Phantasms, original stories illustrating posthumous personality and character

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PHANTASMS

ORIGINAL STORIES

II.LCSI'i^

lPostl3uinou6 |pcr5onalit\2 ant) Cbaractci*

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PI PTM *» I r<: >

rHICAL ROMANCr,

"• I meddle not with those Bedlam phancies, ti\ whose conceits are antiques,
but leave them for the Physician to purge wit' '■

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CONTENTS

FAGS

Introduction— An Interview

7

The Dark Shadow .

43

Retrilution

t

68

The Sleepless Man

89

Uncle Sel\v\'n

142

A Good Intention .

153

A New Force

165

Mysterious Maisie

174

The Face of Nature

219

The Actual Apparition

226

B

ice2953

0.

INTRODUCTION

Posthumous Perso7iality and Character

HORACE VESEY left Corby during my first
term in the lower school. I therefore knew
little of him personally. True, his doings as a
fifth-form boy were fresh in the memories of my
schoolmates, and I remembered a few of them
which had passed into the traditional lore of
the school. When a young and hard-pressed
journalist, I presumed on this acquaintance to
interview Vesey on the subject of " Spiritualism."
I hoped to get specially interesting information ;
for no one in London was credited with so
complete a knowledge of the mystic cults, which
at that time were again attracting general attention.
From the journalistic standpoint the interview
was not a success — I remember that my "copy"
was pigeon-holed and forgotten — but I benefited
to the extent of gaining a friend and an intimate

8 INTR OD UC TION.

association with the most remarkable personality
it has been my fortune to meet.

" We were at Corby together, you say, Gerrare ;
but you must have been learning genders at the
time I was on Sallust. What do you remember of
me?"

" That you walked in your sleep, and threw the
hammer fully ten feet further than Alec Grove."

He laughed. "The first needs explanation, the
second does not, I suppose."

The former was the easier to believe. It seemed
to me incomprehensible that the slight, slack,
sinewless frame of the sleep-walker had been
capable of achieving such success over the skilled
and muscular Alec. " It is of spiritualism I wish
to talk with you."

"But the general public cannot understand
spiritualism. It is as useless to attempt an
explanation of spirit- life to materialists, as to
expound the Differential Calculus to ignorant
Papuans."

" The interpreter only is wanting."

" A right conception of the mystery of being is
necessary to a comprehension of posthumous
existence, and this conception is lacking."

' ■ INTRODUCTION. 9

" Is not that because scientists will not use the
common language of the people ? "

" No ; for learning is not wisdom. Our con-
ception of a thigh-bone is not altered when we
learn to call it a femur, nor have we advanced in
knowledge when we term a lapse of memory
ecmnesia. Much of the labour of eminent men
is thrown away, because resulting only in the
discovery of new names for well-known things,
or is misspent in search of correct definitions for
long-ascertained processes. Wisdom rather is
possessed by those who have not lost their
perception of facts, in attempting to represent the
relation of them by S}'mbols."

" I want facts."

He smiled. A gleam as of humour flashed
into his wondrous dreamy eyes ; but they almost
immediately reassumed their habitual faraway
look — a look which I have never seen in other
^yzs, and which I can only describe as being a
soft, intelligent gaze into the unknown. " I am
not a fact-monger," he said quietly. "You must
go to the schoolmen if. )-ou wish to hear someone
who can talk glibly of telakousia, aponeurosis,
dynamogeny, and other things which are under-

lo INTRODUCTION.

standable, capable even of being demonstrated,
and adequately, if not accurately, described with
the aid of special vocables culled from the choicer
teratology of the textbooks. I am an idealist
whose ideas have been proved by experience. I
cannot convey my ideas to you, because they are
known to me only as what they an\ not by
symbols; and if I coined names, or made symbols,
neither you nor anyone else would understand
them, nor could I explain them — there is the
difficulty."

" It is not insurmountable."

"Yes and no. I can suggest certain things to
you, as I have to others. I can suggest that you
believe them as being realities, as tJicy are ; but
what does that amount to .' No more than that
you have been hypnotised, and experienced what
some term hallucinations ; others, less learned,
delusions. If you perchance alight on the right
path without direction, you are believed to have
evolved the ideas out of your inner consciousness,
told that your experiences arc self-suggested
phantasms, not real discoveries of fact."

"The general public dislikes anyone to be
greatly ahead of it in knowledge."

INTRODUCTION. n

"The limit of human knowledge is not where
public opinion places it, nor as it is determined by
exponents of the physical sciences ; it rests solely
with the individual. In the first place, you must
distinguish between the knowledge of the in-
dividual and the knowledge of the whole mass
of individuals. For instance, I may not know
what one John Jones in California and another in
New South Wales know at this moment ; but
there is a state some persons attain, in which it is
possible to ascertain what any and every person
living knows — that is comparatively easy. Beyond
there is a state in which it is possible to ascertain
more, but to translate it is impossible."

" Because no one can comprehend the trans-
lation .? "

" Quite so. The individual cannot understand
that of which he has no experience, as in the
material world we know not the feel of iron or
stone until we have touched something harder
than a feather pillow ; so our unutilised senses
need experience if we are to comprehend the
non-material world, whilst even to perceive the
facts of this, our ordinary senses are barely suffi-
cient."

1 2 INTR on UCTION.

" Some people are supposed to possess a sixth
sense."

"There is really but one sense. Man's so-
called five senses are but variations of the same
mechanism suited to receive material impressions
of different kinds, and communicate the result of
each ijidcntation to the brain ; for all are operated
in the same manner — by contact. You know the
physiological processes ; for instance, the sense of
touch, the most limited in range of the five senses,
arises from the membrane that first receives the
impression of the object in contact, setting up a
certain vibration in the nerve which connects it
with the brain. The impression reaches the brain
as a sensation, the interpretation of which is
dependent upon the memory of past experiences
of like similar, or dissimilar, sensations produced
by the same nerve, or one of the same order.
The quality of touch varies in different parts of
the body. If two needle points placed only one
twenty-fifth part of an inch apart be applied to
the tip of the tongue, they will be felt as iiuo
points. If they are placed even four times the
distance apart, and applied to the back, they will
be felt as a single point only. Taste and smell

r^

INTRODUCTION. 13

are closely allied to touch, the sensations being
excited by the impinging of extremely minute
particles of matter upon appropriate nerves.
Hearing is the sensation caused by certain vibra-
tions of the atmospheric ether, in contact with
the tympanum of the ear. Sight the result of
certain movements of the optic nerve, caused by
the impression of a picture upon the retina."

"Just so; but I came to hear you talk of life
after death, about elementary spirits, ghosts,
goblins, and the like."

" Including objective and subjective appari-
tions ; therefore I point out to you particularly
the acknowledged fact that we never see an object,
only the reflection in miniature of one, as it is
depicted upon a membrane ivithin the eye by the
rays of light ; that is, by contact with waves of
atmospheric ether in rapid motion, for light as
you know is but a mode of movement. Red
waves result from impulses at a speed of 392
billions a second, and violet, at the other extremity
of the solar spectrum, by impulses at a speed of
757 billions a second. Vibrations above the violet
and below the red do not excite luminous
sensations."

1 4 INTR on UCTION.

"Then above the violet is spirit land ?"

"The scientist says simply that there is chemical
activity."

"And below the red?"

" Heat — until we descend to the very low figure
of say 35,000 a second, when vibrations are per-
ceived as sound."

"What is the usual difference in the sensory
capabilities of individuals .-'"

" Too slight to affect the main issue. Some
people cannot hear the squeal of a bat; and it may
be presumed that should a bat squeal within the
hearing of seven people, yet only one hear it,
an examination of the witnesses would establish
in an overwhelming fashion that the bat did not
then squeal : thus if one sees a ghost, and a dozen
people having equal opportunities ought to see it
but do not, then there was no appearance of a
ghost — the senses of the man who saw it must
have deceived him, he is left doubting, too often is
over-persuaded, and believes the contrary of the
actual fact. Of course, all the senses may be
deceived ; the sensation which ordinarily results
from touching a steel point with the tip of the
finger may arise from anything inside the body

r^

INTRODUCTION. 15

which will produce a like movement of the nerve
connecting the finger tip with the brain. The
stimulation of any sense nerve to action results in
the delivery of a sensation to the conscious self;
its interpretation, as a false message or as a
genuine impression, will depend upon the past
experience of the recipient. When one knows
that one's optic nerve is unable to convey
accurately different sensations for impressions of
red and green, one learns to distrust that sen-
sation ; in like manner when one hears strange
noises, unheard by others, one distrusts one's
hearing, and believes one's self to be the subject
of hallucinations. On the other hand the value
of each of the senses increases as memories of
past experiences of its use accumulate."

"Apparently the evidence of one sense is sup-
ported, or is contradicted, by that of another ? "

" Yes, but the accumulations of past experiences
prove how close is the association of one sense
with another ; upon hearing the word ' vinegar '
there comes a sensation as of sour taste ; this
association of sensation with words helps the
mesmeriser towards the mental realisation of the
suggestion he makes. The transference of sensa-

1 6 INTR OD UCTION.

tion from person to person without the ordinary
perceptible suggestion, has been done, accompHshed
under test conditions. Apparently all perception
must be by means of motion. What movement
then is that, by which one person in one room
is mentally directed by another person in another
room at a distance to taste coffee, and the coffee
so hot as to scald } "

" Thought transference is done simply by an
effort of will.?"

"Then no doubt the effort puts into wave-motion
particles of ethic substance which reach the other
person and produce the sensation desired. Could
we see that mode of motion we know to exist at
higher velocities than 760 billion vibrations a
second, or hear sound waves travelling at a higher
pitch than 35,000 vibrations a second, possibly we
might either sec or hear the process by which
thought-transference is cfl'ected."

" We shall not do that unless the sixth sense
is developed ; yet we can neither see nor hear
magnetic force and have nevertheless been able
to make much use of it, and scientists think they
fairly comprehend it now."

"Just as we have been able to use electricity to

INTRO D UCTION. 1 7

enable us hear and see things our senses can
perceive, so can thought-transference be utilised.
Thought-transference also explains the kindred
phenomena of clairvoyance; for clairvoyance is
merely a change to the other end of the connecting-
line. The percipient of a sensation, the one who
receives a thought-message, knozvs that a similar
sensation is experienced by the person who
communicates. The person who wills conjures up
a vision of a luminous cross, or actually beholds
one ; the person who receives the thought-message
or impression, knows that the sender is regarding
a cross ; what one sees the other sees ; clairvoyance
therefore is but a variety of thought-transference,
or, more accurately, telepathy."

"Such communications are surely limited," I
ventured.

" Limitations of this kind ; if the person who
wishes to transmit the impression knows neither
the taste nor the appearance of, say, olives, and
determines to transmit the sensation of taste of
them to a person who does know it, the nerves
of the sense of taste would not be directly acted
upon by the will of the transmitter, but the sense
of hearing or of sight would be directed to the

1 8 INTRO D UCTION.

word 'olives,' and by a reflex action and the
association of ideas, the taste of oHves would
become apparent to the percipient. If neither
the person who wills, that is the transmitter, nor
the person who perceives, that is recipient, knows
anything of olives, although a knowledge of the
name-word may be conveyed, it will be as power-
less to produce the flavour of olives as though the
word ' Mcthuscla' had been communicated. If,
however, the transmitter likes olives, and the
percipient does not, the taste communicated,
although recognised, will be agreeable to the
percipient."

" Then thought or sensation-transference proves
that the external organs of sense do not need to
be appealed to directly, in order to produce
exactly similar sensations to those which follow
an actual appeal to the senses in the ordinary
way.?"

"If such proof were needed. Of more im-
portance is the fact that through thought-
transference and clairvoyance many get a glimpse
of a world of activities imperceptible to man's
external organs of sense ; an indication of the
manner in which it is the easiest for a being not

• INTRODUCTION. 19

possessing man's organs of speech or material
body to communicate with him."

" Then you acknowledge that apparitions, ghosts,
are subjective, not objective ? That they are in
fact illusions ? "

" Consider the matter in a commonsense manner.
Assume that a phantom of the dead wishes to
appear to the living, in order to accomplish some
set purpose, will not the phantom adopt the
method easiest for it ? The simplest and most
direct means arc usually the best, and if the
phantom had to simultaneously attract the
attention of a blind man and a deaf one it would
be useless to 'appear' in winding-sheet and with
clinking of chain ; it would be easier to appeal to
the sense of touch."

" Do you give ghosts credit for ability to touch ?"

" Say rather ability to make themselves felt.
The hypnotiscr can suggest to the subject that
he is blistered, and a real actual blister, leaving
a real, unmistakable scar, is produced wholly by
the effect of the suggestion on the hypnotised
subject. When, therefore, the ghost of Lord
Tyrone appeared to Lady Beresford, and made
an indelible scar upon her wrist, it is not necessary'

ao INTRODUCTION.

to suppose that it was really burned, or that the
phantom had the power of touch."

" But how about the impress burnt into the
cabinet ?"

" The evidence for that is not so good ; nor are
we considering the power of phantoms to act
upon inorganic matter. That they may do so is,
I think, the logical inference from the proven fact
that they act upon organic matter."

" In order to do so phantoms must materialise,
and their ability to do even this has, I believe,
never been proved under test conditions."

" It is amusing how some of those who laugh at
every phase of spiritualism, express their willing-
ness to be convinced if spirits will manifest under
test conditions which tJicy will impose. They
admit that they know nothing of spirits, nor of
the laws by which they are governed, and so the
test conditions are often extremely ridiculous. It
is as though when one proposed to make ice-
cream for the delectation of an African potentate,
he refused to believe in the solidification of the
confection unless it should remain frozen as solid
after an exposure of an hour or two to a tropical
sun. You propose to show a sceptic a spirit. He

r^

INTR on UCTION. 2 1

will not believe it to be a spirit until it shall have
materialised. When materialised he will even
declare that it, being matter, cannot be spirit, and
will attribute its appearance and disappearance to
trickery — probably complimenting you upon
having so successfully deluded his perceptions.
It is thankless work."

" Does not much of the opposition to spiritualism
arise from the trivial nature of spiritualistic
phenomena .'' "

" Arises rather from a misconception of the
character of spirit life. The idea that human
beings as soon as dead become as omniscient as
angels are popularly supposed to be, is not based
upon commonsense, and is fallacious. Man im-
mediately after death is neither more nor less than
the entity he was — minus the body and the power
of communicating through it with the material
world. He has precisely the same intelligence
and character, the same knowledge, and he has to
discern his universe from a fresh point of view.
Whatever he may learn in this new environment
he will never be able to communicate to men in
the flesh, unless they are such facts or experiences
as by learning or research he had some conception

C

83 INTRODUCTION.

of when in the body. The talk of a spiritualist
medium who is controlled, or fancies himself
controlled, by a bricklayer is such as one expects
from a man of the labouring class. It is in the
fitness of things that such should be so. Whatever
was beyond his knowledge as a bricklayer will be
still unknown so far as informing a medium is
concerned ; and this, not because new knowledge
is unobtainable by a spirit, but because it is
acquired by a method, the manner of expressing
which was unknown to him prior to his post-
humous existence."

" There is then little hope of learning from
spirits .-• "

" So far as the ordinary manifestations go
the teaching is that suited to the needs and
capabilities of the learners. As far as my ex-
perience goes, nothing very new, very startling,
or radically different to preconceived and gener-
ally accepted ideas, need ever be expected from
them."

" Matter passing through matter, for instance } "

" Matter is always passing through matter in the
same way as a fish through water, or the earth
through a comet's tail. Solidity is only relative ;

'^

INTR OD UCTION. 2 3

the comet which occupies millions of cubic miles
would, if its particles were as closely packed as
those of gold, form a tiny lump small enough to
place in the pocket of one's waistcoat. Even then
some space would be left between the atoms
composing it. The radiometer, as you know,
reveals the fact that matter may be reduced to
particles so small, that in comparison with the
smallest of those observable with the most
powerful microscope they are in size as a pistol-
bullet to the earth. Solid matter passes through
solid wire, as you may demonstrate with a water-
battery by placing the one pole in a solution of
various salts and the other in a separate vessel in
a bit of moist sand ; the salt crj'stals will be found
in the sand-heap, separately deposited, those of
dissimilar character apart."

" But that does not show how a book passes
through a brick wall."

" It illustrates the working of a force, and the
force which controls lifeless matter is known to
ph}'sical science solely by the result of its
operation. F"or instance, it has never been
explained why and how steel is attracted to the
magnet. If instead of comprehending force as a

24 INTR OD UCTION.

property of matter, you ascertain the nature of
the activities by which matter is conditioned, the
passage of matter through matter in the sense
you mean will no longer appear impossible, and
you will be as little inclined as I am to witness
irregular physical manifestations of force."

"You regard them as pertaining to black
magic ?

" I simply do not desire them. I know that
man does not end at the finger-tips, and is able
to influence matter at a distance from his body.
There is a radiation from each soul-cantre which
receives sympathetic response from other centres —
from the soul of things. The sun as an entity
terminates many millions of miles from this earth ;
the sun as a force reaches here and obtains that
physical response known as heat and light — two
forms of motion — of life."

"But table-turning, rapping, and supposed
communications with the spirits of the dead do
not seem to impart much knowledge."

" Simply the knowledge fitted to the under-
standing and desires of the circle. If the search
is for truth, so much truth as the seekers can
comprehend; if the 'circle' is frivolous, then the

INTRODUCTION. 25

desired quantity of frivolity. The wholly curious
are most often disappointed."

"And the indifferent multitude truth does not
attract ? "

"Is not so large as you imagine; for the truth
is known by many names. I receive communi-
cations from all sorts and conditions of people.
Some of these abuse spiritualism, yet give
particular instances which are further evidence
of its working. The chief effect these com-
munications have is to convince me that truth
must be taught by parable."

" Because spiritualism is not to be scientifically
demonstrated } "

" The scientific spirit of the age is materialistic.
When matter has been ascertained, if not before,
the spirit underlying matter will be sought and
found. Now, as always, there are many for whom
the study of matter is insufficient, and them I
serve. If you wish to know more of magic, come
here whenever you choose, and in time, in lieu of
talking elementary physics, we will speak of
matters the multitude cannot understand."

From that day my visits were frequent. Vesey
had no inclination to symbolic mysticism ; his

26 INTRODUCTION.

room was an ordinary, comfortably- furnished
apartment ; quiet, lofty, roomy, light, and as
home-like as the cosy corner of the cultured
bachelor can be made to be. It was if anything
too modern ; too orderly ; too business-like ; his
books, other than one in immediate use, were
stored away in closed presses ; there was no
statuary, few ornaments, and the pictures were
bright, cheerful, and common-place; the most
noticeable, and most used, piece of furniture was
a large Persian divan, on which every day Vesey,
reclining at ease, spent hours in dreaming those
untranslatable visions, which were to him the
very essence of being. " Be at ease, be comfort-
able, and let no one disturb you," he counselled,
"if you wish to attain a conception of the higher
life ; my people guard the door, and, as yoii know,
will allow no one to enter nor themselves intrude ;
as I lie here at perfect ease, my nargJiilch induces
that trance condition I wish, and my universe
unfolds to my view."

The only peculiarity I noticed was the always
burning wood-fire on the open hearth, so con-
stantly replenished that the heat of the room was
never less than 65° and often 10^ higher.

INTRODUCTION. 21

My first experience of Vesey's mystic world
was one dull November afternoon ; a thick fog
had turned to rain, and his cheerful fireside was
an oasis in London wretchedness. I was at my
ease in smoking jacket and soft buckskin slippers,
my roomy arm-chair was in the very front of the
fire ; Vesey was in his happiest mood, and the
conversation which had been brisk became desul-
tory, and the silence often broken only by the
bubbling of the iiargJuleh, as Vesey drew furtively
from the sinuous pipe which reached him as he
lay stretched inelegantly on his divan.

It was of course a dream, but very difterent to
any previously experienced. In the first place,
I appeared to be gazing at a large screen of a
browny drab colour. Suddenly I noticed that in
the centre there was something bright ; no sooner
had it attracted my attention than it instantly
burst into a scintillating blaze of colour, of a
colour which was new to me, for into its com-
position neither red nor yellow nor blue entered ;
it had no suggestion of any of the secondary or
tertiary hues, and as I looked into its magnificent
depth, enraptured with its beauty, it seemed to
centralise and be set against a background of

28 INTRODUCTION.

fiery opal, with every varying tint of which this
new colour contrasted sharply ; as I looked a
broad black bar appeared across the upper half,
a white one across the lower, both shewing with
equal distinctness ; then, as my gaze faded, I saw
this new colour showing dimly through the jet
black of the streak across the upper half, whilst
the portion covered with the diaphanous white
band remained totally hidden.

I opened my eyes. Vesey was sitting upright
on the divan, an amused expression on his face.
" What have you seen ?" he asked.

" A new colour," I replied.

" Can you describe it V

" I think so."

"Well.?"

I remained silent.

" Come ! Speak ! Was it transparent or fuligi-
nous .'' Opalescent or phosphorescent } Aplanatic
or atramentous } Glaucous, xanthous, or gridelin }
Or perhaps murrey, lateritious, or cymophanous }

"Don't ! I will write out the description."

" You may spare yourself the worry ; remember
I have been a journalist, and the attempt to
describe a new colour will only cause you to curse

INTRODUCTION. 29

the cecity and ablepsy of an cxcecated generation.
Yet, if language cannot convey even an idea of
a mild exaltation of the colour sense, is it sur-
prising that man remains etiolate ? Probably
you and I are the only persons living who have
seen the colour ; now tell me what colour was
it ?"

I understood his humour. " I must see it
again," I replied.

"Are you at my end of the spectrum ? Am I
likely to have a companion in my investigations,
or are you with so many modern mystics at the
other ?

" What separates the two ? Is not the whole
field of the unknown one ? "

" In the appreciation of colour the difference
is only some 350 billion vibrations the second,
in the speed of light waves — but that means
the whole of the universe as measured by man's
senses,"

On another excursion into the unknown, I
appeared to be viewing a world in which this new
colour entered largely, and I saw moving about in
it strange shapes, most of them of the more
delicate shades of pink and heliotrope, but some

30 INTR OD UCTION.

fulvous, others pearly, all diaphanous ; occasionally
two or more apparently united for an instant,
and a vivid flash of yet another colour new
to me was produced, which, glowing intensely,
seemed to burn itself out with wondrous reful-
gence, and change into a mass of iridescent
syenite.

My descriptions of such visions did not appear
to afford any information to Vcsey, who ex-
horted me to idealise differently and "create new
thoughts." One day, when urging me into iiis
field of ideal speculation, I told him t»hat it lacked
variety; this he attributed to the extraordinary
development of my colour sense. "It has the
sameness of Danics Paradiso,'' I complained.

"The sameness of Paradise! It is only the
' Inferno' that lacks variety. Have you no better
conception of future existence } Do you not
know that heaven is Kalpa-Taroo, a tree of the
imagination from which everyone gathers the
fruit he expects } How otherwise could the
heavens of true believers harmonise ^ The picture
of Paradise drawn by and for the gold-keeping,
jewel-worshipping, music-loving Jew is not satis-
fying even to the modern cultured orthodox

INTRO D UCTION. 3 1

Christian, who rightly regards the Biblical
description as symbolic ; for some it has no
attraction, others it actively repels. Yet every
man will find the heaven or hell he expects ; the
Jew his golden Jerusalem, the Hindu his Nirvhana,
the Pagan his Olympus, the warrior his Valhalla,
and the poor savage his happy hunting ground,
for in the future state the ideals of this are
realised."

" Then the good Catholic his thousand or more
years of purgatory, and some eternal fire,"

"The thousand or more years certainly, accord-
ing to the believer's conception of a thousand
years, but not for ever ; because no one who can
conceive eternity believes he merits everlasting
punishment."

" Then the suffering is measured, not by the
enormity of the evil wrought, but by the wrong-
doer's conception of the punishment due.-*"

" Exactly."

"A belief in such injustice would add a new
terror to death !"

" Is it wrong to give a man what he conceives to
be his just reward.' In physical life do not the
sick, the weakly, the incompetent, suffer more than

3 2 INTR on UCTION.

the strong, the healthy, the successful ? Are not
misfortunes invariably accompanied with com-
pensations ? Do you believe in the eternal fitness
of things ? You, my friend, arc gravitating to the
wrong end of the spectrum, instead of seeing in
future existence an extended sphere of activity,
greater knowledge, fresh powers, new desires,
illimitable life, increasing variety ; you would
confine yourself to an enlarged memory of the
past, to live again and again the existences you
have had, and renew the dreadful experiences of
your slow development to your present not very
enjoyable state of being!"

" Is such my destiny ? "

" Not if you will have it otherwise."

" And you, Vcsey, what do you conceive to be
your ultimate state ? "

" Not Nirvhana ! At present I feel drawn
towards the sun; I could luxuriate in its fierce
warmth, gain new strength from its intense
energy. Thence, ever onward, in illimitable,
infinite space — there is ever room ! "

" It is useless for me to attempt your idealisa-
tions ; I must be useful at the other end of the
spectrum."

INTRODUCTIOX. 33

"With no other ambition than to become a
dead, joyless, unenh'ghtened, motionless moon !"

Here I may observe that these ideas were not
speculative abstractions ; to Vesey they were real,
living, almost tangible, realities.

From that time he endeavoured to make his
views more pleasing, and was assiduous in directing
my attention to objects which had no attraction
for me, and of which I could not understand the
significance. One day when we had been com-
paring the houri-haunted paradise of the Moslem
with that heaven in which there is " no marriage,"
he remarked that sex was but an accident, just as
" in a future state some of the beings cannot hide
a fact in their past history, whilst others are
perfectly inscrutable both as to the past and the
present, and the attraction of each kind to the
other far surpasses in intensity any phase of
mundane passion."

Soon it became evident to Vesey that he and I
were attracted to mysticism from different poles ;
the only thing we both held in common was a
dislike of symbolism and detestation of ritual.
When Vesey found that I was, to use his term,
" at the other end of the spectrum," he helped me

34 INTR OD UCTION.

to a better understanding of mysticism in its
nearer relations to human life. We used to study
together some of the problems which were sub-
mitted to him for advice ; we would seek out cases
of extraordinary psychical experiences, analyse,
and comment upon them ; for a time he took an
interest in this work, and even annotated a number
of other people's experiences upon his own
initiative, but this was not so interesting as the
speculative mysticism which grew to a master
passion and occupied him night and day. I
suggested that he should write a' theory of
apparitions ; some fragments only, scrawled upon
the margin of theses drawn up by myself and
submitted for his consideration, are all he wrote.
From them it appears that he held that man after
death has " other concerns than those which
occupied his attention during life on earth ; the
phantom or apparition is usually but a thought-
picture deeply impressed upon the ever-living
memory, and observable by those in whose nature
there is a sufficiently responsive chord in active
sympathy with that which sustained, received, the
original impression."

" Periodically or irregularly recurrent appari-

(r.

INTRODUCTION. 35

tions are usually produced by the individual after
death, recalling to memory the experience of a
certain fact of earth life; when, for instance, a
wrong done is deeply felt and rankles in the
soul of the sufferer, the remembrance of the
injury surges up into the memory during post-
humous life, and is dwelt upon with such in-
tensity of feeling that the thought is observable
by men in the flesh."

" The malignant phantom possessing a hatred
of certain natures, objects, or localities is some-
times unable to follow the attractions of the newer
life it has entered upon, and haunts those places
or people, and is observable ; in time this per-
version succumbs to other impulses, and if the
apparitions do not wholly cease, they at least
become harmless and occur at irregular intervals
and without malicious intent."

"Minor material disturbances, instead of being
attributed to elementary spirits, should be traced
to irregular action of earth-force, an energy closely
allied in its nature to that which causes volcanic,
seismic, and electric disturbances, and at times
escapes from the throbbing and over-fatigued
creature which we call the earth."

36 INTR OB UCTION.

" The apparitions of phantoms of living persons,
although less frequently perceived than the phan-
toms of the dead, and attracting less attention,
really deserve closer study at this time, for they
prove that man is more than mere flesh and nerve,
and they indicate his intimacy with the intelligent
cosmos, or world force ; in like manner, from their
rarity and the seemingly trivial circumstances
which induce them, we comprehend better the like
action of the posthumous phantom. It should
also be remembered that man after death, possess-
ing already a full knowledge of earth life, is not
prompted by curiosity to live its details over again
— thus spirit manifestation is often as accidental,
both with regard to the cause and the apper-
ception and the coincidence of observation, as is
the ascertained apparition of a phantasm of a
living person."

Here I may explain that Vesey believed all
occurrences were purposely brought about by
world-force or the intelligent cosmos ; to him the
word accidental had a different significance to
that commonly assigned it, but in this instance
he appears to use it in the ordinary sense.
Apparently the most trivial occurrences would

INTR 0 DUCT TON. 3 7

attract him, because he perceived their psychical
significance.

" Coincidence," he remarked to me one dav,
" has convinced more people of the existence of
Providence than have all the miracles. It is the
seeming miracle brought about in a natural
manner which touches the soul - sense, and in-
fluences for good a man who would be only
bewildered by seeing a revised edition of the
Bible passing through a solid brick wall. You
know the case of the mill foreman who wore a
pocketless suit, and one day so far transgressed
the factory rules as to secrete a penknife about
him ; he could never explain why he was impelled
to do so ; he had never done it before ; he has
never done it since ; but that day he did it ; and
because he had the knife was able to save the life
of his master, whose neckerchief or ' comforter '
had accidentally engaged with a fast rotating
shaft, and hoisted the wearer to the ceiling. It
appeared to ///cm a direct interposition of Provi-
dence, and in like instances is almost always so
regarded ; often as a direct answer to prayer for
preservation. Of course, answered pra}'ers are
much too frequent to be the result of accidental

D

38 INTRODUCTION.

coincidence : it is rare indeed that a request for
a psychical favour is not accorded, and this is a
further indication that a closer knowledge of the
intelligent cosmos is not denied to those who
desire it ; a guardian angel, a mentor, or an actual
spiritual adviser is at the call of everyone, but as
the manner of working is incomprehensible to
many, I will explain it by assuming the case of an
orthodox theologian who feels an overpowering
impulse to read any particular book, from Volney's
Ruins of Empires to Robert Elsmere. He believes
that the impulse is the instigation of the devil to
an act designed to tempt him from his belief; the
temptation to read is always before him, his power
to resist becomes weaker and weaker ; he prays
that the temptation may be removed, or that he
may have power to resist it. The next time the
book is before him, open perhaps, he is about just
to glance at its contents, when instantly there is
a message, ' If you read you will become blind.'
The dread of physical misfortune kills the desire ;
he is saved from the temptation ; his faith is
strengthened. There are messages which com-
mand and impel one to do directly the opposite
to what one has fully determined to do. When

INTRO D UCTION. 39

one's will is subordinated to an impulse to the
commission of an act at variance with reason,
previous experience, and intention, the impulse
is followed, and if a catastrophe is thereby avoided,
the person warned and saved is blindly grateful
to the spirit guide and becomes superstitious."

After what I have reported of my first con-
versation with Vesey, it seems hardly necessary
to give his view of the manner in which the
phantoms make themselves known : that they do
not usually materialise in order to be observed,
but act directly upon the sense nerve, or brain,
awaken the memory of themselves in order to
be at once recognised, and influence rather than
compel action. " Our waking thoughts, our sleep-
ing memories, the records of the whole of our past
experiences arc available to the phantom, just as
fully as is the actual mechanism by which we are
actuated, and as the phantom knows that the idea
of a stone wall obstructing our progress is quite as
effective to change our path as the actual obstacle
would be, he creates the idea as being less trouble-
some than producing real masonry."

" The fact that the phantom acts upon a higher
plane than the material one should increase the

40 INTRODUCTION.

dread we have of its interference rather than
lessen the awe with which we regard it, for it is
much easier to combat earthworks, of which our
senses have cognizance, than struggle against
the psychical wrongs done by malicious beings
working on a plane where the mischief wrought is
known to us only by the disastrous results to our
psychical and material well-being."

"The worst natural phantoms are those of
persons whose earthly life is cut short before
naturally developed ; particularly of those evilly
inclined, who are killed whilst attempting some
wicked act, and powerfully animated by lust or
passion."

"The worst unnatural phantoms are those of
persons who, during earth life, have been able to
attract to themselves some of the world-force, or
energy, without intelligence."

" Not one, nor a dozen, but legion," complained
Vesey, " for they are possessed of that lowest of
all attributes, the faculty of uniting ; of taking
common action against the separate individual,
just like fellows of a Society, or subscribers to a
Trade's Union. Pah ! blinded by their own greed
they do not see that ever)' work in creation points

INTRO D UCTION. 4 1

to the evolution of the individual, so they linger,
hindering all, and missing every chance of
development."

The stories which reached us, the experiences
we ourselves had, and the cases in which Vesey
was consulted were, Vesey declared, nearly all
concerned with the work of the evil-disposed
phantoms ; the recountal of them could serve no
useful purpose, and the selection I have made is
of those cases in which the higher principle is not
wholly obscured.

Three stories, however, do not properly come
within this classification ; one, " A New Force,"
appears to me to warrant insertion, as illustrating
a possible achievement on the material plane;
the other, "The Face of Nature," is a narrative
of Vesey 's, which in my opinion forecasts the
direction of some of his later experiments; it was
with others in a parcel of MSS. handed to me
after his death, which took place suddenly, and
was attributed to failure of the heart's action,
though readers of the story may find indications
of a more recondite cause. The story of Robert
has been still more recently notified to me, and is
introduced because the phantom has points which

43 INTRODUCTIOI^.

differentiate it from others of the astral type, and,
altliough the manifestations appear to have been
motiveless, this publication of the particulars,
together with the capital portrait of the phantom,
drawn from memory by the artist to whom he
appeared, may be a means to the identification of
the person, and lead to the elucidation of the
mystery connected with its periodical reappear-
ance.

r^

TIic Dark Sliadozv,

IN November, 1888, I was ordered to relieve
Nurse Rose at Ikacknal House, Kbcry, where
she liad been her full term of six weeks. It was a
hopeless case, and I had of late had so many that
I felt disheartened, and was so dismayed at the
cheerless aspect of the deserted, straggling village,
and more particularly of the lonely house on its
outskirts, that I was inclined to sacrifice my career
and return forthwith to Kyrwick with Nurse Rose :
many times since I have wished that I had done so.
Nurse Rose was not long in getting away ; a farmer
drove her to the station. I watched the spring-
cart as long as it was in sight, then shut the heavy
iron gate in the old high wall, and burst out crying.
I walked slowly up the weedy path through the
neglected and desolate garden, with its dark gloomy
evergreens and leafless old trees. It was already
becoming dark, and I saw, or thought I saw, some-
thing like a luiman figure, dimly discernible,

44 THE DARK SHADOW.

crouching behind some overgrown and gnarled
espah'ers at the far end of the garden. I hastened
to the front door, which I had left ajar ; but it
closed with a bang before I reached it, and no
sooner had the echo it produced died out than I
heard an ominous chuckle ; it seemed close at my
side. There was nothing for it but to make my
way round by the espaliers to the other door, and
this I did with face averted and as fast as my legs
could take me. The little village girl, our sole
establishment, was astonished to sec me out of
breath and sobbing in her kitchen ; my manner
frightened her, and she never got over her aversion,
which was unfortunate, for she and her mother,
who came once or twice to char, were the only
people to speak to.

My unfortunate patient, however, required
constant care. Poor woman, I hardly knew how
to take her at first ; she was so importunate, so
querulous, so insistent upon constant and im-
mediate attention, that I thought she would weary
me to death ; but I found that it was because she
was afraid to be alone, and not that she had
determined to have the full value of her money
in service, as it is the manner of some coarse

THE DARK SHADOW. 45

natures to exact. For fifty years she had lived
alone and uncared for in that dreary village,
unloving and unloved ; there appeared to be no
relative to solace her age, or comfort her dying
moments with sympathy. To the doctor also she
was almost a stranger, and although she suffered
from a wondrous number of diseases, not one had
the merit of being uncommon or interesting.
Chronic bronchitis, with dropsy, a sphacelitic
limb and senile atrophy, are merely trouble-
some and hopeless.

It was indceda dj;cadfu[ti^me. The close, stuffy
sick-room with bronchitis-kettle always steaming,
and the air reeking of Iodoform, nauseous com-
pounds, and the ever-prevailing odour of death ;
the huge four-post bedstead and its heavy curtains;
the heavy, well-polished press ; the equally sub-
stantial and inelegant chest-upon-chest ; the dirty
and foxed engravings in their worm-eaten frames;
the badly-polished bare floor and rush-bottomed,
cruelly angular, and impossible chairs ; these and
other reminders of that age when people regarded
hardship, torture, and agony as daily necessaries,
all added to the prevailing gloom — a gloom which
was not enlivened by such glimpses of day as

46 THE DARK SHADOW.

one obtained through the small latticed window,
o'ershadowed by the huge arms of an elm from
which the vigour of youth had long since departed.

Then the doctor, a grumpy, dried-up, ill-at-
easc old bachelor, whom nothing could please,
barely noticed me — I suppose I have Nurse Rose
to thank for that — and had nothing to say to his
patient. Then the mild-faced, soulless curate, who
was a sort of hereditary incumbent, nephew to
a vicar who invariably wintered in the South and
passed the summer in Scotland. The charwoman,
Kate's mother, a grasping, cruel, bargain-driving
peasant woman, and a young, very boorish, taci-
turn farmer, who drove me back to the station at
Soltun-in-the-Marsh, were the only other persons to
whom I spoke except the village lawyer, Mr. Shum.
He came but once, ostensibly to see Mrs. Bailey,
and assure me that the nursing-fee would be paid ;
really I think to see me ; for he asked me to visit
him at Frog Hall — what a name for a house! — on
Sunday afternoon and try his Madeira. A would-
be waggish and not at all nice man, Mr. Shum. I
was glad when his visit ended.

Then out of doors dull November ; dead leaves
strewn thickly over dank grass, and muddy roads,

O-

THE DARK SHADOW. 47

rotten sticks which cracked, and bursting acorns
which crunched beneath one's feet ; a sleepy-
village, with dirty cottages, dilapidated church,
and a barn for a school ; pools of water in fields
and roads, and ponds hidden by dead rushes ;
drizzle, fog, the churchyard smell of Nature in
extremis ; no paint, no life, no colour, no solidity
anywhere visible ; rather decrepit walls, worn-out
thatch, cracking boughs, huge, waving black poplars
— their sooty trunks at every angle but a right one
— moist leaves and skeletons of leaves; old withered
hags ; children of stunted growth ; dejected curs
too ill to yelp ; heavy-limbed, leaden-eyed, listless
men ; lazy pigs rooting for offal. Such are my
recollections of Ebery.

All through, the house was cheerless. In the
damp, unused hall an old mildewed hunting-whip
hung against the wall over the head of a mangy
fox, which, cut off close behind the ears, and with
only one glass eye, grinned like a death's head at
a moth-eaten jay perched in a broken case over
the door. The rooms were even more gloomy :
threadbare carpets, the furniture rickety and
angular and scant ; the curtains thin, colourless,
and patched ; the linen blinds of Isabella hue and

48 THE DARK SHADOW.

full of holes, and the ceiling cracked and dirty,
and ornamented with long-deserted cobwebs ; and
peering into the gloom of the corners one noticed
tiny heaps of wood dust and the shrivelled-up
corpses of insects long since dead. There was no
sign of life, neither cat, nor dog, neither mouse nor
fly ; a stray reptile which had wandered from the
congenial dampness of the moss-covered yard had
yielded its low life, and lay mummified on the
flagged floor at the edge of a mat too rotten
to raise.

*

On the second day Kate, our tiny, juvenile
maid-of-all-work, told me that on the third floor,
in the room farthest from that in which my patient
lay, a man lived. "The woman's son," she said, "a
poor creature, but evil disposed ; at enmity with his
dying mother, and barely able to keep life in his
own body." Kate attended to him, but he mostly
foraged for himself when she was absent from the
kitchen, for he possessed the cunning common to
those whose intellect has only in part developed.

For more than a fortnight my life there was
simply dull. There was no change in the condition
of the patient ; she was not only resigned to death,
but anxious for a termination to her suffering. The

*

THE DARK SHADOW. 49

little girl attended to us as she was able, but was
an unconscionable time on her errands. The doctor
came in and hummed and hahed ; the curate
called thrice, the postman called once — with a
note for mc from the matron — and time dragged
on, my odd hours being spent in reading aloud
Paley's Evidences, or Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying,
to my listless patient.

The monotony was becoming dreadful ; it
wanted but a month to Christmas, and it seemed
possible that I should have to while it away amidst
the in festivity of Ebery.

In the middle drawer of the chest-upon-che.st
was a little store of money upon which wc drew
for our daily supplies. As I saw it dwindle to very
small proportions, I fear I longed for it to become
exhausted ; only in order to see where the next
supply, if any, would come from ; everything
was so insulse. My patient, I thought, took very
little interest in it, until one day she accidentally
lisped something which made me more careful of
her trifling hoard ; she was not a lovable object,
barely likable, but really I felt more for her than
for many who were far more interesting.

On the last Friday in November I noticed a

50 THE DARK SHADOW.

change ; there could be no doubt she was sinking
fast. This the doctor corroborated ; she had
repeatedly asked him when the end would come.
He was now able to tell her. "At four o'clock
to-day," he said shortly. He bade her a more
kindly farewell than I thought him capable of,
gave me a few final instructions, bade mc good-
bye, and went.

My patient seemed much relieved ; she would
not allow me to send for the curate, " Not again,
nurse, not again — you will stay with pie — tell no
one," she whispered. Of course I reassured her,
and I told no one.

"When's her goin' to dic.^" asked Kate bluntly,
the next time I entered the kitchen.

I answered as kindly as I could.

"'Cos I ain't a goin' to stay here while hcr's
dyin'. Mother says I needn't."

" What has your mother to do with it .'' "

" D 'yer think I 'd be here now if 't warn't fur
mother.' Her'd thrape mc if I went whum, but
her sed I needn't stay while her's dyinV

" Are you afraid .'' "

" Afeared ! A course I 'm afeared, so you '11 be
by-and-bye. I suppose you dursen't leave ,'' "

•

THE DARK SHADOW. 51

" I should not think of leaving, nor must you," I
replied, and I escaped quickly from the kitchen,
for there was something in the girl's manner which
alarmed me.

Slowly the hours went by, the silence broken
only by the often reiterated " How long ? " or
"What time is it now?" of my patient, in whose
condition there was no change. As it grew dusk
I put the clock on half an hour and lit my small
lamp. Four o'clock came ; five o'clock ; my patient
grew restless. Six ; seven ; she accused me of
deceiving her. And so on until midnight, when
she fell into a troubled sleep. In the morning she
seemed stronger, but depressed in spirits, and I
could not rouse her. On Saturdays Kate's mother
went to char at Frog Hall. No one came to
Bracknal House. Hour after hour crawled slowly
by. My patient besought me to end her suffering;
if only I would give her a treble dose of medicine,
or snatch from under her the pillows on which
she was propped ; anything which would snap
the slender thread which held her to this world.
These requests were so earnest, so often repeated,
the state of the patient so piteous, that I fear I
became somewhat unnerved. Once only I looked

52 THE DARK SHADOW.

out of the window ; and saw an old man with
his spade over his shoulder limping towards the
churchyard. I turned quickly away, and my
patient recommenced. She upbraided me with
want of heart ; reproached me for my attentions
to her, and cried at my refusal to do her wish.
"If I only had more money to give, you would
do it, you know you would," she gasped exasper-
atingly, and all I could do was to sit at the dressing
table, with my back towards her, my head upon
my hand, and bear with it. All through that long
Saturday, all through the long, long dreary night,
I had to hear it ; often with hands clenched and
grinding teeth, and my heart listening to what I
could not shut my ears to.

At last day broke. My patient was worn, and
I half mad ; our solitude was unbearable. I told
Kate she would have to sit with my patient, and
I — went to church : made my way through the
thick fog which hung over the village, but cleared
to show me a newly-dug grave yawning beneath
the dripping yew. Everyone knew that Mrs.
Bailey was dead ; the doctor had told them so.
They appeared, too, surprised to see me, but after
service no one spoke to me except the doctor.

0-

' THE DARK SHADOW. 53

"Why has not Shum sent up his man to take you
to the station ? " he asked. I told him it was
probably because his patient was not yet dead.
" She died at four o'clock on Friday afternoon,"
he said. "Confound it, won't you understand .''"

" I am afraid I do not."

The doctor fumed. " The thing is doncl' he
said. " I made out the certificate yesterday,
Fluck has it now, he'll be round for the body
to-morrow. You understand, don't you .'' "

" I think it will be best for you to come with
me now," I answered.

" 1 1 Oh, no, not again. I can do nothing.
Good morning."

I went back alone, Kate seemed stupefied with
terror at having been left so long ; in an hour or
so things resumed their usual course.

As soon as possible I shut out the heavy day,
but I could not make the room cheery ; even my
lamp refused to burn, and had to be replaced with
snuffy candles. As I turned over the words of
the doctor, and looked at the patient, I thought
it strange that the woman was not dead. " Why
could she not die ? "

Perhaps I spoke the question ; at any rate the

E

54 THE DARK SHADOW.

patient understood ; she groaned. " I will tell
you, nurse, I will tell you. I shall not die to-day
unless j^« — ah, you won't! but listen to me."

I drew a chair near, and bent over to hear her
story, told in short gasps : painfully, discon-
nectedly, but understandable.

More than fifty years ago, she said, she had
loved the man who owned the house in which
we were. During his absence she was faithless,
or rather was coerced into marrying Mr. Bailey,
a man of fierce temper and violent disposition,
and who was both cruel and resentful. When
her lover returned he committed suicide, " here in
this room," she gasped — " with a saddle-pistol —
at dead of night, on the last day of November,
fifty years ago."

" And your husband } "

" He swore that I had been false, and left me,
but vowed that — in fifty years — dead or alive — he
would return and be avenged on me. ' When your
dead lover will no longer be able to protect you,'
as he said."

" But your husband is dead } "

" Yes, yes, dead."

" And your son .-' "

r^

THE DARK SHADOW. 55

" That thiug ! He hates me — hates me — more
than his father did."

*' But you have not injured him ? "

" No, but — I could not love — him — and he has
— cursed me."

" What can you fear } None can hurt you."

" What can you know, child ? For fifty years
I have never been outside but ill befell me, it is
only here — in the house where he died — that there
is peace — for I am forgiven by Judi ; I must join
him before the other returns,"

"No, no," I replied quickly, "you will soon be
at peace ; where nought can trouble you more."

" No. It is not true."

The death-bed is no place for argument. My
patient was terribly agitated, so anxious did she
appear to hear my answer, that her look frightened
me. I took her hard, wrinkled hand in mine, and
kneeling prayed for her earnestly, and as I prayed
I heard short mocking laughs, and at each she
clutched at my hand convulsively as if in terror.
I dared not look up, my tongue was stilled, I
shook with fright. Then all was silent except the
heavy short breathing of the patient, her broken
sobs and bronchial hiss. In time I gained sufficient

56 THE DARK SHADOW.

courage to look up. Her terror-stricken gaze filled
me with despair ; I would have prayed but could
not.

My patient was the first to speak.

" You are afraid."

" No, no," I answered.

" Then pray,"

1 could not. I passed my hand over my face,
tried to persuade myself that I was only weak,
nervous from long watching, that really I was not
afraid ; but I got up from the bedside, and said
that I would call Kate to serve ted — that I felt
faint. The look of anguish on my patient's face
as I made these poor excuses was heart-rending,
and filled me with shame. Nevertheless, and
notwithstanding her piteous appeal to remain with
her, I went along the corridor to the head of the
stairs, and called Kate. There was no answer.
I went down to the kitchen ; it was empty, and the
fire had burned out. I called again and again, but
obtained no reply. Loneliness brought back the
feeling of fright, and I turned upstairs eager for
companionship — even that of my dying patient.

I paused at the top of the stairs, determining
to regain courage. Everything was explicable.

THE DARK SHADOW. 57

Kate had run away home. There was nothing to
fear ; no harm could come to me. I ought to be
ashamed of my cowardice. I was too familiar with
death for that to frighten me, and these and
kindred thoughts resolved me to be brave; but my
newly-recovered courage quickly left me, when,
as I neared the bedroom door, I heard sounds
which my patient, bedridden as she was, could not
possibly have made. Footsteps were audible, the
drawing out of drawers, angry exclamations,
splutterings, mingled with the groans of my
patient. I remember peering into the room and
seeing the strange form of a man, at the head of
the bed, bending over it. I drew hastily back.
Then came a faint cry, "Nurse! Nurse!" I
fear that I staggered rather than walked into
the room. Something told me that it was only
the son ; and with any living creature I felt
able to deal.

This strange creature was gesticulating violently
a few inches from his mother's face, muttering
incoherently, occasionally spluttering words which
were half intelligible, " Papersh crrsse."

" What is it you want .-* " I asked firmly. He
turned his face towards me, a small, pinchcd-up

58 THE DARK SHADOW.

hairless face, with eyes deep sunken, and lips
drawn tightly across broken teeth. He was
wretchedly clothed, and his ill-shapen form thin to
attenuation ; his limbs were long, but his body
bowed — a tabid, flcshless, cretinous creature who
might have been seventeen or seventy for all one
could tell, but evidently weak and unable to
control his movements.

He hissed a reply, the import of which I did
not understand.

" You must go, if you please," I said. " I have
to attend to my patient."

He understood, for he expostulated energeti-
cally.

"At once, please," I said, holding the door.

I never saw a face so full of evil, perfectly
demoniacal in its malignance. " Crsse womssh,"
he hissed ; but he did not go.

Unfortunately I could not hear my patient, nor
could I approach closer whilst he was there. I
therefore grasped him firmly by the arm, thinking
to remove him ; but as my fingers closed I felt
that he was as strong and unyielding as one in a
cataleptic fit, and instinctively my fingers relaxed
until there was but the slightest pressure. "You

THE DARK SHADOW. 59

must go now, please," I said. " Come again if you
wish — in an hour."

Somewhat to my surprise he yielded, reluctantly
it is true, and with jerky movements made his way
to the door, hissing and muttering and gesticulating
wildly with his hands. No sooner had he passed
the threshold than I sprang to the door, shut it
upon him, and locked it.

He turned in a terrific fury, hammered at the
door, and made the house echo with weird, horrible
noises. I appreciated the mistake I had made,
and opened the door, but blocked the entrance
by confronting him.

" Have you forgotten anything 1 " I asked as
calmly as I could.

A grimace was his only reply.

" Come when you will after eight o'clock," I
continued, " but come quietly ; you must go now."
I tendered him a candle, pretending it was that he
had forgotten. He motioned that he did not need
it, and turned a\yay. " The door will be unlocked
after eight, but do not trouble us without cause,"
I called after him.

The poor patient was decidedly worse. I com-
forted her as well as circumstances permitted. I

6o THE DARK SHADOW.

must confess that I was elated at the success of
my encounter with the intruder. After I had made
and taken tea, and thought the matter over, I
concluded that my senses had been deceived, and
that I had frightened myself needlessly ; in short,
I recovered m)- nerve, and awaited composedly
to carry out whatever wishes my patient might
express. She requested that I should read to her,
and this I did. It seemed to distract her attention
from herself, but not for long; then she made me
promise that I would not leave her again that
night for anything; to this I agreed. ' I sat close
to the bed and kept her hand in mine, only loosing
it when I needed both to minister to her wants. I
remember well looking into her face, and trying to
trace in the coarse features the beauty which half
a century before had attracted two men, and years
before that had doubtless been the happy, smiling
face of a child. I was not very successful, for
surely never were human lineaments so brutalised
by selfishness and fear ; but I felt an intimacy as
of years. What little there was in her life I knew,
and I remember that I felt puzzled then, as I am
puzzled now, as to what useful purpose such an
existence as hers had been could serve.

THE DARK SHADOW. 6i

She regarded me as her sole hope, gazed at me
with a look of longing that was akin to love, and
listened to every trifling thing I said, as though
her salvation depended upon understanding it.
No one, I am sure, had extended sympathy to
her, and it was iliat she lacked. My talk was of
such trifling matters as are distinctly human, and
she became so far interested as to forget her
immediate state. I was pleased that I had calmed
her terrors, and she appeared to be so grateful for
the relation of the few trifling private occurrences
which concerned only myself, that I ventured to
tell her of a weightier matter, one which I ap-
proached with some diffidence, and blushing like
a school girl ; a matter 1 would have confided to
a loving mother, perhaps to one other ; but its
relation to this poor dying woman was as pleasing
to her as it was surprising to me. How I came to
say so much I do not know ; perhaps because I
knew she was dying, and would keep my poor
little secret. Of course I was crying when my story
finished, and the tears were rolling down her fat,
furrowed cheeks too. It was unutterably silly,
but I kissed her; then dried my eyes, and stood
at the foot of the bed looking at her confusedly.

62 THE DARK SHADOW.

"God bless you, dear," she wliispcred, and
turned her face away. Perhaps I had touched a
chord wliich the orthodox and usual conversation
would have missed.

Then I sat down at the table and wrote for a
short time in my journal ; read again to my patient,
but she seemed to wish to chat. She complimented
me upon the prettincss of our uniform, expressed
herself as satisfied with the white cuffs and the
long streamers to the cap. I wished to humour
her, and crossed over and snuffed the candle, that
she could sec better, and she told mc that I was

really handsome and carried my odd years

like a girl of seventeen. I just bowed my head
and replaced the snuffers, and when I looked up I
saw a man's face staring at mc out of the highly
polished wood of the wardrobe. I remember that
I drew a very quick breath, and the face, which
had anything but a pleasing expression upon it,
slowly died away from view as I looked.

I did not cr)' out; I do not think that I betrayed
my fear by any tremor. I could not trust myself
to speak, nor should I have spoken of what I had
seen ; but the very silence seemed to convey a
knowledge of all to the dying woman.

T//£ DARK SHADOW. 6^

" What time ? " she murmured.

" A quarter past twelve," I replied.

" No. You arc fast."

I remembered then that I had put on my clock
fully thirty minutes the day upon which she was
to have died.

" Perhaps," I replied.

" Yes, yes. Do not leave me — you do not know."
Then came some terrible gasps, and she was shaken
with convulsive tremors.

I made a supreme effort to be calm ; I felt that
I must see something beyond that terrible room.
I went to the window, and pulling aside the blind
looked out into the night. I was surprised to sec
that the fog had lifted, the moon shone brightly,
the whole garden from the house to the gate was
clearly visible. There was of course no one stirring;
the silence was only broken by the dripping of the
fog-damp from the boughs. As I gazed at the
gate I distinctly heard it clang as though pushed
to in haste, but it had not stirred. There was
something coming along the path, for I heard the
footsteps as of a person stealing, as on tip-toe,
towards the house ; it was clearer than day, but I
could see no one— no thing.

64 THE DARK SHADOW.

" Nurse — nurse — it comes ! "'

I went to the bed, and took the woman's hand
in mine ; she clung to it with all the strength of
her feeble grasp.

"I will not leave you," I stammered.

Again that face appeared in the wardrobe — ivas
there when I looked, and faded away before my
gaze.

The head of the bedstead was towards the door.
I stood with my back to the door, facing the fire-
place ; on my left, the window ; on the right, the
bed ; and beyond it, at the foot, the table, with the
candle burning brightly upon it. I am thus
particular because the occurrences of that night
can be set down only as I remember them, not
perhaps in the order of their e.xact sequence.

First (of that I am sure) the son came into the
room, staggering, staring blindly, and ever blinking
his strange deeply-sunk eyes. He groped his way
to the wardrobe, opened it, and passed his hands
along the upper shelves ; brought from there a
small bundle of yellow papers, waved them above
his head in an unmeaning fashion, and with them
tottered from the room. His young-old wizened
face, his terribly emaciated frame, and his ex-

THE DARK SHADOW. 6$

pression of wicked cunning, I can see now as
plainly as though he stood before me as he did
then, and as I write I hear the peculiar chuckle,
the only sound he made then.

His footsteps died away in the corridor. All
around, in the house and out of it, everything was
still — still as the dreadful calm before the hurricane.
The silence was broken by two sharp blows, as
though struck with a withy switch on the window-
pane. There was a firmer grip of my hand, a
muttered cry of " Help ! " and I reeled as I saw
glide into the room a shapeless, shadowy pillar of
sooty blackness, larger than human size, but with
a form no better defined than that of a huge
cactus : without marks, or lines, or excrescences.

It passed round to the foot of the bed, my gaze
firmly riveted upon it. For a moment it passed
between me and the candle, and obscured the light,
and I remember noticing that the bronchitis-kettle
on the fire ceased to emit its tiny puff of steam ;
then it again moved to the foot of the bed, and
the room instantly and perceptibly darkened, just
like the darkening of the stage at a second-rate
theatre, when they alter the scene from noonday to
dusk. Then this thing extended ; as it were a

66 THE DARK SHADOW.

shapeless shadowy arm, or limb ivas stretching
from one side and closing the door of the
wardrobe ; then instantly another, like the trunk
of an elephant, reached out to the candle, enveloped,
and extinguished it ; all in very much less time
than I can recall the memory. Then, in the glow
of the fire and the dim light of the moon shining
through the dirty, stained blinds, this sooty shadow
extended upwards, bent under the canopy of the
bedstead, reached in a straight line from the head
to the foot of the bed immediately above the
dying woman, then spread out in breadth and
descended. There was a bright flash of light, a
loud shriek from the corridor, a convulsive tug at
my hand ; voices, the hurrying of many feet, low
groans, ear-piercing yells, sobs, stifled cries — but I
had swooned.

When I recovered, the room was still dark, and
I was alone. The candle had burned out in the
socket ; there was a dull, red glow from the lower
bars of the grate, and all was still, the silence
broken only by the almost inaudible slow ticking
of my clock.

I knew that my patient was dead.

There is very little more to tell. The affairs of

Cr.

THE DARK SHADOW. 67

the dead arc no concern of mine, and the little I
said to the doctor next day elicited only the fact
that Mrs. Bailey had occupied the house at a
peppercorn rent for fifty years. The lease ended,
strange to say, the day of her death; and as she
appeared to be very poor it is possible that this
may have made her anxious to quit the world
when she did.

My stay at the house of the dark shadow almost
terminated my career as a nurse. My nerve was
shattered, and for a long time I was too ill to
undertake any duty. However, twelve months
amid the brighter surroundings of a convalescent
home have assisted my recovery, although, I am
sure, the events will never fade from my memory,
nor, I fancy, will their freshness be impaired by
new adventures.

Retribution.

I.

THE sun had set, and the throng gathered
on the gibbet-hill over against Durbuy dis-
persed. A few lingered expecting that at sundown
the death's man, Maclet, would administer the coup
de grace to Bosly Velroux, whom he had that
morning broken on the wheel, and who now lay
groaning on the triangle ten feet above their heads.
The bourrcaii, however, satisfied with his work, had
no inclination to again mount the scafibld, and his
young assistant had no liking for the horrid task ;
so the two climbed up into their cart, taking their
twine and wire with them, and made a seat of the
hurdle upon which the wretched Bosly had been
drawn out of the town in the morning. No one
cared to stay longer, and the idlers, although they
would not ride with the executioners, followed
closely at the tail of the vehicle, and descended to
the inhabited valley.

0.

RETRIBUTION. 69

Very dim were the shadows thrown by the
scaffold and its hideous burden, before any human
creature again trod the high land ; then as dusk
mingled with darkness a young girl came from the
direction of the hamlet of Rom, and with quick
steps made her way directly to the scaffold. She
peered up anxiously at the wheel, from which the
blood was still dripping.

" Bosly ! Bosly ! " she called.

A groan was the reply.

She drew out from under her blouse a long
thin rope of knotted hay-bands, and removing her
sabot, tied one end round it, put a fragment of
limestone in the toe, and pitched it high into the
air. After several attempts she succeeded in
getting it over a cross-bar of the scaffold, then
drew the two ends towards one of the three
uprights supporting the triangle, twisted the rope
round the post, made the ends fast, and quickly
scaled to where the wheel lay.

" Bosly ! my Bosly ! " she sobbed.

She wiped the blood and froth from his mouth
and nostrils with some damp lint she had brought.

"They said thou wert living, and I came, my
Bosly ! "

F

70 RETRIBUTION.

The man looked at her and recognised her.
"Mis(S," he groaned.

" Thy Mist* ! and thou know'st me ? "

She placed a drinking-flask of bcechwood to his
lips, and he gulped down the contents greedily.

She looked at his terrible wounds, and clenched
her hands in grief and miserj'.

"Thou hast not forgotten, Mise," he murmured.

" I live but to avenge thee, my Bosly. Oh cruel !
cruel ! " Her sobs stayed her words.

" Listen my Mise ! Jean Bex is now at Barvaux."

"I will kill him wherever he may be."

"Not if thou hatcst him — his torment must
endure longer than mine. Thou hatest him, Misd-.?"

" Even as thou dost, my Bosly."

" Thou forgettest not thy oath t "

" Until thou art avenged seven score times thy
Mis(§ cannot forget."

" God give thee strength, my Misd"

" The good God will give thy Mis^ strength to
avenge thee."

"Amen! Amen!"

" Thou must go, Mise."

" Not whilst thou art in torment."

"If thou'rt seen here they'll kill thee, Mis^ ;

0.

RETRIBUTION. 71

burn thee in the market-place at Marche, or cast
thee into the donjon at Laroche."

" I fear not, my Bosly."

" What seest thou, Mis6 ? "

"'Tis but the crows flying near, I will not
leave thee, Bosly."

" The crows ! " A look of terror came upon his
face. The girl bent low and kissed him repeatedly.

"Thy father knoweth that I confessed nothing
at the torture."

" He hath told me."

"At the fifth coqiicviari I accused Nycs, Jesu
forgive me. Is he free .'' "

" Free as air, my Bosly. Thou wcrt brave, and
thou goest from me "

" 'T is not they, 't is Bex who accused falsely.
'T is he who leaves thy Bosly to languish in
torment till the crows eat his living "

" No ! no ! my Bosly ! "

" Thou art brave, my Mise."

" Canst thou ask it ? "

" Thou wilt not leave thy Bosly to be killed by
the foul beasts of the air } "

" Aye, even so much I dare."

" Promise ! "

72 RETRIBUTION.

" I promise."

" See how brightly the stars shine, my Mis6.
Even as they thou wilt be if thou dost as thou
hast vowed."

"Then the brightest of all stars, thy Mise."

"And no crow so black, no beast so foul as thee,
if thou breakest thy vow ! "

" Break my vows after seeing thee thus mangled
here ! I could serve them as thou art served, and
strike but one blow a year that their torment
mifjht endure the longer."

Her savagery pleased him.

" Tell me again how thou hatest him," he pleaded.

" I hate him as I love thee, with all my soul."

So they talked, until the cold night air
heightened the fever of Bosly Velroux, and thus
before daybreak it was only a dead body that
Misd guarded, and into the heart of which she
plunged again and again the short miscricorde
she had picked up on a deserted battle-field.

Then in the bright autumn morning she made
her way over the crisp grass to the Devil's Seat
overlooking the swift-flowing Ourthe at Barvaux,
and tore her rope of knotted bands into hay by
the way.

RETRIBUTION. 73

II.

It was not often that Horace Vesey was favoured
with a call by Dr. Victor Colquhon ; for the latter
was a young man with a rapidly-growing practice,
and although his increasing fortune was due to
his success in the hypnotic treatment of dipso-
maniacs, kleptomaniacs, and other decadents, he
had to some extent forsaken the " promise of his
spring," and joined forces with the materialistic
section. He had taken as his motto Facta non
verba. He practised, he did not preach. The facts
of animal magnetism satisfied him ; he had no
time for ideas ; so that, although he was constantly
employed, he made no progress — that is to say
what Vesey considered progress ; the Income Tax
Commissioners thought differently.

Dr. Colquhon, however, was not disinclined to
consult Vesey whenever he had a case which was
not within a reasonable time amenable to mesmeric
influence, and he now had a patient who troubled
him sorely.

" He was introduced to me by Wimpole of

74 RETRIBUTION.

Stockton, or Sunderland, or some place that way,"
said Colquhon, " suffering from insomnia. Of
course he had been drugged to death, and was
half poisoned with morphia when I first had him.
A very difficult case, but after a time I became
hopeful ; but then I knew only part of the truth.
Progress was checked, the patient grew rapidly
worse. I knew that something was being withheld,
but at last he told me all. I have the story
written out ; for I knew you idealists rely upon
an exact substratum of fact. Read it and tell me
what you think."

" What opinion have you formed .' " asked
Vesey.

"Oh, the man is mad, there is no doubt about
that ; but I want to cure him, and I am persuaded
that vou can tell me how."

Ube Statement q>X Raines 3Becbinan.

"I was born at G in the year 1861. So far

as I know I have no hereditary taint. Until after
my marriage I enjoyed perfect health, and in the
year 1884 was accepted as a first-rate risk by the

Life Assurance Co, for ;i^3,000, which policy

was made over to M , now my wife, by an

RETRIBUTION. 75

ante-nuptial settlement. With reference to M ,

she is two years my junior, I felt drawn towards
her when we first met (a year and a half before
marriage), it being a case of what Goethe terms
elective affinity. I was quite happy when she
consented to be my wife. From the day of our
first meeting to the moment of writing this paper
we have never quarrelled, nor has there been any
serious disagreement between us. My wife, both
before and since our marriage, has had good
health, and the trouble I have experienced has
never been felt by her; and although she is very
sympathetic in other matters, she is, apparently,
quite unconcerned at my sufferings — she says they
are wholly imaginary.

"My trouble commenced during our honeymoon;
I am unable to fix the exact date. My earliest
recollection is of a sensation : the feeling one has
upon awakening after a bad dream, the details
of the dream itself being entirely forgotten. I
dreamed but rarely before I was married ; after-
wards, as I have stated, I remember being
awakened by a sort of nightmare. At first the
impressions of the dream were faint, and I quickly
fell asleep again. The next night, or the next

76 RETRIBUTION.

night but one, the dream would be repeated ; then
it occurred not only every night, but twice, even
thrice, and the details were all forgotten on
awakening, but the impression ever grew. The
sense of oppression increased ; the agony became
so great I dared not, after awakening, again fall
asleep. V>y my side my wife lay sleeping calmly
and happily, a sweet smile on her baby face, and
often her hand thrown over me as in the caress
with which she dozed into unconsciousness. I
took a sleeping-draught; for one night my
slumber was undisturbed, but I arose in the
morning unrefreshcd. Repeating the experiment,
I found to my dismay that the opiate not only
failed to prevent the recurrence of the dream,
but increased the agonising sensation I always
experienced on awakening. I at once consulted

Dr. W . lie attributed the restlessness to

business worries, and prescribed a change of air
and scene. It was impossible to act upon his
suggestion at once, but I arranged fur a short
continental tour, and started as soon as business
engagements allowed.

"At that time the after-effects of the dream
were felt by me as a distinct sensation of pain in

V

RETRIBUTION. 77

my right arm and leg, a terrible oppression of the
chest, and a prevailing languor I cannot specify.
The remedies prescribed by the doctors were
taken; all had the same effect — they heightened
the sensation, and the insomnia increased. I
therefore discontinued medicine, and took narcotics
but sparingly, and only when in fits of des-
peration.

" The tour my wife and I had planned was
through Brussels and the Belgian Ardennes to
Luxemburg, thence to the Black Forest, and home
by Strasburg and Paris. We stayed at Ghent and
Bruges, and there my malady increased. At
Brussels I first remembered the dream — that
terrible tragedy I have endured so many hundreds
of times since.

" I felt that I was bound to a wheel ; that with
a heavy bar of iron some person struck at me,
breaking each of my limbs, not always at the
first blow, for in all thirteen blows were felt, the
two last crushing in the ribs of my right and left
sides respectively. The pain was excruciating
and the languor intolerable ; I felt beside myself
with frenzy. But all these details I have already
given you by word of mouth.

78 RETRIBUTION.

" We hurriedly left Brussels, and the next place
at which we stayed was Barvaux. I had never been
there before, indeed had never been out of England,
but the place seemed strangely familiar. As we
walked over the hills to Durbuy I saw nothing
that was fresh; the ruined chapel, the arched cliffs,
the woods, the slaty-topped hills — one and all I
had seen somewhere. I did not need to ask or to
be shown the way. Durbuy bored us, and we
walked out to an adjoining hamlet, the name of
which I forget if I ever knew it, but the locality
was familiar. Then we walked towards Barvaux.
Tired, we sat down to rest. After the manner of
those suff"cring from insomnia I dozed. The dream
came again, more vivid than ever before. The
wheel I saw was now mounted on a triangular
scaffold right where we were, one corner pointing
to Barvaux, the other to Durbuy. I could have
shrieked with terror, but nothing, my wife states,
escaped my lips.

"After I had endured my martyrdom, and sunk
into that ever-increasing agony which is death, I
noticed that a figure was regarding me. In time,
for I was feeble and confused with the torture I
endured, I saw the face of the figure which looked

0.

RETRIBUTION. 79

upon me and gloated over my anguish — it was
the face of my wife !
" I can write no more you do not already know.

We left that accursed district at once. Dr. W

persuaded me to confide in you. You know that
your treatment for a time alleviated my suffering.
The dream returns, is ever-recurrent ; many, many
times a day I have had to endure it, and always
with the full details as for the first time experienced
at Barvaux. Is it to /ci// me ? Will it first drive
me mad? Is there nothing in medicine, nothing
in science, which will give me twenty-four, aye
twelve, or even six hours' relief? My torment is
unendurable."

Vesey read without showing that he felt the least
interest or sympathy. He tossed the paper idly
aside, asking, " Have you his wife's statement ? "

" Great Scott, no!" vehemently replied Colquhon.

" Well, you advised a separation, of course."

" Naturally."

" And it does not succeed, or you would not be
here."

" I think it might have done, but the fellow
would not keep away, or go far enough away. I

So RETRIBUTION.

\vorked very hard ; he was the very worst subject
to hypnotise I ever met. If it had not been that I
was proud of my reputation in the matter, I should
not have persevered to the extent I did. Well, to
some extent he got better, and I had him so far
under control that he at last consented to take a
voyage in a sailing ship to New Zealand, and leave
his wife here with her friends. The fellow had not
been gone three months before he was back ; got
put ashore, or aboard a passing vessel, and turns up
declaring that he was worse whilst going away
than when returning."

Vcsey did not appear to have been listening,
lie had before him two large musty folios he had
reached from one of the closed presses, and was
calmly turning over the leaves. " There is no
doubt this is the case mentioned in a note to
Damhoudere, the Antwerp folio edition of 1648 ; if
so, full particulars are contained in the ' Archives
du grand Grefitc des Echevins,' province of Liege.
It appears that some time during the rule of
Archbishop Ernest, probably about 1609, one
Bosly Velroux was broken on the wheel at
Durbuy for some outlawry. Later, during the
period of Ferdinand, a woman called Mise de Rom,

r^

RETRIBUTION. 8i

or Derome, was accused of witchcraft at Laroche
by one Jean Bex ; he testified that by her sorcery
she caused him great suffering and damage both
to body and effects. This she denied. Put to the
torture, she accused Bex of having sworn falsely
and brought about the execution of the man
Velroux, and attributed the misery of Bex to the
remorse he felt at having caused the degradation
and punishment of an innocent man. There
appears to have been some investigation made ; for
Bex adhered to his statement later, and specified
the particular witchcraft, as being tortured with
brodequins and the wheel, and declared that on
these occasions he saw the accused Mise sitting on
the scaffold looking at him and gloating over his
anguish. The woman was then again put to the
torture, and declared that on the night of the
execution she had climbed on to the scaffold and
conversed with the culprit, and her words were
written down ; and she made oath that her accuser
knew at the time of this, and that it was his own
conscience which troubled him. This declaration
was sufficient to warrant Bex being put to the
torture, and we arc informed that he died at the
seventh coquemart. How this fact was twisted

82 RETRIBUTION,

round as corroborative evidence of the guilt of
Mise only a grcffier of that epoch could make
clear; but there is no doubt that Miso, after
lying for a time in a donjon of Laroche Castle,
was duly executed upon the accession of Maxi-
milian Henry to the episcopate ; that is to say,
about 1O50."

" And the only evidence you have to connect
tlicse two is the fancied retrocognition of a land-
scape by a hypersensitive neuropath ? "

" I have sufficient evidence to convince me ; it
is you who need the proof of connecting links."

" I do not hold the theory of reincarnation."

" Of course you do not. Whoever would think
you guilty of that heresy, Vic. .'' "

" Have your little joke, since it pleases you.
You overlook the fact that it is no trifling matter
to this poor fellow. Take a serious view of the
case."

" Your interesting patient with his imaginary
disorder."

" Insomnia is not hypochondriasis."

" Then disordered imagination, if you so prefer
it "

Dr. Colquhon made a gesture of dissent.

RETRIBUTION. 83

" We have his view of the trouble. Let us regard
it from his wife's standpoint."

" Why his wife's } "

" Is she consciously or unconsciously producing
his uncomfortable condition ? Has he wronged
her? Is it part of the vengeance of Bosly
Velroux ? Is it her revenge for the pain felt
by Mise Derome as she sped down the hill-
side at Laroche inside the barrel lined with
spikes ? "

" Was the woman killed that way } "

"You do not need to be told how they served
witches in Flanders in the middle of the seven-
teenth century."

" Wait ! The only particulars I have relating to
Mrs. Bechman are concerning a number of strange
star-shaped cicatrices on the face and arms. A
fine, tall, fair, clear-skinned woman but for these
viaculosa. The scars are just such as would be
produced by the incision of spikes."

" Colquhon of little faith ! A regarder of birth-
marks, moles, lines on the palm, creases of the skin
and their possible significance, yet ignoring the
obvious source of their origin. But we are agreed;
we assume that James Bechman two hundred and

84 RETRIBUTION.

fifty years ago was Jean Bex ; that M. was Mis6
of Rom ? "

" Assume it ? Yes, but it is only assumption."

" Assuming it, James Bcchman suffers what he
deserves."

" Man ! where is your pity ? "

" I feel none."

" No sympathy for his suffering } "

" None."

" Yet be merciful. Mercy is of all qualities
the "

" Pah ! Nature knows no such quality. Mercy
has no place in the scheme of creation. Mercy is
base currency, justice the only legal tender."

" Be just to him then."

" And to others."

" What will you do ? "

" Nothing."

"What am I to do to alleviate his torment .'' "

" Nothing."

" I must do something."

" Oh well ! Treat the symptoms in the usual
way as they arise. It will amount to '

There was a knock at the door. "A gentleman,
sir, to see Dr. Colquhon. Mr. Bechman "

0,

RETRIBUTION. 85

But the servant was pushed aside.

A tall large-formed man strode hurriedly into
the room. He was very thin, nervous, and
trembling like one worn with fever. His eyes
shone brightly, but his gaze was wandering. His
face was partly hidden by a bushy black beard
and very heavy eyebrows, but the darkness of the
hair, and the tiny bright red patches on each
cheek, only heightened his pallor. Every feature,
every line, every movement expressed his suffering;
his imaginary torment was a dreadful reality to
him.

His presence roused Vesey, but the emotion he
felt was betrayed by the restless movement of his
lips only; his eyes looked as dreamy as though he
saw nothing of what was taking place before
him.

" It is with me now, waking or sleeping ! " cried
the intruder. " Oh, Colquhon, do sovictJiing for
me ! I have not slept an instant since I saw you
yesterday, and I have suffered the torment six
times. Help me ! Save me ! You must ! You
shall!"

" Come, come now, my dear fellow, calm your-
self. No nonsense here ! " said Colquohn.

G

86 RETRIBUTION.

" Calm yourself ? See ! There 's the hurdle !
and the wheel ! " he pointed to the floor, and
looked at Vesey's thick Turkey pile in terror.
Then he clenched his fists, flexed his arms
spasmodically, and then threw himself to the
ground in a paroxysm.

Colquhon would have raised him, but Vesey
motioned him to be quiet. Then the wretched
man, with varied contortions, acted as though the
executioner were performing his barbarous work.
The limbs twitched, and shrank as from expected
blows ; and the man groaned and 'shrieked, and
called for mercy ; prayed and cursed by turns.
Then the paroxysm subsided, and he fell into a
state of torpor, groaning faintly and calling for
water.

Vesey was clumsily rolling a cigarette, Colquhon
was watching his patient, looking up from time to
time and glancing furtively at Vesey.

Then the man stirred as though awakening from
a deep sleep, looked listlessly about him, passed
his hand over his face and raised himself on one
elbow. Colquhon watched him closely but re-
mained silent. Then he appeared to recover him-
self; he arose, threw himself wearily into a low

r^

RETRIBUTION. 87

chair, put his elbows on his knees and buried his
face in his hands. For some time no one spoke ;
then the visitor asked :

" Does your friend know all ? "

Vesey answered immediately and with emphasis
" I know all."

" Can you help me ? "

" No one can help you."

" Then I must end my misery by death."

" You know that will not end it."

The man looked up in alarm. Two minutes of
oppressive silence elapsed before he asked, " What
am I to do .-• "

" Undo what you have done."

" I have done nothing," he expostulated weakly.

" So you say, so you tell your wife. This
statement of yours " — and he pushed the folded
paper away from him with his still unlighted
cigarette — " informs me to the contrary. You have
not written tlie truth. Goethe und Wahlver-
wandschaft, forsooth ! Your marriage was not for
love ; yours was but an affinity like that of the
base metal for a pure element which it consumes,
but is shrunken instead of enlarged by its nourish-
ment. More, you have dared to violate the

88 RETRIBUTION.

grandest emotion Nature has evolved. By what
false accusation did you separate your wife from
him whom she loved ? By what lies did you
coerce her into the loveless union with yourself?
You know the wrong you have done ; you know
a part of the punishment. What will cure you is
the sympathy of others, but this your sufferings
will never excite; and the greater they become the
more you will pity yourself and so feed your
malady. You know the remedy ; repair the injury
you have done unto others. Neither in time nor
eternity can you have justice until yoti have freely
rendered it ; you can decide ivhen. Take your
patient away, Colquhon, and leave him where he
may effect his own cure."

"But are these accusations true.-*" queried the
doctor incredulously.

"They are true," muttered the man, sitting
with hands clenched on his knees, and glaring
ashamedly at the carpet.

The doctor looked enquiringly at Vesey. " You
regard symptoms, I study causes," the other replied,
as he threw the unsmoked cigarette upon the
hearth, and walked to the door.

Tlie Sleepless Man.
I.

THE POST TRAIN.

A FEW minutes after the train had left St.
Petersburg, the passengers in the sleeping-car
had arranged their packages and sat down to talk
to each other.

My vis-d-vis was a stout, elderly, bald-headed
man, with a dark moustache, heavy double-chin,
and peculiarly arched eyebrows. He had the air
of a sleepy man who could with difficulty keep
awake.

He took out a tobacco-pouch and rolled a
cigarette, a sure indication that his home was, or
had been, in the south of Russia.

I tendered him a light. After thanking me,
and looking at my baggage, he asked me if I
was on a sporting tour.

I answered that I was travelling to Moscow

90 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

with the intention of getting some bear and elk
shooting with a friend who lived on the Yaroslav
Railway.

" I am a great sportsman, or rather I was before
my wife died. My health will not now permit me
to indulge in field sports as I used to do. Still
I shoot one or two bears every winter, and
occasionally an elk."

" Do you live near Moscow .''"

"At Lieschneva, on the Knieschma Railway.
There is plenty of large game in the ilistrict. The
will to hunt is still great within me, but I am
weak, nervous, and physically incapable of exercise.
I will tell you how the change came about. We
were living in Odessa, my wife, son, daughter, and
myself. It was vacation time, my boy was home
from the university, my daughter had finished her
education, and we were preparing for a trip to the
Crimea ; my wife went into town to make some
necessary purchases. They brought her home in
the evening — dead. She had been run over in
the street by a carriage and pair, and from the
moment she was knocked down had never opened
her mouth to speak. It was a great shock to me ;
to my children also ; but they were young, and

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 91

recovered. I was terribly prostrated, fever super-
vened, chronic nervousness resulted, and from that
day to this, now nearly five years ago, I have
never had a refreshing sleep. You cannot
understand this } It is nevertheless true. I have
travelled, I have tried the remedies prescribed
by the best doctors in Vienna, Paris, and London.
I have consulted them personally, and followed
their advice as to diet, change of climate, and all
that sort of thing, but the only sleep I get is
obtained from a dose of chloral, or sometimes
from a milder opiate I receive from a physician
in Paris. It is very bad. I always want to go
to sleep and yet can never do so. If for instance
I go out shooting, after walking a few yards I am
overcome with fatigue, the gun falls from my
hands, I sink to the ground and doze, but for a
few seconds only. I awake and am unable to con-
tinue my sport — return home, lie down, but cannot
sleep. My daughter plays to me, for she is a
great musician, and when she plays I seem to be
a little refreshed. She is a great singer too ! Do
you know that there are two Pattis } one the
Italian Patti — Adelina ; the other, the Caucasian
Patti, my daughter, Tatiana, whose acquaintance

92 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

you must make. She is in the ladies' car, for,
as you know, tobacco smoke is very bad for the
voice, and she has a splendid voice, a soprano of
great volume. She can play with the C in alt, play
with it, sir, and even one or two notes still higher
she can sing distinctly and with ease. There is a
great future before my daughter, but unfortunately
she wants practice and the aid of a first class
teacher. She is too devoted to me to live in
towns where such a master can be procured, and
1 cannot live in any large town, not even in
Moscow, where last year I purchased a house
for ourselves. Vou must understand that my
daughter's voice is strong, rich, and powerful, and
as she had constantly to practice, the neighbours
complained to our landlord. It became almost
impossible to keep a fine suite of apartments, so
I bought a house — not a very large one, but still
a fine dwelling — standing in its own yard and
garden in the best part of Moscow, near the
Pretschenska, in a quiet street with but little
traffic. It was of no use, I could not live there,
and we returned to our summer place at
Lieschncva. Ah, you do not know the life I
lead, unable to go to sleep, unable to forget cares.

f^

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 93

even for a time, never for an instant to be oblivious
to what is going on about you. Can you imagine
anything more dreadful ? Then to see people
sleeping calmly, how terribly annoying ! It
irritates me to such an extent that I shriek out
in agony, and they wake up and abuse me. So
do you know what I did } It was the only thing
to be done. I married a gipsy w^oman from
Arcadia ! You know that pleasure resort at
St. Petersburg. The gipsy band of singers seems
to be always there ; at whatever hour of the day
or night you may command them they straight-
way appear. I thought that one of these women,
used to being awake all through the night, and
night after night, would never annoy me by
lying at my side fast asleep, so I married one
of them."

He sighed and remained silent, from which I
inferred, from his point of view this second
marriage had been a failure. When next he
spoke he evaded my leading questions, and turned
the conversation into another channel.

By-and-bye he began to recount his sporting
exploits, and I related certain of my experiences
upon a yachting trip in the North Sea — a

94 THE SLEEPLESS MAN,

memorable voyage, for none of us got to sleep
for nearly a week.

" Yes, /^/^ had something to keep you awake."

"Apart from that, English sailors can live and
be well with but very little sleep," I remarked.

" I do not know that. Have they no wish to
sleep .? "

" Possibly, but they are so used to having only
four hours' sleep in the day that they neither need
nor desire much more."

" It is possible."

" For instance. Captain Boyle, of the Babara,
arrived at St. Petersburg from Liverpool, a voyage
of eleven days, during which he had only eight
hours' sleep in his bunk, and an odd hour or so
from time to time in the chart-room, yet, having a
chance of a trip to Moscow with friends, he started
off by the post train on Tuesday, and when he got
back on the Friday neither he nor his friends had
once closed their eyes in sleep."

" I should like to know Captain Boyle. I should
like to travel with such a man. Can you do
without sleep ">. "

" Fairly well," I answered.

" Come down to Lieschneva with mc. It is very

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 95

quiet, but you will have plenty of sport by day,
and at night \vc can play cards, talk or amuse
ourselves in some way. My daughter is always
telling me to find a companion, but my Russian
neighbours — you can imagine what they are like
after dinner — as torpid as a boa-constrictor which
has swallowed an ox.

" Why do I not make a companion of my son }
He prefers the society of younger men than
myself He is in the capital, and is doing all he
can to spend my money. I think he will succeed
in spending all our fortune. But what does that
matter } My father left me a little more than two
million roubles, I spent them as fast as I could, I
did not squander them ; that is to say, I always
obtained fair value for my money. I have still
more than one million roubles, in addition to my
little estate at Licschneva. My daughter has
four hundred thousand roubles left her by her
mother, and although my son is only twenty-two,
and is spending two or three thousand roubles
every month, there will still be enough left for us.
So, what does it matter after all, even if the young
man does spend a thousand roubles or more every
month and enjoys himself

96 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

"Ah ! here is my daughter, Tatiana Glebevna
Nalivaete, the Caucasian Patti."

A well-dressed young girl with fair hair, a
sallow complexion and spare figure, came into the
car and sat for a few minutes with us. Her eyes,
unlike her father's, were bright, sparkling, and
lustrous, but she had his air of lassitude. She was
thin to attenuation, and seemed to be haggard,
worn, and restless from constant watching. Having
satisfied herself that her father was comfortable,
she retired to her own car, and we again conversed
upon sporting topics.

Very early in the evening the Russian had his
berth made up for the night — it was the upper cross
berth, and opposite to mine. He took a small
quantity of a colourless fluid, and I sat under the
lamp reading the last number of The Field, which
I had obtained in St. Petersburg. Whenever I
looked towards his berth I saw him lying with his
eyes wide open, and gazing vacantly at me.

At about eleven o'clock his daughter again paid
us a visit, and shortly afterwards I got into my
berth.

" Are you asleep ? " I asked.

" No, never again to sleep, never again to sleep,"

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 97

and he turned over wearily, so that I could no
longer see his face.

I do not know that sleeplessness is infectious, but
neither I nor anyone else in that car slept soundly
that night — even that common terror of the
sleeping car, the persistent snorer, was silent, for
all were awake — some reading, some restlessly
turning from side to side, or ever and anon lighting
cigarettes and breaking the silence with a few
words spoken in a low tone to their neighbour, or
occasionally someone, with an ejaculation of
impatience, would turn his face to the wall and
resolutely court sleep and rest.

Only my friend remained still and silent. Yet
he was awake, I knew it ; everyone in the car
knew it ; but, with his face averted, he lay as
motionless as though he had been of carved
stone.

Towards three o'clock in the morning his
daughter quietly entered the car. Her thin straw-
coloured hair hung loose about her shoulders, her
shapeless gown showed all the angularities of her
spare figure, her restless eyes glanced rapidly from
one occupant of a berth to another, and as she
neared where her father lay I closed my eyes.

98 THE SLEEPLESS .VAN.

She did not speak, her hand sought his, there
was a gentle pressure, her head was bent down as
she gazed into his face, a silent kiss, and she
quietly and quickly withdrew, hiding her face in
the woollen wrap she had thrown over her
shoulders.

Is it unnatural that I was anxious to learn
more about the sleepless man and his devoted
daughter ?

Before we reached Tver, and took our coffee, I
had determined to accept his invitation to
Lieschneva, and at Moscow all the details were
settled as we breakfasted together. Early in the
afternoon we drove to the terminus of the Nijni-
Novogorod Railway, to catch the only train in
the day to Knieschma.

II.

THE FAMILIAR.

It was an uneventful ride to Knieschma. The
travellers were few, and the journey was broken
by a long wait and change of trains at the
Junction. Towards six o'clock in the morning

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 99

we arrived at the small wayside station which was
nearest to my host's estate.

It wanted two hours to break of day, but there
was quite a company of peasants with lanterns
awaiting our arrival. The sledges were at once
loaded up, and we commenced our drive of twenty-
five miles through the forest to Kertchemskoi,
following for some miles the road to Lieschneva
— if a barely indicated track through the forest
and over the moorland may be termed a road —
we then left the highway for the sledge path to
the villages, and as in each sledge there was room
but for one person besides the driver, and the
sledges kept in Indian file, it was impossible for
me either to communicate with my host who
was in front, or with his daughter, whose sledge
with three others conveying the baggage followed
mine.

We passed through several villages, all very
much alike, and neither in the landscapes nor in
the homesteads was there anything worthy of
admiration or notice.

Shortly after eight o'clock the first sledge got
some distance ahead, and I noticed that a sledge
with a single occupant was trotting along before

loo THE SLEEPLESS MAN,

mine. My driver hurried his horse, but we could
not gain upon the sledges in front, and looking
backwards I noticed that Tatiana and the baggage
sledges were falling far in the rear. Thinking
that my host wished to arrive in advance of us,
I slackened speed ; but we did not lose sight
of the two sledges, although both drove rapidly
ahead.

At about nine o'clock we reached Kertchemskoi
and our house. It was a dreary one-story dwelling
of wood, and stood within its own yard at some
distance from the road, and a couple of hundred
yards outside the village. It was apparently
deserted, but the entrance gates, as we neared
them, were thrown open by a stalwart young
peasant, and several domestics were gathered
about the porch awaiting our arrival.

Nalivaete's sledge was empty, and the over-
driven horse was being unharnessed. The second
sledge was nowhere visible, although I was sure
I had seen it driven into the yard close behind
that of my host.

And Nalivaete, when I saw him, tremblingly
grasped my hand as he stammered a few words of
welcome. The domestics silently helped us to

t^

THE SLEEPLESS .VAiY. loi

take off our heavy cloaks and overshoes, and
Tatiana, all bustle and talking nonsense with
great volubility, alone made a show of hospitality.

By-and-by Nalivaete apologised for the scanty
accommodation his house provided, but which, as
a sportsman conversant with the rough and ready
methods of country life, he hoped I would not
despise.

The room assigned to mc was a small bed-
chamber at one of the angles, and at the farthest
extremity of the large and well-heated hall
which separated the kitchens and outbuildings
from the rest of the house.

With the exception of a small hanging mirror,
the ikon, and a shelf of books, my room contained
nothing but the furniture absolutely indispensable
to a bed-chamber.

The living-rooms were larger and sumptuously
furnished, especially the best reception or music
room, which had an elegant cabinet, a grand
piano from a fashionable maker, and a large
Persian divan.

Madam Nalivaete, I was told, was still sleeping,
and was absent from the breakfast-table. My
host talked of sport, dozed, told us his symptoms,

H

102 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

drank freely, and seemed to be terribly bored
and wear)'.

Tatiana spoke in monosyllables, listened with-
out interest to my feeble attempts at jocularity,
and appeared undecided as to whether she should
weep or go to sleep. Surely never did a meal
drag on as did that one.

Breakfast finished, Tatiana played, at her father's
request, a few pieces of classical music, but ex-
cused herself from singing, and retired to her
apartments. ,

In the afternoon we sent for the staritza, or chief
villager, and arranged with him the details of a
hunt — three bears having taken up their winter
quarters near a neighbouring village. Two land-
owners, friends of my host, were to meet us at
eleven next morning, and the beaters were all
quickly engaged. There was nothing more for us
to do until the morrow, and how to occupy the
two-and-twenty hours which intervened was a
puzzle.

It was impossible to interest my host in any-
thing. " He had," he said, " played every game of
cards there was to be played — chess, backgammon,
chequers, five stones, puzzles, acrostics, all bored

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 103

him," and he proved that he was fast becoming a
confirmed melanchoh'c hypochondriac.

The dinner was the sole remaining event of the
day. We dined at six, and Madame Nalivaete
presided. She was a taciturn woman, with the
features and manners of the gipsy — a combination
of the gkittonous untaught savage, and the alluring
voluptuous gipsy queen. Her coal-black eyes — her
only beauty — were most attractive, and had
evidently been trained to serve their owner well —
they sparkled with merriment at the weakest jest,
rewarded with a kindly glance of encouragement
the little attentions of Tatiana to her father, and
spoke volumes of love in answer to the polite
flatteries of her melancholy husband. She looked
frequently towards and at me, but where I saw
only sprightly roguishness there lurked the cun-
ning of a fox.

The dinner was a good one, and the vieim would
have satisfied any gourmand. Fresh caviare ; rich
soup made from a fish similar to our bream ; fresh
fish caught from the lake through a hole in the ice;
a fillet of beef; roast venison, game pAtis ; apple
cake, ices, Russian wines, kvas, coffee and liqueurs,
and of everything a profuse abundance.

104 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

Tatiana ate but little. I was sure that she had
both wept and slept since she had left us after
breakfast ; now she assumed an air of gaiety so
distraite as to be painfully evident. Madame
Nalivacte also was acting; only the sick man
was natural in his behaviour ; and when we at
length retired from the table he lay down silent
and motionless upon the divan, with his eyes
vacantly staring at the cornice.

With piano, guitar, and mandoline we whilcd
away a few hours, but the merriment was too
forced to continue long.

Tatiana retired shortly after midnight, and a
little later I went to my room, though in no mood
for sleep. I never felt more wakeful. My brain
was strangely excited, and in some measure to
compose my thoughts I took down a book, and
without undressing lay down to read.

The volume was a ribald, jesting work, in
French, published in Paris in the year three, the
production of some wicked wit who had written
when his world was mad, and his piquant if
blasphemous stories lost nothing of their point
from squeamishness on the part of either writer
or printer.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 105

The book was not worth reading, but there was
nothing on the shelf more interesting, and I read
on until I heard the tick-tick of the death-watch,
and looking up met the eyes of the ikon, smiling
benignly through the smoky mist arising from the
tiny lamp ever burning before it.

I closed the book and listened. From the music
room came the patter of the gipsy woman, inter-
spersed with an occasional weird yell — that usual
accompaniment of the peculiar dance of the
Romany people, and I thought I saw the languid
look of the recumbent Russian as he lay, silently
and without interest, gazing at her gyrations.

In another apartment a young girl was weeping,
or praying, and here I lay reading the wretched
witticisms of a mad man !

Veritably this is "a mad world, my masters";
but as perforce we must continue in our madness I
banished serious thoughts, and resumed the perusal
of the old French book.

But my attention was divided. I heard that the
death-watch ticked with greater vigour, the
shrieks from the other room were in earnest, the
sound of a real sob reached my ear from the
distant chamber. My hand trembled, my sight

io6 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

became dim, the light waned, and a cold, clammy
hand touched my throat ! It was but a waking
nightmare, to be shaken ofif by determined
resolution. I arose, lit another candle, retrimmed
the little lamp before the ikon, threw aside my
book for once and all, and after smoking a cigarette
felt drowsy and dropped asleep.

But in a moment came again that cold, clammy
hand, insidiously creeping along my throat, the
better to obtain a firm grip. I awoke with a start
to see the room filled with a faint bluish vapour,
in which some indistinct figures seemed to be
moving.

Neither nervous nor superstitious, nor yet subject
to illusions, I arose gaily ; the vision — if vision
it were — was quickly dispelled, and somewhat
puzzled at being unable to sleep, I determined to
pass the night in company with my host.

As I made my way to the music-room I
heard the voice of Tatiana singing a topical song.
Then she stopped, and played the hunting chorus
from Dorothy.

I entered the room noiselessly and unheeded.
The gipsy was sitting in a chair opposite her
husband, silent and sullen, with a dogged look of

o.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 107

active discontent upon her face ; the husband
motionless as usual, and with eyes averted.
Tatiana, in her travelling gown, her hair loose, and
with tears fast coursing down her cheeks, seemed
to be playing against time upon the piano. She
changed, from time to time, without pause, from
grave to gay, from simple air to intricate key
fingering, a musical medley such as an artist intent
upon a tour de force might choose to execute,
as proof of staying power and an extensive
repertoire.

Madam, grim, taciturn, and sulky, stared at me
sullenly ; but Tatiana, at length perceiving me,
turned her face away, but not so quickly that
I failed to see her anguish.

No interference was possible. Quietly I walked
back to my room and paced impatiently to and
fro until the music stopped, then I crept rather
than walked towards the room once more.
At the threshold I paused ; the door was open ;
I could see the greater part of the apartment, the
gipsy woman was not there. Tatiana, still seated
at the piano, was watching her father, who, as
though in a trance and quite unconscious of what
he was doing, moved mysteriously about the room,

io8 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

now crouching near the table, now violently
gesticulating at the divan, again walking without
apparent motive from one object to another,
until at last, bursting with spasmodic sobs, he
knelt with bowed head before the holy picture.
Tatiana rose and knelt by his side, and his sobbing
became less violent just as a light hand was
placed upon my shoulder, and an icy cold finger
touched my neck. I looked round to meet the
flashing eyes of Madame Nalivaetc, gazing angrily
into mine. ,

" Is Monsieur a spy ? " she hissed.

" Your guest, Madame, and your husband's."

" Do you understand the meaning of this .'' " and
she gesticulated her disgust of what was taking
place in the room.

" Your husband suffers."

'■ Pfui ! A madman ! You may learn more
some day, take care that while here you do not
learn too much."

" I am already interested."

" In what cannot concern you. Would it not be
better to retire .'' "

" If I can but serve you by so doing."

" I wish it," and she turned away impatiently,

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 109

walking through the hall towards her own
apartments.

I went to mine, but not to sleep, and I was
still thinking of what I had witnessed, when
some hours after a servant brought me coffee,
and the business of an eventful day had to be
commenced.

III.
THE BEAR HUNT.

Than the bear hunt there is nothing more enjoy-
able. The short, brisk drive over the cold snow
to the village nearest to the bear's winter lair ;
the merry chatter of the villagers who have
gathered to witness your arrival ; the earnest
bargaining of the staritza with his beaters ; the
pretty faces of the young girls as they shyly peep
from under their hoods at a strange face; the
good-humoured smiles of the buxom dames who
have come into the ring to see that their husbands
are not cheated by the staritza; the muttered
criticisms of the sour-tempered old men who made
such good bargains and had such excellent sport

no THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

in their youth ; the new white sheepskins, the gay-
coloured handkerchiefs of the women, the clear
bright sunshine making the snowflakes sparkle,
and brightening even the dull dark forest in the
background, all furnish their quota of life to a
scene which for earnestness, excitement, and gaiety
has no equal.

But there is a bear hunt of a different kind, and
it was to one of these that my host introduced
mc. The sUxriiza was melancholy, there were no
beaters visible, and as we walked through the village
to hunt them up the young ones hurried from our
path, and the able men sat listening to our
commands with apathy. The day was dull and
the snow fitfully falling. We started out for the
forest, a small band, trudging wearily through the
deep snow in half-hearted fashion ; we were silent
from ill-humour, not from love of the chase. We
aroused the bear with a pistol shot, for none had
the heart to cheer, and the sleepy brute ran directly
towards my rifle and promptly fell to my aim,
never to rise again. The peasants grumblingly
swung him to a pole, and in silence we marched
back to the village, where our arrival received no
comment. From beginning to end it was a

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. in

wretched business, unworthy of the name of sport,
and my success produced only a feeh'ng of disgust.

The remainder of the day wc passed as we had
the preceding one, and I went to bed early hoping
to sleep soundly ; but I dreamed again, this time
of the bear hunt. I was again at my post in
the forest, and a bear— an immense animal — was
advancing towards me. I fired, but it still came
on ; I fired again and again until I had no loaded
weapon left, and the brute reared within arm's
length. I hastily seized my knife, but too late;
the great animal falls heavily upon mc, and, buried
in the snow, beneath his great rough chest I feel
the heavy weight of his body, as his ponderous
paw upon my breast forces me still further into
the snow.

I am crushed beneath his heavy flesh, stifled
with the thick shaggy hot wool about his throat
— I struggle to free myself, believing it is but a
dream from which I shall soon awake. I do wake
— it is not a bear which is burying me, but a
monster feather-bed, with Nalivaete a-top, and by
him held down tightly over my head. His knees
are upon my chest, and he it is who, by exerting
his great strength, is murdering me in his madness.

1X2 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

It is impossible to escape. I am fast losing con-
sciousness— there is singing in my ears — I gasp
for breath and inhale feathers, nearly suffocated.
I gasp again, and — wake. The house is silent,
and it is sometime before I can realize that all I
have suffered is but a dream.

Sleep in the house seems to be quite impossible.
As soon as I am sufficiently composed I again
reach down the French book and commence to
read.

It seemed to me that in a few minutes the book
fell from my hands, and that I dozed into a troubled
sleep. I see Nalivaete come into my room and
gaze at the bed. He listens, then disappears
through the door into the adjoining apartment,
quickly reappearing with a large soft cushion, and
holding it before him in both hands he steals
on tiptoe to the bedside. I see now for the first
time the face of a fair woman lying upon my
pillow. Nalivaete covers it with the cushion,
and springs savagely upon the bed, kneading the
writhing body as he sways from side to side upon
his knees, grinning with demoniacal delight at
the slight indications of movement under the
pillow, which he holds down with both hands as

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 113

determinedly as though he expected a thousand
furies to spring from underneath it. The struggles
cease ; a look half of pleasure half of pain
appears upon his face, to disappear instantly as
he raises himself and notices, looking at him as
from the wall, two human eyes, clear, brilliant,
conscious. No face nor figure is visible ; but those
eyes have witnessed this foul deed. Trembling
he stands up, and now as he raises the pillow to
screen his face from those penetrating glances, the
eyes change their position, coming nearer to me.
He cannot hide himself from them. Fearful of
moving, upbraided by their steady, reproachful
look, he is constrained to regard the face upon
the pillow, a face dreadfully altered, discoloured,
distorted, motionless, soulless — dead ! 'Tis enough ;
the face disappears, and I see the trembling form
of Nalivaete kneeling humbly before the ikon,
his head bowed and his frame shaking convul-
sively as he sobs aloud.

Then I feel an icy cold hand upon my throat.
I see that Nalivaete shudders as I am touched,
and his sobs cease.

As I slowly awake there is a numbed feeling
about my neck, and the room seems to be filled

114 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

again with a thin bluish vapour, in which some
unrecognisable figures are indistinctly to be seen
moving about. There are two eyes quite plainly
visible other than the eyes of the ikon, but as I
become more clearly conscious of my surroundings
they appear to be less distinct, and slowly fade
from my sight.

Confused, nervous, weary, and in a sleeping-
waking dazed state, I grope together the bed
coverings and stagger into the music room, where
I lay myself down unthinkingly upoi^ the divan
and fall again into slumber, which is undisturbed
until soon after dawn. The servant again brings
me coffee, and tells me that my host and his
daughter have already risen.

IV.
THE WIZARD.

"Ah, you have had a bad dream I fear, my
friend." Nalivaete came quietly towards the
divan and sat down by my side.

" Will you tell me your dream } " he asked, as I,
feeling very stupid, helped myself to the coffee.

0.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 115

"Yes, certainly. I have been dreaming. A
disagreeable dream, but of no consequence."

" Do not say that. All dreams are of con-
sequence, but no one seems to have pointed out
yet how important dreams are in moulding
character and in determining certain actions."

" I never regard mine as of importance. How
have you slept .•* "

" But very little, not that I have not dreamt. I
am haunted by dreadful day dreams, from which
there is no awaking."

" Is it always the same dream .-' "

" Always the same subject, but variously
presented. Last night during the few minutes
I slept, I was haunted by a terrible nightmare.
It has quite affected me. I must tell it to some-
one ; poor Tatiana has trouble of her own ;
moreover, she is so superstitious she would be
afraid, and that would make me still more
nervous, I might go mad. But I must tell it.
Will you hear it ? You are not superstitious, and
you will tell me what I am to think of it."

" I can tell you that much before you begin.
Dismiss "

" No, no, first listen to what I have to say.

ii6 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

It is about this woman I have married, I am
afraid of her. She is not akin to us, she has
no sympathy for me. She hates me, she hates
me. Do you hear .^ What do people like these
gipsies when they hate anyone } What do we
do to those whom we hate ? We kill them, that
is what she means to do to me. Do you hear ?
She means to kill me. Last night she lay by
my side, she was not asleep although her eyes
were shut, and I did not think her to be foxing.
I sat up in bed looking at her. While sitting
so, I fell asleep and dreamed that she was hatch-
ing a plot to destroy me. And how do you
think this woman hopes to kill me ? She knows
that these peasants — rude, ignorant fellows — will
do anything they believe to be right. She is

going to tell them that I am an • No, I

did not dream that. What I dreamt was that
I was turned out into the frosty night into the
hands of a crowd of these peasants thirsting for
my blood, they put an icy cold raw-hide rope
round my neck, and fastened me to the back of
a sledge. Then they drove out into the forest,
and I heard the howling of wolves, and they left
me there alone — alone."

o.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 117

He ceased speaking, and sat looking curiously
into my face.

" Is that all ? "

" Is it not enough ? But it was not all ; I
wanted to escape, but I was fast by reason of
the cord round my neck, and then when I cried
out in my agony for someone to come and free me,
I heard the mocking laughter of the peasants,
and I saw that where I was there lay another
body too ! "

" Did you recognise it ? "

"Why do you ask? I recognized it. How
strange dreams are! It was no one whom you
know. It was a person known to me some years
ago, now, alas ! dead — dead!'

"And your dream ended there.-'"

"Yes, my dream ended there."

" And what did you do } "

" I was much frightened, and began to think
how I could avoid this terrible fate, when I saw the
gipsy woman's face at my side. She was still
awake and she knew how I was suffering. And
I thought if I could only kill her, if I could
smother her with a pillow, crush her, anything

I

ii8 THE SLEEPLESS JLAM

to be free of her, it would relieve my brain
Why do you look so scared ? "

"It is nothing," I replied, "go on with your story."

" Well, I remained like that a long time, until
I frightened myself. I really thought I should
commit some crime, so I shrieked out for Tatiana,
and the gipsy laughingly replied that Tatiana
would never come again. Then we began to
quarrel, and I became more calm. I always
gain greater courage and become composed when
I have to wrangle with some one. It is only when
people refuse to make any answer that I get
excited ; I become wild then. But what do you
think of my dream .' "

"It is simply a dream; an unpleasant one
certainly. Perhaps both you and I ate too heartily
last evening."

Nalivaete shook his head.

" Tell me what you think of it .-• " he persisted.

" Well I will think it over, and we will talk
about it again this evening ; meanwhile we must
prepare for the bear hunt."

The sun shone brightly, and out of doors the
scene was gay, and I dared to hope that this
day's sport would be enjoyable.

r*.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 119

Unfortunately it was but a repetition of yester-
day's proceedings, with two exceptions ; one that
Nalivaete shot the bear, and a person who did
not introduce himself followed us everywhere,
and when I pointed him out to Nalivaete he
was much agitated, but gave me no information
as to who the stranger might be, nor did he
address him in any way, but acted as though he
wished to ignore his presence.

This man returned to the house with us, but
I lost sight of him among the crowd of domestics
in the yard, and although I asked several of the
beaters who he was, they declined to answer.

In the hall Tatiana was waiting our return.
She advanced gaily to meet me. " Have I to
congratulate you upon success to-day .-' " she
asked.

"As yet I have accomplished nothing. Vaska
has fallen to your father's rifle, his hand has
not yet lost its cunning ; we can all congratulate
him."

She turned to her father, whose gaze wandered
fitfully from object to object, and whose hand
trembled like that of one who has sustained a
severe shock.

120 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

"Has anything happened ? My father is quite
unnerved. Father, what is the matter with you ? "

" Nothing, my child. I am getting old, and
you know how I have suffered. The excitement
of the chase is too much for me."

She gazed pitifully at the man, who, with the
help of a servant, was divesting himself of his great
over-shoes and sporting accoutrements.

" It is a great bear, my Tatiana, my largest
and my last. Let the villagers have a plentiful
allowance of vodka, and, if you c^n spare it,
give them white bread and zakonski. It is only
meet that they should celebrate the last bear
killed by their master."

" They shall have all, father, but do not talk of
this bear being your last ! "

" And why not, child ? Is it a pleasure to
me to shoot a brute like that and suffer as I
am suffering.'* Where is Irma .''"

" She will not appear until dinner ; to-day, it
will be served earlier than usual. Meanwhile shall
I play to you .-'"

The time passed quickly until dinner was
announced, and when I left the table I returned
to the deserted music room and lay upon the

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 121

divan. Soon Nalivaete peered through the half-
open door leading from the living room.

Seeing no one but myself he hesitated, then
quickly entered, shutting the door behind him.

He was terribly haggard and worn and still
trembling.

" I want to ask you," he began, then stopped
and his eyes wandered from one object to another.

" About your dream t "

" No, tell me about this person whom you say
you saw."

I described his figure as nearly as I could.

" Yes, 't is he ! 't is he ! You saw him, you
say .-* " he gasped.

" I believe so. Do not be alarmed, for I was
not in the least dismayed by his appearance."

" No .? "

He looked at me questioningly.

" Is that all you saw } "

"That was all."

" That was all then, but you saw that figure
before; you noticed its eyes in your bedroom last
night."

I started.

" I do not remember it," I replied.

122 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

"We arc alone. Whatever I say to you now
is of no value. Why should I not tell you all ? "

The man was, I thought, mad, and I did not
answer.

" Let me ask you once more. You never saw
that figure before .•' "

" Never ! "

"Last night you dreamed. You saw me in
your dream ? Speak ! "

I did not answer.

" Ah ! I see that you fear to answer me. You
saw me — /'/// — my — wife ? "

He bent forward, looking earnestly into my
eyes. I thought I saw again that terrible dream
drama enacted, and involuntarily I closed my
eyes.

" You think it strange that I dare to tell you
of my crime. You are a stranger, there are no
witnesses to support any statement you may
make about me. It is a good thing for me to
confess. Therefore I will tell you. How strange
you must think it that I can calmly talk to you,
can give you — a stranger — every detail of a
crime for which I may be called upon to suffer
capital punishment t "

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 123

"Do not tell me. I do not want to hear any
particulars. Go ! "

" You shun me .-' "

" I know all. Go ! Go ! "

He did not go. He sat there silent, as though
pained by my words ; then he proceeded to slowly
roll a cigarette, while I watched him eagerly,
savagely, not knowing what to do, and remaining
inactive upon the divan.

He continued to regard my agitation with
unmoved curiosity.

"Ah, if you would but hear all the story !"

" Tell it to the priest or to the police, not to me !
Do go away ! "

" I am braver now than you. I want to tell
you all the details, then if you command me
I will seek the police or the priest ; I do not
care ! "

" Not now ! I will not hear anything now ! " and
I rushed from the room into the hall.

A servant was hurrying towards Tatiana's
apartments ; a sledge driver, covered with snow
spray and the icicles hanging from his moustache,
stood uncovered in the hall.

" Oh, mistress ! " I heard the servant call, "our

124 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

young lord has been hurt, and has sent for you to
go to him at once ! "

Tatiana, surprised and frightened, burst into
tears, and asked incoherently for particulars.

" What is the matter ? " I asked of the driver.

"The young Barin, sir, the betrothed of our
mistress, has met with an accident. lie is badly
injured, and he wishes to sec the Barina at once."

"And I dare not leave my father. Say! Is he
badly hurt .•' "

The man turned away his head and replied
hoarsely, " I am told, Barina, that he is very badly
hurt. He may be dying, and he wishes to sec the
Barina, if only for a time. lie is so good, our
young Barin. My lady, do see him, I have driven
here fast ; my horse is fleet, and I can take you
quickl)'. Vou may yet be in time to hear
something from his lips, and I, Vanka, will be
answerable to anyone for your safety."

" I will ^o!' She turned to me. " Promise me
that you will not leave my father until I return ! "

" And allow you to go alone } "

" That is nothing ; 1 have no fear. My father
may be in danger, watch over him until my return.
Do you promise } "

0.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 125

" I promise."

She put on a heavy fur cloak, and I went into
the yard and watched her, as, seated by the side
of Vanka, she rapidly disappeared across the
frozen snow.

I made my way to the music room ; Nalivaete
lay upon the divan, his eyes open staring^ vacantly,
a freshly-rolled cigarette between his fingers, a
melancholy spectacle, and one that I had then
no wish to contemplate.

I sat down on m}' bed and read for a few
minutes. Strange noises outside disturbed me.
I called for the servants, there was no reply. I
went into the hall and called again ; all was silent.

I returned to my room and saw peering in
through the double-sashed window a human face,
horribly ugly and grinning fiendishly. As I
stepped towards the window it vanished.

I listened, there was the sound of shuffling feet
upon the snow outside, a rasping noise as of wood
grating against the wall, then all was still again.
I went to the servants' quarters ; they were quite
deserted ; and passing through the music - room
I saw that Nalivaete too had disappeared. I sat
down there and in a few minutes I heard strange

126 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

voices outside. The door of the h'ving-room
opened, the face of the man whom I had seen
at the bear hunt appeared before me.

I saw nothing but the face, pallid, with glassy
eyes and a vacuous expression. I thought I
noticed the features slightly relax, then the face
disappeared.

I glanced towards the other door, it was ajar,
and a face peered through t/iat staring saucily at
me ; at the window was another ugly grinning face,
which as soon as I moved vanished. J made my
way to the living room. The gipsy woman was
there, seated in a low chair.

"Ah ! Anglichannin ! You want to know what
has happened, do you .-* How do you feel,
batucJika ? Will you drink some coffee .•* Shall I
tell you what is happening } Where shall I
begin ?

" At the beginning. Ah, ah, ah ! Where is
the beginning, Golubchick? I don't know, but
the end will soon be here. It is not yet eight
months since I left my people at Arcadia to come
here, and what have I not suffered since then,
living with this teharodi."

" A wizard .' "

•

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 127

" Krovososs ! a vampire ! a murderer ! phui ! "

" What has become of him ? " I asked.

"Chort vosini ! I don't know. Hark ! Can you
not hear the Tcharodi's dirge ? "

I listened, and from far away there came a
sound as of voices slowly chanting : —

" Mu — urderer ! Sorcerer !

So — orcerer ! Mu — urderer !
We have no fear.

Mu— urderer ! So — orcerer !

So — orcerer ! Mu — urderer !

The end it is near.
Mu— urderer ! So — orcerer !

Sorcerer ! Mu — urderer ! "

Then came the same monotonous dirge, louder,
nearer, and sung by many more people. Again
and again I heard it, in as many directions,

" What is to be done } "

I looked inquiringly at the gipsy woman.

"We shall escape. All the peasants from ten
villages assemble here to put to death the sorcerer
of Kertchemskoi. We who have lived with him
may escape by purifying ourselves in the approved
fashion."

" And that is ? "

128 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

" I will not tell you. A gipsy cannot perform
it. What is that face at the window } "

Turning round quickly I saw a shadow pass
across the window, nothing more.

" It was not a human face nor yet a mask,"
muttered the woman, advancing with hesitating
steps towards the window.

All outside was silent, and indoors there was no
sound except the ticking of a clock and the
hissing and crackling of the burning wood in the
stove.

«

" You are not afraid, Irma ? " I asked as I
followed her to the window.

She replied with a malicious grin. Peering
through the steam-covered panes I saw before me
the wide expanse of snow on the moorlands, and
to the right and left the dark line of the forest.
There was no one in the enclosed garden, and
the snow appeared to be untrodden round about
the house. The moon, screened by a filmy cloud,
shed enough light upon the scene for me to
distinguish a band of persons approaching the
village from the forest, and in the far distance was
a solitary sledge apparently at a standstill.

" Do you see yon sledge .-' " I asked the gipsy.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 129

" Distinctly. It brings the ghostly Vanka to
the sorcerer's home."

" Is that the epileptic boy whom Tatiana
visits ? "

The gipsy woman stared at me strangely.

" It is one of the fiends of the sorcerer ; others
will come."

I looked at the woman, who was still peering out
of the window. With a scream of terror she
sprang back, and right before me, a few inches
only from my face, was a horrible purple visage,
bloated, distorted, half human, half bestial, only its
bleared eyes, blinking in at the strongly-lighted
room, betokened its earthly nature.

I turned quickly away. The gipsy woman,
loudly yelling, had rushed from the apartment,
and in her hurry had overturned the lamp, which
now lay extinguished upon the floor.

When next I looked towards the window the
face — too horrible for any mask — was no longer
visible. The hall was in darkness ; so, throwing
open the door of the stove, the cheery rosy rays
from the glowing embers enabled me to find my
room and reach down my weapons. I lit my
candle and cautiously entered the hall once more,

130 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

for I thought I heard the noises of people about
the house.

In the semi-darkness I plainly discerned shadows
moving swiftly towards the music-room — shadows
not of men and women, but of strange creatures
having a certain resemblance to the human form,
but with horribly disorted features, crooked limbs,
and necks askew.

I stood still gazing earnestly at the shadows,
then from out the gloom came a raggedly-clad
woman with crone-like features and a crooked
spine ; her hair, dark and glossy, grew thickly upon
her forehead and temples, and was coiled round
her large red ears. From the crown and the back
of her head, and all down her withered neck, the
hair had been scalded, and her parchment-like skin
shone with iridescent hues. She held before her
a boy of some eighteen years, lean, lank and long,
whose horrible contortions she endeavoured in
some way to guide, for over his muscleless limbs
he seemed unable to exert any control, while he
gazed idiotically in whatever direction his eyes
were spasmodically rolled, and threw with jerky
twitchings his ungainly limbs into meaningless and
seemingly impossible attitudes.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 131

The crone, with some difficulty, got the youth
in front of the stove, where she permitted him to
lie, and where the unhappy being writhed and
floundered restless and tormented. Then with
uncertain steps she tottered towards me.

I did not advance, and should have kept my
gaze fixed upon her had not I felt a tug at my
coat sleeve, and, turning round, saw standing at
my elbow a monstrosity of frightful magnitude.
Upon a short podgy body, bent with infirmities,
was a head of enormous size, a bloated visage,
bulbous, blue, and beardless — the lips awry and the
mouth distorted — for instead of flesh and bone there
was nothing but a rank growth of fungoid skin.

Tearing myself away from the trembling hold
he had upon my arm, I rushed across the hall and
entered Nalivaete's room, closing and locking the
door behind me.

V.

TATIANA.

The room was empty. I sat upon the bed
expecting an attack, for I knew that an attempt
would be made to force open the door, and I heard

132 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

the heavy tread of the peasants in the hall and the
confused babble of voices — amongst them I thought
I could distinguish that of the gipsy woman.

Suddenly a grating noise in the room attracted
my attention, and turning towards the.corner from
which it seemed to proceed I saw Nalivaete staring
at me, through a trap-door in the floor.

He beckoned to me and signed me that I was
not to speak. I saw as I approached the trap-door
that he stood upon the steps of a rude ladder; he
descended into the cellar and beckoned to me to
follow him. I stood in the darkness upon the
earthen floor of \\\\?> pogrib, and he secured the trap-
door with strong wooden bars from below.

As I became used to the darkness I noticed a
large chest, a common bench, and a huge covered
vat almost level with the floor.

" Fetch Tatiana. Tell her that her father wants
her help now. We must escape."

" The house is surrounded by enraged peasants ;
strange people are in the rooms ; it is not easy to
escape."

He pointed to a door in the cellar. " I have
thought of all this. Irma must escape, why not
you .'* She has my fleetest horse ready harnessed

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 133

to the sledge ; take it, drive to Vorebba, bring
back Tatiana quickly."

" But to get the sledge ? "

He smiled grimly, and drew from under the
bench a large hooded shoob lined with white lambs-
wool and made of pale cloth. " My wife's ! " He
unfolded it slowly and placed it on my shoulders.
" She lies here," and he placed his hand upon the
vat. " They think she walks around the house in
this shoob, my last present to her ; no one will dare
to touch you,"

I fastened the garment across my chest, and
pulled the hood over my head, it barely reached
to my knees ; a pair of light-coloured valetikis
were taken from a corner, and after putting them
on I moved to the door,

" See those eyes, they arc watching me still,"
and he pointed to a corner near the extremity of
the vat.

" I see nothing," I answered.

" Not so loud ; I see them, but I fear nothing."

I drew the bolt of the door and opened it
quietly. I saw the eyes then, gleaming out of the
darkness, and dimly outlined was the form of the
mysterious man I had seen so frequently that da}-.

K

134 THE SLEEPLESS MAN:

Nalivaete shrieked, pushed me forward, and closed
and bolted the door behind me.

The figure of the man retreated along the
passage, and groping my way, I followed it.

The passage was a short one ; at the extremity
was a door hinged horizontally and opening
inwards. The figure opened the door and dis-
appeared ; as quickly as possible I followed, and
found myself in a retired corner of the pleasure
ground at the rear of the stables.

I walked round to the yard. Forms flit be-
fore me as I advance, none approach. In the
yard was the black horse with the sledge, the
moiijik who stood at the horse's head ran as I
walked towards him, the horse perceiving me
reared — seizing the reins, I sprang upon the sledge
and drove rapidly from the yard.

The horse was fresh and travelled fast, and we
soon reached the woods. I drew my revolver and
fired a shot, then two others in quick succession.
The horse, terrified, increased his pace, and the
snow spray flew from before the runners like sea-
foam from the prow of a racing yacht. The horse
knew that an efi'ort was expected of him, and
continued his wild pace across the moorland and

*

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 135

through the forest ; a wolf, trotting along the track,
at our approach hastened into the wood, and an
elk gazed with astonishment from the brushwood
on the edge of a clearing.

In time we reached a village ; it was apparently
deserted. At the further end, however, was a
sledge with a horse harnessed thereto, but empty.
The horse was steaming and had evidently been
driven hard ; the ycmstdiik was standing midway
between his sledge and the entrance to the
house.

As I drove up, the door of the house opened
and Tatiana ran out.

" What is the meaning of this } " she asked
angrily. " Why am I brought here .-* Speak, will
you ? Fool ! "

The man made no reply, and Tatiana going to
the sledge, seized the driver's whip and with it
commenced to beat the fellow, who bent to escape
the blows, but remained idiotically silent. A
peasant had followed her from the house with
a lantern and looked unconcernedly upon the scene,
until perceiving my approach he cried out, and
dropping his lantern ran towards the house.

Tatiana came to me. I spoke to her, and

136 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

muttering words I could not hear, she sh'pped into
the sledge and I at once turned the horse towards
home.

" It is a catch, a mean, miserable, foolish trick,"
she sobbed. " What does it mean .? "

I did not answer, but urged on the horse, which
seemed unwilling to race homewards.

We were clear of the village and trotting slowly
through the forest when she spoke again.

" Where did you leave my father .-' " she asked.

" In the cellar beneath his room," I replied.

She started. Then putting her hand upon my
arm she looked beseechingly into my face.

" Then you know "

" I do not know, but I can guess," I answered.

The horse ran uneasily, turning first to the right
and then to the left, walking at every turn in the
road, and at last he came to a standstill and
buried his nose in a snow-drift at the side of the
track.

"Poor father, I must save him, but how.-* Hurry
the horse along."

She spoke to him, and the animal moved more
gaily.

"Will you help me.'' Must my poor father

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 137

perish body and soul ? Is he not mad ? He was
mad when he committed that terrible crime, and
did he not tell you that my brother saw him — my
poor half-witted brother ? He has never spoken
since that time. He will not live with us, but
haunts us unceasingly — watches us, follows us to
Moscow, St. Petersburg, to Odessa, speaks to no
one, looks only at us ! It is as though he had
taken a vow never to speak again until my father
has expiated his crime. And I try to save my
father. Am I right in so attempting? I ask myself
again and again ! He loves me because I try so
hard to save him. To save him from that prison,
where, living with senseless souls he would lose his
own; to save him by imploring him to confess and
to seek forgiveness of our Holy Mother. He has
committed a crime and must bear the punishment
— that he knows, that we know — but is it not right
that he should bear the punishment inflicted by
God who is just and merciful, rather than that of
men who would wreck his life and lose his soul .''
But what an expiation his is, and how bravely
and uncomplainingly he endures ! He promised
me only yesterday that he would confess to the
good priest in Lieschneva, and then he would be

13S THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

content to die. He bears so much for my sake,
thinking that if he gave himself up to the police,
as, weary of his terrible lot he has often wished to
do, his punishment would have to be borne by me,
'Who,' he asks, 'would wed the daughter of a
condemned murderer?'

" And you see the wretched life we lead," she
continued sadly. "I cannot sing, but in order that
my father's infirmities may not be too closely pried
into, I have practised, and by loudly shrieking
I have driven curious neighbours from our doors.
Soon all must come right, is it not so .'' "

" I pray that it may," I answered.

" Yes, if father could but know that he is for-
given by God ! To feel, to bear the punishment is
nothing to the callous prison-hardened criminal
working out his sentence. You cannot know what
a soul-destroying hell is a Russian prison, and how
happy are the evil-doers to work therein and stifle
conscience."

She paused. We were now reaching her home
and we saw there were several groups of people
near it ; some carried torches, others had large
bundles on their shoulders.

I drove over the fields, round to the back of the

0.

•

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 139

stables, and leaving the sledge, by leaning against
the fence of the pleasure-ground forced an
entrance.

There were a few peasants grouped on this side
of the house, and they moved about unceasingly.
I helped Tatiana from the sledge, and we walked
stealthily towards the secret doorway.

The windows shone with a lurid glare, and
strange shadows moved about in the room.

" They have fired the house," shrieked Tatiana,
rushing wildly towards it.

" Tatiana ! Tatiana ! Save me ! "

" I come ! " cried Tatiana.

Some of the peasants put out their hands to
bar the wa}', but she eluded them and throwing
herself against the hidden door it gave way and
she disappeared from sight

" Anglichannin ! " yelled the gipsy woman, recog-
nising me. Then instantly moiijtks seized my
arms, and cutting the reins from our sledge, bound
my hands tightly to my side and my feet together.

Tongues of fire were creeping round the
windows and eaves, and the peasants who had
torches threw them into the house through the
broken windows.

140 THE SLEEPLESS MAN.

Then the gipsy woman went to the passage
through which Tatiana had disappeared, and at
her command dry brushwood and faggots were
placed in the doorway, the straw from our sledge
was carried to it and fired ; then the peasants
brought more faggots and piled them against
those which were burning. The flames had now
burst through the roof in several places, and
issued freely at the windows and doorways ; the
dry wood crackled as it burnt, and the sparks
flew high into the air, and were followed by the
broad streaming flames and the long sinuous
tongues of fire. We heard cries, but the words
were undistinguishable. We knew the prisoners
were trying to force their way through the passage,
for we saw the faggots near the little doorway
shaken and forced outwards. It seemed possible
that success would follow one effort, for the
bundles of wood fell away suddenly, but the
gipsy woman took a long fork from a peasant
and pushed the half-burnt faggots further into
the doorway, holding it there resolutely until
fresh fuel had been heaped around it — then as
the heat became unbearable she reluctantly fell
back.

THE SLEEPLESS MAN. 141

The crackling of the blazing shingle, the noise
of the burning timber, the bursting of the thick
pine logs placed against the walls, and the
constant roar of the quickly advancing fire,
deadened the cries of the perishing inmates ; but
all could not drown a shriek that commenced
with the supplicants' cry of " Forgive ! " and
ended in a weird yell of agony. It stopped the
wild talking of the excited peasants, and in
silence they watched the falling beams and walls
or slunk quietly and abashed to their village
homes. In an hour's time all that remained as
evidence of the tragedy was a heap of smouldering
timber, and a few creatures on their knees in the
snow, crossing themselves constantly, and praying
without ceasing.

Uncle Sekuyn.

AFTER a long day of dull tramping in the
swaaliy London streets the poorest home is
welcome. That murky November evening I was
particularly tired. Saturated with mud and slush,
I was anxious to reach my poor lodgmg, where, if
there were not other clothes, I could be rid of my
wet, clinging, frayed, and splashed garments — at
least for a time,

I was terribly down on m)' luck, but the result
of my tramp was promising for a dinner on the
morrow, and I had enough to provide a good
supper; for, like all men who eat to live, I had
determined upon such substantial fare as can be
most cheaply purchased.

I climbed to my garret for the mug and platter,
and found Uncle Selwyn seated upon my old sea
chest ; recognised him by his whisky-laden breath,
which dispelled my vision of the grateful and
Comforting cup and hot-steaming "savoury duck."

»

UNCLE SELIVVN. 143

My relative was the ne'er-do-wcU of the family,
and rarely visited me save to extort a loan or
share my meal.

"What cheer, Sclwyn?" I asked.

" Bad news, Willy," he replied gently, and as he
was generally boisterous his subdued tone afifected
me strangely, and I crossed the room for a light
so that I might see in what he had changed.

To all appearance he was the same — tall, well-
built and wiry, somewhat emaciated, and looking
five years older than his age. He had grey
whiskers and hair, although he was but forty ; he
was wretchedly clad as usual with him, for he
despised clothes ; a battered old bowler hat upon
his shaggy head ; his moustache was awry and his
chin had been shaved, perhaps a week ago.

His cheek bones were prominent, his cheeks
red, and his deep, sunken blue eyes were as bright
and restless as ever ; but there was something
more about my uncle, and to discover what it was
I regarded him earnestly.

He remained seated upon the chest without
speaking until I had finished my scrutiny. I was
doubtful as to this man being really my uncle, for
as sometimes when you look into the eyes of a

144 UNCLE SELWYN.

friend you sec his soul looking back at you, so
now I saw in the dark pupils of my uncle's blue
eyes an individuality that was strangely at
variance with his character, and I was afraid of
it. For my brusque-mannered, sottish, but withal
kind Uncle Selwyn I never had the slightest fear.

" I suppose it is you, Selwyn ?"

" Have I changed so much ? What money have
you got ?"

" Eightpence."

" Four drinks. Willy, my bo}', don't spend that
money in liquor, however much I may plead or
threaten. Now come with me, you are late. We
may be too late."

He got up nervously from his scat, raised his
hat and put it more jauntily upon his head, and
tottered towards the door. I felt impelled to
follow him, just as whenever he asked a loan I
never withheld it, and we slowly descended the
broken stairs.

"Where are you going.''" I asked, when we
reached the street.

" Over the water. Let us hurry along."

We walked along in silence, threading our way
across the busy thoroughfares, and plunging into

UNCLE SELU'YN. 145

the narrower streets and passages which run
parallel with them. It was ten o'clock when we
reached the Thames, and my uncle declared it was
too early to cross.

" Let us take a drink. You have eightpcnce,
and fourpence will be enough for what you have
to buy."

" I only brought fourpence. I could not afford
to bring all."

The lie satisfied him. We went to the Embank-
ment and sat down.

" Why have you brought me here .-' " I asked.

He looked at me curiously. " I want your help
— your eightpence," and he laughed nervously.

" Will you take it then, and let me return
home > "

He seemed hurt at the suggestion. " I will
never touch money again, never again," he replied
snappishly.

" What is the matter with you, Selwyn } "

He was silent for several minutes, and then
commenced to talk about the objects on the
river ; of his college days at Oxford, and in garru-
lous fashion recounted his freaks and escapades of
ten years ago ; to all I listened patiently, ex-

146 UNCLE SELU'YN.

pccting each moment to learn the reason for his
call ; Uncle Selwyn was not the man to make
a friendly visit.

The Embankment was deserted, for fine rain had
commenced to fall. It was nearly midnight.

" About Thora, Thora ! " he said abruptly, and
turned upon the seat so as to face me. " I can
never be rid of that woman, the more badly I
treat her the closer she sticks to mc."

" Where is she now .'' "

He started. Passing his hand over his brow
he commenced to speak gently and in a con-
fidential manner of his relations with Thora.
" And the last thing was, eight days ago," he
hesitated, " she was ill and could not get from
our room, so she gave me her dress to pawn
that we might have something to eat, and she
has not been out of that room since."

I laughed.

" Yes, an excellent joke, isn't it } Could never
get rid of the woman, you know. Good oppor-
tunity, thought I, of keeping you indoors now,
my lady, and so " he stopped abruptly.

" There is no one here. Continue."

" So I came round for you to go home with me."

0.

UNCLE SELWYN. 147

I started up. " How long is it since you saw
her ? " I gasped.

" I don't know, I never went back. Pawned
the rags and spent the money in drinks and a
shave, must have a face like a gentleman. But
she asked so earnestly that I would buy food
that I promised her not to spend the money
in drink, she made me swear not to, smiled,"
he shuddered, " thanked me, and said, ' I trust
you, Selwyn, I will watch for you.' She expected
me back soon, I led her to suppose that I should
not be many minutes, and," he felt his chin
musingly, " I suppose that is some days ago."

" I am going now," and I sprang to my feet.

" Where } You do not know where I live, and
I am sure I shall not tell you. When the clock
has struck twelve I will conduct you."

I expostulated, but all remonstrance was vain,
and seating myself by his side I waited anxiously
for the stroke of twelve. It came at last, but
Uncle Selwyn declared it had struck but eleven.
In desperation I dragged him towards the bridge.
Seeing that it was practically deserted he dashed
across with such speed that it was with difficulty
I kept pace with him. We went through dirty

uS UNCLE SELWYN.

and desolate streets, he sometimes running wildly
ahead or hesitatingly creeping with uncertain
steps along the dark streets.

We entered an ill -lighted alley, silent, and
apparently deserted ; it was flanked by lofty
buildings, of which the greater number were
untenanted. Something was following us, and I
looked behind repeatedly, without catching a sight
of the person whose persistent tread had attracted
my attention.

Uncle Selwyn was frightened, he clutched at
my arm convulsively, and started violently at the
commonest sounds. We turned into a deserted
court, the houses were dilapidated and old ; tiles
and broken earthenware lay about the yard, and
subdued noises from the dismantled tenements
disturbed the silence of the night. We heard
still those steps following ours, slowly crunching
the earthy floor of the unpaved yard. I paused,
the sounds ceased ; it could but be the echo of
our own steps. I led on again more slowly.
A figure brushed past us and entered one of
the dwellings ; a dark, almost shapeless pillar-like
form, ill-defined in the semi-darkness of the night,
but distinguishable as something. It seemed to

UNCLE SELWYN. 149

glide along and make no noise in treading over
the debris covered corner of the yard.

"Which way?" I asked of Sehvyn.

"Follow thatl' he stammered, again clutching
my arm. I did not wonder that he feared to
return alone. I paused and looked up at the
windows of the building we were to enter ; they
were all paneless, the frames of some had gone,
in a couple there still remained a few fragments
of broken glass, but no attempt had been made
to fill up the openings with paper or rags. I saw
as each landing was reached that a black form
passed noiselessly across the window openings —
it reached the topmost, a dark mass protruded,
remained clearly visible for a few seconds, then
disappeared. Through the next window we now
saw a face peering — the figure was motionless,
and it seemed to be staring fixedly down upon
us in the yard. I looked at Uncle Sclwyn ; the
darkness of that corner of the court was so great
that I could not distinguish his features, but the
light was reflected from his deep sunken eyes, and
I saw that he was watching me.

" Lead the way, Selwyn ! "

"I dare not!"

L

150 UNCLE SELWYN.

" Thora is up there ! "

"Who?"

" Thora."

"And what else? The figure of death passes
us by ; let us go away."

" Come," and I groped forward in the darkness.
The stairs were broken, and as we trod upon them
the noise of our footsteps reverberated through
the house ; at the second flight I tripped and
fell, and a hundred echoes were awakened in the
empty tenements, and answered each other from
all sides of the courtyard.

Slowly we made our way to the topmost storey.
The doors appeared to be nailed up, as were those
of the floors below. Sehvyn directed me to a
back passage, upon which there was a small door
leading to the rooms on our left.

I entered it, followed closely by Selwyn. It
was apparently quite empty. I called to "Thora."
There was no reply save the hollow-sounding
echoes from the various rooms. " In the next
garret," muttered Selwyn, pushing me towards a
low doorway covered by an old piece of sacking.
I tried to strike a match, but the walls and floor
were so damp that I could not obtain a light.

r„

UNCLE SELWYN. 151

We entered the other room. There was a figure
at the window, the black something was near it;
instinctively I drew back, and Sclwyn pulling
wildly at my arm forced me through the door-
way.

"Did you see it?"

" Thora must be dead," I said vacantly.

" Yes ; but that thing, what was it } What does
it want here .?" His grasp tightened upon my arm,
and his face was but a few inches from mine.
"See, it is coming this way!" and he pointed to
the doorway, where the sacking was still shaking.
It seemed to lift slightly, and the dark presence
was in our room, between us and the door.
Sehvyn, in abject fear, was crouching between
me and the wall, and we heard distinctly groans
and the tramping of feet in the room adjoining.

I lifted Selwyn to his feet, and attempted to
drag him towards the door. He released himself
from my grasp, and running to the window
attempted to leap through. I was able to prevent
him, and he became more calm. I succeeded in
getting a match to light, and we again raised the
sacking. The dark figure was again by the side
of the corpse, but disappeared at my approach.

' ,'

IS2 UNCLE SELWYN.

" Thora is dead," I called to Selwyn. He made
no reply, but held the lighted match mechanically
on high.

The room was entirely destitute of furniture,
and contained not even a bundle of rags or straw
to serve as a bed. On the walls were scrawled
a few undecipherable characters, which the damp
had partly obliterated.

I gave the lights to Selwyn, and moved the
body from the window. The figure was terribly
emaciated, and had been dead some days. As I
placed it upon the floor I saw strange marks upon
the naked breast. Selwyn recognised them and
cried for mercy. He dropped upon his knees and
raised his hands in supplication. The burning
match flickered for a moment upon the floor, then
left us in darkness, and the presence was with us
again. Selwyn shuddered; he did not attempt to
move from his knees. The figure advanced, and
he fell prone upon his face, and when I had again
succeeded in obtaining a light I found that he too
was dead.

A Good Intention.

IN ethics, as in most things, Horace Vesey was
original ; his ideas of right and wrong would
not, I fear, be accepted by members of the Ethical
Society, but then, as he said, he was ahead of
most people. One day, after endeavouring to prove
to me that a good intention is not a good intention
when it is a paving-block in a certain road no one
will willingly tread, he told me the story of a half-
finished pen-and-ink sketch I had often examined
with curiosity. It was a rough outline of a small
factory, possessing numerous windows and far too
many very tall chimneys, all smoking as though
nuisance inspectors had never been appointed.
From the manner in which the factory dwarfed
those adjacent to it, to say nothing of churches
and huge edifices in the neighbourhood, it had
evidently been sketched in accordance with the
views its occupier held of its importance. Why
such a trumpery production was so highly esteemed
by Vesey I had never dared to ask.

154 A GOOD INTENTION.

"About seven years ago," he commenced, " I
went to the Kyrvvick assizes to report for the
Herald, and Mr. Justice Sterndale was judge. No,
it was not the occasion, but prior to that, and it
is, perhaps, because it was the same judge whose
ineptitude wrecked my happiness, and the close
association of place and scene with that of ;«j life
story, that I have never broached the subject 1 am
about to relate, although this story is of itself sad
enough to keep.

" Everyone knows that if law is Sterndale's forte,
justice is his foible, and however lenient he may be
towards the perpetrators of physical outrage, he is
inexorably Draconian whenever the offence is one
against morals. It is, of course, the old vice of
'compounding sins he is inclined to by damning
those he has no mind to.' Hugo Speedy was the
counsel in charge of the county prosecutions, and
the list was cleared in his best manner ; in fact cases
were running almost as rapidly as before a stipen-
diary magistrate at a police court. A scoundrel who
had done his paramour to death, and half-killed the
policeman who arrested him, had been found guilty
of manslaughter, and allotted twelve months ;
then three fellows were put in the dock charged

A GOOD INTENTION. 155

with dealing in prohibited literature and photo-
graphs. The two brothers who dealt in the rubbish
pleaded guilty, and urged nothing in extenuation ;
the third was a cousin, who had coloured some of
the prints at eighteen pence a dozen, and had been
brought from some other part of the country ; he
pleaded ignorance of the fact that the pictures
were to be offered for sale, and stated that he and
his wife and child were starving, and he had to
take whatever work he could. This was the oppor-
tunity Stcrndale needed to prove that the bench
was the bulwark of morality. He was, of course,
actuated by the highest motives, his intentions were
good. So he gave a short lecture on the enormity
of the offence, pointed out the sinful purposes to
which art could be applied, the wickedness of this
debased artist in prostituting his talent in order to
make these abominable prints more attractive, and
thus his crime was of greater magnitude than that
of the others ; for without his gaudy work upon
them it was doubtful whether there would have
been purchasers. Then he unloosed all the stock
phrases he keeps for grand occasions, and the poor
artist in his threadbare coat drew himself up
proudly, and looked back at the judge as a man of

156 A GOOD INTENTION.

genius stares at a jack-in-office who attempts to
coerce him. The soul of the artist was the soul
of a man who repudiated the exaggerated notions
of the judge, a judge whose speck of humanity
was obscured by his intemperate indignation.

" Sterndale docs not go express speed for
nothing ; the objects of his wrath got two years'
imprisonment each, and the artist a fine of a
hundred pounds in addition, and was ordered to
be kept in prison until the fine was pai^.

" I got the sentence down mechanically, wonder-
ing that such a barbarous punishment should be
possible ; but if Sterndale imposed it, who would
have the temerity to question its validity.^

"There was a sob heard in court; it came from
the artist's wife. I think I can see her now ; you
know the sort of woman a big, burly, black-bearded,
callaesthetician would love. A pretty little woman:
her features so regular that the face was almost
characterless in its beauty ; fair hair in sunny
ripples, blue eyes, clear complexion, and a neck
Praxiteles would have delighted to cop)'. A frail,
delicate creature withal, and dressed in a poor
black gown which everyone could see had again
and again been altered to the fashion ; and she

6.

A GOOD INTENTION. 157

clasped to her arms a four-year-old boy, the noblest-
looking and finest-built child I ever saw. Poor
lad, he only half understood ; there were tears on
his cheeks, yet a smile played about his lips, and
he clung timorously to his mother, yet looked
defiantly at us. A brave little fellow! He expected
to be danced on his father's knee that night ; that
father who could do no wrong, but — who had done
what no one on this side of the Channel can attempt
with impunity. So a family's happiness was sacri-
ficed to British morality, and a British judge was
appeased.

"We were, of course, too busy to trouble more
then. Judge and counsel went ahead like clock-
work. We had a gang of swindlers next, with forty
witnesses to boot, and morality went dungeonwards.

" That night, as I thought the matter over, the
pitch to which we had brought jurisprudence did
not appear to me to be a high one. Scoundrels
with money, who could buy eloquence to plead for
them, who could purchase brains and experience to
present their misdoings in the most favourable
aspect, and actually adduce testimony to their
good behaviour, appeared in court to be magni-
ficently virtuous in comparison with the poor artist

158 A GOOD INTENTION.

and his wretched mates. Moreover, to turn sav-
agely upon the man who had not the necessary
guinea with which to purchase a dock defence,
then to fine that man a sum impossible to pay,
and keep him until it was paid where he could
never earn it, was an un-English course which
angered me. I determined at the first opportunity
to investigate the case; perhaps with a view to
' copy,' for I was very keen in those days.

" In time I found where the man had worked.
He shared a shop with an engraver, and I purchased
that drawing— unfinished, as he left it when arrested.
The little I gave for it the engraver sent on to the
wife ; then — I forgot all about them for a time.

"About eighteen months after those Kyrwick
assizes I went down into the Potteries to write up
the lead-poisoning topic. There I met the artist's
wife — a wreck. The poor creature had been
tempted by the high wages ; it was the only
employment at which she could earn enough to
put anything by for payment of the fine ; she
worked too hard, too long, and denied herself the
necessaries of life ; she had saved over thirty
pounds, and she was poisoned through and through.
I can hardly describe her — a withered, toothless,

0

A GOOD INTENTION. 159

ill-shapen creature, with bleared eyes, her face
terribly disfigured with crimson patches, lips blue,
hair gone, and the finely-shaped hands stained,
twisted, and swollen. I asked after her husband.
He was still in prison ; the last two visiting-days
she had not been. ' I would rather he remembered
me as I was,' she sobbed. She knew then that
she would never see him again; but she still hoped,
by sacrificing her life, to earn enough to buy his
release. The boy was in the hospital ; he had
never thriven in the neighbourhood in which they
had come to live, and the doctors feared he had a
diseased bone. The poor woman furnished all the
particulars I required, and I wrote that article as I
never wrote but one other. She knew she was to
have the payment, and I was pleased the cheque
was for a substantial amount. I meant to visit
the boy, but I did not. My trouble came — the
murder, the trial, and its consequences. In the
midst of all some one wrote asking me for pity
sake to buy a portrait. I sent the few guineas
asked, but did not open the package when it came,
nor trouble to read the note of thanks which
accompanied it. When I did it was to learn that
the wretched woman was too far poisoned to be

i6o A GOOD INTENTION.

employed further, and lived upon her little hoard
until death ended her suffering.

" Some years passed. I changed ; money more
than I could use was mine, but the child had
disappeared. I was informed, how you would not
understand, that Mr. Justice Sterndale was being
troubled ; on the bench even he appeared pre-
occupied ; some one had been known to laugh at
him. I tried hard not to notice the information ;
it was too persistent. Then a man consulted me
about the treatment of some hypothetical case. I
am pleased it remained hypothetical. It concerned
a man of the highest probity, justly esteemed, an
excellent liver, and good Christian, who was
haunted by faces, horrible faces, but one face
which was particularly persistent he seemed to
remember, not an ugly face, rather a good-looking
one, with dark hair, a bright eye, a noble expression,
but with this there appeared always a number of
highly-coloured pictures which no right-minded
person would describe. It was a terrible haunting.
This man of the greatest probity felt that he could
not much longer discharge the duties of his high
position unless these distracting illusions were
stayed.

•

A GOOD INTENTION. i6i

" No one suspected that the person, who was
represented to me as being, if not a Lord Spiritual,
some one of equal position, was subject to any
hallucination, and notwithstanding the eminent
position he had attained by reason of his great
ability, no one had ever dared to breathe a word
of slander about him. His reputation was like
that of Caesar's wife, whilst his suffering was
greater than that of St. Francis.

" Now the explanation of all this is, that in
sentencing the artist to imprisonment beyond
hope of release, Mr. Justice Sterndale had
committed an error ; for the artist had nothing to
do but to brood over his lot. His thoughts were
of the injustice of his sentence, of the man who
had imposed it, and the actions of his own which
had led up to the conviction. As time went on
and the thoughts remained, or rather grew every
time they were recalled to mind — and they were
rarely absent — more particularly after the death of
the prisoner's wife — and as they increased in
intensity, they became so real as to be perceptible
to others than the thinker who originated them.
Now brain-pictures or thought-photographs of
this description fall upon and drop away from the

i62 A GOOD INTENTION.

properly constituted medium, just as rain drops
from a duck's back. But Stcrndale was an
improperly constituted medium. Instead of the
ingress to his conscious self being obtained by
way of a will-controlled psychic valve, the im-
pressions reached him owing to a lesion in his
psychic structure. And such a lesion results from
an ungovernable temper, or senile decay, or a
combination of the two, and then the receiver of
the impressions is as unable to stop or regulate
their flow, as a Swiss guide to stop an avalanche
some other guide has started on the peak above
him. Sterndale was doomed, and I knew it.

" One day, whilst walking through a drizzling
rain, I saw on the pavement a face which, smudged,
smeared, and half washed away though it was, I
at once recognised. Only one person could have
limned it ; I knew the artist had been released. I
looked for the 'screever,' but he had left his
pavement pictures and was nowhere to be found.
Some weeks after I overtook him in Bayswater;
he stooped as he shambled along, and a little
fellow limped by his side. At first he resented
my enquiries, but we soon got upon good terms ;
he was half silly, and his hatred of Stcrndale was

A GOOD INTENTION. 163

the only thing which kept him alive. He told
me how he had tramped all the way to London,
and had hung about the Law Courts for weeks, in
order to show his boy 'the man who had killed
his mother,' but he had no idea of taking any
active revenge. I gave him the portrait of his
wife, and tried to persuade him to other courses,
but the cruelty of his fate had eaten too far into
his nature to be eradicated, until the fierceness of
his hate is in some measure appeased by
Sterndale's death. I have tried to do something
for the boy, but his father will not permit it ; poor
little fellow, his fate too is sealed ; his right leg, I
noticed, was fully four inches shorter than his left,
his spine is crooked, the joints of his fingers and
wrists are permanently enlarged, his face is wizened,
his look cruel ; not in the least does he resemble
the pretty little fellow whom I remember to have
seen in the Assize Court ; truly a great injustice
has been done to him. The fate of Sterndale is
worse; the proud, strong man is the prey to the
worst fears, his dread of death he hides, and the
secret of his hauntings is not known to any but his
confidential advisers, who are not likely to betray
him ; but rather far endure the misery of the cripple

1 64 A GOOD INTENTION.

boy than experience the torture of the death-
affrighted Sterndale. Nothing in this great city is
more painful than to see this poor artist and his
crippled son painfully making their way through its
crowded streets, impelled and guided by a force
they know not, to be where Sterndale can see
them. I have found out that the last time the
judge went circuit the artist went too, tramping
from town to town, and unconsciously appearing
just when and where Sterndale least expected
him ; but the tension is becoming too great, it
cannot continue much longer."

And it did not ; the figures of the wretched
artist and his ruined son had barely become
familiar to mc, when, a few weeks after I called on
Vesey, I saw a miserably clad, unkempt fellow
shivering on the doorstep, but on this man's face
there was a look I envied.

" He won't see anyone," he vouchsafed as I
approached, " not any one. Cos for why } See
there!" and he pointed to a contents bill carried
by a newsboy, and I knew that before many hours
should pass columns of type would be prepared
for the paeans in praise of the man they hated and
in whose death they gloried.

•

A New Force,

PETER ROBERTSON, by vocation a pro-
fessional inventor, I have known for some
years ; he is a natural genius, one of that rare class
who can create. This, to me, appears the most god-
like of faculties, and its possessor nearer akin to
the intelligent cosmos than to common humanity.
Peter's father was a farm hand in the North-
Country, an ordinary common-place lout, worth
his fifteen shillings a week, but not altogether a
success when promoted to the position of " hind,"
with eighteen shillings as his remuneration ; his
mother a fine, braw, north-country woman, with a
lust for work and great capacity for keeping a
family of thirteen comfortably clothed, housed, and
fed at a total cost of a shilling a head per week.
With the exception of Peter the progen>' was
mediocre; his brothers and sisters are where he left
them forty years ago ; shepherding, farming and
the like, the smartest foys a coble on the Tyne.

M

1 66 A NEW FORCE.

Peter commenced work as a rivet-catcher at the
age of twelve, afterwards became a boiler-maker at
Jarrow, where by sheer hard work he got enough
money to buy for himself such books and learning
as a marine engineer needs ; he went to sea as a
donkey-man, and during the long watches studied
algebra and geometry in the intcr\'als of engine
tending. Then he took to inventing; came to
London ; worked in a cellar in Soho ; brought out
all sorts of new things from boot tingjes to armour
plate. The patent laws and the company pro-
moter swallowed up all Peter's takings, took too
his few savings, and at fifty he had to face starva-
tion or go to sea ; preferring the latter he soon
picked up again, and but for domestic troubles,
which had always plagued him sorely, but held
back their heaviest trial for his old age and weak-
ness, he would have been fairly happy in the
royalties from the minor inventions trade thieves
left to him.

He gave me a call one day, when evidently
something unusually heavy was pressing upon him.

"What's the matter.?" I asked.

" I want t' consult ye, Mr. Vesey, aboot a matter
that 's cau^ing me a vast o' thinking."

t.

A NEW FORCE. 167

"Thinking only?"

"Aye! joost that."

" Patent jobbery ? "

" Nae, it 's the thing itsel' that fashes me the

noo."

"Then I am afraid I cannot help you, Peter;
the veriest fool can beat me hollow at mechanics
and mathematics."

" It 's nac a question o' mathematics nae book-
learning, or I'd make no trouble on it; it's the
thing itscl' that 's ayont me."

" What is the mechanical problem then V

"It's nae mechanical problem, it's a force o'
Nature itsel' I am losing the grip on, man ! "

" What ! you have discovered a new force .-' "

"Joost that."

" What is it .? "

" I div 'na kna' ; I div 'na kna'."

" Perpetual motion, perhaps .^ "

" Man ! D'ye think I 'm mad .? "

"You are far too clever, Peter; but what have
you found .-• is it — something like electricity .'' "

" Aye— to luke at."

" Presumably you have discovered some re-
condite property of matter ."

1 68 A NEW FORCE.

" See here noo, I 've na come here to liear talk
the like I can get in Great Saint Geordie Street ;
I've come because ye'r an honest man, Horace
Vesey, and it 's yer help I want. D'ye mind me
this time ?"

" Quite seriously."

"Ye kna Scott ha' written in one o' his poems
anent the force that cleft Eildon Hills in three ."

"The same that 'curbed the Tweed with a
bridge of stone,' and if it is with respect to
raising the old Tay Bridge, I am no engineer to
decide as to the possibility of your scheme."

" I said nout about bridges ; but the force that
cleft Eildon Hills."

" I 'm not an authority on explosives."

" But ye ken the magic words ; at least I 'vc
been told so."

" I am not good at riddles, Peter. What is it
you want .''"

" As I told ye ; there 's joost a force o' Nature I
was utilising for ordinary mechanical purposes, a
practical motor, an' I 've lost the grip o' the thing;
and it 's joost running me the noo."

" Tell me all about it, Peter ; steer clear of
mechanical terms."

f-

A NEW FORCE. 169

" D'ye mind a time back o' the pneumatic
motor ?"

"You mean the dodge you had for running the
water automatically through the surface condensers,
instead of pumping it in and out of the ship?"

" Nae I don't. I mean the wind-driven ketch in
which I took ye to Putney."

" I remember the trip ; can't say that I re-
member the motor."

" Well, when I went to sea again I was turning
the idea over in my mind one night watch, when
we were running from Kertch to the Bosphorus,
and it came into my mind like, that if the reser-
voir of the motor were all made solid, of one
piece, without joint or seam, there 'd be no leakage
from the vacuum."

" You are getting too deep for me."

" Haud thee gob, man ! Ye ken y'r mither
tongue well enoo. Some time agone I got to
work on the same tack, and I had to get a
spherical hollow ball without any seam or flaw,
and a perfect nat'ral vacuum inside — there's only
one way o' getting that."

*' I did not know there was one."

" Y've no mind for mechanics. A weel ! For

170 A NEW FORCE.

the last hundred years they 've rolled hollow tubes
from the solid bar, and had a perfect vacuum
inside. I changed about the rolls till I got the
perfect sphere. T'were hard work for me and my
boy Tich, making the model out of iron, and it
came to me that a bigger train o' rolls than we
could ever afford would be wanted if we were
to have a fair-sized sphere. So after a vast o'
cogitating I fixed on the alloy we 'd use instead o'
steel. D'ye know anything about sodium ?"

" Only the chloride — common salt." '

" I mean the chemistry o' the metal }"

" Nothing."

*' It has very pecooliar properties ; it 's a sort as
though the solid metal had the power o' absorbing
a rare quantity o' other solids."

" Like a sponge."

"Aye, a sponge squeezed vera dry, and which
instead o' swelling with the water it takes up, gets
smaller."

"Hm!"

"Aye. It'll take aboot one-fourth its bulk o'
liquid oxygen, and lose more'n half its size; so
when you add 3 and i together the sum total is
2 ; that 's a bit unnatural."

A NEW FORCE. 171

" Unusual ! "

" Well, the long and short of it is this ; I get
my sphere, made of what I think is aluminium
alloy, I put the tube in without destroying the
natural vacuum "

"How?"

" That 's only a question o' mechanics, and none
so difficult — I fills the charger with — but that 'd
be telling — anyway, I fills it, turns on the stop-
cock, and the sphere contracts to about two-thirds
its size."

"Yes!"

" Now, how did that come aboot ? "

" Can't say."

" Y' see there was nout in the sphere ; I turns on
the tap to let the charge in, and straightaway the
receiver collapses like a blowed-up 'rubber bag
when the wind 's let out."

" Instead of which something got in the receiver."

" Joost gas."

" I understand."

" So do I now. Well, Tich and I set to, to find
out the chemistry o' that stuff. For surprises,
mechanics can't compare with chemistry."

" I agree with you."

172 yl NEW FORCE.

" Man, the composition o' stuff's an awfu'
mystery."

" Matter is merely a form of energy."

" May be. Well, we experimented until I got a
stuff which grew just so much smaller and heavier
as it swallowed up half its bulk and a fourth of its
weight of another metal ; then, when agen a liquid,
expanded ; so all y 'd to do was joost to pump in
and off the liquid, and you had a solid mass of
metal beating just like a living heart."

" Very clever."

" Eh, but it was what we wanted for the pneu-
matic motor ! It was joost a bit uncanny from the
first, this living lump o' metal. I cut it through
with a sht saw, and it 's joost plain, solid, soft alloy,
and it works like a charm. We fixed up the gear
o' the hull of an old yawl, and with a bit o' a hand
crank to work the pump, we ran up and down the
river, slack or full, time and again."

" Then if you have a really practical motor,
Peter, I'm right glad of it."

"Aye, but I 'ver nae doon. Man ! but I 'm sair
perplexed o' th' matter."

" What now 1 "

" Aboot a week back I found the pump eccentric

A NEW FORCE. 173

had loosed from the crank shaft, and that Tich
and I had been turning and grinding at novvt, for
the pump could nae 'a worked for days."

" What difference did that make ? "

" Nae difference whatever ! When we wanted to
go ahead the metal started off abeating and abeat-
ing and away we went, and 'gen we wanted to
stop, we stopped ; the metal's alive, man, and I'm
most scared to death wi' it."

I made as thorough examination of the metal
and the motor mechanism as Peter would allow,
and certainly, if the facts are not exactly as he
related them, he has a boat which, without any
discoverable cause, is driven ahead or astern at
will ; and although, on his voyages up and down
stream, he has always someone grinding away at a
small crank, I, Horace Vesey, have been convinced
that such is not necessary to the working of the
Robertson motor.

Mysterious Maisie.

DEAR MR. VESEY,— It is very good of you
to interest yourself in my behalf in our
quest for " Mysterious Maisie " — so we have named
the kind creature — and I lose no time in giving
you not only all the facts concerning her visits,
but many details of my sister's strange experiences.
For the best of reasons I cannot add to the
particulars now given ; you have the whole story,
and nothing extraneous to it, save such slight
embellishments as my sister herself has written
in her letters and journal, and some explanatory
comments by myself to references which would be
unintelligible to a stranger.

I will preface the story by stating that my sister
Laura was seventeen when our father died ; in our
straitened circumstances, and with mother's health
failing, it was needful that she should at once earn
her living. She was not fitted for teaching, and
had she been so, I think my experiences as assistant

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 175

mistress of a High School were well enough known
to her to act as an efficient repcllant from embark-
ing upon a like career. She was accomplished,
fond of literature, painted a little, played well, and
was of such a kindly disposition that she seemed
eminently fitted for the post of companion to an
elderly or invalid lady, and we were glad to accept
a situation of this kind for her. True it was
obtained through an agency, but the references
were quite satisfactory, and such enquiries as we
could make brought replies which reassured us,
and we were confident that Laura would quickly
gain the affection of all with whom she came in
contact. My sister at that time was very pretty ;
she had a really beautiful face, but she was petite,
very slight, very fragile ; a delicately nurtured
child, but full of verve, and not wanting in courage.
She was not unduly timorous, nor was she over
imaginative, and so truthful in all she said, and
honest in all she did, that I accept as actual fact
every statement she has made, exaggerated though
those accounts may appear, and extraordinary as
they undoubtedly are. But to the story. My sister
wrote in her journal, under the date of October
22nd, 1889:

176 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

"Arrived safely at Willesden Junction at
4.33; after waiting nearly half-an-hour, took the

train to , reaching that station in less than

twenty minutes; took a 'four-wheeler' to Miss
Mure's. The streets had a very dingy appearance,

is a dowdy suburb. Soon we turned down a

winding lane, very badly fenced, not many houses
in it, they were all old and were built on one side
of the road ; plenty of trees, nearly all of them
bare of leaves. The car stopped in a wider road
just out of the lane ; the house lool<s old and
badly kept from the outside ; it stands back about
twelve yards from the road. The garden in front
is very badly kept — I have not yet seen that at the
back — it is walled in, with iron palisades on the top
of the wall, and ivy and other creepers grow over
the fence as well as over the house. The front
gate is in an iron arch, and was locked. The
maid, whose name is Agnes, was a long time
answering our appeal ; then, when she saw who it
was, she went back into the house for the key, so
the cabman put my box on the footway, I paid
him, and he drove away. I did not at all like the
look of the house or the garden, and the cold flag-
stones with which the walk from the gate to the

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 177

front door is paved are very ugly and cheerless.
Agnes locked the gate again before we went into
the house. In the little hall it was so dark I could
not see anything, but when the door was shut, and
we opened another leading to the stairs, I felt that
the front door was lined with sheet iron. Every
time I see such a door I think of the house in
which Bill Sikcs made his last stand, but I do not
want to frighten myself. My room is large ; it has
a four-post bedstead with green rep hangings, a
chest-upon-chest, an old closed press, and some
old-fashioned chairs. The only lights are candles,
the window is small, overgrown with a creeper
from which the leaves are fast falling, and is barred
with five iron bars and some ornamental scroll
work. There are very curious prints on the wall,
and some designs, which I cannot make out, on
the ceiling. In the walls there are three doors,
not counting the one in use ; one of those has
no bolts, but is locked. I have placed my box
against it.

" I have not seen Miss Mure. Agnes tells me
she does not wish to see me until to-morrow. I
have had tea in the front room downstairs. It is a
long, narrow room, with three tall and very narrow

178 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

windows looking into the front garden, and a
smaller window at the side, by the fire-place, also
looking out upon the garden. There is a door
leading to the drawing-room, which is at the back
of the house. The room seemed to be very dark,
but perhaps that was due to the dismal light out
of doors, and the thick growth of trees and shrubs
in front. When the candles were lit — we have no
gas nor lamps — I saw that the room had a papered
ceiling, a dirty, cream-coloured ground, with an
open floral design in blue. The walls are panelled
half way, the upper half is covered with an orna-
mental net reaching up to the cornice; at the back
of the netting the wall is plastered over with
canvas, which some time was painted stone colour.
There are no pictures in the room. It is not
home-like or cosy, and I do not admire the style;
but I have never seen anything at all like it before,
perhaps it will be better when I am accustomed to
it ; at present there is an air of mystery about the
house and its inmates.

" Since I wrote the above I have had a talk with
Agnes. I hope nothing she told me was true. She
is a strange woman ; but she says she has been
here over fourteen years, so I cannot think things are

0-

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 179

so bad as she represents them to be. If her idea
was to frighten me, she failed ; I do not believe
her silly tales. At first I was amused at her talk,
for she speaks the true cockney dialect, and with a
peculiar inflexion, very different to the accent
habitual to people of the Midlands. I think Agnes
is good-natured, but it was cruel to attempt to
frighten me with silly superstitions ; she is very
io-norant if she does not know that all she said is
false. I hope Miss Mure is more enlightened,
otherwise my sojourn here will not be pleasant. I
judge them to be funny people ; they must be
eccentric, or they would not keep a crocodile for
a pet.

"Agnes says that my room is called the dragon
room, from the pattern upon the ceiling. I am to
go later into ' Caduceus,' but she persuaded Miss
Mure to let me have the larger room at first, as
beine more homelike. I wonder what ' Caduceus '
is like ! There are seven bedrooms — some of
them must be very small — and one over the back
kitchen ; in that Agnes sleeps, and it is reached
by different stairs.

"After her silly tales about hauntings, I asked her
why she did not keep a dog. She replied that she

i8o MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

had tried several times to get one to stay, but they
all ran away. ' They sees 'em, and they won't stop.
Why there's Draysen's bull terrier, what '11 kill
anythin' livin' ; when 'c come with the meat one
day, I 'ticed him in through the side entrance, and
put him in the back garden. He were right savage
when I shut the door on him, but 'c no sooner
turned round and looked the other way than his
tail dropped, and he whined that awful I were glad
to let 'im out there and then. But wc must ha'
summut, so we've got Sivvy.'

"'And what is Sivvy .!'' I asked.

" For answer, Agnes commenced to explain that
Miss Mure is a spiritualist, and constantly attended
by a lot of spiritual companions, so that dogs and
other animals dread her. At this I laughed heartily.
Agnes was not offended, but she said I evidently
knew very little of such matters. We were then
silent for a few minutes, and I heard mumblings
and scratchings. * Is that Sivvy } ' I asked laugh-
ingly. ' No,' she replied very seriously, 'they're at
it agen,' by they meaning the spirits, I suppose ;
but after listening she said it was the ' sooterkin,'
at which I was, of course, as wise as before. I shall
have to enlarge my vocabulary very considerably

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE, i8i

before understanding the inmates of this house.
Sivvy frightened me much more than any ghost is
hkely to do. She is a huge crocodile, nearly four
feet in length, and she ran, or rather waddled,
straight towards me as soon as the door to the
kitchen was opened ; she hissed the whole time,
and sent one of the chairs spinning by a blow
from her tail. Agnes had ready a rough and
much torn Turkish towel, which she threw over
Sivvy 's head ; the reptile snapped savagely at it,
and got its teeth entangled in the threads, and
being also blindfolded by the towel, was quiet
until Agnes seized its snout with her left hand,
and taking its right thigh in her other, lifted it
from the floor. It then commenced to lash
savagely with its tail, and if Agnes was not badly
hurt by the blows, she must be destitute of feeling ;
but it was only for an instant, for she slipped the
reptile into a tank underneath the side-table by
the window. She looked hot and flurried when
the business was over, but she gave me to under-
stand that the vicious thing was always loose in
the outer kitchen, and that I must not presume to
pass that way unless she accompanied me. She
said also that Sivvy was in and out of the tank in

N

1 82 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

her kitchen all night ; a significant hint that neither
I nor Miss Mure must venture beyond our own
quarters after Sivvy's supper time.

" I did not sleep very well last night. Someone
was in and out of my room several times, but they
did not reply to my challenge, and as they did not
molest me, no harm is done. I expect it was
Agnes, trying to convince me of the truth of her
ghost stories. I saw Miss Mure just after twelve
o'clock to-day. She is an ogress. I think she is
harmless, for she is nearly blind,* but she is
dreadful to look upon ; very big, very stout, with a
great fat face and tremendous cheeks and neck.
She speaks in a very snappy, peremptory manner,
but what she has said so far has not been
di.sagrecable. My chief duty it appears is to read
to her in the afternoons. We commenced to-day ;
she has a large number of books, but they are
very old and about many curious things. Some
of them arc in black letter, which is very hard to
read ; some are in Latin, which I can read, but
cannot understand. Miss Mure says, so much the
better. When she tries to read she has to bring
the volume quite close to her nose, and then runs
along the line. It must be very trying work for her,

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 183

but it is quite comical to see. We finished by
reading in a book called Ccrtaine Secret Wonders
of Nature, and I had to copy out the following
description of a monster, for Miss Mure said she
knew where there was one just like it, only it was
nearly six months old ; she seemed very much
interested in the description, which she has learned
by heart.

" ' Begotten of honourable parents, yet was he most
horrible, deformed and fearefull, having his eyes of the
colour of fire, his mouth and his nose like to the snoute of
an Oxe, wyth an Home annexed thereunto like the Trumpe
of an Elephant ; all hys back shagge-hairde like a dogge,
and in place where other men be accustomed to have brests,
he had two heads of an Ape, hauing above his nauell
marked the eies of a cat, and joyned to his knee and armes
foure heades of a dog, with a grenning and fearefull
countenance. The palmes of his feet and handes were like
to those of an Ape ; and among the rest he had a taile
turning up so high, that the height thereof was half an elle ;
who after he had lived foure houres died.'

"A fortnight has passed since I last wrote in
my journal. I have had two letters from my
sister Maggie, and one from mother ; both com-
plain that they have not heard from me, save by
the note advising my arrival. I have given three
letters to Agnes to post for me, to-day I found

1 84 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE

them on the dresser in her kitchen. I am not
allowed to go out of the house at all ; first one
excuse and then another is made, but I shall soon
see whether or not any attempt will be made to
keep me prisoner here. Two people have been at
different times to sec Miss Mure, but the interviews
have been private. There is very little variety in
the life we lead, and our reading is confined to the
same class of book. I have become quite learned
respecting goblin-land. I should know much
more if I understood better the Latin books I
have to read, but they are printed in such strange
type and with so many abbreviations, that I have
to concentrate my attention upon the words, not
the sense. How different this world to the one
about which I used to read, and in which I used to
live ! This is one peopled by demons, phantoms,
vampires, ghouls, boggarts, and nixies. Names of
things of which I knew nothing are now so
familiar that the creatures themselves appear to
have real existence. The Arabian Nights are not
more fantastic than our gospels ; and Lempri^re
would have found ours a more marvellous world
to catalogue than the classical mythical to which
he devoted his learning. Ours is a world of

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 185

luprachaun and clurichaune, deev and cloolie, and
through the maze of mystery I have to thread my
painful way, now learnhig how to distinguish oufe
from pooka, and nis from pixy; study long
screeds upon the doings of effreets and dwergers,
or decipher the dwaul of delirious monks who
have made homunculi from refuse. Waking or
sleeping, the image of some uncouth form is
always present to me. What would I not give for
a volume by the once despised " A. L. O. E." or
prosy Emma Worboise ? Talk of the troubles of
Winifred Bertram or Jane Eyre, what are they to
mine ? Talented authoresses do not seem to
know that however terrible it may be to have as a
neighbour a mad woman in a tower, it is much
worse to have to live in a kitchen with a crocodile.
This elementary fact has escaped the notice of
writers of fiction ; the re-statement of it has
induced me to reconsider my decision as to the
most longed-for book ; my choice now is the
Swiss Family Robinson. In it I have no doubt I
should find how to make even the crocodile useful,
or how to kill it, which would be still better.

" It is a month to-day since I left home. It
seems a year. I am conscious of a great change

1 86 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

in myself; this cooped -up life, the whole of my
time passed in the company of people for whom
I have no affection, and my thoughts engaged
with things to which I have a natural aversion,
have altered my character. That this change was
desired by my employer I am certain. The
atmosphere of mystery and unreality which
pervades this house has broken my nerve. The
trifling irregularities at which I used to laugh now
oppress me ; the dream faces, the scrapings, the
waving of the bed-curtains, the footsfeps and the
scurrying, which disturb my rest, I cannot attribute
to my imagination. Until a week or so ago I felt
strong enough to dismiss them as absurdities, now
I do not know what to think. I see strange forms
disappearing from the rooms as I enter them ;
creatures, like to nothing in the heaven above or
in the earth beneath, trip across the landing as I
mount the stairs to my chamber ; small headless
beasts creep through the skirting-board on the
corridor to hide themselves from my gaze, and
these matters now affect me greatly. In the
words of Job, ' Fear came upon me, and trembling,
which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit
passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood

0.

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 187

up : it stood still, but I could not discern the form
thereof.' I am quite in the power of Miss Mure;
she takes my hand in hers, and I know not how
the time passes, but I feel weak and listless ; even
the letters from Maggie and mother do not interest
me; they are in answer to letters I do not remember
to have written. There has been one gathering
here for the performance of the rites of the higher
mystery. I was present, but I remember very
little of them ; one great horror excluded all
others. A thing they brought here, half human,
half — I know not what. I was in the front room
downstairs when it arrived. It stood on two
splayed feet outside the front gate when I first
saw it, and its hand was grasped by a sad-looking,
demure little man, with white hair, and wearing
large blue spectacles. Its face was hidden by a
dark silk pockethandkerchief tucked in under the
edge of a heavy cloth cap, and it made uncouth
noises, and tugged at the bars of the gate like a
wild beast in its cage. At the seance we were in
semi-darkness ; at the table it was placed right
opposite me, and the cap and handkerchief were
removed — but it would be wicked to describe
what was disclosed — neither God nor demon could

1 88 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

have made that horror ! Its keeper stood at the
back of it, and he had taken from the black hand-
bag he carried a short, stiff stick with a pear-shaped
end, with which he energetically cudgelled the
horror about the elbows when it tried to get across
the table to me ; apparently the only thing it
sought to do. Strange shapes flitted about in the
gloom, harsh noises were made, there was some
weird chanting and hysterical sobbing; the sooter-
kin was brought from its warm-lined hatching-box,
and twitched two tentacles sluggishly after the
manner of a moribund jelly-fish ; but my attention
was riveted on the horror before whom I crouched.
Since the seance I have had more leisure, and have
hardly seen Miss Mure, who is engaged in pre-
parations for some other orgie ; thus I have time,
and now some inclination, to write once more.

"Agnes tells me that I am soon to go into
' Caduceus,' a small room at the back of the house.
It looks out upon that corner of the garden which
is a dense tangle of shrub and bramble. It is at
the angle nearest to a low building which has
been built on a piece of land cut off from the
garden. The building, Agnes says, is the mortuary
for this district, and it is only when there are

r>.

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 189

bodies there that Miss Mure convenes a meeting.
The girl who came to the last stance and sat at my
side is, Agnes informs me, a successful sorceress.
Only a short time ago she was robust, stout, and
healthy ; now she is like a walking corpse, and she
draws her strength from those of her acquaintance
who do not shun her. If Agnes is to be believed,
this Miss Buimbert must be a sort of soul vampire,
sucking the spirituality from every person who
allows her to approach within range of her in-
fluence. I was doubtful whether she was in reality
a person or only the phantom of one ; it has
become so hard to me now to distinguish the
actual from the seemingly real. I know that the
headless forms and curious creatures which are
ever flitting before me, and disappearing at my
approach, are but illusions or phantasms conjured
by Miss Mure to make an impression upon me,
and it is to her that I owe the visitations of
intangible visionary monsters who disturb my rest
with groans, and make my waking moments
horrible by their hideous grimaces and threatening
■gestures. I know the horror was real, for it had
to be admitted by the front gate, and the impress
left by its clubbed feet was visible for days on the

190 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

clayey side walk outside the entrance gate. The
sooterkin is real, for I have touched the brown
skin of its boneless body, and seen the impression
of its short, flabby, rounded limbs in the soft cotton
wool of its bed.

" I know the phantoms cannot harm me, and I
pray earnestly for preservation from all ill, and
that I may be delivered from this place.

" Why was I brought here .-' For what unholy
purpose am I necessary to these people that they
guard me so jealously } Perhaps Agnes may be
induced to give me some indication of my fate.

" Three days have passed since I wrote in my
journal ; an event has happened which has in-
creased the mystery of this place. Yesternight,
about ten o'clock, a car drew up at the front gate.
I was in the front room and peeped through the
blind. As Agnes passed the door to answer the
knock she turned the key of the room and made
me a prisoner. She admitted three men, and a
fourth stood on the flags between the door and
the gate. I had ample opportunity for examining
him closely. A coarse, ruffianly-looking, burly
man, a drover or butcher, or one following some
brutalizing calling, I judged, from his appearance

0.

•

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 191

and his manner whilst standing and walking.
Dark hair, a short beard, and a raucous voice.
After admitting the men Agnes went hurriedly to
her kitchen, and locked and barred the door, and
soon I heard the hiss and the clattering of furni-
ture which followed ' Sivvy's ' entrance into the
front kitchen.

"The three men went upstairs, and in a few
moments the stillness of the house was broken by
the shrill shrieks of a female ; the screams were
accompanied by sounds as of a scuffle and over-
turned furniture, then the noise partly subsided,
but the struggle had not ceased. I heard the
heavy breathing of the men, and seemed to see
the efforts made by the woman they were dragging
to the stairs. There were gasps and short cries as
they brought her downstairs, and a short but sharp
struggle in the hall. Then the burly man stepped
within, and soon the four re-appeared in front,
half carrying half dragging a struggling woman.
Her light hair flew in disorder, as she twisted and
bent to free herself It was with difficulty they
forced her into the car, and I saw her arms waving
in helplessness as the captors endeavoured to enter
the vehicle. I saw, too, that something had been

192 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

tied over her mouth, and the last thing I noticed
on her thin forearm, from which the dress had been
torn, was a freshly- made scratch two or more
inches in length, from which the blood was still
trickling. Three of the men, including the burly
drover, having entered the vehicle, the fourth rang
our bell, then mounted the seat by the driver, and
as they drove away I saw them pulling down the
blinds to the windows of the car.

"Agnes went out at once and locked the gate,
then bolted and barred the door and came to me.
She appeared to have been drinking heavily, and
answered my earnestly-put questions in an in-
coherent manner. If I am to believe her there
have been several girls engaged at different times
as companions to Miss Mure, and none of them
have escaped ; some have died, others have been
taken away after residing here a long time. What
am I to do.'' I will see Miss Mure to-morrow and
demand some explanation of what I have seen
and heard ; and 1 have told Agnes to tell Miss
Mure when she first sees her to-morrow that I
must have an interview.

*' I did not sleep at all last night, for I could not
dismiss from my mind the scene I had witnessed,

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 193

and what with speculating upon the fate of the
unhappy creature forcibly taken away, and fore-
bodings of ill to myself, I passed a most wretched
time.

" Somewhat to my surprise Miss Mure expressed
her willingness to see me at once. She was at
breakfast when I entered her bedroom, feeling
very nervous, and not quite knowing what to say.
I told her that I did not like the place, and wished
to go home ; that she had no confidence in me,
and did not even let me know who were the
inmates of the house. To this she replied that
she was sorry that I was not comfortable, that
Agnes should have instructions to give me greater
attention, and that any delicacy I might express
a liking for should be obtained for me. As to not
knowing who were the inmates of the house, she
could not understand to whom I referred. No
one was there, or had been there, but herself,
myself, and Agnes. When I told her of what I
had seen, she said it was all imagination ; she
knew nothing of anyone having been there, and
surely she would have heard had there been any
such struggle as I described. I told her that the
footprints on the footway outside the gate, and

194 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

the marks of the carriage wheels, were still to be
seen distinctly, so that I was sure I had not
deceived myself. She said it was cruel of me to
mention such evidence, as I knew she was so
afflicted that she could not see the marks herself;
and even were the marks there, as I said, she
was not responsible, for they were not upon her
premises, and what people did outside our gates
was beyond our control. The neighbourhood had
greatly deteriorated since she first resided there.
Had they not forced her to give uf> the most
delightful portion of the garden for the erection of
a public mortuar)' .■• A thing which so incensed
her that she had entirely neglected the 'beautiful
pleasure grounds' since, and allowed the gardens
to run wild, for she never used them now, and she
only hoped that the authorities would allow her to
enjoy possession of her house unmolested for the
few years that remained to her. Then I com-
plained of the crocodile. To this the answer was
that I need not go near it. Siva — that is its correct
name — was to be kept in the kitchen ; it was a
strange pet, but Agnes wished to keep it, and as
long as she kept it in her own quarters she was to
be allowed to do so. If it was once found in any

MYSTERIOUS MAI SI E. 195

other part of the house it was to go ; Agnes knew
that, and I need not fear that it would be allowed
to pass the threshold of the kitchen. Then I said
that I did not like the 'horror/ and I could not,
and would not, stay if it ever came again. She
replied that it was impertinent of me to attempt
to dictate to her as to whom she should or should
not invite as guests to her house, and that she
would not submit to my dictation ; no harm had
been done to mc, I had experienced no rudeness,
and she was sure that none of her acquaintance
would insult mc. I then told her that I had
heard that none of the persons who had previously
filled the post I occupied had received any wages ;
that I was too poor to stay there if not paid, and
that my only object on leaving home was to earn
something to help to support my mother, as my
sister's salary was insufficient, and that I should
be pleased to be able to send them something at
at once. She listened in silence, but veritably
stormed her reply. I had been listening to ' idle
kitchen tales,' for she always paid when the money
was due, my first quarter's salary was not payable
until Christmas. I should have it then, unless she
sent me about my business before, and she would

196 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

like to know if there were any other preposterous
claims I wished to make. To this I replied some-
what hotly that I had not made any preposterous
claims, that I had simply asked for an advance of
money as a favour and for the purpose I stated ;
that 1 certainly did wish for greater liberty ; that
I had never been outside the door since the day I
came, that I wanted greater freedom for writing
and posting my letters, and that I could not
consent to remain in her service unless she showed
greater confidence in me, and informed of the
object she had in view when compelling my
attendance at such meetings as the seatice at which
I had assisted. She said that she was pleased
that I had spoken out boldly, for she now felt no
diffidence in making our relative positions plain to
me. She wished me to remember that she stood
in loco parentis, and therefore could not allow me
to wander about alone, for the neighbourhood was
not one of the kind in which a young girl could
do so with impunity. But I was not to imagine
that it was by her wish that I was confined to the
premises. On fitting occasions, and as oppor-
tunities offered, we should drive and walk out
together. As to the writing of letters I was, and

0.

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 197

always had been, quite free to write when I liked
and whatever I wished to either my mother or my
sister, and so far from having tampered with my
correspondence she was only too pleased to know
that my letters had been delivered to me personally
by the postman. I sadly mistrusted her, but she
was sure it was because I did not know her suffi-
ciently well, and as proof of the kindly interest
she took in my welfare, and that of my mother
and sister, she would be pleased to advance me,
there and then, five pounds on account of my
first quarter's salary if I would undertake to send
it at once, writing only a few lines to say why it
had been sent, and in her presence putting the
money in the envelope, sealing it and taking it
directly to the gate, and giving it to any boy who
might be playing in the locality to post in the
letter box which we could see about a hundred
yards distant. She knew it must be tiresome to a
young girl to have no companions but Agnes, so, if
my mother was agreeable, I might at Christmas
spend a few days with friends in London ; or, if
that could not be arranged, I might invite anyone
to spend some time with me in her house ; she
would always be ready to grant me facilities to

O

1 98 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

receive or visit any friend of whom my mother
might approve. As to the object of her studies
and work, she was gratified that I showed any
interest in them. I was possessed of sufficient
inteHigence, she thought, to form some idea of her
work from the book's I had read to licr. She was
engaged in researches of a kind not understood
by many, and she admitted that the m^cthods it
was necessary to adopt were not always pleasant ;
indeed they were viewed with such suspicion by
the authorities that it was advisable" to work in
secret, or at anyrate in such a manner as would
excite but little suspicion. She concluded, ' I
liked you, dear, from the time I first saw your
portrait, and I hope some day you will be an
earnest worker in the cause to which I have
devoted my life.'

" I made haste to apologise fully, and gladly
availed myself of her oft'er to make the remittance.
I thought how pleased dear mother and Maggie
would be to receive my first earnings, and I took
the five sovereigns to Agnes to get changed into a
note by one of the tradesmen. Then I wrote my
letter, and submitted it to Miss Mure, who at once
approved it, though it took her some time to read

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 199

it. When Agnes brought up the note I took the
number and date, at Miss Mure's suggestion, and
also the name of the last owner, ' H. Fletcher,'
scrawled on the back, and stated them upon the
receipt I gave her ; then in her presence and in
that of Agnes I put the note and the letter in the
envelope, sealed it with black wax, and at once
went with Agnes to the front gate to find a boy to
post it. At Miss Mure's suggestion we staj'cd
there, and watched him take it to and drop it in
the box, then gave him another penny when he
came back. I never was so pleased as when I
saw the boy drop the letter in. I felt quite content
to remain with Miss Mure, and I told Agnes so.
She did not say anything. I added that though
we had no friends in London, a friend of mine
had, and no doubt I should have an invitation
from them, and leave for a few days at Christmas.
' Oh no, you won't ! ' said Agnes. ' I 've been
here fourteen year last Febry, and it ain't the
fust time I 've seen this trick played. Don't I
remember poor Miss Jo } Why, 'er stood here
just as you, and talked about goin' 'ome in a
fortnight ; but 'er war took bad and died ; and
'er went 'ome from the mortrey, 'er did. The

200 MYSTERIOUS MAI SI E.

missis ain't never so dangerous as when her *s
nice, that's it, miss. It ain't her fault, but I'm
sorry for yer, I am.'

"No sooner were we back in the house than
Miss Mure called me. I hastened to her, and she
held out to me the note I had sent in the letter,
and laughingly asked me why I had forgotten to
enclose it. There it was, the number and the
name both corresponded with those I had taken
of the one I was sure I had enclosed to mother.
'Have you sent the real note or only tfie phantom .-''
she asked. I was too confused to reply. ' Well,
we will wait until we hear from your home,' she
said with a smile, and motioned me to leave the
room.

" I have had a long talk with Agnes ; she
refused to say anything about the event of the
other evening, but says I shall 'see what I shall
see.' I cannot make out at all what became of
the other girls; but as to my fate, Agnes makes no
secret of what she believes is in store for me. ' If
I was you, miss, I should pra}'. I should ; it can't
do no harm to you, and it '11 make yer 'appy.
Why don't I pray } It ain't much use prayin'
when the copper 'ave 'is 'and on yer shoulder, is

•

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 201

it ? I hadn't oughter come 'ere, I 'adn't. If I 'd
gone to quod it'd only been for life at the wust.
But Agnes Coley 'd had one taste, and her d'ain't
want two, so 'er chivvied the beak, and 'as 'er
liberty — livin' alone in a cellar with a bloomin'
crocerdile, that's what 'er's doin'.'

" ' But I have not " chivvied the beak," and I
am here,' I argued.

""Course ycr 'aven't. It's yer fate, that's all.
You won't be here for a couple o' bloomin' stretches
fightin' for ycr livin' with a stinkin' crocerdile.
You '11 be a hangel long afore that.'

"'But, Agnes, tell me why must I be an angel }
If what you tell me is true, I do not think poor
Miss Mure and her friends want angels, they seem
to choose such very opposite characters for their
acquaintance.'

" ' Look 'ere, miss, 't ain't that missis wants yer
to become a hangel; yer '11 become a hangel 'cause
it 's yer nature.'

" ' I do not understand you.'

" * Well, see 'ere. S'pose — only s'pose a' course
— s'pose that there thing yer call the 'orror were
to come here, and be put in " Salymandy," and
you in " Caduceus," with only a bit a' tishy paper

202 MYSTERIOUS MAI SI E.

a dividin' yer room from his 'n. Don't yer think
yer 'd soon be a hangel thin ? '

" I shuddered.

" ' Yer 'd better pray, miss ; though it ain't for
the likes o' mc to tell yoii to pray — if I 'd a pray'd
for fourteen year instead o' carryin' on as I 've
been doin' — but there, it ain't no use cryin' over
spilt milk.'

" ' But why should the horror be brought here at
all > '

"'You ask that? Well, I should *ave thought
you'd a knowed. There was poor Miss Jo, a nice
girl she was, and she used to tell me that what the
hinner cercle was after was the makin' o' summat
different to 'omunclusses, and as how, when all
things was properishus, they'd try agen and agen
until they did get somethin' fresh. We was great
in mandrakes in them days, miss, and some haw-
ful things I 've seen in this house. Poor Miss Jo,
'er zvas a dear good girl, just like yerself; but I
found her 'alf dead in Caduceus, and the dwerger
what used to be here ain't been nigh since that.
You do put me in mind o' Miss Jo, miss, you
do.'

•' I did not quite understand Agnes at first, but

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 203

soon the import of much I had read to Miss Mure
seemed clear to me.

" You pretend to like me, Agnes, I said. Why
did you not help Miss Jo, if you liked her as you
say you did ? "

" ' That 's it, miss, I ain't no good. When the
times is properishus I could no more stir a finger
to help yer than Sivvy could if yer tumbled in a
vat o' bilin' oil.'

" ' Then if you believe that, and wish to help
me, let me escape from here at once.' I clung
to her arm, for I felt a fear I had never before
experienced.

"'No, miss, that wouldn't save yer, and it 'd be
worse than death to me. I 'an't live 'ere fourteen
year for nothin'. I 've 'eard all that before. Yer
a brave girl, you are, braver than Miss Jo, but
I s'pose it '11 be the same with you as with the
rest.'

"We were silent for some time.

" ' Agnes, will you tell me — will you let me
know — if that thing ever comes here again ? '

" ' I can't promise, miss.'

" ' If only I could get a few days I could escape,'
I said in despair.

204 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

'"No, yer couldn't. There was that Miss Van-
over who got out of a Russian prison, trying for
months to escape from 'ere, and 'er never could.
Besides, 'ow do you know 'e ain't here now }
What would you do if you met 'im on the stairs
to-night .'' '

" I screamed.

" ' Be quiet, or I '11 let Sivvy in. You 'd better
go to bed now.'

" ' Oh, do help me, Agnes ! ' I pleaded.

" ' And 'aven't I helped yer .-• 'Avcft't I warned
yer of yer fate } Ain't it because I like you
I 'vc told yer what I 'ave .-' You do what I told
you.'

" I came upstairs, and have written, and now
feel more trustful. Surely mother's prayers will
avail with the good God, and His angels will
guard me.

" I slept soundly that night, but the last two
days my terror has increased. I notice just those
indications of a forthcoming meeting which im-
mediately preceded the last sMnce, and the
passages w^e have read in the books of magic have
prepared me for the attempt which I feel certain
will be made. Agnes has taken me, for the first

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 205

time, into ' Caduceus,' and shewn me the window
bars which were bent by Miss Jo in her frantic
endeavours to escape, and I have peeped into the
adjoining cupboard, 'Salamander,' which is arranged
more Hke a stall for a beast than a bedroom for a
human creature. It is divided by the flimsiest of
partitions from ' Caduceus,' and there is a door
communicating which / could easily break down.
I have a letter from mother acknowledging the
receipt of my remittance,* and containing some
words of encouragement which I shall lay to heart.
I showed the letter to Miss Mure, and read it to
her. She smiled and said she hoped I was now
satisfied. Unfortunately I am not.

" Last night I sustained another shock. I was
again in that downstairs room where I spend so
much of my time, fearing to see that horror once
more, yet always on the lookout for it ; it would
be still worse if it came into the house unknown
to me. A two-wheeled cart of funny shape, like
that used for dehvering pianofortes, stopped at the
gate. Four men were on it. I recognised the
tread of one at once, he was the burly, butcher-like

* No money was received and no acknowledgmen': sent. —
Maggie Gleig.

2o6 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

man who had waited on the flags when the woman
was dragged away. I was again locked in the
room by Agnes, who however did not retreat to
her kitchen, but fetched h'ghts, and the men
brought from the vehicle a large coffin. Their
burden seemed heavy. They spoke in low whis-
pers, and once inside the house the door was shut.
Then they conveyed the coffin upstairs, and I
heard their irregular tramp across the landing.
From the manner in which the coffin was handled
I knew that it was not empty. '

" Did it contain the corpse of the woman whom
less than a week ago I had seen forcibly dragged
from the house .'' Or was it intended for me ?
Did it contain the living horror, smuggled thus
into the house so that I should not know of its
coming .''

"The men were not long upstairs, and soon
descended and drove away. Agnes went straight
to her kitchen without unfastening the door of the
room in which I was. I called and knocked, but
obtained no reply.

" It was nearly midnight when the door com-
municating with the drawing-room opened, and
Miss Mure beckoned to me to follow her. We

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 207

went upstairs, and she told me that my room had
been changed. I was to sleep henceforth in
'Caduceus,' whither my things had already been
conveyed,

" She showed me into the room, and left me
there with less than a half inch of candle, locking
the door upon me. I at once attempted to
barricade the fhmsy door which divided my room
from the 'pen,' but the result was unsatisfactory.
Then I looked for my Bible, but none of my
books appeared to have been brought into the
room. It did not take long to search the small
apartment, and my things were so few that the
books must have been left behind purposely.
There was no bedstead in the room, but in its
place was a long settle like a boxed-in bath or
water cistern, and on the top of this a straw
mattress was laid and the bed made ; a long
curtain, hanging over a pole swung above the
middle of the bed in the French fashion, hid the
want of a bedstead. Suddenly it occurred to me
that the coffin had been placed in the locker
under my bed. For some minutes I was too
frightened at the thought to do more than stare
blankly at the bed. When I commenced to lift up

2o8 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

the palliasse the candle gave a warning flicker, and
I was in utter darkness before I could make even
a cursory examination of the locker. Left without
light and with the apartment in disorder, I sat in a
half dazed condition on the first chair into which I
could drop ; straining my eyes to see further into
the darkness and my ears to catch a sound from
the next room. In a short time I succeeded in
frightening myself completely. I heard, or thought
I heard, the peculiar grunting of the horror, and I
flung myself against the door fror?i my room,
hoping to break it down, but the effort was useless,
and I again sank helplessly into the chair. It was
whilst listening breathlessly for the sounds I so
well remembered, that my attention was distracted
by a sigh, as the soughing of the wind, from the
box bed before me. I looked in that direction,
and in the pitchy blackness saw a bright white
figure, first its head projecting through the lid of
the box, or the bottom of the bed, then slowly it
arose — a corpse fully dressed out in its grave
clothes, with livid face, fallen jaw, and wide-open
glassy eyes staring vacantly before it. Very many
strange things I had seen since staying at Miss
Mures, but no spectre so struck mc with terror as

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 209

did this one. I felt that I could not stay there
with it. I sprang up, and whilst my gaze was
riveted upon it fell back towards the door of
'Salamander' and groped for the fastenings. The
door yielded to my pressure, and scrambling over
my box I entered the little pen or cupboard, which
was associated in my mind with the thing I most
dreaded. In the delirium of terror I felt that I
must reach Agnes, but I had sufficient sense to
clutch at the bed coverlet as I escaped from my
room. The door from 'Salamander' was unlocked,
and without stopping to think I sped along the
corridor and hurried downstairs, groping my way
more slowly in the less known hall and passages
leading to the kitchen. The door had no lock — in
this very old part of the house a drop latch was
the only fastening — and by working away perse-
veringly the stop peg Agnes stuck in above the
latch would drop out. I knew Siva would be
near, and had the coverlet ready to throw over
her, but when I gently opened the door and peered
in I saw Siva was perched half on a chair and half
on the kitchen table still and dumb, whilst before
the fire there stood the figure of a man from
whom the skin had been removed. It was like an

2 10 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

anatomical figure designed to show the muscles ;
its grinning face, prominent teeth, and colourless
scalp were doubly horrible in the glow of the
dying fire. As it turned its head to look at me
the last spark of hope died in my heart, and with
a loud scream I fell forward on the floor and
fainted.

"When I recovered consciousness I was again
on the bed in ' Caduccus.' The light of a foggy
morning showed that the room was empty, and
some untouched breakfast was on a 'tray by my
bedside. Was the adventure of last night a dream
or a reality .''

" I arose and went at once downstairs and wrote
up my journal. When I went there again, in the
dusk of the early evening, a young woman was
sitting in an obscure corner ; I bowed to her, and
took up my accustomed position at the front
window. She crossed over to me, and sat by my
side. I felt pleased that she did so, and soon we
commenced a conversation. I learned that her
name was Maisie, and she told me that she under-
stood my fears, and that in time I should be free
of them. Her face seemed familiar, her voice was
sweet, and manner gentle and subdued. I could

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 211

learn nothing concerning Miss Mure, and Maisie
told me that she could never see me in her presence,
but she would be in that room frequently, and
possibly she could come to me occasionally in my
new room.

" I told her of my dread of that room, and of
the great fear I entertained that the cupboard next
to it would be tenanted by the creature who was
sometimes brought there. She told me it was
wrong to anticipate trouble, the danger was less
real than I imagined. I spoke of what I had seen
from that window, and she shuddered when I
described the struggles of the woman who had
been dragged away. I commenced to tell her of
what I had seen brought back the night before,
but she prevented me with an impatient gesture.
I dropped the Subject, but soon the thoughts which
were uppermost in my mind were again the topic of
my tale, and I told her of the spectre I had seen
arise from beneath my bed. She arose abruptly,
and, with a sad wave of the hand, left the room by
the door leading to the passage. I remained there
musing, and hoping that she would soon return.
The darkness and loneliness became oppressive.
I sought Agnes, but I dared not speak to her of

212 MYSTERIOUS MAI SIR.

Maisie, and as we had little to say to each other,
she went to bed early.

" That night I barely slept at all, the remem-
brance of my adventures the night before, or the
too vivid nature of my dream, prevented slumber.
I may have dozed several times, but 1 had no
sleep until daylight broke, when I fell into a
troubled slumber. When in the afternoon I
again entered the downstairs room Maisie was
there. Her presence cheered me ; she said but
little, and all too soon she went, ■♦l am pleased
with the companionship of Maisie; sometimes I
find her in my bedroom, but there she is always
more sad than when downstairs, and I barely
notice her coming and going. She glides in and
out as a ghost might. My manner, likely enough,
is the same. To-day, when I looked in the mirror,
I was horrified at my appearance. My face is
pallid as death, and set in its frame of hay-coloured
hair, and with two violet eyes shining like burning
coals, I doubt whether it would not frighten a
visitor as much as any real spectre could do.

" Something tells me I am not long for this
world ; I think of mother and Maggie, and burst
into tears. They will miss me. If it were not

MYSTERIOUS MAI SI E. 213

for them I think I should like to be at rest ; but
when I think about it ' a strange perplexity creeps
coldly on me, like a fear to die.' I have talked
about this to Maisie, and she answered peremptorily
that I must not die here. ' You know not what it
means to die in this place.' I looked at her
earnestly. Was she real .■' The words of Dryden
came imperatively into my mind —

" ' Oh ! 't is a fearful thing to be no more.
Or if it be, to wander after death ;
To walk, as spirits do, in brakes all day ;
And when the darkness comes, to glide in paths
That lead to graves ; and in the silent vault,
Where lies your own pale shroud, to hover o'er it.
Striving to enter your forbidden corpse. '

" I looked tearfully at Maisie ; she did not
reply, but her face was ineffably sad. As I cried
piteously, ' Oh, Maisie ! Maisie ! ' she left the room
hastily.

" I saw her again when I went to my room ; her
face was still troubled, but she drew me towards
her affectionately, and we talked together for a
long time of love, and trust, and of beauty. The
pale moonlight shone into the room, and by its
faint glimmer Maisie's face seemed truly beautiful;
but for the first time I noticed that her hands were

P

214 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

coarse, and that upon the wrist of one there was
the scratch I had seen on the arm of the woman
who had been dragged from the house on that
terrible evening a fortnight ago. She smiled
when she saw that I noticed the scar, but offered
no explanation. It seemed to alter the thread of
our discourse, for she talked to me of my position
in the house, of the heavy work sJic had to do on
the morrow. It would be best for me to go, if I
really wished. I told her how I dreaded the next
meeting, and how anxious I was to» escape. For
some minutes she was silent ; she then said it
would be hard to part from me, but to-morrow, if
I would trust her, she would show me how to
escape. I was to follow her in silence, soon after
midnight, and must promise not to speak to her.
I expressed my readiness to do all that she wished,
and commenced at once to think out my plans for
getting my things together in readiness. She said
that she was tired, and with my permission would
rest for a time on my bed. She lay down, and
after looking at her for a time I turned away and
watched the moon and the slowly-floating clouds.
I must have dozed, for when I again looked for
her I found that she had disappeared.

0

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 215

" When I awoke in the morning it was already-
late, but I should have slept on had not the noise
of strange footsteps on the landing disturbed me,
I dressed hastily, and upon leaving my room was
in time to see two men dragging the coffin from
under my bed through a door in the wooden
partition which divided the room from the landing.
I waited and saw that it was taken to the stance
room.

" Agnes has been in a very bad temper all day.
Siva has been thrust out into the garden, and
lurks about in the bushes. The house has been
reeking with strange odours, and the preparations
for the meeting to-night are now completed. I do
so hope Maisie will not fail me, and that I shall
leave this house to-night for ever. I have not
seen Miss Mure, nor did I expect to. Maisie has
not been here, and I am waiting patiently at the
window, looking out for the arrival of that most
fearful of all things which attends the meeting of
the black magicians. I feel that if I see it again
I shall never more write in this, my journal. It is
at the gate, gripped tightly by the old man with
blue spectacles. Adieu !

% « Ji^ « «

2i6 MYSTERIOUS MAI SIR.

" East Sheen,

^^ December \a^th.

"Dearest Mother, — Mr. Frank's telegram has in-
formed you that I have left Miss Mure's. That the
why and wherefore of my conduct may be understood
without inconvenient explanations by word of mouth
when I see you, I send you the journal I have kept
since I went there, and when I tell you that I have
promised one to whom I owe my life that I will never
speak of my experiences while with those dreadful people,
I know that both Maggie and yourself will accept this
account as final, and so far complete as I am able to
make it. . . . At the seance I was pleased to see Maisie
sitting opposite me in the seat which the horror had
occupied on the last occasion. On the table between
us was the coffin, open, and containing Maisie herself.
The other Maisie, the living one, smiled at me as she
saw my wondering face. The monster still had its face
covered, and was tolerably still. I kept my gaze fixed
ujion Maisie during the performance of the preliminary
rites. Later, when the face of the horror was un-
covered, it whined piteously, and moved about the room
as a ferret which has escaped from a rat-hole, sniffing
and creeping, but avoiding the seat on which Maisie sat,
and towards which it was evident its keeper wished to
direct it. Then it clambered on to the table, and threw
itself upon the body in the coflin. Maisie at once arose,
and crossing to where I was gazing in the stupefaction

MYSTERIOUS MAISIE. 217

of fascination upon the horror, she touched me hghtly
on the shoulder, and I turned and followed her from
the room. We went downstairs and through the kitchens,
then along an old, little-used passage leading to a stable-
yard. In this there was a door locked from the inside,
the key still in the lock. Maisie indicated that I was to
open the door, and we passed out into a passage leading
to the pathway by the mortuary. We were free. She
then made me promise never to speak of what had
happened to me, and told me to hasten towards town.
I looked behind me, and saw her pale, wistful face still
watching me. How I reached here I can tell you fully.
It was all so strange. In the thick London fog the men
and creatures all loomed upon me suddenly, and took
seemingly strange shapes. I became frightened, but
struggled on to the address I had determined to reach.
More I will never tell until Maisie shall have released
me from the promise I made."

Nothing has shaken my sister's resolution.
Miss Mure has now left the house, and resides
with a relative. Agnes, we learned, has joined
her friends in Australia. Whether the mystery is
fact or fiction I may never know, but my sister is
often strangely affected since her return to us.

2i8 MYSTERIOUS MAISIE.

She starts in her sleep, is often found weeping, is
timorous, and will not be alone after dusk. Even
when she is with us, and we are as merry as we
know how to be, her face will suddenly become
clouded, and she will shrink as though some great
horror were before her, and ofttimes she will raise
her hands as though to screen from view something
which terrifies her, and sends her sobbing to mother
or myself.

•

The Face of Nahire.

THE other clay a man who gave the name of
Vigleik Mekke called upon me. He was a
Finn who had for some years been resident in
South America, and was on his way home from
Bogota to Uleaborg. He said that his object was
to learn of me how he could see into the soul of
things. As, from his conversation, I judged him
to be a fairly successful psychometrist, the question
seemed an idle one. But I had not rightly under-
stood the broken English in which he spoke ;
what he wished was to look upon the face of
nature as a whole — in mystic jargon, upon the
Macrocosm.

The psychometrist is to the true mystic much
the same as the geologist to the inspired poet;
he obtains some knowledge of results, but an
inadequate idea of causes, even in his own field,
which is the microcosm. By investigation the
geologist may understand the formation of a par-

2 20 THE FACE OF NATURE.

ticular stratum, of several, or many strata, even
comprehend a mountain range, but will need
genius to idealise the formation of a continent.
The powers and learning which constitute a com-
petent mineralogist do not avail when he leaves
the study of microcosm to conceive the composition
of the macrocosm. Assuming the planet earth is
alive — they who do not believe that it is so may
possibly imagine so little — that it possesses huge
vital organs, these organs of the same, composition,
roughly, as that of the earth's crust, and that, by
some means, the earth shall be pierced through
its centre, and the fragments from the boring
submitted to geologists, to the most learned of
the students of the microcosm. Is it likely that
they will learn more of the earth's organic struc-
ture than they can from investigation of the
surface ? The investigators would be of the same
nature as

" He, who with pocket hammer smites the edge
Of luckless rocks, detailing by the stroke
A chip or splinter to resolve his doubts ;
And, with that ready answer satisfied,
The substance classes by some barbarous name,
And hurries on."

THE FACE OF NATURE. 221

Wordsworth adds, " Doubtless wiser than before " ;
but in that I cannot wholly agree. The knowledge
obtained would be of a similar kind to that already
possessed, and though it might lead to a different
classification and arrangement of the facts of
geology, an epoch - marking revolution in the
history of physical science, the real result would
be no greater than one which should cause
people to give new names to all books, turn them
the other way round on the shelves, and evermore
read their newspapers upside down.

For me personally the study of fragments, and
the investigation of past events, possess no attrac-
tion. As Vigleik Mekke stated it : "I want a
bird's-eye view of futurity." To obtain a bird's-
eye view you must not only reach the altitude at
which it is possible, but when there must not
concentrate the sight upon any particular object,
but allow all within range to focus upon you. No
longer observe the microcosm, allow the macro-
cosm to manifest itself. All created things may
be ascertained by those who have the ability to
interpret the perceptions created things produce.
The psychic power necessary to effect the inter-
pretation of a sensation into a cognition, or idea

2 22 THE FACE OF NATURE.

of the thing which produced the sensation, varies
with individuals. Mekke undoubtedly possesses
greater psychic force than most men. He is also
well developed mentally, that is to say, knows
how to utilise his perceptions. For instance, his
plan had been as follows : — Whilst making geo-
logical investigations, he was puzzled by observing
large heaps of loose stones and boulders upon
mountain tops where they could not have been
deposited by glaciers, and where there were
positive proofs that they were not wJiat are termed
" outcrop." Testing them psychometrically, he saw
that they had been gathered together artificially,
though by what, or whom, he could not see.
Nevertheless, he was aware that there were near
them huge crustaceans some ten or more feet in
height, in shape very much like human creatures,
but neckless, and with heads, like those of crabs,
low down between their shoulders. These am-
phibious creatures lived on the fringe of the then
forming glaciers, and waged war upon other
creatures, which sheltered themselves behind walls
of loosely-piled rocks, the ruins of which were
the collections of stones which had puzzled him as
geologist. Prior to that period in the world's history

6-,

THE FACE OF NATURE. 223

the atmosphere had been much more dense, even
then it was much denser than now ; these creatures,
who had left but the faintest psychometric trace,
had developed in that thick air, and were akin to
that aerial race which long preceded man as the
dominant creature upon the earth's surface. We
have long postulated the existence of such crea-
tures without psychic proof. A heap of rough
stones furnishes the " trace " required, and a whole
world of fresh existences is discovered.

It must be explored.

First, where not to go. This aerial race was
not even akin to the other predominant glorified
human creatures, which more immediately preceded
man. Man resembled this later race about as
much as the common ant will resemble the new
being, half a span in height, who will succeed man
as the predominant creature on this world's crust.
Mekke knows the scale of the aerials' work, and
where to look for the traces that remain of it. It
is as hard for us to attribute what they have done
to anything but Nature, as it will be for the coming
ant-like creatures to attribute the ruins of our
ship-canals, great railway cuttings, and tunnels
to anything but the workings of Nature ; at the

2 24 THE FACE OF NATURE.

marvels of which they will of course be lost in
wonder and admiration.

The most fitted to survive among the descendants
of Mekke's aerial race still exist in the bosom of
the earth's atmosphere. Less dense than the most
rarefied gas known to physicists, they are all-
powerful on their own plane, and not altogether
powerless on ours. Mekke asserts that the weaker
among them are to be found on the southern
periphery. They are curious to find what are the
psychic qualities of the substrata beneath their
ocean of atmosphere. He has seen what I may
term psychic rays, descending from the sky when
the weather has been bright, clear, and sunny,
reach the sea, disturb its surface, and extract
from the water various gases, and with them be
drawn up again into the unbroken blue of the
sky. He has seen the same "trawling" rays
descend upon open land in the forests of Western
Brazil, turning over the earth and mould like a
snow-plough on the Pacific railway. He measured
one of these trenches, and found it twelve feet deep
in places, and about the same width ; it extended
for nearly a quarter of a mile, appearing from a
distance like the work of some mighty earth-worm.

THE FACE OF NATURE. 225

Mekke thinks he has been en rapport with some
of these supermundane existences ; he says it is
devitalising in the extreme, he is more than half
dead at the conclusion of the trance. But to see
the world from their point of view must be to
see the whole of the face of Nature. Poor Mekke !
The whole of the face of Nature is so huge that
the solar universe in its entirety is but as a few
sweat drops trickling from its brow; with an eye
as large as the sun itself one could not see the face
of nature. But Mekke will try ; he will kill him-
self in the attempt, and the effort is well worth the
sacrifice it will entail.

TJie Actical Apparition,

I J E was a real ghost, there was no mistake
-l about that, though many people disputed it.
In the matter of ghosts experience alone carries
complete conviction. If those who doubt did but
pass through what I suffered, they wpuld not speak
glibly of hallucinations or illusions, they would
know what a ghost is like — words may fail to
convey the exact impression. My experience
again is remarkable in so far as I saw, heard, and
felt the apparition — if one sense was deceived all
were deceived. But to the story.

In 1S92 I removed into a couple of cosy little
rooms recommended me by a friend as being
"just the thing, you know, so snug and con-
venient, just right for an artist, and then the land-
lady is so nice and good-natured."

I took up my residence there in June, and for a
few weeks went through the usual process of
".settling down." With the exception of a night-

THE ACTUAL APPARITION. 227

mare or two, or that which seemed then to come
under the category of such, I gradually began to
feel myself at home, or as near there as one can
be in the average furnished apartments.

These so-called nightmares were the forerunners
of my future experiences. Vague and inexplic-
able, I did not at first attach any importance to
them, or attribute them to any ghostly visitant ;
but rather to bad dreams, or perhaps over-fatigue.
I did not then take account of when and how they
happened ; such a course, naturally, did not enter
my mind, and it was some time afterward that
I had occasion to classify them as it were.

It was on the night of the 30th Sept., 1S92, that
the apparition first took actual shape. As usual
that night I went to bed not feeling the least
nervous, as I had plenty of other things to occupy
my mind at that time, and I was utterly un-
suspicious of any harm happening on that, or any
other night. It was about 1 1 p.m. when I
extinguished my candle, and I had been asleep
about two hours I suppose, when I suddenly
awoke with the impression that someone else was
in the room. The place, with the exception 01
the farthest corners, seemed to be filled with a

2 28 THE ACTUAL APPARITION.

ghastly grey light (there was no moon that night),
and in front of the window the dark figure of a
man passed to the foot of the bed, and stood there
regarding me.

For the moment it seemed almost familiar
to me, for the figure somewhat resembled that
of my father, so much so that involuntarily I
gasped :

" Father, is that you ? "

" I 'm not your father," was the sullen reply.

"Then who arc you," I asked, highly indignant
at the intrusion.

"If you want to know who I am, I 'm Robert,"
he hissed.

I knew no one of that name, I became frightened,
his expression was so maniacal, so devilish, that
I was speechless with terror, but could not remove
my gaze. I dared not move, I did not scream,
but I am not given to screaming on any account
or under any stress of fright.

The cold perspiration stood out all over me,
and I lay there simply paralysed under that gaze.
Then, horror of horrors ! he sprang at me like a
cat, and for a moment the struggle was fearful ;
afterwards I must have swooned, for I remember

•

THE ACTUAL APPARITION. 229

nothing more for some minutes, or it may be
longer, when I gradually perceived that the room
was dark once more, and there was no apparent
form visible ; though I dared not think of what
might be lurking in the dim corners of the room.
I felt I dare not move an inch even to reach the
matches, nor could I contemplate for a moment
raising an alarm. Such a course would have been
futile, as my rooms were cut off from the rest of
the sleeping apartments. There was no more
sleep for me that night. All I could do was to
wait and watch for the dawn, which came at last,
and with it relief

I felt convinced that my visitant was no human
being; for no human being could have got through
the door of my sitting-room, which led into my
bedroom, without my being instantly aware of it, —
as the fastening had an unfortunate trick of snap-
ping with a spring rather loudly, and without the
least warning, no matter how carefully manipulated.
The windows, too, of both sitting-room and bed-
room, are unyielding, noisy in their movements;
and though I kept the one in the bedroom always
open at the top, yet only sufficiently wide to
admit a free current of fresh air, certainly not

Q

230 THE ACTUAL APPARITION.

wide enough to admit any intruder choosing to
come in that way.

I could not chase the recollection of the horrid
thing from my mind all that day, and I made it
my business to tax my landlady with it, and get
her to account for it in a reasonable way. I asked
her first, whether she knew of anything out of the
ordinary that might have happened in the rooms
before I took them ; or whether a death had
occurred there. She seemed very much taken by
surprise, and innocently curious as»to my reason
for asking her ; in fact, her replies were most irri-
tating in their assumption of innocence. Whether
she ever really was cognizant of anything taking
place there, and kept her knowledge back for
pecuniary reasons of her own, I shall never learn.
I only know that it was with the most guileless
air imaginable that she promised to make inquiries
of an old lady next door, who had lived there in
the former tenant's time, and most likely knew all
about it. But whatever the old lady did say was
never told to me, though I repeatedly made
inquiries.

I for my part took note of the fact that it was
on the last night of the month, which struck me as

THE ACTUAL APPARITION. 231

being peculiar, as on the last night of the preceding
month I remembered I had had a curious experi-
ence during the night, the precise nature of which
I could never arrive at satisfactorily. It seemed
to me a curious jumble of dream and reality, and
a sense of being pummelled to a pulp. I put this
experience down to a nightmare, as I could not
account for it in any other way, though I had
partaken of nothing that evening at supper to
cause indigestion. In short, I tried in vain to
arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, and to reduce
the unusual experience to a natural cause, but did
not succeed in so doing.

The month went quickly by ; I had much to
think of; life is made up of a multitude of little
things, and the trivialities often fully occupy our
thoughts ; but at that time I was contemplating
a change of importance, and what to do in the
circumstances pressing upon me required so much
thought and attention, that the experience of the
last night in the month faded into insignificance ;
so much so, that the last day of the month again
arrived without so much as a thought on my part
that it was the last day. I therefore retired that
night as inapprehensive as one could wish, full of

232 THE ACTUAL APPARITION.

my little troubles, and utterly oblivious to nervous
fear.

I had not been asleep two hours before I felt a
horrible pressure from behind (I was lying on my
right side), and two long, cold, clammy hands
were gradually insinuated beneath my arms. I
felt instinctively that they were " Robert's," and,
cold with fright, almost paralysed by the strength
of his grip, I held them tight as in a vice ; where-
upon they were removed and immediately held in
front of my face, on a level with Yny eyes, each
finger moving as though vindicating their release
from my pressure ; and in my determination to
hurt them if I possibly could, and thereby rid
myself of his presence once and for all, / took
the little finger of the hand nearest me to pincJi it
with a spiteful pinch, when it again eluded my
grasp and vanished, together with the hands
themselves.

Trembling at what I had had the temerity to
do, I sank back on my pillow, moved not a limb
for very fear, and waited for morning.

I asked myself again and again, What did it all
mean ? Was I to be haunted in this way all the
time I remained in these rooms, tormented by a

•

THE ACTUAL APPARITION. 233

thing so uncanny as this " Robert," as he called
himself? Why I had never in my life before
come across, or had any dealings with, any person
of the name of Robert, and certainly after this
experience I never wished to. I resolved that
as soon as possible I would seek fresh apart-
ments, and until they were found I would sleep
anyivJiere but in that room on all future "last
nights." After this, therefore, at the end of every
month, I slept at the houses of friends who, while
appearing to sympathise most warmly with me,
laughed undisguisedly at my contention that
Robert was a real ghost.

I have long since removed from the apartments
and the only facts I have been able to gather
concerning its previous tenants were obtained for
me by the wife of a medical man long resident in
the neighbourhood. " Robert " was the son (or
brother, I forget which), then dead, of the family
who formerly lived in the house where I lodged.
He was known to be wrong in the head, and some
time before his death had to be placed under
restraint and labelled " dangerous." Moreover, his
apartments in the house were those which I
occupied. I was never able to find out any

234 THE ACTUAL APPARITION.

reason for his appearance on the last nights only.
I have not seen him or his apparition once since
I left the house, nor do I wish to.

This is a plain statement of the actual facts in
nothing elaborated, and the drawing I have made
is a faithful presentment of what I saw.

PLYMOUTH:

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON,

PRINTERS.

» ■

THE TIME LIMITED SERIES.

UNIFORM WITH "PHANTASMS."
Crown 8vo. Cloth, 3s. 6d. net October to December, 1895.

MANDRAKES.

Original Stories of some "anrecjar^eD 5tcm0.

BY

WIRT GERRARE.

AUTHOR OF "phantasms," " RL FIN's LEGACY," ETC., ETC.

These stories are new. The method of publishing them
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LONDON :

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Single Volume, Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 312 pages.

Price 2s. 6d.

RDFIN'S LEGACY: A THEOSOPHICAL ROMANCE.

By Wirt Gerrare.

lEltracts from tbc 3firi3t IRcvfcws.

"As a gift book for any reader who has a love for the sensational,
Rufiti's Legacy, by Wirt Gerrare, should have few rivals. It is far
removed from the conventional in point of subject, and the story will
be followed with strained interest by every reader." — Yorkshire Post.

"An odd story. Sensationalism and mysticism are inextricably
blended, and the theories it suggests are very startling indeed. The
book is an eccentric one in conception and style, but it is far from
lacking interest, and shows considerable power." — Scottish Leader,

" There is an appalling intensity about certain parts of this
stirring romance which will have a great attraction for a certain
class of readers. There is also a domestic tale of the affections
which will conciliate probably a still larger cla^s. . , . The work
has the interest of a very involved and intricate detective story, as
well as of a very subtle and profound metaphysical study. The
story is extremely well told, and is easy and pleasant to follow.
The character of Mr. Caradoc Morgan is very original, and is
delineated with considerable power." — Manchester Examiner.

" The plot is original and well worked out, and some of the
situations are very dramatic. We do not know why Christmas
should be associated with blood-curdling tales, but we doubt if
many will surpass Kiijin's Legcuy in horrors, albeit a most interest-
ing book." — Birmingham Daily Gazette.

"■ Rufin^s Legacy is a powerful work. It is distinctly new. The
book has to be read through at a sitting, though it does contain
312 pages ; there is no dallying with such a story. ... In some
of the earlier scenes the people are actually bright, cheerful, and
decidedly epigrammatic. There is no denying the intensely vivid
and dramatic nature of Mr. Gerrare's work. Ru/tn's Legacy is a
curious book." — Magazine and Book Review.

" The strange mysticism of the whole volume is one to enthrall
the reader." — Bookseller.

" The narrative of the girl Xenia is very singular, but as the
leading incidents of it form the principal feature of the book it
would be unfair to reveal them. There is some amount of power
in the story." — Academy.

London : Hutchinson & Co., Paternoster Row.

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ISSUED BY

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INDIA. AND THE CONTINENT
1895.

.1. AUSTRALIA.

CONTENTS

PACf

Index of Slbjkci.
List of Authors, AKiiii;, li
Scientific. General. Tkavel. Rlmims-
CENCE, Fiction

OlCKENSIANA . i;

Verse and Song 19

Medicine, Nursing, and alulu subjects 23

Occult, Folk Lore, etc., etc 27
Works bv Mr. Charles F. RiDt.VL issued

through Other Publishers. . -i

0.

•

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Accidents . . 25

Across the Atlantic .9

Bibliography of Guns anil Sliootiiig, A ... 9
Childhood. A Magazine for Every Mother . . 25
Chiromanci', Chirognomy, Palmistry . . .29
Comprehensive Dictionary of Palmistrj-, A . 30

Crucifixion of Man, The 22

Crushes and Crowds in Thealresand other Buildii'^-s la
Dickens, Cliarles. Heroines and Women I'ol'r:

Some thoughts concerning them
Digest of Literature, A
Divine Problem of Man, The, "is a Living Soul.

Being an explanation of what it is

Dry Toast

Evolution, a Retrospect

Fever Nursing ....

Erom Dawn to Sunset

Glossary and Polyglot Dictionary of Technical

Words and Idioms used in the Firearms In

duitry, etc., A

Good Luck ; or. Omens and Superstitious
Hands of Ct) us in Palmistry

Homer's Wi. , . .

1 low to Prolong Luc . 25

Idcaof a Patriot Party, Th. u

India in Nine Qiapters ... .11

Law and Lawyers of Pickwick, Tlie . .18

Lectures to Nurses on Antiseptics in Surgery . 33
Lost Mother, A 12

Magistracy, Tlic 1 1

Mandrakes. Original Stones ol borne UnregardeJ

Items II

Manual of Practical Electro-Therapeutics, A
Massage for Bef;-inners . . • jj

Midi\a! Montlily, The Pof>iilar . 25

Moles or r>irthmarks, and their SitiiiilKaiioa to

Man and Womr.n 29

iS
34

12

•3

9

34

32

10

29

ai

INDEX OF SUBJECTS (^'^^^^z:;^-^)

More I'eople Wc Meet

Mountain Lake and Other I'ocms, The

Norris's Nursing Notes ...

Nurst, The .

Nursing Old Age

r^unitig Rtiord i\hul \\ uiUi, lUt.

rapeanl of Life, The : . i . Fotiii

Falniiil aitii Cliirotogical HiiiiW, The

People We Meet

Phantasms. Original Stories illustrating Pob

r I' 'fly

Pitt i^bury Uoarding-Housc

For r, Songs of Life and Love

POi. 13

Practical Nursing Series, The

I'rccious Stones and Gents .

Pyjama Purists, and Virtue made I^sy

Kc. • • . -ITie

Kci .p:ciiarian Citi<.en, 'llie

Kc ..jhi. The

Rc'i , A, and other Short Storic.i

HenaU, 1 he. A Review of Modern and Progi'. ,

»ive Ihought ....
Stukcbp<:are't< Songs and Sonnets
Spoi ■■ ■ ■ ..lid Pscudon^ui:^

Sli. Yard

" 1 .

True Detective Stories i

Wellerisnis i

Whom to Marry. A Look all about Luvc and M*i

riagt

Woman Retrained : A Study ol P»?si©n

\V> :ine . .

Yoi: ' 11 of ro-D«v •■

Young Ladies of To-Day

"Zenith" Memo-Pad, Ih' . .

.^G£

33
:l

33
=5

-5
33

SI

29

»3

30
'3
31

34
as

^ J

1

..»

0
9

r^

LIST OK AUTHORS. ARTISTS, ETC.

I' AGE

Ackroyd, Laura (> .21

Allen, Pliabc 12

Karlow, George 1, 21, as

Hitihop, SlatiinoiL, l.K.L..'? i;^

liodciiblcdt, Hill voii .'I

Callow, Kdward

Crauiiier-B\ iiR, H . i-;

Ciaiiiuer-Byiig, I , ji

"Crow'" . ;<

Lriiikshank, Geuiiii-i J 111,1 17

hvaiis, C. Uc l.acy .■>

Inch, Lucy . ,,;

Fletcher-Van'i, 1 11

hrappeur, L.L . 2<)

Gen a re, Wirt '^, lu, 11, 30

Good, Margaret L. . . 35

1 fake, A. ligmonl . 11

Harries, Arthur, ^L1 '

Harris, Mary ■4

Hawkins, Lionel M. - :;4

Howard, The Lady Couaiau',!.

Hutton, Edward ...

Kent, Charles

LIST OF AUTHORS, ARTISTS. ETC
{lOHtinuiJ).

I-AGE

LilMUIC, ivilLiS J.. J. IV. ■ "^»

Lawrence, H. Newman ^5

Lo -ir Frank, Q.C..M.r. 18

Lo . , M.D. . . -•5

Naylor, Robert Anderioi: 9

Noil is, Radicl

"Pajjanus" ... ■

Panama, Viscountess dc <

Parkes, Hairy
Preston, Julia

R.. :

R

R. O. ........ 11

R;t , . - I'. II. 12. I-,. 17, 10, 31, 2;, ao. i\ ,,,^4

St. Hill, Kalhannc
Salisbury, Lord, K.(>
Sykes, Edith . .

Taylor, I^n|;di>i. -9

Truman, Mary -s

Vauchan, C'uidinal

Wek»lau, O. E.

Wheeler, M.-iiid ^9

Winter, C. Gordon ii

Zanjfwill, Mark

SCIENTIFIC,

GENERAL

TRAVEL,

REMINISCENCE

FICTION.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC, Ry R. Anderton
Naylor, KR.S.Lit., Author of " Nugne Canorao,"
etc. Presentation Kditioo.

" Briclit, interestinfi:, beautifully produccJ. "— T/t InstituU.

WOMAN REGAINED. A Study of Passion. A

Novel of Artistic hiie. By Georgi: Barlow. Six

Shillings. [Shortly.

" Tlierc ii mucli splendid versification in THE CRUCIFIXION OF

MAN."— iV.i_-.'.! //' ■.(.■..■■.

" Til' oet , . . his force it
Is Impn^

".MI' ....... . . , . llarlow is to be con

gratulai' ,r.

" TIh ly we have read for many a day
In the rir : i r.K .1 .tl loiii | . euv. Let every student of life read

tills work of Keniiis." — S^s,^s Miii,iziui,

THE REMINISCENCES OF A SEPTUAGEN-
ARIAN CITIZEN. By Fdward Callow. Larfje
paper edition, liinited to 350 copies, specially bound,
numbered, and signed by Author, Illustrated, cis.

■rce,' an interestinj rcIle.-t!o!\ of Is,

t -. to

sr' r.

'1' •■

•'l!i-.. -nr

cf love . -d

Mr. Sil- . • , , , ..

—i',.ji-r.

•)•

EVOLUTION, A RETROSPECT. The (slightly
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Association at Oxford 1804. By the M,\rouis of
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THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. The
(revised, with an Introduction and Appendix)
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1894, by His Eminence C.\rdinal Vauciian, Arch-
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A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GUNS AND SHOOT-
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and Foreign Books Relating to Firearms and their
Use. and to the Composition and Manufacture ol
Explosives; with an Introductory Chapter on
Technical Books and the Writers of them, Fireanns
Inventions and the History of Gunmaking, and the
Development of the Art of Wing Shooting. By
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SPORTING PERIODICALS - PSEUDONYMS.
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Ne"-" ••'- I.'... .. ■ ^- : ! • '"I al I'liiodicals,

w!; : with an Index

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List or • t. By

Wirt l. . i>hy oJ

Guns and . ' lornicily Lditoi ol" The

Spnrlin^ (• >:i\ etr., etc. This Guide

wii . rature

of ( 'ly " >s

to ■ ot

evi nl

Sc: Lj . ..L.i..~,i. I s'

All will comprise

m;. :' ( c itrihMt.ivs,

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ot' I to

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A GL(> ■ ■ AND POLYGLOT t "IARY

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an. ;

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otli r.

i"ai^- . . ,un-
cerninp K.t; book
therefore is . Tech-
niques, to all who write of Guns and .Shooting,
and to all who are interested in the Firearms
Trade, whether as Manufacturers or Dealers.

ffij Prfparntinn.

0

THE MAGISTRACY. Rcing a Director}- and Bio-
•jraijliical Dictionary of the Justices of the Peace
of the United Kirgdom. Kdited by Charles F.
RiDEAL. ais. [//; Fnpnratioii.

THE SENATE. A
jrrcssive Thought.

and C. Gordon Winter.
of each Month, Sixpence,
annum, post free.

"Truly the tlia- '
conductur<; of tlii .
lent . . . poetry . .
Kiganiis."— r/ii.' -■;

". . . I; I, r.s V
I 'a nil V

Review of Modern and Pro-
Edited by L. C'ranmer-Bvnc.

Published on the tirst
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to <:ucli rcrormers as the
.111. Tlie prose is excel-
Love beyond Law,' by

.W.

J of its kind need be."—

(httttr 1/

!io ori^n 01 two bright yoiinR man."— Mar.

THE IDEA OF A PATRIOT PARTY. By A.

I'c.io.NT lI.vKE.nith Contributions by L. Cranmer-
BvNG, O. E. Wksslau and V. Fletcher-Vane.
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INDIA IN NINE CHAPTERS. By A. M. O.
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'TOLD AT THE CLUB." Some Short Stories.'
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V. RtDEAi.. Manilla, Eightcenpence, ■ •■If-

a-crown ; Post Free %d. extra. {In /,., ^;»

MANDRAKES. Original Stories of Some Unre-
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1.1 lion. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. 6rf.

'/;/ Preparation.

WOMEN OF THE TIME : P.eing a Dictionary of
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' }\ov.il Soiiety of Literature).
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DiCKENSIANA

' WELLERISMS." from " Pickwick" and " Muster
lluniphrcjs Clock." Selected by Chakles !•',
RiuEAL, aiiU liditcd with an Iiitroduclioa by
Chakles Kent, AuUior of "The Humour luid
Pathosof Charles Dickens." Third Edition. With
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Lonleiils : ■— Sam Weller's Introduction ; Old
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White Hat; Independent Voters: Proud o' the
Title; The VVeller Philosophy; The Twopenny
Kope ; job Trotter's Tears ; Sam's Misgivings as
to Mr. Pickwick ; Clear the Way for the \Vlicel-
barrow ; Unpacking the Lunch Hamper ; Battledore
and Shuttlecock; a True Londoner; Spoiling the
Beadle ; Old Wcllcr's Remedy for the Gout ; Sam
on Cabs; Poverty and Oysters; Old Weller on
"Pikes"; Sam's Power of Suction; Vcllcr and
Gammon ; Sam as Master of the Ceremonies ;
.Sam before Mr. Nupkins ; Sam's Introduction to
Mary and the Cook ; Somethin;; behind the Door ;
.bam and Master BardcU ; Good Wi.-:hcs to Messri.
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Ihc Shepherd's Water Kates; Stiggins as air
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Donkeys; A Vessel: Old Weller's Threat; .Sam's
Dismissal of the lat Boy; Is She aWidder? Bill
Blinders Request ; The Watchbor. Boy.

... Tlie btai .^> i.ijiu.
jrc collected here. ' The ;
witli the certainty of iftui .
A^iy ia the pocket."— Lifei-ajj, Hjr:.:.

" It wcu, a very jood idea ... the e\triiCli are \ cry numerous,
here nothing is missed."— O'.'avi'a' //eraM,

17

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(With an Original SkeUh of "Mr. Serjeant
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'• Th jf perni.inciit iiiclu-.ion in Dickeiisian

r.r, ■ II,.. ...i,.. ..r .,n, .l.ilUlUr. I I U' MttlC

1 cd

portraiture of ihU kinU.^'— t'////i/v.

CHARLES DICKENS' HEROINES AND
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"nV"

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SONG.

•

POEMS OF PAGANISM; OR, SONGS OF LIFE

AND LOVE. i;y " I'AC.VNrri." Sis .Shillint;>

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AmoM "'.

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