you have been leading
+us a wild goose chase!" said a fellow.
+
+Then the clouds broke, and a bright, dazzling pure ray shot down on a
+grave in the churchyard, and revealed a little figure lying on it.
+
+"I do believe," said one man, "as how, if he ain't led us a goose chase,
+he's brought us after a Gander--surely that is little Joe."
+
+Thus encouraged, and their fears dispelled, the whole half-tipsy party
+stumbled up the graveyard steps, staggered among the tombs, some
+tripping on the mounds and falling prostrate. All laughed, talked, joked
+with one another.
+
+The only one silent there was little Joe Gander--and he was gone to join
+in the great symphony above.
+
+
+
+
+A DEAD FINGER
+
+
+I
+
+Why the National Gallery should not attract so many visitors as, say,
+the British Museum, I cannot explain. The latter does not contain much
+that, one would suppose, appeals to the interest of the ordinary
+sightseer. What knows such of prehistoric flints and scratched bones? Of
+Assyrian sculpture? Of Egyptian hieroglyphics? The Greek and Roman
+statuary is cold and dead. The paintings in the National Gallery glow
+with colour, and are instinct with life. Yet, somehow, a few listless
+wanderers saunter yawning through the National Gallery, whereas swarms
+pour through the halls of the British Museum, and talk and pass remarks
+about the objects there exposed, of the date and meaning of which they
+have not the faintest conception.
+
+I was thinking of this problem, and endeavouring to unravel it, one
+morning whilst sitting in the room for English masters at the great
+collection in Trafalgar Square. At the same time another thought forced
+itself upon me. I had been through the rooms devoted to foreign schools,
+and had then come into that given over to Reynolds, Morland,
+Gainsborough, Constable, and Hogarth. The morning had been for a while
+propitious, but towards noon a dense umber-tinted fog had come on,
+making it all but impossible to see the pictures, and quite impossible
+to do them justice. I was tired, and so seated myself on one of the
+chairs, and fell into the consideration first of all of--why the
+National Gallery is not as popular as it should be; and secondly, how it
+was that the British School had no beginnings, like those of Italy and
+the Netherlands. We can see the art of the painter from its first
+initiation in the Italian peninsula, and among the Flemings. It starts
+on its progress like a child, and we can trace every stage of its
+growth. Not so with English art. It springs to life in full and splendid
+maturity. Who were there before Reynolds and Gainsborough and Hogarth?
+The great names of those portrait and subject painters who have left
+their canvases upon the walls of our country houses were those of
+foreigners--Holbein, Kneller, Van Dyck, and Lely for portraits, and
+Monnoyer for flower and fruit pieces. Landscapes, figure subjects were
+all importations, none home-grown. How came that about? Was there no
+limner that was native? Was it that fashion trampled on home-grown
+pictorial beginnings as it flouted and spurned native music?
+
+Here was food for contemplation. Dreaming in the brown fog, looking
+through it without seeing its beauties, at Hogarth's painting of Lavinia
+Fenton as Polly Peachum, without wondering how so indifferent a beauty
+could have captivated the Duke of Bolton and held him for thirty years,
+I was recalled to myself and my surroundings by the strange conduct of a
+lady who had seated herself on a chair near me, also discouraged by the
+fog, and awaiting its dispersion.
+
+I had not noticed her particularly. At the present moment I do not
+remember particularly what she was like. So far as I can recollect she
+was middle-aged, and was quietly yet well dressed. It was not her face
+nor her dress that attracted my attention and disturbed the current of
+my thoughts; the effect I speak of was produced by her strange movements
+and behaviour.
+
+She had been sitting listless, probably thinking of nothing at all, or
+nothing in particular, when, in turning her eyes round, and finding
+that she could see nothing of the paintings, she began to study me. This
+did concern me greatly. A cat may look at the king; but to be
+contemplated by a lady is a compliment sufficient to please any
+gentleman. It was not gratified vanity that troubled my thoughts, but
+the consciousness that my appearance produced--first of all a startled
+surprise, then undisguised alarm, and, finally, indescribable horror.
+
+Now a man can sit quietly leaning on the head of his umbrella, and glow
+internally, warmed and illumined by the consciousness that he is being
+surveyed with admiration by a lovely woman, even when he is middle-aged
+and not fashionably dressed; but no man can maintain his composure when
+he discovers himself to be an object of aversion and terror.
+
+What was it? I passed my hand over my chin and upper lip, thinking it
+not impossible that I might have forgotten to shave that morning, and in
+my confusion not considering that the fog would prevent the lady from
+discovering neglect in this particular, had it occurred, which it had
+not. I am a little careless, perhaps, about shaving when in the country;
+but when in town, never.
+
+The next idea that occurred to me was--a smut. Had a London black,
+curdled in that dense pea-soup atmosphere, descended on my nose and
+blackened it? I hastily drew my silk handkerchief from my pocket,
+moistened it, and passed it over my nose, and then each cheek. I then
+turned my eyes into the corners and looked at the lady, to see whether
+by this means I had got rid of what was objectionable in my personal
+appearance.
+
+Then I saw that her eyes, dilated with horror, were riveted, not on my
+face, but on my leg.
+
+My leg! What on earth could that harmless member have in it so
+terrifying? The morning had been dull; there had been rain in the night,
+and I admit that on leaving my hotel I had turned up the bottoms of my
+trousers. That is a proceeding not so uncommon, not so outrageous as to
+account for the stony stare of this woman's eyes.
+
+If that were all I would turn my trousers down.
+
+Then I saw her shrink from the chair on which she sat to one further
+removed from me, but still with her eyes fixed on my leg--about the
+level of my knee. She had let fall her umbrella, and was grasping the
+seat of her chair with both hands, as she backed from me.
+
+I need hardly say that I was greatly disturbed in mind and feelings, and
+forgot all about the origin of the English schools of painters, and the
+question why the British Museum is more popular than the National
+Gallery.
+
+Thinking that I might have been spattered by a hansom whilst crossing
+Oxford Street, I passed my hand down my side hastily, with a sense of
+annoyance, and all at once touched something cold, clammy, that sent a
+thrill to my heart, and made me start and take a step forward. At the
+same moment, the lady, with a cry of horror, sprang to her feet, and
+with raised hands fled from the room, leaving her umbrella where it had
+fallen.
+
+There were other visitors to the Picture Gallery besides ourselves, who
+had been passing through the saloon, and they turned at her cry, and
+looked in surprise after her.
+
+The policeman stationed in the room came to me and asked what had
+happened. I was in such agitation that I hardly knew what to answer. I
+told him that I could explain what had occurred little better than
+himself. I had noticed that the lady had worn an odd expression, and had
+behaved in most extraordinary fashion, and that he had best take charge
+of her umbrella, and wait for her return to claim it.
+
+This questioning by the official was vexing, as it prevented me from at
+once and on the spot investigating the cause of her alarm and mine--hers
+at something she must have seen on my leg, and mine at something I had
+distinctly felt creeping up my leg.
+
+The numbing and sickening effect on me of the touch of the object I had
+not seen was not to be shaken off at once. Indeed, I felt as though my
+hand were contaminated, and that I could have no rest till I had
+thoroughly washed the hand, and, if possible, washed away the feeling
+that had been produced.
+
+I looked on the floor, I examined my leg, but saw nothing. As I wore my
+overcoat, it was probable that in rising from my seat the skirt had
+fallen over my trousers and hidden the thing, whatever it was. I
+therefore hastily removed my overcoat and shook it, then I looked at my
+trousers. There was nothing whatever on my leg, and nothing fell from my
+overcoat when shaken.
+
+Accordingly I reinvested myself, and hastily left the Gallery; then took
+my way as speedily as I could, without actually running, to Charing
+Cross Station and down the narrow way leading to the Metropolitan, where
+I went into Faulkner's bath and hairdressing establishment, and asked
+for hot water to thoroughly wash my hand and well soap it. I bathed my
+hand in water as hot as I could endure it, employed carbolic soap, and
+then, after having a good brush down, especially on my left side where
+my hand had encountered the object that had so affected me, I left. I
+had entertained the intention of going to the Princess's Theatre that
+evening, and of securing a ticket in the morning; but all thought of
+theatre-going was gone from me. I could not free my heart from the sense
+of nausea and cold that had been produced by the touch. I went into
+Gatti's to have lunch, and ordered something, I forget what, but, when
+served, I found that my appetite was gone. I could eat nothing; the food
+inspired me with disgust. I thrust it from me untasted, and, after
+drinking a couple of glasses of claret, left the restaurant, and
+returned to my hotel.
+
+Feeling sick and faint, I threw my overcoat over the sofa-back, and cast
+myself on my bed.
+
+I do not know that there was any particular reason for my doing so, but
+as I lay my eyes were on my great-coat.
+
+The density of the fog had passed away, and there was light again, not
+of first quality, but sufficient for a Londoner to swear by, so that I
+could see everything in my room, though through a veil, darkly.
+
+I do not think my mind was occupied in any way. About the only occasions
+on which, to my knowledge, my mind is actually passive or inert is when
+crossing the Channel in _The Foam_ from Dover to Calais, when I am
+always, in every weather, abjectly seasick--and thoughtless. But as I
+now lay on my bed, uncomfortable, squeamish, without knowing why--I was
+in the same inactive mental condition. But not for long.
+
+I saw something that startled me.
+
+First, it appeared to me as if the lappet of my overcoat pocket were in
+movement, being raised. I did not pay much attention to this, as I
+supposed that the garment was sliding down on to the seat of the sofa,
+from the back, and that this displacement of gravity caused the movement
+I observed. But this I soon saw was not the case. That which moved the
+lappet was something in the pocket that was struggling to get out. I
+could see now that it was working its way up the inside, and that when
+it reached the opening it lost balance and fell down again. I could make
+this out by the projections and indentations in the cloth; these moved
+as the creature, or whatever it was, worked its way up the lining.
+
+"A mouse," I said, and forgot my seediness; I was interested. "The
+little rascal! However did he contrive to seat himself in my pocket? and
+I have worn that overcoat all the morning!" But no--it was not a mouse.
+I saw something white poke its way out from under the lappet; and in
+another moment an object was revealed that, though revealed, I could not
+understand, nor could I distinguish what it was.
+
+Now roused by curiosity, I raised myself on my elbow. In doing this I
+made some noise, the bed creaked. Instantly the something dropped on the
+floor, lay outstretched for a moment, to recover itself, and then began,
+with the motions of a maggot, to run along the floor.
+
+There is a caterpillar called "The Measurer," because, when it advances,
+it draws its tail up to where its head is and then throws forward its
+full length, and again draws up its extremity, forming at each time a
+loop; and with each step measuring its total length. The object I now
+saw on the floor was advancing precisely like the measuring caterpillar.
+It had the colour of a cheese-maggot, and in length was about three and
+a half inches. It was not, however, like a caterpillar, which is
+flexible throughout its entire length, but this was, as it seemed to me,
+jointed in two places, one joint being more conspicuous than the other.
+For some moments I was so completely paralysed by astonishment that I
+remained motionless, looking at the thing as it crawled along the
+carpet--a dull green carpet with darker green, almost black, flowers in
+it.
+
+It had, as it seemed to me, a glossy head, distinctly marked; but, as
+the light was not brilliant, I could not make out very clearly, and,
+moreover, the rapid movements prevented close scrutiny.
+
+Presently, with a shock still more startling than that produced by its
+apparition at the opening of the pocket of my great-coat, I became
+convinced that what I saw was a finger, a human forefinger, and that the
+glossy head was no other than the nail.
+
+The finger did not seem to have been amputated. There was no sign of
+blood or laceration where the knuckle should be, but the extremity of
+the finger, or root rather, faded away to indistinctness, and I was
+unable to make out the root of the finger.
+
+I could see no hand, no body behind this finger, nothing whatever except
+a finger that had little token of warm life in it, no coloration as
+though blood circulated in it; and this finger was in active motion
+creeping along the carpet towards a wardrobe that stood against the wall
+by the fireplace.
+
+I sprang off the bed and pursued it.
+
+Evidently the finger was alarmed, for it redoubled its pace, reached the
+wardrobe, and went under it. By the time I had arrived at the article of
+furniture it had disappeared. I lit a vesta match and held it beneath
+the wardrobe, that was raised above the carpet by about two inches, on
+turned feet, but I could see nothing more of the finger.
+
+I got my umbrella and thrust it beneath, and raked forwards and
+backwards, right and left, and raked out flue, and nothing more solid.
+
+
+II
+
+I packed my portmanteau next day and returned to my home in the country.
+All desire for amusement in town was gone, and the faculty to transact
+business had departed as well.
+
+A languor and qualms had come over me, and my head was in a maze. I was
+unable to fix my thoughts on anything. At times I was disposed to
+believe that my wits were deserting me, at others that I was on the
+verge of a severe illness. Anyhow, whether likely to go off my head or
+not, or take to my bed, home was the only place for me, and homeward I
+sped, accordingly. On reaching my country habitation, my servant, as
+usual, took my portmanteau to my bedroom, unstrapped it, but did not
+unpack it. I object to his throwing out the contents of my Gladstone
+bag; not that there is anything in it he may not see, but that he puts
+my things where I cannot find them again. My clothes--he is welcome to
+place them where he likes and where they belong, and this latter he
+knows better than I do; but, then, I carry about with me other things
+than a dress suit, and changes of linen and flannel. There are letters,
+papers, books--and the proper destinations of these are known only to
+myself. A servant has a singular and evil knack of putting away literary
+matter and odd volumes in such places that it takes the owner half a day
+to find them again. Although I was uncomfortable, and my head in a
+whirl, I opened and unpacked my own portmanteau. As I was thus engaged I
+saw something curled up in my collar-box, the lid of which had got
+broken in by a boot-heel impinging on it. I had pulled off the damaged
+cover to see if my collars had been spoiled, when something curled up
+inside suddenly rose on end and leapt, just like a cheese-jumper, out of
+the box, over the edge of the Gladstone bag, and scurried away across
+the floor in a manner already familiar to me.
+
+I could not doubt for a moment what it was--here was the finger again.
+It had come with me from London to the country.
+
+Whither it went in its run over the floor I do not know, I was too
+bewildered to observe.
+
+Somewhat later, towards evening, I seated myself in my easy-chair, took
+up a book, and tried to read. I was tired with the journey, with the
+knocking about in town, and the discomfort and alarm produced by the
+apparition of the finger. I felt worn out. I was unable to give my
+attention to what I read, and before I was aware was asleep. Roused for
+an instant by the fall of the book from my hands, I speedily relapsed
+into unconsciousness. I am not sure that a doze in an armchair ever does
+good. It usually leaves me in a semi-stupid condition and with a
+headache. Five minutes in a horizontal position on my bed is worth
+thirty in a chair. That is my experience. In sleeping in a sedentary
+position the head is a difficulty; it drops forward or lolls on one side
+or the other, and has to be brought back into a position in which the
+line to the centre of gravity runs through the trunk, otherwise the head
+carries the body over in a sort of general capsize out of the chair on
+to the floor.
+
+I slept, on the occasion of which I am speaking, pretty healthily,
+because deadly weary; but I was brought to waking, not by my head
+falling over the arm of the chair, and my trunk tumbling after it, but
+by a feeling of cold extending from my throat to my heart. When I awoke
+I was in a diagonal position, with my right ear resting on my right
+shoulder, and exposing the left side of my throat, and it was
+here--where the jugular vein throbs--that I felt the greatest intensity
+of cold. At once I shrugged my left shoulder, rubbing my neck with the
+collar of my coat in so doing. Immediately something fell off, upon the
+floor, and I again saw the finger.
+
+My disgust--horror, were intensified when I perceived that it was
+dragging something after it, which might have been an old stocking, and
+which I took at first glance for something of the sort.
+
+The evening sun shone in through my window, in a brilliant golden ray
+that lighted the object as it scrambled along. With this illumination I
+was able to distinguish what the object was. It is not easy to describe
+it, but I will make the attempt.
+
+The finger I saw was solid and material; what it drew after it was
+neither, or was in a nebulous, protoplasmic condition. The finger was
+attached to a hand that was curdling into matter and in process of
+acquiring solidity; attached to the hand was an arm in a very filmy
+condition, and this arm belonged to a human body in a still more
+vaporous, immaterial condition. This was being dragged along the floor
+by the finger, just as a silkworm might pull after it the tangle of its
+web. I could see legs and arms, and head, and coat-tail tumbling about
+and interlacing and disentangling again in a promiscuous manner. There
+were no bone, no muscle, no substance in the figure; the members were
+attached to the trunk, which was spineless, but they had evidently no
+functions, and were wholly dependent on the finger which pulled them
+along in a jumble of parts as it advanced.
+
+In such confusion did the whole vaporous matter seem, that I think--I
+cannot say for certain it was so, but the impression left on my mind
+was--that one of the eyeballs was looking out at a nostril, and the
+tongue lolling out of one of the ears.
+
+It was, however, only for a moment that I saw this germ-body; I cannot
+call by another name that which had not more substance than smoke. I saw
+it only so long as it was being dragged athwart the ray of sunlight. The
+moment it was pulled jerkily out of the beam into the shadow beyond, I
+could see nothing of it, only the crawling finger.
+
+I had not sufficient moral energy or physical force in me to rise,
+pursue, and stamp on the finger, and grind it with my heel into the
+floor. Both seemed drained out of me. What became of the finger, whither
+it went, how it managed to secrete itself, I do not know. I had lost the
+power to inquire. I sat in my chair, chilled, staring before me into
+space.
+
+"Please, sir," a voice said, "there's Mr. Square below, electrical
+engineer."
+
+"Eh?" I looked dreamily round.
+
+My valet was at the door.
+
+"Please, sir, the gentleman would be glad to be allowed to go over the
+house and see that all the electrical apparatus is in order."
+
+"Oh, indeed! Yes--show him up."
+
+
+III
+
+I had recently placed the lighting of my house in the hands of an
+electrical engineer, a very intelligent man, Mr. Square, for whom I had
+contracted a sincere friendship.
+
+He had built a shed with a dynamo out of sight, and had entrusted the
+laying of the wires to subordinates, as he had been busy with other
+orders and could not personally watch every detail. But he was not the
+man to let anything pass unobserved, and he knew that electricity was
+not a force to be played with. Bad or careless workmen will often
+insufficiently protect the wires, or neglect the insertion of the lead
+which serves as a safety-valve in the event of the current being too
+strong. Houses may be set on fire, human beings fatally shocked, by the
+neglect of a bad or slovenly workman.
+
+The apparatus for my mansion was but just completed, and Mr. Square had
+come to inspect it and make sure that all was right.
+
+He was an enthusiast in the matter of electricity, and saw for it a vast
+perspective, the limits of which could not be predicted.
+
+"All forces," said he, "are correlated. When you have force in one form,
+you may just turn it into this or that, as you like. In one form it is
+motive power, in another it is light, in another heat. Now we have
+electricity for illumination. We employ it, but not as freely as in the
+States, for propelling vehicles. Why should we have horses drawing our
+buses? We should use only electric trams. Why do we burn coal to warm
+our shins? There is electricity, which throws out no filthy smoke as
+does coal. Why should we let the tides waste their energies in the
+Thames? in other estuaries? There we have Nature supplying us--free,
+gratis, and for nothing--with all the force we want for propelling, for
+heating, for lighting. I will tell you something more, my dear sir,"
+said Mr. Square. "I have mentioned but three modes of force, and have
+instanced but a limited number of uses to which electricity may be
+turned. How is it with photography? Is not electric light becoming an
+artistic agent? I bet you," said he, "before long it will become a
+therapeutic agent as well."
+
+"Oh, yes; I have heard of certain impostors with their life-belts."
+
+Mr. Square did not relish this little dig I gave him. He winced, but
+returned to the charge. "We don't know how to direct it aright, that is
+all," said he. "I haven't taken the matter up, but others will, I bet;
+and we shall have electricity used as freely as now we use powders and
+pills. I don't believe in doctors' stuffs myself. I hold that disease
+lays hold of a man because he lacks physical force to resist it. Now, is
+it not obvious that you are beginning at the wrong end when you attack
+the disease? What you want is to supply force, make up for the lack of
+physical power, and force is force wherever you find it--here motive,
+there illuminating, and so on. I don't see why a physician should not
+utilise the tide rushing out under London Bridge for restoring the
+feeble vigour of all who are languid and a prey to disorder in the
+Metropolis. It will come to that, I bet, and that is not all. Force is
+force, everywhere. Political, moral force, physical force, dynamic
+force, heat, light, tidal waves, and so on--all are one, all is one. In
+time we shall know how to galvanise into aptitude and moral energy all
+the limp and crooked consciences and wills that need taking in hand, and
+such there always will be in modern civilisation. I don't know how to do
+it. I don't know how it will be done, but in the future the priest as
+well as the doctor will turn electricity on as his principal, nay, his
+only agent. And he can get his force anywhere, out of the running
+stream, out of the wind, out of the tidal wave.
+
+"I'll give you an instance," continued Mr. Square, chuckling and rubbing
+his hands, "to show you the great possibilities in electricity, used in
+a crude fashion. In a certain great city away far west in the States, a
+go-ahead place, too, more so than New York, they had electric trams all
+up and down and along the roads to everywhere. The union men working for
+the company demanded that the non-unionists should be turned off. But
+the company didn't see it. Instead, it turned off the union men. It had
+up its sleeve a sufficiency of the others, and filled all places at
+once. Union men didn't like it, and passed word that at a given hour on
+a certain day every wire was to be cut. The company knew this by means
+of its spies, and turned on, ready for them, three times the power into
+all the wires. At the fixed moment, up the poles went the strikers to
+cut the cables, and down they came a dozen times quicker than they went
+up, I bet. Then there came wires to the hospitals from all quarters for
+stretchers to carry off the disabled men, some with broken legs, arms,
+ribs; two or three had their necks broken. I reckon the company was
+wonderfully merciful--it didn't put on sufficient force to make cinders
+of them then and there; possibly opinion might not have liked it.
+Stopped the strike, did that. Great moral effect--all done by
+electricity."
+
+In this manner Mr. Square was wont to rattle on. He interested me, and I
+came to think that there might be something in what he said--that his
+suggestions were not mere nonsense. I was glad to see Mr. Square enter
+my room, shown in by my man. I did not rise from my chair to shake his
+hand, for I had not sufficient energy to do so. In a languid tone I
+welcomed him and signed to him to take a seat. Mr. Square looked at me
+with some surprise.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" he said. "You seem unwell. Not got the 'flue,
+have you?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"The influenza. Every third person is crying out that he has it, and the
+sale of eucalyptus is enormous, not that eucalyptus is any good.
+Influenza microbes indeed! What care they for eucalyptus? You've gone
+down some steps of the ladder of life since I saw you last, squire. How
+do you account for that?"
+
+I hesitated about mentioning the extraordinary circumstances that had
+occurred; but Square was a man who would not allow any beating about the
+bush. He was downright and straight, and in ten minutes had got the
+entire story out of me.
+
+"Rather boisterous for your nerves that--a crawling finger," said he.
+"It's a queer story taken on end."
+
+Then he was silent, considering.
+
+After a few minutes he rose, and said: "I'll go and look at the
+fittings, and then I'll turn this little matter of yours over again, and
+see if I can't knock the bottom out of it, I'm kinder fond of these sort
+of things."
+
+Mr. Square was not a Yankee, but he had lived for some time in America,
+and affected to speak like an American. He used expressions, terms of
+speech common in the States, but had none of the Transatlantic twang. He
+was a man absolutely without affectation in every other particular; this
+was his sole weakness, and it was harmless.
+
+The man was so thorough in all he did that I did not expect his return
+immediately. He was certain to examine every portion of the dynamo
+engine, and all the connections and burners. This would necessarily
+engage him for some hours. As the day was nearly done, I knew he could
+not accomplish what he wanted that evening, and accordingly gave orders
+that a room should be prepared for him. Then, as my head was full of
+pain, and my skin was burning, I told my servant to apologise for my
+absence from dinner, and tell Mr. Square that I was really forced to
+return to my bed by sickness, and that I believed I was about to be
+prostrated by an attack of influenza.
+
+The valet--a worthy fellow, who has been with me for six years--was
+concerned at my appearance, and urged me to allow him to send for a
+doctor. I had no confidence in the local practitioner, and if I sent for
+another from the nearest town I should offend him, and a row would
+perhaps ensue, so I declined. If I were really in for an influenza
+attack, I knew about as much as any doctor how to deal with it. Quinine,
+quinine--that was all. I bade my man light a small lamp, lower it, so as
+to give sufficient illumination to enable me to find some lime-juice at
+my bed head, and my pocket-handkerchief, and to be able to read my
+watch. When he had done this, I bade him leave me.
+
+I lay in bed, burning, racked with pain in my head, and with my eyeballs
+on fire.
+
+Whether I fell asleep or went off my head for a while I cannot tell. I
+may have fainted. I have no recollection of anything after having gone
+to bed and taken a sip of lime-juice that tasted to me like soap--till I
+was roused by a sense of pain in my ribs--a slow, gnawing, torturing
+pain, waxing momentarily more intense. In half-consciousness I was
+partly dreaming and partly aware of actual suffering. The pain was real;
+but in my fancy I thought that a great maggot was working its way into
+my side between my ribs. I seemed to see it. It twisted itself half
+round, then reverted to its former position, and again twisted itself,
+moving like a bradawl, not like a gimlet, which latter forms a complete
+revolution.
+
+This, obviously, must have been a dream, hallucination only, as I was
+lying on my back and my eyes were directed towards the bottom of the
+bed, and the coverlet and blankets and sheet intervened between my eyes
+and my side. But in fever one sees without eyes, and in every direction,
+and through all obstructions.
+
+Roused thoroughly by an excruciating twinge, I tried to cry out, and
+succeeded in throwing myself over on my right side, that which was in
+pain. At once I felt the thing withdrawn that was awling--if I may use
+the word--in between my ribs.
+
+And now I saw, standing beside the bed, a figure that had its arm under
+the bedclothes, and was slowly removing it. The hand was leisurely
+drawn from under the coverings and rested on the eider-down coverlet,
+with the forefinger extended.
+
+The figure was that of a man, in shabby clothes, with a sallow, mean
+face, a retreating forehead, with hair cut after the French fashion, and
+a moustache, dark. The jaws and chin were covered with a bristly growth,
+as if shaving had been neglected for a fortnight. The figure did not
+appear to be thoroughly solid, but to be of the consistency of curd, and
+the face was of the complexion of curd. As I looked at this object it
+withdrew, sliding backward in an odd sort of manner, and as though
+overweighted by the hand, which was the most substantial, indeed the
+only substantial portion of it. Though the figure retreated stooping,
+yet it was no longer huddled along by the finger, as if it had no
+material existence. If the same, it had acquired a consistency and a
+solidity which it did not possess before.
+
+How it vanished I do not know, nor whither it went. The door opened, and
+Square came in.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed with cheery voice; "influenza is it?"
+
+"I don't know--I think it's that finger again."
+
+
+IV
+
+"Now, look here," said Square, "I'm not going to have that cuss at its
+pranks any more. Tell me all about it."
+
+I was now so exhausted, so feeble, that I was not able to give a
+connected account of what had taken place, but Square put to me just a
+few pointed questions and elicited the main facts. He pieced them
+together in his own orderly mind, so as to form a connected whole.
+"There is a feature in the case," said he, "that strikes me as
+remarkable and important. At first--a finger only, then a hand, then a
+nebulous figure attached to the hand, without backbone, without
+consistency. Lastly, a complete form, with consistency and with
+backbone, but the latter in a gelatinous condition, and the entire
+figure overweighted by the hand, just as hand and figure were previously
+overweighted by the finger. Simultaneously with this compacting and
+consolidating of the figure, came your degeneration and loss of vital
+force and, in a word, of health. What you lose, that object acquires,
+and what it acquires, it gains by contact with you. That's clear enough,
+is it not?"
+
+"I dare say. I don't know. I can't think."
+
+"I suppose not; the faculty of thought is drained out of you. Very well,
+I must think for you, and I will. Force is force, and see if I can't
+deal with your visitant in such a way as will prove just as truly a
+moral dissuasive as that employed on the union men on strike in--never
+mind where it was. That's not to the point."
+
+"Will you kindly give me some lime-juice?" I entreated.
+
+I sipped the acid draught, but without relief. I listened to Square, but
+without hope. I wanted to be left alone. I was weary of my pain, weary
+of everything, even of life. It was a matter of indifference to me
+whether I recovered or slipped out of existence.
+
+"It will be here again shortly," said the engineer. "As the French say,
+_l'appetit vient en mangeant_. It has been at you thrice, it won't be
+content without another peck. And if it does get another, I guess it
+will pretty well about finish you."
+
+Mr. Square rubbed his chin, and then put his hands into his trouser
+pockets. That also was a trick acquired in the States, an inelegant one.
+His hands, when not actively occupied, went into his pockets, inevitably
+they gravitated thither. Ladies did not like Square; they said he was
+not a gentleman. But it was not that he said or did anything "off
+colour," only he spoke to them, looked at them, walked with them, always
+with his hands in his pockets. I have seen a lady turn her back on him
+deliberately because of this trick.
+
+Standing now with his hands in his pockets, he studied my bed, and said
+contemptuously: "Old-fashioned and bad, fourposter. Oughtn't to be
+allowed, I guess; unwholesome all the way round."
+
+I was not in a condition to dispute this. I like a fourposter with
+curtains at head and feet; not that I ever draw them, but it gives a
+sense of privacy that is wanting in one of your half-tester beds.
+
+If there is a window at one's feet, one can lie in bed without the glare
+in one's eyes, and yet without darkening the room by drawing the blinds.
+There is much to be said for a fourposter, but this is not the place in
+which to say it.
+
+Mr. Square pulled his hands out of his pockets and began fiddling with
+the electric point near the head of my bed, attached a wire, swept it in
+a semicircle along the floor, and then thrust the knob at the end into
+my hand in the bed.
+
+"Keep your eye open," said he, "and your hand shut and covered. If that
+finger comes again tickling your ribs, try it with the point. I'll
+manage the switch, from behind the curtain."
+
+Then he disappeared.
+
+I was too indifferent in my misery to turn my head and observe where he
+was. I remained inert, with the knob in my hand, and my eyes closed,
+suffering and thinking of nothing but the shooting pains through my head
+and the aches in my loins and back and legs.
+
+Some time probably elapsed before I felt the finger again at work at my
+ribs; it groped, but no longer bored. I now felt the entire hand, not a
+single finger, and the hand was substantial, cold, and clammy. I was
+aware, how, I know not, that if the finger-point reached the region of
+my heart, on the left side, the hand would, so to speak, sit down on it,
+with the cold palm over it, and that then immediately my heart would
+cease to beat, and it would be, as Square might express it, "gone coon"
+with me.
+
+In self-preservation I brought up the knob of the electric wire against
+the hand--against one of the ringers, I think--and at once was aware of
+a rapping, squealing noise. I turned my head languidly, and saw the
+form, now more substantial than before, capering in an ecstasy of pain,
+endeavouring fruitlessly to withdraw its arm from under the bedclothes,
+and the hand from the electric point.
+
+At the same moment Square stepped from behind the curtain, with a dry
+laugh, and said: "I thought we should fix him. He has the coil about
+him, and can't escape. Now let us drop to particulars. But I shan't let
+you off till I know all about you."
+
+The last sentence was addressed, not to me, but to the apparition.
+
+Thereupon he bade me take the point away from the hand of the
+figure--being--whatever it was, but to be ready with it at a moment's
+notice. He then proceeded to catechise my visitor, who moved restlessly
+within the circle of wire, but could not escape from it. It replied in a
+thin, squealing voice that sounded as if it came from a distance, and
+had a querulous tone in it. I do not pretend to give all that was said.
+I cannot recollect everything that passed. My memory was affected by my
+illness, as well as my body. Yet I prefer giving the scraps that I
+recollect to what Square told me he had heard.
+
+"Yes--I was unsuccessful, always was. Nothing answered with me. The
+world was against me. Society was. I hate Society. I don't like work
+neither, never did. But I like agitating against what is established. I
+hate the Royal Family, the landed interest, the parsons, everything that
+is, except the people--that is, the unemployed. I always did. I couldn't
+get work as suited me. When I died they buried me in a cheap coffin,
+dirt cheap, and gave me a nasty grave, cheap, and a service rattled
+away cheap, and no monument. Didn't want none. Oh! there are lots of
+us. All discontented. Discontent! That's a passion, it is--it gets into
+the veins, it fills the brain, it occupies the heart; it's a sort of
+divine cancer that takes possession of the entire man, and makes him
+dissatisfied with everything, and hate everybody. But we must have our
+share of happiness at some time. We all crave for it in one way or
+other. Some think there's a future state of blessedness and so have
+hope, and look to attain to it, for hope is a cable and anchor that
+attaches to what is real. But when you have no hope of that sort, don't
+believe in any future state, you must look for happiness in life here.
+We didn't get it when we were alive, so we seek to procure it after we
+are dead. We can do it, if we can get out of our cheap and nasty
+coffins. But not till the greater part of us is mouldered away. If a
+finger or two remains, that can work its way up to the surface, those
+cheap deal coffins go to pieces quick enough. Then the only solid part
+of us left can pull the rest of us that has gone to nothing after it.
+Then we grope about after the living. The well-to-do if we can get at
+them--the honest working poor if we can't--we hate them too, because
+they are content and happy. If we reach any of these, and can touch
+them, then we can draw their vital force out of them into ourselves, and
+recuperate at their expense. That was about what I was going to do with
+you. Getting on famous. Nearly solidified into a new man; and given
+another chance in life. But I've missed it this time. Just like my luck.
+Miss everything. Always have, except misery and disappointment. Get
+plenty of that."
+
+"What are you all?" asked Square. "Anarchists out of employ?"
+
+"Some of us go by that name, some by other designations, but we are all
+one, and own allegiance to but one monarch--Sovereign discontent. We are
+bred to have a distaste for manual work; and we grow up loafers,
+grumbling at everything and quarrelling with Society that is around us
+and the Providence that is above us."
+
+"And what do you call yourselves now?"
+
+"Call ourselves? Nothing; we are the same, in another condition, that is
+all. Folk called us once Anarchists, Nihilists, Socialists, Levellers,
+now they call us the Influenza. The learned talk of microbes, and
+bacilli, and bacteria. Microbes, bacilli, and bacteria be blowed! We are
+the Influenza; we the social failures, the generally discontented,
+coming up out of our cheap and nasty graves in the form of physical
+disease. We are the Influenza."
+
+"There you are, I guess!" exclaimed Square triumphantly. "Did I not say
+that all forces were correlated? If so, then all negations, deficiencies
+of force are one in their several manifestations. Talk of Divine
+discontent as a force impelling to progress! Rubbish, it is a paralysis
+of energy. It turns all it absorbs to acid, to envy, spite, gall. It
+inspires nothing, but rots the whole moral system. Here you have
+it--moral, social, political discontent in another form, nay
+aspect--that is all. What Anarchism is in the body Politic, that
+Influenza is in the body Physical. Do you see that?"
+
+"Ye-e-s-e-s," I believe I answered, and dropped away into the land of
+dreams.
+
+I recovered. What Square did with the Thing I know not, but believe that
+he reduced it again to its former negative and self-decomposing
+condition.
+
+
+
+
+BLACK RAM
+
+
+I do not know when I had spent a more pleasant evening, or had enjoyed a
+dinner more than that at Mr. Weatherwood's hospitable house. For one
+thing, the hostess knew how to keep her guests interested and in
+good-humour. The dinner was all that could be desired, and so were the
+wines. But what conduced above all to my pleasure was that at table I
+sat by Miss Fulton, a bright, intelligent girl, well read and
+entertaining. My wife had a cold, and had sent her excuses by me. Miss
+Fulton and I talked of this, that, and every thing. Towards the end of
+dinner she said: "I shall be obliged to run away so soon as the ladies
+leave the room to you and your cigarettes and gossip. It is rather mean,
+but Mrs. Weatherwood has been forewarned, and understands. To-morrow is
+our village feast at Marksleigh, and I have a host of things on my hand.
+I shall have to be up at seven, and I do object to cut a slice off my
+night's rest at both ends."
+
+"Rather an unusual time of the year for a village feast," said I. "These
+things are generally got over in the summer."
+
+"You see, our church is dedicated to St. Mark, and to-morrow is his
+festival, and it has been observed in one fashion or another in our
+parish from time immemorial. In your parts have they any notions about
+St. Mark's eve?"
+
+"What sort of notions?"
+
+"That if you sit in the church porch from midnight till the clock
+strikes one, you will see the apparitions pass before you of those
+destined to die within the year."
+
+"I fancy our good people see themselves, and nothing but themselves, on
+every day and hour throughout the twelvemonth."
+
+"Joking apart, have you any such superstition hanging on in your
+neighbourhood?"
+
+"Not that I am aware of. That sort of thing belonged to the Golden Age
+that has passed away. Board schools have reduced us to that of lead."
+
+"At Marksleigh the villagers believe in it, and recently their faith has
+received corroboration."
+
+"How so?" I asked.
+
+"Last year, in a fit of bravado, a young carpenter ventured to sit in
+the porch at the witching hour, and saw himself enter the church. He
+came home, looking as blank as a sheet, moped, lost flesh, and died nine
+months later."
+
+"Of course he died, if he had made up his mind to do so."
+
+"Yes--that is explicable. But how do you account for his having seen his
+double?"
+
+"He had been drinking at the public-house. A good many people see double
+after that."
+
+"It was not so. He was perfectly sober at the time."
+
+"Then I give it up."
+
+"Would you venture on a visit to a church porch on this night--St.
+Mark's eve?"
+
+"Certainly I would, if well wrapped up, and I had my pipe."
+
+"I bar the pipe," said Miss Fulton. "No apparition can stand tobacco
+smoke. But there is Lady Eastleigh rising. When you come to rejoin the
+ladies, I shall be gone."
+
+I did not leave the house of the Weatherwoods till late. My dogcart was
+driven by my groom, Richard. The night was cold, or rather chilly, but I
+had my fur-lined overcoat, and did not mind that. The stars shone out of
+a frosty sky. All went smoothly enough till the road dipped into a
+valley, where a dense white fog hung over the river and the
+water-meadows. Anyone who has had much experience in driving at night is
+aware that in such a case the carriage lamps are worse than useless;
+they bewilder the horse and the driver. I cannot blame Dick if he ran
+his wheel over a heap of stones that upset the trap. We were both thrown
+out, and I fell on my head. I sang out: "Mind the cob, Dick; I am all
+right."
+
+The boy at once mastered the horse. I did not rise immediately, for I
+had been somewhat jarred by the fall; when I did I found Dick engaged in
+mending a ruptured trace. One of the shafts was broken, and a carriage
+lamp had been shattered.
+
+"Dick," said I, "there are a couple of steep hills to descend, and that
+is risky with a single shaft. I will lighten the dogcart by walking
+home, and do you take care at the hills."
+
+"I think we can manage, sir."
+
+"I should prefer to walk the rest of the way. I am rather shaken by my
+fall, and a good step out in the cool night will do more to put me to
+rights than anything else. When you get home, send up a message to your
+mistress that she is not to expect me at once. I shall arrive in due
+time, and she is not to be alarmed."
+
+"It's a good trudge before you, sir. And I dare say we could get the
+shaft tied up at Fifewell."
+
+"What--at this time of night? No, Dick, do as I say."
+
+Accordingly the groom drove off, and I started on my walk. I was glad to
+get out of the clinging fog, when I reached higher ground. I looked
+back, and by the starlight saw the river bottom filled with the mist,
+lying apparently dense as snow.
+
+After a swinging walk of a quarter of an hour I entered the outskirts of
+Fifewell, a village of some importance, with shops, the seat of the
+petty sessions, and with a small boot and shoe factory in it.
+
+The street was deserted. Some bedroom windows were lighted, for our
+people have the habit of burning their paraffin lamps all night. Every
+door was shut, no one was stirring.
+
+As I passed along the churchyard wall, the story of the young carpenter,
+told by Miss Fulton, recurred to me.
+
+"By Jove!" thought I, "it is now close upon midnight, a rare opportunity
+for me to see the wonders of St. Mark's eve. I will go into the porch
+and rest there for a few minutes, and then I shall be able, when I meet
+that girl again, to tell her that I had done what she challenged me to
+do, without any idea that I would take her challenge up."
+
+I turned in at the gate, and walked up the pathway. The headstones bore
+a somewhat ghostly look in the starlight. A cross of white stone,
+recently set up, I supposed, had almost the appearance of
+phosphorescence. The church windows were dark.
+
+I seated myself in the roomy porch on a stone bench against the wall,
+and felt for my pipe. I am not sure that I contemplated smoking it then
+and there, partly because Miss Fulton had forbidden it, but also because
+I felt that it was not quite the right thing to do on consecrated
+ground. But it would be a satisfaction to finger it, and I might plug
+it, so as to be ready to light up so soon as I left the churchyard. To
+my vexation I found that I had lost it. The tobacco-pouch was there, and
+the matches. My pipe must have fallen out of my pocket when I was
+pitched from the trap. That pipe was a favourite of mine.
+
+"What a howling nuisance," said I. "If I send Dick back over the road
+to-morrow morning, ten chances to one if he finds it, for to-morrow is
+market-day, and people will be passing early."
+
+As I said this, the clock struck twelve.
+
+I counted each stroke. I wore my fur-lined coat, and was not cold--in
+fact, I had been too warm walking in it. At the last stroke of twelve I
+noticed lines of very brilliant light appear about the door into the
+church. The door must have fitted well, as the light did no more than
+show about it, and did not gush forth at all the crevices. But from the
+keyhole shot a ray of intense brilliancy.
+
+Whether the church windows were illumined I did not see--in fact, it did
+not occur to me to look, either then or later--but I am pretty certain
+that they were not, or the light streaming from them would have brought
+the gravestones into prominence. When you come to think of it, it was
+remarkable that the light of so dazzling a nature should shine through
+the crannies of the door, and that none should issue, as far as I could
+see, from the windows. At the time I did not give this a thought; my
+attention was otherwise taken up. For I saw distinctly Miss Venville, a
+very nice girl of my acquaintance, coming up the path with that swinging
+walk so characteristic of an English young lady.
+
+How often it has happened to me, when I have been sitting in a public
+park or in the gardens of a Cursaal abroad, and some young girls have
+passed by, that I have said to my wife: "I bet you a bob those are
+English."
+
+"Yes, of course," she has replied; "you can see that by their dress."
+
+"I don't know anything about dress," I have said; "I judge by the
+walk."
+
+Well, there was Miss Venville coming towards the porch.
+
+"This is a joke," said I. "She is going to sit here on the look-out for
+ghosts, and if I stand up or speak she will be scared out of her wits.
+Hang it, I wish I had my pipe now; if I gave a whiff it would reveal the
+presence of a mortal, without alarming her. I think I shall whistle."
+
+I had screwed up my lips to begin "Rocked in the cradle of the
+deep"--that is my great song I perform whenever there is a village
+concert, or I am asked out to dinner, and am entreated afterwards to
+sing--I say I had screwed up my lips to whistle, when I saw something
+that scared me so that I made no attempt at the melody.
+
+The ray of light through the keyhole was shut off, and I saw standing in
+the porch before me the form of Mrs. Venville, the girl's mother, who
+had died two years before. The ray of white light arrested by her filled
+her as a lamp--was diffused as a mild glow from her.
+
+"Halloo, mother, what brings you here?" asked the girl.
+
+"Gwendoline, I have come to warn you back. You cannot enter; you have
+not got the key."
+
+"The key, mother?"
+
+"Yes, everyone who would pass within must have his or her own key."
+
+"Well, where am I to get one?"
+
+"It must be forged for you, Gwen. You are wholly unfit to enter. What
+good have you ever done to deserve it?"
+
+"Why, mother, everyone knows I'm an awfully good sort."
+
+"No one in here knows it. That is no qualification."
+
+"And I always dressed in good taste."
+
+"Nor is that."
+
+"And I was splendid at lawn tennis."
+
+Her mother shook her head.
+
+"Look here, little mummy. I won a brooch at the archery match."
+
+"That will not do, Gwendoline. What good have you ever done to anyone
+else beside yourself?"
+
+The girl considered a minute, then laughed, and said: "I put into a
+raffle at a bazaar--no, it was a bran-pie for an orphanage--and I drew
+out a pair of braces. I had rare fun over those braces, I sold them to
+Captain Fitzakerly for half a crown, and that I gave to the charity."
+
+"You went for what you could get, not what you could give."
+
+Then the mother stepped on one side, and the ray shot directly at the
+girl. I saw that it had something of the quality of the X-ray. It was
+not arrested by her garments, or her flesh or muscles. It revealed in
+her breast, in her brain--penetrating her whole body--a hard, dark core.
+
+"Black Ram, I bet," said I.
+
+Now Black Ram is the local name for a substance found in our land,
+especially in the low ground that ought to be the most fertile, but is
+not so, on account of this material found in it.
+
+The substance lies some two or three feet below the surface, and forms a
+crust of the consistency of cast iron. No plough can possibly be driven
+through it. No water can percolate athwart it, and consequently where it
+is, there the superincumbent soil is resolved into a quagmire. No tree
+can grow in it, for the moment the taproot touches the Black Ram the
+tree dies.
+
+Of what Black Ram consists is more than I can say; the popular opinion
+is that it is a bastard manganese. Now I happen to own several fields
+accursed with the presence in them of Black Ram--fields that ought to be
+luxuriant meadows, but which, in consequence of its presence, are worth
+almost nothing at all.
+
+"No, Gwen," said her mother, looking sorrowfully at her, "there is not a
+chance of your admission till you have got rid of the Black Ram that is
+in you."
+
+"Sure," said I, as I slapped my knee, "I thought I knew the article, and
+now my opinion has been confirmed."
+
+"How can I get rid of it?" asked the girl.
+
+"Gwendoline, you will have to pass into little Polly Finch, and work it
+out of your system. She is dying of scarlet fever, and you must enter
+into her body, and so rid yourself in time of the Black Ram."
+
+"Mother!--the Finches are common people."
+
+"So much the better chance for you."
+
+"And I am eighteen, Polly is about ten."
+
+"You will have to become a little child if you would enter her."
+
+"I don't like it. What is the alternative?"
+
+"To remain without in the darkness till you come to a better mind. And
+now, Gwen, no time is to be lost; you must pass into Polly Finch's body
+before it grows cold."
+
+"Well, then--here goes!"
+
+Gwen Venville turned, and her mother accompanied her down the path. The
+girl moved reluctantly, and pouted. Passing out of the churchyard, both
+traversed the street and disappeared within a cottage, from the upper
+window of which light from behind a white blind was diffused.
+
+I did not follow, I leaned back against the wall. I felt that my head
+was throbbing. I was a little afraid lest my fall had done more injury
+than I had at first anticipated. I put my hand to my head, and held it
+there for a moment.
+
+Then it was as though a book were opened before me--the book of the life
+of Polly Finch--or rather of Gwendoline's soul in Polly Finch's body. It
+was but one page that I saw, and the figures in it were moving.
+
+The girl was struggling under the burden of a heavy baby brother. She
+coaxed him, she sang to him, she played with him, talked to him, broke
+off bits of her bread and butter, given to her for breakfast, and made
+him eat them; she wiped his nose and eyes with her pocket-handkerchief,
+she tried to dance him in her arms. He was a fractious urchin, and most
+exacting, but her patience, her good-nature, never failed. The drops
+stood on her brow, and her limbs tottered under the weight, but her
+heart was strong, and her eyes shone with love.
+
+I drew my hand from my head. It was burning. I put my hand to the cold
+stone bench to cool it, and then applied it once more to my brow.
+
+Instantly it was as though another page were revealed. I saw Polly in
+her widowed father's cottage. She was now a grown girl; she was on her
+knees scrubbing the floor. A bell tinkled. Then she put down the soap
+and brush, turned down her sleeves, rose and went into the outer shop to
+serve a customer with half a pound of tea. That done, she was back
+again, and the scrubbing was renewed. Again a tinkle, and again she
+stood up and went into the shop to a child who desired to buy a
+pennyworth of lemon drops.
+
+On her return, in came her little brother crying--he had cut his finger.
+Polly at once applied cobweb, and then stitched a rag about the wounded
+member.
+
+"There, there, Tommy! don't cry any more. I have kissed the bad place,
+and it will soon be well."
+
+"Poll! it hurts! it hurts!" sobbed the boy.
+
+"Come to me," said his sister. She drew a low chair to the fireside,
+took Tommy on her lap, and began to tell him the story of Jack the
+Giant-killer.
+
+I removed my hand, and the vision was gone.
+
+I put my other hand to my head, and at once saw a further scene in the
+life-story of Polly.
+
+She was now a middle-aged woman, and had a cottage of her own. She was
+despatching her children to school. They had bright, rosy faces, their
+hair was neatly combed, their pinafores were white as snow. One after
+another, before leaving, put up the cherry lips to kiss mammy; and when
+they were gone, for a moment she stood in the door looking after them,
+then sharply turned, brought out a basket, and emptied its contents on
+the table. There were little girls' stockings with "potatoes" in them to
+be darned, torn jackets to be mended, a little boy's trousers to be
+reseated, pocket-handkerchiefs to be hemmed. She laboured on with her
+needle the greater part of the day, then put away the garments, some
+finished, others to be finished, and going to the flour-bin took forth
+flour and began to knead dough, and then to roll it out to make pasties
+for her husband and the children.
+
+"Poll!" called a voice from without; she ran to the door.
+
+"Back, Joe! I have your dinner hot in the oven."
+
+"I must say, Poll, you are the best of good wives, and there isn't a
+mother like you in the shire. My word! that was a lucky day when I chose
+you, and didn't take Mary Matters, who was setting her cap at me. See
+what a slattern she has turned out. Why, I do believe, Poll, if I'd took
+her she'd have drove me long ago to the public-house."
+
+I saw the mother of Gwendoline standing by me and looking out on this
+scene, and I heard her say: "The Black Ram is run out, and the key is
+forged."
+
+All had vanished. I thought now I might as well rise and continue my
+journey. But before I had left the bench I observed the rector of
+Fifewell sauntering up the path, with uncertain step, as he fumbled in
+his coat-tail pockets, and said: "Where the deuce is the key?"
+
+The Reverend William Hexworthy was a man of good private means, and was
+just the sort of man that a bishop delights to honour. He was one who
+would never cause him an hour's anxiety; he was not the man to indulge
+in ecclesiastical vagaries. He flattered himself that he was strictly a
+_via media_ man. He kept dogs, he was a good judge of horses, was fond
+of sport. He did not hunt, but he shot and fished. He was a favourite in
+Society, was of irreproachable conduct, and was a magistrate on the
+bench.
+
+As the ray from the keyhole smote on him he seemed to be wholly
+dark,--made up of nothing but Black Ram. He came on slowly, as though
+not very sure of his way.
+
+"Bless me! where can be the key?" he asked.
+
+Then from out of the graves, and from over the wall of the churchyard,
+came rushing up a crowd of his dead parishioners, and blocked his way to
+the porch.
+
+"Please, your reverence!" said one, "you did not visit me when I was
+dying."
+
+"I sent you a bottle of my best port," said the parson.
+
+"Ay, sir, and thank you for it. But that went into my stomick, and what
+I wanted was medicine for my soul. You never said a prayer by me. You
+never urged me to repentance for my bad life, and you let me go out of
+the world with all my sins about me."
+
+"And I, sir," said another, thrusting himself before Mr. Hexworthy--"I
+was a young man, sir, going wild, and you never said a word to restrain
+me; never sent for me and gave me a bit of warning and advice which
+would have checked me. You just shrugged your shoulders and laughed, and
+said that a young chap like me must sow his wild oats."
+
+"And we," shouted the rest--"we were never taught by you anything at
+all."
+
+"Now this is really too bad," said the rector. "I preached twice every
+Sunday."
+
+"Oh, yes--right enough that. But precious little good it did when
+nothing came out of your heart, and all out of your pocket--and that you
+did give us was copied in your library. Why, sir, not one of your
+sermons ever did anybody a farthing of good."
+
+"We were your sheep," protested others, "and you let us wander where we
+would! You didn't seem to know yourself that there was a fold into which
+to draw us."
+
+"And we," said others, "went off to chapel, and all the good we ever got
+was from the dissenting minister--never a mite from you."
+
+"And some of us," cried out others, "went to the bad altogether, through
+your neglect. What did you care about our souls so long as your terriers
+were washed and combed, and your horses well groomed? You were a
+fisherman, but all you fished for were trout--not souls. And if some of
+us turned out well, it was in spite of your neglect--no thanks to you."
+
+Then some children's voices were raised: "Sir, you never taught us no
+Catechism, nor our duty to God and to man, and we grew up regular
+heathens."
+
+"That was your fathers' and mothers' duty."
+
+"But our fathers and mothers never taught us anything."
+
+"Come, this is intolerable," shouted Mr. Hexworthy. "Get out of the way,
+all of you. I can't be bothered with you now. I want to go in there."
+
+"You can't, parson! the door is shut, and you have not got your key."
+
+Mr. Hexworthy stood bewildered and irresolute. He rubbed his chin.
+
+"What the dickens am I to do?" he asked.
+
+Then the crowd closed about him, and thrust him back towards the gate.
+"You must go whither we send you," they said.
+
+I stood up to follow. It was curious to see a flock drive its shepherd,
+who, indeed, had never attempted to lead. I walked in the rear, and it
+seemed as though we were all swept forward as by a mighty wind. I did
+not gain my breath, or realise whither I was going, till I found myself
+in the slums of a large manufacturing town before a mean house such as
+those occupied by artisans, with the conventional one window on one side
+of the door and two windows above. Out of one of these latter shone a
+scarlet glow.
+
+The crowd hustled Mr. Hexworthy in at the door, which was opened by a
+hospital nurse.
+
+I stood hesitating what to do, and not understanding what had taken
+place. On the opposite side of the street was a mission church, and the
+windows were lighted. I entered, and saw that there were at least a
+score of people, shabbily dressed, and belonging to the lowest class, on
+their knees in prayer. There was a sort of door-opener or verger at the
+entrance, and I said to him: "What is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"Oh, sir!" said he, "_he_ is ill, he has been attacked by smallpox. It
+has been raging in the place, and he has been with all the sick, and
+now he has taken it himself, and we are terribly afraid that he is
+dying. So we are praying God to spare him to us."
+
+Then one of those who was kneeling turned to me and said: "I was an
+hungred, and he gave me meat."
+
+And another rose up and said: "I was a stranger, and he took me in."
+
+Then a third said: "I was naked, and he clothed me."
+
+And a fourth: "I was sick, and he visited me."
+
+Then said a fifth, with bowed head, sobbing: "I was in prison, and he
+came to me."
+
+Thereupon I went out and looked up at the red window, and I felt as if I
+must see the man for whom so many prayed. I tapped at the door, and a
+woman opened.
+
+"I should so much like to see him, if I may," said I.
+
+"Well, sir," spoke the woman, a plain, middle-aged, rough creature, but
+her eyes were full of tears: "Oh, sir, I think you may, if you will go
+up softly. There has come over him a great change. It is as though a new
+life had entered into him."
+
+I mounted the narrow staircase of very steep steps and entered the
+sick-room. There was an all-pervading glow of red. The fire was low--no
+flame, and a screen was before it. The lamp had a scarlet shade over it.
+I stepped to the side of the bed, where stood a nurse. I looked on the
+patient. He was an awful object. His face had been smeared over with
+some dark solution, with the purpose of keeping all light from the skin,
+with the object of saving it from permanent disfigurement.
+
+The sick priest lay with eyes raised, and I thought I saw in them those
+of Mr. Hexworthy, but with a new light, a new faith, a new fervour, a
+new love in them. The lips were moving in prayer, and the hands were
+folded over the breast. The nurse whispered to me: "We thought he was
+passing away, but the prayers of those he loved have prevailed. A great
+change has come over him. The last words he spoke were: 'God's will be
+done. If I live, I will live only--only for my dear sheep, and die among
+them'; and now he is in an ecstasy, and says nothing. But he is praying
+still--for his people."
+
+As I stood looking I saw what might have been tears, but seemed to be
+molten Black Ram, roll over the painted cheeks. The spirit of Mr.
+Hexworthy was in this body.
+
+Then, without a word, I turned to the door, went through, groped my way
+down the steps, passed out into the street, and found myself back in the
+porch of Fifewell Church.
+
+"Upon my word," said I, "I have been here long enough." I wrapped my fur
+coat about me, and prepared to go, when I saw a well-known figure, that
+of Mr. Fothergill, advancing up the path.
+
+I knew the old gentleman well. His age must have been seventy. He was a
+spare man, he was rather bald, and had sunken cheeks. He was a bachelor,
+living in a pretty little villa of his own. He had a good fortune, and
+was a harmless, but self-centred, old fellow. He prided himself on his
+cellar and his cook. He always dressed well, and was scrupulously neat.
+I had often played a game of chess with him.
+
+I would have run towards him to remonstrate with him for exposing
+himself to the night air, but I was forestalled. Slipping past me, his
+old manservant, David, went to meet him. David had died three years
+before. Mr. Fothergill had then been dangerously ill with typhoid fever,
+and the man had attended to him night and day. The old gentleman, as I
+heard, had been most irritable and exacting in his illness. When his
+malady took a turn, and he was on the way to convalescence, David had
+succumbed in his turn, and in three days was dead.
+
+This man now met his master, touched his cap, and said: "Beg pardon,
+sir, you will not be admitted."
+
+"Not admitted? Why not, Davie?"
+
+"I really am very sorry, sir. If my key would have availed, you would
+have been welcome to it; but, sir, there's such a terrible lot of Black
+Ram in you, sir. That must be got out first."
+
+"I don't understand, Davie."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, to have to say it; but you've never done anyone any
+good."
+
+"I paid you your wages regularly."
+
+"Yes, sir, to be sure, sir, for my services to yourself."
+
+"And I've always subscribed when asked for money."
+
+"Yes, that is very true, sir, but that was because you thought it was
+expected of you, not because you had any sympathy with those in need,
+and sickness, and suffering."
+
+"I'm sure I never did anyone any harm."
+
+"No, sir, and never anyone any good. You'll excuse me for mentioning
+it."
+
+"But, Davie, what do you mean? I can't get in?"
+
+"No, sir, not till you have the key."
+
+"But, bless my soul! what is to become of me? Am I to stick out here?"
+
+"Yes, sir, unless----"
+
+"In this damp, and cold, and darkness?"
+
+"There is no help for it, Mr. Fothergill, unless----"
+
+"Unless what, Davie?"
+
+"Unless you become a mother, sir!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Of twins, sir."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!"
+
+"Indeed, it is so, sir, and you will have to nurse them."
+
+"I can't do it. I'm physically incapable."
+
+"It must be done, sir. Very sorry to mention it, but there is no
+alternative. There's Sally Bowker is approaching her confinement, and
+it's going terribly hard with her. The doctor thinks she'll never pull
+through. But if you'd consent to pass into her and become a mother----"
+
+"And nurse the twins? Oh, Davie, I shall need a great amount of stout."
+
+"I grieve to say it, Mr. Fothergill, but you'll be too poor to afford
+it."
+
+"Is there no alternative?"
+
+"None in the world, sir."
+
+"I don't know my way to the place."
+
+"If you'd do me the honour, sir, to take my arm, I would lead you to the
+house."
+
+"It's hard--cruel hard on an old bachelor. Must it be twins? It's a
+rather large order."
+
+"It really must, sir."
+
+Then I saw David lend his arm to his former master and conduct him out
+of the churchyard, across the street, into the house of Seth Bowker, the
+shoemaker.
+
+I was so interested in the fate of my old friend, and so curious as to
+the result, that I followed, and went into the cobbler's house. I found
+myself in the little room on the ground floor. Seth Bowker was sitting
+over the fire with his face in his hands, swaying himself, and moaning:
+"Oh dear! dear life! whatever shall I do without her? and she the best
+woman as breathed, and knew all my little ways."
+
+Overhead was a trampling. The doctor and the midwife were with the
+woman. Seth looked up, and listened. Then he flung himself on his knees
+at the deal table, and prayed: "Oh, good God in heaven! have pity on me,
+and spare me my wife. I shall be a lost man without her--and no one to
+sew on my shirt-buttons!"
+
+At the moment I heard a feeble twitter aloft, then it grew in volume,
+and presently became cries. Seth looked up; his face was bathed in
+tears. Still that strange sound like the chirping of sparrows. He rose
+to his feet and made for the stairs, and held on to the banister.
+
+Forth from the chamber above came the doctor, and leisurely descended
+the stairs.
+
+"Well, Bowker," said he, "I congratulate you; you have two fine boys."
+
+"And my Sally--my wife?"
+
+"She has pulled through. But really, upon my soul, I did fear for her at
+one time. But she rallied marvellously."
+
+"Can I go up to her?"
+
+"In a minute or two, not just now, the babes are being washed."
+
+"And my wife will get over it?"
+
+"I trust so, Bowker; a new life came into her as she gave birth to
+twins."
+
+"God be praised!" Seth's mouth quivered, all his face worked, and he
+clasped his hands.
+
+Presently the door of the chamber upstairs was opened, the nurse looked
+down, and said: "Mr. Bowker, you may come up. Your wife wants you. Lawk!
+you will see the beautifullest twins that ever was."
+
+I followed Seth upstairs, and entered the sick-room. It was humble
+enough, with whitewashed walls, all scrupulously clean. The happy mother
+lay in the bed, her pale face on the pillow, but the eyes were lighted
+up with ineffable love and pride.
+
+"Kiss them, Bowker," said she, exhibiting at her side two little pink
+heads, with down on them. But her husband just stooped and pressed his
+lips to her brow, and after that kissed the tiny morsels at her side.
+
+"Ain't they loves!" exclaimed the midwife.
+
+But oh! what a rapture of triumph, pity, fervour, love, was in that
+mother's face, and--the eyes looking on those children were the eyes of
+Mr. Fothergill. Never had I seen such an expression in them, not even
+when he had exclaimed "Checkmate" over a game of chess.
+
+Then I knew what would follow. How night and day that mother would live
+only for her twins, how she would cheerfully sacrifice her night's rest
+to them; how she would go downstairs, even before it was judicious, to
+see to her husband's meals. Verily, with the mother's milk that fed
+those babes, the Black Ram would run out of the Fothergill soul. There
+was no need for me to tarry. I went forth, and as I issued into the
+street heard the clock strike one.
+
+"Bless me!" I exclaimed, "I have spent an hour in the porch. What will
+my wife say?"
+
+I walked home as fast as I could in my fur coat. When I arrived I found
+Bessie up.
+
+"Oh, Bessie!" said I, "with your cold you ought to have been in bed."
+
+"My dear Edward," she replied, "how could I? I had lain down, but when I
+heard of the accident I could not rest. Have you been hurt?"
+
+"My head is somewhat contused," I replied.
+
+"Let me feel. Indeed, it is burning. I will put on some cold
+compresses."
+
+"But, Bessie, I have a story to tell you."
+
+"Oh! never mind the story, we'll have that another day. I'll send for
+some ice from the fishmonger to-morrow for your head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did eventually tell my wife the story of my experience in the porch of
+Fifewell on St. Mark's eve.
+
+I have since regretted that I did so; for whenever I cross her will, or
+express my determination to do something of which she does not approve,
+she says: "Edward, Edward! I very much fear there is still in you too
+much Black Ram."
+
+
+
+
+A HAPPY RELEASE
+
+
+Mr. Benjamin Woolfield was a widower. For twelve months he put on
+mourning. The mourning was external, and by no means represented the
+condition of his feelings; for his married life had not been happy. He
+and Kesiah had been unequally yoked together. The Mosaic law forbade the
+union of the ox and the ass to draw one plough; and two more uncongenial
+creatures than Benjamin and Kesiah could hardly have been coupled to
+draw the matrimonial furrow.
+
+She was a Plymouth Sister, and he, as she repeatedly informed him
+whenever he indulged in light reading, laughed, smoked, went out
+shooting, or drank a glass of wine, was of the earth, earthy, and a
+miserable worldling.
+
+For some years Mr. Woolfield had been made to feel as though he were a
+moral and religious pariah. Kesiah had invited to the house and to
+meals, those of her own way of thinking, and on such occasions had
+spared no pains to have the table well served, for the elect are
+particular about their feeding, if indifferent as to their drinks. On
+such occasions, moreover, when Benjamin had sat at the bottom of his own
+table, he had been made to feel that he was a worm to be trodden on. The
+topics of conversation were such as were far beyond his horizon, and
+concerned matters of which he was ignorant. He attempted at intervals to
+enter into the circle of talk. He knew that such themes as football
+matches, horse races, and cricket were taboo, but he did suppose that
+home or foreign politics might interest the guests of Kesiah. But he
+soon learned that this was not the case, unless such matters tended to
+the fulfilment of prophecy.
+
+When, however, in his turn, Benjamin invited home to dinner some of his
+old friends, he found that all provided for them was hashed mutton,
+cottage pie, and tapioca pudding. But even these could have been
+stomached, had not Mrs. Woolfield sat stern and silent at the head of
+the table, not uttering a word, but giving vent to occasional, very
+audible sighs.
+
+When the year of mourning was well over, Mr. Woolfield put on a light
+suit, and contented himself, as an indication of bereavement, with a
+slight black band round the left arm. He also began to look about him
+for someone who might make up for the years during which he had felt
+like a crushed strawberry.
+
+And in casting his inquiring eye about, it lighted upon Philippa Weston,
+a bright, vigorous young lady, well educated and intelligent. She was
+aged twenty-four and he was but eighteen years older, a difference on
+the right side.
+
+It took Mr. Woolfield but a short courtship to reach an understanding,
+and he became engaged.
+
+On the same evening upon which he had received a satisfactory answer to
+the question put to her, and had pressed for an early marriage, to which
+also consent had been accorded, he sat by his study fire, with his hands
+on his knees, looking into the embers and building love-castles there.
+Then he smiled and patted his knees.
+
+He was startled from his honey reveries by a sniff. He looked round.
+There was a familiar ring in that sniff which was unpleasant to him.
+
+What he then saw dissipated his rosy dreams, and sent his blood to his
+heart.
+
+At the table sat his Kesiah, looking at him with her beady black eyes,
+and with stern lines in her face. He was so startled and shocked that he
+could not speak.
+
+"Benjamin," said the apparition, "I know your purpose. It shall never be
+carried to accomplishment. I will prevent it."
+
+"Prevent what, my love, my treasure?" he gathered up his faculties to
+reply.
+
+"It is in vain that you assume that infantile look of innocence," said
+his deceased wife. "You shall never--never--lead her to the hymeneal
+altar."
+
+"Lead whom, my idol? You astound me."
+
+"I know all. I can read your heart. A lost being though you be, you have
+still me to watch over you. When you quit this earthly tabernacle, if
+you have given up taking in the _Field_, and have come to realise your
+fallen condition, there is a chance--a distant chance--but yet one of
+our union becoming eternal."
+
+"You don't mean to say so," said Mr. Woolfield, his jaw falling.
+
+"There is--there is that to look to. That to lead you to turn over a new
+leaf. But it can never be if you become united to that Flibbertigibbet."
+
+Mentally, Benjamin said: "I must hurry up with my marriage!" Vocally he
+said: "Dear me! Dear me!"
+
+"My care for you is still so great," continued the apparition, "that I
+intend to haunt you by night and by day, till that engagement be broken
+off."
+
+"I would not put you to so much trouble," said he.
+
+"It is my duty," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield sternly.
+
+"You are oppressively kind," sighed the widower.
+
+At dinner that evening Mr. Woolfield had a friend to keep him company, a
+friend to whom he had poured out his heart. To his dismay, he saw seated
+opposite him the form of his deceased wife.
+
+He tried to be lively; he cracked jokes, but the sight of the grim face
+and the stony eyes riveted on him damped his spirits, and all his mirth
+died away.
+
+"You seem to be out of sorts to-night," said his friend.
+
+"I am sorry that I act so bad a host," apologised Mr. Woolfield. "Two is
+company, three is none."
+
+"But we are only two here to-night."
+
+"My wife is with me in spirit."
+
+"Which, she that was, or she that is to be?"
+
+Mr. Woolfield looked with timid eyes towards her who sat at the end of
+the table. She was raising her hands in holy horror, and her face was
+black with frowns.
+
+His friend said to himself when he left: "Oh, these lovers! They are
+never themselves so long as the fit lasts."
+
+Mr. Woolfield retired early to bed. When a man has screwed himself up to
+proposing to a lady, it has taken a great deal out of him, and nature
+demands rest. It was so with Benjamin; he was sleepy. A nice little fire
+burned in his grate. He undressed and slipped between the sheets.
+
+Before he put out the light he became aware that the late Mrs. Woolfield
+was standing by his bedside with a nightcap on her head.
+
+"I am cold," said she, "bitterly cold."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it, my dear," said Benjamin.
+
+"The grave is cold as ice," she said. "I am going to step into bed."
+
+"No--never!" exclaimed the widower, sitting up. "It won't do. It really
+won't. You will draw all the vital heat out of me, and I shall be laid
+up with rheumatic fever. It will be ten times worse than damp sheets."
+
+"I am coming to bed," repeated the deceased lady, inflexible as ever in
+carrying out her will.
+
+As she stepped in Mr. Woolfield crept out on the side of the fire and
+seated himself by the grate.
+
+He sat there some considerable time, and then, feeling cold, he fetched
+his dressing-gown and enveloped himself in that.
+
+He looked at the bed. In it lay the deceased lady with her long slit of
+a mouth shut like a rat-trap, and her hard eyes fixed on him.
+
+"It is of no use your thinking of marrying, Benjamin," she said. "I
+shall haunt you till you give it up."
+
+Mr. Woolfield sat by his fire all night, and only dozed off towards
+morning.
+
+During the day he called at the house of Miss Weston, and was shown into
+the drawing-room. But there, standing behind her chair, was his deceased
+wife with her arms folded on the back of the seat, glowering at him.
+
+It was impossible for the usual tender passages to ensue between the
+lovers with a witness present, expressing by gesture her disapproval of
+such matters and her inflexible determination to force on a rupture.
+
+The dear departed did not attend Mr. Woolfield continuously during the
+day, but appeared at intervals. He could never say when he would be
+free, when she would not turn up.
+
+In the evening he rang for the housemaid. "Jemima," he said, "put two
+hot bottles into my bed to-night. It is somewhat chilly."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And let the water be boiling--not with the chill off."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When somewhat late Mr. Woolfield retired to his room he found, as he had
+feared, that his late wife was there before him. She lay in the bed with
+her mouth snapped, her eyes like black balls, staring at him.
+
+"My dear," said Benjamin, "I hope you are more comfortable."
+
+"I'm cold, deadly cold."
+
+"But I trust you are enjoying the hot bottles."
+
+"I lack animal heat," replied the late Mrs. Woolfield.
+
+Benjamin fled the room and returned to his study, where he unlocked his
+spirit case and filled his pipe. The fire was burning. He made it up. He
+would sit there all night During the passing hours, however, he was not
+left quite alone. At intervals the door was gently opened, and the
+night-capped head of the late Mrs. Woolfield was thrust in.
+
+"Don't think, Benjamin, that your engagement will lead to anything," she
+would say, "because it will not. I shall stop it."
+
+So time passed. Mr. Woolfield found it impossible to escape this
+persecution. He lost spirits; he lost flesh.
+
+At last, after sad thought, he saw but one way of relief, and that was
+to submit. And in order to break off the engagement he must have a
+prolonged interview with Philippa. He went to the theatre and bought two
+stall tickets, and sent one to her with the earnest request that she
+would accept it and meet him that evening at the theatre. He had
+something to communicate of the utmost importance.
+
+At the theatre he knew that he would be safe; the principles of Kesiah
+would not suffer her to enter there.
+
+At the proper time Mr. Woolfield drove round to Miss Weston's, picked
+her up, and together they went to the theatre and took their places in
+the stalls. Their seats were side by side.
+
+"I am so glad you have been able to come," said Benjamin. "I have a most
+shocking disclosure to make to you. I am afraid that--but I hardly know
+how to say it--that--I really must break it off."
+
+"Break what off?"
+
+"Our engagement."
+
+"Nonsense. I have been fitted for my trousseau."
+
+"Your what?"
+
+"My wedding-dresses."
+
+"Oh, I beg pardon. I did not understand your French pronunciation. I
+thought--but it does not matter what I thought."
+
+"Pray what is the sense of this?"
+
+"Philippa, my affection for you is unabated. Do not suppose that I love
+you one whit the less. But I am oppressed by a horrible
+nightmare--daymare as well. I am haunted."
+
+"Haunted, indeed!"
+
+"Yes; by my late wife. She allows me no peace. She has made up her mind
+that I shall not marry you."
+
+"Oh! Is that all? I am haunted also."
+
+"Surely not?"
+
+"It is a fact."
+
+"Hush, hush!" from persons in front and at the side. Neither Ben nor
+Philippa had noticed that the curtain had risen and that the play had
+begun.
+
+"We are disturbing the audience," whispered Mr. Woolfield. "Let us go
+out into the passage and promenade there, and then we can talk freely."
+
+So both rose, left their stalls, and went into the _couloir_.
+
+"Look here, Philippa," said he, offering the girl his arm, which she
+took, "the case is serious. I am badgered out of my reason, out of my
+health, by the late Mrs. Woolfield. She always had an iron will, and she
+has intimated to me that she will force me to give you up."
+
+"Defy her."
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"Tut! these ghosts are exacting. Give them an inch and they take an ell.
+They are like old servants; if you yield to them they tyrannise over
+you."
+
+"But how do you know, Philippa, dearest?"
+
+"Because, as I said, I also am haunted."
+
+"That only makes the matter more hopeless."
+
+"On the contrary, it only shows how well suited we are to each other. We
+are in one box."
+
+"Philippa, it is a dreadful thing. When my wife was dying she told me
+she was going to a better world, and that we should never meet again.
+_And she has not kept her word._"
+
+The girl laughed. "Rag her with it."
+
+"How can I?"
+
+"You can do it perfectly. Ask her why she is left out in the cold. Give
+her a piece of your mind. Make it unpleasant for her. I give Jehu no
+good time."
+
+"Who is Jehu?"
+
+"Jehu Post is the ghost who haunts me. When in the flesh he was a great
+admirer of mine, and in his cumbrous way tried to court me; but I never
+liked him, and gave him no encouragement. I snubbed him unmercifully,
+but he was one of those self-satisfied, self-assured creatures incapable
+of taking a snubbing. He was a Plymouth Brother."
+
+"My wife was a Plymouth Sister."
+
+"I know she was, and I always felt for you. It was so sad. Well, to go
+on with my story. In a frivolous mood Jehu took to a bicycle, and the
+very first time he scorched he was thrown, and so injured his back that
+he died in a week. Before he departed he entreated that I would see him;
+so I could not be nasty, and I went. And he told me then that he was
+about to be wrapped in glory. I asked him if this were so certain.
+'Cocksure' was his reply; and they were his last words. And _he has not
+kept his word_."
+
+"And he haunts you now?"
+
+"Yes. He dangles about with his great ox-eyes fixed on me. But as to his
+envelope of glory I have not seen a fag end of it, and I have told him
+so."
+
+"Do you really mean this, Philippa?"
+
+"I do. He wrings his hands and sighs. He gets no change out of me, I
+promise you."
+
+"This is a very strange condition of affairs."
+
+"It only shows how well matched we are. I do not suppose you will find
+two other people in England so situated as we are, and therefore so
+admirably suited to one another."
+
+"There is much in what you say. But how are we to rid ourselves of the
+nuisance--for it is a nuisance being thus haunted. We cannot spend all
+our time in a theatre."
+
+"We must defy them. Marry in spite of them."
+
+"I never did defy my wife when she was alive. I do not know how to pluck
+up courage now that she is dead. Feel my hand, Philippa, how it
+trembles. She has broken my nerve. When I was young I could play
+spellikins--my hand was so steady. Now I am quite incapable of doing
+anything with the little sticks."
+
+"Well, hearken to what I propose," said Miss Weston. "I will beard the
+old cat----"
+
+"Hush, not so disrespectful; she was my wife."
+
+"Well, then, the ghostly old lady, in her den. You think she will appear
+if I go to pay you a visit?"
+
+"Sure of it. She is consumed with jealousy. She had no personal
+attractions herself, and you have a thousand. I never knew whether she
+loved me, but she was always confoundedly jealous of me."
+
+"Very well, then. You have often spoken to me about changes in the
+decoration of your villa. Suppose I call on you to-morrow afternoon, and
+you shall show me what your schemes are."
+
+"And your ghost, will he attend you?"
+
+"Most probably. He also is as jealous as a ghost can well be."
+
+"Well, so be it. I shall await your coming with impatience. Now, then,
+we may as well go to our respective homes."
+
+A cab was accordingly summoned, and after Mr. Woolfield had handed
+Philippa in, and she had taken her seat in the back, he entered and
+planted himself with his back to the driver.
+
+"Why do you not sit by me?" asked the girl.
+
+"I can't," replied Benjamin. "Perhaps you may not see, but I do, my
+deceased wife is in the cab, and occupies the place on your left."
+
+"Sit on her," urged Philippa.
+
+"I haven't the effrontery to do it," gasped Ben.
+
+"Will you believe me," whispered the young lady, leaning over to speak
+to Mr. Woolfield, "I have seen Jehu Post hovering about the theatre
+door, wringing his white hands and turning up his eyes. I suspect he is
+running after the cab."
+
+As soon as Mr. Woolfield had deposited his bride-elect at her residence
+he ordered the cabman to drive him home. Then he was alone in the
+conveyance with the ghost. As each gaslight was passed the flash came
+over the cadaverous face opposite him, and sparks of fire kindled
+momentarily in the stony eyes.
+
+"Benjamin!" she said, "Benjamin! Oh, Benjamin! Do not suppose that I
+shall permit it. You may writhe and twist, you may plot and contrive how
+you will, I will stand between you and her as a wall of ice."
+
+Next day, in the afternoon, Philippa Weston arrived at the house. The
+late Mrs. Woolfield had, however, apparently obtained an inkling of what
+was intended, for she was already there, in the drawing-room, seated in
+an armchair with her hands raised and clasped, looking stonily before
+her. She had a white face, no lips that showed, and her dark hair was
+dressed in two black slabs, one on each side of the temples. It was done
+in a knot behind. She wore no ornaments of any kind.
+
+In came Miss Weston, a pretty girl, coquettishly dressed in colours,
+with sparkling eyes and laughing lips. As she had predicted, she was
+followed by her attendant spectre, a tall, gaunt young man in a black
+frock-coat, with a melancholy face and large ox-eyes. He shambled in
+shyly, looking from side to side. He had white hands and long, lean
+fingers. Every now and then he put his hands behind him, up his back,
+under the tails of his coat, and rubbed his spine where he had received
+his mortal injury in cycling. Almost as soon as he entered he noticed
+the ghost of Mrs. Woolfield that was, and made an awkward bow. Her
+eyebrows rose, and a faint wintry smile of recognition lighted up her
+cheeks.
+
+"I believe I have the honour of saluting Sister Kesiah," said the ghost
+of Jehu Post, and he assumed a posture of ecstasy.
+
+"It is even so, Brother Jehu."
+
+"And how do you find yourself, sister--out of the flesh?"
+
+The late Mrs. Woolfield looked disconcerted, hesitated a moment, as if
+she found some difficulty in answering, and then, after a while, said:
+"I suppose, much as do you, brother."
+
+"It is a melancholy duty that detains me here below," said Jehu Post's
+ghost.
+
+"The same may be said of me," observed the spirit of the deceased Mrs.
+Woolfield. "Pray take a chair."
+
+"I am greatly obliged, sister. My back----"
+
+Philippa nudged Benjamin, and unobserved by the ghosts, both slipped
+into the adjoining room by a doorway over which hung velvet curtains.
+
+In this room, on the table, Mr. Woolfield had collected patterns of
+chintzes and books of wall-papers.
+
+There the engaged pair remained, discussing what curtains would go with
+the chintz coverings of the sofa and chairs, and what papers would
+harmonise with both.
+
+"I see," said Philippa, "that you have plates hung on the walls. I don't
+like them: it is no longer in good form. If they be worth anything you
+must have a cabinet with glass doors for the china. How about the
+carpets?"
+
+"There is the drawing-room," said Benjamin.
+
+"No, we won't go in there and disturb the ghosts," said Philippa. "We'll
+take the drawing-room for granted."
+
+"Well--come with me to the dining-room. We can reach it by another
+door."
+
+In the room they now entered the carpet was in fairly good condition,
+except at the head and bottom of the table, where it was worn. This was
+especially the case at the bottom, where Mr. Woolfield had usually sat.
+There, when his wife had lectured, moralised, and harangued, he had
+rubbed his feet up and down and had fretted the nap off the Brussels
+carpet.
+
+"I think," remarked Philippa, "that we can turn it about, and by taking
+out one width and putting that under the bookcase and inserting the
+strip that was there in its room, we can save the expense of a new
+carpet. But--the engravings--those Landseers. What do you think of them,
+Ben, dear?"
+
+She pointed to the two familiar engravings of the "Deer in Winter," and
+"Dignity and Impudence."
+
+"Don't you think, Ben, that one has got a little tired of those
+pictures?"
+
+"My late wife did not object to them, they were so perfectly harmless."
+
+"But your coming wife does. We will have something more up-to-date in
+their room. By the way, I wonder how the ghosts are getting on. They
+have let us alone so far. I will run back and have a peep at them
+through the curtains."
+
+The lively girl left the dining apartment, and her husband-elect,
+studying the pictures to which Philippa had objected. Presently she
+returned.
+
+"Oh, Ben! such fun!" she said, laughing. "My ghost has drawn up his
+chair close to that of the late Mrs. Woolfield, and is fondling her
+hand. But I believe that they are only talking goody-goody."
+
+[Illustration: "I BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE TALKING GOODY-GOODY."]
+
+"And now about the china," said Mr. Woolfield. "It is in a closet near
+the pantry--that is to say, the best china. I will get a benzoline lamp,
+and we will examine it. We had it out only when Mrs. Woolfield had a
+party of her elect brothers and sisters. I fear a good deal is broken.
+I know that the soup tureen has lost a lid, and I believe we are short
+of vegetable dishes. How many plates remain I do not know. We had a
+parlourmaid, Dorcas, who was a sad smasher, but as she was one who had
+made her election sure, my late wife would not part with her."
+
+"And how are you off for glass?"
+
+"The wine-glasses are fairly complete. I fancy the cut-glass decanters
+are in a bad way. My late wife chipped them, I really believe out of
+spite."
+
+It took the couple some time to go through the china and the glass.
+
+"And the plate?" asked Philippa.
+
+"Oh, that is right. All the real old silver is at the bank, as Kesiah
+preferred plated goods."
+
+"How about the kitchen utensils?"
+
+"Upon my word I cannot say. We had a rather nice-looking cook, and so my
+late wife never allowed me to step inside the kitchen."
+
+"Is she here still?" inquired Philippa sharply.
+
+"No; my wife, when she was dying, gave her the sack."
+
+"Bless me, Ben!" exclaimed Philippa. "It is growing dark. I have been
+here an age. I really must go home. I wonder the ghosts have not worried
+us. I'll have another look at them."
+
+She tripped off.
+
+In five minutes she was back. She stood for a minute looking at Mr.
+Woolfield, laughing so heartily that she had to hold her sides.
+
+"What is it, Philippa?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, Ben! A happy release. They will never dare to show their faces
+again. They have eloped together."
+
+
+
+
+THE 9.30 UP-TRAIN
+
+
+In a well-authenticated ghost story, names and dates should be
+distinctly specified. In the following story I am unfortunately able to
+give only the year and the month, for I have forgotten the date of the
+day, and I do not keep a diary. With regard to names, my own figures as
+a guarantee as that of the principal personage to whom the following
+extraordinary circumstances occurred, but the minor actors are provided
+with fictitious names, for I am not warranted to make their real ones
+public. I may add that the believer in ghosts may make use of the facts
+which I relate to establish his theories, if he finds that they will be
+of service to him--when he has read through and weighed well the
+startling account which I am about to give from my own experiences.
+
+On a fine evening in June, 1860, I paid a visit to Mrs. Lyons, on my way
+to the Hassocks Gate Station, on the London and Brighton line. This
+station is the first out of Brighton.
+
+As I rose to leave, I mentioned to the lady whom I was visiting that I
+expected a parcel of books from town, and that I was going to the
+station to inquire whether it had arrived.
+
+"Oh!" said she, readily, "I expect Dr. Lyons out from Brighton by the
+9.30 train; if you like to drive the pony chaise down and meet him, you
+are welcome, and you can bring your parcel back with you in it."
+
+I gladly accepted her offer, and in a few minutes I was seated in a
+little low basket-carriage, drawn by a pretty iron-grey Welsh pony.
+
+The station road commands the line of the South Downs from Chantonbury
+Ring, with its cap of dark firs, to Mount Harry, the scene of the
+memorable battle of Lewes. Woolsonbury stands out like a headland above
+the dark Danny woods, over which the rooks were wheeling and cawing
+previous to settling themselves in for the night. Ditchling beacon--its
+steep sides gashed with chalk-pits--was faintly flushed with light. The
+Clayton windmills, with their sails motionless, stood out darkly against
+the green evening sky. Close beneath opens the tunnel in which, not so
+long before, had happened one of the most fearful railway accidents on
+record.
+
+The evening was exquisite. The sky was kindled with light, though the
+sun was set. A few gilded bars of cloud lay in the west. Two or three
+stars looked forth--one I noticed twinkling green, crimson, and gold,
+like a gem. From a field of young wheat hard by I heard the harsh,
+grating note of the corncrake. Mist was lying on the low meadows like a
+mantle of snow, pure, smooth, and white; the cattle stood in it to their
+knees. The effect was so singular that I drew up to look at it
+attentively. At the same moment I heard the scream of an engine, and on
+looking towards the downs I noticed the up-train shooting out of the
+tunnel, its red signal lamps flashing brightly out of the purple gloom
+which bathed the roots of the hills.
+
+Seeing that I was late, I whipped the Welsh pony on, and proceeded at a
+fast trot.
+
+At about a quarter mile from the station there is a turnpike--an
+odd-looking building, tenanted then by a strange old man, usually
+dressed in a white smock, over which his long white beard flowed to his
+breast. This toll-collector--he is dead now--had amused himself in
+bygone days by carving life-size heads out of wood, and these were stuck
+along the eaves. One is the face of a drunkard, round and blotched,
+leering out of misty eyes at the passers-by; the next has the crumpled
+features of a miser, worn out with toil and moil; a third has the wild
+scowl of a maniac; and a fourth the stare of an idiot.
+
+I drove past, flinging the toll to the door, and shouting to the old man
+to pick it up, for I was in a vast hurry to reach the station before Dr.
+Lyons left it. I whipped the little pony on, and he began to trot down a
+cutting in the greensand, through which leads the station road.
+
+Suddenly, Taffy stood still, planted his feet resolutely on the ground,
+threw up his head, snorted, and refused to move a peg. I "gee-uped," and
+"tshed," all to no purpose; not a step would the little fellow advance.
+I saw that he was thoroughly alarmed; his flanks were quivering, and his
+ears were thrown back. I was on the point of leaving the chaise, when
+the pony made a bound on one side and ran the carriage up into the
+hedge, thereby upsetting me on the road. I picked myself up, and took
+the beast's head. I could not conceive what had frightened him; there
+was positively nothing to be seen, except a puff of dust running up the
+road, such as might be blown along by a passing current of air. There
+was nothing to be heard, except the rattle of a gig or tax-cart with one
+wheel loose: probably a vehicle of this kind was being driven down the
+London road, which branches off at the turnpike at right angles. The
+sound became fainter, and at last died away in the distance.
+
+The pony now no longer refused to advance. It trembled violently, and
+was covered with sweat.
+
+"Well, upon my word, you have been driving hard!" exclaimed Dr. Lyons,
+when I met him at the station.
+
+"I have not, indeed," was my reply; "but something has frightened Taffy,
+but what that something was, is more than I can tell."
+
+"Oh, ah!" said the doctor, looking round with a certain degree of
+interest in his face; "so you met it, did you?"
+
+"Met what?"
+
+"Oh, nothing;--only I have heard of horses being frightened along this
+road after the arrival of the 9.30 up-train. Flys never leave the moment
+that the train comes in, or the horses become restive--a wonderful thing
+for a fly-horse to become restive, isn't it?"
+
+"But what causes this alarm? I saw nothing!"
+
+"You ask me more than I can answer. I am as ignorant of the cause as
+yourself. I take things as they stand, and make no inquiries. When the
+flyman tells me that he can't start for a minute or two after the train
+has arrived, or urges on his horses to reach the station before the
+arrival of this train, giving as his reason that his brutes become wild
+if he does not do so, then I merely say, 'Do as you think best, cabby,'
+and bother my head no more about the matter."
+
+"I shall search this matter out," said I resolutely. "What has taken
+place so strangely corroborates the superstition, that I shall not leave
+it uninvestigated."
+
+"Take my advice and banish it from your thoughts. When you have come to
+the end, you will be sadly disappointed, and will find that all the
+mystery evaporates, and leaves a dull, commonplace residuum. It is best
+that the few mysteries which remain to us unexplained should still
+remain mysteries, or we shall disbelieve in supernatural agencies
+altogether. We have searched out the arcana of nature, and exposed all
+her secrets to the garish eye of day, and we find, in despair, that the
+poetry and romance of life are gone. Are we the happier for knowing that
+there are no ghosts, no fairies, no witches, no mermaids, no wood
+spirits? Were not our forefathers happier in thinking every lake to be
+the abode of a fairy, every forest to be a bower of yellow-haired
+sylphs, every moorland sweep to be tripped over by elf and pixie? I
+found my little boy one day lying on his face in a fairy-ring, crying:
+'You dear, dear little fairies, I _will_ believe in you, though papa
+says you are all nonsense.' I used, in my childish days, to think, when
+a silence fell upon a company, that an angel was passing through the
+room. Alas! I now know that it results only from the subject of weather
+having been talked to death, and no new subject having been started.
+Believe me, science has done good to mankind, but it has done mischief
+too. If we wish to be poetical or romantic, we must shut our eyes to
+facts. The head and the heart wage mutual war now. A lover preserves a
+lock of his mistress's hair as a holy relic, yet he must know perfectly
+well that for all practical purposes a bit of rhinoceros hide would do
+as well--the chemical constituents are identical. If I adore a fair
+lady, and feel a thrill through all my veins when I touch her hand, a
+moment's consideration tells me that phosphate of lime No. 1 is touching
+phosphate of lime No. 2--nothing more. If for a moment I forget myself
+so far as to wave my cap and cheer for king, or queen, or prince, I
+laugh at my folly next moment for having paid reverence to one digesting
+machine above another."
+
+I cut the doctor short as he was lapsing into his favourite subject of
+discussion, and asked him whether he would lend me the pony-chaise on
+the following evening, that I might drive to the station again and try
+to unravel the mystery.
+
+"I will lend you the pony," said he, "but not the chaise, as I am afraid
+of its being injured should Taffy take fright and run up into the hedge
+again. I have got a saddle."
+
+Next evening I was on my way to the station considerably before the time
+at which the train was due.
+
+I stopped at the turnpike and chatted with the old man who kept it. I
+asked him whether he could throw any light on the matter which I was
+investigating. He shrugged his shoulders, saying that he "knowed nothink
+about it."
+
+"What! Nothing at all?"
+
+"I don't trouble my head with matters of this sort," was the reply.
+"People _do_ say that something out of the common sort passes along the
+road and turns down the other road leading to Clayton and Brighton; but
+I pays no attention to what them people says."
+
+"Do you ever hear anything?"
+
+"After the arrival of the 9.30 train I does at times hear the rattle as
+of a mail-cart and the trot of a horse along the road; and the sound is
+as though one of the wheels was loose. I've a been out many a time to
+take the toll; but, Lor' bless 'ee! them sperits--if sperits them
+be--don't go for to pay toll."
+
+"Have you never inquired into the matter?"
+
+"Why should I? Anythink as don't go for to pay toll don't concern me. Do
+ye think as I knows 'ow many people and dogs goes through this heer
+geatt in a day? Not I--them don't pay toll, so them's no odds to me."
+
+"Look here, my man!" said I. "Do you object to my putting the bar across
+the road, immediately on the arrival of the train?"
+
+"Not a bit! Please yersel'; but you han't got much time to lose, for
+theer comes thickey train out of Clayton tunnel."
+
+I shut the gate, mounted Taffy, and drew up across the road a little way
+below the turnpike. I heard the train arrive--I saw it puff off. At the
+same moment I distinctly heard a trap coming up the road, one of the
+wheels rattling as though it were loose. I repeat deliberately that I
+_heard_ it--I cannot account for it--but, though I heard it, yet I saw
+nothing whatever.
+
+At the same time the pony became restless, it tossed its head, pricked
+up its ears, it started, pranced, and then made a bound to one side,
+entirely regardless of whip and rein. It tried to scramble up the
+sand-bank in its alarm, and I had to throw myself off and catch its
+head. I then cast a glance behind me at the turnpike. I saw the bar
+bent, as though someone were pressing against it; then, with a click, it
+flew open, and was dashed violently back against the white post to
+which it was usually hasped in the day-time. There it remained,
+quivering from the shock.
+
+Immediately I heard the rattle--rattle--rattle--of the tax-cart. I
+confess that my first impulse was to laugh, the idea of a ghostly
+tax-cart was so essentially ludicrous; but the _reality_ of the whole
+scene soon brought me to a graver mood, and, remounting Taffy, I rode
+down to the station.
+
+The officials were taking their ease, as another train was not due for
+some while; so I stepped up to the station-master and entered into
+conversation with him. After a few desultory remarks, I mentioned the
+circumstances which had occurred to me on the road, and my inability to
+account for them.
+
+"So that's what you're after!" said the master somewhat bluntly. "Well,
+I can tell you nothing about it; sperits don't come in my way, saving
+and excepting those which can be taken inwardly; and mighty comfortable
+warming things they be when so taken. If you ask me about other sorts of
+sperits, I tell you flat I don't believe in 'em, though I don't mind
+drinking the health of them what does."
+
+"Perhaps you may have the chance, if you are a little more
+communicative," said I.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you all I know, and that is precious little," answered
+the worthy man. "I know one thing for certain--that one compartment of a
+second-class carriage is always left vacant between Brighton and
+Hassocks Gate, by the 9.30 up-train."
+
+"For what purpose?"
+
+"Ah! that's more than I can fully explain. Before the orders came to
+this effect, people went into fits and that like, in one of the
+carriages."
+
+"Any particular carriage?"
+
+"The first compartment of the second-class carriage nearest to the
+engine. It is locked at Brighton, and I unlock it at this station."
+
+"What do you mean by saying that people had fits?"
+
+"I mean that I used to find men and women a-screeching and a-hollering
+like mad to be let out; they'd seen some'ut as had frightened them as
+they was passing through the Clayton tunnel. That was before they made
+the arrangement I told y' of."
+
+"Very strange!" said I meditatively.
+
+"Wery much so, but true for all that. _I_ don't believe in nothing but
+sperits of a warming and cheering nature, and them sort ain't to be
+found in Clayton tunn'l to my thinking."
+
+There was evidently nothing more to be got out of my friend. I hope that
+he drank my health that night; if he omitted to do so, it was his fault,
+not mine.
+
+As I rode home revolving in my mind all that I had heard and seen, I
+became more and more settled in my determination to thoroughly
+investigate the matter. The best means that I could adopt for so doing
+would be to come out from Brighton by the 9.30 train in the very
+compartment of the second-class carriage from which the public were
+considerately excluded.
+
+Somehow I felt no shrinking from the attempt; my curiosity was so
+intense that it overcame all apprehension as to the consequences.
+
+My next free day was Thursday, and I hoped then to execute my plan. In
+this, however, I was disappointed, as I found that a battalion drill was
+fixed for that very evening, and I was desirous of attending it, being
+somewhat behindhand in the regulation number of drills. I was
+consequently obliged to postpone my Brighton trip.
+
+On the Thursday evening about five o'clock I started in regimentals with
+my rifle over my shoulder, for the drilling ground--a piece of furzy
+common near the railway station.
+
+I was speedily overtaken by Mr. Ball, a corporal in the rifle corps, a
+capital shot and most efficient in his drill. Mr. Ball was driving his
+gig. He stopped on seeing me and offered me a seat beside him. I gladly
+accepted, as the distance to the station is a mile and three-quarters by
+the road, and two miles by what is commonly supposed to be the short cut
+across the fields.
+
+After some conversation on volunteering matters, about which Corporal
+Ball was an enthusiast, we turned out of the lanes into the station
+road, and I took the opportunity of adverting to the subject which was
+uppermost in my mind.
+
+"Ah! I have heard a good deal about that," said the corporal. "My
+workmen have often told me some cock-and-bull stories of that kind, but
+I can't say has 'ow I believed them. What you tell me is, 'owever, very
+remarkable. I never 'ad it on such good authority afore. Still, I can't
+believe that there's hanything supernatural about it."
+
+"I do not yet know what to believe," I replied, "for the whole matter is
+to me perfectly inexplicable."
+
+"You know, of course, the story which gave rise to the superstition?"
+
+"Not I. Pray tell it me."
+
+"Just about seven years agone--why, you must remember the circumstances
+as well as I do--there was a man druv over from I can't say where, for
+that was never exact-ly hascertained,--but from the Henfield direction,
+in a light cart. He went to the Station Inn, and throwing the reins to
+John Thomas, the ostler, bade him take the trap and bring it round to
+meet the 9.30 train, by which he calculated to return from Brighton.
+John Thomas said as 'ow the stranger was quite unbeknown to him, and
+that he looked as though he 'ad some matter on his mind when he went to
+the train; he was a queer sort of a man, with thick grey hair and beard,
+and delicate white 'ands, jist like a lady's. The trap was round to the
+station door as hordered by the arrival of the 9.30 train. The ostler
+observed then that the man was ashen pale, and that his 'ands trembled
+as he took the reins, that the stranger stared at him in a wild
+habstracted way, and that he would have driven off without tendering
+payment had he not been respectfully reminded that the 'orse had been
+given a feed of hoats. John Thomas made a hobservation to the gent
+relative to the wheel which was loose, but that hobservation met with no
+corresponding hanswer. The driver whipped his 'orse and went off. He
+passed the turnpike, and was seen to take the Brighton road hinstead of
+that by which he had come. A workman hobserved the trap next on the
+downs above Clayton chalk-pits. He didn't pay much attention to it, but
+he saw that the driver was on his legs at the 'ead of the 'orse. Next,
+morning, when the quarrymen went to the pit, they found a shattered
+tax-cart at the bottom, and the 'orse and driver dead, the latter with
+his neck broken. What was curious, too, was that an 'andkerchief was
+bound round the brute's heyes, so that he must have been driven over the
+edge blindfold. Hodd, wasn't it? Well, folks say that the gent and his
+tax-cart pass along the road every hevening after the arrival of the
+9.30 train; but I don't believe it; I ain't a bit superstitious--not I!"
+
+Next week I was again disappointed in my expectation of being able to
+put my scheme in execution; but on the third Saturday after my
+conversation with Corporal Ball, I walked into Brighton in the
+afternoon, the distance being about nine miles. I spent an hour on the
+shore watching the boats, and then I sauntered round the Pavilion,
+ardently longing that fire might break forth and consume that
+architectural monstrosity. I believe that I afterwards had a cup of
+coffee at the refreshment-rooms of the station, and capital
+refreshment-rooms they are, or were--very moderate and very good. I
+think that I partook of a bun, but if put on my oath I could not swear
+to the fact; a floating reminiscence of bun lingers in the chambers of
+memory, but I cannot be positive, and I wish in this paper to advance
+nothing but reliable facts. I squandered precious time in reading the
+advertisements of baby-jumpers--which no mother should be without--which
+are indispensable in the nursery and the greatest acquisition in the
+parlour, the greatest discovery of modern times, etc., etc. I perused a
+notice of the advantage of metallic brushes, and admired the young lady
+with her hair white on one side and black on the other; I studied the
+Chinese letter commendatory of Horniman's tea and the inferior English
+translation, and counted up the number of agents in Great Britain and
+Ireland. At length the ticket-office opened, and I booked for Hassocks
+Gate, second class, fare one shilling.
+
+I ran along the platform till I came to the compartment of the
+second-class carriage which I wanted. The door was locked, so I shouted
+for a guard.
+
+"Put me in here, please."
+
+"Can't there, s'r; next, please, nearly empty, one woman and baby."
+
+"I particularly wish to enter _this_ carriage," said I.
+
+"Can't be, lock'd, orders, comp'ny," replied the guard, turning on his
+heel.
+
+"What reason is there for the public's being excluded, may I ask?"
+
+"Dn'ow, 'spress ord'rs--c'n't let you in; next caridge, pl'se; now then,
+quick, pl'se."
+
+I knew the guard and he knew me--by sight, for I often travelled to and
+fro on the line, so I thought it best to be candid with him. I briefly
+told him my reason for making the request, and begged him to assist me
+in executing my plan. He then consented, though with reluctance.
+
+"'Ave y'r own way," said he; "only if an'thing 'appens, don't blame me!"
+
+"Never fear," laughed I, jumping into the carriage.
+
+The guard left the carriage unlocked, and in two minutes we were off.
+
+I did not feel in the slightest degree nervous. There was no light in
+the carriage, but that did not matter, as there was twilight. I sat
+facing the engine on the left side, and every now and then I looked out
+at the downs with a soft haze of light still hanging over them. We swept
+into a cutting, and I watched the lines of flint in the chalk, and
+longed to be geologising among them with my hammer, picking out
+"shepherds' crowns" and sharks' teeth, the delicate rhynconella and the
+quaint ventriculite. I remembered a not very distant occasion on which I
+had actually ventured there, and been chased off by the guard, after
+having brought down an avalanche of chalk debris in a manner dangerous
+to traffic whilst endeavouring to extricate a magnificent ammonite which
+I found, and--alas! left--protruding from the side of the cutting. I
+wondered whether that ammonite was still there; I looked about to
+identify the exact spot as we whizzed along; and at that moment we shot
+into the tunnel.
+
+There are two tunnels, with a bit of chalk cutting between them. We
+passed through the first, which is short, and in another moment plunged
+into the second.
+
+I cannot explain how it was that _now_, all of a sudden, a feeling of
+terror came over me; it seemed to drop over me like a wet sheet and wrap
+me round and round.
+
+I felt that _someone_ was seated opposite me--someone in the darkness
+with his eyes fixed on me.
+
+Many persons possessed of keen nervous sensibility are well aware when
+they are in the presence of another, even though they can see no one,
+and I believe that I possess this power strongly. If I were blindfolded,
+I think that I should know when anyone was looking fixedly at me, and I
+am certain that I should instinctively know that I was not alone if I
+entered a dark room in which another person was seated, even though he
+made no noise. I remember a college friend of mine, who dabbled in
+anatomy, telling me that a little Italian violinist once called on him
+to give a lesson on his instrument. The foreigner--a singularly nervous
+individual--moved restlessly from the place where he had been standing,
+casting many a furtive glance over his shoulder at a press which was
+behind him. At last the little fellow tossed aside his violin, saying--
+
+"I can note give de lesson if someone weel look at me from behind! Dare
+is somebodee in de cupboard, I know!"
+
+"You are right, there is!" laughed my anatomical friend, flinging open
+the door of the press and discovering a skeleton.
+
+The horror which oppressed me was numbing. For a few moments I could
+neither lift my hands nor stir a finger. I was tongue-tied. I seemed
+paralysed in every member. I fancied that I _felt_ eyes staring at me
+through the gloom. A cold breath seemed to play over my face. I believed
+that fingers touched my chest and plucked at my coat. I drew back
+against the partition; my heart stood still, my flesh became stiff, my
+muscles rigid.
+
+I do not know whether I breathed--a blue mist swam before my eyes, and
+my head span.
+
+The rattle and roar of the train dashing through the tunnel drowned
+every other sound.
+
+Suddenly we rushed past a light fixed against the wall in the side, and
+it sent a flash, instantaneous as that of lightning, through the
+carriage. In that moment I saw what I shall never, never forget. I saw a
+face opposite me, livid as that of a corpse, hideous with passion like
+that of a gorilla.
+
+I cannot describe it accurately, for I saw it but for a second; yet
+there rises before me now, as I write, the low broad brow seamed with
+wrinkles, the shaggy, over-hanging grey eyebrows; the wild ashen eyes,
+which glared as those of a demoniac; the coarse mouth, with its fleshy
+lips compressed till they were white; the profusion of wolf-grey hair
+about the cheeks and chin; the thin, bloodless hands, raised and
+half-open, extended towards me as though they would clutch and tear me.
+
+In the madness of terror, I flung myself along the seat to the further
+window.
+
+Then I felt that _it_ was moving slowly down, and was opposite me again.
+I lifted my hand to let down the window, and I touched something: I
+thought it was a hand--yes, yes! it _was_ a hand, for it folded over
+mine and began to contract on it. I felt each finger separately; they
+were cold, dully cold. I wrenched my hand away. I slipped back to my
+former place in the carriage by the open window, and in frantic horror I
+opened the door, clinging to it with both my hands round the
+window-jamb, swung myself out with my feet on the floor and my head
+turned from the carriage. If the cold fingers had but touched my woven
+hands, mine would have given way; had I but turned my head and seen that
+hellish countenance peering out at me, I must have lost my hold.
+
+Ah! I saw the light from the tunnel mouth; it smote on my face. The
+engine rushed out with a piercing whistle. The roaring echoes of the
+tunnel died away. The cool fresh breeze blew over my face and tossed my
+hair; the speed of the train was relaxed; the lights of the station
+became brighter. I heard the bell ringing loudly; I saw people waiting
+for the train; I felt the vibration as the brake was put on. We stopped;
+and then my fingers gave way. I dropped as a sack on the platform, and
+then, then--not till then--I awoke. There now! from beginning to end the
+whole had been a frightful dream caused by my having too many blankets
+over my bed. If I must append a moral--Don't sleep too hot.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE LEADS
+
+
+Having realised a competence in Australia, and having a hankering after
+country life for the remainder of my days in the old home, on my return
+to England I went to an agent with the object of renting a house with
+shooting attached, over at least three thousand acres, with the option
+of a purchase should the place suit me. I was no more intending to buy a
+country seat without having tried what it was like, than is a king
+disposed to go to war without knowing something of the force that can be
+brought against him. I was rather taken with photographs of a manor
+called Fernwood, and I was still further engaged when I saw the place
+itself on a beautiful October day, when St. Luke's summer was turning
+the country into a world of rainbow tints under a warm sun, and a soft
+vaporous blue haze tinted all shadows cobalt, and gave to the hills a
+stateliness that made them look like mountains. Fernwood was an old
+house, built in the shape of the letter H, and therefore, presumably,
+dating from the time of the early Tudor monarchs. The porch opened into
+the hall which was on the left of the cross-stroke, and the drawing-room
+was on the right. There was one inconvenience about the house; it had a
+staircase at each extremity of the cross-stroke, and there was no
+upstair communication between the two wings of the mansion. But, as a
+practical man, I saw how this might be remedied. The front door faced
+the south, and the hall was windowless on the north. Nothing easier than
+to run a corridor along at the back, giving communication both upstairs
+and downstairs, without passing through the hall. The whole thing could
+be done for, at the outside, two hundred pounds, and would be no
+disfigurement to the place. I agreed to become tenant of Fernwood for a
+twelvemonth, in which time I should be able to judge whether the place
+would suit me, the neighbours be pleasant, and the climate agree with my
+wife. We went down to Fernwood at once, and settled ourselves
+comfortably in by the first week in November.
+
+The house was furnished; it was the property of an elderly gentleman, a
+bachelor named Framett, who lived in rooms in town, and spent most of
+his time at the club. He was supposed to have been jilted by his
+intended, after which he eschewed female society, and remained
+unmarried.
+
+I called on him before taking up our residence at Fernwood, and found
+him a somewhat blase, languid, cold-blooded creature, not at all proud
+of having a noble manor-house that had belonged to his family for four
+centuries; very willing to sell it, so as to spite a cousin who
+calculated on coming in for the estate, and whom Mr. Framett, with the
+malignity that is sometimes found in old people, was particularly
+desirous of disappointing.
+
+"The house has been let before, I suppose?" said I.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied indifferently, "I believe so, several times."
+
+"For long?"
+
+"No--o. I believe, not for long."
+
+"Have the tenants had any particular reasons for not remaining on
+there--if I may be so bold as to inquire?"
+
+"All people have reasons to offer, but what they offer you are not
+supposed to receive as genuine."
+
+I could get no more from him than this. "I think, sir, if I were you I
+would not go down to Fernwood till after November was out."
+
+"But," said I, "I want the shooting."
+
+"Ah, to be sure--the shooting, ah! I should have preferred if you could
+have waited till December began."
+
+"That would not suit me," I said, and so the matter ended.
+
+When we were settled in, we occupied the right wing of the house. The
+left or west wing was but scantily furnished and looked cheerless, as
+though rarely tenanted. We were not a large family, my wife and myself
+alone; there was consequently ample accommodation in the east wing for
+us. The servants were placed above the kitchen, in a portion of the
+house I have not yet described. It was a half-wing, if I may so describe
+it, built on the north side parallel with the upper arm of the western
+limb of the hall and the [Symbol: H]. This block had a gable to the
+north like the wings, and a broad lead valley was between them, that, as
+I learned from the agent, had to be attended to after the fall of the
+leaf, and in times of snow, to clear it.
+
+Access to this valley could be had from within by means of a little
+window in the roof, formed as a dormer. A short ladder allowed anyone to
+ascend from the passage to this window and open or shut it. The western
+staircase gave access to this passage, from which the servants' rooms in
+the new block were reached, as also the untenanted apartments in the old
+wing. And as there were no windows in the extremities of this passage
+that ran due north and south, it derived all its light from the
+aforementioned dormer window.
+
+One night, after we had been in the house about a week, I was sitting up
+smoking, with a little whisky-and-water at my elbow, reading a review of
+an absurd, ignorantly written book on New South Wales, when I heard a
+tap at the door, and the parlourmaid came in, and said in a nervous tone
+of voice: "Beg your pardon, sir, but cook nor I, nor none of us dare go
+to bed."
+
+"Why not?" I asked, looking up in surprise.
+
+"Please, sir, we dursn't go into the passage to get to our rooms."
+
+"Whatever is the matter with the passage?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, sir, with the passage. Would you mind, sir, just coming to
+see? We don't know what to make of it."
+
+I put down my review with a grunt of dissatisfaction, laid my pipe
+aside, and followed the maid.
+
+She led me through the hall, and up the staircase at the western
+extremity.
+
+On reaching the upper landing I saw all the maids there in a cluster,
+and all evidently much scared.
+
+"Whatever is all this nonsense about?" I asked.
+
+"Please, sir, will you look? We can't say."
+
+The parlourmaid pointed to an oblong patch of moonlight on the wall of
+the passage. The night was cloudless, and the full moon shone slanting
+in through the dormer and painted a brilliant silver strip on the wall
+opposite. The window being on the side of the roof to the east, we could
+not see that, but did see the light thrown through it against the wall.
+This patch of reflected light was about seven feet above the floor.
+
+The window itself was some ten feet up, and the passage was but four
+feet wide. I enter into these particulars for reasons that will
+presently appear.
+
+The window was divided into three parts by wooden mullions, and was
+composed of four panes of glass in each compartment.
+
+Now I could distinctly see the reflection of the moon through the window
+with the black bars up and down, and the division of the panes. But I
+saw more than that: I saw the shadow of a lean arm with a hand and thin,
+lengthy fingers across a portion of the window, apparently groping at
+where was the latch by which the casement could be opened.
+
+My impression at the moment was that there was a burglar on the leads
+trying to enter the house by means of this dormer.
+
+Without a minute's hesitation I ran into the passage and looked up at
+the window, but could see only a portion of it, as in shape it was low,
+though broad, and, as already stated, was set at a great height. But at
+that moment something fluttered past it, like a rush of flapping
+draperies obscuring the light.
+
+I had placed the ladder, which I found hooked up to the wall, in
+position, and planted my foot on the lowest rung, when my wife arrived.
+She had been alarmed by the housemaid, and now she clung to me, and
+protested that I was not to ascend without my pistol.
+
+To satisfy her I got my Colt's revolver that I always kept loaded, and
+then, but only hesitatingly, did she allow me to mount. I ascended to
+the casement, unhasped it, and looked out. I could see nothing. The
+ladder was over-short, and it required an effort to heave oneself from
+it through the casement on to the leads. I am stout, and not so nimble
+as I was when younger. After one or two efforts, and after presenting
+from below an appearance that would have provoked laughter at any other
+time, I succeeded in getting through and upon the leads.
+
+I looked up and down the valley--there was absolutely nothing to be seen
+except an accumulation of leaves carried there from the trees that were
+shedding their foliage.
+
+The situation was vastly puzzling. As far as I could judge there was no
+way off the roof, no other window opening into the valley; I did not go
+along upon the leads, as it was night, and moonlight is treacherous.
+Moreover, I was wholly unacquainted with the arrangement of the roof,
+and had no wish to risk a fall.
+
+I descended from the window with my feet groping for the upper rung of
+the ladder in a manner even more grotesque than my ascent through the
+casement, but neither my wife--usually extremely alive to anything
+ridiculous in my appearance--nor the domestics were in a mood to make
+merry. I fastened the window after me, and had hardly reached the
+bottom of the ladder before again a shadow flickered across the patch of
+moonlight.
+
+I was fairly perplexed, and stood musing. Then I recalled that
+immediately behind the house the ground rose; that, in fact, the house
+lay under a considerable hill. It was just possible by ascending the
+slope to reach the level of the gutter and rake the leads from one
+extremity to the other with my eye.
+
+I mentioned this to my wife, and at once the whole set of maids trailed
+down the stairs after us. They were afraid to remain in the passage, and
+they were curious to see if there was really some person on the leads.
+
+We went out at the back of the house, and ascended the bank till we were
+on a level with the broad gutter between the gables. I now saw that this
+gutter did not run through, but stopped against the hall roof;
+consequently, unless there were some opening of which I knew nothing,
+the person on the leads could not leave the place, save by the dormer
+window, when open, or by swarming down the fall pipe.
+
+It at once occurred to me that if what I had seen were the shadow of a
+burglar, he might have mounted by means of the rain-water pipe. But if
+so--how had he vanished the moment my head was protruded through the
+window? and how was it that I had seen the shadow flicker past the light
+immediately after I had descended the ladder? It was conceivable that
+the man had concealed himself in the shadow of the hall roof, and had
+taken advantage of my withdrawal to run past the window so as to reach
+the fall pipe, and let himself down by that.
+
+I could, however, see no one running away, as I must have done, going
+outside so soon after his supposed descent.
+
+But the whole affair became more perplexing when, looking towards the
+leads, I saw in the moonlight something with fluttering garments running
+up and down them.
+
+There could be no mistake--the object was a woman, and her garments were
+mere tatters. We could not hear a sound.
+
+I looked round at my wife and the servants,--they saw this weird object
+as distinctly as myself. It was more like a gigantic bat than a human
+being, and yet, that it was a woman we could not doubt, for the arms
+were now and then thrown above the head in wild gesticulation, and at
+moments a profile was presented, and then we saw, or thought we saw,
+long flapping hair, unbound.
+
+"I must go back to the ladder," said I; "you remain where you are,
+watching."
+
+"Oh, Edward! not alone," pleaded my wife.
+
+"My dear, who is to go with me?"
+
+I went. I had left the back door unlocked, and I ascended the staircase
+and entered the passage. Again I saw the shadow flicker past the moonlit
+patch on the wall opposite the window.
+
+I ascended the ladder and opened the casement.
+
+Then I heard the clock in the hall strike one.
+
+I heaved myself up to the sill with great labour, and I endeavoured to
+thrust my short body through the window, when I heard feet on the
+stairs, and next moment my wife's voice from below, at the foot of the
+ladder. "Oh, Edward, Edward! please do not go out there again. It has
+vanished. All at once. There is nothing there now to be seen."
+
+I returned, touched the ladder tentatively with my feet, refastened the
+window, and descended--perhaps inelegantly. I then went down with my
+wife, and with her returned up the bank, to the spot where stood
+clustered our servants.
+
+They had seen nothing further; and although I remained on the spot
+watching for half an hour, I also saw nothing more.
+
+The maids were too frightened to go to bed, and so agreed to sit up in
+the kitchen for the rest of the night by a good fire, and I gave them a
+bottle of sherry to mull, and make themselves comfortable upon, and to
+help them to recover their courage.
+
+Although I went to bed, I could not sleep. I was completely baffled by
+what I had seen. I could in no way explain what the object was and how
+it had left the leads.
+
+Next day I sent for the village mason and asked him to set a long ladder
+against the well-head of the fall pipe, and examine the valley between
+the gables. At the same time I would mount to the little window and
+contemplate proceedings through that.
+
+The man had to send for a ladder sufficiently long, and that occupied
+some time. However, at length he had it planted, and then mounted. When
+he approached the dormer window--
+
+"Give me a hand," said I, "and haul me up; I would like to satisfy
+myself with my own eyes that there is no other means of getting upon or
+leaving the leads."
+
+He took me under both shoulders and heaved me out, and I stood with him
+in the broad lead gutter.
+
+"There's no other opening whatever," said he, "and, Lord love you, sir,
+I believe that what you saw was no more than this," and he pointed to a
+branch of a noble cedar that grew hard by the west side of the house.
+
+"I warrant, sir," said he, "that what you saw was this here bough as has
+been carried by a storm and thrown here, and the wind last night swept
+it up and down the leads."
+
+"But was there any wind?" I asked. "I do not remember that there was."
+
+"I can't say," said he; "before twelve o'clock I was fast asleep, and it
+might have blown a gale and I hear nothing of it."
+
+"I suppose there must have been some wind," said I, "and that I was too
+surprised and the women too frightened to observe it," I laughed. "So
+this marvellous spectral phenomenon receives a very prosaic and natural
+explanation. Mason, throw down the bough and we will burn it to-night."
+
+The branch was cast over the edge, and fell at the back of the house. I
+left the leads, descended, and going out picked up the cedar branch,
+brought it into the hall, summoned the servants, and said derisively:
+"Here is an illustration of the way in which weak-minded women get
+scared. Now we will burn the burglar or ghost that we saw. It turns out
+to be nothing but this branch, blown up and down the leads by the wind."
+
+"But, Edward," said my wife, "there was not a breath stirring."
+
+"There must have been. Only where we were we were sheltered and did not
+observe it. Aloft, it blew across the roofs, and formed an eddy that
+caught the broken bough, lifted it, carried it first one way, then spun
+it round and carried it the reverse way. In fact, the wind between the
+two roofs assumed a spiral movement. I hope now you are all satisfied. I
+am."
+
+So the bough was burned, and our fears--I mean those of the
+females--were allayed.
+
+In the evening, after dinner, as I sat with my wife, she said to me:
+"Half a bottle would have been enough, Edward. Indeed, I think half a
+bottle would be too much; you should not give the girls a liking for
+sherry, it may lead to bad results. If it had been elderberry wine, that
+would have been different."
+
+"But there is no elderberry wine in the house," I objected.
+
+"Well, I hope no harm will come of it, but I greatly mistrust----"
+
+"Please, sir, it is there again."
+
+The parlourmaid, with a blanched face, was at the door.
+
+"Nonsense," said I, "we burnt it."
+
+"This comes of the sherry," observed my wife. "They will be seeing
+ghosts every night."
+
+"But, my dear, you saw it as well as myself!"
+
+I rose, my wife followed, and we went to the landing as before, and,
+sure enough, against the patch of moonlight cast through the window in
+the roof, was the arm again, and then a flutter of shadows, as if cast
+by garments.
+
+"It was not the bough," said my wife. "If this had been seen immediately
+after the sherry I should not have been surprised, but--as it is now it
+is most extraordinary."
+
+"I'll have this part of the house shut up," said I. Then I bade the
+maids once more spend the night in the kitchen, "and make yourselves
+lively on tea," I said--for I knew my wife would not allow another
+bottle of sherry to be given them. "To-morrow your beds shall be moved
+to the east wing."
+
+"Beg pardon," said the cook, "I speaks in the name of all. We don't
+think we can remain in the house, but must leave the situation."
+
+"That comes of the tea," said I to my wife. "Now," to the cook, "as you
+have had another fright, I will let you have a bottle of mulled port
+to-night."
+
+"Sir," said the cook, "if you can get rid of the ghost, we don't want to
+leave so good a master. We withdraw the notice."
+
+Next day I had all the servants' goods transferred to the east wing, and
+rooms were fitted up for them to sleep in. As their portion of the house
+was completely cut off from the west wing, the alarm of the domestics
+died away.
+
+A heavy, stormy rain came on next week, the first token of winter
+misery.
+
+I then found that, whether caused by the cedar bough, or by the nailed
+boots of the mason, I cannot say, but the lead of the valley between the
+roofs was torn, and water came in, streaming down the walls, and
+threatening to severely damage the ceilings. I had to send for a
+plumber as soon as the weather mended. At the same time I started for
+town to see Mr. Framett. I had made up my mind that Fernwood was not
+suitable, and by the terms of my agreement I might be off my bargain if
+I gave notice the first month, and then my tenancy would be for the six
+months only. I found the squire at his club.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "I told you not to go there in November. No one likes
+Fernwood in November; it is all right at other times."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There is no bother except in November."
+
+"Why should there be bother, as you term it, then?"
+
+Mr. Framett shrugged his shoulders. "How the deuce can I tell you? I've
+never been a spirit, and all that sort of thing. Mme. Blavatsky might
+possibly tell you. I can't. But it is a fact."
+
+"What is a fact?"
+
+"Why, that there is no apparition at any other time It is only in
+November, when she met with a little misfortune. That is when she is
+seen."
+
+"Who is seen?"
+
+"My aunt Eliza--I mean my great-aunt."
+
+"You speak mysteries."
+
+"I don't know much about it, and care less," said Mr. Framett, and
+called for a lemon squash. "It was this: I had a great-aunt who was
+deranged. The family kept it quiet, and did not send her to an asylum,
+but fastened her in a room in the west wing. You see, that part of the
+house is partially separated from the rest. I believe she was rather
+shabbily treated, but she was difficult to manage, and tore her clothes
+to pieces. Somehow, she succeeded in getting out on the roof, and would
+race up and down there. They allowed her to do so, as by that means she
+obtained fresh air. But one night in November she scrambled up and, I
+believe, tumbled over. It was hushed up. Sorry you went there in
+November. I should have liked you to buy the place. I am sick of it."
+
+I did buy Fernwood. What decided me was this: the plumbers, in mending
+the leads, with that ingenuity to do mischief which they sometimes
+display, succeeded in setting fire to the roof, and the result was that
+the west wing was burnt down. Happily, a wall so completely separated
+the wing from the rest of the house, that the fire was arrested. The
+wing was not rebuilt, and I, thinking that with the disappearance of the
+leads I should be freed from the apparition that haunted them, purchased
+Fernwood. I am happy to say we have been undisturbed since.
+
+
+
+
+AUNT JOANNA
+
+
+In the Land's End district is the little church-town of Zennor. There is
+no village to speak of--a few scattered farms, and here and there a
+cluster of cottages. The district is bleak, the soil does not lie deep
+over granite that peers through the surface on exposed spots, where the
+furious gales from the ocean sweep the land. If trees ever existed
+there, they have been swept away by the blast, but the golden furze or
+gorse defies all winds, and clothes the moorland with a robe of
+splendour, and the heather flushes the slopes with crimson towards the
+decline of summer, and mantles them in soft, warm brown in winter, like
+the fur of an animal.
+
+In Zennor is a little church, built of granite, rude and simple of
+construction, crouching low, to avoid the gales, but with a tower that
+has defied the winds and the lashing rains, because wholly devoid of
+sculptured detail, which would have afforded the blasts something to lay
+hold of and eat away. In Zennor parish is one of the finest cromlechs in
+Cornwall, a huge slab of unwrought stone like a table, poised on the
+points of standing upright blocks as rude as the mass they sustain.
+
+Near this monument of a hoar and indeed unknown antiquity lived an old
+woman by herself, in a small cottage of one story in height, built of
+moor stones set in earth, and pointed only with lime. It was thatched
+with heather, and possessed but a single chimney that rose but little
+above the apex of the roof, and had two slates set on the top to protect
+the rising smoke from being blown down the chimney into the cottage
+when the wind was from the west or from the east. When, however, it
+drove from north or south, then the smoke must take care of itself. On
+such occasions it was wont to find its way out of the door, and little
+or none went up the chimney.
+
+The only fuel burnt in this cottage was peat--not the solid black peat
+from deep bogs, but turf of only a spade graft, taken from the surface,
+and composed of undissolved roots. Such fuel gives flame, which the
+other does not; but, on the other hand, it does not throw out the same
+amount of heat, nor does it last one half the time.
+
+The woman who lived in the cottage was called by the people of the
+neighbourhood Aunt Joanna. What her family name was but few remembered,
+nor did it concern herself much. She had no relations at all, with the
+exception of a grand-niece, who was married to a small tradesman, a
+wheelwright near the church. But Joanna and her great-niece were not on
+speaking terms. The girl had mortally offended the old woman by going to
+a dance at St. Ives, against her express orders. It was at this dance
+that she had met the wheelwright, and this meeting, and the treatment
+the girl had met with from her aunt for having gone to it, had led to
+the marriage. For Aunt Joanna was very strict in her Wesleyanism, and
+bitterly hostile to all such carnal amusements as dancing and
+play-acting. Of the latter there was none in that wild west Cornish
+district, and no temptation ever afforded by a strolling company setting
+up its booth within reach of Zennor. But dancing, though denounced,
+still drew the more independent spirits together. Rose Penaluna had been
+with her great-aunt after her mother's death. She was a lively girl, and
+when she heard of a dance at St. Ives, and had been asked to go to it,
+although forbidden by Aunt Joanna, she stole from the cottage at night,
+and found her way to St. Ives.
+
+Her conduct was reprehensible certainly. But that of Aunt Joanna was
+even more so, for when she discovered that the girl had left the house
+she barred her door, and refused to allow Rose to re-enter it. The poor
+girl had been obliged to take refuge the same night at the nearest farm
+and sleep in an outhouse, and next morning to go into St. Ives and
+entreat an acquaintance to take her in till she could enter into
+service. Into service she did not go, for when Abraham Hext, the
+carpenter, heard how she had been treated, he at once proposed, and in
+three weeks married her. Since then no communication had taken place
+between the old woman and her grand-niece. As Rose knew, Joanna was
+implacable in her resentments, and considered that she had been acting
+aright in what she had done.
+
+The nearest farm to Aunt Joanna's cottage was occupied by the Hockins.
+One day Elizabeth, the farmer's wife, saw the old woman outside the
+cottage as she was herself returning from market; and, noticing how bent
+and feeble Joanna was, she halted, and talked to her, and gave her good
+advice.
+
+"See you now, auntie, you'm gettin' old and crimmed wi' rheumatics. How
+can you get about? An' there's no knowin' but you might be took bad in
+the night. You ought to have some little lass wi' you to mind you."
+
+"I don't want nobody, thank the Lord."
+
+"Not just now, auntie, but suppose any chance ill-luck were to come on
+you. And then, in the bad weather, you'm not fit to go abroad after the
+turves, and you can't get all you want--tay and sugar and milk for
+yourself now. It would be handy to have a little maid by you."
+
+"Who should I have?" asked Joanna.
+
+"Well, now, you couldn't do better than take little Mary, Rose Hext's
+eldest girl. She's a handy maid, and bright and pleasant to speak to."
+
+"No," answered the old woman, "I'll have none o' they Hexts, not I. The
+Lord is agin Rose and all her family, I know it. I'll have none of
+them."
+
+"But, auntie, you must be nigh on ninety."
+
+"I be ower that. But what o' that? Didn't Sarah, the wife of Abraham,
+live to an hundred and seven and twenty years, and that in spite of him
+worritin' of her wi' that owdacious maid of hern, Hagar? If it hadn't
+been for their goings on, of Abraham and Hagar, it's my belief that
+she'd ha' held on to a hundred and fifty-seven. I thank the Lord I've
+never had no man to worrit me. So why I shouldn't equal Sarah's life I
+don't see."
+
+Then she went indoors and shut the door.
+
+After that a week elapsed without Mrs. Hockin seeing the old woman. She
+passed the cottage, but no Joanna was about. The door was not open, and
+usually it was. Elizabeth spoke about this to her husband. "Jabez," said
+she, "I don't like the looks o' this; I've kept my eye open, and there
+be no Auntie Joanna hoppin' about. Whativer can be up? It's my opinion
+us ought to go and see."
+
+"Well, I've naught on my hands now," said the farmer, "so I reckon we
+will go."
+
+The two walked together to the cottage. No smoke issued from the
+chimney, and the door was shut. Jabez knocked, but there came no answer;
+so he entered, followed by his wife.
+
+There was in the cottage but the kitchen, with one bedroom at the side.
+The hearth was cold.
+
+"There's some'ut up," said Mrs. Hockin.
+
+"I reckon it's the old lady be down," replied her husband, and, throwing
+open the bedroom door, he said: "Sure enough, and no mistake--there her
+be, dead as a dried pilchard."
+
+And in fact Auntie Joanna had died in the night, after having so
+confidently affirmed her conviction that she would live to the age of a
+hundred and twenty-seven.
+
+"Whativer shall we do?" asked Mrs. Hockin.
+
+"I reckon," said her husband, "us had better take an inventory of what
+is here, lest wicked rascals come in and steal anything and everything."
+
+"Folks bain't so bad as that, and a corpse in the house," observed Mrs.
+Hockin.
+
+"Don't be sure o' that--these be terrible wicked times," said the
+husband. "And I sez, sez I, no harm is done in seein' what the old
+creetur had got."
+
+"Well, surely," acquiesced Elizabeth, "there is no harm in that."
+
+In the bedroom was an old oak chest, and this the farmer and his wife
+opened. To their surprise they found in it a silver teapot, and half a
+dozen silver spoons.
+
+"Well, now," exclaimed Elizabeth Hockin, "fancy her havin' these--and me
+only Britannia metal."
+
+"I reckon she came of a good family," said Jabez. "Leastwise, I've heard
+as how she were once well off."
+
+"And look here!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "there's fine and beautiful linen
+underneath--sheets and pillow-cases."
+
+"But look here!" cried Jabez, "blessed if the taypot bain't chock-full
+o' money! Whereiver did she get it from?"
+
+"Her's been in the way of showing folk the Zennor Quoit, visitors from
+St. Ives and Penzance, and she's had scores o' shillings that way."
+
+"Lord!" exclaimed Jabez. "I wish she'd left it to me, and I could buy a
+cow; I want another cruel bad."
+
+"Ay, we do, terrible," said Elizabeth. "But just look to her bed, what
+torn and wretched linen be on that--and here these fine bedclothes all
+in the chest."
+
+"Who'll get the silver taypot and spoons, and the money?" inquired
+Jabez.
+
+"Her had no kin--none but Rose Hext, and her couldn't abide her. Last
+words her said to me was that she'd 'have never naught to do wi' the
+Hexts, they and all their belongings.'"
+
+"That was her last words?"
+
+"The very last words her spoke to me--or to anyone."
+
+"Then," said Jabez, "I'll tell ye what, Elizabeth, it's our moral dooty
+to abide by the wishes of Aunt Joanna. It never does to go agin what is
+right. And as her expressed herself that strong, why us, as honest
+folks, must carry out her wishes, and see that none of all her savings
+go to them darned and dratted Hexts."
+
+"But who be they to go to, then?"
+
+"Well--we'll see. Fust us will have her removed, and provide that her be
+daycent buried. Them Hexts be in a poor way, and couldn't afford the
+expense, and it do seem to me, Elizabeth, as it would be a liberal and a
+kindly act in us to take all the charges on ourselves. Us is the closest
+neighbours."
+
+"Ay--and her have had milk of me these ten or twelve years, and I've
+never charged her a penny, thinking her couldn't afford it. But her
+could, her were a-hoardin' of her money--and not paying me. That were
+not honest, and what I say is, that I have a right to some of her
+savin's, to pay the milk bill--and it's butter I've let her have now and
+then in a liberal way."
+
+"Very well, Elizabeth. Fust of all, we'll take the silver taypot and the
+spoons wi' us, to get 'em out of harm's way."
+
+"And I'll carry the linen sheets and pillow-cases. My word!--why didn't
+she use 'em, instead of them rags?"
+
+All Zennor declared that the Hockins were a most neighbourly and
+generous couple, when it was known that they took upon themselves to
+defray the funeral expenses.
+
+Mrs. Hext came to the farm, and said that she was willing to do what she
+could, but Mrs. Hockin replied: "My good Rose, it's no good. I seed your
+aunt when her was ailin', and nigh on death, and her laid it on me
+solemn as could be that we was to bury her, and that she'd have nothin'
+to do wi' the Hexts at no price."
+
+Rose sighed, and went away.
+
+Rose had not expected to receive anything from her aunt. She had never
+been allowed to look at the treasures in the oak chest. As far as she
+had been aware, Aunt Joanna had been extremely poor. But she remembered
+that the old woman had at one time befriended her, and she was ready to
+forgive the harsh treatment to which she had finally been subjected. In
+fact, she had repeatedly made overtures to her great-aunt to be
+reconciled, but these overtures had been always rejected. She was,
+accordingly, not surprised to learn from Mrs. Hockin that the old
+woman's last words had been as reported.
+
+But, although disowned and disinherited, Rose, her husband, and children
+dressed in black, and were chief mourners at the funeral. Now it had so
+happened that when it came to the laying out of Aunt Joanna, Mrs. Hockin
+had looked at the beautiful linen sheets she had found in the oak chest,
+with the object of furnishing the corpse with one as a winding-sheet.
+But--she said to herself--it would really be a shame to spoil a pair,
+and where else could she get such fine and beautiful old linen as was
+this? So she put the sheets away, and furnished for the purpose a clean
+but coarse and ragged sheet such as Aunt Joanna had in common use. That
+was good enough to moulder in the grave. It would be positively sinful,
+because wasteful, to give up to corruption and the worm such fine white
+linen as Aunt Joanna had hoarded. The funeral was conducted, otherwise,
+liberally. Aunt Joanna was given an elm, and not a mean deal board
+coffin, such as is provided for paupers; and a handsome escutcheon of
+white metal was put on the lid.
+
+Moreover, plenty of gin was drunk, and cake and cheese eaten at the
+house, all at the expense of the Hockins. And the conversation among
+those who attended, and ate and drank, and wiped their eyes, was rather
+anent the generosity of the Hockins than of the virtues of the
+departed.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Hockin heard this, and their hearts swelled within them.
+Nothing so swells the heart as the consciousness of virtue being
+recognised. Jabez in an undertone informed a neighbour that he weren't
+goin' to stick at the funeral expenses, not he; he'd have a neat stone
+erected above the grave with work on it, at twopence a letter. The name
+and the date of departure of Aunt Joanna, and her age, and two lines of
+a favourite hymn of his, all about earth being no dwelling-place, heaven
+being properly her home.
+
+It was not often that Elizabeth Hockin cried, but she did this day; she
+wept tears of sympathy with the deceased, and happiness at the ovation
+accorded to herself and her husband. At length, as the short winter day
+closed in, the last of those who had attended the funeral, and had
+returned to the farm to recruit and regale after it, departed, and the
+Hockins were left to themselves.
+
+"It were a beautiful day," said Jabez.
+
+"Ay," responded Elizabeth, "and what a sight o' people came here."
+
+"This here buryin' of Aunt Joanna have set us up tremendous in the
+estimation of the neighbours."
+
+"I'd like to know who else would ha' done it for a poor old creetur as
+is no relation; ay--and one as owed a purty long bill to me for milk and
+butter through ten or twelve years."
+
+"Well," said Jabez, "I've allus heard say that a good deed brings its
+own reward wi' it--and it's a fine proverb. I feels it in my insides."
+
+"P'raps it's the gin, Jabez."
+
+"No--it's virtue. It's warmer nor gin a long sight. Gin gives a
+smouldering spark, but a good conscience is a blaze of furze."
+
+The farm of the Hockins was small, and Hockin looked after his cattle
+himself. One maid was kept, but no man in the house. All were wont to
+retire early to bed; neither Hockin nor his wife had literary tastes,
+and were not disposed to consume much oil, so as to read at night.
+
+During the night, at what time she did not know, Mrs. Hockin awoke with
+a start, and found that her husband was sitting up in bed listening.
+There was a moon that night, and no clouds in the sky. The room was full
+of silver light. Elizabeth Hockin heard a sound of feet in the kitchen,
+which was immediately under the bedroom of the couple.
+
+"There's someone about," she whispered; "go down, Jabez."
+
+"I wonder, now, who it be. P'raps its Sally."
+
+"It can't be Sally--how can it, when she can't get out o' her room
+wi'out passin' through ours?"
+
+"Run down, Elizabeth, and see."
+
+"It's your place to go, Jabez."
+
+"But if it was a woman--and me in my night-shirt?"
+
+"And, Jabez, if it was a man, a robber--and me in my night-shirt? It 'ud
+be shameful."
+
+"I reckon us had best go down together."
+
+"We'll do so--but I hope it's not----"
+
+"What?"
+
+Mrs. Hockin did not answer. She and her husband crept from bed, and,
+treading on tiptoe across the room, descended the stair.
+
+There was no door at the bottom, but the staircase was boarded up at the
+side; it opened into the kitchen.
+
+They descended very softly and cautiously, holding each other, and when
+they reached the bottom, peered timorously into the apartment that
+served many purposes--kitchen, sitting-room, and dining-place. The
+moonlight poured in through the broad, low window.
+
+By it they saw a figure. There could be no mistaking it--it was that of
+Aunt Joanna, clothed in the tattered sheet that Elizabeth Hockin had
+allowed for her grave-clothes. The old woman had taken one of the fine
+linen sheets out of the cupboard in which it had been placed, and had
+spread it over the long table, and was smoothing it down with her bony
+hands.
+
+The Hockins trembled, not with cold, though it was mid-winter, but with
+terror. They dared not advance, and they felt powerless to retreat.
+
+Then they saw Aunt Joanna go to the cupboard, open it, and return with
+the silver spoons; she placed all six on the sheet, and with a lean
+finger counted them.
+
+She turned her face towards those who were watching her proceedings, but
+it was in shadow, and they could not distinguish the features nor note
+the expression with which she regarded them.
+
+Presently she went back to the cupboard, and returned with the silver
+teapot. She stood at one end of the table, and now the reflection of the
+moon on the linen sheet was cast upon her face, and they saw that she
+was moving her lips--but no sound issued from them.
+
+She thrust her hand into the teapot and drew forth the coins, one by
+one, and rolled them along the table. The Hockins saw the glint of the
+metal, and the shadow cast by each piece of money as it rolled. The
+first coin lodged at the further left-hand corner and the second rested
+near it; and so on, the pieces were rolled, and ranged themselves in
+order, ten in a row. Then the next ten were run across the white cloth
+in the same manner, and dropped over on their sides below the first row;
+thus also the third ten. And all the time the dead woman was mouthing,
+as though counting, but still inaudibly.
+
+[Illustration: SHE THRUST HER HAND INTO THE TEAPOT AND DREW FORTH THE
+COINS, ONE BY ONE, AND ROLLED THEM ALONG THE TABLE.]
+
+The couple stood motionless observing proceedings, till suddenly a cloud
+passed before the face of the moon, so dense as to eclipse the light.
+
+Then in a paroxysm of terror both turned and fled up the stairs, bolted
+their bedroom door, and jumped into bed.
+
+There was no sleep for them that night. In the gloom when the moon was
+concealed, in the glare when it shone forth, it was the same, they
+could hear the light rolling of the coins along the table, and the click
+as they fell over. Was the supply inexhaustible? It was not so, but
+apparently the dead woman did not weary of counting the coins. When all
+had been ranged, she could be heard moving to the further end of the
+table, and there recommencing the same proceeding of coin-rolling.
+
+Not till near daybreak did this sound cease, and not till the maid,
+Sally, had begun to stir in the inner bedchamber did Hockin and his wife
+venture to rise. Neither would suffer the servant girl to descend till
+they had been down to see in what condition the kitchen was. They found
+that the table had been cleared, the coins were all back in the teapot,
+and that and the spoons were where they had themselves placed them. The
+sheet, moreover, was neatly folded, and replaced where it had been
+before.
+
+The Hockins did not speak to one another of their experiences during the
+past night, so long as they were in the house, but when Jabez was in the
+field, Elizabeth went to him and said: "Husband, what about Aunt
+Joanna?"
+
+"I don't know--maybe it were a dream."
+
+"Curious us should ha' dreamed alike."
+
+"I don't know that; 'twere the gin made us dream, and us both had gin,
+so us dreamed the same thing."
+
+"'Twere more like real truth than dream," observed Elizabeth.
+
+"We'll take it as dream," said Jabez. "Mebbe it won't happen again."
+
+But precisely the same sounds were heard on the following night. The
+moon was obscured by thick clouds, and neither of the two had the
+courage to descend to the kitchen. But they could hear the patter of
+feet, and then the roll and click of the coins. Again sleep was
+impossible.
+
+"Whatever shall we do?" asked Elizabeth Hockin next morning of her
+husband. "Us can't go on like this wi' the dead woman about our house
+nightly. There's no tellin' she might take it into her head to come
+upstairs and pull the sheets off us. As we took hers, she may think it
+fair to carry off ours."
+
+"I think," said Jabez sorrowfully, "we'll have to return 'em."
+
+"But how?"
+
+After some consultation the couple resolved on conveying all the
+deceased woman's goods to the churchyard, by night, and placing them on
+her grave.
+
+"I reckon," said Hockin, "we'll bide in the porch and watch what
+happens. If they be left there till mornin', why we may carry 'em back
+wi' an easy conscience. We've spent some pounds over her buryin'."
+
+"What have it come to?"
+
+"Three pounds five and fourpence, as I make it out."
+
+"Well," said Elizabeth, "we must risk it."
+
+When night had fallen murk, the farmer and his wife crept from their
+house, carrying the linen sheets, the teapot, and the silver spoons.
+They did not start till late, for fear of encountering any villagers on
+the way, and not till after the maid, Sally, had gone to bed.
+
+They fastened the farm door behind them. The night was dark and stormy,
+with scudding clouds, so dense as to make deep night, when they did not
+part and allow the moon to peer forth.
+
+They walked timorously, and side by side, looking about them as they
+proceeded, and on reaching the churchyard gate they halted to pluck up
+courage before opening and venturing within. Jabez had furnished himself
+with a bottle of gin, to give courage to himself and his wife.
+
+Together they heaped the articles that had belonged to Aunt Joanna upon
+the fresh grave, but as they did so the wind caught the linen and
+unfurled and flapped it, and they were forced to place stones upon it to
+hold it down.
+
+Then, quaking with fear, they retreated to the church porch, and Jabez,
+uncorking the bottle, first took a long pull himself, and then presented
+it to his wife.
+
+And now down came a tearing rain, driven by a blast from the Atlantic,
+howling among the gravestones, and screaming in the battlements of the
+tower and its bell-chamber windows. The night was so dark, and the rain
+fell so heavily, that they could see nothing for full half an hour. But
+then the clouds were rent asunder, and the moon glared white and ghastly
+over the churchyard.
+
+Elizabeth caught her husband by the arm and pointed. There was, however,
+no need for her to indicate that on which his eyes were fixed already.
+
+Both saw a lean hand come up out of the grave, and lay hold of one of
+the fine linen sheets and drag at it. They saw it drag the sheet by one
+corner, and then it went down underground, and the sheet followed, as
+though sucked down in a vortex; fold on fold it descended, till the
+entire sheet had disappeared.
+
+"Her have taken it for her windin' sheet," whispered Elizabeth.
+"Whativer will her do wi' the rest?"
+
+"Have a drop o' gin; this be terrible tryin'," said Jabez in an
+undertone; and again the couple put their lips to the bottle, which came
+away considerably lighter after the draughts.
+
+"Look!" gasped Elizabeth.
+
+Again the lean hand with long fingers appeared above the soil, and this
+was seen groping about the grass till it laid hold of the teapot. Then
+it groped again, and gathered up the spoons, that flashed in the
+moonbeams. Next, up came the second hand, and a long arm that stretched
+along the grave till it reached the other sheets. At once, on being
+raised, these sheets were caught by the wind, and flapped and fluttered
+like half-hoisted sails. The hands retained them for a while till they
+bellied with the wind, and then let them go, and they were swept away
+by the blast across the churchyard, over the wall, and lodged in the
+carpenter's yard that adjoined, among his timber.
+
+"She have sent 'em to the Hexts," whispered Elizabeth.
+
+Next the hands began to trifle with the teapot, and to shake out some of
+the coins.
+
+In a minute some silver pieces were flung with so true an aim that they
+fell clinking down on the floor of the porch.
+
+How many coins, how much money was cast, the couple were in no mood to
+estimate.
+
+Then they saw the hands collect the pillow-cases, and proceed to roll up
+the teapot and silver spoons in them, and, that done, the white bundle
+was cast into the air, and caught by the wind and carried over the
+churchyard wall into the wheelwright's yard.
+
+At once a curtain of vapour rushed across the face of the moon, and
+again the graveyard was buried in darkness. Half an hour elapsed before
+the moon shone out again. Then the Hockins saw that nothing was stirring
+in the cemetery.
+
+"I reckon us may go now," said Jabez.
+
+"Let us gather up what she chucked to us," advised Elizabeth.
+
+So the couple felt about the floor, and collected a number of coins.
+What they were they could not tell till they reached their home, and had
+lighted a candle.
+
+"How much be it?" asked Elizabeth.
+
+"Three pound five and fourpence, exact," answered Jabez.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE FLAG
+
+
+A percentage of the South African Boers--how large or how small that
+percentage is has not been determined--is possessed of a rudimentary
+conscience, much as the oyster has incipient eyes, and the snake
+initiatory articulations for feet, which in the course of long ages may,
+under suitable conditions, develop into an active faculty.
+
+If Jacob Van Heeren possessed any conscience at all it was the merest
+protoplasm of one.
+
+He occupied Heerendorp, a ramshackle farmhouse under a kopje, and had
+cattle and horses, also a wife and grown-up sons and daughters.
+
+When the war broke out Jacob hoisted the white flag at the gable, and he
+and his sons indulged their sporting instincts by shooting down such
+officers and men of the British army as went to the farm, unsuspecting
+treachery.
+
+Heerendorp by this means obtained an evil notoriety, and it was ordered
+to be burnt, and the women of Jacob's family to be transferred to a
+concentration camp where they would be mollycoddled at the expense of
+the English taxpayer. Thus Jacob and his sons were delivered from all
+anxiety as to their womankind, and were given a free field in which to
+exercise their mischievous ingenuity. As to their cattle and horses that
+had been commandeered, they held receipts which would entitle them to
+claim full value for the beasts at the termination of hostilities.
+
+Jacob and his sons might have joined one of the companies under a Boer
+general, but they preferred independent action, and their peculiar
+tactics, which proved eminently successful.
+
+That achievement in which Jacob exhibited most slimness, and of which he
+was pre-eminently proud, was as follows: feigning himself to be wounded,
+he rolled on the ground, waving a white kerchief, and crying out for
+water. A young English lieutenant at once filled a cup and ran to his
+assistance, when Jacob shot him through the heart.
+
+When the war was over Van Heeren got his farm rebuilt and restocked at
+the expense of the British taxpayer, and received his wife and daughters
+from the concentration camp, plump as partridges.
+
+So soon as the new Heerendorp was ready for occupation, Jacob took a
+large knife and cut seventeen notches in the doorpost.
+
+"What is that for, Jacob?" asked his wife.
+
+"They are reminders of the Britishers I have shot."
+
+"Well," said she, "if I hadn't killed more Rooineks than that, I'd be
+ashamed of myself."
+
+"Oh, I shot more in open fight. I didn't count them; I only reckon such
+as I've been slim enough to befool with the white flag," said the Boer.
+
+Now the lieutenant whom Jacob Van Heeren had killed when bringing him a
+cup of cold water, was Aneurin Jones, and he was the only son of his
+mother, and she a widow in North Wales. On Aneurin her heart had been
+set, in him was all her pride. Beyond him she had no ambition. About him
+every fibre of her heart was entwined. Life had to her no charms apart
+from him. When the news of his death reached her, unaccompanied by
+particulars, she was smitten with a sorrow that almost reached despair.
+The joy was gone out of her life, the light from her sky. The prospect
+was a blank before her. She sank into profound despondency, and would
+have welcomed death as an end to an aimless, a hopeless life.
+
+But when peace was concluded, and some comrades of Aneurin returned
+home, the story of how he had met his death was divulged to her.
+
+Then the passionate Welsh mother's heart became as a live coal within
+her breast. An impotent rage against his murderer consumed her. She did
+not know the name of the man who had killed him, she but ill understood
+where her son had fallen. Had she known, had she been able, she would
+have gone out to South Africa, and have gloried in being able to stab to
+the heart the man who had so treacherously murdered her Aneurin. But how
+was he to be identified?
+
+The fact that she was powerless to avenge his death was a torture to
+her. She could not sleep, she could not eat, she writhed, she moaned,
+she bit her fingers, she chafed at her incapacity to execute justice on
+the murderer. A feverish flame was lit in her hollow cheeks. Her lips
+became parched, her tongue dry, her dark eyes glittered as if sparks of
+unquenchable fire had been kindled in them.
+
+She sat with clenched hands and set teeth before her dead grate, and the
+purple veins swelled and throbbed in her temples.
+
+Oh! if only she knew the name of the man who had shot her Aneurin!
+
+Oh! if only she could find out a way to recompense him for the wrong he
+had done!
+
+These were her only thoughts. And the sole passage in her Bible she
+could read, and which she read over and over again, was the story of the
+Importunate Widow who cried to the judge, "Avenge me of mine adversary!"
+and who was heard for her persistent asking.
+
+Thus passed a fortnight. She was visibly wasting in flesh, but the fire
+within her burned only the fiercer as her bodily strength failed.
+
+Then, all at once, an idea shot like a meteor through her brain. She
+remembered to have heard of the Cursing Well of St. Elian, near Colwyn.
+She recalled the fact that the last "Priest of the Well," an old man who
+had lived hard by, and who had initiated postulants into the mysteries
+of the well, had been brought before the magistrates for obtaining money
+under false pretences, and had been sent to gaol at Chester; and that
+the parson of Llanelian had taken a crowbar and had ripped up the wall
+that enclosed the spring, and had done what lay in his power to destroy
+it and blot out the remembrance of the powers of the well, or to ruin
+its efficacy.
+
+But the spring still flowed. Had it lost its virtues? Could a parson,
+could magistrates bring to naught what had been for centuries?
+
+She remembered, further, that the granddaughter of the "Priest of the
+Well" was then an inmate of the workhouse at Denbigh. Was it not
+possible that she should know the ritual of St. Elian's spring?--should
+be able to assist her in the desire of her heart?
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones resolved on trying. She went to the workhouse and
+sought out the woman, an old and infirm creature, and had a conference
+with her. She found the woman, a poor, decrepit creature, very shy of
+speaking about the well, very unwilling to be drawn into a confession of
+the extent of her knowledge, very much afraid of the magistrates and the
+master of the workhouse punishing her if she had anything to do with the
+well; but the intensity of Mrs. Jones, her vehemence in prosecuting her
+inquiries, and, above all, the gift of half a sovereign pressed into her
+palm, with the promise of another if she assisted Mrs. Winifred in the
+prosecution of her purpose, finally overcame her scruples, and she told
+all that she knew.
+
+"You must visit St. Elian's, madam," said she, "when the moon is at the
+wane. You must write the name of him whose death you desire on a pebble,
+and drop it into the water, and recite the sixty-ninth Psalm."
+
+"But," objected the widow, "I do not know his name, and I have no means
+of discovering it. I want to kill the man who murdered my son."
+
+The old woman considered, and then said: "In this case it is different.
+There is a way under these circumstances. Murdered, was your son?"
+
+"Yes, he was treacherously shot."
+
+"Then you will have to call on your son by name, as you let fall the
+pebble, and say: 'Let him be wiped out of the book of the living. Avenge
+me of mine adversary, O my God.' And you must go on dropping in pebbles,
+reciting the same prayer, till you see the water of the spring boil up
+black as ink. Then you will know that your prayer has been heard, and
+that the curse has wrought."
+
+Winifred Jones departed in some elation.
+
+She waited till the moon changed, and then she went to the spring. It
+was near a hedge; there were trees by it. Apparently it had been
+unsought for many years. But it still flowed. About it lay scattered a
+few stones that had once formed the bounds.
+
+She looked about her. No one was by. The sun was declining, and would
+soon set. She bent over the water--it was perfectly clear. She had
+collected a lapful of rounded stones.
+
+Then she cried out: "Aneurin! come to my aid against your murderer. Let
+him be blotted out of the book of the living. Avenge me on my adversary,
+O my God!" and she dropped a pebble into the water.
+
+Then rose a bubble. That was all.
+
+She paused but for a moment, then again she cried: "Aneurin! come to my
+aid against your murderer. Let him be blotted out of the book of the
+living. Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!"
+
+Once more a pebble was let fall. It splashed into the spring, but there
+was no change save that ripples were sent against the side.
+
+A third--then a fourth--she went on; the sun sent a shaft of yellow
+glory through the trees over the spring.
+
+Then someone passed along the road hard by, and Mrs. Winifred Jones
+held her breath, and desisted till the footfall had died away.
+
+But then she continued, stone after stone was dropped, and the ritual
+was followed, till the seventeenth had disappeared in the well, when up
+rose a column of black fluid boiling as it were from below, the colour
+of ink; and the widow pressed her hands together, and drew a sigh of
+relief; her prayer had been heard, and her curse had taken effect.
+
+She cast away the rest of the pebbles, let down her skirt, and went away
+rejoicing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It so fell out that on this very evening Jacob Van Heeren had gone to
+bed early, as he had risen before daybreak, and had been riding all day.
+His family were in the outer room, when they were startled by a hoarse
+cry from the bedroom. He was a short-tempered, imperious man, accustomed
+to yell at his wife and children when he needed them; but this cry was
+of an unusual character, it had in it the ring of alarm. His wife went
+to him to inquire what was the matter. She found the old Boer sitting up
+in bed with one leg extended, his face like dirty stained leather, his
+eyes starting out of his head, and his mouth opening and shutting,
+lifting and depressing his shaggy, grey beard, as though he were trying
+to speak, but could not utter words.
+
+"Pete!" she called to her eldest son, "come here, and see what ails your
+father."
+
+Pete and others entered, and stood about the bed, staring stupidly at
+the old man, unable to comprehend what had come over him.
+
+"Fetch him some brandy, Pete," said the mother; "he looks as if he had a
+fit."
+
+When some spirits had been poured down his throat the farmer was
+revived, and said huskily: "Take it away! Quick, take it off!"
+
+"Take what away?"
+
+"The white flag."
+
+"There is none here."
+
+"It is there--there, wrapped about my foot."
+
+The wife looked at the outstretched leg, and saw nothing. Jacob became
+angry, he swore at her, and yelled: "Take it off; it is chilling me to
+the bone."
+
+"There is nothing there."
+
+"But I say it is. I saw him come in----"
+
+"Saw whom, father?" asked one of the sons.
+
+"I saw that Rooinek lieutenant I shot when he was bringing me drink,
+thinking I was wounded. He came in through the door----"
+
+"That is not possible--he must have passed us."
+
+"I say he did come. I saw him, and he held the white rag, and he came
+upon me and gave me a twist with the flag about my foot, and there it
+is--it numbs me. I cannot move it. Quick, quick, take it away."
+
+"I repeat there is nothing there," said his wife.
+
+"Pull off his stocking," said Pete Van Heeren; "he has got a chill in
+his foot, and fancies this nonsense. He has been dreaming."
+
+"It was not a dream," roared Jacob; "I saw him as clearly as I see you,
+and he wrapped my foot up in that accursed flag."
+
+"Accursed flag!" exclaimed Samuel, the second son. "That's a fine way to
+speak of it, father, when it served you so well."
+
+"Take it off, you dogs!" yelled the old man, "and don't stand staring
+and barking round me."
+
+The stocking was removed from his leg, and then it was seen that his
+foot--the left foot--had turned a livid white.
+
+"Go and heat a brick," said the housewife to one of her daughters; "it
+is just the circulation has stopped."
+
+But no artificial warmth served to restore the flow of blood, and the
+natural heat.
+
+Jacob passed a sleepless night.
+
+Next morning he rose, but limped; all feeling had gone out of the foot.
+His wife vainly urged him to keep to his bed. He was obstinate, and
+would get up; but he could not walk without the help of a stick. When
+clothed, he hobbled into the kitchen and put the numbed foot to the
+fire, and the stocking sole began to smoke, it was singed and went to
+pieces, but his foot was insensible to the heat. Then he went forth,
+aided by the stick, to his farmyard, hoping that movement would restore
+feeling and warmth; but this also was in vain. In the evening he seated
+himself on a bench outside the door, whilst his family ate supper. He
+ordered them to bring food to him. He felt easier in the open air than
+within doors.
+
+Whilst his wife and children were about the table at their meal, they
+heard a scream without, more like that of a wounded horse than a man,
+and all rushed forth, to find Jacob in a paroxysm of terror only less
+severe than that of the preceding night.
+
+"He came on me again," he gasped; "the same man, I do not know from
+whence--he seemed to spring out of the distance. I saw him first like
+smoke, but with a white flicker in it; and then he got nearer and became
+more distinct, and I knew it was he; and he had another of those white
+napkins in his hand. I could not call for help--I tried, I could utter
+no sound, till he wrapped it--that white rag--round my calf, and then,
+with the cold and pain, I cried out, and he vanished."
+
+"Father," said Pete, "you fell asleep and dreamt this."
+
+"I did not. I saw him, and I felt what he did. Give me your hand. I
+cannot rise. I must go within. Good Lord, when will this come to an
+end?"
+
+When lifted from his seat it was seen that his left leg dragged. He had
+to lean heavily on his son on one side and his wife on the other, and he
+allowed himself, without remonstrance, to be put to bed.
+
+It was then seen that the dead whiteness, as of a corpse, had spread
+from the foot up the calf.
+
+"He is going to have a paralytic stroke, that is it," said Pete. "You,
+Samuel, must ride for a doctor to-morrow morning, not that he can do
+much good, if what I think be the case."
+
+On the second day the old man persisted in his determination to rise. He
+was deaf to all remonstrance, he would get up and go about, as far as he
+was able. But his ability was small. In the evening, as the sun went
+down, he was sitting crouched over the fire. The family had finished
+supper, and all had left the room except his wife, who was removing the
+dishes, when she heard a gasping and struggling by the fire, and,
+turning her head, saw her husband writhing on his stool, clinging to it
+with his hands, with his left leg out, his mouth foaming, and he was
+snorting with terror or pain.
+
+She ran to him at once.
+
+"Jacob, what is it?"
+
+"He is at me again! Beat him off with the broom!" he screamed. "Keep him
+away. He is wrapping the white flag round my knee."
+
+Pete and the others ran in, and raised their father, who was falling out
+of his seat, and conveyed him to bed.
+
+It was now seen that his knee had become hard and stiff, his calf was as
+if frozen; the whiteness had extended upwards to the knee.
+
+Next day a surgeon arrived. He examined the old man, and expressed his
+conviction that he had a stroke. But it was a paralytic attack of an
+unusual character, as it had in no way affected his speech or his left
+arm and hand. He recommended hot fomentations.
+
+Still the farmer would not be confined to bed; he insisted on being
+dressed and assisted into the kitchen.
+
+One stick was not now sufficient for him, and Samuel contrived for him
+crutches. With these he could drag himself about, and on the fourth
+evening he laboriously worked his way to a cowstall to look at one of
+his beasts that was ill.
+
+Whilst there he had a fourth attack. Pete, who was without, heard him
+yell and beat at the door with one of his crutches. He entered, and
+found his father lying on the floor, quivering with terror, and
+spluttering unintelligible words. He lifted him, and drew him without,
+then shouted to Samuel, who came up, and together they carried him to
+the house.
+
+Only when there, and when he had drunk some brandy, was he able to give
+an account of what had taken place. He had been looking at the cow, and
+feeling it, when down out of the hayloft had come leaping the form of
+the Rooinek lieutenant, which had sprung in between him and the cow,
+and, stooping, had wrapped a white rag round his thigh, above the knee.
+And now the whole of his leg was dead and livid.
+
+"There is nothing for it, father, but to have your leg amputated," said
+Pete. "The doctor told me as much. He said that mortification would set
+in if there was no return of circulation."
+
+"I won't have it off! What good shall I be with only one leg?" exclaimed
+the old man.
+
+"But father, it will be the sole means of saving your life."
+
+"I won't have my leg off!" again repeated Jacob.
+
+Pete said in a low tone to his mother: "Have you seen any dark spots on
+his leg? The doctor said we must look for them, and, when they come,
+send for him at once."
+
+"No," she replied, "I have not noticed any, so far."
+
+"Then we will wait till they appear."
+
+On the fifth day the farmer was constrained to keep his bed.
+
+He had now become a prey to abject terror. So sure as the hour of
+sunset came, did a new visitation occur. He listened for the clock to
+sound each hour of the day, and as the afternoon drew on he dreaded with
+unspeakable horror the advent of the moment when again the apparition
+would be seen, and a fresh chill be inflicted. He insisted that his wife
+or Pete should remain in the room with him. They took it in turns to sit
+by his bedside.
+
+Through the little window the fire of the setting sun smote in and fell
+across the suffering man.
+
+It was his wife's turn to be in attendance.
+
+All at once a gurgling sound broke from his throat. His eyes started
+from his face, his hair bristled, and with his hands he worked himself
+into a sitting posture, and he heaved himself on to his pillow, and
+would have broken his way through the backboard of his bed, could he
+have done so.
+
+"What is it, Jacob?" asked his wife, throwing down the garment which she
+was mending, and coming to his assistance. "Lie down again. There is
+nothing here."
+
+He could not speak. His teeth were chattering, and his beard shaking,
+foam-bubbles formed on his lips, and great sweatdrops on his brow.
+
+"Pete! Samuel!" she called, "come to your father."
+
+The young men ran in, and they forcibly laid the old Boer in bed,
+prostrate.
+
+And now it was found that the right foot had turned dead, like the left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of the seventeenth day after the visit to the well of
+Llanelian, Mrs. Winifred Jones was sitting on the side of her bed in the
+twilight. She had lighted no candle. She was musing, always on the same
+engrossing topic, the wrong that had been done to her and her son, and
+thirsting with a feverish thirst for vengeance on the wrongdoer.
+
+Her confidence in the expedient to which she had resorted was beginning
+to fail. What was this recourse to the well but a falling in with an old
+superstition that had died out with the advance of knowledge, and under
+the influence of a wholesome feeling? Was any trust to be placed in that
+woman at the workhouse? Was she deceiving her for the sake of the
+half-sovereign? And yet--she had seen a token that her prayer would
+prove efficacious. There had risen through the crystal water a column of
+black fluid.
+
+Could it be that a widow's prayer should meet with no response? Was
+wrong to prevail in the world? Were the weak and oppressed to have no
+means of procuring the execution of justice on the evildoers? Was not
+God righteous in all His ways? Would it be righteous in Him to suffer
+the murderer of her son to thrive? If God be merciful, He is also just.
+If His ear is open to the prayer for help, He must as well listen to the
+cry for vengeance.
+
+Since that evening at the spring she had been unable to pray as usual,
+to pray for herself--her only cry had been: "Avenge me on my adversary!"
+If she tried to frame the words of the Lord's Prayer, she could not do
+so. They escaped her; her thoughts travelled to the South African veldt.
+Her soul could not rise to God in the ecstasy of love and devotion; it
+was choked with hate--an overwhelming hate.
+
+She was in her black weeds; the hands, thin and white, were on her lap,
+nervously clasping and unclasping the fingers. Had anyone been there, in
+the grey twilight of a summer night, he would have been saddened to see
+how hard and lined the face had become, how all softness had passed from
+the lips, how sunken were the eyes, in which was only a glitter of
+wrath.
+
+Suddenly she saw standing before her, indistinct indeed, but
+unmistakable, the form of her lost son, her Aneurin, and he held a white
+napkin in his right hand, and this napkin emitted a phosphorescent
+glow.
+
+She tried to cry out; to utter the beloved name; she tried to spring to
+her feet and throw herself into his arms! But she was unable to stir
+hand, or foot, or tongue. She was as one paralysed, but her heart
+bounded within her bosom.
+
+"Mother," said the apparition, in a voice that seemed to come from a
+vast distance, yet was articulate and audible--"Mother, you called me
+back from the world of spirits, and sent me to discharge a task. I have
+done it. I have touched him on the foot and calf and knee and thigh, on
+hand and elbow and shoulder, on one side and on the other, on his head,
+and lastly on his heart, with the white flag--and now he is dead. I did
+it in all sixteen times, and with the sixteenth he died. I chilled him
+piecemeal with the white flag; the sixteenth was laid on his heart, and
+that stopped beating."
+
+Then she lifted her hands slightly, and her stiffened tongue relaxed so
+far that she was able to murmur: "God be thanked!"
+
+"Mother," continued the apparition, "there is a seventeenth remaining."
+
+She tried to clasp her hands on her lap, but the fingers were no longer
+under her control; they had fallen to the side of the chair-bed, and
+hung there lifeless. Her eyes stared wildly at the spectre of her son,
+but without love in them; love had faded out of her heart, and given
+place to hate of his murderer.
+
+"Mother," proceeded the vision, "you summoned me, and even in the world
+of spirits the soul of a child must respond to the cry of a mother, and
+I have been permitted to come back and to do your will. And now I am
+suffered to reveal something to you: to show you what my life would have
+been had it not been cut short by the shot of the Boer."
+
+He stepped towards her, and put forth a vaporous hand and touched her
+eyes. She felt as though a feather had been passed over them. Then he
+raised the luminous sheet and shook it. Instantly all about her was
+changed.
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones was not in her little Welsh cottage; nor was it
+night. She was no longer alone. She stood in a court, in full daylight.
+She saw before her the judge on his seat, the barristers in wig and
+gown, the press reporters with their notebooks and pens, a dense crowd
+thronging every portion of the court. And she knew instinctively, before
+a word was spoken, without an intimation from the spirit of her son,
+that she was standing in the Divorce Court. And she saw there as
+co-respondent her son, older, changed in face, but more altered in
+expression. And she heard a tale unfolded--full of dishonour, and
+rousing disgust.
+
+She was now able to raise her hands--she covered her ears; her face,
+crimson with shame, sank on her bosom. She could endure the sight, the
+words spoken, the revelations made, no longer, and she cried out:
+"Aneurin! Aneurin! for the Lord's sake, no more of this! Oh, the day,
+the day, that I have seen you standing here."
+
+At once all passed; and she was again in her bedroom in Honeysuckle
+Cottage, North Wales, seated with folded hands on her lap, and looking
+before her wonderingly at the ghostly form of her son.
+
+"Is that enough, mother?"
+
+She lifted her hands deprecatingly.
+
+Again he shook the glimmering white sheet, and it was as though drops of
+pearly fire fell out of it.
+
+And again--all was changed.
+
+She found herself at Monte Carlo; she knew it instinctively. She was in
+the great saloon, where were the gaming-tables. The electric lights
+glittered, and the decorations were superb. But all her attention was
+engrossed on her son, whom she saw at one of the tables, staking his
+last napoleon.
+
+It was indeed her own Aneurin, but with a face on which vice and its
+consequent degradation were written indelibly.
+
+He lost, and turned away, and left the hall and its lights. His mother
+followed him. He went forth into the gardens. The full moon was shining,
+and the gravel of the terraces was white as snow. The air was fragrant
+with the scent of oranges and myrtles. The palms cast black shadows on
+the soil. The sea lay still as if asleep, with a gleam over it from the
+moon.
+
+Mrs. Winifred Jones tracked her son, as he stole in and out among the
+shrubs, amid the trees, with a sickening fear at her heart. Then she saw
+him pause by some oleanders, and draw a revolver from his pocket and
+place it at his ear. She uttered a cry of agony and horror, and tried to
+spring forward to dash the weapon from his hand.
+
+Then all changed.
+
+She was again in her little room in the dusk, and the shadowy form of
+Aneurin was before her.
+
+"Mother," said the spirit, "I have been permitted to come to you and to
+show to you what would have been my career if I had not died whilst
+young, and fresh, and innocent. You have to thank Jacob Van Heeren that
+he saved me from such a life of infamy, and such an evil death by my own
+hand. You should thank, and not curse him." She was breathing heavily.
+Her heart beat so fast that her brain span; she fell on her knees.
+
+"Mother," the apparition continued, "there were seventeen pebbles cast
+into the well."
+
+"Yes, Aneurin," she whispered.
+
+"And there is a seventeenth white flag. With the sixteenth Jacob Van
+Heeren died. The seventeenth is reserved for you."
+
+"Aneurin! I am not fit to die."
+
+"Mother, it must be, I must lay the white flag over your head."
+
+"Oh! my son, my son!"
+
+"It is so ordained," he proceeded; "but there are Love and Mercy on
+high, and you shall not be veiled with it till you have made your peace.
+You have sinned. You have thrust yourself into the council-chamber of
+God. You have claimed to exercise vengeance yourself, and not left it to
+Him to whom vengeance in right belongs."
+
+"I know it now," breathed the widow.
+
+"And now you must atone for the curses by prayers. You have brought
+Jacob Van Heeren to his death by your imprecations, and now, fold your
+hands and pray to God for him--for him, your son's murderer. Little have
+you considered that his acts were due to ignorance, resentment for what
+he fancied were wrongs, and to having been reared in a mutilated and
+debased form of Christianity. Pray for him, that God may pardon his many
+and great transgressions, his falsehood, his treachery, his
+self-righteousness. You who have been so greatly wronged are the right
+person to forgive and to pray for his soul. In no other way can you so
+fully show that your heart is turned from wrath to love. Forgive us our
+trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us."
+
+She breathed a "Yes."
+
+Then she clasped her hands. She was already on her knees, and she prayed
+first the great Exemplar's prayer, and then particularly for the man who
+had wrecked her life, with all its hopes.
+
+And as she prayed the lines in her face softened, and the lips lost
+their hardness, and the fierce light passed utterly away from her eyes,
+in which the lamp of Charity was once more lighted, and the tears formed
+and rolled down her cheeks.
+
+And still she prayed on, bathed in the pearly light from the summer sky
+at night. Without, in the firmament, twinkled a star; and a night-bird
+began to sing.
+
+"And now, mother, pray for yourself."
+
+Then she crossed her hands over her bosom, and bowed her head, full of
+self-reproach and shame; and as she prayed, the spirit of her son raised
+the White Flag above her and let it sail down softly, lightly over the
+loved head, and as it descended there fell from it as it were a dew of
+pale fire, and it rested on her head, and fell about her, and she sank
+forward with her face upon the floor. R.I.P.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book of Ghosts, by Sabine Baring-Gould
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