All Destiny MoON Fiction: A Mix of Old & New Short Stories
Author: Warner, Dean; Thal, Michael L; Turner, Russell; Hughson, Ceri; Gallah, Sarah; Khattah, Debra Grace; Blaney, Alanna
Date: 2011-01-07 04:30:00+00:00
Publisher: All Destiny.com

All Destiny.com MoON Fiction: A Mix of Old & New Short Stories

Edited by Ceri Hughson

Kindle Edition

Copyright 2011 Ceri Hughson

Visit http://CeriClark.com for information about the author

Kindle Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

About the Editor

Ceri Hughson is the pen name of Ceri Clark. Ceri has compiled and published short stories and articles on All Destiny.com since 2002.

Contents

Preface

About the Authors

The Midshipman by Dean Warner

An Unfinished Race by Ambrose Bierce

The Price of Genius by Debra Grace Khattah

Charles Ashmore’s Trail by Ambrose Bierce

Daemons, Dragons & Infants by Alanna Blaney

Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

The Leather Funnel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The New Catacomb by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Witch by Anton Chekhov

The Spectre Bridegroom by Irving Washington

Love is an Empty Space by Russell Turner

The Gipsy Prophecy by Bram Stoker

The Merodian Revolution by Sarah Gallah

Green Eyes by Ceri Hughson

A School Story by MR James

Cygnus Loop by Michael L Thal

Madam Crowl’s Ghost by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

The Haunted House by Charles Dickens

Schalken the Painter by Joseph Le Fann

Present at a hanging by Ambrose Bierce

Preface

MoON is a mixture of old and new fiction in the science-fiction, fantasy and horror genres published in the All Destiny magazine over the years. They appear in the order they were published in the issues.

A note about editing

The authors of these short stories are from different countries, for example Britain, Canada, Ireland and from the US. As such I have tried to stick to the English language native to the country of the author’s birth. Therefore if you see color and colour used in different stories, it is as the author intended. Similarly some of the stories are written in older English forms, think of it as adding to the ambience of the story.

About the Authors

Dean Warner

Dean Warner won our 2004 short story competition. Originally from Reading, just outside of London, UK, he worked in the Post Office from the age of 18 and studied accounting for 4 years. Taking a chance he moved to Thailand where he found employment as an investment broker.

He has been writing since very young but had never submitted anything for competitions or publication until the Post Office launched an annual compilation of short stories, in which one of his stories was published.

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce wrote several books and short stories. He was a journalist, satirist and novelist. He died in 1913.

Debra Grace Khattah

Debra Grace Khattah comes from Berkeley in Canada.

Alanna Blaney

Alanna Blaney won a short story competition with Writers News for her short story, ‘Sophia.’

Edgar Allan Poe

Best known for the ‘Fall of the House of Usher’, Edgar Allan Poe was a writer poet and editor. He died in 1849.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

While Sherlock Holmes is the most famous of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creations, his other works included the Challenger series and historical works.

Anton Chekhov

Anton Checkhov is said to be ‘the greatest short-story writers in the history of world literature.’

Irving Washington

As well as an author, Irving Washington was also a historian. His most famous stories are ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle.’ Irving Washington died in 1859.

Russell Turner

Russell Turner sent his story in to an All Destiny competition from his home in Scotland.

Bram Stoker

One of the best gothic authors in history, Bram Stoker’s most famous work was Dracula. He died in 1912.

Sarah Gallah

Sarah Gallah sent her great story in to an All Destiny competition in 2005. This is surely a talent to watch out for.

Ceri Hughson

Ceri is the Editor of and has written various articles for the All Destiny Magazine. She published ‘Children of the Elementi’, a teenage fantasy novel in 2010.

MR James

This classic horror tale was written by MR James, an English author who died in 1936. He was noted most for his ghost stories. However he was a medieval scholar as well as a celebrated author.

Michael L Thal

Michael L Thal has written over fifty articles. He has also written the ‘Legend of Koolura’ and ‘The Light: An Alien Abduction.’

Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

Two classic horror tales in this collection were written by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, an Anglo-Irish author who died in 1873. He was noted most for his ghost stories and mystery novels, of which these are two of his best.

Charles Dickens

One of the UK’s best known authors, he wrote masterpieces such as ‘The Adventures of Oliver Twist’, ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Great Expectations.’ He died in 1870.

The Midshipman by Dean Warner

1872

November 18th

For those who may cast their eyes upon this journal, William Richard Sumner is my name, a non-commissioned midshipman and officer of His Majesty’s Navy assigned to my second crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, aboard a merchant vessel.

As in accordance with my duty roster, and as the Articles of War convey for a midshipman: in the occasion of fatality or incapacity of all officers that I precede in rank, I am to commandeer the vessel on which I am aboard and administer all duties necessary to maintain captaincy of the said vessel. Therefore in the unfortunate absence of Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs due to his passing at mid-day, on the 15th day of November 1872, I inherit the task of continuing to update the ship’s log and captain’s journal. I have undertaken all responsibilities of the captain’s position, and give my best efforts to meet the expectations of a senior naval officer. Our current position at this time is yet to be determined, although the captain’s last journal entry stated us being three hundred and seventy miles due south-southeast of port.

Those of us left aboard the vessel honoured the captain in his committal to the seas that he’d sailed for decades of a distinguished career, followed sadly by his wife Sarah, and young daughter Sophia.

He was a courageous seaman admired and respected among the crew, and I’m sure I also speak on behalf of the officers that he’d previously sailed with, and those with whom he were acquainted with onshore.

In resuming captaincy, it is my duty to investigate the cause of death of those concerned, and in doing so I have eliminated the possibility of mutinous intention, and established that no unscrupulous misdeeds took place, and in consultation with the ship’s surgeon, we arrived at the assumption that an anonymous ailment said to be initiated by tainted pork was the apparent source.

Hence, I have seen to it that the stock of pork was jettisoned with haste. Yet, the master and master’s mate, and the senior midshipman are evidently infected with the same virus having eaten the pork in the captain’s quarters beforehand, and are unable to perform any physical tasks aboard the ship.

The symptoms of the virus, according to the ship’s surgeon include the inability to stand or walk due to frailty, headaches, vomiting, and a watery discharge of mucous from the nose and eyes, all of which the said officers of the crew are experiencing. Aside from sickness and death, the ship and its active crew are in splendid order.

November 19th

The infected members of the crew-master, master’s mate, and the senior midshipman respectively passed at various times during the night, and the remaining crew held the necessary funeral procedures for the men. This misfortune officially confirms me as captain of the ship and commander of its crew until it reaches its final destination.

Two weeks have passed since we left New York Harbour on a course to Genoa, Italy with cargo of 1,701 barrels of grog and industrial alcohol, and due to the shortfall of crew, arrival will be delayed by a considerable yet immeasurable amount of time. The crew now consists of the surgeon, quartermaster, three able seamen and myself. However, winds and tides remain in our favour for now and supplies are in surplus. Following the weekly assessment of the cargo, I conclude all cargo to be present and of an undamaged condition.

November 22nd

As indicated by our quartermaster, we appear to be running at least two hundred miles parallel to our proposed course due to the contrary winds of the last two days, but have successfully resumed correct path to Genoa. In erring so recklessly, I considered ordering the quartermaster to spend the night aloft at the mast’s head as punishment, but for the sake of the fortitude of the crew, I faltered.

Thomas Ratner, able seaman, complains of headaches and weak legs but continues duties as instructed. Gables, the optimistic surgeon attributes his symptoms to common seasickness, but I fear that the man may have acquired the same ailment that saw the captain and his family perish. To fuel the crew’s morale I allowed double rations of grog and salt beef, and onboard merriments. I also assumed night watch in place of Ratner.

November 24th

Following committal of able seaman Ratner, and by ill temperatures, the ship’s progress is thwarted further, and the spirits of the men are dampened. For the record, I note that Thomas Ratner was known for his eloquent and gentlemanly manner despite being an uneducated common seaman.

I have seen to it that twenty-four hour watch is enforced in order to attempt location of passing vessels that may aid us, and that the remaining crew members double their efforts in order to avoid the extreme conditions and frosts of mid-Atlantic winter. Gables approached me this calm afternoon and claimed that Captain Briggs had once stated with seriousness, that he had feared the vessel to be cursed with demons. It was apparently the reason he’d had it repainted shortly after he had purchased it. I mocked Gables for pursuing the notion, and asked if he’d been drinking seawater.

December 1st

I have been confined to my quarters for several days, as I am this evening, with symptoms of influenza. I leave all petty-command and navigational duties in the hands of John Stewart, the quartermaster.

While below deck I feel a state of repose, despite my infirmity, that I’ve not experienced since before assuming captain’s duty. I hear the ghostly creak of the hull as the ship sways to and fro over the muffled cries and shuffling of the men above, and contemplate Gable’s unusual account.

The mind wanders in such a state, and I speculate how she could possibly be accursed-a mere twelve years of age and not a scar to disfigure her in any way. As small as she is, I recall remarking upon her beauty during my time as a common seaman a year after she was built in Nova Scotia. I stood and watched as she left Portsmouth on her third Atlantic return crossing. A one hundred and three foot, two hundred and eighty ton, double-masted merchantman brigantine. Lightly armed but heavily stocked, she sailed into a dense bank of fog and away to some mysterious land. I had envied the men aboard her, and aspired that one day I would have the opportunity to command a ship of her magnificence. It is ironic and unfortunate that in this manner, I have commandeered the very boat of those aspirations.

It is nigh, and I hear something resembling cheers from the men on deck.

December 3rd

Two nights ago, the night watchman spotted a man-o-war from the mainmast, approximately a mile off portside, but visible by moonlight. From what I could ascertain with the aid of a telescope, I deemed the ship to be a pirated vessel for lack of a flag or form of identity. Without a full crew and stock of armaments, I made the decision not to pursue or signal the boat in regard to the safety of our crew and completion of its mission. Despite the contending opinions of my men, with mutiny and piracy as rife on the high seas as it currently is, I give the order that the course to Genoa be maintained.

December 4th

Shortly preceding sunrise, able seaman and ship’s carpenter Mr Finkler was the subject of an unfortunate fatal accident. He fell overboard while conducting maintenance of the starboard taffrail that was damaged by unfastened kegs in the night. Being the only witness to the event, I conclude his death to be purely of accidental occurrence.

Gables the surgeon is of ill health, although he seemed to be of good spirits while we messed together in the captain’s quarters yesterday evening. During the meal we had consumed salt beef, bread, butter and three varieties of cheese, which appear to have been gnawed at by rodents. In spite of the shortage of food, the doctor has seen fit to discard all beef and cheeses without consulting me, leaving only salted cabbage, bread and butter. His claim is that he holds authority over all matters of health, being the only member of the crew of a medical disposition.

December 5th

The doctor dies in the night and I see to his committal myself before the men rise for duty. The numbers have now been reduced to two seamen and myself. Therefore I order alteration of course by six degrees, toward the Azores-from where I estimate arrival in eleven days-in order to restock, employ new crew, and subsequently resume course as projected toward Genoa.

Meanwhile I am resigned to depend on the incompetence of officers Charles Winter and John Stewart, who consistently criticize and object my authority. It is captain’s duty to maintain discipline aboard his ship, and I do so with a will. It is evident that the men on deck feel a great level of contempt towards me that they are at no pains to conceal. If not for the seriousness of the circumstance, I would call for lashings to be given to the insolent rascals, but I myself am not yet acquainted with the use of the cat-o-nine- tails so the threat of a court martial upon reaching shore is enough to keep them about their duties.

December 12th

With the arrival of the twelfth day of the twelfth month, the morning brings a thick screen of mist sweeping across the deck augmenting the feeling of seclusion. Since I had not rationed any food to Winter and Stewart for the last three days, their deaths prove evident the contagiousness and lethality of the disease. They had previously complained of rheumy eyes and noses, and weak limbs. I determined that their whining was an attempt to seek clemency in their idleness, and their symptoms were nothing more than those of a common cold in the changing temperatures.

Emerging towards me from the bank of mist like a phantom gradually materialising, four miles off bow, is an armed Spanish merchant ship with every square inch of its sailcloth spread. As I look yonder, I see its colours hoisted, and watch the crew man the masts and tend the rigging in the most elegant and organised fashion. tall, rigid bow aggressively parts the ocean and bounces through the waves before it.

I ponder, and envision myself at the command of such an intrepidly vigorous frigate with a fine arrangement of men at my command, and then I reflect upon the irony of how my own mutinous, gluttonous ways have left me alone and guilt laden aboard this plagued chamber pot. The ability and worth of the old bible-reader Captain Briggs had long expired before I poisoned him and those other pompous fools with the pork, but the deaths of the captain’s family, and the good souls that would sweat and bleed in the interest of a simple grog transport errand was not my wish. All I wanted was to feel the liberty of command on the high seas, and have a whole ship at my disposal, even if it were not a vessel of His Majesty’s fleet. Then after gaining passage to England, I would have duly received honours, and promotion to master’s mate at the least, and invitation to sail aboard such vessels.

Murder was indeed my intention, and the pork I may have tainted, but the disease that claimed the lives of the other crew, save Finkler and Gables, was no doubt something brewed by the evil curse that lingers aboard. I can feel it. From stern to bow, starboard to portside. From the depths of the hull to the head of the mast, and through every length of timber its malevolent existence thrives, and lingers like the odour of a fresh corpse.

The captain’s belief that this ship is cursed became more credible with the death of every sailor that walked her deck, and it’s as if I can still feel their presence, haunting me, jeering at me and shuffling around above my quarters as I sleep. I know it was those ghosts that made me push good Mr Finkler the carpenter, over the taffrail to his death, and slice the throat of Gables the surgeon as he slept. Now the curse has finally reached me, and infected me. It influences my hand as I write. My legs are weak, and my head spins like nothing caused by common seasickness. It waits to claim me, but its mercilessness lets me suffer in anticipation.

I can barely hold the telescope to my eye, but I’m able to see that the ship is the Dei Gratia-a first-rate merchant frigate but armed like a war fortress of the seas-and with haste it approaches. Her crew will board hastily with their muskets and bayonets, and somehow find reason to accuse me of murdering my shipmates. Or they shall simply open fire with a fusillade of shots once they are in range and shred the boat to splinters. Perhaps they will have no intention of the like. They might take me aboard their vessel, captive or otherwise, and I will contaminate another crew and consequently a whole fleet. My sinful defecting would be the trigger of the demise of hundreds. I must abandon while I still can.

December 13th

Before I lowered the cutter into the water, stocking it with a sextant and charts, a pistol, and enough food and water to see me to the Azores, I cooked myself a final meal that I could not eat, only minutes before the Dei Gratia would reach me. Once aboard the tiny boat, I found the strength to row it away from the ship, and carefully did so that the sails stood between them and myself obstructing their view.

I know that I am infected with this infernal disease or burdened with the evil curse, but I lasted through the night. I am four hundred miles from land and unknowing as to how much longer I will be alive. I will row, and row, and row until I perish or reach land where I can be tended. For now, I take one last glance back to the horizon where I see a large Spanish frigate, sails slack.

Her crew is now aboard the adjacent vessel and with no doubt considering how the absence of a whole crew ever came to be. But perhaps a conclusion would never be drawn. Nobody may ever know what occurred aboard that cursed ship, and none shall discover how William Richard Sumner-a low ranking naval officer sent across the water on an ordinary vessel for ‘nautical experience’ - was, if for a short time, master and commander of the Mary Celeste.

An Unfinished Race by Ambrose Bierce

James Burne Worson was a shoemaker who lived in Leamington, Warwickshire, England. He had a little shop in one of the by-ways leading off the road to Warwick. In his humble sphere he was esteemed an honest man, although like many of his class in English towns he was somewhat addicted to drink. When in liquor he would make foolish wagers. On one of these too frequent occasions he was boasting of his prowess as a pedestrian and athlete, and the outcome was a match against nature. For a stake of one sovereign he undertook to run all the way to Coventry and back, a distance of something more than forty miles. This was on the 3rd day of September in 1873.

He set out at once, the man with whom he had made the bet - whose name is not remembered - accompanied by Barham Wise, a linen draper, and Hamerson Burns, a photographer, I think, following in a light cart or wagon.

For several miles Worson went on very well, at an easy gait, without apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and was not sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them. The three men in the wagon kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional friendly ‘chaff’ or encouragement, as the spirit moved them. Suddenly - in the very middle of the roadway, not a dozen yards from them, and with their eyes full upon him - the man seemed to stumble, pitched headlong forward, uttered a terrible cry and vanished! He did not fall to the earth - he vanished before touching it. No trace of him was ever discovered.

After remaining at and about the spot for some time, with aimless irresolution, the three men returned to Leamington, told their astonishing story and were afterward taken into custody. But they were of good standing, had always been considered truthful, were sober at the time of the occurrence, and nothing ever transpired to discredit their sworn account of their extraordinary adventure, concerning the truth of which, nevertheless, public opinion was divided, throughout the United Kingdom. If they had something to conceal, their choice of means is certainly one of the most amazing ever made by sane human beings.

The Price of Genius by Debra Grace Khattah

Kathleen waddled into the waiting room with a contented smile on her face. Doctor Piren had said that she should be the first to deliver. Daniel had been so proud when he heard.

Working in the Space Agency’s Dept. Of Extraterrestrial Diplomacy, S.A.D.E.D., he had been in competition with his fellow workers to see who could get pregnant first. The Genius Change seeded to them by the Ftheerians was given to S.A.D.E.D. first to benefit from since they had negotiated the viral change.

They had assumed the Ftheerians would stay around longer after acquiring the metal and mineral supplies the humanoid wanderers needed, but the aliens had departed within six months. Since then the department had been busy analyzing the computer data left to them by the Ftheerians as well as studying what information and history the aliens had been willing to share with them.

It would be a lifetime before her children would go to space, Kathleen knew that, but still she felt it was her prerogative to daydream and imagine them piloting humanity’s way to the stars. She had been so happy and proud when it turned out she was pregnant with twins. She just knew that her children must be extra special since there would be two of them whereas other women would probably only have one. She was quite disappointed when it turned out that all the patients impregnated through the Genius Change program were pregnant with twins.

Nurse Chaney called her in to the exam room and she got up carefully from her seat. At eight months she was being seen twice a week due to the fact that she had twins to observe and the doctor’s concern about how the Genius Change might affect the actual birth itself.

After taking her vitals like usual, Nurse Chaney helped her remove her shoes since she could no longer see her feet and left her with the standard green gown to put on.

Kathleen managed to get her smock off, she refused to call the huge tent like travesty she had to wear now a dress, and struggled into the hospital gown. She was just trying to sit on the exam table when Dr. Piren came in.

‘Well I see those two youngsters are becoming a healthy size.’ He smiled as he helped her get up on the exam table.

‘Can I hear their heart beat again Doctor?’

‘I don’t see any reason why not, it isn’t necessary but can’t hurt.’

He got her laid down and began to position his stethoscope. Kathleen stared at the speaker set in the wall eagerly. The double heartbeats came in together this time.

‘They must be face to face right now. Sounding quite healthy. How active are they?’

‘Way too much, I take a lot of cat naps now instead of getting to sleep the night through.’ She didn’t sound very disappointed.

‘We’re going to do another sonogram today Mrs Mertz. I want to make sure the twins aren’t getting too big. Otherwise we’ll be needing to schedule a caesarean.’

‘As long as they are healthy, that’s all that matters to me. The operation isn’t too hard to cope with afterwards is it?’

Dr. Piren was making notes on his charts and checking her progress on the graphs.

‘No, the operation isn’t too hard to recover from, especially not with modern medicine. It’s not like in the days of your grandmother when a woman who had a C-section would be laid up for six weeks recovering. It should only be about ten days to two weeks and you’ll be back on your feet and feeling pretty close to normal.’ He finished writing and looked up at her with a smile as he finished talking. ‘I’ll be right back with the sonogram machine Mrs Mertz. You just relax and stay put.’

‘Alright.’

It was only a few minutes before Nurse Chaney, Dr. Piren and a technician came in with the sonogram machine. The Nurse dimmed the lights while the technician plugged the machine in.

For once, Dr. Piren was the one who actually put the gel on her stomach instead of the tech. Kathleen didn’t think much of it, she was too excited to see what the sonogram said. The technician got up and let the Doctor sit down once he had everything set up.

‘All right Mrs Mertz, let’s see how those twins look today.’ His voice was tense as he tried to sound casual. Luckily his patient didn’t seem to notice any difference.

The technician leaned over and quietly murmured at the doctor, pointing out the twin’s faces and heads as soon as they showed up on the sonogram. The eyes of one twin were already open and seemed to be staring straight out at them.

The doctor found that to be one of the most startling things he had ever seen, the awareness in the face staring out at them from the sonogram, almost as though it was aware of them looking at it. The other twin had its eyes closed and its thumb in its mouth.

Then the doctor noticed what the technician had pointed out about the last sonogram done a week ago. The twin with the closed eyes had a smaller head, a much smaller head than its twin. It was even more obvious now than it had been a month ago when he and the tech had thought it might be a glitch in the positions of the foetuses since they weren’t face to face but one behind the other at that time. Dr. Piren hadn’t taken it that seriously as a concern and had only wanted to be here during the next sonogram to double check it, but now he was worried.

‘How do they look Dr. Piren?’ Kathleen’s voice was impatient as she waited for them to show her the sonogram picture like they usually did.

‘They look pretty good Mrs Mertz. Let us just check a few more things and we’ll give you a chance. Remember, we’re trying to evaluate the possible need for a caesarean right now so we need to take more measurements and estimate their sizes.’ His calming patter assured Kathleen and she laid back to wait.

The tech pointed out the difference in sizes of torsos between the twins. The larger twin had its arms around the smaller one and turned to look at the smaller one while they watched. The Doctor and tech still couldn’t determine the sex of either foetus since both twins once again had their legs twined up and around each other’s waists as before when they had done the sonogram last week. Noting how long the umbilical cord was and how much it entwined around the smaller twin’s arms and legs beneath the larger twin’s limbs, the Doctor made a note on the chart. He then turned the screen so Mrs Mertz could see it. Since the twins were now facing each other, it wasn’t as disconcerting to realize that the larger twin had its eyes open.

‘Oh look at them, they are so big now. I swear if I didn’t know better, one baby looks like it is cradling the other. Have you been able to determine the sex yet Dr. Piren?’ Her happy voice questioned him as she reached out towards the screen, almost as though she wanted to touch them.

‘No we haven’t determined the sex yet, they are being independent and refusing to turn in the right direction.’ His voice was light while he studied his patient’s face. He decided not to mention his concerns to her past a certain point. Mrs Mertz didn’t seem to be the most rational or worried woman he had met when it came to serious questions and concerns, quite unlike a few of the other pregnant women in his care through the S.A.D.E.D. Genius Change program. Part of him wondered what it would be like for a genius child to be raised by this rather simple woman. He was glad he didn’t have to live with her and find out.

His own wife Peggy was eager for her turn to try out for the Genius Change program, but since she was a genius Biologist in her own right, he didn’t see as much a need for her to participate as he had told her.

‘Unfortunately it looks like we are going to need to do a caesarean Mrs Mertz. See how large this twin’s head is?’ He pointed at the larger twin who now partially hid some of the other twin in the picture as they both moved slightly.

‘And there is some concern as to how much the umbilical cord is interfering with the other twin’s movement.’ He omitted to point out the fact that the cord was literally wrapped around the smaller twin much too much.

‘When?’ Kathleen looked up at the Doctor.

‘It might be good to schedule it for today. We don’t want the twins to get any larger, that could affect your health and we want the Mom to be healthy and ready when there are two babies that need to be taken care of.’ He didn’t mention that the head of S.A.D.E.D. had requested that c-sections be done if there were any unusual concerns. The program wouldn’t be released to the public until it was proven safe. Dr. Piren was beginning to wonder if there might not be some hidden problems. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately he began to think, that decision was out of his hands.

Kathleen smiled a little nervously as she thought of it. Her eagerness to hold her children won out and she grinned up at Dr. Piren.

‘This afternoon would be fine. Could you call Daniel and let him know?’

‘Absolutely, nurse, have her in a wheelchair and transferred to floor seven right away.’

Floor seven had been set aside special for the Genius Change patients with its own staff of Paediatric and OB/Gyn specialists. Kathleen found herself positioned on a table that was much too narrow with her arms out at her side within four hours. She looked around the room with interest, both nervous and excited, wondering who was who out of the many people hurrying to check machines and consult with each other around her. The Anaesthesiologist had already spoken to her and given her the spinal anaesthesia which would allow her to be awake during the operation.

Just then Daniel came hurrying through a nearby door. Kathleen found herself giggling nervously when she saw him dressed in greens with a funny cap on his hair that looked somewhat like her shower cap. Daniel smiled as her clasped his wife’s hand.

‘They said that I could be here as long as I stay at your head and stay out of the way.’

‘Daniel, are you going to watch?’ She found part of herself wanting him to so he could report how it was going and part of her not wanting him to see her all opened up like that.

‘They recommended that neither of us watch.’

Just then someone began to lower the curtain which shielded her from those operating. She found it weird to have the green screen right below her chin. The Anaesthesiologist came to sit behind her head now and told them they were starting. Daniel put his hand at her shoulder as he sat on a stool a nurse brought for him. He leaned over and murmured ‘I love you’ into her ear.

The operation seemed to go quite quick to Kathleen whose sense of time blurred as she listened to the doctors murmuring to each other.

There seemed to be quite a few. She guessed that was probably because this birth was special. Suddenly she heard a loud wail and her husband was called away.

‘You have a healthy daughter Mr Mertz.’ The Doctor’s voice sounded quite happy to Kathleen.

‘Let me see her Daniel.’ She prodded him with her voice as her hands couldn’t and found herself craning her neck to try to see around the curtain where Daniel was standing at the side of the room. As he turned to come to her, she saw the blanket wrapped bundle.

‘She’s gorgeous Kathleen, just like you.’ His awed voice was quiet as he brought the baby down to where she could see her.

‘Oh look, her eyes are open and she is so aware.’ The baby reached out a hand towards her and Daniel brought the baby close enough so her hand touched Kathleen’s cheek.

‘What about her twin. Is it a boy or girl?’ Kathleen looked away from her daughter momentarily to glance up at her husband.

‘They should have the second twin out any moment now Mrs Mertz.’ The Anesthesiologist’s soothing voice answered her Suddenly there were loud voices and people hurrying over to the side of the room where Daniel had gone to gather up the baby girl.

‘Daniel what’s happening?’

‘I’m not sure.’ He started to stand and a nurse noticed him and hurried over to him.

‘Please stay here Mr Mertz. Don’t get in the Doctors way.’

‘What’s wrong?’ His scared reply was louder than he had meant to be.

‘Your second baby is a son and it looks like he is having some trouble breathing. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about but they are taking all precautions to make sure he is fine.’

Daniel sat down confused. He wasn’t very reassured. The Doctors seemed very urgent in their voices and movements but he knew better than to interfere. If there was something seriously wrong, he could make it worse if he distracted them.

‘What does she mean Daniel? What are they doing? Is my baby alive?’

Kathleen’s voice got shriller with each question.

‘He’s alive Kathleen, of course he’s alive. They wouldn’t have told us he was alive otherwise.’

‘What are they doing?

What’s wrong with him?’ He looked away from the knot of doctors and down at her as he heard the panic worsening in her voice. Just as he was trying to figure out what to say in reply to her, their daughter chose that moment to pull her mother’s hair.

‘Ow!’ Daniel carefully detached the baby’s fingers from his wife’s sweaty black hair. ‘What an ornery little sweetheart.’ Kathleen cooed at the baby who was still trying to reach out for her hair. Daniel had been around babies and children more than his wife and he was quite surprised. Most newborns cried, slept or were nursing. They didn’t start pulling hair like this for weeks usually from his experience with his nephews and nieces who always loved his blond beard when they were old enough to notice it.

The Doctor began to sew Kathleen up while the Specialists continued to work with the second new-born. Before he knew it, Daniel had his daughter taken from him and his wife was being rolled out to the recovery room. The nurse indicated he could follow her to another room where his daughter was going to be put under a warming lamp. She couldn’t give him any answers about his son when he asked, she only smiled and said someone would come and let him know as soon as they were available. It was later that evening after he had taken a break to eat dinner before he heard anything more. By that time, Kathleen was out of recovery and both her and their daughter were installed in a private room with a chair that made into a bed for Daniel. Dr. Piren and three more doctors all came in to the room together. Dr. Piren approached the bed first.

‘And how is the happy Mother doing?’ He smiled as he took her blood pressure and glanced at the IV next to the bed.

‘Groggy but not too sore.

The nurse assured me that any soreness probably wouldn’t be felt until tomorrow.’

‘Has your daughter nursed yet?’

Daniel was holding his sleeping daughter and he glanced up at the doctor.

‘Yes, but there wasn’t much there yet. I think that’s normal, isn’t it?’

‘Absolutely and…’

‘and… How’s our son?’ Daniel interrupted before the Doctor and his wife could be drawn into more conversation.

‘Well, as you may have guessed, there were some problems.’

‘Is he okay?’

‘Yes and no. Yes he is alive and breathing well now. At first there was a breathing problem as you might have heard, but that has resolved itself.’

‘And no.’ Daniel’s voice was slightly flat, waiting for the bad news.

‘Mr and Mrs Mertz, it appears that your son had a seizure and may have some neurological problems.’

‘What kind of neurological problems?’

‘We are guessing at Cerebral Palsy or something similar but we aren’t absolutely sure yet.’

‘He is normal, isn’t he though Doctor?’ His wife’s anxious voice silenced any other questions he might have asked right then as he realized that she wouldn’t need the added stress of answers that he badly wanted.

‘He is normal for himself Mrs Mertz, but if you mean is he normal like your daughter, than the answer is no.’

‘But you can make him normal, can’t you? I mean with all the advances in science and all that.’ Dr. Piren glanced at the other doctors with a look of I told you so. The older doctor nodded his head at him.

‘There is a great deal of potential and we expect we can help him, but we can’t tell you how much. He is sleeping in a special incubator right now and we are running tests so we can understand his needs.’ This was the older Doctor who moved forward and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I am Dr. Haverson, a Specialist, Mr and Mrs Mertz, a Paediatric Neurologist specializing in new-borns. So far from my examination of your son, he is looking better than I was afraid he would after hearing that he had a mild seizure right after birth. I believe there is a great deal to hope for in his case. We’ll know more after we get more test results. Would Mr Mertz like to come see him?’ Daniel nodded quickly and put the sleeping baby girl down in her bassinet.

‘Unfortunately, you won’t be able to come over and see him until tomorrow Mrs Mertz since bed rest is ordered for you. At that time we’ll bring a wheelchair for you so you can see him also. Right now he is sleeping peacefully.’

Daniel went with them to see his son who looked peaceful and quite normal if smaller than his sister. Over the next few days as the tests came back, he met with the doctors privately and got many of his questions answered. As far as anyone could tell, the Genius Change had nothing to do with the situation his son was in, it just happened sometimes to some babies the Doctors said. So far it looked like his son was not destined to be the Genius his daughter was destined to be. At only a week old, his daughter had already managed to say ‘Momma’ which thrilled Kathleen and helped ease some of Daniel’s worries if only for the moment. Meanwhile, his son was being bottle fed in Paediatric Intensive Care with breast milk Kathleen pumped in between nursing their daughter who they named Lauren. They hadn’t yet agreed on a name for the little boy. It was two weeks before they agreed on Gregory after Kathleen’s father.

A month after Lauren and Gregory were born, two other couples from the S.A.D.E.D. project had their twins. Daniel began to worry when both sets of twins were born with almost identical results as his twins. Gregory now had company in the Paediatric Intensive Care as he struggled to drink from the bottle and jerked his small limbs around.

By the time the fourth and fifth sets of twins were also born with one twin a Genius potential and the second twin showing all the symptoms of Cerebral Palsy, the project was called to a temporary halt and all the participants found themselves, both men and women, isolated in a special facility with their children.

Daniel attended the large informational meeting called by the head of the project alone. Kathleen had declined to come since she was busy learning how to care for Gregory who had just been allowed out of intensive care that day and brought to their new home in the isolated complex with an aide. He sat in the back of the room apprehensive about what other information might be forthcoming. He already knew more than his wife had wanted too, more than many of the other couples since his children had been born first. Many of the questions and answers at the beginning were already familiar to Daniel but obviously were not known to the majority of the audience.

Policy had changed soon after the first half dozen children had been born and information must have become harder to come by. He saw a few women beginning to cry quietly. In general the men comforted their wives or became very stony faced. A few began to get red in the face but personnel around the room moved in to try to calm those before any major outbursts occurred. The worried and scared faces reminded him of an earthquake disaster movie he had once seen. He easily spotted the few other parents whose children had been born earlier by their quiet, grim demeanour.

From what Daniel could see, all the men whether they were co-workers of his, or spouses of his co-workers, were present, but he had a feeling that many of the women had been talking to each other and the doctors, because at least half the women were missing from the audience. He knew that some were on bed rest due to complications from a multiple pregnancy, Kathleen had filled him in on how many of the pregnancies were going along with some mild boasting at how easy her pregnancy had been in comparison. That still didn’t cover the numerous women who had chosen not to come. Daniel thought of his wife’s reactions and reluctance to want to know too much about their son yet.

Perhaps it was better for the second child, he hated to call them the damaged ones but that sprang to mind also, if the mother gave herself a chance to fall in love with the lesser child before knowing too much. He hated to think of how some parents might react to their non-genius child. He remembered being told that there was already one baby who hadn’t come home from the Pediatric Intensive Care Nursery, the parents had refused to accept the baby. As time passed, Daniel found himself hoping in a dark way that there wasn’t going to be any new revelations forthcoming as all his ideas about the Genius Change were confirmed one after the other. All pregnancies were twins. All twins were born with one genius and one child with neurological problems, most of the time Cerebral Palsy. The genius twins appeared to develop using extra nutrition and possibly some crucial elemental needs in the very early weeks generated by the body’s reaction to a twin pregnancy that were then no longer available to the second foetus.

Like most present, Daniel understood why the Genius Change experiment was necessary for humans to travel beyond their own solar system. As an Engineer and Computer Specialist, he understood the need for a human with a quick enough mind to be able to integrate with the computers the aliens had showed them would be needed to progress to interstellar travel. He also had realized early on that the Genius Change might be permanent in the parents, at the time the administrators had been unclear on this. Now they confirmed that the change appeared to be permanent in all parents who had participated, any other children they might have would probably find themselves in the same position as their first set of twins until they could learn of a cure or correction. Daniel assumed he would then hear that the project was being terminated. He sat up straighter when he was told the project would continue under more controls while a special division was being set up to resolve the obvious drawbacks in the program. He felt his mind go numb. He thought of his son Gregory struggling to hold his head up, working his limbs in his static baby dance. He thought of his son smiling. His son, the drawback. Something deep inside him snapped and he felt a deep rage building up.

The Head Negotiator had just finished defending his team from questions about their interactions with the aliens during negotiations. He finished up explaining how the Ftheerians had appeared open and completely informative until his team recently went back over the negotiation records again. It wasn’t until then that they realized that there were a few definitions they had assigned to the Ftheerian language which didn’t seem to always fit the context within which the Ftheerian had used them.

A linguist was approaching the podium just as Daniel quietly stood up and came up a side aisle where many parents were beginning to mill around the personnel from the project.

‘What do you mean the project is going to continue? Do you expect us to just keep having children like my son while you take your sweet time to find a ‘‘cure’’?’

A few people in lab coats began to move towards Daniel but other parents already standing gathered around him as though he were their spokesman.

‘If you will sit down I am sure that your questions will be adequately addressed as the linguist speaks.’ The Head Negotiator leaned towards the microphone as the linguist hesitated.

‘No, I’m sorry but I have one of those drawbacks at home, I call him my son, and I want answers now. What are you going to do with these twins when they are born with problems? What are you going to do about the parents who may not want to or may not be capable of giving these babies the loving care they deserve?

Who is going to be breeding for your space program now because it sure isn’t going to be me.’

The Head Negotiator stared at Daniel as he realized that he was going to have a harder time facing down this angry father who stayed calm and logical while he demanded answers. Then the linguist spoke softly in the negotiator’s ear and the negotiator motioned him on up to the podium.

‘First off I understand your objections better than most of the administrators here.’

‘How can you? Where are your children?’ Another father beside Daniel cried this out loudly and Daniel put a gentle hand on his shoulder as he recognized a co-worker whose wife had just given birth two days before.

‘Actually they are still in the foetal stage in their mother’s uterus, both of them.’ The crowd below quieted as they took this in.

‘My name is Quentin Ford and my wife and I found out we were pregnant from the Genius Change the day before they called a temporary halt to the program.’ Daniel looked closely at the slight blond man standing on the stage and noticed the lines bracketing his eyes and mouth. He guessed that he had had as little sleep as Daniel himself since his children were born.

‘At this time I just wanted to share with you what we have begun to understand about the Ftheerians through their language. I will be as involved as all of you here in demanding and working towards answers after that.’

He shuffled some papers in his hand and then laid the papers down on the podium without glancing at them again.

‘One piece of information I have to add is the correct interpretation of the full name the Ftheerians had for the Genius Change.

Some phrases in the Ftheerian language didn’t translate easily into human concepts and we made two major mistakes we have now been able to correct. We assumed that the Ftheerians were a race that gambled on space and won. We did not understand that they made a mistake and as a race were not gambling but playing a very harsh lottery. We also assumed they were speaking of their female sex who we had little contact with when it turns out they were referring to a split in their very race itself. The full translation for their viral change is, roughly, the Genius Partner Lottery of the Split Race. From what historical data the aliens left us which we have only recently been able to finish translating, the Ftheerians we met were the winners in the genius gamble. Only the winners get to go to Space. And they can never return home again. They become wanderers who set up colonies they themselves are not allowed to stay in. The losers in their viral gamble have a lower intellectual capacity but do not have the physical restrictions or the neurological damage our children are showing. The question left in my mind is whether we will also achieve the stars only by losing our home planet and our heart along with it.’

The rising volume in the audience at his words nearly drowned out Mr Ford’s final words.

‘I don’t believe anyone other than us parents should be allowed to make that decision.’

He turned to face a side door and Daniel watched as a group of reporters emerged and immediately began to surround the Administrators and the Head Negotiator up on the stage holding vidcameras and microphones.

Charles Ashmore’s Trail by Ambrose Bierce

The family of Christian Ashmore consisted of his wife, his mother, two grown daughters, and a son of sixteen years. They lived in Troy, New York, were well-to-do, respectable persons, and had many friends, some of whom, reading these lines, will doubtless learn for the first time the extraordinary fate of the young man.

From Troy the Ashmores moved in 1871 or 1872 to Richmond, Indiana, and a year or two later to the vicinity of Quincy, Illinois, where Mr Ashmore bought a farm and lived on it.

At some little distance from the farmhouse was a spring with a constant flow of clear, cold water, whence the family derived its supply for domestic use at all seasons.

On the evening of the 9th of November in 1878, at about nine o’clock, young Charles Ashmore left the family circle about the hearth, took a tin bucket and started toward the spring.

As he did not return, the family became uneasy, and going to the door by which he had left the house, his father called without receiving an answer. He then lighted a lantern and with the eldest daughter, Martha, who insisted on accompanying him, went in search.

A light snow had fallen, obliterating the path, but making the young man’s trail conspicuous; each footprint was plainly defined. After going a little more than half-way - perhaps seventy-five yards - the father, who was in advance, halted, and elevating his lantern stood peering intently into the darkness ahead.

‘What is the matter, father?’ the girl asked.

This was the matter: the trail of the young man had abruptly ended, and all beyond was smooth, unbroken snow. The last footprints were as conspicuous as any in the line; the very nail-marks were distinctly visible.

Mr Ashmore looked upward, shading his eyes with his hat held between them and the lantern. The stars were shining; there was not a cloud in the sky; he was denied the explanation which had suggested itself, doubtful as it would have been - a new snowfall with a limit so plainly defined.

Taking a wide circuit round the ultimate tracks, so as to leave them undisturbed for further examination, the man proceeded to the spring, the girl following, weak and terrified. Neither had spoken a word of what both had observed. The spring was covered with ice, hours old.

Returning to the house they noted the appearance of the snow on both sides of the trail its entire length. No tracks led away from it.

The morning light showed nothing more. Smooth, spotless, unbroken, the shallow snow lay everywhere.

Four days later the grief stricken mother herself went to the spring for water. She came back and related that in passing the spot where the footprints had ended she had heard the voice of her son and had been eagerly calling to him, wandering about the place, as she had fancied the voice to be now in one direction, now in another, until she was exhausted with fatigue and emotion.

Questioned as to what the voice had said, she was unable to tell, yet averred that the words were perfectly distinct. In a moment the entire family was at the place, but nothing was heard, and the voice was believed to be a hallucination caused by the mother’s great anxiety and her disordered nerves. But for months afterward, atirregular intervals of a few days, the voice was heard by the several members of thefamily, and by others. All declared it unmistakably the voice of Charles Ashmore; all agreed that it seemed to come from a great distance, faintly, yet with entire distinctness of articulation; yet none could determine its direction, nor repeat its words. The intervals of silence grew longer and longer, the voice fainter and farther, and by midsummer it was heard no more. If anybody knows the fate of Charles Ashmore, it is probably his mother. She is dead.

Daemons, Dragons & Infants by Alanna Blaney

They’re beautiful creatures, aren’t they? Dragons I mean. They remind me of the angels I’ve seen from afar: the way their wings arc when they swoop up into the air; the way distance turns them to miniscule stars, sparkling from moonlight reflected from their scaled skin - so striking is the similarity.

Dragons are definitely my passion, and have been for aeons. I was still a young daemon when I saw my first, not even considered a creature of the night yet. It was a time when my (many) older sisters used to think it was funny to say I was still in training when describing me to others, (‘Well, we do have another sister, but she’s not quite ready for summoning yet, still in training’) - to this day their wicked laughs still echo in my ears, bringing a blush to my pale cheeks, despite the knowledge every childe is treated with this same patronising tone.

Now where was I before I leapt onto that tangent? Ah yes, my first sighting of a dragon. It was a spectacular sight, the most magnificent creature I had ever seen. Even now very few dragons compare to its beauty! It was huge, and appeared from the very flames of Hell straight before me, as I travelled from world to world. Its scales were charred black by the fire from which it appeared, yet glistening, as if wet, or, as it struck me later on, made from sheets of ebony etched with the pattern of scales. Its eyes glared out at me as it rose into the air, two round emeralds that could be seen even through the streams of fire that belched forth from its nostrils sporadically. Its tail lashed out behind it like a strand of Medusa’s hair, and its beautiful wings, that same thin sheet of ebony stretched over a spider’s web of bones, seemed to fill the entire cavern. The sight of this precious beast took my breath away, and I found myself still staring at the space where it had appeared many hours after it had left my sight. I could still smell the brimstone of its breath in the air, could still feel the heat washing over me in waves from where it had beat its wings whilst I had stood and stared. That first sighting has never left me. Not that I got to see them very much once I left Hell.

My father (or more correctly, The Father) only keeps us there until we are ready to be sent out into the world. The only creatures you’ll find in Hell on a residential basis (that aren’t children in waiting) are Satan, Lucifer and The Father himself (although itis thought that only Satan and Lucifer know him as more than a name and all-consuming power).

I can almost hear your confusion now - I can assure you, they are separate entities, and in no way the rulers of Hell, as some mortals would like you to believe. They are just the two beings you are most likely to meet if you somehow ended up there, and being the rash creatures you mortals are, the presumption is frequently made that one of the duo must be the rulers of the underworld (honestly, if you walked into a restaurant, would you presume the doorman was the owner?). Despite their thirst for power, it is not rare knowledge that neither Lucifer nor Satan would say such a thing. No daemon would dare imply such a thing when The Father could hear them - and believe me, The Father would hear them! Crudely, they are something between the caretakers and tour-guides of Hell, although it is rumoured their duties extend to much more sinister and mysterious matters. I feel I should set the record straight, once and for all, lest you do end up in Hell and become confused like so many before you.

Satan is the masculine entity of the siblings, a bad tempered daemon, who favours observation over interaction. His pallor is more deathly than my own, not the bruised colour of a corpse, but pure, as if his very skin has been frosted with ice. The only hint of colour you can see on him is in his lips, which are as red as those of a freshly dined vampire’s’. He possesses hair as white as a winter’s fog - long enough to touch the very base of his spine - which cascades around him in a swirling mist, mimicking his skilled movements. He is witnessed frequently disappearing at will and floating precariously on thin air, scaring the Hell (no pun intended) out of both visitors and dwellers alike, making us all feel very stalked as he patrols Hells borders. He prefers the outskirts of the land (where what could have once been a vast ocean is frozen solid) and stays away from the fires found in central Hell (notice Hell caters for both lovers of hot and cold weather - The Father is very considerate like that!). From here he watches people with void, opal eyes that glow dully from beneath his black hooded cape. He carries with him at all times a sword that seems to be forged from an electrically charged glacier and is often seen in the acquaintance of Death and his tribe, as if some kind of magnetic attraction pulls them towards him.

I seldom saw Satan as a child, but his sister, on the other hand, was long my fascination, and between searching for dragons as a child, I would furtively watch her patrol, enamoured by the swing of her hips and crooked smirk. Lucifer is almost the opposite of her brother, A creature of fire where her brother is ice, scorching flames bliss to her, though she is in no way less deadly. She is much more playful than him, a socialite in comparison, but her mischief is that of a cat with a mouse - pitiless and with an air of temptation and seduction. There are countless stories revolving around her and her playthings (lost mortals, foolish daemons…), many of which end in her standing amidst the lava and flames of central Hell, laughing wickedly as she watches creatures somehow convinced it would be safe to join her burn and melt in the heat.

She is an attractive creature, to those of you who find familiarity in the more human like daemons, a totally different breed to some of the more grotesque you will find in The Fathers realm. Her figure is Death’s hourglass, her skin burnt red by the inferno surrounding her. Her talon like nails are painted black, as are the edges of her eyes, which are lined with intricate patterns later used by the Egyptians (though how they obtained her designs are unknown). Her lips are naturally black, as is her hair, which reaches down to her shoulder blades and at the front falls into a natural fringe over her eyes, which are void like her brothers’, filled only with the reflections of the blaze around her. She likes to adorn herself in jewellery and ornamentation of all kinds, particularly the Ankh. She is never seen without an Ankh imprinted on gauntlets, hanging from her ears, or on a pendant round her neck. From her shoulders protrude two leathery wings, not unlike those of a dragon, a similar colour to her skin, that hang in folds from bones of ebony with ruby red veins travelling across them. Perhaps it is these wings that gave me my strange fascination with her, or perhaps I idolised her in her role as one of the most powerful female daemons.

Of course, we all know that The Father created female daemons to be much more dangerous than the male or those of no sex at all. Femininity exudes from her like fatality.

Her weapon of choice is something of a cross between a scythe not unlike that wielded by Death and an oversized battle-axe. So many times I have watched her patrol, weapon in hand, the blade licked and tasted by flames that have crept along her own body onto the metal, somehow attracted to the razor sharp edge.

The present is catching up with us, I must explain myself faster.

There are many types of creatures in Hell. Some travel in clans and tribes, some work alone but are of many, and of some there are but one creature left to face this world alone.

We’re all conditionally immortal; a succubus must feed upon the soul of a mortal through carnal pleasure in order to live, just as a vampire must drink a mortal’s blood to stay in existence. Not all of us are designed for mortals’ pain though (The Father has some mercy) - some of us just happen to like it. However many choose not to attack unless they’re provoked. Dragons fall into this category. How they have been written as cruel, vicious creatures is beyond me! They are actually very quiet and shy by nature, but like so many can turn disagreeable quite quickly when they feel threatened.

I don’t know what I am any more. I was once a siren, probably still am, but I have been changed. Sirens are strange creatures. We are renowned best for our singing, and it is the sound of our own voice we feed upon, but as irony would have it our singing gives mortals the same satisfaction we feel from the feed multiplied to a point where their minds are filled with no thought but our song. It blinds them. And that’s when the problems start.

Mythology has given us a bad label. We are like the dragons, shy creatures who rarely choose to live with our own kind, let alone abide the company of mortals or any other species! So we try to stay away from the shore, instead aiming for obscure areas, preferably surrounded by rocks which can be used both as a hiding place and as a seat above water level for feeding. But there is no escape from the Father’s wrath.

As fate would have it, whenever a ship comes our way (and they inevitably do) our singing causes them to lose control of their vehicle, and the next thing you know - it is wrecked upon the solid moats of our water built castles! And unfortunately, despite being able to breathe underwater, we cannot hear our own singing there, and are forced to come up onto the rocks when we need to feed. And as Sods law will have it, you can almost guarantee, no matter how far out into the middle of nowhere you place yourself, as soon as its time to feed, a mortal will just sail on by and be caught in your snare of melody.

Please don’t let yourself think this is funny - It’s the worst feeling you could ever imagine. It is seldom you will find a creature of the night. The Father who feels remorse or guilt for those they have slain, but sirens certainly do! How many sirens I have witnessed crying whilst they sing, not realising why until they’ve finished and are greeted by more bodies and broken vehicles filling the sea with debris.

As tragic as this all is, it is pretty standard certainly not a sob story worth telling. What I recall to you is much worse.

I fear that I am no longer one of them, that I am now a freakish deformity of what I should be. It crosses my mind that I have been this way all my life, but why only today? After all, I’d only ever attracted mortals before - that’s what we sirens do! I can still remember every single person that I have watched die upon the edge of my home. My first kill was the worst; I remember weeping and weeping, my tears tasting like the sea, and stinging my cold cheeks. It was the lack of remorse that hurt the most - the irony of killing to stay alive was too much for me!

I was still a young daemon then and having never experienced death at my own hands it had been a shock to me. The mortal I killed, though male, was barely a man, just out of boyhood, reeking of androgyny. He had been sailing alone, in a small boat that easily fragmented upon impact. Why he was out there in the middle of nowhere? By the time I had opened my eyes from feeding, he was already dead. His body drifted by me, and curiosity forced me to stroke his skin, relishing the unfamiliar sensation. It had felt so warm and different to my own, even though I knew it to be cold from the water.

However I didn’t have long to savour the feeling, for his body soon floated away with the tide, leaving me on the rocks, alone and suddenly racked with guilt.

I swam underwater, cowering at the ocean floor as I watched the shadow of his carcass move above, afraid it would suddenly awake and turn on me. It never did. I was so young then, I didn’t realise his soul was already gone and my tears meant nothing to his corpse. I’ve grown since then and I’ve learnt to see their souls leaving.

They watch me as I continue to sing, until Death himself takes them by the hand and leads them away to the land of souls. I know they don’t feel the pain until they’re out of sight, as long as I keep singing. And I always do - it’s a responsibility I feel I owe them, and it helps ease my guilt. I no longer cry either. Only watch and sing.

See! All perfectly normal stuff. Had you ever asked me to identify myself, I was a siren, plain and simple. Until now. Now I don’t know what I am! For not too long ago, a dragon collided with the rocks before my very eyes, attracted by my song.

Surely you can see what’s wrong with this picture already! And that’s not the worst of it, for the creature did not die upon its impact as most mortals would have, but instead lay impaled on the rocks, slowly dying before me. In shock I stopped singing, forgetting the pain that would now return to the creature, lost in the horror and confusion of the moment. I didn’t know what to do! I wasn’t supposed to attract immortals! Sirens and mortals are the only being who get affected by our voices - to other immortals it just sounds another voice and nothing more!

Shivering, but not from cold, I swam through the water to where its carcass lay heaving against the waves. I put my hand to its skin, noticing how its scales felt like that of my own sleek tail, the familiarity making my already cold blood run like ice. It was heart-breaking! I couldn’t bear to watch it die so slowly, yet what could I do? Foam lined its contorted mouth, which opened and shut pathetically, allowing it to emit low moans of pain and anguish.

When our eyes finally locked, there was no denying it - it blamed me. Surely it knew the pain I was causing it wasn’t intentional? Surely it could see that it wasn’t my fault?

Oh, if only it knew how I loved its kind, and how my only ever wish was to be near one again. Was I doomed to live a life of irony? I looked desperately for some way to help it, searching my brain frantically for anything - I was too shaken to even attempt to sing, to help ease its pain! I wiped tears from my eyes as it dawned on me that it was too large for me to move on my own, and I was not strong enough, nor possessed any weapon with which to end its suffering. I was as helpless as it was!

Through blurred eyes, I caught a flash of a precious colour. Blinking away more tears, I realised its silver blood which ran down the rock was turning gold in the water it had now reached. Instinctively, I moved back, as quickly as I could, trying to prevent its blood from touching me. I’m not sure why, but the very thought was like poison to my veins, I could feel my heart beating faster the second realisation dawned on me. But it was unavoidable and the blood was soon covering me, a particularly violent wave, made sure I was covered head to fin. I could feel it, thick, in my hair, much heavier than water. I tried to concentrate on the dragon as it writhed in agony, trying to rationalise my own panic, though every pore in my body told me to run away! I tried to recall wanting to help, but upon realising the impossibility of this instinct was taking over.

Yet I was paralysed with fear. Its blood was colder than the water and stung my eyes as it ran down my face. I blinked hard as more tears cascaded downwards. Furiously, I wiped my face, only to find myself staring at the metallic gleam that now coated the back of my hand. Was that running from my hair, or was that coming from my eyes. Was I crying dragon’s blood? Was it possible? I was crying dragon’s blood! Blind panic took over; the blood was everywhere!

The water gleamed with it; it seemed to be filling my lungs; it blinded me and filled my nostrils with its stench of pain and regret. I spun around, away from the dragon’s watchful glare, and ducked under the water, trying to cleanse myself - but the blood did not wash off! It clung to me like a warning to all - I had been tainted! I was a freak! I had killed an immortal! I had turned on one of my own! Turning back round, and bobbing to the surface, I found I couldn’t see the dragon anymore; my eyes felt like they were burning with acid! I rubbed them to no avail, unable to see anything but silver and gold darkness. My lungs felt like they were collapsing! My panic turned to frenzy as I tried to inhale, but nothing was filling my lungs but a fiery liquid - it must be the blood!! All I could taste was that bittersweet blood, coating my tongue and the lining of my throat.

There was so much of it!! It couldn’t all be coming from the dragon surely? I had become hectic, spinning around the water in circles that I was sure would be making me dizzy had I been left with any concept of my surroundings, with any sensation other than fear and the dragons blood inside me. Or was that outside me? I couldn’t remember!! It was filling my mind!! I felt my arm scrape hard against the rock, my own blood cascade out of my wound. I didn’t care. I wondered momentarily if it was even my own blood anymore; I was sure I was bleeding dragon’s blood, just as I was breathing, sweating, crying, feeding upon, being kept alive by and driven insane by dragons blood! It really did seem to be inside me, filling my every inch, as if I was purely composed of it. I just wanted to escape myself, to get away from it all, to get away from what I was turning into; is it possible to become claustrophobic due to being locked inside oneself? I could hear the dragon’s wings beating in my ears, or was it my heart beating the blood around my body - I could no longer tell. I was in darkness, could no longer see a thing! The panic swelled up inside me to bursting point, and suddenly I found a voice!

‘NO!! No!!! Get off me!! Get off me!!!’ I screamed, scraping my hands and nails along my skin in an attempt to remove it from myself. They felt soaked! More blood! It was under my nails, covering my hands, it was everywhere!! I thought I could hear the dragon roar back at me, in response to my earlier cries; it might have been waves though.

Was I even still in the water, or was this an ocean of blood? I didn’t know, but I was sinking in whatever it was! I was still panicking, stuck within myself. I couldn’t escape; it wouldn’t leave me alone. Confusion was taking over. I tried to remember what I was escaping? Was it myself, the dragon, the blood or some completely different monster I couldn’t put a name to? I couldn’t even hyperventilate; I was too busy suffocating on dragon’s blood. It had swallowed me; I was now swimming in dragon’s blood, I was sure of it. This wasn’t water against my hands anymore, my own scales were turning into dragon’s skin, they must be! I could hear voices muttering, it could’ve been my own - I wouldn’t know - I can’t remember what I sound like. What had happened? What was I?

So that’s my story. You are with me in the present. I am still spinning now, struggling to get a hold of myself. The water is getting warmer. I try to speak, I try to say I am sorry, but flames come out instead, burning my mouth.

I am pretty sure I am delirious. I know these cannot be flames. It must be blood, more blood. I don’t know if it’s my own or the dragons, but it is hot in my mouth. The blood is still all around me, I am sure I have more dragon’s blood left in me than my own. Oh Father, please help, help me please, I don’t know what’s what anymore! Has my mind left me and been replaced by more blood? Oh this blood - why won’t it leave me alone, why do we obsess with each other, this blood and I?

I’m motionless now, a foetus floating in the womb, although the struggle continues in my head, fighting the bonds I’ve wrapped around myself. Sensation is returning to me, and I can feel hand, hands that guide me. I force my eyes open, trying to see the night sky of blood filling my mind. I am greeted by the sun and moon, blinking frantically, my eyes focus upon a pair of hands either side of me. Lucifer and Satan are holding me. The hot and cold of their skin ripples through me returning to me sensations I had forgotten.

I force myself to look up, to take in the details. I can see myself reflected in their eyes. There’s an ankh round Lucifer’s wrist that presses into my back as they carry me together, as brother and sister. I am outstretched between them, draped over their powerful arms. They’re both so beautiful - had I forgotten this, or did I just not realise when I was a childe? It strikes a strange chord of longing and hurt in my heart. I want to reach out and touch them; I don’t want them to let go of me, I want to stay with them forever. They’re both so sad. I wonder why? Have they always been this sad and have I just never noticed, or is it me that causes them such discomfort? They are laying me down now; somehow my eyes have closed again. I feel a hot palm stroke my face.

I remember being a child watching Lucifer - did she notice me then? It’s gone. I’m alone again. With the little strength I have, I shake my hair. It feels heavy, I am guessing still with blood. I think everything is composed of blood. I wonder if touching me has now tainted Lucifer and Satan? I wonder if that’s why they’re so sad?

I wish I could say I’m sorry, but they’ve already gone, not that I can string together two words together anyway. Nothing is working right now. I can’t even tell if I’m shivering or having a fit; all of my movements have been slowed down, my mind unable to keep up with reality. Maybe I’m not moving at all. I want to cry; I feel so lonely. I think I’ve forgotten how to cry. Without warning, I feel myself being pushed against something, thrust forward by an invisible force into some kind of surface. It is hard, but brittle, and breaking into pieces as I put more pressure against it.

Claustrophobia hits me, and I head butt it sharply, my hands not responding to the orders I give them. This must be my coffin they placed me in! I have to escape! I have to let them know I’m not dead! Using as much force as I can summon, I am finally free as the last piece cracks above me. Air is now filling my lungs’, it is coming in ragged gasps. I force my eyes open and am immediately blinded by light. I think I can see The Fathers eyes; they’re so sad, just like everyone else’s. I part my lips to call his name, struggling to form a word, my tongue feeling strangely unfamiliar in my mouth.

I trail off before I begin. Realisation is pouring into me with every pained breath. I am staring into the face of a dragon. Egg shells are lying on the floor before me.

As I stare at the porcelain jigsaw pieces, and in one jagged breath it all becomes clear, like a sharp blow to the back of my head that sends me reeling. The realisation alone is abysmal. I understand those sad eyes that stare at me now. She still remembers her life, still remembers who she killed. She’s like a living mirror. I understand now why mortals fear dragons instinctively - we’re all murderers. Now I know. I know what I am, and I know why I am. It sickens me. Why me? Why us? I know now; we truly are The Fathers saddest creations. I try to speak again, my tongue just about responding now, and the word comes out, thick and heavy like the tears that would be falling down my cheeks, could I remember how to cry.

‘Mother...’

Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mystery of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

Joseph Glanvill.

I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering.

Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family-I have surely heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word alone - by Ligeia-that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own-a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?

I but indistinctly recall the fact itself - what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?

And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance - if ever she, the wan misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mold which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen.

‘There is no exquisite beauty,’ says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, ‘without some strangeness in the proportion.’

Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity - although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed ‘exquisite,’ and felt that there was much of ‘strangeness’ pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of ‘the strange.’

I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead- -it was faultless - how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine! - the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant, and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, ‘hyacinthine!’ I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose - and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly-the magnificent turn of the short upper lip - the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under - the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke-the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin - and, here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek-the contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals - in moments of intense excitement-that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was her beauty - in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps - the beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth - the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk.

The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint.

The ‘strangeness,’ however, which I found in the eyes was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the expression.

Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we entrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered upon it!

How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it-that something more profound than the well of Democritus - which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.

There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact - never, I believe, noticed in the schools - than in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression - felt it approaching - yet not quite be mine - and so at length entirely depart!

And (strange, oh, strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia’s beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs.

Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly growing vine - in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean-in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven (one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not infrequently by passages from books.

Among innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness - who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment:

‘And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness.

Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.’

Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me,- -by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice, - and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.

I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense - such as I have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the Academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault?

How singularly-how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her knowledge was such as I have never known in woman - but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a childlike confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a triumph-with how vivid a delight-with how much of all that is ethereal in hope did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little sought - but less known, - that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden.

How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away!

Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed.

Wanting the radiant luster of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too - too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most gentle emotion. I saw that she must die - and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own.

There had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow.

I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed - I would have reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild desire for life - for life - but for life - solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanour. Her voice grew more gentle - grew more low - yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened, entranced, to a melody more than mortal-to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never before known.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by such confessions? - how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of my making them? But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia’s more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, I at length, recognized the principle of her longing, with so wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild longing - it is this eager vehemence of desire for life - but for life - that I have no power to portray - no utterance capable of expressing.

At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me, peremptorily, to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these: -

Lo! ‘tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly;

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their condor wings

Invisible Wo!

That motley drama! - oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot;

And much of Madness, and more of Sin

And Horror, the soul of the plot!

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes! - it writhes!-with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out - out are the lights-out all:

And over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm -

And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy,

‘Man,’

And its hero, the conqueror Worm.

‘O God!’ half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines-

‘O God! O Divine Father!-shall these things be undeviatingly so?-shall this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who - who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.’

And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I bent to them my ear, and distinguished, again, the concluding words of the passage in Glanvill:

‘Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.’

She died: and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more, than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased and put in some repair, an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within.

For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams.

But these absurdities I must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither, in a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride - as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia - the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine. There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that bridal chamber which is not visibly before me.

Where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have said, that I minutely remember the details of the chamber - yet I am sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment; and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic display to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size.

Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagonal was the sole window - an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice - a single pane, and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon passing through it, fell with a ghastly luster on the objects within.

Over the upper portion of this huge window extended the trellis-work of an aged vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi Druidical device. From out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires.

Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about; and there was the couch, too - the bridal couch - of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture.

But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! The chief phantasy of all. The lofty walls, gigantic in height-even unproportionably so-were hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry - tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the richest cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies - giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.

In halls such as these - in a bridal chamber such as this - I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage - passed them with but little disquietude.

That my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper - that she shunned me, and loved me but little- -I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty- -her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug), I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathways she had abandoned - ah, could it be forever? - upon the earth.

About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length convalescent - finally, well.

Yet but a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians.

With the increase of the chronic disease, which had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds - of the slight sounds - and of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear - of motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive.

The wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich luster thrown from the censer, a shadow - a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect - such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having found the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which I held to the lips of the fainting lady.

She had now partially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as Rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her lips, I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid. If this I saw - not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I forebore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by the hour.

Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride. Wild visions, opium engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the particolored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia - and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon the body of Rowena.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony-the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious terror - but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse - but there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to restore my self possession.

I could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our preparations - that Rowena still lived. It was necessary that some immediate exertion be made; yet the turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants - there were none within call - I had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes - and this I could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia. An hour thus elapsed, when (could it be possible?) I was a second time aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I listened - in extremity of horror. The sound came again - it was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw - distinctly saw-a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth.

Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort that I at length succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady lived; and with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I chafed and bathed the temples and the hands and used every exertion which experience, and no little medical reading, could suggest. But in vain.

Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.

And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia-and again (what marvel that I shudder while I write?), again there reached my ears a low sob from the region of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why shall I pause to relate how, time after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.

The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead once again stirred - and now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible, the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the countenance - the limbs relaxed - and, save that the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and draperies of the grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly, the fetters of Death. But if this idea was not, even then, altogether adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into the middle of the apartment.

I trembled not - I stirred not - for a crowd of unutterable fancies connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor, of the figure, rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed - had chilled me into stone. I stirred not- -but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts - a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it, indeed, be Rowena at all - the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine?

Why, why should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth - but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks - there were the roses as in her noon of life - yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers? - but had she then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet!

Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses of long and disheveled hair; it was blacker than the raven wings of midnight. And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me.

‘Here then, at least,’ I shrieked aloud, ‘can I never - can I never be mistaken-these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes - of my lost love - of the Lady-of the LADY LIGEIA.’

The Leather Funnel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My friend, Lionel Dacre, lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris. His house was that small one, with the iron railings and grass plot in front of it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from the Arc de Triomphe. I fancy that it had been there long before the avenue was constructed, for the grey tiles were stained with lichens, and the walls were mildewed and discoloured with age. It looked a small house from the street, five windows in front, if I remember right, but it deepened into a single long chamber at the back. It was here that Dacre had that singular library of occult literature, and the fantastic curiosities which served as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends.

A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical works, many of them of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization and of decorum. To his English friends he never alluded to such matters, and took the tone of the student and virtuoso; but a Frenchman whose tastes were of the same nature has assured me that the worst excesses of the black mass have been perpetrated in that large and lofty hall, which is lined with the shelves of his books, and the cases of his museum.

Dacre’s appearance was enough to show that his deep interest in these psychic matters was intellectual rather than spiritual. There was no trace of asceticism upon his heavy face, but there was much mental force in his huge, dome-like skull, which curved upward from amongst his thinning locks, like a snow-peak above its fringe of fir trees. His knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior to his character. The small bright eyes, buried deeply in his fleshy face, twinkled with intelligence and an unabated curiosity of life, but they were the eyes of a sensualist and an egotist. Enough of the man, for he is dead now, poor devil, dead at the very time that he had made sure that he had at last discovered the elixir of life. It is not with his complex character that I have to deal, but with the very strange and inexplicable incident which had its rise in my visit to him in the early spring of the year ‘82.

I had known Dacre in England, for my researches in the Assyrian Room of the British Museum had been conducted at the time when he was endeavouring to establish a mystic and esoteric meaning in the Babylonian tablets, and this community of interests had brought us together. Chance remarks had led to daily conversation and that to something verging upon friendship. I had promised him that on my next visit to Paris I would call upon him. At the time when I was able to fulfil my compact I was living in a cottage at Fontainebleau, and as the evening trains were inconvenient, he asked me to spend the night in his house.

‘I have only that one spare couch,’ said he, pointing to abroad sofa in his large salon; ‘I hope that you will manage to be comfortable there.’

It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber, and no more congenial surroundings.

‘If the fittings are neither convenient nor conventional, they are at least costly,’ said he, looking round at his shelves. ‘I have expended nearly a quarter of a million of money upon these objects which surround you. Books, weapons, gems, carvings, tapestries, images - there is hardly a thing here which has not its history, and it is generally one worth telling.’

He was seated as he spoke at one side of the open fire-place, and I at the other. His reading-table was on his right, and the strong lamp above it ringed it with a very vivid circle of golden light. A half-rolled palimpsest lay in the centre, and around it were many quaint articles of bric-a-brac.

One of these was a large funnel, such as is used for filling wine casks. It appeared to be made of black wood, and to be rimmed with discoloured brass.

‘That is a curious thing,’ I remarked.

‘What is the history of that?’

‘Ah!’ said he, ‘it is the very question which I have had occasion to ask myself. I would give a good deal to know. Take it in your hands and examine it.’ I did so, and found that what I had imagined to be wood was in reality leather, though age had dried it into an extreme hardness. It was a large funnel, and might hold a quart when full. The brass rim encircled the wide end, but the narrow was also tipped with metal.

‘What do you make of it?’ asked Dacre.

‘I should imagine that it belonged to some vintner or maltster in the Middle Ages,’ said I. ‘I have seen in England leathern drinking flagons of the seventeenth century- -’black jacks’ as they were called - which were of the same colour and hardness as this filler.’

‘I dare say the date would be about the same,’ said Dacre, ‘and, no doubt, also, it was used for filling a vessel with liquid. If my suspicions are correct, however, it was a queer vintner who used it, and a very singular cask which was filled. Do you observe nothing strange at the spout end of the funnel?’ As I held it to the light I observed that at a spot some five inches above the brass tip the narrow neck of the leather funnel was all haggled and scored, as if someone had notched it round with a blunt knife. Only at that point was there any roughening of the dead black surface.

‘Someone has tried to cut off the neck.’

‘Would you call it a cut?’

‘It is torn and lacerated. It must have taken some strength to leave these marks on such tough material, whatever the instrument may have been. But what do you think of it? I can tell that you know more than you say.’ Dacre smiled, and his little eyes twinkled with knowledge.

‘Have you included the psychology of dreams among your learned studies?’ he asked.

‘I did not even know that there was such a psychology.’

‘My dear sir, that shelf above the gem case is filled with volumes, from Albertus Magnus onward, which deal with no other subject. It is a science in itself.’

‘A science of charlatans!’

‘The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of our friends on the bookshelf yonder will no longer be the amusement of the mystic, but the foundations of a science.’

‘Supposing that is so, what has the science of dreams to do with a large, black, brass rimmed funnel?’

‘I will tell you. You know that I have an agent who is always on the look-out for rarities and curiosities for my collection. Some days ago he heard of a dealer upon one of the Quais who had acquired some old rubbish found in a cupboard in an ancient house at the back of the Rue Mathurin, in the Quartier Latin. The dining-room of this old house is decorated with a coat of arms, chevrons, and bars rouge upon a field argent, which prove, upon inquiry, to be the shield of Nicholas de la Reynie, a high official of King Louis XIV. There can be no doubt that the other articles in the cupboard date back to the early days of that king. The inference is, therefore, that they were all the property of this Nicholas de la Reynie, who was, as I understand, the gentleman specially concerned with the maintenance and execution of the Draconic laws of that epoch.’

‘What then?’

‘I would ask you now to take the funnel into your hands once more and to examine the upper brass rim. Can you make out any lettering upon it?’

There were certainly some scratches upon it, almost obliterated by time. The general effect was of several letters, the last of which bore some resemblance to a B.

‘You make it a B?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘So do I. In fact, I have no doubt whatever that it is a B.’

‘But the nobleman you mentioned would have had R for his initial.’

‘Exactly! That’s the beauty of it. He owned this curious object, and yet he had someone else’s initials upon it. Why did he do this?’

‘I can’t imagine; can you?’

‘Well, I might, perhaps, guess. Do you observe something drawn a little farther along the rim?’

‘I should say it was a crown.’

‘It is undoubtedly a crown; but if you examine it in a good light, you will convince yourself that it is not an ordinary crown. It is a heraldic crown-a badge of rank, and it consists of an alternation of four pearls and strawberry leaves, the proper badge of a marquis. We may infer, therefore, that the person whose initials end in B was entitled to wear that coronet.’

‘Then this common leather filler belonged to a marquis?’ Dacre gave a peculiar smile.

‘Or to some member of the family of a marquis,’ said he.

‘So much we have clearly gathered from this engraved rim.’

‘But what has all this to do with dreams?’

I do not know whether it was from a look upon Dacre’s face, or from some subtle suggestion in his manner, but a feeling of repulsion, of unreasoning horror, came upon me as I looked at the gnarled old lump of leather.

‘I have more than once received important information through my dreams,’ said my companion in the didactic manner which he loved to affect. ‘I make it a rule now when I am in doubt upon any material point to place the article in question beside me as I sleep, and to hope for some enlightenment. The process does not appear to me to be very obscure, though it has not yet received the blessing of orthodox science.

According to my theory, any object which has been intimately associated with any supreme paroxysm of human emotion, whether it be joy or pain, will retain a certain atmosphere or association which it is capable of communicating to a sensitive mind. By a sensitive mind I do not mean an abnormal one, but such a trained and educated mind as you or I possess.’

‘You mean, for example, that if I slept beside that old sword upon the wall, I might dream of some bloody incident in which that very sword took part?’

‘An excellent example, for, as a matter of fact, that sword was used in that fashion by me, and I saw in my sleep the death of its owner, who perished in a brisk skirmish, which I have been unable to identify, but which occurred at the time of the wars of the Frondists. If you think of it, some of our popular observances show that the fact has already been recognized by our ancestors, although we, in our wisdom, have classed it among superstitions.’

‘For example?’

‘Well, the placing of the bride’s cake beneath the pillow in order that the sleeper may have pleasant dreams. That is one of several instances which you will find set forth in a small brochure which I am myself writing upon the subject. But to come back to the point, I slept one night with this funnel beside me, and I had a dream which certainly throws a curious light upon its use and origin.’

‘What did you dream?’

‘I dreamed - ’ He paused, and an intent look of interest came over his massive face. ‘By Jove, that’s well thought of,’ said he. ‘This really will be an exceedingly interesting experiment. You are yourself a psychic subject - with nerves which respond readily to any impression.’

‘I have never tested myself in that direction.’

‘Then we shall test you tonight. Might I ask you as a very great favour, when you occupy that couch tonight, to sleep with this old funnel placed by the side of your pillow?’

The request seemed to me a grotesque one; but I have myself, in my complex nature, a hunger after all which is bizarre and fantastic. I had not the faintest belief in Dacre’s theory, nor any hopes for success in such an experiment; yet it amused me that the experiment should be made. Dacre, with great gravity, drew a small stand to the head of my settee, and placed the funnel upon it. Then, after a short conversation, he wished me good night and left me.

I sat for some little time smoking by the smouldering fire, and turning over in my mind the curious incident which had occurred, and the strange experience which might lie before me. Sceptical as I was, there was something impressive in the assurance of Dacre’s manner, and my extraordinary surroundings, the huge room with the strange and often sinister objects which were hung round it, struck solemnity into my soul. Finally I undressed, and turning out the lamp, I lay down. After long tossing I fell asleep. Let me try to describe as accurately as I can the scene which came to me in my dreams.

It stands out now in my memory more clearly than anything which I have seen with my waking eyes.

There was a room which bore the appearance of a vault. Four spandrels from the corners ran up to join a sharp, cup-shaped roof. The architecture was rough, but very strong. It was evidently part of a great building.

Three men in black, with curious, top heavy, black velvet hats, sat in a line upon a red-carpeted dais. Their faces were very solemn and sad. On the left stood two long gowned men with port-folios in their hands, which seemed to be stuffed with papers. Upon the right, looking toward me, was a small woman with blonde hair and singular, light-blue eyes-the eyes of a child. She was past her first youth, but could not yet be called middle-aged. Her figure was inclined to stoutness and her bearing was proud and confident.

Her face was pale, but serene. It was a curious face, comely and yet feline, with a subtle suggestion of cruelty about the straight, strong little mouth and chubby jaw. She was draped in some sort of loose, white gown. Beside her stood a thin, eager priest, who whispered in her ear, and continually raised a crucifix before her eyes. She turned her head and looked fixedly past the crucifix at the three men in black, who were, I felt, her judges.

As I gazed the three men stood up and said something, but I could distinguish no words, though I was aware that it was the central one who was speaking. They then swept out of the room, followed by the two men with the papers. At the same instant several rough-looking fellows in stout jerkins came bustling in and removed first the red carpet, and then the boards which formed the dais, so as to entirely clear the room. When this screen was removed I saw some singular articles of furniture behind it. One looked like a bed with wooden rollers at each end, and a winch handle to regulate its length.

Another was a wooden horse. There were several other curious objects, and a number of swinging cords which played over pulleys. It was not unlike a modern gymnasium.

When the room had been cleared there appeared a new figure upon the scene. This was a tall, thin person clad in black, with a gaunt and austere face.

The aspect of the man made me shudder. His clothes were all shining with grease and mottled with stains. He bore himself with a slow and impressive dignity, as if he took command of all things from the instant of his entrance. In spite of his rude appearance and sordid dress, it was now his business, his room, his to command. He carried a coil of light ropes over his left forearm. The lady looked him up and down with a searching glance, but her expression was unchanged. It was confident-even defiant. But it was very different with the priest. His face was ghastly white, and I saw the moisture glisten and run on his high, sloping forehead. He threw up his hands in prayer and he stooped continually to mutter frantic words in the lady’s ear. The man in black now advanced, and taking one of the cords from his left arm, he bound the woman’s hands together. She held them meekly toward him as he did so. Then he took her arm with a rough grip and led her toward the wooden horse, which was little higher than her waist.

On to this she was lifted and laid, with her back upon it, and her face to the ceiling, while the priest, quivering with horror, had rushed out of the room. The woman’s lips were moving rapidly, and though I could hear nothing I knew that she was praying. Her feet hung down on either side of the horse, and I saw that the rough varlets in attendance had fastened cords to her ankles and secured the other ends to iron rings in the stone floor.

My heart sank within me as I saw these ominous preparations, and yet I was held by the fascination of horror, and I could not take my eyes from the strange spectacle. A man had entered the room with a bucket of water in either hand.

Another followed with a third bucket. They were laid beside the wooden horse. The second man had a wooden dipper-a bowl with a straight handle-in his other hand. This he gave to the man in black. At the same moment one of the varlets approached with a dark object in his hand, which even in my dream filled me with a vague feeling of familiarity.

It was a leather funnel. With horrible energy he thrust it - but I could stand no more. My hair stood on end with horror. I writhed, I struggled, I broke through the bonds of sleep, and I burst with a shriek into my own life, and found myself lying shivering with terror in the huge library, with the moonlight flooding through the window and throwing strange silver and black traceries upon the opposite wall.

Oh, what a blessed relief to feel that I was back in the nineteenth century - back out of that mediaeval vault into a world where men had human hearts within their bosoms. I sat up on my couch, trembling in every limb, my mind divided between thankfulness and horror. To think that such things were ever done - that they could be done without God striking the villains dead. Was it all a fantasy, or did it really stand for something which had happened in the black, cruel days of the world’s history? I sank my throbbing head upon my shaking hands. And then, suddenly, my heart seemed to stand still in my bosom, and I could not even scream, so great was my terror. Something was advancing toward me through the darkness of the room.

It is a horror coming upon a horror which breaks a man’s spirit. I could not reason, I could not pray; I could only sit like a frozen image, and glare at the dark figure which was coming down the great room. And then it moved out into the white lane of moonlight, and I breathed once more. It was Dacre, and his face showed that he was as frightened as myself.

‘Was that you? For God’s sake what’s the matter?’ he asked in a husky voice.

‘Oh, Dacre, I am glad to see you! I have been down into hell. It was dreadful.’

‘Then it was you who screamed?’

‘I dare say it was.’

‘It rang through the house. The servants are all terrified.’ He struck a match and lit the lamp.

‘I think we may get the fire to burn up again,’ he added, throwing some logs upon the embers.

‘Good God, my dear chap, how white you are! You look as if you had seen a ghost.’

‘So I have-several ghosts.’

‘The leather funnel has acted, then?’

‘I wouldn’t sleep near the infernal thing again for all the money you could offer me.’ Dacre chuckled.

‘I expected that you would have a lively night of it,’ said he.

‘You took it out of me in return, for that scream of yours wasn’t a very pleasant sound at two in the morning. I suppose from what you say that you have seen the whole dreadful business.’

‘What dreadful business?’

‘The torture of the water-the `Extraordinary Question,’ as it was called in the genial days of `Le Roi Soleil.’ Did you stand it out to the end?’

‘No, thank God, I awoke before it really began.’

‘Ah! it is just as well for you. I held out till the third bucket. Well, it is an old story, and they are all in their graves now, anyhow, so what does it matter how they got there? I suppose that you have no idea what it was that you have seen?’

‘The torture of some criminal. She must have been a terrible malefactor indeed if her crimes are in proportion to her penalty.’

‘Well, we have that small consolation,’ said Dacre, wrapping his dressing-gown round him and crouching closer to the fire. ‘They WERE in proportion to her penalty. That is to say, if I am correct in the lady’s identity.’

‘How could you possibly know her identity?’

For answer Dacre took down an old vellum-covered volume from the shelf.

‘Just listen to this,’ said he; ‘it is in the French of the seventeenth century, but I will give a rough translation as I go. You will judge for yourself whether I have solved the riddle or not. ‘The prisoner was brought before the Grand Chambers and Tournelles of Parliament, sitting as a court of justice, charged with the murder of Master Dreux d’Aubray, her father, and of her two brothers, MM. d’Aubray, one being civil lieutenant, and the other a counsellor of Parliament. In person it seemed hard to believe that she had really done such wicked deeds, for she was of a mild appearance, and of short stature, with a fair skin and blue eyes. Yet the Court, having found her guilty, condemned her to the ordinary and to the extraordinary question in order that she might be forced to name her accomplices, after which she should be carried in a cart to the Place de Greve, there to have her head cut off, her body being afterwards burned and her ashes scattered to the winds.’

‘The date of this entry is July 16, 1676.’

‘It is interesting,’ said I, ‘but not convincing. How do you prove the two women to be the same?’

‘I am coming to that.

The narrative goes on to tell of the woman’s behaviour when questioned. `When the executioner approached her she recognized him by the cords which he held in his hands, and she at once held out her own hands to him, looking at him from head to foot without uttering a word.

‘How’s that?’

‘Yes, it was so.’

She gazed without wincing upon the wooden horse and rings which had twisted so many limbs and caused so many shrieks of agony. When her eyes fell upon the three pails of water, which were all ready for her, she said with a smile, ‘All that water must have been brought here for the purpose of drowning me, Monsieur. You have no idea, I trust, of making a person of my small stature swallow it all.’‘ Shall I read the details of the torture?’

‘No, for Heaven’s sake, don’t.’

‘Here is a sentence which must surely show you that what is here recorded is the very scene which you have gazed upon tonight:

`The good Abbe Pirot, unable to contemplate the agonies which were suffered by his penitent, had hurried from the room.’ Does that convince you?’

‘It does entirely. There can be no question that it is indeed the same event. But who, then, is this lady whose appearance was so attractive and whose end was so horrible?’

For answer Dacre came across to me, and placed the small lamp upon the table which stood by my bed. Lifting up the ill-omened filler, he turned the brass rim so that the light fell full upon it. Seen in this way the engraving seemed clearer than on the night before.

‘We have already agreed that this is the badge of a marquis or of a marquise,’ said he. ‘We have also settled that the last letter is B.’

‘It is undoubtedly so.’

‘I now suggest to you that the other letters from left to right are, M, M, a small d, A, a small d, and then the final B.’

‘Yes, I am sure that you are right. I can make out the two small d’s quite plainly.’

‘What I have read to you tonight,’ said Dacre, ‘is the official record of the trial of Marie Madeleine d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, one of the most famous poisoners and murderers of all time.’

I sat in silence, overwhelmed at the extraordinary nature of the incident, and at the completeness of the proof with which Dacre had exposed its real meaning. In a vague way I remembered some details of the woman’s career, her unbridled debauchery, the coldblooded and protracted torture of her sick father, the murder of her brothers for motives of petty gain. I recollected also that the bravery of her end had done something to atone for the horror of her life, and that all Paris had sympathized with her last moments, and blessed her as a martyr within a few days of the time when they had cursed her as a murderess. One objection, and one only, occurred to my mind.

‘How came her initials and her badge of rank upon the filler? Surely they did not carry their mediaeval homage to the nobility to the point of decorating instruments of torture with their titles?’

‘I was puzzled with the same point,’ said Dacre, ‘but it admits of a simple explanation. The case excited extraordinary interest at the time, and nothing could be more natural than that La Reynie, the head of the police, should retain this filler as a grim souvenir. It was not often that a marchioness of France underwent the Extraordinary question. That he should engrave her initials upon it for the information of others was surely a very ordinary proceeding upon his part.’

‘And this?’ I asked, pointing to the marks upon the leathern neck.

‘She was a cruel tigress,’ said Dacre, as he turned away.

‘I think it is evident that like other tigresses her teeth were both strong and sharp.’

The New Catacomb by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

‘Look here, Burger,’ said Kennedy, ‘I do wish that you would confide in me.’

The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy’s comfortable room overlooking the Corso.

The night was cold, and they had both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove which threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth. Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long, double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted cafes, the rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But inside, in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist, there was only old Rome to be seen.

Cracked and timeworn friezes hung upon the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their fighting heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On the centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was exhibited in Berlin. Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the rich red Turkey carpet.

And of them all there was not one which was not of the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and value; for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European reputation in this particular branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student’s energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensual mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.

Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber. Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual bearing upon his character. In age and in reputation, he was on the same level as his English companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.

Twelve years before, he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded to him by the University of Bonn. Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and single-mindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishman, had caused him in everything outside their work to stand infinitely below him. He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the social graces. It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face was filled with life and soul.

At other times he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and impatient of that small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.

And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the other’s knowledge. And then gradually something had been added to this.

Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say ‘had, ‘because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a cloud.

A love-affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy rather than of reprobation.

‘Look here, Burger,’ said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of his companion, ‘I do wish that you would confide in me.’

As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which lay upon the floor. On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed to have come straight from a dustman’s bin, but which a specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of their kind. The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied exactly one of those missing links of social development which are of such interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them in, and the Englishman’s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.

‘I won’t interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like to hear about it,’ he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a cigar. ‘It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe.’

‘For everyone here there are a million there!’ said the German. ‘There are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo.’

Kennedy sat thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers playing with his long, fair moustache.

‘You have given yourself away, Burger!’ said he at last. ‘Your words can only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb.’

‘I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an examination of these objects.’

‘Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks make it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could contain so vast a store of relics as you describe.’

‘Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I HAVE discovered a new catacomb.’

‘Where?’

‘Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy. Suffice it that it is so situated that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming upon it. Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it has been reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the remains and the relics are quite different from anything which has ever been seen before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your energy, my friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to tell you everything about it. But as it is I think that I must certainly prepare my own report of the matter before I expose myself to such formidable competition.’

Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania - a love which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new underworld which his companion had discovered.

‘Look here, Burger,’ said he, earnestly, ‘I assure you that you can trust me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put pen to paper about anything which I see until I have your express permission. I quite understand your feeling and I think it is most natural, but you have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the other hand, if you don’t tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I shall most certainly discover it. In that case, of course, I should make what use I liked of it, since I should be under no obligation to you.’

Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.

‘I have noticed, friend Kennedy,’ said he, ‘that when I want information over any point you are not always so ready to supply it.’

‘When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You remember, for example, my giving you the material for your paper about the temple of the Vestals.’

‘Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to question you upon some intimate thing would you give me an answer, I wonder! This new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should certainly expect some sign of confidence in return.’

‘What you are driving at I cannot imagine,’ said the Englishman, ‘but if you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer any question which you may put to me I can assure you that I will certainly do so.’

‘Well, then,’ said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and puffing a blue tree of cigar smoke into the air, ‘tell me all about your relations with Miss Mary Saunderson.’

Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive companion.

‘What the devil do you mean?’ he cried. ‘What sort of a question is this? You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one.’

‘No, I don’t mean it as a joke,’ said Burger, simply. ‘I am really rather interested in the details of the matter. I don’t know much about the world and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an incident has the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I knew her by sight - I had even spoken to her once or twice. I should very much like to hear from your own lips exactly what it was which occurred between you.’

‘I won’t tell you a word.’

‘That’s all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new catacomb. You wouldn’t, and I didn’t expect you to. But why should you expect otherwise of me? There’s Saint John’s clock striking ten. It is quite time that I was going home.’

‘No; wait a bit, Burger,’ said Kennedy; ‘this is really a ridiculous caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love- affair which has burned out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells as the greatest coward and villain possible.’

‘Certainly,’ said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities, ‘when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown he must be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public matter which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really doing Miss Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me. But still, I respect your scruples; and so good night!’

‘Wait a bit, Burger,’ said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other’s arm; ‘I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can’t let it drop quite so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in return - something not quite so eccentric this time?’

‘No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it,’ said Burger, with his basket on his arm. ‘No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and no doubt I am quite right also - and so again, my dear Kennedy, good night!’

The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who is making the best of that which cannot be helped.

‘Hold on, old fellow,’ said he; ‘I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous fashion; but still; if this is your condition, I suppose that I must submit to it. I hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it is all over Rome, and I don’t suppose I can tell you anything which you do not know already. What was it you wanted to know?’

The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank into his chair once more.

‘May I have another cigar?’ said he. ‘Thank you very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more when I am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young lady, with whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has become of her?’

‘She is at home with her own people.’

‘Oh, really - in England?’

‘Yes.’

‘What part of England - London?’

‘No, Twickenham.’

‘You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then to hand her over to her own family at-what did you call the place?’

‘Twickenham.’

‘Quite so-at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But if you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has damaged you and ruined her?’

Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove.

‘That’s a logical way of looking at it, certainly,’ said he.

‘Love is a big word, and it represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and - well, you say you’ve seen her - you know how charming she could look. But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have really loved her.’

‘Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?’

‘The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it.’

‘What! You are so fond of adventures!’

‘Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an adventure that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I’ve chased a good deal of game in my time, but there’s no chase like that of a pretty woman. There was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the companion of Lady Emily Rood, it was almost impossible to see her alone. On the top of all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from her own lips very early in the proceedings that she was engaged.’

‘Mein Gott! To whom?’

‘She mentioned no names.’

‘I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more alluring, did it?’

‘Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don’t you think so?’

‘I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things.’

‘My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your neighbour’s tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own. And then I found that she cared for me.’

‘What - at once?’

‘Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last I won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife made it impossible for me to do the right thing by her - but she came all the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted.’

‘But how about the other man?’

Kennedy shrugged his shoulders.

‘I suppose it is the survival of the fittest,’ said he. ‘If he had been the better man she would not have deserted him. Let’s drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!’

‘Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?’

‘Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she had known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was already pining to be back at my work- so there was one obvious cause of separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in London, and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant that really- -though I missed her dreadfully at first - I was very glad to slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I have said.’

‘My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you say interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have seen so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb. There’s no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by that. There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there.’

‘That would be splendid.’

‘When would you like to come?’

‘The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it.’

‘Well, it is a beautiful night - though a trifle cold. Suppose we start in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves. If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was something going on.’

‘We can’t be too cautious,’ said Kennedy.

‘Is it far?’

‘Some miles.’

‘Not too far to walk?’

‘Oh, no, we could walk there easily.’

‘We had better do so, then. A cabman’s suspicions would be aroused if he dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night.’

‘Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches and candles and things.’

‘All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me at the Gate at twelve.’

The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the shadow to meet him.

‘You are ardent in work as well as in love!’ said the German, laughing.

‘Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour.’

‘I hope you left no clue as to where we were going.’

‘Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger, let us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking.’

Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of the disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous highway of the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met. They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St. Calistus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger stopped with his hand to his side.

‘Your legs are longer than mine, and you are more accustomed to walking,’ said he, laughing. ‘I think that the place where we turn off is somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round the corner of the trattoria. Now, it is a very narrow path, so perhaps I had better go in front and you can follow.’

He had lit his lantern, and by its light they were enabled to follow a narrow and devious track which wound across the marshes of the Campagna. The great Aqueduct of old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar across the moonlit landscape, and their road led them under one of its huge arches, and past the circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old arena. At last Burger stopped at a solitary wooden cow house, and he drew a key from his pocket.

‘Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!’ cried Kennedy

‘The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have against anyone else discovering it.’

‘Does the proprietor know of it?’

‘Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain that his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented it from him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the door behind you.’

It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light in all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it.

‘It might excite remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place,’ said he.

‘Just help me to move this boarding.’

The flooring was loose in the corner, and plank by plank the two savants raised it and leaned it against the wall. Below there was a square aperture and a stair of old stone steps which led away down into the bowels of the earth.

‘Be careful!’ cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience, hurried down them. ‘It is a perfect rabbits’ - warren below, and if you were once to lose your way there the chances would be a hundred to one against your ever coming out again. Wait until I bring the light.’

‘How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?’

‘I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned to go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a lost man, if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out.

Even now I always spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into the catacomb. You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every one of these passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go a hundred yards.’

They had descended some twenty feet from the level of the byre, and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the soft tufa. The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim above, over the cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black openings of passages which radiated from this common centre.

‘I want you to follow me closely, my friend,’ said Burger. ‘Do not loiter to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will take you contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for us to go there direct.’

He led the way down one of the corridors, and the Englishman followed closely at his heels.

Every now and then the passage bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks of his own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the walls, packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians of old Rome.

The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of the mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm bones crossed over fleshless chests.

And everywhere as he passed Kennedy looked with wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures, vestments, utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many centuries ago. It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing glances, that this was the earliest and finest of the catacombs, containing such a storehouse of Roman remains as had never before come at one time under the observation of the student.

‘What would happen if the light went out?’ he asked, as they hurried onwards.

‘I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way, Kennedy, have you any matches?’

‘No; you had better give me some.’

‘Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating.’

‘How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a quarter of a mile.’

‘More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs - at least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult place, so I think that I will use our ball of string.’

He fastened one end of it to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of his coat, paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complex and tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it.

‘By Jove!’ cried Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble.

‘It is a Christian altar-probably the first one in existence. Here is the little consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this circular space was used as a church.’

‘Precisely,’ said Burger.

‘If I had more time I should like to show you all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!’

Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on the shredded and mouldering mitre.

‘This is most interesting,’ said he, and his voice seemed to boom against the concave vault. ‘As far as my experience goes, it is unique. Bring the lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all.’

But the German had strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow circle of light at the other side of the hall.

‘Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the stairs?’ he asked. ‘There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one of the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are two thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light; but if he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult.’

‘So I should think.’

‘And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an experiment. Let us try it again!’

He stooped to the lantern, and in an instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of Kennedy’s eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed to press upon him and to smother him.

It was a solid obstacle against which the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it back from him.

‘That will do, Burger,’ said he, ‘let’s have the light again.’

But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound seemed to come from every side at once.

‘You seem uneasy, friend Kennedy,’ said he.

‘Go on, man, light the candle!’ said Kennedy impatiently.

‘It’s very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?’

‘No; you seem to be on every side of me.’

‘If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not have a notion which way to go.’

‘I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this nonsense.’

‘Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are very fond of. The one is an adventure, and the other is an obstacle to surmount. The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this catacomb. The obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong turns which make the way a little difficult to find. But you need not hurry, for you have plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and then, I should like you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and whether you treated her quite fairly.’

‘You devil, what do you mean?’ roared Kennedy.

He was running about in little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with both hands.

‘Good-bye,’ said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.

‘I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did the right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged to a poor ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger.’

There was a rustle somewhere, the vague sound of a foot striking a stone, and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church-a stagnant, heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like water round a drowning man.

Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the European Press:

‘One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus.

The finding of this important burial-place, which is exceeding rich in most interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and sagacity of Dr Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome. Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr Burger.

Some months ago Mr Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly from his rooms in the Corso, and it was conjectured that his association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome. It appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place among living scholars.

His body was discovered in the heart of the new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers.

The deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the natural result of his own temerity. What makes the matter more painful is that Dr Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the deceased. His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate of his comrade and fellow worker.’

The Witch by Anton Chekhov

IT was approaching nightfall. The sexton, Savely Gykin, was lying in his huge bed in the hut adjoining the church.

He was not asleep, though it was his habit to go to sleep at the same time as the hens. His coarse red hair peeped from under one end of the greasy patchwork quilt, made up of coloured rags, while his big unwashed feet stuck out from the other.

He was listening. His hut adjoined the wall that encircled the church and the solitary window in it looked out upon the open country. And out there a regular battle was going on. It was hard to say who was being wiped off the face of the earth, and for the sake of whose destruction nature was being churned up into such a ferment; but, judging from the unceasing malignant roar, someone was getting it very hot. A victorious force was in full chase over the fields, storming in the forest and on the church roof, battering spitefully with its fists upon the windows, raging and tearing, while something vanquished was howling and wailing.... A plaintive lament sobbed at the window, on the roof, or in the stove. It sounded not like a call for help, but like a cry of misery, a consciousness that it was too late, that there was no salvation. The snowdrifts were covered with a thin coating of ice; tears quivered on them and on the trees; a dark slush of mud and melting snow flowed along the roads and paths. In short, it was thawing, but through the dark night the heavens failed to see it, and flung flakes of fresh snow upon the melting earth at a terrific rate. And the wind staggered like a drunkard. It would not let the snow settle on the ground, and whirled it round in the darkness at random.

Savely listened to all this din and frowned. The fact was that he knew, or at any rate suspected, what all this racket outside the window was tending to and whose handiwork it was.

‘I know!’ he muttered, shaking his finger menacingly under the bedclothes; ‘I know all about it.’

On a stool by the window sat the sexton’s wife, Raissa Nilovna. A tin lamp standing on another stool, as though timid and distrustful of its powers, shed a dim and flickering light on her broad shoulders, on the handsome, tempting-looking contours of her person, and on her thick plait, which reached to the floor. She was making sacks out of coarse hempen stuff. Her hands moved nimbly, while her whole body, her eyes, her eyebrows, her full lips, her white neck were as still as though they were asleep, absorbed in the monotonous, mechanical toil. Only from time to time she raised her head to rest her weary neck, glanced for a moment towards the window, beyond which the snowstorm was raging, and bent again over her sacking. No desire, no joy, no grief, nothing was expressed by her handsome face with its turned-up nose and its dimples. So a beautiful fountain expresses nothing when it is not playing.

But at last she had finished a sack. She flung it aside, and, stretching luxuriously, rested her motionless, lack-lustre eyes on the window. The panes were swimming with drops like tears, and white with short-lived snowflakes which fell on the window, glanced at Raissa, and melted....

‘Come to bed!’ growled the sexton. Raissa remained mute. But suddenly her eyelashes flickered and there was a gleam of attention in her eye. Savely, all the time watching her expression from under the quilt, put out his head and asked:

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.... I fancy someone’s coming,’ she answered quietly.

The sexton flung the quilt off with his arms and legs, knelt up in bed, and looked blankly at his wife. The timid light of the lamp illuminated his hirsute, pock-marked countenance and glided over his rough matted hair.

‘Do you hear?’ asked his wife.

Through the monotonous roar of the storm he caught a scarcely audible thin and jingling monotone like the shrill note of a gnat when it wants to settle on one’s cheek and is angry at being prevented.

‘It’s the post,’ muttered Savely, squatting on his heels.

Two miles from the church ran the posting road. In windy weather, when the wind was blowing from the road to the church, the inmates of the hut caught the sound of bells.

‘Lord! fancy people wanting to drive about in such weather,’ sighed Raissa.

‘It’s government work. You’ve to go whether you like or not.’

The murmur hung in the air and died away.

‘It has driven by,’ said Savely, getting into bed.

But before he had time to cover himself up with the bedclothes he heard a distinct sound of the bell. The sexton looked anxiously at his wife, leapt out of bed and walked, waddling, to and fro by the stove. The bell went on ringing for a little, then died away again as though it had ceased.

‘I don’t hear it,’ said the sexton, stopping and looking at his wife with his eyes screwed up.

But at that moment the wind rapped on the window and with it floated a shrill jingling note. Savely turned pale, cleared his throat, and flopped about the floor with his bare feet again.

‘The postman is lost in the storm,’ he wheezed out glancing malignantly at his wife. ‘Do you hear? The postman has lost his way!... I... I know! Do you suppose I... don’t understand?’ he muttered. ‘I know all about it, curse you!’

‘What do you know?’ Raissa asked quietly, keeping her eyes fixed on the window.

‘I know that it’s all your doing, you she-devil! Your doing, damn you! This snowstorm and the post going wrong, you’ve done it all-you!’

‘You’re mad, you silly,’ his wife answered calmly.

‘I’ve been watching you for a long time past and I’ve seen it. From the first day I married you I noticed that you’d bitch’s blood in you!’

‘Tfoo!’ said Raissa, surprised, shrugging her shoulders and crossing herself. ‘Cross yourself, you fool!’

‘A witch is a witch,’ Savely pronounced in a hollow, tearful voice, hurriedly blowing his nose on the hem of his shirt; ‘though you are my wife, though you are of a clerical family, I’d say what you are even at confession.... Why, God have mercy upon us! Last year on the Eve of the Prophet Daniel and the Three Young Men there was a snowstorm, and what happened then? The mechanic came in to warm himself. Then on St. Alexey’s Day the ice broke on the river and the district policeman turned up, and he was chatting with you all night... the damned brute! And when he came out in the morning and I looked at him, he had rings under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow! Eh? During the August fast there were two storms and each time the huntsman turned up. I saw it all, damn him! Oh, she is redder than a crab now, aha!’

‘You didn’t see anything.’

‘Didn’t I! And this winter before Christmas on the Day of the Ten Martyrs of Crete, when the storm lasted for a whole day and night-do you remember?-the marshal’s clerk was lost, and turned up here, the hound.... Tfoo! To be tempted by the clerk! It was worth upsetting God’s weather for him! A drivelling scribbler, not a foot from the ground, pimples all over his mug and his neck awry! If he were good-looking, anyway-but he, tfoo! he is as ugly as Satan!’

The sexton took breath, wiped his lips and listened. The bell was not to be heard, but the wind banged on the roof, and again there came a tinkle in the darkness.

‘And it’s the same thing now!’ Savely went on. ‘It’s not for nothing the postman is lost! Blast my eyes if the postman isn’t looking for you! Oh, the devil is a good hand at his work; he is a fine one to help! He will turn him round and round and bring him here. I know, I see! You can’t conceal it, you devil’s bauble, you heathen wanton! As soon as the storm began I knew what you were up to.’

‘Here’s a fool!’ smiled his wife. ‘Why, do you suppose, you thick-head, that I make the storm?’

‘H’m!... Grin away! Whether it’s your doing or not, I only know that when your blood’s on fire there’s sure to be bad weather, and when there’s bad weather there’s bound to be some crazy fellow turning up here. It happens so every time! So it must be you!’

To be more impressive the sexton put his finger to his forehead, closed his left eye, and said in a singsong voice:

‘Oh, the madness! oh, the unclean Judas! If you really are a human being and not a witch, you ought to think what if he is not the mechanic, or the clerk, or the huntsman, but the devil in their form! Ah! You’d better think of that!’

‘Why, you are stupid, Savely,’ said his wife, looking at him compassionately. ‘When father was alive and living here, all sorts of people used to come to him to be cured of the ague: from the village, and the hamlets, and the Armenian settlement. They came almost every day, and no one called them devils. But if anyone once a year comes in bad weather to warm himself, you wonder at it, you silly, and take all sorts of notions into your head at once.’

His wife’s logic touched Savely. He stood with his bare feet wide apart, bent his head, and pondered. He was not firmly convinced yet of the truth of his suspicions, and his wife’s genuine and unconcerned tone quite disconcerted him. Yet after a moment’s thought he wagged his head and said:

‘It’s not as though they were old men or bandy-legged cripples; it’s always young men who want to come for the night.... Why is that? And if they only wanted to warm themselves - But they are up to mischief. No, woman; there’s no creature in this world as cunning as your female sort! Of real brains you’ve not an ounce, less than a starling, but for devilish slyness-oo-oo-oo! The Queen of Heaven protect us! There is the postman’s bell! When the storm was only beginning I knew all that was in your mind. That’s your witchery, you spider!’

‘Why do you keep on at me, you heathen?’ His wife lost her patience at last. ‘Why do you keep sticking to it like pitch?’

‘I stick to it because if anything-God forbid-happens to-night... do you hear?... if anything happens to-night, I’ll go straight off to-morrow morning to Father Nikodim and tell him all about it. ‘Father Nikodim,’ I shall say, ‘graciously excuse me, but she is a witch.’ ‘Why so?’ ‘H’m! do you want to know why?’ ‘Certainly....’ And I shall tell him. And woe to you, woman! Not only at the dread Seat of Judgment, but in your earthly life you’ll be punished, too! It’s not for nothing there are prayers in the breviary against your kind!’

Suddenly there was a knock at the window, so loud and unusual that Savely turned pale and almost dropped backwards with fright. His wife jumped up, and she, too, turned pale.

‘For God’s sake, let us come in and get warm!’ they heard in a trembling deep bass. ‘Who lives here? For mercy’s sake! We’ve lost our way.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Raissa, afraid to look at the window.

‘The post,’ answered a second voice.

‘You’ve succeeded with your devil’s tricks,’ said Savely with a wave of his hand. ‘No mistake; I am right! Well, you’d better look out!’

The sexton jumped on to the bed in two skips, stretched himself on the feather mattress, and sniffing angrily, turned with his face to the wall. Soon he felt a draught of cold air on his back. The door creaked and the tall figure of a man, plastered over with snow from head to foot, appeared in the doorway. Behind him could be seen a second figure as white.

‘Am I to bring in the bags?’ asked the second in a hoarse bass voice.

‘You can’t leave them there.’ Saying this, the first figure began untying his hood, but gave it up, and pulling it off impatiently with his cap, angrily flung it near the stove. Then taking off his greatcoat, he threw that down beside it, and, without saying good-evening, began pacing up and down the hut.

He was a fair-haired, young postman wearing a shabby uniform and black rusty-looking high boots. After warming himself by walking to and fro, he sat down at the table, stretched out his muddy feet towards the sacks and leaned his chin on his fist. His pale face, reddened in places by the cold, still bore vivid traces of the pain and terror he had just been through. Though distorted by anger and bearing traces of recent suffering, physical and moral, it was handsome in spite of the melting snow on the eyebrows, moustaches, and short beard.

‘It’s a dog’s life!’ muttered the postman, looking round the walls and seeming hardly able to believe that he was in the warmth. ‘We were nearly lost! If it had not been for your light, I don’t know what would have happened. Goodness only knows when it will all be over! There’s no end to this dog’s life! Where have we come?’ he asked, dropping his voice and raising his eyes to the sexton’s wife.

‘To the Gulyaevsky Hill on General Kalinovsky’s estate,’ she answered, startled and blushing.

‘Do you hear, Stepan?’ The postman turned to the driver, who was wedged in the doorway with a huge mail-bag on his shoulders. ‘We’ve got to Gulyaevsky Hill.’

‘Yes... we’re a long way out.’ Jerking out these words like a hoarse sigh, the driver went out and soon after returned with another bag, then went out once more and this time brought the postman’s sword on a big belt, of the pattern of that long flat blade with which Judith is portrayed by the bedside of Holofernes in cheap woodcuts. Laying the bags along the wall, he went out into the outer room, sat down there and lighted his pipe.

‘Perhaps you’d like some tea after your journey?’ Raissa inquired.

‘How can we sit drinking tea?’ said the postman, frowning. ‘We must make haste and get warm, and then set off, or we shall be late for the mail train. We’ll stay ten minutes and then get on our way. Only be so good as to show us the way.’

‘What an infliction it is, this weather!’ sighed Raissa.

‘H’m, yes.... Who may you be?’

‘We? We live here, by the church.... We belong to the clergy.... There lies my husband. Savely, get up and say good-evening! This used to be a separate parish till eighteen months ago. Of course, when the gentry lived here there were more people, and it was worth while to have the services. But now the gentry have gone, and I need not tell you there’s nothing for the clergy to live on. The nearest village is Markovka, and that’s over three miles away. Savely is on the retired list now, and has got the watchman’s job; he has to look after the church....’

And the postman was immediately informed that if Savely were to go to the General’s lady and ask her for a letter to the bishop, he would be given a good berth. ‘But he doesn’t go to the General’s lady because he is lazy and afraid of people. We belong to the clergy all the same...’ added Raissa.

‘What do you live on?’ asked the postman.

‘There’s a kitchen garden and a meadow belonging to the church. Only we don’t get much from that,’ sighed Raissa. ‘The old skinflint, Father Nikodim, from the next village celebrates here on St. Nicolas’ Day in the winter and on St. Nicolas’ Day in the summer, and for that he takes almost all the crops for himself. There’s no one to stick up for us!’

‘You are lying,’ Savely growled hoarsely. ‘Father Nikodim is a saintly soul, a luminary of the Church; and if he does take it, it’s the regulation!’

‘You’ve a cross one!’ said the postman, with a grin. ‘Have you been married long?’

‘It was three years ago the last Sunday before Lent. My father was sexton here in the old days, and when the time came for him to die, he went to the Consistory and asked them to send some unmarried man to marry me that I might keep the place. So I married him.’

‘Aha, so you killed two birds with one stone!’ said the postman, looking at Savely’s back. ‘Got wife and job together.’

Savely wriggled his leg impatiently and moved closer to the wall. The postman moved away from the table, stretched, and sat down on the mail-bag. After a moment’s thought he squeezed the bags with his hands, shifted his sword to the other side, and lay down with one foot touching the floor.

‘It’s a dog’s life,’ he muttered, putting his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t wish a wild Tatar such a life.’

Soon everything was still. Nothing was audible except the sniffing of Savely and the slow, even breathing of the sleeping postman, who uttered a deep prolonged ‘h-h-h’ at every breath. From time to time there was a sound like a creaking wheel in his throat, and his twitching foot rustled against the bag.

Savely fidgeted under the quilt and looked round slowly. His wife was sitting on the stool, and with her hands pressed against her cheeks was gazing at the postman’s face. Her face was immovable, like the face of someone frightened and astonished.

‘Well, what are you gaping at?’ Savely whispered angrily.

‘What is it to you? Lie down!’ answered his wife without taking her eyes off the flaxen head.

Savely angrily puffed all the air out of his chest and turned abruptly to the wall. Three minutes later he turned over restlessly again, knelt up on the bed, and with his hands on the pillow looked askance at his wife. She was still sitting motionless, staring at the visitor. Her cheeks were pale and her eyes were glowing with a strange fire. The sexton cleared his throat, crawled on his stomach off the bed, and going up to the postman, put a handkerchief over his face.

‘What’s that for?’ asked his wife.

‘To keep the light out of his eyes.’

‘Then put out the light!’

Savely looked distrustfully at his wife, put out his lips towards the lamp, but at once thought better of it and clasped his hands.

‘Isn’t that devilish cunning?’ he exclaimed. ‘Ah! Is there any creature slyer than womenkind?’

‘Ah, you long-skirted devil!’ hissed his wife, frowning with vexation. ‘You wait a bit!’

And settling herself more comfortably, she stared at the postman again.

It did not matter to her that his face was covered. She was not so much interested in his face as in his whole appearance, in the novelty of this man. His chest was broad and powerful, his hands were slender and well formed, and his graceful, muscular legs were much comelier than Savely’s stumps. There could be no comparison, in fact.

‘Though I am a long-skirted devil,’ Savely said after a brief interval, ‘they’ve no business to sleep here.... It’s government work; we shall have to answer for keeping them. If you carry the letters, carry them, you can’t go to sleep.... Hey! you!’ Savely shouted into the outer room. ‘You, driver. What’s your name? Shall I show you the way? Get up; postmen mustn’t sleep!’

And Savely, thoroughly roused, ran up to the postman and tugged him by the sleeve.

‘Hey, your honour, if you must go, go; and if you don’t, it’s not the thing.... Sleeping won’t do.’

The postman jumped up, sat down, looked with blank eyes round the hut, and lay down again.

‘But when are you going?’ Savely pattered away. ‘That’s what the post is for-to get there in good time, do you hear? I’ll take you.’

The postman opened his eyes. Warmed and relaxed by his first sweet sleep, and not yet quite awake, he saw as through a mist the white neck and the immovable, alluring eyes of the sexton’s wife. He closed his eyes and smiled as though he had been dreaming it all.

‘Come, how can you go in such weather!’ he heard a soft feminine voice; ‘you ought to have a sound sleep and it would do you good!’

‘And what about the post?’ said Savely anxiously. ‘Who’s going to take the post? Are you going to take it, pray, you?’

The postman opened his eyes again, looked at the play of the dimples on Raissa’s face, remembered where he was, and understood Savely. The thought that he had to go out into the cold darkness sent a chill shudder all down him, and he winced.

‘I might sleep another five minutes,’ he said, yawning. ‘I shall be late, anyway....’

‘We might be just in time,’ came a voice from the outer room. ‘All days are not alike; the train may be late for a bit of luck.’

The postman got up, and stretching lazily began putting on his coat.

Savely positively neighed with delight when he saw his visitors were getting ready to go.

‘Give us a hand,’ the driver shouted to him as he lifted up a mail-bag.

The sexton ran out and helped him drag the post-bags into the yard. The postman began undoing the knot in his hood. The sexton’s wife gazed into his eyes, and seemed trying to look right into his soul.

‘You ought to have a cup of tea...’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t say no... but, you see, they’re getting ready,’ he assented. ‘We are late, anyway.’

‘Do stay,’ she whispered, dropping her eyes and touching him by the sleeve.

The postman got the knot undone at last and flung the hood over his elbow, hesitating. He felt it comfortable standing by Raissa.

‘What a... neck you’ve got!...’ And he touched her neck with two fingers. Seeing that she did not resist, he stroked her neck and shoulders.

‘I say, you are...’

‘You’d better stay... have some tea.’

‘Where are you putting it?’ The driver’s voice could be heard outside. ‘Lay it crossways.’

‘You’d better stay.... Hark how the wind howls.’

And the postman, not yet quite awake, not yet quite able to shake off the intoxicating sleep of youth and fatigue, was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire for the sake of which mail-bags, postal trains... and all things in the world, are forgotten. He glanced at the door in a frightened way, as though he wanted to escape or hide himself, seized Raissa round the waist, and was just bending over the lamp to put out the light, when he heard the tramp of boots in the outer room, and the driver appeared in the doorway. Savely peeped in over his shoulder. The postman dropped his hands quickly and stood still as though irresolute.

‘It’s all ready,’ said the driver. The postman stood still for a moment, resolutely threw up his head as though waking up completely, and followed the driver out. Raissa was left alone.

‘Come, get in and show us the way!’ she heard.

One bell sounded languidly, then another, and the jingling notes in a long delicate chain floated away from the hut.

When little by little they had died away, Raissa got up and nervously paced to and fro. At first she was pale, then she flushed all over. Her face was contorted with hate, her breathing was tremulous, her eyes gleamed with wild, savage anger, and, pacing up and down as in a cage, she looked like a tigress menaced with red-hot iron. For a moment she stood still and looked at her abode. Almost half of the room was filled up by the bed, which stretched the length of the whole wall and consisted of a dirty feather-bed, coarse grey pillows, a quilt, and nameless rags of various sorts. The bed was a shapeless ugly mass which suggested the shock of hair that always stood up on Savely’s head whenever it occurred to him to oil it. From the bed to the door that led into the cold outer room stretched the dark stove surrounded by pots and hanging clouts. Everything, including the absent Savely himself, was dirty, greasy, and smutty to the last degree, so that it was strange to see a woman’s white neck and delicate skin in such surroundings.

Raissa ran up to the bed, stretched out her hands as though she wanted to fling it all about, stamp it underfoot, and tear it to shreds. But then, as though frightened by contact with the dirt, she leapt back and began pacing up and down again.

When Savely returned two hours later, worn out and covered with snow, she was undressed and in bed. Her eyes were closed, but from the slight tremor that ran over her face he guessed that she was not asleep. On his way home he had vowed inwardly to wait till next day and not to touch her, but he could not resist a biting taunt at her.

‘Your witchery was all in vain: he’s gone off,’ he said, grinning with malignant joy.

His wife remained mute, but her chin quivered. Savely undressed slowly, clambered over his wife, and lay down next to the wall.

‘To-morrow I’ll let Father Nikodim know what sort of wife you are!’ he muttered, curling himself up.

Raissa turned her face to him and her eyes gleamed.

‘The job’s enough for you, and you can look for a wife in the forest, blast you!’ she said. ‘I am no wife for you, a clumsy lout, a slug-a-bed, God forgive me!’

‘Come, come... go to sleep!’

‘How miserable I am!’ sobbed his wife. ‘If it weren’t for you, I might have married a merchant or some gentleman! If it weren’t for you, I should love my husband now! And you haven’t been buried in the snow, you haven’t been frozen on the highroad, you Herod!’

Raissa cried for a long time. At last she drew a deep sigh and was still. The storm still raged without. Something wailed in the stove, in the chimney, outside the walls, and it seemed to Savely that the wailing was within him, in his ears. This evening had completely confirmed him in his suspicions about his wife. He no longer doubted that his wife, with the aid of the Evil One, controlled the winds and the post sledges. But to add to his grief, this mysteriousness, this supernatural, weird power gave the woman beside him a peculiar, incomprehensible charm of which he had not been conscious before. The fact that in his stupidity he unconsciously threw a poetic glamour over her made her seem, as it were, whiter, sleeker, more unapproachable.

‘Witch!’ he muttered indignantly. ‘Tfoo, horrid creature!’

Yet, waiting till she was quiet and began breathing evenly, he touched her head with his finger... held her thick plait in his hand for a minute. She did not feel it. Then he grew bolder and stroked her neck.

‘Leave off!’ she shouted, and prodded him on the nose with her elbow with such violence that he saw stars before his eyes.

The pain in his nose was soon over, but the torture in his heart remaine.

The Spectre Bridegroom by Irving Washington

He that supper for is dight,

He lyes full cold, I trow, this night!

Yestreen to chamber I him led,

This night Gray-steel has made his bed!

SIR EGER, SIR GRAHAME, and SIR GRAY-STEEL.

On the summit of one of the heights of the Odenwald, a wild and romantic tract of Upper Germany that lies not far from the confluence of the Main and the Rhine, there stood many, many years since the castle of the Baron Von Landshort. It is now quite fallen to decay, and almost buried among beech trees and dark firs; above which, however, its old watch-tower may still be seen struggling, like the former possessor I have mentioned, to carry a high head and look down upon the neighboring country.

The baron was a dry branch of the great family of Katzenellenbogen+, and inherited the relics of the property and all the pride, of his ancestors. Though the warlike disposition of his predecessors had much impaired the family possessions, yet the baron still endeavoured to keep up some show of former state.

The times were peaceable, and the German nobles in general had abandoned their inconvenient old castles, perched like eagles’ nests among the mountains, and had built more convenient residences in the valleys; still, the baron remained proudly drawn up in his little fortress, cherishing with hereditary inveteracy all the old family feuds, so that he was on ill terms with some of his nearest neighbors, on account of disputes that had happened between their great-great-grandfathers.

* The erudite reader, well versed in good-for-nothing lore, will perceive that the above Tale must have been suggested to the old Swiss by a little French anecdote, a circumstance said to have taken place in Paris.

* I.e., CAT’S ELBOW - the name of a family of those parts, and very powerful in former times. The appellation, we are told, was given in compliment to a peerless dame of the family, celebrated for a fine arm.

The baron had but one child, a daughter, but Nature, when she grants but one child, always compensates by making it a prodigy; and so it was with the daughter of the baron. All the nurses, gossips, and country cousins assured her father that she had not her equal for beauty in all Germany; and who should know better than they? She had, moreover, been brought up with great care under the superintendence of two maiden aunts, who had spent some years of their early life at one of the little German courts, and were skilled in all branches of knowledge necessary to the education of a fine lady. Under their instructions she became a miracle of accomplishments. By the time she was eighteen she could embroider to admiration, and had worked whole histories of the saints in tapestry with such strength of expression in their countenances that they looked like so many souls in purgatory.

She could read without great difficulty, and had spelled her way through several Church legends and almost all the chivalric wonders of the Heldenbuch. She had even made considerable proficiency in writing; could sign her own name without missing a letter, and so legibly that her aunts could read it without spectacles. She excelled in making little elegant good-for-nothing, lady-like knicknacks of all kinds, was versed in the most abstruse dancing of the day, played a number of airs on the harp and guitar, and knew all the tender ballads of the Minnelieders by heart.

Her aunts, too, having been great flirts and coquettes in their younger days, were admirably calculated to be vigilant guardians and strict censors of the conduct of their niece; for there is no duenna so rigidly prudent and inexorably decorous as a superannuated coquette. She was rarely suffered out of their sight; never went beyond the domains of the castle unless well attended, or rather well watched; had continual lectures read to her about strict decorum and implicit obedience; and, as to the men - pah! - she was taught to hold them at such a distance and in such absolute distrust that, unless properly authorized, she would not have cast a glance upon the handsomest cavalier in the world - no, not if he were even dying at her feet.

The good effects of this system were wonderfully apparent. The young lady was a pattern of docility and correctness. While others were wasting their sweetness in the glare of the world, and liable to be plucked and thrown aside by every hand, she was coyly blooming into fresh and lovely womanhood under the protection of those immaculate spinsters, like a rosebud blushing forth among guardian thorns. Her aunts looked upon her with pride and exultation, and vaunted that, though all the other young ladies in the world might go astray, yet thank Heaven, nothing of the kind could happen to the heiress of Katzenellenbogen.

But, however scantily the Baron Von Landshort might be provided with children, his household was by no means a small one; for Providence had enriched him with abundance of poor relations.

They, one and all, possessed the affectionate disposition common to humble relatives - were wonderfully attached to the baron, and took every possible occasion to come in swarms and enliven the castle. All family festivals were commemorated by these good people at the baron’s expense; and when they were filled with good cheer they would declare that there was nothing on earth so delightful as these family meetings, these jubilees of the heart.

The baron, though a small man, had a large soul, and it swelled with satisfaction at the consciousness of being the greatest man in the little world about him. He loved to tell long stories about the stark old warriors whose portraits looked grimly down from the walls around, and he found no listeners equal to those who fed at his expense. He was much given to the marvellous and a firm believer in all those supernatural tales with which every mountain and valley in Germany abounds. The faith of his guests exceeded even his own: they listened to every tale of wonder with open eyes and mouth, and never failed to be astonished, even though repeated for the hundredth time. Thus lived the Baron Von Landshort, the oracle of his table, the absolute monarch of his little territory, and happy, above all things, in the persuasion that he was the wisest man of the age.

At the time of which my story treats there was a great family gathering at the castle on an affair of the utmost importance: it was to receive the destined bridegroom of the baron’s daughter. A negotiation had been carried on between the father and an old nobleman of Bavaria to unite the dignity of their houses by the marriage of their children. The preliminaries had been conducted with proper punctilio. The young people were betrothed without seeing each other, and the time was appointed for the marriage ceremony. The young Count Von Altenburg had been recalled from the army for the purpose, and was actually on his way to the baron’s to receive his bride. Missives had even been received from him from Wurtzburg, where he was accidentally detained, mentioning the day and hour when he might be expected to arrive.

The castle was in a tumult of preparation to give him a suitable welcome. The fair bride had been decked out with uncommon care. The two aunts had superintended her toilet, and quarrelled the whole morning about every article of her dress. The young lady had taken advantage of their contest to follow the bent of her own taste; and fortunately it was a good one. She looked as lovely as youthful bridegroom could desire, and the flutter of expectation heightened the lustre of her charms.

The suffusions that mantled her face and neck, the gentle heaving of the bosom, the eye now and then lost in reverie, all betrayed the soft tumult that was going on in her little heart. The aunts were continually hovering around her, for maiden aunts are apt to take great interest in affairs of this nature. They were giving her a world of staid counsel how to deport herself, what to say, and in what manner to receive the expected lover.

The baron was no less busied in preparations. He had, in truth, nothing exactly to do; but he was naturally a fuming, bustling little man, and could not remain passive when all the world was in a hurry. He worried from top to bottom of the castle with an air of infinite anxiety; he continually called the servants from their work to exhort them to be diligent; and buzzed about every hall and chamber, as idly restless and importunate as a blue-bottle fly on a warm summer’s day.

In the meantime the fatted calf had been killed; the forests had rung with the clamor of the huntsmen; the kitchen was crowded with good cheer; the cellars had yielded up whole oceans of Rhein-wein and Ferre-wein; and even the great Heidelberg tun had been laid under contribution. Everything was ready to receive the distinguished guest with Saus und Braus in the true spirit of German hospitality; but the guest delayed to make his appearance. Hour rolled after hour. The sun, that had poured his downward rays upon the rich forest of the Odenwald, now just gleamed along the summits of the mountains. The baron mounted the highest tower and strained his eyes in hopes of catching a distant sight of the count and his attendants. Once he thought he beheld them; the sound of horns came floating from the valley, prolonged by the mountain-echoes. A number of horsemen were seen far below slowly advancing along the road; but when they had nearly reached the foot of the mountain they suddenly struck off in a different direction. The last ray of sunshine departed, the bats began to

flit by in the twilight, the road grew dimmer and dimmer to the view, and nothing appeared stirring in it but now and then a peasant lagging homeward from his labor.

While the old castle of Landshort was in this state of perplexity a very interesting scene was transacting in a different part of the Odenwald.

The young Count Von Altenburg was tranquilly pursuing his route in that sober jog-trot way in which a man travels toward matrimony when his friends have taken all the trouble and uncertainty of courtship off his hands and a bride is waiting for

him as certainly as a dinner at the end of his journey. He had encountered at Wurtzburg a youthful companion-in-arms with whom he had seen some service on the frontiers - Herman Von Starkenfaust, one of the stoutest hands and worthiest hearts of German chivalry - who was now returning from the army. His father’s castle was not far distant from the old fortress of Landshort, although an hereditary feud rendered the families hostile and strangers to each other.

In the warm-hearted moment of recognition the young friends related all their past adventures and fortunes, and the count gave the whole history of his intended nuptials with a young lady whom he had never seen, but of whose charms he had received the most enrapturing descriptions.

As the route of the friends lay in the same direction, they agreed to perform the rest of their journey together, and that they might do it the more leisurely, set off from Wurtzburg at an early hour, the count having given directions for his retinue to follow and overtake him.

They beguiled their wayfaring with recollections of their military scenes and adventures; but the count was apt to be a little tedious now and then about the reputed charms of his bride and the felicity that awaited him.

In this way they had entered among the mountains of the Odenwald, and were traversing one of its most lonely and thickly wooded passes. It is well known that the forests of Germany have always been as much infested by robbers as its castles by spectres; and at this time the former were particularly numerous, from the hordes of disbanded soldiers wandering about the country. It will not appear extraordinary, therefore, that the cavaliers were attacked by a gang of these stragglers, in the midst of the forest. They defended themselves with bravery, but were nearly overpowered when the count’s retinue arrived to their assistance. At sight of them the robbers fled, but not until the count had

received a mortal wound. He was slowly and carefully conveyed back to the city of Wurtzburg, and a friar summoned from a neighboring convent who was famous for his skill in administering to both soul and body; but half of his skill was superfluous; the moments of the unfortunate count were numbered.

With his dying breath he entreated his friend to repair instantly to the castle of Landshort and explain the fatal cause of his not keeping his appointment with his bride. Though not the most ardent of lovers, he was one of the most punctilious of men, and appeared earnestly solicitous that his mission should be speedily and courteously executed. ‘Unless this is done,’ said he, ‘I shall not sleep quietly in my grave.’ He repeated these last words with peculiar solemnity. A request at a moment so impressive admitted no hesitation. Starkenfaust endeavoured to soothe him to calmness, promised faithfully to execute his wish, and gave him his hand in solemn pledge. The dying man pressed it in acknowledgment, but soon lapsed into delirium - raved about his bride, his engagements, his plighted word - ordered his horse, that he might ride to the castle of Landshort, and expired in the fancied act of vaulting into the saddle.

Starkenfaust bestowed a sigh and a soldier’s tear on the untimely fate of his comrade and then pondered on the awkward mission he had undertaken. His heart was heavy and his head perplexed; for he was to present himself an unbidden guest among hostile people, and to damp their festivity with tidings fatal to their hopes. Still, there were certain whisperings of curiosity in his bosom to see this far-famed beauty of Katzenellenbogen, so cautiously shut up from the world; for he was a passionate admirer of the sex, and there was a dash of eccentricity and enterprise in his character that made him fond of all singular adventure.

Previous to his departure he made all due arrangements with the holy fraternity of the convent for the funeral solemnities of his friend, who was to be buried in the cathedral of Wurtzburg near some of his illustrious relatives, and the mourning retinue of the count took charge of his remains.

It is now high time that we should return to the ancient family of Katzenellenbogen, who were impatient for their guest, and still more for their dinner, and to the worthy little baron, whom we left airing himself on the watch-tower.

Night closed in, but still no guest arrived. The baron descended from the tower in despair. The banquet, which had been delayed from hour to hour, could no longer be postponed. The meats were already overdone, the cook in an agony, and the whole household had the look of a garrison, that had been reduced by famine. The baron was obliged reluctantly to give orders for the feast without the presence of the guest. All were seated at table, and

just on the point of commencing, when the sound of a horn from without the gate gave notice of the approach of a stranger. Another long blast filled the old courts of the castle with its echoes, and was answered by the warder from the walls. The baron hastened to receive his future son-in-law.

The drawbridge had been let down, and the stranger was before the gate. He was a tall gallant cavalier, mounted on a black steed. His countenance was pale, but he had a beaming, romantic eye and an air of stately melancholy. The baron was a little mortified that he should have come in this simple, solitary style. His dignity for a moment was ruffled, and he felt disposed to consider it a want of proper respect for the important occasion and the important family with which he was to be connected. He pacified himself, however, with the conclusion that it must have been youthful impatience which had induced him thus to spur on sooner than his attendants.

‘I am sorry,’ said the stranger, ‘to break in upon you thus unseasonably - - ’

Here the baron interrupted him with a world of compliments and greetings, for, to tell the truth, he prided himself upon his courtesy and eloquence. The stranger attempted once or twice to stem the torrent of words, but in vain, so he bowed his head and suffered it to flow on. By the time the baron had come to a pause they had reached the inner court of the castle, and the stranger was again about to speak, when he was once more interrupted by

the appearance of the female part of the family, leading forth the shrinking and blushing bride. He gazed on her for a moment as one entranced; it seemed as if his whole soul beamed forth in the

gaze and rested upon that lovely form. One of the maiden aunts whispered something in her ear; she made an effort to speak; her moist blue eye was timidly raised, gave a shy glance of inquiry on the stranger, and was cast again to the ground. The words died away, but there was a sweet smile playing about her lips, and a soft dimpling of the cheek that showed her glance had not been unsatisfactory. It was impossible for a girl of the fond age of eighteen, highly predisposed for love and matrimony, not to be pleased with so gallant a cavalier.

The late hour at which the guest had arrived left no time for parley. The baron was peremptory, and deferred all particular conversation until the morning, and led the way to the untested banquet.

It was served up in the great hall of the castle. Around the walls hung the hard-favored portraits of the heroes of the house of Katzenellenbogen, and the trophies which they had gained in the field, and in the chase. Hacked corselets, splintered jousting-spears, and tattered banners were mingled with the

spoils of sylvan warfare: the jaws of the wolf and the tusks of the boar grinned horribly among crossbows and battle-axes, and a huge pair of antlers branched immediately over the head of the youthful bridegroom.

The cavalier took but little notice of the company or the

entertainment. He scarcely tasted the banquet, but seemed absorbed in admiration of his bride. He conversed in a low tone that could not be overheard, for the language of love is never loud; but where is the female ear so dull that it cannot catch the softest whisper of the lover? There was a mingled tenderness and gravity in his manner that appeared to have a powerful effect upon the young lady. Her color came and went as she listened with

deep attention. Now and then she made some blushing reply, and when his eye was turned away she would steal a sidelong glance at his romantic countenance, and heave a gentle sigh of tender happiness. It was evident that the young couple were completely enamored. The aunts, who were deeply versed in the mysteries of the heart, declared that they had fallen in love with each other at first sight.

The feast went on merrily, or at least noisily, for the guests were all blessed with those keen appetites that attend upon light purses and mountain air. The baron told his best and longest stories, and never had he told them so well or with such great effect. If there was anything marvellous, his auditors were lost in astonishment; and if anything facetious, they were sure to laugh exactly in the right place. The baron, it is true, like most great men, was too dignified to utter any joke but a dull one; it was always enforced, however, by a bumper of excellent Hockheimer, and even a dull joke at one’s own table, served up with jolly old wine, is irresistible. Many good things were said by poorer and keener wits that would not bear repeating, except on similar occasions; many sly speeches whispered in ladies’ ears that almost convulsed them with suppressed laughter; and a song or two roared out by a poor but merry and broad-faced cousin of the baron that absolutely made the maiden aunts hold up their fans.

Amidst all this revelry the stranger guest maintained a most singular and unseasonable gravity. His countenance assumed a deeper cast of dejection as the evening advanced, and, strange as it may appear, even the baron’s jokes seemed only to render him the more melancholy. At times he was lost in thought, and at times there was a perturbed and restless wandering of the eye that bespoke a mind but ill at ease. His conversations with the bride became more and more earnest and mysterious. Lowering clouds began to steal over the fair serenity of her brow, and tremors to run through her tender frame.

All this could not escape the notice of the company. Their gayety was chilled by the unaccountable gloom of the bridegroom; their spirits were infected; whispers and glances were interchanged, accompanied by shrugs and dubious shakes of the head. The song and the laugh grew less and less frequent: there were dreary pauses in the conversation, which were at length succeeded by wild tales and supernatural legends. One dismal story produced another still more dismal, and the baron nearly frightened some of the ladies into hysterics with the history of the goblin horseman that carried away the fair Leonora - a dreadful story which has since been put into excellent verse, and is read and believed by all the world.

The bridegroom listened to this tale with profound attention. He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the baron, and, as the story drew to a close, began gradually to rise from his seat, growing taller and taller, until in the baron’s entranced eye he seemed almost to tower into a giant. The moment the tale was finished he heaved a deep sigh and took a solemn farewell of the company. They were all amazement. The baron was perfectly thunderstruck.

‘What! Going to leave the castle at midnight? Why, everything was prepared for his reception; a chamber was ready for him if he wished to retire.’

The stranger shook his head mournfully and mysteriously: ‘I must lay my head in a different chamber to-night.’

There was something in this reply and the tone in which it was uttered that made the baron’s heart misgive him; but he rallied his forces and repeated his hospitable entreaties.

The stranger shook his head silently, but positively, at every offer, and, waving his farewell to the company, stalked slowly out of the hall. The maiden aunts were absolutely petrified; the bride hung her head and a tear stole to her eye.

The baron followed the stranger to the great court of the castle, where the black charger stood pawing the earth and snorting with impatience. When they had reached the portal, whose deep archway was dimly lighted by a cresset, the stranger paused, and addressed the baron in a hollow tone of voice, which the vaulted roof rendered still more sepulchral.

‘Now that we are a lone,’ said he, ‘I will impart to you the reason of my going. I have a solemn, an indispensable engagement - - ’

‘Why,’ said the baron, ‘cannot you send someone in your place?’

‘It admits of no substitute - I must attend it in person; I must away to Wurtzburg cathedral - - ’

‘Ay,’ said the baron, plucking up spirit, ‘but not until to-morrow - to-morrow you shall take your bride there.’

‘No! no!’ replied the stranger, with tenfold solemnity, ‘my engagement is with no bride-the worms! the worms expect me! I am a dead man - I have been slain by robbers - my body lies at Wurtzburg - at midnight I am to be buried - the grave is waiting for me - I must keep my appointment!’

He sprang on his black charger, dashed over the drawbridge, and the clattering of his horse’s hoofs was lost in the whistling of the night blast.

The baron returned to the hall in the utmost consternation, and related what had passed. Two ladies fainted outright, others sickened at the idea of having banqueted with a spectre. It was the opinion of some that this might be the wild huntsman, famous in German legend. Some talked of mountain-sprites, of wood-demons, and of other supernatural beings with which the good people of Germany have been so grievously harassed since time immemorial. One of the poor relations ventured to suggest that it might be some sportive evasion of the young cavalier, and that the very gloominess of the caprice seemed to accord with so melancholy a personage. This, however, drew on him, the indignation of the whole company, and especially of the baron, who looked upon him as little better than an infidel; so that he was fain to abjure his heresy as speedily as possible and come into the faith of the true believers.

But, whatever may have been the doubts entertained, they were completely put to an end by the arrival next day of regular missives confirming the intelligence of the young count’s murder and his interment in Wurtzburg cathedral.

The dismay at the castle may well be imagined. The baron shut himself up in his chamber. The guests, who had come to rejoice with him, could not think of abandoning him in his distress. They wandered about the courts or collected in groups in the hall, shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders at the troubles of so good a man, and sat longer than ever at table, and ate and drank more stoutly than ever, by way of keeping up their spirits. But the situation of the widowed bride was the most pitiable. To have lost a husband before she had even embraced him - and such a husband! If the very spectre could be so gracious and noble, what must have been the living man? She filled the house with lamentations.

On the night of the second day of her widowhood she had retired to her chamber, accompanied by one of her aunts, who insisted on sleeping with her. The aunt, who was one of the best tellers of ghost-stories in all Germany, had just been recounting one of her longest, and had fallen asleep in the very midst of it. The chamber was remote and overlooked a small garden. The niece lay pensively gazing at the beams of the rising moon as they trembled on the leaves of an aspen tree before the lattice. The castle clock had just tolled midnight when a soft strain of music stole up from the garden. She rose hastily from her bed and stepped lightly to the window. A tall figure stood among the shadows of the trees. As it raised its head a beam of moonlight fell upon the countenance. Heaven and earth! She beheld the Spectre Bridegroom! A loud shriek at that moment burst upon her ear, and her aunt, who had been awakened by the music and had followed her silently to the window, fell into her arms. When she looked again the spectre had disappeared.

Of the two females, the aunt now required the most soothing, for she was perfectly beside herself with terror. As to the young lady, there was something even in the spectre of her lover that seemed endearing. There was still the semblance of manly beauty, and, though the shadow of a man is but little calculated to satisfy the affections of a lovesick girl, yet where the substance is not to be had even that is consoling. The aunt declared she would never sleep in that chamber again; the niece, for once, was refractory, and declared as strongly that she would sleep in no other in the castle: the consequence was, that she had to sleep in it alone; but she drew a promise from her aunt not to relate the story of the spectre, lest she should be denied the only melancholy pleasure left her on earth - that of inhabiting the chamber over which the guardian shade of her lover kept its nightly vigils.

How long the good old lady would have observed this promise is uncertain, for she dearly loved to talk of the marvellous, and there is a triumph in being the first to tell a frightful story; it is, however, still quoted in the neighborhood as a memorable instance of female secrecy that she kept it to herself for a whole week, when she was suddenly absolved from all further restraint by intelligence brought to the breakfast table one morning that the young lady was not to be found. Her room was empty - the bed had not been slept in - the window was open and the bird had flown!

The astonishment and concern with which the intelligence was received can only be imagined by those who have witnessed the agitation which the mishaps of a great man cause among his friends. Even the poor relations paused for a moment from the indefatigable labors of the trencher, when the aunt, who had at first been struck speechless, wrung her hands and shrieked out, ‘The goblin’ the goblin! she’s carried away by the goblin!’

In a few words she related the fearful scene of the garden, and concluded that the spectre must have carried off his bride. Two of the domestics corroborated the opinion, for they had heard the clattering of a horse’s hoofs down the mountain about midnight, and had no doubt that it was the spectre on his black charger bearing her away to the tomb. All present were struck with the direful probability for events of the kind are extremely common in Germany, as many well-authenticated histories bear witness.

What a lamentable situation was that of the poor baron! What a heartrending dilemma for a fond father and a member of the great family of Katzenellenbogen! His only daughter had either been rapt away to the grave, or he was to have some wood-demon for a son-in-law, and perchance a troop of goblin grandchildren. As usual, he was completely bewildered, and all the castle in an uproar.

The men were ordered to take horse and scour every road and path and glen of the Odenwald. The baron himself had just drawn on his jack-boots, girded on his sword, and was about to mount his steed to sally forth on the doubtful quest, when he was brought to a pause by a new apparition. A lady was seen approaching the castle mounted on a palfrey, attended by a cavalier on horseback. She galloped up to the gate, sprang from her horse, and, falling at the baron’s feet, embraced his knees.

It was his lost daughter, and her companion - the Spectre Bridegroom! The baron was astounded. He looked at his daughter, then at the spectre, and almost doubted the evidence of his senses. The latter, too, was wonderfully improved in his appearance since his visit to the world of spirits. His dress was splendid, and set off a noble figure of manly symmetry. He was no longer pale and melancholy. His fine countenance was flushed with the glow of youth, and joy rioted in his large dark eye.

The mystery was soon cleared up. The cavalier (for, in truth, as you must have known all the while, he was no goblin) announced himself as Sir Herman Von Starkenfaust. He related his adventure with the young count. He told how he had hastened to the castle to deliver the unwelcome tidings, but that the eloquence of the baron had interrupted him in every attempt to tell his tale. How the sight of the bride had completely captivated him and that to pass a few hours near her he had tacitly suffered the mistake to continue. How he had been sorely perplexed in what way to make a decent retreat, until the baron’s goblin stories had suggested his eccentric exit. How, fearing the feudal hostility of the family, he had repeated his visits by stealth - had haunted the garden beneath the young lady’s window - had wooed - had won-had borne away in triumph - and, in a word, had wedded the fair.

Under any other circumstances the baron would have been inflexible, for he was tenacious of paternal authority and devoutly obstinate in all family feuds; but he loved his daughter; he had lamented her as lost; he rejoiced to find her still alive; and, though her husband was of a hostile house, yet, thank Heaven! he was not a goblin. There was something, it must be acknowledged, that did not exactly accord with his notions of strict veracity in the joke the knight had passed upon him of his being a dead man; but several old friends present, who had served in the wars, assured him that every stratagem was excusable in love, and that the cavalier was entitled to especial privilege, having lately served as a trooper.

Matters, therefore, were happily arranged. The baron pardoned the young couple on the spot. The revels at the castle were resumed. The poor relations overwhelmed this new member of the family with loving-kindness; he was so gallant, so generous - and so rich. The aunts, it is true, were somewhat scandalized that their system of strict seclusion and passive obedience should be so badly exemplified, but attributed it all to their negligence in not having the windows grated. One of them was particularly mortified at having her marvellous story marred, and that the only spectre she had ever seen should turn out a counterfeit; but the niece seemed perfectly happy at having found him substantial flesh and blood. And so the story ends.

Love is an Empty Space by Russell Turner

I hate this damn Moon base sometimes. I mean, it’s the ultimate in four walls closing in on you - you can’t just ‘go outside’ and get away from it all (well, not unless you’re on one of the Surface Team rosters, and that’s not very likely for a low-grade communications technician like me.) There are not even any windows - too much trouble to design into a pressurised dome. Not economically viable.

And, despite what people still think, it’s not even a very exciting place to be. After ten years of fully-manned operation, everything has shaken itself down into staid routine, especially my job. The position of ComTech is mainly a sequence of three or four different tasks done in varying amounts and orders, where only the details change (and definitely not by enough to make the task seem new!)

I say ‘mainly’ because there is occasionally something new, although usually only as a one-off event. Like, for instance, the time a couple of weeks ago when I got the check out the new communications satellite which has just been placed into orbit around the Earth. Oh, admittedly it’s a fairly standard procedure, testing a new ComSat, but it’s not something I’ve ever had the chance to do before - and even though any break from the norm would be welcome, I was particularly looking forward to it. And since communications time is always at a premium on Moon base, it was an important job too - which made me feel good.

The people in charge decided that a good test would be to have Moon base talk to the Russian Space station Leonov, situated in one of the Lagrange orbits, since this would involve particular difficulties in signal routing and amplification due to the somewhat unusual nature of the two participants! Hell - I certainly wasn’t complaining! This was gonna be fun! But it’s a good job that they had assigned someone who knew English to talk at the Russian end - my Russian stretches as far as being able to say ‘Here is a house,’ which isn’t likely to be much use when neither Moon base nor Space station Leonov contain any houses!

So I knew that the Russian would be able to speak English, and I knew that his call sign was Kris, but nothing else. Not that it really mattered, nor was it likely that the Russian knew any more about me than that my call sign is Jax. We would just do our jobs - although I would have fun doing mine.

Well, the installation of the new software that was required went well - I didn’t have to struggle with it and it looked like well-written and powerful code, with some useful options and so on. So I had a little time to look around and explore it before the appointed hour came for the first test.

That is one of the things I like to do; to suss out new software - how it works, how best to use it, what options it has, etc etc, and this stuff was good. But, even so, I didn’t mind when the time came to fire it up and see how it really performed in a fully working situation.

The first test was going to be straightforward - it was mainly to determine if the satellite would support a normal voice conversation. My first thing to do was to initiate the connection - to ‘make the call’ as it were. Simple enough. The procedure went smoothly and quickly, and we were soon ready to begin the test.

‘This is Jax of Moon base calling Kris of Space station Leonov. Jax of Moon base to Kris of the Leonov. Can you hear me? Over?’

A light, sweet female voice filled the Communications Room. ‘This is Kris of the Leonov. Hearing you loudly and clearly Jax.’

‘You’re coming across sweet and clear yourself, Kris. Perhaps it’s time for introductions - I’m Jackson Stevens, ComTech grade 2 with the NASA/ESA Joint Lunar Manned Base.’

‘Commander Krishka Leonov, Communications Officer and Assistant Medical Officer onboard the People’s Space Station Leonov. Very pleased to meet you, tovarish.’

‘Likewise, Commander. It’s a pleasure to hear your voice.’

‘Please, call me Kris. That is standard international practice, after all.’

‘Of course, Kris. Well, now, shall we start with some Sibilance tests? Or would you rather go with the Delay Lag Timing analysis?’

Well, we started to run through some of the standard tests, but my mind wasn’t really on the job. Even though I’d been looking forward to this ever since I found out that I was going to be assigned this job, my thoughts were elsewhere. I just couldn’t stop listening to that female voice! It’s true that I had been expecting a man, but it shouldn’t be this much of a shock!

I tried to shake off the distraction, but somehow I just couldn’t get my head straight no matter how hard I tried.

We ran through all the standard vocal tests, one at a time, but everything seemed smooth. I’m glad that it did, because I wouldn’t have been on top form to cope with any problems that might have occurred. Commander Ivanov and I chatted a little bit in between tests - she certainly was easy to talk to, and her English was darn near perfect except for that delightful touch of Russian accent. But eventually we ran out of tests to do, and after arranging the time for tomorrow’s tests to begin, I broke the connection.

The rest of that day was quite busy for me - lots of routine tasks that had to be got out of the way to make room for tomorrow’s tests, followed in the evening by a long session of exercise in the Lunar Gymnasium, followed by a short chance to do some reading, and then to bed. So it seemed like no time before I was back in the Communications Room talking to Commander Ivanov again.

Well, the tests went fine, and the conversation went better, and the day passed quickly by. But, (too soon!) we completed the whole program of trials, complimented each other on the other’s work, and said goodbye. I finished up my report, went back to my room, ate, watched a videoCD from the library and (eventually) fell asleep.

The next few days passed in a bit of a muddle. Too often I found myself drifting off into thoughts of Krishka Ivanov, rather than keeping my mind on what I was doing. Or even just wandering off into formless speculations or feelings - daydreams of nothing - contemplations of mood. And finally I realised that I had to do something about it. So I went back into the logs of the communications tests and retrieved the ID code of Kris’s CommStation on the Leonov. That same night I returned to my office, plugged in my Comm-use Allowance Card, and punched in the code . . .

The voice that answered was that same sweet, light voice as I had been thinking about. I thanked my lucky stars, at the same time as desperately trying to think what I could say.

‘Hello Kris, Jax here. It’s so good to talk to you again.’ (Oops - that might have been a bit heavy-handed!) ‘Um, I know the tests are over,

but. . .’

She laughed! ‘I wondered if you might call! I was hoping you would.’

I couldn’t believe it! It was that simple - she wanted to talk to me, too!

Well, the rest of that conversation is still a bit of a blur, but I can remember coming away from it happier than I had been in a very long time - a very, very long time in fact.

Well, that started a run of calls between us. We talked about deep things and inconsequential things, of serious matters and light-hearted ones, of philosophy and music and families and sport and science and beer and anything that came to mind. We played like children, we argued like college students, we discussed like responsible adults, and we reminisced like old people.

I started to call her every night. And when she was there, everything was wonderful . . .

. . But when she wasn’t, it was terrible. I really needed to talk to her, like an addiction or a compulsion. Whenever I called, whilst I was waiting for someone to answer, my stomach would churn, I would get dizzy, my head would start to throb. And if she was not there, my disappointment would be almost touchable. And then I would call again, every two hours, every hour, every half-an-hour.

And then I looked at the remaining balance on my Comm-use Allowance Card, and was rocked to the core. I had used almost my entire month’s Comms allowance in just ten days and there was absolutely no way to get more.

And now I’m trapped within these four walls - the ultimate in claustrophobia. No windows, no ‘outside’ to go to, no relief.

I hate this damn Moon base sometimes.

The Gipsy Prophecy by Bram Stoker

‘I really think,’ said the Doctor, ‘that, at any rate, one of us should go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.’

‘Good!’ said Considine. ‘After dinner we will take our cigars and stroll over to the camp.’

Accordingly, when the dinner was over, and the La Tour finished, Joshua Considine and his friend, Dr Burleigh, went over to the east side of the moor, where the gipsy encampment lay. As they were leaving, Mary Considine, who had walked as far as the end of the garden where it opened into the laneway, called after her husband:

‘Mind, Joshua, you are to give them a fair chance, but don’t give them any clue to a fortune-and don’t you get flirting with any of the gipsy maidens-and take care to keep Gerald out of harm.’

For answer Considine held up his hand, as if taking a stage oath, and whistled the air of the old song, ‘The Gipsy Countess.’ Gerald joined in the strain, and then, breaking into merry laughter, the two men passed along the laneway to the common, turning now and then to wave their hands to Mary, who leaned over the gate, in the twilight, looking after them.

It was a lovely evening in the summer; the very air was full of rest and quiet happiness, as though an outward type of the peacefulness and joy which made a heaven of the home of the young married folk. Considine’s life had not been an eventful one. The only disturbing element which he had ever known was in his wooing of Mary Winston, and the long-continued objection of her ambitious parents, who expected a brilliant match for their only daughter. When Mr and Mrs Winston had discovered the attachment of the young barrister, they had tried to keep the young people apart by sending their daughter away for a long round of visits, having made her promise not to correspond with her lover during her absence. Love, however, had stood the test. Neither absence nor neglect seemed to cool the passion of the young man, and jealousy seemed a thing unknown to his sanguine nature; so, after a long period of waiting, the parents had given in, and the young folk were married.

They had been living in the cottage a few months, and were just beginning to feel at home. Gerald Burleigh, Joshua’s old college chum, and himself a sometime victim of Mary’s beauty, had arrived a week before, to stay with them for as long a time as he could tear himself away from his work in London.

When her husband had quite disappeared Mary went into the house, and, sitting down at the piano, gave an hour to Mendelssohn.

It was but a short walk across the common, and before the cigars required renewing the two men had reached the gipsy camp. The place was as picturesque as gipsy camps-when in villages and when business is good-usually are. There were some few persons round the fire, investing their money in prophecy, and a large number of others, poorer or more parsimonious, who stayed just outside the bounds but near enough to see all that went on.

As the two gentlemen approached, the villagers, who knew Joshua, made way a little, and a pretty, keen-eyed gipsy girl tripped up and asked to tell their fortunes. Joshua held out his hand, but the girl, without seeming to see it, stared at his face in a very odd manner. Gerald nudged him:

‘You must cross her hand with silver,’ he said. ‘It is one of the most important parts of the mystery.’ Joshua took from his pocket a half-crown and held it out to her, but, without looking at it, she answered:

‘You have to cross the gipsy’s hand with gold.’

Gerald laughed. ‘You are at a premium as a subject,’ he said. Joshua was of the kind of man-the universal kind-who can tolerate being stared at by a pretty girl; so, with some little deliberation, he answered:

‘All right; here you are, my pretty girl; but you must give me a real good fortune for it,’ and he handed her a half sovereign, which she took, saying:

‘It is not for me to give good fortune or bad, but only to read what the Stars have said.’ She took his right hand and turned it palm upward; but the instant her eyes met it she dropped it as though it had been red hot, and, with a startled look, glided swiftly away. Lifting the curtain of the large tent, which occupied the centre of the camp, she disappeared within.

‘Sold again!’ said the cynical Gerald. Joshua stood a little amazed, and not altogether satisfied. They both watched the large tent. In a few moments there emerged from the opening not the young girl, but a stately looking woman of middle age and commanding presence.

The instant she appeared the whole camp seemed to stand still. The clamour of tongues, the laughter and noise of the work were, for a second or two, arrested, and every man or woman who sat, or crouched, or lay, stood up and faced the imperial looking gipsy.

‘The Queen, of course,’ murmured Gerald. ‘We are in luck tonight.’ The gipsy Queen threw a searching glance around the camp, and then, without hesitating an instant, came straight over and stood before Joshua.

‘Hold out your hand,’ she said in a commanding tone.

Again Gerald spoke, sotto voce: ‘I have not been spoken to in that way since I was at school.’

‘Your hand must be crossed with gold.’

‘A hundred per cent. at this game,’ whispered Gerald, as Joshua laid another half sovereign on his upturned palm.

The gipsy looked at the hand with knitted brows; then suddenly looking up into his face, said:

‘Have you a strong will-have you a true heart that can be brave for one you love?’

‘I hope so; but I am afraid I have not vanity enough to say ‘yes’.’

‘Then I will answer for you; for I read resolution in your face-resolution desperate and determined if need be. You have a wife you love?’

‘Yes,’ emphatically.

‘Then leave her at once-never see her face again. Go from her now, while love is fresh and your heart is free from wicked intent. Go quick-go far, and never see her face again!’

Joshua drew away his hand quickly, and said, ‘Thank you!’ stiffly but sarcastically, as he began to move away.

‘I say!’ said Gerald, ‘you’re not going like that, old man; no use in being indignant with the Stars or their prophet-and, moreover, your sovereign-what of it? At least, hear the matter out.’

‘Silence, ribald!’ commanded the Queen, ‘you know not what you do. Let him go-and go ignorant, if he will not be warned.’

Joshua immediately turned back. ‘At all events, we will see this thing out,’ he said. ‘Now, madam, you have given me advice, but I paid for a fortune.’

‘Be warned!’ said the gipsy. ‘The Stars have been silent for long; let the mystery still wrap them round.’

‘My dear madam, I do not get within touch of a mystery every day, and I prefer for my money knowledge rather than ignorance. I can get the latter commodity for nothing when I want any of it.’

Gerald echoed the sentiment. ‘As for me I have a large and unsaleable stock on hand.’

The gipsy Queen eyed the two men sternly, and then said: ‘As you wish. You have chosen for yourself, and have met warning with scorn, and appeal with levity. On your own heads be the doom!’

‘Amen!’ said Gerald.

With an imperious gesture the Queen took Joshua’s hand again, and began to tell his fortune.

‘I see here the flowing of blood; it will flow before long; it is running in my sight. It flows through the broken circle of a severed ring.’

‘Go on!’ said Joshua, smiling. Gerald was silent.

‘Must I speak plainer?’

‘Certainly; we commonplace mortals want something definite. The Stars are a long way off, and their words get somewhat dulled in the message.’

The gipsy shuddered, and then spoke impressively. ‘This is the hand of a murderer-the murderer of his wife!’ She dropped the hand and turned away.

Joshua laughed. ‘Do you know,’ said he, ‘I think if I were you I should prophesy some jurisprudence into my system. For instance, you say ‘this hand is the hand of a murderer.’ Well, whatever it may be in the future-or potentially-it is at present not one. You ought to give your prophecy in such terms as ‘the hand which will be a murderer’s’, or, rather, ‘the hand of one who will be the murderer of his wife’. The Stars are really not good on technical questions.’

The gipsy made no reply of any kind, but, with drooping head and despondent mien, walked slowly to her tent, and, lifting the curtain, disappeared.

Without speaking the two men turned homewards, and walked across the moor. Presently, after some little hesitation, Gerald spoke.

‘Of course, old man, this is all a joke; a ghastly one, but still a joke. But would it not be well to keep it to ourselves?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, not tell your wife. It might alarm her.’

‘Alarm her! My dear Gerald, what are you thinking of? Why, she would not be alarmed or afraid of me if all the gipsies that ever didn’t come from Bohemia agreed that I was to murder her, or even to have a hard thought of her, whilst so long as she was saying ‘Jack Robinson.’‘

Gerald remonstrated. ‘Old fellow, women are superstitious-far more than we men are; and, also they are blessed-or cursed-with a nervous system to which we are strangers. I see too much of it in my work not to realise it. Take my advice and do not let her know, or you will frighten her.’

Joshua’s lips unconsciously hardened as he answered: ‘My dear fellow, I would not have a secret from my wife. Why, it would be the beginning of a new order of things between us. We have no secrets from each other. If we ever have, then you may begin to look out for something odd between us.’

‘Still,’ said Gerald, ‘at the risk of unwelcome interference, I say again be warned in time.’

‘The gipsy’s very words,’ said Joshua. ‘You and she seem quite of one accord. Tell me, old man, is this a put-up thing? You told me of the gipsy camp-did you arrange it all with Her Majesty?’ This was said with an air of bantering earnestness. Gerald assured him that he only heard of the camp that morning; but he made fun of every answer of his friend, and, in the process of this raillery, the time passed, and they entered the cottage.

Mary was sitting at the piano but not playing. The dim twilight had waked some very tender feelings in her breast, and her eyes were full of gentle tears. When the men came in she stole over to her husband’s side and kissed him. Joshua struck a tragic attitude.

‘Mary,’ he said in a deep voice, ‘before you approach me, listen to the words of Fate. The Stars have spoken and the doom is sealed.’

‘What is it, dear? Tell me the fortune, but do not frighten me.’

‘Not at all, my dear; but there is a truth which it is well that you should know. Nay, it is necessary so that all your arrangements can be made beforehand, and everything be decently done and in order.’

‘Go on, dear; I am listening.’

‘Mary Considine, your effigy may yet be seen at Madame Tussaud’s. The juris-imprudent Stars have announced their fell tidings that this hand is red with blood-your blood. Mary! Mary! my God!’ He sprang forward, but too late to catch her as she fell fainting on the floor.

‘I told you,’ said Gerald. ‘You don’t know them as well as I do.’

After a little while Mary recovered from her swoon, but only to fall into strong hysterics, in which she laughed and wept and raved and cried, ‘Keep him from me-from me, Joshua, my husband,’ and many other words of entreaty and of fear.

Joshua Considine was in a state of mind bordering on agony, and when at last Mary became calm he knelt by her and kissed her feet and hands and hair and called her all the sweet names and said all the tender things his lips could frame. All that night he sat by her bedside and held her hand. Far through the night and up to the early morning she kept waking from sleep and crying out as if in fear, till she was comforted by the consciousness that her husband was watching beside her.

Breakfast was late the next morning, but during it Joshua received a telegram which required him to drive over to Withering, nearly twenty miles. He was loth to go; but Mary would not hear of his remaining, and so before noon he drove off in his dog-cart alone.

When he was gone Mary retired to her room. She did not appear at lunch, but when afternoon tea was served on the lawn under the great weeping willow, she came to join her guest. She was looking quite recovered from her illness of the evening before. After some casual remarks, she said to Gerald: ‘Of course it was very silly about last night, but I could not help feeling frightened. Indeed I would feel so still if I let myself think of it. But, after all these people may only imagine things, and I have got a test that can hardly fail to show that the prediction is false-if indeed it be false,’ she added sadly.

‘What is your plan?’ asked Gerald.

‘I shall go myself to the gipsy camp, and have my fortune told by the Queen.’

‘Capital. May I go with you?’

‘Oh, no! That would spoil it. She might know you and guess at me, and suit her utterance accordingly. I shall go alone this afternoon.’

When the afternoon was gone Mary Considine took her way to the gipsy encampment. Gerald went with her as far as the near edge of the common, and returned alone.

Half-an-hour had hardly elapsed when Mary entered the drawing-room, where he lay on a sofa reading. She was ghastly pale and was in a state of extreme excitement. Hardly had she passed over the threshold when she collapsed and sank moaning on the carpet. Gerald rushed to aid her, but by a great effort she controlled herself and motioned him to be silent. He waited, and his ready attention to her wish seemed to be her best help, for, in a few minutes, she had somewhat recovered, and was able to tell him what had passed.

‘When I got to the camp,’ she said, ‘there did not seem to be a soul about, I went into the centre and stood there. Suddenly a tall woman stood beside me. ‘Something told me I was wanted!’ she said. I held out my hand and laid a piece of silver on it. She took from her neck a small golden trinket and laid it there also; and then, seizing the two, threw them into the stream that ran by. Then she took my hand in hers and spoke: ‘Naught but blood in this guilty place,’ and turned away. I caught hold of her and asked her to tell me more. After some hesitation, she said: ‘Alas! alas! I see you lying at your husband’s feet, and his hands are red with blood’.’

Gerald did not feel at all at ease, and tried to laugh it off. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘this woman has a craze about murder.’

‘Do not laugh,’ said Mary, ‘I cannot bear it,’ and then, as if with a sudden impulse, she left the room.

Not long after Joshua returned, bright and cheery, and as hungry as a hunter after his long drive. His presence cheered his wife, who seemed much brighter, but she did not mention the episode of the visit to the gipsy camp, so Gerald did not mention it either. As if by tacit consent the subject was not alluded to during the evening. But there was a strange, settled look on Mary’s face, which Gerald could not but observe.

In the morning Joshua came down to breakfast later than usual. Mary had been up and about the house from an early hour; but as the time drew on she seemed to get a little nervous and now and again threw around an anxious look.

Gerald could not help noticing that none of those at breakfast could get on satisfactorily with their food. It was not altogether that the chops were tough, but that the knives were all so blunt. Being a guest, he, of course, made no sign; but presently saw Joshua draw his thumb across the edge of his knife in an unconscious sort of way. At the action Mary turned pale and almost fainted.

After breakfast they all went out on the lawn. Mary was making up a bouquet, and said to her husband, ‘Get me a few of the tea-roses, dear.’

Joshua pulled down a cluster from the front of the house. The stem bent, but was too tough to break. He put his hand in his pocket to get his knife; but in vain. ‘Lend me your knife, Gerald,’ he said. But Gerald had not got one, so he went into the breakfast room and took one from the table. He came out feeling its edge and grumbling. ‘What on earth has happened to all the knives-the edges seem all ground off?’ Mary turned away hurriedly and entered the house.

Joshua tried to sever the stalk with the blunt knife as country cooks sever the necks of fowl-as schoolboys cut twine. With a little effort he finished the task. The cluster of roses grew thick, so he determined to gather a great bunch.

He could not find a single sharp knife in the sideboard where the cutlery was kept, so he called Mary, and when she came, told her the state of things. She looked so agitated and so miserable that he could not help knowing the truth, and, as if astounded and hurt, asked her:

‘Do you mean to say that you have done it?’

She broke in, ‘Oh, Joshua, I was so afraid.’

He paused, and a set, white look came over his face. ‘Mary!’ said he, ‘is this all the trust you have in me? I would not have believed it.’

‘Oh, Joshua! Joshua!’ she cried entreatingly, ‘forgive me,’ and wept bitterly.

Joshua thought a moment and then said: ‘I see how it is. We shall better end this or we shall all go mad.’

He ran into the drawing-room.

‘Where are you going?’ almost screamed Mary.

Gerald saw what he meant-that he would not be tied to blunt instruments by the force of a superstition, and was not surprised when he saw him come out through the French window, bearing in his hand a large Ghourka knife, which usually lay on the centre table, and which his brother had sent him from Northern India. It was one of those great hunting-knives which worked such havoc, at close quarters with the enemies of the loyal Ghourkas during the mutiny, of great weight but so evenly balanced in the hand as to seem light, and with an edge like a razor. With one of these knives a Ghourka can cut a sheep in two.

When Mary saw him come out of the room with the weapon in his hand she screamed in an agony of fright, and the hysterics of last night were promptly renewed.

Joshua ran toward her, and, seeing her falling, threw down the knife and tried to catch her.

However, he was just a second too late, and the two men cried out in horror simultaneously as they saw her fall upon the naked blade.

When Gerald rushed over he found that in

falling her left hand had struck the blade, which lay partly upwards on the grass. Some of the small veins were cut through, and the blood gushed freely from the wound. As he was tying it up he pointed out to Joshua that the wedding ring was severed by the steel.

Are you looking for an unusual gift or Christmas, look no further? The Knights Templar Encyclopaedia is the one to buy, or even two, one or yourself...

They carried her fainting to the house. When, after a while, she came out, with her arm in a sling, she was peaceful in her mind and happy. She said to her husband:

‘The gipsy was wonderfully near the truth; too near for the real thing ever to occur now, dear.’

Joshua bent over and kissed the wounded hand.

The Merodian Revolution by Sarah Gallah

It is a Friday afternoon in Copperdale, a perfect town where everything seems to be ordinary. It is a serene place, where crystal buildings sprinkle light in iridescent scenes, where there are flowers of such vivacious colour caressed by the warm sun’s glow, a place of no pain or sorrow, a town where happiness is all anybody knows. However, this ‘perfect image’ is deceiving until the day that the townspeople became aware of so.

The school bell rang as the students rushed out like hounds unleashed on a racetrack. One schoolboy slowly walked into the bus with his head drooping and sat beside a middle-aged man.

‘What’s wrong son?’ the man asked.

‘They kicked me out,’ the boy mumbled.

‘Oh, is that so?’ the man said as he handed the boy a cigarette butt.

‘Thank you.’ The boy twisted the cigarette butt and put it aside. He then sat on the floor, twisted his legs to create odd shapes, and then he knelt. The people on the bus stared at the boy in wonder, their eyes focused on the young boy as they spoke amongst themselves. Unexpectedly the boy shrieked, a shriek so high and piercing that the bus turned into chaos. People were screaming.

‘Stop the bus! The boy has gone mad!’ a man screamed.

‘My ears!’ the bus driver shouted as he collapsed. A group of people rushed to the aid of the bus driver as many attended to the boy. In a rocking motion the boy growled.

‘Flavius, come save me now! Now!’ the boy growled as people pulled his arms back, trying to control his movement, in hopes of calming him down. The boy shrieked once more, and this shriek was all he needed for the termination of everyone. People were running not knowing where they were running to, people were jumping, screaming out of the pain the shriek caused them.

‘The bus driver can’t breathe! Help!’ a little girl cried. Nobody could attend to the little girl’s concern due to their temporary madness the boy has caused them. The bus collided into a forest of trees. The dead passengers and ruin were overcome with great silence and stillness.

It was a year ago when this boy entered high school. He was aware of his misfit. He was not of the cheerleaders, the football players, the ‘smart ones’, the AP classes; he did not belong in the complex rungs of the high school social ladder. During the final class of the day, math class, he heard a noise from behind him. He turned around.

‘Pss! Take this!’ a fellow classmate handed him a note. The note is then read:

Dear Markus,

Meet me after school in the basement of the school by the water fountain. I want to get to know you.

Your new friend,

- Luke

Markus’ face brightened as he smiled.

‘Markus, do you mind sharing this note with the rest of the class?’ the teacher asked as he grabbed the note from Markus’ hand.

‘Oh Markus has a friend!’ the teacher said sarcastically. The class giggled. Markus did not care however, he had a new friend indeed, and that was enough to make joy conquer this boy’s embarrassment. When class finished, Markus, in utter delight ran down to the basement to meet Luke. He found Luke awaiting him at the water fountain.

‘Markus! Over here!’ Luke yelled. Markus walked over to Luke in suspicion. Luke hugged Markus.

‘Do you want to meet my friends?’ Luke asked. In disbelief that Luke actually wanted to befriend Markus, Markus agreed.

Markus then walked with Luke across the street into an abandoned warehouse. There, Markus saw a large group of people. They all stood and clapped as Luke and Markus entered the warehouse. The group of boys surrounded Markus and hugged him.

‘Welcome Markus!’ they all said at once. As welcoming as this was, Markus found their kindness peculiar. Everyone sat down and formed a circle.

‘Markus, you may begin. Talk about yourself.’

‘Well, my name is Markus. I…’ Markus was cut off with sudden gasping. A fellow member of this group screamed. Markus was so extremely confused, that words could not pass his lips. Luke explained.

‘We are Merodians, therefore we must assign you a Merodian name.’

‘Cool, what’s a Merodian?’

‘It’s kind of complicated. Don’t worry, you’ll fit in,’ Luke said as he suspiciously grinned.

‘Oh, ok.’ Markus had no idea reason to not accept this invitation. He smiled. Finally he belonged somewhere.

Markus was at utmost joy while he walked home.

‘Good afternoon Mr Brockets!’ he said as he waved to the meat shop owner, who was sweeping the ground in front of his shop. He continued to skip gaily down the road. The sun was setting on the horizon. Markus stood still to gaze at this beautiful sight. He knew it was a day too good to be true. He then saw another familiar face down the road.

‘Mrs Collins! Do you need help carrying your groceries?’ Markus yelled down the street as he ran towards her. He flashed a large smile as he gasped for air.

‘My oh my, you seem as if you just won the lottery. Sure, I wouldn’t mind if you helped me.’

Markus helped the old lady and ran home. His mother opened the door.

‘Mother! I missed you today!’ Markus hugged his mother. Incredible happiness twinkled in her eyes seeing her son so happy.

Markus’ next week was very systematic. Every day after school, he would meet with this group he called a ‘club’. It was until one day that everything seemed to change. Like usual, this day he had attended the group meeting. After the meeting he walked home, opened the door to find his mother sitting down rocking on her rocking chair, awaiting him. She stood up to greet her son.

‘Mother leave me alone!’ Markus said as he ran upstairs. His mother, worried, followed him upstairs, finding his room closed. She heard an odd sound and put her ear to the door. She heard unusual squealing.

‘Ugh! Blood! More blood, I said!’ Markus said as he squealed out of pain. Horrified, she froze. A tear ran down her cheek, her voice became shaky.

‘Markus! Open the door Markus!’ she sobbed.

‘No, mother. I must finish my piece of work.’ He said quietly, in a twisted voice. The mother’s palms went to her eyes, covering them as she cried heavily. She banged on the door hysterically.

‘Markus!’ She sobbed, until the only scent remaining that she could smell was that of her own tears. She heard more squealing. She panicked in terror of what her son was doing. The door then slightly opened. She ran inside to her son. Markus’ hands and clothes were covered in his blood. His mother wept as she hugged Markus.

‘What happened?’ She wept excessively. Markus did not speak. Full of so many feelings, the mother looked at the blood. She took out a towel to wipe the blood off. As she did so she noticed that her son had engraved a picture into his hand. It was an image that she never saw before that immediately triggered her suspicion.

‘Markus, take a shower son.’ She said as she choked on a tear. He walked away, drooping his head. His mother searched the room to find his journal open on his desk. She saw a paper pasted into the journal:

Fellow Merodian,

There will be a mandatory meeting tomorrow after school. Master Flavius will be awaiting all members. He has a very important announcement. Be ready to greet our Master Flavius with a gift.

-The Merodian Revolution

‘Markus has joined…a cult,’ she whispered beneath her breath. A shiver of fear ran up her spine.

‘My poor, poor, Markus.’ She had a feeling of being unable to help him. She was overcome by a feeling of pity. It was like somebody had stabbed her heart, and tore it away to pieces. Her only son, destined to doom. She did not know what to do. Markus came out of the shower.

‘Markus, we need to speak,’ the mother said, her face: hurt and expressionless.

‘Mother…’ he touches her face. Cold. ‘I am so sorry.’ It was as if he had melted her heart away. She wanted to anything she could to help him.

‘Markus, maybe it’s not a great idea to go to school tomorrow. You know, maybe we can spend some quality time together. Just me and you.’ She looked at his face. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and words fell out of his mouth.

‘No mother! I must go to school! Must!’ he said, while he rocked back and forth.

‘Markus, no school tomorrow. Good night.’ She left the room, closing the lights and door.

His mother woke up and entered his room to find his desk full of twisted papers. Everything in the room was twisted, splayed out in coiled patterns, his covers on his bed and even his clothes. She also found a note on his desk:

Dear mother,

I love you dearly and I am sorry for causing you any pain, but you are holding me back on my missions. I have decided to run away. I’ll be back to visit you.

Your son,

-Markus

His mother panicked. Her heart was struck by pain. She called the school. He was reported absent. She was unable to call the police. She knew she had to, but she believed that maybe this was all just a dream, or a practical joke, although she saw the note before her.

Markus had stayed at the warehouse all day and waited until the meeting would begin. After waiting for hours, Markus saw Luke. Luke carried many bottles of water and kool-aid powder.

‘Oh, you brought the club some drinks?’ Markus asked.

‘Uh…yes I did.’ Luke answered. More members came and within the time of half an hour, everyone was present. They sat in the form of an odd shape.

‘Everyone stand! Master Flavius is entering the room.’ Everyone stood in the presence of Master Flavius. For the first time, Markus heard Master Flavius speak.

‘Hello servant Merodians.’

‘Hail to you, our Master!’ everyone responded as they kneeled down.

‘It is now the time.’

‘The time for what?’ Markus whispered to Luke.

‘Well, we must die today so that we can meet with the real Flavius. The Flavius you see now is only the human incarnation,’ Luke answered.

Slowly, one by one, everyone drank the poisoned beverages. After drinking the beverage, each person fell to ground screaming, slowly dying. Luke handed Markus a drink.

‘I can’t.’ Markus hesitated. A look of horror was in his eyes.

‘What do you mean you can’t? You’re a Merodian. Drink this!’ Luke ordered.

‘I can’t kill myself. My mother would be heartbroken.’

‘Then you aren’t a Merodian anymore. Go back to your mother to whom you love. You’re kicked out.’

He was in shock and visibly shuddered as he thought of the terrible incident. He was no longer a Merodian, and this fact bothered him more than anything. He no longer belonged and he yearned for this feeling once again. He decided to go back to his mother, for she was the reason he no longer belonged. He walked to school, where he saw all his fellow classmates rush out of school. He entered the bus, drooping his head and he sat beside a man, whom he recognized. It was an ex-Merodian. This man handed Markus a cigarette butt.

‘Old habits die hard,’ the man said.

‘Thank you,’ Markus said.

Markus twisted it around his finger and performed odd leg rituals. People stared at him in wonder and talked amongst themselves. The pain in his heart spilled over into his voice. He shrieked, trying to ease the pain. Maybe Master Flavius could help him, he thought.

‘Flavius, come save me now! Now!’ he growled. The bus turned into chaos and collided into a forest of trees. The dead passengers and ruin were overcome with great silence and stillness.

His mother, still panicking and in search for Markus, decided to look in the warehouse. She opens the warehouse door to find a large group of people dead on the floor. Fear overcame her, her heart racing rapidly.

‘Markus!’ she screamed. Was one of the dead her son? She hyperventilated as she looked through every single person. A rush of relief swept over her when she did not find her son. She walked outside; she was going to go home. The weather was murky and gloomy. While walking, she saw a bus driving out of control, swerving and colliding into a forest.

‘Oh my, what a horrible day. I can’t imagine anything worse happening.’ She said to herself. She took a rest when she was home and prayed:

O Lord, please send me a sign. Where is my son, whom I love ever so much? Lord I need not any pain or sorrow now. Send me a guardian angel to protect me, so that I may have a sleep free from all trouble.

Amen.

The very second she finished her prayer, she heard knocking on her door.

‘Markus! My son has come home!’ she ran as a sense of sheer happiness overcame her. She opened the door widely to see a police officer and the blinking lights of his car.

‘Ma’am I apologize to disturb you this late in the evening, but there is an important issue which needs to be brought to your attention.’

‘Have you found my son?’ A glimpse of hope still remained within her. But the officer crushed it like an eggshell.

‘Your son is dead. He died in the bus collision.’

She could no longer control her emotions. She ran into the street, sobbing.

‘No!’ she screamed. She was miserable, almost as if in a trance of despair. She was alone now, she had nobody to even console her. Her heart was drained, her mind dead. Her tears like two brooks. She saw a shadow walk slowly towards her. It was a man.

‘There is no need to cry. Wipe away those tears.’

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Your new friend. No need for details.’ He said as he smiled. ‘Come with me, and I will show you my group of friends.’ She wiped away her tears. She was no longer alone.

‘Ok. What’s the harm?’ she said as she walked away with the stranger.

Green Eyes by Ceri Hughson

‘Why do you think this world is so messed up?’

The question hung in the air. The only other occupant in the carriage was quite successfully ignoring the impromptu query.

No eye contact, that was the key. Just stare straight ahead and the nutter won’t attack you, or so she fervently thought.

‘Because we’re in hell, that’s why!’ the same voice retorted.

Oh, not just any nutter then, a rugger. It’s not enough that I get accosted every time I go down the street by the charity sort. The one day I go home late and I get a religious mugger on my case. The muscles under her eyes twitched with concentration. Don’t look at him it will only encourage him. Don’t look at him, don’t look at him, don’t look at him, became a repeating mantra in her mind.

Obliviously the man on the opposite seat carried on. ‘I hate this bloody planet. Do you never wonder why it is such a hell hole? Why everyone is in it for themselves, the poverty, the crime?’ He was straining in his seat now. As if leaning forward would persuade her to his way of thinking.

The soothing, repetitive sound of the train had been keeping her calm up until now, only twenty minutes more and she would be home safe - just her, her cat and the TV, safe. …but the train was slowing down.

She looked out of the window as the train came to a complete stop in what was clearly the middle of nowhere. Wonderful!

‘This is your conductor speaking, we are sorry to report there is a problem with the line. We should be moving along again shortly and I will keep you informed as we find out more.’

In the reflection she saw the man glance out the opposite window and took the opportunity to look at him properly. He wasn’t bad looking she supposed, though his clothes were slightly strange. Not any one single piece, mind you but it definitely confirmed her opinion that he was a first class weirdo. His black cotton suit trousers were complemented by a hoodie and a matching suit jacket. She guessed he was tall, he had long legs anyway but it was his eyes that stood out the most.

They were the most amazing colour green she had ever seen. They were almost translucent. Green-eyes turned and caught her looking at him. He grinned.

‘Don’t you wonder?’

Caught staring, she had to reply now. Huh, What? Ah yes, ‘Not really it is just the way it is.’

‘Only here.’ The stranger replied sadly.

‘That’s a strange thing to say.’ Go on, might as well get it over with, she thought. He’s going to talk at me, no matter what I do.

His eyes lit up and Paige inwardly groaned. What had she done?

‘I have a wife you know. We’ve been married for years. She’s the kindest, most gentle woman I know. She was convicted of fraud. I don’t believe it though. I’m on my way now to see her.’ He shook his head.

As if changing the subject he added, ‘Hypothetically, say there was a civilisation that was perfect, everything managed well, no poverty and barely any crime…’

‘Not possible.’ She interjected.

‘To make it perfect,’ he continued, ‘all the criminals would have to be removed. But you don’t want any prisons where they can escape from or any come-back from humanitarian issues. You don’t want to spend a fortune on unproductive trouble makers either. What would you do?’

Drawn despite herself into the strange conversation, she replied, ‘You can’t do anything, that’s why there are so many prisons.’

‘This civilisation would be far more advanced than this one. Anyone found guilty by his peers would be sent away.’

‘Sent away? Where to? Wouldn’t people wonder where they went?’

‘Not really, it’s been dealt with. Why put your perfect life in jeopardy for a criminal? You know they are guilty, they’ve had a trial. You know they are not kept in a tiny cell or restricted by the state. They are just gone’

‘Where are they?’ She asked, curious despite herself.

‘They do go to a prison but it is on a whole planet. Completely left to themselves. As soon as they are declared guilty, they are taken to a room where their life force is transported to the planet. They are then born there never knowing what they left behind...’ His voice trailed off.

Paige’s eyes narrowed, ‘You actually believe that?’ her voice accusing.

‘It’s all hypothetical remember. But still, if this were to happen, that life force would be trapped on the planet and would just keep on being reborn, again and again. Trapped forever in a cycle that can never be broken.’

He sat back, staring once more at the darkened fields through the window. ‘Would you think that’s fair?’

‘Well I suppose, if they were really criminals, then removing them would kind of remove the problem really.’

‘There’s always the possibility of error though. What if the convicted felon is not really guilty?’

That’s easy, she thought, ‘If it’s such an advanced world, wouldn’t you have mind readers or something? There must be a way to tell.’

He turned the full force of his green eyes back on her, ‘There are always mistakes. If good people were to be put on the prison world then they would naturally try to make it better. The fact that this world is not as messed up as it could be shows that there were mistakes, and you, my wife, were one of them. I’ve come to take you home.’

A School Story by MR James

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. ‘At our

school,’ said A., ‘we had a ghost’s footmark on the staircase. ‘

‘ What was it like?’

‘Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a square toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn’t somebody invent one, I wonder?’

‘You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own. There’s a subject for you, by the way - ‘The Folklore of Private Schools.’

‘Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were to investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys at private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be highly-compressed versions of stories out of books.’

‘Nowadays the Strand and Pearson’s, and so on, would be extensively drawn upon.’

‘No doubt: they weren’t born or thought of in my time. Let’s see. I wonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First, there was the house with a room in which a series of people insisted on passing a night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner, and had just time to say, ‘I’ve seen it,’ and died.’

‘Wasn’t that the house in Berkeley Square?’

‘I dare say it was. Then there was the man who heard a noise in the passage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawling towards him on all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides, let me think - Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a horseshoe mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered with marks of horseshoes also; I don’t know why. Also there was the lady who, on locking her bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voice among the bed-curtains say, ‘Now we’re shut in for the night.’ None of those had any explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, those stories.’

‘Oh, likely enough - with additions from the magazines, as I said. You never heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school? I thought not, nobody has that ever I came across.’

‘From the way in which you said that, I gather that you have.’

‘I really don’t know, but this is what was in my mind. It happened at my private school thirty odd years ago, and I haven’t any explanation of it.

‘The school I mean was near London. It was established in a large and fairly old house - a great white building with very fine grounds about it; there were large cedars in the garden, as there are in so many of the older

gardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three or four fields which we used for our games. I think probably it was quite an attractive place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess any tolerable

features.

‘I came to the school in a September, soon after the year 1870; and among the boys who arrived on the same day was one whom I took to: a Highland boy, whom I will call McLeod. I needn’t spend time in describing him: the main thing is that I got to know him very well. He was not an exceptional boy in any way - not particularly good at books or games - but he suited me.

‘The school was a large one: there must have been from 120 to 130 boys there as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters was required, and there were rather frequent changes among them.

‘One term - perhaps it was my third or fourth - a new master made his appearance. His name was Sampson. He was a tallish, stoutish, pale, black-bearded man. I think we liked him: he had travelled a good deal, and

had stories which amused us on our school walks, so that there was some competition among us to get within earshot of him. I remember too - dear me, I have hardly thought of it since then - that he had a charm on his watch-chain that attracted my attention one day, and he let me examine it. It was, I now suppose, a gold Byzantine coin; there was an effigy of some absurd emperor on one side; the other side had been worn practically smooth, and he had had cut on it - rather barbarously - his own initials, GWS, and a date, 24 July, 1865. Yes, I can see it now: he told me he had picked it up in Constantinople: it was about the size of a florin, perhaps rather smaller.

‘Well, the first odd thing that happened was this. Sampson was doing Latin grammar with us. One of his favourite methods - perhaps it is rather a good one - was to make us construct sentences out of our own heads to

illustrate the rules he was trying to make us learn. Of course that is a thing which gives a silly boy a chance of being impertinent: there are lots of school stories in which that happens - or any-how there might be. But

Sampson was too good a disciplinarian for us to think of trying that on with him. Now, on this occasion he was telling us how to express remembering in Latin: and he ordered us each to make a sentence bringing in the verb memini, ‘I remember.’ Well, most of us made up some ordinary sentence such as ‘I remember my father,’ or ‘He remembers his book,’ or something equally uninteresting: and I dare say a good many put down memino librum meum, and so forth: but the boy I mentioned - McLeod - was evidently thinking of something more elaborate than that. The rest of us wanted to have our sentences passed, and get on to something else, so some kicked him under the desk, and I, who was next to him, poked him and whispered to him to look sharp. But he didn’t seem to attend. I looked at his paper and saw he had put down nothing at all. So I jogged him again harder than before and upbraided him sharply for keeping us all waiting. That did have some effect.

He started and seemed to wake up, and then very quickly he scribbled about a couple of lines on his paper, and showed it up with the rest. As it was the last, or nearly the last, to come in, and as Sampson had a good deal to say to the boys who had written meminiscimus patri meo and the rest of it, it

turned out that the clock struck twelve before he had got to McLeod, and McLeod had to wait afterwards to have his sentence corrected. There was nothing much going on outside when I got out, so I waited for him to come.

He came very slowly when he did arrive, and I guessed there had been some sort of trouble. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what did you get?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said McLeod, ‘nothing much: but I think Sampson’s rather sick with me.’ ‘Why, did you show him up some rot?’ ‘No fear,’ he said. ‘It was all right as far as I could see: it was like this: Memento - that’s right enough for remember, and it takes a genitive, - memento putei inter quatuor taxos.’

‘What silly rot!’ I said. ‘What made you shove that down? What does it mean?’ ‘That’s the funny part,’ said McLeod. ‘I’m not quite sure what it does mean. All I know is, it just came into my head and I corked it down. I know what I think it means, because just before I wrote it down I had a sort of picture of it in my head: I believe it means ‘Remember the well among the four’ - what are those dark sort of trees that have red berries on them?’

‘Mountain ashes, I s’pose you mean.’ ‘I never heard of them,’ said McLeod; ‘no, I’ll tell you - yews.’ ‘Well, and what did Sampson say?’

‘Why, he was jolly odd about it. When he read it he got up and went to the mantel-piece and stopped quite a long time without saying anything, with his back to me. And then he said, without turning round, and rather quiet, ‘What do you suppose that means?’ I told him what I thought; only I couldn’t remember the name of the silly tree: and then he wanted to know why I put it down, and I

had to say something or other. And after that he left off talking about it, and asked me how long I’d been here, and where my people lived, and things like that: and then I came away: but he wasn’t looking a bit well.’

‘I don’t remember any more that was said by either of us about this. Next day McLeod took to his bed with a chill or something of the kind, and it was a week or more before he was in school again. And as much as a month went by without anything happening that was noticeable. Whether or not Mr Sampson was really startled, as McLeod had thought, he didn’t show it. I am pretty sure, of course, now, that there was something very curious in his past history, but I’m not going to pretend that we boys were sharp enough to guess any such thing.

‘There was one other incident of the same kind as the last which I told you. Several times since that day we had had to make up examples in school to illustrate different rules, but there had never been any row except when we did them wrong. At last there came a day when we were going through those

dismal things which people call Conditional Sentences, and we were told to make a conditional sentence, expressing a future consequence. We did it, right or wrong, and showed up our bits of paper, and Sampson began looking through them. All at once he got up, made some odd sort of noise in his

throat, and rushed out by a door that was just by his desk. We sat there for a minute or two, and then - I suppose it was incorrect - but we went up, I and one or two others, to look at the papers on his desk. Of course I thought someone must have put down some nonsense or other, and Sampson had gone off to report him. All the same, I noticed that he hadn’t taken any of the papers with him when he ran out. Well, the top paper on the desk was written in red ink - which no one used - and it wasn’t in anyone’s hand who was in the class. They all looked at it - McLeod and all - and took their dying oaths that it wasn’t theirs.

Then I thought of counting the bits of paper. And of this I made quite certain: that there were seventeen bits of paper on the desk, and sixteen boys in the form. Well, I bagged the extra paper, and kept it, and I believe I have it now. And now you will want to know what was written on it. It was simple enough, and harmless enough, I should have said.

‘‘Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te,’ which means, I suppose, ‘If you don’t come to me, I’ll come to you.’’

‘Could you show me the paper?’ interrupted the listener.

‘Yes, I could: but there’s another odd thing about it. That same afternoon I took it out of my locker - I know for certain it was the same

bit, for I made a finger-mark on it and no single trace of writing of any kind was there on it. I kept it, as I said, and since that time I have tried various experiments to see whether sympathetic ink had been used, but

absolutely without result.

‘So much for that. After about half an hour Sampson looked in again: said he had felt very unwell, and told us we might go. He came rather gingerly to his desk, and gave just one look at the uppermost paper: and I suppose he thought he must have been dreaming: anyhow, he asked no questions.

‘That day was a half-holiday, and next day Sampson was in school again, much as usual. That night the third and last incident in my story happened.

‘We - McLeod and I - slept in a dormitory at right angles to the main building. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor. There was a very bright full moon. At an hour which I can’t tell exactly, but sometime between one and two, I was woken up by somebody shaking me. It was McLeod, and a nice state of mind he seemed to be in. ‘Come,’ he said, - ‘come there’s a burglar getting in through Sampson’s window.’ As soon as I could speak, I said, ‘Well, why not call out and wake everybody up? ‘No, no,’ he

said, ‘I’m not sure who it is: don’t make a row: come and look.’ Naturally I came and looked, and naturally there was no one there. I was cross enough, and should have called McLeod plenty of names: only - I couldn’t tell why - it seemed to me that there was something wrong - something that made me very glad I wasn’t alone to face it. We were still at the window looking out, and as soon as I could, I asked him what he had heard or seen. ‘I didn’t hear anything at all,’ he said, ‘but about five minutes before I woke you, I

found myself looking out of this window here, and there was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson’s window-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning.’ ‘What sort of man?’ McLeod wriggled. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I can tell you one thing - he was beastly thin: and he looked as if he was wet all over: and,’ he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, ‘I’m not at all sure that he was alive.’

‘We went on talking in whispers some time longer, and eventually crept back to bed. No one else in the room woke or stirred the whole time. I believe we did sleep a bit afterwards, but we were very cheap next day.

‘And next day Mr Sampson was gone: not to be found: and I believe no trace of him has ever come to light since. In thinking it over, one of the oddest things about it all has seemed to me to be the fact that neither McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to any third person whatever. Of course no questions were asked on the subject, and if they had been, I am inclined to believe that we could not have made any answer: we seemed unable to speak about it.

‘That is my story,’ said the narrator. ‘The only approach to a ghost story connected with a school that I know, but still, I think, an approach to such a thing.’

The sequel to this may perhaps be reckoned highly conventional; but a sequel there is, and so it must be produced. There had been more than one listener to the story, and, in the latter part of that same year, or of the next, one such listener was staying at a country house in Ireland.

One evening his host was turning over a drawer full of odds and ends in the smoking-room. Suddenly he put his hand upon a little box. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you know about old things; tell me what that is.’ My friend opened the little box, and found in it a thin gold chain with an object attached to it. He glanced at the object and then took off his spectacles to examine it more narrowly. ‘What’s the history of this?’ he asked. ‘Odd enough,’ was the answer. ‘You know the yew thicket in the shrubbery: well, a year or two back we were cleaning out the old well that used to be in the clearing here, and what do you suppose we found?’

‘Is it possible that you found a body?’ said the visitor, with an odd feeling of nervousness.

‘We did that: but what’s more, in every sense of the word, we found two.’

‘Good Heavens! Two? Was there anything to show how they got there? Was this thing found with them?’

‘It was. Amongst the rags of the clothes that were on one of the bodies. A bad business, whatever the story of it may have been. One body had the arms tight round the other. They must have been there thirty years or more - long enough before we came to this place. You may judge we filled the well up fast enough. Do you make anything of what’s cut on that gold coin you have there?’

‘I think I can,’ said my friend, holding it to the light (but he read it without much difficulty); ‘it seems to be GWS, 24 July, 1865.’

Cygnus Loop by Michael L Thal

The morning rain pounded the small school along Riverside Drive. Children and teachers ran frantically from parked cars. Horns blasted, and headlights winked through waves of water.

Allison Peters hated arriving late. But she had just moved from her old bachelor pad in anticipation of her boyfriend’s arrival. This new place was a short commute.

Allison waited by the door of her third

grade classroom with her hand over her heart, blonde hair plastered against her face, makeup running down her cheeks. A puddle of water formed around her feet as her students saluted the flag under the leadership of Vice Principal, Brett Castille. Physically, she was attracted to Brett. If only he wasn’t so obnoxious, like the way he looked her over like a barfly would a potential night’s catch.

When the students pulled out their chairs, she whispered in his ear over the scraping noises. ‘Mind if I change?’

‘No problem. Just make it fast.’ As she walked passed the principal’s office, she got nailed. ‘Miss Peters, I want to speak to you now. In my office.’

She walked slowly by the secretary’s desk, forced a smile at the elderly woman, and entered Dr Judd’s office. The door’s tight spring closed it firmly behind her. Thud!

Nanette Judd was an older woman, thin like a scarecrow with brittle gray hair and skin as transparent as wax paper. Her desk was huge, and empty except for a crystal paperweight and a picture of a super nova. Allison smiled in sweet recognition when she saw the photo. She relaxed somewhat and sat in a leather-padded chair across from her boss. The desk seemed to dwarf the frail woman, but her demeanor was anything but feeble. Her blue eyes reached inside Miss Peter’s brown ones like a telepath reading her victim’s mind.

‘Allison, you were late today. Didn’t I tell you not to move out of town?’

‘Yes, Yal... ah, Dr Judd.’

Dr Judd looked at her crossly and said, ‘So why did you?’

‘I want to make a nice home for Cami when he arrives. ‘

‘I’m looking forward to his arrival too. We could use his help around here. But you’re both better off living in Sherman Oaks. We’re a community, you know.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You better not be late again. Not unless you’d rather go home and turn over your cubicle to someone else.’ She surveyed the woman from head to toe.

Dr Judd pointed a bony finger at her and continued, ‘There is a waiting list you know.’

‘Yes.’

With a crooked smile, Dr Judd pushed back her long gray hair and said, ‘Now go ahead and freshen up. We wouldn’t want to ruin that pretty face.’

‘No, we wouldn’t.’

As Allison pulled open the door, Dr Judd said, ‘I’ll be taking over your class at 1:00. Make sure Castille is there.’

The first smile of the day erupted on the blonde’s face. ‘Yes ma’am!’

When she got back to class, her students were answering math problems. Mr Castille was working with a few slower children in a small group reviewing their multiplication tables.

She whispered, ‘Can we talk?’

‘During recess.’

She looked at the clock, and nodded.

An hour later an aide took over her third grade class to escort children to the restroom. Allison walked down the steps and around the bend to the VP office.

It was a small room that used to be a storage closet. Brett was squeezed behind an old brown desk sitting in a chair that creaked with every move.

‘She’s such a bitch,’ Allison screeched.

‘Quiet! Or we’ll both be out on the street. And in this rain, it’s not such a good idea.’

‘She said I had no business moving into my new apartment. Said I was better off living in Sherman Oaks. She even docked me twelve minutes sick leave for being late.’

‘Typical.’ Brett leaned back in his seat and stroked his goatee. ‘I’ll see what I can do. But don’t expect much. She’s within her rights to dock you. As to the housing comment, it’s your word against hers. She’ll deny it in a committee review.’

Allison blew out some air, like a weight lifter trying to heft more pounds than she could press. She stomped to the door, and asked, ‘Could we do lunch?’

‘Sure.’

This wasn’t the first complaint against Dr Judd since he started this job over a year ago. There was a laundry list of problems. A few teachers didn’t like it when Judd took over their classes. She was rude. She was autocratic, and she seemed to think the school was her private property.

Fifth grade teacher, Sue Kaplan complained about the principal the day he started working at Riverside Drive Elementary School. They were standing at the back of the Fire Department assembly when Ms Kaplan said, ‘Dr Judd took over my class today. I hate when she does that.’

‘Most people would be delighted to have time to plan lessons, relax, or make needed phone calls. What’s the problem?’

‘At first I thought it great. But when I returned to class there were thirty-two frightened ten-year-olds.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Travis, Shelly, Jason, and the entire Pain in the Ass line-up. You know, all my PIA’s. They were just sitting at their seats with glassy eyes. It was actually a pleasure to see this. But my GATE kids were crying hysterically. My brightest students were mush. Jan, my spelling whiz kid was standing over my desk puking her guts out. And the rest were wandering around the room aimlessly.

‘At the end of the day I confronted her.’

‘What did you say?’ Brett asked.

‘I thought I’d start with the positive. So I asked, ‘How did you get my lows to be so quiet?’ You know what she said?’

Bret’s eyebrows rose and his brow creased.

‘She told them a spooky story.’

Brett snickered. ‘What did the kids say?’

‘First, I took the class outside for a break. When they were settled down and ready to talk, no one volunteered information.’

‘Did you talk to any of the kids privately?’

‘Sure. I asked Jan how she was feeling. And she told me she was fine. She gave me one of those kid looks that says ‘Why are you even asking?’ I don’t think she remembered anything that happened.’

A few months later Sue Kaplan got the transfer she’d been waiting for.

Brett didn’t like working for Judd, either. But the superintendent promised him a principalship at Hearst if he made it through two years. Everyone knew that his position at Riverside was a steppingstone for administrative advancement. And Hearst School was the best in the district. Its parents were highly educated, wealthy, and the kids were motivated to learn, a big contrast to his school. Riverside was in the south end of town where the average family income was less than $30,000 per year. Its families had many socio-economic hardships.

Brett had a memory like the hard drive of a computer, at least for most things. He

recalled seeing Dr Judd for the first time when he was eleven. It was the fall of 1976.

That year was America’s bicentennial celebration. Brett had recently returned from a trip to New York City with his parents. He talked about his adventures as he and best friend, Vic, walked home from school.

‘How was New York?’ Vic asked.

Brett said, ‘Fourth of July fireworks lit up the sky. They set them off near the Statue of Liberty. It was amazing. And the parade of tall ships down the Hudson River was so cool.’

‘What did you do?’ Brett asked.

‘Nothing except spy on that witch at the edge of town.’

‘You still doing that?’

‘Nothing better to do. And now she’s up to something really weird.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’ll have to see it for yourself.’

It was a warm Friday afternoon in late September. First thing after school they went to Vic’s house, picked up two pairs of binoculars, and headed down Riverside Drive.

At the edge of town was an acre of land overrun by weeds, tall grass, and a few trees. The boys crawled through the high grass, commando style, until they reached the safety of an old apple tree a hundred yards from the front porch. They climbed the tree until they found comfortable perches to view their subject.

Nanette Judd was sitting on an old green plastic chair with a piece of lumber on her lap. On the wood were snails. Her back was to the door. Judd placed the snails behind a black line on the board. About a foot away was a red line. The snails pushed themselves to get to the finish line. Brett was surprised that snails could move that fast. He made a mental note to try this when he got home. After a few tense minutes the snail on the outside of the board was victorious. Judd picked the snail up and kissed it. Her face was expressionless. This was routine.

‘Ugh!’

‘Shh!’ Vic whispered.

The middle-aged recluse took the loser, threw it on the floor, and squashed it with her left foot. She picked a new snail from the box near her right foot and placed it on the board. The new race between the previous winner and the fresh snail commenced.

Then Brett saw an orange light flicker in the hallway, like a blinking light for a hard of hearing person when the phone rang. But the phone didn’t ring. There were only sounds from rustling trees in the warm autumn wind.

Though Judd was fixated on the race, she sensed something. With a blank face, like a zombie, Judd picked herself up. Blue lines circled the pale white skin around her eyes.

Judd was gone for only a minute. When she returned outdoors there was a new awareness to her face, an eagerness as if she’d discovered something unique. Judd walked past the snail racetrack, looked over the yard, gazed up at the cloudless sky, and opened her arms wide and took in a deep breath of air.

When she lowered her gaze, her eyes met his, like two blue lasers piercing his mind. It was also the last thing Brett recalled. Everything went blank. First he was affected, then Vic.

Over the years, Brett had nightmares about that blackout. It was like being in a fog, so thick he dreaded taking even a short step for fear of falling off a cliff.

He shook his head trying to shake off the bad dream. That was twenty-seven years ago. What amazed him, even as an eleven year old, was that this seemingly uneducated hermit had a Ph.D. in education. A week after spying on her in the apple tree, she replaced Mr Ghazarian as principal, and Mr G was boosted up to an assistant superintendent. He also recalled that his friendship with Vic soured. He shrugged his shoulders. Maybe Vic didn’t like the snail game.

Brett was curious about Allison’s complaint. There were a few other teachers at the school who whined about Judd, but their complaints were similar to Sue Kaplan’s. Allison was different. She didn’t mind.

He decided that he’d talk to Allison about this during lunch.

Dr Judd was sitting at a table across the room with a small group of teachers, teachers that actually liked her. Go figure.

Allison was sitting alone when Brett tossed his lunch sack on the table across from her. She didn’t say hello. She made an observation staring in Judd’s direction.

‘Look at that stringy hair. I suggested Tony’s Salon in Studio City. Tony can make anyone’s hair look good. But she won’t listen. And those clothes, she dresses like an old lady.’

‘She is an old lady. She was fifty when she started here. She must be seventy-seven.’

‘She could at least put on some makeup and wear some decent shoes. Those black clogs are so tacky.’

Brett took a deep breath noting Allison’s voluptuous figure and full lips. In the past she had refused his offers of a dinner date. Her excuse, ‘My boyfriend Cami will be here soon.’

Whoever this Cami person was, he sure envied him. But he had other things to discuss. ‘Allison, has Judd ever taken over your class?’

‘Sure, plenty of times.’

‘Doesn’t that bother you?’

‘Why should it? I get time off to freshen up, grade papers, and plan lessons. I think Judd’s great about that.’ She smiled with a slight hint of a question on her brow.

‘When’s she planning to visit your room again?’

‘It’s routine. Today’s Wednesday, she’ll be there at 1:00.’

That’s all he needed to hear. Maybe now he’d find out the connection between Judd and Allison.

Brett entered the back door to Allison’s room. Judd’s back was toward the door in deep concentration with 20 very quiet eight year olds. This was a class of low achievers. Their IQ’s hovered in the 50’s. What amazed Brett was that Judd permitted this class to exist and that it was given to such an inexperienced teacher.

Out of nothingness came specks of light. There was an array of twinkling orange stars, each a different shade of orange. Like snowflakes, no two were the same. They hovered over the heads of each student. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they were gone. The kids opened their eyes. ‘WOW!’

One child said, ‘Wasn’t that cool.’

‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘First the darkness, then a feeling of nothingness.’

‘Like we stopped being,’ said a third.

Then a continuous chatter Brett couldn’t hear. He was washed over by an all too familiar fog. He felt pushed. And he feared a bottomless pit, but a step away. That was when everything went blank.

The next thing he recalled was being revived in his swivel chair behind his office desk. His vision was blurry, as if he were severely near sighted. Then, as he regained control of his faculties, objects in front of him began to coalesce into meaning. Before him was Allison’s pear shaped face framed by her winsome blonde hair.

‘Are you okay? Do you always fall asleep in class?’ She laughed at her own joke.

‘I was standing. And the next thing I knew, I’m looking at you. What happened?’

‘Beats me. I would love to talk this over with you, but Judd is waiting for me to take back my class. She’s one person I hate to keep waiting. By the way, she wants to see you in her office after school.’

‘Good, now I can get to the bottom of this before the day is out.

At 3:30, when the kids were dismissed, the secretary read her boss’ prepared speech over the public address system. ‘Dr Judd would like the building vacated by 4:00. The rain has caused flooding and she wants you all to get to your homes safely before rush hour.’

Brett walked the short distance to the school office in time to watch the secretary let down the aluminum door to the reception window and bolt it. She grabbed her large purse, and rushed out the door.

Brett caught his principal looking out the window, at a storm that didn’t want to quit. Somehow, she sensed his presence and said, ‘It’s actually a beautiful day. So much life! So much green. You’re so lucky.’

‘Nanette, I want to talk to you about something personal.’ Her desk, unlike the mess on his, was always immaculate. Only the crystal paperweight and a picture taken from the Hubble Telescope held any space.

Underneath the picture was the caption, ‘Cygnus Loop - Blast Wave from a Stellar Time-Bomb. High speed gas from a supernova explosion slams into dark cooler clouds of interstellar material.’ The gases were shocked and heated by a tidal wave of energy, the clouds glowing in bright, neon-like colors.

‘It’s not Nanette, ‘ she said. She faced him behind the expanse of her desk and noticed him reading the blurb.

‘I’m sorry, Dr Judd. I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.’ He’d used her first name on other occasions when they were alone, and was surprised that suddenly she was objecting.

‘It’s not that.’

His eyes narrowed.

‘My name is Yalma Nakava.’ She pointed toward the chair across from her desk for him to sit.

She’s really flipped. I’ll ride this out until I find out what she was doing with those kids. Maybe she will tell me what happened while I was unconscious.

‘I’m an entrepreneur from Tau Ceti 5.’ She leaned over to the picture on her desk and pointed to an orange star lighting up a region of space near the Cygnus Loop.

‘With a group of investors we opened an amusement park on our moon. Unlike yours, Stam has an atmosphere and a tropical climate. Thirty years ago there was still some land to be bought, but the terrain was rough and uninhabitable. We decided to build an amusement park. It was successful, but our people wanted more.

‘Then, one of our scientists found a way to harness the energy from this supernova.’ She pointed to the picture on her desk. ‘And use it as a means to transport his essence over thousands of light years. We constructed twenty capsules in which visitors could comfortably fit for a short period of time and experience intergalactic travel.’

Brett leaned forward in his seat, eyes bulging and jaw gaping. ‘Those lights I saw in Allison’s room. Are you telling me those were... aliens?’

‘To you, maybe. To me they’re clients. You see Brett, business is booming. We need to build more cubicles to meet demand. And we need more bodies to borrow to meet that demand. That means another administrator to guide our visitors. So, within a week’s time...’

‘Wait a second. Are you telling me that you’re from another planet?’

‘Nanette Judd is from Earth. The intellect known as Yalma Nakava is from Tau Ceti 5. My mind has taken over her body. My body is in a cubicle twelve light years from your sun.’

‘Doesn’t she mind?’ Brett asked trying to humor her.

‘Being so mentally deranged, it was easy to push her mind to the enlarged brain ventricles of a schizophrenic.’

‘Why are you here at an elementary school?’

‘When visitors come to our theme park, they want to try the Cygnus Loop experience. So we built more cubicles to protect their bodies. When one of our principals has a classroom of children prepared, the transference can be made.’

‘How long does that last?’

‘Since we have a waiting list, no longer than an hour.’

‘What happens to the children?’ Brett asked.

‘Nothing. They usually forget. Some of the older ones get sick. That’s why we try to target children less than ten years old.’

‘Forget? Do you mean...blackout?’

‘Just like you, Brett. We seized your mind when you were eleven. You’ve been a tough brain to raid, but one of our people has figured out a way to push your consciousness aside for him to take over your body. That’s why you’ve been promoted to the Hearst School principal job.’

Maybe now she’s coming to her senses. This was sudden, but expected. Brett contemplated what his promotion meant. New responsibilities, a comfortable office, and some of the foxiest single women in the district. Hearst was a dream comes true.

Dr Judd closed her eyes and went into a meditative trance. Her eyelids fluttered until the office glowed with an orange light. Brett bolted out of his seat and to the office door. But before he could leave, the orange star hovered over his head and then disappeared.

Brett stood at a precipice, but this time a scaly hand with long sharp nails plunged out of the fog and pushed him. With arms flailing and legs twisting, Brett’s mind fell into an abyss.

The next day was a sunny unseasonably warm day. Brett Castille opened the door of his silver Nissan Altima, stretched his arms, took in a deep breath of air, and happily strolled to his office closet.

He knew he wouldn’t be there but for a few more days and decided to clean up the mess. He heard the click of his door open and the rattle of the window when it was thrown quickly against the wall that desperately needed a door guard.

‘Cami? Cami is that you?’ Allison Parks ran over to Brett. She stroked his newly shaven face, saw that special gleam in his eye, and threw her arms around his neck rewarding him with a deep passionate kiss.’

Madam Crowl’s Ghost by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

Twenty years have passed since you last saw Mrs Jolliffe’s tall slim figure. She is now past seventy, and can’t have many mile-stones more to count on the journey that will bring her to her long home. The hair has grown white as snow, that is parted under her cap, over her shrewd, but kindly face. But her figure is still straight, and her step light and active.

She has taken of late years to the care of adult invalids, having surrendered to younger hands the little people who inhabit cradles, and crawl on all-fours. Those who remember that good-natured face among the earliest that emerge from the darkness of non-entity, and who owe to their first lessons in the accomplishment of walking, and a delighted appreciation of their first babblings and earliest teeth, have ‘spired up’ into tall lads and lasses, now. Some of them show streaks of white by this time, in brown locks, ‘the bonny gouden’ hair, that she was so proud to brush and shew to admiring mothers, who are seen no more on the green of Golden Friars, and whose names are traced now on the flat grey stones in the church-yard.

So the time is ripening some, and searing others; and the saddening and tender sunset hour has come; and it is evening with the kind old north-country dame, who nursed pretty Laura Mildmay, who now stepping into the room, smiles so gladly, and throws her arms round the old woman’s neck, and kisses her twice.

‘Now, this is so lucky!’ said Mrs Jenner, ‘you have just come in time to hear a story.’

‘Really! That’s delightful.’

‘Na, na, od wite it! no story, ouer true for that, I sid it a wi my aan eyen. But the barn here, would not like, at these hours, just goin’ to her bed, to hear tell of freets and boggarts.’

‘Ghosts? The very thing of all others I should most likely to hear of.’

‘Well, dear,’ said Mrs Jenner, ‘if you are not afraid, sit ye down here, with us.’

‘She was just going to tell me all about her first engagement to attend a dying old woman,’ says Mrs Jenner, ‘and of the ghost she saw there. Now, Mrs Jolliffe, make your tea first, and then begin.’

The good woman obeyed, and having prepared a cup of that companionable nectar, she sipped a little, drew her brows slightly together to collect her thoughts, and then looked up with a wondrous solemn face to begin.

Good Mrs Jenner, and the pretty girl, each gazed with eyes of solemn expectation in the face of the old woman, who seemed to gather awe from the recollections she was summoning.

The old room was a good scene for such a narrative, with the oak-wainscoting, quaint, and clumsy furniture, the heavy beams that crossed its ceiling, and the tall four-post bed, with dark curtains, within which you might imagine what shadows you please.

Mrs Jolliffe cleared her voice, rolled her eyes slowly round, and began her tale in these words:-

MADAM CROWL’S GHOST

‘I’m an ald woman now, and I was but thirteen, my last birthday, the night I came to Applewale House. My aunt was the housekeeper there, and a sort o’ one-horse carriage was down at Lexhoe waitin’ to take me and my box up to Applewale.

‘I was a bit frightened by the time I got to Lexhoe, and when I saw the carriage and horse, I wished myself back again with my mother at Hazelden. I was crying when I got into the ‘shay’-that’s what we used to call it-and old John Mulbery that drove it, and was a good-natured fellow, bought me a handful of apples at the Golden Lion to cheer me up a bit; and he told me that there was a currant-cake, and tea, and pork-chops, waiting for me, all hot, in my aunt’s room at the great house. It was a fine moonlight night, and I eat the apples, lookin’ out o’ the shay winda.

‘It’s a shame for gentlemen to frighten a poor foolish child like I was. I sometimes think it might be tricks. There was two on ‘em on the tap o’ the coach beside me. And they began to question me after nightfall, when the moon rose, where I was going to. Well, I told them it was to wait on Dame Arabella Crowl, of Applewale House, near by Lexhoe.

‘‘Ho, then,’ says one of them, ‘you’ll not be long there!’

‘And I looked at him as much as to say ‘Why not?’ for I had spoken out when I told them where I was goin’, as if ‘twas something clever I hed to say.

‘‘Because,’ says he, ‘and don’t you for your life tell no one, only watch her and see-she’s possessed by the devil, and more an half a ghost. Have you got a Bible?’

‘‘Yes, sir,’ says I. For my mother put my little Bible in my box, and I knew it was there: and by the same token, though the print’s too small for my ald eyes, I have it in my press to this hour.

‘As I looked up at him saying ‘Yes, sir,’ I thought I saw him winkin’ at his friend; but I could not be sure.

‘‘Well,’ says he, ‘be sure you put it under your bolster every night, it will keep the ald girl’s claws aff ye.’

‘And I got such a fright when he said that, you wouldn’t fancy! And I’d a liked to ask him a lot about the ald lady, but I was too shy, and he and his friend began talkin’ together about their own consarns, and dowly enough I got down, as I told ye, at Lexhoe. My heart sank as I drove into the dark avenue. The trees stand very thick and big, as ald as the ald house almost, and four people, with their arms out and finger-tips touchin’, barely girds round some of them.

‘Well my neck was stretched out o’ the winda, looking for the first view o’ the great house; and all at once we pulled up in front of it.

‘A great white-and-black house it is, wi’ great black beams across and right up it, and gables lookin’ out, as white as a sheet, to the moon, and the shadows o’ the trees, two or three up and down in front, you could count the leaves on them, and all the little diamond-shaped winda-panes, glimmering on the great hall winda, and great shutters, in the old fashion, hinged on the wall outside, boulted across all the rest o’ the windas in front, for there was but three or four servants, and the old lady in the house, and most o’ t’ rooms was locked up.

‘My heart was in my mouth when I sid the journey was over, and this the great house afoore me, and I sa near my aunt that I never sid till noo, and Dame Crowl, that I was come to wait upon, and was afeard on already.

‘My aunt kissed me in the hall, and brought me to her room. She was tall and thin, wi’ a pale face and black eyes, and long thin hands wi’ black mittins on. She was past fifty, and her word was short; but her word was law. I hev no complaints to make of her; but she was a hard woman, and I think she would hev bin kinder to me if I had bin her sister’s child in place of her brother’s. But all that’s o’ no consequence noo.

‘The squire-his name was Mr Chevenix Crowl, he was Dame Crowl’s grandson-came down there, by way of seeing that the old lady was well treated, about twice or thrice in the year. I sid him but twice all the time I was at Applewale House.

‘I can’t say but she was well taken care of, notwithstanding; but that was because my aunt and Meg Wyvern, that was her maid, had a conscience, and did their duty by her.

‘Mrs Wyvern-Meg Wyvern my aunt called her to herself, and Mrs Wyvern to me-was a fat, jolly lass of fifty, a good height and a good breadth, always good-humoured and walked slow. She had fine wages, but she was a bit stingy, and kept all her fine clothes under lock and key, and wore, mostly, a twilled chocolate cotton, wi’ red, and yellow, and green sprigs and balls on it, and it lasted wonderful.

‘She never gave me nout, not the vally o’ a brass thimble, all the time I was there; but she was good-humoured, and always laughin’, and she talked no end o’ proas over her tea; and, seeing me sa sackless and dowly, she roused me up wi’ her laughin’ and stories; and I think I liked her better than my aunt-children is so taken wi’ a bit o’ fun or a story-though my aunt was very good to me, but a hard woman about some things, and silent always.

‘My aunt took me into her bed-chamber, that I might rest myself a bit while she was settin’ the tea in her room. But first, she patted me on the shouther, and said I was a tall lass o’ my years, and had spired up well, and asked me if I could do plain work and stitchin’; and she looked in my face, and said I was like my father, her brother, that was dead and gone, and she hoped I was a better Christian, and wad na du a’ that lids (would not do anything of that sort).

‘It was a hard sayin’ the first time I set foot in her room, I thought.

‘When I went into the next room, the housekeeper’s room-very comfortable, yak (oak) all round-there was a fine fire blazin’ away, wi’ coal, and peat, and wood, all in a low together, and tea on the table, and hot cake, and smokin’ meat; and there was Mrs Wyvern, fat, jolly, and talkin’ away, more in an hour than my aunt would in a year.

‘While I was still at my tea my aunt went up-stairs to see Madam Crowl.

‘She’s agone up to see that old Judith Squailes is awake,’ says Mrs Wyvern. ‘Judith sits with Madam Crowl when me and Mrs Shutters’-that was my aunt’s name-’is away. She’s a troublesome old lady. Ye’ll hev to be sharp wi’ her, or she’ll be into the fire, or out o’ t’ winda. She goes on wires, she does, old though she be.’

‘How old, ma’am?’ says I.

‘Ninety-three her last birthday, and that’s eight months gone,’ says she; and she laughed. ‘And don’t be askin’ questions about her before your aunt-mind, I tell ye; just take her as you find her, and that’s all.’

‘And what’s to be my business about her, please, ma’am?’ says I.

‘About the old lady? Well,’ says she, ‘your aunt, Mrs Shutters, will tell you that; but I suppose you’ll hev to sit in the room with your work, and see she’s at no mischief, and let her amuse herself with her things on the table, and get her her food or drink as she calls for it, and keep her out o’ mischief, and ring the bell hard if she’s troublesome.’

‘‘Is she deaf, ma’am?’

‘‘No, nor blind,’ says she; ‘as sharp as a needle, but she’s gone quite aupy, and can’t remember nout rightly; and Jack the Giant Killer, or Goody Twoshoes will please her as well as the king’s court, or the affairs of the nation.’

‘‘And what did the little girl go away for, ma’am, that went on Friday last? My aunt wrote to my mother she was to go.’

‘‘Yes; she’s gone.’

‘‘What for?’ says I again.

‘‘She didn’t answer Mrs Shutters, I do suppose,’ says she. ‘I don’t know. Don’t be talkin’; your aunt can’t abide a talkin’ child.’

‘‘And please, ma’am, is the old lady well in health?’ says I.

‘‘It ain’t no harm to ask that,’ says she. ‘She’s torflin a bit lately, but better this week past, and I dare say she’ll last out her hundred years yet. Hish! Here’s your aunt coming down the passage.’

‘In comes my aunt, and begins talkin’ to Mrs Wyvern, and I, beginnin’ to feel more comfortable and at home like, was walkin’ about the room lookin’ at this thing and at that. There was pretty old china things on the cupboard, and pictures again the wall; and there was a door open in the wainscot, and I sees a queer old leathern jacket, wi’ straps and buckles to it, and sleeves as long as the bed-post hangin’ up inside.

‘‘What’s that you’re at, child?’ says my aunt, sharp enough, turning about when I thought she least minded. ‘What’s that in your hand?’

‘‘This, ma’am?’ says I, turning about with the leathern jacket. ‘I don’t know what it is, ma’am.’

‘Pale as she was, the red came up in her cheeks, and her eyes flashed wi’ anger, and I think only she had half a dozen steps to take, between her and me, she’d a gev me a sizzup. But she did gie me a shake by the shouther, and she plucked the thing out o’ my hand, and says she, ‘While ever you stay here, don’t ye meddle wi’ nout that don’t belong to ye’, and she hung it up on the pin that was there, and shut the door wi’ a bang and locked it fast.

‘Mrs Wyvern was liftin’ up her hands and laughin’ all this time, quietly, in her chair, rolling herself a bit in it, as she used when she was kinkin’.

‘The tears was in my eyes, and she winked at my aunt, and says she, dryin’ her own eyes that was wet wi’ the laughin’, ‘Tut, the child meant no harm-come here to me, child. It’s only a pair o’ crutches for lame ducks, and ask us no questions mind, and we’ll tell ye no lies; and come here and sit down, and drink a mug o’ beer before ye go to your bed.’

‘My room, mind ye, was upstairs, next to the old lady’s, and Mrs Wyvern’s bed was near hers in her room, and I was to be ready at call, if need should be.

‘The old lady was in one of her tantrums that night and part of the day before. She used to take fits o’ the sulks. Sometimes she would not let them dress her, and at other times she would not let them take her clothes off. She was a great beauty, they said, in her day. But there was no one about Applewale that remembered her in her prime. And she was dreadful fond o’ dress, and had thick silks, and stiff satins, and velvets, and laces, and all sorts, enough to set up seven shops at the least. All her dresses was old-fashioned and queer, but worth a fortune.

‘Well, I went to my bed. I lay for a while awake; for a’ things was new to me; and I think the tea was in my nerves, too, for I wasn’t used to it, except now and then on a holiday, or the like. And I heard Mrs Wyvern talkin’, and I listened with my hand to my ear; but I could not hear Mrs Crowl, and I don’t think she said a word.

‘There was great care took of her. The people at Applewale knew that when she died they would every one get the sack; and their situations was well paid and easy.

‘The doctor came twice a week to see the old lady, and you may be sure they all did as he bid them. One thing was the same every time; they were never to cross or frump her, any way, but to humour and please her in everything.

‘So she lay in her clothes all that night, and next day, not a word she said, and I was at my needlework all that day, in my own room, except when I went down to my dinner.

‘I would a liked to see the ald lady, and even to hear her speak. But she might as well a’ bin in Lunnon a’ the time for me.

‘When I had my dinner my aunt sent me out for a walk for an hour. I was glad when I came back, the trees was so big, and the place so dark and lonesome, and ‘twas a cloudy day, and I cried a deal, thinkin’ of home, while I was walkin’ alone there. That evening, the candles bein’ alight, I was sittin’ in my room, and the door was open into Madam Crowl’s chamber, where my aunt was. It was, then, for the first time I heard what I suppose was the ald lady talking.

‘It was a queer noise like, I couldn’t well say which, a bird, or a beast, only it had a bleatin’ sound in it, and was very small.

‘I pricked my ears to hear all I could. But I could not make out one word she said. And my aunt answered:

‘‘The evil one can’t hurt no one, ma’am, bout the Lord permits.’

‘Then the same queer voice from the bed says something more that I couldn’t make head nor tail on.

‘And my aunt med answer again: ‘Let them pull faces, ma’am, and say what they will; if the Lord be for us, who can be against us?’

‘I kept listenin’ with my ear turned to the door, holdin’ my breath, but not another word or sound came in from the room. In about twenty minutes, as I was sittin’ by the table, lookin’ at the pictures in the old Aesop’s Fables, I was aware o’ something moving at the door, and lookin’ up I sid my aunt’s face lookin’ in at the door, and her hand raised.

‘‘Hish!’ says she, very soft, and comes over to me on tiptoe, and she says in a whisper: ‘Thank God, she’s asleep at last, and don’t ye make no noise till I come back, for I’m goin’ down to take my cup o’ tea, and I’ll be back i’ noo-me and Mrs Wyvern, and she’ll be sleepin’ in the room, and you can run down when we come up, and Judith will gie ye yaur supper in my room.’

‘And with that she goes.

‘I kep’ looking at the picture-book, as before, listenin’ every noo and then, but there was no sound, not a breath, that I could hear; an’ I began whisperin’ to the pictures and talkin’ to myself to keep my heart up, for I was growin’ feared in that big room.

‘And at last up I got, and began walkin’ about the room, lookin’ at this and peepin’ at that, to amuse my mind, ye’ll understand. And at last what sud I do but peeps into Madam Crowl’s bedchamber.

‘A grand chamber it was, wi’ a great four-poster, wi’ flowered silk curtains as tall as the ceilin’, and foldin’ down on the floor, and drawn close all round. There was a lookin’-glass, the biggest I ever sid before, and the room was a blaze o’ light. I counted twenty-two wax candles, all alight. Such was her fancy, and no one dared say her nay.

‘I listened at the door, and gaped and wondered all round. When I heard there was not a breath, and did not see so much as a stir in the curtains, I took heart, and walked into the room on tiptoe, and looked round again. Then I takes a keek at myself in the big glass; and at last it came in my head, ‘Why couldn’t I ha’ a keek at the ald lady herself in the bed?

‘Ye’d think me a fule if ye knew half how I longed to see Dame Crowl, and I thought to myself if I didn’t peep now I might wait many a day before I got so gude a chance again.

‘Well, my dear, I came to the side o’ the bed, the curtains bein’ close, and my heart a’most failed me. But I took courage, and I slips my finger in between the thick curtains, and then my hand. So I waits a bit, but all was still as death. So, softly, softly I draws the curtain, and there, sure enough, I sid before me, stretched out like the painted lady on the tomb-stean in Lexhoe Church, the famous Dame Crowl, of Applewale House. There she was, dressed out. You never sid the like in they days. Satin and silk, and scarlet and green, and gold and pint lace; by Jen! ‘twas a sight! A big powdered wig, half as high as herself, was a-top o’ her head, and, wow!-was ever such wrinkles?-and her old baggy throat all powdered white, and her cheeks rouged, and mouse-skin eyebrows, that Mrs Wyvern used to stick on, and there she lay proud and stark, wi’ a pair o’ clocked silk hose on, and heels to her shoon as tall as nine-pins. Lawk! But her nose was crooked and thin, and half the whites o’ her eyes was open. She used to stand, dressed as she was, gigglin’ and dribblin’ before the lookin’-glass, wi’ a fan in her hand and a big nosegay in her bodice. Her wrinkled little hands was stretched down by her sides, and such long nails, all cut into points, I never sid in my days. Could it even a bin the fashion for grit fowk to wear their fingernails so?

‘Well, I think ye’d a-bin frightened yourself if ye’d a sid such a sight. I couldn’t let go the curtain, nor move an inch, nor take my eyes off her; my very heart stood still. And in an instant she opens her eyes and up she sits, and spins herself round, and down wi’ her, wi’ a clack on her two tall heels on the floor, facin’ me, ogglin’ in my face wi’ her two great glassy eyes, and a wicked simper wi’ her wrinkled lips, and lang fause teeth.

‘Well, a corpse is a natural thing; but this was the dreadfullest sight I ever sid. She had her fingers straight out pointin’ at me, and her back was crooked, round again wi’ age. Says she:

‘‘Ye little limb! what for did ye say I killed the boy? I’ll tickle ye till ye’re stiff!’

‘If I’d a thought an instant, I’d a turned about and run. But I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and I backed from her as soon as I could; and she came clatterin’ after like a thing on wires, with her fingers pointing to my throat, and she makin’ all the time a sound with her tongue like zizz-zizz-zizz.

‘I kept backin’ and backin’ as quick as I could, and her fingers was only a few inches away from my throat, and I felt I’d lose my wits if she touched me.

‘I went back this way, right into the corner, and I gev a yellock, ye’d think saul and body was partin’, and that minute my aunt, from the door, calls out wi’ a blare, and the ald lady turns round on her, and I turns about, and ran through my room, and down the stairs, as hard as my legs could carry me.

‘I cried hearty, I can tell you, when I got down to the housekeeper’s room. Mrs Wyvern laughed a deal when I told her what happened. But she changed her key when she heard the ald lady’s words.

‘‘Say them again,’ says she.

‘So I told her.

‘‘Ye little limb! What for did ye say I killed the boy? I’ll tickle ye till ye’re stiff.’

‘‘And did ye say she killed a boy?’ says she.

‘‘Not I, ma’am,’ says I.

‘Judith was always up with me, after that, when the two elder women was away from her. I would a jumped out at winda, rather than stay alone in the same room wi’ her.

‘It was about a week after, as well as I can remember, Mrs Wyvern, one day when me and her was alone, told me a thing about Madam Crowl that I did not know before.

‘She being young and a great beauty, full seventy year before, had married Squire Crowl, of Applewale. But he was a widower, and had a son about nine years old.

‘There never was tale or tidings of this boy after one mornin’. No one could say where he went to. He was allowed too much liberty, and used to be off in the morning, one day, to the keeper’s cottage and breakfast wi’ him, and away to the warren, and not home, mayhap, till evening; and another time down to the lake, and bathe there, and spend the day fishin’ there, or paddlin’ about in the boat. Well, no one could say what was gone wi’ him; only this, that his hat was found by the lake, under a haathorn that grows thar to this day, and ‘twas thought he was drowned bathin’. And the squire’s son, by his second marriage, with this Madam Crowl that lived sa dreadful lang, came in far the estates. It was his son, the ald lady’s grandson, Squire Chevenix Crowl, that owned the estates at the time I came to Applewale.

‘There was a deal o’ talk lang before my aunt’s time about it; and ‘twas said the step-mother knew more than she was like to let out. And she managed her husband, the ald squire, wi’ her white-heft and flatteries. And as the boy was never seen more, in course of time the thing died out of fowks’ minds.

‘I’m goin’ to tell ye noo about what I sid wi’ my own een.

‘I was not there six months, and it was winter time, when the ald lady took her last sickness.

‘The doctor was afeard she might a took a fit o’ madness, as she did fifteen years befoore, and was buckled up, many a time, in a strait-waistcoat, which was the very leathern jerkin I sid in the closet, off my aunt’s room.

‘Well, she didn’t. She pined, and windered, and went off, torflin’, torflin’, quiet enough, till a day or two before her flittin’, and then she took to rabblin’, and sometimes skirlin’ in the bed, ye’d think a robber had a knife to her throat, and she used to work out o’ the bed, and not being strong enough, then, to walk or stand, she’d fall on the flure, wi’ her ald wizened hands stretched before her face, and skirlin’ still for mercy.

‘Ye may guess I didn’t go into the room, and I used to be shiverin’ in my bed wi’ fear, at her skirlin’ and scrafflin’ on the flure, and blarin’ out words that id make your skin turn blue.

‘My aunt, and Mrs Wyvern, and Judith Squailes, and a woman from Lexhoe, was always about her. At last she took fits, and they wore her out.

‘T’ sir was there, and prayed for her; but she was past praying with. I suppose it was right, but none could think there was much good in it, and sa at lang last she made her flittin’, and a’ was over, and old Dame Crowl was shrouded and coffined, and Squire Chevenix was wrote for. But he was away in France, and the delay was sa lang, that t’ sir and doctor both agreed it would not du to keep her langer out o’ her place, and no one cared but just them two, and my aunt and the rest o’ us, from Applewale, to go to the buryin’. So the old lady of Applewale was laid in the vault under Lexhoe Church; and we lived up at the great house till such time as the squire should come to tell his will about us, and pay off such as he chose to discharge.

‘I was put into another room, two doors away from what was Dame Crowl’s chamber, after her death, and this thing happened the night before Squire Chevenix came to Applewale.

‘The room I was in now was a large square chamber, covered wi’ yak pannels, but unfurnished except for my bed, which had no curtains to it, and a chair and a table, or so, that looked nothing at all in such a big room. And the big looking-glass, that the old lady used to keek into and admire herself from head to heel, now that there was na mair o’ that wark, was put out of the way, and stood against the wall in my room, for there was shiftin’ o’ many things in her chamber ye may suppose, when she came to be coffined.

‘The news had come that day that the squire was to be down next morning at Applewale; and not sorry was I, for I thought I was sure to be sent home again to my mother. And right glad was I, and I was thinkin’ of a’ at hame, and my sister Janet, and the kitten and the pymag, and Trimmer the tike, and all the rest, and I got sa fidgetty, I couldn’t sleep, and the clock struck twelve, and me wide awake, and the room as dark as pick. My back was turned to the door, and my eyes toward the wall opposite.

‘Well, it could na be a full quarter past twelve, when I sees a lightin’ on the wall befoore me, as if something took fire behind, and the shadas o’ the bed, and the chair, and my gown, that was hangin’ from the wall, was dancin’ up and down on the ceilin’ beams and the yak pannels; and I turns my head ower my shouther quick, thinkin’ something must a gone a’ fire.

‘And what sud I see, by Jen! but the likeness o’ the ald beldame, bedizened out in her satins and velvets, on her dead body, simperin’, wi’ her eyes as wide as saucers, and her face like the fiend himself. ‘Twas a red light that rose about her in a fuffin low, as if her dress round her feet was blazin’. She was drivin’ on right for me, wi’ her ald shrivelled hands crooked as if she was goin’ to claw me. I could not stir, but she passed me straight by, wi’ a blast o’ cald air, and I sid her, at the wall, in the alcove as my aunt used to call it, which was a recess where the state bed used to stand in ald times wi’ a door open wide, and her hands gropin’ in at somethin’ was there. I never sid that door befoore. And she turned round to me, like a thing on a pivot, flyrin’, and all at once the room was dark, and I standin’ at the far side o’ the bed; I don’t know how I got there, and I found my tongue at last, and if I did na blare a yellock, rennin’ down the gallery and almost pulled Mrs Wyvern’s door off t’ hooks, and frighted her half out o’ wits.

‘Ye may guess I did na sleep that night; and wi’ the first light, down wi’ me to my aunt, as fast as my two legs cud carry me.

‘Well my aunt did na frump or flite me, as I thought she would, but she held me by the hand, and looked hard in my face all the time. And she telt me not to be feared; and says she:

‘‘Hed the appearance a key in its hand?’

‘‘Yes,’ says I, bringin’ it to mind, ‘a big key in a queer brass handle.’

‘Stop a bit,’ says she, lettin’ go ma hand, and openin’ the cupboard-door. ‘Was it like this?’ says she, takin’ one out in her fingers, and showing it to me, with a dark look in my face.

‘‘That was it,’ says I, quick enough.

‘‘Are ye sure?’ she says, turnin’ it round.

‘‘Sart,’ says I, and I felt like I was gain’ to faint when I sid it.

‘‘Well, that will do, child,’ says she, saftly thinkin’, and she locked it up again.

‘‘The squire himself will be here today, before twelve o’clock, and ye must tell him all about it,’ says she, thinkin’, ‘and I suppose I’ll be leavin’ soon, and so the best thing for the present is, that ye should go home this afternoon, and I’ll look out another place for you when I can.’

‘Fain was I, ye may guess, at that word.

‘My aunt packed up my things for me, and the three pounds that was due to me, to bring home, and Squire Crowl himself came down to Applewale that day, a handsome man, about thirty years ald. It was the second time I sid him. But this was the first time he spoke to me.

‘My aunt talked wi’ him in the housekeeper’s room, and I don’t know what they said. I was a bit feared on the squire, he bein’ a great gentleman down in Lexhoe, and I darn’t go near till I was called. And says he, smilin’:

‘‘What’s a’ this ye a sen, child? it mun be a dream, for ye know there’s na sic a thing as a bo or a freet in a’ the world. But whatever it was, ma little maid, sit ye down and tell all about it from first to last.’

‘Well, so soon as I made an end, he thought a bit, and says he to my aunt:

‘‘I mind the place well. In old Sir Olivur’s time lame Wyndel told me there was a door in that recess, to the left, where the lassie dreamed she saw my grandmother open it. He was past eighty when he told me that, and I but a boy. It’s twenty year sen. The plate and jewels used to be kept there, long ago, before the iron closet was made in the arras chamber, and he told me the key had a brass handle, and this ye say was found in the bottom o’ the kist where she kept her old fans. Now, would not it be a queer thing if we found some spoons or diamonds forgot there? Ye mun come up wi’ us, lassie, and point to the very spot.’

‘Loth was I, and my heart in my mouth, and fast I held by my aunt’s hand as I stept into that awsome room, and showed them both how she came and passed me by, and the spot where she stood, and where the door seemed to open.

‘There was an ald empty press against the wall then, and shoving it aside, sure enough there was the tracing of a door in the wainscot, and a keyhole stopped with wood, and planed across as smooth as the rest, and the joining of the door all stopped wi’ putty the colour o’ yak, and, but for the hinges that showed a bit when the press was shoved aside, ye would not consayt there was a door there at all.

‘‘Ha!’ says he, wi’ a queer smile, ‘this looks like it.’

‘It took some minutes wi’ a small chisel and hammer to pick the bit o’ wood out o’ the keyhole. The key fitted, sure enough, and, wi’ a strang twist and a lang skreak, the boult went back and he pulled the door open.

‘There was another door inside, stranger than the first, but the lacks was gone, and it opened easy. Inside was a narrow floor and walls and vault o’ brick; we could not see what was in it, for ‘twas dark as pick.

‘When my aunt had lighted the candle, the squire held it up and stept in.

‘My aunt stood on tiptoe tryin’ to look over his shouther, and I did na see nout.

‘‘Ha! ha!’ says the squire, steppin’ backward. ‘What’s that? Gi’ ma the poker-quick!’ says he to my aunt. And as she went to the hearth I peeps beside his arm, and I sid squat down in the far corner a monkey or a flayin’ on the chest, or else the maist shrivelled up, wizzened ald wife that ever was sen on yearth.

‘‘By Jen!’ says my aunt, as puttin’ the poker in his hand, she keeked by his shouther, and sid the ill-favoured thing, ‘hae a care, sir, what ye’re doin’. Back wi’ ye, and shut to the door!’

‘But in place o’ that he steps in saftly, wi’ the poker pointed like a swoord, and he gies it a poke, and down it a’ tumbles together, head and a’, in a heap o’ bayans and dust, little meyar an’ a hatful.

‘‘Twas the bayans o’ a child; a’ the rest went to dust at a touch. They said nout for a while, but he turns round the skull, as it lay on the floor.

‘Young as I was, I consayted I knew well enough what they was thinkin’ on.

‘‘A dead cat!’ says he, pushin’ back and blowin’ out the can’le, and shuttin’ to the door. ‘We’ll come back, you and me, Mrs Shutters, and look on the shelves by-and-bye. I’ve other matters first to speak to ye about; and this little girl’s goin’ hame, ye say. She has her wages, and I mun mak’ her a present,’ says he, pattin’ my shouther wi’ his hand.

‘And he did gimma a goud pound and I went aff to Lexhoe about an hour after, and sa hame by the stage-coach, and fain was I to be at hame again; and I never sid Dame Crowl o’ Applewale, God be thanked, either in appearance or in dream, at-efter. But when I was grown to be a woman, my aunt spent a day and night wi’ me at Littleham, and she telt me there was no doubt it was the poor little boy that was missing sa lang sen, that was shut up to die thar in the dark by that wicked beldame, whar his skirls, or his prayers, or his thumpin’ cud na be heard, and his hat was left by the water’s edge, whoever did it, to mak’ belief he was drowned. The clothes, at the first touch, a’ ran into a snuff o’ dust in the cell whar the bayans was found. But there was a handful o’ jet buttons, and a knife with a green heft, together wi’ a couple o’ pennies the poor little fella had in his pocket, I suppose, when he was decoyed in thar, and sid his last o’ the light. And there was, amang the squire’s papers, a copy o’ the notice that was prented after he was lost, when the ald squire thought he might ‘a run away, or bin took by gipsies, and it said he had a green-hefted knife wi’ him, and that his buttons were o’ cut jet. Sa that is a’ I hev to say consarnin’ ald Dame Crowl, o’ Applewale House.’

The Haunted House by Charles Dickens

CHAPTER I-THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE

UNDER none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people-and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.

The manner of my lighting on it was this.

I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop by the way, to look at the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn’t been to sleep at all;-upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night-as that opposite man always has-several legs too many, and all of them too long. In addition to this unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable.

It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller and said:

‘I beg your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me?’ For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.

The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:

‘In you, sir?-B.’

‘B, sir?’ said I, growing warm.

‘I have nothing to do with you, sir,’ returned the gentleman; ‘pray let me listen-O.’

He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.

At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication with the guard, is a serious position. The thought came to my relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don’t believe in. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.

‘You will excuse me,’ said the gentleman contemptuously, ‘if I am too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it. I have passed the night-as indeed I pass the whole of my time now-in spiritual intercourse.’

‘O!’ said I, somewhat snappishly.

‘The conferences of the night began,’ continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, ‘with this message: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ ‘

‘Sound,’ said I; ‘but, absolutely new?’

‘New from spirits,’ returned the gentleman.

I could only repeat my rather snappish ‘O!’ and ask if I might be favoured with the last communication.

‘ ‘A bird in the hand,’ ‘ said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, ‘ ‘is worth two in the Bosh.’ ‘

‘Truly I am of the same opinion,’ said I; ‘but shouldn’t it be Bush?’

‘It came to me, Bosh,’ returned the gentleman.

The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. ‘My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling.’ Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. ‘I am glad to see you, amico. Come sta? Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Addio!’ In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, ‘Bubler,’ for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction of Mrs Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.

If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of them. In a word, I was so impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free air of Heaven.

By that time it was a beautiful morning. As I walked away among such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and russet trees; and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation, and thought of the steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they are sustained; the gentleman’s spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece of journey-work as ever this world saw. In which heathen state of mind, I came within view of the house, and stopped to examine it attentively.

It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden: a pretty even square of some two acres. It was a house of about the time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartet of Georges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was ‘to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished.’ It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of which had been extremely ill chosen.

It was easy to see that it was an avoided house-a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a mile off-a house that nobody would take. And the natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.

No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is so solemn to me, as the early morning. In the summer time, I often rise very early, and repair to my room to do a day’s work before breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep-in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending-the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are images of Death. The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of Death. The colour and the chill have the same association. Even a certain air that familiar household objects take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of the night into the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age, in death, into the old youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition of my father, at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once. As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder, as I thought-and there was no such thing.

For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning; and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then.

I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the house.

‘Is it haunted?’ I asked.

The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, ‘I say nothing.’

‘Then it is haunted?’

‘Well!’ cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the appearance of desperation-’I wouldn’t sleep in it.’

‘Why not?’

‘If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to ring ‘em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang ‘em; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why, then,’ said the landlord, ‘I’d sleep in that house.’

‘Is anything seen there?’

The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for ‘Ikey!’

The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way-if it were not pruned-of covering his head and overrunning his boots.

‘This gentleman wants to know,’ said the landlord, ‘if anything’s seen at the Poplars.’

‘ ‘Ooded woman with a howl,’ said Ikey, in a state of great freshness.

‘Do you mean a cry?’

‘I mean a bird, sir.’

‘A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me! Did you ever see her?’

‘I seen the howl.’

‘Never the woman?’

‘Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together.’

‘Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?’

‘Lord bless you, sir! Lots.’

‘Who?’

‘Lord bless you, sir! Lots.’

‘The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his shop?’

‘Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn’t go a-nigh the place. No!’ observed the young man, with considerable feeling; ‘he an’t overwise, an’t Perkins, but he an’t such a fool as that.’

(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins’s knowing better.)

‘Who is-or who was-the hooded woman with the owl? Do you know?’

‘Well!’ said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he scratched his head with the other, ‘they say, in general, that she was murdered, and the howl he ‘ooted the while.’

This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see, had been took with fits and held down in ‘em, after seeing the hooded woman. Also, that a personage, dimly described as ‘a hold chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby, unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, ‘Why not? and even if so, mind your own business,’ ‘ had encountered the hooded woman, a matter of five or six times. But, I was not materially assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch as the first was in California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by the landlord), Anywheres.

Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries, between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to understand, than I had been able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller to the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses-both abroad. In one of these, an old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly: notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms, which were never used, and possessed, in one large room in which I sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted these considerations to the landlord. And as to this particular house having a bad name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the village that any weird-looking, old drunken tinker of the neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in time to be suspected of that commercial venture! All this wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life.

To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted house, and was already half resolved to take it. So, after breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins’s brother-in-law (a whip and harness maker, who keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey.

Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal. The slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man’s hands whenever it’s not turned to man’s account. The kitchens and offices were too large, and too remote from each other. Above stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened between patches of fertility represented by rooms; and there was a mouldy old well with a green growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the bottom of the back-stairs, under the double row of bells. One of these bells was labelled, on a black ground in faded white letters, MASTER B. This, they told me, was the bell that rang the most.

‘Who was Master B.?’ I asked. ‘Is it known what he did while the owl hooted?’

‘Rang the bell,’ said Ikey.

I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it himself. It was a loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound. The other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to which their wires were conducted: as ‘Picture Room,’ ‘Double Room,’ ‘Clock Room,’ and the like. Following Master B.’s bell to its source I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft, with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition, always made a point of pulling the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest why he made such a fool of himself.

Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but sparely. Some of the furniture-say, a third-was as old as the house; the rest was of various periods within the last half century. I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to treat for the house. I went that day, and I took it for six months.

It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very handsome, sensible, and engaging). We took with us, a deaf stable-man, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an Odd Girl. I have reason to record of the attendant last enumerated, who was one of the Saint Lawrence’s Union Female Orphans, that she was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement.

The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock’s Gardens, Liggs’s Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak.

We went, before dark, through all the natural-as opposed to supernatural-miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don’t know what it is), there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the landlord be? Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful and exemplary. But within four hours after dark we had got into a supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen ‘Eyes,’ and was in hysterics.

My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or any one of them, for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd Girl had ‘seen Eyes’ (no other explanation could ever be drawn from her), before nine, and by ten o’clock had had as much vinegar applied to her as would pickle a handsome salmon.

I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o’clock Master B.’s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the house resounded with his lamentations!

I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don’t know; but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B.’s neck-in other words, breaking his bell short off-and silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience and belief, for ever.

But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master B.’s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.’s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?-I say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd Girl’s suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among us like a parochial petrifaction.

Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an unusually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those specimens, so that they didn’t fall, but hung upon her face and nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by neatly winding up the session with the protest that the Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes regarding her silver watch.

As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded woman? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of hooded women. Noises? With that contagion downstairs, I myself have sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system.

I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-triggers. The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.

It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be frightened, for the moment in one’s own person, by a real owl, and then to show the owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and combinations. It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence it. It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and recesses. We changed servants, and it was no better. The new set ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better. At last, our comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised and wretched, that I one night dejectedly said to my sister: ‘Patty, I begin to despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I think we must give this up.’

My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied, ‘No, John, don’t give it up. Don’t be beaten, John. There is another way.’

‘And what is that?’ said I.

‘John,’ returned my sister, ‘if we are not to be driven out of this house, and that for no reason whatever that is apparent to you or me, we must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into our own hands.’

‘But, the servants,’ said I.

‘Have no servants,’ said my sister, boldly.

Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions. The notion was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very doubtful.

‘We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and we know they are frightened and do infect one another,’ said my sister.

‘With the exception of Bottles,’ I observed, in a meditative tone.

(The deaf stable-man. I kept him in my service, and still keep him, as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England.)

‘To be sure, John,’ assented my sister; ‘except Bottles. And what does that go to prove? Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever given, or taken! None.’

This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired, every night at ten o’clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles’s way after that minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering. Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many uproars. An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.

‘And so,’ continued my sister, ‘I exempt Bottles. And considering, John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable and willing-form a Society here for three months-wait upon ourselves and one another-live cheerfully and socially-and see what happens.’

I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot, and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.

We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and mustered in the haunted house.

I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun? On his saying, ‘Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her,’ I begged the favour of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.

‘She’s a true one, sir,’ said Ikey, after inspecting a double-barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago. ‘No mistake about her, sir.’

‘Ikey,’ said I, ‘don’t mention it; I have seen something in this house.’

‘No, sir?’ he whispered, greedily opening his eyes. ‘ ‘Ooded lady, sir?’

‘Don’t be frightened,’ said I. ‘It was a figure rather like you.’

‘Lord, sir?’

‘Ikey!’ said I, shaking hands with him warmly: I may say affectionately; ‘if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure. And I promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again!’

The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The Odd Girl’s case was exactly similar. She went about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It is not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of this kind.

To return to our party. The first thing we did when we were all assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and every bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or were shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words. We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were not there to be deceived, or to deceive-which we considered pretty much the same thing-and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out the truth. The understanding was established, that any one who heard unusual noises in the night, and who wished to trace them, should knock at my door; lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences since that then present hour of our coming together in the haunted house, should be brought to light for the good of all; and that we would hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable provocation to break silence.

We were, in number and in character, as follows:

First-to get my sister and myself out of the way-there were we two. In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I drew Master B.’s. Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel, so called after the great astronomer: than whom I suppose a better man at a telescope does not breathe. With him, was his wife: a charming creature to whom he had been married in the previous spring. I thought it (under the circumstances) rather imprudent to bring her, because there is no knowing what even a false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and I must say that if she had been my wife, I never could have left her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the Clock Room. Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges I was ever able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather, wind or no wind. Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be ‘fast’ (another word for loose, as I understand the term), but who is much too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have distinguished himself before now, if his father had not unfortunately left him a small independence of two hundred a year, on the strength of which his only occupation in life has been to spend six. I am in hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his fortune is made. Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture Room. She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and ‘goes in’-to use an expression of Alfred’s-for Woman’s mission, Woman’s rights, Woman’s wrongs, and everything that is woman’s with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. ‘Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you!’ I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, ‘but don’t overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don’t fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not all Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it.’ However, I digress.

Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room. We had but three other chambers: the Corner Room, the Cupboard Room, and the Garden Room. My old friend, Jack Governor, ‘slung his hammock,’ as he called it, in the Corner Room. I have always regarded Jack as the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago-nay, handsomer. A portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under darker hair, and they look all the better for their silver setting. He has been wherever his Union namesake flies, has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his name, and have cried, ‘You know Jack Governor? Then you know a prince of men!’ That he is! And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were to meet him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal’s skin, you would be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.

Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but, it fell out that he married another lady and took her to South America, where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one ‘Nat Beaver,’ an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At times, there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom lasted many minutes. He got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr Undery, my friend and solicitor: who came down, in an amateur capacity, ‘to go through with it,’ as he said, and who plays whist better than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning to the red cover at the end.

I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries. My sister was pastry cook and confectioner. Starling and I were Cook’s Mate, turn and turn about, and on special occasions the chief cook ‘pressed’ Mr Beaver. We had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within, and there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.

We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On the first night, I was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship’s lantern in his hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me that he ‘was going aloft to the main truck,’ to have the weathercock down. It was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody would be ‘hailing a ghost’ presently, if it wasn’t done. So, up to the top of the house, where I could hardly stand for the wind, we went, accompanied by Mr Beaver; and there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they both got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I thought they would never come down. Another night, they turned out again, and had a chimney-cowl off. Another night, they cut a sobbing and gulping water-pipe away. Another night, they found out something else. On several occasions, they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to ‘overhaul’ something mysterious in the garden.

The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed anything. All we knew was, if any one’s room were haunted, no one looked the worse for it.

CHAPTER II-THE GHOST IN MASTER B.’S ROOM

WHEN I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained so distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master B. My speculations about him were uneasy and manifold. Whether his Christian name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having been born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill. Whether the initial letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird. Whether he was a foundling, and had been baptized B. Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for Briton, or for Bull. Whether he could possibly have been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch?

With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of the deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he couldn’t have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, Brighton, or Broadstairs, like a Bounding Billiard Ball?

So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.

It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a dream of Master B., or of anything belonging to him. But, the instant I awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my thoughts took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to something that would fit it and keep it quiet.

For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.’s room, when I began to perceive that things were going wrong.

The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning when it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and amazement, that I was shaving-not myself-I am fifty-but a boy. Apparently Master B.!

I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there. I looked again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression of a boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one. Extremely troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and went back to the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and complete the operation in which I had been disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut while recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight at me, the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong effort to recover myself. Opening them again, I saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been dead. Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in my life.

Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the present general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious thoughts, I retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter some new experience of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation needless, for, waking from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o’clock in the morning, what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master B.!

I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a plaintive voice saying, ‘Where am I? What is become of me?’ and, looking hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.

The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather, was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed that these buttons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill round his neck. His right hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon his stomach; connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance, and his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine.

‘Where am I?’ said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice. ‘And why was I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that Calomel given me?’

I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn’t tell him.

‘Where is my little sister,’ said the ghost, ‘and where my angelic little wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?’

I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with. I represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human experience, come out well, when discovered. I urged that I myself had, in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and none of them had at all answered. I expressed my humble belief that that boy never did answer. I represented that he was a mythic character, a delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, the last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a wall of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely Titanic. I related how, on the strength of our having been together at ‘Old Doylance’s,’ he had asked himself to breakfast with me (a social offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak embers of belief in Doylance’s boys, I had let him in; and how, he had proved to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being abolished, instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many thousand millions of ten-and-sixpenny notes.

The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare. ‘Barber!’ it apostrophised me when I had finished.

‘Barber?’ I repeated-for I am not of that profession.

‘Condemned,’ said the ghost, ‘to shave a constant change of customers-now, me-now, a young man-now, thyself as thou art-now, thy father-now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down with a skeleton every night, and to rise with it every morning-’

(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)

‘Barber! Pursue me!’

I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a spell to pursue the phantom. I immediately did so, and was in Master B.’s room no longer.

Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told the exact truth-particularly as they were always assisted with leading questions, and the Torture was always ready. I asseverate that, during my occupation of Master B.’s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted it, on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly, I was presented to no shabby old man with a goat’s horns and tail (something between Pan and an old clothes man), holding conventional receptions, as stupid as those of real life and less decent; but, I came upon other things which appeared to me to have more meaning.

Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare without hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance on a broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse. The very smell of the animal’s paint-especially when I brought it out, by making him warm-I am ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterwards, in a hackney coach; an institution with the peculiar smell of which, the present generation is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog with the mange, and very old bellows. (In this, I appeal to previous generations to confirm or refute me.) I pursued the phantom, on a headless donkey: at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in the state of his stomach that his head was always down there, investigating it; on ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the first cab-another forgotten institution where the fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with the driver.

Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful than those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one experience from which you may judge of many.

I was marvellously changed. I was myself, yet not myself. I was conscious of something within me, which has been the same all through my life, and which I have always recognised under all its phases and varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed in Master B.’s room. I had the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, and I had taken another creature like myself, also with the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, behind a door, and was confiding to him a proposition of the most astounding nature.

This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.

The other creature assented warmly. He had no notion of respectability, neither had I. It was the custom of the East, it was the way of the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted name again for once, it is so scented with sweet memories!), the usage was highly laudable, and most worthy of imitation. ‘O, yes! Let us,’ said the other creature with a jump, ‘have a Seraglio.’

It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin. It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies, and incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great Haroun. Mystery impenetrably shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bule.

We were ten in Miss Griffin’s establishment by Hampstead Ponds; eight ladies and two gentlemen. Miss Bule, whom I judge to have attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society. I opened the subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed that she should become the Favourite.

Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss Pipson? Miss Bule-who was understood to have vowed towards that young lady, a friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on the Church Service and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and lock-Miss Bule said she could not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that Pipson was not one of the common.

Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was my idea of anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I promptly replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair Circassian.

‘And what then?’ Miss Bule pensively asked.

I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to me veiled, and purchased as a slave.

[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in the State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier. He afterwards resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he yielded.]

‘Shall I not be jealous?’ Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.

‘Zobeide, no,’ I replied; ‘you will ever be the favourite Sultana; the first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours.’

Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in the course of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule’s hand after supper, a little note to that effect; dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the celebrated chief of the Blacks of the Hareem.

There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, as there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself before the Caliph; wouldn’t call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him slightingly and inconsistently as a mere ‘chap;’ said he, the other creature, ‘wouldn’t play’-Play!-and was otherwise coarse and offensive. This meanness of disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of an united Seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest of the daughters of men.

The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a legend among the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl. But every day after dinner, for an hour, we were all together, and then the Favourite and the rest of the Royal Hareem competed who should most beguile the leisure of the Serene Haroun reposing from the cares of State-which were generally, as in most affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander of the Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.

On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for that officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation. In the first place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the Caliph, even when Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss Pipson’s pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment, was never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for. In the second place, his breaking out into grinning exclamations of ‘Lork you pretties!’ was neither Eastern nor respectful. In the third place, when specially instructed to say ‘Bismillah!’ he always said ‘Hallelujah!’ This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humoured altogether, kept his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous extent, and even once-it was on the occasion of the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap, too-embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the Caliph, all round. (Parenthetically let me say God bless Mesrour, and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender bosom, softening many a hard day since!)

Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that she was walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and Mahomedanism. I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with which the contemplation of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state, inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent among us that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge of what Miss Griffin (who knew all things that could be learnt out of book) didn’t know, were the main-spring of the preservation of our secret. It was wonderfully kept, but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal. The danger and escape occurred upon a Sunday. We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head-as we were every Sunday-advertising the establishment in an unsecular sort of way-when the description of Solomon in his domestic glory happened to be read. The moment that monarch was thus referred to, conscience whispered me, ‘Thou, too, Haroun!’ The officiating minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving him the appearance of reading personally at me. A crimson blush, attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my features. The Grand Vizier became more dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened as if the sunset of Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces. At this portentous time the awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of Islam. My own impression was, that Church and State had entered into a conspiracy with Miss Griffin to expose us, and that we should all be put into white sheets, and exhibited in the centre aisle. But, so Westerly-if I may be allowed the expression as opposite to Eastern associations-was Miss Griffin’s sense of rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we were saved.

I have called the Seraglio, united. Upon the question, solely, whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates divided. Zobeide asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to scratch, and the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green baize bag, originally designed for books. On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent beauty from the fruitful plains of Camden Town (whence she had been brought, by traders, in the half-yearly caravan that crossed the intermediate desert after the holidays), held more liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting the benefit of them to that dog, and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier-who had no rights, and was not in question. At length, the difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very youthful slave as Deputy. She, raised upon a stool, officially received upon her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies of the Hareem.

And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I became heavily troubled. I began to think of my mother, and what she would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected. I thought of the number of beds we made up at our house, of my father’s income, and of the baker, and my despondency redoubled. The Seraglio and malicious Vizier, divining the cause of their Lord’s unhappiness, did their utmost to augment it. They professed unbounded fidelity, and declared that they would live and die with him. Reduced to the utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay awake, for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot. In my despair, I think I might have taken an early opportunity of falling on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon, and praying to be dealt with according to the outraged laws of my country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not opened before me.

One day, we were out walking, two and two-on which occasion the Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the turnpike, and if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the beauties of the Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the night-and it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom. An unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace. That charmer, on the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to a ball and supper: with a special stipulation that they were ‘not to be fetched till twelve.’ This wandering of the antelope’s fancy, led to the surprising arrival at Miss Griffin’s door, in divers equipages and under various escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top step in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears. At the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies, the antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and at every new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more distracted, that at last she had been seen to tear her front. Ultimate capitulation on the part of the offender, had been followed by solitude in the linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to all, of vindictive length, in which Miss Griffin had used expressions: Firstly, ‘I believe you all of you knew of it;’ Secondly, ‘Every one of you is as wicked as another;’ Thirdly, ‘A pack of little wretches.’

Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was in a very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss Griffin, and, after walking on at her side for a little while and talking with her, looked at me. Supposing him to be a minion of the law, and that my hour was come, I instantly ran away, with the general purpose of making for Egypt.

The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as my legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning on the left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest way to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep, and cut me off. Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back; Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, This was very curious! Why had I run away when the gentleman looked at me?

If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have made no answer; having no breath, I certainly made none. Miss Griffin and the strange man took me between them, and walked me back to the palace in a sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn’t help feeling, with astonishment) in culprit state.

When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss Griffin called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky guards of the Hareem. Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed tears. ‘Bless you, my precious!’ said that officer, turning to me; ‘your Pa’s took bitter bad!’

I asked, with a fluttered heart, ‘Is he very ill?’

‘Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!’ said the good Mesrour, kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head to rest on, ‘your Pa’s dead!’

Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished; from that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest of the daughters of men.

I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and we had a sale there. My own little bed was so superciliously looked upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called ‘The Trade,’ that a brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song. So I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal song it must have been to sing!

Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough; where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, ‘Going, going, gone!’ I never whispered in that wretched place that I had been Haroun, or had had a Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my reverses, I should be so worried, that I should have to drown myself in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer.

Ah me, ah me! No other ghost has haunted the boy’s room, my friends, since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy belief. Many a time have I pursued the phantom: never with this man’s stride of mine to come up with it, never with these man’s hands of mine to touch it, never more to this man’s heart of mine to hold it in its purity. And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.

Schalken the Painter by Joseph Le Fann

‘For he is not a man as I am that we should come together; neither is there any that might lay his hand upon us both. Let him, therefore, take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me.’

There exists, at this moment, in good preservation a remarkable work of Schalken’s. The curious management of its lights constitutes, as usual in his pieces, the chief apparent merit of the picture. I say apparent, for in its subject, and not in its handling, however exquisite, consists its real value.

The picture represents the interior of what might be a chamber in some antique religious building; and its foreground is occupied by a female figure, in a species of white robe, part of which is arranged so as to form a veil. The dress, however, is not that of any religious order. In her hand the figure bears a lamp, by which alone her figure and face are illuminated; and her features wear such an arch smile, as well becomes a pretty woman when practising some prankish roguery; in the background, and, excepting where the dim red light of an expiring fire serves to define the form, in total shadow, stands the figure of a man dressed in the old Flemish fashion, in an attitude of alarm, his hand being placed upon the hilt of his sword, which he appears to be in the act of drawing.

There are some pictures, which impress one, I know not how, with a conviction that they represent not the mere ideal shapes and combinations which have floated through the imagination of the artist, but scenes, faces, and situations which have actually existed. There is in that strange picture, something that stamps it as the representation of a reality.

And such in truth it is, for it faithfully records a remarkable and mysterious occurrence, and perpetuates, in the face of the female figure, which occupies the most prominent place in the design, an accurate portrait of Rose Velderkaust, the niece of Gerard Douw, the first, and, I believe, the only love of Godfrey Schalken. My great grandfather knew the painter well; and from Schalken himself he learned the fearful story of the painting, and from him too he ultimately received the picture itself as a bequest. The story and the picture have become heirlooms in my family, and having described the latter, I shall, if you please, attempt to relate the tradition which has descended with the canvas.

There are few forms on which the mantle of romance hangs more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth Schalken-the boorish but most cunning worker in oils, whose pieces delight the critics of our day almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own; and yet this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, in the midst of his celebrity, had in his obscure, but happier days, played the hero in a wild romance of mystery and passion.

When Schalken studied under the immortal Gerard Douw, he was a very young man; and in spite of his phlegmatic temperament, he at once fell over head and ears in love with the beautiful niece of his wealthy master. Rose Velderkaust was still younger than he, having not yet attained her seventeenth year, and, if tradition speaks truth, possessed all the soft and dimpling charms of the fair, light-haired Flemish maidens. The young painter loved honestly and fervently. His frank adoration was rewarded. He declared his love, and extracted a faltering confession in return. He was the happiest and proudest painter in all Christendom. But there was somewhat to dash his elation; he was poor and undistinguished. He dared not ask old Gerard for the hand of his sweet ward. He must first win a reputation and a competence.

There were, therefore, many dread uncertainties and cold days before him; he had to fight his way against sore odds. But he had won the heart of dear Rose Velderkaust, and that was half the battle. It is needless to say his exertions were redoubled, and his lasting celebrity proves that his industry was not unrewarded by success.

These ardent labours, and worse still, the hopes that elevated and beguiled them, were however, destined to experience a sudden interruption-of a character so strange and mysterious as to baffle all inquiry and to throw over the events themselves a shadow of preternatural horror.

Schalken had one evening outstayed all his fellow-pupils, and still pursued his work in the deserted room. As the daylight was fast falling, he laid aside his colours, and applied himself to the completion of a sketch on which he had expressed extraordinary pains. It was a religious composition, and represented the temptations of a pot-bellied Saint Anthony. The young artist, however destitute of elevation, had, nevertheless, discernment enough to be dissatisfied with his own work, and many were the patient erasures and improvements which saint and devil underwent, yet all in vain. The large, old-fashioned room was silent, and, with the exception of himself, quite emptied of its usual inmates. An hour had thus passed away, nearly two, without any improved result. Daylight had already declined, and twilight was deepening into the darkness of night. The patience of the young painter was exhausted, and he stood before his unfinished production, angry and mortified, one hand buried in the folds of his long hair, and the other holding the piece of charcoal which had so ill-performed its office, and which he now rubbed, without much regard to the sable streaks it produced, with irritable pressure upon his ample Flemish inexpressibles.

‘Curse the subject!’ said the young man aloud; ‘curse the picture, the devils, the saint-’

At this moment a short, sudden sniff uttered close beside him made the artist turn sharply round, and he now, for the first time, became aware that his labours had been overlooked by a stranger. Within about a yard and half, and rather behind him, there stood the figure of an elderly man in a cloak and broad-brimmed, conical hat; in his hand, which was protected with a heavy gauntlet-shaped glove, he carried a long ebony walking-stick, surmounted with what appeared, as it glittered dimly in the twilight, to be a massive head of gold, and upon his breast, through the folds of the cloak, there shone the links of a rich chain of the same metal. The room was so obscure that nothing further of the appearance of the figure could be ascertained, and his hat threw his features into profound shadow. It would not have been easy to conjecture the age of the intruder; but a quantity of dark hair escaping from beneath this sombre hat, as well as his firm and upright carriage served to indicate that his years could not yet exceed threescore, or thereabouts. There was an air of gravity and importance about the garb of the person, and something indescribably odd, I might say awful, in the perfect, stone-like stillness of the figure that effectually checked the testy comment which had at once risen to the lips of the irritated artist. He, therefore, as soon as he had sufficiently recovered his surprise, asked the stranger, civilly, to be seated, and desired to know if he had any message to leave for his master.

‘Tell Gerard Douw,’ said the unknown, without altering his attitude in the smallest degree, ‘that Minheer Vanderhausen, of Rotterdam, desires to speak with him on tomorrow evening at this hour, and if he please, in this room, upon matters of weight; that is all.’

The stranger, having finished this message, turned abruptly, and, with a quick, but silent step quitted the room, before Schalken had time to say a word in reply. The young man felt a curiosity to see in what direction the burgher of Rotterdam would turn, on quitting the studio, and for that purpose he went directly to the window which commanded the door.

A lobby of considerable extent intervened between the inner door of the painter’s room and the street entrance, so that Schalken occupied the post of observation before the old man could possibly have reached the street. He watched in vain, however. There was no other mode of exit. Had the queer old man vanished, or was he lurking about the recesses of the lobby for some sinister purpose? This last suggestion filled the mind of Schalken with a vague uneasiness, which was so unaccountably intense as to make him alike afraid to remain in the room alone, and reluctant to pass through the lobby. However, with an effort which appeared very disproportioned to the occasion, he summoned resolution to leave the room, and, having locked the door and thrust the key in his pocket, without looking to the right or left, he traversed the passage which had so recently, perhaps still, contained the person of his mysterious visitant, scarcely venturing to breathe till he had arrived in the open street.

‘Minheer Vanderhausen!’ said Gerard Douw within himself, as the appointed hour approached, ‘Minheer Vanderhausen, of Rotterdam! I never heard of the man till yesterday. What can he want of me? A portrait, perhaps, to be painted; or a poor relation to be apprenticed; or a collection to be valued; or-pshaw! there’s no one in Rotterdam to leave me a legacy. Well, whatever the business may be, we shall soon know it all.’

It was now the close of day, and again every easel, except that of Schalken, was deserted. Gerard Douw was pacing the apartment with the restless step of impatient expectation, sometimes pausing to glance over the work of one of his absent pupils, but more frequently placing himself at the window, from whence he might observe the passengers who threaded the obscure by-street in which his studio was placed.

‘Said you not, Godfrey,’ exclaimed Douw, after a long and fruitful gaze from his post of observation, and turning to Schalken, ‘that the hour he appointed was about seven by the clock of the Stadhouse?’

‘It had just told seven when I first saw him, sir,’ answered the student.

‘The hour is close at hand, then,’ said the master, consulting a horologe as large and as round as an orange. ‘Minheer Vanderhausen from Rotterdam-is it not so?’

‘Such was the name.’

‘And an elderly man, richly clad?’ pursued Douw, musingly.

‘As well as I might see,’ replied his pupil; ‘he could not be young, nor yet very old, neither; and his dress was rich and grave, as might become a citizen of wealth and consideration.’

At this moment the sonorous boom of the Stadhouse clock told, stroke after stroke, the hour of seven; the eyes of both master and student were directed to the door; and it was not until the last peal of the bell had ceased to vibrate, that Douw exclaimed - -

‘So, so; we shall have his worship presently, that is, if he means to keep his hour; if not, you may wait for him, Godfrey, if you court his acquaintance. But what, after all, if it should prove but a mummery got up by Vankarp, or some such wag? I wish you had run all risks, and cudgelled the old burgomaster soundly. I’d wager a dozen of Rhenish, his worship would have unmasked, and pleaded old acquaintance in a trice.’

‘Here he comes, sir,’ said Schalken, in a low monitory tone; and instantly, upon turning towards the door, Gerard Douw observed the same figure which had, on the day before, so unexpectedly greeted his pupil Schalken.

There was something in the air of the figure which at once satisfied the painter that there was no masquerading in the case, and that he really stood in the presence of a man of worship; and so, without hesitation, he doffed his cap, and courteously saluting the stranger, requested him to be seated. The visitor waved his hand slightly, as if in acknowledgment of the courtesy, but remained standing.

‘I have the honour to see Minheer Vanderhausen of Rotterdam?’ said Gerard Douw.

‘The same,’ was the laconic reply of his visitor.

‘I understand your worship desires to speak with me,’ continued Douw, ‘and I am here by appointment to wait your commands.’

‘Is that a man of trust?’ said Vanderhausen, turning towards Schalken, who stood at a little distance behind his master.

‘Certainly,’ replied Gerard.

‘Then let him take this box, and get the nearest jeweller or goldsmith to value its contents, and let him return hither with a certificate of the valuation.’

At the same time, he placed a small case about nine inches square in the hands of Gerard Douw, who was as much amazed at its weight as at the strange abruptness with which it was handed to him. In accordance with the wishes of the stranger, he delivered it into the hands of Schalken, and repeating his direction, despatched him upon the mission.

Schalken disposed his precious charge securely beneath the folds of his cloak, and rapidly traversing two or three narrow streets, he stopped at a corner house, the lower part of which was then occupied by the shop of a Jewish goldsmith. He entered the shop, and calling the little Hebrew into the obscurity of its back recesses, he proceeded to lay before him Vanderhausen’s casket. On being examined by the light of a lamp, it appeared entirely cased with lead, the outer surface of which was much scraped and soiled, and nearly white with age. This having been partially removed, there appeared beneath a box of some hard wood; which also they forced open and after the removal of two or three folds of linen, they discovered its contents to be a mass of golden ingots, closely packed, and, as the Jew declared, of the most perfect quality. Every ingot underwent the scrutiny of the little Jew, who seemed to feel an epicurean delight in touching and testing these morsels of the glorious metal; and each one of them was replaced in its berth with the exclamation:

‘Mein Gott, how very perfect! not one grain of alloy-beautiful, beautiful!’

The task was at length finished, and the Jew certified under his hand the value of the ingots submitted to his examination, to amount to many thousand rix-dollars. With the desired document in his pocket, and the rich box of gold carefully pressed under his arm, and concealed by his cloak, he retraced his way, and entering the studio, found his master and the stranger in close conference. Schalken had no sooner left the room, in order to execute the commission he had taken in charge, than Vanderhausen addressed Gerard Douw in the following terms: - -

‘I cannot tarry with you to-night more than a few minutes, and so I shall shortly tell you the matter upon which I come. You visited the town of Rotterdam some four months ago, and then I saw in the church of St. Lawrence your niece, Rose Velderkaust. I desire to marry her; and if I satisfy you that I am wealthier than any husband you can dream of for her, I expect that you will forward my suit with your authority. If you approve my proposal, you must close with it here and now, for I cannot wait for calculations and delays.’

Gerard Douw was hugely astonished by the nature of Minheer Vanderhausen’s communication, but he did not venture to express surprise; for besides the motives supplied by prudence and politeness, the painter experienced a kind of chill and oppression like that which is said to intervene when one is placed in unconscious proximity with the object of a natural antipathy-an undefined but overpowering sensation, while standing in the presence of the eccentric stranger, which made him very unwilling to say anything which might reasonably offend him.

‘I have no doubt,’ said Gerard, after two or three prefatory hems, ‘that the alliance which you propose would prove alike advantageous and honourable to my niece; but you must be aware that she has a will of her own, and may not acquiesce in what we may design for her advantage.’

‘Do not seek to deceive me, sir painter,’ said Vanderhausen; ‘you are her guardian-she is your ward-she is mine if you like to make her so.’

The man of Rotterdam moved forward a little as he spoke, and Gerard Douw, he scarce knew why, inwardly prayed for the speedy return of Schalken.

‘I desire,’ said the mysterious gentleman, ‘to place in your hands at once an evidence of my wealth, and a security for my liberal dealing with your niece. The lad will return in a minute or two with a sum in value five times the fortune which she has a right to expect from her husband. This shall lie in your hands, together with her dowry, and you may apply the united sum as suits her interest best; it shall be all exclusively hers while she lives: is that liberal?’

Douw assented, and inwardly acknowledged that fortune had been extraordinarily kind to his niece; the stranger, he thought, must be both wealthy and generous, and such an offer was not to be despised, though made by a humorist, and one of no very prepossessing presence. Rose had no very high pretensions for she had but a modest dowry, which she owed entirely to the generosity of her uncle; neither had she any right to raise exceptions on the score of birth, for her own origin was far from splendid, and as the other objections, Gerald resolved, and indeed, by the usages of the time, was warranted in resolving, not to listen to them for a moment.

‘Sir’ said he, addressing the stranger, ‘your offer is liberal, and whatever hesitation I may feel in closing with it immediately, arises solely from my not having the honour of knowing anything of your family or station. Upon these points you can, of course, satisfy me without difficulty?’

‘As to my respectability,’ said the stranger, drily, ‘you must take that for granted at present; pester me with no inquiries; you can discover nothing more about me than I choose to make known. You shall have sufficient security for my respectability-my word, if you are honourable: if you are sordid, my gold.’

‘A testy old gentleman,’ thought Douw, ‘he must have his own way; but, all things considered, I am not justified to declining his offer. I will not pledge myself unnecessarily, however.’

‘You will not pledge yourself unnecessarily,’ said Vanderhausen, strangely uttering the very words which had just floated through the mind of his companion; ‘but you will do so if it is necessary, I presume; and I will show you that I consider it indispensable. If the gold I mean to leave in your hands satisfy you, and if you don’t wish my proposal to be at once withdrawn, you must, before I leave this room, write your name to this engagement.’

Having thus spoken, he placed a paper in the hands of the master, the contents of which expressed an engagement entered into by Gerard Douw, to give to Wilken Vanderhausen of Rotterdam, in marriage, Rose Velderkaust, and so forth, within one week of the date thereof. While the painter was employed in reading this covenant, by the light of a twinkling oil lamp in the far wall of the room, Schalken, as we have stated, entered the studio, and having delivered the box and the valuation of the Jew, into the hands of the stranger, he was about to retire, when Vanderhausen called to him to wait; and, presenting the case and the certificate to Gerard Douw, he paused in silence until he had satisfied himself, by an inspection of both, respecting the value of the pledge left in his hands. At length he said - -

‘Are you content?’

The painter said he would fain have another day to consider.

‘Not an hour,’ said the suitor, apathetically.

‘Well then,’ said Douw, with a sore effort, ‘I am content, it is a bargain.’

‘Then sign at once,’ said Vanderhausen, ‘for I am weary.’

At the same time he produced a small case of writing materials, and Gerard signed the important document.

‘Let this youth witness the covenant,’ said the old man; and Godfrey Schalken unconsciously attested the instrument which forever bereft him of his dear Rose Velderkaust.

The compact being thus completed, the strange visitor folded up the paper, and stowed it safely in an inner pocket.

‘I will visit you to-morrow night at nine o’clock, at your own house, Gerard Douw, and will see the object of our contract;’ and so saying Wilken Vanderhausen moved stiffly, but rapidly, out of the room.

Schalken, eager to resolve his doubts, had placed himself by the window, in order to watch the street entrance; but the experiment served only to support his suspicions, for the old man did not issue from the door. This was very strange, odd, nay fearful. He and his master returned together, and talked but little on the way, for each had his own subjects of reflection, of anxiety, and of hope. Schalken, however, did not know the ruin which menaced his dearest projects.

Gerard Douw knew nothing of the attachment which had sprung up between his pupil and his niece; and even if he had, it is doubtful whether he would have regarded its existence as any serious obstruction to the wishes of Minheer Vanderhausen. Marriages were then and there matters of traffic and calculation; and it would have appeared as absurd in the eyes of the guardian to make a mutual attachment an essential element in a contract of the sort, as it would have been to draw up his bonds and receipts in the language of romance.

The painter, however, did not communicate to his niece the important step which he had taken in her behalf, a forbearance caused not by any anticipated opposition on her part, but solely by a ludicrous consciousness that if she were to ask him for a description of her destined bridegroom, he would be forced to confess that he had not once seen his face, and if called upon, would find it absolutely impossible to identify him. Upon the next day, Gerard Douw, after dinner, called his niece to him and having scanned her person with an air of satisfaction, he took her hand, and looking upon her pretty innocent face with a smile of kindness, he said: - -

‘Rose, my girl, that face of yours will make your fortune.’ Rose blushed and smiled. ‘Such faces and such tempers seldom go together, and when they do, the compound is a love charm, few heads or hearts can resist; trust me, you will soon be a bride, girl. But this is trifling, and I am pressed for time, so make ready the large room by eight o’clock to-night, and give directions for supper at nine. I expect a friend; and observe me, child, do you trick yourself out handsomely. I will not have him think us poor or sluttish.’

With these words he left her, and took his way to the room in which his pupils worked.

When the evening closed in, Gerard called Schalken, who was about to take his departure to his own obscure and comfortless lodgings, and asked him to come home and sup with Rose and Vanderhausen. The invitation was, of course, accepted and Gerard Douw and his pupil soon found themselves in the handsome and, even then, antique chamber, which had been prepared for the reception of the stranger. A cheerful wood fire blazed in the hearth, a little at one side of which an old-fashioned table, which shone in the fire-light like burnished gold, was awaiting the supper, for which preparations were going forward; and ranged with exact regularity, stood the tall-backed chairs, whose ungracefulness was more than compensated by their comfort. The little party, consisting of Rose, her uncle, and the artist, awaited the arrival of the expected visitor with considerable impatience. Nine o’clock at length came, and with it a summons at the street door, which being speedily answered, was followed by a slow and emphatic tread upon the staircase; the steps moved heavily across the lobby, the door of the room in which the party we have described were assembled slowly opened, and there entered a figure which startled, almost appalled, the phlegmatic Dutchmen, and nearly made Rose scream with terror. It was the form, and arrayed in the garb of Minheer Vanderhausen; the air, the gait, the height were the same, but the features had never been seen by any of the party before. The stranger stopped at the door of the room, and displayed his form and face completely. He wore a dark-coloured cloth cloak, which was short and full, not falling quite to his knees; his legs were cased in dark purple silk stockings, and his shoes were adorned with roses of the same colour. The opening of the cloak in front showed the under-suit to consist of some very dark, perhaps sable material, and his hands were enclosed in a pair of heavy leather gloves, which ran up considerably above the wrist, in the manner of a gauntlet. In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and rested upon the plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face! - all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue, which is sometimes produced by metallic medicines, administered in excessive quantities; the eyes showed an undue proportion of muddy white, and had a certain indefinable character of insanity; the hue of the lips bearing the usual relation to that of the face, was, consequently, nearly black; and the entire character of the face was sensual, malignant, and even satanic. It was remarkable that the worshipful stranger suffered as little as possible of his flesh to appear, and that during his visit he did not once remove his gloves. Having stood for some moments at the door, Gerard Douw at length found breath and collectedness to bid him welcome, and with a mute inclination of the head, the stranger stepped forward into the room. There was something indescribably odd, even horrible, about all his motions, something undefinable, that was unnatural, unhuman; it was as if the limbs were guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery. The stranger spoke hardly at all during his visit, which did not exceed half an hour; and the host himself could scarcely muster courage enough to utter the few necessary salutations and courtesies; and, indeed, such was the nervous terror which the presence of Vanderhausen inspired, that very little would have made all his entertainers fly in downright panic from the room. They had not so far lost all self-possession, however, as to fail to observe two strange peculiarities of their visitor. During his stay his eyelids did not once close, or, indeed, move in the slightest degree; and farther, there was a deathlike stillness in his whole person, owing to the absence of the heaving motion of the chest, caused by the process of respiration. These two peculiarities, though when told they may appear trifling, produced a very striking and unpleasant effect when seen and observed. Vanderhausen at length relieved the painter of Leyden of his inauspicious presence; and with no trifling sense of relief the little party heard the street door close after him.

‘Dear uncle,’ said Rose, ‘what a frightful man! I would not see him again for the wealth of the States.’

‘Tush, foolish girl,’ said Douw, whose sensations were anything but comfortable. ‘A man may be as ugly as the devil, and yet, if his heart and actions are good, he is worth all the pretty-faced perfumed puppies that walk the Mall. Rose, my girl, it is very true he has not thy pretty face, but I know him to be wealthy and liberal; and were he ten times more ugly, these two virtues would be enough to counter balance all his deformity, and if not sufficient actually to alter the shape and hue of his features, at least enough to prevent one thinking them so much amiss.’

‘Do you know, uncle,’ said Rose, ‘when I saw him standing at the door, I could not get it out of my head that I saw the old painted wooden figure that used to frighten me so much in the Church of St. Laurence at Rotterdam.’

Gerard laughed, though he could not help inwardly acknowledging the justness of the comparison. He was resolved, however, as far as he could, to check his niece’s disposition to dilate upon the ugliness of her intended bridegroom, although he was not a little pleased, as well as puzzled, to observe that she appeared totally exempt from that mysterious dread of the stranger which, he could not disguise it from himself, considerably affected him, as also his pupil Godfrey Schalken.

Early on the next day there arrived, from various quarters of the town, rich presents of silks, velvets, jewellery, and so forth, for Rose; and also a packet directed to Gerard Douw, which on being opened, was found to contain a contract of marriage, formally drawn up, between Wilken Vanderhausen of the Boom-quay, in Rotterdam, and Rose Velderkaust of Leyden, niece to Gerard Douw, master in the art of painting, also of the same city; and containing engagements on the part of Vanderhausen to make settlements upon his bride, far more splendid than he had before led her guardian to believe likely, and which were to be secured to her use in the most unexceptionable manner possible-the money being placed in the hand of Gerard Douw himself.

I have no sentimental scenes to describe, no cruelty of guardians, no magnanimity of wards, no agonies, or transport of lovers. The record I have to make is one of sordidness, levity, and heartlessness. In less than a week after the first interview which we have just described, the contract of marriage was fulfilled, and Schalken saw the prize which he would have risked existence to secure, carried off in solemn pomp by his repulsive rival. For two or three days he absented himself from the school; he then returned and worked, if with less cheerfulness, with far more dogged resolution than before; the stimulus of love had given place to that of ambition. Months passed away, and, contrary to his expectation, and, indeed, to the direct promise of the parties, Gerard Douw heard nothing of his niece or her worshipful spouse. The interest of the money, which was to have been demanded in quarterly sums, lay unclaimed in his hands.

He began to grow extremely uneasy. Minheer Vanderhausen’s direction in Rotterdam he was fully possessed of; after some irresolution he finally determined to journey thither-a trifling undertaking, and easily accomplished-and thus to satisfy himself of the safety and comfort of his ward, for whom he entertained an honest and strong affection. His search was in vain, however; no one in Rotterdam had ever heard of Minheer Vanderhausen. Gerard Douw left not a house in the Boom-quay untried, but all in vain. No one could give him any information whatever touching the object of his inquiry, and he was obliged to return to Leyden nothing wiser and far more anxious, than when he had left it.

On his arrival he hastened to the establishment from which Vanderhausen had hired the lumbering, though, considering the times, most luxurious vehicle, which the bridal party had employed to convey them to Rotterdam. From the driver of this machine he learned, that having proceeded by slow stages, they had late in the evening approached Rotterdam; but that before they entered the city, and while yet nearly a mile from it, a small party of men, soberly clad, and after the old fashion, with peaked beards and moustaches, standing in the centre of the road, obstructed the further progress of the carriage. The driver reined in his horses, much fearing, from the obscurity of the hour, and the loneliness, of the road, that some mischief was intended. His fears were, however, somewhat allayed by his observing that these strange men carried a large litter, of an antique shape, and which they immediately set down upon the pavement, whereupon the bridegroom, having opened the coach-door from within, descended, and having assisted his bride to do likewise, led her, weeping bitterly, and wringing her hands, to the litter, which they both entered. It was then raised by the men who surrounded it, and speedily carried towards the city, and before it had proceeded very far, the darkness concealed it from the view of the Dutch coachman. In the inside of the vehicle he found a purse, whose contents more than thrice paid the hire of the carriage and man. He saw and could tell nothing more of Minheer Vanderhausen and his beautiful lady.

This mystery was a source of profound anxiety and even grief to Gerard Douw. There was evidently fraud in the dealing of Vanderhausen with him, though for what purpose committed he could not imagine. He greatly doubted how far it was possible for a man possessing such a countenance to be anything but a villain, and every day that passed without his hearing from or of his niece, instead of inducing him to forget his fears, on the contrary tended more and more to aggravate them. The loss of her cheerful society tended also to depress his spirits; and in order to dispel the gloom, which often crept upon his mind after his daily occupations were over, he was wont frequently to ask Schalken to accompany him home, and share his otherwise solitary supper.

One evening, the painter and his pupil were sitting by the fire, having accomplished a comfortable meal, and had yielded to the silent and delicious melancholy of digestion, when their ruminations were disturbed by a loud sound at the street door, as if occasioned by some person rushing and scrambling vehemently against it. A domestic had run without delay to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, and they heard him twice or thrice interrogate the applicant for admission, but without eliciting any other answer but a sustained reiteration of the sounds. They heard him then open the hall-door, and immediately there followed a light and rapid tread on the staircase. Schalken advanced towards the door. It opened before he reached it, and Rose rushed into the room. She looked wild, fierce and haggard with terror and exhaustion, but her dress surprised them as much as even her unexpected appearance. It consisted of a kind of white woollen wrapper, made close about the neck, and descending to the very ground. It was much deranged and travel-soiled. The poor creature had hardly entered the chamber when she fell senseless on the floor. With some difficulty they succeeded in reviving her, and on recovering her senses, she instantly exclaimed, in a tone of terror rather than mere impatience: - -

‘Wine! wine! quickly, or I’m lost!’

Astonished and almost scared at the strange agitation in which the call was made, they at once administered to her wishes, and she drank some wine with a haste and eagerness which surprised them. She had hardly swallowed it, when she exclaimed, with the same urgency:

‘Food, for God’s sake, food, at once, or I perish.’

A considerable fragment of a roast joint was upon the table, and Schalken immediately began to cut some, but he was anticipated, for no sooner did she see it than she caught it, a more than mortal image of famine, and with her hands, and even with her teeth, she tore off the flesh, and swallowed it. When the paroxysm of hunger had been a little appeased, she appeared on a sudden overcome with shame, or it may have been that other more agitating thoughts overpowered and scared her, for she began to weep bitterly and to wring her hands.

‘Oh, send for a minister of God,’ said she; ‘I am not safe till he comes; send for him speedily.’

Gerard Douw despatched a messenger instantly, and prevailed on his niece to allow him to surrender his bed chamber to her use. He also persuaded her to retire to it at once to rest; her consent was extorted upon the condition that they would not leave her for a moment.

‘Oh that the holy man were here,’ she said; ‘he can deliver me: the dead and the living can never be one: God has forbidden it.’

With these mysterious words she surrendered herself to their guidance, and they proceeded to the chamber which Gerard Douw had assigned to her use.

‘Do not, do not leave me for a moment,’ said she; ‘I am lost forever if you do.’

Gerard Douw’s chamber was approached through a spacious apartment, which they were now about to enter. He and Schalken each carried a candle, so that a sufficiency of light was cast upon all surrounding objects. They were now entering the large chamber, which as I have said, communicated with Douw’s apartment, when Rose suddenly stopped, and, in a whisper which thrilled them both with horror, she said: - -

‘Oh, God! he is here! he is here! See, see! there he goes!’

She pointed towards the door of the inner room, and Schalken thought he saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into that apartment. He drew his sword, and, raising the candle so as to throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the shadow had glided. No figure was there-nothing but the furniture which belonged to the room, and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. A sickening dread came upon him, and the cold perspiration broke out in heavy drops upon his forehead; nor was he more composed, when he heard the increased urgency and agony of entreaty, with which Rose implored them not to leave her for a moment.

‘I saw him,’ said she; ‘he’s here. I cannot be deceived; I know him; he’s by me; he is with me; he’s in the room. Then, for God’s sake, as you would save me, do not stir from beside me.’

They at length prevailed upon her to lie down upon the bed, where she continued to urge them to stay by her. She frequently uttered incoherent sentences, repeating, again and again, ‘the dead and the living cannot be one: God has forbidden it.’ And then again, ‘Rest to the wakeful-sleep to the sleep-walkers.’ These and such mysterious and broken sentences, she continued to utter until the clergyman arrived. Gerard Douw began to fear, naturally enough, that terror or ill-treatment, had unsettled the poor girl’s intellect, and he half suspected, by the suddenness of her appearance, the unreasonableness of the hour, and above all, from the wildness and terror of her manner, that she had made her escape from some place of confinement for lunatics, and was in imminent fear of pursuit. He resolved to summon medical advice as soon as the mind of his niece had been in some measure set at rest by the offices of the clergyman whose attendance she had so earnestly desired; and until this object had been attained, he did not venture to put any questions to her, which might possibly, by reviving painful or horrible recollections, increase her agitation. The clergyman soon arrived-a man of ascetic countenance and venerable age-one whom Gerard Douw respected very much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one perhaps more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian-of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined and immediately on his arrival, she requested him to pray for her, as for one who lay in the hands of Satan, and who could hope for deliverance only from heaven.

That you may distinctly understand all the circumstances of the event which I am going to describe, it is necessary to state the relative position of the parties who were engaged in it. The old clergyman and Schalken were in the anteroom of which I have already spoken; Rose lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her guardian; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. The old man now cleared his voice as if about to commence, but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which the poor girl lay, and she, with hurried alarm, exclaimed: - -

‘Godfrey, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe.’

Gerard Douw forgetting for the moment her repeated injunctions, in the immediate impulse, stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired.

‘Oh God! do not go, dear uncle,’ shrieked the unhappy girl-and at the same time she sprung from the bed, and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him. But the warning came too late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had his niece had time to utter the startling exclamation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung by a strong blast of wind. Schalken and he both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to shake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Schalken and Douw applied every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One last shriek, so long and piercing and agonized as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence. A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window; and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and, yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, nearly precipitated them into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Schalken sprung to a chair and gazed out upon the street and canal below. He saw no form, but he saw, or thought he saw, the waters of the broad canal beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circles, as if a moment before disturbed by the submission of some ponderous body.

No trace of Rose was ever after found, nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer discovered or even suspected-no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth and to arrive at its solution, presented itself. But an incident occurred, which, though it will not be received by our rational readers in lieu of evidence, produced nevertheless a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Schalken. Many years after the events which we have detailed, Schalken, then residing far away received an intimation of his father’s death, and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in the church of Rotterdam. It was necessary that a very considerable journey should be performed by the funeral procession, which as it will be readily believed, was not very numerously attended. Schalken with difficulty arrived in Rotterdam late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place. It had not then arrived. Evening closed in, and still it did not appear.

Schalken strolled down to the church; he found it open; notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given, and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened. The sexton, on seeing a well-dressed gentleman, whose object was to attend the expected obsequies, pacing the aisle of the church, hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing fire, which, as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions, he had kindled in the hearth of a chamber in which he was accustomed to await the arrival of such grisly guests and which communicated, by a flight of steps, with the vault below. In this chamber, Schalken and his entertainer seated themselves; and the sexton, after some fruitless attempts to engage his guest in conversation, was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can, to solace his solitude. In spite of his grief and cares, the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Godfrey Schalken, and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he awakened by someone’s shaking him gently by the shoulder. He first thought that the old sexton had called him, but he was no longer in the room. He roused himself, and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him, he perceived a female form, clothed in a kind of light robe of white, part of which was so disposed as to form a veil, and in her hand she carried a lamp. She was moving rather away from him, in the direction of the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults. Schalken felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow its guidance. He followed it towards the vaults, but when it reached the head of the stairs, he paused; the figure paused also, and, turning gently round, displayed, by the light of the lamp it carried, the face and features of his first love, Rose Velderkaust. There was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant the artist long before in his happy days. A feeling of awe and interest, too intense to be resisted, prompted him to follow the spectre, if spectre it were. She descended the stairs-he followed-and turning to the left, through a narrow passage, she led him, to his infinite surprise, into what appeared to be an old-fashioned Dutch apartment, such as the pictures of Gerard Douw have served to immortalize. Abundance of costly antique furniture was disposed about the room, and in one corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black cloth curtains around it; the figure frequently turned towards him with the same arch smile; and when she came to the side of the bed, she drew the curtains, and, by the light of the lamp, which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror-stricken painter, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Vanderhausen. Schalken had hardly seen him, when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons employed in closing the passages into the vaults. He was lying in a cell of considerable size, which had not been disturbed for a long time, and he had fallen beside a large coffin, which was supported upon small pillars, a security against the attacks of vermin.

To his dying day Schalken was satisfied of the reality of the vision which he had witnessed, and he has left behind him a curious evidence of the impression which it wrought upon his fancy, in a painting executed shortly after the event I have narrated, and which is valuable as exhibiting not only the peculiarities which have made Schalken’s pictures sought after, but even more so as presenting a portrait of his early love, Rose Velderkaust, whose mysterious fate must always remain matter of speculation.

Present at a hanging by Ambrose Bierce

An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended with considerable danger.

The peddler with his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to rely upon the country people for hospitality. This brought him into relation with queer characters, some of whom were not altogether scrupulous in their methods of making a living, murder being an acceptable means to that end. It occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character and never could be traced beyond. This was so in the case of ‘old man Baker,’ as he was always called. (Such names are given in the western ‘settlements’ only to elderly persons who are not esteemed; to the general disrepute of social unworth is affixed the special reproach of age.) A peddler came to his house and none went away - that is all that anybody knew.

Seven years later the Rev. Mr Cummings, a Baptist minister well known in that part of the country, was driving by Baker’s farm one night. It was not very dark: there was a bit of moon somewhere above the light veil of mist that lay along the earth. Mr Cummings, who was at all times a cheerful person, was whistling a tune, which he would occasionally interrupt to speak a word of friendly encouragement to his horse.

As he came to a little bridge across a dry ravine he saw the figure of a man standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray background of a misty forest. The man had something strapped on his back and carried a heavy stick - obviously an itinerant peddler. His attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction, like that of a sleepwalker. Mr Cummings reined in his horse when he arrived in front of him, gave him a pleasant salutation and invited him to a seat in the vehicle - ‘if you are going my way,’ he added.

The man raised his head, looked him full in the face, but neither answered nor made any further movement.

The minister, with good-natured persistence, repeated his invitation. At this the man threw his right hand forward from his side and pointed downward as he stood on the extreme edge of the bridge. Mr Cummings looked past him, over into the ravine, saw nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man again. He had disappeared. The horse, which all this time had been uncommonly restless, gave at the same moment a snort of terror and started to run away.

Before he had regained control of the animal the minister was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along. He looked back and saw the figure again, at the same place and in the same attitude as when he had first observed it. Then for the first time he was conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home as rapidly as his willing horse would go.

On arriving at home he related his adventure to his family, and early the next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, John White Corwell and Abner Raiser, returned to the spot. They found the body of old man Baker hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the bridge, immediately beneath the spot where the apparition had stood. A thick coating of dust, slightly dampened by the mist, covered the floor of the bridge, but the only footprints were those of Mr Cummings’ horse.

In taking down the body the men disturbed the loose, friable earth of the slope below it, disclosing human bones already nearly uncovered by the action of water and frost. They were identified as those of the lost peddler. At the double inquest the coroner’s jury found that Daniel Baker died by his own hand while suffering from temporary insanity, and that Samuel Morritz was murdered by some person or persons to the jury unknown.

Table of Contents

Preface

About the Authors

The Midshipman by Dean Warner

An Unfinished Race by Ambrose Bierce

The Price of Genius by Debra Grace Khattah

Charles Ashmore’s Trail by Ambrose Bierce

Daemons, Dragons & Infants by Alanna Blaney

Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

The Leather Funnel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The New Catacomb by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Witch by Anton Chekhov

The Spectre Bridegroom by Irving Washington

Love is an Empty Space by Russell Turner

The Gipsy Prophecy by Bram Stoker

The Merodian Revolution by Sarah Gallah

Green Eyes by Ceri Hughson

A School Story by MR James

Cygnus Loop by Michael L Thal

Madam Crowl’s Ghost by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

The Haunted House by Charles Dickens

Schalken the Painter by Joseph Le Fann

Present at a hanging by Ambrose Bierce