| - .| || -|| -|-- ---- - -- | - | || -| --- | ||| | | OP PHIL A PREFHA- | | # - , - " -- - -------- - * Communiter bona Profundere #est & - - - - - - - w * * = -- ~~~------------ - - - - - - - CAN SUCH THINGS BE? BY AMBROSE BIERCE AUTHOR OF “TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANs” “BLACK BEETLES IN AMBER '' NEW YORK THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 31 EAST 17TH ST. (UNION SQUARE) CoPYRIGHT, 1893, by THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. All rights reserved. THE MERSHON company PREss, RAHwAY, N. J. CONTENTS. THE DEATH OF HALPIN FRAYSER, . • - • THE MOCKING BIRD, . - • • - • - MY FAVORITE MURDER, . - - • • - • ONE OFFICER, ONE MAN, . - - • • • THE MAN OUT OF THE NoSE, • - • • • AN OCCURRENCE AT BROWNVILLE, • - • • JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER GENERAL, . - - - THE FAMOUS GILSON BEQUEST, . - • - • THE STORY OF A CONSCIENCE, - - • • • THE SECRET OF MACARGER's GULCH, . • - • THE MAJOR's TALE, - • - - • • • A PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIPWRECK, . - • - • ONE KIND OF OFFICER : I. ONE OF THE USES OF CIVILITY, . - - II. UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES MEN DO NOT WISH TO BE SHOT, . • - - • III. How To PLAY THE CANNON WITHOUT NOTES, IV. To INTRODUCE GENERAL MASTERSON, • - V. How SounDs CAN FIGHT SHADows, • • VI. WHY, BEING AFFRONTED BY A, IT IS NOT BEST To AFFRONT B, • - • e • • THE APPLICANT, . • - • • • - • ONE OF THE TWINs, • • - • • - - THE NIGHT-DOINGS AT “DEADMAN’s,” - - • THE WIDoweR TURMORE, - - - - • - GEORGE THURSTON : THREE EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF A BRAVE MAN, • - • - - • PAGE 27 37 5 I 6I 73 9I Io7 I2I I35 I47 I59 167 169 I73 176 179 183 187 I95 207 22I 231 iii iv COAVTEAV7'.S. John BARTINE’s WATCH : A STORY WRITTEN FROM PAGE NoTES OF A PHYSICIAN, • - - . 239 THE REALM OF THE UNREAL, . - - - - 249 A BABY TRAMP, - - - - - - - . 263 SOME HAUNTED HOUSES : “THE ISLE of PINEs,” . - - - - . 273 A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT, . - - - - 28O THE THING AT NOLAN, . - - - - . 285 BODIES OF THE DEAD : THAT OF GRANNY MAGONE, . • - - , 293 A LIGHT SLEEPER, - - - - - - 296 THE MYSTERY OF JOHN FARQUHARSON, . - . 298 DEAD AND “GONE,” . - * - - - 3OI A COLD NIGHT, - - • - - - . 303 A CREATURE OF HABIT, - - - • - 306 “MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCEs”: THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD, . - . .309 AN UNFINISHED RACE, . - - - - - 313 CHARLES ASHMORE's TRAIL, . - - - . 31.5 CAN SUCH THINGS BE P THE DEATH OF HALPIN FRAYSER. I. For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown. Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the form of the body it bore), yet it hath happened that the veritable body without the spirit hath walked. And it is attested of those encountering who have lived to speak thereon, that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil altogether.—Hali. ONE dark night in midsummer a man waking from a dreamless sleep in a forest in the Napa Valley, lifted his head from the earth, and staring a few moments into the blackness, said: “Cath- erine Larue.” He said nothing more; no reason was known to him why he should have said so much. The man was Halpin Frayser. He lived in St. Helena, but where he lives now is uncertain, for he is dead. One who practices sleeping in the 2 CAA SUC// 7/7//VG.S. A.A. P. woods with nothing under him but the dry leaves and the damp earth, and nothing over him but the branches from which the leaves have fallen, and the sky from which the earth has fallen, can- not hope for great longevity, and Frayser had already attained the age of thirty-two. There are people in this world, millions of people, and far and away the best people, who regard that as a very advanced age. They are the children. To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure, the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the further shore. However, it is not certain that Halpin Frayser came to his death by exposure. He had been all day in the hills west of the Napa Valley, looking for doves and such small game as was in season. Late in the afternoon it had come on to be cloudy, and he had lost his bearings; and although he had only to go always downhill—everywhere the way to safety when one is lost—the absence of trails had so impeded him that he was overtaken by night while still in the forest. Unable in the darkness to penetrate the thickets of manzanita and other undergrowth, utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, he had lain down near the root of a large madroño and fallen into a dreamless sleep. It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God's mysterious messengers, gliding ahead of r 7A/A. DAA TH OF HA LP/AW FA'A VSAA’. 3 the incalculable host of his companions who swept westward with the dawn line, pronounced the awakening word in the ear of the sleeper, who, as we have noted, sat upright and spoke, he knew not why, a name, he knew not whose. Halpin Frayser was not much of a philosopher, nor a scientist. The circumstance that, waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of a for- est, he had mentioned aloud a name that he had not in memory, and hardly had in mind, did not arouse an enlightened curiosity to investigate the phenomenon. He thought it odd, and with a little perfunctory shiver, as if in deference to a numerical presumption that the night was chill, he lay down again and went to sleep. But his sleep was no longer dreamless. He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in the gathering darkness of a summer night. Whence and whither it led, and why he traveled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple and natural, as is the way in dreams; for in the Land Beyond the Bed surprises cease from troubling and the judgment is at rest. Soon he came to a parting of the ways; leading from the highway was a road less traveled, having the appearance, indeed, of having been long aban- doned, because, he thought, it led to something evil; yet he turned into it without hesitation, impelled by some imperious necessity. As he pressed forward he became conscious 4 CAAW SUCH 7'H/AVG.S. BAE 2 that his way was haunted by malevolent exist- ences, invisible, and whom he could not definitely figure to his mind. From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against his body and his soul. It was now long after night- fall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer, having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumina- tion nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped and plunged his hand into it. It stained his fingers; it was blood! Blood, he then observed, was about him everywhere. The weeds growing rankly by the roadside showed it in blots and splashes on their big, broad leaves. Patches of dry dust between the wheelways were pitted and spattered as with a red rain. Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage. All this he observed with a terror, which, however, seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation. It seemed to him that it was all in expiation of some crime which, though conscious of his guilt, he could not rightly remember. To the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings the conscious- - - * 7"HE DEA / A# O/7 H.A.A.A/AW HA'A VSAA’. 5 ness was an added horror. Vainly he sought, by tracing life backward in memory, to reproduce the moment of his sin; scenes and incidents came crowding tumultuously into his mind, one picture effacing another, or commingling with it in con- fusion and obscurity, but nowhere could he catch a glimpse of what he sought. The failure aug- mented his terror; he felt as one who has mur- dered in the dark, not knowing why nor whom. So frightful was the situation—the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace; the noxious plants, the trees that by common consent are invested with a melancholy or baleful character, so openly in his sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of earth—that he could endure it no longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound his faculties to silence and inaction, he shouted with the full strength of his lungs! His voice broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the forest, died into silence, and all was as before. But he had made a beginning at resistance and was encouraged. He said : “I will not submit unheard. There may be powers that are not malignant traveling this accursed road. I shall leave them a record and 6 CAA SUCH 7///AWGS BE 2 an appeal. I shall relate my wrongs, the perse- cutions that I endure—I, a helpless mortal, a penitent, an unoffending poet!" Halpin Frayser was a poet only as he was a penitent: in his dream. Taking from his clothing a small red leather pocketbook, one-half of which was leaved for memoranda, he discovered that he was without a pencil. He broke a twig from a bush, dipped it in a pool of blood and wrote rapidly. He had hardly touched the paper with the point of his twig when a low, wild laugh seemed to break out at a measureless distance away, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soul- less, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of the loon, solitary by the lakeside at midnight; a laugh which culminated in an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had with- drawn over the verge of the world whence it had come. But the man felt that this was not so— that it was near by and had not moved. A strange sensation slowly began to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses was affected; he felt it rather as a consciousness—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence —some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and superior to them in power. He - * ----> -------. THE DEA TH OF HALP/AV HAYA YSER. 7 knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction he did not know-dared not con- jecture. All his former fears were forgotten or merged in the gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one thought: to complete his written appeal to the benign powers who, traversing the haunted wood, might some time rescue him if he should be denied the blessing of annihilation. He wrote with terrible rapidity, the twig in his fingers rill- ing blood without renewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands denied their service to his will, his arms fell to his sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharply drawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave! II. IN his youth Halpin Frayser had lived with his parents in Nashville, Tenn. The Fraysers were well-to-do people, having a good position in such society as had survived the wreck wrought by civil war. Their children had the social and educational opportunities of their time and place, and had responded to good associations and instruction with agreeable manners and cultivated minds. Halpin, being the youngest, and not over robust, was, perhaps, a trifle “spoiled.” He had the double disadvantage of a mother's assid- uity and a father's neglect. Frayser père was what no Southern man of means is not—a politi- cian. His country, or rather his section and State, made demands upon his time and attention so exacting that to those of his family he was compelled to turn an ear partly deafened by the thunder of the political captains and the shout- ing, his own included. - Young Halpin was of a dreamy, indolent, and rather romantic turn, somewhat more addicted to literature than law, the profession to which he was bred. Among those of his relations who pro- fessed the modern faith of heredity it was well 8 Z'A'A. DAA 7'A' OA. H.4 LA/AW FARA VSEA’. 9 understood that in him the character of the late Myron Bayne, a maternal great-grandfather, had revisited the glimpses of the moon—by which orb Bayne had in his lifetime been sufficiently affected to be a poet of no small Colonial distinction. If not specially observed, it was observable that while a Frayser who was not the proud possessor of a sumptuous copy of the ancestral "poetical works" (printed at the family expense, and long ago withdrawn from an inhospitable market) was a rare Frayser indeed, there was an illogical indis- position to honor the great deceased in the person of his spiritual successor. Halpin was pretty generally deprecated as an intellectual black sheep who was likely at any moment to disgrace the flock by bleating in meter. T = e Tennessee Fraysers were a practical folk—not practical in the popular sense of devotion to sordid pursuits, but having a robust contempt for any qualities unfitting a man for the wholesome vocation of politics. In justice to young Halpin it should be said that while in him were pretty faithfully reproduced most of the mental and moral charac- teristics ascribed by history and family tradition to the famous Colonial bard, his succession to the gift and faculty divine was purely inferential. Not only had he never been known to court the muse, but in point of fact he could not have written correctly a line of verse to save himself from the Killer of the Wise. Still, there was no Io CAA SUCH THIAWGS BE 2 knowing when the dormant faculty might awake and smite the lyre. In the meantime the young man was rather a loose fish, anyhow. Between him and his mother was the most perfect sympathy, for secretly the lady was her- self a devout disciple of the late and great Myron Bayne, though with the tact so generally and justly admired in her sex (despite the hardy calumniators who insist that it is essentially the same thing as cunning), she had always taken care to conceal her weakness from all eyes but his who shared it. Their common guilt in respect of that was an added tie between them. If in Halpin's youth his mother had “spoiled” him, he had assuredly done his part toward being spoiled. As he grew to such manhood as is attainable by a Southerner who does not care which way elections go, the attachment between him and his beautiful mother—whom from early childhood he had called Katy—became yearly stronger and more tender. In these two romantic natures was man- ifest in a signal way that neglected phenomenon, the dominance of the sexual element in all the relations of life, strengthening, softening, and beautifying even those of consanguinity. The two were nearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their manner, were not infrequently mistaken for lovers. Entering his mother's boudoir one day Halpin Frayser kissed her upon the forehead, toyed for THE DEA TH OF AZALA/AW FR4 VSAA’. II a moment with a lock of her dark hair which had escaped from its confining pins, and said, with an obvious effort at calmness: “Would you greatly mind, Katy, if I were called away to California for a few weeks?” It was hardly needful for Katy to answer with her lips a question to which her telltale cheeks had made instant reply. Evidently she would greatly mind; and the tears, too, sprang into her large brown eyes as corroborative testimony. “Ah, my son,” she said, looking up into his face with infinite tenderness, “I should have known that this was coming. Did I not lie awake a half of the night weeping because, during the other half, Grandfather Bayne had come to me in a dream, and standing by his portrait— young, too, and handsome as that—pointed to yours on the same wall? And when I looked it seemed that I could not see the features; you had been painted with a facecloth, such as we put upon the dead. Your father has laughed at me, but you and I, dear, know that such things are not for nothing. And I saw below the edge of the cloth the marks of hands on your throat—forgive me, but we have not been used to keep such things from each other. Perhaps you have an- other interpretation—perhaps it does not mean that you will go to California. Or maybe you will take me with you?” It must be confessed that this ingenious inter- I 2 CA V SUCH THIVGS BR 2 pretation of the dream in the light of newly dis- covered evidence did not wholly commend itself to the son's more logical mind; he had, for the moment at least, a conviction that it foreshad- owed a more simple and immediate, if less tragic, disaster than a visit to the Pacific Coast. It was Halpin Frayser's impression that he was to be garroted on his native heath. “Are there not medicinal springs in California?” Mrs. Frayser resumed before he had time to give her the true reading of the dream—“places where one recovers from rheumatism and neural- gia? Look—my fingers feel so stiff, and I am almost sure they have been giving me great pain while I slept.” - She held out her hands for his inspection. What diagnosis of her case he may have thought it best to conceal with a smile the historian is unable to state, but for himself he feels bound to say that fingers looking less stiff, and showing fewer evidences of even insensible pain, have seldom been submitted for medical inspection by even the fairest patient desiring a prescription of unfamiliar scenes. The outcome of it was that of these two odd persons having equally odd notions of duty, the one went to California, as the interest of his client required, and the other remained at home in compliance with a wish that her husband was scarcely conscious of entertaining. 7"HE DAA TH OF HA / P/A' A'A'A VSAA’. I 3 While in San Francisco Halpin Frayser was walking one dark night along the water front of the city, when, with a suddenness that surprised and disconcerted him, he became a sailor. He was in fact “shanghaied" aboard a gallant, gallant ship and sailed for a far countree. Nor did his misfortunes end with the voyage; for the ship was cast ashore on an island of the South Pacific, and it was six years afterward when the survivors were taken off by a ventursome trading schooner and brought back to San Francisco. Though poor in purse, Frayser was no less proud in spirit than he had been in the years that seemed ages and ages ago. He would accept no assistance from strangers, and it was while living with a fellow survivor near the town of St. Helena, awaiting news and remittances from home, that he went gunning and dreaming. \ \, III. THE apparition confronting the dreamer in the haunted wood—the thing so like, yet so unlike his mother—was horrible! It stirred no love nor longing in his heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past—inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. He tried to turn and run from before it, but his legs were as lead; he was unable to lift his feet from the ground. His arms hung helpless at his sides; of his eyes only he retained control, and these he dared not remove from the lusterless orbs of the apparition, which he knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all the existences infesting that haunted wood—a body without a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, nor intelli- gence—nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. “An appeal will not lie,” he thought, with an absurd attrusion of professional memories making the situation more horrible, as the fire of a cigar might light up a tomb. For a time, which seemed so long that the world grew gray with age and sin, and the haunted for- est, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous 14 THE DAA TH OF HA LP/M FRA VSER. I5 culmination of its terrors, vanished out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding him with the mindless malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon him with appalling ferocity : The act released his physical energies without unfettering his will; his mind was still spellbound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well. For an instant he seemed to see this un- natural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator—such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his iden- tity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antago- nist. But what mortal can cope with a creature of his dream? The imagination creating the enemy is already vanquished; the combat's result is the combat's cause. Despite his struggles- despite his strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, he felt the cold fingers close upon his throat. Borne backward to the earth, he saw above him the dead and drawn face within a hand's breadth of his own, and then all was black. A sound as of the beating of distant drums—a murmur of swarming voices, a sharp far cry signing all to silence, and Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead. IV. A WARM, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. At about the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff of light vapor—a mere thickening of the atmosphere, the ghost of a cloud—had been observed clinging to the western side of Mount St. Helena, away up along the barren altitudes near the summit. It was so thin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would have said: “Look quickly! in a moment it will be gone.” - In a moment it was visibly larger and denser. While with one edge it clung to the mountain, with the other it reached farther and farther out into the air above the lower slopes. At the same time it extended itself to north and south, joining small patches of mist that appeared to come out of the mountainside on exactly the same level, with an intelligent design to be absorbed. And so it grew and grew until the summit was shut out of view from the valley, and over the valley itself was an ever-extending canopy, opaque and gray. At Calistoga, which lies near the head of the valley and the foot of the mountain, there 16 7//Z DAA 7/7 of //.4///V FAA Ys 17 were a starless night and a sunless morning. . And the fog, sinking into the valley, had reached southward, swallowing up ranch after ranch, until it had blotted out the town of St. Helena, nine miles away. The dust in the road was laid; trees were adrip with moisture; birds sat silent in their coverts; the morning light was wan and ghastly, with neither color nor fire. Two men left the town of St. Helena at the first glimmer of dawn, and walked along the road northward up the valley toward Calistoga. They carried guns on their shoulders, yet no one having knowledge of such matters could have mistaken them for hunters of bird or beast. They were a deputy sheriff from Napa and a detective from San Francisco–Holker and Jaralson, respectively. Their business was man hunting. “How far is it?” inquired Holker, as they strode along, their feet stirring white the dust beneath the damp surface of the road. “The White Church? Only a half mile farther,” the other answered. “By the way,” he added, “it is neither white nor a church; it is an abandoned schoolhouse, gray with age and neglect. Relig- ious services were once held in it—when it was white, and there is a graveyard that would delight a poet. Can you guess why I sent for you, and told you to come heeled?” | “Oh, I never have bothered you about things of that kind. I've always found you communica- s I 8 CA.V SUCH 7'H/AWGS BA 2 tive when the time came. But if I may hazard a guess, you want me to help you arrest one of the corpses in the graveyard.” “You remember Branscom?” said Jaralson, treating his companion's wit with the inattention that it deserved. “The chap who cut his wife's throat? I ought; I wasted a week's work on him and had my expenses for my trouble. There is a reward of five hundred dollars, but none of us ever got a sight of him. You don't mean to say * * “Yes, I do. He has been under the noses of you fellows all the time. He comes by night to the old graveyard at the White Church.” “The devil! That's where they buried his wife.” “Well, you fellows might have had sense enough to suspect that he would return to her grave some time.” “The very last place that anyone would have expected him to return to.” “But you had exhausted all the other places. Learning your failure at them, I laid for him there.” “And you found him?” “D n it! he found me. The rascal got the the drop on me—regularly held me up and made me travel. It's God's mercy that he didn't go through me. Oh, he's a good one, and I fancy the half of that reward is enough for me if you're needy.” THE DAA TA/ OA. AAA LA/Av A. ARA VSAA’. I9 Holker laughed good humoredly, and explained that his creditors were never more importunate. “I wanted merely to show you the ground, and arrange a plan with you," the detective explained. “I thought it as well for us to be heeled, even in daylight.” - “The man must be insane,” said the deputy sheriff. “The reward is for his capture and con- viction. If he's mad he won't be convicted.” Mr. Holker was so profoundly affected by that possible failure of justice that he involuntarily stopped in the middle of the road, then resumed his walk with abated zeal. * “Well, he looks it,” assented Jaralson. “I’m bound to admit that a more unshaven, unshorn, unkempt, and uneverything wretch I never saw outside the ancient and honorable order of tramps. But I've gone in for him, and can't make up my mind to let go. There's glory in it for us, anyhow. Not another soul knows that he is this side of the Mountains of the Moon.” “All right,” Holker said; “we will go and view the ground,” and he added, in the words of a once favorite inscription for tombstones: “‘where you must shortly lie'—I mean, if old Branscom ever gets tired of you and your impertinent intrusion. By the way, I heard the other day that ‘Brans- com' was not his real name.” “What is?” “I can't recall it. I had lost all interest in the 2O C.1 V S ( C// T///AWGS BA 2 wretch, and it did not fix itself in my memory. Yes, I remember—it is Pardee. The woman whose throat he had the bad taste to cut was a widow when he met her. She had come to Cali- fornia to look up some relatives—there are per- sons who will do that sometimes. But you know all that.” “Naturally.” “But not knowing the right name, by what happy inspiration did you find the right grave? The man who told me that the name was Pardee said it had been cut on the headboard.” “I don't know the right grave.” Jaralson was apparently a trifle reluctant to admit his igno- rance of so important a point of his plan. “I have been watching about the place generally. A part of our work this morning will be to identify that grave. Here is the White Church.” For a long distance the road had been bor- dered by fields on both sides, but now on the left there was a forest of oaks, madroños, and gigantic spruces whose lower parts only could be seen, dim and ghostly in the fog. The undergrowth was, in places, thick, but nowhere impenetrable. For some moments Holker saw nothing of the building, but as they turned into the woods it revealed itself in faint gray outline through the fog, looking huge and far away. A few steps more, and it was within an arm's length, distinct, dark with moisture, and insignificant in size. It (L THE ZOZA TAZ O/7 Z.4 LP/A /7/0.1 YSEK. 2 I had the usual country schoolhouse form—be- longed to the packing-box order of architecture; had an underpinning of stones, a moss-grown roof, and blank window spaces, whence both glass and sash had been long removed by Time and his ally, the small boy. It was ruined, but not a ruin—a typical Californian substitute for what are known to guide-bookers abroad as “monu- ments of the past.” With scarcely a glance at this uninteresting structure, Jaralson moved on into the dripping undergrowth beyond. “I will show you where he held me up,” he said. “This is the graveyard.” Here and there among the bushes were small inclosures containing graves, sometimes no more than one. They were recognized as graves by the rotting boards at head and foot, leaning at all angles, some prostrate; by the ruined picket fences surrounding them; or, infrequently, by the mound itself showing its gravel through the fallen leaves. In many instances nothing marked the spot where lay the vestiges of some poor mortal who, leaving “a large circle of sorrowing friends,” had been left by them in turn, except a depression in the earth, more lasting than that in the spirits of the mourners. The paths, if any paths had been, were long obliterated; trees of a considerable size had been permitted to grow up from the graves and thrust aside with root or branch the inclosing fences. Over all was that 22 CAA SUCH 7'H/AWGS BA 2 air of abandonment and decay which seems no- where so fit and right as in a village of the dead. As the two men, Jaralson leading, pushed their way through a growth of young trees, that enter- prising man suddenly stopped and brought up his shotgun to the height of his breast, uttered a low note of warning, and stood motionless, his eyes fixed upon something ahead. As well as he could, obstructed by brush, his companion, though see- ing nothing, imitated the posture and so stood, prepared for what might ensue. A moment later Jaralson strode forward, the other following. Under the branches of an enormous spruce lay the dead body of a man. Standing silent above it they noted such particulars as first strike the attention—the face, the attitude, the clothing; whatever most promptly and plainly answers the unspoken questions of a sympathetic curiosity. The body lay upon its back, the legs wide apart. One arm was thrust upward, the other outward; but the latter was bent acutely, and the hand was near the throat. Both hands were tightly clenched. The whole attitude was that of desperate but ineffectual resistance to—what? Near by lay a shotgun and a game bag through the meshes of which was seen the plumage of shot birds. All about were evidences of a furious struggle; small sprouts of poison oak were bent and denuded of leaf and bark, dead and rotting leaves had been pushed into heaps and ridges on Z"AA D/E4 7/7 OA: //A/LA/AW PARA VSAA’. 23 both sides of the legs by the action of other feet than theirs, and alongside the waist were unmis- takable impressions of human knees. The nature of the struggle was made clear by a glance at the dead man's throat and face. While breast and hands were white, those were purple—almost black. The shoulders lay upon a low mound, and the head was turned back at an angle other- wise impossible, the expanded eyes staring blankly backward in a direction opposite to that of the feet. From the froth filling the open mouth the tongue protruded, black and swollen. The throat showed horrible contusions; not mere finger- marks, but bruises and lacerations wrought by two strong hands that must have buried them- selves in the yielding flesh, maintaining their ter- rible grasp until long after death. Breast, throat, face, were wet; the clothing was saturated; drops of water, condensed from the fog, studded the hair and mustache. All this the two men observed without speak- ing; almost at a glance. Then Holker said: “Poor devil! he had a rough deal.” Jaralson was making a vigilant circumspection of the forest, his shotgun held in both hands and at full cock, his finger upon the trigger. “The work of a maniac,” he said, without with- drawing his eyes from the inclosing wood. “It was done by Branscom—Pardee.” Something half hidden by the disturbed leaves 24 C.A.V SÜC// 7://ZA'G.S. B.A. 2 on the earth caught Holker's attention. It was a red leather pocketbook. He picked it up and opened it. It contained leaves of white paper for memoranda, and upon the first leaf was the name “Halpin Frayser.” Written in red on several succeeding leaves—scrawled as if in haste and barely legible—were the following lines, which Holker read aloud, while his companion continued scanning the dim gray confines of their narrow world and hearing matter of suspicion in the drip of water from every burdened branch: “Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood, In the lit gloom of an enchanted wood. The cypress there and myrtle twined their boughs, Significant, in baleful brotherhood. “The brooding willow whispered to the yew ; Beneath, the deadly nightshade and the rue, With immortelles self-woven into strange Funereal shapes, and horrid nettles grew. “No song of bird nor any drone of bees, Nor light leaf lifted by the wholesome breeze: The air was stagnant all, and Silence was A living thing that breathed among the trees. “Conspiring spirits whispered in the gloom, Half-heard, the stilly secrets of the tomb. With blood the trees were all adrip, the leaves Shone in the witch-light with a ruddy bloom. “I cried aloud —the spell, unbroken still, Rested upon my spirit and my will. Unsouled, unhearted, hopeless, and forlorn, I strove with monstrous presages of ill “At last the viewless—" * -- - - - - - --- - Z"HA DAA TH/ OA: AMAZA/AW FA'A VS/E/2. 25 Holker ceased reading; there was no more to read. The manuscript broke off in the middle of - a line. “That sounds like Bayne,” said Jaralson, who was something of a scholar in his way. He had abated his vigilance and stood looking down at the body. “Who's Bayne?” Holker asked rather incuri- ously. “Myron Bayne, a chap who flourished in the early years of the nation—more than a century ago; wrote mighty dismal stuff. I have his col- lected works. That poem is not among them, but it must have been omitted by mistake." “It is cold,” said Holker; “let us leave here; we must have up the coroner from Napa.” Jaralson said nothing, but made a movement in compliance. Passing the end of the slight eleva- tion of earth upon which the dead man's head and shoulders lay, his foot struck some hard sub- stance under the rotting forest leaves, and he took the trouble to kick it into view. It was a fallen headboard, and painted on it were the words, “Catherine Larue.” “Larue, Larue!” exclaimed Holker, with sud- den animation. “Why, that is the real name of Branscom—not Pardee. And–bless my soul! how it all comes to me—the murdered woman's name had been Frayser!" “There is some rascally mystery here,” said 26 CAAW SUCH 7'H/AWGS BE 2 - Detective Jaralson. “I hate anything of that kind.” There came to them out of the fog—seemingly from a great distance—the sound of a laugh, a low, deliberate, soulless laugh, which had no more of joy than that of a hyena night-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder and louder, clearer, more distinct and ter- rible, until it seemed barely outside the narrow circle of their vision; a laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that it filled those hardy man hunters with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their weapons nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was not of the kind to be met with arms. As it had grown out of silence so now it died away; with a culminating shout which seemed almost in their ears, it drew itself away into the distance, until its failing notes, joyless and mechanical to the last, sank to silence at a measureless remove. ------- - - - - -- THE MOCKING BIRD. THE time, a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the early autumn of 1861. The place, a forest's heart in the mountain region of Western Virginia. Private Grayrock of the Federal Army is discov- ered seated comfortably at the root of a great pine tree, against which he leans, his legs ex- tended straight along the ground, his rifle lying across his thighs, his hands (clasped in order that they may not fall away to his sides) resting upon the barrel of the weapon. The contact of the back of his head with the tree has pushed his cap downward over his eyes, almost concealing them; one seeing him would say he slept. Private Grayrock did not sleep; to have done so would have imperiled the interests of the United States, for he was a long way outside the lines, and subject to capture or death at the hands of the enemy. Moreover, he was in a frame of mind unfavorable to repose. The cause of his perturbation of spirit was this: During the pre- vious night he had served on the picket guard, and had been posted as a sentinel in this very forest. The night was clear, though moonless, but in the gloom of the wood the darkness was 27 28 CAA SUCH T///AVGS BE 2 deep. Grayrock's post was at a considerable distance from those to right and left, for the pickets had been thrown out a needless distance from the camp, making the line too long for the force detailed to occupy it. The war was young, and military camps entertained the error that when sleeping they were better protected by thin lines a long way out toward the enemy than by thicker ones close in. And surely they needed as long notice as possible of an enemy's approach, for they were at that time addicted to the prac- tice of undressing—than which nothing could be more unsoldierly. On the morning of the mem- orable 6th of April, at Shiloh many of Grant's men when spitted on Confederate bayonets were as naked as civilians; but it should be allowed that this was not because of any defect in their picket line. Their error was of another sort: they had no pickets. This is perhaps a digres- sion. I should not care to undertake to interest the reader in the fate of an army; what we have here to consider is that of Private Gray- . rock. For two hours after he had been left at his lonely post that Saturday night he stood stock still, leaning against the trunk of a large tree, staring into the darkness in his front and trying to recognize known objects; for he had been posted at the same spot during the day. But all was now different; he saw nothing in detail, but THA MOCAT/AWG B/A2/D. 29 only groups of things, whose shapes, not observed when there was something more of them to observe, were now unfamiliar. They seemed not before to have been there. A landscape which is all trees and undergrowth, moreover, lacks defini- tion, is confused and without accentuated points upon which attention can gain a foothold. Add the gloom of a moonless night, and something more than great natural intelligence and a city education is required to preserve one's sense of direction. And that is how it occurred that Private Grayrock, after vigilantly watching the spaces in his front and then imprudently execut- ing a circumspection of his whole dimly visible environment (silently walking around his tree to accomplish it) lost his bearings and seriously impaired his usefulness as a sentinel. Lost at his post—unable to say in which direction to look for an enemy's approach, and in which lay the sleep- ing camp for whose security he was responsible with his life—conscious, too, of many another awkward feature of the situation and of consider- ations affecting his own safety, Private Grayrock was profoundly disquieted. Nor was he given time to recover his tranquillity, for almost at the moment that he realized his awkward predic- ament he heard a stir of leaves and a snap of fallen twigs, and turning with a stilled heart in the direction whence it came, saw in the gloom the indistinct outline of a human figure. 3o CAA SUCH T///AVG.S. RE 2 “Halt!” shouted Private Grayrock, peremp- torily as in duty bound, backing up the command with the sharp metallic snap of his cocking rifle— “who goes there?” There was no answer; at least there was an instant's hesitation, and the answer, if it came, was lost in the report of the sentinel's rifle. In the silence of the night and the forest the sound was deafening, and hardly had it died away when it was repeated by the pieces of the pickets to right and left, a sympathetic fusillade. For two hours every unconverted civilian of them had been evolving enemies from his imagination, and peopling the woods in his front with them, and Grayrock's shot had started the whole encroach- ing host into visible existence. Having fired, all retreated, breathless, to the reserves—all but Grayrock, who did not know in what direction to retreat. When, no enemy appearing, the roused camp two miles away had undressed and got itself into bed again, and the picket line was cautiously re-established, he was discovered bravely holding his ground, and was highly complimented by the officer of the guard as the one soldier of that devoted band who could rightly be considered the moral equivalent of that uncommon unit of value, “a whoop in hell.” - In the mean time, however, Grayrock had made a close but unavailing search for the mortal part of the intruder at whom he had fired, and whom -- -- ------ 7"HE AMOCAT/A/G BAA D. 31 he had a marksman's intuitive sense of having hit; for he was one of those born experts who shoot without aim by an instinctive sense of direction, and are nearly as dangerous by night as by day. During a full half of his twenty-four years he had been a terror to the targets of all the shooting galleries in three cities. Unable now to produce his dead game he had the discretion to hold his tongue, and was glad to observe in his officer and comrades the natural assumption that not having run away he had seen nothing hostile. His “honorable mention” had been earned by not running away, anyhow. Nevertheless, Private Grayrock was far from satisfied with the night's adventure, and when, the next day, he made some fair enough pretext to apply for a pass to go outside the lines, and the general commanding promptly granted it in recognition of his bravery the night before, he passed out at the point where that had been dis- played. Telling the sentinel then on duty there that he had lost something, —which was true enough,-he renewed the search for the person whom he supposed himself to have shot, and whom if only wounded he hoped to trail by the blood. He was no more successful by daylight than he had been in the darkness, and after cov- ering a wide area and boldly penetrating a long distance into “the Confederacy” he gave up the search, somewhat fatigued, seated himself at the 32 CAAW SUCH T//LVGS BE 2 root of the great pine tree, where we have seen him, and indulged his disappointment. It is not to be inferred that Gray rock's was the chagrin of a cruel nature balked of its bloody deed. In the clear large eyes, finely wrought lips, and broad forehead of that young man one could read quite another story, and in point of fact his character was a singularly felicitous compound of boldness and sensibility, courage and conscience. “I find myself disappointed,” he said to him- self, sitting there at the bottom of the golden haze submerging the forest like a subtler sea— “disappointed in failing to discover a fellow-man dead by my hand! Do I then really wish that I had taken life in the performance of a duty as well performed without? What more could I wish? If any danger threatened, my shot averted it; that is what I was there to do. No, I am glad indeed if no human life was needlessly extin- guished by me. But I am in a false position. I have suffered myself to be complimented by my officers and envied by my comrades. The camp is ringing with praise of my courage. That is not just; I know myself courageous, but this praise is for specific acts which I did not perform, or per- formed—otherwise. It is believed that I re- mained at my post bravely without firing, whereas it was I who began the fusillade, and I did not retreat in the general alarm because bewildered. What, then, shall I do? Explain that I saw an THE MOCA A G B/RD. 33 enemy and fired? They have all said that, yet none believes it? Shall I tell a truth which, dis- crediting my courage, will have the effect of a lie? Ugh it is an ugly business altogether. I wish to God I could find my man!” And so wishing, Private Grayrock, overcome at last by the languor of the afternoon and lulled by the stilly sounds of insects droning and prosing in certain fragrant shrubs, so far forgot the inter- ests of the United States as to fall asleep and expose himself to capture. And sleeping he dreamed. He thought himself a boy, living in a far, fair land by the border of a great river upon which the tall steamboats sped grandly up and down be- neath their towering evolutions of black smoke, which announced them long before they had rounded the bends and marked their movements when miles out of sight. With him always, at his side as he watched them, was one to whom he gave his heart and soul in love—a twin brother. Together they strolled along the banks of the stream; together explored the fields lying farther away from it, and gathered pungent mints and sticks of fragrant sassafras in the hills overlooking all—beyond which lay the Realm of Conjecture, and from which, looking southward across the great river, they caught glimpses of the Enchanted Land. Hand in hand and heart in heart they two, the only children of a widowed mother, 34 CAAW SUCH 7'H/AWGS BE 2 walked in paths of light through valleys of peace, seeing new things under a new sun. And through all the golden days floated one unceasing sound —the rich, thrilling melody of a mocking bird in a cage by the cottage door. It pervaded and pos- sessed all the spiritual intervals of the dream, like a musical benediction. The joyous bird was always in song; its infinitely various notes seemed to flow from its throat, effortless, in bubbles and rills at each heart beat, like the waters of a puls- ing spring. That fresh, clear melody seemed, indeed, the spirit of the scene, the meaning and interpretation to sense of the mysteries of life and love. But there came a time when the days of the dream grew dark with sorrow in a rain of tears. The good mother was dead, the meadowside home by the great river was broken up, and the brothers were parted between two of their kins- men. William (the dreamer) went to live in a populous city in the Realm of Conjecture, and John, crossing the river into the Enchanted Land, was taken to a distant region whose people in their lives and ways were said to be strange and wicked. To him, in the distribution of the dead mother's estate, had fallen all that they deemed of value—the mocking-bird. They could be divided, but it could not, and so it was carried away into the strange country, and the world of William knew it no more forever. Yet still - * *-** -- - - - - - - - THE MOCATIA G B JA','D. 35 through all the aftertime of his loneliness its song filled all the dream, and seemed always sounding in his ear and in his heart. The kinsmen who had adopted the boys were enemies, holding no communication. For a time letters full of boyish bravado and boastful narra- tives of the new and larger experience—grotesque descriptions of their widening lives and the new - worlds they had conquered—passed between them; but these gradually became less frequent, and with William's removal to another and greater city ceased altogether. But ever through it all ran the song of the mocking bird, and when the dreamer opened his eyes and stared through the vistas of the pine forest the cessation of its music first apprised him that he was awake. The sun was low and red in the west; the level rays projected from the trunk of each giant pine a wall of shadow traversing the golden haze to eastward until light and shade were blended in undistin- guishable blue. Private Grayrock rose to his feet, looked cau- tiously about him, shouldered his rifle and set off toward camp. He had gone perhaps a half mile, and was passing a thicket of laurel, when a bird rose from the midst of it and perching on the branch of a tree above, poured from its joyous breast so inexhaustible floods of song as but one of all God's creatures can utter in his praise. There was little in that—it was but to open the 36 CAAW SUCH 7'H/AWGS BE 2 beak and breathe; yet the man stopped as if struck—stopped and let fall his rifle, looking up- ward at the bird, covered his eyes with his hands and wept like a child ! For the moment he was, indeed, a child in spirit and in memory, dwelling again by the great river, over against the En- chanted Land! Then with an effort of the will he pulled himself together, picked up his weapon and audibly damning himself for an idiot strode on. Passing an opening that reached into the heart of the little thicket he looked in, and there, supine upon the earth, its arms all abroad, its gray uniform stained with a single spot of blood upon the breast, its white face turned sharply upward and backward, lay the image of himself! —the body of John Grayrock, dead of a gunshot wound, and still warm | He had found his man. As the unfortunate soldier knelt beside that masterwork of civil war, the shrilling bird upon the bough overhead stilled her song and, flushed with sunset's crimson glory, glided silently away through the solemn spaces of the wood. At roll- call that evening in the Federal camp the name Grayrock brought no response, nor ever again thereafter. -------- ---, - - - - MY FAVORITE MURDER. HAVING murdered my mother under circum- stances of singular atrocity, I was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years. In summing up, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked that it was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to explain away. At this my counsel rose and said: “May it please your honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by comparison. If you were familiar with the details of my client's previous murder of his uncle, you would discern in his later offense something in the nature of tender forbearance and filial consideration for the feel- ings of the victim. The appalling ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent with any hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not been for the fact that the honorable judge before whom he was tried was the president of a life insurance company which took risks on hanging, and in which my client held a policy, it is impossible to see how he could have been decently acquitted. If your honor would like to 37 38 CAAV S UC// ZYZZA'G.S. PA 2 hear about it for the instruction and guidance of your honor's mind, this unfortunate man, my client, will consent to give himself the pain of relating it under oath.” The district attorney said: “Your honor, I object. Such a statement would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three years ago, in the spring of I88I.” “In a statutory sense,” said the judge, “you are right, and in the Court of Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling in your favor. But not in a Court of Acquittal. The objection is overruled.” “I except,” said the district attorney. “You cannot do that,” the judge said. “I must remind you that in order to take an exception you must first get this case transferred for a time to the Court of Exceptions upon a formal motion duly supported by affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office was denied by me during the first year of this trial. “Mr. Clerk, swear the prisoner.” The customary oath having been administered, - I made the following statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the compara- tive triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply instructed the jury to * *: * *-*------- --- - - - - - * A. Y FA Vox/TE MURDER. 39 acquit, and I left the court without a stain upon my reputation: “I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee, Mich., of honest and reputable parents, one of whom Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in my later years. In 1867 the family came to California and settled near Nigger Head, where my father opened a road agency and prospered beyond the dreams of avarice. He was a silent, saturnine man then, though his increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity of his disposition, and I believe that nothing but his memory of the sad event for which I am now on trial prevents him from manifesting a genuine. hilarity. “Four years after we had set up the road agency an itinerant preacher came along, and having no other way to pay for the night's lodging which we gave him, favored us with an exhortation of such power that, praise God, we were all con- verted to religion. My father at once sent for his brother, the Hon. William Ridley of Stockton, and on his arrival turned over the agency to him, charging him nothing for the franchise or plant— the latter consisting of a Winchester rifle, a sawn- off shotgun, and an assortment of masks made out of flour sacks. The family then moved to Ghost Rock and opened a dance house. It was called ‘The Saints' Rest Hurdy-Gurdy, and the 4o CAA SUCH //H/A'G.S BE 2 proceedings each night began with prayer. It was there that my now sainted mother, by her grace in the dance, acquired the sobriquet of ‘The Bucking Walrus.' “In the fall of '75 I had occasion to visit Coyote, on the road to Mahala, and took the stage at Ghost Rock. There were four other passengers. About three miles beyond Nigger Head, persons whom I indentified as my Uncle William and his two sons held up the stage. Finding nothing in the express box, they went through the passen- gers. I acted a most honorable part in the affair, placing myself in line with the others, holding up my hands and permitting myself to be deprived of forty dollars and a gold watch. From my behavior no one could have suspected that I knew the gentlemen who gave the entertainment. A few days later, when I went to Nigger Head and asked for the return of my money and watch, my uncle and cousins swore they knew nothing of the matter, and they affected a belief that my father and I had done the job ourselves in dishonest violation of commercial good faith. Uncle Wil- liam even threatened to retaliate by starting an opposition dance house at Ghost Rock. As “The Saints' Rest had become rather unpopular, I saw that this would assuredly ruin it and prove a paying enterprise, so I told my uncle that I was willing to overlook the past if he would take me into the scheme and keep the partnership a secret ~~~~~~~ AM V RA VOA’/TE MURDER. 4 I from my father. This fair offer he rejected, and I then perceived that it would be better and more satisfactory if he were dead. "My plans to that end were soon perfected, and communicating them to my dear parents, I had the gratification of receiving their approval. My father said he was proud of me, and my mother promised that, although her religion forbade her to assist in taking human life, I should have the advantage of her prayers for my success. As a preliminary measure, looking to my security in case of detection, I made an application for mem- bership in that powerful order, the Knights of Murder, and in due course was received as a member of the Ghost Rock Commandery. On the day that my probation ended I was for the first time permitted to inspect the records of the order and learn who belonged to it—all the rites of initiation having been conducted in masks. Fancy my delight when, in looking over the roll of membership, I found the third name to be that of my uncle, who indeed was junior vice-chancel- lor of the order! Here was an opportunity exceeding my wildest dreams—to murder I could add insubordination and treachery. It was what my good mother would have called a special Providence.” “At about this time something occurred which caused my cup of joy, already full, to overflow on all sides, a circular cataract of bliss. Three men, 42 CAA/ SUCH T///AWGS BA p strangers in that locality, were arrested for the stage robbery in which I had lost my money and watch. They were brought to trial and, despite my efforts to clear them and fasten the guilt upon three of the most respectable and worthy citizens of Ghost Rock, convicted on the clearest proof. The murder would now be as wanton and reasonless as I could wish. - “One morning I shouldered my Winchester rifle, and going over to my uncle's house, near Nigger Head, asked my Aunt Mary, his wife, if he were at home, adding that I had come to kill him. My aunt replied with a peculiar smile that so many gentlemen called on the same errand and were afterward carried away without having per- formed it, that I must excuse her for doubting my good faith in the matter. She said I did not look as if I would kill anybody, so, as a guarantee of good faith, I leveled my rifle and wounded a Chinamán who happened to be passing the house. She said she knew whole families who could do a thing of that kind, but Bill Ridley was a horse of another color. She said, however, that I would find him over on the other side of the creek in the sheep lot; and she added that she hoped the best man would win. “My Aunt Mary was one of the most fair- minded women whom I have ever met. “I found my uncle down on his knees engaged in skinning a sheep. Seeing that he had neither ------------ M V FA VOA’/TE AM URADAR. 43 gun nor pistol handy, I had not the heart to shoot him, so I approached him, greeted him pleasantly, and struck him a powerful blow on the head with the butt of my rifle. I have a very good delivery, and Uncle William lay down on his side, then rolled over on his back, spread out his fingers, and shivered. Before he could recover the use of his limbs I seized the knife that he had been using and cut his ham- strings. You know, doubtless, that when you sever the tendon Achillis the patient has no further use of his leg; it is just the same as if he had no leg. Well, I parted them both, and when he revived he was at my service. As soon as he comprehended the situation, he said: “‘Samuel, you have got the drop on me, and can afford to be liberal about this thing. I have only one thing to ask of you, and that is that you carry me to the house and finish me in the bosom of my family.” “I told him I thought that a pretty reasonable request, and I would do so if he would let me put him in a wheat sack; he would be easier to carry that way, and if we were seen by the neighbors en route it would caused less remark. He agreed to that, and going to the barn I got a sack. This, however, did not fit him; it was too short and much wider than he was; so I bent his legs, forced his knees up against his breast, and got him into it that way, tying the sack above his 44 CAA SUCH 7"HAVGS BA 2 head. He was a heavy man, and I had all I could do to get him on my back, but I staggered along for some distance until I came to a swing which some of the children had suspended to the branch of an oak. Here I laid him down and sat upon him to rest, and the sight of the rope gave me a happy inspiration. In twenty minutes my uncle, still in the sack, swung free to the sport of the wind. I had taken down the rope, tied one end tightly about the mouth of the bag, thrown the other across the limb, and hauled him up about five feet from the ground. Fastening the other end of the rope also about the mouth of the sack, I had the satisfaction to see my uncle converted into a huge pendulum. I must add that he was not himself entirely aware of the nature of the change which he had undergone in his relation to the exterior world, though in jus- tice to a brave man's memory I ought to say that I do not think he would in any case have wasted much of my time in vain remonstrance. “Uncle William had a ram which was famous in all that region as a fighter. It was in a state of chronic constitutional indignation. Some deep disappointment in early life had soured its dispo- sition, and it had declared war upon the whole world. To say that it would butt anything acces- sible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of its military activity: the universe was its antagonist; its method was that of a projectile. A/V RA VOR/TE MURADER. 45 It fought, like the angels and devils, in mid-air, cleaving the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve and descending upon its victim at just the exact angle of incidence to make the most of its velocity and weight. Its momentum, cal- culated in foot-tons, was something incredible. It had been seen to destroy a four year old bull by a single impact upon that animal's gnarly fore- head. No stone wall had ever been known to resist its downward swoop; there were no trees tough enough to stay it; it would splinter them into matchwood, and defile their leafy honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable brute— this incarnate thunderbolt—this monster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of conquest and glory. It was with a view to summoning it forth to the field of honor that I suspended its master in the manner described. “Having completed my preparations, I imparted to the avuncular pendulum a gentle oscillation, and retiring to cover behind a contiguous rock, lifted up my voice in a long, rasping cry whose diminishing final note was drowned in a noise like that of a swearing cat, which emanated from the sack. Instantly that formidable sheep was upon its feet and had taken in the military situa- tion at a glance. In a few moments it had ap- proached, stamping, to within fifty yards of the swinging foeman who, now retreating and anon 46 CAA SUCH THIVGs BA advancing, seemed to invite the fray. Suddenly I saw the beast's head drop earthward as if de- pressed by the weight of its enormous horns; then a dim, white, wavy streak of sheep pro- longed itself from that spot in a generally hori- zontal direction to within about four yards of a point immediately beneath the enemy. There it struck sharply upward, and before it had faded from my gaze at the place whence it had set out I heard a horrible thump and a piercing scream, and my poor uncle shot forward with a slack rope, higher than the limb to which he was attached. Here the rope tautened with a jerk, arresting this flight, and back he swung in a breathless curve to the other end of his arc. The ram had fallen, a heap of indistinguishable legs, wool, and horns, but, pulling itself together and dodging as its antagonist swept downward, it retired at ran- dom, alternately shaking its head and stamping its fore feet. When it had backed about the same distance as that from which it had delivered the assault it paused again, bowed its head as if in prayer for victory, and again shot forward, dimly visible as before—a prolonging white streak with monstrous undulations, ending with a sharp ascension. Its course this time was at a right angle to its former one, and its impatience so great that it struck the enemy before he had nearly reached the lowest point of his arc. In consequence he went flying around and around in A/ V A.A POR/7"AZ Al/UA’DAA’. 47 a horizontal circle, whose radius was about equal: to half the length of the rope, which I forgot to say was nearly twenty feet long. His shrieks, crescendo in approach and diminuendo in reces- sion, made the rapidity of his revolution more obvious to the ear than to the eye. He had evidently not yet been struck in a vital spot. His posture in the sack and the distance from the ground at which he hung compelled the ram to operate upon his lower extremities and the end of his back. Like a plant that has struck its root into some poisonous mineral, my poor uncle was dying slowly upward. “After delivering its second blow the ram had not again retired. The fever of battle burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxicated with the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who in his rage forgets his skill and fights ineffectively at half- arm's length, the angry beast endeavored to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps as he passed overhead, sometimes, indeed, succeeding in striking him feebly, but more frequently over- thrown by its own misguided eagerness. But as the impetus was exhausted and the man's circles narrowed in scope and diminished in speed, bring- ing him nearer to the ground, these tactics pro- duced better results and elicited a superior quality of screams, which I greatly enjoyed. "Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce, the ram suspended hostilities and walked away, 48 CAAV SÜC// TH/AWGS BE * thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch of grass and slowly munching it. It seemed to have tired of war's alarms and resolved to beat the sword into a plowshare and cultivate the arts of peace. Steadily it held its course away from the field of fame until it had gained a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile. There it stopped and stood with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud and apparently half asleep. I observed, however, an occasional slight turn of its head, as if its apathy were more affected than real. “Meantime Uncle William's shrieks had abated with his motion, and nothing was heard from him but long, low moans, and at long intervals my name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful to my ear. Evidently the man had not the faintest notion of what was being done to him, and was inexpressibly terrified. When Death comes cloaked in mystery he is terrible indeed. Little by little my uncle's oscillations diminished, and finally he hung motionless. I went to him and was about to give him the coup de grâce, when I heard and felt a succession of smart shocks which shook the ground like a series of light earthquakes, and turning in the direction of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust approaching me with inconceivable rapidity and alarming effect. At a distance of some thirty yards away it stopped short, and from the near end of it rose Alf Y FA VOR/7'E A/UA’/D/EA’. 49 into the air what I at first thought a great white bird. Its ascent was so smooth and easy and regular that I could not realize its extraordinary celerity, and was lost in admiration of its grace. To this day the impression remains that it was a slow, deliberate movement, the ram—for it was that animal—being upborne by some power other than its own impetus, and supported through the successive stages of its flight with infinite tender- ness and care. My eyes followed its progress through the air with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by contrast with my former terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward the noble animal sailed, its head bent down almost between its knees, its fore feet thrown back, its hinder legs trailing to rear like the legs of a soar- ing heron. At a height of forty or fifty feet, as nearly as I could judge, it attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without altering the relative position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and steeper course with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot, and struck my poor uncle almost squarely on the top of the head | So frightful was the impact that not only the neck was broken, but the rope too; and the body of the deceased, forced against the earth, was crushed to pulp beneath the awful front of that meteoric sheep ! The concussion stopped > 5o - CA V SUCH 7///AGS BA 2 all the clocks between Lone Hand and Dutch Dan's, and Professor Davidson, who happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained that the vibrations were from north to south.” Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in point of atrocity my murder of Uncle William has seldom been excelled. ONE OFFICER, ONE MAN. CAPTAIN GRAFFENREID stood at the head of his company. The regiment was not engaged. It formed a part of the front line of battle, which stretched away to the right with a visible length of nearly two miles through the open ground. The left flank was veiled by woods; to the right also the line was lost to sight, but extended many miles. A hundred yards in rear was a second line; behind this the reserve brigades and divi- sions in column. Batteries of artillery occupied the spaces between and crowned the low hills. Groups of horsemen—generals with their staffs and escorts, and field officers of regiments behind the colors—broke the regularity of the lines and columns. Numbers of these figures of interest had field glasses at their eyes and sat as motion- less as statues, stolidly scanning the country in front; others came and went at a slow canter, bearing orders. There were squads of stretcher bearers, ambulances, wagon trains with ammuni- tion, and officers' servants in rear of all. Of all that was visible—for still in rear of these, along the roads, extended for many miles all that vast multitude of non-combatants who with their 51 52 CAA/ SUCH TH/AVGS BE 2 various impedimenta are assigned to the inglori- ous but important duty of supplying the fighters' many needs. An army in line of battle awaiting attack or prepared to deliver it presents strange contrasts. At the front are precision, formality, fixity, and silence. Toward the rear these characteristics are less and less conspicuous, and finally, in point of space, are lost altogether in confusion, motion, and noise. The homogeneous becomes hetero- geneous. Definition is lacking; repose is replaced by an apparently purposeless activity; harmony vanishes in hubbub, form in disorder. Commo- tion everywhere and ceaseless unrest. The men who do not fight are never ready. From his position at the right of his company in the front rank, Captain Graffenreid had an unobstructed outlook toward the enemy. A half mile of open and nearly level ground lay before him, and beyond it an irregular wood, covering a slight acclivity; not a human being anywhere visible. He could imagine nothing more peaceful than the appearance of that pleas- ant landscape with its long stretches of brown fields over which the atmosphere was beginning to quiver in the heat of the morning sun. Not a sound came from forest or field—not even the barking of a dog or the crowing of a cock at the half-seen plantation house on the crest among the trees. Yet every man in those miles of *----------------- - OAA OFFICER, OATE MAA'. 53 men knew that he and death were face to face. Captain Graffenreid had never in his life seen an armed enemy, and the war in which his regi- ment was one of the first to take the field was two years old. He had had the rare advantage of a military education, and when his comrades had marched to the front he had been detached for administrative service at the capital of his State, where it was thought that he could be most useful. Like a bad soldier he protested, and like a good one obeyed. In close official and personal relations with the governor of his State, and enjoying his confidence and favor, he had firmly refused promotion, and seen his juniors elevated above him. Death had been busy in his distant regiment; vacancies among the field officers had occurred again and again; but from a chivalrous feeling that war's rewards belonged of right to those who bore the storm and stress of battle, he had held his humble rank and gener- ously advanced the fortunes of others. His silent devotion to principle had conquered at last: he had been relieved of his hateful duties and ordered to the front, and now, untried by fire, stood in the van of battle in command of a com- pany of hardy veterans, to whom he had been but a name, and that name a by-word. By none —not even by those of his brother officers in whose favor he had waived his rights—was his 54 C.1 V SÜC// TH/A'GS BE 2 position understood. They were too busy to be just; he was looked upon as one who had shirked his duty, until forced unwillingly into the field. Too proud to explain, yet not too insensible to feel, he could only endure and hope. Of all the Federal Army on that summer morning none had accepted battle more joyously than Anderton Graffenreid. His spirit was buoy- ant, his faculties were riotous. He was in a state of mental exaltation, and scarcely could endure the enemy's tardiness in advancing to the attack. To him this was opportunity—for the result he cared nothing. Victory or defeat, as God might will; in one or in the other he should prove him- self a soldier and a hero; he should vindicate his right to the respect of his men and the compan- ionship of his brother officers—to the considera- tion of his superiors. How his heart leaped in his breast as the bugle sounded the stirring notes of the “assembly”! With what a light tread, scarcely conscious of the earth beneath his feet, he strode forward at the head of his company, and how exultingly he noted the tactical disposi- tions which placed his regiment in the front line ! And if perchance some memory came to him of a pair of dark blue eyes that might take on a tenderer light in reading the account of that day's doings, who shall blame him for the unmartial thought or count it a debasement of soldierly ardor? - **-** - - - - ONE OFFICER, O.V.E 7/A.V. 55 Suddenly, from the forest a half mile in front— apparently from among the upper branches of the trees, but really from the ridge beyond–rose a tall column of white smoke. A moment later came a deep, jarring explosion, followed—almost attended — by a hideous rushing sound that seemed to leap forward across the intervening space with inconceivable rapidity, rising from whisper to roar with too quick a gradation for attention to note the successive stages of its horrible progression | A visible tremor ran along the lines of men; all were startled into motion. Captain Graffenreid dodged and threw up his hands to one side of his head, palms outward. As he did so he heard a keen, ringing report, and saw on a hillside behind the line a fierce roll of smoke defiled with dust—the shell's explosion. It had passed a hundred yards to his left| He heard, or fancied he heard, a low, mocking laugh, and turning in the direction whence it came, saw the eyes of his first lieutenant fixed upon him with an unmistakable look of amusement. He looked along the line of faces in the front ranks. The men were laughing. At him? The thought restored the color to his bloodless face—restored too much of it. His cheeks burned with a fever of shame. The enemy's shot was not answered: the gen- eral in command at that exposed part of the line had evidently no desire to provoke a cannonade. 56 CAA SUCH THINGS BK 2 *- For the forbearance Captain Graffenreid was con- scious of a sense of gratitude. He had not known that the flight of a projectile was a phe- nomenon of so appalling character. His con- ception of war had already undergone a profound change, and he was conscious that his new feeling was manifesting itself in visible perturbation. His blood seemed boiling in his veins; he had a choking sensation, and felt that if he had a com- mand to give it would be inaudible, or at least unintelligible. The hand in which he held his sword trembled; the other moved automatically, clutching at various parts of his clothing. He found a difficulty in standing still and fancied that his men observed it. Was it fear? He feared it was. From somewhere away to the right came, as the wind served, a low, intermittent murmur like that of ocean in a storm—like that of a distant railway train—like that of wind among the pines —three sounds so nearly alike that the ear, unaided by the judgment, cannot distinguish them one from another. The eyes of the troops were drawn in that direction; the mounted officers turned their field glasses that way. Mingled with the sound was an irregular throbbing. He thought it, at first, the beating of his fevered blood in his ears; next, the distant tapping of a bass drum. “The ball is opened on the right flank,” said an officer. ONE OFFICER, ONE MAA'. 57 Captain Graffenreid understood: the sounds were musketry and artillery. He nodded and tried to smile. There was apparently nothing infectious in the smile. Presently a light line of blue smoke puffs broke out along the edge of the wood in front, suc- ceeded by a crackle of rifles. There were keen, sharp hissings in the air, terminating abruptly with a thump near by. The man at Captain Graffenreid's side dropped his musket; his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward, falling upon his face. Somebody shouted “Lie down " and the dead. man was hardly distin- guishable from the living. It looked as if those few rifle shots had slain ten thousand men. Only the field officers remained erect; their concession to the emergency consisted in dismounting and sending their horses to the shelter of the low hills immediately in rear. Captain Graffenreid lay alongside the dead man, from beneath whose breast flowed a little rill of blood. It had a faint sweetish odor which sick- ened him. The face was crushed into the earth and flattened. It looked yellow already, and was repulsive. Nothing suggested the glory of a sol- dier's death, nor mitigated the loathsomeness of the incident. He could not turn his back upon the body without facing away from his company. He fixed his eyes upon the forest, where all again was silent. He tried to imagine what was 58 CA V SUCH T///AWGS AA 2 going on there—the lines of troops forming to attack, the guns being pushed forward by hand to the edge of the open. He fancied he could see their black muzzles protruding from the under- growth, ready to deliver their storm of missiles— such missiles as the one whose shriek had so un- settled his nerves. The distension of his eyes became painful; a mist seemed to gather before them; he could no longer see across the field, yet would not withdraw his gaze lest he see the dead man at his side. The fire of battle was not now burning very brightly in this warrior's soul. From inaction had come introspection. He sought rather to analyze his feelings than distinguish himself by courage and devotion. The result was profoundly disappointing. He covered his face with his hands and groaned aloud. The hoarse murmur of battle grew more and more distinct upon the right; the murmur had, indeed, become a roar, the throbbing a thunder. The sounds had worked round obliquely to the front; evidently the enemy's left was being driven back, and the propitious moment to move against the salient angle of his line would soon arrive. The silence and mystery in front were ominous; all agreed that they boded evil to the assailants. Behind the prostrate lines sounded the hoof beats of galloping horses; the men turned to look. A dozen staff officers were riding to the various brigade and regimental commanders, who ONE OFFICER, ONE MAA’. 59 had remounted. A moment more and there was a chorus of voices, all uttering out of time the same words—"Attention, battalion '" The men sprang to their feet and were aligned by the com- pany commanders. They awaited the word “Forward"—awaited, too, with beating hearts and set teeth the gusts of lead and iron that were to smite them at their first movement in obedi- ence to that word. The word was not given; the tempest did not break forth. The delay was hideous, maddening! It unnerved like a respite at the guillotine. Captain Graffenreid stood at the head of his company, the dead man at his feet. He heard the battle on the right—rattle and crash of musk- etry, ceaseless thunder of cannon, desultory cheers of invisible combatants. He marked ascending clouds of smoke from distant forests. He noted the sinister silence of the forest in front. These contrasting extremes affected the whole range of his sensibilities. The strain upon his nervous organization was insupportable. He grew hot and cold by turns. He panted like a dog, and then forgot to breathe until reminded by vertigo. Suddenly he grew calm. Glancing downward, his eyes had fallen upon his naked sword, as he held it, point to earth. Foreshortened to his view, it resembled somewhat, he thought, the short heavy blade of the ancient Roman. The fancy was full of suggestion, malign, fateful, heroic! 6o CAA SUCH THINGS BE 2 The sergeant in the rear rank, immediately behind Captain Graffenreid, now observed a strange sight. His attention drawn by an un- common movement made by the captain—a sudden reaching forward of the hands and their energetic withdrawal, throwing the elbows out, as in pulling an oar—he saw spring from between the officer's shoulders a bright point of metal which prolonged itself outward, nearly a half arm's-length—a blade It was faintly streaked with crimson, and its point approached so near to the sergeant's breast, and with so quick a move- ment, that he shrank backward in alarm. That moment Captain Graffenreid pitched heavily forward upon the dead man and died. A week later the major-general commanding the left corps of the Federal Army submitted the following official report: “SIR: I have the honor to report, with regard to the action of the 19th inst., that owing to the enemy's withdrawal from my front to reinforce his beaten left, my command was not engaged. My loss was as follows: Killed, one officer, one -- man.” -------- *** - - THE MAN OUT OF THE NOSE. FROM A REPORTER's NoTEBook. AT the intersection of two certain streets in that part of San Francisco known by the rather loosely applied name of North Beach, is a vacant lot, which is rather more nearly level than is usu- ally the case with lots, vacant or otherwise, in that region. Immediately back of it, to the south, however, the ground slopes steeply upward, the acclivity broken by three terraces cut into the soft rock. It is a place for goats and poor peo- ple, several families of each class having occupied it jointly and amicably “from the foundation of the city.” One of the very humble habitations of the lowest terrace is noticeable for its rude resemblance to the human face, or rather to such a simulacrum of it as a boy might cut out of a hollowed pumpkin, meaning no offense to his race. The eyes are two circular windows, the nose is a door, the mouth an aperture caused by removal of a board below. There are no doorsteps. As a face, this house is too large; as a dwelling, too small. The blank, unmeaning stare of its lidless and browless eyes is uncanny. 61 62 CAA SUCH 7///AWGS BA: p. Sometimes a man steps out of the nose, turns, and passes the place where the right ear should be, and making his way through the throng of children and goats obstructing the narrow walk between his neighbors' doors and the edge of the terrace, gains the street by descending some rick- ety stairs. Here he pauses to consult his watch, and the stranger who happens to pass wonders why such a man as that can care what is the hour. Longer observations would show him that the time of the day is an important element in the man's movements, for it is at precisely two o'clock in the afternoon that he comes forth 365 times in every year. Having satisfied himself that he had made no mistake in the hour, he replaces the watch and walks rapidly southward up the street two squares, turns to the right, and as he approaches the next corner fixes his eyes on an upper win- dow in a three story building across the way. This is a somewhat dingy structure, which was originally of red brick, and is now gray. It shows the touch of age and dust. Built for a residence, it is now a factory. I do not know what is made there; the things that are com- monly made in a factory, I suppose. I only know that at two o'clock in the afternoon of every day but Sundays it is full of activity and clatter; pulsations of some great engine shake it and there are recurrent screams of wood tor- THE MAAV OUT OF THE AWOSE. 63 mented by the saw. At the window on which the man fixes an intensely expectant gaze noth- ing ever appears; the glass, in truth, has such a coating of dust that it has long ceased to be transparent. The man looks at it without stop- ping; he merely keeps turning his head more and more backward as he leaves the building behind. Passing along to the next corner, he turns to the left, goes round the block, and comes back till he reaches the point diagonally across the street from the factory—a point on his former course, which he then retraces, looking frequently back- ward over his right shoulder at the window while it is in sight. For many years he has not been known to vary his route nor to introduce a single innovation into his action. In a quarter of an hour he is again at the mouth of his dwelling, and a woman, who has for some time been stand- ing in the nose, assists him to enter. He is seen no more until two o'clock the next day. The woman is his wife. She supports herself and him by washing for the poor people among whom they live, at rates which destroy Chinese and domestic competition. This man is about fifty-seven years of age, though he looks greatly older. His hair is dead white. He wears no beard, and is always newly shaven. His hands are clean, his nails well kept. In the matter of dress he is greatly superior to his position as indicated by his surroundings and 64 CAAW SUCH THIAWGS BE * the business of his wife. He is, indeed, very neatly, if not quite fashionably, clad. His silk hat has a date no earlier than the year before the last, and his boots, scrupulously polished, are innocent of patches. I am told that the suit which he wears during his daily excursions of fifteen min- utes is not the one that he wears at home. Like everything else that he has, this is provided and kept in repair by the wife, and is renewed as fre- quently as her scanty means permit. Thirty years ago John Hardshaw and his wife lived on Rincon Hill in one of the finest resi- dences of that once aristocratic quarter. He had once been a physician, but having inherited a considerable estate from his father, concerned himself no more about the ailments of his fellow- creatures, and found as much work as he cared for in managing his own affairs. Both he and his wife were highly cultivated persons, and their house was frequented by a small set of such men and women as people of their tastes would think worth knowing. So far as these knew, Mr. and Mrs. Hardshaw lived happily together; certainly the wife was devoted to her handsome and accom- plished husband, and exceedingly proud of him. Among their acquaintances were the Barwells —man, wife, and two children—of Sacramento. Mr. Barwell was a civil and mining engineer, whose duties took him much from home and frequently to San Francisco. At these latter THE MAAW OUT OF THE MOSA. 65 times his wife commonly accompanied him and passed much of her time at the house of her friend, Mrs. Hardshaw, always with her two children, of whom Mrs. Hardshaw, childless her- self, grew very fond. Unluckily, her husband grew equally fond of their mother—a good deal fonder. Still more unluckily, that attractive lady was less wise than weak. At about three o'clock one autumn morning, Officer No. 13 of the Sacramento police saw a man stealthily leaving the rear entrance of a gen- tleman's residence, and promptly arrested him. The man—who wore a slouch hat and shaggy overcoat-offered the policeman one hundred, then five hundred, then one thousand dollars to be released. As he had less than the first men- tioned sum on his person, the officer treated his proposal with virtuous contempt. Before reach- ing the station the prisoner agreed to give him a check for ten thousand dollars and remain ironed in the willows along the river bank until it should be paid. As this only provoked new derision, he would say no more, merely giving an obviously fictitious name. When he was searched at the station nothing of value was found on him but a miniature portrait of Mrs. Barwell—the lady of the house at which he was caught. The case was set with costly diamonds; and some- thing in the quality of the man's linen sent a pang of unavailing regret through the severely 66 CA V SUCH 7"H.I.VGS BE 2 incorruptible bosom of Officer No. 13. There was nothing about the prisoner's clothing or per- son to identify him, and he was booked for burglary under the name that he had given, the honorable name of John K. Smith. The K. was an inspiration upon which, doubtless, he greatly prided himself. In the mean time the myterious disappearance of John Hardshaw was agitating the gossips of Rincon Hill in San Francisco, and was even men- tioned in one of the newspapers. It did not occur to the lady whom that journal, with grace- ful tenderness, described as his “widow," to look for him in the city prison at Sacramento—a town which he was not known ever to have visited. As John K. Smith he was arraigned and, waiving ex- amination, committed for trial. About two weeks before the trial, Mrs. Hard- shaw, accidentally learning that her husband was held in Sacramento under an assumed name on a charge of burglary, hastened to that city without daring to mention the matter to anyone, and presented herself at the prison, asking for an interview with her husband, John K. Smith. Haggard and ill with anxiety, wearing a plain traveling wrap which covered her from neck to foot, and in which she had passed the night on the steamboat, too anxious to sleep, she hardly showed for what she was, but her manner pleaded for her more strongly than anything that she THE MAA OUT OF THE AWOSE. 67 chose to say in evidence of her right to admit- tance. She was permitted to see him alone. What occurred during that distressing interview has never transpired; but subsequent events prove that Hardshaw had found means to subdue her will to his own. She left the prison, a broken- hearted woman, refusing to answer a single ques- tion, and returning to her desolate home renewed her inquiries in a half-hearted way for her missing husband. A week later she was herself missing: she had “gone back to the States”—nobody knew any more than that. , On his trial the prisoner pleaded guilty, “by advice of his counsel,” so his counsel said. Nev- ertheless, the judge, in whose mind several un- usual circumstances had created a doubt, insisted on the district attorney placing Officer No. 13 on the stand, and the deposition of Mrs. Barwell, who was too ill to attend, was read to the jury. It was very brief: she knew nothing of the mat- ter except that the likeness of herself was her property, and had, she thought, been left on the parlor table when she had retired on the night of the crime. She had intended it as a present to her husband, then and still absent in Europe on business for a mining company. This witness' manner, when making the depo- sition at her residence, was afterward described by the district attorney as most extraordinary. Twice she had refused to testify, and once when 68 CAA/ SUCH 7///NGS BE 2 the deposition lacked nothing but her signature she had caught it from the clerk's hands and torn it in pieces. She had called her children to the bedside and embraced them with streaming eyes, then suddenly sending them from the room, she verified her statement by oath and signature, and fainted—"slick away,” said the district attorney. It was at that time that her physician, arriving upon the scene, took in the situation at a glance, and grasping the representative of the law by the collar chucked him into the street and kicked his accomplice after him. The insulted majesty of the law was not vindicated; the victim of the indignity did not even mention anything of all this in court. He was ambitious to win his first case, and the circumstances of the taking of that deposition were not such as would give it weight if related; and after all, the man on trial had committed an offense against the law's majesty only less heinous than that of the irascible physician. By suggestion of the judge the jury rendered a verdict of guilty; there was nothing else to do, and the prisoner was sentenced to the peniten- tiary for three years. His counsel, who had ob- jected to nothing and had made no plea for lenity, had, in fact, hardly said a word, wrung his client's hand and simply left the room. It was obvious to the whole bar that he had been en- gaged only to prevent the court from appointing THE MAN O UT OF THE WOSE. 69 counsel who might possibly insist on making a defense. John Hardshaw served out his term at San Quentin, and when discharged was met at the prison gates by his wife, who had returned from “the States” to receive him. It is thought they went straight to Europe; anyhow, a general power of attorney to a lawyer still living among us—from whom I have many of the facts of this simple history—was - executed at Paris. This lawyer in a short time sold everything that Hard- shaw owned in California, and for years nothing was heard of the unfortunate couple; though many to whose ears had come vague and inaccu- rate intimations of their strange story, and who had known them, recalled their personality with tenderness and their misfortunes with compassion. Some years later they returned, broken in for- tune and spirits, he in health. The purpose of their return I have not been able to ascertain. For some time they lived under the name of Johnson, in a respectable enough quarter south of Market Street, pretty well out, and were never seen away from the vicinity of their dwelling. They must have had a little money left, for it is not known that the man had any occupation, the state of his health probably not permitting. The woman's devotion to her invalid husband was matter of remark among their neighbors; she seemed never absent from his side, supporting 7o CAAW SUCH TH/AWGS BE 2 and cheering him. They would sit for hours on one of the benches in a little public park, she reading to him, his hand in hers, her light touch occasionally visiting his pale brow, her still beau- tiful eyes frequently lifted from the book to look into his as she made some comment on the text or closed the volume to beguile his mood with talk of—what? Nobody had ever overheard a con- versation between these two. The reader who has had the patience to follow their history to this point may possibly find a pleasure in con- jecture: there was probably something to be avoided. The bearing of the man was one of profound dejection; in fact, the unsympathetic youth of the neighborhood, with that keen sense for visible characteristics which ever distinguishes the young male of their species, sometimes men- tioned him among themselves by the name of Spoony Glum. It occurred one day that John Hardshaw was posssesed by the spirit of unrest. God knows what led him whither he went, but he crossed Market Street and held his way northward over the hills, and downward into the region known as North Beach. Turning, aimless, to the left, he followed his toes along an unfamiliar street until he was opposite what for that period was a rather grand residence, and for this is a rather shabby factory. Casting his eyes casually upward he saw at an open window what it had been better he - -**- - - - - - - - - : - *: ... • * THE MAA OUT OF THA MOSE. 71 had not seen—the face and figure of Elvira Bar- well. Their eyes met. With a sharp exclama- tion, like the cry of a startled bird, the lady sprang to her feet and thrust her beautiful body half out of the window, clutching the casing on each side. Arrested by the cry, the people in the street below looked up. Hardshaw stood motionless, speechless, his eyes two flames. “Take care!” shouted someone in the crowd, as the woman strained further and further forward, defying the silent, implacable law of gravitation, as once she had defied that other law which God thundered from Sinai. The suddenness of her movements had tumbled a torrent of dark hair about her shoulders, and now it was blown about her cheeks, almost concealing her entire face. A moment so, and then—' A fearful cry rang through the street, as, losing her balance, she pitched headlong from the window, a confused and whirling mass of skirts, limbs, hair, and white face, and struck the pavement with a hor- rible sound and a force of impact that was felt a hundred feet away. For a moment all eyes refused their office, and turned from the sicken- ing spectacle on the sidewalk. Drawn again to that horror, they saw it strangely augmented. A man, hatless, seated flat upon the paving stones, held the broken, the bleeding form against his breast, kissing the mangled cheeks and stream- ing mouth through tangles of wet hair, his own 72 CAA SUCH 7/AIAWGS BA 2 features indistinguishably crimson with the blood that half strangled him and ran in rills from his soaken beard. The reporter's task is nearly finished. The Barwells had that very morning returned from a two years' absence in Lima. A week later the widower, now doubly desolate, since there could be no missing the significance of Hardshaw's horrible demonstration, had sailed for I know not what distant port, he has never come back to say. Hardshaw—as Johnson no longer—passed a year in the Stockton asylum for the insane, where also his wife, through the influence of pity- ing friends, was admitted to care for him. When he was discharged, not cured but harmless, they returned to the city; it would seem ever to have had some dreadful fascination for them. For a time they lived near the Mission, in poverty only less abject than that which is their present lot; but it was too far away from the objective point of the man's daily pilgrimage. They could not afford car fare. So that poor devil of an angel from heaven—wife to this convict and lunatic– obtained, at a fair enough rental, the blank-faced shanty on the lower terrace of Goat Hill. Thence to the structure that was a dwelling and is a fac- tory the distance is not so great; it is, in fact, an agreeable walk, judging from the old gentleman's eager and cheerful look as he takes it. The return journey appears to be a trifle wearisome. *~~~~ * - AN OCCURRENCE AT BROWN VILLE.* I TAUGHT a little country school near Brown- ville, which, as everyone knows who has had the good luck to live there, is the capital of a consid- erable expanse of the finest scenery in California. The town is somewhat frequented in summer by a class of persons whom it is the habit of the local journal to call “pleasure seekers,” but who by a juster classification would be known as “the sick and those in adversity.” Brownville itself might rightly enough be described, indeed, as a summer place of last resort. It is fairly well endowed with boarding houses, at the least per- nicious of which I performed twice a day (lunch- ing at the schoolhouse) the humble rite of cement- ing the alliance between soul and body. From this “hostelry” (as the local journal preferred to call it when it did not call it a “caravenserai") to the schoolhouse the distance by the wagon road was about a mile and a half; but there was a trail, very little used, which led over an interven- * This story was written in collaboration with Miss Ina Lillian Peterson, to whom is rightly due the credit for whatever merit it may have. 73 74 CAAW SUCH THAVGS BE 2 --> ing range of low, heavily wooded hills, consider- ably shortening the distance. By this trail I was returning one evening later than usual. It was the last day of the term, and I had been detained at the schoolhouse until almost dark preparing an account of my stewardship for the trustees—two of whom, I proudly reflected, would be able to read it, and the third (an instance of the domin- ion of mind over matter) would be overruled in his customary antagonism to the schoolmaster of his own creation. I had gone not more than a quarter of the way when, finding an interest in the antics of a family of lizards which dwelt thereabout, and seemed full of reptilian joy for their immunity from the ills incident to life at the Brownville House, I sat upon a fallen tree to ob- serve them. As I leaned wearily against a branch of the gnarled old trunk the twilight deepened in the somber woods and the faint new moon began casting visible shadows and gilding the leaves of the trees with a tender but ghostly light. Suddenly I heard the sound of voices—a woman's, angry, impetous, rising against deep masculine tones, rich and musical. I strained my eyes, peering through the dusky shadows of the wood, hoping to get a view of the intruders on my solitude, but could see no one. For some yards in each direction I had an uninterrupted view of the trail, and, knowing of no other within a half mile, thought the persons heard must be 4 AV OCCUAPA’EAVCA A 7" BA’O WAV VAZ LE. 75 approaching from the wood at one side. There was no sound but that of the voices, which were now so distinct that I could catch the words. One was that of a man, evidently, the tone, though deep and low, giving me an impression of anger, abundantly confirmed by the matter spoken : “I will have no threats; you are powerless, as you very well know. Let things remain as they are or, by G—d you shall both suffer for it." “What do you mean?"—this was the voice of a woman, a cultivated voice, the voice of a lady. “You would not—murder us.” There was no reply, at least none that was audible to me. During the silence I peered into the wood in the hope to get a glimpse of the speakers, for I felt sure that this was an affair of gravity in which ordinary scruples ought not to count. It seemed to me that the woman was in peril; at any rate the man had not disavowed a willingness to murder. When a man is enacting the rôle of potential assassin he has not the right to choose his audience. After some little time I saw them, indistinct in the moonlight among the trees. The man, tall and slender, appeared clothed in black; the woman wore, as nearly as I could make out, a gown of clinging gray stuff. Evidently they were still unaware of my presence in the shadow, though for some reason when they renewed their 76 CAAW SUCH THINGS BE * conversation they spoke in lower tones and I could no longer understand. As I looked the woman seemed to sink to the ground and raise her hands in supplication, as is frequently done on the stage and never, so far as I know, any- where else, and I am not altogether sure that it was done in this instance. The man fixed his eyes upon her; they seemed to glitter bleakly in the moonlight with an expression that made me apprehensive that he would turn them upon me. I do not know by what impulse I was moved, but I sprang to my feet out of the shadow. At that instant the figures vanished. I peered in vain through the spaces among the trees and clumps of undergrowth. The night wind rustled the leaves; the lizards had retired early, reptiles of exemplary habits. The little moon was already slipping behind a black hill in the west. I went home, somewhat disturbed in mind, half doubting that I had heard or seen any living thing excepting the lizards. It all seemed a trifle odd and uncanny. It was as if among the various phenomena, objective and subjective, that made the sum total of the incident there had been an uncertain element which had diffused its dubious character over all—had leavened the whole mass with unreality. I did not like it. At the breakfast table the next morning there was a new face; opposite me sat a young girl at whom I glanced carelessly as I took my seat. * -- - - - - AAV OCCUA’A2EAVCE A 7" BAO WAV VA LLE. 77 In speaking to the high and mighty female per- sonage who condescended to seem to wait upon us, this girl soon invited my attention by the sound of her voice, which was like, yet not alto- gether like, the one still murmuring in my mem- ory of the previous evening's adventure. A moment later another girl, a few years older, entered the room and sat at the left of the other, speaking to her a gentle “good morning.” By her voice I was startled: it was without doubt the one of which the first girl's had reminded me. Here was the lady of the sylvan incident sitting bodily before me, “in her habit as she lived !” Evidently enough the two were sisters. With a nebulous kind of apprehension that I might be recognized as the mute inglorious hero of an adventure which had in my consciousness and con- science something of the character of eavesdrop- ping, I allowed myself but a hasty cup of the lukewarm coffee thoughtfully provided by the prescient waitress for the emergency, and left the table. As I passed out of the house into the grounds I heard a rich, strong male voice singing an aria from “Rigoletto.” I am bound to say that it was exquisitely sung, too, but there was something in the performance that displeased me, I could say neither what nor why, and I walked rapidly away. Returning later in the day I saw the elder of the two young women standing on the porch and 78 CA V SUCH 7"H/A/G.S. B.A. 2 near her was a tall man in black clothing—the man whom I had expected to see. All day the desire to know something of these persons had been uppermost in my mind, and I now resolved to learn what I could of them in any way that was neither dishonorable nor low. The man was talking easily and affably to his companion, but at the sound of my footsteps on the gravel walk he ceased, and turning about looked me full in the face. He was apparently of middle age, dark and uncommonly handsome. His attire was faultless; his bearing easy and graceful, the look which he turned upon me open, free, and devoid of any suggestion of rudeness. Nevertheless it affected me with a distinct emo- tion which on subsequent analysis in memory appeared to be compounded of hatred and dread —I am unwilling to call it fear. A second later the man and woman had disappeared. They seemed to have a trick of disappearing. On entering the house, however, I saw them through the open doorway of the parlor as I passed; they had merely stepped through a window which opened down to the floor. Cautiously “approached” on the subject of her new guests, my landlady proved not ungracious. Restated with, I hope, some small reverence for English grammar the facts were these: The two girls were Pauline and Eva Maynard of San Francisco; the elder was Pauline. The man was AAV OCCURA2AA/CE A 7" BA’O WAV VA LLE. 79 Richard Benning, their guardian, who had been the most intimate friend of their father, now deceased. Mr. Benning had brought them to Brownville in the hope that the mountain climate might benefit Eva, who was thought to be in danger of consumption. Upon these short and simple annals the land- lady wrought an embroidery of eulogium which abundantly attested her faith in Mr. Benning's will and ability to pay for the best that her house afforded. That he had a good heart was evident to her from his devotion to his two beautiful wards and his really touching solicitude for their comfort. The evidence impressed me as insuffi- cient, and I silently found the Scotch verdict, “Not proven.” Certainly Mr. Benning was most attentive to his wards. In my strolls about the country I frequently encountered them – sometimes in company with other guests of the hotel—explor- ing the gulches, fishing, rifle shooting, and other. wise wiling away the monotony of country life; and although I watched them as closely as good breeding would permit I saw nothing that would in any way explain the strange words that I had overheard in the wood. I had grown tolerably well acquainted with the young ladies, and could exchange looks and even greetings with their guardian without actual repugnance. A month went by and I had almost ceased to 8o CAA SUCH THAVGS BE 2 interest myself in their affairs when one night our . entire little community was thrown into excite- ment by an event which vividly recalled my experience in the forest. This was the death of the elder girl, Pauline. The sisters had occupied the same bedroom on the third floor of the house. Waking in the gray of the morning Eva had found Pauline dead beside her in the bed. Later, when the poor girl was weeping beside the body amid a throng of sympathetic if not very considerate persons, Mr. Benning entered the room and was, appar- ently, about to take her hand. She drew away from the side of the dead and moved slowly toward the door. “It is you,” she said—“you who have done this. You—you—you!” - “She is raving,” he said in a low voice. He followed her, step by step, as she retreated, his eyes fixed upon hers with a steady gaze in which there was nothing of tenderness nor of compas- sion. She stopped; the hand that she had raised in accusation fell to her side, her dilated eyes contracted visibly, the lids slowly dropped over them, veiling their strange wild beauty, and she stood motionless and almost as white as the dead girl lying near. The man took her hand and put his arm gently about her shoulders, as if to sup- port her. Suddenly she burst into a passion of tears and clung to him as a child to its mother. r- - - - - ---- A M OCCUA’A’z MCA. A 7" />A’O IPAV I/////z. 8 I He smiled with a smile that affected me most disagreeably—perhaps any kind of smile would have done so—and led her silently out of the 1 OOnn. There was an inquest—perhaps an autopsy- and the customary verdict: the deceased, it appeared, came to her death through “heart disease.” It was before the invention of heart failure, though the heart of poor Pauline had indubitably failed. The body was embalmed and taken to relatives in San Francisco by some- one summoned thence for the purpose, neither Eva nor Benning accompanying it. Some of the hotel gossips ventured to think that very strange, and a few hardy spirits went so far as to think it very strange indeed; but the good landlady gen- erously threw herself into the breach, saying it was owing to the precarious nature of the girl's health. It is not of record that either of the two persons most affected and apparently least con- cerned made any explanation. One evening about a week after the death I went out upon the veranda of the hotel to get a book that I had left there. Under some vines shutting out the moonlight from a part of the space I saw Richard Benning, for whose appari- tion I was prepared by having previously heard the low, sweet voice of Eva Maynard, whom also I now discerned, standing before him with one hand raised to his shoulder, and her eyes, as 82 CAA SUCH THIVGS BE 2 nearly as I could judge, gazing upward into his. He held her disengaged hand and his head was bent with a peculiar dignity and grace. Their attitude was that of lovers, and as I stood in deep shadow to observe it I felt even guiltier than on that memorable night in the wood. I was about to retire, when the girl spoke, and the contrast between her words and her attitude was so surprising that I remained, because I had merely forgotten to go away. “You will take my life,” she said, “as you did Pauline's last week. I know your intention as well as I know your power, and I ask nothing, only that you finish your work without needless delay, and let me be at peace.” He made no reply—merely let go the hand that he was holding, removed the other from his shoul- der, and, turning away, descended the steps lead- ing to the garden, and disappeared in the shrubbery. But a moment later I heard, seem- ingly from a great distance, his fine clear voice in a barbaric chant, which, as I listened, brought before some inner spiritual sense a consciousness of some far strange land, peopled with beings having forbidden powers. The song held me in a kind of spell, but when it had died away I recovered and instantly perceived what I thought an opportunity. I walked out of my shadow to where the girl stood. She turned and looked at me with something of the look, it seemed to me, A.V occCAAAA CE A 7" RKO WA WILLE, 83 of a hunted hare. Possibly my intrusion had frightened her. “Miss Maynard,” I said, “I beg you tell me who that man is, and the nature of his power over you. Perhaps this is impertinence in me, but it is not a matter for idle civilities. When a woman is in danger any man has a right to act.” She listened without apparent emotion—almost I thought without interest, and when I had fin- ished she closed her big blue eyes as if unspeak- ably weary. “You can do nothing,” she said. I took hold of her arm, gently shaking her as one shakes a person falling into a dangerous sleep. “You must rouse yourself,” I said; "something must be done, and you must give me leave to act. You have said that that man killed your sister, and I believe it—that he will kill you, and I believe that.” She merely raised her eyes to mine. “Will you not tell me all?” I added. “There is nothing to be done, I tell you— nothing. And if I could do anything I would not. It does not matter in the least. We shall be here only two days more; we go away then, oh, so far! If you have observed anything, I beg you to be silent.” “But this is madness, girl.” I was trying by rough speech to break the deadly repose of her manner. “You have accused him of murder. 84 CAAW SUCH THINGS BE * Unless you explain these things to me I shall lay the matter before the authorities." This roused her, but in a way that I did not like. She lifted her head proudly and said: "Do not meddle, sir, in what does not concern you. This is my affair, Mr. Moran, not yours.” “It concerns every person in the country—in the world,” I answered, with equal coldness. "If you had no love for your sister, I, at least, am concerned for * * “Listen,” she interrupted, leaning toward me. “I loved her, yes, God knows! But more than that—beyond all, beyond expression, I love him. You have overheard a secret, but you shall not make use of it to harm him. I shall deny all. Your word against mine—it will be that. Do you think your 'authorities' will believe you?” She was now smiling like an angel, and, God help me! I was heels over head in love with her! Did she, by some of the many methods of divina- tion known to her sex, read my feelings? Her whole manner had altered. “Come," she said, almost coaxingly, “promise that you will not be impolite again.” She took my arm in the most friendly way. “Come, I will walk with you. He will not know—he will remain away all night.” Up and down the veranda we paced in the moonlight, she apparently forgetting her recent bereavement, cooing and murmuring girlwise of * ****** - - - - - AAW OCCUA’A BA/CAE A 7' AA’O / WAV / AL//z. 85 every kind of nothing in all Brownville; I silent, consciously awkward, and with something of the feeling of being concerned in an intrigue. It was a revelation—this most charming and apparently blameless creature coolly and confessedly deceiv- ing the man for whom a moment before she had acknowledged and shown the supreme love which finds even death an acceptable endearment. “Truly,” I thought in my inexperience, “here is something new under the moon.” And the moon must have smiled. Before we parted I had exacted a promise that she would walk with me the next afternoon– before going away forever—to the Old Mill, one of Brownville's revered antiquities, erected in I86O. “If he is not about,” she added gravely, as I let go the hand she had given me at parting, and of which, may the good saints forgive me, I strove vainly to repossess myself when she had said it—so charming, as the wise Frenchman has pointed out, do we find woman's infidelity when we are its objects, not its victims. In apportion- ing his benefactions that night the Angel of Sleep overlooked me. The Brownville House dined early, and after dinner on the next day Miss Maynard, who had not been at table, came to me on the veranda, attired in the demurest of walking costumes, say- ing not a word. “He” was evidently “not about.” 86 CAAW SUCH 7/7/AWGS BAZ * We went slowly up the road that led to the Old Mill. She was apparently not strong and at times took my arm, relinquishing it and taking it again rather capriciously, I thought. Her mood, or rather her succession of moods, was as muta- ble as skylight in a rippling sea. She jested as if she had never heard of such a thing as death, and laughed on the lightest incitement, and directly afterward would sing a few bars of some grave melody with such tenderness of expression that I had to turn away my eyes lest she should see the evidence of her success in art, if art it was, not artlessness, as then I was compelled to think it. And she said the oddest things in the most un- conventional way, skirting sometimes unfathom- able abysms of thought, where I had hardly the courage to set foot. In short, she was fascinating in a thousand and fifty different ways, and at every step I executed a new and profounder emotional folly, a hardier spiritual indiscretion, incurring fresh liability to arrest by the invisible constabulary of conscience for infractions of my own peace. Arriving at the mill, she made no pretense of stopping, but turned into a trail leading through a field of stubble toward a creek. Crossing by a rustic bridge, we continued on the trail, which now led uphill to one of the most picturesque spots in the country. The Eagle's Nest, it was called—the summit of a cliff which rose sheer *-*s-------. * - s AAV OCCURREAVCE A 7" BA’O ) /AW WILLE. 87 into the air a height of hundreds of feet above the forest at its base. From this elevated point we had a noble view of another valley and of the opposite hills flushed with the last rays of the set- ting sun. As we watched the light escaping to higher and higher planes from the encroaching flood of shadow filling the valley we heard foot- steps, and in another moment were joined by Richard Benning. “I saw you from the road," he said carelessly; “so I came up." Being a fool, I neglected to take him by the throat and pitch him into the treetops below, but muttered some polite lie instead. Upon the girl the effect of his coming was immediate and un- mistakable. Her face was suffused with the glory of love's transfiguration: the red light of the sunset had not been more obvious in her eyes than was now the lovelight that replaced it. “I am so glad you came !” she said, giving him both her hands; and, God help me! it was mani- festly true. Seating himself upon the ground he began a lively dissertation upon the wild flowers of the region, a number of which he had with him. In the middle of a facetious sentence he suddenly ceased speaking and fixed his eyes upon Eva, who leaned against the stump of a tree absently plaiting grasses. She lifted her eyes in a startled way to his, as if she had felt his look. She then 88 CAA SUCH 7/7//VG.S BA 2 * rose, cast away her grasses, and moved slowly away from him. He also rose and continued looking at her. He had still in his hand the bunch of flowers. The girl turned, as if to speak, but said nothing. I recall clearly now something of which I was but half conscious then—the dreadful contrast between the smile upon her lips and the terrified expression in her eyes as she met his steady and imperative gaze. I know nothing of how it happened, nor how it was that I did not sooner understand; I only know that with the smile of an angel upon her lips and that look of terror in her beautiful eyes, Eva Maynard sprang from the cliff and shot crashing into the tops of the pines below ! How and how long afterward I reached the place I cannot say, but Richard Benning was already there, kneeling beside the dreadful thing that had been a woman. “She is dead—quite dead,” he said coldly. “I will go to town for assistance. Please do me the favor to remain.” He rose to his feet and moved away, but in a moment had stopped and turned about. “You have doubtless observed, my friend,” he said, “that this was entirely her own act. I did not rise in time to prevent it, and you, not know- ing her mental condition—you could not, of course, have suspected.” His manner maddened me, .* A V OCCURREAVCE A 7" BRO WAV VALLE. 89 “You are as much her assassin,” I said, “as if your damnable hands had cut her throat.” He shrugged his shoulders without reply and, turning, walked away. A moment later I heard through the deepening shadows of the wood, into which he had disappeared, a rich, strong, baritone voice singing “La donna e mobile,” from “Rig- oletto.” - - - - - - - * *- * • * - * - - • *. - * JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER GENERAL. FROM THE SECRETARY OF WAR TO THE HON. JUPITER DOKE, HARDPAN CROSSROADS, POSEY COUNTY, ILLINOIS. WASHINGTON, November 3, 1861. Having faith in your patriotism and ability, the President has been pleased to appoint you a brigadier general of volunteers. Do you accept? FROM THE HON. JUPITER DOKE TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR. HARDPAN CITY, ILL., November 9, 1861. It is the proudest moment of my life. The office is one which should be neither sought nor declined. In times that try men's souls the patriot knows no North, no South, no East, no West. His motto should be: “My country, my whole country, and nothing but my country.” I accept the great trust confided in me by a free and intelligent people, and with a firm reliance on the principles of constitutional liberty, and invok- ing the guidance of an all-wise Providence, Ruler 9I - * 92 CAA SUCH 7/*/A/G.S. RE 2 of Nations, shall labor so to discharge it as to leave no blot upon my political escutcheon. Say to his Excellency, the successor of the immortal Washington in the Seat of Power, that the pat- ronage of my office will be bestowed with an eye single to securing the greatest good to the great- est number, the stability of republican institutions in Posey County, and the triumph of the party in all elections; and to this I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor. I shall at once prepare an appropriate response to the speech of the chairman of the committee deputed to inform me of my appointment, and I trust the senti- ments therein expressed will strike a sympathetic chord in the public heart, as well as command the Executive approval. FROM THE SECRETARY OF WAR TO MAJOR GENERAL BLOUNT WARDORG, COMMANDING THE MILITARY DEPARTMENT OF EASTERN KENTUCKY. WASHINGTON, November 14, 1861. I have assigned to your department Brigadier General Jupiter Doke, who will soon proceed to Distilleryville, on the Little Buttermilk River, and take command of the Illinois Brigade at that point, reporting to you by letter for orders. Is the route from Covington by way of Bluegrass, Opossum Corners, and Horsecave still infested **---- /UPITER DOKE, BR/GADIER GENERAL. 93 with bushwhackers, as reported in your last dis- patch? I have a plan for cleaning them out. FROM MAJOR GENERAL BLOUNT WARDORG TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR. LOUISVILLE, KY., November 20, 1861. The name and services of Brigadier General Doke are unfamiliar to me, but I shall be pleased to have the advantage of his skill. The route from Covington to Distilleryville via Opossum Corners and Horsecave I have been compelled to abandon to the enemy, whose guerilla warfare made it impossible to keep it open without detaching too many troops from the front. The brigade at Distilleryville is supplied by steam- boats up the Little Buttermilk. FROM THE SECRETARY OF WAR TO BRIGADIER GENERAL JUPITER DOKE, HARDPAN, ILL. WASHINGTON, November 26, 1861. I deeply regret that your commission had been forwarded by mail before the receipt of your letter of acceptance; so we must dispense with the formality of official notification to you by a committee. The President is highly gratified by the noble and patriotic sentiments of your letter, and directs that you proceed at once to your command at Distilleryville, Ky., and there report 94 CAAW SUCH THINGS BR 2 by letter to Major General Wardorg at Louisville, for orders. It is important that the strictest secrecy be observed regarding your movements until you have passed Covington, as it is desired to hold the enemy in front of Distilleryville until you are within three days of him. Then if your approach is known it will operate as a demonstra- tion against his right and cause him to strengthen it with his left now at Memphis, Tenn., which it is desirable to capture first. Go by way of Blue- grass, Opossum Corners, and Horsecave. All officers are expected to be in full uniform when en route to the front. FROM BRIGADIER GENERAL JUPITER DOKE TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR. COVINGTON, KY., December 7, 1861. I arrived yesterday at this point, and have given my proxy to Joel Briller, Esq., my wife's cousin, and a staunch Republican, who will worthily rep- resent Posey County in field and forum. He points with pride to a stainless record in the halls of legislation, which have often echoed to his soul-stirring eloquence on questions which lie at the very foundation of popular government. He has been called the Patrick Henry of Hardpan, where he has done yeoman's service in the cause of civil and religious liberty. Mr. Briller left for Distilleryville last evening, and the standard JUPI TER DOKE, BRIGAD/ER GENERAL. 95 bearer of the Democratic host confronting that stronghold of freedom will find him a pillar of strength. I have been asked to remain here and deliver some addresses to the people in a local contest involving issues of paramount importance. That duty being performed, I shall in person enter the arena of armed debate and move in the direction of the heaviest firing, burning my ships behind me. I forward by this mail to his Excel- lency the President a request for the appointment of my son, Jabez Leonidas Doke, as postmaster at Hardpan. I would take it, sir, as a great favor if you would give the application a strong verbal indorsement as the appointment is in the line of reform. Be kind enough to inform me what are the emoluments of the office I hold in the mili- tary arm, and if they are by salary or fees? Are there any perquisites? My mileage account will be transmitted monthly. FROM BRIGADIER GENERAL JUPITER DOKE TO MAJOR GENERAL BLOUNT WARDORG. DISTILLERYVILLE, KY., January 12, 1862. I arrived on the tented field yesterday by steamboat, the recent storms having inundated the landscape, covering, I understand, the greater part of a Congressional District. I am pained to find that Joel Briller, Esq., a prominent citizen of Posey County, Ill., and a far-seeing statesman 96 CAM SUCH THIV.G.S BE * who held my proxy, and who a month ago should have been thundering at the gates of Disunion, has not been heard from, and has doubtless been sacrificed upon the altar of his country. In him the American people lose a bulwark of freedom. I would respectfully move that you designate a committee to draw up resolutions of respect to his memory, and that the office holders and men of the command wear the usual badge of mourn- ing for thirty days. I shall at once place myself at the head of affairs here, and am now ready to entertain any suggestions which you may make, looking to a better enforcement of the laws in this commonwealth. The militant Democrats on the other side of the river appear to be con- templating extreme measures. They have two large cannons facing this way, and yesterday morning, I am told, some of them came down to the water's edge and remained in session for some time, making infamous allegations. FROM THE DIARY OF BRIGADIER GENERAL JUPITER DOKE, AT DISTILLERYVILLE, KY. January 12, 1862. On my arrival yesterday at the Henry Clay Hotel (named in honor of the late far-seeing statesman) I was waited on by a delegation con- sisting of the three colonels intrusted with the command of the regiments of my brigade. It yUPITER poke, BRIGADIER GENERAL. 97 was an occasion that will be memorable in the political annals of America. Forwarded copies of the speeches to the Posey Maverick, to be spread upon the record of the ages. The gentle- men composing the delegation unanimously re- affirmed their devotion to the principles of national unity and the Republican party. Was gratified to recognize in them men of political prominence and untarnished escutcheons. At the subsequent banquet, sentiments of lofty patriotism were expressed. Wrote to Mr. War- dorg at Louisville for instructions. January 13, 1862.—Leased a prominent resi- dence (the former incumbent being absent in arms against his country) for the term of one year, and wrote at once for Mrs. Brigadier Gen- eral Doke and the vital issues—excepting Jabez Leonidas. In the camp of treason opposite here there are supposed to be three thousand mis- guided men laying the ax at the root of the tree of liberty. They have a clear majority, many of our men having returned without leave to their constituents. We could probably not poll more than two thousand votes. Have advised my heads of regiments to make a canvass of those remaining, all bolters to be read out of the phalanx. January 14, 1862.—Wrote to the President, asking for the contract to supply this command with firearms and regalia through my brother-in- 98 CAAW SUCH TH/AWGS BA 2 law, prominently connected with the manufactur- ing interests of the country. Club of cannon soldiers arrived at Jayhawk, three miles back from here, on their way to join us in battle array. Marched my whole brigade to Jayhawk to escort them into town, but their chairman, mistaking us for so-called Confederates, opened fire on the head of the procession and by the extraordinary noise of the cannon balls (I had no conception of it!) so frightened my horse that I was unseated without a contest. The meeting adjourned in dis- order and returning to camp I found that a depu- tation of the enemy had crossed the river in our absence and made a division of the loaves and fishes. Wrote to the President applying for the Gubernatorial Chair of the Territory of Idaho. FROM EDITORIAL ARTICLE IN THE POSEY (ILL) “MAVERICK,” JANUARY 20, 1862. Brigadier General Doke's thrilling account, in another column, of the Battle of Distilleryville will make the heart of every loyal Illinoisian leap with exultation. The brilliant exploit marks an era in military history, and as General Doke says, “lays broad and deep the foundations of Ameri- can prowess in arms.” As none of the troops engaged, except the gallant author-chieftain (a host in himself) hail from Posey County, he justly considered that a list of the fallen would only /U// TER DOKE, BRIGADIER GENERAL. 99 occupy our valuable space to the exclusion of more important matter, but his account of the strategic ruse by which he apparently abandoned his camp and so inveigled a perfidious enemy into it for the purpose of murdering the sick, the unfortunate countertempus at Jayhawk, the subse- quent dash upon a trapped enemy flushed with a supposed success, driving their terrified legions across an impassable river which precluded pur- suit—all these “moving accidents by flood and field” are related with a pen of fire and have all the terrible interest of romance. Verily, truth is stranger than fiction and the pen is mightier than the sword. When by the graphic power of the art preservative of all arts we are brought face to face with such glorious events as these, the Maver- ick's enterprise in securing for its thousands of readers the services of so distinguished a contrib- utor as the Great Captain who made the history as well as wrote it seems a matter of almost secondary importance. For President in 1865 (subject to the decision of the Republican Na- tional Convention) Brigadier General Jupiter Doke of Illinois ! FROM MAJOR GENERAL BLOUNT WARDORG TO BRIGADIER GENERAL JUPITER DOKE. LOUISVILLE, January 22, 1862. Your letter apprising me of your arrival at Dis- tilleryville was delayed in transmission, having IOO CAAV SUCH THIAWGS BE 2 only just been received (open) through the cour- tesy of the Confederate department commander under a flag of truce. He begs me to assure you that he would consider it an act of cruelty to trouble you, and I think it would be. Maintain, however, a threatening attitude, but at the least pressure retire. Your position is simply an out- post which it is not intended to hold. FROM MAJOR GENERAL BLOUNT WARDORG TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR. LOUISVILLE, January 23, 1862. I have certain information that the enemy has concentrated twenty thousand troops of all arms on the Little Buttermilk. According to your assignment, General Doke is in command of the small brigade of raw troops opposing them. It is no part of my plan to contest the enemy's advance at that point, but I cannot hold myself responsible for any reverses to the brigade men- tioned, under its present commander. I think him a fool. FROM THE SECRETARY OF WAR TO MAJOR GENERAL BLOUNT WARDORG. WASHINGTON, February 1, 1862. The President has great faith in General Doke. If your estimate of him is correct, however, he JUPITER pokE, BRIGADIER GENERAL. 101 would seem to be singularly well placed where he now is, as your plans appear to contemplate a considerable sacrifice for whatever advantages you expect to gain. FROM BRIGADIER GENERAL JUPITER DOKE TO MAJOR GENERAL BLOUNT WARDORG. DISTILLERYVILLE, February 1, 1862. To-morrow I shall remove my headquarters to Jayhawk in order to point the way whenever my brigade retires from Distilleryville, as foreshad- owed by your letter of the 22d inst. I have appointed a Committee on Retreat, the minutes of whose first meeting I transmit to you. You will perceive that the committee having been duly organized by the election of a chairman and sec- retary, a resolution (prepared by myself) was adopted, to the effect that in case treason again raises its hideous head on this side of the river every man of the brigade is to mount a mule and the procession to move promptly in the direction of Louisville and the loyal North. In preparation for such an emergency, I have for some time been collecting mules from the resident Democracy, and have on hand 2300 in a field at Jayhawk. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty! I O2 CA V S UCH ZZ/AVGS BAE 2 FROM MAJOR GENERAL GIBEON J. BUXTER, C. S. A., TO THE CONFEDERATE SECRETARY OF WAR. BUNG STATION, KY., February 4, 1862. On the night of the 2d inst., our entire force, consisting of 25,000 men and thirty-two field pieces, under command of Major General Sim- mons B. Flood, crossed by a ford to the north side of Little Buttermilk River at a point three miles above Distilleryville and moved obliquely down and away from the stream, to strike the Covington turnpike at Jayhawk; the object being, as you know, to capture Covington, destroy Cincinnati, and occupy the Ohio Valley. For some months there had been in our front only a small brigade of undisciplined troops, ap- parently without a commander, who were useful to us, as by not disturbing them we could create an impression of our weakness. But the move- ment on Jayhawk having isolated them, I was about to detach an Alabama regiment to bring them in, my division being the leading one. The night was very dark and the weather threatening. A few moments later (about 11 P.M.) an earth- shaking rumble was heard, and suddenly the head of the column was struck by one of the terrible cyclones for which this region is famous, and utterly annihilated. The cyclone, I believe, passed along the entire length of the road back to the ford, dispersing or destroying our whole JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER GENERAL. 103 army; but of this I cannot be sure, for I was lifted from the earth insensible and carried back to the south side of the river. Continuous firing all night on the north side, and the reports of such of our men as have recrossed at the ford, convince me that the Yankee brigade has exter- minated the disabled survivors. Our loss has been uncommonly heavy. Of my own division of 15,000 infantry, the casualities—killed, wounded, captured, and missing—are 14,994. Of General Dolliver Billow's division, II,200 strong, I can find but two officers and a nigger cook. Of the artil- lery, 800 men, none have reported on this side of the river. General Flood is dead. I have as- sumed command of the expeditionary force, but owing to the heavy losses have deemed it advis- able to contract my line of supplies as rapidly as possible. I shall push southward to-morrow morning early. The objects of the campaign have been as yet but partly accomplished. FROM MAJOR GENERAL DOLLIVER BILLOws, C. S. A., TO THE CONFEDERATE SECRETARY OF WAR. BUHAC, Ky., February 5, 1862. But during the 2d they had, unknown to us, been reinforced by fifty thousand cavalry, and being apprised of our movement by a spy, this vast body was drawn up in the darkness at Io4 CAAW SUCH 7"HIVGS BE 2 Jayhawk, and as the head of our column reached that point at about 11 P. M., fell upon it with inconceivable fury, destroying the division of General Buxter in an instant. General Baum- schank's brigade of artillery, which was in the rear, may have escaped—I did not wait to see, but withdrew my division to the river at a point several miles above the ford, and at daylight ferried it across on two fence rails lashed together with a suspender. Its losses, from an effective strength of 11,200, are 11,199. General Buxter is dead. I am changing my base to Knoxville, Tenn. FROM BRIGADIER GENERAL SCHNEDDEKER BAUMSCHANK, C. S. A., TO THE CON- FEDERATE SECRETARY OF WAR. IODINE, KY., February 6, 1862. Yoost den somdings occur, I know nod vot it vos—somdings mackneefcent, but it vas nod vor—und I finds meinselluf, afder leedle viles, in dis blace, midout a goon und mit no gompny. Sheneral Peelows is dead. You vill blease be so goot as to resign me—I vights no more in a dam gontry vere I gets vipped und know nod how it vos done. RESOLUTIONS OF CONGRESS, FEBRUARY 15, I862. Resolved, That the thanks of Congress are due, and hereby tendered, to Brigadier General Jupiter /UP/TER DOKE, BRIGADIER GENERAL. 105 Doke and the gallant men under his command for their unparalleled feat of attacking—themselves but 2000 strong—an army of 25,000 men and utterly overthrowing it, killing 5327, making pris- oners of 19,003, of whom more than half were wounded, taking 32 guns, 20,000 stand of small arms, and, in short, the enemy's entire equip- ment. Resolved, That for this unexampled victory the President be requested to designate a day of thanksgiving by the public celebration of reli- gious rites in the various churches. Resolved, That he be requested, in further commemoration of the great event, and in reward of the gallant spirits whose deeds have added such imperishable luster to the American arms, to appoint, with the advice and consent of the Senate, the following officers: One major general. STATEMENT OF MR. HANNIBAL. ALCAZAR PEYTON, OF JAYHAWK, KY. Dat wus a almighty dark night, sho', and dese yere ole eyes aint wuf shucks, but I's got a year like a squel, an' w'en I cotch de mummer o' v'ices I knowed dat gang b'long on de far side o’ de ribber. So I jes' runs in de house an' wakes Marse Doke an' tells him: “Skin outer dis fo yo’ life!” An de Lo'd bress my soul! ef dat man Io6 CAA SUCH TH/AWGS BE 2 didn' go right fru de winder in his shir' tail an’ break for to cross de mule patch! An' dem twenty-free hunerd mules dey jes' fink it is de debble hese’f wid de brandin' iron, an dey bu'st outen dat patch like a yarthquake, an' pile inter de upper ford road, an' flash down it five deep, an’ it full o' Confed'rates from en' to en'! . . . ---- *~~~~~ * THE FAMOUs GILSON BEQUEST. IT was rough on Gilson. Such was the terse, cold, but not altogether unsympathetic judgment of the better public opinion at Mammon Hill— the dictum of respectability. The verdict of the opposite, or rather the opposing, element— the element that lurked red-eyed and restless about Moll Gurney’s “deadfall,” while respecta- bility took it with sugar at Mr. Jo. Bentley's gorgeous “saloon”—was to pretty much the same general effect, though somewhat more ornately expressed by the use of picturesque expletives, which it is needless to quote. Practically, Mam- mon Hill was a unit upon the Gilson question. And it must be confessed that, in a merely tem- poral sense, all was not well with Mr. Gilson. He had that morning been led into town by Mr. Brentshaw, and publicly charged with horse stealing; the sheriff meantime busying himself about The Tree with a new manila rope, and Carpenter Pete being actively employed, between drinks, upon a pine box about the length and breadth of Mr. Gilson. Society having rendered its verdict, there remained between Gilson and eternity only the decent formality of a trial. 107 Io8 CAA SUCH TH/AWGS BE 2 These are the short and simple annals of the prisoner: He had recently been a resident of New Jerusalem, on the north fork of the Little Stony, but had come to the newly discovered placers of Mammon Hill immediately before the "rush” by which the former place was depopu- lated. The discovery of the new diggings had occurred opportunely for Mr. Gilson, for it had only just before been intimated to him by a New Jerusalem vigilance committee that it would better his prospects in, and for, life to go some- where; and the list of places to which he could prudently go did not include any of the older camps, so he naturally established himself at Mammon Hill. Being eventually followed thither by all his judges, he ordered his conduct with considerable circumspection, but as he had never been known to do an honest day's work at any industry sanctioned by the stern local code of morality except draw poker (at which he commonly won) he was still an object of sus- picion. Indeed, it was conjectured that he was the author of the many daring depredations that had recently been committed with pan and brush upon the sluice boxes. Prominent among those in whom this suspicion had ripened into a steadfast conviction was Mr. Brentshaw. At all seasonable and unseasonable times Mr. Brentshaw avowed his belief in Mr. Gilson's connection with these unholy midnight THE FAMOUS G/LSOA BAEQUEST. Io9 enterprises, and his own willingness to prepare a way for the solar beams through the body of any- one who might think it expedient to utter a dif- ferent opinion—which, in his presence, no one was more careful not to do than the peace loving person most concerned. Whatever may have been the truth of the matter, it is certain that Gilson frequently lost more “clean dust” at Jo. Bentley's faro table than it was recorded in local history that he had ever honestly earned at draw poker in all the days of the camp's existence. But at last Mr. Bentley—fearing, it may be, to lose the more profitable patronage of Mr. Brent- shaw—peremptorily refused to let Gilson copper the queen, intimating at the same time, in his frank, forthright way, that the privilege of losing money at “this bank” was a blessing appertaining to, proceeding logically from, and coterminous with, a condition of notorious commercial right- eousness and social good repute. The Hill thought it high time to look after a person whom its most honored citizen had felt it his duty to rebuke at a ruinous personal sacrifice. The New Jerusalem contingent, particularly, began to abate something of the toleration begotten of amusement at their own blunder in exiling an objectionable neighbor from the place which they had left to the place whither they had come. Mammon Hill was at last of one mind. Not much was said, but that Gilson must I IO CAAM S UC// TAZZAVG.S BA 2 hang was “in the air.” But at this critical junc- ture in his affairs he showed signs of an altered life if not a changed heart. Perhaps it was only that “the bank” being closed against him, he had no further use for gold dust. Anyhow the sluice boxes were molested no more forever. But it was impossible to repress the abounding energies of such a nature as his, and he continued, possibly from habit, the tortuous courses which he had pursued for profit of Mr. Bentley. After a few tentative and resultless undertakings in the way of highway robbery—if one may venture to desig- nate road agency by so harsh a name—he made one or two modest essays in horse herding, and it was in the midst of a promising enterprise of this character, and just as he had taken the tide in his affairs at its flood, that he made shipwreck. For on a misty, moonlight night Mr. Brentshaw rode up alongside a person who was evidently leav- ing that part of the country, laid a hand upon the halter connecting Mr. Gilson's wrist with Mr. Harper's bay mare, tapped him familiarly on the cheek with the barrel of a navy revolver, and re- quested the pleasure of his company in a direc- tion the exact opposite of that in which he was traveling. It was indeed rough on Gilson. On the morning after his arrest he was tried, convicted, and sentenced. It only remains, so far as concerns his earthly career, to hang him, - - - - * *~~~~~ **- - * - * - THE FAMOUS G/ZSOA RAO UES7. I I I reserving for more particular mention his last will and testament, which, with great labor, he con- trived in prison, and in which, probably from some confused and imperfect notion of the rights of captors, he bequeathed everything he owned to his “lawfle execketer " Mr. Brentshaw. The bequest, however, was made conditional on the legatee taking the testator's body from The Tree and “planting it white.” So Mr. Gilson was—I was about to say “swung off,” but I fear there has been already something too much of slang in this straightforward state- ment of facts; besides, the manner in which the law took its course is more accurately described in the terms employed by the judge in passing sentence—Mr. Gilson was “strung up.” In due season Mr. Brentshaw, somewhat touched, it may well be, by the empty compli- ment of the bequest, repaired to The Tree to pluck the fruit thereof. When taken down the body was found to have in its waistcoat pocket a duly attested codicil to the will already noted. The nature of its provisions accounted for the manner in which it had been withheld, for had Mr. Brentshaw previously been made aware of the conditions under which he was to succeed to the Gilson estate he would indubitably have declined the responsibility. Briefly stated, the purport of the codicil was as follows: “Whereas, at divers times and in sundry places, 1 I 2 CAA SUCH TH/A'GS BE 2 certain persons had asserted that during his life the testator had robbed their sluice boxes; there- fore, if during the five years next succeeding the date of this instrument anyone should make proof of such assertion before a court of law, such per- son was to receive as reparation the entire per- sonal and real estate of which the testator died seized and possessed, minus the expenses of court and a stated compensation to the executor, Henry Clay Brentshaw; provided, that if more than one person made such proof the estate was to be equally divided between or among them. But in case none should succeed in so establish- ing the testator's guilt, then the whole property, minus court expenses, as aforesaid, should go to the said Henry Clay Brentshaw for his own use, as stated in the will.” The syntax of the remarkable document was perhaps open to critical objection, but that was clearly enough the meaning of it. The orthogra- phy conformed to no recognized system, but being mainly phonetic it was not ambiguous. As the probate judge remarked, it would take five acres to beat it. Mr. Brentshaw smiled good- humoredly, and after performing the last sad rites with amusing ostentation, had himself duly sworn as executor and conditional legatee under the provisions of a law hastily passed (at the instance of the member from Mammon Hill) by a facetious legislature; which law was afterward discovered 7 HE FAMOUS GI/Sov REQUEST. I 13 to have also created three or four lucrative offices, and authorized the expenditure of a con- siderable sum of public money for the construc- tion of a certain railway bridge that with greater advantage might perhaps have been erected on the line of some actual railway. Of course Mr. Brentshaw expected neither profit from the will nor litigation in consequence of its unusual provisions; Gilson, although fre- quently “flush," had been a man whom assessors and tax collectors were well satisfied to lose no money by. But a careless and merely formal search among his papers revealed the title deeds to valuable estates in the East, and certificates of deposit for incredible sums in banks less severely scrupulous than that of Mr. Jo. Bentley. The astounding news got abroad directly, throwing the Hill into a fever of excitement. The Mammon Hill Patriot, whose editor had been a leading spirit in the proceedings which resulted in Gilson's departure from New Jerusalem, pub- lished a most complimentary obituary notice of the deceased, and was good enough to call atten- tion to the fact that his degraded contemporary, the Squaw Gulch Clarion, was bringing virtue into contempt by beslavering with flattery the memory of one who in life had spurned the vile sheet as a nuisance from his door. Undeterred by the press, however, claimants under the will were not slow in presenting themselves with their I 14 CAM SUCH THINGS BE 2 evidence; and, great as was the Gilson estate, it appeared conspicuously paltry considering the vast number of sluice boxes from which it was averred to have been obtained. The country rose as one man : Mr. Brentshaw was equal to the emergency. With a shrewd application of humble auxiliary devices, he at once erected above the bones of his benefactor a costly monument, overtopping every rough headboard in the cemetery, and on this he judiciously caused to be inscribed an epitaph of his own composing, eulogizing the honesty, public spirit, and cognate virtues of him who slept be- neath, “a victim to the unjust aspersions of Slan- der's viper brood.” Moreover, he employed the best legal talent in the Territory to defend the memory of his de- parted friend, and for five long years the Terri- torial courts were occupied with the causes grow- ing out of the Gilson bequest. To fine forensic abilities Mr. Brentshaw opposed abilities more finely forensic; in bidding for purchasable favors he offered prices which utterly deranged the market; the judges found at his hospitable board entertainment for man and beast, the like of which had never been spread in the Territory; with mendacious witnesses he confronted wit- nesses of superior mendacity. Nor was the battle confined to the temple of the blind goddess—it invaded the press, the pul- 7 HE FAMOUS G/ZSOA BKQUEST 115 pit, the drawing room. It raged in the mart, the exchange, the school; in the gulches, and on the street corners. And upon the last day of the memorable period to which legal action against the Gilson will was limited, the angry sun went down upon a region in which the moral sense was dead, the social conscience callous, the intellectual capacity dwarfed, enfeebled, and confused ! But Mr. Brentshaw was victorious all along the line. On that night, it so happened that the ceme- tery in one corner of which lay the now honored ashes of the late Milton Gilson, Esq., was partly under water. Swollen by incessant rains, Cat Creek had spilled an angry flood over its banks, which, after scooping out unsightly hollows wher- ever the soil had been disturbed, had partly sub- sided, as if ashamed of the sacrilege, leaving exposed much that had been piously concealed. Even the famous Gilson monument, the pride and glory of Mammon Hill, was no longer a standing rebuke to the “viper brood": suc- cumbing to the sapping current, it had toppled prone to earth. The ghoulish flood had ex- humed the poor, decayed pine coffin, which now lay half exposed in pitiful contrast with the pompous monolith which, like a giant note of admiration, emphasized the disclosure. To this depressing spot, drawn by some subtle influence he had sought neither to resist nor I 16 CAA/ SUCH 7"/7/AWGS BE 2 analyze, came Mr. Brentshaw. An altered man was Mr. Brentshaw. Five years of toil, anxiety, and wakefulness had dashed his black locks with streaks and patches of gray, bowed his fine figure, drawn sharp and angular his face, and debased his walk to a doddering shuffle. Nor had this lus- trum of fierce contention wrought less upon his heart and intellect. The careless good humor that had prompted him to accept the trust of the dead man had given place to a fixed habit of melancholy. The firm, vigorous intellect had overripened into the mental mellowness of second childhood. His broad understanding had nar- rowed to the accommodation of a single idea; and in place of the quiet, cynical incredulity of former days, there was in him a haunting faith in the supernatural, that flitted and fluttered about his soul, shadowy, batlike, ominous of insanity. Unsettled in all else, his understanding clung to one conviction with the desperate tenacity of a wrecked intellect. That was an unshaken belief in the entire blamelessness of the dead Gil- son. He had so often sworn to this in court and asserted it in private conversation—had so fre- quently and so triumphantly established it by testimony that had come expensive to him (for that very day he had paid the last dollar of thes Gilson property to Mr. Jo. Bentley, the last wit- ness to the Gilson good character)—that it had become to him a sort of religious faith. It * --~~~~~~ :- - * - * - * THE FAMOUS G/LSON BEO UES 7. 117 seemed to him the one great central and basic truth of life—the sole serene verity in a world of lies. On that night, as he seated himself pensively upon the prostrate monument, trying by the uncertain moonlight to spell out the epitaph which five years before he had composed with a chuckle that memory had not recorded, tears of remorse came into his eyes as he remembered that he had been mainly instrumental in com- passing by a false accusation this good man's death; for during some of the legal proceedings, Mr. Harper, for a consideration (forgotten), had come forward and sworn that in the little trans- action with his bay mare, the deceased had acted in strict accordance with the Harperian wishes, confidentially communicated to the deceased, and by him faithfully concealed at the cost of life. All that Mr. Brentshaw had since done for the dead man's memory seemed pitifully inadequate— most mean, paltry, and debased with selfishness! As he sat there, torturing himself with futile regrets, a faint shadow fell across his eyes. Looking toward the moon, hanging low in the west, he saw what seemed a vague, watery cloud obscuring her disk; but as it moved so that her beams lit up one side of it, he perceived the clear, sharp outline of a human figure. The apparition became momentarily more distinct, and grew, visibly; it was drawing near. Dazed I 18 CA.V SUCH TH/AWGS BA: 2 as were his senses, half locked up with terror and confounded with dreadful imaginings, Mr. Brent- shaw yet could not but perceive, or think he perceived, in this unearthly shape a strange simil- itude to the mortal part of the late Milton Gilson, as that person had looked when taken from The Tree five years before. The likeness was indeed complete, even to the full, stony eyes, and a certain shadowy circle about the neck. It was without coat or hat, precisely as Gilson had been when laid in his poor, cheap casket by the not ungentle hands of Carpenter Pete—for whom someone had long since performed the same sad office. The specter, if such it was, seemed to bear something in its hands which Mr. Brentshaw could not clearly make out. It drew nearer, and paused at last beside the coffin containing the ashes of the late Mr. Gilson, the lid of which was awry, half disclosing the uncertain interior. Bending over this, the phantom seemed to shake into it from a basin some dark substance of dubi- ous consistency, then glided stealthily back to the lowest part of the cemetery. Here the retiring flood had stranded a number of open coffins, about and among which it gurgled with low sob- bings and stilly whispers. Stooping over one of these, the apparition carefully brushed its con- tents into the basin, then returning to its own casket, emptied the vessel into that, as before. This mysterious operation was repeated at every ----------------, --- 1 - - - - - **: - - - -, - * * * - THE FAMOUS GILSON BEO UES 7. I 19 exposed coffin, the ghost sometimes dipping its laden basin in the running water, and gently agitating it to free it of the baser clay, always hoarding the residuum in its own private box. In short, the immortal part of the late Milton Gilson was cleaning up the dust of its neighbors and providently adding the same to its own. Perhaps it was a phantasm of a disordered mind in a fevered body. Perhaps it was a solemn farce enacted by pranking existences that throng the shadows lying along the border of another world. God knows; to us is permitted only the knowl- edge that when the sun of another day touched with a grace of gold the ruined cemetery of Mammon Hill his kindliest beam fell in compas. sion upon the white still face of Henry Brent- shaw, dead among the dead. THE STORY OF A CONSCIENCE. I. CAPTAIN PARROL HARTROY stood at the advanced post of his picket guard, talking in low tones with the sentinel. This post was on a turnpike, which bisected the captain's camp, a half mile in rear, though the camp was not in sight from that point. The officer was appar- ently giving the soldier certain instructions—was perhaps merely inquiring if all were quiet in front. As the two stood talking a man approached them from the direction of the camp, carelessly whist- ling, and was promptly halted by the soldier. He was quite evidently a civilian—a tall person, coarsely clad in the home-made stuff of yellow gray, called “butternut,” which was men's only wear in the latter days of the Confederacy. On his head was a slouch felt hat, once white, from beneath which hung masses of uneven hair, seemingly unacquainted with either scissors or comb. The man's face was rather striking; a broad forehead, high nose, and thin cheeks, the mouth invisible in the full dark beard, which seemed as ill-cared for as the hair. The eyes I2I I 2.2 CAA SUCA, ZAZZA/G.S. A.Z. A were large and had that steadiness and fixity of attention which so frequently mark a considering intelligence and a will not easily turned from its purpose—so say those physiognomists who have that kind of eyes. On the whole, this was a man whom one would be likely to observe and be observed by. He carried a walking stick freshly cut from the forest and his ailing cowskin boots were white with dust. “Show your pass,” said the Federal soldier, a trifle more imperiously perhaps than he would have thought necessary if he had not been under the eye of his commander, who with folded arms looked on from the roadside. “’Lowed you'd rec'lect me, gineral,” said the wayfarer tranquilly, while producing the paper from the pocket of his coat. There was some- thing in his tone—perhaps a faint suggestion of irony—which made his elevation of his obstructor to exalted rank less agreeable to that worthy warrior than promotion for gallantry is commonly found to be. “You 'uns have to be purty pertick- ler, I reckon,” he added, in a more conciliatory tone, as if in half apology for being halted. Having read the pass, with his rifle resting on the ground, the soldier handed the document back without a word, shouldered his weapon, and returned to his commander. The civilian passed on in the middle of the road, and when he had penetrated the circumjacent Confederacy a few THE STOAP V OA: A COA/SC/ZA/CA2. 123 yards resumed his whistling and was soon out of sight beyond an angle in the road, which at that point entered a thin forest. Suddenly the officer undid his arms from his breast, drew a revolver from his belt, and sprang forward at a run in the same direction, leaving his sentinel in gaping astonishment at his post. After making to the various visible forms of nature a solemn promise to be damned, that gentleman resumed the air of stolidity which is supposed to be appropriate to a state of alert military attention. II. CAPTAIN HARTROY held an independent com- mand. His force consisted of a company of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a section of artillery, detached from the army to which they belonged, to defend an important defile in the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee. It was a field officer's command held by a line officer promoted from the ranks, where he had quietly served until “discovered.” His post was one of exceptional peril; its defense entailed a heavy responsibility, and he had wisely been given cor- responding discretionary powers, all the more necessary because of his distance from the main army, the precarious nature of his communica- tions, and the lawless character of the enemy's irregular troops infesting that region. He had strongly fortified his little camp, which embraced a village of a half dozen dwellings and a country store, and had collected a considerable quantity of supplies. To a few resident civilians of known loyalty, with whom it was desirable to trade, and of whose services in various capacities he some- times availed himself, he had given written passes admitting them within his lines. It is easy to 124 THE STOA Y OF A COA SCIEAVCE. 125 understand that an abuse of this privilege in the interest of the enemy might entail serious conse- quences. Captain Hartroy had issued an order to the effect that anyone so abusing it would be summarily shot. While the sentinel had been examining the civilian's pass the captain had eyed the latter narrowly. He thought his appearance familiar and had at first no doubt of having given him the pass which had satisfied the sentinel. It was not until the man had got out of sight and hearing that his identity was disclosed by a revealing light from memory. With soldierly promptness of decision the officer had acted on the revelation. III. TO any but a singularly self-possessed man the apparition of an officer of the military forces, formidably clad, bearing in one hand a sheathed sword and in the other a cocked revolver, and rushing in furious pursuit, is no doubt disquieting to a high degree; upon the man to whom the pursuit was in this instance directed it appeared to have no other effect than somewhat to inten- sify his tranquillity. He might easily enough have escaped into the forest to the right or the left, but chose another course of action—turned and quietly faced the captain, saying as he came up: “I reckon ye must have something to say to me, which ye disremembered. What mout it be, neighbor?” But the “neighbor” did not answer, being engaged in the unneighborly act of covering him with a cocked pistol. “Surrender," said the captain as calmly as a slight breathlessness from exertion would permit, “or you die.” There was no menace in the manner of this demand; that was all in the matter and in the means of enforcing it. There was, too, something 126 *- * * * * - THE STORY OF A COMSCIENCE. 127 not altogether reassuring in the cold gray eyes that glanced along the barrel of the weapon. For a moment the two men stood looking at each other in silence; then the civilian, with no appearance of fear—with as great apparent unconcern as when complying with the less austere demand of the sentinel—slowly pulled from his pocket the paper which had satisfied that humble functionary and held it out, saying: “I reckon this 'ere parss from Mister Hartroy * * 1S “The pass is a forgery,” the officer said, inter- rupting. "I am Captain Hartroy—and you are Dramer Brune.” It would have required a sharp eye to observe the slight pallor of the civilian's face at these words, and the only other manifestation attesting their significance was a voluntary relaxation of the thumb and fingers holding the dishonored paper, which, falling to the road unheeded, was rolled by a gentle wind and then lay still, with a coating of dust, as in humiliation for the lie that it bore. A moment later the civilian, still looking unmoved into the barrel of the pistol, said: “Yes, I am Dramer Brune, a Confederate spy, and your prisoner. I have on my person, as you will soon discover, a plan of your fort and its armament, a statement of the distribution of your men and their number, a map of the approaches, showing the positions of all your outposts. My 128 CAA SUCH TH/A'GS B/E p life is fairly yours, but if you wish it taken in a more formal way than by your own hand, and if you are willing to spare me the indignity of marching into camp at the muzzle of your pistol, I promise you that I will neither resist, escape, nor remonstrate, but will submit to whatever penalty may be imposed." The officer lowered his pistol, uncocked it, and thrust it into its place in his belt. Brune ad- vanced a step, extending his right hand. “It is the hand of a traitor and a spy,” said the officer coldly, and did not take it. The other bowed. “Come,” said the captain, “let us go to camp; you shall not die until to-morrow morning.” He turned his back upon his prisoner, and these two extraordinary men retraced their steps and soon passed the sentinel, who expressed his general sense of things by a needless and exag. gerated salute to his commander. "…→ ~ *------ -----, - - - - ~ > * > IV. EARLY on the morning after these events the two men, captor and captive, sat in the tent of the former. A table was between them on which lay, among a number of letters, official and private, which the captain had written during the night, the incriminating papers found upon the spy. That gentleman had slept through the night in an adjoining tent, unguarded. Both, having breakfasted, were now smoking. “Mr. Brune,” said Captain Hartroy, “you probably do not understand why I recognized you in your disguise, nor how I was aware of your name." “I have not sought to learn, Captain,” the prisoner said with quiet dignity. “Nevertheless I should like you to know–if the story will not offend. You will perceive that my knowledge of you goes back to the autumn of 1861. At that time you were a private in an Ohio regiment—a brave and trusted soldier. To the surprise and grief of your officers and com- rades you deserted and went over to the enemy. Soon afterward you were captured in a skirmish, recognized, tried by court-martial, and sentenced 129 - 13o • GAA SUCH 7"HIVGS BE 2 - to be shot. Pending the execution of the sen- tence you were confined, unfettered, in a freight car standing on a side track of a railway.” “At Grafton, Virginia,” said Brune, pushing the ashes from his cigar with the little finger of the hand holding it, and without looking up. “At Grafton, Virginia,” the captain repeated. "One dark and stormy night a soldier was placed on guard over you who had just returned from a long, fatiguing march. He sat on a cracker box inside the car, near the door, his rifle loaded and the bayonet fixed. You sat in a corner and his orders were to kill you if you attempted to rise.” “But if I asked to rise he might call the corporal of the guard.” “Yes. As the long silent hours wore away the soldier yielded to the demands of nature: he himself incurred the death penalty by sleeping at his post of duty.” “You did.” “What! you recognize me? you have known me all along?” The captain had risen and was walking the floor of his tent, visibly excited. His face was flushed, the gray eyes had lost the cold, pitiless look which they had had when Brune had seen them over the pistol barrel; they had softened wonderfully. “I knew you,” said the spy, with his customary > tranquillity, “the moment you faced me, demand- ing my surrender. Under the circumstances it *- --- *- 7 'A' A STOA Y OF A COA SC/EA CE. I 31 would have been hardly becoming in me to recall these matters. I am perhaps a traitor, certainly a spy; but I should not wish to seem a suppliant." The captain had paused in his walk and was facing his prisoner. There was a singular huski- ness in his voice as he spoke again. “Mr. Brune, whatever your conscience may permit you to be, you saved my life at what you must have believed the expense of your own. Until I saw you yesterday when halted by my sentinel I believed you dead—thought that you had suffered the fate which through my own crime you might easily have escaped. You had but to step from the car and leave me to take your place before the firing squad. You had a divine compassion. You pitied my fatigue. You let me sleep, watched over me, and as the time drew near for the relief guard to come and detect me in my crime, you gently waked me. Ah, Brune, Brune, that was well done—that was great —that—" The captain's voice failed him; the tears were running down his face and sparkled upon his beard and his breast. Resuming his seat at the table, he buried his face in his arms and sobbed. All else was silence. Suddenly the clear warble of a bugle was heard sounding the “assembly.” The captain started and raised his wet face from his arms; it had turned ghastly pale. Outside, in the sunlight, were heard the stir of the men I 32 CAA SUCH THIVGS BE 2 falling into line; the voices of the sergeants call- ing the roll; the tapping of the drummers as they braced their drums. The captain spoke again: “I ought to have confessed my fault in order to relate the story of your magnanimity; it might have secured your pardon. A hundred times I resolved to do so, but shame prevented. Be- sides, your sentence was just and righteous. Well, Heaven forgive me! I said nothing, and my regiment was soon afterward ordered to Tennessee and I never heard.” “It was all right, sir,” said Brune, without visible emotion; “I escaped and returned to my colors—the Confederate colors. I should like to add that before deserting from the Federal service I had earnestly asked a discharge, on the ground of altered convictions. I was answered by pun- ishment.” “Ah, but if I had suffered the penalty of my crime—if you had not generously given me the life which I accepted without gratitude you would not be again in the shadow and imminence of death.” The prisoner started slightly and a look of anxiety came into his face. One would have said, too, that he was surprised. At that moment a lieutenant, the adjutant, appeared at the opening of the tent and saluted. “Captain,” he said, “the battalion is formed.” Captain Hartroy had recovered his composure. THE STORY OF A COMSCIAMAVCE. I 33 He turned to the officer and said: “Lieutenant, go to Captain Graham and say that I direct him to assume command of the battalion and parade it outside the parapet. This gentleman is a deserter and a spy; he is to be shot to death in the presence of the troops. He will accompany you, unbound and unguarded." While the adjutant waited at the door the two men inside the tent rose and exchanged ceremo- nious bows, Brune immediately retiring. Half an hour later an old negro cook, the only person left in camp except the commander, was so startled by the sound of a volley of musketry that he dropped the kettle that he was lifting from a fire. But for his consternation and the hiss- ing which the contents of the kettle made among the embers, he might also have heard, nearer at hand, the single pistol shot with which Captain Hartroy renounced the life which in conscience he could no longer keep. In compliance with the terms of a note that he left for the Officer who succeeded him in command, he was buried, like the deserter and spy, without military honors; and in the solemn shadow of the mountain which knows no more of war the two sleep well in long-forgotten graves. THE SECRET OF MACARGER'S GULCH. NORTHWESTWARDLY from Indian Hill, about nine miles as the crow flies, is Macarger's Gulch. It is not much of a gulch—a mere depression be- tween two wooded ridges of inconsiderable height. From its mouth up to its head—for gulches, like rivers, have an anatomy of their own—the dis- tance does not exceed two miles, and the width at bottom is at only one place more than a dozen yards; for most of the distance on either side of the little brook which drains it in winter, and goes dry in the early spring, there is no level ground at all: the steep slopes of the hills, covered with an almost impenetrable growth of manzanita and chemisal, are divided by nothing but the width . of the water course. No one but an occasional enterprising hunter of the vicinity ever goes into Macarger's Gulch, and five miles away it is un- known, even by name. Within that distance in any direction are far more conspicuous topo- graphical features without names, and one might try a long time in vain to ascertain by local inquiry the origin of the name of this one. About midway between the head and the 135 136 CAAW SUCH 7"/y/AWGS BA 2 mouth of Macarger's Gulch, the hill on the right as you ascend is cloven by another gulch, a short dry one, and at the junction of the two is a level space of two or three acres, and there, a few years ago, stood an old board house containing one small room. How the component parts of the house, few and simple as they were, had been assembled at that almost inaccessible point is a problem, in the solution of which there would be greater satisfaction than advantage. Possibly, the creek bed is a reformed road. It is certain that the gulch was at one time pretty thoroughly prospected by miners, who must have had some means of getting in with at least pack animals carrying tools and supplies; their profits, appar- ently, were not such as would have justified any considerable outlay to connect Macarger's Gulch with any center of civilization enjoying the dis- tinction of a sawmill. The house, however, was there, most of it. It lacked a door and a window frame, and the chimney of mud and stones had fallen into an unlovely heap, overgrown with rank weeds. Such humble furniture as there may once have been, and much of the lower weatherboard- ing, had served as fuel in the camp fires of hunt- ers; as had also, probably, the curbing of an old well, which at the time I write of existed in the form of a rather wide but not very deep depres- sion near by. One afternoon in the summer of 1874, I passed THE SECRA 7" OA' MACAA’GEA'S GULC//. 137 * up Macarger's Gulch from the narrow valley into which it opens, by following the dry bed of the brook. I was quail shooting and had made a bag of about a dozen birds by the time I had reached the house described, of whose existence I was until then unaware. After rather carelessly inspecting the ruin, I resumed my sport, and having fairly good success, prolonged it until nearly sunset, when it occurred to me that I was a long way from any human habitation—too far to reach one by nightfall. But in my game bag was food, and the old house would afford shelter, if shelter were needed on a warm and dewless night in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where one may sleep in comfort on the pine needles, without covering. I am fond of solitude and love the night, so my resolution to "camp out" was soon taken, and by the time that it was dark I had made my bed of boughs and grasses in a corner of the room and was roasting a quail at a fire which I had kindled on the hearth. The smoke escaped out of the ruined chimney, the light illuminated the room with a kindly glow, and as I ate my simple meal of plain bird and drank the remains of a bottle of red wine which had served me all the afternoon in place of the water, which the region did not afford, I experi- enced a sense of comfort which better fare and accommodations do not always give. Neverthe- less, there was something lacking. I had a sense 138 CAA SUCH THZA/GS BE 2 of comfort, but not of security. I detected myself staring more frequently at the open door- way and blank window than I could find warrant for doing. Outside these apertures all was black, and I was unable to repress a certain feel- ing of apprehension as my fancy pictured the outer world and filled it with unfriendly exist- ences, natural and supernatural-chief among which, in their respective classes, were the grizzly bear, which I knew was occasionally still seen in that region, and the ghost, which I had reason to think was not. Unfortunately, our feelings do not always respect the law of probabilities, and to me that evening, the possible and the impossi- ble were equally disquieting. Everyone who has had experience in the matter must have observed that one confronts the actual and imaginary perils of the night with far less apprehension in the open air than in a house with an open doorway. I felt this now as I lay on my leafy couch in a corner of the room next to the chimney and permitted my fire to die out. So strong became my sense of the presence of something malign and menacing in the place, that I found myself almost unable to withdraw my eyes from the opening, as in the deepening darkness it became more and more distinct. And when the last little flame flickered and went out I grasped the shotgun which I had laid at my side and actually turned the muzzle in the direction of the now invisible entrance, my 7"A"E SE CAPE 7" OA: AMA CAA’GAA”.S. G. UZCH. I 39 thumb on one of the hammers, ready to cock the piece, my breath suspended, my muscles rigid and tense. A moment later I laid down the weapon with a sense of shame and mortification. What did I fear, and why—I to whom the night had been “a more familiar face Than that of man"— I in whom that element of hereditary superstition from which none of us is altogether free had but given to solitude and darkness and silence a more alluring charm and interest. I was unable to comprehend my folly, and losing in the conjecture the thing conjectured of, I fell asleep. And, sleeping, I dreamed. I was in a great city in a foreign land—a city whose people were of my own race, with minor differences of speech and costume; yet precisely what these were I could not say; my sense of them was indistinct. The city was dominated by a great castle upon an overlooking height whose name I knew, but could not speak. I walked through many streets, some broad and straight with high modern buildings, some narrow, gloomy, and tortuous, between the gables of quaint old houses whose overhanging stories, elaborately ornamented with carvings in wood and stone, almost met above my head. I sought someone whom I had never seen, yet knew that I should recognize when found. My quest was not aimless I 40 CAAW SUCH TH/AVG.S BE * and fortuitous; it had a definite method. I turned from one street into another without hesitation and threaded a maze of intricate pas- sages, devoid of the fear of losing my way. Presently I stopped before a low door in a plain stone house which might have been the dwelling of an artisan of the better sort, and without announcing myself, entered. The room, rather sparely furnished, and lighted by a single window with small diamond-shaped panes, had but two occupants: a man and a woman. They took no notice of my intrusion, a circumstance which, in the manner of dreams, appeared entirely natural. They were not conversing; they sat apart, unoc- cupied and sullen. The woman was young and rather stout, with fine large eyes and a certain grave beauty; my memory of her expression is exceedingly vivid, but in dreams one does not observe the details of faces. About her shoulders was a plaid shawl. The man was older, dark, with an evil face made more forbidding by a long scar extending from near the left temple diagonally downward into the black mustache; though in my dreams it seemed rather to haunt the face as a thing apart —I can express it no otherwise—than to belong to it. The moment that I found the man and woman I knew them to be husband and wife. What followed, I remember indistinctly; it was con- fused and inconsistent—made so, I think, by * -- *** * – - THE SECA2A 7" OAT AMA CAAPGAA”.S. G. ULCA/. I4 I gleams of consciousness. It was as if two pic- tures, the scene of my dream, and my actual surroundings, had been blended, one overlying the other, until the former, gradually fading, dis- appeared, and I was broad awake in the deserted cabin, entirely and tranquilly conscious of my situation. My foolish fear was gone and, opening my eyes, I saw that my fire, not altogether burned out, had revived by the falling of a stick and was again lighting the room. I had probably slept but a few minutes, but my commonplace dream had somehow so strongly impressed me, that I was no longer drowsy, but after a little while rose, pushed the embers of my fire together, and lighting my pipe, proceeded in a rather ludicrously methodical way to meditate upon my vision. It would have puzzled me then to say in what respect it was worth attention. In the first moment of serious thought that I gave to the matter, I recognized the city of my dream as Edinburgh, where I had never been; so if the dream was a memory, it was a memory of pictures and description. The recognition somehow deeply impressed me; it was as if something in my mind insisted rebel- liously against will and reason on the importance of all this. And that faculty, whatever it was, asserted also a control of my speech. “Surely,” I said aloud, quite involuntarily, “the MacGreg- ors must have come here from Edinburgh.” I42 CAA SUCH 7A//AWG.S. BAE 2 At the moment, neither the substance of this remark nor the fact of my making it, surprised me in the least; it seemed entirely natural that I should know the name of my dreamfolk and something of their history. But the absurdity of it all soon dawned upon me: I laughed audibly, knocked the ashes from my pipe, and again stretched myself upon my bed of boughs and grass, where I lay staring absently into my failing fire, with no further thought of either my dream or my surroundings. Suddenly the single remain- ing flame crouched for a moment, then, springing upward, lifted itself clear of its embers and expired in air. The darkness seemed absolute. At that instant—almost, it seemed, before the gleam of the blaze had faded from my eyes— there was a dull, dead sound, as of some heavy body falling upon the floor, which shook beneath me as I lay. I sprang to a sitting posture and groped at my side for my gun; my notion was that some wild beast had leaped in through the open window. While the flimsy structure was still shaking from the impact, I heard the sound of blows, the scuffling of feet upon the floor, and then—it seemed to come from almost within reach of my hand, the sharp shrieking of a woman in mortal agony. So horrible a cry I had never heard nor conceived; it utterly unnerved me; I was conscious for a moment of nothing but my own terror! Fortunately my hand now found the E---- - +----------- ZTAZZ SECA’E 7" OAT MACAA’GEA”.S. G. ULCA. I43 weapon of which it was in search, and the familiar touch somewhat restored me. I leaped to my feet, straining my eyes to pierce the darkness. The violent sounds had ceased, but more terrible than these, I heard, at what seemed long intervals, the faint intermittent gasping of some living thing! As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light of the coals in the fireplace, I saw first the shapes of the door and window, looking blacker than the black of the walls. Next, the distinction between wall and floor became discernible, and at last I was sensible to the form and full expanse of the latter from end to end and side to side. Nothing was visible and the silence was unbroken. With a hand that shook a little, the other still grasping my gun, I restored my fire, and made a critical examination of the place. There was nowhere any sign that the cabin had been en- tered. My own tracks were visible in the dust covering the floor, but there were no others. I relit my pipe, provided fresh fuel by ripping a thin board or two from the inside of the house— I did not care to go into the darkness out of doors —and passed the rest of the night smoking and thinking, and feeding my fire; not for a hundred added years of life would I have permitted that little flame to expire again. Some years afterward, I met in Sacramento a I 44 CA V SÜC// THAWG.S. R.A. 9 man named Morgan, to whom I had a note of introduction from a friend in San Francisco. Dining with him one evening at his home, I observed various "trophies" upon the wall, indi- cating that he was fond of shooting. It turned out that he was, and in relating some of his feats, he mentioned having been in the region of my own adventure. “Mr. Morgan,” I asked abruptly, “do you know a place up there called Macarger's Gulch?” “I have good reason to,” he replied; “it was I who gave to the newspapers, last year, the accounts of the finding of the skeleton there.” I had not heard of it; the accounts had been published, it appeared, while I was absent in the East. - “By the way,” said Morgan, “the name of the gulch is a corruption; it should have been called. ‘MacGregor's. My dear,” he added, speaking to his wife, “Mr. Elderson has upset his wine.” That was hardly accurate—I had simply dropped it, glass and all. “There was an old shanty once in the gulch,” Morgan resumed when the ruin wrought by my awkwardness had been repaired, “but just previ- ously to my visit it had been blown down, or rather blown away, for its débris was scattered all about, the very floor being parted, plank from plank. Between two of the sleepers still in posi- tion, l and my companion observed the remnant 77/E SECRET OF MACAAGER's GULCH. I45 of an old plaid shawl, and examining it, found that it was wrapped about the shoulders of the body of a woman, of which but little remained beside the bones, partly covered with fragments of clothing, and brown dry skin—but we will spare Mrs. Morgan,” he added, with a smile. The lady had indeed exhibited signs of disgust rather than sympathy. - “It is necessary to say, however," he went on, “that the skull was fractured in several places, as by blows of some blunt instrument; and that instrument itself—a pick handle, still stained with blood—lay under the boards near by.” Mr. Morgan turned to his wife. “Pardon me, my dear,” he said with affected solemnity, “for mentioning these disagreeable particulars, the natural though regrettable incidents of a conjugal quarrel resulting, doubtless, from the wife's insubordination.” “I ought to be able to overlook it,” the lady replied with composure; “you have so many times asked me to in those very words.” I thought he seemed rather glad to go on with his story. “From these and other circumstances,” he said, “the coroner's jury found that the deceased, Jariet MacGregor, came to her death from blows in- flicted by some person to the jury unknown; but it was added that the evidence pointed strongly to her husband, Thomas MacGregor, as the guilty 146 CAM SUCH THINGS BE 2 person. But Thomas MacGregor has never been found nor heard of. It was learned that the couple came from Edinburgh, but not—my dear, do you not observe that Mr. Elderson's bone plate has water in it?” I had deposited a chicken bone in my finger bowl. “In a little cupboard I found a photograph of MacGregor, but it did not lead to his capture.” “Will you let me see it?” I said. The picture showed a dark man with an evil face made more forbidding by a long scar extend- ing from near the temple diagonally downward into the black mustache. “By the way, Mr. Elderson,” said my affable host, “may I know why you asked about 'Macarger's Gulch’?” “I lost a mule near there once,” I replied, “and the mischance has—has quite—upset me." “My dear,” said Mr. Morgan, with the mechan- ical intonation of an interpreter translating, “the loss of Mr. Elderson's mule has peppered his coffee.” THE MAJOR'S TALE. IN the days of the Civil War practical joking had not, I think, fallen into that disrepute which characterizes it now. That, doubtless, was owing to our extreme youth—men were much younger than they are now, and your young man has a boisterous spirit, running easily to horse play. You cannot think how young the men were in the early sixties! Why, the average age of the entire Federal Army was not more than twenty- five; I doubt if it was more than twenty-three, but not having the statistics on that point (if there are any) I want to be moderate: we will say twenty-five. It is true a man of twenty-five was in that heroic time a good deal more of a man than one of that age is now; you would see that by looking at him. His face had nothing of that unripeness so conspicuous in his successor. I never see a young fellow now without observing how disagreeably young he is, but during the war we did not think of a man's age at all unless he happened to be pretty well along in life. In that case one could not help it, for the unloveli- ness of age assailed the human countenance then much earlier than now; the result, I suppose, of I47 148 CAA SUCH 7"H/A/GS BE 2 hard service—perhaps, to some extent, of hard drink, for, bless my soul! we did shed the blood of the grape and the grain abundantly during the war. I remember thinking General Grant, who could not have been above forty-five, a pretty well preserved old chap, considering his habits. As to men of middle age—say from fifty to sixty —why, they all looked fit to personate the Last of the Hittites, or the Madagascarene Methuselah, in a museum. Depend upon it, my friends, men of that time were greatly younger than men are to-day, but looked much older. The change is quite remarkable. I said that practical joking had not then gone out of fashion. It had not, at least, in the army; though possibly in the more serious life of the civilian it had no place except in the form of tarring and feathering an occasional obnoxious “copperhead.” You all know, I suppose, what a “copperhead” was, so I will go directly at my story without introductory remark, as is my way. It was a few days before the battle of Nash- ville. The enemy had driven us up out of north- ern Georgia and Alabama. At Nashville we had turned at bay and fortified, while old Pap Thomas, our commander, hurried down reinforce- ments and supplies from Louisville. Meantime Hood, the Confederate commander, had partly invested us and lay close enough to have tossed shells into the heart of the town. As a rule he THE MAJOR'S TALE. 149 abstained—he was afraid of killing the families of his own soldiers, I suppose, a great many of whom had lived there. I sometimes wondered what were the feelings of those fellows, gazing over our heads at their own dwellings, where their wives and children or their aged parents were, perhaps, suffering for the necessaries of life, and certainly (so their reasoning would run) cowering under the tyranny and power of the barbarous Yankees. To begin, then, at the beginning, I was serving at that time on the staff of a division commander whose name I shall not disclose, for I am relating facts, and the person upon whom they bear hard- est may have surviving relatives who would not care to have him traced. Our headquarters were in a large dwelling which stood just behind our line of works. It had been hastily abandoned by the civilian occupants, who had left everything pretty much as it was—had no place to store it, probably, and trusted that Heaven would pre- serve it from Federal cupidity and Confederate shells. With regard to the latter we were as solicitous as they. Rummaging about in some of the chambers and closets one evening, some of us found an abundant supply of lady gear—gowns, shawls, bonnets, hats, petticoats, and the Lord knows what; I could not at that time have named the half of it. The sight of all this pretty plunder 15o CAA SUCH TH/A/GS BA 2 ** inspired one of us with what he was pleased to call an “idea,” which, when submitted to the other scamps and scapegraces of the staff, met with instant and enthusiastic approval. We pro- ceeded at once to act upon it for the undoing of one of our companions. Our selected victim was an aid, Lieutenant Haberton, so to call him. He was a good soldier —as gallant a chap as ever wore spurs; but he had an intolerable weakness: he was a lady-killer, and like most of his class, even in those days, anxious that all should know it. He never tired of relat- ing his amatory exploits, and I need not say how dismal that kind of narrative is to all but the narrator. It would be dismal even if sprightly and vivacious, for all men are rivals in woman's favor, and to relate your successes to another man is to rouse in him a dumb resentment, tem- pered by disbelief. You will not convince him that you tell the tale for his entertainment; he will hear nothing in it but an expression of your own vanity. Moreover, as most men, whether rakes or not, are willing to be thought so, he is very likely to resent a stupid and unjust inference which he suspects you to have drawn from his reticence in the matter of his own adventures— namely, that he has had none. If, on the other hand, he has no scruple in the matter and his reticence is due to lack of opportunity to talk, or of nimbleness in taking advantage of it, why, then --------------------. THE MAJOR'S TALE. I5 I he will be surly because you “have the floor” when he wants it himself. There are, in short, no circumstances under which a man, even from that best of motives, or no motive at all, can relate his feats of love without distinctly lowering him- self in the esteem of his male auditor; and herein lies a just punishment for such as kiss and tell. In my younger days I was myself not entirely out of favor with the ladies, and have a memory stored with much concerning them which doubt- less I might put into acceptable narrative had I not undertaken another tale, and if it were not my practice to relate one thing at a time, going straight away to the end, without digression. Lieutenant Haberton was, it must be con- fessed, a singularly handsome man with engaging manners. He was, I suppose, judging from the imperfect view point of my sex, what women call “fascinating.” Now, the qualities which make a man attractive to ladies entail a double disadvan- tage. First, they are of a sort readily discerned by other men, and by none more readily than by those who lack them. Their possessor, being feared by all these, is habitually slandered by them in self-defense. To all the ladies in whose welfare they deem themselves entitled to a voice and interest they hint at the vices and general unworth of the “ladies' man" in no uncertain terms, and to their wives relate without shame the most monstrous falsehoods about him. Nor 152 cAv such TH/AGS 6A are they restrained by the consideration that he is their friend; the qualities which have engaged their own admiration make it necessary to warn away those to whom the allurement would be a peril. So the man of charming per- sonality, while loved by all the ladies who know him well, yet not too well, must endure with such fortitude as he may the consciousness that those others who “know him only by reputation” con- sider him a shameless reprobate, a vicious and unworthy man—a type and example of moral depravity. To name the second disadvantage entailed by his charms: he commonly is. In order to get forward with our busy story (and in my judgment a story once begun should not suffer impedition) it is necessary to explain that a young fellow attached to our headquarters as an orderly was notably effeminate in feature and figure. He was not more than seventeen and had a perfectly smooth face and large lustrous eyes, which must have been the envy of many a beautiful woman in those days. And how beau- tiful the women of those days were ! and how gracious! Those of the South showed in their demeanor toward us Yankees something of hauteur, but, for my part, I found it less insup- portable than the studious indifference with which one's attentions are received by the ladies of this new generation, whom I certainly think destitute of sentiment and sensibility. THE MA/OR'S 7A/E. I53 This young orderly, whose name was Arman, we persuaded—by what arguments I am not bound to say—to clothe himself in female attire and personate a lady. When we had him arrayed to our satisfaction—and a charming girl he looked —he was conducted to a sofa in the office of the adjutant general. That officer was in the secret, as indeed were all excepting Haberton and the general; within the awful dignity hedging the latter lay possibilities of disapproval which we were unwilling to confront. When all was ready I went to Haberton and said: “Lieutenant, there is a young woman in the adjutant general's office. She is the daughter of the insurgent gentleman who owns this house, and has, I think, called to see about its present occupancy. We none of us know just how to talk to her, but think perhaps you would say about the right thing—at least you will say things in the right way. Would you mind coming down?” The lieutenant would not mind; he made a hasty toilet and joined me. As we were going along a passage toward the Presence we encoun- tered a formidable obstacle—the general. “I say, Broadwood,” he said, addressing me in the familiar manner which meant that he was in excellent humor, “there's a lady in Lawson's office. Looked like a devilish fine girl—came on some errand of mercy or justice, no doubt. Have the goodness to conduct her to my quar- 154 CAA SUCH 7"H/AWGS BE 2 ters. I won't saddle you youngsters with all the business of this division,” he added facetiously. This was awkward; something had to be done. “General,” I said, “I did not think the lady's business of sufficient importance to bother you with it. She is one of the Sanitary Commission's nurses, and merely wants to see about some sup- plies for the smallpox hospital where she is on duty. I'll send her in at once.” “You need not mind,” said the general, moving on; "I dare say Lawson will attend to the matter.” Ah, the gallant general! how little I thought, as I looked after his retreating figure and laughed at the success of my ruse, that within the week he would be “dead on the field of honor !” Nor was he the only one of our little military house- hold above whom gloomed the shadow of the death angel and who might almost have heard “the beating of his wings.” On that bleak December morning a few days later, when from an hour before dawn until ten o'clock we sat on horseback on those icy hills, waiting for General Smith to open the battle miles away to the right, there were eight of us. At the close of the fight- ing there were three. There is now one. Bear with him yet a little while, oh, thrifty generation; he is but one of the horrors of war strayed from his era into yours. He is only the harmless skele- ton at your feast and peace dance, responding to - ***** *- THE MA/OR'S 7A LE. I55 your laughter and your footing it featly, with rat- tling fingers and bobbing skull—albeit upon suit- able occasion, with a partner of his choosing, he might do his little dance with the best of you. As we entered the adjutant general's office we observed that the entire staff was there. The adjutant general himself was exceedingly busy at his desk. The commissary of subsistence played cards with the surgeon in a bay window. The rest were in various parts of the room, reading or conversing in low tones. On a sofa in a half lighted part of the room, at some distance from any of the groups, sat the “lady,” closely veiled, her eyes modestly fixed upon her toes. “Madam,” I said, advancing with Haberton, “this officer will be pleased to serve you if it is in his power. I trust that it is.” With a bow I retired to the further corner of the room and took part in a conversation going on there, though I had not the faintest notion what it was about, and my remarks had no rele- vancy to anything under the heavens. A close observer would have noticed that we were all intently watching Haberton and only “making believe” to do anything else. He was worth watching, too; the fellow was simply an edition de lure of “Turveydrop on De- portment.” As the “lady” slowly unfolded her tale of grievances against our lawless soldiery and mentioned certain instances of wanton disregard 156 CAA/ SUC// 7:///AWGS BE 2 of property rights—among them, as to the immi- ment peril of our bursting sides we partly over- heard, the looting of her own wardrobe—the look of sympathetic agony in Haberton's handsome face was the very flower and fruit of histrionic art. His deferential and assenting nods at each several statement were so exquisitely performed that one could not help regretting their unsubstantial nature and the impossibility of preserving them under glass, for instruction and delight of poster- ity. And all the time the wretch was drawing his chair nearer and nearer. Once or twice he looked about to see if we were observing, but we were in appearance blankly oblivious to all but one another and our several diversions. The low hum of our conversation, the gentle tap-tap of the cards as they fell in play, and the furious scratch- ing of the adjutant general's pen as he turned off countless pages of words without sense were the only sounds heard. No—there was another; at long intervals the distant boom of a heavy gun, followed by the approaching rush of the shot. The enemy was amusing himself. On these occasions the lady was perhaps not the only member of that company who was startled, but she was startled more than the others, sometimes rising from the sofa and standing with clasped hands, the authentic por- trait of terror and irresolution. It was no more than natural that Haberton should at these times THE MA/OR'S TALE. 157 reseat her with infinite tenderness, assuring her of her safety and regretting her peril in the same breath. It was perhaps right that he should finally possess himself of her gloved hand and a seat beside her on the sofa; but it certainly was highly improper for him to be in the very act of possessing himself of both hands when—boom, zwhiz, BANG! * We all sprang to our feet. A shell had crashed into the house and exploded in the room above us. Bushels of plaster fell among us. That modest and murmurous young lady leaped erect. “Jumping Je-rusalem!” she cried ! Haberton, who had also risen, stood as one petrified—as a statue of himself erected on the site of his assassination. He neither spoke, nor moved, nor once took his eyes off the face of Orderly Arman, who was now flinging his girl gear right and left, exposing his charms in the most shameless way; while out upon the night and away over the lighted camps into the black spaces between the hostile lines rolled the billows of our inexhaustible laughter! Ah, what a merry life it was in the old heroic days when men had not forgotten how to laugh! Haberton slowly came to himself. He looked about him less blankly, then by degrees fashioned his visage into the sickliest grin that ever libeled all smiling. He shook his head and looked knowing. “You can't fool me / " he said. A PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIPWRECK. IN the summer of 1874 I was in Liverpool, whither I had gone on business for the mercantile house of Bronson & Jarrett, New York. My name is William Jarrett; my partner, Zenas Bronson, is dead; the firm failed last year, and, unable to endure the fall from affluence to pov- erty, he committed suicide. Having finished my business, and feeling the lassitude and exhaustion incident to its dispatch, it occurred to me that a protracted sea voyage would be both agreeable and beneficial, so instead of embarking for my return on one of the many fine passenger steamers I booked for New York on the sailing vessel Morrow, upon which I had shipped a large and valuable invoice of the goods I had purchased. The Morrow was an English ship, with, of course, but limited accommodation for passengers, of whom there were only myself, a young woman, and her servant, who was a middle-aged negress. I thought it singular that a traveling English girl should be so attended, but she afterward explained to me that the woman had been left with her family by a man and his wife from South Carolina, both of whom 159 16o CAAW SUCH THIVGS BE 2 had died on the same day at the house of the young lady's father in Devonshire—a circum- stance in itself sufficiently uncommon to remain rather distinctly in my memory, even had it not afterward transpired in conversation with the young lady that the name of the man was Wil- liam Jarrett, the same as my own. I knew that a branch of my family had settled in South Caro- lina, but of them and their history I was alto- gether ignorant. The Morrow sailed from the mouth of the Mersey on the 15th of June, and for several weeks we had fair breezes and unclouded skies. The skipper, an admirable seaman, but nothing more, favored us with very little of his society, except at his table; and the young woman, Miss Janette Harford, and I became very well acquainted; we were, in truth, nearly always together, and being of an introspective turn of mind I often endeavored to analyze and define the novel feel- ing with which she inspired me—a secret, subtle, but powerful attraction which constantly impelled me to seek her; but the attempt was hopeless. I could only be sure that at least it was not love. Having assured myself of this, and being reason- ably certain that she was quite as whole-hearted, I ventured one evening (I remember it was on the 3d of July) as we sat on deck, to ask her, laugh- ingly, if she could assist me to resolve my psycho- logical doubt. A PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIP WRECAT. 161 For a moment she was silent, with averted face, and I began to fear I had been extremely rude and indelicate; then she fixed her eyes gravely on my own. In an instant my mind was dom- inated by as strange a fancy as ever entered human consciousness. It seemed as if she were looking at me, not with, but through, those eyes —from an immeasurable distance behind them— and that where she sat a number of other people, men, women, and children, upon whose faces I caught strangely familiar evanescent expressions, clustered about her, struggling with gentle eager- ness to look at me through the same orbs. Ship, ocean, sky—all had vanished. I was conscious of nothing but the figures in this extraordinary and fantastic scene. Then all at once darkness fell upon me, and anon from out of it, as to one who grows accustomed by degrees to a dimmer light, my former surroundings of deck and mast and cordage slowly resolved themselves. Miss Har- ford had closed her eyes, and was leaning back in her chair, apparently asleep, the book she had been reading open in her lap. Impelled by surely I cannot say what motive, I glanced at the top of the page; it was a copy of that rare and curious work, “Denneker's Meditations,” and the lady's index finger rested on this passage: “To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the body for a season; for, as concerning 'rills which would flow across each I62 CAAW SUCH THIVGS BAZ * other the weaker is borne along by the stronger, so there be certain of kin whose paths intersect- ing, their souls do bear company, the while their bodies go fore-appointed ways, unknowing.” Miss Harford arose, shuddering; the sun had sunk below the horizon, but it was not cold. There was not a breath of wind; there were no clouds in the sky, yet not a star was visible. A hurried tramping sounded on the deck; the captain, summoned from below, joined the first officer, who stood looking at the barometer. . “Good God!” I heard him exclaim. An hour later the form of Janette Harford, invisible in the darkness and spray, was torn from my grasp by the cruel vortex of the sinking ship, and I fainted in the cordage of the floating mast to which I had lashed myself. It was by lamplight that I awoke. I lay in a berth amid the familiar surroundings of the state- room of a steamer. On a couch opposite sat a man, half undressed for bed, reading a book. I recognized the face of my friend Gordon Doyle, whom I had met in Liverpool on the day of my embarkation, when he was himself about to sail on the steamer City of Prague, on which he had urged me to accompany him. - After some moments I now spoke his name. He simply said, “Well,” and turned a leaf in his book, without removing his eyes from the page. A PSYCHOLOG/CA / SH/P II RACK". 163 “Doyle,” I repeated, “did they save her ?" He now deigned to look at me and smiled as if amused. He evidently thought me but half awake. “Her? Whom do you mean?” “Janette Harford.” . His amusement turned to amazement; he stared at me fixedly, saying nothing. “You will tell me after a while," I continued; "I suppose you will tell me after a while.” A moment later I asked: “What ship is this?" Doyle stared again. “The steamer City of Prague, bound from Liverpool to New York, three weeks out with a broken shaft. Principal passenger, Mr. Gordon Doyle; ditto lunatic, Mr. William Jarrett. These two distinguished travelers embarked together, but they are about to part, it being the resolute intention of the former to pitch the latter overboard.” I sat bolt upright. “Do you mean to say that I have been three weeks on this steamer?” “Yes, pretty nearly; this is the 3d of July.” “Have I been ill?” - “Right as a trivet all the time, and punctual at your meals.” “My God! Doyle, there is some mystery here; do have the goodness to be serious. Was I not rescued from the wreck of the ship Morrow 2 ” Doyle changed color, and approaching me, laid his fingers on my wrist. A moment later, “What 164 CAAM SUCH 7 A//AVGS BE 2 do you know of Janette Harford?” he asked very calmly. “First tell me what you know of her?” Mr. Doyle gazed at me for some moments as if to ascertain what to do, then seating himself again on the couch, said: “Why should I not? I am engaged to marry Janette Harford, whom I met a year ago in London. Her family, one of the wealthiest in Devonshire, cut up rough about it, and we eloped —are eloping rather, for on the day that you and I walked to the landing stage to go aboard this steamer she and her faithful servant, a negress, passed us, driving to the ship Morrow. She would not consent to go in the same vessel with me, and it had been deemed best that she take a sailing vessel in order to avoid observation and lessen the risk of detection. I am now alarmed lest this cursed breaking of our machinery may detain us so long that the Morrow will get to New York before us, and the poor girl will not know where to go.” I lay still in my berth—so still I hardly breathed, indeed. But the subject was evidently not displeasing to Doyle, and after a short pause he resumed: “By the way, she is only an adopted daughter of the Harfords. Her mother was killed at their place by being thrown from a horse while hunting, and her father, mad with grief, made away with A PS VCA/OALOG/CA L SA/A WARE CAT. 165 himself the same day. No one ever claimed the child, and after a reasonable time they adopted it. Sorry to deprive them, really.” “Doyle, what book are you reading?” “Oh, it's called “Denneker's Meditations.” It's a rum lot. Janette gave it to me; she hap- pened to have two copies. Want to see it?” He tossed me the volume, which opened as it fell. On one of the exposed pages was a marked passage: “To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the body for a season; for, as concerning rills which would flow across each other the weaker is borne along by the stronger, so there be certain of kin whose paths intersect- ing, their souls do bear company, the while their bodies go fore-appointed ways, unknowing.” “She had—she has—a singular taste in read- ing," I managed to say, mastering my agitation. “Yes. And now perhaps you will have the kindness to explain how you knew her name and that of the ship she sailed in.” “You talked of her in your sleep,” I said. A week later we were towed into the port of New York. But the Morrow was never heard from. * *--> -- ~~ s" -> - * ONE KIND OF OFFICER. I. ONE OF THE USES OF CIVILITY. “CAPTAIN RANSOME, it is not permitted to you to know anything. It is sufficient that you obey my order—which permit me to repeat. If you perceive any movement of troops in your front you are to open fire and if attacked hold this position as long as you can. Do I make myself understood, sir?” “Nothing could be plainer. Lieutenant Price,” —this to an officer of his own battery, who had ridden up in time to hear the order—“the gen- eral's meaning is clear, is it not?” “Perfectly.” The lieutenant passed on to his post. For a moment General Cameron and the commander of the battery sat in their saddles, looking at each other in silence. There was no more to say; apparently too much had been already said. Then the superior officer nodded coldly and turned his horse to ride away. The artillerist saluted slowly, gravely, and with extreme for- 167 I68 CAA SUCH 7'H/AWGS BA 2 mality. One acquainted with the niceties of military etiquette would have said that by his manner he attested a sense of the rebuke that he had incurred. It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment. When the general had joined his staff and escort, awaiting him at a little distance, the whole cavalcade moved off toward the right of the guns and vanished in the fog. Captain Ransome was alone, silent, motionless as an equestrian statue. The gray fog, thickening every moment, closed in about him like a visible doom. II. **** ---...---- UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES MEN DO NOT WISH TO BE SHOT. THE fighting of the day before had been desultory and indecisive. At the points of col- lision the smoke of battle had hung in blue sheets among the branches of the trees till beaten into nothing by the falling rain. In the softened earth the wheels of cannon and ammunition wagons cut deep, ragged furrows, and movements of infantry seemed impeded by the mud that clung to the soldiers' feet as, with soaken garments and rifles imperfectly protected by capes of overcoats, they went dragging in sinuous lines hither and thither through dripping forest and flooded field. Mounted officers, their heads protruding from rubber ponchos that glittered like black armor, picked their way, singly and in loose groups, among the men, coming and going with apparent aimlessness, and commanding attention from nobody but one another. Here and there a dead man, his clothing defiled with earth, his face covered with a blanket or showing yellow and claylike in the rain, added his dispiriting influence to that of the other dismal features of the scene 169 172 CAA/ SUCH Tay/AWGS BE 2 as they could without the absent spade and the noisy ax. One of these points was held by Cap- tain Ransome's battery of six guns. Provided always with intrenching tools, his men had labored with diligence during the night, and now his guns thrust their black muzzles through the embrasures of a really formidable earthwork. It crowned a slight acclivity devoid of undergrowth and affording an unobstructed fire that would sweep the ground for an unknown distance in front. The position could hardly have been better chosen. It had this peculiarity, which Captain Ransome, who was greatly addicted to the use of the compass, had not failed to observe: it faced northward, whereas he knew that the general line of the army must face eastward. In fact, that part of the line was “refused"—that is to say, bent backward, away from the enemy. This implied that Captain Ransome's battery was somewhere near the left flank of the army; for an army in line of battle retires its flanks if the nature of the ground will permit, they being its vulner- able points. Actually, Captain Ransome ap- peared to hold the extreme left of the line, no troops being visible in that direction beyond his own. Immediately in rear of his guns occurred that conversation between him and his brigade commander, the concluding and more picturesque part of which is reported above. * - III. HOW TO PLAY THE CANNON WITHOUT NOTES. CAPTAIN RANSOME sat motionless and silent on horseback. A few yards away his men were standing at their guns. Somewhere—everywhere within a few miles—were a hundred thousand men, friends and enemies. Yet he was alone. The mist had isolated him as completely as if he had been in the heart of a desert. His world was a few square yards of wet and trampled earth about the feet of his horse. His comrades in that ghostly domain were invisible and inaudible. These were conditions favorable to thought, and he was thinking. Of the nature of his thoughts his clear-cut handsome features yielded no attest- ing sign. His face was as inscrutable as that of the sphinx. Why should it have made a record which there was none to observe? At the sound of a footstep he merely turned his eyes in the direction whence it came; one of his sergeants, looking a giant in stature in the false perspective of the fog, approached, and when clearly defined and reduced to his true dimensions by propin- quity, saluted and stood at attention. 173 I 74 CAAW SUCA/ 7///AVGS BE 2 “Well, Morris,” said the officer, returning his subordinate's salute. f “Lieutenant Price directed me to tell you, sir, that the infantry has been withdrawn. We have no support.” “Yes, I know.” "I am to say that some of our men have been out over the works a hundred yards and report that our front is not picketed." “Yes,” “They were so far forward that they heard the enemy.” “Yes.” “They heard the rattle of the wheels of artillery and the commands of officers.” “Yes.” “The enemy is moving toward our works." Captain Ransome, who had been facing to the rear of his line—toward the point where the brigade commander and his cavalcade had been swallowed up by the fog—reined his horse about and faced the other way. Then he sat motionless as before. “Who are the men who made that statement?” he inquired, without looking at the sergeant; his eyes were directed straight into the fog over the head of his horse. “Corporal Hassman and Gunner Manning.” Captain Ransome was a moment silent. A slight pallor came into his face, a slight compres- ONE KHAWD OF OFFICER. I75 sion affected the lines of his lips, but it would have required a closer observer than Sergeant Morris to note the change. There was none in the voice: “Sergeant, present my compliments to Lieu. tenant Price and direct him to open fire with all the guns. Grape.” The sergeant saluted and vanished in the fog. IV. TO INTRODUCE GENERAL MASTERSON. SEARCHING for his division commander, Gen- eral Cameron and his escort had followed the line of battle for nearly a mile to the right of Ran- some's battery, and there learned that the division commander had gone in search of the corps com- mander. It seemed that everybody was looking for his immediate superior—an ominous circum- stance. It meant that nobody was quite at ease. So General Cameron rode on for another half mile, where by good luck he met General Master- son, the division commander, returning. “Ah, Cameron,” said the higher officer, reining up, and throwing his right leg across the pommel of his saddle in a most unmilitary way—“any- thing up? Found a good position for your battery, I hope—if one place is better than another in a fog.” “Yes, general,” said the other, with the greater dignity appropriate to his less exalted rank, “my battery is very well placed. I wish I could say that it is as well commanded.” “Eh, what's that? Ransome? I think him a 176 directed to hook on to you. Better go and OAWE KHAVID OF OFFICER. - 177 fine fellow. In the army we should be proud of him.” It was customary for officers of the regular army to speak of it as “the army.” As the greatest cities are most provincial, so the self- complacency of aristocracies is most frankly plebeian. “He is too fond of his opinion. By the way, in order to occupy the hill that he holds I had to extend my line dangerously. The hill is on my left—that is to say the left flank of the army." “Oh, no, Hart's brigade is beyond. It was ordered up from Drytown during the night and The sentence was unfinished: a lively cannon- ade had broken out on the left, and both officers, followed by their retinues of aids and orderlies making a great jingle and clank, rode rapidly toward the spot. But they were soon impeded, for they were compelled by the fog to keep within sight of the line of battle, behind which were swarms of men, all in motion across their way. Everywhere the line was assuming a sharper and harder definition, as the men sprang to arms and the officers, with drawn swords, “dressed” the ranks. Color bearers unfurled the flags, buglers blew the “assembly,” hospital at- tendants appeared with stretchers. Field officers dismounted and sent their horses to the rear in care of negro servants. Back in the ghostly 178 CAA SUCH 7/7//VG.S. BAE 2 spaces of the forest could be heard the rustle and murmur of the reserves, pulling themselves together. Nor was all this preparation vain, for scarcely five minutes had passed since Captain Ransome's guns had broken the truce of doubt before the whole region was aroar: the enemy had attacked with inconceivable fury everywhere. I 8o CAA/ SUCH THAVGS BE 2 serious and feverish activity. From his station at the parapet Captain Ransome now saw a great multitude of dim gray figures taking shape in the mist below him and swarming up the slope. But the work of the guns was now fast and furious. They swept the populous declivity with gusts of grape and canister, the whirring of which could be heard through the thunder of the explosions. In this awful tempest of iron the assailants struggled forward foot by foot across their dead, firing into the embrasures, reloading, firing again, and at last falling in their turn, a little in advance of those who had fallen before. Soon the smoke was dense enough to cover all. It settled down upon the attack and drifting back, involved the defense. The gunners could hardly see to serve their pieces, and when occasional figures of the enemy appeared upon the parapet—having had the good luck to get near enough to it, between two embrasures, to be protected from the guns— they looked so unsubstantial that it seemed hardly worth while to go to work upon them with saber and revolver and tumble them back into the ditch. As the commander of a battery in action can find something better to do than cracking individ. ual skulls, Captain Ransome had retired from the parapet to his proper post in rear of his guns, where he stood with folded arms, his bugler beside him. Here, during the hottest of the OAMAZ AT/AW/D OAT OFF/CZAR. I8 I fight, he was approached by Lieutenant Price, who had just sabered a daring assailant inside the work. A spirited colloquy ensued between the two officers—spirited, at least, on the part of the lieutenant, who gesticulated with energy and shouted again and again into his commander's ear in the attempt to make himself heard above the infernal din of the guns. His gestures, if coolly noted by an actor, would have been pronounced to be those of protestation: one would have said that he was opposed to the proceedings. Captain Ransome listened without a change of countenance or attitude, and when the other man had finished his harangue, looked him coldly in the eyes and during a seasonable abatement of the uproar said: “Lieutenant Price, it is not permitted to you to know anything. It is sufficient that you obey my orders.” The lieutenant went to his post, and the para- pet being now apparently clear, Captain Ransome returned to it to have a look over. As he mounted the banquette a man sprang upon the crest, waving a great brilliant flag. The captain drew a pistol from his belt and shot him dead. The body, pitching forward, hung over the inner edge of the embankment, the arms straight down- ward, both hands still grasping the flag. The man's few followers turned and fled down the slope. Looking over the parapet, the captain 182 CAA SUCH 7/7/AWGS B/ 2 saw no living thing. He observed also that no bullets were coming into the work. He made a sign to the bugler, who sounded the command to cease firing. At all other points the action had already ended for the time being with a repulse of the Confederate attack; with the cessation of this cannonade the silence was absolute. VI. WHY, BEING AFFRONTED BY A, IT IS NOT BEST TO AFFRONT B. GENERAL MASTERSON rode into the redoubt. The men, gathered in groups, were talking loudly and gesticulating. They pointed at the dead, running from one body to another. They neg- lected their foul and heated guns, and forgot to resume their outer clothing. They ran to the parapet and looked over, some of them leaping down into the ditch. A score were gathered about a flag rigidly held by a dead man. “Well, my men,” said the general cheerily, “you have had a pretty fight of it.” They stared; nobody replied; the presence of the great man seemed to embarrass and alarm. Getting no response to his pleasant condescen- sion, the easy-mannered officer whistled a bar or two of a popular air, and riding forward to the parapet, looked over at the dead. In an instant he had whirled his horse about and was spurring along in rear of the guns, his eyes everywhere at once. An officer sat on the trail of one of the guns, smoking a cigar. As the general dashed up he rose and tranquilly saluted. 183 184 CAA SUCH TH/AVG.S BE 2 "Captain Ransome!"—the words fell sharp and harsh, like the clash of steel blades—“You have been fighting our own men—our own men, sir; do you hear? Hart's brigade'" “General, I know that.” “You know it—you know that, and you sit here smoking? Oh, d-n it, Hamilton, I'm losing my temper,”—this to his provost marshal. "Sir—Captain Ransome, be good enough to say —to say why you fought our own men.” “That I am unable to say. In my orders that information was withheld.” Apparently the general did not comprehend. “Who was the aggressor in this affair, you or General Hart?” he asked. “I was.” “And could you not have known—could you not see, sir, that you were attacking our own men?” The reply was astounding! “I knew it, general. It appeared to be none of my business.” Then, breaking the dead silence that followed his answer, he said: - “I must refer you to General Cameron.” “General Cameron is dead, sir—as dead as he can be—as dead as any man in this army. He lies back yonder under a tree. Do you mean to say that he had anything to do with this horrible business?” OA/A2 A*/A/D OA. OATF/CEA2. 185 Captain Ransome did not reply. Observing the altercation, his men had gathered about to watch the outcome. They were greatly excited. The fog, which had been partly dissipated by the firing, had again closed in so darkly about them that they drew more closely together till the judge on horseback and the accused, standing calmly before him, had but a narrow space free from intrusion. It was the most informal of courts-martial, but all felt that the formal one to follow would but affirm its judgment. It had no jurisdiction, but it had its significance of prophecy. - “Captain Ransome,” the general cried impetu- ously, but with something in his voice that was almost entreaty, “if you can say anything to put a better light upon your extraordinary conduct I beg you will do so.” Having recovered his temper, this generous soldier sought for something to justify his nat- urally sympathetic attitude toward a brave man in the imminence of a dishonorable death. “Where is Lieutenant Price?” the captain said. That officer stood forward, his dark saturnine face looking somewhat forbidding under a bloody handkerchief bound about his brow. He under- stood the summons and needed no invitation to speak. He did not look at the captain, but addressed the general: “During the engagement I discovered the state * I 86 CAA/ SUCAZ 7”/7/A/G.S. AA 2 of affairs, and apprised the commander of the battery. I ventured to urge that the firing cease. I was insulted and ordered to my post.” “Do you know anything of the orders under which I was acting?” asked the captain. “Of any orders under which the commander of the battery was acting,” the lieutenant continued, still addressing the general, “I know nothing.” Captain Ransome felt his world sink away from his feet. In those words he heard the murmur of the centuries breaking upon the shore of eternity. He heard the voice of doom; it said, in cold, mechanical, and measured tones: “Ready, aim, fire!” and he felt the bullets tear his heart to shreds. He heard the sound of the earth upon his coffin, and (if the good God was so merciful) the song of a bird above his forgotten grave. Quietly detaching his saber from its supports, he handed it up to the provost marshal. "*- : THE APPLICANT. PUSHING his adventurous shins through the deep snow that had fallen overnight, and encour- aged by the glee of his little sister, following in the open way that he made, a sturdy small boy, the son of Grayville's most distinguished citizen, struck his foot against something of which there was no visible sign on the surface of the snow It is the purpose of this narrative to explain how it came to be there. No one who has had the advantage of passing through Grayville by day can have failed to observe the large stone building crowning the low hill to the north of the railway station—that is to say, to the right in going toward Great Mowbray. It is a somewhat dull-looking edifice, of the Early Comatose order, and appears to have been de- signed by an architect who shrank from publicity, and although unable to conceal his work—even compelled, in this instance, to set it on an eminence in the sight of men—did what he honestly could to insure it against a second look. So far as concerns its outer and visible aspect, the Abersush Home for Old Men is unquestion- ably inhospitable to human attention. But it is 187 I88 CAA SUCH TH/NGS BE 2 a building of great magnitude, and cost its benev- olent founder the profit of many a cargo of the teas and silks and spices that his ships brought up from the under-world when he was in trade in Boston; though the main expense was its endow- ment. Altogether, this reckless person had robbed his heirs-at-law of no less a sum than half a million dollars, and flung it away in riotous giving. Possibly it was with a view to get out of sight of the silent big witness to his extravagance that he shortly afterward disposed of all his Grayville property that remained to him, turned his back upon the scene of his prodigality, and went off across the sea in one of his own ships. But the gossips who got their inspiration most directly from heaven declared that he went in search of a wife—a theory not easily reconciled with that of the village humorist, who solemnly averred that the bachelor philanthropist had departed this life (left Grayville, to wit) because the marriageable maidens had made it too hot to hold him. However this may have been, he had not returned, and although at long intervals there had come to Grayville, in a desultory way, vague rumors of his wanderings in strange lands, no one seemed certainly to know about him, and to the new generation he was no more than a name. But from above the portal of the Home for Old Men the name shouted in stone. Despite its unpromising exterior, the Home is THE APPLICAA/7'. 189 a fairly commodious place of retreat from the ills that its inmates have incurred by being poor and old and men. At the time embraced in this brief chronicle they were in number about a score, but in acerbity, querulousness, and general ingrati- tude they could hardly be reckoned at fewer than a hundred; at least that was the estimate of the superintendent, Mr. Silas Tilbody. It was Mr. Tilbody's steadfast conviction that always, in admitting new old men to replace those who had gone to another and a better Home, the trustees had distinctly in will the infraction of his peace, and the trial of his patience. In truth, the longer the institution was connected with him, the stronger was his feeling that the founder's scheme of benevolence was sadly impaired by providing any inmates at all. He had not much imagination, but with what he had he was ad- dicted to the reconstruction of the Home for Old Men into a kind of “castle in Spain,” with himself as castellan, hospitably entertaining about a score of sleek and prosperous middle-aged gentlemen, consummately good-humored and civilly willing to pay for their board and lodging. In this revised project of philanthropy the trustees, to whom he was indebted for his office and respon- sible for his conduct, had not the happiness to appear. As to them, it was held by the village humorist aforementioned that in their manage- ment of the great charity Providence had 190 CAA SUCH T//ZA/G.S. AA 3 thoughtfully supplied an incentive to thrift. With the inference which he expected to be drawn from that view we have nothing to do; it had neither support nor denial from the inmates, who certainly were most concerned. They lived out their little remnant of life, crept into graves neatly numbered, and were succeeded by other old men as like them as could be desired by the Adversary of Peace. If the Home was a place of punishment for the sin of unthrift, the veteran offenders sought justice with a persistence that attested the sincerity of their penitence. It is to one of these that the reader's attention is now invited. In the matter of attire this person was not altogether engaging. But for the season, which was midwinter, a careless observer might have looked upon him as a clever device of the hus- bandman indisposed to share the fruits of his toil with the crows that toil not, neither spin–an error that might not have been dispelled without longer and closer observation than he seemed to court; for his progress up Abersush Street, toward the Home, was not, in the gloom of the winter even- ing, visibly faster than what might have been expected of a scarecrow blessed with youth, health, and discontent. The man was indisputa- bly ill-clad, yet not without a certain fitness and good taste, withal; for he was obviously an applicant for admittance to the Home, where THE A PPL/CAA 7. 191 poverty was a qualification. In the army of in- digence the uniform is rags; they serve to distin- guish the rank and file from the recruiting officers. As the old man, entering the gate of the grounds, shuffled up the broad walk, already white with the fast-falling snow, which from time to time he feebly shook from its various coigns of vantage on his person, he came under inspec- tion of the large globe lamp that burned always by night over the great door of the building. As if unwilling to incur its revealing beams, he turned to the left, and, passing a considerable distance along the face of the building, rang at a smaller door emitting a dimmer ray that came from within, through the fanlight, and expended itself incuriously overhead. The door was opened by no less a personage than the great Mr. Tilbody himself. Observing his visitor, who at once uncovered, and somewhat shortened the radius of the permanent curvature of his back, the great man gave visible token of neither surprise nor displeasure. Mr. Tilbody was, indeed, in an uncommonly good humor, a phenomenon as- cribable doubtless to the cheerful influence of the season; for this was Christmas Eve, and the morrow would be that blessed 365th part of the year that all Christian souls set apart for mighty feats of goodness and joy. Mr. Tilbody was so full of the spirit of the season that his fat face and pale blue eyes, whose ineffectual fire served 192 CAAW SUCH THIAWGS BE 2 to distinguish it from an untimely summer squash, effused so genial a glow that it seemed a pity that he could not have lain down in it, basking in the consciousness of his own identity. He was hatted, booted, overcoated, and umbrel- laed, as became a person who was about to expose himself to the night and the storm of an errand of charity; for Mr. Tilbody had just parted from his wife and children to go "down town" and purchase the wherewithal to confirm the annual falsehood about the hunch-bellied saint who frequents the chimneys to reward little boys and girls who are good and especially truth- ful. So he did not invite the old man in, but saluted him cheerily: “Hello! just in time; a moment later and you would have missed me. Come, I have no time to waste; we'll walk a little way together.” “Thank you,” said the old man, upon whose thin and white but not ignoble face the light from the open door showed an expression that was perhaps disappointment made visible; "but if the trustees—if my application—” “The trustees,” Mr. Tilbody said, closing more doors than one, and cutting off two kinds of light, “have agreed that your applicationn disagrees with them.” Certain sentiments are inappropriate to Christ- mastide, but Humor, like Death, has all seasons for his own. TZZ A PP/L/CAA/7". I93 “Oh, my God!” cried the old man, in so thin and husky a tone that the invocation was any- thing but impressive, and to at least one of his two auditors sounded, indeed, somewhat ludicrous. To the Other—but that is a matter which laymen are devoid of the light to expound. “Yes,” continued Mr. Tilbody, accommodating his gait to that of his companion, who was mechanically, and not very successfully, retracing the track that he had made through the snow; “they have decided that, under the circumstances —under the very peculiar circumstances, you understand—it would be inexpedient to admit you. As superintendent and ex officio secretary of the honorable board”—as Mr. Tilbody “read his titles clear,” the magnitude of the big build- ing, seen through its veil of falling snow, ap- peared to suffer somewhat in comparison—"it is my duty to inform you that, in the words of Deacon Byram, the chairman, your presence in the Home would—under the circumstances—be peculiarly embarrassing. I felt it my duty to submit to the honorable board the statement that you made to me yesterday of your needs, your physical condition, and the trials which it has pleased Providence to send upon you in your very proper effort to present your claims in per- son; but, after careful, and I may say prayerful, consideration of your case—with something too, I trust, of the large charitableness appropriate to 194 CA V SUCH 7"H/AWGS BE * * s -* the season—it was decided that we should not be justified in doing anything likely to impair the usefulness of the institution intrusted (under Providence) to our care.” They had now passed out of the grounds; the street lamp opposite the gate was dimly visible through the snow. Already the old man's former track was obliterated, and he seemed uncertain as to which way he should go. Mr. Tilbody had drawn a little away from him, but paused and turned half toward him, apparently reluctant to forego the continuing opportunity. “Under the circumstances,” he resumed, “the decision—" But the old man was inaccessible to the suasion of his verbosity; he had crossed the street into a vacant lot and was going forward, rather devi- ously, toward nowhere in particular—which, he having nowhere in particular to go to, was not so reasonless a proceeding as it looked. And that is how it happened that the next morning, when the church bells of all Grayville were ringing with an added unction appropriate to the day, the sturdy little son of Deacon Byram, breaking a way through the snow to the place of worship, struck his foot against the body of Amasa Abersush, philanthropist. ONE OF TWINS. A LETTER FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A DECEASED PHYSICIAN. YOU ask me if in my experience as one of a pair of twins I ever observed anything unaccountable by such natural laws as we have acquaintance with. As to that you shall judge; perhaps we have not all acquaintance with the same natural laws. You may know some that I do not, and what is to me unaccountable may be very clear to you. You knew my brother John—that is, you knew him when you knew that I was not present; but neither you nor, I believe, any human being could distinguish between him and me if we chose to seem alike. Our parents could not; ours is the only instance of which I have any knowledge of so close resemblance as that. I speak of my brother John, but I am not at all sure that his name was not Henry and mine John. We were regularly christened, but afterward, in the very act of branding us with small distinguishing marks, the operator lost his reckoning; and although I bear upon my forearm a small “H” 195 196 CAAV SUCH 7'H/AWG.S AA 8 - and he bore a “J,” it is by no means certain that the letters ought not to have been transposed. During our boyhood our parents tried to distin- guish us more obviously by our clothing and other simple devices, but we would so frequently exchange suits and otherwise circumvent the enemy that they abandoned all such ineffectual attempts, and during all the years that we lived together at home everybody recognized the diffi- culty of the situation and made the best of it by calling us both “Jenry.” I have often wondered at my father's forbearance in not branding us conspicuously upon our unworthy brows, but as we were tolerably good boys and used our power of embarrassment and annoyance with commend- able moderation, we escaped the iron. My father was, in fact, a singularly good-natured man, and I think quietly enjoyed nature's practical joke. Soon after we had come to California, and settled at San Jose (where the only good fortune that awaited us was our meeting with so kind a friend as you), the family, as you know, was broken up by the death of both my parents in one week. My father died insolvent and the homestead was sacrificed to pay his debts. My sisters returned to relations in the East, but owing to your kindness John and I, then twenty- two years of age, obtained employment in San Francisco, in different quarters of the town. Circumstances did not permit us to live together, OME OF TW/AW.S. 197 and we saw each other infrequently, sometimes not oftener than once a week. As we had few acquaintances in common, the fact of our extra- ordinary likeness was little known. I come now to the matter of your inquiry. One day soon after we had come to this city I was walking down Market Street late in the afternoon, when I was accosted by a well-dressed man of middle age, who after greeting me cordi- ally said: “Stevens, I know, of course, that you do not go out much, but I have told my wife about you, and she would be glad to see you at the house. I have a notion, too, that my girls are worth knowing. Suppose you come out to- morrow at six and dine with us, en famille, and then if the ladies can't amuse you afterward I'll stand in with a few games of billiards.” This was said with so bright a smile and so engaging a manner that I had not the heart to refuse, and although I had never seen the man in my life I promptly replied: “You are very good, sir, and it will give me great pleasure to accept the invitation. Please present my compliments to Mrs. Margovan and ask her to expect me.” With a shake of the hand and a pleasant part- ing word the man passed on. That he had mistaken me for my brother was plain enough. That was an error to which I was accustomed and which it was not my habit to rectify unless the matter seemed important. But how had I known 198 CAA/ SUCH 7'H' MA GS BA 2 that this man's name was Margovan? It certainly is not a name which one could apply to a man at random with a probability that it would be right. In point of fact, the name was as strange to me as the man. The next morning I hastened to where my brother was employed and met him just coming out of the office with a number of bills which he was to collect. I told him how I had “com- mitted” him and added that if he didn't care to keep the engagement I should be delighted to continue the impersonation. “That's funny,” he said thoughtfully. “Mar- govan is the only man in the office here whom I know well and like. When he came in this morning and we had passed the usual greetings some singular impulse prompted me to say: 'Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Margovan, but I neg- lected to ask your address.' I got the address, but what under the sun I was to do with it, I did not know until now. It's good of you to offer to take the consequence of your impudence, but I'll eat that dinner myself, if you please.” He ate a number of dinners at the same place —more than were good for him, I may add with- out disparaging their quality; for he fell in love with Miss Margovan, proposed marriage to her and was heartlessly accepted. Several weeks after I had been informed of the engagement, but before it had been convenient OME OF TIV/AWS. I 99 for me to make the acquaintance of the young woman and her family, I met one day on Kearney Street a handsome but somewhat dissipated look- ing man whom something prompted me to follow and watch, which, feeling that I was myself unob- served, I did without any scruple whatever. He turned up Geary Street and followed it until he came to Union Square. There he looked at his watch, then entered the square. He loitered about the paths for some time, evidently waiting for someone. Presently he was joined by a fash- ionably dressed and beautiful young woman and the two walked away up Stockton Street, I following. I now felt the necessity of extreme caution, for although the girl was a stranger it seemed to me that she would recognize me at a glance. They made several turns from one street to another and finally, after both had taken a hasty look all about—which I narrowly evaded by stepping into a doorway—they entered a house of which I do not care to state the location. Its location was better than its character. I protest that my action in playing the spy upon these two strangers was absolutely without assignable motive. It was one of which I might or might not be ashamed, according to my esti- mate of the character of the person finding it out. As an essential part of a narrative educed by your question, it is related here without hesitancy or shame, 2OC) CAAV SÜC/7 7"H/AWGS BA 2 A week later John took me to the house of his prospective father-in-law, and in Miss Margovan, as you have already surmised, but to my profound astonishment, I recognized the heroine of that discreditable adventure. A gloriously beautiful heroine of a discreditable adventure I must in justice admit that she was; but that fact has only this importance: her beauty was such a surprise to me that it cast a doubt upon her identity with the young woman I had seen before; how could the marvelous fascination of her face have failed to strike me at that time? But no—there was no possibility of error; the difference was due to costume, light, and general surroundings. John and I passed the evening at the house, enduring, with the fortitude of long experience, such delicate enough banter as our likeness nat- urally suggested. When the young lady and I were left alone for a few minutes I looked her squarely in the face and said with sudden gravity: “You, too, Miss Margovan, have a double: I saw her last Tuesday afternoon in Union Square.” She trained her great gray eyes upon me for a moment, but her glance was a trifle less steady than my own and she withdrew it and fixed it on the tip of her shoe. “Was she very like me?” she asked, with an indifference which I thought a little overdone. “So like,” said I, “that I greatly admired her, and being unwilling to lose sight of her I confess OAWE OF T1//AW.S. 2O1 I followed her until–Miss Margovan, are you sure that you understand?” She was now pale but perfectly calm. She again raised her eyes to mine, with a look that did not falter. “What do you wish me to do?” she asked. “You need not fear to name your terms. I accept them.” It was plain, even in the brief time given me for reflection, that in dealing with this girl ordinary methods would not do, and ordinary exactions were needless. - “Miss Margovan,” I said, doubtless with some- thing of the compassion in my voice that I had in my heart, “it is impossible not to think you the victim of some horrible compulsion. Rather than impose new embarrassments upon you I would prefer to aid you to regain your freedom.” She shook her head, sadly and hopelessly, and I continued, with agitation: “Your beauty unnerves me. I am disarmed by your frankness and your distress. If you are free to act upon conscience, you will, I believe, do what you conceive to be best; if you are not.— well, Heaven help us all! You have nothing to fear from me but such opposition to this marriage as I can try to justify on-on other grounds.” These were not my exact words, but that was the sense of them, as nearly as my sudden and conflicting emotions permitted me to express it. 2O2 CAAW SUCH THAWGS BE 2 I rose and left her without another look at her, met the others as they re-entered the room and said, as calmly as I could: “I have been bidding Miss Margovan good-evening; it is later than I thought.” John decided to go with me. In the street he asked if I had observed anything singular in Julia's manner. “I thought her ill,” I replied; “that is why I left.” Nothing more was said. The next evening I came late to my lodgings. The events of the previous evening had made me nervous and ill; I had tried to cure myself and attain to clear thinking by walking in the open air, but I was oppressed with a horrible presenti- ment of evil—a presentiment which I could not formulate. It was a chill, foggy night; my cloth- ing and my hair were damp and I shook with cold. In my dressing gown and slippers before a blazing grate of coals I was even more uncomfortable. I no longer shivered but shuddered—there is a difference. The dread of some impending calam- ity was so strong and dispiriting that I tried to drive it away by inviting a real sorrow—tried to dispel the conception of a terrible future by substituting the memory of a painful past: I recalled the death of my parents and endeavored vainly to fix my mind upon the last sad scenes at their bedsides and their graves. It all seemed vague and unreal, as having occurred ages ago --------------- OME OF TW/AW.S. 203 and to another person. Suddenly, striking through my thought and parting it as a tense cord is parted by the stroke of steel—I can think of no other comparison—I heard a sharp cry as of one in mortal agony The voice was that of my brother and seemed to come from the street outside my window. I sprang to the window and threw it open. A street lamp directly opposite threw a wan and ghastly light upon the wet pavement and the fronts of the houses. A single policeman, with upturned collar, was leaning against a gatepost, quietly smoking a cigar. No one else was in sight. I closed the window and pulled down the shade, seated myself before the fire, and tried to fix my mind upon my surround- ings. By way of assisting, by the performance of some familiar act, I looked at my watch; it marked half-past eleven. Again I heard that awful cry! It seemed in the room—at my side. I was frightened and for some moments had not the power to move. A few minutes later—I have no recollection of the intermediate time—I found myself hurrying along an unfamiliar street as fast as I could walk. I did not know where I was, nor whither I was going, but presently sprang up the steps of a house before which were two or three carriages and in which were moving lights and a subdued confusion of voices. It was the house of Mr. Margovan. You know, good friend, what had occurred 2O4 CAAM SUCH THIAWGS B.F 2 * - there. In one chamber lay Julia Margovan, hours dead by poison; in another John Stevens, bleeding from a pistol wound in the chest, inflicted by his own hand. As I burst into the room, pushed aside the physicians and laid my hand upon his forehead, he unclosed his eyes, stared blankly, closed them slowly, and died without a sign. I knew no more until six weeks afterward, when I had been nursed back to life by your own saintly wife in your own beautiful home. All of that you know, but what you do not know is this —which, however, has no bearing upon the subject of your psychological researches—at least not upon that branch of them in which, with a deli- cacy and consideration all your own, you have asked for less assistance than I think I have given you : One moonlight night several years afterward I was passing through Union Square. The hour was late and the square deserted. Certain mem- ories of the past naturally came into my mind as I came to the spot where I had once witnessed that fateful assignation, and with that unaccount- able perversity which prompts us to dwell upon thoughts of the most painful character, I seated myself upon one of the benches to indulge them. A man entered the square and came along the walk toward me. His hands were clasped behind him, his head was bowed; he seemed to observe = - ONE OF TWIA/S. 205 nothing. As he approached the shadow in which I sat, I recognized him as the man whom I had seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But he was terribly altered—gray, worn, and haggard. Dissipation and vice were in evidence in every look; illness was no less appar- ent. His clothing was in disorder, his hair fell across his forehead in a derangement which was at once uncanny and picturesque. He looked fitter for restraint than liberty-–the restraint of a hospital. With no defined purpose I rose and confronted him. He raised his head and looked me full in the face. I have no words to describe the ghastly change that came over his own; it was a look of unspeakable terror—he thought himself eye to eye with a ghost. But he was a man of courage. “D—n you, John Stevens!” he cried, and lifting his trembling arm he dashed his fist feebly at my face, and fell headlong upon the gravel as I walked away. Somebody found him there, stone-dead. Nothing more is known of him, not even his name. To know of a man that he is dead should be enough. * * THE NIGHT-DOINGS AT “DEADMAN’S.” A STORY THAT IS UNTRUE. IT was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond. Clear nights have a trick of being keen. In black dark you may be cold and not know it; when you see, you suffer. This night was beautiful enough to bite like a serpent. The moon was moving mysteriously along behind the giant pines crowning the South Mountain, striking a cold sparkle from the crusted snow, and bringing out against the black west the ghostly outlines of the Coast Range, beyond which lay the invisible Pacific. The snow had piled itself, in the open spaces along the bottom of the gulch, into long ridges that seemed to heave, and into hills that appeared to toss and scatter spray. The spray was sunlight, twice reflected: dashed once from the moon, once from the snow. In this snow, many of the shanties of the abandoned mining camp were quite obliterated, (a sailor might have said they had gone down) and at irregular intervals it had overtopped the tall trestles which had once supported a river called 207 208 CAA/ SUCH THAA/GS BE 2 a flume; for, of course, “flume” is flumen. Among the advantages of which the mountains cannot deprive the gold hunter, is the privilege of speaking Latin. He says of his dead neighbor, “He has gone up the flume.” This is not a bad way to say, “His life has returned to the Foun- tain of Life.” While putting on its armor against the assaults of the wind, this snow had neglected no coign of vantage. Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions; where it can get a foothold it makes a stand; where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall. The devious old road, hewn out of the mountain side, was full of it. Squadron upon squadron had struggled to escape by this line, when suddenly pursuit had ceased. A more desolate and dreary spot than Deadman's Gulch in a winter midnight it is impossible to imagine. Yet Mr. Hiram Beeson elected to live there, the sole inhabitant. Away up the side of the North Mountain his little pine-log shanty projected from its single pane of glass a long thin beam of light, and looked not altogether unlike a black beetle fastened to the hillside with a bright new pin. Within it sat Mr. Beeson himself, before a roaring fire, staring into its hot heart as if he had never THE AIGH 7-Do/AGS A 7" “DEADMAA's" 209 before seen such a thing in all his life. He was not a comely man. He was gray; he was ragged and slovenly in his attire; his face was wan and haggard; his eyes were too bright. As to his age, if one had attempted to guess it, one might have said forty-seven, then corrected himself and said seventy-four. He was really twenty- eight. Emaciated he was; as much, perhaps, as he dared be, with a needy undertaker at Bentley's Flat and a brand-new coroner at Sonora. Pov- erty and zeal are an upper and a nether mill- stone. It is dangerous to make a third in that kind of sandwich. As Mr. Beeson sat there, with his ragged elbows on his ragged knees, his lean jaws buried in his lean hands, and with no apparent intention of going to bed, he looked as if the slightest move- ment would tumble him in pieces. Yet during the last hour he had winked no fewer than three times. Suddenly there was a sharp rapping at the door. A rap at that time of night, and in that weather might have surprised an ordinary mortal who had dwelt two years in the gulch without seeing a human face, and who could not but know that the country was absolutely impassable; but Mr. Beeson did not so much as pull his eyes out of the coals. And even when the door was pushed open he only shrugged a little more closely into himself, as one does who is expecting something that he would rather not see. You 2 IO CAA/ SUCH 7A/AWG.S. AA 2 ** may observe this movement in women when, in a mortuary chapel, the coffin is borne up the aisle behind them. But when a long old man in a blanket overcoat, his head tied up in a handkerchief and nearly his entire face in a muffler, wearing green goggles, and with a complexion of glittering whiteness where it could be seen, strode silently into the room, laying a hard, gloved hand on Mr. Beeson's shoulder, the latter so far forgot himself as to look up, with an appearance of no small astonish- ment; whomever he may have been expecting, he had evidently not counted on meeting anyone like this. Nevertheless, the sight of this un- expected guest produced in Mr. Beeson the • following sequence: a feeling of astonishment; a sense of gratification; a sentiment of profound good will. Rising from his seat, he took the knotty hand from his shoulder, and shook it up and down with a fervor quite unaccountable; for in the old man's aspect was nothing to attract, much to repel. However, attraction is too gen- eral a property for repulsion to be without it. The most attractive object in the world is the face we instinctively cover with a cloth. When it becomes still more attractive—fascinating— we put seven feet of earth above it. “Sir,” said Mr. Beeson, releasing the old gen- tleman's hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack, “it is an extremely dis- THE AWIGHT-DO/AVG.S. A 7" “IDEADMAAV’.S.” 2 II agreeable night. Pray be seated; I am very glad to see you.” Mr. Beeson spoke with an easy good breeding that one would hardly have expected, considering 'all things, Indeed, the contrast between his appearance and his manner was sufficiently sur- prising to be one of the commonest of social phenomena in the mines. The old gentleman advanced a step toward the fire, glowing cavern- ously in the green goggles. Mr. Beeson resumed: “You bet your life I am!” Mr. Beeson's elegance was not too refined; it had made reasonable concessions to local taste. He paused a moment, letting his eyes drop from the muffled head of his guest, down along the row of moldy buttons confining the blanket over- coat, to the greenish cowhide boots powdered with snow, which had begun to melt and run along the floor in little rills. He took an inven- tory of his guest, and appeared satisfied. Who. would not have been? Then he continued: “The cheer I can offer you is, unfortunately, in keeping with my surroundings; but I shall esteem myself highly favored if it is your pleasure to partake of it, rather than seek better at Bent- ley's Flat.” With a singular refinement of hospitable humility, Mr. Beeson spoke as if a sojourn in his warm cabin on such a night, as compared with walking fourteen miles up to the throat in snow 2 I 2 CAAW SUCH 7"H/AWGS BE 2 with a cutting crust, would be a peculiar hardship. By way of reply, his guest unbuttoned the blanket overcoat. The host laid fresh fuel on the fire, swept the hearth with the tail of a wolf, and added: “But I think you'd better skedaddle.” The old man took a seat by the fire, spreading his broad soles to the heat without removing his hat. In the mines, the hat is seldom removed except when the boots are. Without further remark Mr. Beeson also seated himself in a chair which had been a barrel, and which, retaining much of its original character, seemed to have been designed with a view to preserving his dust, if it should please him to crumble. For a moment there was silence; then, from somewhere among the pines came the snarling yelp of a coyote, and simultaneously the door rattled in its frame. There was no other connection between the two incidents than that the coyote has an aversion to storms, and the wind was rising; yet there seemed somehow a kind of supernatural conspiracy between the two, and Mr. Beeson shuddered with a vague sense of terror. He recovered himself in a moment, and again addressed his guest. “There are strange doings here. I will tell you everything, and then if you decide to go, I shall hope to accompany you over the worst of the way; as far as where Baldy Peterson shot Ben Hike—I dare say you know the place.” • *-* * - - - TAE AW/GH 7-DO/AWGS A T “DEADMA W’.S.” 2 I 3 The old gentleman nodded emphatically, as intimating not merely that he did, but that he did indeed. “Two years ago,” began Mr. Beeson, “I, with two companions, occupied this house; but when the rush to the Flat occurred we left, along with the rest. In ten hours the Gulch was deserted. That evening, however, I discovered I had left behind me a valuable pistol (that is it), and returned for it, passing the night here quite alone, as I have passed every night since. I must explain that a few days before we left, our Chinese domestic had the misfortune to die while the ground was frozen so hard that it was quite impossible to dig a grave in the usual way. So, on the day of our hasty departure, we cut through the floor there, and gave him such bur- ial as we could. But before putting him down, I had the extremely bad taste to cut off his cue and spike it to that beam above his grave, where you may see it at this moment, or, prefera- bly, when warmth has given you leisure for observation. “I stated, did I not, that the Chinaman came to his death from natural causes? I had, of course, nothing to do with that, and returned through no irresistible attraction, or morbid fascination, but only because I had forgotten a pistol. This is clear to you, is it not, sir?” The visitor nodded gravely. He appeared to THE AWIGH 7-DOIAWGS A Z “PEADMAA”.S.” 215 nail that pigtail fast, and have assumed the some- what onerous obligation of guarding it. So it is quite impossible to act on your considerate suggestion. “Do you play me for a Modoc?” Nothing could exceed the sudden ferocity with which he thrust this indignant remonstrance into the ear of his guest. It was as if he had struck him on the side of the head with a steel gauntlet. It was a protest, but it was a challenge. To be mistaken for a coward—to be played for a * Modoc: these two expressions are one. Some- times it is a Chinaman. Do you play me for a Chinaman? is a question frequently addressed to the ear of the suddenly dead. Mr. Beeson's buffet produced no effect, and, after a moment's pause, during which the wind thundered in the chimney like the sound of clods upon a coffin, he resumed: “But, as you say, it is wearing me out. I feel that the life of the last two years has been a mistake—a mistake that corrects itself; you see how. The grave! No; there is no one to dig it. The ground is frozen, too. But you are very welcome. You may say at Bentley's—but that is not important. It was very tough to cut: they braid silk into their tails. Kwaagh.” Mr. Beeson was speaking with his eyes shut, and he wandered. His last word was a snore. A moment later he drew a long breath, opened his 216 CAN SUCH 7"H/AWGS BE 2 eyes with an effort, made a single remark, and fell into a deep sleep. What he said was this: “They are gobbling my dust!” Then the aged stranger, who had not uttered one word since his arrival, arose from his seat, and deliberately laid off his outer clothing; look- ing as angular in his flannels as the late Signorina Festorazzi, an Irish woman, six feet in height, and weighing fifty-six pounds, who used to exhibit herself in her chemise to the people of San Francisco. He then crept into one of the “bunks,” having first placed a revolver in easy reach, according to the custom of the country. This revolver he took from a shelf, and it was the one which Mr. Beeson had mentioned as that for which he had returned to the Gulch two years before. In a few moments Mr. Beeson awoke, and seeing that his guest had retired, he did likewise. But before doing so he approached the long plaited wisp of pagan hair, and gave it a powerful tug, to assure himself that it was fast and firm. The two beds—mere shelves covered with blan- kets not overclean—faced each other from oppo- site sides of the room; the little square trapdoor that had given access to the Chinaman's grave being midway between. This, by the way, was crossed by a double row of spike heads. In his resistance to the supernatural, Mr. Beeson had not disdained the use of material precautions, THE AWIGHT. DOIAWGS A 7" “DEADMA W’.S.” 2 I7 The fire was now low, the flames burning bluely and petulantly, with occasional flashes, projecting spectral shadows on the walls—shadows that moved mysteriously about, now dividing, now uniting. The shadow of the pendant cue, however, kept moodily apart, near the roof at the further end of the room, where it looked like a note of admiration. The song of the pines out- side had now risen to the dignity of a triumphal hymn, in the pauses of which the silence was dreadful. It was during one of these intervals that the trap in the floor began to lift. Slowly and stead- ily it rose, and slowly and steadily rose the swaddled head of the old gentleman in the bunk to observe it. Then, with a clap that shook the house to its foundation, it was thrown clean back, where it lay with its unsightly spikes point- ing threateningly upward. Mr. Beeson awoke, and, without rising, pressed his fingers into his eyes. He shuddered; his teeth chattered. His guest was now reclining on one elbow, watching the proceedings with goggles that glowed like lamps. Suddenly a howling gust of wind swooped down the chimney, scattering ashes and smoke in every direction, for a moment obscuring everything. When the firelight again illuminated the room, there was seen, sitting gingerly on the edge of a stool by the hearthside, a swarthy little man, of 218 CAN SUCH THINGS BE 2 -- re- * prepossessing appearance, dressed with faultless taste, and nodding to the old man with a familiar and most engaging smile. “From San Francisco, evidently,” thought Mr. Beeson, who, having somewhat recovered from his fright, was groping his way to a solution of the evening's events. But now another actor appeared upon the scene. Out of the square black hole in the middle of the floor protruded the head of the departed Chinaman, his glassy eyes turned up- ward in their angular slits, and fastened on the dangling cue above with a look of yearning unspeakable. Mr. Beeson groaned, and again spread his hands upon his face. A mild odor of opium pervaded the place. The phantom, clad only in a short blue tunic, quilted and silken, but covered with grave mold, rose slowly, as if pushed by a weak spiral spring. Its knees were at the level of the floor, when, with a quick upward impulse, like the silent leaping of a flame, it grasped the cue with both hands, drew up its body, and took the tip in its horrible yellow teeth. To this it clung with a seeming frenzy, grimacing ghastly, surging and plunging from side to side in its efforts to disengage its property from the beam, but uttering no sound. It was like a corpse artificially convulsed by means of a galvanic battery. The contrast between its superhuman activity and its silence was no less than hideous! THE WIGHT-DOIAWGS A 7" “DEADMAA ’S.” 219 Mr. Beeson cowered in his bed. The swarthy little gentleman uncrossed his legs, beat an impa- tient tattoo with the toe of his boot, and con- sulted a heavy gold watch. The old man sat erect, and quietly laid hold of the revolver. Bang! Like a body cut from the gallows the Chinaman plumped into the black hole below, carrying his tail in his teeth. The trapdoor turned over, shutting down with a snap. The little gentleman from San Francisco sprang nimbly from his perch, caught something in the air with his hat, as a boy catches a butterfly, and vanished into the chimney as if drawn up by suction. From away somewhere in the outer darkness floated in through the open door a faint, far cry —a long, sobbing wail, as of a child death- strangled in the desert, or a lost soul borne away by the Adversary. It may have been the coyote. In the early days of the following spring a party of miners, on their way to new diggings, passed along the Gulch, and straying through the de- serted shanties, found in one of them the body of Hiram Beeson, stretched upon a bunk, with a bullet hole through the heart. The ball had evidently been fired from the opposite side of the room, for in one of the oaken beams overhead was a shallow blue dint, where it had struck a hard knot and been deflected downward to the 22o CAA SUCH 7A/AWGS BE 2 breast of its victim. Strongly attached to the same beam was what appeared to be an end of a rope of braided horsehair, which had been cut by the bullet in its passage to the knot. Nothing else of interest was noted, excepting a suit of moldy and incongruous clothing, several articles of which were afterward identified by positive witnesses as those in which certain deceased citizens of Deadman's had been buried years before. But it is not easy to understand how that could be, unless, indeed, the garments had been worn as a disguise by Death himself—which is hardly credible. THE WIDOWER TU R MORE. THE circumstances under which Joram Tur- more became a widower have never been popu- larly understood. I know them, naturally, for I am Joram Turmore; and my wife, the late Eliza- beth Mary Turmore, is by no means ignorant of them; but although she doubtless relates them, yet they remain a secret, for not a soul ever believed her. When I married Elizabeth Mary Johnin she was very wealthy, otherwise I could hardly have afforded to marry, for I had not a cent, and Heaven had not put into my heart any intention to earn one. As related elsewhere (“Lives of the Gods,” Beecroft, San Jurasco) I held the Pro- fessorship of Cats in the University of Gray- maulkin, and scholastic pursuits had unfitted me for the heat and burden of business or labor. Moreover, I could not forget that I was a Tur. more—a member of a family whose motto from the time of William of Normandy has been Laborare est errare. The only known infraction of the sacred family tradition occurred when Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore, an illus- trious master burglar of the seventeenth century, 22I 222 CAA SUCH TH/AVGS BE 2 personally assisted at a difficult operation under- taken by some of his workmen. That blot upon our escutcheon cannot be contemplated without the most poignant mortification. My incumbency of the Chair of Cats in the Graymaulkin University had not, of course, been marked by any instance of mean industry. There had never, at any one time, been more than two students of Felinology, and by merely repeating the manuscript lectures of my predecessor, which I had found among his effects (he died at sea on his way to Malta), I could sufficiently sate their famine for knowledge without really earning even the distinction which served in place of salary. Naturally, under the straitened circumstances, I regarded Elizabeth Mary as a kind of special Providence. She unwisely refused to share her fortune with me, but for that I cared nothing; for, although by the laws of that country (as is well known) a wife has control of her separate property during her life, it passes to the husband at her death; nor can she dispose of it otherwise by will. The mortality among wives is consider- able, but not excessive. Having married Elizabeth Mary, and, as it were, ennobled her by making her a Turmore, I felt that the manner of her death ought, in some sense, to match her social distinction. If I should remove her by any of the ordinary marital methods I should incur a just reproach, as one WIDO WEA TURMORE. 223 destitute of a proper family pride. Yet I could not hit upon a suitable plan. In this emergency I decided to consult the Turmore archives, a priceless collection of docu- ments, comprising the records of the family from the time of its founder in the seventh century of our era. I knew that among these sacred muni- ments I should find detailed accounts of all the principal murders committed by my sainted ancestors for forty generations. From that mass of papers I could hardly fail to derive the most valuable suggestions. The collection contained also most interesting relics. There were patents of nobility granted to my forefathers for daring and ingenious removals of pretenders to thrones, or occupants of them; stars, crosses, and other decorations attesting services of the most secret and unmentionable character; miscellaneous gifts from the earth's greatest and best, representing an intrinsic money value beyond computation—robes, jewels, swords of honor, and every kind of “testimonials of esteem”; a king's skull fashioned into a wine cup; the title deeds to vast estates, long alienated by confiscation, sale, or abandonment; an illumi- nated breviary that had belonged to Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore of accursed mem- ory; embalmed ears of several of the family's most renowned enemies; the small intestine of a certain unworthy Italian statesman inimical to Turmores, 224 CAA SUCH 7"HAVGS & E * ~" * - *- - * which, twisted into a jumping rope, had served the youth of six kindred generations—mementos and souvenirs precious beyond the estimates of imagination and the powers of expression, but by the sacred mandates of tradition and sentiment forever inalienable by sale or gift. As the head of the family I was custodian of all these priceless heirlooms, and for their safe keep- ing I had constructed in the basement of my dwelling a strong-room of massive masonry, whose solid stone walls and single iron door could defy alike the earthquake's shock, the tireless assaults of Time, and Cupidity's unholy hand. To this thesaurus of the soul, redolent of senti- ment and tenderness, and rich in suggestions of crime, I now repaired for hints upon assassina- tion. To my unspeakable astonishment and grief I found it empty Every shelf, every chest, every coffer had been rifled. Of that unique and incomparable collection not a vestige remained Yet, I satisfied myself that until I had myself unlocked the massive metal door, not a bolt nor bar had been disturbed, and the seals upon the lock had been intact. I passed the night in alternate lamentation and research, equally fruitless; the mystery was im- penetrable to conjecture, the pain invincible to balm. But never once throughout that dreadful night did my firm spirit relinquish its high design against Elizabeth Mary, and daybreak found me WIDO WER 7"URMORE. 225 more resolute than before to harvest the fruits of my marriage. My great loss seemed but to bring me into nearer spiritual relations with my dead ancestors, and to lay upon me a new and more inevitable obligation to prove myself obedient to the suasion that spoke in every globule of my blood. My plan of action was soon formed, and pro- curing a stout cord I entered my wife's bedroom, finding her, as I expected, in a sound sleep. Before she was awake, I had her bound fast, hand and foot. She was greatly surprised and pained, but heedless of her remonstrances, delivered in a high key, I carried her into the now rifled strong- room, which I had never suffered her to enter, and of whose treasures I had not apprised her. Seat- ing her, still bound, in an angle of the wall, I passed the next two days and nights in conveying bricks and mortar to the spot, and on the morning of the third day had her securely walled in, from floor to ceiling. All this time I gave no further heed to her pleas for mercy than (on her assurance of non-resistance, which I am bound to say she honorably observed) to grant her the freedom of her limbs. The space allowed her was about four feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of the top course, in contact with the ceiling of the strong-room, she bade me farewell with what I deemed the composure of despair, and I rested from my work, feeling that I had faithfully 226 CAA SUCH 7"H/AWGS BE 2 observed the traditions of an ancient and illustri- ous family. My only bitter reflection, so far as my own conduct was concerned, came of the consciousness that in the performance of my design I had labored; but that no living soul would ever know. After a night's rest I went to the Judge of the Court of Successions and Inheritances, and made a true and sworn relation of all that I had done— except that I ascribed to a servant the manual labor of building the wall. His honor appointed a court commissioner, who made a careful exam- ination of the work, and upon his report Eliza- beth Mary. Turmore was, at the end of a week, formally pronounced dead. By due process of law I was put into possession of her estate, and although that was not by hundreds of thousands of dollars as valuable as my lost treasures, it raised me from poverty to affluence and brought me the respect of the great and good. Some six months after these events strange rumors reached me that the ghost of my deceased wife had been seen in various places about the country, but always at a considerable distance from Graymaulkin. These rumors, which I was unable to trace to any authentic source, differed | widely in many particulars, but were alike in ascribing to the apparition a certain high degree of apparent worldly prosperity combined with an audacity most uncommon in ghosts. Not only - Iv//DO Iv/2A2 TURA/OA’z. 227 was the spirit attired in the most costly raiment, but it walked at noonday, and even drove! I was inexpressibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking there might be something more than superstition in the popular belief that only the spirits of the unburied dead still walk the earth, I took some workmen equipped with picks and crowbars into the now long unentered strong- room, and ordered them to demolish the brick wall that I had built about the partner of my joys. I was resolved to give the body of Eliza- beth Mary such burial as I thought her immortal part might be willing to accept as an equivalent for the privilege of ranging at will among the haunts of the living. In a few minutes we had broken down the wall, and, thrusting a lamp through the breach, I looked in. Nothing! Not a bone, not a lock of hair, not a shred of clothing —the narrow space which, upon my affidavit, had been legally declared to hold all that was mortal of the late Mrs. Turmore was absolutely empty This amazing disclosure, coming upon a mind already overwrought with too much of mystery and excitement, was more than I could bear. I shrieked aloud and fell in a fit. For months afterward I lay between life and death, fevered and delirious; nor did I recover until my physi- cian had had the providence to take a case of valu- able jewels from my safe and leave the country. The next summer I had occasion to visit my 228 CAA SUCH 7"HIVGS BE * --":- - *... " wine cellar, in one corner of which I had built the now long disused strong-room. In moving a cask of Madeira I struck it with considerable force against the partition wall, and was surprised to observe that it displaced two large square stones forming a part of the wall. Applying my hands to these, I easily pushed them out of the wall entirely, and looking through saw that they had fallen into the niche in which I had immured my lamented wife; facing the opening which their fall left, and at a distance of four feet, was the brickwork which my own hands had made for that unfortunate gentlewoman's restraint. At this significant revelation I began a search of the wine cellar. Behind a row of casks I found four historically interesting but intrinsically valueless objects: First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe of state (Florentine) of the eleventh century; sec- ond, an illuminated vellum breviary with the name of Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters- Turmore inscribed in "colors on the title page; third, a human skull fashioned into a drinking cup and deeply stained with wine; fourth, the iron cross of a Knight Commander of the Imperial Austrian Order of Assassins by Poison. That was all—not an object having commer- cial value, no papers—nothing. But this was enough to clear up the mystery of the strong- room. My wife had early divined the existence WIDO WAR TUA'MOA'E. 229 and purpose of that apartment, and, with a skill amounting to genius, had effected an entrance by loosening the two stones in the wall. Through that opening she had, at various times, abstracted the entire collection, which doubtless she had succeeded in converting into coin of the realm. When, with an unconscious justice which deprives me of all satisfaction in the memory, I decided to build her into the wall, by some malign fatality I selected that part of it in which were these movable stones, and doubtless before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she had removed them, and slipping through into the wine cellar, replaced them as they were originally laid. From the cellar she had easily escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant parts. I have endeavored to procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron of the Court of Arrest and Convic- tion reminds me that she is legally dead, and says my only course is to go before the Master in Cadavery and move for a writ of disinterment and revival. So it looks as ff I must suffer without redress this great wrong at the hands of a woman devoid alike of principle and shame. GEORGE THURSTON. THREE EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF A BRAVE MAN. GEORGE THURSTON was a first lieutenant and aid-de-camp on the staff of Colonel Brough, commanding a Federal brigade. Colonel Brough was only temporarily in command, as senior colonel, the brigadier general having been se- verely wounded and granted a leave of absence to recover. Lieutenant Thurston was, I believe, of Colonel Brough's regiment, to which, with his chief, he would naturally have been relegated had he lived till our brigade commander's recovery. The aid whose place Thurston took had been killed in battle; Thurston's advent among us was the only change in the personnel of our staff con- sequent upon the change in commanders. We did not like him; he was unsocial. This, how- ever, was more observed by others than by me. Whether in camp or on the march, in barracks, in tents or en bivouac, my duties as topographical engineer kept me working like a beaver—all day in the saddle and half the night at my drawing table, platting my surveys. It was hazardous 231 232 CAA SUCH TH/AWGS BE 2 work; the nearer to the enemy's lines I could penetrate, the more valuable were my field notes and the resulting maps. It was a business in which the lives of men counted as nothing against the chance of defining a road or sketching a bridge. Whole squadrons of cavalry escort had sometimes to be sent thundering against a pow- erful infantry outpost in order that the brief time between the charge and the inevitable retreat might be utilized in sounding a ford or determin- ing the point of intersection of two turnpikes. In some of the dark corners of England and Wales they have an immemorial custom of “beat- ing the bounds” of the parish. On a certain day of the year the whole population turns out and travels in procession from one landmark to another on the boundary line. At the most important points lads are soundly beaten with rods to make them remember the place in after life. They become authorities. Our frequent engage- ments with the Confederate outposts, patrols, and scouting parties had, incidentally, the same edu- cating value; they fixed in my memory a vivid and apparently imperishable picture of the locality —a picture serving instead of accurate field notes, which, indeed, it was not always convenient to take, with carbines cracking, sabers clashing, and horses plunging all about. These spirited en- counters were observations entered in red. One morning as I set out at the head of my GEORGE THUA’S TO AW. 233 escort on an expedition of more than the usual hazard, Lieutenant Thurston rode up alongside of me and asked if I had any objection to his accom- panying me, the colonel commanding having given him permission. “None whatever,” I replied rather gruffly, “but in what capacity will you go? You are not ..a topographical engineer, and Captain Burling commands my escort.” “I will go as a spectator,” he said. Removing his sword-belt and taking the pistols from his holsters he handed them to his servant, who took them back to headquarters. I realized the brutal- ity of my remark, but not clearly seeing my way to an apology, said nothing. That afternoon we encountered a whole regiment of the enemy's cavalry in line, and a field piece that dominated a straight mile of the turnpike by which we had approached. We fought deployed in the woods on both sides, but Thurston remained in the center of the road, which at intervals of a few seconds was swept by gusts of grape and canister that tore the air wide open as they passed. He had dropped the rein on the neck of his horse and sat bolt upright in the saddle, with folded arms. Soon he was down, his horse torn to pieces. From the side of the road, my pencil and field book idle, my duty forgotten, I watched him slowly disengaging himself from the wreck and rising. At that instant, the cannon 234 CAA SUCH 7.H.I.VGS BE 2 having ceased firing, a burly Confederate trooper on a spirited horse dashed like a thunderbolt down the road with drawn saber. Thurston saw him coming, drew himself up to his full height, and again folded his arms. He was too brave to retreat before the word, and my uncivil words had disarmed him. He was a spectator. Another moment and he would have been split like a mackerel, but a blessed bullet tumbled his assailant into the dusty road so near that the impetus sent the body rolling to Thurs- ton's feet. That evening, while platting my hasty survey, I found time to frame an apology, which I think took the rude, primitive form of a confession that I had spoken like a malicious idiot. A few weeks later a portion of our army made. an assault upon the enemy's left. The attack, which was made upon an unknown position and across unfamiliar ground, was led by our brigade. The ground was so broken and the underbrush so thick that all mounted officers and men were com- pelled to fight on foot—our brigade commander and his staff included. In the mêlée Thurston got parted from the rest of us, and we found him, horribly wounded, only when we had carried the enemy's last defense. He was some months in the hospital at Nashville, Tenn., but finally re- joined us. He said little about his misadventure, except that he had been bewildered and had 236 CAAW SUCH THINGS BE 2 t-try to m-m-master it; and if he w—ere p-present I w—ouldn't d-d-dare to d-d-discuss it,” was the mollifying reply. This intrepid man, George Thurston, died an ignoble death. The brigade was in camp, with headquarters in a grove of immense trees. To an upper branch of one of these a venturesome climber had attached the two ends of a long rope and made a swing with a length of not less than one hundred feet. Plunging downward from a height of fifty feet, along the arc of a circle with such a radius, and soaring to an equal altitude, pausing for one breathless instant, then sweeping dizzily backward—no one who has not tried it can conceive the terrors of such sport to the novice. Thurston came out of his tent one day and asked for instruction in the mystery of propelling the swing—the art of rising and sitting on which every boy has mastered. In a few moments he had acquired the trick, and was swinging higher than the most experienced of us had dared. We shuddered to look at his fearful flights. “St-t-top him,” said the provost-marshal, snail- ing lazily along from the mess-tent, where he had been lunching; “h—e d-doesn't know that if h—e g-g-goes c-clear over h-e'll w—ind up the sw—ing.” With such energy was that strong man cannon- ading himself through the air that at each ex- tremity of his increasing arc his body, standing GEORGE 7/5/UA’.S 7"OA". 237 in the swing, was almost horizontal. Should he once pass above the level of the rope's attach- ment he would be lost; the rope would slacken and he would fall vertically to a point as far below as he had gone above, and then the sudden tension of the rope would wrest it from his hands. All saw the peril—all cried out to him to desist, and gesticulated at him as, indistinct and with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot in flight, he swept past us through the lower reaches of his hideous oscillation. A woman standing at a little distance away fainted and fell unobserved. Men from the camp of a regiment near by ran in crowds to see, all shouting. Suddenly, as Thurs- ton was on his upward curve, the shouts all ceased. Thurston and the swing had parted—that is all that can be known; both hands at once had released the rope. The impetus of the light swing exhausted, it was falling back; the man's momentum was carrying him, almost erect, up- ward and forward, no longer in an arc, but with an outward curve. It could have been but an instant, yet it seemed an age. I cried out, or thought I cried out: “My God, will he never stop going up?” He passed close to the branch of a tree. I remember a feeling of delight as I thought he would clutch it and save himself. I speculated on the possibility of it sustaining his weight. He passed above it, and from my point 238 CAA SUCH 7"H/AVG.S. B.A. 2 of view was sharply outlined against the blue. At this distance of twenty years I can distinctly recall that image of a man in the sky, its head erect, its feet close together, its hands—I do not see its hands. All at once, with astonishing sud- denness and rapidity, it turns clear over and pitches downward. There is another cry from the crowd, which has rushed instinctively forward. The man has become merely a whirling object, mostly legs. Then there is an indescribable sound—the sound of an impact that shakes the earth, and these men, familiar with death in its most awful aspects, turn sick. Many walk un- steadily away from the spot; others support themselves against the trunks of trees or sit at the roots. Death has taken an unfair advantage; he has struck with an unfamiliar weapon; he has executed a new and disquieting stratagem. We did not know he had so ghastly resources, capaci- ties of terror so dismal. Thurston's body lay on its back. One leg, bent beneath, was broken above the knee and the bone driven into the earth. The abdomen had burst and the bowels protruded. The neck was broken. The arms were folded tightly across the breast. JOHN BARTINE'S WATCH. A STORY WRITTEN FROM NOTES OF A PHYSICIAN. “THE exact time? Good God! my friend, why do you insist? One would think—but what does it matter; it is easily bedtime—isn't that near enough? But, here, if you must set your watch, take mine and see for yourself.” With that he detached his watch—a tremen- dously heavy, old-fashioned one—from the chain, and handed it to me; then turned away, and walking across the room to a shelf of books, began an examination of their backs. His agita- tion and evident distress surprised me; they appeared altogether reasonless. Having set my watch by his, I stepped over to where he stood and said, “Thank you.” As he took his watch and reattached it to the guard I observed that his hands were unsteady. A slight pallor had come into his face. With a tact upon which I greatly prided myself, I saun- tered carelessly to the sideboard and took some brandy and water; then, begging his pardon for my thoughtlessness, asked him to have some, and went back to my seat by the fire, leaving him to 239 24o CAA SUCH THAWGS BE 2 help himself, as was our custom. He did so and presently joined me at the hearth, as tranquil as eVer. This odd little incident occurred in my apart- ment, where John Bartine was passing an evening. We had dined together at the club, had come home in a hack, and—in short, everything had been done in the most prosaic way; and why John Bartine should break in upon the natural and established order of things to make himself spectacular with a display of emotion, apparently for his own entertainment, I could nowise under- stand. The more I thought of it, while his brilliant conversational gifts were commending themselves to my inattention, the more curious I grew, and of course had no difficulty in persuading myself that my curiosity was friendly solicitude. That is the disguise that curiosity commonly assumes to evade resentment. So I ruined one of the finest sentences of his monologue by cut- ting it short without ceremony. “John Bartine,” I said, “you must try to for- give me if I am wrong, but with the light that I have at present I cannot concede your right to go all to pieces when asked the time o' night. I cannot admit that it is proper to experience a mysterious reluctance to look your own watch in the face and to cherish in my presence, without explanation, painful emotions which are denied to me, and which are none of my business.” JoHA BARTINE'S IVA TCH. 24 I To this ridiculous speech Bartine made no im- mediate reply, but sat looking gravely into the fire. Fearing that I had offended, I was about to apologize and beg him to think no more about the matter, when, looking me calmly in the eyes, he said: - “My dear fellow, the levity of your manner does not at all disguise the hideous impudence of your demand; but happily I had already decided to tell you what you wish to know, and no mani- festation of your unworthiness to hear it shall alter my decision. Be good enough to persuade me to have a fresh cigar and you shall hear all about the matter. “This watch,” he said, “had been in my family for three generations before it fell to me. Its original owner, for whom it was made, was my great-grandfather, Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a wealthy planter of Colonial Virginia, and as stanch a Tory as ever lay awake nights con- triving new kinds of maledictions for the head of Mr. Washington, and new methods of aiding and abetting good King George. One day this worthy gentleman had the deep misfortune to perform for his cause a service of capital importance which was not recognized by those who suffered its dis- advantages as legitimate. It does not matter what it was, but among its minor consequences was my excellent ancestor's arrest one night in his own house by a party of Mr. Washington's 242 CAAW SUCH 7"///AVGS BE 2 rebels. He was permitted to say farewell to his weeping family, and was then marched away into the darkness, which swallowed him up forever. Not the slenderest clew to his fate was ever found. After the war the most diligent inquiry and the offer of large rewards failed to turn up any of his captors or any fact concerning him. He had dis- appeared, and that was all." Something in John Bartine's manner that was not in his words—I hardly knew what it was— prompted me to ask: “What is your view of the matter—of the justice of it?” - “My view of it,” he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public house dicing with blackguards— “my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that d d traitor, Washington, and his ragamuffin rebels !” For some minutes nothing was said: Bartine was recovering his temper, and I waited. Then I said: “Was that all ?” - “No—there was something else. A few weeks after my great-grandfather's arrest his watch was found lying on the porch at the front door of his dwelling. It was wrapped in a sheet of letter paper bearing the name of Elizabeth Bartine, his only daughter, my grandmother. I am wearing that watch.” JoHA BAR 7/NE'S WA TCH. 243 Bartine paused. His usually restless black eyes were staring fixedly into the grate, a point of red light in each, reflected from the glowing coals. He seemed to have forgotten my existence. A sudden threshing of the branches of a tree out- side one of the windows, and almost at the same instant a rattle of rain against the glass, recalled him to a sense of his surroundings. A storm had risen, heralded by a single gust of wind, and in a few moments the steady plash of the water on the pavement was distinctly audible. I hardly know why I relate that incident; it seemed some- how to have a certain significance and relevancy which I am unabled now to discern. It at least added an element of seriousness, almost solemnity. Bartine resumed : “I have a singular feeling toward this watch— a kind of affection for it; I like to have it about me, though partly from its weight, and partly for a reason that I shall now explain, I seldom carry it. The reason is this: Every evening when I have it with me I feel an unaccountable desire to open and consult it, even if I can think of no reason for wishing to know the time. But if I yield to it, the moment my eyes rest upon the dial I am filled with a mysterious apprehension— a sense of imminent calamity. And this is the more insupportable the nearer it is to eleven o'clock—by this watch, no matter what the actual hour may be. After the hands have registered 244 CAAW SUCH 7"HIVGS BE 2 eleven the desire to look is gone; I am entirely indifferent. But then I can consult the thing as often as I like, with no more emotion than you feel in looking at your own. Naturally I have trained myself not to look at that watch in the evening before eleven; nothing could induce me. Your insistence this evening upset me a trifle. I felt very much as I suppose an opium eater might feel if his yearning for his special and particular kind of hell were re-enforced by oppor- tunity and advice. “Now that is my story, and I have told it in the interest of your trumpery science; but if on any evening hereafter you observe me wearing this damnable watch, and you have the thought- fulness to ask me the hour, I shall beg leave to put you to the inconvenience of being knocked down.” His humor did not amuse me. I could see that in relating his hallucination he was again somewhat disturbed. His concluding smile was positively ghastly, and his eyes had resumed something more than their old restlessness; they shifted hither and thither about the room with apparent aimlessness, and I fancied had taken on a wild expression, such as is sometimes observed in cases of dementia. Perhaps this was my own imagination, but at any rate I was now persuaded that my friend was afflicted with a most singu- lar and interesting monomania. Without, I trust, > yo/LV BARTIME's WATCH. 245 any abatement of my affectionate solicitude for him as a friend, I began to regard him as a patient rich in possibilities of profitable study. Why not? Had he not described his delusion in the interest of science? Ah, poor fellow, he was doing more for science than he knew: not only his story but himself was in evidence. I should cure him if I could, of course, but first I should make a little experiment in psychology—nay, the experiment itself might be a step in his restoration. “That is very frank and friendly of you, Bar- tine,” I said cordially, “and I'm rather proud of your confidence. It is all very odd, certainly. Do you mind showing me the watch?” He detached it from his waistcoat, chain and all, and passed it to me without a word. The case was of gold, very thick and strong, and curiously engraved. After closely examining the dial and observing that it was nearly twelve o'clock, I opened it at the back and was interested to observe an inner case of ivory, upon which was painted a miniature portrait in that exquisite and delicate manner which was in vogue during the eighteenth century. “Why, bless my soul!” I exclaimed, experienc- ing the keenest artistic delight—“how under the sun did you get that done? I thought miniature painting on ivory was a lost art.” “That,” he replied, gravely smiling, “is not I; it is my excellent great-grandfather, the late Bram- 246 CAAW SUCH TH/AVGS BA 2 well Olcott Bartine, Esquire, of Virginia. He was younger then than later—about my age, in fact. , It is said to resemble me; do you think so?” “Resemble you? I should say so! Barring the costume, which I supposed you to have assumed out of compliment to the art—or for vraisemblance, so to say—and the no mustache, that face is yours in every feature, line, and ex- pression." No more was said at that time. Bartine took a book from the table and began reading. I heard outside the incessant plash of the rain in the street. There were occasional hurried footfalls on the sidewalks; and once a slower, heavier tread seemed to cease at my door—a policeman, I thought, seeking shelter in the doorway. The boughs of the trees tapped significantly on the window panes, as if asking for admittance. I remember it all through these years and years of a wiser, graver life. Seeing myself unobserved, I took the old- fashioned watchkey that dangled from the chain and quickly turned back the hands of the watch a full hour; then, closing the case, I handed Bar- tine his property, and saw him replace it on his person. “I think you said,” I began, with assumed carelessness, “that after eleven the sight of the dial no longer affects you. As it is now nearly twelve"—looking at my own timepiece—“per- yo/IA BARTINE'S WA 7'CH'. 247 haps, if you don't resent my pursuit of proof, you will look at it now.” He smiled good-humoredly, pulled out the watch again, opened it, and instantly sprang to his feet with a cry that Heaven has not had the mercy to permit me to forget! His eyes, their blackness strikingly intensified by the absolute pallor of his face, were fixed upon the watch, which he clutched in both hands. For some time he remained in that attitude without uttering another sound; then, in a voice that I should not have recognized as his, he said: “D—n you! it is two minutes to eleven.” I was not unprepared for some such outbreak, and without rising replied, calmly enough : “I beg your pardon; I must have misread your watch in setting my own by it.” He shut the case with a sharp snap and put the watch in his pocket. He looked at me and made an attempt to smile, but his lower lip quivered and he seemed unable to close his mouth. His hands, also, were shaking, and he thrust them clenched into the pockets of his sack coat. The courageous spirit was manifestly endeavoring to subdue the coward body. The effort was too great; he began to sway from side to side, as from vertigo, and before I could spring from my chair to support him his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward and fell upon his face —dead! - 248 CAAW SUCH THINGS BE 2 The post-mortem examination disclosed noth- ing; every organ was normal and sound. But when the body had been prepared for burial a faint dark circle, as if made by contusion, was seen to have developed about the neck; at least I was so assured by several persons who said they saw it, but of my own knowledge I cannot say if that was true. Nor can I affirm my knowledge of the limita- tions of the principle of heredity. I do not know that in the spiritual as in the temporal world, natural laws have no post-facto validity. Surely, if I were to guess at the fate of Bramwell Olcott Bartine, I should guess that he was hanged at eleven o'clock in the evening, and that he had been allowed several hours in which to prepare for the change. As to John Bartine, my friend, my patient for five minutes, and—Heaven forgive me—my vic- tim for eternity, there is no more to say. He is buried, and his watch with him—I saw to that. May God rest his soul in Paradise, and the soul of his Virginian ancestor, if, indeed, they are two souls. THE REALM OF THE UN REAL. I. FOR a part of the distance between Auburn and Newcastle the road—first on one side of a creek and then on the other—occupies the whole bottom of the ravine, being partly cut out of the steep hillside, and partly built up with bowlders re- moved from the creek-bed by the miners. The hills are wooded, the course of the ravine is sinu- ous. In a dark night careful driving is required in order not to go off into the water. The night that I have in memory was dark, the creek a tor- rent, swollen by a recent storm. I had driven up from Newcastle and was within about a mile from Auburn in the darkest and narrowest part of the ravine, looking intently ahead of my horse for the roadway. Suddenly I saw the figure of a man almost under the animal's nose, and reined in with a jerk which came near setting the creature upon its haunches. “I beg your pardon,” I said; “I did not see you, sir." “You could hardly be expected to see me,” the man replied, civilly enough, approaching the - 249 25o CAA SUCH TH/AVGS BE 2 side of the buggy; “and the noise of the creek prevented my hearing you." I at once recognized the voice, although five years had passed since I had heard it. I was not particularly well pleased to hear it now. “You are Dr. Dorrimore, I think,” said I. “Yes; and you are my good friend Mr. Man- rich. I am more than glad to see you—the excess,” he added, with a light laugh, “being due to the fact that I am going your way, and natu- rally expect an invitation to ride with you." “Which I extend with all my heart.” It was not altogether true. Dr. Dorrimore thanked me as he seated him- self beside me, and I drove cautiously forward, as before. Doubtless it is fancy, but it seems to me now that the remaining distance was made in a chill fog; that I was uncomfortably cold; that the way was longer than ever before, and the town, when we reached it, cheerless, forbidding, and desolate. It must have been early in the evening, yet I do not recollect a light in any of the houses nor a living thing in the streets. Dor- rimore explained at some length how he happened to be there, and where he had been during the years that had elapsed since I had seen him. I recall the fact of the narrative, but none of the facts narrated. He had been in foreign countries and had returned—that is all that my memory retains, and that I already knew. As to myself, THE A2EALM OF THE UAVREAL. 251 I cannot remember that I spoke a word, though doubtless I did. Of one thing I am distinctly conscious: the man's presence at my side was strangely distasteful and disquieting—so much so that when I at last pulled up under the lights of the Putnam House I experienced a sense of having escaped some spiritual peril of a nature peculiarly forbidding. This sense of relief was somewhat modified by the discovery that Dr. Dorrimore was living at the same hotel. THE REALM OF THE UAVREAL. 253 end of a silken ladder into the air, mounting it and disappearing." “Nonsense !” I said, rather uncivilly I fear. “You surely do not believe such things?” “Certainly not : I have seen them too often.” “But I do,” said a journalist of considerable local fame as a picturesque reporter. “I have so frequently related them that nothing but observa- tion could shake my conviction. Why, gentle- men, I have my own word for it.” Nobody laughed—all were looking at some- thing behind me. Turning in my seat, I saw a man in evening dress who had just entered the room. He was exceedingly dark, almost swarthy, with a thin face, black-bearded to the lips, an abundance of coarse black hair in some disordege a high nose, and eyes that glittered with as soul- less an expression as those of a cobra. One of the group arose and introduced him as Dr. Dorri- more of Calcutta. As each of us was presented in turn, he acknowledged the fact with a pro- found bow in the Oriental manner, but with nothing of Oriental gravity. His smile impressed me as cynical and a trifle contemptuous. His whole demeanor I can describe only as disagree- ably engaging. His presence led the conversation into other channels. He said little—I do not recall any- thing of what he did say. I thought his voice singularly rich and melodious, but it affected me 254 CAA SUCH T///AWGS BE * in the same way as his eyes and his smile. In a few minutes I rose to go. He also rose and put on his overcoat. “Mr. Manrich,” he said, “I am going your way.” “The devil you are !” I thought. “How do you know which way I am going?” Then I said, “I shall be pleased to have your company." We left the building together. No cabs were in sight, the street cars had gone to bed, there was a full moon, and the cool night air was delightful; we walked up the California Street hill. I took that direction, thinking he would naturally wish to take another, toward one of the hotels. “You do not believe what is told of the Hindoo jugglers,” he said abruptly. “How do you know that?” I asked. Without replying he laid his hand lightly upon my arm and with the other pointed to the stone sidewalk directly in front. There, almost at our feet, lay the dead body of a man, the face up- turned and white in the moonlight ! A sword whose hilt sparkled with gems stood fixed and upright in the breast; a pool of blood had col- lected on the stones of the sidewalk. I was startled and terrified—not only by what I saw, but by the circumstances under which I saw it. Repeatedly during our ascent of the hill my eyes, I thought, had traversed the whole reach of that sidewalk, from street to street. How could they THE REALM OF THE UAVREAL. 255 have been insensible to this dreadful object now so conspicuous in the white moonlight? As my dazed faculties cleared I observed that the body was in evening dress; the overcoat thrown wide open revealed the dress coat, the white tie, the broad expanse of shirt front pierced by the sword. And—horrible revelation l—the face, except for its pallor, was that of my com- panion It was to the minutest detail of dress and feature Dr. Dorrimore himself. Inexpress- ibly bewildered and horrified, I turned to look for the living man. He was nowhere visible, and with an added terror I retired from the place, down the hill in the direction whence I had come. I had taken but a few strides when a strong grasp upon my shoulder arrested me. I came near cry- ing out with terror: the dead man, the sword still fixed in his breast, stood beside me! Pulling out the sword with his disengaged hand, he flung it from him, the moonlight glinting upon the jewels of its hilt and the unsullied steel of its blade. It fell with a clang upon the sidewalk ahead and—vanished ! The man, swarthy as be- fore, relaxed his grasp upon my shoulder and looked at me with the same cynical regard which I had observed on first meeting him. The dead have not that look—it partly restored me, and turning my head backward, I saw that the smooth white expanse of sidewalk was absolutely un- broken from street to street. III. On the day after my second meeting with Dr. Dorrimore I did not see him : the clerk in the Putnam House explained that a slight illness con- fined him to his rooms. That afternoon, being at the railway station, I was surprised and made happy by the unexpected arrival of Miss Margaret Corray and her mother from Oakland. This is not a love story. I am no story- teller, and love as it is cannot be portrayed in a literature dominated and enthralled by the debas- ing tyranny which “sentences letters” in the name of the Young Girl. Under the Young Girl's blighting reign—or rather under the rule of those false Ministers of the Censure who have appointed themselves to the custody of her welfare—love veils her sacred fires, And, unaware, Morality expires, famished upon the sifted meal and distilled water of a prudish purveyance. Let it suffice that Miss Corray and I were engaged in marriage. She and her mother went to the hotel at which I lived, and for two weeks I saw her daily. That I was happy need hardly 257 258 CAAW SUCH THIAWGS BE 2 * ~y. be said; the only bar to my perfect enjoyment of those golden days was the presence of Dr. Dorrimore, whom I had felt compelled to intro- duce to the ladies. By them he was evidently held in favor. What could I say? I knew abso- lutely nothing to his discredit. His manners were those of a cultivated and considerate gentleman; and to women a man's manner is the man. On one or two occasions when I saw Miss Corray walking with him I was furious, and once had the indiscretion to protest. Asked for reasons, I had none to give, and fancied I saw in her expression a shade of contempt for the vagaries of a jealous mind. In time I grew morose and consciously dis- agreeable, and resolved in my madness to return to San Francisco the next day. Of this, how- ever, I said nothing. IV. There was at Auburn an old, abandoned cem- etery. It was nearly in the heart of the town, yet by night it was as gruesome a place as the most dismal of human moods could crave. The railings about the plats were prostrate, decayed, or altogether gone. Many of the graves were sunken, from others grew sturdy pines, whose roots had committed unspeakable sin. The headstones were fallen and broken across; brambles overran the ground; the fence was mostly gone, and cows and pigs wandered there at will; the place was a dishonor to the living, a calumny on the dead, a blasphemy against God. The evening of the day on which I had taken my madman's resolu- tion to depart in anger from all that was dear to me, found me in that congenial spot. The light of the half moon fell ghastly through the foliage of trees in spots and patches, revealing much that was unsightly, and the black shadows seemed con- spiracies withholding to the proper time revela- tions of darker import. Passing along what had been a gravel path, I saw emerging from shadow the figure of Dr. Dorrimore. I was myself in shadow, and stood still with clenched hands and 259 26o CAA SUCH THINGS BE 2 set teeth, trying to control the impulse to leap forward and strangle him. A moment later a second figure joined him and clung to his arm. It was Margaret Corray! I cannot rightly relate what occurred. I know that I sprang forward, bent upon murder; I know that I was found in the gray of the morning, bruised and bloody, with finger marks upon my throat. I was taken to the Putnam House, where for days I lay in a delirium. All this I know, for I have been told. And of my own knowledge I know that when consciousness returned with con- valescence I sent for the clerk of the hotel. “Are Mrs. Corray and her daughter still here?” I asked. “What name did you say?” “Corray.” “Nobody of that name has been here.” “I beg you will not trifle with me,” I said petu- lantly. “You see that I am all right now ; tell me the truth.” “I give you my word,” he replied with evident sincerity, “we have had no guests of that name.” His words stupefied me. I lay for a few moments in silence; then I asked: “Where is Dr. Dorrimore ?” “He left on the morning of your fight and has not been heard of since. It was a rough deal he gave you." V. Such are the facts of this case. Margaret Corray is now my wife. She has never seen Auburn, and during the weeks whose history, as it shaped itself in my brain, I have endeavored to relate, was living at her home in Oakland, wonder- ing where her lover was, and why he did not write. The other day I saw in the Baltimore Sun the following paragraph: “Professor Valentine Dorrimore, the hypnotist, had a large audience last night. The lecturer, who has lived most of his life in India, gave some marvelous exhibitions of his power, hypnotizing anyone who chose to submit himself to the ex- periment by merely looking at him. In fact, he twice hypnotized the entire audience (reporters alone exempted), making all entertain the most extraordinary illusions. The most valuable feature of the lecture was the disclosure of the methods of the Hindoo jugglers in their famous performances, familiar in the mouths of travelers. The pro- fessor declares that these thaumaturgists have acquired such skill in the art which he learned at their feet that they perform their miracles by simply throwing the ‘spectators' into a state of 261 262 CAA SUCH 7 A/ZA/GS BE 2 hypnosis and telling them what to see and hear. His assertion that a peculiarly susceptible subject may be kept in the realm of the unreal for weeks, months, and even years, dominated by whatever hallucinations the operator may from time to time,suggest, is a trifle disquieting.” A BABY TRAMP. IF you had seen little Jo standing at the street corner in the rain, you would hardly have admired him. It was apparently an ordinary autumn rain- storm, but the water which fell upon Jo (who was hardly old enough to be either just or unjust, and so perhaps did not come under the law of impartial distribution) appeared to have some property peculiar to itself: one would have said it was dark and adhesive—sticky. But that could hardly be so, even in Blackburg, where things certainly did occur that were a good deal out of the common. For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had fallen, as is veritably attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the record concluding with a somewhat obscure state- ment to the effect that the chronicler considered it good growing weather for Frenchmen. Some years later Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow; for it is cold in Blackburg when winter is on, and the snows are frequent and deep. There can be no doubt of it—the snow in this instance was of the color of blood and melted into water of the same hue, if water it was, not blood. The phenomenon had attracted wide attention, and science had as 263 264 CAA SUCH 7'AAA/GS BA 2 *T** many explanations as there were scientists who knew nothing about it. But the men of Black- burg—men who for many years had lived right there where the red snow fell, and might be supposed to know a good deal about the matter—shook their heads and said something would come of it. And something did, for the next summer was made memorable by the prevalence of a mysterious disease—epidemic, endemic, or the Lord knows what, though the physicians didn't—which carried away a full half of the population. Most of the other half carried itself away and was slow to return. All finally came back, and were now increasing and multiplying as before, but Black- burg had not since been altogether the same. Of quite another kind, though equally “out of the common,” was the incident of Hetty Parlow's ghost. Hetty Parlow's maiden name had been Brownon, and that, in Blackburg, meant more than one would think. The Brownons had from time immemorial—from the very earliest of the old colonial days—been the leading family of the town. It was the richest and it was the best, and Blackburg would have shed the last drop of its plebeian blood in defense of the Brownon fair fame. As few of the family's members had ever been known to live permanently away from Black- burg, although most of them were educated else- where and nearly all had traveled “abroad,” there was quite a number of them. The men held most A BABY TRAMA. 265 of the public offices, and the women were foremost in all good works. Of these latter Hetty was most beloved by reason of the sweetness of her disposi- tion, the purity of her character, and her singular personal beauty. She married in Boston a young scapegrace named Parlow, and, like a good Brownon, brought him to Blackburg forthwith and made a man and a town councilman of him. They had a child which they named Joseph and dearly loved, as was then the fashion among parents in all that region. Then they died of the mysterious disorder already mentioned, and at the age of one whole year Joseph set up as an orphan. Unfortunately for Joseph the disease which had cut off his parents did not stop at that ; it went on and extirpated nearly the whole Brownon contin- gent and its allies by marriage; and those who fled did not return. The tradition was broken, the Brownon estates passed into alien hands, and the only Brownons remaining in that place were under- ground in Oak Hill Cemetery, where, indeed, was a colony of them powerful enough to resist the encroachment of surrounding tribes and hold the best part of the grounds. But about the ghost: One night, about five years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a number of the young people of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill Cemetery in a wagon—if you have been there you will remem- ber that the road to Greenton runs alongside it on the south. They had been attending a May Day 266 CAA SUCH THAWGS BE * festival at Greenton; and that servés to fix the date. Altogether there may have been a dozen, and a jolly party they were, considering the legacy of gloom left by the town's recent somber experi- ences. As they passed the cemetery the man driving suddenly reined in his team with an excla- mation of surprise. It was sufficiently surprising, no doubt, for just ahead, and almost at the roadside, though inside the cemetery, stood the ghost of Hetty Parlow. There could be no doubt of it, for she had been personally known to every youth and maiden in the party. That established the thing's identity; its character as ghost was attested by all the customary signs—the shroud, the long, undone hair, the “far-away look"— everything. This disquieting apparition was stretching out its arms toward the west, as if in supplication for the evening star, which, certainly, was an alluring object, though obviously out of reach. As they all sat silent (so the story goes) every member of that party of merrymakers—they had merry-made on coffee and lemonade only— distinctly heard that ghost call the name “Joey, Joey!” A moment later nothing was there. Of course, one does not believe all that. Now, at that moment, as was afterward ascer- tained, Joey was wandering about in the sagebrush on the opposite side of the continent, near Winne- mucca, in the State of Nevada. He had been taken to that town by some very good people dis- A BABY TRAMA". 267 tantly related to his dead father, and by them adopted and most tenderly cared for. But on that evening the poor child had strayed from home and was lost in the desert. His after history is involved in the greatest ob- scurity and has gaps which conjecture alone can fill. It is known that he was found by a family of Piute Indians, who kept the little wretch with them for a time and then sold him—actually sold him for money to a woman on one of the east-bound trains, at a station a long way from Winnemucca. The woman professed to have made all manner of inquiries, but all in vain: so, being childless and a widow, she adopted him herself. Jo, at this point of his career, seemed to be getting a long way from the condition of orphanage; the interposition of a multitude of parents between himself and that woeful state promised him a long immunity from its disadvantages. Mrs. Darnell, his newest mother, lived in Cleveland, O. But her adopted son did not long remain with her. He was seen one afternoon by a policeman, new to that beat, deliberately toddling away from her house, and being questioned answered that he was “a doin' home.” He must have traveled by rail, some- how, for three days later he was in the town of Whiteville, which, as you know, is a long way from Blackburg. His clothing was in pretty fair con- dition, but he was sinfully dirty. Being unable to give any account of himself, he was arrested as 268 CAA/ SUCH TH/AWGS BE 2 - a vagrant and sentenced to imprisonment in the Infants' Sheltering Home—where he was washed. Jo ran away from the Infants' Sheltering Home at Whiteville—just took to the woods one day, and the Home knew him no more forever. We find him next, or rather get back to him, standing forlorn in the cold autumn rain at a suburban street corner in Blackburg; and it seems right to explain now that the raindrops falling upon him there were really not dark and gummy; they only failed to make his face and hands less so. Jo was indeed fearfully and wonderfully be- smirched, as by the hand of an artist. And the forlorn little tramp had no shoes; his feet were bare, red, and swollen, and when he walked he limped with both legs. As to clothing—ah, you would hardly have had the skill to name any single garment that he wore, or say by what magic he kept it upon him. That he was cold all over and all through did not admit of a doubt; he knew it himself. Anyone would have been cold there that evening; but, for that reason, no one else was there. How Joe came to be there himself, he could not for the flickering little life of him have told, even if gifted with a vocabu- lary exceeding a dozen words. From the way he stared about him one could have seen that he had no notion of where (nor why) he was. Yet he was not altogether a fool in his day and generation; being cold and hungry, and still able A BA B V TA’AA/A. 269 to walk a little by bending his knees very much in- deed and putting his feet down toes first, he decided to enter one of the houses which flanked the street at long intervals and looked so bright and warm. But when he attempted to act upon that very sensible decision a burly dog came bowsing out and disputed his right. Inexpressibly fright- ened and believing, no doubt (with some reason, too), that brutes without meant brutality within, he hobbled away from all the houses, and with gray, wet fields to right of him and gray, wet fields to left of him—with the rain half blinding him and the night coming in mist and darkness, held his way along the road that leads to Green- ton. That is to say, the road leads those to Greenton who succeed in passing the Oak Hill Cemetery. Quite a number every year do not. Jo did not. * They found him there the next morning, very wet, very cold, but no longer hungry. He had apparently entered the cemetery gate—hoping, perhaps, that it led to a house where there was no dog—and gone blundering about in the darkness, falling over many a grave, no doubt, until he had tired of it all and given up. The little body lay upon one side, with one soiled cheek upon one soiled hand, the other hand tucked away among the rags to make it warm, the other cheek washed : clean and white at last, as for a kiss from one of God's great angels. It was observed—though 27o CAA SUCH TH/AVGS BE 2 -. ** #:s: m * nothing was thought of it at the time, the body being as yet “unidentified ”—that the little fel- low was lying upon the grave of Hetty Parlow. The grave, however, had not opened to receive him. That is a circumstance, which, without act- ual irreverence, one may wish had been ordered otherwise. * SOME HAUNTED HOUSES. “THE ISLE OF PINES.” FOR many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, O., an old man named Herman Deluse. Very little was known of his history, for he would neither speak of it himself nor suf- fer others. It was a common belief among his neighbors that he had been a pirate—if upon any better evidence than his collection of boarding pikes, cutlasses, and ancient flint-lock pistols, I do not know. He lived entirely alone, in a small house of four rooms falling rapidly into decay, and never repaired further than was required by the imperative mandates of the weather. It stood on a slight elevation in the midst of a large stony field overgrown with brambles and culti- vated in patches, and that in the most primitive way. It was his only visible property, but could hardly have yielded him a living, simple and few as were his wants. He seemed always to have ready money, and paid cash for all his purchases at the village stores roundabout, seldom buying more than two or three times at the same place until 273 27.4 CAA SUCH THIANGS B.F. P after the lapse of a considerable period. He got no commendation, however, for this equitable dis- tribution of his patronage; people were disposed to regard it as an ineffectual attempt to conceal his possession of so much money. That he had great hoards of ill-gotten gold buried somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling was not reason- ably to be doubted by any honest soul conver- sant with the facts of local tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of things. On the 9th of November, 1867, the old man died; at least his dead body was discovered on the Ioth, and physicians testified that death had occurred about twenty-four hours previously— precisely how, they were unable to say; for the Post-mortem examination showed every organ to be absolutely healthy, with no indication any- where of disorder or violence. According to them death must have taken place about noonday, yet the body was found in bed. The verdict of the coroner's jury was that he “came to his death by a visitation of God.” The body was buried and the public administrator took charge of the estate. A rigorous search disclosed nothing more than was already known about the de- ceased, and much patient excavation here and there about the premises by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded. The admin- istrator locked up the house against the time when the property, real and personal, should be - - - - - SOME HA UAVTED HOUSES. 275 sold by law with a view to defraying, partly, the expenses of the sale. The night of November 20 was boisterous. A furious gale stormed across the country, scourg- ing it with desolating drifts of sleet. Great trees were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads. So wild a night had never been known in all that region, but toward morning the storm had blown itself out of breath, and the day dawned bright and clear. At about eight o'clock that morning the Rev. Henry Galbraith, a well-known and highly esteemed Baptist minister, arrived on foot at his house, a mile and a half from the De- luse place. Mr. Galbraith had been for a month in Cincinnati. He had come up the river in a steamboat, and landing at Gallipolis the previous evening, had immediately obtained a horse and buggy and set out for home. The violence of storm had delayed him overnight, and in the morning the fallen trees had compelled him to abandon his conveyance and continue his journey afoot. “But where did you pass the night?” inquired his wife, after he had briefly related his adventure. “With old Deluse at the ‘Isle of Pines,’” * was the laughing reply; “and a glum enough time I had of it. He made no objection to my remain- ing, but not a word could I get out of him.” * The Isle of Pines, in the West Indies, was formerly a famous rendezvous of pirates. 276 CAAW SUCH THIVGS BE 2 ". " Fortunately for the interests of truth, there was present at this conversation Mr. Robert Mosley Maren, a lawyer and littérateur of Columbus, the same who wrote the delightful “Mellowcraft Papers." Noting, but apparently not sharing, the astonishment caused by Mr. Galbraith's answer, this ready-witted person checked by a gesture the exclamations that would naturally have followed, and tranquilly inquired: “How came you to go in there ?” This is Mr. Maren's version of Mr. Galbraith's reply: “I saw a light moving about in the house, and being nearly blinded by the sleet, and half frozen besides, drove in at the gate and put up my horse in the old rail stable, where it is now. I then rapped at the door, and getting no invitation, went in without one. The room was dark, but, having matches, I found a candle and lit it. I tried to enter the adjoining room, but the door was fast, and although I heard the old man's heavy footsteps in there, he made no response to my calls. There was no fire on the hearth, so I made one, and laying [sic] down before it with my \ overcoat under my head, prepared myself for sleep. Pretty soon the door which I had tried silently opened, and the old man came in, carrying a can- dle. I spoke to him pleasantly, apologizing for my intrusion, but he took no notice of me. He seemed to be searching for something, though his SOAME HA UAVTED HOUSE.S. 277 eyes were unmoved in their sockets. I wonder if he ever walks in his sleep! He took a circuit a part of the way round the room, and then went out the same way he came in. Twice more before I slept he came back into the room, acting precisely the same way, and departing as at first. In the intervals I heard him tramping all over the house, his footsteps distinctly audible in the pauses of the storm. When I woke in the morning he had already gone out." Mr. Maren attempted some further questioning, but was unable longer to restrain the family's tongues; the story of Deluse's death and burial came out, greatly to the good minister's astonish- ment. “The explanation of your adventure is very simple,” said Mr. Maren. “I don't believe old Deluse walks in his sleep—not in his present one—but you evidently dream in yours.” And to this view of the matter Mr. Galbraith was compelled reluctantly to assent. Nevertheless, a late hour of the next night found these two gentlemen, accompanied by a son of the minister, in the road in front of the old Deluse house. There was a light inside; it appeared now at one window and now at another. The three men advanced to the door. Just as they reached it there came from the interior a confusion of the most appalling sounds—the clash of weapons, steel against steel, sharp explosions 278 CAA SUCH TH/AWGS BE 2 as of firearms, shrieks of women, groans, and the curses of men in combat! The investigators stood a moment, irresolute, frightened. Then Mr. Gal- braith tried the door. It was fast. But the minister was a man of courage, a man, moreover, of Herculean strength. He retired a pace or two and rushed against the door, striking it with his right shoulder and bursting it from the hinges with a loud crash. In a moment the three were inside. Darkness and silence | The only sound was the beating of their hearts. Mr. Maren had provided himself with matches and a candle. With some difficulty, begotten of his excitement, he made a light, and they pro- ceeded to explore the place, passing from room to room. Everything was in orderly arrangement, as it had been left by the sheriff; nothing had been disturbed. A light coating of dust was everywhere. A back door was partly open, as if by neglect, and their first thought was that the authors of the awful revelry might have escaped. The door was opened, and the light of the candle thrown through upon the ground. The expiring effort of the pre- vious night's storm had been a light fall of snow; there were no footprints; the white surface was unbroken. They closed the door and entered the last room of the four that the house contained— that farthest from the road, in an angle of the building. Here the candle in Mr. Maren's hand was suddenly extinguished as by a draught of air. A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT. HENRY SAYLOR, who was killed in Covington, Ky., in a quarrel with Antonio Finch, was once a reporter on the Cincinnati Commercial. In the year 1859 a vacant dwelling on Vine Street, in Cincinnati, became the center of a local excite- ment because of the strange sights and sounds said to be observed in it nightly. According to the testimony of many reputable residents of the vicinity these were inconsistent with any other hypothesis than that the house was haunted. Figures with something singularly unfamiliar about them were seen by crowds on the sidewalk to pass in and out. No one could say just where they appeared upon the open lawn on their way to the front door by which they entered, nor at exactly what point they vanished as they came out; or, rather, while each spectator was positive enough about these matters, no two agreed. They were all similarly at variance in their de- scriptions of the figures themselves. Some of the bolder of the curious throng ventured on several evenings to stand upon the doorsteps to inter- cept the ghostly visitors or get a nearer look at them. These courageous men, it was said, were 28o SOAME AA UAV Z'E/D HOUSES. 28 I unable to force the door by their united strength, and invariably were hurled from the steps by some invisible agency and severely injured; the door immediately afterward opening, apparently of its own volition, to admit or free some ghostly guest. The dwelling was known as the Roscoe house, a family of that name having lived there for some years, and then, one by one, disappeared, the last to leave being an old woman. Stories of foul play and successive murders had always been rife, but never were authenticated. One day during the prevalence of the excite- ment Saylor presented himself at the office of the Commercial for orders. He was handed a note from the city editor which read as follows: “Go and pass the night alone in the haunted house on Vine Street and if anything occurs worth while make two columns.” Saylor obeyed his superior; he could not afford to lose his position on the paper. Apprising the police of his intention, he effected an entrance through a rear window before dark, walked through the deserted rooms, bare of furniture, dusty and desolate, and seating himself at last in the parlor on an old sofa which he had dragged in from another room, watched the deep- ening of the gloom as night came on. Before it was altogether dark the curious crowd had col- lected in the street, silent, as a rule, and expect- ant, with here and there a scoffer uttering his 282 CAAW SUCH THIAWGS BE 2 incredulity and courage with scornful remarks or ribald cries. None knew of the anxious watcher inside. He feared to make a light; the uncur- tained windows would have betrayed his presence, subjecting him to insult, possibly to injury. Moreover, he was too conscientious to do any- thing to enfeeble his impressions, and unwilling to alter any of the customary conditions under which the manifestations were said to occur. It was now quite dark, but light from the street faintly illuminated the part of the room that he was in. He had set open every door in the whole interior, above and below, but all the outer ones were locked and bolted. Sudden exclama- tions from the crowd caused him to spring to the window and look out. He saw the figure of a man moving rapidly across the lawn toward the building—saw it ascend the steps; then a projec- tion of the wall concealed it. There was a noise as of the opening and closing of the hall door; he heard quick heavy footsteps along the passage— heard them ascend the stairs—heard them on the uncarpeted floor of the chamber immediately overhead. Saylor promptly drew his pistol, and, groping his way up the stairs, entered the chamber, dimly lighted from the street. No one was there. He heard footsteps in an adjoining room and entered that. It was black-dark and silent. He struck his foot against some object on the floor, knelt by SOME A/A UAVTED AOUSES. 283 it, and passed his hand over it. It was a human head—that of a woman. Lifting it by the hair, this iron-nerved man returned to the half-lighted room below, carried it near the window, and atten- tively examined it. While so engaged he was half conscious of the rapid opening and closing of the outer door, of footfalls sounding all about him. He raised his eyes from the ghastly object of his attention and saw himself the center of a crowd of men and women dimly seen; the room was thronged with them. He thought the peo- ple had broken in. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, coolly, “you see me under suspicious circumstances, but ** his voice was drowned in peals of laughter—such laughter as is heard in asylums for the insane. The persons about him pointed at the object in his hand, and their merriment increased as he dropped it and it went rolling among their feet. They danced about it with gestures grotesque and at- titudes obscene and indescribable. They struck it with their feet, urging it about the room from wall to wall; pushed and overthrew one another in their struggles to kick it; cursed and screamed and sang snatches of ribald songs as the battered head bounded about the room as if in terror and trying to escape. At last it shot out of the door into the hall, followed by all with tumultuous haste. That moment the door closed with a sharp concussion. Saylor was alone, in dead silence. 284 CAAW SUCH THINGS BE 2 Carefully putting away his pistol, which all the time he had held in his hand, he went to the windows and looked out. The street was de- serted and silent; the lamps were extinguished; the roofs and chimneys of the houses were sharply outlined against the dawn-light in the east. He left the house, the door yielding easily to his hand, and walked to the Commercial office. The city editor was still in his office—asleep. Saylor waked him and said quietly: “I have been at the haunted house.” The editor stared blankly as if not wholly awake. “Good God!” he cried, “are you Say- 1Or P” “Yes—why not?” The editor made no answer, but continued staring. - - “I passed the night there—it seems,” said Saylor. “They say that things were uncommonly quiet out there,” the editor said, trifling with a paper- weight upon which he had dropped his eyes, “did anything occur?” “Nothing whatever.” *. THE THING AT NOLAN. TO the south of where the road between Lees- ville and Hardy, in the State of Missouri, crosses the East Fork of May Creek stands an abandoned house. Nobody has lived in it since the summer of 1879, and it is fast going to pieces. For some three years before the date mentioned it was occu- pied by the family of Charles May, from one of whose ancestors the creek near which it stands took its name. Mr. May's family consisted of a wife, an adult son, and two young girls. The son's name was John—the names of the daugh- ters are unknown to the writer of this sketch. John May was of a morose and surly disposi- tion, not easily moved to anger, but having an uncommon gift of sullen, implacable hate. His father was quite otherwise; of a sunny, jovial dis- position, but with a quick, hot temper, like a sud- den flame which, kindled in a wisp of straw, con- sumes it in a flash and is no more. He cherished no resentments and, his anger gone, was quick to make overtures for reconciliation. He had a brother living near by who was unlike him in respect of all this, and it was a current witticism in the neighborhood that John had inherited his disposition from his uncle. 285 288 CAA SUCA/ THZAVGS & E * such action at any time as the circumstances might seem to warrant. On Wednesday all was changed. From the town of Nolan, eight miles away, came a story which put a quite different aspect upon the matter. Nolan consists of a cchoolhouse, a blacksmith's shop, a “store,” and a half-dozen dwellings. The store was kept by one Henry Odell, a cousin of the elder May. On the afternoon of the Sun- day of May's disappearance Mr. Odell and four of his neighbors, men of credibility, were sitting in the store smoking and talking. It was a warm day, and both the front and the back door were open. At about three o'clock Charles May, who was well known to three of them, entered at the front door and passed out at the rear. He was without hat or coat. He did not look at them nor return their greeting, a circumstance which did not surprise, for he was evidently seriously hurt. Above the left eyebrow was a wound—a deep gash from which the blood had flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck and saturating his light-gray shirt. Oddly enough, the thought uppermost in the minds of all was that he had been fighting and was going to the brook that ran directly back of the store, to wash himself. - Perhaps there was a feeling of delicacy—a backwoods etiquette which restrained them from following him to offer assistance; the court rec- > 290 CAAW SUCH THIVGS BE 2 If during the time in which John May must have killed Charles May, if he had killed him at all, Charles May was miles away from where John May must have been, it is plain that the deceased must have come to his death at the hands of . someone else. - John May was acquitted, immediately left the country, and has never been heard of from that day. Shortly afterward his mother and sisters removed to St. Louis. The farm having passed into the possession of a man who owns the land adjoining and has a dwelling of his own, the May house has ever since been vacant, and has the somber reputation of being haunted. One day in September, 1879, directly after the May family had left the country, some boys, play- ing in the woods along May Creek, found con- cealed under a mass of dead leaves, but partly exposed by the rooting of hogs, a spade nearly new and quite bright, except a spot on one edge, which was rusted and stained with blood. The implement had the initials C. M. cut into the handle. This discovery renewed, in some degree, the public excitement of a few months before. The earth near the spot where the spade was found was carefully examined, and the result was the finding of the dead body of a man. It had been buried under two or three feet of soil and the spot covered with a layer of dead leaves and twigs, - SOAME A/A UAV ZZAP AO U.S.A.S. 29 I There was but little decomposition, a fact at- tributed to some preservative property in the mineral-bearing soil. Above the left eyebrow was a wound—a deep gash from which blood had flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck and saturat- ing the light-gray shirt. The skull had been cut through by the blow. The body was that of Charles May. But what was it that passed through Mr. Odell's store at Nolan P BODIES OF THE DEAD. THAT OF GRANNY MAGONE. ABOUT ten miles to the southeast of Whites- burg, Ky., in a little “cove” of the Cumberland mountains, lived for many years an old woman named Sarah (or Mary) Magone. Her house, built of logs and containing but two rooms, was a mile and a half distant from any other, in the wildest part of the “cove,” entirely surrounded by forest except on one side, where a little field, or “patch,” of about a half-acre served her for a vegetable garden. How she subsisted nobody exactly knew; she was reputed to be a miser with a concealed hoard; she certainly paid for what few articles she procured on her rare visits to the village store. Many of her ignorant neighbors believed her to be a witch, or thought, at least, that she possessed some kind of supernatural powers. In November, 1881, she died, and fortu- nately enough, the body was found while yet warm by a passing hunter, who locked the door of the cabin and conveyed the news to the nearest settlement. 293 2.94 CAA SUCH TH/AWG.S. B.A. 2 Several persons living in the vicinity at once went to the cabin to prepare for her burial; others were to follow the next day with a coffin and whatever else was needful. Among those who first went was the Rev. Elias Atney, a Methodist minister of Whitesburg, who hap- pened to be in the neighborhood visiting a rela- tion. He was to conduct the funeral services on the following day. Mr. Atney is, or was, well known in Whitesburg and all that country as a good and pious man of good birth and education. He was closely related to the Marshalls and several other families of distinction. It is from him that the particulars here related were learned; and the account is confirmed by the affidavits of John Hershaw, William C. Wrightman, and Catharine Doub, residents of the vicinity and eye-witnesses. The body of “Granny” Magone had been “laid out” on a wide plank supported by two chairs at the end of the principal room, opposite the fireplace, and the persons mentioned were acting as “watchers,” according to the local cus- tom. A bright fire on the hearth lighted one end of the room brilliantly, the other dimly. The watchers sat about the fire, talking in subdued tones, when a sudden noise in the direction of the corpse caused them all to turn and look. In a black shadow near the remains, they saw two glowing eyes staring fixedly; and before they A LIGHT SLEEPER. JOHN HOSKIN, living in San Francisco, had a beautiful wife, to whom he was devotedly at- tached. In the spring of 1871 Mrs. Hoskin went East to visit her relations in Springfield, Ill., where, a week after her arrival, she suddenly died of some disease of the heart; at least the physi- cian said so. Mr. Hoskin was at once apprised of his loss, by telegraph, and he directed that the ody be sent to San Francisco. On arrival there the metallic case containing the remains was opened. The body was lying on the right side, the right hand under the cheek, the other on the breast. The posture was the perfectly natural one of a sleeping child, and in a letter to the deceased lady's father, Mr. Martin L. Whitney of Spring- field, Mr. Hoskin expressed a grateful sense of the thoughtfulness that had so composed the remains as to soften the suggestion of death. To his surprise he learned from the father that noth- ing of the kind had been done : the body had been put in the casket in the customary way, lying on the back, with the arms extended along the sides. In the meantime the casket had been deposited in the receiving vault at Laurel Hill Cemetery, awaiting the completion of a tomb. ---...- * 296 BO/D/ES OF THE DEAD. 297 Greatly disquieted by this revelation, Hoskin did not at once reflect that the easy and natural posture and placid expression precluded the idea of suspended animation, subsequent revival, and eventual death by suffocation. He insisted that his wife had been murdered by medical incom- petency and heedless haste. Under the influence of this feeling he wrote to Mr. Whitney again, expressing in passionate terms his horror and renewed grief. Some days afterward, someone having suggested that the casket had been opened en route, probably in the hope of plunder, and pointing out the impossibility of the change hav- ing occurred in the straitened space of the con- fining metal, it was resolved to reopen it. Removal of the lid disclosed a new horror: the body now lay upon its left side. The position was cramped, and to a living person would have been uncomfortable. The face wore an expres- sion of pain. Some costly rings on the fingers were undisturbed. Overcome by his emotions, to which was now added a sharp, if mistaken, remorse, Mr. Hoskin lost his reason, dying years afterward in the asylum at Stockton. A physician having been summoned, to assist in clearing up the mystery, viewed the body of the dead woman, pronounced life obviously extinct, and ordered the casket closed for the third and last time. “Obviously extinct,” indeed: the corpse had, in fact, been embalmed at Springfield. DEAD AND “GONE.” ON the morning of the 14th day of August, 1872, George J. Reid, a young man of twenty- one years, living at Xenia, O., fell while walking across the dining room in his father's house. The family consisted of his father, mother, two sisters, and a cousin, a boy of fifteen. All were present at the breakfast table. George entered the room, but instead of taking his accustomed seat near the door by which he had entered, passed it and went obliquely toward one of the windows— with what purpose no one knows. He had passed the table but a few steps when he fell heavily to the floor and did not again breathe. The body was carried into a bedroom and, after vain efforts at resuscitation by the stricken family, left lying on the bed with composed limbs and covered face. In the meantime the boy had been hastily dis- patched for a physician, who arrived some twenty minutes after the death. He afterward remem- bered as an uncommon circumstance that when he arrived the weeping relations—father, mother, and two sisters—were all in the room out of which the bedroom door opened, and that the door was closed. There was no other door to the bedroom. This door was at once opened by the 3•1 A COLD NIGHT. THE first day's battle at Stone River had been fought, resulting in disaster to the Federal army, which had been driven from its original ground at every point except its extreme left. The weary troops at this point lay behind a railway embank- ment to which they had retired, and which had served them during the last hours of the fight as a breastwork to repel repeated charges of the enemy. Behind the line the ground was open and rocky. Great bowlders lay about everywhere, and among them lay many of the Federal dead, where they had been carried out of the way. Before the embankment the dead of both armies lay more thickly, but they had not been disturbed. Among the dead in the bowlders lay one whom nobody seemed to know—a Federal sergeant, shot directly in the center of the forehead. One of our surgeons, from idle curiosity, or possibly with a view to the amusement of a group of officers during a lull in the engagement (we needed some- thing to divert our minds), had pushed his probe clean through the head. The body lay on its back, its chin in the air, and with straightened limbs, as rigid as steel; frost on its white face 303 A CREATURE OF HABIT. AT Hawley's Bar, a mining camp near Virginia City, Mont., a gambler named Henry Graham, but commonly known as “Gray Hank,” met a miner named Dreyfuss one day, with whom he had had a dispute the previous night about a game of cards, and asked him into a barroom to have a drink. The unfortunate miner, taking this as an overture of peace, gladly accepted. They stood at the counter, and while Dreyfuss was in the act of drinking Graham shot him dead. This was in 1865. Within an hour after the murder Graham was in the hands of the vigilantes, and that evening at sunset, after a fair, if informal, trial, he was hanged to the limb of a tree which grew upon a little eminence within sight of the whole camp. The original intention had been to - “string him up,” as is customary in such affairs; and with a view to that operation the long rope had been thrown over the limb, while a dozen pairs of hands were ready to hoist away. For some reason this plan was abandoned; the free end of the rope was made fast to a bush and the victim compelled to stand on the back of a horse, which at the cut of a whip sprang from under 300 308 CAA/ SUCH THIAWGS BE 2 Spier, who with two other physicians had pro- nounced the man dead and had been retiring to the camp. He moved as directly toward the dead man as the now somewhat less rapid and erratic movements of the latter would permit, and seized him in his arms. Encouraged by this, a score of men sprang shouting to the free end of the rope, which had not been drawn entirely over the limb, and laid hold of it, intending to make a finish of their work. They ran with it toward the bush to which it had been fastened, but there was no re- sistance; the physician had cut it from the mur- derer's neck. In a moment the body was lying * on its back, with composed limbs and face up- turned to the kindling stars, in the motionless rigidity appropriate to death. The hanging had been done well enough—the neck was broken. “The dead are creatures of habit," said Dr. Spier. “A corpse which when on its feet will walk and run will lie still when placed on its back." * “MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEAR- ANCES.” THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD. ONE morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six miles from Selma, Ala., was sitting with his wife and a child on the veranda of his dwelling. Immediately in front of the house was a lawn, perhaps fifty yards in extent, between the house and public road, or, as it was called, the “pike.” Beyond this road lay a close- cropped pasture of some ten acres, level and without a tree, rock, or any natural or artificial object on its surface. At the time there was not even a domestic animal in the field. In another field, beyond the pasture, a dozen slaves were at work under an overseer. Throwing away the stump of a cigar, the planter rose, saying: “I forgot to tell Andrew about those horses.” Andrew was the overseer. Williamson strolled leisurely down the gravel walk, plucking a flower as he went, passed across the road and into the pasture, pausing a moment as he closed the gate leading into it, to greet a 3og “...M. YSTER/O US JD/SAPPEA RAAWCES.” 3 II gravity of the occurrence, though I thought it singular. My son, however, was greatly astonished, and kept repeating his question in different forms until we arrived at the gate. My black boy Sam was similarly affected, even in a greater degree, but I reckon more by my son's manner than by anything he had himself observed. [This sentence in the testimony was stricken out..] As we got out of the carriage at the gate of the field, and while Sam was hanging [sic] the team to the fence, Mrs. Williamson, with her child in her arms and followed by several servants, came running down the walk in great excitement, crying: ‘He is gone, he is gone ! O God! what an awful thing!' and many other such exclamations, which I do not distinctly recollect. I got from them the impression that they related to something more than the mere disappearance of her husband, even if that had occurred before her eyes. Her manner was wild, but not more so, I think, than was natural under the circumstances. I have no reason to think she had at that time lost her mind. I have never since seen nor heard of Mr. Williamson.” This testimony was, as might have been expected, corroborated in almost every particular by the only other eye-witness (if that is a proper term), the lad James. Mrs. Williamson had lost her reason, and the servants were, of course, not 312 CAA SUCA. THZAVGS BA 2 competent to testify. The boy James Wren had delared at first that he saw the disappearance, but there is nothing of this in his testimony given in court. None of the hands working in the field to which Williamson was going had seen him at all, and the most rigorous search of the entire plantation and adjoining country failed to afford a clew. The most monstrous and grotesque fictions, originating with the blacks, were current in that part of the State for many years, and prob- ably are to this day; but what has been here related is all that is certainly known of the matter. The courts decided that Williamson was dead, and his estate was distributed according to law. AN UNFINISHED RACE. JAMES BURNE WORSON was a shoemaker who lived in Leamington, Warwickshire, England. He had a little shop in one of the by-ways lead- ing 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 sover- eign he undertook to run all the way to Coventry and back, a distance of something more than forty miles. This was on the 3d day of Septem- ber in 1873. He set out at once, the man with whom he had made the bet—whose name is not recorded—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 suffi- ciently intoxicated to enfeeble them. The three men in the wagon kept a short distance in the 313 3I4 CAAW SUCH TH/AWGS BA 2 rear, giving him occasional friendly “chaff" or encouragement, as the spirit moved them. Sud- denly—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 afterward discovered. After remaining at and about the spot for some time, with aimless irresolution, the three astonished men returned to Leamington, told their story and were afterward taken into cus- tody. But they were of good standing, had always been considered truthful, were sober at the time of the occurrence, and nothing ever tran- spired 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. 316 CAA/ SUCH/ THINGS BE * trail conspicuous; each footprint was plainly de- fined. After going a little more than halfway— 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, on close inspection, were as conspicuous as any in the line; the very nail-marks were distinctly vis, ible. Mr. Ashmore looked upward, shading his eyes with his hat held between them and the lan- tern. 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 ulti- mate 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 they had observed. The spring was covered with ice, hours old. Returning to the house they noted the appear- ance 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, absolutely unbroken, the shallow snow lay everywhere. ‘‘Al/ V.S. 7"ZAR/O U.S. D/SAAAAAAAA’ CE.S.” 319 caverns exist in the earth, or cells in a Swiss cheese. In such a cavity there would be abso- lutely nothing. It would be such a vacuum as cannot be artificially produced; for if we pump the air from a receiver there remains the luminif- erous ether. Through one of these cavities light could not pass, for there would be nothing to bear it. Sound could not proceed from it; noth- ing could be felt in it. It would not have a single one of the conditions necessary to the action of any of our senses. In such a void, in short, nothing whatever could occur. Now, in the words of the writer before quoted—the learned doctor himself nowhere puts it so con- cisely: “A man inclosed in such a closet could neither see nor be seen ; neither hear nor be heard; neither feel nor be felt; neither live nor die, for both life and death are processes which can take place only where there is force, and in empty space no force could exist.” Are these the awful conditions (some will ask) under which the parents and friends of Charlie Ross and others of the lost are to think of them as existing, and doomed forever to exist? Baldly and imperfectly as here stated, Dr. Hern's theory, in so far as it professes to be an adequate explanation of “mysterious disappear- ances,” is open to many obvious objections; to fewer as he states it himself in the “spacious volubility” of his book. But even as expounded 320 CAA/ SUCH THIA/GS BE 2 by its author it does not explain, and in fact is incompatible with some incidents of, the occur- rences related in these memoranda: for example, the sound of Charles Ashmore's voice. It is not my duty to indue facts and theories with affinity.—A. B. THE END. f