In the midst of life, tales of soldiers and civilians

HANDBOLND
AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRESS

/3

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS

BY

AMBROSE B1ERCE

A NEW EDITION

LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH AND GRAYSON

LIMITED

All the names mentioned in this story
are names of purely fictitious persons.

MADE AND PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY THE GARDEN CITY I KESS LTD.
LEICUWORTH, 11EKIS.

CONTENTS

PAGE
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS I

THE NIGHT . . . . . . I

THE DAY BEFORE ...... 4

THE DAY AFTER ...... 8

SOLDIERS

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY . . . . .15

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE . . 25

CHICKAMAUGA ....... 4!

A SON OF THE GODS ...... 5!

ONE OF THE MISSING ...... 63

KILLED AT RESACA ...... 83

THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH . . -93

A TOUGH TUSSLE . . . . . .107

THE COUP DE GRACE . . . . . . 121

PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER . . .131

vl IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

CIVILIANS

PAGE
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD . , . . .145

THE MAN AND THE SNAKE . „ . . .163

A HOLY 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 .... 235

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

TEE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS

THE NIGHT

ONE midsummer night 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 was more by the sense of touch
than by that of sight that the lad kept the path. He
could not, indeed, very easily go astray ; the 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 inefficacy. 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

77/5 SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 3

peace. Yet this stubborn lad, shaking in every
limb, would not retreat. The blood in his veins was
strong and rieh 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

I 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 1 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 ? '

' In many ways. Let me ask you how yon 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
oblivions to the discomfort of this street car is a
ghost story I '

'Well?'

c 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 yon 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.'

4 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 u 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 ? '

* 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

THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS ^

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 ate 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 you know
such a place,' he said, ' take me there to-night and
leave me your story and a candle. Call for me when
I've had time enough to read it, and I'll tell you the
entire plot and — kick you out of the place.'

That is how it occurred that the farmer's boy,
looking in at an unglazed window of the Breede
house, saw a man sitting in the light of a caudle.

THE DAY AFTER

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

THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS g

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
on 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 his 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 II . 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 II

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 B. 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. R. C.'

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

i» IN 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 '

4 Yesterday the Commissioners of Lunacy com-
mitted to the asylum Mr. James R. 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 Baine 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 ascended. 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

18 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 tlie capping rock and sharply outlined against
the sky, waa 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 its
lift against the sky and by the soldier's testifying
sense of the formidableness of a near enemy, the
group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.

For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined
feeling that he had slept to the end of the war and
was looking upon a noble work of art reared upon
that commanding eminence to commemorate the
deeds of an heroic past of which he had been an
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

to 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 nnsteadily 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 !

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.

23 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
thenco 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?'

1 My father.'

The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away.
< Good God 1 ' he said.

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK
BRIDGE

A MAN stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern
Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty
feet below. The man's hands were behind his back,
the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely 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.

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE Vj

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 whose 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-
c

28 fN THE MIDST OF LIFE

mended itself to his judgment as simple and effective.
His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged.
He looked a moment at his ' unsteadfast footing,'
then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the
stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of
dancing driftwood caught his 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 now 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 iui'requency
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 my 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 onea
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 Derform in aid of the South,

^o 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 in good faith and without
too much qualification assented to at least a part of
the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love
and war.

One evening while Farquhar aud 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-
inhar asked.

4 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

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 31

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.

m

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 LIFE

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,
aud 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 month. 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 lunge 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.

34 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their
separate sounds aa 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 npon 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, bnt 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 carne 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 :

4 Attention, company. . . . Shoulder anus.
. . . Ready. . . . Aim. . . . Fire.'

Farquhar dived — dived as deeply as he could.
The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara,
yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and
rising again 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 ont.

36 TN THE MTDST OF LIFE

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he,
saw that he had been a long time under water ; he
was perceptibly farther down stream — nearer to safety.
The soldiers had almost finished reloading ; the
mt<tal 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 ; ' the

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 37

next time they will use a charge of grape. I nmst
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,
( lie forest, the now distant bridge, fort and men — all
\vere 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,
lie 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-
Imled 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 ceolian 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 whizz and rattle of grapeshot among the
branches high above his hend 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 untravt-lled.
No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not
BO much as the barking of a dog 8ugj_r<\*ted human
habitation. The black bodies of the great trrrs
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 whi^poi H
in an unknown tongne.

His neck was in pain, and, lifting his hand to it,

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 35

he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had
a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His
eyes felt congested ; he could no longer close them.
His tongue was swollen with thirst ; he relieved its
fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth
into the cool air. How softly the turf had carpeted the
untravelled avenue! He could no longer feel the
roadway beneath his feet !

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he fell asleep
while walking, for now ne sees anotner 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, be 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 1 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.

CIIICKAMAUGA

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 he had been taught
by the engiaver'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 bafiled ; 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 stivara
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-
ienly 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
D

44 /JV 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 recrobsing, 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 AM A UGA 45

did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only
to advance foot by foot in tho 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 TN 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, recoverrd,
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
against it. It -truck the creeping figures and gave

HICKAMAUGA 47

them monstrous suadows, which caricatured their
movements on the lit grnsn. 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 theii
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 ev«ry
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.

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
interspace8 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 I 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

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-arul-
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 BO 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 I
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 elope, 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 tha
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.

56 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 manrouvred 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 i* 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 haa
enabled him to overlook a part of the line. If he

58 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

were here, he could tell us in words. But that is
now hopeless ; he must make the best use of the few
minutes of life remaining to him, by compelling the
enemy himself to tell us as much and as plainly as
possible — which, 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 w!
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, relieving the insupportable tension of our
feelings. And the horse and its rider ? Yes, they
are up and away. Away, indeed — they are making
directly to our left, parallel to the now steadily
blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the 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 1 — 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

6o 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. Our
cannon speak and the enemy's now open in full
chorus, to right and left as far as we can see ; the
distant crest, seeming now so near, erects its towers
of cloud, and the great shot pitch roaring down
among our moving masses. Flag after flag of ours
emerges from the wood, line after line sweeps forth,
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. Tras-la-la ! TraAd-la ! The injunction has
an imperiousness which enforces it. It is repeated

A SON OF THE GODS 6l

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

ONE OF THE HISSING.

JEROME REARING, a private soldier of General Sher-
ruim'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
be^n 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 —
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 ia 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 Lis 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 effort 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.

4 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 6$

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 be
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,

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, Hearing 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 the
touch of a finger. Concealing himself in the
d6bris of joists and flooring, Searing looked a<
the open ground between his point of view and a
spur of Keuesaw 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 mude to

68 /AT 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. lie 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 tired 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 hia
rifle, and, with his eyes upon the distant '
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 hoard 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 officern 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 coih'n. 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,' bethought; 'the dt'a.l luiv.-
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 tlie tops of trees. In the
foreground, shutting out some of the trees, a high,
dun mound, angular in outline and crossed by an
intricate, patteruless system of straight linos ; in the
centre a bright riiiijr of metal — the whole an immeas-
urable distance away — a distance so inconceivably
great that it fatigued him, and he closed his <
The moment that he did so he was conscious of an
insufferable light. A sound was in his cars like the

ONE OF THE MISSING 71

low, rhythmic thunder of a distant sea breaking in
successive waves upou 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,
|ou 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

Buffer 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 hrst 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 versd. He was unable tc
Bee 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, he
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 • 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 Scaring 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 un-

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 not 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, ' as the day advances. I wonder which
way I am looking.1

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.'

But 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
I

76 IN 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 of
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. lie
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 thorn, 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 conld 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 full of
splinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate
more manly. He was a plain, common soldier, had
no religion and not much philosophy ; he could not
die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even
if there were someone to hear them, but he could die
4 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 iiu-tal with its black interior. The pain in
his forehead was fierce and constant. He felt it

78 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

gradually penetrating the brain more and more
deeply, until at last its progress waa arrented 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 lif t 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 breath, 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 d6bris 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.

8o 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 eud 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 cheefcs 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 verity
his estimate of time. Six o'clock and forty minutes.

KILLED AT RES AC A

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 waa
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 ' waa 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

84

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 his
staff officers — or those of his men, for that matter.

In every subsequent engagement while Brayle
was with us it was the same way. He 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 ta 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, his conduct was
the same. He would stand like a rock in the open
when officers and men alike had taken to cover;
while men older in service and years, higher in rank
and of 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 hi? 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-dollara 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 Lle.^sod 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 creat.
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 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

ammunition in unnecessary firing. You may leave
your horse.'

\Vhen 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 Jine, 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 centered lightly
into the field and the enemy's works were in 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 careh
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 guiiy, crossing half the field from the enemy's
line, its general course at right angles to it. From

90 IN 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 ho 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
flag, soon afterward moved unmolested into the
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 my way to
California, I opened and idly inspected it. Out of
an overlooked compartment fell a letter without
envelope or address. It was in a woman's hand-

KILLED AT- RE SAC 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 wae ariven — 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 inju^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. 1
found her in a handsome dwelling on Eincon Hill.
She was beautiful, well bred — in a word, charming.

4 You knew Lieutenant Herman Brayle,' I said,
rather abruptly. ' You know, doubtless, that he fell
in battle. A.mong 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 :

4 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 me, 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

' Do yon think, colonel, that your brave Coulter
would like to put one of his guus in here ? ' the
general asked.

He waa 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 waa
serious, then.

The place was a depression, a 'notch,* in the
sharp crest of a hill. It was a pass, and through it
ran a turnpike, which, reaching this highest point in
its course by a sinuous 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 IN 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 eye", which seemed occasionally to strike right

96 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

and loft across the landscape, like search-lights, uvre
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.

1 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
Epoke, 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
hiinl 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

98 IN 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
aud horses were plainly visible.

4 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 COULTER'S 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 ol
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.
1 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

too IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

Homething wrong in all this. Do you happen to
know that Captain Coulter is from the South ? '

' No ; woe 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 ? '

' 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
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 wore blazing with
a generous indignation.

THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 101

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

' I don't want to say how I got it, Colonel, unless
it is necessary ' — he was blushing a trifle — ' but
I'll stake my life upon its truth in the main.'

The colonel turned toward a small knot of
officers some distance away. * Lieutenant Williams ! '
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 aides 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 aud 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.

4 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 COULTER'S NOTCH I6J

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 seep 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, nis hps. 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 MlDST 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
colonel, unmoved.

' This house belongs to me, sir,' was the reply,,
civilly delivered.

' To you ? Ah, I see ! And these ? '

' My wife and child. I am Captain Coulter.'

A TOUGH TUSSLE

ONE night in the autumn of 1861 a man iat 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 and unremitting vigilance. In four
U

log IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

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, hud 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 aiert, began his vigil. For
greater ease he loosened his sword belt, and, taking

I io 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 four.
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 his sword belt and laid hold of his pistol —
again he was in a world of war. by occupation an
assassin.

The figure did not move. Rising, pistol in hand,
he approached. The figure lay upon its back, its
upper part in shadow, but standing above it and
looking down upon the face, he saw that it was a
dead body. He shuddered and turned from it with
a feeling of sickness and disgust, resumed his seat
upon the log, and, forgetting military 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.

' 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. CI

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.1

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,

II4 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 By ring 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
fkrtlip-st 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

n6 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 Lien tenant By ring 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
nse 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 117

lier .and louder, though more distant, shot than ever
had been heard by mortal ear I 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 ite
prey, he sprung 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 shota — 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'e 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 loft 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 fault, sickening odour.

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

THE 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 GRACh 133

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 Madwell, 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 MadwelTs 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-
i

124 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

gether. They had, indeed, gro\vn 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
tke old relation was maintained with difficulty and a
difference.

Creede Ilalcrow, 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
»nd strengthened to an active animosity. But for
the restraining influence of their mutual relation to
Daffal, 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 aud 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 conRpicuous 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 enrly as 1862.

A half hour later Captain Mad well's company
was driven from its position at the head of the
ravine, with a loss of cne-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 UtE

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 Madwell had not seen a wound
like this. He could neither conjecture how it was
made nor explain the attendant circumstances — the
strangely torn clothing, the parted belt, the 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, nnheroic 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 grdce.

Captain Mad well 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
eight 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 OF 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 ite death strnggle, which,
contrary to his expectation, was violent and long ;
bnt 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 coming and there were miles of haunted forest
between Captain Madwell and camp. Yet he stood
there at the side of the dead animal, apparently lost
to all sense of his surroundings. His eyes were
bont 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 Hadwell 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 trne. He stooped, and with hie 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 ADDWR80N, PHILOSOPHER

' 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.'

1 3J 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 ofieuce.

' 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 ? '

' 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 ADDERSON, 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
' pomp and circumstance ' had attained their highest
development. On a large nail driven into the teufc-
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 tenta. 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.

4 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 eye?, not unkindly, and said : ' It is a bad night,
my man.'

' For me, yes.'

' Do you guess what I have written ? '

1 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 ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 135

4 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

136 IN THE MIDST OF LTFE

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 1 ' — this man of death.

* It was horrible to our sav.vge ancestors,' said the
spy, gravely, ' because they had not enough intelli-
gence to dissociate the idea of consciousness from the
idea of the physical forma in which it ia 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 ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER i.tf

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 I 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,! 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.
K

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.1

' 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 I '

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 iu the room was pretty
thickly coated with it, and there were oobwebs 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

146 TN 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
etrike 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 and 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

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 1 He replaced it in the candle-
stick and blew it out.

n

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 laugiied. ' Oughtn't a man to be

M9

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.'

1 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 room— of
a vacant house — with no bed-covers to pull over hia

150 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

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

'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.'

1 How do you know that ? '

( He would rather bet than eat. As for fear — I
dare say he thinks it some cutaneous disorder, or,
possibly, a particular kind of 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 move-

A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 153

ments of the candle in hia 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. Returning 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 harm-
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

IJ4 IN THE MIDST OF UFB

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 coupe1.

' 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 oool
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 1 fear we
deserve to be.'

A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 15$

* 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.
L

156 IN THE M'lDST OF LTFE

They hastened on. Arrived at the honse, 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 ;
1 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 ma,n had sprung oat of a door and
was breaking away from those endeavouring to det a lu
him. Down through the mass of affrighted idlers

A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 157

hft 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 no'v* 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
» table. The newcomers edged their way forward,

1 58 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
«nose 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
oilicer, and made his way toward the door.

' Clear the room — out, all ! ' said the officer,
sharply, and the body disappeared as if it had b.-.-u
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 ITurper were swept out of the rooir
and cascaded down the stairs into the street.

A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 159

1 Good God, doctor ! did 1 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'cluck 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

TTalberson 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-
disposed, doctor. If you cannot treat yourself, Dr.
Harper can do something for you, I am sure.'

4 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 HY 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.

1 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.'

THE MAN AND THE SNAKE

It is ol veritabyll report, and attested of so many that there
be nowe of wyse and learned none to gaynsaye it, that ye
serponte hys eye hath a magnetick propertie that whosoe
falleth into its svasinn is drawn forwards in dcspyte of his
wille, and perisheth 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 learned 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 hie reading. A moment later somt>-

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 there. They seemed to have become
brighter than before, shining with a greenish lustre
which he had not at first observed. lie 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. Brayton, 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 eyps ! 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 sliow
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.

THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 165

n

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. Harker Brayton, a bachelor of thirty-five,
a scholar, idler, and something of an athlete,
rich, popular, and of sound health, had returned
to San Francisco from all manner of remote and
unfamiliar countries. His tastes, always a trifle
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

166 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

and sweetly to recommend itself unto Lis gentle
senses, it had 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; and, as Brayton
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 prewnoa Despite

THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 167

the Snakery and its uncanny associations — to which,
indeed, he gave little attention — Bray ton found
life at the Druring mansion very much to his
mind.

m

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 ?
AVas 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

1 68 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

the floor with furniture and the furuiture with
a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for this bit of
the savage life of the jungle. Besides — insup-
portable thought ! — 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 oonsidaratioD 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 ?

Brayton rose to his feet and prepared to buck
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 iho tloor 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

ijo /A 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 fur music, inconceivably
sweet, like the tones of an aeolian harp. He knew it
for the sunrise melody of Memnon'a statue, and
thought he stood 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
lloor; 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 air-inst
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 serpeut 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.

M

172 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

IV

Dr. Draring 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
opJiiopJiagus.1

' 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 ophinphagus 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 Kprang 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 1

' 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 ; it»
eyes were two shoe buttons.

A HOLY TERROR

THEKE wns nn 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 him
some such appellation as ' The White-headed Conun-
drum,' or ' No Sarvey ' — an expression naively
supposed to suggest to quick intelligences the
Spanish quien sale. 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 aingu-

176 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

larly mendacious character of the person whose
ingenious tales of rich gold deposits had lured them
thither — work, by the way, in which there wa* 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 onmp'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
u nl land .some, 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-
lusion of black bottles, distributed with a truly
catholic impartiality everywhere.

n

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

178 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 peculiarilira
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 thia 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.

180 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

ra

This Mr. Jefferson Doman was from Elizabeth-
fcown, 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.

'1 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 c 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 Seem an,
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
soh-iyuet of ' Split-faced Moll.' At about this time
she wrote to Mr. Dornan 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 Red 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

r8* IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

consisted mainly in a marvellouR 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 Dornan, 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 gravedigo-er.
This was not a vocation, but Barney in a desultory
way turned his trembling hand to it whenever some
local misunderstanding at the card-table and his
own partial recovery from a prolonged debauch
occurred coincidently in point of time. One day
Mr. Doman received, at Red Dog, a letter with the
simple postmark, ' Hurdy, Cal.,' and being occupied
with another matter, carelessly thrust it into a
chink of his cabin for future perusal. Some two
years later it was accidentally dislodged, and he
it. It ran as follows :—

A HOLY TERROR 183

' HUBDT, 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, BABNEF.
' P.S. — I've clayed her with Scarry.'

With some knowledge of the general mining
camp curgot 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 Scany.

From subsequent events, as related to Mr. Doman
at Red Dog, it would appear that before taking this
precaution Mr. Bree had the thrift to remove a
modest competency of the gold ; at any rate, it was
about that time that he entered upon that 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
away us Ghost Rock and Lone Hand. At its con-

1 84 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, ' SLe
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 Scarry had been prevalent in the
mining camps thereabout — when, as the editor of
the Hurdy Herald would have phrased it, she was
'in the plentitude of her power' — Mr. Doman's
fortunes had been at a low ebb and he had led the
vagrantly 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 * dead sure thing ' and no
fear of an adverse claimant's enforcement of a prior
right, reached the coffin and uncovered it. When

186 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

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.
Thru, 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, and
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

1 88 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

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 Scurry 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 hia 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,

IQO IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

seemed to come 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 lace 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 ho 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 tendon?
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

iga 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 thiuk 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 en their way to the
Yoseiuite 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 asa. 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 MJDST OF LIFE

tree in the 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

MANCELITA MURPHY.

Born at the Mission San Pedro— Died in

Hurdy-Gurdy,

Aged 47.
Uell'a 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, defiled 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 ample
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.
Locking about to assure herself that BO unladylike an
act was not observed, she thrust ner jewelled hand

496 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 beautiful 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.

AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA

For there be divers sorts of death — some wherein the body
remaineth ; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit.
This commonly occurrcth 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 hath
happened in sight of many, as abundant testimony showeth. In
one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been
known to do while yet the body was in 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-

198 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

shaped and sombre-colourod 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, munt 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 every thing 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 cb-
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 humau aid?

200 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

Was it not indeed all an illusion of my madness ? 1
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 my 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 301

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 treo,
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 1 leaned as I sat heJd inclosed in its graep
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

201 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 Hoselb Alar Robardin.

THE BOARDED WINDOW

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 known 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
0

204 IN THE MIDSJ 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
eeamed with wrinkles, which appeared to belong to

THE BOARDED WINDOW 105

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

jo6 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 waya
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
Btete, 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 certain things incor-

THE BOARDED WINDOW Wf

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
asleep.

Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this
unfaithful watcher awoke, and, lifting his head from
his arms, intently listened — he knew not why.
There in the black darkness by the side of his dead,
recalling all without a shock, he strained his eyes to
eee — 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
<vt 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 hia
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 hia 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. Thaw

no IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

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 RIGHT FOOT

IT is well known that the old Manton house is
haunted. In all the rural district near about, and
even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not one
person of 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 facta 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 —
it 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-

212 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 ia
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. Mautou
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, which the candle but dimly lighted.
The floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which
partly muffled their footfalls. Cobwebs were in the
angles of the walls and depended from the ceiling
like strips of rotting lace, making nndulatory 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 low
forehead was seamed with wrinkles above the eyes,
and over the nose these became vertical. The heavy
black brows followed the same law, saved from
meeting only by an upward turn at what would
otherwise have been the point of contact. Deeply
sunken beneath these, glowed in the obscure light a
pair of eyes of uncertain 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 MIDDJJi TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 215

and forgets that he met. All were younger than the
man described, between whom and the eldest of the
others, who stood apart, there was apparently no
kindly feeling. They avoided looking at one 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 yon, Mr. Grossmith ? '

The heavy man bowed and scowled.

4 You will please remove your outer clothing.'

Their hats, coats, waistcoats, and neckwear were
soon removed and thrown outside the door, in the
passage. The man with the candle now nodded, and
the fourth man — he who had urged Mr. GrossmitK
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

216 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

the man holding the light, * you will place yourseif
in that comer.'

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, yoq 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 ' duel in the
dark' were simple enough. One evening three
yonng 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,
Sancher, and Rosser. At a little distance, within
easy hearing but taking no part in the conversation,
sat a fourth. He was a stranger to the others.
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 assoications.'
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

n8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

had, moreover, experienced n slight rebuff iji Qii
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 Eosser, 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 Rosser in a low voice,
his eyes fixed upon the stranger.

That person was obviously listpnintj intently fco
the conversation.

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 nan 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 Rosser ;
' this gentleman has done nothing to deserve such
language.'

But Rosser would not withdraw a word. By the
custom of the country and the time, there could bo
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
pyes 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
p

»2o IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

disclosed. The duel with knives in a dark room waa
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 raukly,
but with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the
weeds blossomed quite like plants. Full of charming
lights and shadows, and populous with pleaHant-
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. Ilia
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, nil 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 sheriif 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

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, lie
was stone dead — de;td 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 Mauton ! '

' 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 Alan ton's
crouching corpse — were three parallel lines of foot-
prints— light but definite impressions of bare feet,

224 IN 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. Manton, sister to Mr.
Brewer.

HA1TA THE SHEPHERD

IN the heart 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 Hock 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 l& 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 the 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,

226 LV THE MTDST OF LIFE

leaning forward oat 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. ITaita most
valued the friendly interest of his neighbours, the
ehy 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
arge his terrified flock to the uplands, he interceded
for the people in the great cities, which he had been
nld lay in the plain beyond the two blue hills which
formed the gateway of his valley.

' It is kind of thee, 0 Hastur,' so he prayed, ' to
give me mountains so near to my dwelling and my
fold that I and my sheep can escape the an,Lrry
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 Halta was a youth

HAITA THE SHEPHERD 327

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

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

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

HAITA THE SHEPHERD 329

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 thut 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 ? '

*30 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

Inexpressibly grieved, Haft a fell upon his knees
;md 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 JETai'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 to thee again.
Wilt thou have me for a companion ? '

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

Hai'ta had no word for death.

* I wish, indeed,' he continued, ' that thou wert of

HAfTA THE SHEPHERD 331

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 Ha'ita, 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 bad 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 Ha'ita saw the maiden
again. One day he was returning from the head of
the valley, where he had gone with ewe's milk and
oateake 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 spoke, the maiden, clad in glittering gar-
ments, met him in the path with a smila which took
away his breath.

' I am come again,' she said, ' to dwell with thee
if thou wilt now have me, for none else will. Thou
mayest have learned wisdom, and art willing to take
me as I am, nor care to know.'

Haita threw himself at her feet. ' Beautiful
being,' he crietl, ' if thou wiit but deign to accept all

233 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

the devotion of ray 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, 1 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 (led
for his life. Nor did he stop until he was in the cut
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, l 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 \v«s a
moment silent, then said : ' My son, I have attended
to thy story, and 1 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

HA IT A 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 1 How long didst thou
have her at any time before she fled ? '

' But a single instant,' answered Hai'ta, 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 REDIIORSE

Ooronado, 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, hia
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 been
Q

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
courst > 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 Raj-nor — you knew
Raynor at Monterey — tells me that the men all like
him, and that he is treated with something like
deference everywhere. There is a mystery, too —
something about his connection with the Blavatsky
people in Northern India. Raynor either would not
or could not tell me the particulars. I infer that
Dr. Barritz is thought — don't you dare to laugh — a
magician I 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 unde finable in his art — black art. Seriously,
dear, I quite tremble when he looks rne 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 — 0 Irene, Irene, I love the man beyond
expression, and you know how it is yourself !

Fancy ! I, an ugly duckling from Redhoree —
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 hah* 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 panse
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 waisem-
Uance.) 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 —
O Irene, can you ever forgive me ? — I was called
* Gunny.' God knows why ; perhaps in allusion to
the material of my pinafores ; perhaps because the
name is in alliteration with * Giggles,' for Gig and I
were inseparable playmates, and the miners may
have thought it a delicate compliment to 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 139

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 c 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 Raynor, of Wells,
Fargo & Co., and old Mrs. Barts was herself chlorided
to her fathers, Dumps drifted over to San Juan
Smith and turned stage driver, and was killed by
road agents, and so forth.

Why do I tell you all this, dear ? Because it is
heavy on my heart. Because I walk the Valley of
Humility. Because I am subduing myself to per-
manent consciousness of my unworthiness to unloose
the latehet 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 nay you

240 /A" 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 Redhorse — 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 Raynor I am sure of — he will not tell
him. He seems, indeed, to hold him in such respect
as hardly to dare speak to him at all, and I'm a good
deal that way 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
Bide 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 FROKf REDHORSE 141

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 Redhorae
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, yon
should have seen his superb attitude, the godlike
inclination of his head as he stood over me after I

242 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

had got upon my feet ! It was a noble picture, but
I soon destroyed it, for I began at once to sink again
to the earth. There was only one thing for him to
do, and he did it ; he supported me with an arm
about my waist.

' Miss Dement, are you ill ? ' he said.

It was not an exclamation ; there was neither
alarm nor solicitude in it. If he had added : ' I
suppose that is about what I am expected to say,' he
would hardly have expressed his sense of the situa-
tion more clearly. His manner filled me with shame
and indignation, for I was Buffering 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.

1 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 llubbered !

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, ray whole face was flaming, and,
I think, steaming. What could I do ? I hid it on
his shoulder — there was no other place. And, O
my dear friend, how my leg tingled and thrilled,
and how I wanted to kick !

We sat so for a long time. He had 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.

' And yon 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 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

4 But about Jack — Mr. Raynor ? Don't yon
know '

' I am ashamed to say, darling, that it was
through that unworthy person's invitation that I
came here from \7ienna.'

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
Bet foot in Sepoy.

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Crown STO. Cloth, gilt lettering. Pric« 2«. 6d. net

THE POOLS OF SILENCE
By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

THE CURSE OF THE NILE : A STORY OF
LOVE IN THE DESERT

By DOUGLAS SLADEN

SUSANNAH AND ONE ELDER
By E. MARIA ALBANESI

MRS. THOMPSON.

By W. B. MAXWELL

THE DREAM SHIP

By CYNTHIA STOCKLEY

THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

CAVIARE

By GRANT RICHARDS

A GREY LIFE
By RITA

RAFFLES

By E. W. HORNUNG

THE PROCESSION OF LIFE
By HORACE A. VACHELL

THE DRUMS OF WAR

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

TALES OF HEARSAY
By JOSEPH CONRAD

EVELEIGH NASH & GRAYSON LTD.

148 STRAND, LONDON

WASH'S POPULAR LIBRARY

Crown 8vo. Cloth. Price 3s. 6d. net

THE SHEIK. By E. M. HULL
THE SHADOW OF THE EAST. By E. M. HULL
THE DESERT HEALER. By E. M. HULL
THE SONS OF THE SHEIK. By E. M. HULL

THE LUNATIC AT LARGE AGAIN. By J. STOKER
CLOUSTON

THE LUNATIC STILL AT LARGE. By J. STOKER
CLOUSTON

TWO STRANGE MEN. By J. STOKER CLOUSTON

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY MAITLAND. By
MORLEY ROBERTS

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN SPINK. By MORLEY
ROBERTS

THE STREET OF THE FLUTE PLAYER. By H. DB
VERB STACPOOLB

ETHAN FROME. By EDITH WHARTON
CROSSRIGGS. By MARY AND JANE FINDLATER
HAWK OF THE DESERT. By G. E. MITTON
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. By AMBROSE BIERCB

WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER. By CHARLES
MAJOR

ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS. By FLORA ANNIE
STEEL

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. By WILSON BARRETT

THINGS I KNOW ABOUT KINGS. CELEBRITIES AND
CROOKS. By WILLIAM LE QUEUX

MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. By Mrs. W. K. CLIFFORD

EVELEIGH NASH & GRAYSON LTD.

148 STRAND, LONDON

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