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Full text of "In the midst of life : tales of soldiers and civilians"


Presented to the 

LIBRARY of the 

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 

by 

MICHAEL MILLGATE 



TALES 

OF 

SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS 




PRINTED BY 

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
LONDON 



IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 



of 



Cttrifmns 



BY 



AMBROSE BIERCE 




CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 

1892 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS . .' . . .1 

THE NIGHT , . . I 

THE DAY BEFORE . 4 

THE DAY AFTER 8 

SOLDIERS 

A. HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 15 

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BBIDGE 25 

CHICKAMAUGA 41 

A SON OF THE GODS 61 

ONE OF THE MISSING 63 

KILLED AT RESACA 83 

THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 93 

A TOUGH TUSSLE 107 

THE COUP DE GRACE 131 

PARKER ADDERSGN, PHILOSOPHER ,131 



vi IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

CIVILIANS 

PAGE 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD US 

THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 163 

A HOLT TERROR ........ 175 

AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA . . . . , . . 197 

THE BOARDED WINDOW 203 

THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 211 

HAITA THE SHEPHERD , . . . . . . 225 

AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE . .... 236 



IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 



THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 

THE NIGHT 

ONE midsummer eight a farmer's boy living about 
ten miles from the city of Cincinnati, was following 
a bridle path through a dense and dark forest. He 
had been searching 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 only partly 
familiar. But he was a stout-hearted lad, and, know- 
ing 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 ex- 
ceedingly dark. It Avas 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 under- 
growth on both sides was so thick as to be almost 
impenetrable. He had gone into the forest a mile 
or more when he was surprised to see a feeble gleam 



2 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

of light shining through the foliage skirting the 
path on his left. The sight of it startled him, and 
set his heart beating audibly. 

'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 brambles. 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 un- 
glazed 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 supernatural ; for the Breede house bore the 
evil reputation of being haunted. Possibly it was 
not, but even the hardiest sceptic could not deny 
that it was deserted which, in rural regions, is 
much the same thing. 

Looking at the mysterious dim light shining from 
the ruined window, the boy remembered with appre- 
hension that his own hand had assisted at the 
destruction. His penitence was, of course, poignant 
in proportion to its tardiness and inefiicacy. He 
half expected to be set upon by all the unworldly and 
bodiless malevolences whom he had outraged by 
assisting to break alike their windows and their 



THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 3 

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 centre of 
the room, at a table upon which lay some loose 
sheets of paper. The elbows rested on the table, 
the hands supporting 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 deep shadow. The 
man's eyes were fixed upon the blank window space 
with a stare in which an older and cooler observer 
might have discerned something of apprehension, 
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 endeavoured to still the beating of his 
heart by holding his breath until half suffocated. 
He was weak, faint, trembling; 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 



4 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 extinguishing 
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 commendation of your 
literary work was mere civility, and here you find 
me absorbed actually merged in your latest story 
in the Messenger. Nothing less shocking than your 
touch upon my shoulder would have roused me to 
consciousness.' 

' The proof is stronger than you seem to know,' 
replied the man addressed ; ' so keen is your eager- 
ness to read my story that you are willing to re- 
nounce 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 putting it in his 
pocket. '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 ? ' 

4 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 perfected as to be able to 
give you an entire opera singing, orchestration) 



THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 5 

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 Schubert 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 
remind you, sir, that the story which you have done 
me the honour to begin as a means of becoming 
oblivious to the discomfort of this street car is a 
ghost story ! ' 

'Well?' 

' Well ! Has the reader no duties corresponding 
to his privileges ? You have paid five 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 re- 
spectfully 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 author has rights which 
the reader is bound to respect.' 

' For specific example ? ' 



6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

'The right to the reader's undivided attention. 
To deny him this is immoral. To make him share 
your attention with the rattle of a street car, the 
moving panorama of the crowds on the sidewalks, 
and the buildings beyond with any of the thousands 
of distractions 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 steady- 
ing himself by one of the straps hanging 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 Mes- 
senger is plainly sub-headed " A Ghost Story." That 
is ample notice to all. Every honourable reader will 
understand it as prescribing by implication the con- 
ditions under which the work is to be read.' 

The man addressed as Marsh winced a trifle, then 
asked with a smile : ' What conditions ? You know 
that I am only a plain business man, who cannot be 
supposed to understand such things. How, when, 
where should I read your ghost story ? ' 

1 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 
circumstances. But for my ghost story to be 
effective 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 accessible 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 interrupted. 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 resent- 
ment 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 that Colston did not drink liquor, but many 
said that he site opium. Something in his appear- 
ance 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 
subject which he found interesting, however it might 
excite his friend. 



8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

1 Do you mean to say,' he began, ' that if I take 
the trouble to observe your directions place myself 
in the condition which you demand : solitude, night, 
and a tallow candle 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 emphasised 
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.' 

Marsh was angry. He knew himself a man of 
courage, and the words stung him. ' If yen 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 AFTEK 

Late in the afternoon of the next day three men 
and a boy approached the Breede house from that 



THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 9 

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-humoured 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 pro- 
fesses 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 
011 the inside, the party of investigators entered with- 
out further ceremony than breaking it down. Lead- 
ing 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 first entered at random the one on the 
left. 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 agreeable thing to 
encounter. An overthrown table, a partly-burned 
candle, a chair, and some paper 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 bis life. 
One of the men said to him, < You're a good un,' a 



io IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

remark which was received by the two others with 
nods of acquiescence. It was Scepticism apologising 
to Truth. Then one of the men took from the floor 
the sheets of manuscript and stepped to the window, 
for already the evening 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 appearing 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 people as a writer of tragic tales, but 
the soberest imagination never conceived anything so 
gloomy as my own life and history. Not in inci- 
dent : my life has been destitute of adventure 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 publication 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 15th 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 Breede, performed his vow to 



THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS n 

f 

me by the same act which his fidelity to our pledge 
now entails upon me. He took his life in his little 
house in the Copeton woods. There was the cus- 
tomary 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 arrange 
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 obliga- 
tion. 

' 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 manuscript, to be 
opened and read under the conditions 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 explain 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 ! 

<j. E. c; 

Before the man who was reading this manuscript 
had finished, the candle had been picked up and 



12 LV THE MIDST OF LIFE 

lighted. When the reader had done, he quietly 
thrust the paper against the flame, and despite the 
protestations of the others held it until it was burnt 
to ashes. The man who did this, and who placidly 
endured a severe reprimand from the coroner, was a 
son-in-law of the late Charles Breede. At the 
inquest nothing could elicit an intelligible account of 
what the paper contained. 

From the ( TIMES ' 

' Yesterday the Commissioners of Lunacy com- 
mitted to the asylum Mr. James K. Colston, a writer 
of some local reputation, connected with the Mes- 
senger. It will be remembered that on the evening 
of the 15th inst. Mr. Colston was given into custody 
by one of his fellow-lodgers in the Baiue House, 
who had observed him acting very suspiciously, bar- 
ing his throat and whetting a razor occasionally 
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 resis- 
tance 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.' 



SOLDIERS 



A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 

ONE 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 Virginia. He lay at full length, 
upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his 
head upon the left forearm. His extended right 
hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the some- 
what methodical disposition of his limbs and a slight 
rhythmic movement of the cartridge 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 yards. There it turned south- 
ward 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 ascenclecl. The rock capped a high cliff; 



16 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 except at 
the bottom of the valley to the northward, -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 
inclosing 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 somehow made its 
climb to the summit. The configuration of the valley, 
indeed, was such that from our point of observation 
it seemed entirely 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 theatre 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 



A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 17 

starved an army to submission, 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 midnight. Their hope 
was to surprise it, for the road led 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 move- 
ment. 

The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was 
a young Virginian named Carter Druse. He was 
the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had 
known such ease and cultivation and high living as 
wealth and taste were able to command in the moun- 
tain country of Western Virginia. His home was 
but a few miles from where he now lay. One morn- 
ing he had risen from the breakfast table and said, 
quietly but gravely : ' Father, a Union regiment 
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 without 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 

c 



1 8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 devotion and daring, he soon 
commended himself 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. Never- 
theless, 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 con- 
sciousness whispered into the ear of his spirit the 
mysterious awakening word which no human lips 
have ever spoken, no human memory ever has re- 
called. 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. On 
a colossal pedestal, the cliff, motionless at the extreme 
edge of the capping rock and sharply outlined against 
the sky, was an equestrian statue of impressive 



A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 19 

dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the 
horse, straight and soldierly, but with the repose of 
a Grecian god carved in the marble which limits the 
suggestion of activity. The grey costume harmonised 
with its aerial background ; the metal of accoutre- 
ment and caparison was softened and subdued by the 
shadow ; the animal'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 invisible. In silhouette against 
the sky, the profile of the horse was cut with the 
sharpness 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 down- 
ward to the bottom of the valley. Magnified by ite 
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 
inglorious part. The feeling was dispelled by a 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 

c 2 



20 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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. 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, and 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 



A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 21 

soldier was plain : the man must be shot dead from 
ambush 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 creeping across the 
green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men and 
horses some foolish commander was permitting the 
soldiers of his escort to water their beasts in the 
open, in plain view from a hundred summits I 

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. ( What- 
ever 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 sleeping babe's not a tremor affected any 
muscle of his body; his breathing, until suspended 
in the act of taking aim, was regular and slow. 



22 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 know- 
ledge, 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 considering what he had to gain by pushing his 
exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile 
before him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose 
from its fringe of pines the gigantic 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 altitude of its summit, the 
officer saw an astonishing sight a man on horse- 
back 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 animal'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 



A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 23 

they ceased, with all the legs thrown sharply forward 
as in the act of alighting from a leap. But this was 
a flight ! 

Filled with amazement and terror by this appari- 
tion of a horseman in the sky half believing himself 
the chosen scribe of some new 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 intention of the marvellous performance 
that it did not occur to him that the line of march of 
aerial cavalry is directed 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 expedition, he answered : 

' Yes, sir ; there is no road leading down into 
this valley from the southward.' 



24 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

The commander, knowing better, smiled. 

After firing his shot private Carter Druse re- 
loaded his rifle and resumed his watch. Ten minutes 
had hardly passed when a Federal 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/ 

' 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 moment's 
silence, ' it's no use making a mystery. 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 



A MAX 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 encir- 
cled 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 railway sup- 
plied a footing for him and his executioners 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 hammer resting on the 
forearm thrown straight across the chest a formal 
and unnatural 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 centre 



26 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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. Midway 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 
inclining 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 centre of 
the bridge not a man moved. The company faced 
the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sen- 
tinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have 
been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain 
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 features 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 moustache and pointed 
beard, but no whiskers ; his eyes were large and 
dark grey and had a kindly expression which one 
would hardly have expected in one whoso neck was 
in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. 
The liberal military code makes provision for hang- 
ing many kinds of people, and gentlemen are not 
excluded. 

The preparations being complete, the two private 
soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank 
upon which he had been standing. The sergeant 
turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself 
immediately behind 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 captain ; 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 condemned man 
go down between two ties. The arrangement com- 



28 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

mended itself to Iris judgment as simple and effective. 
His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. 
He looked a moment at his ' nnsteadfast 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 attention and his eyes 
followed it down the current. How slowly it ap- 
peared to move ! What a sluggish stream ! 

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last 
thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, 
touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists 
under the banks at some distance down the stream, 
the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift all had dis- 
tracted him. And new he became conscious of a 
new disturbance. Striking through the thought of 
his dear ones was a sound which he could neither 
ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, 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 
distant or near by it seemed both. Its recurrence 
was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death 
knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and 
he knew not why apprehension. The intervals 
of silence grew progressively longer ; the delays 
became maddening. 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. 



AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 29 

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water 
below him. ' If I could free niy hands,' he thought, 
'I might throw off the noose and spring into the 
stream. By diving I could evade the bullets, and, 
swimming vigorously, 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 family. 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 of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, 
the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, 
he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. 
Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was 
too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, 



30 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if 
consistent with the character of a civilian who was 
at heart a soldier, and who iu 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 entrance to his 
grounds, a grey-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 another advance. 
They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in 
order, and built a stockade on the other bank. The 
commandant has issued an order, which is posted 
everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught inter- 
fering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or 
trains, will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.' 

' How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge ? ' Far- 
quhar asked. 

' About thirty miles.' 

' Is there no force on this side the creek ? ' 

' Only a picket post half a mile out, on the rail- 
road, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge.' 

' Suppose a man a civilian and student of hang- 
ing should elude the picket post and perhaps get 



the better of the sentinel,' said Farquhar, smiling, 
' what could he accomplish ? ' 

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 ceremoniously, bowed 
to her husband, and rode away. An hour later, after 
nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going north- 
ward in the direction from which he had come. He 
was a Federal scout. 



Ill 

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward 
through the bridge, he lost consciousness and was 
as one already dead. From this state he was awak- 
ened 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 fibre 
of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to 
flash along well-defined lines of ramification, 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 
conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness of 
congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied 



32 IN THE MIDST OF LffE 

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 oscilla- 
tion, 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. 
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 inaccessible ! He was 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 toward 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 observe the feat of a juggler, with- 



AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 33 

out interest in the outcome. What splendid effort ! 
what magnificent, what superhuman strength ! 
Ah, that was a fine endeavour ! 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 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 undoing 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, down- 
ward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt 
his head emerge ; his eyes were blinded by the sun- 
light ; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a 
supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a 
great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in 
a shriek ! 

He was now in full possession of his physical 
senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and 
alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his 
organic system had so exalted and refined them that, 
they made record of things never before perceived 

P 



34 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their 
separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the 
forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual 
trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf saw 
the very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant- 
bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs 
from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colours 
in all the dewdrops 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 exe- 
cutioners. They were in silhouette against the blue 
sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing 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 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 
rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw 



AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 35 

the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own 
through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it 
was a grey eye, and remembered having read that 
grey eyes were keenest and that all famous marks- 
men 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 monotonous singsong now rang out 
behind him and came across the water with a dis- 
tinctness 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 morning's work. How coldly and piti- 
lessly with what an even, calm intonation, presag- 
ing and enforcing tranquillity in the men with what 
accurately-measured intervals fell those cruel words : 

'Attention, company. . . . Shoulder arms. 
. . . Eeady. . . . 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 toward 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 collar and neck; it was un- 
comfortably warm, and he snatched it out. 

P 2 



36 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

As lie 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 shoulder ; 
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. 

' 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, diminuendo, 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 ; c the 



AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 37 

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, fort and men all 
were commingled and blurred. Objects were re- 
presented by their colours only ; circular horizontal 
streaks of colour 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 sudden 
arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands 
on the gravel, restored him and he wept with delight. 
He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over him- 
self 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, in- 
haled 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 asolian harps. He had no wish to perfect 
his escape, was content to remain in that enchanting 
spot until retaken. 



38 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

A wliizz and rattle of grapesliot 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 travelled, laying his course by 
the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable ; 
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 revelation. 

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. 
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 direction. It was as wide and 
straight as a city street, yet it seemed untravelled. 
No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not 
so much as the barking of a dog suggested human 
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 constellations. 
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, 



AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 39 

lie 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 
untravelled 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 
left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning 
sunshine. He must have travelled 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 verandah to meet him. At the bottom of the 
steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, 
an attitude 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 

ONE 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 exploration 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 critical 
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 civilised 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, 



42 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

though even 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 
forest, assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures 
of aggression and defence that be 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 boulders in the bed of the stream 
lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way 
across and fell again upon the rear guard of his 
imaginary foe, putting all to the sword. 

Now that the battle had been won, prudence 
required that he withdraw to his base of operations. 
Alas ! like many a mightier conqueror, 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 sud- 
denly found himself confronted with a new and more 
formidable enemy; in the path that he was following, 



CHICKAMAUGA 43 

bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended 
before it, sat a rabbit. With a startled cry .the 
child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, 
calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, 
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 tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome with 
fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two 
rocks, within a few yards of the stream, and, still 
grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a 
companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds 
sang merrily above his head; the squirrels, whisking 
their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, 
unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far 
away was a strange, muffled thunder, 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 impelled to action, he struggled 
through the undergrowth about him and came to a 
more open ground on his right the brook, to the 



44 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

left a gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees ; 
over all the gathering gloom of twilight. A thin 
ghostly mist rose along the water. It frightened 
and repelled him ; instead 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 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 movement 
of this object something in the awkwardness 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 impressionable mind 
was half conscious of something familiar in its sham- 
bling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near 
enough to resolve his doubts, he saw that it was 
followed by another 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 



CHICK 'AMA UGA 45 

did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only 
to 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 move- 
ment. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as 
far on either hand as one could see in the deepen- 
ing gloom they extended, and the black wood behind 
them appeared to be inexhaustible. 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 upward, 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 unfamiliarly 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 this something 
too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and move- 
ments reminded 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 



46 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their 
own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spec- 
tacle. 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 hang- 
ing shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The un- 
natural prominence 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, 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 landscape 
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 
againat it. It struck the creeping figures and gave 



CHICK 'AMAUGA 47 

them monstrous shadows, which caricatured their 
movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, 
touching their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accen- 
tuating 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 splendour 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, conform- 
ing 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 articles to which, in the 
leader's mind, were coupled no significant associa- 
tions; an occasional blanket, tightly rolled length- 
wise, 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 footprints^pointed 
in both directions ; the ground had been twice passed 



48 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

over in advance and in retreat. A few hours be- 
fore, these desperate, stricken men, with their more 
fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated 
the forest in thousands. Their successive battalions, 
breaking into swarms and reforming in lines, had 
passed the child on every side had almost trodden 
on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their 
march had not 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 shouting.' 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 land- 
scape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to 
the vapour of gold. The water gleamed with dashes 
of red, and red, too, were many of the stones pro- 
truding above the surface. But that was blood ; the 
less desperately wounded had stained them in cross- 
ing. 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 already 



CHICKAMAUGA 49 

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 expanded with wonder ; even his hospit- 
able understanding could not 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 form- 
less 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 imitation 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 
approach. In despair he flung in his sword a 
surrender to the superior forces of nature. His 
military career was at an end. 

E 



- 
50 IN THE MIDST OF -LIFE 

Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some out- 
buildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as 
if he had dreamed of them. He stood considering 
them with wonder, when suddenly the entire planta- 
tion, 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 re- 
cognised the blazing building as his own home ! 

For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of 
the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making 
a half circuit of the ruin. There, conspicuous in the 
light of the conflagration, 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 pro- 
truded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of 
grey, 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 inar- 
ticulate and indescribable cries something between 
the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey 
a startling, soulless, 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, and full of confused 
noises the occasional rattle of wheels as a battery of 
artillery gets into position to cover the advance ; 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. Detached 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 advance. For this 
powerful army, moving in battle order through a 
forest, has met with a formidable obstacle the open 
country. The 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 dis- 
tance. Behind the wall is a hedge; behind the 
hedge are seen the tops of trees in rather straggling 

E 2 



52 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

order. Behind the trees what ? It is necessary to 
know. 

Yesterday, and for many days and nights pre- 
viously, we were fighting somewhere ; always there 
was cannonading, with occasional keen rattlings of 
musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the 
enemy's, we seldom knew, attesting some temporary 
advantage. This morning at daybreak the enemy 
was gone. We have moved forward across his 
earthworks, across which we have so often vainly 
attempted to move before, through the debris of his 
abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, 
into the woods beyond. 

How curiously we regarded everything ! how odd 
it all seemed ! Nothing appeared quite familiar ; the 
most commonplace objects an old saddle, a splint- 
ered wheel, a forgotten canteen everything related 
something of the mysterious personality of those 
strange men who had been killing us. The soldier 
never becomes wholly familiar with the conception of 
his foes as men like himself; he cannot divest him- 
self of the feeling that they are another order of 
beings, differently conditioned, in an environment 
not altogether 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 



A SON OF THE GODS 53 

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 
between retiring and retreating. 

That group of horsemen is our commander, his 
staff and escort. He is facing the distant crest, 
holding his field-glass against his eyes with both 
hands, his elbows needlessly 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 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 positions ; 
the men resting at ease straighten themselves, and 
the ranks are reformed without 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 colours are 
fashionable in military life must be accepted as the 



54 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 he is ! with what careless 
grace he sits upon his horse ! 

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 deployed at 
six paces or so apart, now pushes from the wood into 
the open. The commander 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 advanced 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 
sabre ; his right hand hangs easily at his side. The 
breeze catches the plume in his hat and flutters it 



.A SON OF THE GODS 55 

smartly. The sunshine rests upon his shoulder, 
straps, lovingly, like a visible benediction. Straight 
on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are fixed 
upon him with an intensity that he can hardly fail 
to feel ; ten thousand hearts keep quick time to the 
inaudible 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 backward. 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 commander 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 awfullest forms is a fact 
familiar to their every-day observation ; who sleep on 
hills trembling with the thunder of great guns, dine 
in the midst of streaming missiles, and play at 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. 



5 6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 beyond. 

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 need- 
less sacrifice of self. If the enemy has not retreated 
he is in force on that ridge. The investigator will 
encounter nothing less than a line of battle ; there 
is no need of pickets, vedettes, skirmishers, to give 
warning of our approach ; our attacking lines will be 
visible, conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire 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 mano3uvred out by the imme- 
morial plan of threatening his line of communication, 
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 some- 



A SON OF THE GODS 57 

body 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 affirmative 
with all their lives ; the enemy, crouching 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 accomplish 
the predestined retreat. What a price to pay for 
gratified curiosity ! At what a dear rate an army 
must sometimes purchase knowledge ! ' 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 advances 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 intellect 
between a man and an army. Our horseman, now 
within a quarter of a mile of the crest, suddenly 
wheels to the left and gallops 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 



58 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

were here, lie 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, naturally, 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 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 directly 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 



A SON OF THE GODS 59 

right and left. This is as instantly dissipated by the 
wind, and before the rattle of the rifles reaches us, 
he is down. No, he recovers his seat ; he has but 
pulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up 
and away ! A tremendous cheer bursts from our 
ranks, relieviug 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 musk- 
etry is continuous, and every bullet's target is that 
courageous heart. 

Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes 
upward from behind the wall. Another and another 
a dozen roll up before the thunder of the explo- 
sions and the humming 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 temporary distrac- 
tion, a passing thought of self. 

The dust drifts away. Incredible ! that en- 
chanted horse and rider have passed a ravine and are 
climbing another slope to unveil another conspiracy 
of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host. 
Another moment and that crest too is in eruption. 
The horse rears and strikes the air with its forefeet. 
They are down at last. But look again the man 
has detached himself from the dead animal. He 
stands erect, motionless, holding his sabre in his 
right hand straight above his head. His face is to 



60 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

the enemy. Now he lowers his hand to a level with 
his face, moves it outward, the blade of the sabre 
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 
forward at a keen run, like hounds unleashed. Oar 
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, 
catching the sunlight on its burnished arms. The 
rear battalions alone are in obedience ; they preserve 
their proper distance from the insurgent front. 

The commander has not moved. He now re- 
moves his field-glass from his eyes and glances to 
the right and left. He sees the human current flow- 
ing 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 I The injunction has 
an imperiousness which enforces it. It is repeated 



A SON OF THE GODS 61 

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 
cannon. To halt is to withdraw. The colours move 
slowly back ; the lines face about and sullenly fol- 
low,, 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 hillside 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 SEAKING, a private soldier of General Sher- 
man's army, then confronting the enemy at and 
about Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, turned his back 
upon a small group of officers, with whom he had 
been talking 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 pass- 
ing, but all who saw understood that this brave man 
had been intrusted 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 i 
anything. He may perform services for which no 
provision is made in orders and army regulations. 
Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon 
favour, upon accident. Private Searing, an incom- 
parable marksman, young it is surprising how 
young we all were in those days hardy, intelligent, 
and insensible to fear, was a scout. The general 



64 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

commanding 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-d-vis through the customary channels; he wanted 
to know more than he was apprised of by the corps 
commander and the collisions of pickets and skir- 
mishers. Hence Jerome Searing with his extraor- 
dinary 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 defences. The forest ex- 
tended without a break toward the front, so solemn 
and silent that only by an eifort of the imagination 
could it be conceived as populous with armed men, alert 
and vigilant a forest formidable with possibilities of 
battle. Pausing a moment in one of the rifle pits to 
apprise the men of his intention, Searing crept 
stealthily forward on his hands and knees and was 
soon lost to view in a dense thicket of underbrush. 

' 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.' 



ONE OF THE MISSING 65 

Searing crept on, taking advantage of every 
accident of ground and growth to give himself better 
cover. His eyes penetrated everywhere, his ears 
took note of every sound. He stilled his breathing, 
and at the cracking of a twig beneath his knee 
stopped his progress and hugged the earth. It was 
slow work, but not tedious ; the danger made it ex- 
citing, 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 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 regard- 
ing the hillock of clay. In another moment he was 
upon his feet, rifle in hand, striding rapidly forward 
with little attempt at concealment. He had rightly 
interpreted 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, 

F 



66 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

his eyes vigilant to discover possible stragglers. He 
came to the edge of a plantation one of those forlorn, 
deserted homesteads of the last years of the war, up- 
grown with brambles, ugly with broken fences, and 
desolate with vacant buildings having blank apertures 
in place of doors and windows. After a keen recon- 
noissance from the safe seclusion of a clump of young 
pines, Searing ran lightly across a field and 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 country in the direction that he sup- 
posed the enemy 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 sup- 
porting posts were themselves no longer vertical. It 
looked as if the whole edifice would go down at thte 
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 



ONE OF THE MISSING 67 

command with all possible speed and report his dis- 
covery. But the grey column of infantry toiling up 
the mountain road was 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 re- 
treat to be announced by him. For countless ages 
events had been so matching themselves together in 
that wondrous 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 certain 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 concurrence 
of an infinite number of favouring influences and 
their preponderance over an infinite number of oppos- 
ing ones, this officer of artillery had been made to 

F 2 



63 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 Sear- 
ing, the Federal scout, stood cocking his rifle. No- 
thing had been neglected at every step in the 
progress of both these men's lives, and in the lives of 
their ancestors and contemporaries, and of the lives 
of the contemporaries of their ancestors 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 
retreating Confederates that morning, and would 
perhaps have missed. As it fell out, a captain of 
artillery, having nothing better to do while awaiting 
his turn to pull out and be off, amused himself by 
sighting a field piece obliquely to his right at what 
he took to be some Federal officers on the crest of a 
hill, and discharged it. The shot flew high of its 
mark. 

As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer of his 
rifle, and, with his eyes upon the distant Confede- 
rates, 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, for Private 
Searing, although he had repeatedly refused pro- 
motion, was not without a certain kind of ambition 



ONE OF THE MISSING 69 

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, striking with a deafening impact one of the 
posts supporting the confusion of timbers above him, 
smashing it into matchwood, and bringing 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 in front 
of 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 



70 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

of their duty by the non-commissioned officers in low 
tones, had deployed from their rifle pits and were 
moving forward in skirmishing order, with set teeth 
and beating hearts. The lieutenant mechanically 
looked at his watch. Six o'clock and eighteen 
minutes. 

When Jerome Searing recovered consciousness, 
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 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, patternless system of straight lines ; in the 
centre a bright ring of metal the whole an immeas- 
urable distance away a distance so inconceivably 
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 



ONE OF THE MISSL\G 71 

low, rhythmic thunder of a distant sea breaking in 
successive waves upon the beach, and out of this 
noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly coming from 
beyond it, and intermingled with its ceaseless under- 
tone, came the articulate words : ' Jerome Searing, 
you are caught like a rat in a trap in a trap, trap } 
trap.' 

Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black dark- 
ness, an infinite tranquillity, and Jerome 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 defence. 

He was caught in a reclining posture, his back 
firmly supported by a solid beam. Another lay 
across his breast, but he had been able to shrink a 
little way from it so that it no longer oppressed him, 
though it was immovable. 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 



72- IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

suffer pain. A smart rap on the head from a flying 
fragment of the splintered post, incurred simultane- 
ously with the frightfully sudden shock to the 
nervous system, had momentarily dazed him. His 
term of unconsciousness, including the period of 
recovery, 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 intelligent survey of the situa- 
tion. 

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. Obvi- 
ously he could not get his hand under the beam nor 
over it ; he could not, in fact, touch it at all. Hav- 
ing demonstrated his inability, 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 determin- 
ing that point, his attention was arrested by what 
seemed to be a ring of shining metal immediately in 
front of his eyes. It appeared to him at first to sur- 



ONE OF THE MISSING 73 

round some perfectly black substance, and it was 
somewhat more than a half inch in diameter. It sud- 
denly occurred to his mind that the blackness 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 correspond- 
ing 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 centre of his 
forehead. 

In the perception of this circumstance, in the 
recollection that just previously to the mischance of 
which this uncomfortable situation was the result, lie 
had cocked the gun 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 ex- 
perience at the storming of Missionary Ridge, where, 
walking up to one of the enemy's embrasures from 



74 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 com- 
monest incidents in a soldier's life firearms, too, 
with malevolent 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 annoying from his ignorance 
of what held it. Next he tried to free his feet, but 
while exerting the powerful muscles of his legs for 
that purpose it occurred to him that a disturbance 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 cir- 
cumstance would doubtless have cheered his an- 



ONE OF THE MISSING 75 

tagonist to longer endurance. He had always smiled 
in recalling that blunder of his ' green and salad 
days ' as a soldier, but now he did net smile. He 
turned his eyes again to the muzzle 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 plantation interested 
him ; he had not before observed how light and 
feathery they seemed, nor how darkly blue the sky 
was, even among their branches, where they some- 
what paled it with their green ; above him it appeared 
almost black. ' It will be uncomfortably hot here,' 
he thought, c as the day advances. I wonder which 
way I am looking.' 

Judging by such shadows as he could see, he de- 
cided 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.' 

Bat he did not sleep. Gradually he became 
sensible of a pain in his forehead a dull ache, hardly 
perceptible at first, but growing more and more un- 
comfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone 
closed them and it returned. ' The devil ! ' he said 



76 JN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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, raced across 
the fields, shouting to alarm the sedentary larks, en- 
tered the sombre 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 mystery. 
For the first time he observed that the opening oT 
the haunted cavern was encircled 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 inconceivable 
distance away, and all the more sinister 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 poignant pain 
in his forehead the prophecy and menace of the 
bullet forced him to reopen them. 

The tension of nerve and brain was too severe ; 
nature came to his relief with intervals of uncon- 



ONE OF THE MISSING 77 

sciousness. Reviving from one of these, he became 
sensible of a sharp, smarting 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 running blood. In 
his delirium he had beaten it against the jagged 
fragments of the wreck, had clutched it fall 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 sneaking and scampering about. One of 
them mounted the pile of debris 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 be- 
wildered 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. 

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 constant. He felt it 



78 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

gradually penetrating tlie brain more and more 
deeply, until at last its progress was arrested by 
the wood at the back of his head. It grew momen- 
tarily 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 formid- 
able enemy, the strong, resolute warrior, was as pale 
as a ghost. His jaw was fallen ; his eyes protruded : 
he trembled in every fibre ; 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 bleeding 
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. Finally 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, 



ONE OF THE MISSING 79 

that is to say backward, 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 backward 
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-defence he was less sensible of the pain in his 
head and had ceased to scream. But he was 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 extended 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 rubbish, 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, aug- 
mented tenfold. 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 tremble again. 



?o IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

Suddenly he became composed. His tremor 
subsided. He clinched his teeth and drew down his 
eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of 
defence ; 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 
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, closing 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 building, observing no- 
thing. At a short distance in their rear came their 
commander, Lieutenant 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 Confederate 
grey. 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 



ONE OF THE MISSING 81 

observe the rifle ; the man was apparently killed by 
the fall of the building. 

' 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 fortv minutes. 



KILLED AT RESACA. 

THE best soldier of our staff was Lieutenant Herman 
Brayle, one of the two aides-de-camp. I don't 
remember where the general picked him up ; from 
some Ohio regiment, 1 think ; none of us had pre- 
viously 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 circumstances a man's 
services had to be very distinguished indeed to be 
heard of by his family and the friends of his youth ; 
and ' the speaking trump of fame ' was a trifle hoarse 
from loquacity, anyhow. 

Lieutenant Brayle was more than six feet in 
height and of splendid proportions, with the light 
hair and grey-blue eyes which men similarly gifted 

o 2 



84 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 
conspicuous figure. As for the rest, he had a gen- 
tleman'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 
mutations 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 bis 
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 would sit 
his horse like an equestrian statue, in a storm of 
bullets and grape, in the most exposed places 
wherever, in fact, duty, requiring him to go, per- 
mitted 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, 



KILLED AT RES AC A 85 

On foot, from necessity or in deference to his 
dismounted commander or associates, liis 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 unquestionable intrepidity, were loyally pre- 
serving 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 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 civilian 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 



86 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 
customary to return. 

Brayle's practice was different. He would con- 
sign 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 sus- 
pended 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 exposures of life 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 forgetting 
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." ' 



KILLED AT RES AC A 87 

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 impossible 
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 re- 
turning to duty as good as new. 

Of course, it came at last ; he who defies the law 
of probabilities challenges an adversary 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 earth- 
works 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 waste much 



88 

ammunition in unnecessary firing. 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 sug- 
gestion 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 abso- 
lutely certain failure to deliver the message. Before 
anybody could interpose, Brayle had cantered lightly 
into the field and the enemy's works were hi' crack- 
ling conflagration. 

' Stop that d d 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 
honour. 

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 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 



KILLED AT RES AC A 89 

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 defence. No longer regardful of them- 
selves 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 offending 
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 thunder- 
clouds, I saw Brayle, the cause of the carnage. In- 
visible 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 distance 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 general course at right angles to it. From 



90 7.V THE MIDST OF LIFE 

where we were it was invisible, and Brayle had 
evidently not known of it. Clearly, it was impassable. 
Its salient angles would have afforded him absolute 
security if he had chosen to be satisfied with the 
miracle already wrought in his favour. He could not 
go forward, he would not turn back ; he stood 
awaiting death. It did not keep him long waiting. 

By some mysterious coincidence, almost instan- 
taneously as he fell, 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 
flaer, soon afterward moved unmolested into the 

o" 

field, and made straight for Brayle's body. Several 
Confederate officers and men came out to meet them, 
and, with uncovered heads, assisted 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 honoured 
the fallen brave. 

Amongst the dead man's effects was a soiled 
Russia-leather pocket-book. 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 iny 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 hand- 



KILLED AT RES AC A 91 

writing, and began with words of endearment, but 
no name. 

It had the following date line : ' San Francisco, 
Cal., July 9, 1862.' The signature was 'Darling,' 
in marks of quotation. Incidentally, 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 something. It was this : 

* 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 words 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 Bincon Hill. 
She was beautiful, well bred in a word, charming. 

1 You knew Lieutenant Herman Brayle,' I said, 
rather abruptly. ' You know, doubtless, that he fell 
in battle. Among his effects was found this letter 



92 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

from you. My errand here is to place it in your 
hands.' 

She mechanically took the letter, glanced through 
it with deepening colour, 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 suddenly, and 
changed colour. ' This stain,' she said, ' is it 
surely it is not ' 

' Madam,' I said, ' pardon ine, but that is the 
blood of the truest and bravest heart that ever beat.' 

She hastily flung the letter on the blazing coals. 
' Ugh ! 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 upward. 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 beautiful as 
this detestable creature. 

' He was bitten by a snake,' I replied. 



THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 

1 Do yon think, colonel, that your brave Coulter 
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-humouredly to intimate that Captain Coulter's 
courage had been too highly extolled in a recent 
conversation 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 c 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 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 



94 S1V THE MIDST OF LIFE 

right the ridge, though occupied by Federal infantry 
lying close behind the sharp crest, and appearing as 
if held in place by atmospheric pressure, was inac- 
cessible 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 directly in front of a rather 
grandiose building, the planter's dwelling. The gun 
was safe enough in its exposure but only because 
the Federal infantry had been forbidden to fire. 
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, sprawling 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 division, and the colonel command- 
ing the brigade, with their staffs and escorts, had 
ridden into the notch to have a look at the enemy's 
guns which had straightway obscured themselves 
in towering clouds of smoke. It was hardly profit- 
able to be curious about guns which had the trick of 
the cuttlefish, and the season of observation was 
brief. At its conclusion a short remove backward 



THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 95 

from where it began occurred the conversation 
already partly reported. ' It is the only place,' the 
general repeated thoughtfully, ' 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 himself.' 

The tone of irony was now unmistakable. It 
angered the colonel, but he did not know what to 
say. The spirit of military subordination is not 
favourable 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 Coulter. He could not have been more than 
twenty-three years of age. He was of medium height, 
but very slender and lithe, sitting 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, grey-eyed, with a slight blonde moustache, 
and long, rather straggling hair of the same colour. 
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 expanse 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 surroundings. His 
grey eyes, which seemed occasionally to strike right 



9.6. IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

and left across the landscape, 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 direction to see. 
As he came opposite his division and brigade com- 
manders at the roadside he saluted mechanically and 
was about to pass on. Moved by a sudden impulse, 
the colonel signed him to halt. 

' Captain Coulter,' he said, ' the. enemy has twelve 
pieces over there on the next ridge. If I 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 swarming slowly up 
the hill through rough undergrowth, 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 commander. 
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, 



THE AFFAIR AT COULTERS NOTCH 97 

humiliated and indignant, was about to order 
Captain Coulter into arrest, when the latter spoke a 
few words in a low tone to his bugler, saluted, and 
rode straight forward into the Notch, where, pres- 
ently, at the summit of the road, his field-glass at his 
eyes, he showed against the sky, he and his horse, 
sharply defined and motionless as an equestrian 
statue. The bugler had dashed down the road in the 
opposite direction at headlong speed and disappeared 
behind a wood. Presently his bugle was heard sing- 
ing in the cedars, and in an incredibly 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 loading, 
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 report the affair at Coulter's Notch had 
begun. 

It is not intended to relate in detail the progress 
and incidents of that ghastly contest a contest 
without vicissitudes, its alternations only different 
degrees of despair. Almost at the instant when 
Captain Coulter's gun blew its challenging cloud 
twelve answering clouds rolled upward from among 
the trees about the plantation house, a deep multiple 

H 



98 AV THE MIDST OF LIFE 

report roared back like a broken echo, and thence- 
forth to the end the Federal cannoneers fought their 
hopeless battle in an atmosphere 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 successive masses of smoke, 
seemed the crater of a volcano in thundering erup- 
tion. 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 main- 
tained 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 ascensions of smoke 
from the breached roof. Figures of prostrate men 
and horses were plainly visible. 

' 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 accuracy 
of his fire.' 

Turning to his adjutant-general he said, ' Did 



THE AFFAIR AT COULTERS NOTCH 99 

you observe Coulter's damned reluctance to obey 
orders ? ' 

1 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 rear guard of a retreating enemy.' 

A young officer approached from below, climbing 
breathless up the acclivity. Almost before he had 
saluted he gasped out : 

' Colonel, I am directed by Colonel Harmon 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. 
' Colonel Harmon would like to have permission 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 

H 2 



ioo IN THE MIDST OP LIFE 

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 that ? ' 

1 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 
ascended except desultory cloudlets from the 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, resuming 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 
1 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 complaint 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. 



THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 101 

' See here, Morrison,' said he, looking his gossip- 
ing staff officer straight in the face, ' did you get 
that story from a gentleman or a liar ? ' 

1 1 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 colonel turned toward a small knot of 
officers some distance away. ' Lieutenant Williams ! J 
he shouted. 

One of the officers detached himself from the 
group, and, coming forward, saluted, saying: 
' Pardon me, Colonel, I thought you had been in- 
formed. 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 commander's congratulations. 

' Go,' said the colonel, ' and direct the with- 
drawal 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 which 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 



102 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

one disabled there had been a lack of men to re- 
place it quickly. The debris lay on both sides of 
the road ; the men had managed to keep an open 
way between, 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 bleed- 
ing 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 frag- 
ments 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 experience 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 clashing ; 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 



THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 103 

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 obscurity 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. 

Simultaneously with the colonel's arresting sign, 
silence fell upon the whole field of action. The pro- 
cession 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 com- 
mander of his rear guard, who had held his position 
perilously 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, facetiously, riding forward to the crest 
to see what had really happened. 

An hour later his brigade was in bivouac on the 



104 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 odour of powder 
smoke everywhere. The beds, the closets of women's 
clothing, the cupboards were not greatly damaged. 
The new tenants for a night made themselves com- 
fortable, and the practical effacement of Coulter's 
battery supplied them with an interesting 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 plea- 
santly, 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 officer, 
rising. 

' So will I,' the colonel said ; ' let the others 
remain. Lead on, orderly.' 

They took a candle from the table and descended 



THE AFFAIR AT COULTERS NOTCH 105 

the cellar stairs, the orderly in visible 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 forward. 
The face, which should have been seen in profile, was 
invisible, for the man was bent so far forward that 
his long hair concealed 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 excavation 
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. 



106 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

They stood about the group awhile in silence ; 
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 apparently 
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 orderly 
two paces. 

' What are you doing here, my man ? ' said the 
col one , 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 Coulter.' 



A TOUGH TUSSLE. 

OXE 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 uncer- 
tainty as to its numbers and position -that accounted 
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 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 jind unremitting vigilance. In four 



io8 

hours, if nothing occurred, 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 forward 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 ex- 
pected to make a stand after firing the men would 
come into the converging roads, and, naturally fol- 
lowing them to their point of intersection, could be 
rallied and 'formed.' In his small way the young 
lieutenant was something of a strategist ; if 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 comparatively inex- 
perienced 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 com- 
pany on account of his education and engaging 
manner, and had been lucky enough to lose his 
captain by a Confederate bullet; in the resulting 



A TOUGH TUSSLE 109 

promotions he had got a commission. He had been 
in several engagements, such as they were at 
Philippi, Rich Mountain, Carrick's Ford and Green- 
brier and had borne himself with such gallantry as 
to attract the 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 unnaturally swollen, had always in- 
tolerably affected him. He felt toward them a 
kind of reasonless antipathy which was something 
more than the physical and spiritual repugnance 
common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was 
due to his unusually acute sensibilities 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 unthinkable. 
Death was a thing to be hated. It was not pictur- 
esque, it had no tender and solemn side a dismal 
thing, hideous in all its manifestations and sugges- 
tions. Lieutenant 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 



no IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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, in- 
visible ocean of 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 few and served only to 
accentuate the blackness of his environment, which 
his imagination 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 whispers, 
whispers that startle ghosts of sounds long dead. 
There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard 
under other conditions : notes of strange night birds, 
the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with 
stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the 



A TOUGH TUSSLE in 

dead leaves it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may 
be the footstep of a panther. 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 observed 
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. Yield- 
ing himself to the solemn and mysterious 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 uni- 
verse 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 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 adjusted the 



112 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

clasp of liis 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 prudence, 
struck a match and lit a cigar. In the sudden 
blackness that followed the extinction of the flame 
he felt a sense of relief; 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. 

1 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 hum- 
ming 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 
neighbour. He was conscious, too, of a vague, in- 
definable 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 



A TOUGH TUSSLE 113 

suppose it will require a thousand years perhaps 
ten thousand for humanity to outgrow 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. Doubtless they 
believed themselves justified by facts whose nature 
we cannot even conjecture in thinking a dead body 
a malign thing endowed 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, 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 generation is as 
much a part of us as our blood and bones.' 

In following out his thought he had forgotten 
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 grey, the uniform 
of a Confederate soldier. The coat and waistcoat, 

I 



114 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

unbuttoned, had fallen away on each side, exposing 
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 the front, and 
resumed his philosophising where he had left off. 

' It may be that our Central Asian ancestors 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 bcdy. The right arm the one 
farthest from him was now in shadow. He could 



A TOUGH TUSSLE 115 

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 certain comfort, 
he could not have said why. He did not at once 
remove his eyes ; that 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 altogether 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 attitude 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. Heavens ! what sound was that ? what 
mindless devil was uttering an unholy- glee in mock- 
ery of human merriment? He sprang to his feet 
and looked about him, not recognising 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 office ; they gave way be- 
neath him ? and he sat again upon the log, violently 

i 3 



Ii6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 coward 
counsel, sing their doleful death-songs in his heart 
and disarm his very blood of all its iron ? The odds 
are too great courage was not made for such rough 
use as that. 

One sole conviction now had the man in posses- 
sion : 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 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 visibly moving. At that moment 
a single shot rang out upon the picket line a lone 



A: TOUGH TUSSLE n; 

lier 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 silence and the 
solitude, dispersed the hindering 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, firing 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 horsemen thundered by 
them, striking wildly with their sabres 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 saddle 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 



n8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

Federal commander, with a part of his staff, imper- 
fectly clad, appeared upon the scene, asked a few 
questions, looked exceedingly 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, com- 
manded by a captain and accompanied by a surgeon, 
searched the ground for dead and wounded. At the 
fork of the road, a little 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 not, 
apparently, until he had inflicted 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 removed 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 revolver in the dead officer's 
belt. 

The surgeon laid down the sword and approached 
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 



A TOUGH TUSSLE 119 

effort the body was displaced. The dead do not 
wish to be moved when comfortable it protested 
with a faint, sickening odour. 

The surgeon looked at the captain. The captain 
looked at the surgeon. 



TEE COUP DE GRACE 

THE 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 re- 
mained only to succour 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 
required. 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 requiring 
attention, but many do not live to avail themselves 
of it. 

The dead were collected in groups of a 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 



122 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

buried where they lay. There was little attempt at 
identification, 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 victorious 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 uniform 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 quitting 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 
after 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 



THE COUP DE GRACE 123 

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 unheeded. What, indeed, 
could the officer have done, being no surgeon and 
having no water ? 

At the head of a shallow ravine, a mere depres- 
sion 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 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 Mad well, of a 
Massachusetts regiment of infantry, a daring and in- 
telligent soldier, an honourable man. 

In the regiment were two brothers named Hal- 
crow Caffal and Creede Halcrow. CafFal 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 to- 



124 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

gether. They had, indeed, grown up together from 
childhood. A habit of the heart is not easily broken 
off. Caffal Halcrow had nothing military 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 
highest non-commissioned and the lowest commis- 
sioned officer the social gulf is deep and wide, and 
the old relation was maintained with difficulty and a 
difference. 

Creede Halcrow, the brother of Caffal, was the 
major of the regiment a cynical, saturnine man, 
between whom and Captain Madwell there was a 
natural antipathy which circumstances had nourished 
and strengthened to an active animosity. But for 
the restraining influence of their mutual relation to 
Caffal, these two patriots would doubtless have en- 
deavoured 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 attacked and nearly 
surrounded in the forest, but stubbornly held its 
ground. During a lull in the fighting, Major Hal- 
crow came to Captain Madwell. The two exchanged 
formal salutes, and the major said : ' Captain, the 
colonel directs that you push your company to the 
head of this ravine and hold your place there until 
recalled. I need hardly apprise you of the dangerous 



THE COUP DE GRACE 125 

character of the movement, but if you wish, you can, 
I suppose, turn over the command to your first 
lieutenant. I was not, however, directed to authorise 
the substitution ; it is merely a suggestion of my 
own, unofficially made.' 

.To this deadly insult Captain Madwell coolly re- 
plied :- 

' Sir, I invite you to accompany the movement. 
A mounted officer would be a conspicuous mark, and 
I have long held the opinion that it would be better 
if you were dead.' 

The art of repartee was cultivated in military 
circles as early as 1862. 

A half hour later Captain Madwell's company 
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 subor- 
dinate and friend. 

Sergeant Halcrow was mortally hurt. His cloth- 
ing was deranged ; it seemed to have been violently 
torn apart, exposing the abdomen. Some of the 
buttons of his jacket had been pulled off and lay on 
the ground beside him, and fragments of his other 
garments were strewn about. His leather belt was 
parted, and had apparently been dragged from be- 
neath him as he lay. There had been no very great 
effusion of blood. The only visible wound was a 



126 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

wide, ragged opening in the abdomen. It was defiled 
with earth and dead leaves. Protruding from it was 
a lacerated end of the small intestine. In all his 
experience Captain Mad well 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 be- 
smirching of the white skin. He knelt and made a 
closer examination. 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 mov- 
ing about among the fallen men a herd of swine. 
One stood with its back to him, its shoulders sharply 
elevated. Its forefeet 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 and earth. Articulate speech 
was beyond his power ; it was impossible to know if 
he were sensible to anything but pain. The ex- 
pression of his face was an appeal ; his eyes were full 
of prayer. For what ? 



THE COUP DE GRACE 127 

There was no misreading that look ; the captain 
had too frequently seen it in eyes of those whose lips 
had still the power to formulate 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 imploring 
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 whatever took form in sense 
or consciousness, this incarnate suffering addressed 
its silent plea. 

For what, indeed ? For that which we accord 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 com- 
passion, the coup de grace. 

Captain Madwell spoke the name of his friend. 
He repeated it over and over without effect until 
emotion choked his utterance. His tears plashed 
upon the livid face beneath his own and blinded 
himself. He saw nothing but a blurred and moving 
object, but the moans were more distinct than ever, 
interrupted 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, re- 
garding him suspiciously a second, and then, with a 
gruff, concerted grunt, raced away out of sight. A 
horse, its foreleg splintered horribly by a cannon 



128 IN THE MIDST OP LIFE 

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 expectation, 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 west- 
ward the fringe of sunset fire had now nearly burned 
itself out. The light upon the trunks of the trees 
had faded to a tender grey ; the shadows were in 
their tops, like great dark birds aperch. The night 
was coining and there were miles of haunted forest 
between Captain Madwell and camp. Yet he sioDd 
there at the side of the dead animal, apparently lost 
to all sense of his surroundings. 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 



THE COUP DE GRACE 129 

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 withdraw his eyes. Grasping the hilt with 
both hands, he thrust downward with all his strength 
and weight. The blade sank into the man's body 
through his body into the earth ; Captain Madwell 
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 

1 PRISONER, what is your name ? ' 

'As I am .to lose it at daylight to-morrow 
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 front. 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.' 

K 2 



132 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

The general so far laid aside the dignity appro- 
priate to a Confederate officer of high rank and wide 
renown as to smile. But no one in his power and 
out of his favour would have drawn any happy 
augury from that outward and visible sign of 
approval. It was neither genial nor infectious ; it 
did not communicate 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 offence. 

' 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 informa- 
tion secretly regarding the numbers and disposition 
of my troops ? ' 

c Regarding, particularly, their numbers. Their 
disposition I already knew. It is morose.' 

The general brightened again ; the guard, with a 
severer sense of his responsibility, accentuated the 
austerity of his expression and stood a trifle more 
erect than before. Twirling his grey slouch hat 
round and round upon his forefinger, the spy took a 
leisurely survey 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, 



PARKER ADDERS ON, PHILOSOPHER 133 

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 
covered 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 
c pomp and circumstance ' had attained their highest 
development. On a large nail driven into the tent- 
pole at the entrance was suspended a sword-belt 
supporting a long sabre, a pistol in its holster, and, 
absurdly enough, a bowie knife. Of that most 
unmilitary weapon it was the general'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 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 himself out 
of the tent. General Clavering turned his handsome. 



134 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 is a memorandum for an order to be 
read to the troops at reveille concerning your execu - 
tion. Also some notes for the guidance of .the 
provost-marshal in arranging the details of that 
event.' 

* I hope, general, the spectacle will be intellig- 
ently arranged, for I shall attend it myself.' 

' 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 ex- 
perienced it.' 

The general was silent for a moment ; the man 
interested, perhaps amused, him a type not pre- 
viously encountered. 



PARKER ADDERS ON, PHILOSOPHER 135 

' 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 conscious can 
be borne with composure and therefore expected with- 
out apprehension. You must have observed, general, 
that of all the dead men with whom it is your 
soldierly 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 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. Nature appears to have 



156 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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.' 

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 intelli- 
gence 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 imagine a 
house without inhabitants, and seeing a ruined hut 
fancies a suffering occupant. To us it is horrible be- 
cause we have inherited the tendency to think it so, 
accounting for the notion by wild and fanciful 
theories of another world as names of places give 
rise to legends explaining them, and reasonless con- 
duct to philosophies in justification. You can hang 
me, general, but there your power of evil ends ; you 
cannot condemn me to heaven.' 

The general appeared not to have heard ; the 
spy's talk had merely turned his thoughts into an 



PARKER ADDERS ON, PHILOSOPHER 137 

unfamiliar channel, but there they pursued their will 
independently to conclusions 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 sombre tinge of a supernatural 
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 intended 
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 file of men, conduct him at once 
to the parade-ground, and shoot him.' 

A sharp cry broke from the spy's lips. He threw 
himself forward, thrust out his neck, expanded his 
eyes, clenched his hands. 

' Good God ! ' he cried hoarsely, almost inartic- 
ulately; 'you do not mean that! You forget I 
am not to die until morning.' 

'I have said nothing of morning,' replied the 
general, coldly ; ' that was an assumption of your 
own. You die now.' 

' But, general, 1 beg I implore you to remember; 



138 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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, 
general, 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, thrusting 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 over- 
turned, the 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 conjecturing 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. 



PARKER ADDERS ON, PHILOSOPHER 139 

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 com- 
mands 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 lifting off the fallen 
tent and pulling apart the breathless and bleeding 
actors in that strange contention. 

Breathless, indeed, was one ; the captain was 
dead, the handle of the bowie knife protruding from 
his throat and pressed back beneath his chin until 
the end had caught in the angle of the jaw, and the 
hand that delivered 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 remonstrances. 



140 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

His face, swollen by blows and stained with gouts of 
blood, nevertheless showed white beneath his di- 
shevelled hair as white as that of a corpse. 

' The man is not insane,' said the surgeon 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 nothing that 
could in any way accentuate the importance 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 consciousness. 
He raised himself upon his elbow, looked about him, 
and, seeing the spy crouching by a camp-fire, guarded, 
said simply : 

' Take that man to the parade-ground and shoot 
him.' 

' The general's mind wanders,' said an officer 
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- 
marshal ' and, by God ! it shall be executed.' 

Ten minutes later Sergeant Parker Adderson, 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 the keen air of the winter midnight, 



PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 141 

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-general, 
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. 






CIVILIANS 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 



IN an upper room of an unoccupied dwelling 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 evening; 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-table, supporting the body of the man. All 
these, as also the corpse, would seem to have been 
recently brought in, for an observer, had there been 
one, would have seen that all were free from dust, 
whereas everything 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 could 
be traced, even the features, these having that un- 
naturally sharp definition which seems to belong to 
faces of the dead, but is really characteristic of those 

L 



146 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 neighbouring church clock was striking 
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 voli- 
tion ; there was a grating, as of a key turned with diffi- 
culty 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, the panes were covered with 
dust, but, by wiping this away, he could see that the 
window was fortified with strong iron bars crossing 
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 appar- 
ently a tractable one. Having completed his exam- 
ination of the room, he seated himself in the arm- 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 147 

chair, took a book from his pocket, drew the stand 
with its candle alongside 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 arid a ' firmness ' of the chin and jaw which 
is said by those having it to denote resolution. The 
eyes were grey and steadfast, not moving except 
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 
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 recalling him to a sense of his 
surroundings. Clearly this watcher by the dead 
was discharging 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 read- 
ing-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 

L 2 



148 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 com- 
panion with a serious and tranquil regard. Satisfied 
with his inspection, he pulled the sheet over the face 
again, and, returning to his chair, took some 
matches off the candlestick, put 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 calculating 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 living 
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 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 149 

ashamed to be a liar ? ' asked the youngest of the 
three, who was, in fact, a medical student not yet 
graduated. 

' 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 condi- 
tions 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 sufficient familiarity 
with death to be altogether unmoved by it.' 

Young Harper, who had been helping himself to 
a fresh cigar at the sideboard, resumed his seat. 
' What would you consider conditions under which 
any man of woman born would become insupportably 
conscious of his share of our common weakness in 
this regard ? ' he asked, rather verbosely. 

' Well, I should say that if a man were locked up 
all night with a corpse alone in a dark ro'om of 
a vacant house with no bed-covers to pull over bis 



I5o IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

head and lived through it without going altogether 
raacl he might justly boast himself not of woman 
born, nor yet, like Macduff, a product of Cassarean 
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.' 

c Who is he ? ' 

' His name is Jarette a stranger in California ; 
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 fetir I 
dare say he thinks it some cutaneous disorder, or, 
possibly, a particular kind of religious heresy.' 

' What does he look like ? ' Helberson was evid- 
ently becoming interested. 

' Like Mancher, here might be his twin brother.' 

' I accept the challenge,' said Helberson, promptly. 

* Awfully obliged to you for the compliment, I'm 
sure,' drawled Mancher, who was growing sleepy. 
< Can't I get into this ? ' 

' Not against me,' Helberson said. ' I don't want 
your money.' 

* All right,' said Mancher ; ' I'll be the corpse.' 
The others laughed. 

The outcome of this crazy conversation we have 
seen. 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 151 

III 

In extinguishing his meagre 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 of 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 settled himself com- 
fortably in the arm-chair, leaned back and closed his 
eyes, hoping and expecting to sleep. In this he was 
disappointed ; he had never in his life felt less sleepy, 
and in a few minutes he gave up the attempt. But 
what could he do ? He could not go groping about 
in the absolute darkness at the risk of bruising him- 
self at the risk, too, of blundering against the table 
and rudely disturbing the dead. We all recognise 
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 



152 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 ring- 
ing 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 his breath 
almost to suffocation. The revelation was vexatious ; 
he arose, pushed away the chair with his foot, and 
strode to the centre of the room. But one does not 
stride far in darkness ; he began to grope, and, find- 
ing 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 forgotten where it was ! ' he muttered, 
and groped his way along the third wall to the fire- 
place. ' I must put things to rights,' said Mr. 
Jarette, feeling the floor for the candle. 

Having recovered that, he lighted it and in- 
stantly turned his eyes to the table, where, naturally, 
nothing had undergone any change. The reading- 
stand lay unobserved upon the floor; he had for- 
gotten to ' put it to rights.' He looked all about 
the room, dispersing the deeper shadows by 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 153 

ments 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. Keturning 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 distinctly 
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 fool.' But courage does not come of saying, 
' I will be courageous,' nor of recognising its appro- 
priateness to the occasion. The more Jarette con- 
demned himself, the more reason he gave himself for 
condemnation ; the greater the number of variations 
which he played upon the simple theme of the harrn- 
lessness 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 desire shall I lose at once my bet, my 
honour, and my self-respect, perhaps my reason, be- 
cause certain savage ancestors, dwelling in. caves and 



154 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

burrows, conceived the monstrous notion that the 
dead walk by night ; that ' distinctly, unmistak- 
ably, Mr. Jarette heard behind him a light, soft sound 
of footfalls, deliberate, regular, and successively nearer ! 



IV 

Just before daybreak the next morning Dr. Hel- 
berson 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 en- 
feebling 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 endur- 
ance a purely physical quality and by the cool 
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.' 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 155 

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 different.' 

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 travelled 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 unoccu- 
pied house belonging to the doctor, 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, 
suddenly checking his speed, ' where I can find a 
physician ? ' 

' What's the matter ? ' Helberson asked, non-com- 
mittal. 

' Go and see for yourself,' said the man, resuming 
his running. 



156 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 pro- 
trusion of heads. All heads were asking questions, 
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. 
Exactly opposite the door of the house which they 
sought, a street-lamp threw a yellow, insufficient 
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's all up with 
us, doctor,' he said in extreme agitation, which con- 
trasted 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 endeavouring to detain 
him, Down through the mass of affrighted idlers 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 157 

lie 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, thrusting 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. 

As the crowd at the foot of the stairs, having 
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 policeman, who had had inferior success in 
conquering 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, followed 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 newcomers edged their way forward, 



158 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 illuminated 
by the beam of a bull's-eye lantern held by a police- 
man 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, re- 
pulsive, horrible ! The eyes were partly open and 
upturned, and the jaw fallen ; traces of froth defiled 
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 fingers 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 officer, 
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 effect was amazing! The men, 
blinded, confused, 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 officer poured his light without 
pity and without cessation. Caught in the current, 
Helberson and Harper were swept out of the room 
and cascaded down the stairs into the street. 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 159 

' 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 greying east the dwellings of our hill 
tribes showed in silhouette. The familiar milk- 
waggon 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 Helberson, ' that 
you and I have been having too much of the morning 
air lately. It is unwholesome ; 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. 



Seven years afterward these two men sat upon a 
bench in Madison Square, New York, in familiar 
conversation. Another man, who had been observing 
them for some time, himself 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 liberty.' 



160 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

Helberson and Harper exchanged significant 
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 in- 
dispcsed, 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 myself Jarette some- 
times, but I don't mind telling you, for old friend- 
ship, 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 recall 
something, then began humming a popular 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. 



A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 161 

You see I knew, by overhearing him talking to him- 
self, 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 ; I 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. 

'We? why why ,' Helberson stammered, 
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 gamblers.' 
And that was the truth. 

'A very good profession very good, indeed; 
and, by the way, I hope Sharper here paid over 
Jarette's money like an honest stakeholder. A very 
good and honourable profession,' he repeated, thought- 
fully, moving carelessly away ; ' but I stick to the 
old one. I am High Supreme Medical Officer of the 
Bloomingdale Asylum ; it is my duty to cure the 
superintendent.' 

M 



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 svasiun is drawn forwards in despyte of his 
wille, and perishetb miserabyll by ye creature hys byte. 

STRETCHED at ease upon a sofa, in gown and slippers, 
Harker Brayton smiled as he read the foregoing 
sentence in old Morryster's ' Marvells of Science.' 
' The only marvel in the matter,' he said to himself, 
' is that the wise and leai'ned in Morryster's day 
should have believed such nonsense as is rejected by 
most of even the ignorant in ours.' 

A train of reflections followed for Brayton was 
a man of thought and he unconsciously 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 reflections of the gas jet above him, in 
metal nail heads ; he gave them but little thought 
and resumed his reading. A moment later some- 

M 2 



164 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

thing some impulse which it did not occur to him 
to analyse impelled him to lower the book again 
and seek for what he saw before. The points of 
light were still Jbhere. They seemed to have become 
brighter than before, shining with a greenish lustre 
which he had not at first observed. He thought, too, 
that they might have moved a trifle were some- 
what nearer. They were still too much in shadow, 
however, to reveal their nature and origin to an in- 
dolent attention, 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. Bray ton, half 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 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 points ; they looked 
into his own with a meaning, a malign signifi- 
cance. 



i6 S 



II 

A snake in a bedroom of a modern city dwell- 
ing of the better sort is, happily, not so common 
a phenomenon as to make explanation altogether 
needless. Barker 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 
luxurious, had taken on an added exuberance 
from long privation ; and the resources of even the 
Castle Hotel being inadequate to their perfect 
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 
elements of its altered environment, and appeared to 
have developed some of the eccentricities which come 
of isolation. One of these was a ' wing,' conspicu- 
ously irrelevant in point of architecture, and no less 
rebellious in the matter of purpose ; for it was a 
combination of laboratory, menagerie, and museum. 
It was here that the doctor indulged 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 



1 66 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

and sweetly to recommend itself unto his gentle 
senses, it ha<J at least to retain certain rudimentary 
characteristics allying it to such 'dragons of the 
prime ' as toads and snakes. His scientific sympathies 
were distinctly reptilian ; he loved nature's vul- 
garians and described 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, excluded from what he 
called the Snakery, and doomed to companionship 
with their own kind, though, to soften the rigours 
of their lot, he had permitted them, out of his great 
wealth, to outdo the reptiles in the gorgeousness of 
their surroundings and to shine with a superior 
splendour. 

Architecturally, and in point of ' furnishing,' the 
Snakery had a severe simplicity befitting the humble 
circumstances of its occupants, 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 peculiarity of being 
alive. In their own apartments, however, they 
were under as little personal restraint as was 
compatible with their protection from the baneful 
habit of swallowing one another; arid, 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 presence. Despite 



THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 167 

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. 

Ill 

Beyond a smart shock of surprise and a shudder 
of mere loathing, Mr. Brayton was not greatly 
affected. His first thought was 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 revolting, 
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 deciphered the code. 

If not dangerous, the creature was at least offen- 
sive. It was de trop ' matter out of place ' an 
impertinence. The gem was unworthy of the setting. 
Even the barbarous taste of our time and country, 
which had loaded the walls of the room with pictures 5 



168 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

the floor with furniture and the furniture with bric- 
a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for this bit of 
the savage life of the jungle. Besides insup- 
portable tnought ! the exhalations 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 : something contracts 
our muscles. Does it matter if we give to the 
preparatory molecular changes the name of will ? 

Bray ton rose to his feet and prepared to back 
softly away from the snake, without disturbing 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 backward 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. 

Brayton lifted his right foot free of the floor to 



THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 169 

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 ? Because 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 suspended. 

' 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 back- 
ward. 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 before, 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 took a 
step forward, and another, partly dragging the 
chair, which, when finally released, fell upon the 
floor with a crash. The man groaned ; the snake 
made neither sound nor motion, but its eyes were two 
dazzling suns. The reptile itself was wholly con- 
cealed by them. They gave off enlarging rings of 
rich and vivid colours, which at their greatest 



170 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

expansion successively vanished like soap bubbles; 
they seemed to approach his very face, and anon were 
an immeasurable distance away. He heard, some- 
where, the continuous throbbing of a great drum, 
with desultory bursts of far music, inconceivably 
sweet, like the tones of an osolian harp. He knew it 
for the sunrise melody of Memnon's statue, and 
thought he 3tood in the Nileside reeds, hearing, with 
exalted sense, that immortal anthem through the 
silence of the centuries. 

The music ceased ; rather, it became by insensible 
degrees the distant roll of a retreating thunderstorm. 
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 mother's eyes. 
Suddenly this enchanting landscape seemed to rise 
swiftly upward, like the drop-scene at a theatre, 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 realised 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 



THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 171 

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 some- 
what to have lost its power upon the imagination ; 
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 expression unspeakably malignant. It was as if 
the creature, knowing its triumph assured, had 
determined to practise no more alluring wiles. 

Now ensued a fearful scene. The man, prone 
upon the floor, within a yard of his enemy, raised 
the upper part of his body upon his elbows, his head 
thrown back, his legs extended to their full length. 
<His face was white between its gouts of blood ; his 
eyes were strained open to their uttermost expansion. 
There was froth upon his lips; it dropped off in 
flakes. Strong convulsions ran through his body, 
making almost serpentine 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. 



172 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

IV 

Dr. Drurlng and his wife sat in the library. The 
scientist was in rare good humour. 

' I have just obtained, by exchange with another 
collector,' he said, ' a splendid specimen of the 
ophiophayus.' 

' And what may that be ? ' the lady inquired with 
a somewhat languid interest. 

' Why, bless my soul, what profound ignorance ! 
My dear, a man who ascertains after marriage that 
his wife does not know Greek, is entitled to a divorce. 
The opliiopliacjus is a snake which eats other snakes.' 

' I hope it will eat all yours,' she said, absently 
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 affection of petulance. ' You know how 
irritating to me is any allusion to that vulgar super- 
stition 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 'doctor 
was out of the room, springing up the staircase two 
steps at a time. In the corridor, in front of Bray- 
ton's chamber, he met some servants who had come 



THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 173 

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 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 centre of the room, 
whence, with a harsh, shuffling sound, it slid across 
the polished floor till stopped by the wall, where it 
lay without motion. It was a stuffed snake ; its 
eyes were two shoe buttons. 



A HOLY TERROR 

THERE was an entire lack of interest in the latest 
arrival at Hurdy-Gurdy. He was not even christened 
with the picturesquely descriptive nickname which 
is so frequently a mining camp's word of welcome to 
the new-comer. In almost any other camp thereabout 
this circumstance would of itself have secured hifn 
some such appellation as ' The White-headed Conun- 
drum,' or ' No Sarvey ' an expression naively 
supposed to suggest to quick intelligences the 
Spanish quien sdbe. He came without provoking a 
ripple of concern upon the social surface of Hurdy- 
Gurdy a place which, to the general Californian 
contempt of men ? s personal antecedents superadded 
a local indifference of its own. The time was long 
past when it was of any importance 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 weeks' earnest work in de- 
monstrating, to the disgust of the latter, the singu- 



176 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

larly mendacious character of the person whose 
ingenious tales of rich gold deposits had lured them 
thither w,prk, 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 
famine, to the condition of mere skeletons, about 
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 stilting awkwardly across the 
interspaces upon unhewn poles. The whole place 
presented that raw and forbidding aspect of arrested 



A'^HOLY TERROR 177 

development which is a new country's substitute for 
the solemn grace of ruin wrought by time. When- 
ever there remained a patch of the original soil, a 
rank overgrowth of weeds and brambles had spread 
upon the scene, and from its dank, unwholesome 
shades the visitor curious in such matters might have 
obtained numberless souvenirs of the camp's former 
glory fellowless boots mantled with green mould and 
plethoric of rotting leaves; an occasional old felt 
hat ; desultory remnants of a flannel shirt ; sardine 
boxes inhumanly mutilated, and a surprising pro- 
fusion of black bottles, distributed with a truly 
catholic impartiality everywhere. 

II 

The man who had now rediscovered Hurdy- 
Gurdy was evidently not curious as to its archaeology. 
Nor, as he looked about him upon the dismal evi- 
dences of wasted work and broken hopes, their 
dispiriting significance accentuated by the ironical 
pomp of a cheap gilding by the rising sun, did he 
supplement his sigh of weariness by one of sensibility. 
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 

N 



i;8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 scrutiny appeared to be rewarded with 
success, for he suddenly erected his figure to its full 
height, made a gesture of satisfaction, pronounced 
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 carefully 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, 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 accordance 
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 metropolis 
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 signalised by a debate 
between two members of the committee, with re- 
ference to a more eligible site, and on the third day 
the necropolis was inaugurated by a double funeral. 
As the camp had waned the cemetery had waxed ; 



A HOLY TERROR 179 

and long before the ultimate inhabitant, victorious 
alike over the insidious 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 graveyard though some- 
what marred by time and 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 com- 
mendable 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 
dangled), half a hundred gravelly mounds, a score of 
rude headboards displaying the literary peculiarities 
above mentioned, and a struggling colony of prickly 
pears. Altogether, God's Location, as with character- 
istic 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 inter- 
esting 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. 



N 2 



i8o Iff THE MIDST OF LIFE 

III 

This Mr. Jefferson Doman was from Elizabeth- 
town, New Jersey, where, six years before, he had 
left his heart in the keeping of a golden-haired, 
demure-mannered young woman named Mary Mat- 
thews, 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, incidentally, her view of the nature of 
encouragement. 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 aurifer- 
ous deposits did not commend itself to the masculine 
intelligence: it was Mr. Doman'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 labour for her 
through the long, loveless years, with a strong heart, 
an alert hope, and a steadfast fidelity that never for 
a moment forgot what it was about. In the mean- 
time 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 was better ap- 
preciated than her commanding genius for unsacking 



A HOLY TERROR 181 

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 renuncia- 
tion, 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 Eed Dog to get the letter, made 
vicarious atonement under the spur all the way back 
to camp. The letter failed in a signal way to accom- 
plish its object ; the fidelity which had before been to 
Mr. Doman a matter of love and duty, was thenceforth 
a matter of honour 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, appeared less surprised than 
from the apparently low estimate of Mr. Doman's 
generosity which the tone of her former letter attested, 
one would naturally have expected her to be. Soon 
after, however, her letters grew infrequent, and then 
ceased altogether. 

But Mr. Doman had another correspondent, Mr. 
Barney Bree, of Hurdy-Gurdy, formerly of Red Dog. 
This gentleman, although a notable figure among 
miners, was not a miner. His knowledge of mining 



1 82 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

consisted mainly in a marvellous command of its 
slang, to which he made copious contributions, 
enriching its vocabulary with a wealth of extra- 
ordinary 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 inventor's acquirements. When 
not entertaining 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 degrees to the position of gravedigger. 
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, Oal.,' 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 ; 



A HOLY TERROR 183 

^r- ' HUBDY, 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 mining 
camp argot and of Mr. Bree's private system for the 
communication of ideas, Mr. Doman had no diffi- 
culty in understanding by this uncommon epistle 
that Barney, while performing his duty as grave- 
digger, had uncovered a quartz ledge with no out- 
croppings ; that it was visibly rich in free gold ; that 
moved by considerations of friendship, he 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 conceal the treasure, he had buried above it the 
mortal part of a person named Scarry. 

From subsequent events, as related to Mr. Doman 
at Eed 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 memor- 
able 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 
awav as Ghost Hock and Lone Hand. At its con- 



184 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

elusion, 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 centre of it and stood again at 
the spot where his search among the graves had 
expired in the exclamation, ' Scarry.' He bent 
again over the headboard which bore that name, and, 
as if to reinforce 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 ! ' 

Had Mr. Doman been required to make these 
words good with proof as, considering their some- 
what censorious character, he doubtless should have 
been he would have found himself embarrassed by 
the absence of reputable witnesses, and hearsay 
evidence would have been the best he could command. 
At the time when Scarvy had been prevalent in the 
mining camps thereabout when, as the editor of 
the Ilurdy 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 laborious life of a prospector. His time 
had been mostly spent in the mountains, now with 
one companion, now with another. It was from 



A HOLY TERROR 185 

the admiring recitals of these casual partners, fresh 
from the various camps, that his judgment of Scarry 
had been made up; himself had never had the 
doubtful advantage of her acquaintance and the 
precarious distinction of her favour. And when, 
finally, on the termination 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 humourist 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 re- 
called 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 gravedigger, Mr. Barney Bree had made an 
unusually deep sepulchre, and it was near sunset 
before Mr. Doman, labouring with the leisurely delib- 
eration of one who has a c dead sure thing ' and no 
fear of an adverse claimant's enforcement of a prior 
right, reached the coffin and uncovered it. When 



1 86 JN THE MIDST OF. LIFE 

V 

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 the excavation. The best he could 
do without violating the decent 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 advan- 
tageous conditions. The feverish stimulation of cu- 
pidity 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 
uncovered, 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 
character of his horrible purpose, and when the sun- 
fringes had burned themselves out along 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 } 



A HOLY TERROR 187 

looked at the coffin upon which the moonlight now 
fell with a full illumination, he was thrilled with a 
sudden terror to observe upon it the startling appa- 
rition of a dark human head the shadow of his own. 
For a moment this simple and natural circumstance 
unnerved him. The noise of his laboured breathing 
frightened him, and he tried to still it, but his 
bursting lungs would not be denied. Then, laughing 
half audibly and wholly without spirit, he began 
making movements of his head from side to side, in 
order to compel the apparition to repeat them. He 
found a comforting reassurance in asserting his com- 
mand over his own shadow. He was temporising, 
making, with unconscious prudence, a dilatory oppo- 
sition to an impending catastrophe. He felt that 
invisible forces of evil were closing in upon him, a'nd 
he parleyed for time with the Inevitable. 

He now observed in succession several extra- 
ordinary 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 reflected the moonlight with a dismal lustre. 
Along the outer edges of the coffin, at long intervals, 
were rusteaten 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 humours of the camp 
a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that 



188 

V 

had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy 
obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great 
humourist. Perhaps it had some occult personal 
signification impenetrable to understandings unin- 
structed in local traditions. A more charitable 
hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on 
the part of Mr. Barney Bree, who, making the inter- 
ment unassisted, either by choice for the conservation 
of his golden secret, or through public apathy, 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. 

When terror and absurdity make alliance, the 
effect is frightful. This strong-hearted and daring 
man, this hardy nightworker among the dead, this 
defiant antagonist of darkness and desolation, suc- 
cumbed 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 
congested 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. 



A HOLY TERROR 189 

Then, one by one, his senses returned: the tide 
of terror that had overwhelmed his faculties began to 
recede. But with the return of his senses he became 
singularly unconscious of the object of his fear. He 
saw the moonlight gilding the coffin, but no longer 
the coffin that it gilded. Raising his eyes and turn- 
ing his head, he noted, curiously and with surprise, 
the black branches of the dead tree, and tried to 
estimate the length of the weatherworn 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 
awkwardly above him on noiseless wings, and he 
tried to forecast the direction of its flight when it 
should encounter the cliff that reared its illuminated 
front a mile away. His hearing took account of a 
gopher's stealthy tread in the shadow of the cactus. 
He was intensely observant; 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 separate existence of 
anything dreadful. The Assassin was cloaking the 
sword. 

It was during this lull in the battle that he be- 
came sensible of a faint, sickening odour. At first 
he thought it was that of a rattlesnake, and involun- 
tarily tried to look about his feet. They were nearly 
invisible in the gloom of the grave. A hoarse, gurg- 
ling sound, like the death-rattle in a human throat, 



jgo IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

seemed to coine out of the sky, and a moment later a 
great, black, angular shadow, like the same sound 
made visible, dropped curving from the topmost 
branch of the spectral tree, fluttered 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 coffin, 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 lidless, 
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 decay. By some mysterious pro- 
cess, his mind reverted for the first time that day to 
the photograph 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 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 coincidence a relation a 
parallel, between the face on the card and the name 



A HOLY TERROR 191 

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 behind the coffin 
lid ; the contrast became a resemblance ; the resem- 
blance grew to identity. Remembering the many 
descriptions of Scarry's personal appearance that he 
had heard from the gossips of his camp-fire, he tried 
with imperfect success to recall the exact nature of 
the disfiguration that had given the woman her ugly 
name ; and what was lacking in his memory,, fancy 
supplied, stamping 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 whipcords, and his 
breath came in short sharp gasps. The catastrophe 
could not be much longer delayed, or the agony of 
anticipation would leave nothing to be done 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 illegible 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 backward 



192 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 percussion, and with a 
dull clatter the whole decayed coffin lid broke in 
pieces and came away, falling 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 ! 



Some months later a party of men and 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 
desolate camp. One of the party had been at Hurdy- 
Gurdy in the days of its glory. He had, indeed, 
been one of its prominent citizens ; 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 suc- 
cesses 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 



A HOLY TERROR 193 

and her exacting rigour with regard to the social 
position 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 attention 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 tree. If I am not mistaken, a 
rope is dangling 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 taking himself out of that region 
would have spanned it. 

Proceeding leisurely down the creek to a con- 
venient 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 gentlemen, sentimental and re- 
fined by the lady. A little later they stood by the 





194 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

tree in fae cemetery, 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 satisfaction, 
but greatly to the horror of his wife, to whose sensi- 
bilities the performance gave a smart shock. 

An exclamation from one of the party gathered 
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 
investigate this somewhat unusual redundancy, one 
of the younger gentlemen had the hardihood to spring 
into the grave and hand them up to another before 
Mrs. Porfer could indicate her marked disapproval of 
so shocking an act, which, nevertheless, she did with 
considerable feeling and in very choice words, Pur- 
suing his search among the dismal debris at the 
bottom of the grave, the young gentleman next 
handed up a rusted coffin plate, with a rudely-cut in- 
scription, which, with difficulty, Mr. Porfer deciphered 
and read aloud with an earnest and not altogether 
unsuccessful attempt at the dramatic effect which he 
deemed befitting to the occasion and his rhetorical 
abilities : MANUELITA MUKPHY. 

Born at the Mission San Pedro Died in 
Hurdy-Gurdy, 

Aged 47. 
JTell's full of such. 



A HOLY TERROR 195 

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 impression 
produced by this uncommon inscription, further than 
to say that the elocutionary powers of Mr. Porfer had 
never before met with such spontaneous and over- 
whelming 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 re- 
ceived little attention. Suddenly, with a short 
exclamation and a gesture of excitement, the young 
man unearthed a fragment of greyish rock, and after 
a hurried inspection handed it up to Mr. Porfer. As 
the sunlight fell upon it, it glittered with a yellow 
lustre 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 had slipped from its 
confinement, she was attracted 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 jewelled hand 



- J96 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

into the exposed pocket, and drew out a mouldy 
pocket-book. Its contents were as follows : 

One bundle of letters, postmarked Elizabethtown, 
New Jersey. 

One circle of blonde hair tied with a ribbon. 

One photograph of a beauliful girl. 

One ditto of same, singularly disfigured. 

One name on back of photograph ' Jefferson 
Doman.' 

A few moments later a group of anxious gentle- 
men surrounded Mrs. Porfer as she sat motionless at 
the foot of the tree, her head dropped forward, her 
fingers clutching a crushed photograph. Her hus- 
band raised her head, exposing a face ghastly white, 
except 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. 



For there be divers sorts of death some wherein the body 
remaineth ; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. 
This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God's will) 
and, none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a 
long journey which indeed he hath ; but sometimes it bath 
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 vigour 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. 

PONDERING these words of Hali (whom God rest) and 
questioning their full meaning, 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 unfamiliar. On every side of me 
stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, 
covered with a tall overgrowth of sere grass, which 
rustled and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven 
knows what mysterious and disquieting suggestion. 
Protruded at long intervals above it, stood strangely- 



v i 9 8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

shaped and sombre-coloured rocks, which seemed to 
have an understanding with one another and to ex- 
change 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 con- 
sciousness of that fact was rather mental than physi- 
cal I had no feeling of discomfort. Over all the 
dismal landscape a canopy of low, lead-coloured 
clouds hung like a visible curse. In everything there 
was 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 grey grass bent to whisper 
its dread secret to the earth ; but no other sound 
or motion broke the awful repose of that dismal 
place. 

I observed in the herbage a number of weather- 
worn stones, evidently shaped with tools. They 
were broken, covered with moss, and half sunken in 
the earth. Some lay prostrate, some leaned at 
various angles, none were vertical. They were ob- 
viously headstones of graves, though the graves 
themselves no longer existed as either mounds or 
depressions; the years had levelled all. Scattered 
here and there, more massive blocks showed where 
some pompous tomb or ambitious monument had 



AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA 199 

once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. So old 
seemed these relics, these vestiges of vanity and 
memorials of affection 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 prehistoric race 
of men a nation whose very name was long ex- 
tinct. 

Filled with these reflections, I was for some time 
heedless of the sequence of my own experiences, 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 
singularly weird character with which my fancy had 
invested all that I saw and heard. I was ill. I 
remembered now how I had been prostrated by a 
sudden fever, and how my family had told me that 
in my periods of delirium I had constantly cried out 
for liberty and air, and had been held in bed to pre- 
vent my escape 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 famous city of Carcosa. No 
signs of human life were anywhere visible or audible ; 
no rising smoke, no watchdog's bark, no lowing of 
cattle, no shouts of children at play nothing but 
this dismal burial-place, with its air of mystery and 
dread, due to my own disordered brain. Was I not 
becoming again delirious, 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 approaching.- 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 ray throat. I sprang toward it, shouting. It 
trotted tranquilly by, within a hand's breadth of me, 
and disappeared behind a rock. A moment later a 
man's head appeared to rise out of the ground 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 grey 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 intercept him, I met him 
almost face to face, accosting him with the saluta- 
tion, ' 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 Carcosa.' 



AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA 201 

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, 
Aldebaran 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 recognised 
a ground of doubt in the conviction. Of fever I 
had no trace. I had, withal, a sense of exhilaration 
and vigour altogether unknown to me a feeling of 
mental and physical exaltation. My senses seemed 
all alert; I could feel the air as a ponderous sub- 
stance, 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. The tree's 



002 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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-relieved 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 dark- 
ened 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 
prospect and extending to the horizon ; and then I 
knew that these were the ruins of the ancient and 
famous city of Carcosa. 



Such are the facts imparted to the medium 
Bayrolles by the spirit Hoseib Alar Robardin. 



IN 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 prosperity which to-day we should call 
indigence than, impelled by some mysterious 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 settle- 
ments, but among those remaining 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 knpwn him to smile nor speak 
a needless word. His simple wants were supplied 
by the sale or barter of skins of wild animals in the 
river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the 
land which he might, if needful, have claimed by 



?04 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

right of undisturbed possession. There were evi- 
dences of 'improvement' a few acres of ground 
immediately 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 axe at some 
distant day. Apparently the man's zeal for agricul- 
ture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in 
penitential ashes. 

The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, 
its roof of warping clapboards weighted with travers- 
ing 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 him- 
self on his doorstep if heaven had provided sun- 
shine 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 man's name was said to be Murlock. He 
was apparently seventy years old, actually about 
fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in 
his ageing. His hair and long, full beard were white, 
his grey, lustreless eyes sunken, his face singularly 
seamed with wrinkles, which appeared to belong to 



THE BOARDED WINDOW 205 

two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and 
spare, with a stoop of the shoulders a burden 
bearer. I never saw him ; these particulars 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 an equally 
intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the place and ven- 
tured 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 began 
laying sturdily about with his axe to hew out a farm 
the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support he 



V 2o6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 honest 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 happiness 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 ? 

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 neighbour, nor was she in a condi- 
tion to be left, to summon help. So he set about 
the task of nursing 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 details of the out- 
line picture drawn by my grandfather. When con- 
vinced that she was dead, Murlock had sense enough 
to remember that the dead must be prepared for 
burial. In performance of this sacred duty he 
blundered now and again, did pertain things incor- 



THE BOARDED WINDOW 307 

rectly, and others which he did correctly were done 
over and over. His occasional failures to accomplish 
some simple and ordinary act filled him with aston- 
ishment, 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 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, ad- 
. justing the hair and putting the finishing touches 
on the simple toilet, doing all mechanically, 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 every- 
thing explained. He had had no experience in 
grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. 
His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagina- 
tion 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 natures it startles ; some it 



~ 208 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 crush- 
ing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have 
been that way affected, for (and here we are upon 
surer ground than that of conjecture) 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 window 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 Murlock was 



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 ? 

Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and 
at the same moment he heard, or fancied that he 



THE BOARDED WINDOW 209 

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 forfeited 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 wayward 
impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, 
and with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and 
without aim discharged 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 



CIO 

there was darkness blacker than before, and silence ; 
and when he returned 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, dreadfully 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 EIGHT FOOT 



IT is well kuovvn that the old Mantoii house is 
haunted. lu all the rural district near about, and 
even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not one 
person of unbiassed 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 testimony 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 fundamental 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 ignore. 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 dis- 

p 2 



2i2 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

figured with strips of rotting fence and half covered 
with brambles overrunning a stony and sterile soil 
long unacquainted with the plough. 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 disap- 
proval 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 win- 
dow 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 
humourist explained 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 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 attention to the fitness of the place for super- 
natural phenomena. 

To this house, one summer evening, came four 
men in a waggon. Three of them promptly alighted, 
and the one who had been driving hitched the team 



THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 213 

to the only remaining post of what had been a 
fence. The fourth remained seated in the waggon. 
' 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 re- 
member, 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 of nothing,' the man interrupted 
with another oath, and sprang to the 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, Avhich 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 move- 
ments in the disturbed air. The room had two 
windows in adjoining sides, but from neither could 



. 



214 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

anything be seen except the rough inner surfaces of 
boards a few inches from the glass. There was no 
fireplace, no furniture ; there was nothing. Besides 
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 especially ' spectacular ' he 
might have been called sensational. He was of 
middle age, heavily built, deep chested and broad- 
shouldered. 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 grey. His lo\v 
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 colour, 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 sufficiently 
commonplace : they were such persons as one meets 



THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 215 

and forgets that lie 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 an- 
other. 

' 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 clothing.' 

Tlieir 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 waggon 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, presenting 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/ said 



21 6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE ' 

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 consultation, his second left him, joining 
the other near the door. At that moment the candle 
was suddenly extinguished, leaving all in profound 
darkness. This may have been done by a draught 
from the open 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, ' gentlemen, 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 entire building. 

A few minutes later a belated farmer's boy met 
a waggon 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 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 waggon 
as it passed the haunted house. As the lad could 
boast a considerable former experience with the 



THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 217 

supernatural thereabout, his word had the weight 
justly due to the testimony of an expert. The story 
eventually appeared in the Advance, with some slight 
literary embellishments and a concluding intimation 
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 c duel in the 
dark' were simple enough. One evening 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 edu- 
cated young men of a Southern village would 
naturally find interesting. Their names were King, 
Sandier, 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. 
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 anyone except the hotel 
clerk. He seemed, indeed, 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 



2i8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

had, moreover, experienced a slight rebuff in an 
effort at an ' interview.' 

' 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 Ilosser, 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 accidentally, 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.' 

' Whereas,' said Sancher, 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 Ilosser 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 ? ' 



THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 219 

'That's an easy one/ Rosser replied, rising. 
' Sir,' he continued, addressing the stranger, ' I think 
it would be better if you would remove your chair to 
the other end of the verandah. The presence of 
gentlemen is evidently an unfamiliar situation to 
you.' 

The man sprang to his feet and strode forward 
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 Eosser ; 
' this gentleman has done nothing to deserve such 
language.' 

But Eosser would not withdraw a word. By the 
custom of the country and the time, there could be 
but one outcome to the quarrel. 

' I demand the satisfaction due to a gentleman,' 
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 represent me in this matter.' 

Sancher accepted the trust somewhat reluc- 
tantly, 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 already 



220 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE > 

disclosed. The duel with knives in a dark room was 
once a commoner feature of South-western 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. 

Ill 

In the blaze of a midsummer noonday, the old 
Manton house was hardly true to its traditions. It 
was of the earth, earthy. The sunshine caressed it 
warmly and affectionately, with evident unconscious- 
ness of its bad reputation. 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 populous 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 MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 221 

the late Mrs. Manton. Under a beneficent law of 
the State relating to property which has been for a 
certain period abandoned by its owner, whose resi- 
dence cannot be ascertained, the sheriff was the legal 
custodian of the Manton farm and the appurtenances 
thereunto belonging. His present visit was in mere 
perfunctory compliance with some order of a court in 
which Mr. Brewer had an action to get possession 
of the property as heir to his deceased sister. By 
a mere coincidence the visit was made on the day 
after the night that Deputy King had unlocked the 
house for another and very different purpose. His 
presence 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 obedience. 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. Exami- 
nation showed it to consist of two hats, and the same 
number of coats, waistcoats, and scarves, all in a 
remarkably good state of preservation, albeit some- 
what defiled by the dust in which they lay. Mr. 
Brewer was equally astonished, but Mr. King's emo- 
tion 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 



222 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

t 

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 crouch- 
ing close in the corner. Something in the attitude 
made the intruders halt when they had barely passed 
the threshold. The figure more and more clearly 
defined itself. The man was upon one knee, his 
back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated 
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 expression of unutterable fright, the 
mouth half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He 
was stone dead dead of terror ! Yet, with the ex- 
ception 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 the boarded-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 sheriff 
grasped one of the outthrown arms ; it was as rigid 
as iron, and the application of a gentle force rocked 
the entire body without altering 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 . evident 



THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 223 

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 recognised him when 
he challenged Rosser. I told Rosser and Sandier 
who he was before we played him this horrible trick. 
When Rosser left this dark room at our heels, for- 
getting 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 penetrate the mystery 
of the man's death. That he had not once moved 
from the corner where he had been stationed, that 
his posture was that of neither attack nor defence, 
that he had dropped his weapon, that he had obviously 
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 clue to 
his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed mechanically 
downward, as is the way of one who ponders momen- 
tous matters, fell upon something which, there, in 
the light of day, and in the presence of living com- 
panions, 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 parallel lines of foot- 
prints light but definite impressions of bare feet, 



224 Iff THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 attention, 
horribly pale. 

' Look at that ! ' he cried, pointing with both 
hands at the nearest print of the woman's right foot, 
where she had apparently stopped and stood. 'The 
middle toe is missing it was Gertrude ! ' 

Gertrude was the late Mrs. Mantou, sister to Mr. 
Brewer. 



IIAITA THE SHEPHERD 

IN the beart of Hai'ta 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 Hastur, the god of shepherds, who heard and was 
pleased. After performance of this pious rite Hai'ta 
unbarred the gate of the fold, and with a cheerful 
mind drove his flock afield, eating his morning meal 
of curds and oatcake as he went, occasionally paus- 
ing to add a few berries, 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 forelegs doubled 
under their breasts and indolently chewed the cud, 
Hai'ta, reclining in th shadow of a tree, or sitting 
upon a rock, 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, 

Q 



226 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

leaning forward out of the copse to hear ; but if he 
looked at them directly, they vanished. From this 
for he must be thinking 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 favour of 
Hastur, who never disclosed himself, Hai'ta most 
valued the friendly interest of his neighbours, the 
shy immortals of the wood 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 Hai'ta cowered in his cave, his face hidden in 
his hands, and prayed that he alone might be pun- 
ished for his sins and the world saved from destruc- 
tion. Sometimes 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 beyond 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 Hai'ta was a youth 



HAITA THE SHEPHERD 227 

who kept his word, spared the cities and turned the 
waters into the sea. 

So he had lived since lie could remember. He 
could not rightly conceive any other mode of exis- 
tence. 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 mysteries 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 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, Ha'iba became melan- 
choly and morose. He no longer spoke cheerfully to 
his flock, nor ran with alacrity to the shrine of 

Q 2 



228 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

Hastur. In every breeze he heard whispers of malign 
deities whose existence 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 riparian 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 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 reflec- 
tions, 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 



HAI'TA THE SHEPHERD 229 

submission ; so sweet her look that the humming 
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. 

Hai'ta was entranced. Rising, he knelt before 
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 goddess, but if thou art 
truthful and dutiful, I will abide with thee.' 

Hai'ta 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 rapture. 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 underwent a visible 
alteration that made him shudder, he knew not why, 
for still she was beautiful. 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 compact ? ' 



230 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

Inexpressibly grieved, Hai'ta 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 disappoint- 
ment, drove his flock to the fold, and repairing to the 
place of worship poured out his heart in gratitude to 
Hastur for permitting him to save his flock, then 
retired to his cave and slept. 

When Hai'ta 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 stay- 
ing the wolves of the night, I am come tothee again. 
Wilt thou have me for a companion ? ' 

' Who would not have thee for ever ? ' replied 
Hai'ta. ' Oh ! never again leave me until until I 
change and become silent and motionless.' 

Hai'ta had no word for death. 

' J wish, indeed,' he continued, ' that thou wert of 



HAI'TA THE SHEPHERD 231 

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 Hai'ta, 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 Hai'ta saw the maiden 
again. One day he was returning from the head of 
the valley, where he had gone with ewe's milk and 
oatcake and berries for the holy hermit, who was too 
old and feeble to provide himself with food. 

' Poor old man ! ' he said aloud, as he trudged 
along homeward. ' I will return to-morrow and 
bear him on my back to my own dwelling, where I 
can care for him. Doubtless it is for that that 
Hastur has reared me all these years, and gives me 
health and strength.' 

As he spcke, the maiden, clad in glittering gar- 
ments, 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.' 

Hai'ta threw himself at her feet. ' Beautiful 
being,' he cried, ' if thou wilt but deign to accept all 



232 IN THE MIDST OF L1PE 

the devotion of my heart and soul after Hastur be 
served it is yours for ever. But, alas ! thou art 
capricious and wayward. 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 hermit, whence he had set out. Hastily 
barring the door against the wolves, he cast himself 
upon the ground and wept. 

' My son,' said the hermit from his couch of straw, 
freshly gathered that morning by Hai'ta'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 wis- 
dom.' 

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 my- 
self 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 



HAITA THE SHEPHERD 233 

her, that she was capricious, for she imposes condi- 
tions that man cannot fulfil, and delinquency is 
punished by desertion. She cometh only when un- 
sought, and will not be questioned. One manifesta- 
tion of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one expression 
of misgiving, and she is away ! How long didst thou 
have her at any time before she fled ? ' 

' 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 hermit, ' 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 corre- 
sponding 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 faithfulest of 
all possible wives that you are when he looks his 
best, as he always does. Nor do I think the fascina- 
tion of his manner has much to do with it. You 
recollect that the charm of art inheres in that which 
is undefinable, 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 
conversation is the best I have ever heard, and alto- 
gether unlike anyone else's. He seems to know 
everything, as, indeed, he ought, for he has beep 



236 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

everywhere, read everything, seen all there is to see 
sometimes, I think, rather more than is good for 
him and had acquaintance with the queerest people. 
And then his voice Irene, when I hear it I actually 
feel as if I ought to have paid 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 inconsistent with a manner sometimes playful 
and always charming) than any of the men that you 
and I ever met. And young Eaynor you knew 
Kaynor 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 connection with the Blavatsky 
people in Northern India. Eaynor either would not 
or could not tell me the particulars. I infer that 
Dr. Barritz is thought don't you dare to laugh 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 influence the man has upon me. It is 
the undefinable in his art black art. Seriously, 
dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full in the 



AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 237 






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 16. 

The strangest thing ! Last evening while Auntie 
was attending one of the hotel hops (I hate them) 
Dr. Barritz called. It was scandalously 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 admitted 
him, I'm ashamed to say) I was helpless, I trembled, 
I blushed, I Irene, Irene, 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 thousand and fifty ways abso- 
lutely 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 feeling, 
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. 



238 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 exterminates 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 vraisom- 
llance.) Mr. Raynor observes no game laws ; like 
Death (which he would inflict if slander were fatal) 
he has all seasons for his own. But I like him, for 
we knew one another at Redhorse when we were 
young and true-hearted and barefooted. He was- 
known in those far fair days as ' Giggles,' and I 
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 recognise 
some kind of relationship between us. 

Later, we took in a third another of Adversity's 
brood, who, like Garrick between Tragedy and 
Comedy, had a chronic inability to adjudicate the 
rival claims (to himself) of Frost and Famine. Be- 
tween him and the grave there was seldom anything 
more than a single suspender and the hope of a meal 



AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 239 

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 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 favour ; 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 unprotected 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 Eaynor, 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 subduing myself to per- 
manent consciousness of my unworthiness to unloose 
the latchet 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 acquaint- 
ance with him, but do you suppose he has recog- 
nised me ? Do, please, give me in your next your 
candid, sure-enough opinion about it, and say you 



240 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

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 Eedhorse not if I'm pitched 
out of society into the sea. So the skeleton some- 
times rattles behind the door. I never cared much 
before, as you know, but now now it is not the 
same. Jack Baynor 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 myself. Dear, dear ! I wish I had 
something besides 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 the 
beach. If you are not lost to every feeling of 
womanly delicacy you will accept my statement 
without question. I soon established 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 



AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 241 

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 agreeable 
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 delivered 
mine into it without a moment's hesitation, 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, 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 
region 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 

B 



242 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 

had got upon my feet ! Tt 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 situa- 
tion more clearly. His manner 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 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 choking. ' 0, 
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 tenderest 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 



AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 243 

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, 
my dear friend, how my leg tingled and thrilled, 
and how I wanted to kick ! 

We sat so for a long time. He had released 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 under- 
stand ? 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. 

1 And you are not dead ? ' I asked, hardly know- 
ing what I said. 

' Only dead in love, dear. I recovered from the 
road agent's bullet, but this, I fear, is fatal.' 



244 

' Bat about Jack Mr. Raynor ? Don't you 
know ' 

' I am ashamed to say, darling, that it was 
through that unworthy person's invitation that I 
came here from Vienna.' 

Irene, they have played it upon your affectionate 
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 Sepoy. 



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Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack. 
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Story of London Parks. JACOB LARWOOD. 
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Peg Wofflngton. By CHARLES READE. 



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The Essays of Elia. By CHARLES LAMB. 
Robinson Crusoe. Edited by JOHN MAJOR. 

With 3/Illusts. by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 
Whims and Oddities. By THOMAS HOOD. 

With 85 Illustrations. 
The Barber's Chair, and The Hedgehog 

Letters. By DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
Gastronomy as a Fine Art. By BRILLAT- 

SAVARIN. Trans. R. E. ANDERSON, M.A. 



printed on laid paper and hf.-bd., 2s. each. 
The Epicurean, &c. By THOMAS MOORE. 
Leigh Hunt's Essays. Ed. E. OLLIER. 
The Natural History of Selborne. By 

GILBERT WHITE. 
Gulliver's Travels, and The Tale of a 

Tub. By Dean SWIFT. 
The Rivals, School for Scandal, and other 

Plays by RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. 
Anecdotes of the Clergy. J. LARWOOD. 



THE PICCADILLY NOVELS. 

LIBRARY EDITIONS OF NOVELS BY THE BEST AUTHORS, many Illustrated, 
crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. each. 



By GRANT ALLEN. 



For Maimie's Sake. 
The Devil's Die. 
This Mortal Coil. 
The Great Taboo. 



Philistia. 

Babylon 

In all Shades. 

The Tents of Shem. 

By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
A Fellow of Trinity. 

By Rev. 8. BARING GOULD. 
Red Spider. | Eve. 

By W. KESANT & J. RICE. 



By Celia's Arbour. 
Monks of Thelema. 
The Seamy Side. 
Ten Years' Tenant. 



My Little Girl. 
Case of Mr.Lucraft. 
This Son of Vulcan. 
Golden Butterfly. 
Ready-Money Mortiboy. 
With Harp and Crown. 
Twas in Trafalgar's Bay. 
The Chaplain of the Fleet. 

By WALTER BESANT. 
All Sorts and Conditions of Men. 
The Captains' Room. 
All in a Garden Fair 
The World Went Very Well Then. 
For Faith and Freedom. 



To Call Her Mine. 
The Holy Rose. 
Armorel of Lyon- 
esse. 



Dorothy Forster. 
Uncle Jack. 
Children of Gibeon. 
Herr Paulus. 
Bell of St. Paul's. 

By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
The Shadow of the Sword. 
A Child of Nature. 
The Martyrdom of Madeline. 
God and the Man. The New Abelard. 
Love Me for Ever. Foxglove Manor. 
Annan Water. Master of the Mine. 

Matt. Heir of Linne. 

By HALL. < ASM:. 
The Shadow of a Crime. 
A Son of Hagar. | The Deemster. 
MOKT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
Sweet Anne Page. | Transmigration. 
From Midnight to Midnight. 
Blacksmith and Scholar. 
Village Comedy. | You Play Me Fall 



By .Tl r.s.II. LOVETT CAMERON. 

Juliet's Guardian. | Deceivers Ever. 
By WILKIE COLLINS. 



Armadale. 
After Dark. 
No Name. 
Antonina. j Basil. 
Hide and Seek. 
The Dead Secret. 
Queen of Hearts. 
My Miscellanies. 
Woman in White. 
The Moonstone. 
Man and Wife. 
Poor Miss Finch. 
Miss or Mrs? 
New Magdalen. 



The Frozen Deep. 
The Two Destinies. 
Law and the Lady. 
Haunted Hotel. 
The Fallen Leaves. 
Jezebel's Daughter. 
The Black Robe. 
Heart and Science. 
"I Say No." 
Little Novels. 
The Evil Genius. 
The Legacy of Cain 
A Rogue's Life. 
Blind Love. 



By DUTTON COOK. 

Paul Foster's Daughter. 

By WILLIAM CYPLES. 
Hearts of Gold. 

By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 

The Evangelist; or, Port Salvation. 
By JAMES DE MILLE. 
A Castle in Spain. 

By J. LEITII DERWENT. 

Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. 

By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 

Archie Lovell. 

By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
The New Mistress. 

By PERCY FITZGERALD. 
Fatal Zero. 

By R. E. FRANCILLON. 



Queen Cophetua. 
One by One. 



A Real Queen. 
King or Knave? 
Pref.bySlrBARTLE FRERE. 
Pandurang Hari. 

By EDWARD GARRETT. 
The Capel Girls. 



BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 



THK PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued. 
By CHARLES GIBBON. 



Robin Gray. 

In Honour Bound. 



The Golden Shaft. 
Of High Degree. 



Loving a Dream. 

The Flower of the Forest. 

By THOMAS HARDY. 
Under the Greenwood Tree. 
By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 



Garth. 

Ellice Quentin. 

Sebastian Strome. 



Dust. 

Fortune's Fool. 
Beatrix Randolph. 



David Poindexter's Disappearance. 
The Spectre of the Camera. 

By Sir A. HELPS. 

Ivan de Biron. 

By ISAAC: HENDERSON. 

Agatha Page. 

By Mr*. ALFRED HUNT. 

The Leaden Casket. 1 Self-Condemned. 
That other Person. 

By JEAN INGELOW. 
Fated to be Free. 

By R. ASHE KING. 
A Drawn Game. 
"The Wearing of the Green." 

By HENRY KINGSLEY. 

Number Seventeen. 

By E. LYNN LINTON. 



Patricia Kemball. 
Under which Lord? 
"My Love!" 



lone. 

Paston Carew. 

Sowing the Wind. 



The Atonement of Learn Dundas. 
The World Well Lost. 

By HENRY W. LUCY. 

Gideon Fleyce. 

By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 



A Fair Saxon. 
Linley Rochford. 
Miss Misanthrope. 



Donna Quixote. 
Maid of Athens. 
Camiola. 



The Waterdale Neighbours. 
My Enemy's Daughter. 
Dear Lady Disdain. 
The Comet of a Season. 

By AGNES MACDONELL. 

Quaker Cousins. 
By FLORENCE MARRYAT. 

Open! Sesame 1 
By . CHRISTIE MURRAY. 

Life's Atonement. Val Strange. 

Joseph's Coat. Hearts. 

Coals of Fire. 

A Bit of Human Nature. 

First Person Singular. 

Cynic Fortune. 

The Way of the World. 

By MURRAY & HERMAN. 

The Bishops' Bible. 

By GEORGES OHNET. 

A Weird Gift. 



THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued' 

By Mr*. OLIPHANT. 

Whiteladies. 

By OUIDA. 



Held in Bondage. 
Strathmore. 
Chandos. 
Under Two Flags. 
Idalia. 

CecilCastlemalne's 
. Gage. 



Two Little Wooden 

Shoes. 

In a Winter City. 
Ariadne. 
Friendship. 
Moths. | Rufflno. 
Pipistrello. 



Tricotrln. | Puck. ! A Village Commune 
Folle Farine. Bimbl. | Wanda. 

A Dog of Flanders. Frescoes. 
Pascarel. I Signa. In Maremma. 
Princess Nap rax- Othmar. | Syrlin. 
Ine. Guilderoy. 

By MARGARET A. PAUL. 

Gentle and Simple. 

By JAMES PAYN. 

Lost Sir Massingberd. 

Less Black than We're Painted, 

A Confidential Agent. 

A Grape from a Thorn. 

Some Private Views. 

In Peril and Privation. 

The Mystery of Mirbridge. 

The Canon's Ward. 

Walter's Word. Talk of the Town. 

By Proxy. Holiday Tasks. 

High Spirits. The Burnt Million. 

Under One Roof. The Word and the 

From Exile. Will. 

Glow-worm Tales. Sunny Stories. 

By E. C. PRICE. 
Yalentina. I The Foreigners. 

Mrs. Lancaster's Rival. 

By CHARLES READE. 
It Is Never Too Late to Mend. 
The Double Marriage. 
Love Me Little, Love Me Long. 
The Cloister and the Hearth. 
The Course of True Love. 
The Autobiography of a Thief. 
Put Yourself in his Place. 
A Terrible Temptation. 
Singleheart and Doubleface. 
Good Stories of Men and other Animals. 
Hard Cash. Wandering Heir. 

Peg Wofflngton. A Woman-Hater 
ChristieJohnstone. A Simpleton. 
Griffith Gaunt. Readiana. 
Foul Play. The Jilt. 

A Perilous Secret. 

By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
The Prince of Wales's Garden Party. 
Weird Stories. 

By F. W. ROBINSON. 
Women are Strange. 
The Hands of Justice. 

By \V. CLARK RUSSELL. 
An Ocean Tragedy. 
My Shipmate Louise. 

By JOHN SAUNDERS. 
Guy Waterman. | Two Dreamers. 
Bound to the Wheel. 
The Lion In the Path. 



CHATTO & WINDUS, 2l4, PJCCADILLY. 



THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued. 
By KATHARINE SAUNDERS. 

Margaret and Elizabeth. 

Gideon's Rock. Heart Salvage. 

The High Mills. Sebastian. 

By HAWLEY SMART. 

Without Love or Licence. 

By R. A. STERNDALE. 

The Afghan Knife. 

By BERTHA THOMAS. 

Proud Maisie. | The Violin-player. 

By FRANCES E. TROLLOPE. 

Like Ships upon the Sea. 

Anne Furness. | Mabel's Progress. 



THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued. 
By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 

Frau Frohmann. I Kept in the Dark. 
Marion Fay. Land-Leaguers. 

The Way We Live Now. 
Mr. Scarborough's Family. 

By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 

Stories from Foreign Novelists. 

By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. 

Mistress Judith. 

By SARAH TYTLER. 



The Bride's Pass. 
Noblesse Oblige. 



The Blackball Ghosts. 



Lady Bell. 
Buried Diamonds. 



CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS. 

Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2s. each. 



By ARTEMUS WARD. 

Artemus Ward Complete. 

By EDMOND ABOUT. 

The Fellah. . 

By HAMILTON AIDE. 

Carr of Carrlyon. | Confidences. 
By MARY ALBERT. 

Brooke Finchley's Daughter. 

By Mrs. ALEXANDER. 

Maid, Wife, or Widow? | Valerie's Fate. 

By GRANT ALLEN. 
Strange Stories. The Devil's Die. 
Philistia. This Mortal Coil. 

Babylon. In all Shades. 

The Beckoning Hand. 
For Maimie's Sake. | Tents of Shem. 

By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
A Fellow of Trinity. 
By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
Bed Spider. | Eve. 

By FRANK BARRETT. 
Fettered for Life. 
Between Life and Death. 
BySHELSLE Y BEAUCHAMP. 
Grantley Grange. 

By W. BESANT & J. RICE. 
This Son of Vulcan. 
My Little Girl. 
Case of Mr.Lucraft. 
Golden Butterfly. 
Ready-Money Mortiboy. 
With Harp and Crown. 
Twas in Trafalgar's Bay. 
The Chaplain of the Fleet. 

By WALTER BESANT. 
Dorothy Forster. Uncle Jack. 
Children of Gibeon. Herr Paulus. 
All Sorts and Conditions of Men. 
The Captains' Room. 
All in a Garden Fair. 
The World Went Very Well Then. 
For Faith and Freedom. 
To Call Her Mine. 
The Bell of St. Paul's. 



By Celia's Arbour. 
Monks of Tholema. 
The Seamy Side. 
Ten Years' Tenant. 



By FREDERICK BOYLE. 

Camp Notes. | Savage Life. 

Chronicles of No-man's Land. 

By BRET HARTE. 



Californian Stories 
Gabriel Conroy. 



Flip. 

Maruja. 

An Heiress of Red Dog. 

The Luck of Roaring Camp. 

A Phyllis of the Sierras. 

By HAROLD BRYDGES. 

Uncle Sam at Home. 

By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



The Shadow of the 



The Martyrdom of 



Sword. Madeline. 

A Child of Nature. Annan Water. 
God and the Man. The New Abelard. 
Love Me for Ever. Matt. 
Foxglove Manor. The Heir of Llnne. 
The Master of the Mine. 

By HALL CAINE. 
The Shadow of a Crime. 
A Son of Hagar. | The Deemster. 

By Commander CAMERON. 
The Cruise of the " Black Prince." 
By Mrs. LOVETT CAMERON. 
Deceivers Ever. | Juliet's Guardian. 

By AUSTIN CLARE. 
For the Love of a Lass. 

By Mrs. ARCHER CLIVE. 
Paul Ferroll. 
Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife. 

By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
The Cure of Souls. 

By C. ALLSTON COLLINS. 
The Bar Sinister. 

MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
Sweet Anne Page, j Transmigration. 
From Midnight to Midnight. 
A Fight with Fortune. 
Sweet and Twenty. I Village Comedy. 
Frances. You Play me False. 

Blacksmith and Scholar. 



BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 



TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 


TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 


By Wl Lit 1 H COLLINS. 


By II A IN B KIS\Vi:i,l,. 


Armadale. 


My Miscellanies. 


One of Two. 


After Dark. 
No Name. 
Antonina. | Basil. 


Woman in White. 
The Moonstone. 
Man and Wife. 


By EDWARD GARRETT. 

The Capel Girls. 


Hide and Seek. 


Poor Miss Finch. 


By CHARLES GIBBON. 


The Dead Secret. 
Queen of Hearts. 
Miss or Mrs ? 
New Magdalen. 


The Fallen Leaves. 
Jezebel's Daughter 
The Black Robe. 
Heart and Science. 


Robin Gray. 
Fancy Free. 
For Lack of Gold. 
What will the 


In Honour Bound. 
Flower of Forest. 
Braes of Yarrow. 
The Golden Shaft. 


The Frozen Deep. 
Law and the Lady. 


"I Say No." 
The Evil Genius. 


World Say? 
In Love and War. 


Of High Degree. 
Mead and Stream. 


The Two Destinies. 
Haunted Hotel. 


Little Novels. 
Legacy of Cain. 


For the King. 
In Pastures Green. 


Loving a Dream. 
A Hard Knot. 


A Rogue's Life. 


Blind Love. 


Queen of Meadow. 


Heart's Delight. 


By M. J. COLQUHOUN. 


A Heart's Problem. 

Th Henri Hen.pt. 


Blood-Money. 



By DUTTON COOK. 

Leo. | Paul Foster's Daughter. 

By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. 

By WILLIAM CYPLUS. 
Hearts of Gold. 

By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
The Evangelist; or, Port Salvation. 

By JAMES DE MILLE. 
A Castle in Spain. 

By J. LEITII DERWENT. 
Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. 

By CHARLES DICKENS. 
Sketches by Boz. Oliver Twist. 
Pickwick Papers. Nicholas Nickleby. 

By DICK DONOVAN. 

The Man-Hunter. | Caught at Last! 

Tracked and Taken. 

Who Poisoned Hetty Duncan? 

The Man from Manchester. 

A Detective's Triumphs. 

By CONAN DOYLE, Arc. 
Strange Secrets. 

By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 
A Point of Honour. [ Archie Lovell. 

By IK. BETHAM-ED WARDS. 
Felicia. I Kitty. 

By EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
Roxy. 

By PERCY FITZGERALD. 
Bella Donna. Polly. 

Never Forgotten. Fatal Zero. 
The Second Mrs. Tillotson. 
Seventy-five Brooke Street. 
The Lady of Brantome. 
ALBANY DE FONBLANQUE. 
Filthy Lucre. 

By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
Olympia. Queen Cophetua. 

One by One. King or Knave? 

A Real Queen. Romances of Law. 

By HAROLD FREDERICK. 
Beth's Brother's Wife. 
The Lawton Girl. 

Pref. by Sir BARTLE FRERE. 
Pafidurang Harl. 



By WILLIAM GILBERT. 

Dr. Austin's Guests. I James Duke. 
The Wizard of the Mountain. 

By HENRY GREVILLE. 
A Noble Woman. 

By JOHN HABBERTON. 
Brueton's Bayou. 1 Country Luck. 

By ANDREW HALLIDAY. 

Every-Day Papers. 
By Lady DUFFUS HARDY. 

Paul Wynter's Sacrifice. 

By THOMAS HARDY. 

Under the Greenwood Tree. 

By J. BERWICK HA E WOOD. 

The Tenth Earl. 

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 

Garth. Sebastian Strome. 

Ellice Quentin. Dust. 
Fortune's Fool. Beatrix Randolph. 
Miss Cadogna. Love or a Name. 

David Poindexter's Disappearance. 
The Spectre of the Camera. 

By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. 
Ivan de Biron. 

By Mrs. CASHEL HOEY. 
The Lover's Creed. 
By Mrs. GEORGE HOOPER. 
The House of Raby. 

By TIGHE HOPKINS. 

'Twixt Love and Duty. 

By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 

Thornicroft's Model. I Self Condemned, 
That Other Person. | Leaden Casket. 

By JEAN INGELOW. 

Fated to be Free. 

By HARRIETT JAY. 

The Dark Colleen. 

The Queen of Connaught. 

By MARK KERSHAW. 

Colonial Facts and Fictions. 

By R. ASHE KING. 

A Drawn Game. I Passion's Slave. 
" The Wearing of the Green." 



CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 



TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 

Ky HENRY K.INGSLEY. 
Oakshott Castle. 

Ily JOHN LEYS. 
The Lindsays. 

By E. LYNN L1NTON. 



Patricia Kemball. 
World Well Lost. 
Under which Lord? 



Paston Carew, 
"My LoveJ" 
lone. 



The Atonement of Learn Dundas, 
With a Silken Thread. 
The Rebel of the Family. 
Bowing the Wind. 

ISy HENRY W. LUCY. 

Gideon Fleyce. 

By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 

A Fair Saxon. Donna Quixote. 

Linley Rochford. Maid of Athens. 

Miss Misanthrope. Camiola. 

Dear Lady Disdain. 

The Waterdale Neighbours. 

My Enemy's Daughter. 

The Comet of a Season. 

By AGNES MACDONELL. 

Quaker Cousins. 

KATHARINE 8. MACO,UOID. 

The Evil Eye. | Lost Rose. 

By W. H.-MALLOCK.. 
The New Republic. 
By FLORENCE MARRYAT. 

Open ! Sesame t | Fighting the Air. 
A Harvest of Wild Oats. 
Written in Fire. 

By J. MASTERMAN. 
Haifa-dozen Daughters. 
By BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
A Secret of the Sea. 

By JEAN MIDDLE in ASS. 
Touch and Go. 1 Mr. Dorillion. 

By Mrs. MOLES WORTH. 
Hathercourt Rectory. 

By J. E. MUDDOCK. 

Stories Weird and Wonderful. 
The Dead Man's Secret. 
By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 

A Model Father. Old Blazer's Hero. 

Joseph's Coat. Hearts. 

Coals of Fire. Way of the World. 

Val Strange. Cynic Fortune. 

A Life's Atonement. 

By the Gate of the Sea. 

A Bit of Human Nature. 

First Person Singular. 

By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
One Traveller Returns. 
Paul Jones's Alias. 

By HENRY MURRAY. 

A Game of Bluff. 

By A LICE O'HANLON. 

Ibe Unforeseen, I Chance? or Fate? 



TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 

By GEORGES OHNET. 
Doctor Rameau. | A Last Love. 
By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 

Whlteladles. | The Primrose Path. 
The Greatest Heiress in England. 

By Mrs. ROBERT O'REILLY. 

Phoebe's Fortunes. 

By OUIDA. 

Two Little Wooden 
Shoes. 

Friendship. 

Moths. 

Pipistrello. 

A Village Com- 
mune. 

Bimbi. 



Held in Bondage. 
Strathmore. 
Chandos. . 
Under Two Flags. 
Idaiia. 
CecilCastlemaine's 

Gage. 
Tricotrin. 
Puck. 

Folio Farlne. 
A Dog of Flanders. 
Pascarel. 
Signa. 
Princess Naprax- 

ine. 

In a Winter City. 
Ariadne. 



Wanda. 
Frescoes. 
In Maremma. 
Othmar. 
Guildcroy. 
Rufflno. 

Ouida's Wisdom, 
Wit, and Pathos. 



MARGARET AGNES PAUL. 

Gentle and Simple. 

By JAMES PAYN. 



200 Reward. 
Marine Residence. 
Mirk Abbey. 
By Proxy. 
Under One Roof. 
High Spirits. 
Carlyon's Year. 
From Exile. 
For Cash Only. 
Kit. 

The Canon's Ward 
Talk of the Town. 
Holiday Tasks. 



Bentlnck's Tutor. 

Murphy's Master. 

A County Family. 

At Her Mercy. 

Cecil's Tryst. 

Clyffards of Clyffe. 

Foster Brothers. 

Found Dead. 

Best of Husbands. 

Walter's Word. 

Halves. 

Fallen Fortunes. 

Humorous Stories. 

Lost Sir Massingberd. 

A Perfect Treasure. 

A Woman's Vengeance. 

The Family Scapegrace* 

What He Cost Her. 

Gwendoline's Harvest. 

Like Father, Like Son. 

Married Beneath Him. 

Not Wooed, but Won. 

Less Black than We're Painted. 

A Confidential Agent. 

Some Private Views. 

A Grape from a Thorn. 

Glow-worm Tales. 

The Mystery of Mirbridge. 

The Burnt Million. 

By C. L. PIRKIS. 
Lady Lovelace. 

By EDGAR A. POD. 
The Mystery of Marie Roget. 

By E. C. PRICE. 
Valentina. J The Foreigner*. 

Mrs. Lancaster'! Rival, 
Gerald* 



CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 



TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
By CHARLES READE. 

It Is Never Too Late to Mend. 

Christie Johnstone. 

Put Yourself in His Place. 

The Double Marriage. 

Love Me Little, Love Me Long, 

The Cloister and the Hearth. 

The Course of True Love. 

Autobiography of a Thief. 

A Terrible Temptation. 

The Wandering Heir. 

Bingleheart and Doublcface. 

Good Stories of Men and other Animals. 

Hard Cash. A Simpleton. 

Peg Wofflngton. Readlana. 

Griffith Gaunt. A Woman-Hater. 

Foul Play. The Jilt. 

A Perilous Secret. 

By Mrs. J. II. Itl ODMI,!,. 
Weird Stories. | Fairy Water. 
Her Mother's Darling. 
Prince of Wales's Garden Party. 
The Uninhabited House. 
The Mystery in Palace Gardens. 

By F. W. ROBINSON. 

Women are Strange. 
The Hands of Justice. 

By JAJTIES RUNCIMAN. 

Skippers and Shellbacks. 
Grace Balmaign's Sweetheart. 
Schools and Scholars. 

By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 

Round the Galley Fire. 

On the Fo'k'sle Head. 

In the Middle Watch. 

A Voyage to the Cape. 

A Book for the Hammock. 

The Mystery of the "Ocean Star." 

The Romance of Jenny Harlowe. 

An Ocean Tragedy. 

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 

Gaslight and Daylight. 

By JOHN SAUNDERS. 

Guy Waterman. | Two Dreamers. 
The Lion in the Path. 

By KATHARINE SAUNDERS. 

Joan Merry weather. Heart Salvage. 
The High Mills. Sebastian. 

Margaret and Elizabeth. 

By GEORGE R. NIMH. 
Rogues and Vagabonds. 
The Ring o' Bells. 
Mary Jane's Memoirs. 
Mary Jane Married. 
Tales of To-day. | Drama* of Life. 
Tinkletop's Crime. 

By ARTHUR SKETCH LEV. 

A Match in the Dark. 

By T. W. SPEIGHT. 

The Mysteries of Heron Dyke. 

The .Golden Hoop. | By Devious Ways. 

Hoodwinked, &c. 



TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
By R. A. STERNDALE. 

The Afghan Knife. 

By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
New Arabian Nights. | Prince Otto. 
BV BERTHA THOIUA*. 

Cressida. 1 Proud Maisie. 

The Violin-player. 

By WALTER THORNBU1C V. 

Tales for the Marine*. 
Old Stories Re-told. 

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. 

Diamond Cut Diamond. 

By F. ELEANOR TROLLOPE. 

Like Ships upon the. Sea. 

Anne Furness. | Mabel's Progress. 

By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 

Frau Frohmann. I Kept in the Dark, 

Marion Fay. John Caldigate. 

The Way We Live Now. 

The American Senator. / 

Mr. Scarborough's Family. / 

The Land-Leaguers. 

The Golden Lion of Granpere. 

By J. T. TROWBRIDGE. 

Farnell's Folly. 
By IVAN TURGENIEFF, dec. 

Stories from Foreign Novelists. 
By IT! ARK TWAIN. 

Tom Sawyer. I A Tramp Abroad. 

The Stolen White Elephant. 

A Pleasure Trip on the Continent, 

Huckleberry Finn. 

Life on the Mississippi. 

The Prince and the Pauper. 

Ry '. C. FRASER-TVTLER. 

Mistress Judith. 

By SARAH TYTLER. 



The Bride's Pass. 
Buried Diamonds. 
Saint Mango's City. 



Noblesse Oblige. 
Disappeared. 
Huguenot Family. 
Blackball GhobtK. 



Lady Bell. 

What She Came Through. 
Beauty and the Beast. 
Citoyenne Jaqueline. 

By J. 8. \VINTER. 

Cavalry Life. | Regimental Legends. 
By II. F. WOOD. 

The Passenger from Scotland Tard. 
The Englishman of the Rue Cain. 

By Lady WOOD. 

Sabina. 

CEL1A PARKER WOOLLEY. 

Rachel Armstrong; or, Love & Theology 
By EDMUND YATES. 

The Forlorn Hope. | Land at Last. 
Castaway. 



*DSH, tMAtrK AMD 9, 



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