University of California Berkeley 
 
 From the library 
 
 of 
 JAMES D. HART 
 
TALES 
 
 OF 
 
 Soldiers and Civilians 
 
 BY 
 
 AMBROSE BIERCE 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 I^. G. 
 
 208 CALIFORNIA STREET 
 1891. 
 
Copyrighted, 1891, by E. L. G. STEELE. 
 
DENIED existence by the chief publishing houses 
 of the country, this book owes itself to Mr. E. 
 L. G. STEELE, merchant, of this city. In attesting Mr. 
 STEELE'S faith in his judgment and his friend, it will 
 serve its author's main and best ambition. 
 
 A. B. 
 SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 4, i89i. 
 
THE TALES BY TITLE. 
 
 SOLDIERS PAGE, 
 
 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 9 
 
 AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 21 
 
 CHICKAMAUGA 41 
 
 A SON OF THE GODS 55 
 
 ONE OF THE MISSING 69 
 
 KILLED AT RESACA 93 
 
 THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 105 
 
 A TOUGH TUSSLE :... 123 
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE 139 
 
 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 151 
 
 CIVILIANS 
 
 A W.ATCHER BY THE DEAD 165 
 
 THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 187 
 
 A HOLY TERROR 200 
 
 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 227 
 
 AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA 241 
 
 THE BOARDED WINDOW 249 
 
 THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE BRIGHT FOOT 259 
 
 HAITA THE SHEPHERD 277 
 
 AN HEIRESS FROM RED HORSE.... ... 289 
 
SOLDIERS 
 
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 
 
 sunny afternoon in the autumn of the 
 year 1861, a soldier lay in a clump of 
 laurel by the side of a road in Western Vir- 
 ginia. He lay at full length, upon his stom- 
 ach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head 
 upon the left forearm. His extended right 
 hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the 
 somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs 
 and a slight rhythmic movement of the car- 
 tridge box at the back of his belt, he might 
 have been thought to be dead. He was asleep 
 at his post of duty. But if detected he would 
 be dead shortly afterward, that being the just 
 and legal penalty of his crime. 
 
 The clump of laurel in which the criminal 
 lay was in the angle of a road which, after 
 ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that 
 point, turned sharply to the west, running 
 along the summit for perhaps one hundred 
 
 (9) 
 
10 
 
 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 
 
 yards. There it turned southward again and 
 went zigzagging downward through the forest. 
 At the salient of that second angle was a large 
 flat rock, jutting out from the ridge to the 
 northward, overlooking the deep valley from 
 which the road ascended. The rock capped 
 a high cliff; a stone dropped from its outer 
 edge would have fallen sheer downward one 
 thousand feet to the tops of the pines. The 
 angle where the soldier lay was on another 
 spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake 
 he would have commanded a view, not only 
 of the short arm of the road and the jutting 
 rock but of the entire profile of the cliff below 
 it. It might well have made him giddy to 
 look. 
 
 The country was wooded everywhere ex- 
 cept at the bottom of the valley to the north- 
 ward, where there was a small natural meadow, 
 through which flowed a stream scarcely visible 
 from the valley's rim. This open ground 
 looked hardly larger than an ordinary door- 
 yard, but was really several acres in extent. 
 Its green was more vivid than that of the in- 
 closing forest. Away beyond it rose a line of 
 giant cliffs similar to those upon which we are 
 supposed to stand in our survey of the savage 
 scene, and through which the road had some- 
 
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 
 
 II 
 
 how made its climb to the summit. The con- 
 figuration of the valley, indeed, was such that 
 from our point of observation it seemed en- 
 tirely shut in, and one could not but have 
 wondered how the road which found a way 
 out of it had found a way into it, and whence 
 came and whither went the waters of the 
 stream that parted the meadow two thousand 
 feet below. 
 
 No country is so wild and difficult but men 
 will make it a theater of war; concealed in the 
 forest at the bottom of that military rat trap, 
 in which half a hundred men in possession of 
 the exits might have starved an army to sub 
 mission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. 
 They had marched all the previous day and 
 night and were resting. At nightfall they 
 would take to the road again, climb to the 
 place where their unfaithful sentinel now slept, 
 and, descending the other slope of the ridge, 
 fall upon a camp of the enemy at about mid- 
 night. Their hope was to surprise it, for 
 the road lead to the rear of it. In case of 
 failure their position would be perilous in the 
 extreme; and fail they surely would should 
 accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of 
 the movement. 
 
 The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel 
 
12 
 
 A HORSEMAN IN THE SAT. 
 
 was a young Virginian named Carter Druse. 
 He was the son of wealthy parents, an only 
 child, and had known such ease and cultiva- 
 tion and high living as wealth and taste were 
 able to command in the mountain country of 
 Western Virginia. His home was but a few 
 miles from where he now lay. One morning 
 he had risen from the breakfast table and said, 
 quietly but gravely: " Father, a Union regi- 
 ment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to 
 join it." 
 
 The father lifted his leonine head, looked 
 at the son a moment in silence, and replied: 
 "Go, Carter, and, whatever may occur, do 
 what you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, 
 to which you are a traitor, must get on with- 
 out you. Should we both live to the end of 
 the war, we will speak further of the matter. 
 Your mother, as the physician has informed 
 you, is in a most critical condition; at the best 
 she cannot be with us longer than a few weeks, 
 but that time is precious. It would be better 
 not to disturb her." 
 
 So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his 
 father, who returned the salute with a stately 
 courtesy which masked a breaking heart, left 
 the home of his childhood to go soldiering. 
 By conscience and courage, by deeds of de- 
 
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. j^ 
 
 votion and daring, he soon commended him- 
 self to his fellows and his officers; and it was 
 to these qualities and to some knowledge of 
 the country that he owed his' selection for his 
 present perilous duty at the extreme outpost. 
 Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than 
 resolution, and he had fallen asleep. What 
 good or bad angel came in a dream to rouse 
 him from his state of crime who shall say? 
 Without a movement, without a sound, in the 
 profound silence and the languor of the late 
 afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate 
 touched with unsealing finger the eyes of his 
 consciousness whispered into the ear of his 
 spirit the mysterious awakening word which 
 no human lips have ever spoken, no human 
 memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised 
 his forehead from his arm and looked between 
 the masking stems of the laurels, instinctively 
 closing his right hand about the stock of his 
 rifle. 
 
 His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. 
 Qn a colossal pedestal, the cliff, motionless at 
 the extreme edge of the capping rock and 
 sharply outlined against the sky, was an eques- 
 trian statue of impressive dignity. The figure 
 of the man sat the figure of the horse, straight 
 and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian 
 
j, A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 
 
 god carved in the marble which limits the 
 suggestion of activity. The gray costume 
 harmonized with its aerial background; the 
 metal of accouterment and caparison was sof- 
 tened and subdued by the shadow; the ani- 
 mal's skin had no points of high light. A 
 carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across 
 the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by 
 the right hand grasping it at the "grip" ; the 
 left hand, holding the bridle rein, was in- 
 visible. In silhouette against the sky, the 
 profile of the horse was cut with the sharp- 
 ness of a cameo; it looked across the heights 
 of air to the confronting cliffs beyond. The 
 face of the rider, turned slightly to the left, 
 showed only an outline of temple and beard; 
 he was looking downward to the bottom of 
 the valley. Magnified by its lift against the 
 sky and by the soldier's testifying sense of 
 the formidableness of a near enemy, the group 
 appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size. 
 
 For an instant Druse had a strange, half- 
 defined feeling that he had slept to the end 
 of the war and was looking upon a noble 
 work of art reared upon that commanding 
 eminence to commemorate the deeds of an 
 heroic past of which he had been an inglori- 
 ous part. The feeling was dispelled by a 
 
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. ^ 
 
 slight movement of the group; the horse, 
 without moving its feet, had drawn its body 
 slightly backward from the verge; the man 
 remained immobile as before. ' Broad awake 
 and keenly alive to the significance of the 
 situation, Druse now brought the butt of his 
 rifle against his cheek by cautiously pushing 
 the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked 
 the piece, and, glancing through the sights, 
 covered a vital spot of the horseman's breast. 
 A touch upon the trigger and all would have 
 been well with Carter Druse. At that instant 
 the horseman turned his head and looked in 
 the direction of his concealed foeman seemed 
 to look into his very face, into his eyes, into 
 his brave, compassionate heart. 
 
 Is it, then, so terrible to kill an enemy in 
 war an enemy who has surprised a secret 
 vital to the safety of one's self and comrades 
 an enemy more formidable for his knowledge 
 than all his army for its numbers? Carter 
 Druse grew deathly pale; he shook in every 
 limb, turned faint, and saw the statuesque 
 group before him as black figures, rising, 
 falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles 
 in a fiery sky. His hand fell away from his 
 weapon, his head slowly dropped until his 
 face rested on the leaves in which he lay. 
 
j^ A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 
 
 This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier 
 was near swooning from intensity of emotion. 
 It was not for long; in another moment his 
 face was raised from earth, his hands resumed 
 their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought 
 the trigger; mind, heart, ai.d eyes were clear, 
 conscience and reason sound. He could not 
 hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him 
 would but send him dashing to his camp with 
 his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was 
 plain: the man must be shot dead from am- 
 bush without warning, without a moment's 
 spiritual preparation, with never so much as 
 an unspoken prayer, he must be sent to his 
 account. But no there is a hope; he may 
 have discovered nothing perhaps he is but 
 admiring the sublimity of the landscape. If 
 permitted he may turn and ride carelessly 
 away in the direction whence he came. Surely 
 it will be possible to judge at the instant of his 
 withdrawing whether he knows. It may well 
 be that his fixity of attention Druse turned 
 his head and looked below, through the deeps 
 of air downward, as from the surface to the 
 bottom of a translucent sea. He saw creep- 
 ing across the green meadow a sinuous line 
 of figures of men and horses some foolish 
 commander was permitting the soldiers of his 
 
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. T 
 
 escort to water their beasts in the open, in 
 plain view from, a hundred summits ! 
 
 Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley 
 and fixed them again upon the group of man 
 and horse in the sky, and again it was through 
 the sights of his rifle. But this time his aim 
 was at the horse. In his memory, as if they 
 were a divine mandate, rang the words of 
 his father at their parting, "Whatever may 
 occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." 
 He was calm now. His teeth were firmly but 
 not rigidly closed; his nerves were as tranquil 
 as a sleep ng babe's not a tremor affected 
 any muscle of his body; his breathing, until 
 suspended in the act of taking aim, was reg- 
 ular and slow. Duty had conquered; the 
 spirit had said to the body : ' ' Peace, be still. ' ' 
 He fired. 
 
 At that moment an officer of the Federal 
 force, who, in a spirit of adventure or in quest 
 of knowledge, had left the hidden bivouac in 
 the valley, and, with aimless feet, had made 
 his way to the lower edge of a small open 
 space near the foot of the cliff, was consider- 
 ing what he had to gain by pushing his ex- 
 ploration further. At a distance of a quarter 
 mile before him, but apparently at a stone's 
 throw, rose from its fringe of pines the gigan- 
 2 
 
jg A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 
 
 tic face of rock, towering to so great a height 
 above him that it made him giddy to look 
 up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line 
 against the sky. At some distance away to 
 his right it presented a clean, vertical profile 
 against a background of blue sky to a point 
 half of the way down, and of distant hills 
 hardly less blue thence to the tops of the trees 
 at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy alti- 
 tude of its summit, the officer saw an astonish- 
 ing sight a man on horseback riding down 
 into the valley through the air! 
 
 Straight upright sat the rider, in military 
 fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong 
 clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from 
 too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head 
 his long hair streamed upward, waving like a 
 plume. His right hand was concealed in the 
 cloud of the horse's lifted mane. The ani- 
 mal's body was as level as if every hoof stroke 
 encountered the resistant earth. Its motions 
 were those of a wild gallop, but even as the 
 officer looked they ceased, with all the legs 
 thrown sharply forward as in the act of alight- 
 ing from a leap. But this was a flight! 
 
 Filled with amazement and terror by this 
 apparition of a horseman in the sky half be- 
 lieving himself the chosen scribe of some new 
 
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. jg 
 
 Apocalypse, the officer was overcome by the 
 intensity of his emotions; his legs failed him 
 and he fell. Almost at the same instant he 
 heard a crashing sound in the 'trees a sound 
 that died without an echo, and all was still. 
 
 The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The 
 familiar sensation of an abraded shin recalled 
 his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together, 
 he ran rapidly obliquely away from the cliff 
 to a point a half-mile from its foot; thereabout 
 he expected to find his man; and thereabout 
 he naturally failed. In the fleeting instant of 
 his vision his imagination had been so wrought 
 upon by the apparent grace and ease and in- 
 tention of the marvelous performance that it 
 did not occur to him that the line of march of 
 aerial cavalry is directly downward, and that 
 he could find the objects of his search at the 
 very foot of the cliff. A half hour later he 
 returned to camp. 
 
 This officer was a wise man; he knew better 
 than to tell an incredible truth. He said 
 nothing of what he had seen. But when the 
 commander asked him if in his scout he had 
 learned anything of advantage to the expedi- 
 tion, he answered: 
 
 "Yes, sir; there is no road leading down 
 into this valley from the southward." 
 
20 
 
 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 
 
 The commander, knowing better, smiled. 
 
 After firing his shot private Carter Druse 
 reloaded his rifle and resumed his watch. 
 Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Fed- 
 eral sergeant crept cautiously to him on hands 
 and knees. Druse neither turned his head 
 nor looked at him, but lay without motion or 
 sign of recognition. 
 
 "Did you fire?" the sergeant whispered. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 1 ' At what ? ' ' 
 
 ' 'A horse. It was standing on yonder rock 
 pretty far out. You see it is no longer 
 there. It went over the cliff. " 
 
 The man's face was white but he showed 
 no other sign of emotion. Having answered, 
 he turned away his face and said no more. 
 The sergeant did not understand. 
 
 "See here, Druse," he said, after a mo- 
 ment's silence, "it's no use making a mys- 
 tery. I order you to report. Was there 
 anybody on the horse?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "My father." 
 
 The sergeant rose to his feet and walked 
 away. ' ' Good God ! " he said. 
 
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK 
 BRIDGE. 
 
 I. 
 
 A MAN stood upon a railroad bridge in 
 Northern Alabama, looking down into 
 the swift waters twenty feet below. The man' s 
 hands were behind his back, the wrists bound 
 with a cord. A rope loosely encircled his 
 neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber 
 above his head, and the slack fell to the level 
 of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon 
 the sleepers supporting the metals of the rail- 
 way supplied a footing for him, and his exe- 
 cutioners two private soldiers of the Federal 
 army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life 
 may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short 
 remove upon the same temporary platform 
 was an officer in the uniform of his rank, 
 armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at 
 each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in 
 the position known as "support," that is to 
 say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the 
 
 (21) 
 
22 
 
 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 hammer resting on the forearm thrown 
 straight across the chest a formal and un- 
 natural position, enforcing an erect carriage 
 of the body. It did not appear to be the 
 duty of these two men to know what was 
 occurring at the center of the bridge; they 
 merely blockaded the two ends of the foot 
 plank which traversed it. 
 
 Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in 
 sight; the railroad ran straight away into a 
 forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was 
 lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost 
 further along. The other bank of the stream 
 was open ground a gentle acclivity crowned 
 with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop- 
 holed for rifles, with a single embrasure 
 through which protruded the muzzle of a 
 brass cannon commanding the bridge. Mid- 
 way of the slope between bridge and fort 
 were the spectators a single company of 
 infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts 
 of the rifles on the ground, the barrels in- 
 clining slightly backward against the right 
 shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. 
 A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the 
 point of his sword upon the ground, his left 
 hand resting upon his right. Excepting the 
 group of four at the center of the bridge not a 
 
AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 2$ 
 
 man moved. The company faced the bridge, 
 staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, 
 facing the banks of the stream, might have 
 been statues to adorn the bridge. The cap- 
 tain stood with folded arms, silent, observing 
 the work of his subordinates but making no 
 sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he 
 comes announced, is to be received with 
 formal manifestations of respect, even by 
 those most familiar with him. In the code 
 of military etiquette silence and fixity are 
 forms of deference. 
 
 The man who was engaged in being hanged 
 was apparently about thirty-five years of age. 
 He was a civilian, if one might judge from his 
 dress, which was that of a planter. His fea- 
 tures were good a straight nose, firm mouth, 
 broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair 
 was combed straight back, falling behind his 
 ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. 
 He wore a mustache and pointed beard but 
 no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark 
 gray and had a kindly expression which one 
 would hardly have expected in one whose 
 neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was 
 no vulgar assassin. . The liberal military code 
 makes provision for hanging many kinds of 
 people, and gentlemen are not excluded. 
 
24 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 The preparations being complete, the two 
 private soldiers stepped aside and each drew 
 away the plank upon which he had been stand- 
 ing. The sergeant turned to the captain, 
 saluted and placed himself immediately be- 
 hind that officer, who in turn moved apart 
 one pace. These movements left the con- 
 demned man and the sergeant standing on the 
 two ends of the same plank, which spanned 
 three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The 
 end upon which the civilian stood almost, but 
 not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had 
 been held in place by the weight of the cap- 
 tain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. 
 At a signal from the former, the latter would 
 step aside, the plank would tilt and the con- 
 demned man go down between two ties. The 
 arrangement commended itself to his judg- 
 ment as simple and effective. His face had 
 not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He 
 looked a moment at his ' ' unsteadfast footing," 
 then let his gaze wander to the swirling water 
 of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. 
 A piece of dancing driftwood caught his at- 
 tention and his eyes followed it down the 
 current. How slowly it appeared to move! 
 What a sluggish stream ! 
 
 He closed his eyes in order to fix his last 
 
AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 25 
 
 thoughts upon his wife and children. The 
 water, touched to gold by the early sun, the 
 brooding mists under the banks at some dis- 
 tance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, 
 the piece of drift all had distracted him. 
 And now he became conscious of a new dis- 
 turbance. Striking through the thought of 
 his dear ones was a sound which he could 
 neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, dis- 
 tinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a 
 blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had 
 the same ringing quality. He wondered 
 what it was, and whether immeasurably dis- 
 tant or near by it seemed both. Its recur- 
 rence was regular, but as slow as the tolling 
 of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with 
 impatience and he knew not why appre- 
 hension. The intervals of silence grew pro- 
 gressively longer; the delays became mad- 
 dening. With their greater infrequency the 
 sounds increased in strength and sharpness. 
 They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; 
 he feared he would shriek. What he heard 
 was the ticking of his watch. 
 
 He unclosed his eyes and saw again the 
 water below him. " If I could free my hands," 
 he thought, "I might throw off the noose 
 and spring into the stream. By diving I 
 
26 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 could evade the bullets, and, swimming vigor- 
 ously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and 
 get away home. My home, thank God, is 
 as yet outside their lines; my wife and little 
 ones are still beyond the invader's farthest 
 advance. ' ' 
 
 As these thoughts, which have here to be 
 set down in words, were flashed into the 
 doomed man's brain rather than evolved from 
 it, the captain nodded to the sergeant. The 
 sergeant stepped aside. 
 
 II. 
 
 Peyton Farquhar was a. well-to-do planter, 
 of an old and highly-respected Alabama fam- 
 ily. Being a slave owner, and, like other 
 slave owners, a politician, he was naturally 
 an original secessionist and ardently devoted 
 to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an 
 imperious nature which it is unnecessary to 
 relate here, had prevented him from taking 
 service with the gallant army which had 
 fought the disastrous campaigns ending with 
 the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the 
 inglorious restraint, longing for the release ot 
 his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the 
 opportunity for distinction. That opportu- 
 nity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in 
 
AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 2J 
 
 war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. 
 No service was too humble for him to perform 
 in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous 
 for him to undertake if consistent with the 
 character of a civilian who was at heart a 
 soldier, and who in good faith and without 
 too much qualification assented to at least a 
 part of the frankly villainous dictum that all 
 is fair in love and war. 
 
 One evening while Farquhar and his wife 
 were sitting on a rustic bench near the en- 
 trance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier 
 rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of 
 water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to 
 serve him with her own white hands. While 
 she was gone to fetch the water, her husband 
 approached the dusty horseman and inquired 
 eagerly for news from the front. 
 
 "The Yanks are repairing the railroads," 
 said the man, "and are getting ready for an- 
 other advance. They have reached the Owl 
 Creek bridge, put it in order, and built a 
 stockade on the other bank. The comman- 
 dant has issued an order, which is posted 
 everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught 
 interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tun- 
 nels, or trains, will be summarily hanged. I 
 saw the order." 
 
28 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 "How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" 
 Farquhar asked. 
 
 "About thirty miles?" 
 
 ' ' Is there no force on this side the creek ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Only a picket post half a mile out, on the 
 railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of 
 the bridge. ' ' 
 
 " Suppose a man a civilian and student of 
 hanging should elude the picket post and 
 perhaps get the better of the sentinel, ' ' said 
 Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accom- 
 plish?" 
 
 The soldier reflected. "I was there a 
 month ago," he replied. "I observed that 
 the flood of last winter had lodged a great 
 quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier 
 at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and 
 would burn like tow." 
 
 The lady had now brought the water, which 
 the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremo- 
 niously , bowed to her husband, and rode away. 
 An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the 
 plantation, going northward in the direction 
 from which he had come. He was a Federal 
 scout. 
 
 III. 
 
 As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward 
 through the bridge, he lost consciousness and 
 
AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 2Q 
 
 was as one already dead. From this state he 
 was awakened ages later, it seemed to him 
 by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his 
 throat, followed by a sense of 'suffocation. 
 Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from 
 his neck downward through every fiber of 
 his body and' limbs. These pains appeared 
 to flash along well-defined lines of ramifica- 
 tion and to beat with an inconceivably rapid 
 periodicity. They seemed like streams of 
 pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable 
 temperature. As to his head, he was con- 
 scious of nothing but a feeling of fullness 
 of congestion. These sensations were unac- 
 companied by thought. The intellectual part 
 of his nature was already effaced; he had 
 power only to feel, and feeling was torment. 
 He was conscious of motion. Encompassed 
 in a luminous cloud, of which he was now 
 merely the fiery heart, without material sub- 
 stance, he swung through unthinkable arcs 
 of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then 
 all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light 
 about him shot upward with the noise of a 
 loud plash ; a frightful roaring was in his ears, 
 and all was cold and dark. The power of 
 thought was restored; he knew that the rope 
 had broken and he had fallen into the stream. 
 
30 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 There was no additional strangulation; the 
 noose about his neck was already suffocating 
 him and kept the water from his lungs. To 
 die of hanging at the bottom of a river! the 
 idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened 
 his eyes in the blackness and saw above him 
 a gleam of light, but how distant, how inac- 
 cessible! He vas still sinking, for the light 
 became fainter and fainter until it was a 
 mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and 
 brighten, and he knew that he was rising to- 
 ward the surface knew it with reluctance, for 
 he was now very comfortable. "To be 
 hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is 
 not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. 
 No; I will not be shot; that is not fair." 
 
 He was not conscious of an effort, but a 
 sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he 
 was trying to free his hands. He gave the 
 struggle his attention, as an idler might ob- 
 serve the feat of a juggler, without interest in 
 the outcome. What splendid effort! what 
 magnificent, w r hat superhuman strength ! Ah, 
 that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord 
 fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, 
 the hands dimly seen on each side in the 
 growing light. He watched them with a new 
 interest as first one and then the other 
 
A T OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 31 
 
 pounced upon the noose at his neck. They 
 tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its 
 undulations resembling those of a water snake. 
 "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he 
 shouted these words to his hands, for the un- 
 doing of the noose had been succeeded by the 
 direst pang which he had yet experienced. 
 His neck ached horribly; his brain was on 
 fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, 
 gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at 
 his mouth. His whole body was racked and 
 wrenched with an insupportable anguish ! But 
 his disobedient hands gave no heed to the 
 command. They beat the water vigorously 
 with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to 
 the surface. He felt his head emerge; his 
 eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest 
 expanded convulsively, and with a supreme 
 and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a 
 great draught of air, which instantly he ex- 
 pelled in a shriek! 
 
 He was* now in full possession of his phys- 
 ical senses. They were, indeed, preternatu- 
 rally keen and alert. Something in the awful 
 disturbance of his organic system had so ex- 
 alted and refined them that they made record 
 of things never before perceived. He felt the 
 ripples upon his face and heard their separate 
 
32 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 sounds as they struck. He looked at the for- 
 est on the bank of the stream, saw the indi^ 
 vidual trees, the leaves and the veining of each 
 leaf saw the very insects upon them, the 
 locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spi- 
 ders stretching their webs from twig to twig. 
 He noted the prismatic colors in all the dew- 
 drops upon a million blades of grass. The 
 humming of the gnats that danced above the 
 eddies of the stream, the beating of the 
 dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water 
 spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their 
 boat all these made audible music. A fish 
 slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the 
 rush of its body parting the water. 
 
 He had come to the surface facing down 
 the stream; in a moment the visible world 
 seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the 
 pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, 
 the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, 
 the sergeant, the two privates, his execution- 
 ers. They were in silhouette against the blue 
 sky. They shouted and gesticulated, point- 
 ing at him; the captain had drawn his pistol, 
 but did not fire; the others were unarmed. 
 Their movements were grotesque and horrible, 
 their forms gigantic. 
 
 Suddenly he heard a sharp report and 
 
AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 33 
 
 something struck the water smartly within a 
 few inches of his head, spattering his face 
 with spray. He heard a second report, and 
 saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at 
 his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke ris- 
 ing from the muzzle. The man in the water 
 saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing 
 into his own through the sights of the rifle. 
 He observed that it was a gray eye, and re- 
 membered having read that gray eyes were 
 keenest and that all famous marksmen had 
 them. Nevertheless, this one had missed. 
 
 A counter swirl had caught Farquhar and 
 turned him half round; he was again looking 
 into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. 
 The sound of a clear, high voice in a monoto- 
 nous singsong now rang out behind him 
 and came across the water with a distinctness 
 that pierced and subdued all other sounds, 
 even the beating of the ripples in his ears. 
 Although no soldier, he had frequented 
 camps enough to know the dread significance 
 of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; 
 the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in 
 the Coming's work. How coldly and piti- 
 lessly with what an even, calm intonation, 
 presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the 
 men with what accurately-measured inter- 
 vals fell those cruel words : 
 3 
 
34 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 ''Attention, company. . . . Shoulder 
 arms. . . . Ready. . . . Aim. . . . 
 Fire." 
 
 Farquhar dived dived as deeply as he 
 could. The water roared in his ears like the 
 voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled 
 thunder of the volley, and, rising again to- 
 ward the surface, met shining bits of metal, 
 singularly flattened, oscillating slowly down- 
 ward. Some of them touched him on the 
 face and hands, then fell away, continuing 
 their descent. One lodged between his col- 
 lar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm, and 
 he snatched it out. 
 
 As he rose to the surface, gasping for 
 breath, he saw that he had been a long time 
 under water; he was perceptibly farther 
 down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers 
 had almost finished reloading; the metal 
 ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as 
 they were drawn from the barrels, turned in 
 the air, and thrust into their sockets. The 
 two sentinels fired again, independently and 
 ineffectually. 
 
 The hunted man saw all this over his shoul- 
 der; he was now swimming vigorously with 
 the current. His brain was as energetic as his 
 arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity 
 of lightning. 
 
AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 35 
 
 "The officer," he reasoned, "will not 
 make that martinet's error a second time. 
 It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single 
 shot. He has probably already given the 
 command to fire at will. God help me, I 
 cannot dodge them all! " 
 
 An appalling plash within two yards of 
 him, followed by a loud rushing sound, dim- 
 inuendo, which seemed to travel back through 
 the air to the fort and died in an explosion 
 which stirred the very river to its deeps ! A 
 rising sheet of water, which curved over him, 
 fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled 
 him! The cannon had taken a hand in the 
 game, As he shook his head free from the 
 commotion of the smitten water, he heard the 
 deflected shot humming through the air 
 ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and 
 smashing the branches in the forest beyond. 
 
 ' ' They will not do that again, ' ' he thought ; 
 ' ' the next time they will use a charge of grape. 
 I must keep my eye upon the gun; the 
 smoke will apprise me the report arrives too 
 late; it lags behind the missile. It is a good 
 gun." 
 
 Suddenly he felt himself whirled round 
 and round spinning like a top. The water, 
 the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, 
 
36 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 fort and men all were commingled and 
 b 1 urred. Objects were represented by their 
 colors only; circular horizontal streaks of 
 color that was all he saw. He had been 
 caught in a vortex and was being whirled on 
 with a velocity of advance and gyration which 
 made him giddy and sick. In a few moments 
 he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of 
 the left bank of the stream the southern 
 bank and behind a projecting point which 
 concealed him from his enemies. The sud- 
 den arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one 
 of his hands on the gravel, restored him 
 and he wept with delight. He dug his fin- 
 gers into the sand, threw it over himself in 
 handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked 
 like gold, like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; 
 he could think of nothing beautiful which 
 it did not resemble. The trees upon the 
 bank were giant garden plants; he noted a 
 definite order in their arrangement, inhaled 
 the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, 
 roseate light shone through the spaces among 
 their trunks, and the wind made in their 
 branches the music of aeolian harps. He 
 had no wish to perfect his escape, was con- 
 tent to remain in that enchanting spot until 
 retaken. 
 

 AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 37 
 
 A whizz and rattle of grapeshot among the 
 branches high above his head roused him 
 from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had 
 fired him a random farewell. He sprang to 
 his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and 
 plunged into the forest. 
 
 All that day he traveled, laying his course 
 by the rounding sun. The forest seemed in- 
 terminable; nowhere did he discover a break 
 in it, not even a woodman's road. He had 
 not known that he lived in so wild a region. 
 There was something uncanny in the revela- 
 tion. 
 
 By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, fam- 
 ishing. The thought of his wife and children 
 urged him on. At last he found a road which 
 led him in what he knew to be the right di- 
 rection. It was as wide and straight as a city 
 street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields 
 bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so 
 much as the barking of a dog suggested hu- 
 man habitation. The black bodies of the 
 great trees formed a straight wall on both 
 sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, 
 like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. 
 Overhead, as he looked up through this rift 
 in the wood, shone great golden stars looking 
 unfamiliar and grouped in strange constella- 
 
38 AN OCCURRENCE 
 
 tions. He was sure they were arranged in 
 some order which had a secret and malign 
 significance. The wood on either side was 
 full of singular noises, among which once, 
 twice, and again he distinctly heard whispers 
 in an unknown tongue. 
 
 His neck was in pain, and, lifting his hand 
 to it, he found it horribly swollen. He knew 
 that it had a circle of black where the rope 
 had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he 
 could no longer close them. His tongue was 
 swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by 
 thrusting it forward from between his teeth 
 into the cool air. How softly the turf had 
 carpeted the untraveled avenue ! He could 
 no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet! 
 
 Doubtless, despite his suffering, he fell 
 asleep while walking, for now he sees another 
 scene perhaps he has merely recovered 
 from a delirium. He stands at the gate of 
 his own home. All is as he 1 ft it, and all 
 bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. 
 He must have traveled the entire night. As 
 he pushes open the gate and passes up the 
 wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female 
 garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and 
 sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet 
 him. At the bottom of the steps she stands 
 
AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 39 
 
 waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an atti- 
 tude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, 
 how beautiful she is ! He springs forward with 
 extended arms. As he is about to clasp her, 
 he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the 
 neck; a blinding white light blazes all about 
 him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon 
 then all is darkness and silence ! 
 
 Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with 
 a broken neck, swung gently from side to 
 side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek 
 bridge. 
 
CHICKAMAUGA. 
 
 /^VNE sunny autumn afternoon a child 
 strayed away from its rude home in a 
 small field and entered a forest unobserved. 
 It was happy in a new sense of freedom from 
 control happy in the opportunity of explora- 
 tion and adventure; for this child's spirit, in 
 bodies of its ancestors, had for many thousands 
 of years been trained to memorable feats of 
 discovery and conquest victories in battles 
 whose crit'.cal moments were centuries, whose 
 victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. 
 From the cradle of its race it had conquered 
 its way through two continents, and, passing 
 a great sea, had penetrated a third, there to 
 be born to war and dominance as a heritage. 
 The child was a boy, aged about six years, 
 the son of a poor planter. In his younger 
 manhood the father had been a soldier, had 
 fought against naked savages, and followed the 
 flag of his country into the capital of a civil- 
 
 (41) 
 
42 CHICK A MA UGA . 
 
 ized race to the far South. In the peaceful 
 life of a planter the warrior-fire survived; once 
 kindled it is never extinguished. The man 
 loved military books and pictures, and the 
 boy had understood enough to make himself 
 a wooden sword, though e\en the eye of his 
 father would hardly have known it for what 
 it was. This weapon he now bore bravely, as 
 became the son of an heroic race, and, pausing 
 now and again in the sunny spaces of the for- 
 est, assumed, with some exaggeration, the 
 postures of aggression and defense that he 
 had been taught by the engraver's art. Made 
 reckless by the ease with which he overcame 
 invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, 
 he committed the common enough military 
 error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous 
 extreme, until he found himself upon the 
 margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose 
 rapid waters barred his direct advance against 
 the flying foe who had crossed with illogical 
 ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be 
 baffled; the spirit of the race which had 
 passed the great sea burned unconquerable in 
 that small breast and would not be denied. 
 Finding a place where some bowlders in the 
 bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap 
 apart, he made his way across and fell again 
 
CHICKAMAUGA. ^~ 
 
 upon the rear guard of his imaginary foe, 
 putting all to the sword. 
 
 Now that the battle had been won, pru- 
 dence required that he withdraw to his base 
 of operations. Alas! like many a mightier 
 conquerer, and like one, the mightiest, he 
 could not 
 
 curb the lust for war, 
 
 Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest 
 star. 
 
 Advancing from the bank of the creek, he 
 suddenly found himself confronted with a 
 new and more formidable enemy; in the path 
 that he was following, bolt upright, with ears 
 erect and paws suspended before it, sat a rab- 
 bit. With a startled cry the child turned and 
 fled, he knew not in what direction, calling 
 with inarticulate cries for his mother, weep- 
 ing, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn 
 by brambles, his little heart beating hard with 
 terror breathless, blind with tears lost in 
 the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he 
 wandered with erring feet .through the tan- 
 gled undergrowth, till at last, overcome with 
 fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space be- 
 tween two rocks, within a few yards of the 
 stream, and, still grasping his toy sword, no 
 longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed 
 
. . CHICK A .If A VGA . 
 
 himself to sleep. The wood birds sang mer- 
 rily above his head; the squirrels, whisking 
 their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to 
 tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and some- 
 where far away was a strange, muffled thun- 
 der, as if the partridges were drumming in 
 celebration of nature's victory over the son 
 of her immemorial enslavers. And back at 
 the little plantation, where white men and 
 black were hastily searching the fields and 
 hedgerows in alarm, a mother's heart was 
 breaking for her missing child. 
 
 Hours passed, and then the little sleeper 
 rose to his feet. The chill of the evening was 
 in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his 
 heart. But he had rested, and he no longer 
 wept. With some blind instinct which im- 
 pelled to action, he struggled through the 
 undergrowth about him and came to a more 
 open ground on his right the brook, to the 
 left a gentle acclivity studded with infrequent 
 trees; over all the gathering gloom of twi- 
 light. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the 
 water. It frightened and repelled him; in- 
 stead of recrossing, in the direction whence 
 he had come, he turned his back upon it and 
 went forward toward the dark inclosing 
 wood. Suddenly he saw before him a 
 
CHICK A MA UGA . . - 
 
 strange moving object which he took to be 
 some large animal a dog, a pig he could 
 not name it; perhaps it was a bear. He 
 had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing 
 to their discredit, and had vaguely wished to 
 meet one. But something in form or move- 
 ment of this object something in the awk- 
 wardness of its approach told him that it was 
 not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. 
 He stood still, and as it came slowly on, 
 gained courage every moment, for he saw 
 that at least it had not the long, menacing 
 ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impression- 
 able mind was half conscious of something 
 familiar in its shambling, awkward gait. Be- 
 fore it had approached near enough to resolve 
 his doubts, he saw that it was followed by an- 
 other and another. To right and to left 
 were many more; the whole open space about 
 him was alive with them all moving forward 
 toward the brook. 
 
 They were men. They crept upon their 
 hands and knees. They used their hands 
 only, dragging their legs. They used their 
 knees only, their arms hanging useless at 
 their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, 
 but fell prone in the attempt. They did noth- 
 ing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to 
 
4 6 
 
 CHICKAMAUGA. 
 
 advance foot by foot in the same direction. 
 Singly, in pairs, and in little groups, they 
 came on through the gloom, some halting 
 now and again while others crept slowly 
 past them, then resuming their movement. 
 They came by dozens and by hundreds; as 
 far on either hand as one could see in the 
 deepening gloom they extended, and the 
 black wood behind them appeared to be in- 
 exhaustible. The very ground seemed in 
 motion toward the creek. Occasionally one 
 who had paused did not again go on, but lay 
 motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, 
 made strange gestures with their hands, 
 erected their arms and lowered them again, 
 clasped their heads; spread their palms up- 
 ward, as men are sometimes seen to do in 
 public prayer. 
 
 Not all of this did the child note; it is what 
 would have been noted by an older observer; 
 he. saw little but that these were men, yet 
 crept like babes. Being men, they were not 
 terrible, though some of them were unfamil- 
 iarly clad. He moved among them freely, 
 going from one to another and peering into 
 their faces with childish curiosity. All their 
 faces were singularly white and many were 
 streaked and gouted with red. Something in 
 
CHICKAMAUGA. ^ 
 
 this something too, perhaps, in their gro- 
 tesque attitudes and movements eminded 
 him of the painted clown whom he had seen 
 last summer in the circus, and he laughed as 
 he watched them. But on and ever on they 
 crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as 
 heedless as he of the dramatic contrast be- 
 tween his laughter and their own ghastly 
 gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. 
 He had seen his father's negroes creep upon 
 their hands and knees for his amusement 
 had ridden them so, "making believe" they 
 were his horses. He now approached one of 
 these crawling figures from behind and with 
 an agile movement mounted it astride. The 
 man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung 
 the small boy fiercely to the ground as an un- 
 broken colt might have done, then turned 
 upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw 
 from the upper teeth to the throat was a great 
 red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh 
 and splinters of bone. The unnatural prom- 
 inence of nose, the absence of chin, the 
 fierce eyes, gave this man the appearance of 
 a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and 
 breast by the blood of its quarry. The man 
 rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The 
 man shook his fist at the child; the child, 
 
48 
 
 CHICKAMAl'GA. 
 
 terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got 
 upon the farther side of it, and took a more 
 serious view of the situation. And so the 
 uncanny multitude dragged itself slowly and 
 painfully along in hideous pantomime 
 moved forward down the slope like a swarm 
 of great black beetles, with never a sound of 
 going in silence profound, absolute. 
 
 Instead of darkening, the haunted land- 
 scape began to brighten. Through the belt 
 of trees beyond the brook shone a strange 
 red light, the trunks and branches of the 
 trees making a black lacework against it. 
 It struck the creeping figures and gave them 
 monstrous shadows, which caricatured their 
 movements on the lit grass. It fell upon 
 their faces, touching their whiteness with 
 a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with 
 which so many of them were freaked and 
 maculated. It sparkled on buttons and bits 
 of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the 
 child turned toward the growing splendor 
 and moved down the slope with his horrible 
 companions; in a few moments had passed 
 the foremost of the throng not much of a 
 feat, considering his advantages. He placed 
 himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in 
 hand, and solemnly directed the march, con- 
 

 CHICK AM ATG A. 
 
 forming his pace to theirs and occasionally 
 turning as if to see that his forces did not 
 straggle. Surely such a leader never before 
 had such a following. 
 
 Scattered about upon the ground now 
 slowly narrowing by the encroachment of 
 this awful march to water, were certain arti- 
 cles to which, in the leader's mind, were 
 coupled no significant associations; an oc- 
 casional blanket, tightly rolled lengthwise, 
 doubled and the ends bound together with a 
 string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a 
 broken musket such things, in short, as are 
 found in the rear of retreating troops, the 
 "spoor" of men flying from their hunters. 
 Everywhere near the creek, which here had 
 a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden 
 into mud by the feet of men and horses. An 
 observer of better experience in the use of 
 his eyes would have noticed that these foot- 
 prints pointed in both directions; the ground 
 had been twice passed over in advance and 
 in retreat. A few hours before, these desper- 
 ate, stricken men, with their more fortunate 
 and now distant comrades, had penetrated 
 the forest in thousands. Their successive 
 battalions, breaking into swarms and reform- 
 ing in lines, had passed the child on every 
 
 4 
 
cj CHICKAMAUGA. 
 
 side had almost trodden on him as he slept. 
 The rustle and murmur of their march had 
 npt awakened him. Almost within a stone's 
 throw of where he lay they had fought a 
 battle; but all unheard by him were the roar 
 of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, 
 "the thunder of the captains and the shout- 
 ing." He had slept through it all, grasping 
 his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter 
 clutch in unconscious sympathy with his 
 martial environment, but as heedless of the 
 grandeur of the struggle as the dead who 
 died to make the glory. 
 
 The fire beyond the belt of woods on the 
 farther side of the creek, reflected to earth 
 from the canopy of its own smoke, was now 
 suffusing the whole landscape. It trans- 
 formed the sinuous line of mist to the vapor 
 of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of 
 red, and red, too, were many of the stones 
 protruding above the surface. But that was 
 blood; the less desperately wounded had 
 stained them in crossing. On them, too, 
 the child now crossed with eager steps; he 
 was going to the fire. As he stood upon the 
 farther bank, he turned about to look at the 
 companions of his march. The advance was 
 arriving at the creek. The stronger had al- 
 
CHICKAMAUGA. ^ 
 
 ready drawn themselves to the brink and 
 plunged their faces in the flood. Three or 
 four who lay without motion appeared to 
 have no heads. At this the child's eyes ex- 
 panded with wonder; even his hospitable un- 
 derstanding could riot accept a phenomenon 
 implying such vitality as that. After slaking 
 their thirst these men had not the strength 
 to back away from the water, nor to keep 
 their heads above it. They were drowned. 
 In rear of these the open spaces of the forest 
 showed the leader as many formless figures 
 of his grim command as at first; but not 
 nearly so many were in motion. He waved 
 his cap for their encouragement and smilingly 
 pointed with his weapon in the direction of 
 the guiding light a pillar of fire to this 
 strange exodus. 
 
 Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he 
 now entered the belt of woods, passed through 
 it easily in the red illumination, climbed a 
 fence, ran across a field, turning now and 
 again to coquette with his responsive shadow, 
 and so approached the blazing ruin of a 
 dwelling. Desolation everywhere. In all 
 the wide glare not a living thing was visible. 
 He cared nothing for that; the spectacle 
 pleased, and he danced with glee in imita- 
 
5 2 CHICKAMAUGA. 
 
 tion of the wavering flames. He ran about 
 collecting fuel, but every object that he found 
 was too heavy for him to cast in from the 
 distance to which the heat limited his ap- 
 proach. In despair he flung in his sword a 
 surrender to the superior forces of nature. 
 His military career was at an end. 
 
 Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon 
 some outbuildings which had an oddly famil- 
 iar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. 
 He stood considering them with wonder, 
 when suddenly the entire plantation, with its 
 inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a 
 pivot. His little world swung half around; 
 the points of the compass were reversed. 
 He recognized the blazing building as his 
 own home! 
 
 For a moment he stood stupefied by the 
 power of the revelation, then ran with stum- 
 bling feet, making a half circuit of the ruin. 
 There, conspicuous in the light of the con- 
 flagration, lay the dead body of a woman 
 the white face turned upward, the hands 
 thrown out and clutched full of grass, the 
 clothing deranged, the long dark hair in 
 tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater 
 part of the forehead was torn away, and from 
 the jagged hole the brain protruded, over- 
 
CHICK A MA VGA . c * 
 
 flowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, 
 crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles- 
 the work of a shell ! 
 
 The child moved his little hands, making 
 wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series 
 of inarticulate and indescribable cries some- 
 thing between the chattering of an ape and 
 the gobbling of a turkey a startling, soul- 
 less, unholy sound, the language of a devil. 
 The child was a deaf mute. 
 
 Then he stood motionless, with quivering 
 lips, looking down upon the wreck. 
 
A SON OF THE GODS. 
 
 A STUDY IN THE HISTORICAL PRESENT TENSE. 
 
 A BREEZY day and a sunny landscape,, 
 An open country to right and left and 
 forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this 
 wood, facing the open but not venturing into 
 it, long lines of troops halted. The wood is 
 alive with them s and full of confused noises 
 the occasional rattle of wheels as a battery 
 of artillery gets into position to cover the ad- 
 vance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers 
 talking; a sound of innumerable feet in the 
 dry leaves that strew the interspaces among 
 the trees; hoarse commands of officers. De- 
 tached groups of horsemen are well in front 
 not altogether exposed many of them in- 
 tently regarding the crest of a hill a mile 
 away in the direction of the interrupted ad- 
 vance. For this powerful army, moving in 
 battle order through a forest, has met with a 
 formidable obstacle the open country. The 
 
 (55) 
 
56 A SON OF THE GODS 
 
 crest of that gentle hill a mile away has a 
 sinister look; it says, Beware! Along it runs 
 a stone wall extending to left and right a 
 great distance. Behind the wall is a hedge; 
 behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees 
 in rather straggling order. Behind the trees 
 what? It is necessary to know. 
 
 Yesterday, and for many days and nights 
 previously, we were fighting somewhere; 
 always there was cannonading, with occa 
 sional keen rattlings of musketry, mingled 
 with cheers, our own or the enemy's, we 
 seldom knew, attesting some temporary ad- 
 vantage. This morning at daybreak the en- 
 emy was goneo We have moved forward 
 across his earthworks, across which we have 
 so often vainly attempted to move before, 
 through the de'bris of his abandoned camps, 
 among the graves of his fallen, into the 
 woods beyond. 
 
 How curiously we regarded everything, 1 
 how odd it all seemed! Nothing appeared 
 quite familiar; the most commonplace ob- 
 jects an old saddle, a splintered wheel, a 
 forgotten canteen everything related some- 
 thing of the mysterious personality of those 
 strange men who had been killing us. The 
 soldier never becomes wholly familiar with 
 
A SOW OF THE GODS. 57 
 
 the conception of his foes as men like him- 
 self; he cannot divest himself of the feeling 
 that they are another order of beings, differ- 
 ently conditioned, in an environment not al- 
 together of the earth. The smallest vestiges 
 of them rivet his attention and engage his 
 interest. He thinks of them as inaccessible; 
 and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them, 
 they appear farther away, and therefore larger 
 than they really are like objects in a fog. 
 He is somewhat in awe of them= 
 
 From the edge of the wood leading up the 
 acclivity are the tracks of horses and wheels 
 the wheels of cannon. The yellow grass is 
 beaten down by the feet of infantry. Clearly 
 they have passed this way in thousands; they 
 have not withdrawn by the country roads. 
 This is significant it is the difference be- 
 tween retiring and retreating 
 
 That group of horsemen is our com- 
 mander, his staff and escort. He is facing the 
 distant crest, holding his field glass against 
 his eyes with both hands, his elbows need- 
 lessly elevated; it is a fashion; it seems to 
 dignify the act; we are all addicted to it. 
 Suddenly he lowers the glass and says a few 
 words to those about him Two or three 
 aides detach themselves from the group and 
 
5 8 A SON OF THE GODS. 
 
 canter away into the woods, along the lines 
 in each direction. We did not hear his 
 words but we know them: "Tell General X. 
 to send forward the skirmish line. ' ' Those of 
 us who have been out of place resume our po- 
 sitions; the men resting at ease straighten 
 themselves, and the ranks are re-formed with- 
 out a command. Some of us staff officers 
 dismount and look at our saddle girths; those 
 already on the ground remount. 
 
 Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the 
 open ground comes a young officer on a 
 snow-white horse. His saddle blanket is 
 scarlet. What a fool! No one who has ever 
 been in battle but remembers how naturally 
 every rifle turns toward the man on a white 
 horse; no one but has observed how a bit of 
 red enrages the bull of battle. That such 
 colors are fashionable in military life must be 
 accepted as the most astonishing of all the 
 phenomena of human vanity. They would 
 seem to have been devised to increase the 
 death rate 
 
 This young officer is in full uniform, as if 
 on parade. He is all agleam with bullion a 
 blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War, 
 A wave of derisive laughter runs abreast of 
 him all along the line. But how handsome 
 
A SON OF THE GODS 50 
 
 he is! with what careless grace he sits upon 
 his horse I 
 
 He reins up within a respectful distance 
 of the corps commander and salutes. The 
 old soldier nods familiarly; he evidently 
 knows him. A brief colloquy between them 
 is going on; the young man seems to be 
 preferring some request which the elder one 
 is indisposed to grant. Let us ride a little 
 nearer. Ah! too late it is ended. The 
 young officer salutes again, wheels his horse, 
 and rides straight toward the crest of the hill. 
 He is deathly pale. 
 
 A thin line of skirmishers, the men de- 
 ployed at six paces or so apart, now pushes 
 from the wood into the open. The com- 
 mander speaks to his bugler, who claps his 
 instrument to his lips. Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! 
 The skirmishers halt in their tracks 
 
 Meantime the young horseman has ad- 
 vanced a hundred yards. He is riding at a 
 walk, straight up the long slope, with never 
 a turn of the head. How glorious! Gods! 
 what would we not give to be in his place " 
 with his soul! He does not draw his saber; 
 his right hand hangs easily at his side. The 
 breeze catches the plume in his hat and flut- 
 ters it smartly. The sunshine rests upon his 
 
6O A SON OF THE GODS. 
 
 shoulder straps, lovingly, like a visible bene- 
 diction. Straight on he rides. Ten thousand 
 pairs of eyes are fixed upon him with an in- 
 tensity that he can hardly fail to feel; ten 
 thousand hearts keep quick time to the in- 
 audible hoof beats of his snowy steed. He is 
 not alone he draws all souls after him; we 
 are but "dead men all." But we remember 
 that we laughed ! On and on, straight for the 
 hedge lined wall, he rides. Not a look back- 
 ward. Oh, if he would but turn if he could 
 but see the love, the adoration, the atonement! 
 Not a word is spoken; the populous depths 
 of the forest still murmur with their unseen 
 and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe 
 there is silence absolute. The burly com- 
 mander is an equestrian statue of himself. 
 The mounted staff officers, their field glasses 
 up, are motionless all. The line of battle in 
 the edge of the wood stands at a new kind of 
 "attention," each man in the attitude in 
 which he was caught by the consciousness of 
 what is going on. All these hardened and 
 impenitent man killers, to whom death in its 
 awfulest forms is a fact familiar to their every- 
 day observation; who sleep on hills trem- 
 bling with the thunder of great guns, dine in 
 the midst of streaming missiles, and play at 
 
A SON OF THE GODS. 6 1 
 
 cards among the dead faces of their dearest 
 friends all are watching with suspended 
 breath and beating hearts the outcome of an 
 act involving the life of one man. Such is 
 the magnetism of courage and devotion. 
 
 If now you should turn your head, you 
 would see a simultaneous movement among 
 the spectators a start, as if it had received an 
 electric shock and looking forward again to 
 the now distant horseman you would see that 
 he has in that instant altered his direction 
 and is riding at. an angle to his former course* 
 The spectators suppose the sudden deflec- 
 tion to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; 
 but take this field glass and you will observe, 
 that he is riding towards a break in the wall 
 and hedge. He means, if not killed, to ride 
 through and overlook the country beyondo 
 
 You are not to forget the nature of this 
 man's act; it is not permitted to you to think 
 of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the 
 other hand, a needless sacrifice of self. If 
 the enemy has not retreated he is in force on 
 that ridge. The investigator will encountei 
 nothing less t^an a line of battle; there is no 
 need of pickets, videttes, skirmishers, to give 
 warning of our approach; our attacking lines 
 will be visible, conspicuous, exposed to an 
 
6? A SON OF THE GODS 
 
 artillery lire that will shave the ground the 
 moment they break from cover, and for half 
 the distance to a sheet of rifle bullets in which 
 nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is 
 there, it would be madness to attack him in 
 front; he must be manceuvered out by the im- 
 memorial plan of threatening his line of com- 
 munication, as necessary to his existence as, 
 to the diver at the bottom of the sea, his air 
 tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there? 
 There is but one way, somebody must go 
 and see. The natural and customary thing 
 to do is to send forward a line of skirmishers. 
 But in this case they will answer in the affirm- 
 ative with all their lives; the enemy, crouch- 
 ing in double ranks behind the stone wall 
 and in cover of the hedge, will wait until it is 
 possible to count each assailant's teeth. At % 
 the first volley a half of the questioning line 
 will fall, the other half before it can accom- 
 plish the predestined retreat. What a price 
 to pay for gratified curiosity ! At what a dear 
 rate an army must sometimes purchase knowl- 
 edge! "Let me pay all," says this gallant 
 man this military Christ! 
 
 There is no hope except the hope against 
 hope that the crest is clear. True, he might 
 prefer capture to death. So long as he ad> 
 
A SON OF THE GODS, 63 
 
 vances the line will not fire why should it ? 
 He can safely ride into the hostile ranks and 
 become a prisoner of war. But this would 
 defeat his object. It would not answer our 
 question; it is necessary either that he return 
 unharmed or be shot to death before our 
 eyes. Only so shall we know how to act. If 
 captured why, that might have been done 
 by a half dozen stragglers. 
 
 Now begins an extraordinary contest of in- 
 tellect between a man and an army. Our 
 horseman, now within a quarter of a mile of 
 the crest, suddenly wheels to the left and gal- 
 lops in a direction parallel to it. He has 
 caught sight of his antagonist; he knows all. 
 Some slight advantage of ground has enabled 
 him to overlook a part of the line. If he 
 were here, he could tell us in words. But that 
 is now hopeless; he must make the best use 
 of the few minutes of life remaining to him, 
 by compelling the enemy himself to tell us as 
 much and as plainly as possible which, nat- 
 urally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. 
 Not a rifleman in those crouching ranks, not 
 a cannoneer at those masked and shotted 
 guns, but knows the needs of the situation, 
 the imperative duty of forbearance. Besides, 
 there has been time enough to forbid them 
 
54 ^ SO* V OF TH& GODS. 
 
 all to fire. True, a single rifle shot might 
 drop him and be no great disclosure. But 
 firing is infectious and see how rapidly he 
 moves, with never a pause except as he 
 whirls his horse about to take a new direction, 
 never directly backward toward us, never di- 
 rectly forward toward his executioners. All 
 this is visible through the glass; it seems 
 occurring within pistol shot; we see all but 
 the enemy, whose presence, whose thoughts, 
 whose motives we infer. To the unaided eye 
 there is nothing but a black figure on a white 
 horse, tracing slow zigzags against the slope 
 of a distant hill so slowly they seem almost 
 to creep. 
 
 Now the glass again he has tired of his 
 failure, or sees his error, or has gone mad; 
 he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as 
 if to take it at a leap, hedge and all! One 
 moment only and he wheels right about and 
 is speeding like the wind straight down the 
 slope toward his friends, toward his death! 
 Instantly the wall is topped with a fierce roll 
 of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards 
 to right and left. This is as instantly dissi- 
 pated by the wind, and before the rattle of 
 the rifles reaches us, he is down. No, he 
 recovers his seat; he has but pulled h\s horse 
 
A SOX OF THE GODS. 
 
 lipon its haunches. They are up and away! 
 A tremendous cheer bursts from our ranks, 
 relieving the insupportable tension of our 
 feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, 
 they are up and away. Away, indeed they 
 are making directly to our left, parallel to 
 the now steadily blazing and smoking wall. 
 The rattle of the musketry is continuous, and 
 every bullet's target is that courageous heart. 
 
 Suddenly a great bank of white smoke 
 pushes upward from behind the wall. An- 
 other and another a dozen roll up before 
 the thunder of the explosions and the hum- 
 ming of the missiles reach our ears, and the 
 missiles themselves come bounding through 
 clouds of dust into our covert, knocking over 
 here and there a man and causing a tempo- 
 rary distraction, a passing thought of self. 
 
 The dust drifts away. Incredible! that 
 enchanted horse and rider have passed a 
 ravine and are climbing another slope to un- 
 veil another conspiracy of silence, to thwart 
 the will of another armed host. Another mo- 
 ment and that crest too is in eruption. The 
 horse rears and strikes the air with its fore- 
 feet. They are down at last. But look 
 again the man has detached himself from 
 the dead animal. He stands erect, motion- 
 
66 
 
 less, holding his saber in his right hand 
 straight above his head. His face is to the 
 enemy. Now he lowers his hand to a level 
 with his face, moves it outward, the blade of 
 the saber describing a downward curve. It 
 is a sign to the enemy, to us, to the world, to 
 posterity. It is a hero's salute to death and 
 history. 
 
 Again the spell is broken; our men attempt 
 to cheer; they are choking with emotion; 
 they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they 
 clutch their weapons and press tumultuously 
 forward into the open. The skirmishers, 
 without orders, against orders, are going for- 
 ward at a keen run, like hounds unleashed. 
 Our cannon speak and the enemy's now open 
 in full chorus, to right and left as far as we 
 can see; the distant crest, seeming now so 
 near, erects its towers of cloud, and the great 
 shot pitch roaring down among our moving 
 masses. Flag after flag of ours emerges from 
 the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catch- 
 ing the sunlight on its burnished arms. The 
 rear battalions alone are in obedience; they 
 preserve their proper distance from the insur- 
 gent front. 
 
 The commander has not moved. He now 
 removes his field glass from his eyes and 
 
A .V().V <>/' '/7//-: GODS. 5 7 
 
 glances to the right and left. He sees the 
 human current flowing on either side of him 
 and his huddled escort, like tide waves parted 
 by a rock. Not a sign of feeling in his face; 
 he is thinking. Again he directs his eyes 
 forward; they slowly traverse that malign and 
 awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his 
 bugler. Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! The injunc- 
 tion has an imperiousness which enforces it. 
 It is repeated by all the bugles of all the 
 subordinate commanders; the sharp metallic 
 notes assert themselves above the hum of the 
 advance, and penetrate the sound of the can- 
 non. To halt is to withdraw. The colors 
 move slowly back; the lines face about and 
 sullenly follow, bearing their wounded; the 
 skirmishers return, gathering up the dead. 
 
 Ah, those many, many needless dead! That 
 great soul whose beautiful body is lying over 
 yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hill- 
 side could it not have been spared the bitter 
 consciousness of a vain devotion? Would 
 one exception have marred too much the 
 pitiless perfection of the divine, eternal plan? 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. 
 
 JEROME SEARING, a private soldier of 
 General Sherman's army, then confront- 
 ing the enemy at and about Kenesaw Mount- 
 ain, Georgia, turned his back upon a small 
 group of officers, with whom he had been talk- 
 ing in low tones, stepped across a light line 
 of earthworks, and disappeared in a forest. 
 None of the men in line behind the works had 
 said a word to him, nor had he so much as 
 nodded to them in passing, but all who saw 
 understood that this brave man had been in- 
 trusted with some perilous duty. Jerome 
 Searing, though a private, did not serve in the 
 ranks; he was detailed for service at division 
 headquarters, being borne upon the rolls as 
 an orderly. ' ' Orderly " is a word covering a 
 multitude of duties. An orderly may be a 
 messenger, a clerk, an officer's servant any- 
 thing. He may perform services for which 
 no provision is made in orders and army reg- 
 ulations. Their nature may depend upon his 
 
 (69) 
 
yO ONE OF THE MISSING. 
 
 aptitude, upon favor, upon accident. Private 
 Searing, an incomparable marksman, young 
 it is surprising how young we all were in 
 those days hardy, intelligent, and insensible 
 to fear, was a scout. The general command- 
 ing his division was not content to obey orders 
 blindly without knowing what was in his front, 
 even when his command was not on detached 
 service, but formed a fraction of the line of 
 the army; nor was he satisfied to receive his 
 knowledge of his vis-a-vis through the cus- 
 tomary channels; he wanted to know more 
 than he was apprised of by the corps com- 
 mander and the collisions of pickets and skir- 
 mishers. Hence Jerome Searing with his 
 extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp 
 eyes and truthful tongue. On this occasion 
 his instructions were simple: to get as near 
 the enemy's lines as possible and learn all 
 that he could. 
 
 In a few moments he had arrived at the 
 picket line, the men on duty there lying in 
 groups of from two to four behind little banks 
 of earth scooped out of the slight depression 
 in which they lay, their rifles protruding from 
 the green boughs with which they had masked 
 their small defenses. The forest extended 
 without a break toward the front, so solemn 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. yj 
 
 and silent that only by an effort of the imagi- 
 nation could it be conceived as populous with 
 armed men, alert and vigilant^a forest for- 
 midable with possibilities of battle.' Pausing a 
 moment in one of these rifle pits to apprise 
 the men of his intention, Searing crept stealth- 
 ily forward on his hands and knees and was 
 soon lost to view in a dense thicket of under- 
 brush. 
 
 "That is the last of him," said one of the 
 men; "I wish I had his rifle; those fellows 
 will hurt some of us with it." 
 
 Searing crept on, taking advantage of every 
 accident of ground and growth to give him- 
 self better cover. His eyes penetrated every- 
 where, his ears took note of every sound. 
 He stilled his breathing, and at the cracking 
 of a twig beneath his knee stopped his prog- 
 ress and hugged the earth. It was slow work 
 but not tedious; the danger made it exciting, 
 but by no physical signs was the excitement 
 manifest. His pulse was as regular, his nerves 
 were as steady, as if he were trying to trap a 
 sparrow. 
 
 " It seems a long time," he thought, "but 
 I cannot have come very far; I am still alive." 
 
 He smiled at his own method of estimating 
 distance, and crept forward. A moment later 
 
OF THE - 
 
 he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth 
 and lay motionless, minute after minute. 
 Through a narrow opening- in the bushes he 
 had caught sight of a small mound of yellow 
 clay one of the enemy's rifle pits. After 
 some little time he cautiously raised his head, 
 inch by inch, then his body upon his hands, 
 spread out on each side of him, all the while 
 intently' regarding the hillock of clay. In 
 another moment he was upon his feet, rifle in 
 hand, striding rapidly forward with little at- 
 tempt at concealment. He had rightly inter- 
 preted the signs, whatever they were; the 
 enemy was gone. 
 
 To assure himself beyond a doubt before 
 going back to report upon so important a 
 'matter, Searing pushed forward across the 
 line of abandoned pits, running from cover to 
 cover in the more open forest, his eyes vigi- 
 lant to discover possible stragglers. He came 
 to the edge of a plantation one of those for- 
 lorn, deserted homesteads of the last years of 
 the war, upgrown with brambles, ugly with 
 broken fences, and desolate with vacant build- 
 ings having blank apertures in place of doors 
 and windows. After a keen reconnoissance 
 from the safe seclusion of a clump of young 
 pines, Searing ran lightly across a, field ancl 
 
OXE OF THE MISSIXG. y-i 
 
 through an orchard to a small structure which 
 stood apart from the other farm buildings, on 
 a slight elevation, which he thought would 
 enable him to overlook a large scope of coun- 
 try in the direction that he supposed the en- 
 emy to have taken in withdrawing. This 
 building, which had originally consisted of a 
 single room, elevated upon four posts about 
 ten feet high, was now little more than a roof; 
 the floor had fallen away, the joists and planks 
 loosely piled on the ground below or resting 
 on end at various angles, not wholly torn from 
 their fastenings above. The supporting posts 
 were themselves no longer vertical. It looked 
 as if the whole edifice would go down at the 
 touch of a finger. Concealing himself in the 
 debris of joists and flooring, Searing looked 
 across the open ground between his point of 
 view and a spur of Kenesaw Mountain, a 
 half mile away. A road leading up and 
 across this spur was crowded with troops 
 the rear guard of the retiring enemy, their 
 gun barrels gleaming in the morning sunlight. 
 Searing had now learned all that he could 
 hope to know. It was his duty to return to 
 his own command with all possible speed and 
 report his discovery. But the gray column 
 of infantry toiling up the mountain road was 
 
74 OXE Or THE MISSING. 
 
 singularly tempting. His rifle an ordinary 
 "Springfield," but fitted with a globe sight 
 and hair trigger would easily send its ounce 
 and a quarter of lead hissing into their midst. 
 That would probably not affect the duration 
 and result of the war, but it is the business of 
 a soldier to kill. It is also his pleasure if he 
 is a good soldier. Searing cocked his rifle 
 and "set" the trigger. 
 
 But it was decreed from the beginning of 
 time that Private Searing was not to murder 
 anybody that bright summer morning, nor 
 was the Confederate retreat to be announced 
 by him For countless ages events had been 
 so matching themselves together in that won- 
 drous mosaic to some parts of which, dimly 
 discernible, we give the name of history, that 
 the acts which he had in will would have 
 marred the harmony of the pattern. 
 
 Some twenty-five years previously the 
 Power charged with the execution of the work 
 according to the design had provided against 
 that mischance by causing the birth of a cer- 
 tain male child in a little village at the foot of 
 the Carpathian Mountains, had carefully 
 reared it, supervised its education, directed 
 its desires into a military channel, and in due 
 time made it an officer of artillery. By the 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. 75 
 
 concurrence of an infinite number of favoring 
 influences and their preponderance over an 
 infinite number of opposing ones, this officer 
 of artillery had been made to commit a breach 
 of discipline and fly from his native country 
 to avoid punishment. He had been directed 
 to New Orleans (instead of New York) where 
 a recruiting officer awaited him on the wharf. 
 He was enlisted and promoted, and things 
 were so ordered that he now commanded a 
 Confederate battery some three miles along 
 the line from where Jerome Searing, the Fed- 
 eral scout, stood cocking his rifle. Nothing 
 had been neglected at every step in the prog- 
 ress of both these men's lives, and in the lives 
 of their ancestors and contemporaries, and of 
 the lives of the contemporaries of their ances- 
 tors the right thing had been done to bring 
 about the desired result. Had anything in all 
 this vast concatenation been overlooked, 
 Private Searing might have fired on the re- 
 treating Confederates that morning,and would 
 perhaps have missed. As it fell out, a cap- 
 tain of artillery, having nothing better to do 
 while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off, 
 amused himself by sighting a field piece ob- 
 liquely to his right at what he took to be some 
 Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and dis- 
 charged it. The shot flew high of its mark, 
 
76 ONE OF THE MISSfNG. 
 
 As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer 
 of his rifle, and, with his eyes upon the distant 
 Confederates, considered where he could plant 
 his shot with the best hope of making a widow 
 or an orphan or a childless mother perhaps 
 all three, lor Private Searing, although he had 
 repeatedly refus: d promotion, was not with- 
 out a certain kind of ambition he heard a 
 rushing sound in the air, like that made by 
 the wings of a great bird swooping down 
 upon its prey. More quickly than he could 
 apprehend the gradation, it increased to a 
 hoarse and horrible roar, as the missile that 
 made it sprang at him out of the sky, strik- 
 ing with a deafening impact one of the posts 
 supporting the confusion of timbers above 
 him, smashing it into matchwood, and bring- 
 ing down the crazy edifice with a loud clatter, 
 in clouds of blinding dust! 
 
 Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of 
 the picket guard on that part of the line 
 through which his brother Jerome had passed 
 on his mission, sat with attentive ears in his 
 breastwork behind the line. Not the faintest 
 sound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the 
 barking of a squirrel, the noise of the wind 
 among the pines all were anxiously noted by 
 his overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly 
 
77 
 
 in front ol his line, he heard a faint, confused 
 rumble, like the clatter of a falling building 
 translated by distance. At the same moment 
 an officer approached him on foot from the 
 rear and saluted. 
 
 "Lieutenant," said the aide, "the colonel 
 directs you to move forward your line and feel 
 the enemy if you find him. If not, continue 
 the advance until directed to halt. There is 
 reason to think that the enemy has retreated." 
 
 The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; 
 the other officer retired. In a moment the 
 men, apprised of their duty by the non-com- 
 missioned officers in low tones, had deployed 
 from their rifle pits and were moving forward 
 in skirmishing order, with set teeth and beat- 
 ing hearts. The lieutenant mechanically 
 looked at his watch. Six o'clock and eight- 
 een minutes. 
 
 When Jerome Searing recovered conscious- 
 ness, he did not at once understand what had 
 occurred. It was, indeed, some time before 
 he opened his eyes. For a while he believed 
 that he had died and been buried, and he 
 tried to recall some portions of the burial 
 service. He thought that his wife was kneel- 
 ing upon his grave, adding her weight to 
 that of the earth upon his breast. The two 
 
7-8 O.VE OF THE MISS1\'G, 
 
 of them, widow and earth, had crushed his 
 coffin. Unless the children should persuade 
 her to go home, he would not much longer 
 be able to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. 
 "I cannot speak to her," he thought; "the 
 dead have no voice; and if I open my eyes 
 I shall get them full of earth." 
 
 He opened his eyes a great expanse of 
 blue sky, rising from a fringe of the tops of 
 trees. In the foreground, shutting out some 
 of the trees, a high, dun mound, angular in 
 outline and crossed by an intricate, pattern- 
 less system of straight lines; in the center a 
 bright ring of metal the whole an immeas- 
 urable distance away a distance so incon- 
 ceivably great that it fatigued him, and he 
 closed his eyes. The moment that he did so 
 he was conscious of an insufferable light. A 
 sound was in his ears like the low, rhythmic 
 thunder of a distant sea breaking in success- 
 ive waves upon the beach, and out of this 
 noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly com- 
 ing from beyond it, and intermingled with 
 its ceaseless undertone, came the articulate 
 words: (< J erome Searing, you are caught 
 like a rat in a trap in a trap, trap, trap." 
 
 Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black 
 darkness, an infinite tranquillity, and Jerome 
 
6>A'A" OF THE M1SS1XG. 79 
 
 Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood, 
 and well assured of the trap that he was in, 
 remembered all, and, nowise alarmed, again 
 opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the 
 strength of his enemy, to plan his defense. 
 
 He was caught in a reclining posture, his 
 back firmly supported by a solid beam. An- 
 other lay across his breast, but he had been 
 able to shrink a little away from it so that it 
 no longer oppressed him, though it was im- 
 movable. A brace joining it at an angle had 
 wedged him against a pile of boards on his 
 left, fastening the arm on that side. His 
 legs, slightly parted and straight along the 
 ground, were covered upward to the knees 
 with a mass of debris which towered above 
 his narrow horizon. His head was as rigidly 
 fixed as in a vice; he could move his eyes, his 
 chin no more. Only his right arm was 
 partly free. ' ' You must help us out of this, ' ' 
 he said to it. But he could not get it from 
 under the heavy timber athwart his chest, 
 nor move it outward more than six inches at 
 the elbow. 
 
 Searing was not seriously injured, nor did 
 he suffer pain. A smart rap on the head 
 from a flying fragment of the splintered post, 
 incurred simultaneously with the frightfully 
 
8o ONE OF rin-: MISSING. 
 
 sudden shock to the nervous system, had 
 momentarily dazed him. His term of un- 
 consciousness, including the period of recov- 
 ery, during which he had had the strange 
 fancies, had probably not exceeded a few 
 seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not 
 wholly cleared away as he began an intelli- 
 gent survey of the situation. 
 
 With his partly free right hand he now 
 tried to get hold of the beam which lay 
 across, but not quite against, his breast. In 
 no way could he do so. He was unable to 
 depress the shoulder so as to push the elbow 
 beyond that edge of the timber which was 
 nearest his knees; failing in that, he could 
 not raise the forearm and hand to grasp the 
 beam. The brace that made an angle with 
 it downward and backward prevented him 
 from doing anything in that direction, and 
 between it and his body the space was not 
 half as wide as the length of his forearm. 
 Obviously he could not get his hand under 
 the beam nor over it; he could not, in fact, 
 touch it at all. Having demonstrated his in- 
 ability, he desisted, and began to think if he 
 could reach any of the debris piled upon his 
 legs. 
 
 In surveying the mass with a view to de- 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. 8 1 
 
 termining that point, his attention was ar- 
 rested by what seemed to be a ring of shining 
 metal immediately in front of his eyes. It 
 appeared to him at first to surround some 
 perfectly black substance, and it was some- 
 what more than a half inch in diameter. It 
 suddenly occurred to his mind that the black- 
 ness was simply shadow, and that the ring 
 was in fact the muzzle of his rifle protruding 
 from the pile of debris. He was not long in 
 satisfying himself that this was so if it was a 
 satisfaction. By closing either eye he could 
 look a little way along the barrel to the 
 point where it was hidden by the rubbish 
 that held it. He could see the one side, 
 with the corresponding eye, at apparently 
 the same angle as the other side with the 
 other eye. Looking with the right eye, the 
 weapon seemed to be directed at a point to 
 the left of his head, and vice versa. He was 
 unable to see the upper surface of the barrel, 
 but could see the under surface of the stock 
 at a slight angle. The piece was, in fact, 
 aimed at the exact center of his forehead. 
 
 In the perception of this circumstance, in 
 the recollection that just previously to the 
 mischance of which this uncomfortable situ- 
 ation was the result, he had cocked the gun 
 6 
 
82 ONE OF THE MISSING. 
 
 and set the trigger so that a touch would 
 discharge it. Private Searing was affected 
 with a feeling of uneasiness. But that was as 
 far as possible from fear; he was a brave 
 man, somewhat familiar with the aspect of 
 rifles from that point of view, and of cannon, 
 too; and now he recalled, with something 
 like amusement, an incident of his experi- 
 ence at the storming of Missionary Ridge, 
 where, walking up to one of the enemy's 
 embrasures from which he had seen a heavy 
 gun throw charge after charge of grape among 
 the assailants, he thought for a moment that 
 the piece had been withdrawn; he could see 
 nothing in the opening but a brazen circle. 
 What that was he had understood just in 
 time to step aside as it pitched another peck 
 of iron down that swarming slope. To face 
 firearms is one of the commonest incidents in 
 a soldier's life firearms, too, with malevo- 
 lent eyes blazing behind them. That is what 
 a soldier is for. Still, Private Searing did 
 not altogether relish the situation, and turned 
 away his eyes. 
 
 After groping, aimless, with his right hand 
 for a time, he made an ineffectual attempt to 
 release his left. Then he tried to disengage 
 his head, the fixity of which was the more 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. 83 
 
 annoying from his ignorance of what held it. 
 Next he tried to free his feet, but while ex- 
 erting the powerful muscles of -his legs for 
 that purpose it occurred to him that a dis- 
 turbance of the rubbish which held them 
 might discharge the rifle; how it could have 
 endured what had already befallen it he could 
 not understand, although memory assisted 
 him with various instances in point. One in 
 particular he recalled, in which, in a moment 
 of mental abstraction, he had clubbed his 
 rifle and beaten out another gentleman's 
 brains, observing afterward that the weapon 
 which he had been diligently swinging by the 
 muzzle was loaded, capped, and at full cock 
 knowledge of which circumstance would 
 doubtless have cheered his antagonist to 
 longer endurance. He had always smiled 
 in recalling that blunder of his ' ' green and 
 salad days " as a soldier, but now he did not 
 smile. He turned his eyes again to the muz- 
 zle of the gun, and for a moment fancied that 
 it had moved; it seemed somewhat nearer. 
 
 Again he looked away. The tops of the 
 distant trees beyond the bounds of the plan- 
 tation interested him; he had not before ob- 
 served how light and feathery they seemed, 
 nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among 
 
84 ONE OF THE MISSING. 
 
 their branches, where they somewhat paled it 
 with their green ; above him it appeared al- 
 most black. "It will be uncomfortably hot 
 here," he thought, "as the day advances. 
 I wonder which way I am looking." 
 
 Judging by such shadows as he could see, 
 he decided that his face was due north; he 
 would at least not have the sun in his eyes, 
 and north well, that was toward his wife 
 and children. 
 
 "Bah!" he exclaimed aloud, "what have 
 they to do with it? " 
 
 He closed his eyes. "As I can't get out, 
 I may as well go to sleep. The rebels are 
 gone, and some of our fellows are sure to 
 stray out here foraging. They'll find me." 
 
 But he did not sleep. Gradually he be- 
 came sensible of a pain in his forehead a 
 dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but 
 growing more and more uncomfortable. He 
 opened his eyes and it was gone closed 
 them and it returned. "The devil!" he 
 said, irrelevantly, and stared again at the 
 sky. He heard the singing of birds, the 
 strange metallic note of the meadow lark, 
 suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He 
 fell into pleasant memories of his childhood, 
 played again with his brother and sister, 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. 85 
 
 raced across the fields, shouting to alarm the 
 sedentary larks, entered the somber forest 
 beyond, and with timid steps followed the faint 
 path to Ghost Rock, standing at last with 
 audible heart throbs before the Dead Man's 
 Cave and seeking to penetrate its awful mys- 
 tery. For the first time he observed that 
 the opening of the haunted cavern was en- 
 circled by a ring of metal. Then all else 
 vanished and left him gazing into the barrel 
 of his rifle as before. But whereas before it 
 had seemed nearer, it now seemed an incon- 
 ceivable distance away, and all the more sin- 
 ister for that. He cried out, and, startled by 
 something in his own voice the note of fear 
 lied to himself in denial: "If I don't sing 
 out I may stay here till I die." 
 
 He now made no further attempt to evade 
 the menacing stare of the gun barrel. If he 
 turned away his eyes an instant it was to 
 look for assistance (although he could not 
 see the ground on either side the ruin), and 
 he permitted them to return, obedient to the 
 imperative fascination. If he closed them, it 
 was from weariness, and instantly the poign- 
 ant pain in his forehead the prophecy and 
 menace of the bullet forced him to reopen 
 them. 
 
86 
 
 The tension of nerve and brain was too se- 
 vere; nature came to his relief with intervals 
 of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of 
 these, he became sensible of a sharp, smart- 
 ing pain in his right hand, and when he 
 worked his fingers together, or rubbed his 
 palm with them, he could feel that they were 
 wet and slippery. He could not see the 
 hand, but he knew the sensation; it was run- 
 ning blood. In his delirium he had beaten it 
 against the jagged fragments of the wreck, 
 had clutched it full of splinters. He resolved 
 that he would meet his fate more manly. He 
 was a plain, common soldier, had no religion 
 and not much philosophy; he could not die 
 like a hero, with great and wise last words, 
 even if there were someone to hear them, but 
 he could die "game," and he would. But if 
 he could only know when to expect the shot! 
 
 Some rats which had probably inhabited 
 the shed came sneak'ing and scampering 
 about. One of them mounted the pile of de- 
 bris that held the rifle; another followed, and 
 another. Searing regarded them at first 
 with indifference, then with friendly interest; 
 then, as the thought flashed into his bewil- 
 dered mind that they might touch the trigger 
 of his rifle, he screamed at them to go away. 
 " It is no business of yours," he cried. 
 

 ONE OF THE MISSING. 87 
 
 The creatures left; they would return later, 
 attack his face, gnaw away his nose, cut his 
 throat he knew that, but he hoped by that 
 time to be dead. 
 
 Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the 
 little ring of metal with its black interior. 
 The pain in his forehead was fierce and con- 
 stant. He felt it gradually penetrating the 
 brain more and more deeply, until at last its 
 progress was arrested by the wood at the 
 back of his head. It grew momentarily more 
 insufferable; he began wantonly beating his 
 lacerated hand against the splinters again to 
 counteract that horrible ache. It seemed to 
 throb with a slow, regular, recurrence each 
 pulsation sharper than the preceding, and 
 sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt the 
 fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife 
 and children, of country, of glory. The whole 
 record of memory was effaced. The world 
 had passed away not a vestige remained. 
 Here in this confusion of timbers and boards 
 is the sole universe. Here is immortality in 
 time each pain an everlasting life. The 
 throbs tick off eternities. 
 
 Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the 
 formidable enemy, the strong, resolute war- 
 rior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was 
 
88 ONE OF THE MISS1XG. 
 
 fallen; his eyes protruded; he trembled in 
 every fiber; a cold sweat bathed his entire 
 body; he screamed with fear. He was not 
 insane he was terrified. 
 
 In groping about with his torn and bleed- 
 ing hand he seized at last a strip of board, 
 and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel 
 with his body, and by bending his elbow as 
 much as the contracted space would permit, 
 he could draw it a few inches at a time. Fin- 
 ally it was altogether loosened from the 
 wreckage covering his legs; he could lift it 
 clear of the ground its whole length. A 
 great hope came into his mind: perhaps he 
 could work it upward, that is to say back- 
 ward, far enough to lift the end and push 
 aside the rifle; or, if that were too tightly 
 wedged, so hold the strip of board as to deflect 
 the bullet. With this object he passed it back- 
 ward inch by inch, hardly daring to breathe 
 lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and 
 more than ever unable to remove his eyes 
 from the rifle, which might perhaps now 
 hasten to improve its waning opportunity. 
 Something at least had been gained; in the 
 occupation of his mind in this attempt at self- 
 defense he was less sensible of the pain in his 
 head and had ceased to scream. But he was 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. 89 
 
 still dreadfully frightened and his teeth rattled 
 like castanets. 
 
 The strip of board ceased to move to the 
 suasion of his hand. He tugged at it with 
 all his strength, changed the direction of its 
 length all he could, but it had met some ex- 
 tended obstruction behind him, and the end 
 in front was still too far away to clear the pile 
 of debris and reach the muzzle of the gun. 
 It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the 
 trigger guard, which, uncovered by the rub- 
 bish, he could imperfectly see with his right 
 eye. He tried to break the strip with his 
 hand, but had no leverage. Perceiving his 
 defeat, all his terror returned, augmented ten- 
 fold. The black aperture of the rifle appeared 
 to threaten a sharper and more imminent 
 death in punishment of his rebellion. The 
 track of the bullet through his head ached 
 with an intenser anguish. He began to trem- 
 ble again. 
 
 Suddenly he became composed. His 
 tremor subsided. He clinched his teeth and 
 drew down his eyebrows. He had not ex- 
 hausted his means of defense; a new design 
 had shaped itself in his mind another plan 
 of battle. Raising the front end of the strip 
 of board, he carefully pushed it forward 
 
9 o 
 
 ONE OF THE MISSING. 
 
 through the wreckage at the side of the rifle 
 until it pressed against the trigger guard. 
 Then he moved the end slowly outward until 
 he could feel that it had cleared it, then, clos- 
 ing his eyes, thrust it against the trigger with 
 all his strength! There was no explosion; 
 the rifle had been discharged as it dropped 
 from his hand when the building fell. But 
 Jerome Searing was dead. 
 
 A line of Federal skirmishers swept across 
 the plantation toward the mountain. They 
 passed on both sides of the wrecked build- 
 ing, observing nothing. At a short distance 
 in their rear came their commander, Lieu- 
 tenant Adrian Searing. He casts his eyes 
 curiously upon the ruin and sees a dead body 
 half buried in boards and timbers. It is so 
 covered with dust that its clothing is Confed- 
 erate gray. Its face is yellowish white; the 
 cheeks are fallen in, the temples sunken, too, 
 with sharp ridges about them, making the 
 forehead forbiddingly narrow; the upper lip, 
 slightly lifted, shows the white teeth, rigidly 
 clinched. The hair is heavy with moisture, 
 the face as wet as the dewy grass all about. 
 From his point of view the officer does not 
 observe the rifle; the man was apparently 
 killed by the fall of the building. 
 
ONE OF THE MISSING. QI 
 
 "Dead a week," said the officer curtly, 
 moving on mechanically pulling out his watch 
 as if to verify his estimate of time. Six 
 o'clock and forty minutes. 
 
KILLED AT RESACA. 
 
 best soldier of our staff was Lieuten- 
 ant Herman Brayle, one of the two aides- 
 de-camp. I don't remember where the gen- 
 eral picked him up; from some Ohio regi- 
 ment, I think; none of us had previously 
 known him, and it would have been strange 
 if we had, for no two of us came from the 
 same State, nor even from adjoining States. 
 The general seemed to think that a position 
 on his staff was a distinction that should be 
 so judiciously conferred as not to beget any 
 sectional jealousies and imperil the integrity 
 of that portion of the Union which was still 
 an integer. He would not even choose them 
 from his own command, but by some jugglery 
 at department headquarters obtained them 
 from other brigades. Under such circum- 
 stances a man's services had to* be very dis- 
 tinguished indeed to be heard of by his family 
 and the friends of his youth ; and ' ' the speak- 
 ing trump of fame" was a trifle hoarse from 
 loquacity, anyhow. 
 
 (93) 
 
94 KILLED AT RES AC A. 
 
 Lieutenant Brayle was more than six feet in 
 height and of splendid proportions, with the 
 light hair and gray-blue eyes which men simi- 
 larly gifted usually find associated with a high 
 order of courage. As he was commonly in 
 full uniform, especially in action, when most 
 officers are content to be less flamboyantly 
 attired, he was a very striking and conspic- 
 uous figure. As for the rest, he had a gentle- 
 man's manners, a scholar's head, and a lion's 
 heart. His age was about thirty. 
 
 We all soon came to like Brayle as much 
 as we admired him, and it was with sincere 
 concern that in the engagement at Stone's 
 River our first action after he joined us we 
 observed that he had one most objectionable 
 and unsoldierly quality, he was vain of his 
 courage. During all the vicissitudes and mu- 
 tations of that hideous encounter, whether 
 our troops were fighting in the open cotton 
 fields, in the cedar thickets, or behind the 
 railway embankment, he did not once take 
 cover, except when sternly commanded to do 
 so by the general, who commonly had other 
 things to think of than the lives of his staff 
 officers or those of his men, for that matter- 
 
 In every subsequent engagement while 
 Brayle was with us it was the same way. He 
 
KILLED AT RES AC A. 95 
 
 would sit his horse like an equestrian statue, 
 in a storm of bullets and grape, in the most 
 exposed places wherever, in fact, duty, re- 
 quiring him to go, permitted him to remain 
 when, without trouble and with distinct 
 advantage to his reputation for common sense 
 he might have been in such security as is 
 possible on a battle field in the brief intervals 
 of personal inaction. 
 
 On foot, from necessity or in deference to 
 his dismounted commander or associates, his 
 conduct was the same. He would stand like 
 a rock in the open when officers and men 
 alike had taken to cover; while men older in 
 service and years, higher in rank and of un- 
 questionable intrepidity, were loyally preserv- 
 ing behind the crest of a hill lives infinitely 
 precious to their country, this fellow would 
 stand, equally idle, on the ridge, facing in the 
 direction of the sharpest fire. 
 
 When battles are going on in open ground 
 it frequently occurs that the opposing lines, 
 confronting one another within a stone's 
 throw for hours, hug the earth as closely as 
 if they loved it. The line officers in their 
 proper places flatten themselves no less, and 
 the field officers, their horses all killed or 
 sent to the rear, crouch beneath the infernal 
 
96 KILLED AT RES AC A, 
 
 canopy of hissing lead and screaming iron 
 without a thought of personal dignity. 
 
 In such circumstances the life of a staff 
 officer of a brigade is distinctly ' ' not a happy 
 one,' ' mainly because of its precarious tenure 
 and the unnerving alternations of emotion to 
 which he is exposed. From a position of 
 that comparative security from which a civil- 
 ian would ascribe his escape to a "miracle," 
 he may be dispatched with an order to some 
 commander of a prone regiment in the front 
 line a person for the moment inconspicuous 
 and not always easy to locate without a deal 
 of search among men somewhat preoccupied, 
 and in a din in which question and answer 
 alike must be imparted in the sign language. 
 It is customary in such cases to duck the head 
 and scuttle away on a keen run, an object of 
 lively interest to some thousands of admiring 
 marksmen. In returning well, it is not cus- 
 tomary to return. 
 
 Brayle's practice was different. He would 
 consign his horse to the care of an orderly 
 he loved his horse and walk quietly away 
 on his horrible errand with never a stoop of 
 the back, his splendid figure, accentuated by 
 his uniform, holding the eye with a strange 
 fascination. We watched him with suspended 
 
KILLED A r RES AC A. g- 
 
 breath, our hearts in our mouths. On one 
 occasion of this kind, indeed, one of our 
 number, an impetuous stammerer, was so 
 possessed by his emotion that he shouted at 
 me: 
 
 "I'll b-b-bet you t-two d-d-dollars they 
 d-drop him b-b-fore he g-gets to that d-d- 
 ditch!" 
 
 I did not accept the brutal wager; I thought 
 they would. Let me do justice to a brave 
 man's memory; in all these needless expos- 
 ures of lite there was no visible bravado nor 
 subsequent narration. In the few instances 
 when some of us had ventured to remonstrate, 
 Brayle had smiled pleasantly and made some 
 light reply, which, however, had not encour- 
 aged a further pursuit of the subject. Once 
 he said: 
 
 "Captain, if ever I come to grief by for- 
 getting your advice, I hope my last moments 
 will be cheered by the sound of your beloved 
 voice breathing into my ear the blessed words, 
 ' I told you so. ' ' 
 
 We laughed at the captain just why we 
 could probably not have explained and that 
 afternoon when he was shot to rags from an 
 ambuscade Brayle remained by the body for 
 some time, adjusting the limbs with needless 
 
care there in the middle of a road swept by 
 gusts of grape and canister! It is easy to 
 condemn this kind of thing, and not very 
 difficult to refrain from imitation, but it is im- 
 possible not to respect, and Brayle was liked 
 none the less for the weakness which had so 
 heroic an expression. We wished he were 
 not a fool, but he went on that way to the 
 end, sometimes hard hit, but always return- 
 ing to duty as good as new. 
 
 Of course, it came at last; he who defies 
 the law of probabilities challenges an adver- 
 sary that is never beaten. It was at Resaca, 
 in Georgia, during the movement that resulted 
 in the capture of Atlanta. In front of our 
 brigade the enemy's line of earthworks ran 
 through open fields along a slight crest. At 
 each end of this open ground we were close 
 up to them in the woods, but the clear ground 
 we could not hope to occupy until night, 
 when the darkness would enable us to burrow 
 like moles and throw up earth. At this point 
 our line was a quarter-mile away in the edge 
 of a wood. Roughly, we formed a semicircle, 
 the enemy's fortified line being the chord of 
 the arc. 
 
 ' ' Lieutenant, go tell Colonel Ward to work 
 up as close as he can get cover, and not to 
 
KILLED AT RES AC A, 99 
 
 waste much ammunition in unnecessary fir- 
 ing. You may leave your horse." 
 
 When the general gave this* direction we 
 were in the fringe of the forest, near the right 
 extremity of the arc. Colonel Ward was at 
 the left. The suggestion to leave the horse 
 obviously enough meant that Brayle was to 
 take the longer line, through the woods and 
 among the men. Indeed, the suggestion was 
 needless; to go by the short route meant ab- 
 solutely certain failure to deliver the message. 
 Before anybody could interpose, Brayle had 
 cantered lightly into the field and the enemy's 
 works were in crackling conflagration. 
 
 "Stop that damned fool!" shouted the 
 general. 
 
 A private of the escort, with more ambition 
 than brains, spurred forward to obey, and 
 within ten yards left himself and horse dead on 
 the field of honor. 
 
 Brayle was beyond recall, galloping easily 
 along parallel to the enemy and less than two 
 hundred yards distant. He was a picture to 
 see! His hat had been blown or shot from 
 his head, and his long, blonde hair rose and fell 
 with the motion of his horse. He sat erect 
 in the saddle, holding the reins lightly in his 
 left hand, his right hanging carelessly at his 
 
100 KILLED AT RES AC A. 
 
 side. An occasional glimpse of his handsome 
 profile as he turned his head one way or the 
 other proved that the interest which he took 
 in what was going on was natural and without 
 affectation. 
 
 The picture was intensely dramatic, but in 
 no degree theatrical. Successive scores of 
 rifles spat at him viciously as he came within 
 range, and our own line in the edge of the 
 timber broke out in visible and audible de- 
 fense. No longer regardful of themselves or 
 their orders, our fellows sprang to their feet, 
 and, swarming into the open, sent broad sheets 
 of bullets against the blazing crest of the of- 
 fending works, which poured an answering 
 fire into their unprotected groups with deadly 
 effect. The artillery on both sides joined the 
 battle, punctuating the rattle and roar with 
 deep earth-shaking explosions and tearing 
 the air with storms of screaming grape, which, 
 from the enemy's side, splintered the trees 
 and spattered them with blood, and from ours 
 defiled the smoke of his arms with banks and 
 clouds of dust from his parapet. 
 
 My attention had been for a moment averted 
 to the general combat, but -now, glancing 
 down the unobscured avenue between these 
 two thunderclouds, I saw Brayle, the cause 
 
KIL I. E D AT K ESA CA. I O I 
 
 of the carnage. Invisible now from either side, 
 and equally doomed by friend and foe, he 
 stood in the shot-swept space, motionless, his 
 face toward the enemy. At some little dis- 
 tance lay his horse. I instantly divined the 
 cause of his inaction. 
 
 As topographical engineer I had, early in 
 the day, made a hasty examination of the 
 ground, and now remembered that at that 
 point was a deep and sinuous gully, crossing 
 half the field from the enemy's line, its gen- 
 eral course at right angles to it. From where 
 we were it was invisible, and Brayle had evi- 
 dently not known of it. Clearly, it was im- 
 passible. Its salient angles would have af- 
 forded him absolute security if he had chosen 
 to be satisfied with the miracle already wrought 
 in his favor. He could not go forward, he 
 would not turn back; he stood awaiting 
 death. It did not keep him long waiting. 
 
 By some mysterous coincidence, almost in- 
 stantaneously as he ft-11, the firing ceased, a few 
 desultory shots at long intervals serving rather 
 to accentuate than break the silence. It was 
 as if both sides had suddenly repented of 
 their profitless crime. Four stretcher bearers, 
 following a sergeant with a white flag, soon 
 afterward moved unmolested into the field, 
 
lQ 2 KILLED AT RES AC A. 
 
 and made straight for Brayle's body. Sev- 
 eral Confederate officers and men came out to 
 meet them, and, with uncovered heads, as- 
 sisted them to take up their sacred burden. 
 As it was borne away toward us we heard 
 beyond the hostile works fifes and a muffled 
 drum a dirge. A generous enemy honored 
 the fallen brave. 
 
 Amongst the dead man's effects was a 
 soiled Russia-leather pocketbook. In the 
 distribution of mementoes of our friend, which 
 the general, as administrator, decreed, this 
 fell to me. 
 
 A year after the close of the war, on my 
 way to California, I opened and idly inspected 
 it. Out of an overlooked compartment fell a 
 letter without envelope or address. It was 
 in a woman's handwriting, and began with 
 words of endearment, but no name. 
 
 It had the following date line: " San Fran- 
 cisco, Cal. , July 9, 1862." The signature 
 was "Darling," in marks of quotation. In- 
 cidentally, in the body of the text, the writer's 
 full name was given Marian Mendenhall. 
 
 The letter showed evidence of cultivation 
 and good breeding, but it was an ordinary 
 love letter, if a love letter can be ordinary. 
 There was not much in it, but there was some- 
 thing. It was this: 
 
KILLED AT RES AC A. 103 
 
 ''Mr. Winters, whom I shall always hate 
 for it, has been telling that at some battle 
 in Virginia, where he got his hurt, you were 
 seen crouching behind a tree. I think he 
 wants to injure you in my regard, which he 
 knows the story would do if I believed it. I 
 could bear to hear of my soldier lover's death, 
 but not of his cowardice." 
 
 These were the v/ords which on that sunny 
 afternoon, in a distant region, had slain a 
 hundred men. Is woman weak? 
 
 One evening I called on Miss Mendenhall 
 to return the letter to her. I intended, also, 
 to tell her what she had done but not that 
 she did it. I found her in a handsome 
 dwelling on Rincon Hill. She was beautiful, 
 well bred in a word, charming. 
 
 "You knew Lieutenant Herman Brayle," 
 I said, rather abruptly. "You know, doubt- 
 less, that he fell in battle. Among his effects 
 was found this letter from you. My errand 
 here is to place it in your hands." 
 
 She mechanically took the letter, glanced 
 through it with deepening color, and then, 
 looking at me with a smile, said: 
 
 "It is very good of you, though I am sure 
 it was hardly worth while." She started sud- 
 denly, and changed color. "This stain," 
 she said, "is it surely it is not " 
 
IO4 KILLED AT RES AC A. 
 
 "Madam," I said, "pardon me, but that is 
 the blood of the truest and bravest heart that 
 ever beat. ' ' 
 
 She hastily flung the letter on the blazing 
 coals. "Uh! I cannot bear the sight of 
 blood!" she said. "How did he die? " 
 
 I had involuntarily risen to rescue that scrap 
 of paper, sacred even to me, and now stood 
 partly behind her. As she asked the question 
 she turned her face about and slightly up- 
 ward. The light of the burning letter was 
 reflected in her eyes, and touched her cheek 
 with a tinge of crimson like the stain upon its 
 page. I had never seen anything so beauti- 
 ful as this detestable creature. 
 
 "He was bitten by a snake," I replied. 
 
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 
 
 "Do you think, colonel, that your brave 
 Cou ter would like to put one of his guns in 
 here ? ' ' the general asked. 
 
 He was apparently not altogether serious; 
 it certainly did not seem a place where any 
 artillerist, however brave, would like to put a 
 gun. The colonel thought that possibly his 
 division commander meant good-humoredly 
 to intimate that Captain Coulter's courage 
 had been too highly extolled in a recent con- 
 versation between them. 
 
 "General," he replied, warmly, "Coulter 
 would like to put a gun anywhere within 
 reach of those people," with a motion of his 
 hand in the direction of the enemy. 
 
 "It is the only place," said the general. 
 He was serious, then. 
 
 The place was a depression, a " notch," in 
 the sharp crest of a hill. It was a pass, and 
 through it ran a turnpike, which, reaching 
 this highest point in its course by a sinuous 
 
IO6 THE AI-'FAIit AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 
 
 ascent through a thin forest, made a similar, 
 though less steep, descent toward the enemy. 
 For a mile to the left and a mile to the right 
 the ridge, though occupied by Federal in- 
 fantry lying close behind the sharp crest, and 
 appearing as if held in place by atmospheric 
 pressure, was inaccessible to artillery. There 
 was no place but the bottom of the notch, and 
 that was barely wide enough for the roadbed. 
 From the Confederate side this point was 
 commanded by two batteries posted on a 
 slightly lower elevation beyond a creek, and 
 a half-mile away. All the guns but one 
 were masked by the trees of an orchard; that 
 one it seemed a bit of impudence was di- 
 rectly in front of a rather grandiose building, the 
 planter's dwelling. The gun was safe enough 
 in its exposure but only because the Fed- 
 eral infantry had been forbidden to lire. 
 Coulter's Notch it came to be called so 
 was not, that pleasant summer afternoon, a 
 place where one would "like to put a gun." 
 Three or four dead horses lay there, sprawl- 
 ing in the road, three or four dead men in a 
 trim row at one side of it, and a little back, 
 down the hill. All but one were cavalrymen 
 belonging to the Federal advance. One was 
 a quartermaster. The general commanding 
 
THE AFFAIR AT COULTERS XOTCH. IOJ 
 
 the division, and the colonel commanding the 
 brigade, with their staffs and escorts, had 
 ridden into the notch to have a look at the 
 enemy's guns which had straightway ob- 
 scured themselves in towering clouds of 
 smoke. It was hardly profitable to be curi- 
 ous about guns which had the trick of the 
 cuttlefish, and the season of observation was 
 brief. At its conclusion a short remove 
 backward from where it began occurred the 
 conversation already partly reported. " It is 
 the only place, ' ' the general repeated thought- 
 fully, "to get at them." 
 
 The colonel looked at him gravely. 
 ''There is room for but one gun, General 
 one against twelve." 
 
 "That is true for only one at a time," 
 said the commander with something like, yet 
 not altogether like, a smile. "But then, 
 your brave Coulter a whole battery in him- 
 self." 
 
 The tone of irony was now unmistakable. 
 It angered the colonel, but he did not know 
 what to say. The spirit of military subor- 
 dination is not favorable to retort, nor even 
 deprecation. At this moment a young officer 
 of artillery came riding slowly up the road 
 attended by his bugler. It was Captain 
 
108 THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S A'OTCff. 
 
 Coulter. He could not have been more than 
 twenty-three years of age. He was of me- 
 dium height, but very slender and lithe, sit- 
 ting his horse with something of the air of a 
 civilian. In face he was of a type singularly 
 unlike the men about him; thin, high-nosed, 
 gray-eyed, with a slight blonde mustache, 
 and long, rather straggling hair of the same 
 color. There was an apparent negligence in 
 his attire. His cap was worn with the visor 
 a trifle askew; his coat was buttoned only at 
 the sword belt, showing a considerable ex- 
 panse of white shirt, tolerably clean for that 
 stage of the campaign. But the negligence 
 was all in his dress and bearing; in his face 
 was a look of intense interest in his surround- 
 ings. His gray eyes, which seemed occasion- 
 ally to strike right and left across the land- 
 scape, like search-lights, were for the most 
 part fixed upon the sky beyond the Notch; 
 until he should arrive at the summit of the 
 road, there was nothing else in that direc- 
 tion to see. As he came opposite his di- 
 vision and brigade commanders at the road- 
 side he saluted mechanically and was about 
 to pass on. Moved by a sudden impulse, the 
 colonel signed to him to halt. 
 
 "Captain Coulter," he said, "the enemy 
 
THE A FFA IR A T CO UL TER'S NO TCH. \ 09 
 
 has twelve pieces over there on the next ridge. 
 Ifl rightly understand the general, he directs 
 that you bring up a gun and engage them." 
 
 There was a blank silence; the general 
 looked stolidly at a distant regiment swarm- 
 ing slowly up the hill through rough under- 
 growth, like a torn and draggled cloud of 
 blue smoke; the captain appeared not to have 
 observed him. Presently the captain spoke, 
 slowly and with apparent effort: 
 
 "On the next ridge, did you say, sir? 
 Are the guns near the house? " 
 
 "Ah, you have been over this road before! 
 Directly at the house." 
 
 "And it is necessary to engage them? 
 The order is imperative ? ' ' 
 
 His voice was husky and broken. He was 
 visibly paler. The colonel was astonished 
 and mortified. He stole a glance at the com- 
 mander. In that set, immobile face was no 
 sign; it was as hard as bronze. A moment 
 later the general rode away, followed by his 
 staff and escort. The colonel, humiliated 
 and indignant, was about to order Captain 
 Coulter in arrest, when the latter spoke a few 
 words in a low tone to his bugler, saluted, and 
 rode straight forward into the Notch, where, 
 presently, at the summit of the road, his field. 
 
I TO THE A I' I-' AIR A/' Cdl'L'I'J-lK'S NOTCH- 
 
 glass at his eyes, he showed against the sky, 
 he and his horse, sharply defined and motion- 
 less as an equestrian statue. The bugler had 
 dashed down the road in the opposite direc- 
 tion at headlong speed and disappeared 
 behind a wood. Presently his bugle was 
 heard singing in the cedars, and in an incred- 
 ibly short time a single gun with its caisson, 
 each drawn by six horses and manned by its 
 full complement of gunners, came bounding 
 and banging up the grade in a storm of dust, 
 unlimbered under cover, and was run forward 
 by hand to the fatal crest among the dead 
 horses. A gesture of the captain's arm, some 
 strangely agile movements of the men in load- 
 ing, and almost before the troops along the 
 way had ceased to hear the rattle of the 
 wheels, a great white cloud sprang forward 
 down the slope, and with a deafening re- 
 port the affair at Coulter's Notch had begun. 
 It is not intended to relate in detail the 
 progress and incidents of that ghastly con- 
 test a contest without vicissitudes, its alter- 
 nations only different degrees of despair. 
 Almost at the instant when Captain Coulter's 
 gun blew its challenging cloud twelve answer- 
 ing clouds rolled upward from among the 
 trees about the plantation house, a deep mul- 
 
7V//-; AFI-'AIR A T COUL TER'S XOTCff. I I I 
 
 tiple report roared back like a broken echo, 
 and thenceforth to the end the Federal can- 
 noneers fought their hopeless battle in an at- 
 mosphere of living iron whose thoughts were 
 lightnings and whose deeds were death. 
 
 Unwilling to see the efforts which he could 
 not aid and the slaughter which he could not 
 stay, the colonel had ascended the ridge at a 
 point a quarter of a mile to the left, whence 
 the Notch, itself invisible but pushing up suc- 
 cessive masses of smoke, seemed the crater 
 of a volcano in thundering eruption. With 
 his glass he watched the enemy's guns, noting 
 as he could the effects of Coulter's fire if 
 Coulter still lived to direct it. He saw that 
 the Federal gunners, ignoring the enemy's 
 pieces, whose position could be determined by 
 their smoke only, gave their whole attention 
 to the one which maintained its place in the 
 open the lawn in front of the house, with 
 which it was accurately in line. Over and 
 about that hardy piece the shells exploded at 
 intervals of a few seconds. Some exploded 
 in the house, as could be seen by thin ascen- 
 sions of smoke from the breached roof. Fig- 
 ures of prostrate men and horses were plainly 
 visible. 
 
112 THE A FFA IR A T CO UL TER'S NO TCH. 
 
 " If our fellows are doing- such good work 
 with a single gun/' said the colonel to an 
 aide who happened to be nearest, "they must 
 be suffering like the devil from twelve. Go 
 down and present the commander of that 
 piece with my congratulations on the accu- 
 racy of his fire." 
 
 Turning to his adjutant-general he said, 
 "Did you observe Coulter's damned reluc- 
 tance to obey orders ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, sir, I did." 
 
 "Well, say nothing about it, please. I 
 don't think the general will care to make any 
 accusations. He will probably have enough 
 to do in explaining his own connection with 
 this uncommon way of amusing the real- 
 guard of a retreating enemy." 
 
 A young officer approached 1'rom below, 
 climbing breathless up the acclivity. Almost 
 before he had saluted, he gasped out: 
 
 "Colonel, I am directed by Colonel Har- 
 mon to say that the enemy's guns are within 
 easy reach of our rifles, and most of them 
 visible from various points along the ridge. ' ' 
 
 The brigade commander looked at him 
 without a trace of interest in his expression. 
 >'I know it," he said quietly. 
 
 The young adjutant was visibly embarrassed. 
 
THE A FFA IR AT COUL TER '$ NO TCH. 113 
 
 ''Colonel Harmon would like to have per- 
 mission to silence those guns," he stammered. 
 
 "So should I," the colonel said in the 
 same tone. "Present my compliments to 
 Colonel Harmon and say to him that the 
 general's orders not to fire are still in force." 
 
 The adjutant saluted and retired. The 
 colonel ground his heel into the earth and 
 turned to look again at the enemy's guns. 
 
 "Colonel," said the adjutant-general, "I 
 don't know that I ought to say anything, but 
 there is something wrong in all this. Do you 
 happen to know that Captain Coulter is from 
 the South? " 
 
 "No; was he, indeed?" 
 
 "I heard that last summer the division 
 which the general then commanded was in 
 the vicinity of Coulter's home camped 
 there for weeks, and 
 
 "Listen!" said the colonel, interrupting 
 with an upward gesture. ' ' Do you hear 
 tkatf" 
 
 "That" was the silence of the Federal 
 gun. The staff, the orderlies, the lines of 
 infantry behind the crest all had "heard," 
 and were looking curiously in the direction 
 of the crater, whence no smoke now as- 
 cended except desultory cloudlets from the 
 
I 1 4 THE A FFA IR A T CO UL TER S NO TCH. 
 
 enemy's shells. Then came the blare of a 
 bugle, a faint rattle of wheels; a minute 
 later the sharp reports recommenced with 
 double activity. The demolished gun had 
 been replaced with a sound one. 
 
 "Yes," said the adjutant-general, resum- 
 ing his narrative, "the general made the 
 acquaintance of Coulter's family. There 
 was trouble I don't know the exact nature 
 of it something about Coulter's wife. She 
 is a red-hot Secessionist, as they all are, 
 except Coulter himself, but she is a good 
 wife and high-bred lady. There was a com- 
 plaint to army headquarters. The general 
 was transferred to this division. It is odd 
 that Coulter's battery should afterward have 
 been assigned to it." 
 
 The colonel had risen from the rock upon 
 which they had been sitting. His eyes were 
 blazing with a generous indignation. 
 
 ."See here, Morrison," said he, looking 
 his gossiping staff officer straight in the 
 face, "did you get that story from a gentle- 
 man or a liar?" 
 
 "I don't want to say how I got it, Colonel, 
 unless it is necessary" he was blushing a 
 trifle "but I'll stake my life upon its truth 
 in the main." 
 
THE A FFAIR AT COUL TER'S NO TCH. 115 
 
 The colonel turned toward a small knot 
 of officers some distance away. "Lieuten- 
 ant Williams!" he shouted. 
 
 One of the officers detached himself from 
 the group, and, coming forward, saluted, say- 
 ing: " Pardon me, Colonel, I thought you 
 had been informed. Williams is dead down 
 there by the gun. What can I do, sir?" 
 
 Lieutenant Williams was the aide who had 
 had the pleasure of conveying to the officer 
 in charge of the gun his brigade command- 
 er's congratulations. 
 
 "Go," said the colonel, "and direct the 
 withdrawal of that gun instantly. Hold! I'll 
 go myself." 
 
 He strode down the declivity toward the 
 rear of the Notch at a break-neck pace, over 
 rocks and through brambles, followed by 
 his little retinue in tumultuous disorder. At 
 the foot of the declivity they mounted their 
 waiting animals and took to the road at a 
 lively trot, round a bend and into the Notch. 
 The spectacle \* hich they encountered there 
 was appalling. 
 
 Within that defile, barely broad enough 
 for a single gun, were piled the wrecks of 
 no fewer than four. They had noted the 
 silencing of only the last one disabled there 
 
1 1 6 THE A FFA IR AT COUL TER'S NO TCH. 
 
 had been a lack of men to replace it quickly. 
 The debris lay on both sides of the road; the 
 men had managed to keep an open way be- 
 tween, through which the fifth piece was now 
 firing. The men? they looked like demons 
 of the pit! All were hatless, all stripped to 
 the waist, their reeking skins black with 
 blotches of powder and spattered with gouts 
 of blood. They worked like madmen, with 
 rammer and cartridge, lever and lanyard. 
 They set their swollen shoulders and bleeding 
 hands against the wheels at each recoil and 
 heaved the heavy gun back to its place. 
 There were no commands; in that awful 
 environment of whooping shot, exploding 
 shells, shrieking fragments of iron, and flying 
 splinters of wood, none could have been 
 heard. Officers, if officers there were, were 
 indistinguishable; all worked together each 
 while he lasted governed by the eye. 
 When the gun was sponged, it was loaded; 
 when loaded, aimed and fired. The colonel 
 observed something new to his military experi- 
 ence something horrible and unnatural: the 
 gun was bleeding at the mouth ! In temporary 
 default of water, the man sponging had 
 dipped his sponge in a pool of his comrades' 
 blood. In all this work there was no clash- 
 
THE A FFA IK AT CO UL TER'S NO TCH. I 1 7 
 
 ing; the duty of the instant was obvious. 
 When one fell, another, looking a trifle 
 cleaner, seemed to rise from the earth in the 
 dead man's tracks, to fall in his turn. 
 
 With the ruined guns lay the ruined men 
 alongside the wreckage, under it and atop 
 of it; and back down the road a ghastly 
 procession ! crept on hands and knees such 
 of the wounded as were able to- move. The 
 colonel he had compassionately sent his 
 cavalcade to the right about had to ride 
 over those who were entirely dead in order 
 not to crush those who were partly alive. 
 Into that hell he tranquilly held his way, 
 rode up alongside the gun, and, in the ob- 
 scurity of the last discharge, tapped upon the 
 cheek the man holding the rammer who 
 straightway fell, thinking himself killed. A 
 fiend seven times damned sprang out of the 
 smoke to take his place, but paused and 
 gazed up at the mounted officer with an 
 unearthly regard, his teeth flashing between 
 his black lips, his eyes, fierce and expanded, 
 burning like coals beneath his bloody brow. 
 The colonel made an authoritative gesture 
 and pointed to the rear. The fiend bowed 
 in token of obedience. It was Captain 
 Coulter. 
 
I 1 8 THE A FFA I R AT CO UL TER'S NO TCH. 
 
 Simultaneously with the colonel's arrest- 
 ing sign, silence fell upon the whole field of 
 action. The procession of missiles no longer 
 streamed into that defile of death; the enemy 
 also had ceased firing. His army had been 
 gone for hours, and the commander of his 
 rear guard, who had held his position peri- 
 lously long in hope to silence the Federal 
 fire, at that strange moment had silenced his 
 own. "I was not aware of the breadth of 
 my authority," thought the colonel, face- 
 tiously, riding forward to the crest to see 
 what had really happened. 
 
 An hour later his brigade was in bivouac 
 on the enemy's ground, and its idlers were 
 examining, with something of awe, as the 
 faithful inspect a saint's relics, a score of 
 straddling dead horses and three disabled 
 guns, all spiked. The fallen men had been 
 carried away ; their crushed and broken bodies 
 would have given too great satisfaction. 
 
 Naturally, the colonel established himself 
 and his military family in the plantation 
 house. It was somewhat shattered, but it 
 was better than the open air. The furniture 
 was greatly deranged and broken. The 
 walls and ceilings were knocked away here 
 and there, and there was a lingering odor of 
 
THE A FFA IR AT CO UL TER'S NO TCH. 1 1 9 
 
 powder smoke everywhere. The beds, the 
 closets of women's clothing, the cupboards 
 were not greatly damaged. The new ten- 
 ants for a night made themselves comfort- 
 able, and the practical effacement of Coul- 
 ter's battery supplied them with an interest- 
 ing topic. 
 
 During supper that evening an orderly of 
 the escort showed himself into the dining 
 room and asked permission to speak to the 
 colonel. 
 
 "What is it, Barbour?" said that officer 
 pleasantly, having overheard the request. 
 
 ''Colonel, there is something wrong in the 
 cellar; I don't know what somebody there. 
 I was down there rummaging about." 
 
 "I will go down and see," said a staff offi- 
 cer, rising. 
 
 "So will I," the colonel said; "let the 
 others remain. Lead on, orderly." 
 
 They took a candle from the table and de- 
 scended the cellar stairs, the orderly in visi- 
 ble trepidation. The candle made but a 
 feeble light, but presently, as they advanced, 
 its narrow circle of illumination revealed a 
 human figure seated on the ground against 
 the black stone wall which they were skirting, 
 its knees elevated, its head bowed sharply 
 
12O THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCtf. 
 
 forward. The face, which should have been 
 seen in profile, was invisible, for the man was 
 bent so far forward that his long hair con- 
 cealed it; and, strange to relate, the beard, 
 of a much darker hue, fell in a great tangled 
 mass and lay along the ground at his feet. 
 They involuntarily paused; then the colonel, 
 taking the candle from the orderly's shaking 
 hand, approached the man and attentively 
 considered him. The long dark beard was 
 the hair of a woman dead. The dead 
 woman clasped in her arms a dead babe. 
 Both were clasped in the arms of the man, 
 pressed against his breast, against his lips. 
 There was blood in the hair of the woman; 
 there was blood in the hair of the man. A 
 yard away lay an infant's foot. It was near 
 an irregular depression in the beaten earth 
 which formed the cellar's floor a fresh ex- 
 cavation with a convex bit of iron, having 
 jagged edges, visible in one of the sides. 
 The colonel held the light as high as he 
 could. The floor of the room above was 
 broken through, the splinters pointing at all 
 angles downward. ' ' This casemate is not 
 bomb-proof," said the colonel gravely; it 
 did not occur to him that his summing up of 
 the matter had any levity in it. 
 
THE A FFA IR AT CO UL TER'S NO TCH. I 2 1 
 
 They stood about the group awhile in si- 
 lence; the staff officer was thinking of his 
 unfinished supper, the orderly of what might 
 possibly be in one of the casks on the other 
 side of the cellar. Suddenly the man, whom 
 they had thought dead, raised his head and 
 gazed tranquilly into their faces. His com- 
 plexion was coal black; the cheeks were ap- 
 parently tattooed in irregular sinuous lines 
 from the eyes downward. The lips, too, were 
 white, like those of a stage negro. There 
 was blood upon his forehead. 
 
 The staff officer drew back a pace, the or- 
 derly two paces. 
 
 "What are you doing here, my man?" 
 said the colonel, unmoved. 
 
 "This house belongs to me, sir," was the 
 reply, civilly delivered. 
 
 " To you ? Ah, I see ! And these ? ' ' 
 
 "My wife and child. I am Captain Coul- 
 ter." 
 
A TOUGH TUSSLE. 
 
 E night in the autumn of 1861 a man 
 sat alone in the heart of a forest in 
 Western Virginia. The region was then, and 
 still is, one of the wildest on the continent 
 the Cheat Mountain country. There was 
 no lack of people close at hand, however; 
 within two miles of where the man sat was 
 the now silent camp of a whole Federal 
 brigade. Somewhere about it might be 
 still nearer was a force of the enemy, the 
 numbers unknown. It was this uncertainty 
 as to its numbers and position that ac- 
 counted for the man's presence in that lonely 
 spot; he was a young officer of a Federal 
 infantry regiment, and his business there was 
 to guard his sleeping comrades in the camp 
 against a surprise. He was in command of a 
 detachment of men constituting a picket 
 guard. These men he had stationed just at 
 nightfall in an irregular line, determined by 
 the nature of the ground, several hundred 
 
 (123) 
 
124 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 
 
 yards in front of where he now sat. The line 
 ran through the forest, among the rocks and 
 laurel thickets, the men fifteen or twenty 
 paces apart, all in concealment and under 
 injunction of strict silence and unremitting 
 vigilance. In four hours, if nothing oc- 
 curred, they would be relieved by a fresh 
 detachment from the reserve now resting in 
 care of its captain some distance away to 
 the left and rear. Before stationing his men 
 the young officer of whom we are speaking 
 had pointed out to his two sergeants the spot 
 at which he would be found in case it should 
 be necessary to consult him, or if his presence 
 at the front line should be required. 
 
 It was a quiet enough spot the fork of 
 an old wood road, on the two branches of 
 which, prolonging themselves deviously for 
 ward in the dim moonlight, the sergeants 
 were themselves stationed, a few paces in 
 rear of the line. If driven sharply back by 
 a sudden onset of the enemy and pickets 
 are not expected to make a stand after firing 
 the men would come into the converg- 
 ing roads, and, naturally following them to 
 their point of intersection, could be rallied 
 and ''formed." In his small way the young 
 lieutenant was something of a strategist; il 
 
A TOUGH TUSSLE. 125 
 
 Napoleon had planned as intelligently at 
 Waterloo, he would have won the battle and 
 been overthrown later. 
 
 Second Lieutenant Brainerd Byring was 
 a brave and efficient officer, young and com- 
 paratively inexperienced as he was in the 
 business of killing his fellow-men. He had 
 enlisted in the very first days of the war as a 
 private, with no military knowledge whatever, 
 had been made first sergeant of his company 
 on account of his education and engaging 
 manner, and had been lucky enough to lose 
 his captain by a Confederate bullet; in the 
 resulting promotions he had got a com- 
 mission. He had been in several engage- 
 ments, such as they were at Philippi, Rich 
 Mountain, Carrick's Ford and Greenbrier 
 and had borne himself with such gallantry as 
 not to attract attention of his superior officers. 
 The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to 
 him, but the sight of the dead, with their 
 clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, 
 when not unnaturally shrunken, were un- 
 naturally swollen, had always intolerably 
 affected him. He felt toward them a kind of 
 reasonless antipathy which was something 
 more than the physical and spiritual repug- 
 nance common to us all. Doubtless this 
 
126 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 
 
 feeling was due to his unusually acute sensi- 
 bilities his keen sense of the beautiful, which 
 these hideous things outraged. Whatever 
 may have been the cause, he could not look 
 upon a dead body without a loathing which 
 had in it an element of resentment. What 
 others have respected as the dignity of death 
 had to him no existence was altogether un- 
 thinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. 
 It was not picturesque, it had no tender and 
 solemn side a dismal thing, hideous in all 
 its manifestations and suggestions. Lieuten- 
 ant Byring was a braver man than anybody 
 knew, for nobody knew his horror of that 
 which he was ever ready to encounter. 
 
 Having posted his men, instructed his 
 sergeants, and retired to his station, he seated 
 himself on a log, and, with senses all alert, 
 began his vigil. For greater ease he loosened 
 his sword belt, and, taking his heavy revolver 
 from his holster, laid it on the log beside him. 
 He felt very comfortable, though he hardly 
 gave the fact a thought, so intently did he 
 listen for any sound from the front which 
 might have a menacing significance a shout, 
 a shot, or the footfall of one of his sergeants 
 coming to apprise him of something worth 
 knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of 
 
A TOUGH TUSSLE 12J 
 
 moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a 
 slender, broken stream that seemed to plash 
 against the intercepting branches and trickle 
 to earth, forming small white pools among 
 the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were 
 lew and served only to accentuate the black- 
 ness of his environment, which his imagina- 
 tion found it easy to people with all manner 
 of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or 
 merely grotesque. 
 
 He to whom the portentous conspiracy of 
 night and solitude and silence in the heart of 
 a great forest is not an unknown experience 
 needs not to be told what another world it 
 all is how even the most commonplace and 
 familiar objects take on another character. 
 The trees group themselves differently; they 
 draw closer together, as if in fear. The very 
 silence has another quality than the silence 
 of the day. And it is full of half-heard whis- 
 pers, whispers that startle ghosts of sounds 
 long dead. There are living sounds, too, 
 such as are never heard under other condi- 
 tions: notes of strange night birds, the cries 
 of small animals in sudden encounters with 
 stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling 
 in the dead leaves it may be the leap of a 
 wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. 
 
128 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 
 
 What caused the breaking of that twig? 
 what the low, alarmed twittering in that 
 bushful of birds? There are sounds without 
 a name, forms without substance, translations 
 in space of objects which have not been seen 
 to move, movements wherein nothing is ob- 
 served to change its place. Ah, children of 
 the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you 
 know of the world in which you live! 
 
 Surrounded at a little distance by armed 
 and watchful friends, Byring felt utterly alone. 
 Yielding himself to the solemn and myste- 
 rious spirit of the time and place, he had 
 forgotten the nature of his connection with 
 the visible and audible aspects and phases of 
 the night. The forest was boundless; men 
 and the habitations of men did not exist. 
 The universe was one primeval mystery of 
 darkness, without form and void, himself the 
 sole dumb questioner of its eternal secret. 
 Absorbed in the thoughts born of this mood, 
 he suffered the time to slip away unnoted. 
 Meantime the infrequent patches of white 
 light lying amongst the undergrowth had 
 undergone changes of size, form, and place. 
 In one of them near by, just at the roadside, 
 his eye fell upon an object which he had not 
 previously observed. It was almost before 
 
A TOUGH TUSSLE. 129 
 
 his face as he sat; he could have sworn that 
 it had not before been there. It was partly 
 covered in shadow, but he could see that it 
 was a human figure. Instinctively he ad- 
 justed the clasp of his sword belt and laid 
 hold of his pistol again he was in a world 
 of war, by occupation an assassin. 
 
 The figure did not move. Rising, pistol 
 in hand, he approached. The figure lay 
 upon its back, its upper part in shadow, but 
 standing above it and looking down upon the 
 face, he saw that it was a dead body. He 
 shuddered and turned from it with a feeling 
 of sickness and disgust, resumed his seat 
 upon the log, and, forgetting military pru- 
 dence, struck a match and lit a cigar. In 
 the sudden blackness that followed the ex- 
 tinction of the flame he felt a sense of re- 
 lief; he could no longer see the object of 
 his aversion. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes 
 set in that direction until it appeared again 
 with growing distinctness. It seemed to have 
 moved a trifle nearer. 
 
 ' ' Damn the thing ! " he muttered. ' ' What 
 does it want?" 
 
 It did not appear to be in need of anything 
 but a soul. 
 
 Byring turned away his eyes and began 
 9 
 
130 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 
 
 humming a tune, but he broke off in the 
 middle of a bar and looked at the dead man. 
 Its presence annoyed him, though he could 
 hardly have had a quieter neighbor. He 
 was conscious, too, of a vague, indefinable 
 feeling which was new to him. It was not 
 fear but rather a sense of the supernatural 
 in which he did not at all believe. 
 
 "I have inherited it, " he said to himself. 
 "I suppose it will require a thousand years 
 perhaps ten thousand for humanity to out- 
 grow this feeling. Where and when did it 
 originate? Away back, probably, in what is 
 called the cradle of the human race the 
 plains of Central Asia. What we inherit as 
 a superstition our barbarous ancestors must 
 have held as a reasonable conviction. Doubt- 
 less they believed themselves justified by facts 
 whose nature we cannot even conjecture in 
 thinking a dead body a malign thing en- 
 dowed with some strange power of mischief, 
 with perhaps a will and a purpose to exert it. 
 Possibly they had some awful form of religion 
 of which that was one of the chief doctrines, 
 sedulously taught by their priesthood, just as 
 ours teach the immortality of the soul. As 
 the Aryan moved westward to and through 
 the Caucasus passes and spread over Europe, 
 
A TOUGH TUSSL. 131 
 
 new conditions of life must have resulted in 
 the formulation of new religions. The old 
 belief in the malevolence of the dead body 
 was lost from the creeds, and even perished 
 from tradition, but it left its heritage of terror, 
 which is transmitted from generation to gen- 
 eration is as much a part of us as our blood 
 and bones." 
 
 In following out his thought he had for- 
 gotten that which suggested it; but now his 
 eye fell again upon the corpse. The shadow 
 had now altogether uncovered it. He saw 
 the sharp profile, the chin in the air, the 
 whole face, ghastly white in the moonlight. 
 The clothing was gray, the uniform of a Con- 
 federate soldier. The coat and waistcoat, un- 
 buttoned, had fallen away on each side, ex- 
 posing the white shirt. The chest seemed 
 unnaturally prominent, but the abdomen had 
 sunk in, leaving a sharp projection at the line 
 of the lower ribs. The arms were extended, 
 the left knee was thrust upward. The whole 
 posture impressed Byring as having been 
 studied with a view to the horrible. 
 
 ' ' Bah ! " he exclaimed ; "he was an actor 
 he knows how to be dead." 
 
 He drew away his eyes, directing them 
 resolutely along one of the roads leading to 
 
1^2 A TOUGH TUSSLE 
 
 the front, and resumed his philosophizing 
 where he had left off. 
 
 "It may be that our Central Asian an- 
 cestors had not the custom of burial. In 
 that case it is easy to understand their fear 
 of the dead, who really were a menace and 
 an evil. They bred pestilences. Children 
 were taught to avoid the places where they 
 lay, and to run away if by inadvertence they 
 came near a corpse. I think, indeed, I'd 
 better go away from this chap. ' ' 
 
 He half rose to do so, then remembered 
 that he told his men in front, and the officer 
 in the rear who was to relieve him, that he 
 could at any time be found at that spot. It 
 was a matter of pride, too. If he abandoned 
 his post, he feared they would think he feared 
 the corpse. He was no coward, and he was 
 not going to incur anybody's ridicule. So 
 he again seated himself, and, to prove his 
 courage, looked boldly at the body. The 
 right arm the one farthest from him was 
 now in shadow. He could barely see the 
 hand which, he had before observed, lay at 
 the root of a clump of laurel. There had 
 been no change, a fact which gave him a cer- 
 tain comfort, he could not have said why. 
 He did not at once remove his eyes; that 
 
A TOUGH TUSSLE. 133 
 
 which we do not wish to see has a strange 
 fascination, sometimes irresistible. Of the 
 woman who covers her face with her hands, 
 and looks between the fingers, let it be said 
 that the wits have dealt with "her not alto- 
 gether justly. 
 
 Byring suddenly became conscious of a 
 pain in his right hand. He withdrew his 
 eyes from his enemy and looked at it He 
 was grasping the hilt of his drawn sword so 
 tightly that it hurt him. He observed, too, 
 that he was leaning forward in a strained at- 
 titude crouching like a gladiator ready to 
 spring at the throat of an antagonist. His 
 teeth were clenched, and he was breathing 
 hard. This matter was soon set right, and as 
 his muscles relaxed and he drew a long breath, 
 he felt keenly enough the ludicrousness of the 
 incident. It affected him to laughter. Heav- 
 ens! what sound was that? what mindless 
 devil was uttering an unholy glee in mockery 
 of human merriment? He sprang to his 
 feet and looked about him, not recognizing 
 his own laugh. 
 
 He could no longer conceal from himself 
 the horrible fact of his cowardice; he was 
 thoroughly frightened! He would have 
 run from the spot, but his legs refused their 
 
134 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 
 
 office; they gave way beneath him, and he 
 sat again upon the log, violently trembling. 
 His face was wet, his whole body bathed in a 
 chill perspiration. He could not even cry 
 out. Distinctly he heard behind him a 
 stealthy tread, as of some wild animal, and 
 dared not look over his shoulder. Had the 
 soulless living joined forces with the soulless 
 dead? was it an animal? Ah, if he could 
 but be assured of that! But by no effort of 
 will could he now unfix his gaze from the 
 face of the dead man. 
 
 I repeat that Lieutenant Byring was a 
 brave and intelligent man. But what would 
 you have? Shall a man cope, single-handed, 
 with so monstrous an alliance as that of night 
 and solitude and silence and the dead? while 
 an incalculable host of his own ancestors 
 shriek into the ear of his spirit their cow- 
 ard counsel, sing their doleful death songs 
 in his heart and disarm his very blood of 
 all its iron ? The odds are too great cour- 
 age was not made for such rough use as that. 
 
 One sole conviction now had the man in 
 possession: that the body had moved. It lay 
 nearer to the edge of its plot of light there 
 could be no doubt of it. It had also moved 
 its arms, for, look, they are both in the 
 
A TOUGH TUSSLE I i ) $ 
 
 shadow ! A breath of cold air struck Byring 
 full in the face; the branches of trees above 
 him stirred and moaned. A strongly-defined 
 shadow passed across the face of the dead, 
 left it luminous, passed back upon it and left 
 it half obscured. The horrible thing was vis- 
 ibly moving. At that moment a single shot 
 rang out upon the picket line a lonelier and 
 louder, though more distant, shot than ever 
 had been heard by mortal ear! It broke the 
 spell of that enchanted man; it slew the si- 
 lence and the solitude, dispersed the hinder- 
 ing host from Central Asia, and released his 
 modern manhood. With a cry like that of 
 some great bird pouncing upon its prey, he 
 sprang forward, hot-hearted for action! 
 
 Shot after shot now came from the front. 
 There were shoutings and confusion, hoof 
 beats and desultory cheers. Away to the 
 rear, in the sleeping camp, was a singing of 
 bugles and a grumble of drums. Pushing 
 through the thickets on either side the roads 
 came the Federal pickets, in full retreat, fir- 
 ing backward at random as they ran. A 
 straggling group that had followed back one 
 of the roads, as instructed, suddenly sprang 
 away into the bushes as half a hundred horse- 
 men thundered by them, striking wildly with 
 
136 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 
 
 their sabers as they passed. At headlong- 
 speed these mounted madmen shot past the 
 spot where Byring had sat, and vanished 
 round an angle of the road, shouting and 
 firing their pistols. A moment later there 
 was a roar of musketry, followed by dropping 
 shots they had encountered the reserve 
 guard in line; and back they came in dire 
 confusion, with here and there an empty sad- 
 dle and many a maddened horse, bullet-stung, 
 snorting and plunging with pain. It was all 
 over ' ' an affair of outposts. ' ' 
 
 The line was re-established with fresh men, 
 the roll called, the stragglers were reformed. 
 The Federal commander, with a part of his 
 staff, imperfectly clad, appeared upon the 
 scene, asked a few questions, looked exceed- 
 ingly wise, and retired. After standing at 
 arms for an hour, the brigade in camp 
 ' ' swore a prayer or two ' ' and went to bed. 
 
 Early the next morning a fatigue party, 
 commanded by a captain and accompanied 
 by a surgeon, searched the ground for dead 
 and wounded. At the fork of the road, a lit- 
 tle to one side, they found two bodies lying 
 close together that of a Federal officer and 
 that of a Confederate private. The officer had 
 died of a sword-thrust through the heart, but 
 
A TOUGIT TUSSLE. 137 
 
 not, apparently, until he had inllicted upon 
 his enemy no fewer than five dreadful wounds. 
 The dead officer lay on his face in a pool of 
 blood, the weapon still in his breast. They 
 turned him on his back and the surgeon re- 
 moved it. 
 
 "Gad ! " said the captain "it is Byring!" 
 adding, with a glance at the other, ' ' They 
 had a tough tussle. ' ' 
 
 The surgeon was examining the sword. It 
 was that of a line officer of Federal infantry 
 exactly like the one worn by the captain. 
 It was, in fact, Byring's own. The only other 
 weapon discovered was an undischarged re- 
 volver in the dead officer's belt. 
 
 The surgeon laid down the sword and ap- 
 proached the other body. It was frightfully 
 gashed and stabbed, but there was no blood. 
 He took hold of the left foot and tried to 
 straighten the leg. In the effort the body 
 was displaced. The dead do not wish to be 
 moved when comfortable it protested with 
 a faint, sickening odor. Where it had lain 
 were a few maggots, manifesting an imbecile 
 activity. 
 
 The surgeon looked at the captain. The 
 captain looked at the surgeon. 
 
THE COUP DE GRACE. 
 
 HPHE fighting had been hard and continuous, 
 that was attested by all the senses. The 
 very taste of battle was in the air. All was 
 now over; it remained only to succor the 
 wounded and bury the dead to "tidy up a 
 bit," as the humorist of a burying squad put 
 it. A good deal of ' ' tidying up ' ' was re- 
 quired. As far as one could see through the 
 forest, between the splintered trees, lay wrecks 
 of men and horses. Among them moved the 
 stretcher-bearers, gathering and carrying away 
 the few who showed signs of life. Most of 
 the wounded had died of exposure while the 
 right to minister to their wants was in dispute. 
 It is an army regulation that the wounded 
 must wait; the best way to care for them is to 
 win the battle. It must be confessed that 
 victory is a distinct advantage to a man re- 
 quiring attention, but many do not live to 
 avail themselves of it. 
 
 The dead were collected in groups of a 
 
 (139) 
 
I 4 o 
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 
 
 dozen or a score and laid side by side in rows 
 while the trenches were dug to receive them. 
 Some, found at too great a distance from 
 these rallying points, were buried where they 
 lay. There was little attempt at identifica- 
 tion, though in most cases, the burying parties 
 being detailed to glean the same ground 
 which they had assisted to reap, the names of 
 the victorious dead were known and listed. 
 The enemy's fallen had to be content with 
 counting. But of that they got enough: many 
 of them were counted several times, and the 
 total, as given in the official report of the vic- 
 torious commander, denoted rather a hope 
 than a result. 
 
 At some little distance from the spot where 
 one of the burying parties had established 
 its " bivouac of the dead," a man in the uni- 
 form of a Federal officer stood leaning against 
 a tree. From his feet upward to his neck his 
 attitude was that of weariness reposing; but 
 he turned his head uneasily from side to side; 
 his mind was apparently not at rest. He was 
 perhaps uncertain in what direction to go; he 
 was not likely to remain long where he was, 
 for already the level rays of the setting sun 
 struggled redly through the open spaces of 
 the wood, and the weary soldiers were quit- 
 
THE COUP DE GRACE. 141 
 
 ting their task for the day. He would hardly 
 make a night of it alone there among the 
 dead. Nine men in ten whom you meet af- 
 ter a battle inquire the way to some fraction 
 of the army as if anyone could know. 
 Doubtless this officer was lost. After resting 
 himself a moment, he would follow one of the 
 retiring burial squads. 
 
 When all were gone, he walked straight 
 away into the forest toward the red west, its 
 light staining his face like blood. The air of 
 confidence with which he now strode along 
 showed that he was on familiar ground; he 
 had recovered his bearings. The dead on his 
 right and on his left were unregarded as he 
 passed. An occasional low moan from some 
 sorely-stricken wretch whom the relief parties 
 had not reached, and who would have to pass 
 a comfortless night beneath the stars with his 
 thirst to keep him company, was equally un- 
 heeded. What, indeed, could the officer have 
 done, being no surgeon and having no water? 
 At the head of a shallow ravine, a mere de- 
 pression of the ground, lay a small group of 
 bodies. He saw, and, swerving suddenly 
 from his course, walked rapidly toward them. 
 Scanning each one sharply as he passed, he 
 stopped at last above one which lay at a slight 
 
142 THE COUP DE GRACE. 
 
 remove from the others, near a clump of 
 small trees. He looked at it narrowly. It 
 seemed to stir. He stooped and laid his hand 
 upon its face. It screamed. 
 
 The officer was Captain Downing Madvvell, 
 of a Massachusetts regiment of infantry, a 
 daring and intelligent soldier, an honorable 
 man. 
 
 In the regiment were two brothers named 
 Halcrow Caffal and Creede Halcrow. Carfal 
 Halcrow was a sergeant in Captain Madwell's 
 company, and these two men, the sergeant 
 and the captain, were devoted friends. In so 
 far as disparity of rank, difference in duties, 
 and considerations of military discipline would 
 permit, they were commonly together. They 
 had, indeed, grown up together from child- 
 hood. A habit of the heart is not easily 
 broken oft. Caffal Halcrow had nothing mili- 
 tary in his taste or disposition, but the thought 
 of separation from his friend was disagreeable; 
 he enlisted in the company in which Madwell 
 was second lieutenant. Each had taken two 
 steps upward in rank, but between the high- 
 est non-commissioned and the lowest com- 
 missioned officer the social gulf is deep and 
 wide, and the old relation was maintained 
 with difficulty and a difference. 
 
THE COUP DE GRACE. 143 
 
 Creede Halcrovv, the brother of Caffal, was 
 the major of the regiment a cynical, satur- 
 nine man, between whom and Captain Mad- 
 well there was a natural antipathy which 
 circumstances had nourished and strengthened 
 to an active animosity. But for the restrain- 
 ing influence of their mutual relation to Caffal, 
 these two patriots would doubtless have en- 
 deavored to deprive their country of one 
 another's services. 
 
 At the opening of the battle that morning, 
 the regiment was performing outpost duty a 
 mile away from the main army. It was at- 
 tacked and nearly surrounded in the forest, 
 but stubbornly held its ground. During a 
 lull in the fighting, Major Halcrovv came to 
 Captain Madwell. The two exchanged 
 formal salutes, and the major said: "Captain, 
 the colonel directs that you push your com- 
 pany to the head of this ravine and hold your 
 place there until recalled. I need hardly 
 apprise you of the dangerous character of the 
 movement, but if you wish, you can, I sup- 
 pose, turn over the command to your first 
 lieutenant. I was not, however, directed to 
 authorize the substitution; it is merely a sug- 
 gestion of my own, unofficially made." 
 
 To this deadly insult Captain Madwell 
 coolly replied: 
 
144 ' THE coup DE GRACE. 
 
 "Sir, I invite you to accompany the move- 
 ment. A mounted officer would be a con- 
 spicuous mark, and I have long held the. 
 opinion that it would be better if you were 
 dead." 
 
 The art of repartee was cultivated in mili- 
 tary circles as early as 1862. 
 
 A half hour later Captain Madwell's com- 
 pany was driven from its position at the head 
 of the ravine, with a loss of one-third its 
 number. Among the fallen was Sergeant 
 Halcrow. The regiment was soon afterward 
 forced back to the main line, and at the close 
 of the battle was miles away. The captain 
 was now standing at the side of his subordi- 
 nate and friend. 
 
 Sergeant Halcrow was mortally hurt. His 
 clothing was deranged; it seemed to have 
 been violently torn apart, exposing the ab- 
 domen. Some of the buttons of his jacket 
 had been pulled off and lay on the ground 
 beside him, and fragments of his other gar- 
 ments were strewn about His leather belt 
 was parted, and had apparently been dragged 
 from beneath him as he lay. There had been 
 no very great effusion of blood. The only 
 visible wound was a wide, ragged opening in 
 the abdomen. It was defiled with earth and 
 
THE COUP DE GRACE. 145 
 
 dead leaves. Protruding from it was a lacer- 
 ated end of the small intestine. In all his 
 experience Captain Madwell had not seen a 
 wound like this. He could neither conjecture 
 how it was made nor explain the attendant 
 circumstances the strangely torn clothing, 
 the parted belt, the besmirching of the white 
 skin. He knelt and made a closer examina- 
 tion. When he rose to his feet, he turned his 
 eyes in various directions as if looking for an 
 enemy. Fifty yards away, on the crest of a 
 low, thinly-wooded hill, he saw several dark 
 objects moving about among the fallen men 
 a herd of swine. One stood with its back to 
 him, its shoulders sharply elevated. Its fore- 
 feet were upon a human body, its head was 
 depressed and invisible. The bristly ridge of 
 its chine showed black against the red west. 
 Captain Madwell drew away his eyes and 
 fixed them again upon the thing which had 
 been his friend. 
 
 The man who had suffered these monstrous 
 mutilations was alive. At intervals he moved 
 his limbs; he moaned at every breath. He 
 stared blankly into the face of his friend, and 
 if touched screamed. In his giant agony he 
 had torn up the ground on which he lay; his 
 clenched hands were full of leaves and twigs 
 10 
 
146 THE COUP DE GRACE. 
 
 and earth. Articulate speech was beyond his 
 power; it was impossible to know if he were 
 sensible to anything but pain. The expression 
 of his face was an appeal; his eyes were full 
 of prayer. For what ? 
 
 There was no misreading that look; the 
 captain had too frequently seen it in eyes of 
 those whose lips had still the power to formu- 
 late it by an entreaty for death. Consciously 
 or unconsciously, this writhing fragment of 
 humanity, this type and example of acute 
 sensation, this handiwork of man and beast, 
 this humble, unheroic Prometheus, was implor- 
 ing everything, all, the whole non-ego, for 
 the boon of oblivion. To the earth and the 
 sky alike, to the trees, to the man, to what- 
 ever took form in sense or consciousness, this 
 incarnate suffering addressed its silent plea. 
 
 For what, indeed? For that which we ac- 
 cord to even the meanest creature without 
 sense to demand it, denying it only to the 
 wretched of our own race: for the blessed 
 release, the rite of uttermost compassion, the 
 coup de grace. 
 
 Captain Madwell spoke the name of his 
 friend. He repeated it over and over with- 
 out effect until emotion choked his utterance. 
 His tears plashed upon the livid face beneath 
 
THE COUP DE GRACE. j/jj 
 
 his own and blinded himself. He saw noth- 
 ing but a blurred and moving object, but the 
 moans were more distinct than ever, inter- 
 rupted at briefer intervals by sharper shrieks. 
 He turned away, struck his hand upon his 
 forehead, and strode from the spot. The 
 swine, catching sight of him, threw up their 
 crimson muzzles, regarding him suspiciously 
 a second, and then, with a gruff, concerted 
 grunt, raced away out of sight. A horse, its 
 fore-leg splintered horribly by a cannon shot, 
 lifted its head sidewise from the ground and 
 neighed piteously. Madwell stepped forward, 
 drew his revolver and shot the poor beast 
 between the eyes, narrowly observing its 
 death struggle, which, contrary to his ex- 
 pectation, was violent and long; but at last it 
 lay still. The tense muscles of its lips, which 
 had uncovered the teeth in a horrible grin, 
 relaxed; the sharp, clean-cut profile took on 
 a look of profound peace and rest. 
 
 Along the distant thinly-wooded crest to 
 westward the fringe of sunset fire had now 
 nearly burned itself out. The light upon the 
 trunks of the trees had faded to a tender 
 gray; the shadows were in their tops, like 
 great dark birds aperch. The night was com- 
 ing and there were miles of haunted forest 
 
148 THE COUP DE GRACE. 
 
 between Captain Madwell and camp. Yet he 
 stood there at the side of the dead animal, 
 apparently lost to all sense of his surround- 
 ings. His eyes were bent upon the earth at 
 his feet; his left hand hung loosely at his side, 
 his right still held the pistol. Suddenly he 
 lifted his face, turned it toward his dying 
 friend, and walked rapidly back to his side. 
 He knelt upon one knee, cocked the weapon, 
 placed the muzzle against the man's forehead, 
 turned away his eyes and pulled the trigger. 
 There was no report. He had used his last 
 cartridge for the horse. The sufferer moaned 
 and his lips moved convulsively. The froth 
 that ran from them had a tinge of blood. 
 
 Captain Madwell rose to his feet and 
 drew his sword from the scabbard. He 
 passed the fingers of his left hand along the 
 edge from hilt to point. He held it out 
 straight before him, as if to test his nerves. 
 There was no visible tremor of the blade; 
 the ray of bleak skylight that it reflected was 
 steady and true. He stooped, and with his 
 left hand tore away the dying man's shirt, 
 rose, and placed the point of the sword just 
 over the heart. This time he did not with- 
 draw his, eyes. Grasping the hilt with both 
 hands, he thrust downward with all his 
 
THE COUP DE GRACE. 
 
 149 
 
 strength and weight. The blade sank into 
 the man's body through his body into the 
 earth; Captain Madvvell came near falling 
 forward upon his work. The dying man 
 drew up his knees and at the same time threw 
 his right arm across his breast and grasped 
 the steel so tightly that the knuckles of the 
 hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain 
 effort to withdraw the blade, the wound was 
 enlarged; a rill of blood escaped, running 
 sinuously down into the deranged clothing. 
 At that moment three men stepped silently 
 forward from behind the clump of young 
 trees which had concealed their approach. 
 Two were hospital attendants and carried a 
 stretcher. 
 
 The third was Major Creede Halcrow. 
 
PARKER ADDERSON PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 " PRISONER, what is your name ? " 
 
 u As I am to lose it at daylight to-mor- 
 row morning, it is hardly worth concealing. 
 Parker Adderson." 
 
 " Your rank?" 
 
 "A somewhat humble one; commissioned 
 officers are too precious to be risked in the 
 perilous business of a spy. I am a sergeant." 
 
 ' ' Of what regiment ? ' ' 
 
 " You must excuse me; if I answered that 
 it might, for anything I know, give you an 
 idea of whose forces are in your froi Such 
 knowledge as that is what I came into your 
 lines to obtain, not to impart." 
 
 " You are not without wit." 
 
 " If you have the patience to wait, you will 
 find me dull enough to-morrow." 
 
 " How do you know that you are to die 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 "Among spies captured by night that is the 
 custom. It is one of the nice observances of 
 the profession." 
 
1^2 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 The general so far laid aside the dignity 
 appropriate to a Confederate officer of high 
 rank and wide renown as to smile. But no 
 one in his power and out of his favor would 
 have drawn any happy augury from that out- 
 ward and visible sign of approval. It was 
 neither genial nor infectious; it did not com- 
 municate itself to the other persons exposed 
 to it the caught spy who had provoked it 
 and the armed guard who had brought him 
 into the tent and now stood a little apart, 
 watching his prisoner in the yellow candle- 
 light. It was no part of that warrior's duty 
 to smile; he had been detailed for another 
 purpose. The conversation was resumed; it 
 was, in fact, a trial for a capital offense. 
 
 " You admit, then, that you are a spy that 
 you came into my camp disguised as you are, 
 in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, to 
 obtain information secretly regarding the 
 numbers and disposition of my troops." 
 
 ' ' Regarding, particularly, their numbers. 
 Their disposition I already knew. It is mo- 
 rose." 
 
 The general brightened again; the guard, 
 with a severer sense of his responsibility, ac- 
 centuated the austerity of his expression and 
 stood a trifle more erect than before. Twirl- 
 
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 153 
 
 ing his gray slouch hat round and round upon 
 his forefinger, the spy took a leisurely sur- 
 vey of his surroundings. They were simple 
 enough. The tent was a common "wall 
 tent," about eight feet by ten in dimensions, 
 lighted by a single tallow candle stuck into 
 the haft of a bayonet, which was itself stuck 
 into a pine table, at which the general sat, 
 now busily writing and apparently forgetful of 
 his unwilling guest. An old rag carpet cov- 
 ered the earthen floor; an older hair trunk, 
 a second chair, and a roll of blankets were 
 about all else that the tent contained; in 
 General Clavering's command Confederate 
 simplicity and penury of " pomp and circum- 
 stance," had attained their highest develop- 
 ment. On a large nail driven into the tent 
 pole at the entrance was suspended a sword 
 belt supporting a long saber, a pistol in its 
 holster, and, absurdly enough, a bowie knife. 
 Of that most unmilitary weapon it was the gen- 
 eral's habit to explain that it was a cherished 
 souvenir of the peaceful days when he was 
 a civilian. 
 
 It was a stormy night. The rain cascaded 
 upon the canvas in torrents, with the dull, 
 drum-like sound familiar to dwellers in tents. 
 As the whooping blasts charged upon it the 
 
154 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 frail structure shook and swayed and strained 
 at its confining stakes and ropes. 
 
 The general finished writing, folded the 
 half sheet of paper, and spoke to the soldier 
 guarding Adderson: "Here, Tassman, take 
 that to the adjutant general; then return." 
 
 "And the prisoner, general?" said the 
 soldier, saluting, with an inquiring glance in 
 the direction of that unfortunate. 
 
 " Do as I said," replied the officer, curtly. 
 
 The soldier took the note and ducked him- 
 self out of the tent. General Clavering 
 turned his handsome, clean-cut face toward 
 the Federal spy, looked him in the eyes, not 
 unkindly, and said: "It is a bad night, my 
 man." 
 
 " For me, yes." 
 
 " Do you guess what I have written ? " 
 
 ' ' Something worth reading, I dare say. 
 And perhaps it is my vanity I venture to 
 suppose that I am mentioned in it. ' ' 
 
 "Yes; it a memorandum for an order to 
 be read to the troops at reveille concerning 
 your execution. Also some notes for the 
 guidance of the provost marshal in arrang- 
 ing the details of that event." 
 
 " I hope, general, the spectacle will be in- 
 telligently arranged, for I shall attend it my- 
 self." 
 
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. jt^ 
 
 1 ' Have you any arrangements of your own 
 that you wish to make ? Do you wish to see 
 a chaplain, for example ? " 
 
 ' ' I could hardly secure a longer rest for 
 myself by depriving him of some of his." 
 
 ' ' Good God, man ! do you mean to go to 
 your death with nothing but jokes upon your 
 lips ? Do you not know that this is a serious 
 matter ? ' ' 
 
 ''How can I know that? I have never 
 been dead in all my life. I have heard that 
 death is a serious matter, but never from any 
 of those who have experienced it. ' ' 
 
 The general was silent for a moment; the 
 man interested, perhaps amused him a type 
 not previously encountered. 
 
 "Death," he said, "is at least a loss a 
 loss of such happiness as we have, and of 
 opportunities for more." 
 
 ' ' A loss of which we will never be con- 
 scious can be borne with composure and 
 therefore expected withqut apprehension. 
 You must have observed, general, that of 
 all the dead men with whom it is your sol- 
 dierly pleasure to strew your path, none show 
 signs of regret." 
 
 " If the being dead is not a regrettable 
 condition, yet the becoming so the act of 
 
1^6 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 dying appears to be distinctly disagreeable 
 in one who has not lost the power to feel. ' ' 
 
 "Pain is disagreeable, no doubt. I never 
 suffer it without more or less discomfort. 
 But he who lives longest is most exposed to 
 it. What you call dying is simply the last 
 pain there is really no such thing as dying. 
 Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to 
 escape. You lift the revolver that you are 
 courteously concealing in your lap, and 
 
 The general blushed like a girl, then 
 laughed softly, disclosing his brilliant teeth, 
 made a slight inclination of his handsome 
 head, and said nothing. The spy continued: 
 ' ' You fire, and I have in my stomach what I 
 did not swallow. I fall, but am not dead. 
 After a half hour of agony I am dead. But 
 at any given instant of that half hour I was 
 either alive or dead. There is no transition 
 period. 
 
 "When I am hanged to-morrow morning 
 it will be quite the same; while conscious I 
 shall be living; when dead, unconscious. Na- 
 ture appears to have ordered the matter quite 
 in my interest the way that I should have 
 ordered it myself. It is so simple," he added 
 with a smile, "that it seems hardly worth 
 while to be hanged at all." 
 
PARKER ADDERSOX, PHILOSOPHER. 157 
 
 At the finish of his remarks there was a 
 long silence. The general sat impassive, 
 looking into the man's face, but apparently 
 not attentive to what had been said. It was 
 as if his eyes had mounted guard over the 
 prisoner, while his mind concerned itself with 
 other matters. Presently he drew a long, 
 deep breath, shuddered, as one awakened 
 from a dreadful dream, and exclaimed almost 
 inaudibly: "Death is horrible!" this man 
 of death. 
 
 " It was horrible to our savage ancestors," 
 said the spy, gravely, "because they had not 
 enough intelligence to dissociate the idea of 
 consciousness from the idea of the physical 
 forms in which it is manifested as an even 
 lower order of intelligence, that of the 
 monkey, for example, may be unable to im- 
 agine a house without inhabitants, and seeing 
 a ruined hut fancies a suffering occupant. To 
 us it is horrible because we have inherited the 
 tendency to think it so, accounting for the no- 
 tion by wild and fanciful theories of another 
 world as names of places give rise to leg- 
 ends explaining them, and reasonless conduct 
 to philosophies in justification. You can hang 
 me, general, but there your power of evil 
 ends; you cannot condemn me to heaven." 
 
158 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 The general appeared not to have heard; 
 the spy's talk had merely turned his thoughts 
 into an unfamiliar channel, but there they 
 pursued their will independently to conclu- 
 sions of their own. The storm had ceased, 
 and something of the solemn spirit of the 
 night had imparted itself to his reflections, 
 giving them the somber tinge of a supernat- 
 ural dread. Perhaps there was an element of 
 prescience in it. "I should not like to die," 
 he said " not to-night." 
 
 He was interrupted if, indeed, he had in- 
 tended to speak further by the entrance of 
 an officer of his staff, Captain Hasterlick, 
 the provost-marshal. This recalled him to 
 himself; the absent look passed away from 
 his face. 
 
 "Captain," he said, acknowledging the 
 officer's salute, "this man is a Yankee spy 
 captured inside our lines with incriminating 
 papers on him. He has confessed. How is 
 the weather? " 
 
 "The storm is over, sir, and the moon 
 shining." 
 
 "Good; take a tile of men, conduct him 
 at once to the parade ground, and shoot 
 him." 
 
 A sharp cry broke from the spy's lips. 
 
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 159 
 
 He threw himself forward, thrust out his 
 neck, expanded his eyes, clenched his hands. 
 
 ' ' Good God ! ' ' he cried, hoarsely, almost 
 inarticulately; " you do not mean that! You 
 forget I am not to die until morning." 
 
 " I have said nothing of morning," re- 
 plied the general, coldly; "that was anas- 
 sumption of your own. You die now." 
 
 4< But. general, I beg I implore you to 
 remember; I am to hang! It will take some 
 time to erect the gallows two hours an 
 hour. Spies are hanged ; I have rights 
 under military law. For heaven's sake, gen- 
 eral, consider how short 
 
 " Captain, observe my directions." 
 
 The officer drew his sword, and, fixing his 
 eyes upon the prisoner, pointed silently to the 
 opening of the tent. The prisoner, deathly 
 pale, hesitated; the officer grasped him by 
 the collar and pushed him gently forward. 
 As he approached the tent pole, the frantic 
 man sprang to it, and, with cat-like agility, 
 seized the handle of the bowie knife, plucked 
 the weapon from the scabbard, and, thrust- 
 ing the captain aside, leaped upon the general 
 with the fury of a madman, hurling him to 
 the ground and falling headlong upon him 
 as he lay. The table was overturned, the 
 
l6o PARKER AD PERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 candle extinguished, and they fought blindly 
 in the darkness. The provost-marshal sprang 
 to the assistance of his superior officer, and 
 was himself prostrated upon the struggling 
 forms. Curses and inarticulate cries of rage 
 and pain came from the welter of limbs and 
 bodies; the tent came down upon them, and 
 beneath its hampering and enveloping folds 
 the struggle went on. Private Tassman, re- 
 turning from his errand and dimly conjectur- 
 ing the situation, threw down his rifle, and, 
 laying hold of the flouncing canvas at random, 
 vainly tried to drag it off the men under it; 
 and the sentinel who paced up and down in 
 front, not daring to leave his beat though the 
 skies should fall, discharged his piece. The 
 report alarmed the camp; drums beat the 
 long roll and bugles sounded the assembly, 
 bringing swarms of half-clad men into the 
 moonlight, dressing as they ran, and falling 
 into line at the sharp commands of their 
 officers. This was well; being in line the 
 men were under control; they stood at arms 
 while the general's staff and the men of his 
 escort brought order out of confusion by lift- 
 ing off the fallen tent and pulling apart the 
 breathless and bleeding actors in that strange 
 contention. 
 
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. l6l 
 
 Breathless, indeed, was one; the captain 
 was dead, the handle of the bowie knife pro- 
 truding from his throat and pressed back be- 
 neath his chin until the end had caught in 
 the angle of the jaw, and the hand that de- 
 livered the blow had been unable to remove 
 the weapon. In the dead man's hand was 
 his sword, clenched with a grip that defied 
 the strength of the living. Its blade was 
 streaked with red to the hilt. 
 
 Lifted to his feet, the general sank back to 
 the earth with a moan and fainted. Besides 
 his bruises he had two sword-thrusts one 
 through the thigh, the other through the 
 shoulder. 
 
 The spy had suffered the least damage. 
 Apart from a broken right arm, his wounds 
 were such only as might have been incurred 
 in an ordinary combat with nature's weapons. 
 But he was dazed, and seemed hardly to 
 know what had occurred. He shrank away 
 from those attending him, cowered upon the 
 ground, and uttered unintelligible remon- 
 strances. His face, swollen by blows and 
 stained with gouts of blood, nevertheless 
 showed white beneath his disheveled hair 
 as white as that of a corpse. 
 
 ' 4 The man is not insane, ' ' said the surgeon 
 ii 
 
162 
 
 in reply to a question; "he is suffering from 
 fright. Who and what is he ? " 
 
 Private Tassman began to explain. It was 
 the opportunity of his life; he omitted noth- 
 ing that could in any way accentuate the im- 
 portance of his own relation to the night's 
 events. When he had finished his story and 
 was ready to begin it again, nobody gave him 
 any attention. 
 
 The general had now recovered conscious- 
 ness. He raised himself upon his elbow, 
 looked about him, and, seeing the spy crouch- 
 ing by a camp-fire, guarded, said, simply: 
 
 "Take that man to the parade ground and 
 shoot him." 
 
 "The general's mind wanders," said an 
 ofBcer standing near. 
 
 " His mind does not wander," the adjutant- 
 general said. " I have a memorandum from 
 him about this business; he had given that 
 same order to Hasterlick " with a motion 
 of the hand toward the dead provost-mar- 
 shal "and, by God! it shall be executed." 
 
 Ten minutes later Sergeant Parker Adder- 
 son, of the Federal army, philosopher and 
 wit, kneeling in the moonlight and begging 
 incoherently for his life, was shot to death by 
 twenty men. As the volley rang out upon 
 
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 163 
 
 the keen air of the winter midnight, General 
 Clavering, lying white and still in the red glow 
 of the camp-fire, opened his big blue eyes, 
 looked pleasantly upon those about him, and 
 said, "How silent it all is! " 
 
 The surgeon looked at the adjutant-gen- 
 eral, gravely and significantly. The patient's 
 eyes slowly closed, and thus he lay for a few 
 moments; then, his face suffused with a smile 
 of ineffable sweetness, he said, faintly, " I 
 suppose this must be death," and so passed 
 away. 
 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 
 
 TN an upper room of an unoccupied dwell- 
 ing in that part of San Francisco known as 
 North Beach lay the body of a man under a 
 sheet. The hour was near nine in the even- 
 ing; the room was dimly lighted by a single 
 candle. Although the weather was warm, 
 the two windows, contrary to the custom 
 which gives the dead plenty of air, were 
 closed and the blinds drawn down. The 
 furniture of the room consisted of but three 
 pieces, an arm-chair, a small reading stand, 
 supporting the candle, and a long kitchen ta- 
 ble, supporting the body of the man. All 
 these, as also the corpse, would seem to 
 have been recently brought in, for an ob- 
 server, had there been one, would have seen 
 that all were free from dust, whereas every- 
 thing else in the room was pretty thickly 
 coated with it, and there were cobwebs in the 
 angles of the walls. 
 
 Under the sheet the outlines of the body 
 
 . (165) 
 
1 66 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 
 
 could be traced, even the features, these hav- 
 ing that unnaturally sharp definition which 
 seems to belong to faces of the dead, but is 
 really characteristic of those only that have 
 been wasted by disease. From the silence of 
 the room one would rightly have inferred 
 that it was not in the front of the house, 
 facing a street. It really faced nothing but a 
 high breast of rock, the rear of the building 
 being set into a hill. 
 
 As a neighboring church clock was strik- 
 ing nine with an indolence which seemed to 
 imply such an indifference to the flight of 
 time that one could hardly help wondering 
 why it took the trouble to strike at all, the 
 single door of the room was opened and a 
 man entered, advancing toward the body. 
 As he did so the door closed, apparently of 
 its own volition; there was a grating, as of a 
 key turned with difficulty, and the snap of the 
 lock bolt as it shot into its socket. A sound 
 of retiring footsteps in the passage outside 
 ensued, and the man was, to all appearance, a 
 prisoner. Advancing to the table, he stood 
 a moment looking down at the body; then, 
 with a slight shrug of the shoulders, walked 
 over to one of the windows and hoisted the 
 blind. The darkness outside was absolute, 
 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 167 
 
 the panes were covered with dust, but, by 
 wiping this away, he could see that the win- 
 dow was fortified with strong iron bars cross- 
 ing it within a few inches of the glass, and 
 imbedded in the masonry on each side. He 
 examined the other window. It was the 
 same. He manifested no great curiosity in 
 the matter, did not even so much as raise 
 the sash. If he was a prisoner he was ap- 
 parently a tractable one. Having completed 
 his examination of the room, he seated him- 
 self in the arm-chair, took a book from his 
 pocket, drew the stand with its candle along- 
 side and began to read. 
 
 The man was young not more than thirty 
 dark in complexion, smooth-shaven, with 
 brown hair. His face was thin and high- 
 nosed, with a broad forehead and a ' ' firm- 
 ness ' ' of the chin and jaw which is said by 
 those having" it to denote resolution. The 
 eyes were gray and steadfast, not moving ex- 
 cept with definitive purpose. They were now 
 for the greater part of the time fixed upon 
 his book, but he occasionally withdrew them 
 and turned them to the body on the table, 
 not, apparently, from any dismal fascination 
 which, under such circumstances, it might be 
 supposed to exercise upon even a courageous 
 
1 68 A WATCHER BV THE DEAD. 
 
 person, nor with a conscious rebellion against 
 the opposite influence which might dominate 
 a timid one. He looked at it as if in his 
 reading he had come upon something recall- 
 ing him to a sense of his surroundings. 
 Clearly this watcher by the dead was dis- 
 charging his trust with intelligence and com- 
 posure, as became him. 
 
 After reading for perhaps a half-hour he 
 seemed to come to the end of a chapter and 
 quietly laid away the book. He then rose, 
 and, taking the reading stand from the floor, 
 carried it into a corner of the room near one 
 of the windows, lifted the candle from it, and 
 returned to the empty fireplace before which 
 he had been sitting. 
 
 A moment later he walked over to the body 
 on the table, lifted the sheet, and turned it 
 back from the head, exposing a mass of dark 
 hair and a thin face-cloth, beneath which the 
 features showed with even sharper definition 
 than before. Shading his eyes by interposing 
 his free hand between them and the candle, 
 he stood looking at his motionless compan- 
 ion with a serious and tranquil regard. Sat- 
 isfied with his inspection, he pulled the sheet 
 over the face again, and, returning to his chair, 
 took some matches off the candlestick, put 
 
A U'.lTCIfER BY THE DEAD. 169 
 
 them in the side pocket of his sack coat and 
 sat down. He then lifted the candle from its 
 socket and looked at it critically, as if calcu- 
 lating how long it would last. It was barely 
 two inches long; in another hour he would be 
 in darkness! He replaced it in the candle- 
 stick and blew it out. 
 
 ii. 
 
 In a physician's office in Kearny street 
 three men sat about a table, drinking punch 
 and smoking. It was late in the evening, 
 almost midnight, indeed, and there had been 
 no lack of punch. The eldest of the three, 
 Dr. Helberson, was the host it was in his 
 rooms they sat. He was about thirty years 
 of age; the others were even younger; all 
 were physicians. 
 
 ' ' The superstitious awe with which the liv- 
 ing regard the dead," said Dr. Helberson, 
 "is hereditary and incurable. One need no 
 more be ashamed of it than of the fact that 
 he inherits, for example, an incapacity for 
 mathematics, or a tendency to lie." 
 
 The others laughed. "Oughtn't a man 
 to be ashamed to be a liar ? ' ' asked the 
 youngest of the three, who was, in fact, a 
 medical student not yet graduated. 
 
I7O A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 
 
 "My dear Harper, I said nothing about 
 that. The tendency to lie is one thing; lying 
 is another." 
 
 " But do you think," said the third man, 
 "that this superstitious feeling, this fear of 
 the dead, reasonless as we know it to be, is 
 universal? I am myself not conscious of it." 
 
 "Oh, but it is 'in your system' for all 
 that," replied Helberson; "it needs only 
 the right conditions what Shakespeare calls 
 the ' confederate season ' to manifest itself 
 in some very disagreeable way that will open 
 your eyes. Physicians and soldiers are, of 
 course, more nearly free from it than others. > 
 
 "Physicians and soldiers! why don't you 
 add hangmen and headsmen ? Let us have 
 in all the assassin classes. ' ' 
 
 "No, my dear Mancher; the juries will 
 not let the public executioners acquire suffi- 
 cient familiarity with death to be altogether 
 unmoved by it." 
 
 Young Harper, who had been helping him- 
 self to a fresh cigar at the sideboard, resumed 
 his seat. "What would you consider con- 
 ditions under which any man of woman born 
 would become insupportably conscious of his 
 share of our common weakness in this re- 
 gard ? " he asked, rather verbosely. 
 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. I'Jl 
 
 "Well, I should say that if a man were 
 locked up all night with a corpse alone 
 in a dark room of a vacant house with no 
 bed covers to pull over his head and lived 
 through it without going altogether mad 
 he might justly boast himself not of woman 
 born, nor yet, like Macduff, a product of 
 Caesarean section." 
 
 " I thought you never would finish piling 
 up conditions," said Harper, "but I know a 
 man who is neither a physician nor a soldier 
 who will accept them all, for any stake you 
 like to name. " 
 
 11 Who is he?" 
 
 " His name is Jarette a stranger in Cal- 
 ifornia; comes from my town in New York. 
 I haven't any money to back him, but he will 
 back himself with dead loads of it." 
 
 " How do you know that? " 
 
 " He would rather bet than eat. As for 
 fear I dare say he thinks it some cutaneous 
 disorder, or, possibly, a particular kind of re- 
 ligious heresy." 
 
 ' ' What does he look like ? ' ' Helberson 
 was evidently becoming interested. 
 
 " Like Mancher, here might be his twin 
 brother." 
 
 " I accept the challenge," said Helberson, 
 promptly. 
 
172 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 
 
 " Awfully obliged to you for the compli- 
 ment, I'm sure," drawled Mancher, who was 
 growing sleepy. " Can't I get into this ? " 
 
 "Not against me," Helberson said. "I 
 don't wantjjw^' money." 
 
 "All right," said Mancher; "I'll be the 
 corpse." 
 
 The others laughed. 
 
 The outcome of this crazy conversation we 
 have seen. 
 
 in. 
 
 In extinguishing his meager allowance of 
 candle Mr. Jarette's object was to preserve 
 it against some unforeseen need. He may 
 have thought,, too, or half thought, that the 
 darkness would be no worse at one time than 
 another, and if the situation became insup- 
 portable, it would be better to have a means 
 of relief, or even release. At any rate, it was 
 wise to have a little reserve oi light, even if 
 only to enable him to look at his watch. 
 
 No sooner had he blown out the candle 
 and set it on the floor at his side than he set- 
 tled himself comfortably in the arm-chair, 
 leaned back and closed his eyes, hoping and 
 expecting to sleep. In this he was disap- 
 pointed; he had never in his life felt less 
 sleepy, and in a few minutes he gave up the 
 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 173 
 
 attempt. But what could he do ? He could 
 not go groping about in the absolute dark- 
 ness at the risk of bruising himself at the 
 risk, too, of blundering against the table and 
 rudely disturbing the dead. We all recog- 
 nize their right to lie at rest, with immunity 
 from all that is harsh and violent. Jarette 
 almost succeeded in making himself believe 
 that considerations of that kind restrained 
 him from risking the collision and fixed him 
 to the chair. 
 
 While thinking of this matter he fancied 
 that he heard a faint sound in the direction 
 of the table what kind of sound he could 
 hardly have explained. He did not turn his 
 head. Why should he in the darkness? 
 But he listened why should he not? And 
 listening he grew giddy and grasped the arms 
 of the chair for support. There was a strange 
 ringing in his ears; his head seemed bursting; 
 his chest was oppressed by the constriction of 
 his clothing. He. wondered why it was so, 
 and whether these were symptoms of fear. 
 Suddenly, with a long and strong expiration, 
 his chest appeared to collapse, and with the 
 great gasp with which he refilled his exhausted 
 lungs the vertigo left him, and he knew that 
 so intently had he listened that he had held 
 
174 A WATCH KR /.-) -////; /)/:.!/). 
 
 his breath almost to suffocation. The reve- 
 lation was vexatious; he arose, pushed away 
 the chair with his foot, and strode to the cen- 
 ter of the room. But one does not stride far 
 in darkness; he began to grope, and, finding 
 the wall, followed it to an angle, turned, fol- 
 lowed it past the two windows, and there in 
 another corner came into violent contact with 
 the reading stand, overturning it. It made a 
 clatter which startled him. He was annoyed. 
 " How the devil could I have forgotton where 
 it was!" he muttered, and groped his way 
 along the third wall to the fireplace. "I 
 must put things to rights," said Mr. Jarette, 
 feeling the floor for the candle. 
 
 Having recovered that, he lighted it and 
 instantly turned his eyes to the table, where, 
 naturally, nothing had undergone any change. 
 The reading stand lay unobserved upon the 
 floor; he had forgotten to " put it to rights." 
 He looked all about the room, dispersing the 
 deeper shadows by movements of the candle 
 in his hand, and, finally, crossing over to the 
 door, tried it by turning and pulling the knob 
 with all his strength. It did not yield and 
 this seemed to afford him a certain satisfaction; 
 indeed, he secured it more firmly by a bolt 
 which he had not before observed. Return- 
 
A IV A TC HER BY THE DEAD. 175 
 
 ing to his chair, he looked at his watch; it 
 was half-past nine. With a start of surprise 
 he held the watch at his ear. It had not 
 stopped. The candle was now visibly shorter. 
 He again extinguished it, placing it on the 
 floor at his side as before. 
 
 Mr. Jarette was not at his ease; he was dis- 
 tinctly dissatisfied with his surroundings, and 
 with himself for being so. " What have I to 
 fear? " he thought. "This is ridiculous and 
 disgraceful; I will not be so great a foot." 
 But courage does not come of saying, " I- 
 will be courageous," nor of recognizing its 
 appropriateness to the occasion. The more 
 Jarette condemned himself, the more reason 
 he gave himself for condemnation; the greater 
 the number of variations which he played 
 upon the simple theme of the harmlessness of 
 the dead, the more horrible grew the discord 
 of his emotions. "What!" he cried aloud in 
 the anguish of his spirit, "what! shall I, 
 who have not a shade of superstition in my 
 nature I, who have no belief in immortality 
 I, who know (and never more clearly than 
 now) that the after-life is the dream of a de- 
 sire shall I lose at once my bet, my honor, 
 and my self-respect, perhaps my reason, be- 
 cause certain savage ancestors, dwelling in 
 
iy6 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 
 
 caves and burrows, conceived the monstrous 
 notion that the dead walk by night; that ' 
 distinctly, unmistakably, Mr. Jarette heard 
 behind him a light, soft sound of footfalls, de- 
 liberate, regular, and successively nearer! 
 
 Just before daybreak the next morning 
 Dr. Helberson and his young friend Harper 
 were driving slowly through the streets of 
 North Beach in the doctor's coupe. 
 
 " Have you still the confidence of youth in 
 the courage or stolidity of your friend?" 
 said the elder man. " Do you believe that I 
 have lost this wager ? " 
 
 "I know you have," replied the other, 
 with enfeebling emphasis. 
 
 "Well, upon my soul, I hope so." 
 
 It was spoken earnestly, almost solemnly. 
 There was a silence for a few moments. 
 
 "Harper," the doctor resumed, looking 
 very serious in the shifting half-lights that 
 entered the carriage as they passed the street 
 lamps, "I don't feel altogether comfortable 
 about this business. If your friend had not 
 irritated me by the contemptuous manner in 
 which he treated my doubt of his endurance 
 a purely physical quality and by the cool 
 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. I'JJ 
 
 incivility of his suggestion that the corpse be 
 that of a physician, I should not have gone 
 on with it. If anything should happen, we 
 are ruined, as I fear we deserve to be." 
 
 " What can happen ? Even if the matter 
 should be taking a serious turn; of which I 
 am not at all afraid, Mancher has only to 
 resurrect himself and explain matters. With 
 a genuine ' subject' from the dissecting room 
 or one of your late patients, it might be dif- 
 ferent. ' ' 
 
 Dr. Mancher, then, had been as good as 
 his promise; he was the " corpse." 
 
 Dr. Helberson was silent for a long time, 
 as the carriage, at a snail's pace, crept along 
 the same street it had traveled two or three 
 times already. Presently he spoke: "Well, 
 let us hope that Mancher, if he has had to 
 rise from the dead, has been discreet about it. 
 A mistake in that might make matters worse 
 instead of better. ' ' 
 
 "Yes," said Harper, "Jarette would kill 
 him. But, doctor" looking at his watch 
 as the carriage passed a gas lamp "it is 
 nearly four o'clock at last." 
 
 A moment later the two had quitted the 
 vehicle, and were walking briskly toward the 
 long unoccupied house belonging to the doc- 
 12 
 
Lj8 A WATCHER AT THE DEAD. 
 
 tor, in which they had immured Mr. Jarette, 
 in accordance with the terms of the mad 
 wager. As they neared it, they met a man 
 running. "Can you tell me," he cried, sud- 
 denly checking his speed, ' ' where I can find 
 a physician? " 
 
 ''What's the matter?" Helberson asked, 
 non-committal. 
 
 " Go and see for yourself," said the man, 
 resuming his running. 
 
 They hastened on. Arrived at the house, 
 they saw several persons entering in haste 
 and excitement. In some of the dwellings 
 near by and across the way, the chamber 
 windows were thrown up, showing a protru- 
 sion of heads. All heads were asking ques- 
 tions, none heeding the questions of the 
 others. A few of the windows with closed 
 blinds were illuminated; the inmates of those 
 rooms were dressing to come down. Ex- 
 actly opposite the door of the house which they 
 sought, a street lamp threw a yellow, insuffi- 
 cient light upon the scene, seeming to say 
 that it could disclose a good deal more if it 
 wished. Harper, who was now deathly pale, 
 paused at the door and laid a hand upon his 
 companion's arm. "It is all up with us, 
 doctor," he said in extreme agitation, which 
 
A M'ATCIIKR BV THE DEAD, 179 
 
 contrasted strangely with his free and easy 
 words; "the game has gone against us all. 
 Let's not go in there; I'm for lying low." 
 
 " I'm a physician," said Dr. Helberson, 
 calmly; "there may be need of one." 
 
 They mounted the doorsteps and were 
 about to enter. The door was open; the 
 street lamp opposite lighted the passage into 
 which it opened. It was full of people. 
 Some had ascended the stairs at the farther 
 end, and, denied admittance above, waited 
 for better fortune. All were talking, none 
 listening. Suddenly, on the upper landing 
 there was a great commotion; a man had 
 sprung out of a door and was breaking away 
 from those endeavoring to detain him. Down 
 through the mass of affrighted idlers he came, 
 pushing them aside, flattening them against 
 the wall on one side, or compelling them to 
 cling by the rail on the other, clutching them 
 by the throat, striking them savagely, thrust- 
 ing them back down the stairs, and walking 
 over the fallen. His clothing was in disorder, 
 he was without a hat. His eyes, wild and 
 restless, had in them something more terrify- 
 ing than his apparently superhuman strength-. 
 His face, smooth-shaven, was bloodless, his 
 hair snow white. 
 
ISO A WATCHER AT THE />/;, ID. 
 
 As the crowd at the foot of the stairs, hav- 
 ing more freedom, fell away to let him pass, 
 Harper sprang forward. "Jarette! Jarette!" 
 he cried. 
 
 Dr. Helberson seized Harper by the collar 
 and dragged him back. The man looked 
 into their faces without seeming to see them, 
 and sprang through the door, down the steps, 
 into the street and away. A stout police- 
 man, who had had inferior success in con- 
 quering his way down the stairway, followed 
 a moment later and started in pursuit, all the 
 heads in the windows those of women and 
 children now screaming in guidance. 
 
 The stairway being now partly cleared, 
 most of the crowd having rushed down to 
 the street to observe the flight and pursuit, 
 Dr. Helberson mounted to the landing, fol- 
 lowed by Harper. At a door in the upper 
 passage an officer denied them admittance. 
 "We are physicians," said the doctor, and 
 they passed in. The room was full of men, 
 dimly seen, crowded about a table. The new- 
 comers edged their way forward, and looked 
 over the shoulders of those in the front rank. 
 Upon the table, the lower limbs covered with 
 a sheet, lay the body of a man, brilliantly il- 
 luminated by the beam of a bull's-eye lantern 
 
A WATCHER /-T THE DEAD. l8l 
 
 held by a policeman standing at the feet. 
 The others, excepting those near the head 
 the officer himself all were in darkness. The 
 face of the body showed yellow, repulsive, 
 horrible! The eyes were partly open and up- 
 turned, and the jaw fallen; traces of froth de- 
 nied the lips, the chin, the cheeks. A tall 
 man, evidently a physician, bent over the 
 body with his hand thrust under the shirt 
 front. He withdrew it and placed two fin- 
 gers in the open mouth. "This man has 
 been about two hours dead," said he. " It is 
 a case for the coroner." 
 
 He drew a card from his pocket, handed it 
 to the officer, and made his way toward the 
 door. 
 
 "Clear the room out, all!" said the offi- 
 cer, sharply, and the body disappeared as if 
 it had been snatched away, as he shifted the 
 lantern and flashed its beam of light here and 
 there against the faces of the crowd. The ef- 
 fect was amazing! The men, blinded, con- 
 fused, almost terrified, made a tumultuous 
 rush for the door, pushing, crowding, and 
 tumbling over one another as they fled, like 
 the hosts of Night before the shafts of Apollo. 
 Upon the struggling, trampling mass the of- 
 ficer poured his light without pity and with- 
 
1 82 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 
 
 out cessation. Caught in the current, Hel- 
 berson and Harper were swept out of the 
 room and cascaded down the stairs into the 
 street. 
 
 "Good God, doctor! did I not tell you 
 that Jarette would kill him ? ' ' said Harper, as 
 soon as they were clear of the crowd. 
 
 ' ' I believe you did, ' ' replied the other 
 without apparent emotion. 
 
 They walked on in silence, block after 
 block. Against the graying east the dwell- 
 ings of our hill tribes showed in silhouette. 
 The familiar milk wagon was already astir in 
 the streets; the baker's man would soon come 
 upon the scene; the newspaper carrier was 
 abroad in the land. 
 
 "It strikes me, youngster," said Helber- 
 son, "that you and I have been having too 
 much of the morning air lately. It is un- 
 wholesome; we need a change. What do 
 you say to a tour in Europe? " 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "I'm not particular. I should suppose 
 that 4 o'clock this afternoon would be early 
 enough." 
 
 "I'll meet you at the boat," said Harper. 
 
 V. 
 Seven years afterward these two men sat 
 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 183 
 
 upon a bench in Madison Square, New York, 
 in familiar conversation. Another man, who 
 had been observing them for some time, him- 
 self unobserved, approached and, courteously 
 lifting his hat from locks as white as snow, 
 said: " I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but 
 when you have killed a man by coming to 
 life, it is best to change clothes with him, and 
 at the first opportunity make a break for lib- 
 erty." 
 
 Helberson and Harper exchanged signifi- 
 cant glances. They were apparently amused. 
 The former then looked the stranger kindly 
 in the eye, and replied: 
 
 ' ' That has always been my plan. I entirely 
 agree with you as to its advant ' ' 
 
 He stopped suddenly and grew deathly 
 pale. He stared at the man, open-mouthed; 
 he trembled visibly. 
 
 "Ah! "said the stranger, "I see that you 
 are indisposed, doctor. If you cannot treat 
 yourself, Dr. Harper can do something for 
 you, I am sure." 
 
 "Who the devil are you?" said Harper 
 bluntly. 
 
 The stranger came nearer, and, bending 
 toward them, said in a whisper: "I call my- 
 self Jarette sometimes, but I don't mind tell- 
 
184 A WATCHER /T TItK DKAD. 
 
 ing you, for old friendship, that I am Dr. 
 William Mancher." 
 
 The revelation brought both men to their 
 feet. "Mancher!" they cried in a breath; 
 and Helberson added: " It is true, by God!" 
 
 ''Yes," said the stranger, smiling vaguely, 
 "it is true enough, no doubt." 
 
 He hesitated, and seemed to be trying to re- 
 call something, then began humming a pop- 
 ular air. He had apparently forgotten their 
 presence. 
 
 "Look here, Mancher," said the elder of 
 the two, "tell us just what occurred that 
 night to Jarette, you know." 
 
 "Oh, yes, about Jarette," said the other. 
 "It's odd I should have neglected to tell you 
 I tell it so often. You see I knew, by 
 overhearing him talking to himself, that he 
 was pretty badly frightened. So I couldn't 
 resist the temptation to come to life and have 
 a bit of fun out of him I couldn't, really. 
 That was all right, though certainly I did not 
 think he would take it so seriously; f did not, 
 truly. And afterward well, it was a tough 
 job changing places with him, and then 
 damn you! you didn't let me out!" 
 
 Nothing could exceed the ferocity with 
 which these last words were delivered. Both 
 men stepped back in alarm. 
 
A WATCHER BV THE DEAD. 1 8 5 
 
 ''We? why why," Helberson stam- 
 mered, losing his self-possession utterly, "we 
 had nothing to do with it. " 
 
 "Didn't I say you were Doctors Hellborn 
 and Sharper ? " inquired the lunatic, laughing. 
 
 "My name is Helberson, yes; and this 
 gentleman is Mr. Harper," replied the former, 
 reassured. " But we are not physicians now; 
 we are well, hang it, old man, we are gam- 
 blers." 
 
 And that was the truth. 
 
 "A very good profession very good, in- 
 deed; and, by the way, I hope Sharper here 
 paid over Jarette's money like an honest 
 stakeholder. A very good and honorable 
 profession," he repeated, thoughtfully, mov- 
 ing carelessly away; "but I stick to the old 
 one. I am High Supreme Medical Officer of 
 the Blooming-dale Asylum; it is my duty to 
 cure the superintendent" 
 
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 
 
 <> 
 
 It is of veritabyll report, and attested of so 
 many that there be nowe of wyse and learned none 
 to gaynsaye it, that ye serpente hys eye hath a 
 magnetick propertie that whosoe falleth into its 
 svasion is drawn forwards in despyte of his wille, 
 and perisheth miserabyll by ye creature hys byte. 
 
 QTRETCHED at ease upon a sofa, in gown 
 ^ and slippers, Harker Brayton smiled as 
 he read the foregoing sentence in old Morrys- 
 ter' s ' ' Marvells of Science. " ' ' The only mar- 
 vel in the matter," he said to himself, "is 
 that the wise and learned in Morryster's day 
 should have believed such nonsense as is re- 
 jected by most of even the ignorant in ours." 
 A train of reflections followed for Bray- 
 ton was a man of thought and he uncon- 
 sciously lowered his book without altering 
 the direction of his eyes. As soon as the 
 volume had gone below the line of sight, 
 something in an obscure corner of the room 
 recalled his attention to his surroundings. 
 What he saw, in the shadow under his bed, 
 were two small points of light, apparently 
 about an inch apart. They might have been 
 
 (187) 
 
1 88 THE MAN AX D THE SNAKE. 
 
 reflections of the gas jet above him, in metal 
 nail heads; he gave them but little thought 
 and resumed his reading. A moment later 
 something some impulse which it did not 
 occur to him to analyze impelled him to 
 lower the book again and seek for what he 
 saw before. The points of light were still 
 there. They seemed to have become brighter 
 than before, shining with a greenish luster 
 which he had not at first observed. He 
 thought, too, that they might have moved a 
 trifle -were somewhat nearer. They were 
 still too much in shadow, however, to reveal 
 their nature and origin to an indolent atten- 
 tion, and he resumed his reading. Suddenly 
 something in the text suggested a thought 
 which made him start and drop the book for 
 the third time to the side of the sofa, whence, 
 escaping from his hand, it fell sprawling to the 
 floor, back upward. Brayton, halt risen, 
 was staring intently into the obscurity beneath 
 the bed, where the points of light shone 
 with, it seemed to him > an added fire. His 
 attention was now fully aroused, his gaze 
 eager and imperative. It disclosed, almost 
 directly beneath the foot-rail of the bed, the 
 coils of a large serpent the points of light 
 were its eyes! Its horrible head, thrust flatly 
 
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 189 
 
 forth from the innermost coil and resting upon 
 the outermost, was directed straight toward 
 him, the definition of the wide, brutal jaw and 
 the idiot-like forehead serving to show the 
 direction of its malevolent gaze. The eyes 
 were no longer merely luminous p'oints; they 
 looked into his own with a meaning, a malign 
 significance. 
 
 II. 
 
 A snake in a bedroom of a modern city 
 dwelling of the better sort is, happily, not so 
 common a phenomenon as to make explana- 
 tion altogether needless. Harker Brayton, a 
 bachelor of thirty- five, a scholar, idler, and 
 something of an athlete, rich, popular, and of 
 sound health, had returned to San Francisco 
 from all ( manner of remote and unfamiliar 
 countries. His tastes, always a trifle luxu- 
 rious, had taken on an added exuberance from 
 long privation; and the resources of even the 
 Castle Hotel being inadequate to their per- 
 fect gratification, he had gladly accepted the 
 hospitality of his friend, Dr. Druring, the 
 distinguished scientist. Dr. Druring' s house, 
 a large, old-fashioned one in what was now an 
 obscure quarter of the city, had an outer and 
 visible aspect of proud reserve. It plainly 
 would not associate with the contiguous ele- 
 
IQO THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 
 
 ments of its altered environment, and ap- 
 peared to have developed some of the eccen- 
 tricities which come of isolation. One of 
 these was a "wing," conspicuously irrele- 
 vant in point of architecture, and no less re- 
 bellious in the matter of purpose; for it was a 
 combination of laboratory, menagerie and 
 museum. It was here that the doctor in- 
 dulged the scientific side of his nature in the 
 study of such forms of animal life as engaged 
 his interest and comforted his taste which, 
 it must be confessed, ran rather to the lower 
 forms. For one of the higher types nimbly 
 and sweetly to recommend itself unto his gen- 
 tle senses, it had at least to retain certain ru- 
 dimentary characteristics allying it to such 
 "dragons of the prime" as toads and snakes. 
 His scientific sympathies were distinctly rep- 
 tilian; he loved nature's vulgarians and de- 
 scribed himself as the Zola of zoology. His 
 wife and daughters not having the advantage 
 to share his enlightened curiosity regarding 
 the works and ways of our ill-starred fellow- 
 creatures, were, with needless austerity, ex- 
 cluded from what he called the Snakery, and 
 doomed to companionship with their own 
 kind, though, to soften the rigors of their lot, 
 he had permitted them, out of his great wealth, 
 
THE J/./A" .-I.VZ? THE SNAKE. IQI 
 
 to outdo the reptiles in the gorgeousness of 
 their surroundings and to shine with a supe- 
 rior splendor. 
 
 Architecturally, and in point of " furnish- 
 ing," the Snakery had a severe simplicity be- 
 htting the humble circumstances of its occu- 
 pants, many of whom, indeed, could not 
 safely have been intrusted with the liberty 
 which is necessary to the full enjoyment of 
 luxury, for they had the troublesome pecul- 
 iarity of being alive. In their own apartments, 
 however, they were under as little personal 
 restraint as was compatible with their protec- 
 tion from the baneful habit of swallowing one 
 another; and, as Bray ton had thoughtfully 
 been apprised, it was more than a tradition 
 that some of them had at divers times been 
 found in parts of the premises where it would 
 have embarrassed them to explain their pres- 
 ence. Despite the Snakery and its uncanny 
 associations to which, indeed, he gave little 
 attention Brayton found life at the Druring 
 mansion very much to his mind. 
 
 in. 
 
 Beyond a smart shock of surprise and a 
 shudder of mere loathing, Mr. Brayton was 
 not greatly affected. His first thought was 
 
192 THE MAX AND THE XXAKE. 
 
 to ring the call bell and bring a servant; but, 
 although the bell cord dangled within easy 
 reach, he made no movement toward it; it 
 had occurred to his mind that the act might 
 subject him to the suspicion of fear, which he 
 certainly did not feel. He was more keenly 
 conscious of the incongruous nature of the 
 situation than affected by its perils; it was re- 
 volting, but absurd. 
 
 The reptile was of a species with which 
 Brayton was unfamiliar. Its length he could 
 only conjecture; the body at the largest visible 
 part seemed about as thick as his forearm. 
 In what way was it dangerous, if in any way? 
 Was it venomous? Was it a constrictor? 
 His knowledge of nature's danger signals did 
 not enable him to say; he had never deci- 
 phered the code. 
 
 If not dangerous, the creature was at least 
 offensive. It was de trop "matter out of 
 place" an impertinence. The gem was un- 
 worthy of the setting. Even the barbarous 
 taste of our time and country, which had 
 loaded the walls of the room with pictures, 
 the floor with urniture and the furniture with 
 bric-a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for 
 this bit of the savage life of the jungle. Be- 
 sides insupportable thought! the exhalations 
 
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 193 
 
 of its breath mingled with the atmosphere 
 which he himself was breathing! 
 
 These thoughts shaped themselves with 
 greater or less definition in Brayton's mind, 
 and begot action. The process is what we 
 call consideration and decision. It is thus 
 that we are wise and unwise. It is thus that 
 the withered leaf in an autumn breeze shows 
 greater or less intelligence than its fellows, 
 falling upon the land or upon the lake. The 
 secret of human action is an open one: some- 
 thing contracts our muscles. Does it mat- 
 ter if we give to the preparatory molecular 
 changes the name of will ? 
 
 Brayton rose to his feet and prepared to back 
 softly away from the snake, without disturb- 
 ing it, if possible, and through the door. 
 People retire so from the presence of the 
 great, for greatness is power, and power is a 
 menace. He knew that he could walk back- 
 ward without obstruction, and find the door 
 without error. Should the monster follow, 
 the taste which had plastered the walls with 
 paintings had consistently supplied a rack of 
 murderous Oriental weapons from which he 
 could snatch one to suit the occasion. In 
 the meantime the snake's eyes burned with 
 a more pitiless malevolence than ever. 
 13 
 
THE MAX AND THE S 
 
 Brayton lifted his right foot free of the floor 
 to step backward. That moment he felt a 
 strong aversion to doing so. 
 
 " I am accounted brave," he murmured; 
 "is bravery, then, no more than pride? He- 
 cause there are none to witness the shame 
 shall I retreat ? ' ' 
 
 He was steadying himself with his right 
 hand upon the back of a chair, his foot sus- 
 pended. 
 
 "Nonsense!" he said aloud; "I am not 
 so great a coward as to fear to seem to myself 
 afraid." 
 
 He lifted the foot a little higher by slightly 
 bending the knee, and thrust it sharply to 
 the floor an inch in front of the other! 
 He could not think how that occurred. A 
 trial with the left foot had the same result; it 
 was again in advance of the right. The hand 
 upon the chair back was grasping it; the arm 
 was straight, reaching somewhat backward. 
 One might have seen that he was reluctant to 
 lose his hold. The snake's malignant head 
 was still thrust forth from the inner coil as be- 
 fore, the neck level. It had not moved, but 
 its eyes were now electric sparks, radiating 
 an infinity of luminous needles. 
 
 The man had an ashy pallor. Again he 
 
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 195 
 
 took a step forward, and another, partly drag- 
 ging the chair, which, when finally released, 
 fell upon the floor with a crash. The man 
 groaned; the snake made neither sound nor 
 inotion, but its eyes were two dazzling suns. 
 The reptile itself was wholly concealed by 
 them. They gave off enlarging rings of rich 
 and vivid colors, which at their greatest ex- 
 pansion successively vanished like soap bub- 
 bles; they seemed to approach his very face, 
 and anon were an immeasurable distance 
 away. He heard, somewhere, the contin- 
 uous throbbing of a great drum, with desul- 
 tory bursts of far music, inconceivably sweet, 
 like the tones of an aeolian harp. He knew 
 it for the sunrise melody of Memnon's statue, 
 and thought he stood in the Nileside reeds, 
 hearing, with exalted sense, that immortal an- 
 them through the silence of the centuries. 
 
 The music ceased; rather, it became by in- 
 sensible degrees the distant roll of a retreat- 
 ing thunder-storm. A landscape, glittering 
 with sun and rain, stretched before him, 
 arched with a vivid rainbow, framing in its 
 giant curve a hundred visible cities. In the 
 middle distance a vast serpent, wearing a 
 crown, reared its head out of its voluminous 
 convolutions and looked at him with his dead 
 
196 THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 
 
 mother's eyes. Suddenly this enchanting 
 landscape seemed to rise swiftly upward, like 
 the drop scene at a theater, and vanished in 
 a blank. Something struck him a hard blow 
 upon the face and breast. He had fallen to 
 the floor; the blood ran from his broken nose 
 and his bruised lips. For a moment he was 
 dazed and stunned, and lay with closed eyes, 
 his face against the floor. In a few moments 
 he had recovered, and then realized that his 
 fall, by withdrawing his eyes, had broken the 
 spell which held him. He felt that now, by 
 keeping his gaze averted, he would be able 
 to retreat. But the thought of the serpent 
 within a few feet of his head, yet unseen 
 perhaps in the very act of springing upon 
 him and throwing its coils about his throat 
 was too horrible. He lifted his head, stared 
 again into those baleful eyes, and was again 
 in bondage. 
 
 The snake had not moved, and appeared 
 somewhat to have lost its power upon the im- 
 agination; the gorgeous illusions of a few 
 moments before were not repeated. Beneath 
 that flat and brainless brow its black, beady 
 eyes simply glittered, as at first, with an ex- 
 pression unspeakably malignant. It was as 
 if the creature, knowing its triumph assured, 
 
THE MAX AXD THE SNAKE, 197 
 
 had determined to practice no more alluring 
 wiles. 
 
 Now ensued a fearful scene. The man, 
 prone upon the floor, within a yard of his en- 
 emy, raised the upper part of his body upon 
 his elbows, his head thrown back, his legs ex- 
 tended to their full length. His face was 
 white between its gouts of blood; his eyes 
 were strained open to their uttermost expan- 
 sion. There was froth upon his lips; it 
 dropped off in flakes. Strong convulsions 
 ran through his body, making almost serpen- 
 tine undulations. He bent himself at the 
 waist, shifting his legs from side to side. And 
 every movement left him a little nearer to the 
 snake. He thrust his hands forward to brace 
 himself back, yet constantly advanced upon 
 his elbows. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library. 
 The scientist was in rare good humor. 
 
 ' ' I have just obtained, by exchange with 
 another collector," he said, "a splendid 
 specimen of the ophiophagus" 
 
 "And what may that be?" the lady in- 
 quired with a somewhat languid interest. 
 
 "Why, bless my soul, what profound ig- 
 norance! My dear, a man who ascertains 
 
198 THE .VAX AXD THE SXAKE. 
 
 after marriage that his wife does not know 
 Greek, is entitled to a divorce. The ophioph- 
 agus is a snake which eats other snakes." 
 
 " I hope it will eat all yours," she said, ab- 
 sently shifting the lamp. " But how does it. 
 get the other snakes ? By charming them, I 
 suppose." 
 
 "That is just like you, dear," said the 
 doctor, with an affectation of petulance. ' 'You 
 know how irritating to me is any allusion to 
 that vulgar superstition about the snake's 
 power of fascination." 
 
 The conversation was interrupted by a 
 mighty cry, which rang through the silent 
 house like the voice of a demon shouting in a 
 tomb! Again and yet again it sounded, with 
 terrible distinctness. They sprang to their 
 feet, the man confused, the lady pale and 
 speechless with fright. Almost before the 
 echoes of the last cry had died away, the doc- 
 tor was out of the room, springing up the 
 staircase two steps at a time. In the corri- 
 dor, in front of Brayton's chamber, he met 
 some servants who had come from the upper 
 floor. Together they rushed at the door 
 without knocking. It was unfastened and 
 gave way. Brayton lay upon his stomach on 
 the floor, dead. His head and arms were 
 
THE ^T^^~ AXD THE SNAKE. 199 
 
 partly concealed under the foot rail of the 
 bed. They pulled the body away, turning it 
 upon the back. The face was daubed with 
 blood and froth, the eyes were wide open, 
 staring a dreadful sight! 
 
 " Died in a fit, said the scientist,'' bending 
 his knee and placing his hand upon the heart. 
 While in that position, he happened to glance 
 under the bed. "Good God!" he added, 
 " how did this thing get in here? " 
 
 He reached under the bed, pulled out the 
 snake, and flung it, still coiled, to the center 
 of the room, whence, with a harsh, shuffling 
 sound, it slid across the polished floor till 
 stopped by the wall, where it lay without mo- 
 tion. It was a stuffed snake; its eyes were 
 two shoe buttons. 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 HHHERE was an entire lack of interest in the 
 latest arrival at Hurdy-Gurdy. He was 
 not even christened with the picturesquely de- 
 scriptive nickname which is so frequently a 
 mining camp's word of welcome to the new- 
 comer. In almost any other camp there- 
 about this circumstance would of itself have 
 secured him some such appellation as "The 
 White-headed Conundrum, ' ' or ' ' No Sarvey' ' 
 an expression naively supposed to suggest 
 to quick intelligences the Spanish quien sabe, 
 He came without provoking a ripple of con- 
 cern upon the social surface of Hurdy-Gurdy 
 a place which, to the general Californian con- 
 tempt of men's personal antecedents super- 
 added a local indifference of its own. The 
 time was long past when it was of any impor- 
 tance who came there, or if anybody came. 
 No one was living at Hurdy-Gurdy. 
 
 Two years before, the camp had boasted a 
 
 stirring population of two or three thousand 
 
 males, and not fewer than a dozen females. 
 
 A majority of the former had done a few 
 
 (200) 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 2OI 
 
 weeks' earnest work in demonstrating, to the 
 disgust of the latter, the singularly mendacious 
 character of the person whose ingenious tales 
 of rich gold deposits had lured them thither 
 work, by the way, in which there was as 
 little mental satisfaction as pecuniary profit; 
 for a bullet from the pistol of a public-spirited 
 citizen had put that imaginative gentleman 
 beyond the reach of aspersion on the third 
 day of the camp's existence. Still, his fiction 
 had a certain foundation in fact, and many 
 had lingered a considerable time in and about 
 Hurdy-Gurdy, though now all had been long 
 gone. 
 
 But they had left ample evidence of their 
 sojourn. From the point where Injun Creek 
 falls into the Rio San Juan Smith, up along both 
 banks of the former into the canon whence it 
 emerges, extended a double row of forlorn 
 shanties that seemed about to fall upon one 
 another's neck to bewail their desolation; 
 while about an equal number appeared to 
 have straggled up the slope on either hand, 
 and perched themselves upon commanding 
 eminences, whence they craned forward to get 
 a good view of the affecting scene. Most of 
 these habitations were emaciated, as by fam- 
 ine, to the condition of mere skeletons, about 
 
2O2 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 which clung unlovely tatters of what might 
 have been skin, but was really canvas. The 
 little valley itself, torn and gashed by pick and 
 shovel, was unhandsome, with long, bending 
 lines of decaying flume resting here and there 
 upon the summits of sharp ridges, and stilt- 
 ing awkwardly across the interspaces upon 
 unhewn poles. The whole place presented 
 that raw and forbidding aspect of arrested de- 
 velopment which is a new country's substitute 
 for the solemn grace of ruin wrought by time. 
 Whenever there remained a patch of the orig- 
 inal soil, a rank overgrowth of weeds and bram- 
 bles had spread upon the scene, and from its 
 dank, unwholesome shades the visitor curi- 
 ous in such matters might have obtained 
 numberless souvenirs of the camp's former 
 glory fellowless boots mantled with green 
 mold and plethoric of rotting leaves; an oc- 
 casional old felt hat; desultory remnants of a 
 flannel shirt; sardine boxes inhumanly muti- 
 lated, and a surprising profusion of black bot- 
 tles, distributed with a truly catholic impar- 
 tiality, everywhere. 
 
 n. 
 
 The man who had now rediscovered Hurdy- 
 Gurdy was evidently not curious as to its 
 archaeology. Nor, as he looked about him 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 2C>3 
 
 upon the dismal evidences of wasted work 
 and broken hopes, their dispiriting signifi- 
 cance accentuated by the ironical pomp of a 
 cheap gilding by the rising sun, did he sup- 
 plement his sigh of weariness by one of sensi- 
 bility. He simply removed from the back of 
 his tired burro a miner's outfit a trifle larger 
 than the animal itself, picketed that creature, 
 and, selecting a hatchet from his kit, moved 
 off at once across the dry bed of Injun Creek 
 to the top of a low, gravelly hill beyond. 
 
 Stepping across a prostrate fence of brush 
 and boards, he picked up one of the latter, 
 split it into five parts, and sharpened them at 
 one end. He then began a kind of search, 
 occasionally stooping to examine something 
 with close attention. At last his patient scru- 
 tiny appeared to be rewarded with success, 
 for he suddenly erected his figure to its full 
 height, made a gesture of satisfaction, pro- 
 nounced the word ' ' Scarry, ' ' and at once 
 strode away, with long, equal steps, which he 
 counted, then stopped and drove one of his 
 stakes into the earth. He then looked care- 
 fully about him, measured off a number of 
 paces over a singularly uneven ground, and 
 hammered in another. Pacing off twice the 
 distance at a right angle to his former course; 
 
2O4 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 he drove down a third, and, repeating the 
 process, sank home the fourth, and then a 
 fifth. This he split at the top, and in the 
 cleft inserted an old letter envelope, covered 
 with an intricate system of pencil tracks. In 
 short, he staked off a hill claim in strict ac- 
 cordance with the local mining laws of Hurdy- 
 Gurdy, and put up the customary notice. 
 
 It is necessary to explain that one of the 
 adjuncts to Hurdy-Gurdy one to which that 
 metroplis became afterward itself an adjunct 
 was a cemetery. In the first week of the 
 camp's existence this had been thoughtfully 
 laid out by a committee of citizens. The day 
 after had been signalized by a debate between 
 two members of the committee, with reference 
 to a more eligible site, and on the third day 
 the necropolis was inaugurated by a double 
 funeral. As the camp had waned the ceme- 
 tery had waxed; and long before the ultimate 
 inhabitant, victorious alike over the insid- 
 ious malaria and the forthright revolver, had 
 turned the tail of his pack-ass upon Injun 
 Creek, the outlying settlement had become a 
 populous if not popular suburb. And now, 
 when the town was fallen into the sere and 
 yellow leaf of an unlovely senility, the grave- 
 yard though somewhat marred by time and 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 2O5 
 
 circumstance, and not altogether exempt from 
 innovations in grammar and experiments in 
 orthography, to say nothing of the devastating 
 coyote answered the humble needs of its 
 denizens with reasonable completeness. It 
 comprised a generous two acres of ground, 
 which, with commendable thrift but needless 
 care, had been selected for its mineral unworth, 
 contained two or three skeleton trees (one of 
 which had a stout lateral branch from which a 
 weather-wasted rope still significantly dan- 
 gled), half a hundred gravelly mounds, a 
 score of rude headboards displaying the lit- 
 erary peculiarities above mentioned, and a 
 struggling colony of prickly pears. Alto- 
 gether, God's Location, as with characteristic 
 reverence it had been called, could justly 
 boast of an indubitably superior quality of 
 desolation. It was in the most thickly settled 
 portion of this interesting demesne that Mr. 
 Jefferson Doman staked off his claim. If in 
 the prosecution of his design he should deem 
 it expedient to remove any of the dead, they 
 would have the right to be suitably re-interred. 
 
 in. 
 
 This Mr. Jefferson Doman was from Eliz- 
 abethtown, New Jersey, where, six years be- 
 
2O6 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 fore, he had left his heart in the keeping 
 of a golden-haired, demure-mannered young 
 woman named Mary Matthews, as collateral 
 security for his return to claim her hand. 
 
 "I just know you'll never get back alive 
 you never do succeed in anything, ' ' was the 
 remark which illustrated Miss Matthews' 
 notion of what constituted success, and, in- 
 cidentally, her view of the nature of encour- 
 agement. She added: "If you don't I'll go 
 to California too. I can put the coins in little 
 bags as you dig them out." 
 
 This characteristically feminine theory of 
 auriferous deposits did not commend itself to 
 the masculine intelligence: it was Mr. Do- 
 man's belief that gold was found in a liquid 
 condition. He deprecated her intent with 
 considerable enthusiasm, suppressed her sobs 
 with a light hand upon her mouth, laughed 
 in her eyes as he kissed away her tears, and, 
 with a cheerful "Ta-ta," went to California to 
 labor for her through the long, loveless years, 
 with a strong heart, an alert hope, and a 
 steadfast fidelity that never for a moment for- 
 got what it was about. In the meantime Miss 
 Matthews had granted a monopoly of her 
 humble talent for sacking up coins to Mr. Jo 
 Seeman, of New York, gambler, by whom it 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 2OJ 
 
 was better appreciated than her commanding 
 genius for unsacking and bestowing them 
 upon his local rivals. Of this latter aptitude, 
 indeed, he manifested his disapproval by an 
 act which secured him the position of clerk of 
 the prison laundry at Sing Sing, and for her 
 the sobriquet of "Split-faced Moll." At 
 about this time she wrote to Mr. Doman a 
 touching letter of renunciation, inclosing her 
 photograph to prove that she had no longer 
 a right to indulge the dream of becoming 
 -Mrs. Doman, and recounting so graphically 
 her fall from a horse that the staid bronco 
 upon which Mr. Doman had ridden into Red 
 Dog to get the letter, made vicarious atone- 
 ment under the spur all the way back to 
 camp. The letter failed in a signal way to 
 accomplish its object; the fidelity which had 
 before been to Mr. Doman a matter of love 
 and duty, was thenceforth a matter of honor 
 also; and the photograph, showing the once 
 pretty face sadly disfigured as by the slash of 
 a knife, was duly instated in his affections, 
 and its more comely predecessor treated with 
 contumelious neglect. On being apprised of 
 this, Miss Matthews, it is only fair to say, ap- 
 peared less surprised than from the apparently 
 low estimate of Mr. Doman 's 
 
2O8 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 which the tone of her former letter attested, 
 one would naturally have expected her to be. 
 Soon after, however, her letters grew infre- 
 quent, and then ceased altogether. 
 
 But Mr. Doman had another correspond- 
 ent, Mr. Barney Bree, of Hurdy-Gurdy, 
 formerly of Red Dog. This gentleman, al- 
 though a notable figure among miners, was 
 not a miner. His knowledge of mining con- 
 sisted mainly in a marvelous command of 
 its slang, to which he made copious contribu- 
 tions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth 
 of extraordinary phrases more remarkable for 
 their aptness than their refinement, and which 
 impressed the unlearned "tender-foot" with 
 a lively sense of the profundity of their in- 
 ventor's acquirements. When not entertain- 
 ing a circle of admiring auditors from San 
 Francisco or the East he could commonly be 
 found pursuing the comparatively obscure 
 industry of sweeping out the various dance 
 houses and purifying the spittoons. 
 
 Barney had apparently but two passions in 
 life love of Jefferson Doman, who had once 
 been of some service to him, and love of whisky, 
 which certainly had not. He had been 
 among the first in the rush to Hurdy-Gurdy, 
 but had not prospered, and had sunk by de- 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 2C9 
 
 grees to the position of grave digger. This 
 was not a vocation, but Barney in a desultory 
 way turned his trembling hand to it whenever 
 some local misunderstanding at the card table 
 and his own partial recovery from a prolonged 
 debauch occurred coincidently in point of 
 time. One day Mr. Doman received, at Red 
 Dog, a letter with the simple postmark, 
 "Hurdy, Cal.," and being occupied with 
 another matter, carelessly thrust it into a chink 
 of his cabin for future perusal. Some two 
 years later it was accidentally dislodged, and 
 he read it. It ran as follows: 
 
 " HURDY, June 6. 
 
 <( FRIEND JEFF: I've hit her hard in the bone- 
 yard. She's blind and lousy. I'm on the divvy 
 that's me, and mum's my lay till you toot. 
 
 "Yours, BARNEY. 
 "P. S. I've clayed her with Scarry." 
 
 With some knowledge of the general min- 
 ing camp argot and of Mr. Bree's private 
 system for the communication of ideas, Mr. 
 Doman had no difficulty in understanding by 
 this uncommon epistle that Barney, while 
 performing his duty as grave digger, had un- 
 covered a quartz ledge with no outcroppings; 
 that it was visibly rich in free gold; that, 
 moved by considerations of friendship, he 
 
2IO A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 was willing to accept Mr. Doman as a partner, 
 and, pending that gentleman's declaration of 
 his will in the matter, would discreetly keep 
 the discovery a secret. From the postscript 
 it was plainly inferable that, in order to con- 
 ceal the treasure, he had buried above it the 
 mortal part of a person named Scarry. 
 
 From subsequent events, as related to Mr. 
 Doman, at Red Dog, it would appear that 
 before taking this precaution Mr. Bree had 
 the thrift to remove a modest competency of 
 the gold; at any rate, it was about that time 
 that he entered upon that memorable series 
 of potations and treatings which is still one of 
 the cherished traditions of the San Juan 
 Smith country, and is spoken of with respect 
 as far away as Ghost Rock and Lone Hand. 
 At its conclusion, some former citizens of 
 Hurdy-Gurdy, for whom he had performed 
 the last kindly office at the cemetery, made 
 room for him among them, and he rested 
 well. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Having finished staking off his claim, Mr. 
 Doman walked back to the center of it and 
 stood again at the spot where his search 
 among the graves had expired in the excla- 
 mation, ' ' Scarry. ' ' He bent again over the 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 211 
 
 headboard which bore that name, and, as if to 
 re-inforce the senses of sight and hearing, 
 ran his forefinger along the rudely-carved 
 letters, and, re-erecting himself, appended 
 orally to the simple inscription the shockingly 
 forthright epitaph, " She was a holy terror 1" 
 Had Mr. Doman been required to make 
 these words good with proof as, considering 
 their somewhat censorious character, he doubt- 
 less should have been he would have found 
 himself embarrassed by the absence of reputa- 
 ble witnesses, and hearsay evidence would 
 have been the best he could command. At 
 the time when Scarry had been prevalent 
 in the mining camps thereabout when, as 
 the editor of the Hurdy Herald would have 
 phrased it, she was " in the plentitude of her 
 power" Mr. Doman' s fortunes had been at a 
 low ebb, and he had led the vagrantly labo- 
 rious life of a prospector. His time had been 
 mostly spent in the mountains, now with one 
 companion, now with another. It was from 
 the admiring recitals of these casual partners, 
 fresh from the various camps, that his judg- 
 ment of Scarry had been made up; himself 
 had never had the doubtful advantage of her 
 acquaintance and the precarious distinction of 
 her favor. And when, finally, on the termi- 
 
212 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 nation of her perverse career at Hurdy- 
 Gurdy, he had read in a chance copy of the 
 Herald her column-long obituary (written by 
 the local humorist of that lively sheet in the 
 highest style of his art), Doman had paid to 
 her memory and to her historiographer's 
 genius the tribute of a smile, and chivalrously 
 forgotten her. Standing now at the grave-side 
 of this mountain Messalina, he recalled the 
 leading events of her turbulent career, as he 
 had heard them celebrated at his various 
 camp fires, and, perhaps with an unconscious 
 attempt at self-justification, repeated that she 
 was a holy terror, and sank his pick into her 
 grave up to the handle. At that moment a 
 raven, which had silently settled upon a 
 branch of the blasted tree above his head, 
 solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its 
 mind about the matter with an approving 
 croak. 
 
 Pursuing his discovery of free gold with 
 great zeal, which he probably credited to his 
 conscience as a grave digger, Mr. Barney Bree 
 had made an unusually deep sepulcher, and it 
 was near sunset before Mr. Doman, laboring 
 with the leisurely deliberation of one who has 
 a ' ' dead sure thing ' ' and no fear of an adverse 
 claimant's enforcement of a prior right, reached 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 21 3 
 
 the coffin and uncovered it. When he had 
 done so, he was confronted by a difficulty for 
 which he had made no provision; the coffin 
 a mere flat shell of not very well-preserved 
 redwood boards, apparently had no handles, 
 and it filled the entire bottom of tlie excavation. 
 The best he could do without violating the de- 
 cent sanctities of the situation, was to make the 
 excavation sufficiently longer to enable him to 
 stand at the head of the casket, and, getting his 
 powerful hands underneath, erect it upon its 
 narrower end; and this he proceeded to do. 
 The approach of night quickened his efforts. 
 He had no thought of abandoning his task at 
 this stage, to resume it on the morrow under 
 more advantageous conditions. The feverish 
 stimulation of cupidity and the fascination of 
 terror held him to his dismal work with an 
 iron authority. He no longer idled, but 
 wrought with a terrible zeal. His head un- 
 covered, his upper garments discarded, his 
 shirt opened at the neck and thrown back 
 from his breast, down which ran sinuous rills 
 of perspiration, this hardy and impenitent 
 gold-getter and grave-robber toiled with a 
 giant energy that almost dignified the char- 
 acter of his horrible purpose, and when the 
 sun fringes had burned themselves out along 
 
214 A H LY TERROR. 
 
 the crest line of the western hills, and the full 
 moon had climbed out of the shadows that 
 lay along the purple plain, he had erected the 
 coffin upon its foot, where it stood propped 
 against the end of the open grave. Then, as 
 the man, standing up to his neck in the earth 
 at the opposite extreme of the excavation, 
 looked at the coffin upon which the moon- 
 light now fell with a full illumination, he was 
 thrilled with a sudden terror to observe upon 
 it the startling apparition of a dark human 
 head the shadow of his own. For a moment 
 this simple and natural circumstance un- 
 nerved him. The noise of his labored breath- 
 ing frightened him, and he tried to still it, but 
 his bursting lungs would not be denied. 
 Then, laughing half audibly and wholly with- 
 out spirit, he began making movements of 
 his head from side to side, in order to com- 
 pel the apparition to repeat them. He found 
 a comforting reassurance in asserting his com- 
 mand over his own shadow. He was tempo- 
 rizing, making, with unconscious prudence, a 
 dilatory opposition to an impending catas- 
 trophe. He felt that invisible forces of evil 
 were closing in upon him, and he parleyed 
 for time with the Inevitable. 
 
 He now observed in succession several ex- 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 215 
 
 traordinary circumstances. The surface of 
 the coffin upon which his eyes were fastened 
 was not flat; it presented two distinct ridges, 
 one longitudinal and the other transverse. 
 Where these intersected at the widest part, 
 there was a corroded metallic plate that re- 
 flected the moonlight with a dismal luster. 
 Along the outer edges of the coffin, at long 
 intervals, were rust-eaten heads of nails. 
 This frail product of the carpenter's art had 
 been put into the grave the wrong side up! 
 
 Perhaps it was one of the humors of the 
 camp a practical manifestation of the face- 
 tious spirit that had found literary expression 
 in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the 
 pen of Hurefy-Gurdy's great humorist. Per- 
 haps it had some occult personal signification 
 impenetrable to understandings uninstructed 
 in local traditions. A more charitable hy- 
 pothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure 
 on the part of Mr. Barney Bree, who, making 
 the interment unassisted, either by choice for 
 the conservation of his golden secret, or 
 through public a'pathy, had committed a 
 blunder which he was afterward unable or 
 unconcerned to rectify. However it had 
 come about, poor Scarry had indubitably 
 been put into the earth face downward. 
 
2l6 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 When terror and absurdity make alliance, 
 the effect is frightful. This strong-hearted 
 and daring man, this hardy night worker 
 among the dead, this defiant antagonist of 
 darkness and desolation, succumbed to a 
 ridiculous surprise. He was smitten with a 
 thrilling chill shivered, and shook his mass- 
 ive shoulders as if to throw off an icy hand. 
 He no longer breathed, and the blood in his 
 veins, unable to abate its impetus, surged 
 hotly beneath his cold skin. Unleavened 
 with oxygen, it mounted to his head and con- 
 gested his brain. His physical functions had 
 gone over to the enemy; his very heart was 
 arrayed against him. He did not move; he 
 could not have cried out. He needed but a 
 coffin to be dead as dead as the death that 
 confronted him with only the length of an 
 open grave and the thickness of a rotting 
 plank between. 
 
 Then, one by one, his senses returned; the 
 tide of terror that had overwhelmed his facul- 
 ties began to recede. But with the return of 
 his senses he became singularly unconscious 
 of the object of his fear. He saw the moon- 
 light gilding the coffin, but no longer the cof- 
 fin that it gilded. Raising his eyes and turn- 
 ing his head, he noted, curiously and with 
 
A HOLY TERROR, 21 7 
 
 surprise, the black branches of the dead tree, 
 and tried to estimate the length of the weather- 
 worn rope that dangled from its ghostly hand. 
 The monotonous barking of distant coyotes 
 affected him as something he had heard years 
 ago in a dream. An owl flapped awkward' y 
 above him on noiseless wing's, and he tried 
 to forecast the direction of its flight when it 
 should encounter the cliff that reared its illu- 
 minated front a mile away. His hearing took 
 account of a gopher's stealthy tread in the 
 shadow of the cactus. He was intensely ob- 
 servant; his senses were all alert; but he saw 
 not the coffin. As one can gaze at the sun 
 until it looks black and then vanishes, so 
 his mind, having exhausted its capacities of 
 dread, was no longer conscious of the sep- 
 arate existence of anything dreadful. The 
 Assassin was cloaking the sword. 
 
 It was during this lull in the battle that he 
 became sensible of a faint, sickening odor. 
 At first he thought it was that of a rattlesnake, 
 and involuntarily tried to look about his feet. 
 They were nearly invisible in the gloom of 
 the grave. A hoarse, gurgling sound, like 
 the death-rattle in a human throat, seemed 
 to come out of the sky, and a moment later 
 a great, black, angular shadow, like the same 
 
2l8 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 sound made visible, dropped curving from 
 the topmost branch of the spectral tree, flut- 
 tered for an instant before his face, and sailed 
 fiercely away into the mist along the creek. 
 It was a raven. The incident recalled him to 
 a sense of the situation, and again his eyes 
 sought the upright cofHn, now illuminated by 
 the moon for half its length. He saw the 
 gleam of the metallic plate, and tried without 
 moving to decipher the inscription. Then 
 he fell to speculating upon what was behind 
 it. His creative imagination presented him a 
 vivid picture. The planks no longer seemed 
 an obstacle to his vision, and he saw the livid 
 corpse of the dead woman, standing in grave- 
 clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lid- 
 less, shrunken eyes. The lower jaw was fallen, 
 the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered 
 teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern 
 on the hollow cheeks the maculations of de- 
 cay. By some mysterious process, his mind 
 reverted for the first time that day to the pho- 
 tograph of Mary Matthews. He contrasted 
 its blonde beauty with the forbidding aspect 
 of this dead face the most beloved object 
 that he knew with the most hideous that he 
 could conceive. 
 
 The Assassin now advanced, and, displaying 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 2IQ 
 
 the blade, laid it against the victim's throat. 
 That is to say, the man became at first dimly, 
 then definitely, aware of an impressive coinci- 
 dence a relation a parallel, between the 
 face on the card and the name on the head- 
 board. The one was disfigured, the other 
 described a disfiguration. The thought took 
 hold of him and shook him. It transformed 
 the face that his imagination had created be- 
 hind the coffin lid; the contrast became a 
 resemblance; the resemblance grew to iden- 
 tity. Remembering the many descriptions ot 
 Scarry's personal appearance that he had 
 heard from the gossips of his camp fire, he 
 tried with imperfect success 1o recall the ex- 
 act nature of the disfiguration that had given 
 the woman her ugly name; and what was 
 lacking in his memory, fancy supplied, stamp- 
 ing it with the validity of conviction. In the 
 maddening attempt to recall such scraps of 
 the woman's history as he had heard, the 
 muscles of his arms and hands were strained 
 to a painful tension, as by an effort to lift a 
 great weight. His body writhed and twisted 
 with the exertion. The tendons of his neck 
 stood out as tense as whip cords, and his 
 breath came in short, sharp gasps. The ca- 
 tastrophe could not be much longer delayed, 
 
22O A HOL V TERROR. 
 
 or the agony of anticipation would leave 
 nothing to be clone by the coup de grace of 
 verification. The scarred face behind the 
 coffin lid would slay him through the wood. 
 
 A movement of the coffin calmed him. It 
 came forward to within a foot of his face, 
 growing visibly larger as it approached. The 
 rusted metallic plate, with an inscription illeg- 
 ible in the moonlight, looked him steadily in 
 the eye. Determined not to shrink, he tried 
 to brace his shoulders more firmly against the 
 end of the excavation, and nearly fell back- 
 ward in the attempt. There was nothing to 
 support him; he had advanced upon his 
 enemy, clutching the heavy knife that he had 
 drawn from his belt. The coffin had not 
 moved, and he smiled to think it could not 
 retreat. Lifting his knife, he struck the 
 heavy hilt against the metal plate with all his 
 power. There was a sharp, ringing percus- 
 sion, and with a dull clatter the whole decayed 
 coffin lid broke in pieces and came away, fall- 
 ing about his feet. The quick and the dead 
 were face to face the frenzied, shrieking man 
 the woman standing tranquil in her silences 
 She was a holy terror! 
 v. 
 
 Some months later a party of men and 
 
A FIOLY TERROR. 221 
 
 women belonging to the highest social circles 
 of San Francisco passed through Hurdy- 
 Gurdy on their way to the Yosemite Valley 
 by a new trail. They halted there for dinner, 
 and, pending its preparation, explored the des- 
 olate camp. One of the party had been at 
 Hurdy-Gurdy in the days of its glory. He 
 had, indeed, been one of its prominent citi- 
 zens; and it used to be said that more money 
 passed over his faro table in any one night 
 than over those of all his competitors in a 
 week; but being now a millionaire engaged 
 in greater enterprises, he did not deem these 
 early successes of sufficient importance to 
 merit the distinction of remark. His invalid 
 wife, a lady famous in San Francisco for the 
 costly nature of her entertainments and her 
 exacting rigor with regard to the social posi- 
 tion and antecedents of those who attended 
 them, accompanied the expedition. During 
 a stroll among the abandoned shanties of the 
 abandoned camp, Mr. Porfer directed the at- 
 tention of his wife and friends to a dead tree 
 on a low hill beyond Injun Creek. 
 
 "As I told you," he said, "I passed 
 through this camp in 18 , and was told that 
 no fewer than five men had been hanged here 
 by Vigilantes at various times, and all on that 
 
222 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 tree. If I am not mistaken, a rope is dan- 
 gling from it yet. Let us go over and see the 
 place. ' ' 
 
 Mr. Porfer did not add that the rope in 
 question was perhaps the very one from whose 
 fatal embrace his own neck had once had an 
 escape so narrow that an hour's delay in tak- 
 ing himself out of that region would have 
 spanned it. 
 
 Proceeding leisurely down the creek to a 
 convenient crossing, the party came upon the 
 cleanly-picked skeleton of an animal, which 
 Mr. Porfer, after due examination, pronounced 
 to be that of an ass. The distinguishing ears 
 were gone, but much of the inedible head had 
 been spared by the beasts and birds, and the 
 stout bridle of horsehair was intact, as was the 
 riata, of similar material, connecting it with a 
 picket pin still firmly sunken in the earth. 
 The wooden and metallic elements of a miner's 
 kit lay near by. The customary remarks 
 were made, cynical on the part of the gentle- 
 men, sentimental and refined by the lady. A 
 little later they stood by the tree in the ceme- 
 tery, and Mr. Porfer sufficiently unbent from 
 his dignity to place himself beneath the rotten 
 rope and confidently lay a coil of it about his 
 neck, somewhat, it appeared, to his own sat- 
 isfaction, but greatly to the horror of his wife, 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 22$ 
 
 to whose sensibilities the performance gave a 
 smart shock. 
 
 An exclamation from one of the party gath- 
 ered them all about an open grave, at the 
 bottom of which they saw a confused mass of 
 human bones, and the broken remnants of a 
 coffin. Wolves and buzzards had performed 
 the last sad rites for pretty much all else. 
 Two skulls were visible, and, in order to in- 
 vestigate this somewhat unusual redundancy, 
 one of the younger gentlemen had the hardi- 
 hood to spring into the grave and hand them 
 up to another before Mrs. Porfer could in- 
 dicate her marked disapproval of so shock- 
 ing an act, which, nevertheless, she did with 
 considerable feeling and in very choice words. 
 Pursuing his search among the dismal debris 
 at the bottom of the grave, the young gentle- 
 man next handed up a rusted coffin plate, with 
 a rudely-cut inscription, which, with difficulty, 
 Mr. Porfer deciphered and read aloud with an 
 earnest and not altogether unsuccessiul attempt 
 at the dramatic effect which he deemed befit- 
 ting to the occasion and his rhetorical abilities: 
 MANUELITA MURPHY. 
 
 Born at the Mission San Pedro Died in 
 Hurdy-Gurdy, 
 
 Aged 47. 
 Heir s full of such. 
 
224 A HOLY TERROR. 
 
 In deference to the piety of the reader and the 
 nerves of Mrs. Porfer's fastidious sisterhood of 
 both sexes let us not touch upon the painful im- 
 pression produced by this uncommon inscrip- 
 tion, further than to say that the elocutionary 
 powers of Mr. Porfer had never before met 
 with such spontaneous and overwhelming 
 recognition. 
 
 The next morsel that rewarded the ghoul 
 in the grave was a long tangle of black hair, 
 denied with clay; but this was such an anti- 
 climax that it received little attention. Sud- 
 denly, with a short exclamation and a gesture 
 of excitement, the young man unearthed a 
 fragment of grayish rock, and after a hurried 
 inspection handed it up to Mr. Porfer. As 
 the sunlight fell upon it, it glittered with a 
 yellow luster it was thickly studded with 
 gleaming points. Mr. Porfer snatched it, 
 bent his head over it a moment, and threw 
 it lightly away, with the simple remark: 
 
 "Iron pyrites fool's gold." 
 
 The young man in the discovery shaft was 
 a trifle disconcerted, apparently. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Porfer, unable longer to 
 endure the 'disagreeable business, had walked 
 back to the tree and seated herself at its root. 
 While rearranging a tress of golden hair, which 
 
A HOLY TERROR. 22$ 
 
 had slipped from its confinement, she was at- 
 tracted by what appeared to be, and really 
 was, the fragment of an old coat. Looking 
 about to assure herself that so unladylike an 
 act was not observed, she thrust, her jeweled 
 hand into the exposed pocket, and drew out 
 a moldy pocket-book. Its contents were as 
 follows: 
 
 One bundle of letters, postmarked Eliza- 
 bethtown, New Jersey. 
 
 One circle of blonde hair tied with a ribbon. 
 
 One photograph of a beautiful girl. 
 
 One ditto of same, singularly disfigured. 
 
 One name on back of photograph " Jeft- 
 erson Doman." 
 
 A few moments later a group of anxious 
 gentlemen surrounded Mrs. Porfer as she sat 
 motionless at the foot of the tree, her head 
 dropped forward, her fingers clutching a 
 crushed photograph. Her husband raised 
 her head, exposing a face ghastly white, ex- 
 cept the long, deforming cicatrice, familiar to 
 all her friends, which no art could ever hide, 
 and which now traversed the pallor of* her 
 countenance like a visible curse. 
 
 Mary Matthews Porfer had the bad luck to 
 be dead. 
 
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 THE NIGHT. 
 
 NE midsummer night a farmer's boy liv- 
 ing about ten miles from the city of Cin- 
 cinnati, was following a bridle path through 
 a dense and dark forest. He had been search- 
 ing for some missing cows, and at nightfall 
 found himself a long way from home, and in 
 a part of the country with which he was but 
 partly familiar. But he was a stout-hearted 
 lad, and, knowing his general direction from 
 his home, he plunged into the forest without 
 hesitation, guided by the stars. Coming into 
 the bridle path, and observing that it ran in 
 the right direction, he followed it. 
 
 The night was clear, but in the woods it 
 was exceedingly dark. It was more by the 
 sense of touch than by that of sight that the 
 lad kept the path. He could not, indeed, 
 very easily go astray; the undergrowth on 
 both sides was so thick as to be almost im- 
 penetrable. He had gone into the forest a mile 
 or more when he was surprised to see a fee- 
 
 (227) 
 
228 THE SUITABLE SURROUND1XGS. 
 
 ble gleam of light shining through the foliage 
 skirting the path on his left. The sight of it 
 startled him, and set his heart beating audi- 
 bly. 
 
 "The old Breede house is somewhere 
 about here," he said to himself. "This must 
 be the other end of the path which we reach 
 it by from our side. Ugh ! what should a light 
 be doing there? I don't like it." 
 
 Nevertheless, he pushed on. A moment 
 later and he had emerged from the forest into 
 a small, open space, mostly upgrown to bram- 
 bles. There were remnants of a rotting 
 fence. A few yards from the trail, in the 
 middle of the clearing, was the house, from 
 which the light came through an unglazed 
 window. The window had once contained 
 glass, but that and its supporting frame had 
 long ago yielded to missiles flung by hands 
 of venturesome boys, to attest alike their 
 courage and their hostility to the supernatu- 
 ral; for the Breede house bore the evil repu- 
 tation of being haunted. Possibly it was not, 
 but even the hardiest skeptic could not deny 
 that it was deserted which, in rural regions, 
 is much the same thing. 
 
 Looking at the mysterious dim light shin- 
 ing from the ruined window, the boy remem- 
 
THE S I V TA KL E SURRO UNDINGS. 2 2Q 
 
 bered with apprehension that his own hand 
 had assisted at the destruction. His penitence 
 was, of course, poignant in proportion to its 
 tardiness and inefficacy. He half expected 
 to be set upon by all the unworldly and bodi- 
 less malevolences whom he had outraged by 
 assisting to break alike their windows and 
 their peace. Yet this stubborn lad, shaking 
 in every limb, would not retreat. The blood 
 in his veins was strong and rich with the iron 
 of the frontiersman. He was but two removes 
 from the generation which had subdued the 
 Indian. He started to pass the house. 
 
 As he was going by, he looked in at the 
 blank window space, and saw a strange and 
 terrifying sight, the figure of a man seated 
 in the center of the room, at a table upon 
 which lay some loose sheets of paper. The 
 elbows rested on the table, the hands sup- 
 porting the head, which was uncovered. On 
 each side the fingers were pushed into the 
 hair. The face showed pale in the light of 
 a single candle a little to one side. The 
 flame illuminated that side of the face, the 
 other was in d.ep shadow. The man's eyes 
 were fixed upon the blank window space w'th 
 a stare in which an older and cooler observer 
 might have discerned something of apprehen- 
 
230 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 sion, but which seemed to the lad altogether 
 soulless. He believed the man to be dead. 
 
 The situation was horrible, but not without 
 its fascination. The boy paused in his flight 
 to note it all. He endeavored to still the 
 beating of his heart by holding his breath un- 
 til half suffocated. He was weak, faint, trem- 
 bling; he could feel the deathly whiteness of 
 his face. Nevertheless, he set his teeth and 
 resolutely advanced to the house. He had 
 no conscious intention, it was the mere 
 courage of terror. He thrust his white face 
 forward into the illuminated opening. At 
 that instant a strange, harsh cry, a shriek, 
 broke upon the silence of the night, the 
 note of a screech owl. The man sprang to 
 his feet, overturning the table and extinguish- 
 ing the candle. The boy took to his heels. 
 
 THE DAY BEFORE. 
 
 "Good-morning, Colston. I am in luck, it 
 seems. You have often said that my com- 
 mendation of your literary work was mere 
 civility, and here you find me absorbed actu- 
 ally merged in your latest story in the Mes- 
 senger. Nothing less shocking than your 
 touch upon my shoulder would have roused 
 me to consciousness." 
 
THE Sl'ITAKLE SURROUNDINGS. 23! 
 
 ' ' The proof is stronger than you seem to 
 know, ' ' replied the man addressed ; "so keen 
 is your eagerness to read my story that you 
 are willing to renounce selfish considerations 
 and forego all the pleasure that you could get 
 from it." 
 
 "I don't understand you," said the other, 
 folding the newspaper that he held, and put- 
 ting it in his pocket. ' f You writers are a queer 
 lot, anyhow. Come, tell me what I have done 
 or omitted in this matter. In what way does 
 the pleasure that I get, or might get, from your 
 work depend on me ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' In many ways. Let me ask you how you 
 would enjoy your dinner if you took it in this 
 street car. Suppose the phonograph so per- 
 fected as to be able to give you an entire 
 opera, singing, orchestration, and all; do 
 you think you would get much pleasure out 
 of it if you- turned it on at your office during 
 business hours? Do you really care for a 
 serenade by Shubert when you hear it fiddled 
 by an untimely Italian on a morning ferry- 
 boat? Are you always cocked and primed 
 for admiration? Do you keep every mood 
 on tap, ready to any demand? Let me re- 
 mind you, sir, that the story which you have 
 done me the honor to begin as a means of 
 
232 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 becoming oblivious to the discomfort of this 
 street car is a ghost story ! ' ' 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well! Has the reader no duties corre- 
 sponding to his privileges? You have paid live 
 cents for that newspaper. It is yours. You 
 have the right to read it when and where you 
 will. Much of what is in it is neither helped 
 nor harmed by time, and place, and mood ; 
 some of it actually requires to be read at 
 once while it is fizzing. But my story is 
 not of that character. It is not the 'very 
 latest advices ' from Ghost Land. You are not 
 expected to keep yourself au courant with 
 what is going on in the realm of spooks. 
 The stuff will keep until you have leisure to 
 put yourself into the frame of mind appro- 
 priate to the sentiment of the piece which I 
 respectfully submit that you cannot do in a 
 street car, even if you are the only passenger. 
 The solitude is not of the right sort. An au- 
 thor has rights which the reader is bound 
 to respect. ' ' 
 
 " For specific example? " 
 
 ' ' The right to the reader's undivided atten- 
 tion. To deny him this is immoral. To 
 make him share your attention with the rattle 
 of a street car, the moving panorama of the 
 
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 233 
 
 crowds on the sidewalks, and the buildings 
 beyond with any of the thousands of dis- 
 tractions which make our customary environ- 
 ment is to treat him with gross injustice. 
 By God, it is infamous ! ' ' 
 
 The speaker had risen to his feet, and was 
 steadying himself by one of the straps hang- 
 ing from the roof of the car. The other man 
 looked up at him in sudden astonishment, 
 wondering how so trivial a grievance could 
 seem to justify so strong language. He saw 
 that his friend's face was uncommonly pale, 
 and that his eyes glowed like living coals. 
 
 " You know what I mean," continued the 
 writer, impetuously, crowding his words 
 "You know what I mean, Marsh. My stuff 
 in this morning's Messenger is plainly sub- 
 headed 'A Ghost Story.' That is ample no- 
 tice to all. Every honorable reader will un- 
 derstand it as prescribing by implication the 
 conditions under which the work is to be 
 read." 
 
 The man addressed as Marsh winced a tri- 
 fle, then asked with a smile: "What condi- 
 tions? You know that I am only a plain 
 business man, who cannot be supposed to un 
 clerstand such things. How, when, where 
 should I read your ghost story?" 
 
234 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 "In solitude at night by the light of a 
 candle. There are certain emotions which a 
 writer can easily enough excite such as 
 compassion or merriment. I can move you 
 to tears or laughter under almost any circum- 
 stances. But for my ghost story to be effect- 
 ive you must be made to feel fear at least 
 a strong sense of the supernatural and that is 
 a different matter. I have a right to expect 
 that if you read me at all you will give me a 
 chance; that you will make yourself accessi- 
 ble to the emotion which I try to inspire." 
 
 The car had now arrived at its terminus 
 and stopped. The trip just completed was its 
 first for the day, and the conversation of the 
 two early passengers had not been inter- 
 rupted. The streets were yet silent and 
 desolate;, the house tops were just touched 
 by the rising sun. As they stepped from the 
 car and walked away together Marsh narrowly 
 eyed his companion, who was reported, like 
 most men of uncommon literary ability, to be 
 addicted to various destructive vices. That 
 is the revenge which dull minds take upon 
 bright ones in resentment of their superiority. 
 Mr. Colston was known as a man of genius. 
 There are honest souls who believe that 
 genius is a mode of excess. It was known 
 
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 235 
 
 that Colston did not drink liquor, but many 
 said that he ate opium. Something" in his 
 appearance that morning a certain wildness 
 of the eyes, an unusual pallor, a thickness 
 and rapidity of speech were, taken by Mr. 
 Marsh to confirm the report. Nevertheless, 
 he had not the self-denial to abandon a sub- 
 ject which he found interesting, however it 
 might excite his friend. 
 
 " Do you mean to say," he began, "that 
 if I take the trouble to observe your direc- 
 tions place myself in the condition which 
 you demand: solitude, night and a tallow can- 
 dle you can with your ghastliest work give 
 me an uncomfortable sense of the super- 
 natural, as you call it? Can you accelerate 
 my pulse, make me start at sudden noises, 
 send, a nervous chill along my spine, and 
 cause my hair to rise? " 
 
 Colston turned suddenly and looked him 
 squarely in the eyes as they walked. ' ' You 
 would not dare you have not the courage," 
 he said. He emphasized the words with a 
 contemptuous gesture. "You are brave 
 enough to read me in a street car, but in a 
 deserted house alone in the forest at 
 night ! Bah ! I have a manuscript in my 
 pocket that would kill you." 
 
236 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 
 
 Marsh was angry. He knew himself a 
 man of courage, and the words stung him. 
 "If you know such a place, ' ' he said, ' ' take 
 me there to-night and leave me your story 
 and a candle. Call for me when I've had 
 time enough to read it, and I'll tell you the 
 entire plot and kick you out of the place." 
 
 That is how it occurred that the farmer's 
 boy, looking in at an unglazed window of the 
 Breede house, saw a man sitting in the light 
 of a candle. 
 
 THE DAY AFTER. 
 
 Late in the afternoon of the next day three 
 men and a boy approached the Breede house 
 from that point of the compass toward which 
 the boy had fled the preceding night. They 
 were in high spirits apparently; they talked 
 loudly and laughed They made facetious and 
 good-humored ironical remarks to the boy 
 about his adventure, which evidently they 
 did not believe in. The boy accepted their 
 raillery with seriousness, making no reply. 
 He had a sense of the fitness of things, and 
 knew that one who professes to have seen a 
 dead man rise from his seat and blow out a 
 candle is not a credible witness. 
 
 Arrived at the house, and finding the door 
 bolted on the inside, the party of investigators 
 
237 
 
 entered without further ceremony than break- 
 ing it down. Leading out of the passage into 
 which this door had opened was another 
 on the right and one on the left. These two 
 doors also were fastened, and were broken in. 
 They entered at random the one on the left 
 first. It was vacant. In the room on the 
 right the one which had the blank front 
 window was the dead body of a man. 
 
 It lay partly on one side, with the forearm 
 beneath it, the cheek on the floor. The eyes 
 were wide open; the stare was not an agreea- 
 ble thing to encounter. The lower jaw had 
 fallen ; a little pool of saliva had collected be- 
 neath the mouth. An overthrown table, a 
 partly-burned candle, a chair, and some pa- 
 per with writing on it, were all else that the 
 room contained. The men looked at the 
 body, touching the face in turn. The boy 
 gravely stood at the head, assuming a look 
 of ownership. It was the proudest moment 
 of his life. One of the men said to him, 
 "You're a good 'un" a remark which was 
 received by the two others with nods of ac- 
 quiescence. It was Skepticism apologizing 
 to Truth. Then one of the men took from 
 the floor the sheets of manuscript and stepped 
 to the window, for already the evening 
 
238 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 shadows were glooming the forest. The 
 song of the whip-poor-will was heard in the 
 distance, and a monstrous beetle sped by the 
 window on roaring wings, and thundered 
 away out of hearing. 
 
 THE MANUSCRIPT. 
 
 ' ' Before committing the act which, rightly 
 or wrongly, I have resolved on, and appear- 
 ing before my Maker for judgment, I, James 
 R. Colston, deem it my duty as a journalist to 
 make a statement to the public. My name 
 is, I believe, tolerably well known to the peo- 
 ple as a writer of tragic tales, but the somber- 
 est imagination never conceived anything so 
 gloomy as my own life and history. Not in 
 incident: my life has been destitute of ad- 
 venture and action. But my mental career 
 has been lurid with experiences such as kill 
 and damn. I shall not recount them here 
 some of them are written and ready for publi. 
 cation elsewhere. The object of these lines is 
 to explain to whomsoever may be interested 
 that my death is voluntary my own act. I 
 shall die at twelve o'clock on the night of the 
 i'5th of July a significant anniversary to 
 me, for it was on that day, and at that hour, 
 that my friend in time and eternity, Charles 
 
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 239 
 
 Breede, performed his vow to me by the 
 same act which his fidelity to our pledge now 
 entails upon me. He took his life in his lit- 
 tle house in the Copeton woods. There was 
 the customary verdict of ' temporary insanity.' 
 Had I testified at that inquest had I told all 
 I knew, they would have called me mad ! 
 
 ' ' I have still a week of life in which to ar- 
 range my worldly affairs, and prepare for the 
 great change. It is enough, for I have but few 
 affairs, and it is now four years since death 
 became an imperative obligation. 
 
 " I shall bear this writing on my body ; the 
 finder will please hand it to the coroner. 
 
 "JAMES R. COLSTON. 
 
 "P. S. Willard Marsh, on this the fatal 
 fifteenth day of July, I hand you this manu- 
 script, to be opened and read under the condi- 
 tions agreed upon, and at the place which I 
 designate. I forego my intention to keep it on 
 my body to explain the manner of my death, 
 which is not important. It will serve to ex- 
 plain the manner of yours. I am to call for 
 you during the night to receive assurance 
 that you have read the manuscript. You 
 know me well enough to expect me. But, 
 my friend, it will be after twelve o'clock. May 
 God have mercy on our souls ! ' ' 
 
 "]. R. C." 
 
240 
 
 Before the man who w; s reading this manu- 
 script had finished, the candle had been 
 picked up and lighted. When the reader 
 had done, he quietly thrust the paper against 
 the flame, and despite the prostestations of 
 the others held it until it was burnt to ashes. 
 The man who did this, and who placidly en- 
 dured a severe reprimand from the coroner, 
 was a son-in-law of the late Charles Breede. 
 At the inquest nothing could elicit an intelli- 
 gible account of what the paper contained. 
 FROM THE "TIMES." 
 
 "Yesterday the Commissioners of Lunacy 
 committed to the asylum Mr. James R. Col- 
 ston, a writer of some local reputation, con- 
 nected with the Messenger. It will be remem- 
 bered that on the evening of the I5th inst. 
 Mr. Colston was given into custody by one of 
 his fellow-lodgers in the Baine House, who 
 had observed him acting very suspiciously, 
 baring his throat and whetting a razor oc- 
 casionally trying its edge by actually cutting 
 through the skin of his arm, etc. On being 
 handed over to the police, the unfortunate 
 man made a desperate resistance and has 
 ever since been so violent that it has been 
 necessary to keep him in a strait-jacket. 
 Most of our esteemed contemporary's other 
 writers are still at large. 
 
AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 
 
 For there be divers sorts of death some wherein 
 the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth 
 quite away with the spirit. This commonly oc- 
 cureth only in solitude (such is God's will) and, 
 none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or 
 
 one on a long journey which indeed he hath; 
 ut sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, 
 as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of 
 death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been 
 known to do while yet the body was in vigor for 
 many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, 
 it dieth with the body, but after a season it is raised 
 up again in that place that the body did decay. 
 
 "DONDERING these words of Hali (whom 
 God rest) and questioning- their full mean- 
 ing, as one who, having an intimation yet 
 doubts if there be not something behind other 
 than that which he has discerned, I noted 
 not whither I had strayed until a sudden 
 chill wind striking my face revived in me a 
 sense of my surroundings. I observed with 
 astonishment that everything seemed unfamil- 
 iar. On every side of me stretched a bleak 
 and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a 
 tall overgrowth of sear grass, which rustled 
 and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven 
 16 (241) 
 
242 AN INHABITANT QF CARCOSA. 
 
 knows what mysterious and disquieting sug- 
 gestion. Protruded at long intervals above 
 it, stood strangely-shaped and somber-colored 
 rocks, which seemed to have an understand- 
 ing with one another and to exchange looks 
 of uncomfortable significance, as if they had 
 reared their heads to watch the issue of 'some 
 foreseen event. A few blasted trees here and 
 there appeared as leaders in this malevolent 
 conspiracy of silent expectation. The day, I 
 thought, must be far advanced, though the 
 sun was invisible; and although sensible that 
 the air was raw and chill, my consciousness 
 of that fact was rather mental than physical 
 I had no feeling of discomfort. Over all the 
 dismal landscape a canopy of low, lead- 
 colored clouds hung like a visible curse. In 
 everything there were a menace and a portent 
 a hint of crime, an intimation of doom. 
 Bird, beast, or insect there was none. The 
 wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead 
 trees and the gray grass bent to whisper its 
 dread secret to the earth; but no other sound 
 or motion broke the awful repose of that dis- 
 mal place. 
 
 I observed in the herbage a number of 
 weather-worn stones, evidently shaped with 
 tools. They were broken, covered with 
 
AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 243 
 
 moss and half sunken in the earth. Some 
 lay prostrate, some leaned at various angles, 
 none were vertical. They were obviously 
 headstones of graves, though the graves them- 
 selves no longer existed as either mounds or 
 depressions; the years had leveled all. Scat- 
 tered here and there, more massive blocks 
 showed where some pompous tomb or ambi- 
 tious monument had once flung its feeble de- 
 fiance at oblivion. So old seemed these relics, 
 these vestiges of vanity and memorials of af- 
 fection and piety so battered and worn and 
 stained, so neglected, deserted, forgotten the 
 place, that I could not help thinking myself 
 the discoverer of the burial-ground of a pre- 
 historic race of men a nation whose very 
 name was long extinct. 
 
 Filled with these reflections, I was for some 
 time heedless of the sequence of my own ex- 
 periences, but soon I thought, "How came I 
 hither?" A moment's reflection seemed to 
 make this all clear, and explain at the same 
 time, though in a disquieting way, the singu- 
 larly weird character with which my fancy 
 had invested all that I saw and heard. I was 
 ill. I remembered now how I had been pros- 
 trated by a sudden fever, and how my family 
 had told me that in my periods of delirium I 
 
244 AX INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 
 
 had constantly cried out for liberty and air, 
 and had been held in bed to prevent my es- 
 cape out-of-doors. Now I had eluded the 
 vigilance of my attendants, and had wandered 
 hither to to where? I could not conjecture. 
 Clearly I was at a considerable distance from 
 the city where I dwelt the ancient and fa- 
 mous city of Carcosa. No signs of human 
 life were anywhere visible or audible; no ris- 
 ing smoke, no watchdog's bark, no lowing 
 of cattle, no shouts of children at play noth- 
 ing but this dismal burial-place, with its air of 
 mystery and dread, due to my own disor- 
 dered brain. Was I not becoming again delir- 
 ious, there, beyond human aid ? Was it not 
 indeed all an illusion of my madness? I 
 called aloud the names of my wife and sons, 
 reached out my hands in search of theirs, even 
 as I walked among the crumbling stones and 
 in the withered grass. 
 
 A noise behind me caused me to turn 
 about. A wild animal a lynx was ap- 
 proaching. The thought came to me: If I 
 break down here in the desert if the fever 
 returns and I fail, this beast will be at my 
 throat. I sprang toward it, shouting. It 
 trotted tranquilly by, within a hand's breadth 
 of me, and disappeared behind a rock. A 
 
AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 245 
 
 moment later a man's head appeared to rise 
 out of the gro'und a short distance away. He 
 was ascending the far slope of a low hill whose 
 crest was hardly to be distinguished from the 
 general level. His whole figure soon came 
 into view against the background of gray 
 cloud. He was half naked, half clad in skins. 
 His hair was unkempt, his beard long and 
 ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and 
 arrow; the other held a blazing torch with a 
 long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly 
 and with caution, as if he feared falling into 
 some open grave concealed by the tall grass. 
 This strange apparition surprised but did not 
 alarm, and, taking such a course as to inter- 
 cept him, I met him almost face to face, ac- 
 costing him with the salutation, "God keep 
 you!" 
 
 He gave no heed, nor did he arrest his pace. 
 
 ''Good stranger," I continued, "I am ill 
 and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Car- 
 cosa?" 
 
 The man broke into a barbarous chant in 
 an unknown tongue, passing on and away. 
 An owl on the branch of a decayed tree 
 hooted dismally, and was answered by another 
 in the distance. Looking upward I saw, 
 through a sudden rift in the clouds, Aide- 
 
246 AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 
 
 baran and the Hyades! In all this there was 
 a hint of night the lynx, the man with a 
 torch, the owl. Yet I saw I saw even the 
 stars in absence of the darkness. I saw, but 
 was apparently not seen nor heard. Under 
 what awful spell did I exist? 
 
 I seated myself at the root of a great tree, 
 seriously to consider what it was best to do. 
 That I was mad I could no longer doubt, yet 
 recognized a ground of doubt in the convic- 
 tion. Of fever I had no trace. I had, withal, 
 a sense of exhilaration and vigor altogether 
 unknown to me a feeling ofmental and phys- 
 ical exaltation. My senses seemed all alert; 
 I could feel the air as a ponderous substance, 
 I could hear the silence. 
 
 A great root of the giant tree against whose 
 trunk I leaned as I sat, held inclosed in its 
 grasp a slab of granite, a portion of which 
 protruded into a recess formed by another 
 root. The stone was thus partly protected 
 from the weather, though greatly decomposed. 
 Its edges were worn round, its corners eaten 
 away, its face deeply furrowed and scaled. 
 Glittering particles of mica were visible in the 
 earth beneath it vestiges of its decomposition. 
 This stone had apparently marked the grave 
 out of which the tree had sprung ages ago. 
 
A N IX HA BI TA NT OF CARCOSA . 247 
 
 The tree's exacting roots had robbed the 
 grave and made the stone a prisoner. 
 
 A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and 
 twigs from the uppermost face of the stone; I 
 saw the low-relief letters of an inscription and 
 bent to read it. God in heaven! my name in 
 full! the date of my birth! the date of my 
 death ! 
 
 A level shaft of rosy light illuminated the 
 whole side of the tree as I sprang to my feet 
 in terror. The sun was rising in the east. I 
 stood between the tree and his broad red disk 
 no shadow darkened the trunk! A chorus 
 of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw 
 them sitting on their haunches, singly and in 
 groups, on the summits of irregular mounds 
 and tumuli, filling a half of my desert pros- 
 pect and extending to the horizon; and then 
 I knew that these were the ruins of the an- 
 cient and famous city of Carcosa. 
 
 Such are the facts imparted to the medium 
 Bayrolles by the spirit Hoseib Alar Robardin. 
 
THE BOARDED WINDOW. 
 
 TN 1830, only a few miles back from what is 
 now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an 
 immense and almost unbroken forest. The 
 whole region was sparsely settled by people 
 of the frontier restless souls who no sooner 
 had hewn fairly comfortable homes out of the 
 wilderness and attained to that degree of pros- 
 perity which to-day we should call indigence 
 than, impelled by some myst erious impulse 
 of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed 
 further westward, to encounter new perils and 
 privations in the effort to regain comforts 
 which they had voluntarily renounced. Many 
 of them had already forsaken that region for 
 the remoter settlements, but among those re- 
 maining was one who had been of those first 
 arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs, 
 surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of 
 whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, 
 for no one had ever known him to smile nor 
 speak a needless word. His simple wants 
 were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of 
 
 (249) 
 
250 THE ROAKni-'.n u' ix now. 
 
 wild animals in the river town, for not a thing 
 did he grow upon the land which he might, 
 if needful, have claimed by right of undis- 
 turbed possession. There were evidences of 
 "improvement" a few acres of ground im- 
 mediately about the house had once been 
 cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of 
 which were half concealed by the new growth 
 that had been suffered to repair the ravage 
 wrought by the ax at some distant day. Ap- 
 parently the man's zeal for agriculture had 
 burned with a failing flame, expiring in peni- 
 tential ashes. 
 
 The little log house, with its chimney of 
 sticks, its roof of warping clapboards weighted 
 with traversing poles and its "chinking" of 
 clay, had a single door, and, directly opposite, 
 a window. The latter, however, was boarded 
 up nobody could remember a time when it 
 was not. And none knew why it was so 
 closed; certainly not because of the occu- 
 pant's dislike of light and air, for on those 
 rare occasions when a hunter had passed that 
 lonely spot, the recluse had commonly been 
 seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven 
 had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy 
 there are few persons living to-day who ever 
 knew the secret of that window, but I am one, 
 as in due time you shall see. 
 
THE BOARDED WINDOW. 25! 
 
 The man's name was said to be M unlock. 
 He was apparently seventy years old, actu- 
 ally about fifty. Something besides years 
 had had a hand in his aging. His hair and 
 long, full beard were white, his gray, lusterless 
 eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with 
 wrinkles, which appeared to belong to two in- 
 tersecting systems. In figure he was tall and 
 spare, with a stoop of the shoulders a bur- 
 den bearer. I never saw him; these particu- 
 lars I learned from my grandfather, from 
 whom also I got the story when I was a lad. 
 He had known him when living near by in 
 that early day. 
 
 One day Mr. Murlock was found in his 
 cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for 
 coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it 
 was agreed that he had died from natural 
 causes or I should have been told, and should 
 remember. I only know that, with what was 
 probably a sense of the fitness of things, the 
 body was buried near the cabin, alongside the 
 grave of his wife, who had preceded him 
 by so many years that local tradition had 
 retained hardly a hint of her existence. 
 That closes the final chapter of this true 
 story excepting, indeed, the circumstance 
 that many years afterward, in company with 
 
252 THE BOARDED WINDOW. 
 
 an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the 
 place and ventured near enough to the ruined 
 cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran 
 away to avoid the ghost which every well- 
 informed boy thereabout knew haunted the 
 spot. As this record grows naturally out of 
 my personal relation to what it records, that 
 circumstance, as a part of the relation, has 
 a certain relevancy. But there is an earlier 
 chapter that supplied by my grandfather. 
 
 When Mr. Murlock built his cabin and be- 
 gan laying sturdily about with his ax to hew 
 out a farm the rifle, meanwhile, his means 
 of support he was young, strong, and full of 
 hope. In that Eastern country whence he 
 came he had married, as was the fashion, a 
 young woman in all ways worthy of his hon- 
 est devotion, who shared the dangers and 
 privations of his lot with a willing spirit and 
 light heart. There is no known record of 
 her name; of her charms of mind and person 
 tradition is silent and the doubter is at liberty 
 to .entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I 
 should share it! Of their affection and hap- 
 piness there is abundant assurance in every 
 added day of the man's widowed life; for 
 what but the magnetism of a blessed memory 
 could have chained that venturesome spirit 
 to a lot like that ? 
 
THE BOARDED WINDOW. 253 
 
 One day Murlock returned from gunning 
 in a distant part of the forest to find his wife 
 prostrate with fever and delirious. There 
 was no physician within miles, no neighbor, 
 nor was she in a condition to be left, to sum- 
 mon help. So he set about the task of nurs- 
 ing her back to health, but at the end of the 
 third day she passed into a comatose state, 
 and so passed away, with never a gleam of 
 returning reason. 
 
 From what we know of a nature like his 
 we may venture to sketch in some of the de- 
 tails of the outline picture drawn by my 
 grandfather. When convinced that she was 
 dead, Murlock had sense enough to remem- 
 ber that the dead must be prepared for bur- 
 ial. In performance of this sacred duty he 
 blundered now and again, did certain things 
 incorrectly, and others which he did correctly 
 were done over and over. His occasional 
 failures to accomplish some simple and ordi- 
 nary act filled him with astonishment, like 
 that of a drunken man who wonders at the 
 suspension of familiar natural laws. He was 
 surprised, too, that he did not weep surprised 
 and a little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to 
 weep for the dead, "To-morrow," he said 
 aloud, ' ' I shall have to make the coffin and 
 
254 THE BOARDED WINDOW. 
 
 dig the grave; and then I shall miss her, 
 when she is no longer in sight, but now 
 she is dead, of course, but it is all right it 
 must be all right, somehow. Things cannot 
 be as bad as they seem." 
 
 He stood over the body in the fading light, 
 adjusting the hair and putting the finishing 
 touches on the simple toilet, doing all me- 
 chanically, with soulless care. And still 
 through his consciousness ran an undersense 
 of conviction that all was right that he should 
 have her again as before, and everything ex- 
 plained. He had had no experience in grief; 
 his capacity had not been enlarged by use. 
 His heart could not contain it all, nor his 
 imagination rightly conceive it. He did not 
 know he was so hard hit; that knowledge 
 would come later, and never go. Grief is an 
 artist of powers as various as the characters 
 of the instruments upon which he plays his 
 dirges for the dead, evoking from some the 
 sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, 
 grave chords that throb recurrent like the 
 slow beating of a distant drum. Some na- 
 tures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it 
 comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all 
 the sensibilities to a keener life; to another 
 as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing 
 
THE BOARDED U'fXDtUr. 255 
 
 benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to 
 have been that way affected, for (and here 
 we are upon surer ground than that of con- 
 jecture) no sooner had he finished his pious 
 work than, sinking into a chair by the side 
 of the table upon which the .body lay, and 
 noting how white the profile showed in the 
 deepening gloom, then laying his arms upon 
 the table's edge, he dropped his face into 
 them, tearless yet and unutterably weary. At 
 that moment came in through the open win- 
 dow a long, wailing sound like the cry of a 
 lost child in the far deeps of the darkening 
 wood! But the man did not move. Again 
 and nearer than before sounded that unearthly 
 cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a 
 wild beast; perhaps it was a dream; for Mur- 
 lock was asleep. 
 
 Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, 
 this unfaithful watcher awoke, and, lifting his 
 head from his arms, intently listened he knew 
 not why. There in the black darkness by the 
 side of his dead, recalling all without a shock, 
 he strained his eyes to see he knew not 
 what. His senses all were alert, his breath 
 was suspended, his blood had stilled its tides 
 as if to assist the silence. Who what had 
 waked him, and where was it? 
 
256 THE BOARDED WINDOW. 
 
 Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, 
 and at the same moment he heard, or fancied 
 that he heard, a light, soft step another 
 sounds as of bare feet upon the floor ! 
 
 He was terrified beyond the power to cry 
 out or move. Perforce he waited waited 
 there in the darkness through centuries of 
 such dread as one may know yet live to tell. 
 He tried vainly to speak the dead woman's 
 name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across 
 the table to learn if she were there. His 
 throat was powerless, his arms and hands 
 were like lead. Then occurred something 
 most frightful. Some heavy body seemed 
 hurled against the table with an impetus that 
 pushed it against his breast so sharply as 
 nearly to overthrow him, and at the same 
 instant he heard and felt the fall of something 
 upon the floor with so violent a thump that 
 the whole house was shaken by the impact. 
 Then ensued a scuffling and a confusion of 
 sounds impossible to describe. Murlock had 
 risen to his feet, and terror had by excess for- 
 feited control of his faculties. He flung his 
 hands upon the table. Nothing was there! 
 
 There is a point at which terror may turn 
 to madness; and madness incites to action. 
 With no definite intent, from no motive but 
 
THE BOARDED WINDOW. 2$J 
 
 the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock 
 sprang to the wall, and with a little groping 
 seized his loaded rifle, and without aim dis- 
 charged it. By the flash which lit up the 
 room with a vivid illumination, he saw an 
 enormous panther dragging the dead woman 
 toward the window, its teeth fixed in her 
 throat! Then there were darkness blacker 
 than before, and silence; and when he re- 
 turned to consciousness the sun was high and 
 the woods vocal with songs of birds. 
 
 The body lay near the window, where the 
 beast had left it when frightened away by the 
 flash and report of the rifle. The clothing 
 was deranged, the long hair in disorder, the 
 limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dread- 
 fully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not 
 yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with 
 which he had bound the wrists was broken; 
 the hands were tightly clenched. Between 
 the teeth was a fragment of the animal's ear. 
 
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT 
 FOOT. 
 
 TT is well known that the old Manton house 
 is haunted. In all the rural district near 
 about, and even in the town of Marshall, a 
 mile away, not one person of unbiased mind 
 entertains a doubt of it; incredulity is confined 
 to those opinionated people who will be called 
 "cranks" as soon as the useful word shall 
 have penetrated the intellectual demesne of 
 the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the 
 house is haunted is of two kinds: the testi- 
 mony of disinterested witnesses who have had 
 ocular proof, and that of the house itself. The 
 former may be disregarded and ruled out on 
 any of the various grounds of objection which 
 may be urged against it by the ingenious; 
 but facts within the observation of all are fun- 
 damental and controlling. 
 
 In the first place, the Manton house has 
 been unoccupied by mortals for more than 
 ten years, and with its outbuildings is slowly 
 falling into decay a circumstance which in 
 itself the judicious will hardly venture to ig- 
 
 ( 2 59) 
 
260 THE MIDDLE TOE . 
 
 nore. It stands a little way off the loneliest 
 reach of the Marshall and Harriston road, in 
 an opening which was once a farm and is still 
 disfigured with strips of rotting fence and 
 half covered with brambles overrunning a 
 stony and sterile soil long unacquainted with 
 the plow. The house itself is in tolerably 
 good condition, though badly weather-stained 
 and in dire need of attention from the glazier^ 
 the smaller male population of the region 
 having attested in the manner of its kind its 
 disapproval of dwellings without dwellers. 
 The house is two stories in height, nearly 
 square, its front pierced by a single doorway 
 flanked on each side by a window boarded up 
 to the very top. Corresponding windows 
 above, not protected, serve to admit light and 
 rain to the rooms of the upper floor. Grass 
 and weeds grow pretty rankly all about, and 
 a few shade trees, somewhat the worse for 
 wind and leaning all in one direction, seem 
 to be making a concerted effort to run away. 
 In short, as the Marshall town humorist ex- 
 plained in the columns of the Advance ', ' ' the 
 proposition that the Manton house is badly 
 haunted is the only logical conclusion from 
 the premises." The fact that in this dwelling 
 Mr. Manton thought it expedient one night 
 
OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 26 1 
 
 some ten years ago to rise and cut the throats 
 of his wife and two small children, removing 
 at once to another part of the country, has no 
 doubt done its' share in directing public atten- 
 tion to the fitness of the place for supernatural 
 phenomena. 
 
 To this house, one summer evening, came 
 four men in a wagon. Three of them 
 promptly alighted, and the one who had been 
 driving hitched the team to the only remain- 
 ing post of what had been a fence. The fourth 
 remained seated in the wagon. ' ' Come, ' ' 
 said one of his companions, approaching him, 
 while the others moved away in the direction 
 of the dwelling "this is the place." 
 
 The man addressed was deathly pale and 
 trembled visibly. ' ' By God ! " he said harshly, 
 "this is a trick, and it looks to me as if you 
 were in it." 
 
 "Perhaps I am," the other said, looking 
 him straight in the face and speaking in a 
 tone which had something of contempt in it. 
 "You will remember, however, that the 
 choice of place was, with your own assent, left 
 to the other side. Of course if you are afraid 
 of spooks ' 
 
 "I am afraid cf nothing," the man inter- 
 rupted with another oath, and sprang to the 
 
262 THE MIDDLE TOE 
 
 ground. The two then joined the others at 
 the door, which one of them had already 
 opened with some difficulty, caused by rust 
 of lock and hinge. All entered. Inside it 
 was dark, but the man who had unlocked the 
 door produced a candle and matches and 
 made a light. He then unlocked a door on 
 their right as they stood in the passage. This 
 gave them entrance to a large, square room, 
 which the candle but dimly lighted. The 
 floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which 
 partly muffled their footfalls. Cobwebs were 
 in the angles of the walls and depended from 
 the ceiling like strips of rotting lace, making 
 undulatory movements in the disturbed air. 
 The room had two windows in adjoining sides, 
 but from neither could anything be seen ex- 
 cept the rough inner surfaces of boards a few 
 inches from the glass. There was no fire- 
 place, no furniture; there was nothing. Be- 
 sides the cobwebs and the dust, the four men 
 were the only objects there which were not a 
 part of the architecture. Strange enough they 
 looked in the yellow light of the candle. The 
 one who had so reluctantly alighted was es- 
 pecially ' ' spectacular " he might have been 
 called sensational. He was of middle age, 
 heavily built, deep chested and broad shoul- 
 
OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 263 
 
 dered. Looking at his figure, one would 
 have said that he had a giant's strength; at 
 his face, that he would use it like a giant. 
 He was clean shaven, his hair rather closely 
 cropped and gray. His low forehead was 
 seamed with wrinkles above the eyes, and 
 over the nose these became vertical. The 
 heavy black brows followed the same law, 
 saved from meeting only by an upward turn 
 at what would otherwise have been the point 
 of contact. Deeply sunken beneath these, 
 glowed in the obscure light a pair of eyes of 
 uncertain color, but, obviously enough, too 
 small. There was something forbidding in 
 their expression, which was not bettered by 
 the cruel mouth and wide jaw. The nose 
 was well enough, as noses go; one does not 
 expect much of noses. All that was sinister 
 in the man's face seemed accentuated by an 
 unnatural pallor he appeared altogether 
 bloodless. 
 
 The appearance of the other men was suf- 
 ficiently commonplace: they were such per- 
 sons as one meets and forgets that he met. 
 All were younger than the man described, 
 between whom and the eldest of the others, 
 who stood apart, there was apparently no 
 kindly feeling. They avoided looking at one 
 another. 
 
264 THE MIDDLE TOE 
 
 ''Gentlemen," said the man holding the 
 candle and keys, "I believe everything- is 
 right. Are you ready, Mr. Rosser?" 
 
 The man standing apart from the group 
 bowed and smiled. 
 
 "And you, Mr. Grossmith?" 
 
 The heavy man bowed and scowled. 
 
 "You will please remove your outer cloth- 
 ing." 
 
 Their hats, coats, waistcoats, and neckwear 
 were soon removed and thrown outside the 
 door, in the passage. The man with the 
 candle now nodded, and the fourth man 
 he who had urged Mr. Grossmith to leave 
 the wagon produced from the pocket of his 
 overcoat two long, murderous-looking bowie 
 knives, which he drew from the scabbards. 
 
 "They are exactly alike," he said, present- 
 ing one to each of the two principals for by 
 this time the dullest observer would have 
 understood the nature of this meeting. It 
 was to be a duel to the death. 
 
 Each combatant took a knife, examined it 
 critically near the candle and tested the 
 strength of blade and handle across his lifted 
 knee. Their persons were then searched in 
 turn, each by the second of the other. 
 
 " If it is agreeable to you, Mr. Grossmith," 
 
OF THE RIGIJT FOOT. 265 
 
 said the man holding the light, "you will 
 place yourself in that corner." 
 
 He indicated the angle of the room farthest 
 from the door, to which Grossmith retired, his 
 second parting from him with a grasp of the 
 hand which had nothing of cordiality in it. 
 In the angle nearest the door Mr. Rosser 
 stationed himself, and, after a whispered con- 
 sultation, his second left him, joining the other 
 near the door. At that moment the candle 
 was suddenly extinguished, leaving all in pro- 
 found darkness. This may have been done 
 by a draught from the opened door; whatever 
 the cause, the effect was appalling ! 
 
 "Gentlemen," said a voice which sounded 
 strangely unfamiliar in the altered condition 
 affecting the relations of the senses, "gentle- 
 men, you will not move until you hear the 
 closing of the outer door." 
 
 A sound of trampling ensued, the closing 
 of the inner door; and finally the outer one 
 closed with a concussion which shook the en- 
 tire building. 
 
 A few minutes' later a belated farmer's boy 
 met a wagon which was being driven furiously 
 toward the town of Marshall. He declared 
 that behind the two figures on the front seat 
 stood a third with its hands upon the bowed 
 
266 THE MIDDLE TOE 
 
 shoulders of the others, who appeared to 
 struggle vainly to free themselves from its 
 grasp. This figure, unlike the others, was 
 clad in white, and had undoubtedly boarded 
 the wagon as it passed the haunted house. 
 As the lad could boast a considerable former 
 experience with the supernatural thereabout, 
 his word had the weight justly due to the tes- 
 timony of an expert. The story eventually 
 appeared in the Advance, with some slight 
 literary embellishments and a concluding in- 
 timation that the gentlemen referred to would 
 be allowed the use of the paper's columns for 
 their version of the night's adventure. But 
 the privilege remained without a claimant. 
 
 II. 
 
 The events which led up to this "duel in 
 the dark" were simple enough. One even- 
 ing three young men of the town of Marshall 
 were sitting in a quiet corner of the porch of 
 the village hotel, smoking and discussing such 
 matters as three educated young men of a 
 Southern village would naturally find interest- 
 ing. Their names were King, Sancher, and 
 Rosser. At a little distance, within easy 
 hearing but taking no part in the conversation, 
 sat a fourth. He was a stranger to the others. 
 
OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 267 
 
 They merely knew that on his arrival by the 
 stage coach that afternoon he had written in 
 the hotel register the name Robert Grossmith. 
 He had not been observed to speak to any- 
 one except the hotel clerk. He seemed, in- 
 deed, singularly fond of his own company 
 or, as the personnel of the Advance expressed 
 it, <( grossly addicted to evil associations." 
 But then it should be said in justice to the 
 stranger that the personnel was himself of a 
 too convivial disposition fairly to judge one 
 differently gifted, and had, moreover, experi- 
 enced a slight rebuff in an effort at an ' ' inter- 
 view. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I hate any kind of deformity in a woman, ' ' 
 said King, ' ' whether natural or or acquired. 
 I have a theory that any physical defect has 
 its correlative mental and moral defect." 
 
 "I infer, then," said Rosser, gravely, "that 
 a lady lacking the advantage of a nose would 
 find the struggle to become Mrs. King an 
 arduous enterprise. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Of course you may put it that way, ' ' was 
 the reply; "but, seriously, I once threw over 
 a most charming girl on learning, quite acci- 
 dentally, that she had suffered amputation of 
 a toe. My conduct was brutal, if you like, 
 but if I had married that girl I should have 
 been miserable and should have made her so." 
 
268 THE MIDDLE TOE 
 
 "Whereas," said Sandier, with a light 
 laugh, "by marrying a gentleman of more 
 liberal views she escaped with a cut throat." 
 
 "Ah, you know to whom I refer! Yes, 
 she married Manton, but I don't know about 
 his liberality; I'm not sure but he cut her 
 throat because he discovered that she lacked 
 that excellent thing in woman, the middle toe 
 of the right foot." 
 
 ' ' Look at that chap ! ' ' said Rosser in a 
 low voice, his eyes fixed upon the stranger. 
 
 That person was obviously listening intently 
 to the conversation. 
 
 ''Damn his impudence!" whispered King 
 "what ought we to do?" 
 
 "That's an easy one," Rosser replied, rising. 
 "Sir," he continued, addressing the stranger, 
 "I think ft would be better if you would 
 remove your chair to the other end of the 
 veranda. The presence of gentlemen is evi- 
 dently an unfamiliar situation to you." 
 
 The man sprang to his feet and strode for- 
 ward with clenched hands, his face white 
 with rage. All were now standing. Sancher 
 stepped between the belligerents. 
 
 "You are hasty and unjust," he said to 
 Rosser; "this gentleman has done nothing to 
 deserve such language." 
 
OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 269 
 
 But Rosser would not withdraw a word. 
 By the custom of the country and the time, 
 there could be but one outcome to the quar- 
 rel. 
 
 " T demand the satisfaction due to a gentle- 
 man," said the stranger, who -had become 
 more calm. "I have not an acquaintance in 
 this region. Perhaps you, sir," bowing to 
 Sancher, "will be kind enough to repre- 
 sent me in this matter." 
 
 Sancher accepted the trust somewhat re- 
 luctantly, it must be confessed, for the man's 
 appearance and manner were not at all to his 
 liking. King, who, during the colloquy, had 
 hardly removed his eyes from the stranger's 
 face, and had not spoken a word, consented 
 with a nod to act for Rosser, and the upshot 
 of it was that, the principals having retired, 
 a meeting was arranged for the next evening. 
 The nature of the arrangements has been al- 
 ready disclosed. The duel with knives in a 
 dark room was once a commoner feature of 
 Southwestern life than it is likely to be again. 
 How thin a veneering of "chivalry" covered 
 the essential brutality of the code under which 
 such encounters were possible, we shall see. 
 
270 THE MIDDLE TOE 
 
 III. 
 
 In the blaze of a midsummer noonday, the 
 old Manton house was hardly true to its tra- 
 ditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The 
 sunshine caressed it warmly and affectionately, 
 with evident unconsciousness of its bad repu- 
 tation. The grass greening all the expanse 
 in its front seemed to grow, not rankly, but 
 with a natural and joyous exuberance, and 
 the weeds blossomed quite like plants. Full 
 of charming lights and shadows, and popu- 
 lous with pleasant-voiced birds, the neglected 
 shade trees no longer struggled to run away, 
 but bent reverently beneath their burdens. of 
 sun and song. Even in the glassless upper 
 windows was an expression of peace and con- 
 tentment, due to the light within. Over the 
 stony fields the visible heat danced with a 
 lively tremor incompatible with the gravity 
 which is an attribute of the supernatural. 
 
 Such was the aspect under which the place 
 presented itself to Sheriff Adams and two 
 other men who had come out from Marshall 
 to look at it. One of these men was Mr. 
 King, the sheriff's deputy; the other, whose 
 name was Brewer, was a brother of the late 
 Mrs. Manton. Under a beneficent law of the 
 State relating to property which has been 
 
OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 27 1 
 
 for a certain period abandoned by its owner, 
 whose residence cannot be ascertained, the 
 sheriff was the legal custodian of the Manton 
 farm and the appurtenances thereunto belong- 
 ing. His present visit was in mere perfunc- 
 tory compliance with some order of a court 
 in which Mr. Brewer had an action to get 
 possession of the property as heir to his de- 
 ceased sister. By a mere coincidence the 
 visit was made on the day after the night that 
 Deputy King had unlocked the house for an- 
 other and very different purpose. His pres- 
 ence now was not of his own choosing: he 
 had been ordered to accompany his superior, 
 and at the moment could think of nothing 
 more prudent than simulated alacrity in obe- 
 dience. He had intended going anyhow, 
 but in other company. 
 
 Carelessly opening the front door, which to 
 his surprise was not locked, the sheriff was 
 amazed to see, lying on the floor of the 
 passage into which it opened, a confused heap 
 of men's apparel. Examination showed it to 
 consist of two hats, and the same number of 
 coats, waistcoats, and scarves, all in a re- 
 markably good state of preservation, albeit 
 somewhat denied by the dust in which they 
 lay. Mr. Brewer was equally astonished, but 
 
272 Tin-: ^^nnLR TOE 
 
 Mr. King's emotion is not of record. With a 
 new and lively interest in his own actions, the 
 sheriff now unlatched and pushed open a door 
 on the right, and the three entered. The 
 room was apparently vacant no; as their 
 eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light, 
 something was visible in the farthest angle of 
 the wall. It was a human figure that of a 
 man crouching close in the corner. Some- 
 thing in the attitude made the intruders halt 
 when they had barely passed the threshold. 
 The figure more and more clearly defined it- 
 self. The man was upon one knee, his back 
 in the angle of the wall, his shoulders ele- 
 vated to the level of his ears, his hands before 
 his face, palms outward, the fingers spread 
 and crooked like claws; the white face turned 
 upward on the retracted neck had an expres- 
 sion of unutterable fright, the mouth half open, 
 the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone 
 dead dead of terror! Yet, with the excep- 
 tion of a knife, which had evidently fallen from 
 his own hand, not another object was in the 
 room. 
 
 In the thick dust which covered the floor 
 were some confused footprints near the door 
 and along the wall through which it opened. 
 Along one of the adjoining walls, too, past 
 
OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 
 
 273 
 
 the boardecl-up windows, was the trail made 
 by the man himself in reaching his corner. 
 Instinctively in approaching the body the 
 three men now followed that trail. The sher- 
 iff grasped one of the outthrown arms; it was 
 as rigid as iron, and the application of a gen- 
 tle force rocked the entire body without alter- 
 ing the relation of its parts. Brewer, pale 
 with terror, gazed intently into the distorted 
 face. "God of mercy!" he suddenly cried, 
 "it is Manton!" 
 
 "You are right," said King, with an evi- 
 dent attempt at calmness: "I knew Manton. 
 He then wore a full beard and his hair long, 
 but this is he." 
 
 He might have added : " I recognized him 
 when he challenged Rosser. I told Rosser 
 and Sanchez who he was before we played 
 him this horrible trick. When Rosser left 
 this dark room at our heels, forgetting his 
 clothes in the excitement, and driving away 
 with us in his shirt all through the discredit- 
 able proceedings we knew whom we were 
 dealing with, murderer and coward that he 
 was!" 
 
 But nothing of this did Mr. King say. 
 With his better light he was trying to pene- 
 trate the mystery of the man's death. That 
 18 
 
274 THE MIDDLE '/'<>/: 
 
 he had not once moved from the corner 
 where he had been stationed, that his posture 
 was that of neither attack nor defense, that he 
 had dropped his weapon, that he had obvi- 
 ously perished of sheer terror of something 
 that he saw these were circumstances which 
 Mr. King's disturbed intelligence could not 
 rightly comprehend. 
 
 Groping in intellectual darkness for a clew 
 to his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed me- 
 chanically downward, as is the way of one 
 who ponders momentous matters, fell upon 
 something which, there, in the light of day, and 
 in the presence of living companions, struck 
 him with an invincible terror. In the dust of 
 years that lay thick upon the floor leading 
 from the door by which they had entered, 
 straight across the room to within a yard of 
 Manton's crouching corpse were three par- 
 allel lines of footprints light but definite im- 
 pressions of bare feet, the outer ones those of 
 small children, the inner a woman's- From 
 the point at which they ended they did not 
 return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, 
 who had observed them at the same moment, 
 was leaning forward in an attitude of rapt at- 
 tention, horribly pale. 
 
 " Look at that!" he cried, pointing with 
 
OF THE RIG FIT FOOT. 2J$ 
 
 both hands at the nearest print of the wom- 
 an's right foot, where she had apparently 
 stopped and stood. " The middle toe is 
 missing it was Gertrude!" 
 
 Gertrude was the late Mrs. Manton, sister 
 to Mr. Brewer. 
 
HA1TA THE SHEPHERD. 
 
 TN the heart of Haita the illusions of youth 
 had not been supplanted by those of age 
 and experience. His thoughts were pure and 
 pleasant, for his life was simple and his soul 
 devoid of ambition. He rose with the sun, 
 and went forth to pray at the shrine of Has- 
 tur, the god of shepherds, who heard and was 
 pleased. After performance of th's pious rite 
 Haita unbarred the gate of the fold, and with 
 a cheerful mind drove his flock afield, eating 
 his morning meal of curds and oat cake as he 
 went, occasionally pausing to add a few ber- 
 ries, cold with dew, or to drink of the waters 
 that came away from the hills to join the 
 stream in the middle of the valley and be 
 borne along with it, he knew not whither. 
 
 During the long summer day, as his sheep 
 cropped the good grass which the gods had 
 made to grow for them, or lay with their fore- 
 legs doubled under their breasts and indo- 
 lently chewed the cud, Haita, reclining in the 
 shadow of a tree, or sitting upon a rock, 
 
 (277) 
 
278 HA IT A THE SHEPHERD. 
 
 played so sweet music upon his reed pipe 
 that sometimes from the corner of his eye he 
 got accidental glimpses of the minor sylvan 
 deities, leaning forward out of the copse to 
 hear; but if he looked at them directly, they 
 vanished. From this for he must be think- 
 ing if he would not turn into one of his own 
 sheep he drew the solemn inference that 
 happiness may come if not sought, but if 
 looked for will never be seen; for, next to the 
 favor of Hastur, who never disclosed himself, 
 Haita most valued the friendly interest of his 
 neighbors, the shy immortals of the wood and 
 and stream. At nightfall he drove his flock 
 back to the fold, saw that the gate was secure, 
 and retired to his cave for refreshment and for 
 dreams. 
 
 So passed his life, one day like another, 
 save when the storms uttered the wrath of an 
 offended god. Then Haita cowered in his 
 cave, his face hidden in his hands, and prayed 
 that he alone might be punished for his sins 
 and the world saved from destruction. Some- 
 times when there was a great rain, and the 
 stream came out of its banks, compelling him 
 to urge his terrified flock to the uplands, he 
 interceded for the people in the great cities, 
 which he had been told lay in the plain be- 
 
HA IT A THE SHEPHERD. 2JC) 
 
 yond the two blue hills which formed the 
 gateway of his valley. 
 
 "It is kind of thee, O Hastur, " so he 
 prayed, "to give me mountains so near to 
 my dwelling and my fold that I and my sheep 
 can escape the angry torrents; but the rest 
 of the world thou must thyself deliver in some 
 way that I know not of, or I will no longer 
 worship thee. ' ' 
 
 And Hastur, knowing that Haita was a 
 youth who kept his word, spared the cities 
 and turned the waters into the sea. 
 
 So he had lived since he could remember. 
 He could not rightly conceive any other mode 
 of existence. The holy hermit who lived at 
 the head of the valley, a full hour's journey 
 away, from whom he had heard the tale of the 
 great cities where dwelt people poor souls ! 
 who had no sheep, gave him no knowledge 
 of that early time, when, so he reasoned, he 
 must have been small and helpless like a 
 lamb. 
 
 It was through thinking on these myster- 
 ies and marvels, and on that horrible change 
 to silence and decay which he felt sure must 
 sometime come to him, as he had seen it 
 come to so many of his flock as it came to 
 all living things except the birds that Haita 
 
28O HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 
 
 first became conscious how miserable was his 
 lot, 
 
 "It is necessary," he said, "that I know 
 whence and how I came; for how can one 
 perform his duties unless able to judge what 
 they are by the way in which he was intrusted 
 with them? And what contentment can I 
 have when I know not how long it is going 
 to last? Perhaps before another sun I may 
 be changed, and then what will become of 
 the sheep? What, indeed, will have become 
 of me? " 
 
 Pondering these things, Haita became mel- 
 ancholy and morose. He no longer spoke 
 cheerfully to his flock, nor ran with alacrity 
 to the shrine of Hastur. In every breeze he 
 heard whispers of malign deities whose exist- 
 ence he now first observed. Every cloud 
 was a portent signifying disaster, and the 
 darkness was full of new terrors. His reed 
 pipe when applied to his lips gave out no 
 melody but a dismal wail; the sylvan and ri- 
 parian intelligences no longer thronged the 
 thicket-side to listen, but fled from the sound, 
 as he knew by the stirred leaves and bent 
 flowers. He relaxed his vigilance, and many 
 of his sheep strayed away into the hills and 
 were lost. Those that remained became lean 
 
HA IT A THE SHEPHERD. 28 1 
 
 and ill for lack of good pasturage, for he 
 would not seek it for them, but conducted 
 them day after day to the same spot, through 
 mere abstraction, while puzzling about life and 
 death of immortality he knew nothing. 
 
 One day, while indulging in the gloomiest 
 reflections, he suddenly sprang from the rock 
 upon which he sat, and, with a determined 
 gesture of the right hand, exclaimed: "I 
 will no longer be a suppliant for knowledge 
 which the gods withhold. Let them look to 
 it that they do me no wrong. I will do my 
 duty as best I can, and if I err, upon their 
 own heads be it." 
 
 Suddenly, as he spoke, a great brightness 
 fell about him, causing him to look upward, 
 thinking the sun had burst through a rift in 
 the clouds; but there were no clouds. Hardly 
 more than an arm's length away stood a 
 beautiful maiden. So beautiful she was that 
 the flowers about her feet folded their petals 
 in despair and bent their heads in token of 
 submission; so sweet her look that the hum- 
 ming birds thronged her eyes, thrusting their 
 thirsty bills almost into them, and the wild 
 bees were about her lips. And such was her 
 brightness that the shadows of all objects lay 
 divergent from her feet, turning as she moved. 
 
282 HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 
 
 Haita was entranced. Rising, he knelt be- 
 fore her in adoration, and she laid her hand 
 upon his head. 
 
 "Come," she said in a voice which had 
 the music of all the bells of his flock " come, 
 thou art not to worship me, who am no god- 
 dess, but if thou art truthful and dutiful, I 
 will abide with thee. ' ' 
 
 Haita seized her hand, and stammering his 
 joy and gratitude arose, and hand in hand 
 they stood and smiled in one another's eyes. 
 He gazed upon her with reverence and rap- 
 ture. He said: "I pray thee, lovely maid, 
 tell me thy name and whence and why thou 
 comest." 
 
 At this she laid a warning finger on her lip 
 and began to withdraw. Her beauty under- 
 went a visible alteration that made him shud- 
 der, he knew not why, for still she was beau- 
 tiful. The landscape was darkened by a giant 
 shadow sweeping across the valley with the 
 speed of a vulture. In the obscurity the 
 maiden's figure grew dim and indistinct and 
 her voice seemed to come from a distance, as 
 she said, in a tone of sorrowful reproach: 
 " Presumptuous and ungrateful man! must I 
 then so soon leave thee? Would nothing do 
 but thou must at once break the eternal com- 
 pact?" 
 
HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 283 
 
 Inexpressibly grieved, Ha'ita fell upon his 
 knees and implored her to remain rose and 
 sought her in the deepening darkness ran 
 in circles, calling to her aloud, but all in vain. 
 She was no longer visible, but out of the 
 gloom he heard her voice saying: "Nay, 
 thou shalt not have me by seeking. Go to 
 thy duty, faithless shepherd, or we never 
 meet again." 
 
 Night had fallen, the wolves were howling 
 in the hills, and the terrified sheep crowding 
 about his feet. In the demands of the hour 
 he forgot his disappointment, drove his flock 
 to the folql, and repairing to the place of wor- 
 ship poured out his heart in gratitude to 
 Hastur for permitting him to save his flock, 
 then retired to his cave and slept. 
 
 When Haita awoke, the sun was high and 
 shone in at his cave, illuminating it with a 
 great glory. And there, beside him, sat the 
 maiden. She smiled upon him with a smile 
 that seemed the visible music of his pipe of 
 reeds. He dared not speak, fearing to offend 
 her as before, for he knew not what he could 
 venture to say. 
 
 "Because," she said, "thou didst thy duty 
 by the flock, and didst not forget to thank 
 Hastur for staying the wolves of the night, I 
 
284 HA IT A THE SHEPHERT). 
 
 am come to thee again. Wilt thou have me 
 for a companion? " 
 
 "Who would not have thee forever?" re- 
 plied Haita. "Oh! never again leave me 
 until until I change and become silent and 
 motionless." 
 
 Haita had no word for death. 
 
 "I wish, indeed," he continued, "that 
 thou wert of my own sex, that we might 
 wrestle and run races and so never tire of 
 being together." 
 
 At these words the maiden arose and passed 
 out of the cave, and Haita, springing from 
 his couch of fragrant boughs to overtake and 
 detain her, observed, to his astonishment, that 
 the rain was falling and the stream in the 
 middle of the valley had come out of its 
 banks. The sheep were bleating in terror, 
 for the rising waters had invaded their fold. 
 And there was danger for the unknown cities 
 of the distant plain. 
 
 It was many days before Haita saw the 
 maiden again. One day he was returning 
 from the head of the valley, where he had 
 gone with ewe's milk and oat cake and ber- 
 ries for the holy hermit, who was too old and 
 feeble to provide himself with food, 
 
 "Poor old man!" he said aloud, as he 
 
HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 285 
 
 trudged along homeward. " I will return to- 
 morrow and bear him on my back to my own 
 dwelling, where I can care for him. Doubt- 
 less it is for that that Hastur has reared me all 
 these years, and gives me health and strength." 
 
 As he spoke, the maiden, clad in glittering 
 garments, met him in the path with a smile 
 which took away his breath. 
 
 " I am come again," she said, " to dwell 
 with thee if thou wilt now have me, for none 
 else will. Thou mayest have learned wisdom, 
 and art willing to take me as I am, nor care 
 to know." 
 
 Haita threw himself at her feet. "Beauti- 
 ful being," he cried, "if thou wilt but deign 
 to accept all the devotion of my heart and 
 soul after Hastur be served it is yours for- 
 ever. But, alas! thou art capricious and way- 
 ward. Before to-morrow's sun I may lose 
 thee again. Promise, I beseech thee, that 
 however in my ignorance I may offend, thou 
 wilt forgive and remain always with me." 
 
 Scarcely had he finished speaking when a 
 troop of wolves sprang out of the hills, and 
 came racing toward him with crimson mouths 
 and fiery eyes. The maiden again vanished, 
 and he turned and fled for his life. Nor did 
 he stop until he was in the cot of the holy 
 
286 II A IT A THE SHEPHERD. 
 
 hermit, whence he had set out. Hastily bar- 
 ring the door against the wolves, he cast him- 
 self upon the ground and wept. 
 
 "My son," said the hermit from his couch 
 of straw, freshly gathered that morning by 
 Haifa's hands, "it is not like thee to weep for 
 wolves tell me what sorrow has befallen thee, 
 that age may minister to the hurts of youth 
 with such balms as it hath of its wisdom." 
 
 Haita told him all: how thrice he had met 
 the radiant maid, and thrice she had left him 
 forlorn. He related minutely all that had 
 passed between them, omitting no word of 
 what had been said. 
 
 When he had ended, the holy hermit was 
 a moment silent, then said: " My son, I have 
 attended to thy story, and I know the maiden. 
 I have myself seen her, as have many. Know, 
 then, that her name, which she would not 
 even permit thee to inquire, is Happiness. 
 Thou saidst the truth to her, that she was ca- 
 pricious, for she imposes conditions that man 
 cannot fulfill, and delinquency is punished by 
 desertion. She cometh only when unsought, 
 and will not be questioned. One manifesta- 
 tion of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one ex- 
 pression of misgiving, and she is away! How 
 long didst thou have her at any time before 
 she fled?" 
 
HA IT A THE SHEPHERD. 2&J 
 
 "But a single instant," answered Haita, 
 blushing with shame at the confession. ' 'Each 
 time I drove her away in one moment." 
 
 "Unfortunate youth!" said the holy her- 
 mit, "but for thine indiscretion thou mightst 
 have had her for two." 
 
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 
 
 CORONADO, June 20. 
 
 I find myself more and more interested in 
 him. It is not, I am sure, his do you know 
 any noun corresponding to the adjective 
 "handsome"? One does not like to say 
 "beauty" when speaking of a man. He is 
 handsome enough, heaven knows; I should 
 not even care to trust you with him faithful- 
 est of all possible wives that you are when 
 he looks his best, as he always does. Nor do 
 I think the fascination of his manner has 
 much to do with it. You recollect that the 
 charm of art inheres in that which is undefin- 
 able, and to you and me, my dear Irene, I 
 fancy there is rather less of that in the branch 
 of art under consideration than to girls in 
 their first season. I fancy I know how my 
 fine gentleman produces many of his effects, 
 and could, perhaps, give 'him a pointer on 
 heightening them. Nevertheless, his manner 
 is something truly delightful. I suppose what 
 interests me chiefly is the man's brains. His 
 19 (289) 
 
2QO AN HEIKESS FROM REDHORSE 
 
 conversation is the best I have ever heard, and 
 altogether unlike anyone's else. He seems to 
 know everything, as, indeed, he ought, for he 
 has been everywhere, read everything, seen 
 all there is to see sometimes I think rather 
 more than is good for him and had acquaint- 
 ance with the queerest people. And then his 
 voice Irene, when I hear it I actually feel as 
 if I ought to \ia.vepaid at the door, though of 
 course it is my own door. 
 
 July 3. 
 
 I fear my remarks about Dr. Barritz must 
 have been, being thoughtless, very silly, or 
 you would not have written of him with such 
 levity, not to say disrespect. Believe me, 
 dearest, he has more dignity and seriousness 
 (of the kind, I mean, which is not inconsist- 
 ent with a manner sometimes playful and al- 
 ways charming) than any of the men that you 
 and I ever met. And young Raynor you 
 knew Raynor at Monterey tells me that the 
 men all like him, and that he is treated with 
 something like deference everywhere. There 
 is a mystery, too something about his con- 
 nection with the Blavatsky people in North- 
 ern India. Raynor either would not or could 
 not tell me the particulars. I infer that Dr. 
 Barritz is thought don't you dare to laugh 
 
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 2QI 
 
 a magician! Could anything be finer than 
 that? An ordinary mystery is not, of course, 
 as good as a scandal, but when it relates to 
 dark and dreadful practices to the exercise 
 of unearthly powers could anything be more 
 piquant? It explains, too, .the singular in- 
 fluence the man has upon me. It is the un- 
 definable in his art black art. Seriously, 
 dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full 
 in the eyes with those unfathomable orbs of 
 his, which I have already vainly attempted to 
 describe to you. How dreadful if he have the 
 power to make one fall in love! Do you 
 know if the Blavatsky crowd have that power 
 outside of Sepoy? 
 
 July 1 6. 
 
 The strangest thing! Last evening while 
 Auntie was attending one of the hotel hops (I 
 hate them) Dr. Barritz called. It was scan- 
 dalously late I actually believe he had talked 
 with Auntie in the ballroom, and learned from 
 her that I was alone. I had been all the 
 evening contriving how to worm out of him 
 the truth about his connection with the Thugs 
 in Sepoy, and all of that black business, but 
 the moment he fixed his eyes on me (for I ad- 
 mitted him, I'm ashamed to say) I was help- 
 less, I trembled, I blushed, I O Irene, Irene, 
 
2Q2 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 
 
 I love the man beyond expression, and you 
 know how it is yourself ! 
 
 Fancy! I, an ugly duckling from Redhorse 
 daughter (they say) of old Calamity Jim 
 certainly his heiress, with no living relation 
 but an absurd old aunt, who spoils me a thou- 
 sand and fifty ways absolutely destitute of 
 everything but a million dollars and a hope 
 in Paris, I daring to love a god like him! 
 My dear, if I had you here, I could tear your 
 hair out with mortification. 
 
 I am convinced that he is aware of my feel- 
 ing, for he stayed but a few moments, said 
 nothing but what another man might have 
 said half as well, and pretending that he had 
 an engagement went away. I learned to- 
 day (a little bird told me the bell bird) that 
 he went straight to bed. How does that 
 strike you as evidence of exemplary habits? 
 
 July 17. 
 
 That little wretch, Raynor, called yesterday, 
 and his babble set me almost wild. He never 
 runs down that is to say, when he extermin- 
 ates a score of reputations, more or less, he 
 does not pause between one reputation and 
 the next. (By the way, he inquired about 
 you, and his manifestations of interest in you 
 had, I confess, a good deal of vraisemblance.*) 
 
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 293 
 
 Mr. Raynor observes no game laws; like 
 Death (which he would inflict if slander were 
 fatal) he has all seasons for lys own. But I 
 like him, for we knew one another at Red- 
 horse when we were young and true-hearted 
 and barefooted. He was known in those far 
 fair days as " Giggles, "and I O Irene, can 
 you ever forgive me? I was called "Gunny." 
 God knows why; perhaps in allusion to the 
 material of my pinafores; perhaps because 
 the name is in alliteration with "Giggles," 
 for Gig and I were inseparable playmates, and 
 the miners may have thought it a delicate 
 compliment to recognize some kind of rela- 
 tionship between us. 
 
 Later, we took in a third another of Ad- 
 versity's brood, who, like Garrick between 
 Tragedy and Comedy, had a chronic inability 
 to adjudicate the rival claims (to himself) of 
 Frost and Famine. Between him and the 
 grave there was r seldom anything more than 
 a single suspender and the hope of a meal 
 which would at the same time support life and 
 make it insupportable. He literally picked 
 up a precarious living for himself and an aged 
 mother by " chloriding the dumps," that is to 
 say, the miners permitted him to search the 
 heaps of waste rock for such pieces of ' ' pay 
 
294 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 
 
 ore" as had been overlooked; and these he 
 sacked up and sold at the Syndicate Mill. 
 He became a member of our firm ''Gunny, 
 Giggles, and Dumps ' ' thenceforth through 
 my favor; for I could not then, nor can I now, 
 be indifferent to his courage and prowess in 
 defending against Giggles the immemorial 
 right of his sex to insult a strange and unpro- 
 tected female myself. After old Jim struck 
 it in the Calamity, and I began to wear shoes 
 and go to school, and in emulation Giggles 
 took to washing his face, and became Jack 
 Raynor, of Wells, Fargo & Co. , and old Mrs. 
 Barts was herself chlorided to her fathers, 
 Dumps drifted over to San Juan Smith and 
 turned stage driver, and was killed by road 
 agents, and so forth. 
 
 Why do I tell you all this, dear? Because 
 it is heavy on my heart. Because I walk 
 the Valley of Humility. Because I am sub- 
 duing myself to permanent consciousness of 
 my unworthiness to unloose the lachet of Dr. 
 Barritz's shoe. Because, oh dear, oh dear, 
 there's a cousin of Dumps at this hotel! I 
 haven't spoken to him. I never had any ac- 
 quaintance with him, but do you suppose 
 he has recognized me? Do, please, give me 
 in your next your candid, sure-enough opin- 
 
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 295 
 
 ion about it, and say you don't think so. Do 
 you think He knows about me already and 
 that that is why He left me last evening when 
 He saw that I blushed and trembled like a 
 fool under His eyes? You know I can't bribe 
 all the newspapers, and I can't go back on 
 anybody who was good to Gunny at Red- 
 horse not if I'm pitched out of society into 
 the sea. So the skeleton sometimes rattles 
 behind the door. I never cared much before, 
 as you know, but now now it is not the 
 same. Jack Raynor I am sure of he will 
 not tell him. He seems, indeed, to hold him 
 in such respect as hardly to dare speak to 
 him at all, and I'm a good deal that way my- 
 self. Dear, dear! I wish I had something be- 
 sides a million dollars! If Jack were three 
 inches taller I'd marry him alive and go back 
 to Redhorse and wear sackcloth again to the 
 end of my miserable days. 
 
 July 25. 
 
 We had a perfectly splendid sunset last 
 evening, and I must tell you all about it. I 
 ran away from Auntie and everybody, and 
 was walking alone on the beach. I expect 
 you to believe, you infidel! that I had not 
 looked out of my window on the seaward side 
 of the hotel and seen him walking alone on 
 
2 96 A A" HEIR ESS J-'K OM R KDHO R SE. 
 
 the beach. If you are not lost to every feel- 
 ing of womanly delicacy you will accept my 
 statement without question. I soon estab- 
 lished myself under my sunshade and had 
 for some time been gazing out dreamily over 
 the sea, when, he approached, walking close 
 to the edge of the water it was ebb tide. I 
 assure you the wet sand actually brightened 
 about his feet! As he approached me, he 
 lifted his hat, saying, "Miss Dement, may 
 I sit with you? or will you walk with me?" 
 
 The possibility that neither might be agree- 
 able seems not to have occurred to him. Did 
 you ever know such assurance? Assurance? 
 My dear, it was gall, downright gall! Well, 
 I didn't find it wormwood, and replied, with 
 my untutored Redhorse heart in my throat, 
 "I I shall be pleased to do anything." 
 Could words have been more stupid? There 
 are depths of fatuity in me, friend o' my soul, 
 which are simply bottomless! 
 
 He extended his hand, smiling, and I de- 
 livered mine into it without a moment's hesi- 
 tation, and when his fingers closed about it to 
 assist me to my feet, the consciousness that it 
 trembled made me blush worse than the red 
 west. I got up, however, and, after a while, 
 observing that he had not let go my hand, 
 
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 2Q7 
 
 I pulled on it a little, but unsuccessfully. He 
 simply held on, saying nothing, but looking 
 down into my face with some kind of a smile 
 I didn't know how could I? whether it 
 was affectionate, derisive, or what, for I did 
 not look at him. How beautiful he was! 
 with the red fires of the sunset burning in the 
 depths of his eyes. Do you know, dear, if 
 the Thugs and Experts of the Blavatsky re- 
 gion have any special kind of eyes? Ah, 
 you should have seen his superb attitude, the 
 godlike inclination of his head as he stood 
 over me after I had got upon my feet! It 
 was a noble picture, but I soon destroyed it, 
 for I began at once to sink again to the earth. 
 There was only one thing for him to do, and 
 he did it; he supported me with an arm about 
 my waist. 
 
 ' ' Miss Dement, are you ill ? " he said. 
 
 It was not an exclamation; there was neither 
 alarm nor solicitude in it. If he had added: 
 ' ' I suppose that is about what I am expected 
 to say, ' ' he would hardly have expressed his 
 sense of the situation more clearly. His man- 
 ner filled me with shame and indignation, for 
 I was suffering acutely. I wrenched my hand 
 out of his, grasped the arm supporting me, 
 and pushing myself free, fell plump into the 
 
298 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHOKSE. 
 
 sand and sat helpless. My hat had fallen off 
 in the struggle, and my hair tumbled about my 
 face and shoulders in the most mortifying 
 way. 
 
 "Go away from me," I cried, half chok- 
 ing. " O, please go away, you you Thug! 
 How dare you think that when my leg is 
 asleep?" 
 
 I actually said those identical words! And 
 then I broke down and sobbed. Irene, I 
 blubbered! 
 
 His manner altered in an instant I could 
 see that much through my fingers and hair. 
 He dropped on one knee beside me, parted 
 the tangle of hair, and said, in the tender- 
 est way: " My poor girl, God knows I have 
 not intended to pain you. How should I ? 
 I who love you I who have loved you for 
 for years and years ! ' ' 
 
 He had pulled my wet hands away from 
 my face and was covering them with kisses. 
 My cheeks were like two coals, my whole 
 face was flaming, and, I think, steaming. 
 What could I do? I hid it on his shoulder 
 there was no other place. And, O my dear 
 friend, how my leg tingled and thrilled, and 
 how I wanted to kick ! 
 
 We sat so for a long time. He had re- 
 
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 299 
 
 leased one of my hands to pass his arm about 
 me again, and I possessed myself of my 
 handkerchief and was drying my eyes and 
 my nose. I would not look up until that 
 was done; he tried in vain to push me a little 
 away and gaze into my eyes. Presently, 
 when it was all right, and it had grown a bit 
 dark, I lifted my head, looked him straight 
 in the eyes, and smiled my best my level 
 best, dear. 
 
 "What do you mean," I said, "by 'years 
 and years' ? ' ' 
 
 "Dearest," he replied, very gravely, very 
 earnestly, "in the absence of the sunken 
 cheeks, the hollow eyes, the lank hair, the 
 slouching gait, the rags, dirt, and youth, can 
 you not will you not understand? Gunny, 
 I'm Dumps!" 
 
 In a moment I was upon my feet and he 
 upon his. I seized him by the lapels of his 
 coat and peered into his handsome face in the 
 deepening darkness. I was breathless with 
 excitement. 
 
 " And you are not dead 1" I asked, hardly 
 knowing what I said. 
 
 "Only dead in love, dear. I recovered 
 from the road agent's bullet, but this, I fear, 
 is fatal." 
 
300 AN HEfRESS FROM RED HORSE- 
 
 "But about Jack Mr. Raynor? Don't 
 you know ' ' 
 
 "I am ashamed to say, darling, that it 
 was through that unworthy person's invita- 
 tion that I came here from Vienna." 
 
 Irene, they have played it upon your af- 
 fectionate friend, 
 
 MARY JANE DEMENT. 
 
 P. S. The worst of it is that there is no 
 mystery. That was an invention of Jack to 
 arouse my curiosity and interest. James is 
 not a Thug. He solemnly assures me that in 
 all his wanderings he has never set foot in Se- 
 poy.