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Title: The Automaton Ear, and Other Sketches

Author: Florence McLandburgh

Release date: February 23, 2022 [eBook #67476]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Jansen, McClurg & Co, 1876

Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOMATON EAR, AND OTHER SKETCHES ***





                                  THE
                             AUTOMATON EAR,
                                  AND
                            OTHER SKETCHES.


                                   BY

                         FLORENCE McLANDBURGH.


                                CHICAGO:
                         JANSEN, McCLURG & CO.
                                 1876.




                               COPYRIGHT,
                        BY FLORENCE McLANDBURGH,
                              A. D. 1876.

[Illustration: _LAKESIDE PUBLISHING & PRINTING CO. CHICAGO._]




                               Dedicated

                                   TO

                           JOHN McLANDBURGH.




NOTE.—Some of the sketches and tales in this volume were contributed to
“Scribner’s Monthly,” “Appleton’s Journal,” and the “Lakeside Magazine,”
and are used here, in a revised form, by the kind permission of the
editors. Others appear now for the first time.

                                                                 F. McL.

CHICAGO, _April, 1876_.




[Illustration]

                               CONTENTS.


                                                PAGE
                    THE AUTOMATON EAR,             7

                    THE PATHS OF THE SEA,         44

                    REINHART, THE GERMAN,         89

                    SILVER ISLET,                103

                    BOYDELL, THE STROLLER,       129

                    THE DEATH-WATCH,             149

                    THE MAN AT THE CRIB,         161

                    PROF. KELLERMANN’S FUNERAL,  183

                    THE FEVERFEW,                201

                    OLD SIMLIN, THE MOULDER,     213

                    THE ANTHEM OF JUDEA,         243

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

                           THE AUTOMATON EAR.


The day was hardly different from many another day, though I will likely
recall it even when the mist of years has shrouded the past in an
undefined hueless cloud. The sunshine came in at my open window. Out of
doors it flooded all the land in its warm summer light—the spires of the
town and the bare college campus; farther, the tall bearded barley and
rustling oats; farther still, the wild grass and the forest, where the
river ran and the blue haze dipped from the sky.

The temptation was greater than I could stand, and taking my book I shut
up the “study,” as the students called my small apartment, leaving it
for one bounded by no walls or ceiling.

The woods rang with the hum and chirp of insects and birds. I threw
myself down beneath a tall, broad-spreading tree. Against its
moss-covered trunk I could hear the loud tap of the woodpecker secreted
high up among its leaves, and off at the end of a tender young twig a
robin trilled, swinging himself to and fro through the checkered
sunlight. I never grew weary listening to the changeful voice of the
forest and the river, and was hardly conscious of reading until I came
upon this paragraph:—

  “As a particle of the atmosphere is never lost, so sound is never
  lost. A strain of music or a simple tone will vibrate in the air
  forever and ever, decreasing according to a fixed ratio. The diffusion
  of the agitation extends in all directions, like the waves in a pool,
  but the ear is unable to detect it beyond a certain point. It is well
  known that some individuals can distinguish sounds which to others
  under precisely similar circumstances are wholly lost. Thus the fault
  is not in the sound itself, but in our organ of hearing, and a tone
  once in existence is always in existence.”

This was nothing new to me. I had read it before, though I had never
thought of it particularly; but while I listened to the robin, it seemed
singular to know that all the sounds ever uttered, ever born, were
floating in the air _now_—all music, every tone, every bird-song—and we,
alas! could not hear them.

Suddenly a strange idea shot through my brain—Why not? Ay, _why not
hear_? Men had constructed instruments which could magnify to the eye
and—was it possible?—Why not?

I looked up and down the river, but saw neither it, nor the sky, nor the
moss that I touched. Did the woodpecker still tap secreted among the
leaves, and the robin sing, and the hum of insects run along the bank as
before? I can not recollect, I can not recollect anything, only Mother
Flinse, the deaf and dumb old crone that occasionally came to beg, and
sell nuts to the students, was standing in the gateway. I nodded to her
as I passed, and walked up her long, slim shadow that lay on the path.
It was a strange idea that had come so suddenly into my head and
startled me. I hardly dared to think of it, but I could think of nothing
else. It could not be possible, and yet—why not?

Over and over in the restless hours of the night I asked myself, I said
aloud, Why not? Then I laughed at my folly, and wondered what I was
thinking of and tried to sleep—but if it _could_ be done?

The idea clung to me. It forced itself up in class hours and made
confusion in the lessons. Some said the professor was ill those two or
three days before the vacation; perhaps I was. I scarcely slept; only
the one thought grew stronger—Men had done more wonderful things; it
certainly was possible, and I would accomplish this grand invention. I
would construct the king of all instruments—I would construct an
instrument which could catch these faint tones vibrating in the air and
render them audible. Yes, and I would labor quietly until it was
perfected, or the world might laugh.

The session closed and the college was deserted, save by the few musty
students whom, even in imagination, one could hardly separate or
distinguish from the old books on the library shelves. I could wish for
no better opportunity to begin my great work. The first thing would be
to prepare for it by a careful study of acoustics, and I buried myself
among volumes on the philosophy of sound.

I went down to London and purchased a common ear-trumpet. My own ear was
exceedingly acute, and to my great delight I found that, with the aid of
the trumpet just as it was, I could distinguish sounds at a much greater
distance, and those nearer were magnified in power. I had only to
improve upon this instrument; careful study, careful work, careful
experiment, and my hopes would undoubtedly be realized.

Back to my old room in the college I went with a complete set of tools.
So days and weeks I shut myself in, and every day and every week brought
nothing but disappointment. The instrument seemed only to diminish sound
rather than increase it, yet still I worked on and vowed I would not
grow discouraged.

Hour after hour I sat, looking out of my narrow window. The fields
of barley and waving oats had been reaped, the wheat too had ripened
and gone, but I did not notice. I sprang up with a joyful
exclamation—Strange never to have thought of it before! Perhaps I
had not spent my time in vain, after all. How could I expect to test
my instrument in this close room with only that little window? It
should be removed from immediate noises, high up in the open air,
where there would be no obstructions. I would never succeed here—but
where should I go? It must be some place in which I would never be
liable to interruption, for my first object was to be shielded and
work in secret.

I scoured the neighborhood for an appropriate spot without success, when
it occurred to me that I had heard some one say the old gray church was
shut up. This church was situated just beyond the suburbs of the town.
It was built of rough stone, mottled and stained by unknown years. The
high, square tower, covered by thick vines that clung and crept round
its base, was the most venerable monument among all the slabs and tombs
where it stood sentinel. Only graves deserted and uncared for by the
living kept it company. People said the place was too damp for use, and
talked of rebuilding, but it had never been done. Now if I could gain
access to the tower, that was the very place for my purpose.

I found the door securely fastened, and walked round and round without
discovering any way of entrance; but I made up my mind, if it were
possible to get inside of that church I would do it, and without the
help of keys. The high windows were not to be thought of; but in the
rear of the building, lower down, where the fuel had probably been kept,
there was a narrow opening which was boarded across. With very little
difficulty I knocked out the planks and crept through. It was a cellar,
and, as I had anticipated, the coal receptacle. After feeling about, I
found a few rough steps which led to a door that was unlocked and
communicated with the passage back of the vestry-room.

The tower I wished to explore was situated in the remote corner of the
building. I passed on to the church. Its walls were discolored by green
mould, and blackened where the water had dripped through. The sun, low
down in the sky, lit the tall arched windows on the west, and made
yellow strips across the long aisles, over the faded pews with their
stiff, straight backs, over the chancel rail, over the altar with its
somber wood-work; but there was no warmth; only the cheerless glare
seemed to penetrate the cold, dead atmosphere,—only the cheerless glare
without sparkle, without life, came into that voiceless sanctuary where
the organ slept. At the right of the vestibule a staircase led to the
tower; it ascended to a platform laid on a level with the four windows
and a little above the point of the church roof. These four windows were
situated one on each side of the tower, running high up, and the lower
casement folding inward.

Here was my place. Above the tree-tops, in the free open air, with no
obstacle to obstruct the wind, I could work unmolested by people or
noise. The fresh breeze that fanned my face was cool and pleasant. An
hour ago I had been tired, disappointed, and depressed; but now, buoyant
with hope, I was ready to begin work again—work that I was determined to
accomplish.

The sun had gone. I did not see the broken slabs and urns in the shadow
down below; I did not see the sunken graves and the rank grass and the
briers. I looked over them and saw the gorgeous fringes along the
horizon, scarlet and gold and pearl; saw them quiver and brighten to
flame, and the white wings of pigeons whirl and circle in the deepening
glow.

I closed the windows, and when I had crawled out of the narrow hole,
carefully reset the boards just as I had found them. In another day all
the tools and books that I considered necessary were safely deposited in
the tower. I only intended to make this my workshop, still, of course,
occupying my old room in the college.

Here I matured plan after plan. I studied, read, worked, knowing,
_feeling_ that at last I must succeed; but failure followed failure, and
I sank into despondency only to begin again with a kind of desperation.
When I went down to London and wandered about, hunting up different
metals and hard woods, I never entered a concert-room or an opera-house.
Was there not music in store for me, such as no mortal ear had ever
heard? _All_ the music, every strain that had sounded in the past ages?
Ah, I could wait; I would work patiently and wait.

I was laboring now upon a theory that I had not tried heretofore. It was
my last resource; if this failed, then—but it would not fail! I resolved
not to make any test, not to put it near my ear until it was completed.
I discarded all woods and used only the metals which best transmitted
sound. Finally it was finished, even to the ivory ear-piece. I held the
instrument all ready—I held it and looked eastward and westward and back
again. Suddenly all control over the muscles of my hand was gone, it
felt like stone; then the strange sensation passed away. I stood up and
lifted the trumpet to my ear—What! Silence? No, no—I was faint, my brain
was confused, whirling. I would not believe it; I would wait a moment
until this dizziness was gone, and then—then I would be able to hear. I
was deaf now. I still held the instrument; in my agitation the ivory tip
shook off and rolled down rattling on the floor. I gazed at it
mechanically, as if it had been a pebble; I never thought of replacing
it, and, mechanically, I raised the trumpet a second time to my ear. A
crash of discordant sounds, a confused jarring noise broke upon me and I
drew back trembling, dismayed.

Fool! O fool of fools never to have thought of this, which a child, a
dunce would not have overlooked! My great invention was nothing, was
worse than nothing, was worse than a failure. I might have known that my
instrument would magnify present sounds in the air to such a degree as
to make them utterly drown all others, and, clashing together, produce
this noise like the heavy rumble of thunder.

The college reopened, and I took up my old line of duties, or at least
attempted them, for the school had grown distasteful to me. I was
restless, moody, and discontented. I tried to forget my disappointment,
but the effort was vain.

The spires of the town and the college campus glittered white, the
fields of barley and oats were fields of snow, the forest leaves had
withered and fallen, and the river slumbered, wrapped in a sheeting of
ice. Still I brooded over my failure, and when again the wild grass
turned green I no longer cared. I was not the same man that had looked
out at the waving grain and the blue haze only a year before. A gloomy
despondency had settled upon me, and I grew to hate the students, to
hate the college, to hate society. In the first shock of discovered
failure I had given up all hope, and the Winter passed I knew not how. I
never wondered if the trouble could be remedied. Now it suddenly
occurred to me, perhaps it was no failure after all. The instrument
might be made adjustable, so as to be sensible to faint or severe
vibrations at pleasure of the operator, and thus separate the sounds. I
remembered how but for the accidental removal of the ivory my instrument
perhaps would not have reflected any sound. I would work again and
persevere.

I would have resigned my professorship, only it might create suspicion.
I knew not that already they viewed me with curious eyes and sober
faces. When the session finally closed, they tried to persuade me to
leave the college during vacation and travel on the continent. I would
feel much fresher, they told me, in the Autumn. In the Autumn? Ay,
perhaps I might, perhaps I might, and I would not go abroad.

Once more the reapers came unnoticed. My work progressed slowly. Day by
day I toiled up in the old church tower, and night by night I dreamed.
In my sleep it often seemed that the instrument was suddenly completed,
but before I could raise it to my ear I would always waken with a
nervous start. So the feverish time went by, and at last I held it ready
for a second trial. Now the instrument was adjustable, and I had also
improved it so far as to be able to set it very accurately for any
particular period, thus rendering it sensible only to sounds of that
time, all heavier and fainter vibrations being excluded.

I drew it out almost to its limits.

All the maddening doubts that had haunted me like grinning specters
died. I felt no tremor, my hand was steady, my pulse-beat regular.

The soft breeze had fallen away. No leaf stirred in the quiet that
seemed to await my triumph. Again the crimson splendor of sun-set
illumined the western sky and made a glory overhead—and the dusk was
thickening down below among the mouldering slabs. But that mattered not.

I raised the trumpet to my ear.

Hark!—The hum of mighty hosts! It rose and fell, fainter and more faint;
then the murmur of water was heard and lost again, as it swelled and
gathered and burst in one grand volume of sound like a hallelujah from
myriad lips. Out of the resounding echo, out of the dying cadence a
single female voice arose. Clear, pure, rich, it soared above the tumult
of the host that hushed itself, a living thing. Higher, sweeter, it
seemed to break the fetters of mortality and tremble in sublime
adoration before the Infinite. My breath stilled with awe. Was it a
spirit-voice—one of the glittering host in the jasper city “that had no
need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it?” And the water, was
it the river clear as crystal flowing from the great white throne? But
no! The tone now floated out soft, sad, human. There was no sorrowful
strain in that nightless land where the leaves of the trees were for the
healing of the nations. The beautiful voice was of the earth and
sin-stricken. From the sobbing that mingled with the faint ripple of
water it went up once more, ringing gladly, joyfully; it went up
inspired with praise to the sky, and—hark! the Hebrew tongue:—

“The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.”

Then the noise of the multitude swelled again, and a crash of music
broke forth from innumerable timbrels. I raised my head quickly—it was
the song of Miriam after the passage of the Red Sea.

I knew not whether I lived.

I bent my ear eagerly to the instrument again and heard—the soft rustle,
the breathing as of a sleeping forest. A plaintive note stole gently
out, more solemn and quiet than the chant of the leaves. The mournful
lay, forlorn, frightened, trembled on the air like the piteous wail of
some wounded creature. Then it grew stronger. Clear, brilliant, it burst
in a shower of silver sounds like a whole choir of birds in the glitter
of the tropical sunlight. But the mournful wail crept back, and the
lonely heartbroken strain was lost, while the leaves still whispered to
one another in the midnight.

Like the light of a distant star came to me this song of some
nightingale, thousands of years after the bird had mouldered to nothing.

At last my labor had been rewarded. As sound travels in waves, and these
waves are continually advancing as they go round and round the world,
therefore I would never hear the same sound over again at the same time,
but it passed beyond and another came in its stead.

All night I listened with my ear pressed to the instrument. I heard the
polished, well-studied compliments, the rustle of silks, and the quick
music of the dance at some banquet. I could almost see the brilliant
robes and glittering jewels of the waltzers, and the sheen of light, and
the mirrors. But hush! a cry, a stifled moan. Was that at the——No, the
music and the rustle of silk were gone.

“Mother, put your hand here,—I am tired, and my head feels hot and
strange. Is it night, already, that it has grown so dark? I am resting
now, for my book is almost done, and then, mother, we can go back to the
dear old home where the sun shines so bright and the honeysuckles are
heavy with perfume. And, mother, we will never be poor any more. I know
you are weary, for your cheeks are pale and your fingers are thin; but
they shall not touch a needle then, and you will grow better, mother,
and we will forget these long, long, bitter years. I will not write in
the evenings then, but sit with you and watch the twilight fade as we
used to do, and listen to the murmur of the frogs. I described the
little stream, our little stream, mother, in my book.—Hark! I hear the
splash of its waves now. Hold me by the hand tight, mother. I am tired,
but we are almost there. See! the house glimmers white through the
trees, and the red bird has built its nest again in the cedar. Put your
arm around me, mother, mother—”

Then single, echoless, the mother’s piercing cry went up—“O my God!”

Great Heaven! It would not always be music that I should hear. Into this
ear, where all the world poured its tales, sorrow and suffering and
death would come in turn with mirth and gladness.

I listened again. The long-drawn ahoy!—ahoy!—of the sailor rang out in
slumbrous musical monotone, now free, now muffled—gone. The gleeful
laugh of children at play, then the drunken boisterous shout of the
midnight reveler—What was that? A chime of bells, strange, sublime,
swimming in the air they made a cold, solemn harmony. But even over them
dashed the storm-blast of passion that sweeps continually up and down
the earth, and the harmony that bound them in peace broke up in a wild,
angry clamor, that set loose shrill screams which were swallowed up in a
savage tumult of discord, like a mad carnival of yelling demons. Then,
as if terrified by their own fiendish rage, they retreated shivering,
remorseful, and hushed themselves in hoarse whispers about the gray
belfry. It was the Carillonneur, Matthias Vander Gheyn, playing at
Louvain on the first of July, 1745.

Yes, my invention had proved a grand success. I had worked and worked in
order to give this instrument to the world; but now when it was
finished, strange to say, all my ambition, all my desire for fame left
me, and I was anxious only to guard it from discovery, to keep it
secret, to keep it more jealously than a miser hoards his gold. An
undefinable delight filled my soul that I alone out of all humanity
possessed this treasure, this great Ear of the World, for which kings
might have given up their thrones. Ah! they dreamed not of the wonders I
could relate. It was a keen, intense pleasure to see the public for
which I had toiled live on, deaf forever save to the few transient
sounds of the moment, while I, their slave, reveled in another world
above, beyond their’s. But they should never have this instrument; no,
not for kingdoms would I give it up, not for life itself.

It exerted a strange fascination over me, and in my eager desire to
preserve my secret a tormenting fear suddenly took possession of me that
some one might track me to the tower and discover all. It seemed as if
the people looked after me with curious faces as I passed. I went no
longer on the main road that led to the church, but, when I left my
room, took an opposite direction until out of sight, and then made a
circuit across the fields. I lived in a continual fear of betraying
myself, so that at night I closed my window and door lest I might talk
aloud in my sleep. I could never again bear the irksome duties of my
office, and when the college reopened I gave up my situation and took
lodgings in town. Still the dread of detection haunted me. Every day I
varied my route to the church, and every day the people seemed to stare
at me with a more curious gaze. Occasionally some of my old pupils came
to visit me, but they appeared constrained in my presence and were soon
gone. However, no one seemed to suspect my secret; perhaps all this was
merely the work of my imagination, for I had grown watchful and
reticent.

I hardly ate or slept. I lived perpetually in the past listening to the
echoing song of the Alpine shepherd; the rich, uncultivated soprano of
the Southern slave making strange wild melody. I heard grand organ
fugues rolling, sweeping over multitudes that kneeled in awe, while a
choir of voices broke into a gloria that seemed to sway the great
cathedral. The thrilling artistic voices of the far past rang again,
making my listening soul tremble in their magnificent harmony. It was
music of which we could not dream.

Then suddenly I determined to try the opera once more; perhaps I was
prejudiced: I had not been inside of a concert-room for more than a
year.

I went down to London. It was just at the opening of the season. I could
hardly wait that evening until the curtain rose; the orchestra was harsh
and discordant, the house hot and disagreeable, the gas painfully
bright. My restlessness had acquired a feverish pitch before the prima
donna made her appearance. Surely that voice was not the one before
which the world bowed! Malibran’s song stood out in my memory clearly
defined and complete, like a magnificent cathedral of pure marble, with
faultless arches and skillfully chiseled carvings, where the minarets
rose from wreaths of lilies and vine-leaves cut in bas-relief, and the
slender spire shot high, glittering yellow in the upper sunlight, its
golden arrow, burning like flame, pointing towards the East. But this
prima donna built only a flat, clumsy structure of wood ornamented by
gaudily painted lattice. I left the opera amid the deafening applause of
the audience with a smile of scorn upon my lips. Poor deluded creatures!
they knew nothing of music, they knew not what they were doing.

I went to St. Paul’s on the Sabbath. There was no worship in the
operatic voluntary sung by hired voices; it did not stir my soul, and
their cold hymns did not warm with praise to the Divine Creator, or sway
the vast pulseless congregation that came and went without one quickened
breath.

All this time I felt a singular, inexpressible pleasure in the
consciousness of my great secret, and I hurried back with eager haste.
In London I had accidentally met two or three of my old acquaintances. I
was not over glad to see them myself: as I have said, I had grown
utterly indifferent to society; but I almost felt ashamed when they
offered me every attention within their power, for I had not anticipated
it, nor was it deserved on my part. Now, when I returned, every body in
the street stopped to shake hands with me and inquire for my health. At
first, although I was surprised at the interest they manifested, I took
it merely as the common civility on meeting, but when the question was
repeated so particularly by each one, I thought it appeared strange, and
asked if they had ever heard to the contrary; no, oh no, they said, but
still I was astonished at the unusual care with which they all made the
same inquiry.

I went up to my room and walked directly to the glass. It was the first
time I had consciously looked into a mirror for many weeks. Good
Heavens! The mystery was explained now. _I could hardly recognize
myself._ At first the shock was so great that I stood gazing, almost
petrified. The demon of typhus fever could not have wrought a more
terrific change in my face if he had held it in his clutches for months.
My hair hung in long straggling locks around my neck. I was thin and
fearfully haggard. My eyes sunken far back in my head, looked out from
dark, deep hollows; my heavy black eyebrows were knit together by
wrinkles that made seams over my forehead; my fleshless cheeks clung
tight to the bone, and a bright red spot on either one was half covered
by thick beard. I had thought so little about my personal appearance
lately that I had utterly neglected my hair, and I wondered now that it
had given me no annoyance. I smiled while I still looked at myself. This
was the effect of the severe study and loss of sleep, and the excitement
under which I had labored for months, yes, for more than a year. I had
not been conscious of fatigue, but my work was done now and I would soon
regain my usual weight. I submitted myself immediately to the hands of a
barber, dressed with considerable care, and took another look in the
glass. My face appeared pinched and small since it had been freed from
beard. The caverns around my eyes seemed even larger, and the bright
color in my cheeks contrasted strangely with the extremely sallow tint
of my complexion. I turned away with an uncomfortable feeling, and
started on a circuitous route to the church, for I never trusted my
instrument in any other place.

It was a sober autumn day. Every thing looked dreary with that cold,
gray, sunless sky stretched overhead. The half-naked trees shivered a
little in their seared garments of ragged leaves. Occasionally a cat
walked along the fence-top, or stood trembling on three legs. Sometimes
a depressed bird suddenly tried to cheer its drooping spirits and
uttered a few sharp, discontented chirps. Just in front of me two boys
were playing ball on the roadside. As I passed I accidentally caught
this sentence:

“They say the professor ain’t just right in his head.”

For a moment I stood rooted to the ground; then wheeled round and cried
out fiercely, “What did you say?”

“Sir?”

“What was that you said just now?” I repeated still more fiercely.

The terrified boys looked at me an instant, then without answering
turned and ran as fast as fright could carry them.

So the mystery now was really explained! It was not sick the people
thought me, but crazy. I walked on with a queer feeling and began
vaguely to wonder why I had been so savage to those boys. The fact which
I had learned so suddenly certainly gave me a shock, but it was nothing
to me. What did I care, even if the people did think me crazy? Ah!
perhaps if I told my secret they would consider it a desperate case of
insanity. But the child’s words kept ringing in my ears until an idea
flashed upon me more terrifying than death itself. How did I know that I
was _not_ insane? How did I know that my great invention might be only
an hallucination of my brain?

Instantly a whole army of thoughts crowded up like ghostly witnesses to
affright me. I had studied myself to a shadow; my pallid face, with the
red spots on the cheeks and the blue hollows around the eyes, came
before my mental vision afresh. The fever in my veins told me I was
unnaturally excited. I had not slept a sound, dreamless sleep for weeks.
Perhaps in the long, long days and nights my brain, like my body, had
been overwrought; perhaps in my eager desire to succeed, in my desperate
determination, the power of my will had disordered my mind, and it was
all deception: the sounds, the music I had heard, merely the creation of
my diseased fancy, and the instrument I had handled useless metal. The
very idea was inexpressible torture to me. I could not bear that a
single doubt of its reality should exist; but, after once entering my
head, how would I ever be able to free myself from distrust? I could not
do it; I would be obliged to live always in uncertainty. It was
maddening: now I felt as if I might have struck the child in my rage if
I could have found him. Then suddenly it occurred to me, for the first
time, that my invention could easily be tested by some other person.
Almost instantly I rejected the thought, for it would compel me to
betray my secret, and in my strange infatuation I would rather have
destroyed the instrument. But the doubts of my sanity on this subject
returned upon me with tenfold strength, and again I thought in despair
of the only method left me by which they could ever be settled.

In the first shock, when the unlucky sentence fell upon my ear, I had
turned after the boys, and then walked on mechanically towards the town.
Now, when I looked up I found myself almost at the college gate. No one
was to be seen, only Mother Flinse with her basket on her arm was just
raising the latch. Half bewildered I turned hastily round and bent my
steps in the direction of my lodgings, while I absently wondered whether
that old woman had stood there ever since, since—when? I did not
recollect, but her shadow was long and slim—no, there were no shadows
this afternoon; it was sunless.

As I reached the stairs leading to my room, my trouble, which I had
forgotten for the moment, broke upon me anew. I dragged myself up and
sat down utterly overwhelmed. As I have said, I would sooner destroy the
instrument than give it to a thankless world; but to endure the
torturing doubt of its reality was impossible. Suddenly it occurred to
me that Mother Flinse was mute. I might get her to test my invention
without fear of betrayal, for she could neither speak nor write, and her
signs on this subject, if she attempted to explain, would be altogether
unintelligible to others. I sprang up in wild delight, then immediately
fell back in my chair with a hoarse laugh—Mother Flinse was _deaf_ as
well as dumb. I had not remembered that. I sat quietly a moment trying
to calm myself and think. Why need this make any difference? The
instrument ought to, at least it was possible that it might, remedy loss
of hearing. I too was deaf to these sounds in the air that it made
audible. They would have to be magnified to a greater degree for her. I
might set it for the present and use the full power of the instrument:
there certainly would be no harm in trying, at any rate, and if it
failed it would prove nothing, if it did not fail it would prove every
thing. Then a new difficulty presented itself. How could I entice the
old woman into the church?

I went back towards the college expecting to find her, but she was
nowhere to be seen, and I smiled that only a few moments ago I had
wondered if she did not always stand in the gateway. Once, I could not
exactly recall the time, I had passed her hut. I remembered distinctly
that there was a line full of old ragged clothes stretched across from
the fence to a decayed tree, and a bright red flannel petticoat blew and
flapped among the blackened branches. It was a miserable frame cabin,
set back from the Spring road, about half a mile out of town. There I
went in search of her.

The blasted tree stood out in bold relief against the drab sky. There
appeared no living thing about the dirty, besmoked hovel except one lean
rat, that squatted with quivering nose and stared a moment, then
retreated under the loose plank before the door, leaving its smellers
visible until I stepped upon the board. I knocked loudly without
receiving any reply; then, smiling at the useless ceremony I had
performed, pushed it open. The old woman, dressed in her red petticoat
and a torn calico frock, with a faded shawl drawn over her head, was
standing with her back towards me, picking over a pile of rags. She did
not move. I hesitated an instant, then walked in. The moment I put my
foot upon the floor she sprang quickly round. At first she remained
motionless, with her small, piercing gray eyes fixed upon me, holding a
piece of orange-and-black spotted muslin; evidently she recognized me,
for, suddenly dropping it, she began a series of wild gestures, grinning
until all the wrinkles of her skinny face converged in the region of her
mouth, where a few scattered teeth, long and sharp, gleamed strangely
white. A rim of grizzled hair stood out round the edge of the turbaned
shawl and set off the withered and watchful countenance of the
speechless old crone. The yellow, shriveled skin hung loosely about her
slim neck like leather, and her knotted hands were brown and dry as the
claws of an eagle.

I went through the motion of sweeping and pointed over my shoulder,
making her understand that I wished her to do some cleaning. She drew
the seams of her face into a new grimace by way of assent, and, putting
the piece of orange-and-black spotted muslin around her shoulders in
lieu of a cloak, preceded me out of the door. She started immediately in
the direction of the college, and I was obliged to take hold of her
before I could attract her attention; then, when I shook my head, she
regarded me in surprise, and fell once more into a series of frantic
gesticulations. With considerable trouble I made her comprehend that she
was merely to follow me. The old woman was by no means dull, and her
small, steel-gray eyes had a singular sharpness about them that is only
found in the deaf-mute, where they perform the part of the ear and
tongue. As soon as we came in sight of the church she was perfectly
satisfied. I walked up to the main entrance, turned the knob and shook
it, then suddenly felt in all my pockets, shook the door over, and felt
through all my pockets again. This hypocritical pantomime had the
desired effect. The old beldam slapped her hands together and poked her
lean finger at the hole of the lock, apparently amused that I had
forgotten the key. Then of her own accord she went round and tried the
other doors, but without success. As we passed the narrow window in the
rear I made a violent effort in knocking out the loose boards. The old
woman seemed greatly delighted, and when I crawled through willingly
followed. I gave her a brush, which fortunately one day I had discovered
lying in the vestibule, and left her in the church to dust, while I went
up in the tower to prepare and remove from sight all the tools which
were scattered about. I put them in a recess and screened it from view
by a map of the Holy Land. Then I took my instrument and carefully
adjusted it, putting on its utmost power.

In about an hour I went down and motioned to Mother Flinse that I wanted
her up stairs. She came directly after me without hesitation, and I felt
greatly relieved, for I saw that I would likely have no trouble with the
old woman. When we got into the tower she pointed down to the trees and
then upward, meaning, I presume, that it was high. I nodded, and taking
the instrument placed my ear to it for a moment. A loud blast of music,
like a dozen bands playing in concert, almost stunned me. She watched me
very attentively, but when I made signs for her to come and try she drew
back. I held up the instrument and went through all manner of motions
indicating that it would not hurt her, but she only shook her head. I
persevered in my endeavor to coax her until she seemed to gain courage
and walked up within a few feet of me, then suddenly stopped and
stretched out her hands for the instrument. As she did not seem afraid,
provided she had it herself, I saw that she took firm hold.

In my impatience to know the result of this experiment, I was obliged to
repeat my signs again and again before I could prevail upon her to raise
it to her ear. Then breathlessly I watched her face, a face I thought
which looked as if it might belong to some mummy that had been withering
for a thousand years. Suddenly it was convulsed as if by a galvanic
shock, then the shriveled features seemed to dilate, and a great light
flashed through them, transforming them almost into the radiance of
youth; a strange light as of some seraph had taken possession of the
wrinkled old frame and looked out at the gray eyes, making them shine
with unnatural beauty. No wonder the dumb countenance reflected a
brightness inexpressible, for the Spirit of Sound had just alighted with
silvery wings upon a silence of seventy years.

A heavy weight fell unconsciously from my breast while I stood almost
awed before this face, which was transfigured, as if it might have
caught a glimmer of that mystical morn when, in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed.

My instrument had stood the test; it was proved forever. I could no
longer cherish any doubts of its reality, and an indescribable peace
came into my soul, like a sudden awakening from some frightful dream. I
had not noticed the flight of time. A pale shadow hung already over the
trees—yes, and under them on the slime-covered stones. Ay! and a heavier
shadow than the coming night was even then gathering unseen its rayless
folds. The drab sky had blanched and broken, and the sinking sun poured
a fading light through its ragged fissures.

The old woman, as if wrapped in an enchantment, had hardly moved. I
tried vainly to catch her attention; she did not even appear conscious
of my presence. I walked up and shook her gently by the shoulder, and,
pointing to the setting sun, held out my hand for the instrument. She
looked at me a moment, with the singular unearthly beauty shining
through every feature; then suddenly clutching the trumpet tight between
her skinny claws, sprang backward towards the stairs, uttering a sound
that was neither human nor animal, that was not a wail or a scream, but
it fell upon my ears like some palpable horror. Merciful Heaven! Was
that thing yonder a woman? The shriveled, fleshless lips gaped apart,
and a small pointed tongue lurked behind five glittering, fang-like
teeth. The wild beast had suddenly been developed in the hag. Like a
hungry tigress defending its prey, she stood hugging the trumpet to her,
glaring at me with stretched neck and green eyes.

A savage fierceness roused within me when I found she would not give up
the instrument, and I rushed at her with hands ready to snatch back the
prize I valued more than my life—_or hers_; but, quicker than a hunted
animal, she turned and fled with it down the stairs, making the tower
ring with the hideous cries of her wordless voice. Swiftly—it seemed as
if the danger of losing the trumpet gave me wings to fly in pursuit—I
crossed the vestibule. She was not there. Every thing was silent, and I
darted with fleet steps down the dusky aisle of the church, when
suddenly the jarring idiotic sounds broke loose again, echoing up in the
organ-pipes and rattling along the galleries. The fiend sprang from
behind the altar, faced about an instant with flashing eyes and gleaming
teeth, then fled through the vestry-room into the passage. The sight of
her was fresh fuel to my rage, and it flamed into a frenzy that seemed
to burn the human element out of my soul. When I gained the steps
leading into the coal-room she was already in the window, but I cleared
the distance at a single bound and caught hold of her clothes as she
leaped down. I crawled through, but she clutched the instrument tighter.
I could not prize it out of her grasp; and in her ineffectual efforts to
free herself from my hold she made loud, grating cries, that seemed to
me to ring and reverberate all through the forest; but presently they
grew smothered, gurgled, then ceased. Her clasp relaxed in a convulsive
struggle, and the trumpet was in my possession. It was easily done, for
her neck was small and lean, and my hands made a circle strong as a
steel band.

The tremor died out of her frame and left it perfectly still. Through
the silence I could hear the hiss of a snake in the nettle-weeds, and
the flapping wings of some night bird fanned my face as it rushed
swiftly through the air in its low flight. The gray twilight had
deepened to gloom and the graves seemed to have given up their tenants.
The pale monuments stood out like shrouded specters. But all the dead in
that church-yard were not under ground, for on the wet grass at my feet
there was something stark and stiff, more frightful than any phantom of
imagination—something that the daylight would not rob of its ghastly
features. It must be put out of sight, yes, it must be hid, to save my
invention from discovery. The old hag might be missed, and if she was
found here it would ruin me and expose my secret. I placed the trumpet
on the window-ledge, and, carrying the grim burden in my arms, plunged
into the damp tangle of weeds and grass.

In a lonesome corner far back from the church, in the dense shade of
thorn-trees, among the wild brambles where poisonous vines grew,
slippery with the mould of forgotten years, unsought, uncared for by any
human hand, was a tomb. Its sides were half buried in the tall
underbrush, and the long slab had been broken once, for a black fissure
ran zigzag across the middle. In my muscles that night there was the
strength of two men. I lifted off one-half of the stone and heard the
lizards dart startled from their haunt, and felt the spiders crawl. When
the stone was replaced it covered more than the lizards or the spiders
in the dark space between the narrow walls.

As I have said, the instrument possessed a singular fascination over me.
I had grown to love it, not alone as a piece of mechanism for the
transmission of sound, but like a _living_ thing, and I replaced it in
the tower with the same pleasure one feels who has rescued a friend from
death. My listening ear never grew weary, but now I drew quickly away.
It was not music I heard, or the ripple of water, or the prattle of
merry tongues, but the harsh grating cries that had echoed in the
church, that had rattled and died out in the forest—that voice which was
not a voice. I shivered while I readjusted the instrument; perhaps it
was the night wind which chilled me, but the rasping sounds were louder
than before. _I could not exclude them._ There was no element of
superstition in my nature, and I tried it over again: still I heard
them—sometimes sharp, sometimes only a faint rumbling. Had the soul of
the deaf-mute come in retribution to haunt me and cry eternally in my
instrument? Perhaps on the morrow it would not disturb me, but there was
no difference. I could hear only it, though I drew out the trumpet for
vibrations hundreds of years old. I had rid myself of the withered hag
who would have stolen my treasure, but now I could not rid myself of her
invisible ghost. She had conquered, even through death, and come from
the spirit world to gain possession of the prize for which she had given
up her life. The instrument was no longer of any value to me, though
cherishing a vague hope I compelled myself to listen, even with
chattering teeth; for it was a terrible thing to hear these hoarse,
haunting cries of the dumb soul—of the soul I had strangled from its
body, a soul which I would have killed itself if it were possible. But
my hope was vain, and the trumpet had become not only worthless to me,
but an absolute horror.

Suddenly I determined to destroy it. I turned it over ready to dash it
in pieces, but it cost me a struggle to crush this work of my life, and
while I stood irresolute a small green-and-gold beetle crawled out of it
and dropped like a stone to the floor. The insect was an electric flash
to me, that dispelled the black gloom through which I had been battling.
It had likely fallen into the instrument down in the church-yard, or
when I laid it upon the window-sill, and the rasping of its wings,
magnified, had produced the sounds which resembled the strange grating
noise uttered by the deaf-mute.

Instantly I put the trumpet to my ear. Once more the music of the past
surged in. Voices, leaves, water, all murmured to me their changeful
melody; every zephyr wafting by was filled with broken but melodious
whispers.

Relieved from doubts, relieved from fears and threatening dangers, I
slept peacefully, dreamlessly as a child. With a feeling of rest to
which I had long been unused, I walked out in the soft clear morning.
Every thing seemed to have put on new life, for the sky was not gray or
sober, and the leaves, if they were brown, trimmed their edges in
scarlet, and if many had fallen, the squirrels played among them on the
ground. But suddenly the sky and the leaves and the squirrels might have
been blotted from existence. I did not see them, but I saw—_I saw Mother
Flinse come through the college gateway and walk slowly down the road!_

The large faded shawl pinned across her shoulders nearly covered the red
flannel petticoat, and the orange-and-black spotted muslin was wrapped
into a turban on her head. Without breathing, almost without feeling, I
watched the figure until at the corner it turned out of sight, and a
long dark outline on the grass behind it ran into the fence. The shadow!
Then it was not a ghost. Had the grave given up its dead? I would see.

At the church-yard the briers tore my face and clothes, but I plunged
deeper where the shade thickened under the thorn-trees. There in the
corner I stooped to lift the broken slab of a tomb, but all my strength
would not avail to move it. As I leaned over, bruising my hands in a
vain endeavor to raise it, my eyes fell for an instant on the stone, and
with a start I turned quickly and ran to the church; then I stopped—the
narrow fissure that cut zigzag across the slab on the tomb was filled
with green moss, and this window was nailed up, and hung full of heavy
cobwebs.

And my instrument?

Suddenly, while I stood there, some substance in my brain seemed to
break up—it was the fetters of monomania which had bound me since that
evening long ago, when, by the river in the oak-forest, I had heard the
robin trill.

No murder stained my soul: and there, beside the black waves of insanity
through which I had passed unharmed, I gave praise to the great
Creator—praise silent, but intense as Miriam’s song by the sea.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

                         THE PATHS OF THE SEA.


Around the porch there hung that day a crimson glory. It was the
climbing rose about the door displaying its gorgeous bloom in a thousand
crowns. Green, grass-green were the hills, but in front of the house the
cliff fell abruptly, with a precipitous drop, to the sea. On either side
the waving coast-line stretched away, a shining belt of yellow sand.
There the breakers with unfurled banners of fleece followed each other
in a never ending procession to the shore. But at the foot the billows,
by day and night running in forever, dashed against the rock and chopped
to a seething foam that threw up in one continual briny shower its white
and glittering spray.

The surf at this point, even in pleasant weather, sounded a constant
roar, and in times of storm it increased to a deafening thunder that
appalled the ear and made the heart tremble before the sea in its savage
ferocity. Looking off to the right, perhaps the greater part of a mile
distant, the harbor discovered itself, blue, bluer than the sky. A few
vessels that had grown mysteriously upon the empty horizon, and come in
over the vast waste of waters, were idly lying at anchor, each one
biding her time to spread her sails in the breeze and recede upon her
lonely course, going, as she had come, like some spirit of solitude,
dropping down silently beyond the remote sea-reaches. There the Nereid
swung herself gently over the long ground-swell, patiently awaiting the
coming night when again to take up her watery track that would carry her
over the great Atlantic to other lands and far-off harbors. Not a
trimmer ship sailed the high seas.

The sun had traveled almost down the western slope, and it lit up the
mighty ocean with a splendor that burned in lances of flame along the
waves, and floated in myriad rainbows over the surf. The pomp of the
departing day passed across the boundless waters, a magnificent
pageantry. As the sun went down, the sky became a scarlet canopy. The
flying spray took up the color and spread out a thousand streamers to
the wind. Long, gold-green lanes of sea ran out to where the distant
mists let down their gorgeous drapery. The tireless gulls, shaking the
red light from their wings, sailed and sailed and dipped and sailed
again. A few fishing smacks loitered in the orange haze, and, leagues
away, a single sloop in the humid north stood, like some wan
water-wraith, with a garland of foam about its feet. Eastward, above the
hills, the waiting moon hung her helmet, paler than pearl, and the land,
transfigured by the evening light, looked on while the sea in its play
flashed up a hundred hues.

The widow Aber had lived there on the cliff and seen the tides ebb and
flow for more now than the quarter of a century. She was not a young
girl when, twenty-six years back, poor Jacob Aber had married her. It
was a sudden fancy on his part and a great surprise to the place, for
Jacob was well on towards fifty, and many a girl had set her cap to
catch the handsome sailor in vain. But he never rued his bargain. He was
not a rich man, because he had always been a generous man, and he was
content with enough merely to bring him in a modest living. When he
married he took what little he had and built this cottage, built it of
brick good and strong, where he could feel the salt wind blow, right in
the face of the sea—the sea that, until he met Miriam Drew with her soft
gray eyes, he had loved better than every thing else in all the wide
world.

They were happy and prosperous for four long years. First a son, then a
daughter had come to brighten their home, and it was on just such an
evening as this that Miriam, holding her infant child in her arms, told
Jacob good-bye two-and-twenty years ago.

It would be his last cruise, he said. The vessel was his own, and in
twelve months, or less, he would come back rich enough to stay always,
and if the tears were in his voice he choked them down bravely, saying
again it was but for a little while he should be gone, and she must
cheer up for the long and happy years that would come after.

Then she suddenly laid down her child and with a smothered sob put up
her arms about his neck. It was the first time she had fairly given way,
and she clung to him trembling violently, but uttering not one word. He
smoothed her brow gently, with a caressing touch, for her sake keeping
his own grief crushed within his heart, and said,—

“Miriam don’t you remember once saying you could always tell a sailor by
the dreamy far-off look in his eyes, an expression that came only to
those that lived upon the sea and watched its wide, wide fields? And
don’t you remember sometimes when I was sitting quietly at home you
would come up suddenly and ask me what it was I saw miles and miles
away, over the summer water, in that distant sunny land? Well, do not
cry so, for even when my ship has vanished from your sight, when on
every side there is no trace of shore, I can stand upon her deck and
look beyond the far horizon at our peaceful, happy home. And when at
evening, with your eyes upon the sea, you sit and hold the children in
your lap, remember I will be watching you from across its glittering
line. There, that is right! You are a good, brave girl! It is but for a
little while. I can look beyond this parting—I can see your waiting face
turn radiant as my boat sails safely back!”

Then, when he had kissed her and the little ones, and turned and kissed
them again, there was a faint smile struggling through her tears. So,
striving to keep down her grief, she parted without saying one word of
the terrible dread that lay upon her heart.

And two-and-twenty years ago he had sailed away.

Many days, many nights, many weeks, many months, Miriam had watched the
sea with wistful eyes. For his sake she had very nearly grown to love
it, and the color came again to her cheeks as the time went by and the
year was almost up, when it would give back forever the one she valued
more than life. In those days she scanned the water-line, and waited
patiently, and went about the house singing. She chattered to her
baby-daughter all how its father was sailing home, until it laughed and
cooed in wild delight. Every morning she dressed little Tommy in his
best, and tied about his waist the beautiful sea-green sash that Jacob
had brought her from the distant Indies; and in the queer frosted vases
on the mantel, that had come from some foreign port, she kept a fresh
bouquet of sweet wild flowers.

But poor Jacob never came back.

Homeward bound, his vessel was wrecked off the treacherous Newfoundland
shore. A storm drove her helpless, enshrouded in fog, against the rocks
where she foundered, and captain and crew went down together. Only two
men escaped from the terrible disaster.

When the dreadful news came and they told Miriam as they met her on the
porch, she made no reply. She did not moan or scream. She only looked
out for a moment at the deceitful sea, smiling in its sheen of a
thousand tints, then turned and went into the house and shut the door.

She had always been a strange woman, and they left her to bear her grief
alone. She asked nobody’s sympathy, she did not complain, she never
spoke of Jacob. She did not, as the people had expected, sell her house.
She made no change so far as the world could see, only that she held
herself, if possible, more aloof from society than ever. But before
three months had gone by they noticed that her brown and shining hair
had turned white, and her gray eyes showed half concealed within their
depths an unfathomed trouble. Then too, her figure, once erect and
straight as a dart, grew bent and stooped across the shoulders, and
nothing ever brought the color to her face any more that was always pale
and thin. Otherwise, however, there appeared no difference. She lived
economically, and sometimes took in a small amount of fine sewing, as,
beside the house, she had little else, for the sea when it buried her
husband had buried his earnings also in the same watery grave.

She staid at home and watched the children in whom her life was now
wholly bound up. They were her world, her all. She seemed to find in
them her very existence, and after the queer frosted vases on the mantel
had stood empty for years, their young hands filled them again with
sweet wild flowers. So the house once more was bright and sunny, and,
though Miriam herself never sang, Hannah’s voice was clear and happy.

Hannah had grown up the very picture of her mother when in her early
girlhood, but young Tom was like his father. He was like his father in
more respects than one, and while still a boy the people said he too
will prove a sailor. They were right; though Miriam had struggled
against it and watched over him with an absorbing care. She saw again
developed in him the same wild fascination for the sea. She knew its
strength and that it must prevail, and when he came and begged so hard,
with the well remembered far-off look in his eyes, she felt all
opposition would be vain.

She did not reproach herself that she had lived upon the coast and
played with him upon the beach, for something in her heart told her that
it could have been no different, even had she raised him up in another
place where the sound of the sea would not have been always in his ears.
She recognized in this fatal love the heritage he had received from his
father. The thought that it could be eradicated, that he would ever be
satisfied with any thing else she knew to be hopeless, and so the widow
had given up, and he had gone at fourteen to seek his fortune, like his
father before him, a sailor on the high seas.

Now, ten years later, and two-and-twenty years since poor Jacob had
started on his fateful cruise, young Tom was ready for his fourth
voyage. He had climbed unaided several steps up the ladder in his
calling, and the Nereid, waiting down in the harbor would carry him in a
few hours, her first mate, out upon her long two years’ absence. It was
a great lift to him, for, besides his promotion, Luke Denin, who this
time commanded the ship, had been his early friend. There was but little
difference in their age. They had been boys together, and together they
had explored the shore for miles and fished for days, and they had
rambled the hills and the woods over; so, as young Tom said, it would be
just as good for him as if he commanded the Nereid himself.

When he told his mother this she had only patted him on the head, and
said in a choked voice,—“My little sailor boy!”

The widow Aber, ever since her son took to following the sea, had been
gradually breaking. From that time her health, heretofore always strong
and robust, began perceptibly to decline. The people noticed it, but
then she told them that she was getting old—how could they expect a
woman well up into the sixties to be as active as a girl, and besides
this she had the rheumatism. So she was constantly excusing her
feebleness with anxious care, as if she feared they might attribute it
to some other cause than age.

This evening she was even weaker than usual, though she did not
acknowledge it, but sitting at the supper table her hands trembled so
badly that the cups and saucers rattled a little as she served the tea.
Miriam, whose life had been one constant struggle, was struggling still.
No wonder the widow was proud of her son, her only son. Her gray eyes,
beautiful as in her youth, would wander to him again and again, and rest
upon his face with a strange, yearning expression, but whenever he
turned to her she would drop them quickly and move a little nervously in
her chair, striving to conceal, as she had done so many years ago, the
burden of grief that lay at her heart.

It was a pleasant party to look at, for Luke Denin too was there, and
the young people carefully avoided any allusion to the separation before
them. Tom, always gay and happy, was more than handsome in his sailor’s
dress, with the bronze of the tropical sun upon his face. And Luke, if
he was not so tall by half a head, and if his hair, instead of being
black and crisp with waves, was light and straight, had at least as
honest and frank a pair of deep blue eyes as Hannah cared to see—not
that Hannah looked at them, for she looked only at her plate, and once
in a while anxiously at her mother. Young Tom was evidently determined
that this last meal at home should not be a sorrowful one, as he kept up
the conversation in his liveliest mood. He told wonderful tales in such
an absurd vein of exaggeration, that sometimes it even called up a smile
on the widow’s face; and when the meal was over he picked her up
playfully in his strong arms and carried her out upon the porch. There
together they all watched the moonlight gradually show itself out of the
dissolving day, in long paths across the water. Then the hour came to
say good-bye.

It was a desperate battle for Miriam, as she clung to her son in that
parting moment. Then it was, for the first time, that something in her
face went to the man’s inmost heart like a chill. She was old and frail,
and his absence would be long, perhaps he might never look upon her
again. In his wild fascination for the sea, was he not sacrificing her?
The anguish of the thought overcame him. Had it been possible then he
would have given up this voyage and staid at home, but it was too late
now, and when he had turned for a moment, and with a strong effort
fought his grief under control, he said gently,—

“No, no! Do not be so distressed, mother! It is all for the best; and
when I come back this time, mother, I will never leave you any more.”

But Miriam, thinking of that other parting so long ago, remembered that
Jacob, too, had said when he came back he would never leave her any
more, and with a half suppressed cry she clasped her hands tighter about
his neck.

“O, my son, you will come back! Only promise me you will come back, and
I can wait patiently and long!”

There was a wild energy in her voice that frightened him, as she went on
hurriedly with an accent he had never heard till then,—

“Once before, with this same dread at my heart, I parted two-and-twenty
years ago, but I let _him_ go without saying a word. I waited patiently.
I even sang and tried to be happy. As the time went by I laughed as I
thought how pleased he would be when he saw how his children had grown.
I tied about your waist a sash of his favorite color, that he had
brought me from the distant Indies, and I kept every thing in readiness
for—what? They came and told me that he had gone down at sea—No, no; do
not interrupt me. I let him go without saying a word. I must speak this
time!”

She paused for a moment as if waiting until her excitement had calmed,
and with her trembling hand put back the hair from his forehead, then
went on unsteadily in a tone but little louder than a whisper,—

“You have the same dreamy far-off look in your eyes. I know you must go
my child, I know you can not resist—but when your father left he said it
would be only for a little while, and I—I have waited two-and-twenty
years.”

There was another moment of silence, as though her thoughts had gone
back over that long, long watch, then, in a wavering voice, she went on
once more, calling him again unconsciously by the name she had used when
he was a little child,—

“Tommy, Tommy! my boy, my only boy! if you—if the cruel sea—O, I can not
say it, I can not bear it! You will come back, you must come back to
me!”

A wild terror had crept into her face, then she broke down completely.

“There, forgive me, Tommy, forgive me! I did not used to be so foolish.
Do not mind me. I am getting old and feeble, Tommy—I am not strong any
more, but—I can wait again—”

“Why, mother, there is no danger. Look,” he said, drawing his arm close
about her, “how peaceful is the sea! After you, mother, I love it better
than any thing else in the whole world. It has always been gentle to
me—you need not fear, I will surely come back, surely—if—if you can only
wait.”

Tom’s voice had grown thick and choked, as he added the last words, and
when Miriam, anxious to atone for her past weakness, said quickly,—

“Yes, yes, Tommy, I can wait—” he made her repeat it. Then rallying
himself he went on gaily,—

“Why, I will come back, mother, I will come back so grand and rich that
you shall be three times as proud of me, you shall, indeed! And I will
take care of you always then. But, mother,” he said, the choking
sensation coming again in his throat,—“promise that you will not worry
about me while I am gone, or I shall never be happy, not even in any of
the beautiful lands I will see—won’t you promise me, mother? Promise me
that you will wait patiently, promise me that—that you will not give
up—”

“Yes, yes, Tommy, if you will only come back, I can wait again—I can
even wait a long while.”

“It will not be so very long! why the time will slip by, and almost
before you know it you will find me standing beside you here again, when
I mean you to be so proud of me that it will well nigh turn my head.”

“Ah, Tommy, you know I am proud of you now, so proud of you, that
sometimes it fairly frightens me, and I dare not think of it.”

“Heaven knows,” he said, all the gay sound dying from his voice, as,
stricken with remorse, he remembered the many times he had left her with
no thought beyond the parting moment, “I’m not much to be proud of, but,
mother—” taking up her thin hand and passing it over his face, once more
driven to the last extremity to command his voice—“you and Nan are all I
have on earth to care for me, and out in midocean, or in the far-off
foreign ports, your love, like a constant prayer to keep me from harm,
will be with me always. When I am at home once more I am going to be a
good boy to you, mother. Nothing, not even the sea, shall ever part us
again.”

“You have always been a good boy to me, Tommy—I only thought—I was
afraid that—O never mind, I can wait for you, Tommy. I do not feel so
nervous now.”

“There, that is right! We will meet again, mother, and then we will be
very, very happy.”

He kissed her yearningly, reverentially. It seemed as if he stood awed
before the heart that for a moment had disclosed itself in its most
silent depths, and in that moment there had been revealed to him, with
all its overwhelming strength, that divine love which is mightier than
life. It seemed as if now, for the first time, and almost blinded by the
revelation, he saw—his mother.

After a little silence, taking her face between his hands, he said,
gently,—

“Mother, I want to see you smile once more before I go.”

“I will wait for you, Tommy,” she said again.

“And I will surely come back.”

When Miriam looked up there was a faint smile struggling through her
tears, as there had been once before, two-and-twenty years in the past.
Then he was gone.

Down by the gate Hannah stood, trying to hide in the shadow of the great
honeysuckle the new shy beauty on her face that had been called there by
the kiss of warmer lips than the gentle sea-breeze.

“Good-bye, Nan,” said Tom, unsuspiciously, throwing his arms about her
in his rough brotherly embrace,—“why how you are trembling! You are not
going to cry? Don’t, I can’t stand it!”

“No, no,” came uncertainly in a helpless voice, evidently, in her wild
conflict of emotion, not knowing exactly what she was going to do.

“There, that’s right! Don’t cry, or I’ll—I’ll break down too!” said Tom,
hoarsely, fairly strangling in his throat, and almost worn out by the
strain he had undergone.

Hannah, surprised, raised her face, but Tom had already got the better
of himself. “How your eyes shine to-night, Nan; I did not know how
pretty you were before!” Down went her head again immediately, and
changing his voice he said, with a sigh,—“Nannie, there ain’t many
fellows that have as good a mother and sister as mine; you won’t forget
me while I’m gone, or get tired waiting? I’ve been a worthless, roving
chap; I’ve never been of much comfort to you or mother, but when I come
back next time, I’m going to stay at home a while. Look up now and tell
me you are glad.”

“O, Tom, I am! You don’t know how glad I am, if it was only for mother’s
sake.”

Then, turning his head away to hide the anguish that had come over his
face, he asked, slowly, trying rather ineffectually to keep his voice
natural,—“You don’t think, Nan, any thing will happen to her while I am
gone?”

“What do you mean?” said Hannah, struck by the awe in his tone.

“I mean,” he said, unwilling to trouble his sister by the thought that
had so oppressed him, and speaking gaily again: “I mean that you must be
a good girl, and keep up mother’s spirits, but don’t get so used to my
absence, that neither of you will care when I come back.”

“O, Tom!”

“Come out into the moonlight where I can see you. I’m dreadfully proud
of you, Nan, because you don’t take on like other girls. You see I
couldn’t have stood it!” said Tom, in a frightfully uncertain state of
mind, as to whether it was possible to swallow the lump in his throat.
“I’m going now. Be good to mother, you know she’s—she’s not very
strong—Have you told Captain Denin good-bye?”

“No, she hasn’t. Not yet. I thought I’d let you do it first; but you’ll
tell me good-bye now, until I come back never to say it again, won’t
you, Nanine?” said Luke, coming up in his most masterly way, right under
Tom’s very nose, and almost hiding his sister from view in an embrace
that this time was neither rough nor brotherly.

“Whew!” gasped Tom, as Hannah came in sight again, with no friendly
honeysuckle near to conceal the carnation bloom upon her cheeks. “Is
that the way the wind blows! I’ve been as blind as a bat. Kiss me,
quick, both of you, or I’m a gone case!”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. Sit down on the stone there, and recover
yourself. You’ve said your good-bye, now just wait for me!” said the
superior officer triumphantly. And Tom, spent, exhausted, sank down; but
the next instant Hannah had her arms tight about his neck, and was
hiding her face against the crisp waves of his black hair.

“Tom, dear, you ain’t sorry?”

“No, Nan, I couldn’t have wished for any thing better; but it was so
sudden, it just kind of knocked the wind out of my sails for a minute.”
Then, after a pause,—“I say, there’ll be a grand glorification when the
Nereid comes back, won’t there?”

“Yes.”

“I—I wish it was back now! I don’t know what’s upset me so—There, kiss
her, Luke, and let’s be off, quick, or I’ll disgrace myself outright,
before I know it!” and Tom, gulping down great quantities of air with
all his might, got up from the stone hurriedly, as if he meditated
making a sudden bolt.

But he did not. He stood there quietly looking out at sea; and when, a
moment after, the young captain, taking his arm, said, “Come, now I am
ready,” he started as from a dream. Turning to his sister, with every
trace of his rollicking manner lost, he said, as though he had not
spoken of her before,—

“You must take good care of mother—poor mother. Do not let her grieve
while I am gone. Oh, Hannah, you will be very careful of her, and not
allow any thing—not allow her to get tired, and tell her always, while
she waits, that when I am with her again, I will never leave her.”

Then they had passed through the gate and were going rapidly down the
narrow foot-path to the bottom of the hill. Hannah strained her eyes
after them, and when at the turn of the road both brother and lover were
lost to view, still she lingered at the spot pondering over Tom’s
unwonted emotion. It was not like him. Never before had she seen him so
singularly affected, and now that he was gone, it came back to her with
redoubled intensity. The unusual sorrow that had almost choked him, the
strange tone in his voice that he had tried vainly to conceal, the
sudden wish that the Nereid was back even now, his repeated charges
about their mother, all troubled her.

An uneasy feeling of dread oppressed her, she knew not why. The heavy
perfume of the honeysuckle suddenly make her sick and faint. The tall
and prickly cedar stood up straight and still, covered on one side with
a fret-work of silver, on the other clothed with the very gloom of
darkness, and somewhere from among its shadowy branches a dove, as if
half wakened out of a dream, stirred, uttered its brooding note, then
sank again to silence. Hannah had heard the same dove a hundred times
before, she even knew that there were purple ripples on its neck, but
this time she started violently and shivered. It seemed as if the summer
night had suddenly grown cold and chilled her to the heart, and with
hurried steps she ran back to the house.

The porch was deserted and strangely lonesome when she passed across.
Even the crimson bloom, with its thousand crowns, looked black through
the shade, as if it had withered in the hour, and she heard its leaves
make a weird rustle, like a complaint, as she closed the door. The sense
of desolation was so strong upon her that she could hardly keep from
crying out in the solitude, but she went on swiftly to her mother’s
room, and entered with noiseless feet. A great sigh of relief came to
her lips when she saw the peaceful face upon the pillow, for Miriam,
overcome by the reaction, already slept calmly as a child. Hannah sat
down beside the bed. There was a smile upon her mother’s lips. How long
she sat there, whether one hour, or two hours, she did not know, but
when she got up all the tumult in her heart had subsided.

She kissed the sleeping face gently and went quietly up stairs to her
own room. She threw the shutters open wide, and lo! out upon the sea
with her wings spread, white as the plumage of a gull, the Nereid!
Lonely, spirit-like, beyond the reach of voice, she stood upon the
mighty desert of the ocean. Before her prow the waves held out their
wreath of down, and above, solitary in the vast moonlit sky, hung the
royal planet Jupiter. Steady, radiant, it burned like the magic Star in
the East. Hannah, watching, saw the ship fade away in the far-off
endless isles of silver mist. A great peace had come to her soul, and
when she lay down to sleep there was no trouble on her face. Gone, the
Nereid was gone, but still, even in her dreams, she knew that the star
in the sky was shining.

Slowly the days came and went. Miriam, yet a little feebler, was bright
and happy. Never, since that night when she said good-bye, had she
murmured or uttered a word of complaint. Every thing at the cottage
glided smoothly on; for Hannah attended to the house, and waited upon
her mother with an untiring care, but even while she went about
performing her different duties her eyes, unconsciously, would wander
off to sea. Often in the afternoon, when the widow nodded in the great
rocking chair by the window, she would slip away down to the beach, and
sit there by the hour.

Those were pleasant days to Hannah. Then the sea, clear and calm,
rounded out, a great circle of splendor, to the horizon; or on its
surface the giant mists reared themselves, triumphant, in towering
arches. Perhaps her thoughts went out beyond these mighty phantom
aisles, seeking always the two loved ones across their portals, over the
vast and solemn ocean. Sometimes when the sky was warm and the wind blew
shoreward it seemed to bring faintly the scent of foreign flowers; for
nearer now to her were those mystical lands where Summer, almighty
Summer, sat upon an everlasting throne.

Hannah knew every vessel that sailed into port; and sometimes a boat,
returning, had spoken the Nereid at sea, sometimes at long intervals a
letter came. Then when for weeks, for months it might be, there was no
word, no sign, the royal planet, moving in its eternal orbit, hung again
in the sky, a star of promise. To Hannah, as she watched it night after
night above the sea, it came as a messenger bearing glad tidings of
great joy.

So the time waned. The peaceful days passed by and fierce storms broke
with a savage roar upon the coast. The green upon the hill-sides faded
out, and the freezing spray encrusted the cliff with ice where the
wintry sea threw up its bitter brine—and sometimes, farther off upon the
shelving beach, it threw up more than brine, or stiffened weed. Broken
spars, dreary fragments of wrecks drifted in, told of the wild
desolation out upon the hoarse wilderness of beaten waves.

But even those days too passed, and the Spring clothed the land again
with emerald. More than a year had worn away since the Nereid had faded
out of the horizon, and presently another Fall set in.

For five months no word had come from the absent wanderers. Still Miriam
made not the least complaint. Even when the storms lashed the sea, until
it sent up a roar that made the young girl shiver, the widow evinced no
anxiety. Had she not promised that she would wait patiently? She talked
very little, and generally sat quietly by the window from morning till
evening. But Hannah, saying nothing, had grown heavy-hearted with the
long silence.

It was November, a dull, dreary day in November. Heavy clouds stretched
themselves in a somber, leaden sky, that near the water gathered dark
and frowning. The gray sea, cold and hoarse, uttered eternally its
hollow roar. But for this it seemed as if a mighty silence would have
brooded over earth and ocean, a silence vast and dreadful as the grave.
Dead white, the hungry surf crawled sullenly up the sand. Leagues away
the fishing smacks all headed to shore, and the gulls were flying
landward, when Hannah looking out, counted a new sail in the harbor.

Any word to break this long heart-sick watch?

Quick she had her hat, and glancing at her mother sleeping tranquilly in
the great chair, she ran out, without shawl or wrapping, and started
down the hill. Once at the bottom she slackened her pace a little to
gain breath. A fine drizzle already blew through the air, and the waters
running in upon the smooth beach did not rumble with a great noise as at
the foot of the cliff, but washed, washed, keeping up endlessly a weary
lamentation. The damp settled on her hair in minute globules, and
enveloped all her clothing in its clammy embrace, but she did not heed
the weather. She never looked out once at the desolate, rainy sea, she
hardly heard its solemn moan. Hurrying, hurrying, she went on swiftly
with the one idea absorbing every power. Rapidly, half-running,
half-walking, she never paused until she reached the slippery wharf.

A group of sailors parted to let her pass. So eager was she that she did
not hear the sudden exclamations, or see the look of pity that had come
upon more than one rough sunburnt face when she made her appearance; for
living all her life in the same quiet village many of the sailors knew
Hannah by sight, many by her gentle manner and kind words, and many a
sailor’s wife had to thank her as a guardian angel when sickness and
poverty had come upon them unawares. She, flurried, her heart throbbing
with expectation, saw only it was the good ship Bonibird that had come
to port. Stephen, old Steve, belonged to it now! She remembered him
well. Often when she was a child had he given her curious shells, and
once he had brought her, in a little bowl filled with seawater, a tiny,
live fish that glittered all over with beautiful colors. Oh yes, she
remembered him well! Surprised and pleased she turned to look for him
among the groups of sailors, but the old man was already at her side.

Stained and weather-beaten old Steve stood there with his cap off,
shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, and when with an
exclamation of joy Hannah held out her hand, he took it eagerly between
his rough palms.

“God bless you! God bless you!” broke from his lips in a thick
utterance; then he dropped her hand nervously, and drawing his breath
hard passed his sleeve hurriedly across his face.

“I’m glad to see you back, Stephen,” she said. “You’ve been gone a long
time.”

“Yes, you beant so tall then.”

“Is there any news from the Nereid?” she asked eagerly, hardly noticing
his last reply.

The old man seemed fairly to break out in a violent perspiration. He
moved again uneasily on his feet and, turning his head from her, mopped
his face once more hurriedly with his sleeve.

“I’m——I’m feared thar be a storm comin’ up, Miss. Those clouds over the
water do look ugly, and the gulls be all flyin’ land’ard.”

“Never mind, I’m not afraid of the storm!” she said, impatiently.

“Why you be all wet now, standin’ out in this nasty drizzle.”

“No, no, I don’t care! I want to know if you heard any thing from the
Nereid. Why don’t you tell me?” an alarm gathering quickly in her voice
as the first sickening suspicion came over her. “O Stephen,” she said,
with a terrified cry that fairly frightened the man, “you have, and
there is something wrong! O the Nereid—the Nereid is not lost! Say it is
not lost!”

She had caught the man’s arm in her wild excitement, and clung to him
trembling like a leaf from head to foot.

“Why, no, no!” he said, scared by the girl’s dreadful agitation; “the
Nereid be all right, she be all right! I didn’t think of sich an idee
comin’ to you, or I’d a said afore she be all right. Thar beant nothin’
the matter with her, nothin’, I was aboard o’ her myself—I’m afeard
it’ll make you sick, Miss, a standin’ here in the drizzle like this, an’
with nothin’ to keep off the wet,”—trying to appear as if he had settled
the trouble, but all the time keeping his face turned carefully from
her.

In the first instant of relief Hannah had let go of his arm and put her
hands to her head without one word, so intense had been the strain;
then, looking up suddenly, and drawing a quick breath, she faced round
to him.

“Stephen, is this the truth that you have told me? You are not deceiving
me? Is there _nothing_ the matter?”

“Lord, no, Miss, it beant no lie,” but the old sailor hesitated
painfully while she looked at him, worked his hands nervously about his
neck, put them irresolutely to his pockets once or twice, till unable to
stand it any longer, he suddenly made an end to his indecision by
jerking out a letter, at the same time muttering some half-coherent
sentence about how it had been given to him for her on board the Nereid.

“O, a letter!” she cried, joyfully, breaking the seal, while her face
that had been so clouded lighted up radiantly.

As she looked up for a second, with a smile upon her lips, the old
sailor became more distressed in his manner than ever; and when she
unfolded the paper he even put out his hand once or twice, as if he
would have taken it back. Evidently he could not bear to see her read it
then; he had not thought she would open it there. Troubled, he looked
about, shuffling again with that uneasy movement on his feet. If only he
could find some means to prevail upon her first to take it home, and
driven to desperation he turned once more to her, and said in an
appealing voice,—

“I’m feared thar be a bad storm comin’ up, Miss; the sea it really do
look ugly, and may hap you’d better run home first; thar beant much time
to lose noways.”

But alas! it was too late. Hannah, utterly oblivious to the old man’s
entreaty, was already eagerly reading down the sheet. Suddenly the color
fled from her face. She appeared dazed and confused. For an instant she
held the paper in a convulsive grasp, staring at it with a stony glare.
Then she uttered a long, shivering sound, and her fingers gradually
relaxed their hold.

In a second the letter was gone. A savage wind broke loose with a tiger
roar from the sea. The billows, in swift rage and with frightful tumult,
piled up their fierce scrolls in a chaos of towering surge. Mist and
spray and foam whirled in a blinding froth to the sky.

Old Steve, half-carrying, half-dragging—for the girl seemed hardly able
to take a step unassisted—drew Hannah back into the one long low
building by the wharf, where most of the people that were standing about
a few moments before had taken shelter from the storm. Quickly half a
dozen rough hands drew out a small packing-box and placed it for a seat,
and some one threw a woolen shawl around her shoulders.

She kept her lips closed tight. She looked at no one, she shivered
constantly. The howling blast swept its brine up the wharf—“Washed
overboard at sea.” The cruel breakers lifted and struck with
thunder-crash—“Washed overboard at sea.” Bitter cold, the salt surf
leaped and writhed and reached out with demoniac fury—“Washed overboard
at sea.” Giant waves opened and shut with a grinding wrath their hungry
jaws. Relentless, appalling, the mighty waters filled earth and sky with
the terror of their strength.

And Tom, poor Tom, had been washed overboard at sea!

It was horrible. The awful words rang constantly in her ears. They
repeated themselves over and over. Where, how—she knew naught, only the
one sentence, with its dreadful import. After that she had read nothing,
and before it she forgot all. Rocking a little back and forth on her
seat, she sat there pale and dumb. Like her mother, two-and-twenty years
in the past, she asked no sympathy, she heeded no comment.

The ashen clouds, racing before the wind like the scud of the sea, drove
swiftly down behind the hills, and the blinding fury of the storm had
spent itself. Drearily the gray sky let down again its endless drizzle,
when Stephen, his honest voice painfully choked by emotion, prevailed
upon her to go home. At first looking at him blankly, she seemed hardly
to comprehend what he said, and it was only when he spoke of her mother
that she gave any heed to his entreaty. Her mother! how could she tell
her the terrible news, her patient, waiting mother! Old Stephen, many
times after, used to say how in that moment, when she looked at him, he
wished he had been dead before ever he brought her such a letter.

Shivering, always shivering, she drew the shawl tight about her
shoulders, and slipped down off the fishy box without a word. The old
sailor in his anxious care would have followed too, but she only shook
her head, and without having opened her lips, he saw her go alone.

The sullen mist hung its reeking folds along the shore, and the tide,
running out, left a wide dank stretch of yellow slime. Above it, where,
in Summer, the green swords of the sea-wrack grew, the storm had washed
up clammy masses, heavy with ooze, of the pale and sticky tangle.
Fiercely the treacherous waters had swept over the shore and covered it
with their bitter dregs; but more fiercely had they surged, a dreary
desolation, over the girl’s young heart.

Upon the bloated girdles, on the wet sand, in the chilly damp, with the
salt spray clinging to her clothes, she went, and the wild sea, calming
down, mourned again at her feet, like a sinister mockery of grief, in
loud lamentation. When she went up the narrow foot-path on the hill, and
came to the garden gate, she stopped a moment, she hardly knew why. It
was a mechanical action with her. She scarcely felt or thought. Her
heart was heavy as a stone.

The branches of the great honeysuckle were black and bare. She looked at
the old rock by the path now slippery with rain. She looked at the tall
and prickly cedar drenched with mist and spray. She looked out at the
storm-beaten sea, then she looked back once more at the dripping
evergreen. The dove in its thorny spire was gone—the dove with the
purple ripples on its neck. It had never built another nest. Shivering,
shivering, she went on, crossed the porch, where the arms of the
bloomless rose, weird and gaunt, flung down great heavy tears at her
feet, and, still shivering, she went into the house and shut the door.

Miriam, used to the tumult of the sea, sat patiently in the chair by the
window, as she had done so many, many times in the past. When Hannah
came in she looked up with surprise. The girl would have avoided her,
but Miriam, seeing her so wet became alarmed, and, rising from her seat,
had met Hannah in the hall before she could escape.

“I thought you were up stairs! What took you out in such stormy weather?
You’re all wet and shivering with the cold, and—why, child, your face is
as white as a sheet! What is the matter?”

“Nothing, I—I—was caught in the rain, and—and got a little damp.” The
words came uncertainly in a deep voice, for Hannah could hardly trust
herself to speak, lest some unguarded tone should abruptly betray the
terrible truth. The girl felt as if it was written all over her, or that
she might disclose it in every movement; but she had turned her back to
her mother, and with trembling hands was hurriedly shaking out the wet
shawl. “I’ll go and change my clothes. It will not hurt me.”

“Well, do it quickly, and come down to the fire right away. I’m afraid
it will make you cough.”

Hannah, eager to escape, gathered the shawl on her arm; but at the foot
of the stairs she stopped and looked back.

“You—you’ve had a nice sleep, mother?”

“Yes, dear, so very sound that I only heard the wind like a gentle
zephyr.”

“And you feel well?”

“Oh yes, better to-day than I have for a long, long time. I’m going to
get stronger now steadily,” she said, with a smile that, for a moment,
brought into the wan face a strange beauty, like a gleam of the same
radiance that so far in the past poor Jacob had placed upon the shrine
of his heart.

Hannah, turning her head quickly, almost overpowered by sudden
faintness, went up stairs, staggered across the room, and sank down by
the window in a silent agony of grief. She did not sob or cry audibly,
her whole being was one mental wail of despair—her mother! her gentle,
waiting mother! Fierce unspoken rebellion had taken possession of the
girl’s soul. To one that had been always as a ministering spirit to
those about her, why had Providence allotted so cruel a destiny? She,
whose life had been but a long heart-struggle; she, that had done no
evil, that had suffered without a murmur; she, feeble and bent with
years, marked with the silver brand of sorrow and age; she, far down the
avenue of her days, almost where the mighty mists of eternity close up
their impenetrable curtains, she must yet be compelled to go on, to the
last, through the darkness of new trouble! Was there no mercy, no
justice?

Bitterly Hannah looked out, dry-eyed, at the relentless sea. There was
no distant line against the sky; above, below, drear and empty, the gray
stretched to infinity—not a sail on all the waters, and the tides were
out—aye, the tides _were_ out for her.

She had never shed a tear. Forgetful of her wet clothing, she leaned a
long time upon the window-sill, motionless, and the lines in her young
face were hard and strained. Perhaps the memory of that night came back
to her with its vision of the royal planet that had seemed a star of
promise—a star of promise? A mockery it had been, a cruel mockery!

Then Miriam’s voice calling from the foot of the stairs roused her, and
hurriedly she changed her damp dress, but she could not yet meet her
mother. She lingered about the room. She fell upon her knees; she tried
to pray, but her heart refused to utter a single petition, and Miriam
had called again and yet again before Hannah went down.

“Come close to the fire. You were so long I am afraid it will make you
sick.”

“No, mother, I am cold a little, that is all.”

Miriam did not ask again what had taken her out, and Hannah, shading her
eyes with her hand, sat by the grate trying to prepare herself for the
dreadful duty that awaited her. She knew her mother must be told, lest
it should come upon her abruptly from the lips of a stranger with a
shock greater than she could bear. It was a hard struggle for Hannah;
the girl would gladly have borne all the trouble herself, but that could
not be.

Just how she said it she never remembered, only suddenly she felt calm
and strong for the duty, and with a strange desperation on her face,
slowly, gently as human means could do, she told the terrible news.

And Miriam?

Sitting in her chair she did not scream, or moan, or faint. She leaned a
little forward with her elbow on her knee, and looked at Hannah, looked
at her long and steadily, with a strange wavering light in her eyes.

“Mother, mother, speak to me!” the girl cried, frightened at this light
in her eyes, terrified that she said nothing, did nothing.

“Yes, dear, I am better to-day, yesterday I walked to the garden gate. I
will even be strong enough to go down to the wharf when the Nereid comes
in, and it will be such a glad surprise for him, such a glad surprise!”

She had leaned back in her chair again, and her face, like a revelation,
was radiant once more almost with the lost beauty of her girlhood.

Hannah, dropping her head in her hands, could scarcely speak for the
awful beating of her heart.

“No, no, Mother, you do not understand. He is—dead. He will—never
come—home—”

The same wavering light flickered a second time in Miriam’s eyes as the
girl spoke. She put up her thin hands for a moment and wearily stroked
the silver hair back from her forehead. She looked slowly, with a
bewildered expression about the room, then, smiling again, she said,—

“Home? Yes, the time is nearly up. In the Spring, in the early Spring,
he shall be home, home to stay always. I know he will not disappoint me.
I promised to wait patiently, and I have not complained, have I Hannah?”

“No, no——”

“And I shall be stronger then, and we must make the house pleasant for
him. It will never be lonely any more when he is here. Why do you cry
so, Hannah? It is not long to wait for him now.”

Hannah, trying to smother her choking sobs, slipped down on the floor
with her face covered, and Miriam talked on and on of the happy times
they would have when “Tommy” came back in the Spring.

She could be made to comprehend nothing of the dreadful tidings. He had
promised her he would come back, and her faith never faltered. But there
was a distinct change in her from that day. The quiet, reserved manner
that had been with her always a marked characteristic, seldom
volunteering a sentence to a stranger, was gone. She talked incessantly
of her son. She would tell every person she met how much stronger she
was getting, and how she meant to go and meet him at the wharf when the
Nereid came in.

So months went by, and Miriam did get stronger every day. She had not
been so well in years, not since long ago when poor Tom had first taken
to following the sea. Bright and happy she seemed from morning till
night, only Hannah noticed that sometimes when speaking most earnestly
she would stop suddenly for a moment, and look at her in a bewildered
way, with that same wavering light flickering up in her eyes.

All the villagers knew the sorrowful story of the Widow Aber’s waiting
so trustfully for “Tommy,” her sailor son that could never come back,
and they were good to Hannah that Winter. The girl had not cast her
bread upon the waters in vain. When she found herself weak and faint a
dozen hands were ready with some kind office, and there was little left
for her to do about the house. Those bitter months as they waxed and
waned were one long, mute agony, but the girl did not break down under
the terrible strain. Trouble does not kill the young; thin and pale she
grew, but strong in her youth, stronger in her love, for Miriam’s sake,
and with something of Miriam’s early nature, she kept her grief crushed
within her heart. She seldom went out of the house now. She staid always
with her mother, as if fearful to leave her for an hour; and those who
went to the house from the village, told how dreadful it was to see her
sitting quietly, even sometimes forcing a smile to her trembling lips
when the widow would say,—

“Do not look so sad, Hannah. I am strong and well, are you not glad? He
said he liked to see me smile, and he must find us bright and cheerful
when he comes in the Spring.”

The Spring! Hannah hardly dared to think what might happen then. Every
day, as she watched her mother, the dread upon her grew stronger. She
would have held back the coming of the Nereid, the beautiful Nereid,
that now, with its white wings, might return only as the angel of death
to Miriam. She would understand it all then, and the shock, the dreadful
shock! It was the terror of this that haunted Hannah day and night.

The last winter month had gone by, and the chilly winds of March were
whistling along the coast, when, one morning, old Steve came hurriedly
up the hill to the house. He brought the news that Hannah had so long
dreaded. The Nereid was even then heading round the cliff. She had asked
him to let her know in time, that she might keep it from her mother, at
least till after the boat had landed. But while he was in the very act
of telling, he stopped suddenly, and a look of fright came over his
face. Hannah turned to find the cause, and saw her mother standing in
the open doorway. She had overheard it all. The girl’s heart sank in her
breast like a stone.

Vainly she endeavored to dissuade her from going to the wharf, but
Miriam, radiant as a child in her joy, nervous in her pitiful haste,
paid no heed to her remonstrances, that it was cold, that it was too
far, that she would go in her place, until Hannah, driven to
desperation, told her mother again of the dreadful disaster, and how
poor Tom could not be there to meet her. Then the widow stayed her
trembling hands for a moment in their flurried effort to tie her bonnet,
and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, as she had done
before, with the same strange gaze in her eyes. It always seemed as if
she was dimly conscious, for the instant, that something was wrong, but
even as the shadow flitted over her face, it was gone.

“Come,” she said, her countenance all brilliant with eager excitement,
“hurry, we must not be late. I feel young and strong, and it will be
such a glad surprise for him!”

Hannah, powerless to keep Miriam back, gave up the endeavor, and went
on, with a mortal agony in her heart, beside the frail woman who, in all
faith, was going to welcome home her son—her son out upon the silent sea
of eternity, where even a mother’s voice could never reach. No wonder
the girl’s grief made her dumb. Was there no escape? She heard the
waters running in, it seemed to her for a thousand leagues, sounding
their dreadful dirge. At that moment gladly would she have lain down
forever in the same boundless grave with father and brother, where the
waves, slow and sad, were playing for them this requiem on every shore
of every land. But Miriam, in the extremity of her haste, never
stopping, went on steadily over the wet ground, bending, sometimes
almost staggering, before the raw March wind that swept in fierce gusts
from the still frozen north.

A sudden hush fell upon all the people at the wharf as they came down.
With her gray hair blown about in strands, her eyes fever-bright, and
her breath coming quick and short, paying no heed to any one, the widow
Aber glided silently among them, like an apparition. Unconscious of
every thing but the ship, even then in the mouth of the harbor, she
stood, her face so thin and worn, all quivering with excitement, and her
pale lips moving constantly with some inarticulate sound. Once or twice
she stretched out her trembling hands toward the vessel, then, gathering
her shawl, held them tight against her breast, as if she would keep down
the throbbing of her heart. Frail and shadowy, she seemed hardly human,
as she waited, with her garments fluttering in the bitter wind, with her
very soul reaching, struggling, looking out eagerly in her gray eyes.

Slowly the ship sailed up the harbor, slowly it reached the dock, and
after almost two years’ wandering, the Nereid rested once more in her
native waters. As the boat touched the wharf, Hannah had taken her
mother’s arm, perhaps that she might hold her back, but Miriam made no
effort to move. The girl could feel her trembling, trembling, but she
only put up her hand unsteadily and brushed the hair away from her face.

Too well Hannah knew poor Tom would not be there, and, as through a
mist, she saw the sailors swing themselves down. In the dreadful trouble
that had come upon her, she had almost forgotten Luke. During all these
weeks of anguish she had thought only of her mother, but this morning
the strain had been too severe. She had given up the battle, and now
waited stonily; she would have waited on all day, when Miriam, suddenly
breaking loose from her, in a voice half stifled by a wild delight,
cried,—

“O, Tommy, my boy, my only boy!”

It was Luke that stood beside her, whom she had strangely mistaken for
her son. She would have fallen to the ground had he not caught her in
his arms. Unable to speak for a moment, she clung to him trembling
violently. Clasping her hands tight about his neck, she closed her eyes,
and, with a quivering sigh, laid her head against his shoulder. Hannah,
looking at Luke quickly, made a gesture that kept him silent, then
Miriam, without moving, said, brokenly,—

“I have waited for you, Tommy. It was such a long, long time, but I knew
you would come—”

She paused, while a slight struggle in her breath escaped, like a sob,
from her lips, then went on once more still in an unsteady tone,—

“I am so glad, so glad! I am well and strong, Tommy. I feel a little
tired now, but I am well and strong. You will never leave me, never
leave me any more—”

There was another feeble struggle in her throat; then when she spoke
again, her voice, growing fainter at every effort, seemed to come from
some far-off distance, drifting in to them as from the desert spaces of
an illimitable sea.

“Do not let me go. It is cold, and the wind—Hark! Listen, oh listen how
sweet and soft the waters wash! Hold me close, Tommy. I am weary. Why,
it is Summer! Look! see the land, the foreign land! Stay, Tommy, I am
tired—so tired—”

Her head had drooped back heavily on the man’s arm, but her lips still
moved, and suddenly her face lighted up with a radiant smile.

“Nearer,—come nearer—How bright the sunlight shines upon your face!
Tommy, my boy—my sailor boy—”

So, on that bleak March morning when the Nereid came in, Miriam had
indeed gone to meet her son, her sailor son, on that far, far off
foreign shore that is girdled by the mightier ocean of eternity.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

                         REINHART, THE GERMAN.


Poor Reinhart! He certainly was a brilliant fellow. Even the German
Professors overlooked his English origin, and felt proud of him.
Probably they argued that if he was born in Yorkshire, it was not his
fault. And, besides, as the name showed, his family, no matter where
they had since strayed, must have been, at some period of the past, true
children of the Fatherland.

As far as he was concerned, he seemed to have very little attachment for
his native country. Indeed, he never evinced very much of an attachment
for any place or any body. We had been together the greater part of ten
years. He possessed a singular influence over me. I hardly know what I
would not have done for Reinhart. But he was in disposition not the
least demonstrative; and whether he ever saw any attraction in me, I can
not tell. I simply imagined so, because time wore away without drifting
us apart.

A profound interest in metaphysics absorbed his whole being; and through
this channel he had crept into the good graces of the college
authorities. During his long study upon this subject, he had woven about
himself all the labyrinthine meshes of the subtile German philosophy.
Though only a tutor of twenty-five, the doctors of metaphysics touched
their hats to him; all the students bowed before him; and I—I felt sorry
for him.

Why? I can hardly tell. But he had grown thin and pale and nervous
within the last year; and I could not help wishing that all Germany was
as ignorant of psychology as in the days when the Suabians danced their
dryad dances upon the very spot where now the great University lifted up
its towers—this great University whose walls were built not of stone
from the quarry, but of the labors of many lives, some of whose proudest
pinnacles, reaching into a light of dazzling splendor, had been reared
only by the everlasting sacrifice of reason.

A vague idea had floated into my mind, but so very terrible it was that
I had never dared acknowledge its existence even to myself;
nevertheless, it oppressed me constantly. Finally, it grew into such a
burden that I could bear it no longer, and so made up my mind to do what
little I could to relieve myself at any rate. A plan occurred to me
whereby I might accomplish my chief design, which was to draw him away
from this study that was consuming him; to draw him away from his myriad
theories into life. But before I had said a word, while I was still
meditating how it could best be done, Reinhart settled the trouble
himself.

I never was more astonished or more pleased than when he proposed the
very thing I had been trying to broach, that the two of us should spend
the next six months in traveling. What had suggested it to him, or what
his reasons were, I never asked. Had _he_ any suspicions of this strange
fancy that I would not admit to myself, and yet had been vainly striving
to drive from my mind? Since then I have sometimes thought so, and
sometimes thought not. To the proposition I consented eagerly, and did
my best in hastening all the arrangements; therefore no time was lost
before we found ourselves _en route_ for the south of Europe.

As I have said, Reinhart was not in the least demonstrative. Very likely
his natural reserve had been greatly increased by his sedentary life.
But I noticed, early in our trip, that he seemed laboring to throw off
his abstracted manner. I felt encouraged, notwithstanding I knew it was
an effort to him, and determined, not only that he should see something
of the world, but, what would be of much more benefit, that he should
see something of society.

In the beautiful Italian scenery my own spirits rose perceptibly. The
great load which had been burdening me lessened and finally raised
itself altogether, as I saw this shadow of the German University that
had been resting on my companion break. But I know now I was mistaken.
It was only the battalion preparing for action; the marshalling of the
forces before the conflict.

It had been almost a month since we left Germany. Many of the English
and American gentlemen residing in Florence had shown us not only
attention but hospitality. One thing I noticed quickly that Reinhart
cared almost nothing for the society of ladies. He endured it; never
sought it. The most beautiful faces he would pass without any notice, or
with merely an indifferent glance. I was sorry for this, because here
was a channel, I had thought, wherein might be turned the current of his
existence.

With this subject still uppermost in my mind, I determined one morning I
would bring my sounding-line into play, if it were only on account of my
own satisfaction. We were sitting upon the deep sill of the open window,
smoking our cigars and enjoying the utter tranquillity of the southern
day, when I asked, indifferently, as if the question had been wholly
unpremeditated,—

“Reinhart, were you ever in love?”

He looked up quickly, waited a moment, as though at first he had not
exactly understood, then answered,—

“No.”

Now, I knew very well he never had been; for, as I have said, the last
ten years we had spent together; but at present I was bent upon the
intent of discovering what probability there was that such a catastrophe
could ever be brought about; so I said again,—

“Reinhart, do you think you _ever will_ be in love?”

I expected a repetition of my former answer, but, to my surprise,
without any hesitation, he replied,—

“Yes.”

“Indeed!” I gasped, with my breath almost gone,—“and when may it come to
pass?”

Looking up, I dropped the tone of raillery I had been using immediately,
for I saw it was a serious matter to him; and overcome by astonishment,
I subsided into complete silence.

The perfume of roses came in on the breeze, and a scarlet-cloaked
flower-girl carrying her wares, the only person on the street, turned
out of sight. A small bird, with red plumes in its wings, lighted nearly
within reach, upon the tree, and broke into song, but, checking the
strain almost in the first note, it flew away, settling, a mere speck,
upon the northern spire of the Cathedral. Then Reinhart said, as though
there had been no pause in the conversation,—

“I do not know; it may never come in this life.”

I looked at him, thoroughly puzzled, almost frightened. Then, thinking
perhaps I had not heard aright, said,—“What?” But, without heeding my
interrogation, he continued,—

“Perhaps it never will come in this life.”

Yes, I had heard aright. Possibly we were each talking of different
things; and as a last resource, I said,—

“Perhaps _what_ will never come in this life?”

“Why, love,” he replied, making a slight gesture of impatience, as
though I had been unpardonably dull.

“But,” I persisted, determined to understand, “then it will never be at
all, for they neither marry nor are given in marriage in the next
world.”

“No,” he repeated, “they ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage.’” He
said the words over slowly but mechanically, exactly as if he might have
said, or thought, the same words over a hundred times before.

That he believed in the immortality of the soul, I quite well knew, for
it was the one shoot of his English education, which, springing in early
boyhood, had survived, like a foreign plant, amid all the German
sophisms. I did not like the strange aspect of his face, and, somewhat
ill at ease, I said,—

“Then, what do you mean?” I waited a moment for the answer.

“I can hardly tell you. I have always had a theory of my own—no, not a
theory, a belief. I have never undertaken to express it in language, and
do not know whether I can render myself intelligible. I think every soul
has somewhere in the universe an affinity—I am obliged to use the word
for lack of a better one—and I believe that before complete happiness
can be attained the two are merged into one. It is not marriage: that is
purely earthly. These affinities may possibly meet in this life, though
it is hardly probable; but in the ages to come it will occur just as
certainly as there is an eternity. Mind, I do not call it marriage. It
is the fusing together of two souls, a masculine and feminine, just as
they combine chemicals, producing a new substance. I believe, as I said,
these two souls may sometimes meet in this life; but it is a destiny
that comes to few in centuries, and those few should kneel in
everlasting gratitude before their Creator.”

When Reinhart ceased speaking, I could see that he had worked himself
almost into a fever, for his eyes were bright and restless, and the
blood surged in waves across his usually colorless face. With a rough
hand, I had struck the chord whose undecided vibrations had, a month
ago, appalled me. The great burden which had so oppressed me settled
down again heavier than before. It was not so much what he had said as
the expression of his face that filled me anew with anxiety. And
struggling under this burden, I made a poor attempt to laugh the matter
off.

“Reinhart, this is some of your German metaphysics.”

“No; though you are at liberty to call it what you please; but I have
never read such a theory in any place.”

“Well, it is an absurd idea,” I retorted, “and sounds exactly like some
of your humbug philosophers, who never believe in any thing but
fantasies; and I would advise you to let them alone.”

This was hardly wise on my part. I should not have allowed myself to
express any impatience when I saw it excited him, and only augmented
what I was striving to allay. The blood rushed again over his face, but
he said nothing; only, rising from his seat, he walked several times
across the room.

In the silence that followed, a strain of joyful music broke suddenly
upon us. It was the swell of the Cathedral organ, sounding a prelude for
some wedding. But if the strain was ever finished, we did not hear it,
for the next moment a crash of terrific discord drowned the music,
shaking the very ground. Some object flew swiftly past my face, struck
the wall and fell upon the floor. I sprang up and shut the window
quickly. Half the sky was covered with a black cloud, and from the
carpet at my feet I picked up a dead bird, a small bird with red plumes
in its wings.

The storm passed over in less than half an hour, leaving the sky
perfectly clear again; but for the remainder of the day I could not
recover my spirits. Whether Reinhart suffered from a like oppression, I
know not; but he seemed possessed by the very demon of unrest. He was
not still a moment. He had little to say; and quite late in the evening
proposed a walk. Without any remark upon the unusual hour, I acquiesced.

The night was quiet and beautiful, beautiful even for that southern
clime. There was no moon, and still the sky was filled with a soft
light, brighter than the trembling rays of the stars alone. I remember
it because it was a peculiar luminous haze, that I had seen only in
Italy, and because, though no clouds swept over the sky, and the haze
never paled until lost in the crimson glow of morning, that night, to
me, was the blackest night of my life, whose vision sometimes yet rises
before me, even at noon-day, with appalling reality. Ah! why were the
sky and stars beautiful? O, cruel sky! O, cruel stars! Was the sorrow on
earth nothing to you, that you gave no warning?

We had walked perhaps two squares, when Reinhart stopped just as
suddenly as if he might have come in contact with a stone wall,
invisible to me. Alarmed, I said, quickly, “What is the matter? Are you
ill?”

“No,” he replied, still standing motionless. Then, in a moment, without
another word, he turned and began retracing his steps.

“Are you going home already?” I inquired, puzzled by his strange
conduct.

“No; I am going to the Cathedral.”

We had just passed the Cathedral, when he had made no motion to enter;
but now I tried in vain to dissuade him from it. I told him that there
was no service at this hour; that we might as well not have left home as
to go inside of any house. All to no purpose; he was just as determined
as at first, until finally he turned fiercely upon me and said, with a
strange emphasis in his tone,—

“I will go; I must go; I feel something within me that _compels_ me to
go!”

Was this again the vibration of that terrible chord in his nature—that
terrible chord that threatened to destroy forever the harmony of his
life?

Powerless to turn him from his intent, together we crossed the northern
portal and entered the nave. It was so dim that the heavy shadows
clustered in a rayless cloud among the arches, and at the end, far
off—they looked like stars in the gloom—flickered a few tapers at the
altar, while higher up swung the sacred but sickly flame that had been
burning for centuries. There was not a stir, not a sound. I trembled all
over with a singular sensation of weakness that came upon me as I
followed Reinhart, who went steadily down the long aisle to where the
transepts met, then stopped as abruptly as he had stopped a few moments
before in the street.

It was, as I have said, just where the transepts met. There, upon a low
platform or dais, stood a bier covered by a velvet pall, whose heavy
border fell in waveless folds. And upon it rested a casket with silver
mountings. Beside it two tapers burned, one at the head and one at the
foot; and two monks kneeled, motionless. Beyond the choir I saw the
gleam of the organ-pipes, wavering, come and go. The altar lights
circled about each other, and they, too, receded in infinite space; they
grew dim; they vanished; they sprang again; they fled again. The great
tombs loomed out and faded; the figure on an ebon crucifix, inspired
with life, writhed in fearful agony, then once more became transfixed,
and the weak, trembling sensation under which I had been laboring was
gone.

I saw that we were standing by the dead of some noble family, for the
repose of whose soul the monks were offering up their prayers. I drew a
little nearer. Upon the snow-like cushions within the casket a young
girl lay sleeping the last deep and solemn sleep. Or was it a
vision?—one of that mystical land, whose white portals are beyond the
sun; that land where there is no shadow, no stain; where there is beauty
celestial, peace everlasting? No, it was all the future we ever see; it
was still this side the gates of eternity; it was death.

A chaplet of flowers crowned her brow, all colorless as marble, and
garlands of flowers wreathed her robe, that was purer than fleece; but
her hands held no lilies, no jasmine; more sacred than these, they held
a small golden crucifix, an emblem imperishable, holy. The burning
tapers threw not over the face, turned slightly toward the altar, that
beautiful dream-light; it was the last inscription written by the
spirit, even after it had seen down the radiant vista of immortal
happiness.

Ah! why offer prayers for a soul beyond the troubled sea, beyond the
dread valley? O, frail humanity! Even then beside the pall, where rested
the solemn silence no voice could break, stood one for whom the kneeling
monks might have told a thousand _aves_.

Reinhart raised his face suddenly. Straightening himself, he extended
his arm with a wild gesture, uttering a laugh that grated clear up to
the dome.

“Did I not tell you?” he cried. “Did I not feel the mysterious summons
that brought me to this spot? Do you see her? _It is she!_ It is her
soul and mine that will abide together through all eternity.”

The startled monks rose to their feet. The great arches of the Cathedral
threw back his voice in terrible groans. Quick as thought I sprang
toward him, but was hurled off with the ease of a giant. He stooped for
a moment and put one hand to his head, as if a sudden faintness might
have swept over him; but he did not touch the casket. Then, dropping on
one knee beside it, he raised his face and said softly, so softly that
the last word seemed to come to us from a great distance,—

“O, beautiful soul, part of my spirit, I will not keep you waiting!”

We gathered around and raised him up. It needed no force now; and when
they laid him down again, with a great throbbing in my breast, I folded
his hands. He had taken his life.

O, Germany! like this fair day you lured a bird high up into your
sunshine, a bird with brilliant plumes in its wings; then, before it had
sung one song from the pinnacle where it rested, blackening suddenly
into a storm, you killed it. Reinhart, poor Reinhart! you lured high up
into the fantastic light of psychology; then before he had reared one
minaret upon the temple where he climbed, you darkened suddenly into a
gigantic gloom that, rising up like a storm, overwhelmed him.

Yes, better had it been for Reinhart were the Suabians still dancing
their dryad dances.




[Illustration]

                             SILVER ISLET.


In Lake Superior, near its northern shore, a mere speck of land,
scarcely two hundred feet square, barely shows itself above the water.
This is Silver Islet, and on it sinks the shaft of the richest silver
mine in the world. Covering almost its entire dimensions, stand two
buildings. One, a low frame house, encloses the mouth of the mine, and
the other, immediately adjacent, a small wooden structure, forms the
watch-tower.

Through this tower, every evening, the miners, when dismissed for the
day, are compelled to pass out one by one, and submit themselves to an
examination, where their clothes are thoroughly searched, that none of
the precious metal may be carried away secreted upon the person. So
extreme is the vigilance employed that visitors are never allowed,
except by special permit, and though isolated upon the waters, the place
is kept by day and night under this strict martial surveillance.

To the north, about a quarter of a mile distant, is another island,
perhaps six or eight acres in extent. It is high and rocky, and in one
place reaches up more than a hundred feet. Here, built upon its sloping
side, is the little settlement that could count up altogether, it might
be, thirty houses. Here the miners live with their families. Here, too,
every thing that pertains to the business of the place carries itself
on; and here it was that father had brought me to stay.

I was about eighteen years old then. I do not know how father happened
to receive the position of assistant overseer at the mine. I never knew
very much about father. Indeed I had hardly seen him more than half a
dozen times in my life, until that day he came to take me from the farm.
I could not remember my mother, who died in my infancy, and brother or
sister I had none. Father was a morose, unsociable man by nature, and I
think he cared but very little for me. I had been left at my uncle’s to
grow up, and so, as I said, about him I knew almost nothing.

Uncle George lived on a poverty-stricken farm upon the flattest of
prairies. I hardly know how I did grow up there, it was such a wretched,
miserable place. Although I had never experienced any thing different,
it was so forlorn an existence, that I chafed inwardly against it every
hour. I possessed a kind of dumb consciousness that surely, surely I
must be made for something better than this. I saw nothing of the world,
nothing of humanity outside of my uncle’s family, and the two or three
rough farm hands that he occasionally employed. I would rather have had
the cattle, the poor half-starved cattle, for companions than these.
They were none of them kind to me. I know not whether father ever paid
any thing for my board; but I know I worked far harder than any hired
servant. I did not rebel outwardly, but I was constantly unhappy. Was I
to live on all my days in this hopeless, miserable way? Was there never
to be any thing better? Looking out of the window, I thought of the
great, busy world, and the far-off, unknown cities; but before my eyes
there was only a dead level of the hateful yellow prairie, and above,
the colorless sky stretched itself out in a gigantic, measureless blank.

From this life it was that father came, without word or warning, and
took me. I know now that he only wanted me with him as a convenience,
but then I was wild with delight. In my great craving for human sympathy
I would have loved father with all my heart, had he given me any
encouragement. I did love him for this one good deed. I knew not where
he was taking me, but I was sure it could be no worse place. With an
intense joy I went up and surveyed, for the last time, the miserable
little room where I had vainly cried so many hot tears over my weary
existence. I stayed my steps a moment beside the one window, a little
window facing westward. From here I had seen the only beauty that ever
came before my passionate eyes flame up with a splendor, as of gold,
along the sky when the sun went down. A thousand times my yearning heart
had watched the short-lived glory fade, like a mockery, into the dreary
blank. From here, too, year by year, with a rank rebellion in my soul, I
had looked out at the shadowless prairie that lay over all the earth, a
great, glaring, uncovered, yellow blister.

So it was with nothing but glad emotion that I stood upon the spot
consciously for the last time. I had a keen, absorbing love of the
beautiful, a hunger insatiable, that unfed was sapping my life. This
wretched existence had almost killed me; but for the change I believe
that my longing spirit, like my mother’s in the far past, would have
broken its wings. Now there was an avenue of escape suddenly opened up
before me—of escape from the dreadful monotony, from the intolerable
agony of everlasting sameness that, by day and night, recurring forever,
had made up the tiresome years as they passed. My whole being was turned
to my father with one inspiration of gratitude.

Had I known any thing of Pythagoras then, almost I could have believed
in the transmigration of souls, or that my spirit had passed into some
different body, so utterly strange and new I felt at Silver Islet. Here
father had rented a little house that stood apart from the rest, upon
the very highest point. The whole settlement was grouped within the
least possible compass, and considerable of the island, small as it was,
still remained in its original condition. There were no trees
immediately about our house, but to the right, and running thinly all
the way down on the other side to the water, a few straggling pines
clung, with their rope-like roots, to the rocks. It was no trouble to me
to keep house for only one. I got the breakfast and supper, and every
morning put up a dinner for father, which he took with him to the mine.
So all day I was left wholly to myself.

As I said, so strange and new I felt it seemed to me for a while as if I
had lost my own identity. Here, for the first time in my life, there lay
before my eyes a vast expanse of glittering waves—the mighty mystery of
far-reaching waters! Rolling, moving, changing, remaining for endless
ages, attracting, terrifying—only the mightier mystery of eternity can
fathom the hidden secret of this unceasing problem. A hush fell upon my
fluttering spirits, a hush of profound awe before this symbol, this
vision of the unknown infinite. At last the cry of my soul for food was
silenced, the dreadful hunger of my heart, that through all my life I
could not allay, was pacified.

At dawn I saw the timid light creep up along the east and wait and
brighten, until it set an emblazoned standard in the sky, and below, far
out, covered with the pomp of the rising sun, the distant billows
clashed their blood-red shields. At noon, I saw the mid-day radiance,
falling through the air in torrents of splendor, float far and near,
changing into gorgeous mosaics upon the sea. At night I saw the long
line of mighty cliffs upon the silent Canadian shore reach out their
giant shadow through the dusk of evening that, slowly, softly, gathered
into a twilight sweeter than the luminous haze of a dream.

I had no one to care for me, no friend, no lover, but I needed none now.
I was happy, happy as in a new and glorious world. I forgot the dreadful
prairie, dry and parched—the vast, staring, level of land that for so
many years had oppressed me by its terrible, never ending monotony. I
even forgot the thousand times I had longed and longed to see a great
city, to live among its busy throng.

It was November, and presently the wind, keen and cold, swept down, like
the wind from the Arctic zone. Mad, pitiless, the boundless waters piled
themselves in towering billows. They leaped and menaced. They broke over
Silver Islet with a frightful roar and drenched it with their freezing
spray. They danced about it in savage fury. They beat against it
continually, and the howling gale, swift and strong, dashed the foam in
blinding sheets. Already the long, fierce winter of the North was
rapidly setting in.

Great layers of ice formed and broke, and ground up and formed again,
until December, still and frigid, locked us within the impenetrable
barriers of a vast, frozen sea. To the east, to the west, to the south,
an illimitable wilderness of snow, the mighty Superior for miles lay
wrapped in a silence profound as the grave. To the north, shrouded in
their eternal solitude, cold, white and spectral, the cliffs upon the
long Canadian shore held up their stony battlement, sheeted in ice, as
in a pall. Utterly devoid of warmth, the sunlight blazed with a
brilliance indescribable through an atmosphere that, clearer than
crystal, glittered as with the scintillations of feldspar. But the
nights—the nights swinging in their long winter arc, were illuminated by
a glory more gorgeous than the unreal splendor wrought in the loom of
dreams. The stars, myriads upon myriads, studded the whole heaven with
drops of intense light, and the planets, magnified through the vast
laboratory of the air, showed great balls of molten silver against a
vault of jet. Sometimes when the night was at its blackest, suddenly
there shot up, flaming from the white battlements of the Canadian shore,
a thousand lances. Like the parade of an army, like the marshalling of
far-reaching cohorts, the mighty processions swept the semicircle of the
sky. They rose and fell. They wavered like the spears of troops in
battle. Then the vast battalions, closing together, ran up in a towering
shaft to the zenith. A river of ice-cold fire, it divided the heaven. It
overflowed and spread out in a sea of gorgeous color that receded, wave
upon wave, until it burned, a deep blue flame upon the frozen crown of
the Canadian cliffs. I have watched this aurora in its changeful mood a
hundred times. I have watched the illimitable fields of snow beneath,
while the reflected light played upon them in weird rays, far out to the
remote horizon.

During the Winter, unused to the severe climate, I rarely left the
house. So far as was possible, I held myself aloof from the people, the
people, that, as I said, were only the rough families of miners.
Ignorant and uneducated, painfully ignorant and uneducated I was myself,
still I could not associate with such as these. I did not grow tired,
but yet I was glad when the long, frozen months had passed by. As the
late Spring opened, Winter even then did not yield its supremacy without
a fierce contest, but in the contest—the savage storms from the
north—the ice broke. The huge cakes, drifting about, slowly, gradually,
wore themselves away, and the wind dropped its javelins of frost.

Late it was in June before the last vestige was gone of the bitter cold
that had held us in its frigid clasp for more than two-thirds of a year.
Then there opened for me an unfailing source of enjoyment. I learned to
row, and father allowed me to buy a small boat. It was almost the only
favor I ever asked of him, and how much have I to be thankful for that
he did not deny me! Though slight of figure, my muscles were strong, and
after awhile, with constant practice, I could row twenty miles in a day
without exhaustion, and every day now, and all the day, I spent my time
upon the water.

The Summer, beautiful to me beyond description, was like a perpetual
Spring. In my little boat, alone, I explored the shore far and near. I
rowed to the very ledges of those cliffs that I had watched all Winter
long lifting themselves, like a huge, jagged spine, against the sky. A
thousand, sometimes twelve hundred feet, they reached up, gray and
naked, a sheer, barren wall of rock from the water. With the cold waves
forever at their feet, gloomy, silent, they stood in their drear
majesty, and the chilly fog wrapped them round with the folds of its
clammy garb. Only in the most beautiful weather did this fog lift from
about them its clinging skirts, and slowly the damp mists trailed
themselves off in long white plumes of down. At such times, floating
idly in my skiff, I felt oppressed by the vast burden of their dreadful
silence. I believe there is no greater solitude than that which
sometimes at noon, when sea and sky are unwrinkled by wave or cloud,
sits upon this mighty shore of desolate, desert rock. Yet here, where
this profound silence broods, upon these tawny bastions of stone,
occasionally fierce thunder storms play, and the waters in wild tumult
dash against their base with a noise like the roar of heavy artillery.

So the weeks slipped by, and it was in the early part of October that
first I saw a change had come over father. As I have said, he was by
nature a reserved, unsociable, even morose man. He was never
communicative, and to me sometimes spoke hardly two dozen words in a
day. I had grown used to this, and felt that I had nothing to complain
about, as he laid no restrictions upon me in any respect. But now I
could not help noticing a decided alteration, both in his looks and
manner. Constitutionally a thin man, his face appeared thinner to me
than ever. So exceedingly pale and worn was he, that I do not know that
I had ever seen a more haggard countenance. His eyes, which were very
light in color and deep-set in his head, had an unnatural brightness, a
strange expression I can hardly describe, a peculiar, watching
wakefulness. His manner was restless and uneasy in the extreme, and he
spoke even less frequently than usual. He staid out much later than had
been his ordinary habit, often not coming home until early in the
morning; and several times I heard him with a slow step walk back and
forth, back and forth, over the floor of his room all night.

As I have said, I knew nothing of his duties, nor did I know any thing
of the miners. When first I noticed the change upon father, I thought he
was over fatigued perhaps, then I became alarmed lest he was ill. Little
as he cared for me, he was the only human being on earth upon whom I had
the slightest claim, and I would have done any thing for him. I could
not bear to see him look so badly. He had never manifested any thing
towards me but utter indifference, and so strangely reserved was he that
I, in my great dread that he might be harsh some time, had hardly ever
volunteered a single sentence to him. I was troubled, and did not know
what to do. That night at supper I said, gently,—

“Father, do you feel well?”

At first he did not appear to hear, and I repeated my question, then he
turned his pale eyes upon me suddenly with a quick, startled look in
them that frightened me,—

“What?”

“I asked if you felt well,” I said again, embarrassed by his strange
manner. “You look so badly lately I thought maybe there was something
the matter.”

He did not speak at all for a moment, but sat there staring at me
wildly. Catching his breath slightly, he looked all round the room and
brought his eyes, his pale eyes, with an angry gleam in them now, back
to my face, then said, fiercely,—

“See here, don’t you meddle in my matters! I am able to take care of
myself.”

“Oh, father, I only thought—”

“Do you hear me?” he said, savagely. “Mind your own business. There is
nothing the matter with me. If you can’t do any thing better than
interfere in my affairs, you can go back. See that you don’t do it
again, or—”

He broke off abruptly, and I, my heart throbbing as if it might break,
got up and went into my own room. I had not interfered in his affairs. I
had done nothing wrong, said nothing to call up such an outburst of
passion, and his dreadful anger had terrified me. I went to the window
to try and calm myself. I put up the sash and leaned out.

The twilight had almost dissolved itself in night, a night so soft and
gentle that the very waters, wooed from their troubled toil, ceased
their long complaint and slept. The pine trees, slim and black,
whispered to each other in their mysterious language with peaceful
cadence, telling, perhaps, of the time when they would shed their
countless needles. In the west, shining like a harvest sickle, hung the
yellow crescent of the new October moon. Trying to still the throbbing
in my veins, I watched it grow and change and deepen as it sank, until
above the water it poised, a great Moorish sword of blood-red fire, and
a long line of vermilion light ran out upon the quiet sea. Then suddenly
it was blotted in darkness.

The figure of a man obstructed my range of vision.

Instantly the dreadful throbbing in my heart leaped up again. I drew
back noiselessly from the window. The man, only a few feet distant—I
could almost have put out my hand and touched him—stopped, hesitated
irresolutely for a moment, turned about as if to see that no one watched
him, then with stealthy step went across the open space and began to
climb, catching from tree to tree, down the precipitous rocks towards
the lake. Once or twice I heard a stone loosen from beneath his feet,
and presently I heard the plash of oars in the water, then it died out,
and straining my ears I could detect no sound but the quiet, mysterious
whisperings of the pines. I laid my head upon the window-sill sick and
faint. The figure of the man I had seen was father.

Too well I knew now that he was neither tired, nor ill. Why should he
have crept down so stealthily over these wild, almost perpendicular
rocks to the lake? Why not have gone by the ordinary path through the
settlement? Ah, why? Something was wrong—but what? I turned cold and
dizzy. I would not, I _dared_ not think.

I tried vainly to sleep that night. Haunted by a thousand forebodings, I
could not even close my eyes, and it was almost day-break when I heard
father come in quietly and go to his room.

I never referred again to his ill looks, nor did he, but somehow I could
not help thinking that from this time he watched me a little
suspiciously. I felt hurt that he imagined I would play the spy upon his
actions. Whatever he might do, whatever he might say, he was still my
father, and I could not give him up. It was dreadful, those days that
followed. It seemed like living upon the verge of a precipice, or that
some unseen calamity hung above my head ready to fall at any moment and
crush me.

One evening, just after I had lighted the lamp and put it on the supper
table, I went, as was my usual habit, to draw down the blinds. Father
had not yet come home. As I crossed his room I saw through the window a
man standing close beside it on the outside, so close that I could not
have seen him more distinctly had he been within reach of my touch. His
arms were folded across his chest, and his head dropped a little in the
attitude of one waiting. His figure was large and thick-set, almost that
of a giant. As I looked he took off his cap and passed his hand over his
short-cut, bristly hair, and in the action I saw his face,—a coarse,
heavy, brutish face, that made me shudder. I noticed that the window
sash was down and bolted, and I did not go near to touch the blind. I
went back with an uneasy feeling into the dining-room.

A few moments afterward father came in. He took up the light hurriedly,
saying some thing about wanting it for a moment, and carried it into his
room and shut the door. I heard him walking about in there, opening and
closing drawers, and after a little I thought I heard a sound as if he
were raising the window-sash gently. Then he came out. He looked at me
sharply for a moment, and remarked that he had been hunting for a key.
Strange! He was not in the habit of accounting for his actions. After he
got up from the table he did not leave the house again, but went to bed
almost immediately.

In the morning when I put up his dinner and handed it to him as usual,
he said,—

“You need not get any supper for me to-night. I have office work to do
at the mine and will not be back.”

I was surprised. He had frequently not come home to the evening meal,
but never before had he thought it worth his while to give me notice. I
stood looking after him as he went out of the gate, when suddenly an
idea flashed into my head that made my heart sink in my breast like a
stone. I do not know why it should have come to me then so suddenly,
with such strong conviction. Quickly I turned and ran into father’s
room. I looked about. I opened the drawers. Yes—the most of his clothing
was gone! It was as I thought. He did not mean to come back at
all—Deserted! The dreadful word choked up my throat. I knew nothing of
father’s actions, I knew not what he had done, but I would gladly have
gone with him, have stood disgrace with him even, if that were
necessary. I am sure I can not tell why I clung to him with such
desperation. Though I was ignorant and inexperienced, I was also young
and strong, and I was not afraid I would fail to make my living alone in
the world. But kneeling upon the floor I laid my head upon the foot of
the bedstead, and heavy, suffocating sobs came to my lips. Probably I
would never see him again, and if he did not love me, at least, except
that one time, he had not been harsh to me, and he was my father.

At first I thought I would follow him; I would go to the mine and see if
he might not still be there. Then I knew that to make inquiries about
him would probably only increase the danger that threatened, whatever
that danger might be, and though it was justice pursuing him for some
crime, I would have shielded him still. I was powerless. I could do
nothing to recall him; I could do nothing but wait. Wandering about with
only the one thought in my mind, after awhile the house became
positively intolerable. I must do something at least to keep myself
employed, or I should absolutely go wild. My head ached unbearably, and
I had a compressed feeling across my chest.

I took my heavy, scarlet cloak and threw it over my arm. I do not know
why I should have taken this one, for I wore it generally only in the
bitter cold of midwinter. With a strange feeling of dread when any one
looked at me, I went down hurriedly through the settlement to the wharf.
I got into my boat and pushed off. On the water I could breathe better.

I rowed, rowed, rowed, steadily, steadily, taking note of nothing. My
only relief lay in violent exercise. How many miles up the shore I went
I do not know, but it was farther than I had ever reached before, and
when I drew in my oars to rest, like a mighty conflagration, the red
embers of the sun-set’s fire were dying down along the sky.

In this region of the lake, from a quarter to two miles from shore, at
wide intervals isolated rocks rise up out of the water, or mere points
of land covered with a thick growth of underbrush show themselves, so
small they look from a distance like a floating fleck of green that the
waves could drift about at pleasure. The gulls rest upon them
undisturbed by man or beast. Lonely, a thousand times more lonely, these
islands make it seem than a clear, open stretch of water. A few of them,
perhaps, are fifteen or twenty feet in extent. On a dark night it would
have been dangerous to row here.

I felt weak and tired. The lake stretched itself out, quiet and peaceful
as a painted ocean. Not a ripple disturbed the tranquil surface that
mirrored the sky like a glass. I drew my cloak over me and lay down in
my boat. I cared not when I got back, the later the better, for I still
clung to a forlorn hope, that perhaps in the morning father would
return. I was not afraid, for the moon had reached its full and would be
up even as the last halo of the departing day was fading from the west.
Out of the water I saw it come. An enormous globe of maroon fire, it sat
upon the horizon and stained the lake with its magenta rays. Fatigued
and exhausted, I think I must have slept, for when next I looked, bright
and yellow, it was swung high up in the sky, shedding through the air a
splendor like pearl.

I felt glad I had brought my cloak, for it was cold, very cold, and I
would have been almost numb without it. I knew by the position of the
moon that it must be somewhere near eleven o’clock. I sat up, shivered a
little, drew my wrap closer about me and reached out one hand for the
oars—when suddenly, midway in the action, I held it suspended,
motionless! Sometimes there is nothing so startling as the sound of a
human voice. I heard two men talking. For an instant I was paralyzed. My
boat lay close beside one of these little knolls of land I have
described. I could have put out my arm and touched the rank sword-grass
that grew along its border. I did catch hold of it and noiselessly drew
my skiff nearer, into a kind of curve, so that, though I was on the
bright side, the overhanging brambles threw me into shadow, and another
skiff, passing by, would hardly have detected me, when instantly I found
that the men were not on the water. A cold terror crept over me. They
were distant scarcely three yards. I could not see them, but I could
almost feel the underbrush crackling beneath their feet. They evidently,
though, had no knowledge of my presence, and I, not daring to stir,
fairly held my breath. They seemed to be removing something from the
ground and transferring it to their boat which, as I supposed, lay upon
the other side. I could hear them lift and carry, what, I did not know.
It sounded sometimes like stones falling with a partially muffled thud
when they put them down. One of the men in a rough voice said, with a
loud, harsh laugh, evidently resting for a moment,—

“This repays for lots o’ trouble! That was a neat slip we gave ’em all
to-night. By —— I’m glad to be quit o’ the place! Its ——”

“Be quiet can’t you!”

My heart, at a single bound, leaped into my mouth. In these few words,
spoken low and stern, I instantly recognized the voice. It was father’s.
The other man did not reply, but muttered a half intelligible curse.
They were both in the boat now, for I heard the plash of their oars.
Presently father said, in a sharp, quick tone,—

“Take care! Sit down, sit down I tell you!”

Again the man muttered something between his shut teeth. The next moment
they came round into the light and passed me, pulling hard. Then I
recognized the thick-set, burly figure that I had seen last night. He
was in the stern of the boat, and I saw his face again, the same
repulsive face, but with a sullen scowl upon the brutish features.

They were heavily loaded and rowed slowly. They had got well past me
when I heard father say something; what, I did not understand; but the
man, dropping his oars, turned his head and replied, savagely,—

“Look’e yer! You’ve did nothin’ but boss, an’ boss, an’ I’m tired o’ it!
This yer’s as much mine as yourn, and by —— I’d jes as lief make it all
mine!”

Quick as the movement of a cat he changed his position, facing round to
father. Quicker still, he stooped and caught up something in his hand
that by the glint of the moonlight explained their heavy load, and all
the mystery which had been hanging over father’s actions. It was a
rough, jagged piece of silver ore. He raised his powerful arm and struck
father with it on the head. He struck him two or three times. I
screamed. There was a dreadful struggle, and at the same second that I
saw the gleam of father’s pistol I heard its report. The man raised up
his huge figure for an instant, wavered, and fell back heavily with a
cry like a wounded tiger. The boat, without capsizing, tilted beneath
the shock, filled with water, and went down like a stone.

I absolutely do not know how I pushed out from my hiding-place, but with
two or three swift strokes I was on the spot. For an instant there was
most frightful silence. I can see the waves widening their circle yet.
Then, right at my boat’s head, father came to the surface. I was made
strong by the energy of desperation.

With a wild, straining reach I leaned over and caught him by the arm,
and with the other hand I rowed backward towards the knoll. I would have
capsized and gone down rather than have let go my grasp. I was within a
skiff’s length of the little island when just at my side I saw the huge
form of the miner come up. He struggled and made one mighty effort to
catch hold of my boat. No more terrible can the faces of the damned look
than this face that glared up at me from the water. It has haunted me
waking and sleeping. God forgive me, I could do nothing else! I struck
him with the flat side of my oar. Evidently weakened by loss of blood,
exhausted and nearly gone, he fell back and sank almost instantly from
sight.

I worked round to a place where there was only grass growing, and
catching by it drew close to its border. I could never have lifted
father up but that he was sensible and could help himself somewhat. I
got him on the ground, and from the ground into my boat. Then he
fainted.

His head was terribly wounded. I knew I had no time to waste. I was
afraid he would die in the coming hours before I could reach assistance.
I rubbed his hands. I loosened and took off some of his wet clothing. I
folded my cloak over him carefully and seized the oars. Inspired by my
strange burden with a strength superhuman, my boat shot swiftly almost
as if it had been propelled by steam. But the east was already
brightening again with Indian colors when I reached the wharf at last,
at last!

They raised him softly and carried him up to the house. I paid no
attention to their thousand questions. I do not know what I said—I said
it was an accident.

In the weeks of his long fever and delirium, I watched over him day and
night. He did not die. He came back to life. How many times I had
wondered would he be kind, would he be gentle to me now? Ah, poor
father! He was never harsh to any one after that.

When the people came and spoke to him, he would laugh a gentle,
meaningless laugh, and sometimes, holding to me tight, he would point to
a button or color on their dress and say,—

“Pretty, pretty!”

He grew well and strong again, but it had shattered his mind forever.

How he had avoided the officers at the tower in carrying away the
precious metal which he had secreted from time to time, I do not know,
but they suspected nothing. I held utter silence about the incident, and
if the people did connect the missing miner with his mysterious
“accident,” what was there to do? They pitied me that he was simple.
Shall I say it? Perhaps it was better so. A strange, new joy came to me,
as every day I saw the pale eyes, innocent now as those of a child,
follow me about with a grateful look. He was easily managed, and he
seemed to cling to me with an affection that would atone for the long
blank in the past.

I waited until the bitter Winter had gone by, and the first steamer came
in the Summer.

What would become of us in the big, untried city? I had my youth, I had
my health.

I stood upon the deck of the great vessel and saw this mere speck of
land recede in the distance. Father, standing by my side, touched my
arm, and holding out his open hand, said,—

“Pretty, pretty!”

There was a shell in it clean and white, and he looked up at me and
smiled.

Yes, better so, it was better so!

He had gone there a man, strong and wicked. By the strange mysteries of
Providence, he came from it a child, weak and innocent, with a soul
white as the shell which for the moment he cherished in his simple
delight.

When next I raised my eyes, only the cold waters of Lake Superior washed
the horizon, and Silver Islet had vanished from my sight forever.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

                         BOYDELL, THE STROLLER.


He was a strolling player. During the month of February, 1868, I was at
Chicago, gathering up a theatrical troupe to do the provinces. I found
no difficulty in getting my general utility people, but still lacked a
“first old man.” Every person wanted leading business—that was exactly
the trouble. When I was in the midst of my perplexity, I stumbled across
Carey, whom I knew to be out of a job, and offered him the position.

Now I felt that this act was a real charity, for I knew poor Carey had
never received such a chance in all his theatrical days—years, I should
say; for he was well on the shady side of forty. I was amazed,
dumb-founded, when Carey refused it, absolutely, positively refused
it,—Carey? What could explain this astounding fact? There was an odd
twinkle in his eye, and presently the truth leaked out. He had just
married a pretty, young girl, and—and—well, he had promised to quit the
stage; that was the whole of it. But Carey suited me exactly, and I did
not give up. I told him it was all nonsense; his wife would be glad
enough for him to accept the position. Carey evidently began to waver;
the old love for his profession threatened to out-weigh that other love
which had crept into his heart. However, it was finally determined that
I should call upon his wife and submit the matter to her decision.

I found her really young and really pretty, but, also, really in
earnest. Carey could not go, that was certain; at the very first mention
of the subject, she burst into tears. There was nothing left for me
except to retreat, which I did with many apologies.

Then, to soften my despair, Carey told me he knew of a person, one
Boydell, whom he thought would be glad to fill the position. A few days
after, Carey brought him up and gave me an introduction. A tall man he
was, six feet-one or two, with a fine presence, heightened by a peculiar
dignity of manner and voice. There was dramatic power stamped upon his
English face, with its square, massive jaw, firm mouth, and deep-set
eyes. I had no idea of Boydell’s age. I could not have guessed it by
fifteen years one way or the other. He was one of those singular
individuals who might be twenty-five, thirty-five, or fifty. There were
a few wrinkles about his bronzed features, but they were surely not the
wrinkles of time. His thick, brown hair was combed straight back, and
hung down behind his ears. His dress was what might be called the
shabby-genteel. Black from head to foot, nothing in it was new, and one
would almost think nothing ever had been new. The garments had
apparently existed in just their present condition of wear from time
immemorial. The coat was shiny across the back, and a trifle small too,
as though it had originally been cut for a man of less length both in
body and arms. On his feet he wore queer, English shoes, with broad
spreading soles, and the extra space at the toes turned up after the
fashion of a rocker. A silk hat, bell-crowned, with curved rim, such as
we see in pictures of Beau Brummel, was set well back upon his head.

But, notwithstanding these peculiarities, there was something in his
bearing that gave Boydell the appearance of a finished gentleman, and
his fine address added to the impression he created of eminent
respectability. He accepted the position, and our business was speedily
accomplished. I requested him to call on the following day, when I would
be able to make the final arrangements for our departure, and he left
with a dignified bow.

Gathering together a company of actors and actresses from nowhere in
particular, and attempting to form them into something like an organized
troupe, is not by any means the most encouraging work with which one
might employ himself. Again and again my patience was exhausted, and
again and again I resolved to persevere. Several times we had almost
been ready for action, when somebody would “back out,” and throw us once
more into confusion. Now, however, I determined to surmount every
difficulty, no matter what, so that the next train might bear us _en
route_ for the West.

In the midst of the morning’s turmoil, Boydell made his appearance. I
informed him of our arrangements, inquired where he kept his baggage,
and told him I would send for it immediately.

“That will be unnecessary, as I have it with me. This, Sir, is my
baggage.”

While Boydell spoke, he put his hand back into his coat-tail pocket and
quietly drew out a scratch wig. I looked at his face to find something
which might belie the dignified voice, but there was not even the shadow
of a smile breaking up its gravity. His countenance was as composed when
he returned the wig to his pocket as though he had just shown to my
admiring gaze a complete wardrobe of great magnificence. Indeed, I was
so impressed by his aristocratic manner, that the ludicrous aspect of
the interview hardly presented itself to me until it was over.

But I had no time to be amused, and, with the annoying trials that would
turn up where I least expected them, no inclination. When I sent round
for the luggage I found that two of the boys had “shoved up their trunks
at their uncle’s,” and, as it was the last moment, I was compelled to
redeem them. Then I hired a carriage, and went to conduct the
_soubrette_, to the depot. When I arrived in front of the house,
_Madame_, _la mere_, came out and informed me that her daughter could
not go, would not go, unless I gave them fifteen dollars to get her
front teeth away from the dentist’s! What could we do without a
_soubrette_? With a groan I handed over the fifteen dollars.

Playing in the smaller towns along our route, we cleared our traveling
expenses, and got into pretty good working order.

When we arrived at St. Joseph we gathered up all our strength, and came
out in full glory as “The New York Star Company.” There we played for
three weeks to crowded audiences. On “salary days” the money was
forthcoming, a rare occurrence with strolling actors, and of course we
were all greatly delighted.

Under such circumstances our spirits ran high, and each one began to
tell of the particular _rôles_ in which he or she had, in days gone by,
electrified an audience and won applause. Boydell caught the infection.
It happened that we had been running plays in which the “first old man”
was, at best, only a “stick” part, and Boydell fretted considerably at
his ill-luck. One night he came into the green-room, and to his
inexpressible joy found himself cast for the part of “Colonel Damas” in
Bulwer’s comedy of the “Lady of Lyons.” Now this was his pet _rôle_, and
at the intelligence he felt all his dramatic genius kindle into a fresh
flame.

“Boys,” he said, straightening up his dignified form, “Boys, you will
see me make a great hit to-night. The passage commencing, ‘The man who
sets his heart upon a woman is a chameleon, and doth feed on air,’ has
never been to my mind rightly given.”

Many of us had seen him do pretty well before, but now we looked forward
to such an effort as the stage in St. Joseph had never witnessed.

The next evening I repaired to the theater half an hour earlier than
usual, but found Boydell already dressed for the play. His shabby black
coat looked more eminently respectable than ever, and was buttoned over
smooth white linen, or what he made answer the purpose of linen,—half a
yard of paper muslin folded into tucks, and pinned to his paper collar.
In his hand ready for use he held his one valuable—the scratch wig. It
still lacked a few minutes before he would be called, and he
disappeared, as he said, to “steady his nerves.” Various winks and
knowing looks passed among the boys; such disappearances on his part at
this time of the evening were by no means rare or unaccountable.

Boydell came back and went directly on the stage. The excitement behind
the scenes grew, for, although few of us would admit it, we all knew
Boydell was a born actor, and we clustered eagerly around the wings in
breathless expectation.

He started out with dramatic gesture,—

               “‘The man who sets his heart upon a woman
               Is a chameleon, and doth feed on air—
                                 On air—air—’”

Suddenly his voice grew fainter, and his sentences incoherent. Those few
moments he had spent in “steadying his nerves” had taken every line of
the text from his memory. He could barely keep upon his feet and blunder
through his part with thick voice and uncertain step. He was fully aware
of his powerless condition, and came off with a moody, crestfallen
countenance.

When the curtain finally dropped, as it was Monday night, they all
assembled to receive their salary. Boydell stood a little apart from the
others, leaning against a flat. One of the boys came forward and
delivering a long, elaborate speech in the name of all the members,
presented Boydell with a tin snuff-box to hold his wardrobe—“As a token
of their appreciation of the great ‘hit’ he had made, and the glory it
would reflect upon the troupe.”

That night Boydell, from some unknown source, had scraped up two
shillings.

He could take twice the quantity of liquor that would intoxicate any
other man, and beyond a redness of the nose and a flushed glistening
appearance about the “gills,” he manifested no symptom of intemperance.
He had a trick of using his hand as a shield around the glass and
pouring in whisky to the very brim, so he always got a double drink for
one price. When the boys asked him why he held the tumbler in that
peculiar manner, “It was habit,” he said, “merely habit.” I remember at
Lawrence, Kansas, they had unusually small glasses, and he went into a
logical discussion with the bar-keeper to show the evil of the thing. It
was wrong; it looked mean; it would ruin his custom. Not that he
(Boydell) cared; it was nothing to him, it was only the _principle_ he
objected to; it appeared penurious.

Boxing, I found, was the one thing—aside from his acting—upon which
Boydell prided himself. If he heard of a person about the neighborhood
who made any pretentions in this respect, he would walk miles through
rain or mud to vanquish the “presumptuous fool.” I could not keep from
feeling interested in this singular man. Reared in the English colleges,
with the polish of the classics upon him, destined and trained for the
British army, he had given it all up for this worthless, roving,
vagabond life. And yet—although degraded, intemperate, and often
profane—there was still a natural reserve about Boydell that commanded
respect.

Our expenses had been steadily increasing, and our finances did not
prove equal to the demand; at least they would not justify a longer run.
We played two weeks at Leavenworth City, and disbanded, scattering in
all directions.

I went home to M—— with a feeling of unutterable relief. My theatrical
experience had brought me to the determination of letting the stage
alone for the present, or trying it in a different capacity. Devoting my
whole time to a more lucrative business, I heard nothing about any of
the old troupe, and I did not care to see one of them again, unless it
was Boydell. I had little hope of ever meeting him; it would be mere
chance if I did, and I knew he might just as likely now be in Europe or
Australia as in this country. But we were destined once more to come in
contact.

M—— was a flat, muddy, thriving little town in Western Illinois. It had
built a theater, and was a focus for strolling actors and adventurers—a
kind of center, where the remnant of theatrical troupes that had come to
grief straggled in to recruit. The citizens did not consider this a very
distinguishing characteristic to boast of, but in reality it was what
raised the place out of oblivion; otherwise its few thousand inhabitants
might, like their neighbors, have lived for ever in obscurity.

Early last Summer a business engagement took me to the suburbs of this
town. The atmosphere was clear as crystal and glittering with sunshine.
The cherries hung dead-ripe upon the trees; the blackbirds chattered
about them to each other with red-stained bills, and the cats, stretched
lazily in the sunshine, watched the winged robbers with no charitable
feelings. The leaves, if they were thirsty, complained but gently, and
in the dry and pleasant fields the grasshoppers, without flagging, held
a jubilee, and from the level pastures farther off came the sound of
distant bells, and sometimes, close by the roadside, the farmers whetted
their scythes.

Coming towards me a man upon the turnpike was approaching the town on
foot. As we neared each other, old recollections came back upon me. Yes,
that tall erect figure seemed familiar—it was Boydell coming into M——
from parts unknown.

The same coat I had seen do such good service, only a little shinier
now, was buttoned over the same—no, it was likely another piece of paper
muslin. On his feet were a pair of shoes, a present undoubtedly, which
lacked a size or more in length; but this trouble had been remedied by
cutting out the counters, and strapping down his pantaloons to cover his
naked heels. The fact that I knew his high silk hat, the one of olden
times, had lost its crown, was owing entirely to the elevation I gained
by being on horseback. Under other circumstances it would never have
been discovered, for the edges were trimmed smoothly round, and Boydell,
as I said, was tall.

And so I met him again, the same courtly vagabond, the same Boydell of
former days. His bearing was majestic, almost regal; his dress was—a
respectable shell. But there seemed to be a change, too. He did not look
any older, although I noticed a little silver had sprinkled itself
through his thick waving hair since we had parted, but there was
something about his eyes that did not appear natural, and a tired, a
weary expression sat upon his face—an expression I had never seen there
before. Perhaps he had walked many miles.

I looked after him as he went on towards the town, thinking what an
unsettled, wild, worthless life he led, this man with the divine gift of
genius, this vagrant with the clinging air of gentility. Maybe fate was
against him; maybe he really had higher aspirations; but without
friends, without home, the cold, unsympathetic world had crushed them;
and still watching, it suddenly entered my head how easily I could guess
the contents of his coat-tail pocket!

Some little time after this meeting, when Boydell had almost passed out
of my mind, a gentleman called at my office, and during our conversation
told me about a case of destitution that had accidentally come to his
knowledge. At first I listened with well-bred indifference, for the
experience I had acquired thoroughly cured all my philanthropic symptoms
with which I had once been afflicted, but when he related the
circumstances my interest awakened.

A man, a stranger, had stopped at the tavern on the suburbs of the town
and fallen sick. He had no money, no friends, indeed he had not even a
shirt to his back, and the landlord threatened to turn him out, utterly
helpless as he was. I suddenly thought of Boydell, and inquired the
man’s name. My friend could not recall it, but said he represented
himself as an actor; though the landlord did not place much reliance on
this statement, for the fellow had no wardrobe of any description, and
the only thing in his possession was a scratch wig, which a black-leg
would be as likely to own as an actor. This dispelled what little doubt
had remained in my mind. It was Boydell, and something must be done at
once for his relief.

Generosity does not prevail in any profession to a greater extent,
especially among the lower members, than it does in the dramatic. As it
was the hour for rehearsal, we went up to the theater. We told of
Boydell’s condition, and I related what I knew of his history. One
appeal was sufficient; the contribution they made up would at least
relieve his present wants.

There, at the tavern, we found him in a stupor. Neglected, without the
barest necessities, he had had no medical attendance of any kind. In a
room high up under the roof he was lying across a broken bedstead, on a
worn-out husk mattress, with nothing to shade him from the fierce,
blazing sun or the crawling flies that kept up a loud, incessant buzz.
And he had been sick eight days. On the floor old Mounse had crammed
himself into the one shady corner.

Old Mounse was a besotted beggar round town who had arrived at the state
where the rims of his eyelids appeared to be turned inside out and
resembled raw beefsteak. The landlady, who was somewhat more
compassionate than her worser half, fearing that Boydell might die on
her hands, had sent up old Mounse, an hour ago, with a little gruel
which he had swallowed himself, and was then peacefully snoring in the
corner.

We sent immediately for a physician, and employed ourselves in having
Boydell removed to another apartment, where, at least, he might escape
being broiled to death by the sun, or devoured by flies. When the doctor
arrived, we had him fixed in quite comfortable quarters. Boydell’s
disease, as we feared, was a severe form of the typhoid fever. From the
lifeless stupor, he suddenly broke into the wild ravings of delirium, so
that our combined strength could hardly avail to keep him upon the bed.

We reinstated old Mounse on his watch, only with strict orders that the
granulated eyelids were to be kept wide open. Old Mounse was one of
those rare persons with the _delirium tremens_, who had hovered on the
verge of dissolution for thirty years, and still lived along. Palsied
and feeble, and crippled and unshaven, and dirty and whiny, he just
managed to keep himself on this side of the grave. The adjective “old,”
which had become a prefix to his name, could not have been better
applied, for his clothes, too, were ready at any moment to keep him
company and return to their original element. Old Mounse’s one merit
was, he had become so aged that he could just do what he was told and
nothing more. The case had assumed altogether a new aspect to him, now
that Boydell seemed to have friends.

Every day the doctor reported the condition of his patient, which grew
more and more unfavorable, until one morning he came and told us he
thought Boydell had not over twenty-four hours to live. We went
immediately to the tavern with him. Boydell, for the first time since
his illness, was perfectly conscious. Here, in the silence of this
barren room, unhallowed by the presence of sorrowing ones, the wild,
reckless life was drawing to a close. It seemed as if the specter hands
of death were already stretched out to snap the last binding thread. The
face on the pillow, haggard and ghastly with its hollow cheeks, very
little resembled the one over which that weary, indefinable expression,
the shadow, the forerunner of the fever, had crept but three weeks ago.
Boydell recognized me, and motioned to a chair beside the bed. He made
two or three efforts before he spoke.

“I am going to die—”

We could only answer by silence. It was something terrible to see this
strong man, now weaker than an infant, lie calmly on the brink of
eternity; even old Mounse dropped his beefy lids, and drew back with a
subdued sniffle of awe. We asked if there was any thing that he wished
done. After a little he turned his head that his voice might the better
reach us.

“I have relatives—it will not matter to them that I am gone; they hold
themselves up in the world; it will only be a disgrace wiped out; but—I
would like them to know, and when I am dead, why—I wish you would please
write to—to my brother. I have not heard from him for nearly fifteen
years.”

He closed his eyes, and seemed to dream, but presently roused himself,
and looked anxiously about the room.

“There was something else—oh, yes. Tell him that—I am gone. He is rector
of St. Paul’s Church, S——, Lower Canada.” He paused and then said
slowly, as though repeating his words for the first time, “It is no
matter—but tell him I am—dead.”

He felt up and down the seam of the quilt feebly with his fingers, then
closed his eyes again in unconsciousness.

All day the dread phantom hands seemed to hover closer to that quivering
thread of life, until sometimes we almost thought it broken; but at
nightfall they receded, and the shred strengthened. There was a change
for the better, and Boydell fell into soft, natural slumber.

Several days after this it occurred to me that if Boydell had relatives
in Canada who were well off, they ought to help him in his time of need.
Without making him or any one else acquainted with my intention, I wrote
a letter setting forth Boydell’s illness and utterly destitute condition
among strangers. As they held no communication with Boydell, they would
hardly be willing to send him the money. I was unknown, and to assure
them it was no imposition, I wrote if they wished to send any
assistance, direct “To the Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, M——,
Illinois.”

About a week later that minister came to me and showed a letter
post-marked S——, which contained a check for three hundred dollars. It
specified that the money was to be given to Boydell only on condition
that he would promise to renounce the stage forever, and so soon as he
was able to travel, come home to his relatives. I felt delighted at the
success of my plan, for of course he would accept the money, and whether
he fulfilled his promise afterwards by renouncing the stage and going
home to Canada, which would be extremely doubtful, I considered was no
business of mine.

When we entered his room, Boydell was propped up almost in a sitting
posture by pillows. The window-shutter had been thrown partly open to
admit the air, and a narrow streak of sunlight fell across the bed. We
told him of the good news, and after we had made him understand how it
had all come about, read the letter aloud. He listened in perfect
silence, without changing position, and when it was finished, took the
check and said,—

“Three hundred dollars?”

“Yes,” we said, “it is three hundred dollars.”

He held the slip of paper in his emaciated hands, that trembled with
weakness, and repeated,—

“Three hundred dollars—”

He seemed trying to convince himself of its reality; but suddenly a
bewildered expression broke over his face, and he looked from the check
to the letter, which still laid open. We asked Boydell if he wished to
hear it again, but at the second reading his bewilderment only seemed to
increase. He looked at us with an inquiring gaze that wandered round the
bare, desolate room, and settled on the strip of blue sky in the window.
Then he said, as if asking himself the question,—

“Give up the stage? Renounce the stage?”

His eyes came back to the money in his hand. Presently he folded it up,
pressing the creases with his thin fingers, and slowly holding it out,
shook his head saying,—

“Send it back.”

The ribbon of sunlight had crept further and further round until it
stretched itself across the broad, white forehead, and we stood in
greater awe than when the angel of death had hovered there. Suddenly
before us a dazzling ray had flashed out from the black waste of that
sinful life. The unbroken check went back to Canada.

A month later I was riding in the country. A purple light overhung the
shadowy prairie, which stretched away, broad, level and without bound.
Occasionally a wild bird rose up and darted with swift wings, seeking a
resting place, for already the September moon waited the coming night.
Nearer, the tall weeds raised themselves from the great, soundless ocean
of grass, like the masts of receding vessels. A single wagon, the only
object on all the void prairie, stood out bold and sharp against the
bright line of the horizon, and clearly defined above the driver, high
up on top of the hay, the figure of a man cut the sky. Even at that
distance I knew it was Boydell.

Some one had given him a little money, and with renewed health and
spirits he was going out of M——. Whither?

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

                            THE DEATH-WATCH.


“Didn’t you hear it?”

“When?”

“Just now.”

“No.”

“They say it foretells death. Hush!”

The two men sat motionless. Not a sound broke the silence, not even a
creak of the old boards in the floor, or a sigh of the wind, or a
flapping shutter.

“They say it foretells death. I heard it last night and the night
before. What’s that?”

“Nothing. It’s stiller than a graveyard.”

“I heard it last night, and the night before about this time, near one.
’Taint a very pleasant sound, and this old garret’s dismal enough any
way.”

“Monk, you’re afeard. It’s nothing. Don’t waste no more time. I’m
dead-tired and sleepy. You wouldn’t have been in this old hole now if it
hadn’t been for Peters.”

“No, if it hadn’t been for Peters, the strike, like enough, would have
took. But he won’t stand in nobody’s way again.”

While Monk spoke, he drew out a sharp, slender knife, and ran his finger
along the blade.

“I tell you, Shiflet, we must do it the night after this blast’s done,
and the men in the shed say the coal will run out on the 6th, that’s
to-morrow. When Peters is fixed, the managers will have to give in or
quit runnin’ the furnace.”

Both men sat with their arms leaning on the table, and the flickering
light of the tallow candle between them showed two faces, rough,
begrimed by smoke and soot, and disfigured by evil passions, that grew
fiercer as they calmly plotted against the life of a fellow-being.

“We’ll meet at one, where the roads cross. It’ll be quiet then, and
Peters’s house is alone.”

“I’ll be all right,” said Shiflet, with a grin that rendered his
brute-like countenance doubly repulsive. “I’m confounded tired. Bring
your candle and light me down them infernal stairs.”

The men stood up. Monk, small and slim, was dwarfed by the almost giant
stature of his companion. With a few parting words as to secrecy and
silence, they separated.

Monk stood on the upper step until Shiflet disappeared, then closed the
door and replaced the candle on the table.

The room, neither large nor small, was a mere hole, smoked, dirty, and
unplastered, high up in a frame tenement-house. Two or three chairs, an
old chest of drawers, a rickety bedstead, and pine table, composed its
furniture. Some old boots and broken pieces of pig-iron lay scattered
about. The small, box-shaped window was set just below where the ceiling
or roof sloped to the wall. The only door led directly to the stairs
that went down two, three flights to the ground. There were many such
places in Agatha, where the furnace-hands lived.

Monk walked rapidly up and down the room, as if making an effort to wear
off the excitement that the last few moments had brought upon him. His
features had lost much of the malignant expression, which was by no
means habitual. His countenance was not hardened or stamped with the
impress of crime like Shiflet’s, who had just parted from him at the
door—a countenance in which every trace of conscience had long ago been
erased. Monk’s face was neither good nor bad, neither bright nor dull;
but he was a man easily wrought into a passion, governed by impulse.

Crossing to the table, he slung his coat over a chair, and stretched out
his hand to extinguish the light. Midway in the action he suddenly
checked himself, looked hurriedly around the room for an instant, and
stood motionless, with inclined head, listening intently. Not a sound
disturbed the stillness. Pinching out the light, he threw himself on the
bed, and in the darkness there soon came the heavy, regular respiration
of sleep.

The house at Agatha nestled under the north cliff. A hundred feet above
them the railroad lost itself in the black mouth of a tunnel and
reappeared beyond, a high wall of trestlework stretching southward down
the valley to Ely’s Mines. Hours ago, the toiling men and cattle had
lain down to rest, and now the wild, rocky hills around slept in the
moonlight. No sound broke upon the stillness but the muffled puff, puff,
of the furnace, and a murmur of frogs that rose and fell interruptedly
along the shrunken water-course. The cabins under the cliff shone white
and sharp; the iron on the metal-switch flashed with a million gems; the
rails upon the trestle, receding, turned to silver, and the foliage of
early Summer glittered on the trees. A few passionless stars blinked
feebly in the yellow light, where the hill-tops cut against the sky, and
sank below the verge. Calmly, peacefully waned the night—calmly and
peacefully, as though the spirit of evil had not stalked abroad plotting
the death and ruin of men’s bodies and souls.

That narrow spot of ground, with the houses down in the valley, formed
the world for four hundred people. The furnace-hands and their families
saw nothing beyond the hills and rocks that hemmed in their village;
knew nothing of the mad tumults outside. An untaught, sturdy race of
men, they differed little one from another. Every day, when the sun
rose, they went forth to toil, and every night, when the great furnace
over the creek glimmered red, they lay down to sleep. But ignorance and
superstition filled their hearts, and anger, and hate, and jealousy,
were as rife among them as in the crowded cities.

Another day passed, and the night which followed it was dark and cloudy.
Near midnight, the great bell signalled for the last run of iron.
Occasionally blue flames leaped up from the furnace, lurid as the fiery
tongues of a volcano. The long and narrow roof brooded over the sand-bed
like the black wings of some monster bird hovering in the air. Under its
shadow groups of men were but wavering, dusky figures. Suddenly, as an
electric flash, a dazzling yellow glare broke out, and a fierce,
scorching, withering blast swept from an opening that seemed the mouth
of hell itself. Slowly out of the burning cavern a hissing stream of
molten iron came creeping down. It crawled, and turned and crawled, rib
after rib, until it lay like some huge skeleton stretched upon the
ground. A thin vapor floated up in the sulphurous air and quivered with
reflected splendor. The scarlet-shirted men looked weird in the
unearthly brightness. The yellow glow faded to red, that deepened to a
blood-colored spot in the night. The bell rang to discharge the hands,
and squads of men broke up, scattering in the dark.

Monk went to his garret-room, hesitated a moment at the door, then
passed in and shut it so violently that the floor shook. He struck a
match. In the brimstone light a horrible demon countenance wavered, blue
and ghastly; but, when the candle flamed, it grew into Monk’s face,
covered by the black scowl of rage that had disfigured it once before—a
rage that was freshly roused.

“If I’d had my knife, I’d have done it just now, when I stumbled against
him. But he dies to-morrow night at—”

The words froze on his lips, and his black scowling face was suddenly
overspread by a strange pallor. He stood motionless, as if chained to
the floor, his eyes darted quickly about, and he seemed to suspend his
very breath.

A clear, distinct, ticking sound occurred at regular intervals for a
minute, and left profound silence.

Monk raised his head.

“It’s a sign of coming death. That’s for Peters. There it is again!”

The strange sound, like a faint metallic click, repeated itself several
times.

“D—n it! I don’t like to hear the thing. But there _will_ be a sudden
death.”

Time after time Monk heard at intervals the same faint sound, like the
ticking of a watch for a minute, and it made his blood run cold. He
found himself listening to it with terror, and in the long silence,
always straining his ears to catch it, always expecting, dreading its
repetition, until the thing grew more horrible to him than a nightmare.
Sometimes he would fall into a doze, and, wakening with a start, hear
it, while cold perspiration broke in drops on his forehead.

It grew intolerable. He swore he would find the thing and kill it, but
it mocked him in his search. The sound seemed to come from the table,
but when he stood beside the table it ticked so distinctly at the window
that he thought he could put his finger on the spot; but when he tried
to, it had changed again, and sounded at the head of his bed. Sometimes
it seemed close at his right, and he turned only to hear it on the other
side, then in front, then behind. Again and again he searched, and swore
in his exasperation and disappointment.

The sound became exaggerated by his distempered imagination, till he
trembled lest some one else should hear this omen which so plainly
foretold his anticipated crime. Once an hour dragged by, and his unseen
tormentor was silent. His eyes, that had glittered with deathly hatred,
now wore a startled look, and wandered restlessly about the room.

An owl, that perched on the topmost branch of a high tree near by,
screamed loud and long. A bat flew in at the open window, banged against
the ceiling, and darted out.

Monk shivered. Leaning his head between his arms, he drummed nervously
on the table with his fingers. Instantly the clear metallic click
sounded again. He looked up, and a strange light broke into his face, a
mixed expression of amazement and fright. For a moment he seemed
stupefied, then raising his hand he tapped lightly against the wood with
his finger-nail. The last tap had not died until it was answered by what
seemed like a fainter repetition of itself.

Uttering a fearful oath, Monk recoiled from the table, but, as if drawn
back and held by a weird fascination, he sat an hour striking the hard
surface with his nails, and pausing for the response that each time came
clear and distinct.

Gray streaks crept along the east, and quivered like a faded fringe
bordering the black canopy. Still he sat tapping, but no answer came. He
waited, listened vainly; no echo, no sound, and the dull, hueless light
of the cloudy morning glimmered at his window. Then he threw himself on
his bed, and fell into restless slumbers.

A damp thick fog enveloped the houses in its slimy embrace. At nightfall
its reeking folds gathered themselves from the ground, and a noiseless
drizzle came sullenly down.

Monk had not stirred from his room all day. The feverish sleep into
which he had fallen fled from him before noon, and now he stood at his
window looking out into the blackness. A clammy air blew against his
face. He stretched out his hand and drew it back suddenly, as if he had
touched the dead. It was cold and moist. He rubbed it violently against
his clothes, as though he could not wipe off the dampness. A tremor
seized upon him. Hark! was that the dripping of water? No. A sickly
smile played over his countenance. He went to the table and tapped
lightly with his fingers, as he had done before. In another moment the
taps were answered, and he involuntarily counted as they came,
one—two—three—four—five—six—seven—then all was silent. He made the call
a second time, he tried it over and over, and at each response it ticked
seven times, never more, never less, but seven times clearly,
distinctly. Suddenly he sprang up, and through shut teeth hissed,—

“The seventh day, by Heaven! But I’ll cheat you—I’ll not kill him!”

He darted noiselessly down the stairs, and struck out through the woods.
In half an hour he emerged on the edge of a clearing, a dozen yards from
a chopper’s cabin. Creeping stealthily to the door he shook it, then
after a moment’s irresolution cried out,—

“Peters! Peters! look out for Shiflet. He has sworn to murder you
to-night.”

Without waiting for a reply he sprang away, and was quickly lost among
the trees.

A moment afterward a tall form arose out of the shadow of a stump near
the cabin, and passed rapidly in an opposite direction.

At the summit of the hill east of Agatha, a steep precipice is formed by
a great, bare, projecting rock. From the valley, its outline resembles
an enormous face in profile, and they call it “The Devil’s Head.” The
full moon rendered the unbroken mass of cloud translucent, producing a
peculiar sinister effect. The mist still blew through the air, but in
the zenith there was a dull ashen hue, and the surrounding cloud was the
color of earth. The far-off hills loomed up majestic, terrible, against
the gloom; nearer objects were strangely magnified in the tawny light.
At the foot of this phantom crag, on a terrace, is the ore-bank and
blackened coal-shed. Below rose the metal-stack, from whose stone hearth
a waste of sand sloped gently to the creek. The furnace squatted grim
and black. Its blood-shot eye was shut; its gaping throat uttered no
sigh, no groan; its throbbing pulse was stilled—the fierce, struggling
monster was dead. The only bright spot in all the valley was the yellow
circle made by the watchman’s lantern in the coal-shed.

After leaving the “choppings,” Monk threaded his way through the forest,
coming out at last on the open road. This road led directly over the
“Devil’s Head,” and entered the valley by a steep descent half a mile to
the south. At the precipice Monk paused. The wind eddied with a mournful
wail, and the constant motion of tall trees gave the scene almost the
wavering, unsubstantial appearance of a vision. There was something
oppressive in this strange midnight twilight, but Monk did not feel it.
He only felt relief, inexpressible relief; he only stopped there to
breathe, to breathe freely once more with the heavy weight thrown from
him.

After a moment he ran carelessly down the hill, passed under the
ore-cars and into the coal-shed. He hailed Patterson, the watchman, and
the lantern threw gigantic shadows of the two men over the ground. Then
he walked along the narrow cinder-road leading to the bridge over the
creek. Sometimes the willows, that grew on either side, swept their damp
hair against his face. An hour ago he would have started convulsively,
now he heeded not, for he was free and light of heart.

Monk reached the stairs, and ascended to his room. As he passed in, the
powerful figure of Shiflet sprang upon him from behind. There was a
scuffle, some muttered oaths, then a heavy fall. Monk lay stretched upon
the floor motionless, lifeless, and the echo of fleeing steps died away,
leaving the place still as the now silent death-watch.




[Illustration]

                        THE MAN AT THE CRIB.[1]


One morning in the Spring of 1867—whether in April or May I am now
unable certainly to determine, but think it was in the latter month—I
was sitting at the breakfast-table, leisurely reading the morning paper,
and enjoying my last cup of coffee, when my eye accidentally fell upon
the following advertisement:—

  “WANTED—A reliable man to take charge of the Crib. An unmarried German
  preferred. One who can come well recommended, and give bond for
  faithful performance of duty, will receive a liberal salary. Apply
  immediately to the Board of Public Works, Pumping Department, Nos. 15
  and 17 South Wells Street.”

Footnote 1:

  The Crib is the name given to the isolated structure at the opening of
  the Chicago Water Works tunnel, in the lake, two miles from the shore.

My attention was arrested by the thought of so strange an occupation,
and whether any one would be found willing to accept the situation and
live alone in the crib two miles from the shore. There all companionship
would be cut off, and I wondered what effect the utter solitude and
confinement in the small round building rising out of the water, with
little in the scenery to relieve the eye, and nothing to rest the ear
from the continual dashing of the waves against the frame sides—I
wondered what effect it would have upon the occupant.

It happened I had been lecturing before a class of medical students in
one of our colleges upon the relation of mind to body, and it occurred
to me that this crib-tender might prove an illustration of my theory.
His mind would have afforded it an opportunity to prey upon itself, and
might become perverted. Under certain circumstances the mental exerts an
influence over the physical system, aside from the voluntary volition of
the will, and it frequently transpires that what is mere illusion in the
spiritual nature appears a reality to the material, so closely are the
two linked together.

My interest being awakened, I secretly determined that I would try to
discover who accepted this situation, and notice, if possible, what
effect it would produce upon the keeper. Some time later I learned that
the above advertisement had been answered the same day (the exact date I
can not remember) by a German, one Gustav Stahlmann, who presented
himself at the address indicated, and applied for the situation. After a
slight examination he proved satisfactory in every respect. His
recommendations were of the highest kind and bore testimony to his
strict integrity and upright character.

The position was accordingly offered to him, provided he would be
willing to comply with certain conditions. First, that in accepting it
he would bind himself to remain in the situation at least two years;
and, secondly, that during that period, he would upon no occasion or
pretense whatever, leave the crib. He manifested little hesitation in
assenting to these requirements, as the salary was good, and an
opportunity afforded for resting from the severe labor to which he had
been accustomed.

All necessary arrangements were completed, and upon the following day,
with his dog for the sole companion of his future home, he had been
taken out and instructed in the duties of his office. These were few and
light, consisting mainly of attention to the water-gates of the tunnel,
opening and closing them as required, and removing any obstructions
which might clog their action. At night he was to trim and light the
lamp which had been placed on the apex of the roof as a warning to
passing vessels. This was all; the remainder of the time lay at his own
disposal. A boy might readily have accomplished this labor, and he
congratulated himself upon his good luck in securing so easy a
berth—one, too, which yielded a good income.

The first time I saw Stahlmann myself was soon after he had accepted the
situation. If I recollect rightly, he told me he had been a month on the
Crib. I had rowed myself out from the foot of Twelfth Street in a small
boat.

At this early period in its history the Crib was not so well finished
and comfortable as now, but was bare and barn-like, being in fact
nothing more than a round unplastered house, rising out of the lake. The
wooden floor, which was some fifteen feet above the water, contained in
its center a well about six feet in diameter, around which arose the
iron rods of the water-gates. A small room, the only apartment, had been
partitioned off by three plank walls from the southeastern part of the
circular interior, and furnished for the abode of the keeper. If it were
rough, there was all present that he could reasonably desire for his
comfort. A sufficient supply of provisions were delivered to him once a
month by a tug-boat from the city.

I found Stahlmann to be a man rather above the medium height, with a
broad muscular frame, but there were no evidences of sluggishness in his
movements; on the contrary, his elasticity and gracefulness betokened
great powers of endurance, and indicated to me activity both of body and
mind. He was perhaps thirty-five years of age, and his frank, open
countenance was marked by regular features of a somewhat intellectual
cast; honesty and principle were plainly visible in his face, and a
ready command of language betrayed considerable education. He impressed
me as superior to the majority of men in his rank of life, and from this
conclusion I was none the less driven by the appearance of his coarse
and soiled clothing. I engaged him in conversation, into which he was
easily drawn, and I was surprised by the native love of the beautiful
which he evidently possessed. He seemed to take great pleasure in
pointing out the beauties in the scene that laid before our view.

The sun was scarcely an hour high, and we could hardly turn our eyes
eastward for the splendor of his rays reflected on the water. To the
north the sea-like horizon was flecked by the white sails of retreating
vessels, some hull-down in the distance, others uncertain specks
vanishing from our range of vision. Stretching along the shore to the
westward, Chicago shot a hundred spires, glistening and glorified, into
the morning sunlight, while just opposite us stood the grim lighthouse,
a motionless sentinel keeping watch over the harbor.

I admitted the attraction of the scene, and made an effort to turn the
conversation to his private life. He was easily led to talk of himself,
although he did it in a natural and unaffected manner. I gathered that
he was born in Bavaria, and that when he had attained his sixteenth
year, some difficulty had driven his parents to this country. They were
well educated, but misfortune compelled them, on their arrival, to put
their son to labor. The instruction he had received in the Fatherland
had evidently strengthened his powers of observation and quickened his
understanding.

I asked him if he did not find his life at the Crib very tiresome, and
what he did to pass away the time. I remarked that I believed, if I were
in his place, I would be smitten most fearfully with the blues. He
laughed good humoredly, and said he had never been troubled in that
manner, that there were daily a great number of visitors,
curiosity-seekers, which the Crib attracted, as it was altogether novel,
and had but just been completed. Then he said he had his dog for
companionship, and that they lived very pleasantly together. He was
evidently much attached to this animal, whom he called Caspar, for he
frequently interrupted the conversation to stroke it on the head. I was
astonished to find him well acquainted with the current news of the day,
but he readily explained this, for usually some one who came out carried
a paper, which was willingly given to him, and having nothing else to
occupy his time he read it much more carefully than we do who are in the
turmoil of the city.

Towards the middle of the day I left him, almost envying his peaceful
life and happy contentment, yet doubting if this would last long, for,
after the novelty wore away, I could not help thinking that he might
find his solitary existence less pleasing. I had become wonderfully
interested in this man, and determined to pay him another visit when I
could again find half a day to devote to pleasure.

It was not, however, until the following September that I could spare
time for another trip to the Crib. This visit, as I said, had been
prompted out of curiosity to watch the effects of this solitary life
upon Stahlmann. Although four months had elapsed, I found him situated
just as I had left him, and by the appearance of the surroundings, I
might have almost believed it was but yesterday I had looked upon him.
When I remarked this to him, I noticed a peculiar smile play across his
features, and it struck me that his face had not the same happy
expression which had so pleased me before. I observed, too, that he
carried himself in a listless manner, very unlike his former erect
bearing. I found him, however, just as readily drawn into conversation,
although some of his old enthusiasm was gone, and he manifested an
evident disinclination to speak of himself, for when I made an effort to
bring up the subject, he displayed considerable skill in evading it.
This was repeated again and again until I found that he would not be
forced to it, but I saw full well by his actions that he had already
grown tired of his monotonous life. All my jokes about the solitude,
which he had laughed at before, were now received in silence and with
furtive glances. Evidently it had become a serious matter, and I dropped
the disagreeable subject.

He inquired most eagerly for any news, and said he had not seen a paper
for almost a week, as the wet weather had interfered with visitors,
preventing any one from coming out. When I left he repeatedly invited me
to come again, which I promised to do, as in our slight intercourse we
had struck up a mutual friendship. My interest, too, had been increased,
as I plainly saw that his life had become distasteful to him, and I had
considerable curiosity to ascertain whether he would, according to his
promise, remain the two full years upon the Crib; at any rate, I
concluded that I would not lose sight of him.

Directly after this visit, business arrangements called me away from
home, and detained me in New York City without interruption until last
May. During this period, of course, I had no means of learning any thing
whatever concerning Gustav Stahlmann. On my return, the first glimpse I
caught of the familiar lake recalled him to my memory, and revived the
old interest. I determined to renew our former acquaintance, but found,
to my great disappointment, that all visitors to the Crib had been
prohibited by the authorities soon after I was called from home; yet I
did not give up in my attempt to find out if he still remained in his
situation. After many fruitless inquiries, I finally learned that he was
dead. This was the only knowledge I could gain, and, disappointed by the
sad intelligence, I dismissed the subject from my mind.

A week ago I made the startling discovery that the Crib at the eastern
terminus of the lake tunnel, within the year following its completion,
had been the scene of a tragedy, the particulars of which, when I
learned them, thrilled me with horror, and called forth my profoundest
sympathy for the poor victim. The whole circumstance had been so
carefully kept secret by an enforced reticence on the part of the
authorities, that beyond two or three individuals no one in Chicago had
the slightest suspicion of the sickening drama which was enacted but two
miles from her shores.

I was walking through the Court House looking at the arrangement of the
newly erected portion of the building, and while in the rooms occupied
by the Water Board, I accidentally stumbled upon an old memorandum book
which had evidently been misplaced during the recent removal of this
department from their old quarters on Wells Street to the first floor of
the west wing. Upon examination it proved to be a kind of diary, and was
written with pencil in the German character. On the inside of the front
cover, near the upper right hand corner, was inscribed the name Gustav
Stahlmann, and underneath a date—1865. A small portion of the book, the
first part, was filled with accounts, some of them of expenditures,
others memoranda of days’ work in different parts of the city, and under
various foremen. But it was to the body of the book that my attention
was particularly called. This was in the journal form, being a record of
successive occurrences with the attending thoughts. The entries were
made at irregular intervals and without any regard to system. Sometimes
it had been written in daily for a considerable period, then dropped,
and taken up again apparently at the whim of the owner. In places there
appeared no connection between the parts separated by a break of even
short duration; at others the sense was obscure, and could only be
attained by implication. The earliest records in the second part were in
June, 1867, and I found dates regularly inserted as late as the November
following. In December they ceased entirely; afterward the diary, if
such it might then be called, was either by the day or the week, or
without any direct evidence as to the time when the circumstances
therein narrated had occurred. In fact, throughout the whole of the
concluding portion there was nothing to indicate that the matter had not
been written on a single occasion, except the variations which almost
every person’s hand-writing exhibits when produced under different
degrees of nervous excitement.

From this black morocco memorandum book; from the hand-writing of Gustav
Stahlmann himself, I learned the incidents of his career after I parted
from him. They constitute the history of a fate so horrible in every
respect, that I shudder at the thought that any human being was doomed
to experience it.

The main facts in this narrative I have translated, sometimes literally,
at others using my own language, where the thoughts in the original were
so carelessly or obscurely expressed as to render any other course
simply impossible.

It seems, as I supposed, that when Stahlmann was first settled in the
Crib, he was greatly pleased with his situation. The weather was mild
and beautiful; the fresh air blowing across the water was a grateful
change from the close and dusty atmosphere of Chicago. Many of his old
friends came out to take a look at his new quarters, and almost surveyed
them with envy while listening to an account of his easy, untroubled
life. At dusk, after he had lighted his lamp, and it threw out its rays,
he would watch to see how suddenly in the distance, as if to keep it
company, the great white beacon in the lighthouse would flash out,
burning bright and clear. Then along the western shore the city lights,
one by one, would kindle up, multiplying into a thousand twinkling stars
that threw a halo against the sky. Afterwards the soughing of the waves
as they washed up the sides of his abode, fell pleasantly on his ear,
and lulled him to sleep with Caspar lying at his feet.

But it seemed as if the same day came again and again, for still the
waters broke around him, and still night after night the same lights
flashed and burned. Then the time appeared to become longer, and he
watched more eagerly for the arrival of some visitors, but, if his
watching had been in vain, he went wearily to sleep at night with a
feeling of disappointment, only to waken and go through the same
cheerless routine. Sometimes for a whole week he would not see a single
human being nor hear the sound of a human voice, save his own when he
spoke to the dog, who seemed by sagacious instinct to sympathize in his
master’s lonesome position, and capered about until he would attract his
attention, and be rewarded by an approving word and caress upon the
head.

Visitors had become less and less frequent until the last of September,
when they ceased altogether. Stahlmann in trying to explain this to
himself correctly concluded that the authorities must have prohibited
them, as he had heard some time previously they entertained such an
intention, although he had been reluctant to believe it, and still
vainly hoped that it might not be true. But time only confirmed the
suspicion which he had been so unwilling to accept, and although within
two miles of a crowded city, he found himself completely isolated, cut
off, as it were, from the human race.

Then he searched for something that might amuse him and help wear away
the interminable days, but he found nothing. He would have been glad
even if only the old newspapers had been preserved that he might re-read
them, but they were destroyed, and he owned no books. His former severe
labor, performed in company with his fellow men, was now far preferable
in his eyes to this complete solitude, with nothing to occupy his hands
or mind. He saw the vessels pass until they seemed to become companions
for him in his loneliness; he had watched them all the Summer, but the
winds grew chill and rough, sweeping out of sullen clouds, and
boisterously drove home the ships.

Stahlmann found himself utterly alone on the wide lake, and the fierce
blasts howled around his frame house, covering it with spray from the
lashing billows that seemed ready to engulf it. Crusts of ice formed and
snapped, rattling down to the waves. Heavy snow fell, but did not whiten
the unchanging scenery, for it was drowned in the waste of waters. Night
after night he lit the beacon and looked yearningly westward to the
starred city. Then the solitude grew intolerable. It was like the vision
of heaven to the lost spirits shut out in darkness forever. He was
alone, all alone, craving even for the sound of a kindred voice, so that
he cried out in his anguish. The flickering lights he was watching threw
their rays over thousands of human beings, yet there was not one to
answer his despairing call.

Sleep would no longer allow him to forget that he was shut out from all
human society, for he lost consciousness of his lonesome position only
to find himself struggling in some nightmare ocean, where there was no
eye to see his distress. Then he would be awakened by the dog rubbing
his nose against his face, and knew he had groaned aloud in his troubled
slumber, and Caspar had crawled closer, as if to comfort his unhappy
master. Sometimes the tempter whispered escape—escape from this Crib,
which had been so correctly named, for it had, indeed, become a dismal
cage. He felt himself strong to combat the waves in flying from the
horrible solitude; he could swim twice the distance in his eagerness to
be once again among his fellow beings; but his high principles shrank in
horror from the thought of violating a promise. He had solemnly given
his word that he would remain upon the place, and it bound him stronger
than chains of iron. He cast the thought, which had dared to arise in
his mind, from him with a sense of shame that it had been a moment
entertained.

Early on one bitter cold night, when his house was thick-ribbed with
ice, Stahlmann noticed a great light, which increased until it illumined
all the western sky. He saw the city spires as plainly as though bathed
in the rays of the setting sun, and the lurid glare lit up the waters,
making the surrounding blackness along the lake shore appear more
terrible. The fire brightened and waned, brightened and waned again. He
watched it far into the night, and thought of the thousands of anxious
faces that were turned toward the same light, until he fell into a
troubled sleep, yearning for the sight of a single countenance. This
fire which he witnessed must have been the great conflagration on Lake
Street that occurred in February, 1868.

He was sitting one dull, cloudy afternoon, looking out over the dreary
waves, when his attention was attracted by the strange behavior of
Caspar. The dog was greatly excited; it would jump about him, whining
and howling, then run to the door, which stood partly open, and look
down into the water, at the same time giving a short, quick yelp. This
was repeated so frequently that Stahlmann was aroused from his gloomy
reverie. He followed it to the threshold, and saw for an instant some
black object that the waves threw up against the Crib. A second time it
arose, and Stahlmann plunged into the water with the quick instinct that
prompts a brave man to peril his own life in attempting to save another
from drowning. In one moment more he had grasped the body, and fastened
it to the rope ladder that hung down the western side of the Crib. Then
mounting it himself, he drew it up after him on to the floor.

It was the form of a young man, and Stahlmann eagerly kneeled over it,
hoping yet to find a faint spark of vitality. A glance showed him that
the body must have been in the water several hours, for it was already
somewhat bloated; but even then, in his mad desire to restore life, he
rubbed the stiffened limbs; but the rigid muscles did not relax. He
wrung the water from the black hair, which in places was short and
crisp, looking as if it might have been singed by fire. The features
were not irregular, but the open eyes had a stony, death-glaze on them,
and the broad forehead was cut across in gashes which had evidently been
made by the waves beating it against the walls of the Crib. The hands
were clenched and slightly blistered.

Stahlmann’s frenzied exertions could not call back the departed spirit,
and he sat gazing wildly upon it in his bitter disappointment. Then a
startling thought broke suddenly into his mind—What, out in his desolate
and watery home, could he do with the dead? Where could he put the
stiffened corpse? But as the night came on, he arose to light the
beacon; then descended again immediately, taking up his former position
by the lifeless form, for it appeared to exert a peculiar fascination
over him; he felt a strange kind of pleasure in the presence of the form
of a human being, even though it were dead. He seemed to have found a
companion, and the thought, which had startled him at first died from
his memory.

Hour after hour as he sat beside the corpse; its strange influence
increased, until it gradually filled up in his troubled heart the aching
void which had so yearned for society. He left it only as necessity
called him away to attend to his duties, each time returning with
increasing haste. Day by day the spell continued, and he grew to regard
the dead body with all the tenderness he would have manifested toward a
living brother. He did not shrink from the cold, clammy skin when he
raised the head to place it on a stool, but sat and talked to it. He
asked why it looked at him with that stony glare, and why its face had
turned that dark and ugly color; but when no answer came, he said he
realized that it was dead and could not speak. Then the terrible truth
flashed upon him. With a groan he saw that he could keep the corpse no
longer, and the thought which had startled him once before crept in
again with increased significance. Where could he bury it? In the bottom
of the lake, where nothing would disturb its peace. He gently let it
down into the water, and, as he saw it disappear, he awoke to wild grief
at losing it, and would have plunged in to rescue it the second time,
but it was gone from sight forever.

Might not this body have been one of the lost from the ill-fated Sea
Bird, which burned in the beginning of April, 1868, a few miles north of
the city? Stahlmann must have found it about this time.

His grief for the loss of his dead companion grew upon him each day, and
rendered the solitude more unendurable. Solitude? It was no longer
solitude, for the place was peopled by the phantom creations of his
inflamed imagination. Here a part of the diary is altogether incoherent,
showing into what utter confusion his intellect had been thrown.

The waves roared at him in anger, and the winds joined them in their
rage. Fiendish spirits seemed to rise up before him that were fierce to
clutch him and gloat over his terror. The lights in the west danced
together and glared at him in mockery, and his own beacon threw its cold
white rays over the familiar aperture where the iron rods of the
water-gates rose; but that opening had suddenly become an undefined
horror to him. The very terror with which he regarded it drew him to its
verge. He cast his eyes into its depths, down upon the troubled but
black and silent water, and glared at the vision which met his strained
sight, for the ghostly face of the man who had been murdered in the
tunnel peered at him through the uncertain light.

There was only the dog that he could fly to in his agony, but it, too,
had a strange appearance and answered his call by low plaintive howls
that sent a shiver through his frame. He repeated its name aloud, and
Caspar crawled closer to his master, still at times making moans that
sounded sorrowful—almost like the pleading of a human voice in distress,
and he thought its eyes had a strange reproachful gaze. While he spoke
to it, the dog uttered a prolonged wail. Stahlmann shivered, and a cold
chill crept through his blood; all his superstition was roused afresh.
The wind lost its rage and died down to funeral-sobs. The sound of the
waves fell into a dirge-like cadence, and that melancholy wail which had
chilled his blood rang in his ears—it rang with the awful significance
of an evil omen long after it had died upon the air. The dog lay
perfectly motionless; he stooped to stroke it, but it did not move. He
stared at it with a bewildered gaze, when suddenly the horrible reality
with the fearful explanation, broke upon his half-crazed brain, and he
staggered back with a wild shriek. In the utter misery of his solitude,
in his strange grief for the loss of the drowned corpse, and his terror
from the hallucinations of a disordered intellect, he had neglected to
feed his faithful dog, and had starved to death the only living creature
that existed for him in the world. Caspar was dead.

Stahlmann in his agony seemed to hear once more the piteous cry which
the dog had uttered with its expiring breath, and to him the wail
sounded in its pathetic mournfulness like the mysterious herald of
another death.

The diary is so blurred at this point that it is hardly legible. What
can be read is incomprehensible from broken, incoherent sentences—the
empty language of a lunatic. Save one remaining passage, I could make
out nothing further. This entry must have been written in a lucid
interval when he realized to what a fearful condition he had been
reduced by unbroken solitude. Because it is the last record, I translate
it literally, as follows:

  “That cry again—what have I come through? Hell with its host of furies
  can not be worse than this awful Crib—I kill myself.

                                                          G. STAHLMANN.”

What remains is soon told. A few inquiries in the proper direction
revealed that on the morning of the first of May, 1868, when the tug
boat from Chicago made its usual trip to the Crib to supply provisions,
the dog was discovered dead upon the floor, and near by—just to the
right of the entrance, and about ten feet distant from it—hung the dead
body of Gustav Stahlmann, suspended by the neck from one of the rafters.
It was at once cut down and the Coroner quietly notified. Among his few
effects was found the memorandum book which so curiously came into my
possession.

The authorities were in no way to blame for this unfortunate occurrence.
On that day they placed several persons in charge of this lonely
structure and have changed them at regular intervals ever since. Because
if the circumstance were known, they were fearful they could get no one
to fill the situation, either on account of the solitude or from the
fact that many persons are afraid to live in a house that has been the
scene of a suicide—they wisely concluded to say nothing whatever about
the melancholy event, and, as I said before, few persons in the city are
acquainted with its details.




[Illustration]

                      PROF. KELLERMANN’S FUNERAL.


It had snowed persistently all day, and now, at night, the wind had
risen and blew in furious gusts against the windows, a bleak December
gale.

The Professor tramped steadily up and down his floor, up and down his
floor, from wall to wall and back again. It was not a cheerful room;
with but one strip of carpet, a chair or two, a table and bedstead, and
one dim tallow candle, flickering in a vain struggle to give any thing
better than a sickly light, which was afflicted, at uncertain intervals,
with violent convulsions. No, it was not a pleasant place, for the
Professor was poor, and lived a lonely, hermit-like life in the heart of
the great German city.

He had no relations—no friends. He was not a popular man, though he had
once been well known, and the public had all applauded his great
scholarship. His books, one after another, as they came out, if they
brought him no money, had brought him some fame then; but the last one
had appeared years ago, and been commented upon, and conscientiously put
aside, and the public, never very much interested in the author
personally, had about forgotten him.

During these long years he had been living secluded, waging a perpetual
war with himself. Entangled in the meshes of the subtile German
infidelity, which was at variance with his earlier training, he found
himself encompassed about by unbelief—unbelief in the orthodox theology
of his youth, unbelief, also, in the philosophy of this metaphysical
land. A man of vast learning, and a close student, he discovered his
knowledge to be always conflicting; and thus the long debate within him
was no nearer a termination than at the moment when the first doubt had
asserted itself.

Preyed upon by this harassing mental anxiety, and by encroaching
poverty, he was seized by a nervous fever, which had gradually
undermined his health, and almost disordered his mind.

And now, this night, in a condition of exhaustion, weary of life and its
ceaseless struggle—without friends, without money, without hope—his
black despair, like the evil tempter, rose before him and suggested a
thought from which he had at first drawn back appalled. But it was only
for a moment. Why not put an end forever to all these troubles? Had he
not worked for years, and had he ever done the world any good, or had
the world ever done him any good? No! The world was retrograding daily.
The selfishness of humanity, instead of lessening, was constantly
growing worse. How had they repaid him for his long studies? He had shut
himself up and labored over heavy questions in metaphysics—sifting,
searching, reading, thinking—only for a few thankless ones, who had
glanced at his works, smiled a faint smile of praise, and straightway
left them and him to be lost again in obscurity!

The future was dark, the present a labyrinth of care and suffering, from
which there was but the one escape. Then why not accept it? So he had
been arguing with himself all the evening, and, in his growing
excitement, pacing the floor of his garret to and fro with a quick,
nervous tread. But there had another cause risen in his mind which he,
at first, would hardly acknowledge to himself.

A faint, undefined shadow, as it were, of his early faith stirred within
him, and before him the “oblivion” of death was peopled with a thousand
appalling fancies, illumined by the red flame of an eternal torment. In
vain he strove to dispel it by remembering the more rational doctrine of
reason, that death is but a dreamless sleep, lasting forever.

Suddenly, feeling conscious of the heinousness of the crime he was
meditating, and knowing that he was in an unnatural feverish condition,
he paused abruptly in his hurried tramp, stood a few moments utterly
motionless, then, dropping on his knees, he made a vow that he would
take twenty-four hours to consider the deed, and, if it were done, it
should not be done rashly. “Hear me, O Heaven!” Springing up, he cried;
“Heaven! Heaven!—There is no Heaven! Vow!—to whom did I vow? There is no
God!” Muttering a faint laugh, he said, after a moment: “I vowed to
myself; and the vow shall be kept. Not all the theories and philosophies
of Germany shall cheat me out of it.”

It seemed like the last struggle of his soul to assert itself. Almost
staggering with exhaustion, he fell upon the bed and slept.

A gentle breeze from the far past blew around him in his native land. He
saw the white cliff at whose base the sea-foam threw up its glittering
spray with a ceaseless strain of music. He saw the green meadows, where
the quiet, meek-eyed cattle found a pasture, stretching away to the
green hills, where flocks of sheep browsed in the pleasant shade beneath
the tall oak trees. He saw, far off on the highest summit of the wavy
ridge, the turrets of the great castle rear themselves above the foliage
like a crown—the royal diadem upon all these sun-bathed hills and
valleys. He stood within the cottage, the happy cottage under the
sheltering sycamores; and, brighter, clearer, more beautiful than all
these, he saw a face look down upon him with a calm and earnest smile.
It was the home of his childhood, it was the face of his mother, all
raised in the mirage of sleep—a radiant vision lifted from the heavy
gloom of forty years, years upon which Immanuel Kant, years upon which
the Transcendental school had crept with their baleful influence,
poisonous as the deadly nightshade.

He struggled to speak, and wakened. A dream, yes, all a dream! He
pressed his hands against his brow—A dream? Yes, childhood had been but
a dream. Life itself is but an unhappy dream!

The wild December wind still blew with a rattling noise against the
windows, and sometimes swept round the corner with a dreary,
half-smothered cry. The candle had burned down almost to the socket, and
was seized more frequently than before with its painful spasms, making
each gaunt shadow of the few pieces of furniture writhe in a weird,
silent dance on the wall. As the Professor sat on the bed, they appeared
to him like voiceless demons, performing some diabolical ceremony,
luring his soul to destruction. Then they seemed moving in fantastic
measure to a soundless dirge, which he strained his ears to hear, when
the candle burned steadily, and they paused in their dumb incantation.

A loud knock, which shook the door, made the Professor start up amazed,
and the shadows re-begin their uncanny pantomime. For a moment he stood
stupefied with surprise. It was far in the small hours of the night, and
visitors at any time were unknown. He had lived there for months an
utter stranger, and no footsteps but his own had ever crossed the floor.
An uncontrollable fit of trembling came upon him, and he lay down once
more, thinking it all the creation of his overwrought fancy. But the
knock was repeated louder than before, and the gaunt shadows again made
violent signals to each other in their speechless dialect, as though
their grim desires were just then upon the eve of accomplishment.

With an effort the Professor got up and said “Come!” but the word died
away in his throat, a faint whisper. He tried it a second time; then,
partially overruling the weakness that had seized upon him, crossed the
room and opened the door.

“Good gracious! What’s the matter with you?” said a voice from out of
the dark on the landing.

It was the son of the undertaker, who lived down stairs. They were not
acquainted, and had never spoken, but they had often passed each other
in the street—though, until that moment, the Professor was not aware
that he had ever even noticed him; but now he recognized him and drew
back. The young man, however, entered uninvited.

“I say, what the deuce is the matter with you?”

“Nothing! What do you want, sir?”

“Want? Why your face is as white as a sheet, and your eyes, your eyes
are—confound me if I want any thing!” he said, backing to the door in
alarm.

Indeed, the expression which rested on the features of the Professor was
hardly pleasant to look at alone, and in the night. But, having followed
his instinct, so far as to his bodily preservation, and having backed
into the hall so that the Professor could hardly distinguish the outline
of his figure, the young man’s courage got the better of his fright. He
came to a standstill, passed his hand nervously round his neck, cleared
his throat several times, and then, in a husky voice—caused, evidently,
by his recent alarm, and not by the message, singular as it was, that he
came to deliver—said,—

“We want you. It is Christmas—we want you for a corpse.”

It may have been a very ordinary thing to them, considering their
profession, to want people for corpses, either at Christmas or any other
time; but it was hardly an ordinary thing to the Professor to be wanted
for one; and the announcement was certainly somewhat startling, made in
a sepulchral tone from out the gloom. It was still stranger that the
young man himself appeared rather faint-hearted for one who entertained
so malevolent a desire, and had the boldness to make the assertion
outright. The Professor for a moment fairly thought him in league with
the shadows, for they were at work once more, beckoning and pointing
fiercely, as the wind swept up the staircase, to the indistinct figure
out in the dusk, that was the son of the undertaker, and who said
again,—

“We want you, sir, for a corpse—”

Here he paused abruptly, to clear his throat anew, as though he found
himself disagreeably embarrassed by the unfriendly appearance of his
host, whose face, if it had been pale at first, was of a gray, ashen
color now. He evidently could not see why his request should have been
taken in such ill part, and he stammered and stuttered, and was about
ready to begin again, when the Professor said,—

“You will likely get me.”

The peculiar expression that rested upon the Professor’s mouth as he
uttered these words, was hardly encouraging; but the young man—as though
every body would recognize that it was absolutely essential to them, in
order that they might celebrate the great gala-day with their family, to
have a corpse, just as other people have a tree—immediately brightened
up, and, advancing a step or two, said gratefully,—

“I am very glad, sir; I am very glad. It is Christmas, you know, and I
told them as how I thought you’d do, for you are spare, sir, and—”

Here he found another blockade in his throat, which, after a slight
struggle, he swallowed, and went on,—

“I told them as how I thought you’d do, sir, for you see we want
somebody that is small and thin, and will be light to carry after he is
all fixed up. Hans Blauroch did for us last time; but this year, instead
of parading Santa Claus up and down the street, we’ve concluded to bury
him. It will be something new this Christmas; and Hans is too heavy to
carry; and when I thought of you, sir, I just took the liberty of coming
right up; because it’s near daylight, and there ain’t no great while
left to get the funeral ready.”

So the blockhead had finally jerked out what he came for, which was not
so malevolent after all as he had at first made it appear. He deserved,
rather, to be praised for his persistency than censured for his
awkwardness, considering the difficulties under which he had labored.

The Professor did not show whether he felt relieved by this
_denouement_. He had listened without moving; and when the young man
finished speaking he hesitated a moment, then, with the same peculiar
expression visible about his mouth, said he would be glad to place
himself at their service; he would be with them directly; that he had
not been feeling well; indeed, he only an hour ago almost fainted, and
had not yet recovered when he heard the knock upon his door; but he was
feeling better, and would come down immediately.

The young man laughed good-naturedly as he replied,—

“I am obliged to say I did not like the looks of you at first. You must
have been out of your head.”

The Professor waited until the last echo of the retreating footsteps
died away down at the bottom of the stairs, then shut his door.

“A strange thing,” he muttered; “what have I to do with Christmas? I,
who have studied, studied! I had forgotten there was any time called
Christmas. What is it to a scholar? Philosophy says nothing about it;
and reason would teach that—ah, yes, it too is a dream, a dream within
the dream called life. Then what have I to do with it? Why did I
promise? I will not go. Yet my vow—twenty-four hours. I dare not trust
myself alone. A funeral, did he say? I will see how it feels; yes, for I
will probably need one in another day. They wanted me ‘for a corpse,’
and I said they would likely get me, and I would be glad to ‘place
myself at their service.’ Ha, ha! They can bury me twice. But my vow, my
vow! I will not trust myself alone. It is nothing to me; I will go.”

He had been tramping again rapidly up and down the room, when he
suddenly turned, took up his hat, looked around for a moment at the
shadows that were still making unintelligible signs to each other, then
extinguished them in darkness and slowly went down stairs.

The lodgings were directly over the undertaker’s establishment. Living
so secluded, speaking to none, it had never occurred to the Professor
before what a grim place he had chosen for his home. But now the
silver-barred coffins in the show-case were ghastly as he passed.

Night had not yet yielded up her supremacy. A heavy covering of snow,
that clung to every roof, tower, and spire, made the place look unreal
through the gloom, like some colorless apparition of a great specter
city. Close-blinded, silent and cold, without one glimmer of life, the
houses faced each other down the long street. Far off, the ghostly dome
and pinnacles of the cathedral reached into the sky—the empty, soundless
sky—for the wind had fallen away, leaving a gray expanse that seemed to
stretch through infinitude. But, though the Professor did not notice,
there was a rift that divided the dreary cloud down near the horizon,
and disclosed, brighter than the pale light of the coming day, a star
shining in the East.

And it was Christmas morning.

The Professor walked block after block, feeling unconsciously refreshed
by the crisp air upon his heated brow. Then he turned back, and when he
had reached the building went down an alley-way and entered by a door in
the rear.

A great confusion and general dimness, not lessened any by two or three
candles that were burning, pervaded the room, which was long and ran
almost across the house. Half a dozen men were standing or moving about,
and some were sitting or leaning upon coffins and biers, that covered
all the floor, except where they occasionally left narrow passages
between, like irregular aisles.

At the Professor’s entrance, the young man who had paid him so friendly
a visit came up instantly, took hold of him by the arm, and turned him
round, with the exclamation,—

“Here he is father! He is thin enough to be easily carried.”

The man denominated “father” by the young off-shoot of the establishment
surveyed the Professor with a critical eye from head to foot, and, as
there could be no better sample of physical spareness than he presented,
said, laconically,—

“He’ll do.”

Then there was new confusion and bustling about, and two or three
persons immediately seized the Professor, one by his hair, one by his
feet, one by his arms. With a grim smile, he submitted, in perfect
silence, to the operations of this dressing committee.

He saw himself—him, Gustav Kellermann, the philosopher!—blossom into
brilliant colors, scarlet and blue and orange. He saw them clasp a
girdle round his waist, to which they hung gilded toys and bells in all
directions, until he was fairly covered over with trinkets of every
device. He felt them encase his head—his learned, metaphysical head—in a
cap that was adorned at the point and round the sides with innumerable
swinging-dolls.

It had been daylight three or four hours when all the mysterious
preparations, which had been done almost without speaking a single word,
were finally completed, and every thing waited in readiness.

There, strangely conspicuous in that dismal room, with its dismal
paraphernalia of death, was a brilliant, half-human, half-monkey-like
creature, standing up on its hind legs, and flaming all over in gaudy
colors. To this grotesque figure, the important actor, evidently the
chief agent in the contract, a man of brief speech, came up and said,
brusquely,—

“Now, you are dead, you know, and have nothing to do but be dead. You
are not to be fidgeting, or stirring round, or peeping. When you are
dead, you are dead, you know, and that is all.”

O, Immanuel Kant! O, transcendental school! Good reasoning! When you are
dead, you are _dead_.

Then they picked up this half-human, half-monkey-like object, which had
uttered not one word, placed it in a coffin, and put upon it a
mask-face. Carrying it out by the rear door, they raised it and set it
down on a catafalque, draped in a black velvet pall, and ornamented with
tall black funeral plumes.

O vain pomp and grandeur of death! When you are dead, you are _dead_.

A confused hurry and tramp of many feet was succeeded by a pause, and
some one said,—“Ready.”

The procession reached the open avenue and moved slowly down the street
to the sound of a funeral march. Solemnly, with measured tread, they
advanced, and the people flocked to the doors on every side. There was a
cry of surprise and alarm. “What is it?” “Who is it?” ran from lip to
lip. The crowd gathered. The procession, with its sable plumes and
ribbons of _crepe_, still continued on its way. There was the sound of
lamentation, and at every moment the throng and confusion increased, the
multitude thickened, and men, women and children were held off by the
guard. Do they go to the great cemetery? No, they turned eastward, and
at the Rosenthal halted. There the wondering spectators saw, in its
center, a pure white tomb. Before it the catafalque was brought to a
stand, and the coffin solemnly lowered.

Immediately a broken shout ran through the crowd, that was taken up and
repeated until it grew into a laugh, and men and women, catching up the
children, cried,—

“It is Kriss Kringle! Ha! ha! See, child, it is Kriss Kringle! He is
dead. Kriss Kringle is dead!”

It was a great relief to the people, so suddenly alarmed, and they good
humoredly held up the little ones, saying,—

“See! Kriss Kringle is dead. He will never come any more. He is dead!”

There was a silence; and many little faces, awe-stricken, looked
sorrowfully down, and many little arms were stretched out, and many
little voices, quivering, sobbed,—

“No, no, no! He will come back. He brought us pretty things. He will
come back to us.”

O, Immanuel Kant! O, transcendental school! Is your strength still
greater than this?

There was a stir under the heavy pall, and a voice—hark! a voice!—

“Yes, children, I will come back to you. I have come back to you!” And
from beneath the sable funeral drapery, Kriss Kringle sprang, all
jingling with silver bells, and flashing with a thousand toys.

Then again there was great confusion, but this time no sound of
lamentation; and the solemn funeral march swept into a strain of joyful
music. And the children! Oh, the children, in wild delight, played in
circles about the queer, grotesque being, who set to work destroying the
snow-tomb. He threw it at them in small crystal showers that called up,
each time as they fell, a burst of gleeful laughter. He detached the
bright toys from his girdle, from his cap, from his elbows, from his
knees, and rained them down upon the little ones who raced round him in
their mad frolic. Then he took off the false face and threw it far away,
and the people, in surprise, cried, “It is the Professor!” and drew back
awe-struck, to think they had taken such liberties with so renowned a
scholar. But the children never paused in their romp; and he said, while
they scrambled about him in merry laughter,—

“I have come back to you, children. I have come back to you!”

And in his heart he cried, “I knew not what life was; then how should I
know of death?” O, Immanuel Kant! O, transcendental school! Here are
those who teach a philosophy of which you know nothing—a philosophy
higher than the critics; a philosophy of life; a philosophy of love; a
philosophy of death that is no sleep!

The sun came out and spread a jeweled splendor on the snow, over which,
hand-in-hand, the happy children danced.


The Professor is an old man now, and the fame of his learning has become
great in the land. And all the people tell about his funeral; and how,
every Christmas since, in his scarlet clothes and furs, laden with
“pretty things,” he leads the children in their play, and scatters on
them a thousand toys, while they, in gleeful groups, join their hands
and dance.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

                             THE FEVERFEW.


During my youth I suffered from a naturally delicate constitution. I was
pale, feeble and sickly, but from no decided disease. A dreamy, quiet
cast of temperament caused me to shrink from the rough sports of my
brothers; the contact of strangers was equally disagreeable, and I
seldom strayed from home. Indeed, I lived almost entirely within myself,
although by no means devoid of natural affection; on the contrary, my
emotions were strong, and my sympathy easily aroused.

How it happened that I acquired a love of learning I do not know, all
the outward circumstances by which I was surrounded tending to foster
any thing rather than intellectual habits, for our family, although each
member possessed a common education, were strictly practical; but this
difference in my disposition cut me off from their pursuits, and I found
my chief enjoyment in the volumes of a library to which I obtained
access.

Perhaps it was the sedentary life I led, the close confinement, and lack
of exercise, that brought on a violent attack of sickness when I was in
my nineteenth year, so that I lay for several weeks completely
prostrated. During two or three days my life hung as in a balance, which
a breath might have turned and launched me beyond the confines of time.
However, the disease succumbed to the persevering attention of
experienced nurses. I arose from my weary bed and found my physical
health slowly improving, but from that period I was subject at irregular
intervals to what the physician pronounced temporary delirium, which I
knew he used as a milder term for insanity.

But it was not insanity. I never lost control of my mind, but I lost
control of my body. It obeyed a will that was not my own. A mighty
antagonistic power seemed to creep over my brain, which impelled my
movements and held my struggling soul in subjection. I presented the
singular phenomenon of one person governed by two separate and distinct
wills, for my mind was not disordered, but only mastered by superior
strength. In this strange condition I would see familiar objects
magnified, exaggerated, and contorted, in an atmosphere varying with all
colors, at the same time being perfectly conscious of their real
appearance. I would hear sounds sweet and musical grow into wails of
heart-rending despair. I could recognize my friends when they were
present, but was forced to regard them with the cold eye of a stranger.
I would commit acts that no human agency could have compelled me to do
when my faculties were untrammelled. I never submitted without a
struggle, and always felt conscious that, if I could but once resist
this seemingly invincible power, if I could but once disregard its
promptings, I should be free.

The attacks were never of long duration. They always left me utterly
exhausted, and it would sometimes require a week to recruit my expended
strength. I could afterward recall every incident with the most distinct
minuteness, for they were branded in characters of fire on my memory.
Vainly I asserted again and again that it was not delirium, that I was
forced into subjection to some mysterious power I could not withstand;
my statements made no impression upon the physician, who evidently
considered mine but a common case of one suffering from attacks of
temporary insanity, and, when I persisted in my statement, he forbade
any further reference to the subject.

However, I could not prevent my mind from continually dwelling upon it
in secret. What was this so foreign, so antagonistic to myself that
mastered my will, that controlled my actions, that made me literally
another being? Why did I not shake off this evil influence and be free?
I felt perfectly conscious of possessing the power, but was not able to
arouse it from a latent condition.

As I have said before, I was naturally of a studious disposition, and I
now turned my attention to metaphysics. I read works, ancient and
modern, on its different branches; I studied medical treatises on
insanity, and, the more I learned, the more thoroughly convinced I
became that I was not suffering from mental aberration. Constant
brooding over my disease greatly wore upon my physical strength;
traveling was recommended, in hopes that change of climate and scene
might benefit my health. My old aversion to strangers clung to me, and,
although possessed by a restlessness to which I was wholly unaccustomed,
I persistently refused to leave home; no arguments could gain my
consent, so that my friends were forced to give up the project in
despair.

One morning, when more than the usual gloom oppressed my spirits, I made
an effort to arouse myself and throw off the melancholy that was
settling upon me, which each day I felt to be growing more confirmed. I
was sitting by a window, which stood wide open, and, just outside, a
caged canary was singing and fluttering its feathers in the warm spring
sunshine. The little bird was my particular property, and I regarded it
with an affection which is rarely bestowed upon pets. With the exception
of my young sister, a child about four years of age, this was the only
living thing that I had taken any interest in since my sickness. I had
trained the canary from the shell, and the little creature seemed to
repay all my care, for from no other member of the family would it
receive caresses. I was so much afraid of its being accidentally injured
that I never allowed it to be freed from the cage, except in my
presence. At my call it would fly about me, resting on my head,
shoulders, or hands, and chirping in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment.

I arose and opened the door of its prison, then, reseating myself,
softly whistled while it darted into the air, wheeled once or twice, and
descended upon my hand. Stroking its spotless yellow plumage, I regarded
the little thing with a degree of pleasure I had not experienced for
several weeks. But sudden horror almost caused my heart to cease its
beatings, and the perspiration started from my forehead in great drops,
for I felt my fingers slowly closing over the delicate bird. Although I
made an attempt greater than the racking effort we sometimes exert in
the nightmare, I had no power to restrain them. The canary fluttered in
my clasp. I would have dropped it, I would have shrieked for help, but
my muscles, my voice, my _body_, obeyed me not, and my fingers, like the
steady working of machinery, gradually tightened their relentless grasp.
In my agony the veins of my face protruded like lines of cordage. I
heard the frail bones breaking beneath the crushing pressure, then my
involuntary grip suddenly relaxed, and the bird fell upon my knee, dead
and mangled!

At the same moment, I saw, through the open door, my little sister
playing upon the grass-plat; and, almost before I was aware of moving,
or of any volition, I found myself walking rapidly toward her, while my
fingers twitched with a convulsive, clutching movement. Good Heavens! I
already saw her face turn purple, and heard her gasping breath smothered
by gurgling blood. With this terrible picture before my mental vision,
my brain felt as if it would burst its bounds in the desperate, but
unavailing effort I made to turn back, to fly from the spot. But I could
not command myself. In that moment I endured suffering more intense than
language can describe. Perhaps my strange and wild appearance frightened
the child; for, in place of holding out her arms to me, her favorite
brother, she fled crying to the nurse, who did not observe my approach,
and carried her into the house. Saved! unconsciously saved—saved from a
fate too terrible to contemplate.

I sank insensible upon the ground, and, when I recovered, found myself
surrounded by the family, each one applying some restorative, for I had
been in a long and death-like swoon. Slowly, but distinctly, the
recollections of the events which had reduced me to this condition
presented themselves to my memory with all their appalling horror,
nearly depriving me again of consciousness.

I did not refer in any manner to the subject, which was also carefully
avoided by all others in my presence, for fear that it might produce
renewed excitement, and my friends had no suspicion of the circumstances
which brought it about. The bird was found dead upon the floor, and the
family imagined that it had met with some accident. They were evidently
surprised, when the fact was communicated to me, that I made no remarks,
for they had anticipated an outburst of grief.

Grief! I did not suffer from grief; grief was overpowered by the horror
that racked my brain—horror for the act I had committed, and the more
fearful one which had been so mercifully prevented. I had committed? No,
it was not _my_ mind or will which had prompted my hand to do the deed.
I was innocent, even though my fingers had dripped with the blood of a
sister; but the frightful thought filled me with a terror that wrung my
soul. I pondered continually upon it. When might not this mysterious
demon again assert its evil control over me? Strange as it may seem, I
felt certain that it was some foreign agency—I knew not what—that
mastered my will, and not the result of my own intellect, in a
disordered condition.

This overpowering dread of the future, of what might happen, which took
possession of me, drove me to the decision of leaving home, as the best
way of avoiding danger to my friends. Perhaps, too, if my physical
health became better, I might gain strength enough to defy this infernal
power; for, as I have said before, I possessed a singular consciousness
that, if I could once successfully resist its promptings, my soul would
be liberated from thraldom. I announced my determination of making a
journey, without any explanation of my sudden change, and it was greeted
with delight by my friends and relatives, who were anxious to hasten my
departure while the humor was upon me; but they need not have feared any
change of purpose on my part, for I was haunted by this terrible dread
of the future, and I gladly said farewell for a time to my home and
birthplace.

The incidents of travel and of new scenes broke the monotony, and
dispelled to some degree the gloom that had taken fast hold upon me. In
a short period I found myself rapidly improving. Every week brought me
an increase of strength, and I suffered less frequently from these
frightful attacks. Although they occurred at longer intervals than
formerly, they seemed to grow more severe in character; the conflict was
fiercer, and my mind made a more desperate effort to gain the supremacy.
My whole frame would be racked by the intense struggle which I
constantly maintained, though I was constantly vanquished.

The increasing delight I took in the scenery, the continued exercise and
excitement, almost drove despair from me, and hope once more brightened
my countenance. I began to look forward to the time when my health would
be entirely restored, and my body and mind be in unison. I did not hope
vainly, for the final conflict came, and with it a strange termination
of my long sufferings.

I stood upon the side of an Eastern mountain. Above my head vast rocks
arose in solemn grandeur, their summits lost in canopied mists which,
gray and clinging, wrapped them in obscurity. Below, a great chasm rent
the mountain; a yawning, bottomless gulf. While I gazed, awed by the
thought of its mysterious depths, where no human eye had seen, where no
human foot had trod, a ray of light struggled in and rested on gaunt
trees, on snake-like ferns, damp and cold, that clung to its slimy
sides, and on one pale flower which nodded in the chill draught that
came up, a palpable horror, from the blackness of darkness. I turned
away. Near the western horizon dead clouds were piled one above another,
and their heavy shadow lay brown and dark upon the sullen earth. No wind
stirred the forests, or rustled their motionless leaves, and the awe of
the unbroken silence fell, with a dread oppression, upon my heart.

Suddenly I was seized by an ungovernable desire to possess the
flower—the colorless flower that hung far down in the death-damp of the
chasm. A freezing terror crept through my blood as I recognized this
decree of a will I had never been able to disobey. I felt myself
crawling closer to the verge of the precipice; nearer, yet nearer, until
I sat within the very jaw of the savage gulf. The dead clouds heaved
their shroud-like forms and wavered overhead. I heard the rush of
subterranean waters sounding a muffled requiem. The sickly flower with
its long stem writhed and twisted, as a serpent stretches his folds into
the air. Slowly back and forth it swayed, glaring at me like a
lustreless eye.

My brain reeled, and all the forces of my nature gathered up their
increased strength for one fierce and final conflict. I felt the blood
rage through my veins with the headlong fury of cataracts. The very
spring of life within me was stirred and troubled, when, with one mighty
strain, I drew myself up and fell backward on the grass.

The whole world went out in utter darkness. Before my eyes stretched a
vast, illimitable gloom, when suddenly out of its impenetrable depths
above my head there grew and glimmered faintly a thin and wavering mist.
Folding upon itself, it hung down, white and luminous, a cloud of
palpitating nebulæ. Pricked with a thousand points of fire it gathered
slowly to a nucleus in the center—a flickering speck, a disc, it flamed,
blazed into a star, and lo! poised midway in the air, an aureole of
light, it rested upon the brow of a female figure.

Her scornful eyes looked down upon me with a lurid gleam that seemed to
burn my soul. A smile of derision sat upon her lips that were more vivid
in hue than the vermilion dye. Her locks were yellow as the sun at
noontide; her skin was white as the leper’s; her breath hot as the
desert air, and the light of the star upon her forehead burned red with
the frightful redness of fresh blood. Suddenly I saw that the murky
clouds on either side her form swarmed with a thousand dwarfed and
warted shapes. Black and hideous, they knotted, flitted to and fro, in
and out, with their formless claws and tumultuous motion. She spread her
wings. Immediately there gathered all the dusky shapes—the legion demons
of delirium with their needle eyes—and settled down upon her sable
plumes. A shrill phantom laugh rang out, mocked itself by echoes that
ran up in thin shafts of sound to the skies, and the SPIRIT OF FEVER had
fled from me forever!

The rays of the sun as it sank to rest, slanting through rose-colored
avenues, fell upon the gray mists, and crowned the mountain’s summit in
a rainbow of glory. The rising breeze swept through the forests with a
soothing sound, and, eastward, the eye was lost in mellow lines of
golden haze, which to my soul freed from captivity, seemed cathedral
aisles of peace.




[Illustration]

                        OLD SIMLIN, THE MOULDER.


“You’re right! I ain’t got no relatives an’ nobody to look after, so
thar isn’t any sense in workin’ too much. That’s just what I say.”

And that is just what he always did say, poor Simlin, but he never
ceased, notwithstanding. Nearly every body that knew him and spoke to
him about it always found him quick to acquiesce: “Thar was nothin’
plainer than what they said, and it was just what he said, too.” But it
did not make the slightest difference, for he continued to work away all
the same; so what else could be done but merely to give up the question?

Now, if he had only expressed himself in decided opposition, there might
have been something to hope for in the matter—at least, it would have
opened the way for an argument upon the subject; and, then, there was
always the possibility that he might be induced to change his mind.
However, his provoking approval put the case wholly beyond reach. And so
old Simlin, toiling early and late, quietly followed his vocation.

There was not a better moulder in the whole foundry, or one that drew
much higher wages. But, then, he was getting old. To be sure, he never
had been young, so far as they knew any thing about him, even ten years
ago, when, altogether unknown and friendless, he had first made his
appearance in the village. But these ten years combined had not worn
upon him like the last one. His head now, if once the soot had been
removed, would not have shown a single black hair; and his voice was
weak and cracked, and there was a visible trembling about the old man’s
legs. Perhaps he did imbibe liquor; but nobody had any right to say so,
for nobody could prove that it was true. Only of late he had a strangely
confused manner when anyone addressed him, and, raising his unsteady
hand nervously to his head, would repeat the sentence that had been on
his lips a hundred, yes, a thousand times, until it had long ago grown
into a stereotyped form—“I ain’t got no relatives an’ nobody to look
after, so thar isn’t any sense in workin’ too much.”

Perhaps he really thought that the people would never see that he was
straining every effort, using every moment of his time, though, before
the sun was up, and often after it was gone, the old man was at his
place. And Simlin was always the first on hand if there was an extra job
that would bring an extra cent.

But, other than making the assertion that he had no relatives, and
nobody depending upon him, and that he did not think it worth while to
work over-much, he never carried on a conversation. That there was no
one to look after _him_ was a self-evident fact. He lived utterly alone,
in a small cabin on the brow of the hill. Rarely a soul but himself ever
crossed its threshold. Under the step the gray gophers made their
burrow, and, beneath the tall beech trees, that threw down their prickly
nuts, the brown weasels played in peaceful groups. The shy quail,
sounding their whistle, fled among the ferns; and above, from the myriad
branches, the beautiful wild doves mourned out their perpetual sadness.
At evening, when the sun went down, and the long line of the Scioto
Hills flushed crimson with serene glory; when, by slow degrees, the
pageant of departing day withdrew its gorgeous colors; even when the
valley below was black with the gloom of night, the western radiance
lingered, like the transforming light of some other land, upon the rude
cabin, standing on its high and solitary perch.

Empty and bare, it afforded but little protection from the weather, for
through it the winds blew in Winter, and the rains dripped in Summer.
Simlin’s wants, however, appeared to be few and simple. He seldom had a
fire, even at the coldest season. What he subsisted upon, nobody knew.
Once, perhaps, in two or three days, he would buy a loaf of coarse bread
from the baker in the village, and his table evidently was supplied in
the most frugal manner.

The people put down his besetting sin to be avarice; and the hut, if it
contained no furniture, was reported to contain wealth enough, hidden
away in its obscure cracks and corners, to have draped its dreary boards
in the most costly velvet and lace, and encased its walls with marble.
Of course, he was a miser. More than ten years now he had been at the
foundry, and not a cent of the wages which he drew regularly had he
spent, or put so much as a farthing into the savings bank, where many of
the hands had laid up quite a pile. But, unlike the majority of misers,
the old man never complained of being poor; indeed, he never complained
at all, or spoke of money in any way. If the subject was brought up in
his presence, he either preserved utter silence or quietly got up and
left; and, if driven to the last extremity, and made to say something,
he would remark, running into the same old channel, that “It didn’t much
matter—he hadn’t any relatives nor any body dependin’ upon him.”

So lonely and forlorn did he seem, and so harmless withal—for the old
man never was known to do a mean action, or resent an angry word—that
many uncouth kindnesses had been shown him on the part of the hands,
with whom he was by no means unpopular. Especially had this been the
case latterly; for, though he himself was apparently unconscious of it,
so terribly broken had he become that the change was sorrowful to
behold; and, rude as were the foundry-workmen, what there was pathetic
in the patient manner in which the feeble old man silently worked on
told upon them by instinct.

There had even been an interest taken in him up at the great house.
Every season, “the colonel,” as the owner and sole proprietor of the
Rocky Ford Foundry was called by all the employes, brought his family
down from the city to spend a few months rusticating in the beautiful
Scioto Valley, where he had built a summer residence for that purpose,
and that he might be near his great iron-works at the same time. There
was always gay company up at the house—visitors from town, who needed no
second invitation to entice them from the dust of the city to this
peaceful retreat among the lovely hills of Ohio. Besides, the colonel
had a beautiful daughter, and every body liked the “young misses.”
Seldom, though, did she ever go down to the foundry; never, indeed
unless some special object took her there.

Coming from her home a mile distant—this home for her embowered in
perpetual Summer and wrapped in the peace that broods upon the
everlasting hills, where she could see, far off, the golden meadow-lands
and the more distant Paint Ridge, with its transparent veil of mist;
this home from which she had often looked out and listened to the blue
Scioto, unflecked with sail or skiff, struggling by day and night to
tell its mysterious story, as it flowed forever on its lonely
course—coming from this home, over the narrow path that led down the
slope to the river’s edge, where the green rushes grew and the wild
columbine hung its bells above the water—coming on, past the great
rocks, where the scarlet lichens flamed in the sun and the blossoming
alder displayed its drifted clusters; coming still with active feet over
the velvet moss—coming from the lovely valley, coming from the tranquil
hills, when she entered the foundry it seemed like stepping suddenly
from the beautiful world into some haunt of evil spirits.

Within the great dingy walls no shining sunlight brightened the air. Dim
and cheerless, it hung laden with smoke and vapor, that floated in
clouds to the rafters. The harsh clang of heavy machinery, together with
the roar of the furnaces, seemed to shake the very building. Among the
enormous wheels that whirled with frightful velocity, and the immense
belts that whizzed above their heads, the workmen, black and begrimed,
looked small, weird and unearthly, moving about upon the damp ground,
with its jet-like covering of charred cinders. The place seemed an
apparition of demons, performing in some cavern of the lower regions
their evil incantations. No wonder the young lady seldom went there. Its
gloom fell upon her with a heavy oppression, and her breath only came
freely when once more she found herself out in the clear and open
sunlight.

It happened in this manner that she first came to take any notice of old
Simlin: There were gathered quite a party of young folks; and the
colonel, who had been in Cincinnati upon business, had returned the
previous evening, bringing with him another gentleman, apparently a
stranger to the family.

It was at the breakfast-table that the company were discussing the
“sights” of the neighborhood, and debating whether they would take him
first over to Paint Creek upon a fishing-excursion, or across the river
to Mount Logan, famous for having been the rendezvous of the great
Indian chief, when the colonel spoke up,—

“Why not begin at home?” he said. “Do not fatigue him to death the first
day, and I am proud enough of my foundry to think it might be of
interest even to Mr. Safford; at least I mean to have him shown over it
before he leaves.”

The young man, of course, immediately stated that it would give him
great pleasure, and the whole company, to the most of whom it would
prove a novelty, gladly acquiesced in the proposition. So it was
decided, and two hours later they all started on their way.

When they entered the foundry it seemed more gloomy than ever, the
atmosphere more stifling, and the jar of the machinery more painfully
loud and discordant. Even the gay young people who had chatted and
laughed all the morning felt the sudden change that involuntarily
subdued their merriment. They broke up and scattered in twos and threes
over the place, following the lead of simple curiosity, but the
stranger-gentleman staid beside Helen, the “young misses.”

“What a queer, unreal place!” he said. “One would never expect to find
any thing like it in this beautiful valley. Does it not make you think,
coming upon it suddenly out of the sunlight, of the evil genii you have
read about in some fairy-tale long ago? And the workmen, at whose
bidding all this gigantic power is brought into action, how small and
weird they look!”

The two had been slowly approaching the great furnace, and, just as the
gentleman ceased speaking, the immense door was thrown open,
discovering, like a glimpse of the infernal regions, the seething flame
within. Though they were not near enough to experience any inconvenience
from the heat, Helen uttered a frightened exclamation and drew back; but
the gentleman stood as if spellbound, for immediately in front of him
from this opening streamed a broad but sharply defined streak of
blood-red light, that fell full upon old Simlin, and transformed the
blackened cinders on the ground beneath his feet into a mass of living
embers.

As the old man straightened up, and was in the act of raising his hand
to shield his eyes from the sudden illumination, they encountered the
stranger, and a mingled expression of surprise and fright instantly
struggled up through their weak color. For a moment, like an apparition,
he stood transfixed. The red glare showed the old man’s shrunken figure;
it showed his attenuated arms and death-like mouth, his tattered clothes
and the few wisps of his scant hair.

Mr. Safford had stopped simply at the startling effect which the glow of
the furnace had produced, falling by accident upon a single workman.
But, when the man rose up, he gazed at him, utterly taken aback by his
strange behavior.

For an instant, the old man stared without moving a muscle, then his
lips began to work convulsively, and, raising his hand before his face,
as if to screen it from view, he half uttered an unintelligible sentence
and sank down. At the same time, the door of the furnace had been
closed, shutting off the brilliant light that for a moment had so
strangely thrown him into violent relief.

For a second, Safford almost thought the whole thing had been an optical
illusion, or some hallucination of his own brain; then, stepping
forward, he saw the old man lying in a heap upon the ground.

The young lady, recovering immediately from her sudden fright at the
unexpected blaze, had seen the workman fall, and, coming up, asked, in a
terrified voice,—

“What is the matter? Oh, he is dead!” she exclaimed, kneeling down
beside him.

“No, he is not dead. Run for some brandy—quick!” Mr. Safford called to
the nearest hand. Then, assisted by one of the men, he raised the
prostrate figure, not a heavy burden, and carried it out into the open
air.

“I allus thought old Simlin’d come to this,” said the man who had helped
in carrying him. “We all knowd he was over-workin’ himself.”

“Why? Was he so feeble?” asked Mr. Safford, while he bathed the grimy
forehead with his wet handkerchief.

“Feebil? He’s that feebil he’s just been of a trembil all over; and he’s
getting pretty much used up here, too,” said the man, dropping his
voice, and significantly touching his forehead. “It’s my idee he’s not
booked for this world much longer.”

“Poor man!” said Miss Helen, leaning tenderly over the pale face that
still showed no symptoms of returning consciousness; “how very thin and
emaciated he is! Has he no wife or family to take care of him?”

“That’s just it, ma’am! That’s just what he’s allus harpin’ on! He says
he ain’t got no relatives, and nobody to look after, and—”

The young lady suddenly raised her hand with a warning gesture; and,
before the workman had ceased speaking, old Simlin opened his eyes. He
looked around for a moment in a bewildered way; then his uncertain
glance, falling upon the gentleman kneeling by his side, immediately
became fixed, and grew into a wild stare. Raising himself unsteadily
upon his elbow, still with his eyes fixed upon him, the old man threw
out his trembling arm with a gesture as if addressing the whole
company,—

“It’s a lie! Who said I had any relatives, or any body to look after? I
hain’t! It’s a lie—a _lie_, I say! I never seen you before. He’s a
stranger!”—still keeping his arm extended, and appealing excitedly to
those around him—“you all know he is a stranger. I ain’t got no
relatives, nor any body to look after!”

It was evident enough that what the workman had told them about his
intellect was too true, they all thought, as they looked at each other
with a quick glance.

“I tell you I don’t know you, sir! It’s all a lie. I never seen you
before! I—”

“No, you never saw me before.”

Mr. Safford had spoken, hoping to soothe him; but, instead, the sentence
appeared to act upon the old man like an electric battery, for he raised
himself into a sitting posture, and, with his head bobbing violently
about, fairly screamed, his cracked voice running into high treble,—

“That’s right!—that’s right! Do you all hear it? He says I never seen
him before. It’s all a lie about my havin’ got any relatives. I hain’t!
I never seen him before—You heerd him say so—you all heerd him?” he
inquired, for the first time, taking his pale, watery eyes from the
gentleman, and looking, in a frightened, appealing way, round the group.

Then his strength seemed to fail suddenly, and he fell back upon the
grass, panting for breath.

At this moment the colonel came up, and knelt down by his side. He
uttered his name several times, and even put his hand upon the wrinkled
forehead; but the old man, with vacant eyes fixed on the sky, paid no
heed, though his lips trembled.

“I have ordered a wagon. It will be here directly. He must be taken to
the house, where he can receive every attention. Poor man! I am afraid
this will be about the last. I have expected it for a long time. Here,
Safford, help me to lift him,” he added, as Hendricks came back with the
wagon.

“Safford! Safford! Who called me Safford?” said the old man, suddenly
looking round in a terrified manner. “I—I’ve been a dreamin’,” uttering
a weak laugh. “It’s not my—I mean nobody said it. I never heerd that
name before. It’s darned funny, ain’t it? but I never even heerd that
name before in my life! You know I didn’t”—growing wild and excited
again—“you know it’s a lie! I ain’t got no relatives, nor nobody to look
after.”

The gentlemen, without speaking, stooped to raise him; but he struggled
violently, and, keeping his eyes still fixed on the younger one, he
cried, with such an extreme distress upon his face, that they
involuntarily drew back,—

“No, no! I’m not fit to be near you. Stand off! You’re a fine gentleman;
it’s not for the likes of you to touch me!”

Then turning toward the colonel, he muttered some inarticulate apology,
and actually staggered, unaided, to his feet,—

“I’m ’bliged to ye all,” he said, nodding his head up and down, and
backing, with uncertain steps, toward the foundry, as if afraid to take
his eyes from the party as long as he was within their sight. “Thar
ain’t nothin’ the matter with me! I jest felt faint a spell from the
heat—the heat. It ain’t nothin’, an’ it’s gone now! I’ll go back to my
work agin—I’m all right—I’m ’bliged to ye! It was jest the heat as
overcum me—jest the heat—” and, with a painful smile upon his thin lips,
still muttering unintelligible excuses, he tottered into the building.

For a moment, taken by surprise, the group remained motionless. Then
Helen said; “Poor old man! I declare, it almost made me cry only to look
at him!—Father, you will have him cared for; you will not allow him to
work any more?”

“No. He is dreadfully broken down, and I have heard the hands say that,
latterly, he was breaking in his mind, too; but I did not know it was so
bad. I will see that he does as little as possible; but he will never
quit until he gives out utterly, and he can not hold on long in this
condition. Strange, Safford, how the sight of you seemed to excite him!
Did you notice with what a wild, terrified gaze he stared at you, as if
he had been hunted down? and, when you stooped to raise him up, he
almost drew himself into a knot. I did not suppose, when I saw him on
the ground, that he had strength enough left to stand on his feet
without help; and it seemed as if it was this fear of you that inspired
him with the power.”

The younger man stood leaning against the tree from which he had not
moved.

“Yes,” he replied, “it was strange; I noticed it. How long have you had
him in your employ?”

“More than ten years, and he has been about the most valuable hand in
the foundry.”

“Then I’m sure, father, you will take care of him, and not let him work
any more?” said Helen, again.

“Yes—yes, child! don’t bother yourself so—of course I will;” but the
younger gentleman turned toward her quickly, while his face lighted up,
then checked himself abruptly in what would have been an eager gesture
of gratitude, and looked away without saying a word.

They remained a few moments to hear that the old man had recovered, and
when the messenger reported him working at his place quietly as usual,
without re-entering the foundry, or waiting for their companions, the
two started homeward. Helen’s reluctance to go back into the building
again had been so manifest that the gentleman could hardly do otherwise.
Not until the straggling little village and the smoke of the great
foundry were left in the distance did she fairly draw a breath of
relief, and even then they still walked on almost in silence.

The day had reached its noon. On the river flowing past the lances of
the sun broke into a thousand flakes of fire that followed each other
over its surface in myriad ranks; and on either side, where the twisted
birch reached out its branches, the waves with a grateful murmur turned
up their cool white crests.

There was no loud hum of grasshoppers. Hardly a leaf stirred upon the
trees, hardly a bird fluttered its wings. Even the far-off mists had
disappeared, and a hush was on the hills—a hush as of awe before the
splendor of the sky. No wonder they spoke but little. Almost solemn was
the glory of the day in its noon. Yet perhaps neither one felt this
influence which rested upon the land, and subdued alike to silence the
peewee and the bobolink. It may be that the girl was not wholly
unconscious of the scene, but it was certainly some other influence that
wrapped her companion in abstraction. He saw not even the checkered
shade that fell in arch and groin upon their path.

They were half-way home. Rousing himself suddenly with an effort, as if
but just aware of this long abstraction, he said, for lack of any thing
better,—

“Miss Helen, do you like the country?”

“Dearly. I love these hills and the river. The time I spend here is the
happiest part of my life.”

“And are you not always happy?” he inquired. “You should be.”

A strange gentleness in his tone as he uttered the last words made Helen
look up quickly as she answered him with a smile,—

“I am. I never had a trouble in my life.”

They had reached the turn where the path led up the slope from the foot
of the hill.

“Do not go back to the house,” he said; “let us sit down here a little
while in the shade. I feel strangely oppressed, and the four walls of a
room would suffocate me.”

Apparently, he had uttered the last sentence involuntarily, as he took
off his hat, and passed his hand several times across his forehead, for,
catching his breath quickly, he added, as if by way of an apology,—

“It is so much pleasanter in the open air, and I am less fortunate than
you. I seldom have a chance to enjoy the country.”

He had evidently spoken truly, however, when he said he felt strangely
oppressed, for his eyes wandered up the valley, far off to the remote
Paint Ridge, yet he did not see the glittering Scioto, or how Summer sat
enthroned in royal pomp upon the hills.

There was a thoughtful, almost anxious expression on his face. Presently
he added, in a tone of voice as if they might have been discussing the
subject at the moment, and which showed his mind was still occupied
wholly by the incident at the foundry,—

“Miss Helen, had you ever seen that man before?”

“What man?” she inquired. “The workman, you mean?”

“Yes, the old moulder.”

“No. I have often heard them speak of him. I rarely go to the foundry;
it is gloomy, and the hands are so rough father does not like to have me
come in contact with them in any way, so I do not know one from another.
I did not recollect at first, but I remember now hearing him say that
old Simlin was queer, that he was a miser, and that he lived all alone
on the Spring Hill. But I am sure father did not know he was so feeble,
or how he was losing his mind. I can’t help feeling sorry for him. It
must be dreadfully sad, ignorant though he is, to grow old and have not
a soul on the earth to care for him.”

Again the gentleman turned to her, as she spoke, with a sudden emotion
in his eyes that would have called the color to her cheeks had she seen
it, but in another instant he had looked away, and the troubled cloud
settled back once more upon his features.

“The river _is_ beautiful,” he said, after a pause; “see how the fire
dances down its surface.”

He had dismissed the subject from their conversation, if not from his
own thoughts. More than an hour later Helen sprang up with a conscious
blush upon her face as the sound of approaching voices told her how the
time had fled. Ah, for her at least it had been wafted by on silver
wings! They both joined the party, and all went together to the house.
There, almost immediately, Mr. Safford excused himself and went to his
room.

Shut in alone, the same anxious, troubled expression he had worn when he
looked unconsciously up the river came back upon him as he walked
thoughtfully to and fro across the floor. The incident at the foundry
had affected him singularly. He could not throw off its depressing
influence. Why, he asked himself—why did the face of the old man haunt
him perpetually—the thin, wrinkled face, as it had looked at him with
sudden surprise and terror struggling up through its watery eyes? Why
did the cracked voice, with its accent of fright, ring constantly in his
ears? If it were but the wild vagary of an unsettled mind, why should he
give it any heed? “I am nervous,” he muttered to himself. “They said the
man was crazy, and surely I never saw him before—no, I never saw him
before. Then why should the sight of me have so excited him? Probably
another stranger would have done the same. I am foolish—and they said
the man was crazy—”

He still paced the floor of his room up and down, while he tried to
argue himself out of the unreasonable hold which the circumstance had
taken on his mind. “I wish I could forget it!” he exclaimed. Then
walking to the window, and looking out mechanically, he said slowly to
himself, as if weighing well his words,—

“It is not possible; no, it is not possible that here I am going to find
any clew. The man _was_ crazy, that is all.”

He returned again, however, not the least relieved, to his track over
the carpet, and, before he went down stairs, he had determined that he
would “wait and see.” He would not, as he had previously intended, leave
the place within a day or two. He could not go away until he had
satisfied himself about the matter wholly, and in the mean time he would
find out what he could in regard to the old man.

He did not make any inquiries of the family, and the only information he
could gain was simply what he had been already told.

His sleep that night was strangely disturbed. Over and over in his
troubled slumber a thin, shrunken figure stood with its trembling arm
stretched out toward him. It was always before him, even when sometimes
there flitted through his dreams the form of one whose face was fair as
the morning, whose hair was yellow as the reaper’s wheat. He rose
feeling little refreshed. The night, instead of lessening, had but
strengthened the hold which the incident of the previous day had taken
upon him, and against which he struggled without avail.

The colonel’s prophecy did not prove incorrect when he said Simlin could
not last long, for, just as the family were rising from the
breakfast-table, a messenger arrived, saying the old man was lying
insensible in his cabin. It seemed he did not make his appearance at the
foundry at his usual time, and, after waiting an hour in vain,
Hendricks, who suspected something might be wrong, sent one of the hands
to the hut, where he was found in this condition.

“Tell Hendricks I will see to him immediately,” the colonel said to the
messenger, as he retired; then turning to young Safford, who stood with
his hat in his hand, inquired, “Are you going out?”

“I will go with you, if you have no objection. I may be of some service,
and I am in need of exercise at any rate.”

He hesitated as he spoke, endeavoring to cover the unusual interest
which he took in the matter, and the excitement he felt that the news
had brought upon him.

“Why, my dear fellow, you are absolutely pale this morning! Our country
air ought to do better for you than this. Yes, I wish you would go with
me. I don’t know exactly what is to be done. If old Simlin is very ill,
he can not be moved, and anyhow there is no road leading up that side of
the Spring Hill, nothing but a narrow foot-path, which I guess he has
worn himself, for nobody else ever goes in that direction. The cabin
must have been originally put up by hunters. The place is so lonely and
inaccessible, I have often tried in vain to prevail upon him to come
down into the village. He is a strange man, almost a hermit in his
habits.”

“Father, can not I go along with you? Maybe I can do something for him,
too, if he is sick.”

“You, Helen?” said her father, smiling. “What can you do for such a
person? No, no, child, it is no place for you. I do not like to have you
go among any of these wretched people.”

He stooped and kissed the fair countenance raised so entreatingly to
his. A swift expression of pain had come across the younger gentleman’s
face as the colonel spoke, but the girl persisted, and her father
reluctantly gave his consent.

“Well, well, as you will! Tell Margaret to put a few things into a
basket with some wine and brandy, and tell Jake to follow us with it
immediately. We may need him anyhow, and he has no work to do about the
house this morning. I can not spare Hendricks from the foundry, and very
likely, if we can not move Simlin, the hut will have to be fixed up a
little.”

Losing no time, they started on their errand of mercy. The walk was
long, but well shaded. Down the hill, along the valley, up the hill, all
Nature seemed reveling in an excess of joy. The little song-sparrows,
wild with delight, united in a jubilant choir; the blackbirds called,
and called, and called; the orioles, in myriad numbers, fluttered their
golden wings; and sometimes a chaffinch loitered for a moment in her
flight to the far-off wheat fields.

It seemed strange that there should be any misery, any suffering. The
girl could not realize it until they came out on top of the Spring Hill
to the little clearing where the cabin stood, which, in its utter
desolation, appeared to overwhelm her. There was no sign of a human
presence any where. A silent robin sat idly on the chimney-top, while
its mate flitted wistfully over the sunburnt grass. The place was so
lonely that the gentle wind seemed to smother a sob. Below, the wide
valley stretched away to the remote sky. And in this wretched hovel, on
this solitary site, old Simlin lived, like one ostracized from society.

“Wait here a moment,” said the colonel, “while I go in first, and I will
come and tell you.”

He left them in the shade of the tall beech trees, and they saw him go
into the cabin. Though neither had spoken, they knew that upon each
heart rested the same burden of dread. In the moment that followed there
came over the young man an almost sickening anxiety, but the girl stood,
awed only by the thought that perhaps even then the black wings of Death
might be settling unknown within their very presence. Then she saw her
father come to the door and beckon—the old man at least was not dead—and
they went in together.

The place was far more bare and desolate than even its exterior had
appeared. The rough boards of the floor were shrunken apart. Through the
windows, unshielded by even a plank, the glaring light poured in a
pitiless flood. A broken chair or two were propped against the wall, and
in the corner an old pine table stood in a precarious condition upon its
uneven legs.

There, stretched across the wretched bed dressed in his grimy clothes,
just as they had seen him at the foundry twenty-four hours ago, the old
man lay insensible. All their restoratives were powerless to rouse him
from this heavy stupor. Not even a muscle responded to their efforts.
The half-closed eyes were glazed. There was no quiver now about the
bloodless lips. The thin, emaciated face seemed thinner, more emaciated,
for over all the features rested that sunk expression which those who
look upon it behold with despair at their hearts. But for the slow rise
and fall of his chest, they might have thought the last glimmer of life
had died out of that frail form forever.

It was plain that they could not dare to move him, and the colonel
carefully shaded the window with a few pieces of plank, still leaving
free access to the air. Helen had quietly taken all the things from the
basket, and set them ready for use, though there was little chance now
that they could be of any avail. Safford stood at the foot of the bed,
utterly unconscious of every thing at the moment but the prostrate
figure before him. Since he entered the room he had hardly changed his
position, only that he folded his arms across his breast, and drooped
his head a little, as if in that attitude he might the more intently
watch the sleeper.

When the colonel came and spoke to him he started up as if frightened,
like one out of a dream, so that the elder man looked at him in
surprise; but Safford, with a strong effort controlling himself, said
quickly, in a husky voice,— “I beg your pardon. You startled me!”

“I only wanted to know how long you thought he could last?”

“I can not tell. It may be until evening, hardly longer.”

He was right. The day wore on without any apparent change until about
the going down of the sun, when the old man moved a little. They had
once or twice dropped a few drops of wine between his lips, but this was
the first symptom of any break in the heavy stupor which had held him so
long in its death-like embrace. His respiration quickened, and became
audible. He muttered one or two incoherent sentences, then a tremor
passed over his features, and he opened his eyes.

Helen, whom her father had vainly endeavored during the afternoon to
persuade into going home, stood with her head turned away; and the
colonel, too intent upon watching the dying man, did not notice Safford,
from whose face, at the first struggle in the inanimate form, every
particle of color fled, and who, trembling violently all over, clutched
the bed for support.

The old man for a moment looked about the room blankly, as if a haze
obscured his vision. Raising himself slowly on his elbow, his face
lighted up, and he opened his lips to speak, but as suddenly the light
faded out, his features quivered pitiably, and he sank down, saying,
brokenly, in an accent of despair,—

“Dead—she is dead! She is dead!”

Then, starting up wildly, he cried out,—

“Do not look at me like that, Hetty; you will kill me! It was not for
the likes o’ me to have married you. Now you are so white an’ thin, an’,
Hetty, when I took ye to the church, yer cheeks were redder nor the
summer rose. Oh, forgive me, Hetty—forgive me!”

A terrible struggle in his throat compelled him to pause for a moment,
then he went on with rapid utterance, and an entreaty whose distress
could hardly find expression in words:—

“No, no, Hetty, do not ye call the little one that; I can not bar
it!—not that, not my name! I swear to ye, he shall not take after the
likes of his father—he must not be like me! Hetty, I swear to ye, if I
live, he shall never hear a low word, nor touch a drop o’ whisky! He
shall have learnin’, an’ be a gentleman—a fine gentleman. Hetty, I’ve
been a worthless dog—a brute, a beast! I can’t hardly look at ye now—I
darn’t, thar’ is sich a shinin’ light about yer face—but hear me, Hetty,
I swear to ye, the little one, even if ye will call him George Safford,
shall grow up to be a hon—Hetty, you are so still! O Hetty!—dead! she is
dead—dead!”

Both the colonel and Helen turned with astonishment to young Safford
when the old man, in his delirium, had spoken his name; but the latter,
unconscious of their surprise, with a single cry, sprang forward, and
supported the exhausted figure in his arms as it sank back.

“Father—my father!” The words broke from his lips in a voice painfully
choked by emotion.

There was another severe struggle for breath, then, with renewed
strength, the old man raised himself into a sitting posture, and,
looking round quickly, began in a hurried manner, fumbling about with
his hands,—

“I’ll go some place else; he mustn’t see me agin! He mustn’t never know
as I’m alivin’. He mustn’t never be disgraced by the likes o’ me.” He
paused a moment, and the expression of his face changed. “It’s a lie!”
he cried, fiercely; “I ain’t got no relatives, nor any body to look
after! It’s all a _lie_!” Then, shivering suddenly, he said, lowering
his voice, and speaking softly to himself: “It’s cold, but I’ll not have
no fire. Work—I must work! He’s a gentleman. I said he should be a
gentleman—and he’s got learnin’—lots o’ learnin’——No, no! I never seen
you before—I never seen you before!”

The wild, terrified voice died with a rattling sound in his throat.

“Father, father, speak to me! It is I, George!”

Safford, in his agony, fell upon his knees. During the moment that
followed there was profound silence; then Simlin opened his eyes, and
said, gently,—

“George! the little George!” A radiant light rested upon his thin face.
He raised his trembling hands, and passed them unsteadily over the man’s
head. “Yer hair is soft an’ black as hern, George. Hist! Don’t ye hear
her singin’?—Why, Hetty, I’m a-comin’, Hetty!—I’m a-comin’——”

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

                          THE ANTHEM OF JUDEA.


                                   I.

At the foot of the hill stood a low, old-fashioned frame house, with a
picket-fence round the yard, which ran down to a small stream that
sometimes flowed along slowly, and sometimes with a great rush, and
sometimes slept tranquilly beneath a sheeting of ice. Nearly a mile off,
smooth and level, with pleasant streets, and a church whose spire shone
in the sunlight long after the evening shade had crept over the ground,
was the village of Pickaway, the gem of Paint Valley.

From there, two days in every week, to the quaint old-fashioned house at
the foot of the hill, the children wended their way with music folios,
coming loiteringly in Summer over the narrow foot-path where the wild
columbine grew by the creek, but in Winter walking hurriedly over the
frozen turnpike, swinging their arms, blowing their fingers, and
sometimes doing battle bravely with the snow.

Here Franz Erckman lived in the plainest manner, with only his piano and
his cottage-organ for companions. Wife and children he had none, nor any
relative, nor any domestic pet. There was never a dog, or cat, or even
so much as a chicken, to be seen about the premises. One servant he
kept, to be sure, but she, a cross old woman, never opened her mouth for
the purpose of speech more than a dozen times in a year, and then it was
only upon some unusual provocation, as when the scholars broke a
pitcher, or muddied her floor, when she would give utterance to some
incoherent but disagreeable ejaculation.

Franz Erckman had lived in this way for nearly twenty years, and was
just as bluff in manner, and just as reserved in disposition, as when he
had first come there, an unknown young foreigner, without friends, or
acquaintances, or money, and commenced in a modest way giving
music-lessons to a few pupils at first, to many after a time.

When the new church was built, and a new organ with great gilded pipes
put in, his services were engaged, as well they might, for no other
person in the whole village could have made any thing whatever out of
all those stops, and pedals, and keys.

Now that Pickaway had grown to be quite a town, with a very respectable
hotel, many tourists came down in the summer season from the city to
rusticate for a week or two, and they always heard the organist with
astonishment. Inquiries about him were so often repeated by these
cultivated strangers, that Pickaway had finally grown to feel proud of
its musician, and it became as natural to them to show off Franz Erckman
as it did to call attention to the beautiful scenery. It would have been
hard to have overlooked either, for a more picturesque landscape could
rarely have been found.

However, all this praise and adulation had apparently made little effect
upon the village music-master, who had been again and again invited to
come up for one season to the city by these friendly tourists. They held
out to him the allurements of the orchestras and operas, and told
wonderful tales of the superb voices of the great _prime donne_. It was
all in vain. He always thanked them for their proffered hospitality, but
never accepted it, and lived along, seemingly content enough to teach
the village children, and play the church-organ. Only his one servant
knew how at night, and sometimes all night through, he tried
ineffectually to satisfy his great craving for music, and how, not until
the pale light of morning was visible in the east, would he shut his
cottage-organ. And when he turned from it there was always a strange
expression of despair upon his features.

The people of the town said he was penurious, for he invariably exacted
the tuition of each scholar in advance, and if at the appointed time it
was not forthcoming, he quietly dismissed the pupil without a word, and
there were no more lessons given until the quarter had been paid.
However, they grew to know him so well that every body fell into the
habit, in his case at least, of being punctual.

So, working steadily year after year, as he had done, with almost no
expenses of living, Pickaway thought he must have laid by quite a
fortune, and when the Widow Massey, poverty-stricken though she was,
made up her mind to send her little daughter—her only child—the poor,
weak, crippled little Alice, who went every Sunday to the church, and
listened with such deep delight to the strains of the great organ—when
the Widow Massey made up her mind to send her daughter to the
music-master, and give her this one pleasure, that it might brighten
somewhat the life so early blighted, all the people thought he would
surely take the child for nothing. But he did not—he took the money, the
full amount; and, if the people made sarcastic remarks about his
penuriousness, _they_ never offered to pay for the little girl. And the
mother never thought of asking a favor from any one. Though she earned
by hard labor scarcely enough to keep them, still for the last year she
had had this thought at heart, and quietly saved a little at a time,
until finally the long-coveted sum was in her possession; and gladly she
went and gave it to the music-master, who put it down at the bottom of
his vest-pocket, and told her to send the little girl twice a week. And
twice a week the little girl went.

That was in the Summer. She was pale, and thin, and delicate, and the
scholars all wondered how she would get there through the snow in the
Winter. But before the bleak winds had blown one rude blast, the little
Alice had a worse trouble. The Widow Massey suddenly fell ill and died,
commending her beloved child to the care only of the great Guardian
above.

It was a terrible stroke, and the people all wondered what would become
of the helpless daughter, who was too feeble to do any kind of work for
a means of subsistence, and every person thought it strange that
somebody else did not come to her relief.

It was very sad. The poor little creature seemed fairly racked with
grief, and had sat by the side of her dead mother day and night. On the
afternoon of the funeral they tried in vain to take her away, until
Franz Erckman came, and the people in surprise saw him lift her up in
his arms without a struggle, and quietly carry her out of the house.
They saw him, still with her arms clasped tight about his neck, crossing
the green pastures, strike the narrow foot-path by the creek, and
disappear as the path turned behind the heavy foliage that was brilliant
in the scarlet dyes of October.

It was not one of the days upon which he gave lessons. There was only
the ripple of water over the stones and the rustle of leaves that
occasionally blew down from the trees, to break the profound quiet of
the place as he passed through his gate. Not one word had been spoken,
and still in perfect silence he carried the frail little being, that he
could feel trembling from head to foot—he carried her across the broad
veranda and into the pleasant parlor—not the room that the scholars
used, but where his cottage-organ stood. Then he drew the sofa up beside
the instrument and laid her down upon it.

Her fingers unclasped with a convulsive movement, and Franz turned his
face away, for the child had not uttered a sound. Her eyes, dry and
unnaturally bright, wore a startled look, a mute, beseeching expression,
like the eyes of a wounded animal, and the pallor of her countenance,
that had a wild grief branded upon it, was almost as ghastly in hue as
death. It was suffering terrible to behold, and the hands of the strong
man trembled as he opened the mahogany case of his organ.

There was a moment’s silence; then music, soft and sorrowful, floated
out on the air gently, almost timidly; so very mournful, that the
strain, beautiful though it was, seemed to have in it a human cry of
pain. It was a language that could appeal to the heart when word or lip
failed.

The child’s whole frame shook beneath the heavy sobs that swelled up in
her throat, and the great grief had opened its flood-gates. Hour after
hour he played untiringly, while the violence of the storm spent itself.
The music, at first sorrowful, hurt, had cried out in its pain; then it
grew into a measure so yearning, it seemed the very genius of sympathy.
Making an intense appeal, it swelled into a great passion, which
gradually became exhausted by its own intense vehemence, until about the
going down of the sun it died. And the child slept.

The wild storm of anguish was over. Upon the face, the thin, pale face
of the little girl in her slumber, there shone an expression of such
absolute rest that Franz, with a sudden movement, bent down his head and
listened. Had she passed with the music to the land where there are
strains that swell into a _gloria_ never ending? He held his breath. Was
this the reflection of that peace eternal, that rest which endureth
forever? A sob quivered for a moment on her features, and escaped from
the lips of the sleeper. No, no, for sorrow showed its painful presence.
She was not dead, and, at the sigh, sad though it was to see, the man
arose with a smothered exclamation of relief.

The quiet day was drawing to its close. Within the room the shadows were
already thickening; without, long lines of mist festooned the hills in
plumes of royal purple, and the red haze of Indian-summer had gathered
into broad streamers that unfurled their splendor across the tranquil
sky. The floating twilight hung over the wide and level pastures. Down
by the creek the scarlet sage still showed its coral fringe, and
sometimes the woodbine, close by the house, waved its painted leaves.
Far off in the filmy vale the group of maples that had stood crowned
with a golden glory now shrouded themselves in black; and beyond, like a
long stretch of desolate shore, the great gloom lifted up its chilly
banks.

Many times from the window in his parlor Franz Erckman had watched the
divine pageant of night ascend the valley in all the pomp and grandeur
of its magnificence, in all the solemn majesty of its silence, in all
the ineffable depths of its sadness. Many times in his loneliness he had
seen it pass, when a vision of the fair Rhineland would come back to his
heart. Many times through its profound solitude he had looked out with
yearning eyes, with listening ears, striving to comprehend its sublime
mystery. Many times he had turned to it with a soul oppressed by despair
reaching toward the Infinite. For, though the people did not know it,
beneath the rough exterior of this reserved German dwelt a love of the
beautiful—a love so passionate sometimes, it seemed crushing his very
spirit that he could not give it utterance in his music. Then it was
that often he would rise from his organ in bitter disappointment, and go
out with his trouble to seek consolation from the night—the night
forever wan with her own unspoken sorrow.

But he stood watching the face of the sleeper, paying no heed to the
gathering shade. He stooped and arranged the cushions about the fragile
form with the gentle touch of a woman, while upon his features there
rested an expression more beautiful than they could ever borrow from the
softened light of the evening.

“She would have died,” he said to himself. “But for the music, I believe
she would have died! The chords of the organ spoke to her when all
earthly words failed. She, at least, can understand the language I have
been striving to learn.”

Frail little creature! She appeared, indeed, like a spirit of some other
world. Her every nerve had vibrated in sympathy, and Franz could hardly
help thinking, as he looked at her, that, soundless to human ears, there
played about her ceaseless strains of melody. Music seemed to be the
vitality that gave her life, the only nourishment that fed her soul.

When she first came to him for instruction, he quickly discovered that
she possessed not the least power of execution, and then had taken no
special notice of her further. Wrapped up in his art, teaching the
children had never been a pleasure to him. He compelled himself to
endure it as a means of subsistence.

The great object for which he worked was once to secure means enough to
keep penury always from his door, and then give himself up unreservedly
to this art which he loved better than his life. So he took no
particular interest in any of his scholars, and it was only when he saw
how eagerly the little Alice drank in every sound, that gradually he
began to observe the child more narrowly. As he had at first seen, she
possessed no power of execution whatever. She could not even learn to
read the notes, and she would probably never be able to play a single
bar correctly. But he had noticed how keenly alive she was to harmony,
how peculiarly sensitive to discord. It seemed as though her lessons
were a constant pain. Yet she came eagerly, and often lingered when they
were finished.

He had found her once, late in the day, when he had been playing
dreamily to himself, sitting on the veranda near the window of his
parlor, listening with a rapt attention, wholly unconscious of any thing
but his music. Since that, when she came to take her lesson, he had
always played for her, carelessly at first, but after a time with
greater interest, until gradually he had given up altogether any effort
to instruct her, and in its place each day played for her the oratorios
and symphonies of the great composers. Then he had changed from the
piano to his organ, and he had grown to wait nearly as anxiously for the
hour to come round as the little girl herself.

By degrees the visits of the child became to him almost indispensable.
He seemed to feel always a strange inspiration come upon him in her
presence. Why, he did not know; but it was then that sometimes the wild
tumult, the infinite longings of his soul struggled into expression.
But, when the child went, he would find himself again dejected, and
wholly unable even to recall the strains which seemed to have died at
the very moment of their birth.

Franz stood, still watching her motionless form. The sobs, quivering
through her sleep, had one by one exhausted themselves, and left her
face strangely peaceful to look upon.

“She is mine,” he muttered. “I will never part with her. She is my
spirit of sound!”

Suddenly he heard the grating noise of footsteps on the graveled walk.
Turning quickly, he drew the curtain over the window to shield the
sleeper from the damp night-air. Then he went softly out and closed the
door after him, wrapped once more in his severe reserve, and with the
old stern expression upon his features. His brows knit themselves into a
frown, and his lips curled for a moment with a smile of contempt when he
recognized the figure coming into the hall.

“Ha! Erckman, good-evening,” said the man, in a loud and boisterous
tone, which seemed to dissipate all the serenity of the night in its
pompous swell.

“Good-evening.”

If it had been the first time they had ever met, Franz could not have
spoken with colder formality as he showed his guest into the piano-room.

Mr. Cory claimed to be the richest man in Pickaway, and very likely it
was true. He owned hundreds of green and fertile acres, with cattle
sleek and fat. He was ruling elder in the church, and his wife bought
all her bonnets and flounces in the city, and they had built the finest
house in the whole of Paint Valley. Indeed, nothing was done without his
presence, and every one, from the minister to the sexton, received his
advice, which he distributed far more liberally than he did his money.
So it was that Franz had mentally guessed the object of his visit the
instant he recognized him in the hall.

“Fine weather, this.”

The organist made no more audible reply to the remark than a
half-uttered grunt, as he struck a match down the corner of the
mantelpiece, and lighted the lamp. Mr. Cory sat uneasily on the hard,
hair-cloth chair, dimly conscious of some obstruction in the usually
smooth channel of his discourse.

“Sad affair of the Widow Massey.”

“Yes.”

He looked about the room for a moment, as though expecting to discover
the presence of some third person, then repeated,—

“Sad affair! sad affair! We are all liable to sudden death, and she
ought to have been saving up, in case of such an event. She left nothing
to provide for the child at all. Nothing at all. The furniture will
barely bring enough to pay for her funeral expenses.”

Franz had sat down mechanically on the music-stool, and rested one hand
on the keyboard of the piano. Just as the conversation had reached this
point, he suddenly took his hand away, with a nervous movement that
sounded three or four discordant bass-notes of the instrument as he did
so, and Mr. Cory for the second time found himself laboring under an
ill-defined sense of discomfort, something wholly unusual. But, seeing
his host showed no symptoms of breaking the silence, after a slight
cough, he went on,—

“We have been talking this afternoon as to what is going to be done with
the child. You’ve got her here, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, one can’t do a great deal in this way, but you know it is such a
sad case, and the child can’t do any work about a house, and my wife is
so interested in her she thinks she’ll take the little girl—What did you
say?”

“Nothing.”

“I beg your pardon, I thought you spoke. My wife is so interested in her
she thinks she’ll take the little girl and send her for a year to the
industrial school in the city, where she can learn to do fine sewing and
embroidery. That will give her a chance to earn her living, and we can
take up a collection in church to defray the expense.”

“‘Fine sewing and embroidery’—_fine suffering and death_!” said Franz,
suddenly letting loose his pent-up wrath. “Mr. Cory, would you kill the
child? She is frailer than a flower, a sickly little thing, and
crippled. One month’s stooping over a needle would put her in the grave.
I thought for a moment, but an hour ago, that she was dead.” As he spoke
the last word he left his seat, and, taking up the lamp, said,—“Come
with me, and step lightly.”

Utterly taken aback at the sudden outburst of the music-master, Mr. Cory
followed him across the hall, saw him open the door of the opposite
room, and motion him to enter. Then he said, in a quiet voice, while he
shaded the lamp carefully with his hand, so that its rays did not fall
directly upon the face of the child,—

“Look at her.”

The man stepped forward, but almost immediately drew back, with a
shiver, from the sleeper, whose repose so strangely resembled death. She
lay upon the sofa, with her hands folded across her breast, as when she
had at first fallen into slumber.

Franz stood intently regarding her, when suddenly his guest, coming up
close to him, said, with his rough voice dropped into a frightened
whisper, and his eyes looking quickly about the room,—

“Where does it come from?”

“What?” asked Franz, startled by his singular manner.

“Do you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The music.”

“Music!” exclaimed Franz, dropping his voice also to a whisper, and
involuntarily suspending his breath for a moment—“no, I hear no music.”

“It did not seem like the piano or organ. It must have been the wind in
the trees outside, but it sounded just like a strain of music. We had
better go, or we may waken her,” said Mr. Cory, as he turned to the
door, and drew one hand across his forehead, where the perspiration had
collected in drops, although the evening was cold and the air chilly.

Franz followed him out, springing the latch gently with his hand as it
caught, and they both went back to the piano-room. Here Mr. Cory seemed
to recover somewhat of his usual composure.

“Well, Erckman, she does look thin and delicate-like, but sewing won’t
hurt her, not a bit. She’ll be better when she’s got something to do.
She can’t exist on air, and she can’t live in idleness. She has got
nothing, and it’s the only way I know of she can make her living. She
must do work of some kind for support.”

Before Franz’s eyes there floated visions of broad and fertile acres, of
fine cattle, of fine clothes, of fine houses, but “she must do work of
some kind for support,” so he said nothing, while the church-elder
continued,—

“There is James Maxwell going to the city to-morrow, and my wife said we
had better send her to the school by him.”

“Send her—, Mr. Cory,” said the organist, with a suppressed fierceness
in his voice, “You saw how frail she is, how she looks as if, even now,
the shadow of death might be upon her. You know how, from her birth, she
has been crippled. I tell you one month in that school among strangers
would kill her. Are there not strong arms enough in the world, is there
not wealth enough already, that this unfortunate one, this perpetually
enfeebled child, must wear out her brief span of life in a painful
struggle to gain a little food?”

“We are not, sir, expected to keep the ‘unfortunate one,’ as you call
her,” blustered Mr. Cory, fairly purple with indignant astonishment.
“What do you mean, sir? We are not under obligations to do any thing
whatever for the girl. She should be thankful we interested ourselves in
her behalf,” he said, partially choking with rage. “We will do this for
her, but that is all. She is nothing to us.”

“I had no intention of dictating,” said the organist, politely, who had
quieted down as quickly as he had roused up. “You are right, sir, she is
nothing to you, and you need not trouble yourself about the matter
further. I will see that the child is provided for.”

Then Mr. Cory looked at Franz as if he thought he had not heard aright,
or that the music-master might be departing from his senses.

“I repeat, I will see that the child is provided for, and you need not
trouble yourself in regard to her further.”

“Very well, sir, very well!” exclaimed the elder, rising, almost
speechless with surprise. But when he reached the piazza he said,—“Then
it is understood that I am not responsible in the case?”

“It is understood.”

Franz had had no intention of parting with the child. He would not have
given her up had Mr. Cory offered all his grassy meadows. He watched him
as he walked down the graveled path and disappeared in the darkness.
“Charity!” he muttered. “Shut him out, O Night—hide him from view! Wrap
your impenetrable mantle about him, that it may shield him from the eye
of God and man!”

The German stood for a moment looking out into the limitless gloom,
which screened alike the evil and the good, then he turned again into
the house.

He went back, through the dining-room where his supper was spread
untouched upon the table, to the kitchen, where Margery sat warming
herself by the dying embers in the stove. The old servant was used to
his irregular ways, and often saw his meals go untasted without a
remark. But it was rarely the master ever intruded upon her premises,
and she rose up as he came in, with an expression of surprise upon her
quiet face.

“Margery,” he said, “fix up the bedroom next to yours, then come down to
me in the parlor.”

The old woman heard him without a question, though never before could
she remember when the guest-chamber had been used, or a visitor staid
overnight at the house.

When she had obeyed his instructions she presented herself at the
parlor-door. There was no lamp in the room, only a narrow strip of light
fell upon the floor from across the hall, but it did not penetrate the
heavy shadow, and Margery, with a half-uttered apology upon her lips,
drew back. At the sound of the woman’s steps, Franz came out of the
gloom.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“What is the matter?”

“I did not know you was playin’, or I would have waited,” said the
servant, respectfully, who had learned long ago never under any
circumstances to interrupt her master at his practice.

“I was not playing.”

“Warn’t it you, sir? It was so dark I could not see.”

“Me? no; nor any body else. No one was playing.”

“Why, I thought I heard—but it must have been the wind,” said Margery,
glancing across her shoulder to the vacant piano-stool. “I thought I
heard music just as I opened the door.—The room is ready, sir.” Franz
bent over the sofa and raised the sleeping form in his arms. Turning to
Margery, he said,—

“She is light. Here, carry her up and put her to bed. Don’t waken her if
you can help it, and go to her once or twice in the night to see that
she sleeps, for she is not well.”

Then he added, as an abrupt explanation,—

“She will occupy that room always. This is to be her home, and I want
you to see that she has every thing necessary.”

“Yes, sir.”

If the old servant was surprised at the announcement, she made no
remark. She took her up, arranged every thing for the night, and the
child never awakened.

It was not an unpleasant expression that spread itself upon the face of
the woman as she stooped over the bed, and laid with a careful hand
every fold about the sleeper. With noiseless feet she came again and
again to look once more at the unconscious form that seemed to possess
for her a singular attraction. Taking up the lamp, she turned to go into
her own (the adjoining) room, but, with an abrupt start, she checked
herself midway in the action, held the light suspended, and stood with
every muscle arrested, as if some unexpected sound had fallen suddenly
on her ears. Then she bent her head for a moment over the sleeper,
glanced quickly about the room, and hurriedly crossed to the hall.

She ran down the flight of stairs, looked first into the piano-room,
then into the parlor opposite. Both places were deserted, and the
instruments closed. The front door was bolted, and the master had
evidently retired. She went back to the guest-chamber. The child still
slept, and Margery held every nerve in suspense, but there was not the
least sound. She stepped to the window, pushed up the sash, then leaned
out and listened. The night was perfectly calm. What gentle breeze there
had been two hours before had died away and left a profound silence
unbroken even by the chirp of an insect. She closed the shutter, went
back to the bedside again for an instant; then, saying quietly to
herself, “It must have been mere fancy,” passed out to her own room, and
left the door partially open between the two apartments.


                                  II.

So the little Alice had found a home. All the people in Pickaway
expressed their utter surprise at this unexpected generosity of the
penurious music-master. He certainly was about the last person in the
town from whom such an act might have been anticipated. Indeed, it was
little short of an enigma to the place. But their astonishment knew no
bounds when, within a few days after he had taken the little girl, he
quietly dismissed all his pupils, and steadily refused to give any more
lessons to a single soul. Nothing could prevail upon him, no entreaties
whatever could persuade him, and he could never be induced to offer the
least explanation.

Some of the wealthier ones, unwilling to give him up, had voluntarily
proposed to pay double the former price, but even money, which all the
village had thought the god of his life, failed to move him from his
determination. He was inexorable. Every body wondered what might be the
reason. No person could discover any apparent cause why he should so
suddenly give up teaching. They inquired about his health. It was very
good, he said. Did he expect to leave home? No. He would continue to
play the church-organ? Yes, oh, yes; he had no intention of stopping
that. So they conjectured until tired of the task, while Franz Erckman
paid no attention.

However, as the days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months, all the
village saw that a change had come over the organist. He was less
communicative than formerly, and more severely reserved.

From the borders of the creek the fringe of scarlet flowers had
vanished. The myriad leaves had lost their rainbowed glory, and dropped,
one after another, in russet tatters to the ground. The woodbine had
thrown off its vermilion raiment, and now stretched up unclothed its
weird and snake-like arms. The group of maples had laid down its golden
crown; the hills, too, had cast aside their tiara of brilliant emerald.
The Summer and Fall, in all their emblazoned splendor, had passed by,
and the gorgeous livery of Autumn faded to the grizzled hues of Winter.

Up the tawny valley a bleak December wind swept, making a cheerless
rattle among the naked trees, and the creek slumbered quietly beneath
its covering of ice; but this time no children came over the frozen
turnpike to the house at the foot of the hill. More secluded than ever
it seemed. Before the bitter winds had risen, in the pleasant November
days, Franz had often rambled through the woods, carrying the little
Alice, when she felt tired, in his arms. But, as the air grew chill,
they staid almost wholly within the house. After that Franz rarely left
it except when his duties as organist called him to the church, and then
he invariably took the little girl with him, wrapped carefully in a
heavy cloak.

The people noticed that he was never seen any where without the child.
If the weather proved bad on the Sabbath, or on the days when he went
sometimes during the week to play, he still carried her with him, but an
additional fur mantle was thrown around her for protection. She had
never grown stronger; but, since that first night, when the organist had
broken down the great barrier of grief that was closing up like a strong
wall about her heart, they were seldom separated in her waking hours.

During all this time Franz had changed so strangely that the village
gossips said one would hardly have known him for the same person. To be
sure, he had always been silent and reserved, but now he had become
absolutely inapproachable. His manner, which was naturally abrupt, was
often now wild and feverish. His face, too, had grown thin, his cheeks
hollow, his whole figure gaunt. His eyes, brilliant but sunken, had
assumed a singular expression of unrest, a perpetually searching look,
as if forever striving to see the invisible, and it began finally to be
whispered about among the people that the church-organist was not quite
right in his head. They noticed, besides, that he would never allow the
child to be enticed out of his sight. The ladies often tried to pet her,
but she shrank invariably from every one except Franz, to whom she clung
as if he were the one prop that sustained her life.

So the time had worn away at the musician’s home. Margery, respectful as
ever in her manner, assiduously waited upon the little girl, who
received all her attentions gratefully, and never voluntarily made a
single demand. But there had passed a change over the old servant also.
From her usually quiet ways she had become restless, as if there might
be something upon her mind that rendered her constantly uneasy, or from
which she was ineffectually trying to free herself. If she were sour or
cross in disposition, as all the scholars used to tell, she had never
shown it to the little orphan. She watched the child with a strange
devotion. She would follow her about the house at a distance, and, if
the little girl for a time sat down upon the veranda, Margery, too,
farther off, would sit there with her sewing, or embrace that
opportunity to trim the woodbine, and once or twice she had even found
an excuse to intrude herself for a moment in the parlor.

Every evening, when she put the little girl to bed, Margery, with a
strange, expectant look upon her face, would linger about the room long
after her charge had fallen into a peaceful sleep. Then, when she had
retired, often in the very middle of the night, she would suddenly waken
from a sound slumber, spring out of bed, and, before she was thoroughly
conscious, discover herself standing beside the child, with her head
bent down in a listening position, and every nerve strained to catch the
slightest sound. Immediately she would rundown stairs into the
music-rooms, only to find them both deserted and the instruments closed.
With a white countenance she would return, pause once more in the
child’s room, and then lie down again, saying to herself, for the
hundredth time,—

“It must be mere fancy. I have been dreaming.”

There was no element of superstition in Margery, but this incident would
recur over and over, night after night, until she began to ask herself
if, before she had reached sixty years, she was already losing her mind,
and this the first fancy of a disordered imagination. It was strange,
she told herself, that she should dream the same thing so often, and
every time it should be so vivid, for she heard a strain of music as
distinctly as she ever heard a sound in her life, though it was not like
the piano, organ, or, indeed, any instrument. And, though vivid, it was
so evanescent it made her doubt the veracity of her senses. Then, too,
it never came from down stairs, or out-of-doors, but always seemed
apparently to emanate from the bedside of the little child, though, as
soon as she had stooped to listen, it was gone, and the reign of silence
again left supreme. Once or twice, even during the day, when standing
beside the little Alice, Margery had heard, or thought she heard, a
sudden waft of this soft melody sweep by her, but so fleeting that it
was gone before she could catch her breath to listen, or be sure it was
not simply all her own imagination.

So, with this constantly upon her mind, Margery had grown restless, and
found herself continually watching the little girl. She was not
insensible either of the great change that had, by some means or other,
been wrought in her master since the child had come into the house. She,
as well as the people, had noticed that he would never, if possible,
allow her out of his sight. He never played a night now by himself as he
had been used to doing for years. After the child went to bed the
instruments were always closed, for he never put his hand upon the
keyboard unless she were present. And, even when he had her beside him,
he did not seem happy.

The people at church said, as he had changed, his music, too, had
changed; but, as he had grown more wild and feverish in manner, his
music had grown more softened and beautiful in style. And once, after he
had played a dreamy harmony that held them all entranced, he had come
down from the organ-gallery with a fierce fire burning in his eyes, and
hands that trembled violently, though they were clasped tight over the
little girl in his arms. When they had complimented him he looked
bewildered, and spoke in a confused way, as though he could not remember
what he had been playing. Now, more convinced than ever were the people
that something was evidently wrong with the music-master, and,
notwithstanding he had lost nothing in his art, many shook their heads,
and whispered that poor Erckman was, beyond a doubt, going crazy.

December had worn almost into Christmas. In every house of the village
there were preparations for the approaching holiday. The church, too,
was undergoing some mysterious process at the hands of the young people,
who went in and out at all hours by the back way, and steadily refused
admittance to any one. They had even closed the doors against the
organist when he went there one morning to play, but he was easily
persuaded to withdraw, as he cared far more for solitude than society.

Franz sat moodily by the fire in his parlor, with the little girl upon a
cushion at his feet. They were both naturally silent, and would often
sit quietly together for hours. But now, though the musician gazed
absently into the grate, and seemed to take no heed of the child, she
looked up once or twice into his face, then said, in a timid voice,—

“Father, to-morrow is Christmas.”

Franz had long ago taught her to call him father, and he merely answered
mechanically, without taking his eyes from the illuminated coals,—

“Yes.”

“How dark the night is out, and how shrill and bleak the wind blows!”
She had risen from her seat and gone to the window. “But to-morrow is
Christmas-day, and I know it will be bright then; oh, I am sure it will
be bright!”

She stood a moment longer by the casement without speaking, then came
back and sat down again, looking almost as ethereal as some spirit, that
might vanish any moment forever into the glow of the red firelight.

“You will play something very beautiful to-morrow, will you not, father?
You will make the voluntary better than all the service besides? Oh, for
such a celebration, it ought to be the most magnificent music in the
world, for, think, father, it will be Christmas, the grandest day in all
the year! It seems to me I can hardly wait to hear you, I have been
looking forward to it so long. But, father, you have not practised any
for it, have you?” said the child, looking up suddenly with quick dismay
upon her features.

Franz, still without glancing at the little girl, or taking his eyes
from the fire, said,—

“No,” but he clasped his hands nervously together.

“Oh, father, you did not forget about it, did you?” she asked eagerly.
“I have so often and often thought of it, though I did not say any
thing, but it is strange I never once thought about the practising. Oh,
you could not have forgotten it, father?”

She was so intensely earnest, it seemed as if her whole soul was in the
question, trembling while it awaited the reply.

“No, I have not forgotten it,” said Franz, “It has hardly been out of my
mind one moment for many weeks; but I have nothing to play.”

At first, her face had been perfectly radiant; but, when he added the
last clause, she got up, put her arms about his neck, and said, with a
kind of terror in her voice,—

“Oh, no, no! You will play, father—tell me you will play!”

Franz moved uneasily in his seat.

“And it will be something grand, father. Oh, you will please everybody—I
am not afraid of that. Quick, tell me you will play. Father, if you did
not—I can not bear to think of it—oh, you will—say you will!”

Her entreaty had fairly grown into wild desperation. Every fiber of her
frame quivered as she clung to him. Alarmed at her singular agitation,
he took her up on his knee, and said, hurriedly,—

“Yes, yes; I will play. Do not be troubled about it; I will play.”

“Oh, I am so glad! I knew you would, and it will be grand, I am sure,
for to-morrow is Christmas!”

Her face was radiant with pleasure; but so extreme had been her
excitement that nearly an hour later, when Margery came to take her
upstairs, she still trembled.

Franz, left alone, paced the floor of his room up and down, sometimes
stopping to look moodily into the fire. He had had this thing long upon
his mind. Feeling the divine power of genius within him, he was not
willing to play over again what generations had played over a hundred
times before him. Yet he tried unavailingly to improvise. Once or twice,
when playing, with the little Alice beside him, he had suddenly
entranced even himself; but as soon as he undertook to reproduce the
notes, either upon paper or upon the organ, he discovered them gone from
his memory, and himself utterly powerless. It had only been latterly
that he felt hampered in this way; yet he was conscious,
notwithstanding, that his music at the same time had undergone a vast
improvement. But he struggled against this one fault vainly. He had been
determined to work out a new composition for this great occasion; and
now, upon the very verge of Christmas-day, after all his unceasing
anxiety, he found himself without a single idea—wholly unprepared. In
his disappointment, he had almost been ready to absent himself
altogether from the church; but the sudden appeal of the little girl had
compelled him to give up this cowardly refuge, of which in a better mood
he would have been ashamed.

The child had not prophesied incorrectly. Under cover of night, the
clouds marshaled themselves into gray battalions, which fled
precipitately before the lances of the morning, that in resplendent
array, column upon column, mounted the eastern sky; and Christmas—this
day forever sacred to the world in its grand memories—dawned with the
blaze of victorious colors.

Bathed in sunlight, the crystal valley wreathed itself with brilliant
jewels; the sparkling trees held up their embossed arches of frosted
silver; and from the glittering hill-sides cold flakes of fire burned in
diamond hues almost blinding to the eye—for a slight fall of snow during
the night had spread itself over the land, and covered it as with a
mantle of transfiguration.

The bell in the tower had long been ringing out its invitation to
worship, before Franz, carrying the little Alice on his arm, left the
house. A singular eagerness rested on the face of the child, whose
usually pale cheeks were now colored with a crimson flush that deepened
almost to scarlet in the center. She held quietly to Franz, sometimes
looking at him for a moment, then turning her eyes again toward the
village.

Though she said no word, it seemed as if she could hardly wait until
they reached the church, but that her impatient spirit would break its
bounds and fly. But Franz walked with a slow, unwilling step. A fierce
despair appeared to be consuming him. His disappointment was made keener
when he saw the wild expectation with which the little Alice looked
forward to his music, and her confident belief that it would be far
grander than any thing he had ever done before.

The villagers, by groups, in twos, in threes, with happy faces, coming
from far and near, poured into the church. Paying no heed to any one as
he passed, Franz entered by the side door, and went immediately up into
the organ-gallery. With glad eyes, the little Alice saw the church in
its festival decorations. Beautiful wreaths of cedar coiled themselves
around the great pillars, and crept in waving lines over altar, arch,
and casement, their unfading green sometimes flecked with amber,
sometimes dyed in violet light, as the rays of the sun caught the tints
from the windows of stained glass. Resting against the center of the
chancel rail, a magnificent cross of hot house flowers loaded the air
with the perfumes of summer—an incense more pure and holy than the
incense of myrrh; and on either side sprays of English ivy, in long and
twining branches, displayed their wax-like leaves.

The last vibrations of the bell died away. The congregation chanted its
anthem; the minister read the Christmas service; and the first strains
of the organ-voluntary, after the close of the litany, sounded through
the church. The little Alice, with a throbbing pulse, crept close to
Franz as he played; but it was only the familiar music, that the world
already knew by heart, and had heard a thousand times before. Poor
Franz, warring against himself, had been driven back to the composition
of others, though he knew he possessed within him a power that should
have created, that should have raised him above all written measure. But
now even his execution was a dead, mechanical labor.

A swift expression of keen disappointment fell upon the child’s face.
She looked up at him, with a gesture, slight but strangely appealing,
and with eyes filled by a sorrowful reproach—such a look as one might
wear in the last moment, whose most cherished friend had suddenly turned
and dealt him a death-blow.

But Franz played on mechanically, with the pang of despair at his heart.
Suddenly, half-way in a bar, in the very midst of a single note almost,
a sensation of fear came upon him—an overwhelming awe that seemed to
lock his muscles and turn his hands into stone. The organ ceased
abruptly; he sat motionless as a statue; and a death-like silence
reigned throughout the church. Had the same unaccountable awe fallen
upon the congregation, too? The whole universe waited.

Out of the profound silence a sound was born, a sound more beautiful
than the music of a dream. Soft as a whisper, clear and distinct, it
grew, wave upon wave, into a grand volume of harmony, that was not loud,
though it seemed as if it reached beyond the church-walls and floated on
through endless space. Was it, then, music from that land where the
crystal air breathes a perpetual melody? The people by one impulse
sprang to their feet, and turned with awe-stricken faces toward the
gallery. Grander, more majestic, it swelled into a glad chorus, whose
_gloria_, inspired with praise, rose up into heaven. It was an adoration
of sublime joy that seemed too intense to be ascribed to mortal spirit;
and the people fell upon their knees while they listened. Over plains,
over hills, in the sky, it seemed to reverberate and answer back,
sweeter than the sound of silver, vaster than the roll of ocean—the
hallelujah of myriad voices, the song as of an innumerable multitude,—

“Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward
men—”

Again and again the refrain gathered into a measure more triumphant than
the strains of a victorious army. Then, ascending higher and higher, it
fainted through infinite distance, and was gone as if it had passed
beyond the very portals of eternity.

The spellbound audience hardly moved for a moment, even after the music
had died; but when the first stir broke the silence they collected about
the organist with eager questions. Franz, still sitting at his
instrument, had never turned. Anxious to testify their wild admiration,
they were ready almost to bow down before him; but they were obliged to
speak several times before he gave the slightest heed. Then he looked up
abruptly and said with a strange impatience,—

“Did not you see?”

There was a confused expression in his eyes, as if they might have been
blinded by a great light, and their vision not yet wholly recovered. The
people looked at him, then at each other in bewilderment, but, as if he
had suddenly comprehended their meaning, he went on quickly,—

“It was not I. I did not play a note. It was the music of another world,
the music of the first Christmas. Did not you see the host of angels in
the sky, and the shepherds that watched their flocks by night upon the
plains of Judea? It was the _gloria_ sung at the nativity of Christ by
the angels centuries ago, beside the village of Bethlehem!”

Then the people, regarding him with doubtful faces, drew back, and he
said, with fierce excitement,—

“If you do not believe, ask the little Alice there. She will tell you.”

The little girl sat close to his bench, but when they turned to her she
made no reply. They raised her up. Their question never received an
answer, and Franz with a wild cry fell upon his knees by her side. The
child was dead.

For many years afterward the musician lived on in the old place at the
foot of the hill, but he never again could be prevailed upon to strike a
note of any instrument or listen to a strain of any music. More rarely
than ever did he speak to a soul, and then it was only at the Christmas
time, to tell again of the little Alice, his spirit of sound, to tell of
that wonderful _gloria_ of immortal praise sung by a multitude of the
heavenly hosts, whose splendor, almost blinding to his eyes, had lighted
up earth and sky over the far-off plains of Palestine, where the
shepherds, centuries ago, were watching their flocks by night.

Strangers heard his tale with a scarcely concealed smile, and shook
their heads sorrowfully as the old man, feeble and palsied, with a
singular brilliance in his sunken eyes, turned away. But all the
villagers spoke of him with respect, almost with awe, and the children
learned to hush their mirth in reverence as he passed by. Margery, with
a face quieter than ever, said little, but served her master with an
untiring devotion, and after she had closed his eyes in death, when she
was an old, old woman, sometimes in the evening she would suddenly break
her long silence to tell a wondering group of Franz and the little
Alice, and of the mysterious melody that played about the child.

And so the people of Paint Valley relate the story yet, and show the
graves in the long grass of the village church-yard, where, side by
side, they wait to join at the last day the throng whose immortal
_gloria_ shall surpass even that grand Christmas anthem—the song of the
angels heard by the shepherds upon the plains of Judea.


                                THE END.

[Illustration]

------------------------------------------------------------------------




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------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
      spelling.
 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
 4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.



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