 The art span, Chapter 4, by J. Percy Fitzpatrick, this livery-box recording is in the public domain, read by Sally McConnell. CASSIDY Quote, and the greatest of these is charity, unquote. I met Cassidy under trying circumstances, but it worked out all right eventually, principally because so far as I knew him, and that got to be pretty well, Cassidy was not amenable to circumstances. He beat them mostly, and some of them were pretty tough. The circumstances surrounding our meeting were trying, because Cassidy was in bed after a hard day's work, and I aroused him at three a.m. by firing a revolver at his bulldog. His huts were on the railway works, and near the footpath to Jim McKay's canteen, a pretty hot show. He used to be aroused this way every Saturday and Sunday, and occasionally throughout the week, by visitors black and white, warlike and friendly, thieving and sociable, but all drunk. At first he got a bulldog, but they got to know him, and after a while the tip went round that half a pound of beef steak was a good buy and better than a blunderbuss for Cassidy's cutting. Then he loaded fifty number twelve's with court salt, mixed with pebbles and things, and, as he said to me afterwards, ye weather forth that night, and ye noid me with ye swearing and shootin' and that, so I just passed the salt and went for the dust-shot as been more convincing like. But the devil and all of it was I couldn't get the cartridge in by reason of drawing the charge that was there already. Too bad, too bad for dust-shot it was. Have I'd only known it, and me thinkin' it was nothing but salt. Lord, Lord, we're a miscontented lot. If it wasn't for being greedy, I'd have had ye with the first shot safe as death. Faith ye never know ye luck. It was all right from his point of view, but as I had left my horse dying of decorpsychmus just the side of Kilo 26, and had walked along the formation carrying saddle and bridle up to Kilo 43 about ten miles without a drink, and twice lost my way between unconnected sections, and twice walked over the ends of the formation where culverts should have been and rolled down twenty feet of embankment, and once got bogged in a bottoming pit in a flay, and many times hacked my shins against wheel-barrows and piles of picks stacked on the track. I think it was reasonable to let out at a bulldog that came at me like a hurricane out of the darkness and silence of three a.m. in the bush-felt to say nothing of a half-finished railway-cutting, and I think it only human to have cursed the owner with all my resources until the dog was called off. I don't exactly know how it came about, but I slipped in Cassidy's hut that night. He pushed me in before him, guiding me to the bed with a hand on each elbow. He said that there were no matches in the show, and that it wasn't worth while looking for the candle, which, as he had no means of lighting it, I suppose it wasn't. He had a rare brogue, and a governing nasal drone, but it was the brogue that emboldened me to ask for whiskey. "'Spirits,' said he, not a drop never have, but just sit there and I'll fit your arts and beer. Basses no less, and you'll try that, and can drink from the bottle.' He talked in jerks, and had a quaint knack of chucking remarks, after an apparently completed sentence evidently intending them to catch up to it and be tacked on. He dived under the bed somewhere, and a minute later I heard the squeaking of a corkscrew and the popping of a cork. "'Here you are,' he said as he pressed the bottle into my two hands. "'Drink, arty me lad, and praise your God, Dana Connell, there's got too fat and lazy to pull you down. I daresay he knew what he was talking about, but for my part I confess that nothing in the whole business had impressed me less than any lack of earnestness on Dana Connell's part. I sat awhile, munching biscuits from a tin which he had placed on the table, and gurgling down beer from the bottle. Cassidy was asleep. Ten minutes passed, and I was finishing the beer when he sat up again, as I judged from the sound, and remarked in a brisk, clear tone, "'You've called me a mud-dollapen, dyke-digging, Amsterdam Dutchman. You'll take that, the Dutchman, I believe.' "'I will, indeed,' I said, laughing. "'And the mud?' "'Yes, and the mud.' He settled himself in the bunk again with a grunt, and murmured in a tone of indignant contempt. "'Mud,' says he. "'Mud!' And me shifting granite boulders for soft rock, and shrug solid formation at foot from surface, and get in two and six a cubic for the lot. "'Mud, fair! And not enough water, this three miles to the crocodile, to make spit for an ant. Boring what I can tap from the Figaro battery pipe. "'And mud!' says he. "'Holy fly, mud! Be gold!' It died away in a sleepy grunt, and Cassidy was off. I groped about for a blanket, and rolling back onto the meal-sack stretcher, forgot all about mad Irishman's sick horses, and earnest bulldogs. One always experiences a curious sensation on seeing by daylight that which one has only known in the dark. Persons do for years a certain journey or voyage, always starting and always arriving at regular hours. One day something happens which necessitates their passing in daylight, the places formerly past at night. On such occasions even the most matter of fact must marvel at the wanton freaks of their imaginations. The real thing seems so inconceivably wrong after what the mind had pictured. The appearance of a room. The outside of a house are ludicrously, hopelessly at variance with what one had thought they should be. But it is, if possible, worse when the subject is a person. I have many times travelled with men at night by coach, on horseback, on foot, and in a wagon, have chatted sociably and exchanged all manner of friendly terms, have slipped at the same wayside hotel, and in the morning found myself unable until he spoke to pick out of any two the one with whom I had spent hours the night before. In the case of Cassidy the difference was appalling. I awoke in such light as might leak through the grass hut, which was very little for light but not bad for leakage. The boy bought breakfast, coffee, bread, and cold venison which suited me well, and I was turning my thoughts to the matter of the fresh horse for my homeward journey, when I met the eye of one of my friends of the previous night. I say the eye because I don't count the one in the black patch. I couldn't see it. But when Dan O'Connell stood in the doorway and allowed his one bloodshot, pink-ruined eye to rest thoughtfully on me, it fairly fixed me. I used to recall his bandy legs and undershot jaw long afterwards whenever I thought of Cassidy's cutting. But it was only when the luminous eye uproars before me that I used unconsciously to twitch about and draw my legs up as I did the morning I saw him in the flesh. Cassidy was a surprise. O'Connell wasn't. His appearance was only the cold chill of proof following a horrible conviction. I was much relieved when the boy cleared Dan out of the doorway with the bare-toed kick in the ribs and the vigorous, ow, fucksack! I admired the boy for that and even envied him. Through the open doorway I saw a white man walking briskly towards the hut and I stepped out to meet him. He was a man of medium height, but there was something in his walk and figure that arrested attention. I am sure I had never seen in any man such live, active movement and perfect symmetry. A close-fitting vest and a pair of white flannel trousers were what he wore. I remember that because somehow I always recall that first view in the morning light. The springy walk, the bare muscular arms, the curb of the chest and the poise of the head as the face was turned from me. If I could tell the story without saying another word about his appearance, I would stop right here. I would greatly prefer to do so, but it is not possible. I hope no one will feel exactly as I felt when this man turned his face to me. It serves no good purpose to give revolting details, so I will only say that the man was disfigured, most horribly so. I cannot recall what was said or done during the few minutes that passed after we met, but there are some impressions seared into my brain as with red hot irons. There are some recollections which even now make me feel faint and dazed, and some which make me burn with shame. I take shame, bitter, burning shame, that I failed to grasp his art-stretched hand, and that I let him read in my face the horror that seized me. It is one of those pitiful things that the longest lifetime is not long enough to let a man forget. Surging across this comes the vivid recollection of my conviction that this man was Cassidy. The first instant my glance lighted on him I felt what I can only call a sort of joyous conviction that it was he. I felt, in fact, that I recognized him. No doubt it seems odd, illogical, contradictory, even impossible, that strong as the gratifying conviction was, the other, when he turned his face to me, was a thousand times stronger. It ought to have been a reversal of the first conviction. It wasn't. It was a smashing, terrible corroboration. It crushed me with a sense of personal affliction. It never germinated a doubt. I had to stay all that day with him, and he was most gentle and courteous, most kindly and considerate. Every act heaped coals of fire on my ill-conditioned head. God knows I tried my best, but I could hardly look in his face, and I could not control my physical repugnance. I schooled myself to speak, and even to look without betraying my thoughts, but I could not eat with him. I could not sit opposite a face, half of which was gone. I could not use the plate, the cup, the fork that he had used. I pleaded illness and feigned it, but by night-time I was ill enough to need no feigning. It was common enough for anyone benighted on those unhealthy flats to pay the penalty with a dose of fever. I got fever, and no one seemed surprised, but for the life of me I cannot even now help attaching some significance to the fact that I was certainly not ill before the scene at the hut door. I lay in that grass hut for a week or more, some of the time delirious, all the time panting with fever and shivering with egg, tossing wakefully and gasping for air, complaining of everything unutterably miserable and despondent, hating the sight of food, shrinking from each act of kindness, scarling at the sound of a voice. My case was not worse than hundreds of others. I mention these things only to make clear what I mean when I say that never at any moment during that time did I awake or want anything, but Cassidy was there to tend me. His was the care, the watchfulness, the gentleness of a good woman. Can one say more? It is odd that during that time I only saw him as he ought to have been, as I am sure at one time he had been, a man whose countenance matched his character. It is not so odd, perhaps, that as I recovered and became rational the feeling of repulsion did not return, only an infinite pity for a hardly stricken fellow creature whose physical endarmments and whose prospects must have been far above the average and whose affliction was proportionately great. When I left there was one feeling that was stronger than simple gratitude to him. It was thankfulness that something had occurred to prevent me from leaving with only horror and repulsion. I was thankful for the sickness that had left me richer by a heart full of pity, and I think the right word is reverence. My lines were laid in other places than Cassidy's, and as months passed by without my either seeing or hearing of him, I might, for ought I know, have forgotten him, or come to recall him only as one recalls, after laps of years, some curious experience. This might have happened, I said, but it didn't, mainly because of a conversation which revived my keenest interest in him. Several of us had walked out to dine and spend the evening at the Chauncees, and as we sat on the stoop smoking and chatting, the ladies being with us, the conversation turned on a concert or entertainment of some kind which was being got up for the relief of some distressed families in the place. Somebody hazarded the opinion that the distressed family business was being somewhat overdone, and that there was no evidence of it as far as he had been able to see. The remark was unfortunate, for Mrs. Chauncee happened to be one of the promoters of the charity. She, good little woman, had her young matron's soul full of sympathy still. Her store had not been plundered by impostors, and she vehemently defended her project. She did more. She carried war and rut into the enemy's quarters, and surmised that men, young men, whose lives are divided between money-making and pleasure-seeking, are not the best judges of what those who keep their troubles to themselves may have to endure. When you, the young men, are settling differences on shares or cards, or having your occasional splits, or whatever else you do all day long, there are women and children aching for one good meal, shrinking back for want of ordinary clothing, languishing and dropping for want of a man's arm to fend and support them. Jack Chauncee, good chap, must have thought this from his wife, just a wee bit spirited. For, after a pause, he gently drew a herring across the trail. By the by, dear, he asked, thoughtfully, What became of that good-looking young widow who came here with her kid, and looked so jolly miserable? By God! Her face has been haunting me ever since. Did you manage anything for her? You mean Mrs. Malendane? She would not take anything. She wanted to work, to earn, not to beg, she said. I have managed to get her some needlework, but oh, so little poor thing. And the pay is too dreadful. Now there is a case in point. A widow, absolutely penniless, with a child of four or five to support. A woman of education and breeding, without a friend in the world, apparently, shunned by everyone, by some on account of her poverty, by others for her good looks and reserve. She certainly is difficult to approach. I have been to her now four times, and it was only on the last occasion that she thought enough to tell me anything of herself. She has lived for years on what she believed to be the proceeds of her husband's estate. Until within the last few months she was under this impression. But something happened which made her suspicious, and she found out that the income left by her husband was pure fiction, and that what she had been living on was an allowance from the only real friend she or her husband ever had—the man who was her husband's partner when he died. Does she say that her husband is dead? Asked Carter the unfortunate young man who had before provoked Mrs. Chauncey's ire. Carter was very young, and I could see that he had no arrière pensier in asking that question. He did not mean to be impertinent, but I could also see that Mrs. Chauncey did not take that view. Her little iced reply finished poor Carter. I said that she was a widow, Mr. Carter, and I do not care to make another's misfortunes the subject of an argument. I felt sorry for Carter. He was such an ass, and I believed the other two fellows pitied him also, so we did not refer to the subject as we walked him together in the moonlight. That, however, did not suit Carter. After a while he gave an uncomfortable laugh and said, The little woman was rather down on me to-night about the charity show. I rather put my foot in it, I think. Think! said Lawton, one of our party, with heavy contempt. Think! I wonder you claim to be able to think! I never in my life saw any one make such a blighted idiot of himself. Dash it all, man! Give me a chance! The distressed family illusion was unlucky, I admit. But I hadn't the faintest intention of returning to the subject when I asked about the husband, man alive. Why, the nerve of the Malendane woman fairly knocked the breath out of me. The cheek of her cramming poor Mrs. Chauncey with yarns of her husband's death and estate, when every one knows that he isn't dead at all. That she gave him the slip, and went off with the only friend. His partner, a man with half his face eaten away by disease. I've seen the fellow at the house myself. Old Larkin of the bank, knew them in Kimberley. They were claim-holders and contractors there and used to bank with him. The film was Cassidy in Malendane. I only wonder she continues to call herself Malendane. It's a formality she might as well have dispensed with. I knew Carter to be a gossipy young devil, so I held my peace about Cassidy, but it was with an effort. My impulse was to give Carter the lie direct. But I remembered Mrs. Chauncey's last words, and refrained. We walked along in silence, and after a while Carter stopped in the road opposite a small house, the door of which stood partly open. There were voices outside, and as Carter said, Hush! Listen! We stopped instinctively, and my heart sank as I recognized a voice that said, Good night! I moved on hastily, disgusted at being trapped into eavesdropping, and Carter laughed. That's the only friend! There's no mistaking that! But I wonder why he's coming away, said the youth, with unmistakable and insinuating emphasis on the last words. No one answered his self-satisfied cackling. I was listening to the brisk walk behind us. I would have known it in a million. Closer and closer it came, his sleeve brushed mine as he stepped lightly past. I let him go, and I don't know why, but I felt like a whipped curl for doing it. It seemed to me that I must hear too far have been living an extraordinary ignorance of what was going on round about me in a small place. For, as though it only needed the start, from the first mention of the story by Carter, I was always hearing it, or a similar one, or one half corroborating it. I made an effort to see Cassidy the first thing next morning, but he had left his hotel, presumably having gone out to the works again. After a day or two had passed I felt glad that I had not met him. Glad because I felt sure that he would have noticed that there was something wrong. He would instinctively have detected the cordiality and confidence which were controlled by an effort of will and were not as they should have been and as they did again become spontaneous and real. This worried me exceedingly, and I turned it over and over again to get at the truth, and eventually it came to this. I knew that they were right as to the cause of his disfigurement. It was impossible to look at him and not accept it. I had no high moral prejudices about this. I only pitied him the more, but I did not believe a word of the rest of the story. All presumption and a heap of circumstances were against me, but I am glad to say that but for the first hesitation I never, never doubted him. It may have been a week or two after this that I met Mrs. Chauncey in camp one afternoon. I had not seen her since the evening already referred to, and as it was an awful afternoon I asked leave to join her in her walk home. We wandered on slowly through the outskirts of the camp along the most direct road to the Chauncey's house. Since I had heard and seen what I had that evening, I interest in Mrs. Malendane had increased. I never passed the house without looking. I claim even to myself that it was real interest and not curiosity that prompted me. Once or twice I had seen the figure in simple black, but not sufficiently clearly to have learned the face again. Her figure I don't think I should have mistaken. It was rather striking. There was also a little girl who used to sit under a mimosa tree studying her lessons or doing sums on a slate. She and I became friends. I was drawn to the youngster because when passing one day I took the unwarrantable liberty of looking over her shoulder to see what the sum was. After a decent pause, during which I might have taken the hint, she turned up at me a very serious little face, lighted by large blue eyes, and lisped slowly. I don't like people to stand behind because I forget my thumbs. I laughingly patted the little head, and went on, but after this I always stopped to chaff my little friend about her thumb, and I generally bought an offering of some sort, sweets, cake, or fruit. Thinking of the house and its people as we walked along, I was not sorry when Mrs. Chauncey asked if I would mind waiting for a minute or two while she went in to see her protege about some work secured or promised. I sat down in my little friend's seat and waited. I had not long to wait. Presently I heard behind me the awkward tiptoeing of a child trying to walk very silently. Like a rare rabbit, I lay low. Then came the climbing onto the seat, and finally a pair of childish hands were clapped over my eyes to an accompaniment of half-suppressed squeals of laughter, broken by panting ifots to maintain the blind-folding hug. I was busily keeping up the illusion by extravagantly bad guesses as to who it was, when I heard the rustle of a dress, and someone ran out calling, Mollie! Mollie! How can you be so naughty, darling? Oh, do excuse her! I was released. My hat was in the dust, and my hair rumbled. I saw Mrs. Chauncey in the background in peels of laughter. Mrs. Malendane before me looking most concerned and holding the bewildered Mollie by the hand, and Mollie vindicating herself by saying with much dignity, Mother, it's only the gentleman that just doos my thumbs and kisses me! As a defence this was, of course, adequate not to say excellent, but it was rather embarrassing for me. It was so effective, however, that I was spared the necessity of saying anything myself. Mrs. Chauncey introduced me to her protégé as she would have done to any of her lady friends, and the protégé barred, as it seemed to me, with a great deal more grace and quite as much easy composure as the best of them. That was my first thought. The next was to take myself indignantly to task for instituting a comparison. As we resumed our walk, I was wondering what could be the tie between this woman and Cassidy. There was no mistaking her class. She was a gentle woman to her fingertips. I was roused from my rather discotious distraction by Mrs. Chauncey saying, You are not so surprised now, perhaps, that I lost my temper with Mr. Carter the other evening. I am sorry I spoke as I did, but I felt it deeply. Indeed, I did. I can well understand it, I answered. How do you like her? She asked abruptly. What? After an interview of two minutes and such an interview? Mrs. Chauncey smiled and said, Well, I only wanted to know your impression. And after all, you have had time to form one, for you have been thinking of her all the time since we left the house. Perfectly true, I have. And to speak candidly, I think I have seldom, indeed, I think never seen a face that interested me more, partly, I suppose, because of what you told us. And I don't think I have ever seen anyone look so infinitely sad. It is a pitiful haunting face. I feel that also. I have never been able to forget her look since she came to me a month ago for work, needlework, or any work. I would never believe that she could be an imposter. No, no, truth is stamped in her face, truth and sorrow. I had always liked Mrs. Chauncey. Just at that moment I was mentally patting her on the back and calling her a little brick, for it was clear that she too had heard something, heard it, and passed it by. Good woman. I was a bachelor, and not too old to feel, and over and above my interest in Cassidy, this whole affair fascinated me considerably. From this time forward I never passed the house without greeting mother or child with sincere warmth, or missing them with an equally genuine sense of disappointment. I never met Mrs. Chauncey without inquiring with interest the latest news of her friend and all details of her affairs. There was never much to tell. Now it was some commission for a dress, now the mending of children's clothes, another time the trimming of hats, or working a tennis net that helped to make ends meet without hope to her pride. These were petty details which might pass in women's chat, but should fail to interest a man, you would think. Nevertheless, they interested me. They did more. In the evenings, as I sat alone and smoked out in the starlight, they helped me to conjure up pictures, and to see her as she would at those very moments, perhaps, be employed. I would have done anything to help her had I been able, but there was nothing I could do. I had even learned that I might not as much as have in sympathy or interest, except for the cost of insult to her. On one occasion, when I happened to meet and walk with her in one of the main streets of the camp, I was frigidly cut by two ladies with whom I thought I was on quite friendly terms. This disturbed me considerably, not on my own account, but because of the insult and injustice to one who was powerless to resent it. It hurt me even more to realize that it would be wise to bow before this and prove greater friendship by showing less. I was still smarting under this next morning, when I was accosted by one of those puddle-headed, blundering idiots of whom there seemed to be one or more in any community, no matter how small. I say, old chap, he began. Look here, you know. You're not playing the game, you know, old chap. The missus has been complaining to me about you. You know what I mean. I detest this don't-shun-know-gee-dropping kind of animal at any time, the thing that fondles you with old chap and dear boy, and refers to its wife as the missus. But apart from this, I was today especially unprepared to submit to further outrage. I was still smarting, as I said before. My good man, I said, may I ask you to be more explicit? Why, dash it, old chap. You know what I mean. It's no affair of mine, of course, if you only keep it quiet, don't you know? But you don't give one a chance, don't you know? And after all, you can't run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and all that sort of thing, don't you know? I was trying to keep my temper, but with no very marked success I fear, but I said as calmly as I could. That's a very original remark, my friend, and no doubt equally intelligent, but I shall be pleased if you will be good enough to apply it so that I can understand it. Look here, old chap, if you go and walk in broad daylight with a woman like that, you know, well, you can expect— Stop now! I said. I had hardly breath enough to speak, and there must have been something unpleasant in my face, for he stepped back a pace or two. So far you are only a babbling fool. If you go on now, you will be an infernal cad and mistake the consequences. You understand what I mean. And, further, as you have been good enough to hint that I should choose my line, I may tell you, to adopt your happy illustration, that I elect to run with the hare. You see, perhaps you understand what I mean. Now, before two minutes had passed, I did not need anyone to tell me that I had done the worst and most unwise thing possible under the circumstances. Of course, I knew well enough that when a woman is concerned two things are very essential— that the man shall keep his temper, and that he shall be judicious, even circumspect in defending. Having failed in the former, I necessarily failed in the letter, and I felt sick with impotent rage when I realized it. I knew how the story would circulate, and I knew exactly how it would be touched up, amplified, and illustrated with graphic gesticulations when it reached the club and exchange, and passed through the hands of certain expert raconteurs, and to avoid the lamentable result of chaff and further provocation, I got away for a couple of days to give myself and the story a chance. Several weeks passed after this incident, during which I saw but little of Mrs. Malendane, and heard not much more. Occasionally I heard of Cassidy from men coming up the line. In spite of his grumbling and seeming discontent with the nature of the country in this section, nobody believed that Cassidy's cutting was such a very unprofitable job as he gave out. Cassidy was too old a hand to be drawn into any admission, which could be used against him for the purpose of cutting down prices in future contracts. Those best able to judge put him down to make close on ten thousand pounds out of that job. His section lay some sixty miles from Barberton, and as far as I knew he had been into camp only twice during the five months that had passed since I first met him. One occasion was the night on which I had seen him, the other when he had called at the office to see me. I was out of camp that day and missed him. I do not know how often he may have been in besides those two occasions. Mrs. Chauncey and I were real friends. Jack was one of my oldest chums, and when he married I found what does not necessarily follow that his wife was just one to strengthen the friendship and not weaken it. With regard to her, I felt that if an occasion should arise requiring that I should make a confident of any woman, Mrs. Chauncey would be the one. I don't know that I ever realized this sufficiently forcibly to express it even to myself until after a remark which she made to me about this time. She had been telling me some little thing about Mrs. Malendale, and I may have shown by my attention, perhaps even by questions, more interest than she expected or thought called for. There was quite a long silence during which I felt she was thinking of something concerning me. When she turned towards me, her expression was one of almost tender consideration, and in the gentlest possible voice she said, it is good to be kind and generous and to help those who need it, but when a man means to help a woman it should be clear to him from day to day, from hour to hour, not only how far he means to go, but also what she will understand. The words went home to me, and I suppose I showed it, for she added a little nervously. You must not mind that from me. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Taken as meant, Mrs. Chauncey, and thank you. I meant it. I made a careful and impartial examination of conscience that night, when I had the silence and darkness to faber me, and although I honestly acquitted myself, there was just the faintest suggestion of the finding of the Irish jury. We find the prisoner not guilty, but he's not to do it again. I told myself again that Mrs. Chauncey was a little brick for her timely and well-judged warning, for I thought it was quite possible that I might have drifted on, and gone soft before knowing it. I am satisfied there was no cause for alarm, as the resolution to ease up cost me neither effort nor pang. I abided fairly by the spurt of my unspoken pact. I changed my daily route to one that did not lead past Mrs. Malendane's house. I ceased to talk of her. I even tried not to think of her. But just there I failed, for the effort to forget makes occasion to remember. It was the tail-end of summer. The heat was terrible, and in all the outlying parts, even in the lower portions of the camp, malarial fever was prevalent. The accounts from the line were particularly bad, nearly all the engineers, contractors, and subcontractors being more or less laid up by attacks of the summer themed. One of the engineers suffering from a mild attack was brought in, and being at the hotel when he arrived, I heard accounts of what was going on. He told me that Cassidy had had attack after attack, but that he would neither lie up there nor come into hospital. It was work, work, work with him, all day and night, except when he was looking after others, and, in truth, his camp was a kind of improvised hospital. Cassidy, he said, with his superb strength and physique, would not give in. He would not believe that people could beat a man who was gay, and he fought it. There was no suitable conveyance to be got before night, so I arranged to start after dark, for I was determined to do something to repay the kindness I had had at Cassidy's hands. I took a serious view of his case, for I knew how these things usually ended, and he was not going to die without an effort on my part to save him. I walked home that night worrying considerably about poor Cassidy, and wishing to heaven that the trap was ready to start at once. I had reached the crossing-stones in the little stream where my old and new paths forked out. It was dusk, and I was not thinking of whom I might meet, so I started at the sight of Mrs. Malendane a few paces off coming towards me, evidently to meet me. Oh, I have waited for hours to meet you! She began, without any ceremony and talking nervously and fast. I thought you had gone already, and yet I feared to annoy you by going to your office. Look here! Look! Tell me, is this true? Oh, you can't see. I forgot. It's too dark. Here, in the paper, they say you are going down the line tonight to bring in someone who is ill, very ill with fever. Tell me, is it true? It is quite true. I leave tonight after nine, I answered. I hoped without betraying surprise. But I could not help noticing that she did not mention Cassidy's name, and that she was painfully excited. I drew no conclusions. I had no time for thought. But these things left a weight on my heart for all that, and it was not lightened as she went on. I have come to ask you something. You will please bring him to my house. I must nurse him. He must come to me. This was not a favour sort. It was rather a direction given, and there was only the slightest note of interrogation in her voice. I could only repeat in surprise. To your house, Mrs. Malendane? Yes. Yes. You will do that for me, please. I am sorry, but I do not think that would be right. His place is clearly in the hospital, and I have no right to take him elsewhere. You refuse? Oh, you cannot refuse me. Mrs. Malendane, you put it very harshly. You must see that I cannot do otherwise. I know of nothing to justify me in not sending him to hospital. It will be better for him and far better for you. She drew a sharp breath and faced me, drawn up to her full height, looking me straight in the eyes. I half expected this, she said. I only asked you because I feared to worry him. Your refusal is nothing. He will come to me all the same. You will not refuse to take a letter to him, will you, if I detain you a few minutes longer? We were quite close to her little cottage, and as we walked towards it I tried to soften my refusal as best I could. She, however, did not seem to hear me. She left me seated in the little parlour. There was no light in the room, but she carried in a lamp from an adjoining one, and I have never been so struck by her face as I was by hers when the glow of the lamp lighted it up. The charm of her beauty was not one witter-baited, for beautiful she was, and yet there was only one thing to be read in her face, and that was resolution. It lay in her lips, the curve of her nostrils, a peculiar look in the eye, and a certain poise of the head. In very truth she looked superb. I sat waiting while the minutes passed, and not a sound broke the perfect silence in the house. Everything was so still that it seemed as if there could be no one within miles of me. There was a book on the table before me, and I took it up unthinkingly. It opened where a cabinet-sized photograph had been left in it. As a marker, I suppose, the photograph showed the head and shoulders of a man, and the face, shown in four, was one of the gayest and most resolute that I ever remember to have seen. There was something very attractive about it, and there was, as I thought, a faint suggestion of somebody I had known or seen. It was a good face, splendidly strong and honest, and, from a man's point of view, a right-handsome face, too. To look at a photograph uninvited may be an impertinence. To read the inscription on the back certainly is, and yet these are things which one is apt to do unthinkingly and even instinctively. I turned the photograph round and read, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? And under that, a date. I put it back in the book, feeling that I had been prying into the secrets of a woman's grief. Presently I heard a chair pushed back in the next room, and Mrs. Mellondane stiff approaching. She handed me a closed note. You will give that to him, please? She said politely, but very firmly. He will come here if he receives it, but it is possible that he may still be delirious, and if so, I only ask you again if you will be good enough to bring him to me. With the knowledge which after events have given me, it is difficult to say whether I was concerned only for Catherdee's health and Mrs. Mellondane's good name, or whether I was not pricked to anxiety by some other feeling. My heart did sink at her suggestion. I don't know whether through selfishness or something better. I felt that I was beginning to yield before her evident purpose, but my answer was evasive. I said I did not see how I could promise anything. She waved that impatiently aside. I recall the motion of her hand as though she could literally brush such things away. She came a step nearer to me. The light shone full in her face, on the waves of her hair, on her slightly parted lips, and glinted and flashed back from her eyes. For half a minute she stood so looking at me, and I was conscious of the grip of her hand on the back of a chair, and of the rise and fall of her breast as she breathed. You know him. You have seen him? She queried in a low deliberate voice. Yes, I answered. You know he is disfigured. I could barely answer again. Yes. When I tell you, then, that I am the cause of that, will you deny me the privilege of any reparation I can make? The words made me like a blow in the face. I was crushed. God knows what I would have done, but that I saw the flame of color that leapt into her face and the trembling and quivering of her lips. I gasped out, No! No! I will do it. She seemed so upset, so unsteady, that I made a half-step towards her, but she motioned me back, saying, Go now! Go! Please go! and leave me! A hundred thoughts were surging and churning in my head as I drove down the long, long valley of the Lampo Guarni River that night. I felt as miserable as man need feel. Everything seemed wrong, most of it horribly so. But turn as I might from one phase to another, the one thing always recurred, pervading, dominated everything. I am the cause of that. The words rang in my ears again and again, and the horrible significance shamed me afresh each time, always to be answered by something which said, No! I will believe. I will trust. Poor Cassidy was very, very bad when I reached him, and his lucid intervals were far between. His appearance was terrible, the ghastly pallor adding, as I thought nothing could add, to the face from which one eye, the nose, half the upper lip, and portion of one cheek were gone. It was terrible, truly terrible. There is no need to dwell on it all. I got him in, and he lived for five days. Fever didn't kill him. It couldn't have. He was too strong and too start-hearted. It was hemorrhage resulting from some old injury received in an accident years before. The doctor told me that when the archery had gone, Cassidy knew he would be dead in a few minutes. He begged the doctor to leave him. And turning to Mrs. Malendane, asked her to cover his face with a handkerchief, and to hold his hand. He said to her, God bless you, Molly. Goodbye. And died like the man he was. Mrs. Chauncey was the real friend in that time of need. It was she who had supplied everything that an invalid could want. It was she who stayed all that long night through with Mrs. Malendane, who went with her to the funeral, and stood by her, and stayed with her when all was over. The day after the funeral I sat in my office dazed and stupefied with worrying and puzzling over many things in connection with these people whose affairs and whose lives seemed to have become suddenly entangled with mine. Not the least of my worries was the document before me, which was Cassidy's will. I give everything absolutely to Mary Malendane, and nominating me as his executor. I dreaded the first interview, so much so in fact that I got Mrs. Chauncey to go with me. The tall black figure, and the excessive pallor of her face smote very hard on my heart, but I was relieved by the presence of little Molly, who stuck to me from the time I entered the room until Mrs. Malendane sent her away. I had already stated my object in calling when she sent Molly up, and I was about to resume when she asked me abruptly, Do you know anything of his past life? Nothing, whatever I said, nor of mine. No, Mrs. Malendane. She laid a hand on one of Mrs. Chauncey's who was sitting near and said gravely, You, who have been my friend, know nothing either. It is right that you should, that you both should. We were sitting at a table in the pallor. The writing materials were lying on it ready for my use. The two ladies sat close together, opposite me. I cannot give Mrs. Malendane's own words, nor can I convey her manner when telling us the story of her life. Sometimes she would talk in a subdued monotone, telling, with an absence of feeling that was infinitely pathetic, of their troubles. Sometimes she would be roused to a pitch of feeling that left her voice but a husky whisper. Once, just once, I fancied there was the faintest trace of contempt in her tone, when referring to, well, not to Cassidy. If it was so, it was at any rate instantly lost in the flow of pity. This is substantially what she told us. Malendane and Cassidy had owned claims in the Kimberley or one of the neighbouring mines, and were, in fact, partners doing business together. They were both young Irishmen, and had come out on the same boat some years before, which were considered sufficient reasons for their entering into partnership. Cassidy was the one with the brain's money and work, and from what I gathered there seems to have been no reason except Cassidy's good nature, for the alliance with Malendane at all. However, they prospered, and Malendane went home for a trip and married, and bought his wife back to Kimberley. For a couple of years all went well, in fact until the firm began to lose money. Reverses only stimulated Cassidy to harder work and more cherry, indomitable effort. You couldn't beat him. But it was different with Malendane. All his wife said was that he lost heart, used to go away day after day and night after night, to where he could forget his worries, drinking and gambling. When Cassidy first recognised that his partner was falling, he gave up his own house, suggesting it would be doing him, Cassidy, a good turn if they would let him board with them. He gave himself up to a splendid effort to save his partner from ruin. For a time it answered, but Malendane, besides being naturally unstable, must have been bitten by drink, for he broke out again, and nothing either friend or wife could do could save him. There came scenes, brutality and insult to the wife, ingratitude and insult to the friend. She told us nothing except in pity and forgiveness of her dead husband, nothing that is, that justice to Cassidy did not require. But it is not difficult to imagine what happened, and indeed I know now that it was only the pitiful helplessness of the wife and child, and the knowledge that his present was food and even life to them, that held Cassidy to his partner, for in his fits of drunkenness Malendane would have murdered both wife and child. Cassidy worked from four in the morning until eight at night, and at time through the day he would run up from the claims to the house to see that all was well. Or he made, went to keep the house going. And it was given as a matter of course. No complaint was made, although Malendane now ceased even the pretence of work, and spent the whole day in the canteens. But the end came when least expected. Malendane, when he did come home at all, did not get up until hours after Cassidy was at work. He used to awake drunk and dazed, and wander off at once unshaven, dirty and half-dressed, to the nearest canteen. One morning, however, there was a change. He was grey-faced, puffy and sodden, it is true, but he fussed about the house, briskly talking to himself. He got out a clean, mole-skin suit, and told the servant that he could not wait for breakfast, as he had to fire the eight o'clock shots. And the holes were all charged and waiting for him. Within quarter of an hour Cassidy had come up for breakfast. Mrs. Malendane met him on the way and told him what the servant had in the meantime told her. And Cassidy raced back to stop his delirious partner. With a madman's cunning and instinct he had slipped down the mine from ledge to ledge, and along dangerous slopes until he reached the lowest workings. And when Cassidy, after some delay in getting a bucket on the hauling-gear to go down in, reached the spot, the boys told him that Malendane, Ung Tagarty, bewitched, had gone into the drive to fire the chargers and would let no one go near him. Cassidy looked at the black mouth of the drive. He did not think of the worthless, sodden, rich who had gone in there. He recalled the partner of years, the mate of good times and bad. And he recalled, too, the horror-stricken look on the face of the woman he had just left. He dashed into the sound of a warning yell from every man in the mine. When occasion calls there is still no lack of brave men. Heroes spring into recognition from every grade of life, from every class of material, and while the half-dozen explosion still echoed and reverberated in the circle of the mine, there were men dashing into the rescue at the imminent risk of their lives, heedless of the deadly fumes and of possible unexploded charges. The firm lay in one heap. Cassidy on his back, Malendane, a-thwart him. To the only person to whom he ever spoke of the affair, Cassidy said, he was stooping to light another fuse when I reached him. I gripped both arms round him as he turned on me and tried to carry him out. It was a wrestling match, for he showed fight. My face was over his one shoulder, as his was over mine, but mine was turned towards the shots. A piece of the rock that shattered poor Cassidy's face entered the back of his partner's head, and he never stirred again. Cassidy lay for months in hospital, bandaged, blindfolded, barely alive, and the woman he had stood by, stood by him. When he was able to walk about, it was on her arm he leaned. When he was fit to leave, it was to her house he went to be tended for months longer. He never complained, nor lost heart, although he knew that one eye was gone and thought he would lose the other. Some seven or eight months had passed, and he was getting well and strong, he was healing. She had always dreaded the effect of the first sight of himself, and for this reason had removed the mirrors from the rooms he frequented. But one day, when she had been out for a while, she found him lying on the sofa, the bandage off his eyes, and a hand-gloss dropped on the carpet close by. It was the only time he had fainted, or in any way given in. Later in the evening he said, I don't really mind so much now that I know it was the suspense that worried me. And after a pause he added in the voice that seemed to let you hear his heart lifting. I'll be able to tackle work again soon, and will be all right again. That was the only illusion, Mrs. Malendane said, that he ever made to his disfigurement. I believe it was art of delicacy and consideration for my feelings that he never spoke about it. You could not even see that he ever thought of it, for he had that splendid manliness that doesn't know what self-consciousness means. Only one thing showed unmistakably that he did feel it, and that he felt he was dead to all the promise of his past. You must have remarked his manner of speech, she observed, turning to me. He spoke like a working man. That was his only shield. He deliberately sank himself to that level to be spared the prominence and pity that would have been given him as a gentleman. It was his hope to pass through life unnoticed. With me, and with me only, he had no disguise, no concealment, no reserve. He used always to talk of their affairs as one and the same. In order to keep up the illusion he had encouraged in her from the beginning, when he had told her very seriously that it would never do to liquidate the firm's business now, it would mean sacrificing everything. She agreed to do whatever he thought right, and at the end of every month he used to hand to her scrupulously accounted for a some greater or less according to the firm's profit for the month. From his own profits, he always managed to have something, no matter how little, to spend on Mollie, who was his pet and companion always. The proceeds of the sale of house and furniture, when they had to be given up, were handed over to Mrs. Melondane for a stand-by, and she went into lodgings, because she would feel more comfortable and have more time to give Mollie there, not because he was watchful over her good name, and would not stay in the house once he was well enough to walk alone. When Cassidy extended the firm's business, that is to say, went to the Cape Colony, Natal, and Transvaal in search of contracts on the various railway lines, he continued to remit the profits with the most elaborate statements, which Mrs. Melondane, as a partner, felt bound to study, and as a woman often wept over in despair. This had gone on for several years, and it was not until after she had gone to Barboton to be near the business that something had made her suspicious that the joint capital locked up in the business was all a generous imposition. It only needed the suggestion, said Mrs. Melondane, to show me an appalling chain of evidence, evidence of his generosity and patient tactful help, evidence of my blind content and foolishness, I spoke to him when next he came in. He could see that I knew, and he simply said, Ruff would have done the same for him. God forgive me. He gave up his life to me. He suffered living death for me. He lived when it would have been a million mercies to have died. He bore all that a man could bear and never grudged it, and I, I cut his heart in two when I refused his help. I know it. I wished I had died before I got the look he gave me when I told him that I could not take his help. Month after month went by, and he did not come to me. He, who used to be here on the first day of every month. But I knew he was near. Twice I saw him passing slowly by when he had come to watch over us. The first time I was too surprised to call. The second time I called him, and he came to me. He stayed until late that evening, and he went away happy again because we registered our second compact, that if we, Molly and I, were ever in real need I would send for him, that if he were sick or in need of friends, the privilege of friends should be ours. She stopped for quite a while, and when she spoke again her voice trembled, and it was all she could do to control it so that she could speak at all. I could not bear to look in her face. You too have seen him, she said, and turning to me added, you have known him. I have liked to tell you all about him, and I like to tell you now that I know he loved me, that I think it is the greatest honour a woman can have to be loved by such a man, for not any woman that I have ever known or heard of, or read of, was good enough for him. She left the room for a moment, and returning laid something on the table before us, saying, you remember him as you saw him. Try, try to think of him as I do, like this. It is all you have seen, and I think it is the greatest honour a woman can have to be loved by such a man, for not any woman that I have ever known or heard of, or read of, was good enough as I do, like this. It is all you can do for the memory of a good and honourable man. It was the photograph I had seen in her book the day I left to bring him in. All those things happened some years ago. Out on the grass there, in front of my window, there is a little girl trying to dissuade a very small boy from pulling the black ear off an old white bulldog. But the fat little fists keep their grip, and as he staggers under the effort, the little chap says, Molly, must pull down a conical ear, make him get up. Watching them with the brightest, merriest smile in the world, and looking years younger than when I first saw her, Mrs. But if I mentioned her name, this would not be an anonymous story. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 Of The Art Span by J. Percy Fitzpatrick This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Sally McConnell. The Pool Everyone remembers the rush to the carp some years ago, how everyone said that everyone else would make fortunes in half no time, and the country would be saved. Well, my brother, Jim, and I thought we would like to make fortunes too. So we packed our boxes, donned flanneled shirts, felt hats, and mull-skinned trousers with a revolver each carelessly slung at our sides, and started. We intended to dig for about a year or so, and then sell out and live on the interest of our money. Oh, thirty thousand pounds each would do. It was all cut and dried. I often almost wished it wasn't so certain, as now one hadn't a chance of coming back suddenly and surprising the loved ones at home with the news of a grand fortune. Full of excitement—certainties not standing—we went down to Kent's forwarding-store, and there met Mr. Harding, whose wagons were loaded for the Goldfields. This was our chance, and we took it. On November 10, 1883, we crossed Little Sunday's River and outspanned at the foot of Knight's Cutting. The day was close and sultry, and Harding thought it best to lie by until the cool of the evening before attempting the hill. It wasn't much of a cool evening we got, after all, except that we had not the scorching rays of the sun beating down upon us. It was no cooler at ten p.m. than at midday. We were outspanned above the Cutting, and the oppressive heat of the day and the sultriness of the evening seemed to have told on our party, and we all squattered about on the long, soft grass, smoking or thinking. Besides my brother and myself, there were two young Scotchmen, just out from home, and a little Frenchman. He was a general favourite on account of his inexhaustible good nature and unflagging high spirits. We were, as I have said, stretched out on the grass, smoking in silence, watching the puffs and rings of smoke melt quietly away, so still was the air. How long we had lain thus I don't know, but I was the first to break the silence by exclaiming, What a grand night for a bath! There was no reply to this for some seconds, and then Jim gave an apathetic grunt in courteous recognition of the fact that I had spoken. I subsided again, and there was another long silence. Evidently no one wanted to talk. But I had become restless and fidgety under the heat and stillness, and presently I returned to the charge. Who's for a bath? I asked. Someone grunted out something about no place. Oh yes there is, said I, glad of even so much encouragement, and then turning to hardening I said, I hear the water in the cloof. There is a place, isn't there? Yes, he answered slowly. There is one place, but you couldn't care to dip there. It's the murderer's pool. The what? we asked in a breath. The murderer's pool, he repeated, with such slow seriousness that we had once became interested the name sent an odd tingle through one. I was already all attention, and during the pause that followed, the others closed around and settled themselves to hear the yarn. When he had tantalised us enough with his provoking slowness, harding began. About this time last year. By the by, what is the date? he asked, breaking off. The tenth exclaimed two or three together. By, Jove, it's the very day. Yes, that's queer. This very day last year I was outspanned on the spot as we are now. I had a lady and a gentleman with me as passengers that trip. They were pleasant to accommodating people and gave us no trouble at all. They used to spend all their time botanising and sketching. On this afternoon Mrs. Allen went down to the ravine below to sketch some peculiar bit of rock scenery. I think all ladies sketch when they travel, some more and some less. But Mrs. Allen could sketch and paint really well, and often went off alone short distances while her husband stayed to chat with me. She had been gone about twenty minutes when we were startled by a most awful, piercing shriek, another, another, and another. And then all was still again. Before the first had died away, Allen and I were running at full speed towards where we judged the shrieks to have come from. Fortunately, we were right. Down there, a bit to the right, we came upon a fair-sized pool on the surface of which Mrs. Allen was still floating. In a few seconds we had her art, and were trying restoratives, and on detecting signs of returning life we carried her up to the wagons. When she became conscious, she started up with, oh, such a look of horror and fright! I'll never forget it. Seeing her husband, however, and holding his hand, she became calm again, and told us all about it. It seems she had been sitting by the side of the stream sketching the pool and the great perpendicular cliff rising out of it. The sunlight was playing on the water, silvering every ripple, and bringing out every detail of the rocks and foliage above. Fithery mosses festooned from cliff to cliff. Maiden hair ferns clustered in every nook and crevice. The drops on every leaf and tendril glistened in the setting sun like a thousand diamonds. That's what she told us. She sat a few minutes before beginning, watching the varying shades and hues, when glancing idly into the water she saw deep, down, a sight that horrified her. On the rocks at the bottom of the pool lay the body of a gigantic kefir, his throat cut from ear to ear, and the white teeth gleaming and grinning at her. Instinctively she screamed and ran, and in trying to pass along the narrow ledge she slipped and fell into the water. Had her clothes not buoyed her up she would have been drowned, as when the cold water closed around her it seemed like the clasp of death, and she lost consciousness. Well, what about the nigger? I asked, for Harding had stopped with the air of one whose tail was told. Oh, he was dead right enough throat-cut and as a guy through the heart. A fight, I expect. What did you do? I asked, raked him out and planted him up there somewhere. Let's see. Yes, that's the place, indicating the pile of stones my brother was sitting on. Jim got up hurriedly, perhaps as he said he wanted to look at the place, yet there was a general laugh at him. Did you think he had you, Jim? I asked innocently. Don't you gas, old chap! How about that bathe you were so bent on? Beciful heavens! The words fell like a bucket of ice water on me. I made a ghastly attempt at a laugh, but it was a failure, an utter failure, and of course brought all the others down on me at once. The nigger seems to have taken all the bathe out of you, old man, said one. Not at all, I answered loftily. It would take more than that to frighten me. Now why on earth didn't I hold my tongue and let the remark pass? I must needs make an ass of myself by a bravado, and now I was in for it. There was a perfect chorus of, Go it, old man! Now isn't that real pluck? Six to four on the nigger. I pit five pounds you not swim across and dive two times. This came from the little French demon, and being applauded by the company, I took up the bit. The fact is, I was knettled by the choff, and in the heat of the moment did what I regretted a minute later. As I rose to get my towel, I said with cutting sarcasm. I don't care about the bit, but I'll just show you that everyone isn't afraid of his own shadow. Though, I added forgetfully, it's rather an unreasonable time to bathe. Here Frenchies struck a stage attitude and said innocently, Ah, but a night was a bed. The shot of laughter that greeted this sally was more than enough to decide me, and I went off in search of a towel. Harding, I could see, did not like the idea, and tried to persuade me to give it up. But that was out of the question. Mind, said he, I'm no believer in ghosts. Yet, he added, with rather a forced laugh, this is the anniversary, and you know, it's uncanny. I quite agreed with him, but dared not say so, and I pretended to laugh it off. I was ready in a few moments, and then a rather happy idea, as I thought, struck me and I called out, Who's coming to see that I win my bit? Oh, we know we can trust you, old chap, said Jim, with exaggerated politeness. It'd be a pity, you know, to outnumber the ghost. Very well. It's all the same to me. Goodbye. Two dives and a swim across, is that it? Yes, and look out for the nigger. Mind you, fish him up. Watch his teeth, Jack. Feel for his throat, you know. This letter exclamation came from Jim. It was yelled out as I disappeared down the slope. Jim had not forgotten the incident of the grave, evidently. I had a half-moon to go by, and a ghostly sort of light it shed. Everything seemed more shadowy and fantastic than usual. Besides this, I had not gone a hundred yards from the wagons before every sound was stilled, not the faintest whisper stirred the air. The crunching of my heavy boots on the gravel was echoed across the creek, and every step grated on my nerves, and went like a sword-stab through me. However, I walked along briskly until the descent became more steep, and I was obliged to go more carefully. Down I went, step by step, lower and lower, till I felt the light grow dimmer and dimmer, and then quite suddenly I stepped into gloom and darkness. This startled me. The sadness of the change made me shiver a bit and fancy it was cold, but it couldn't have been that. For a moment later the chill had gone and the air was close and sultry. It must have been something else. Still I went down, down, down along the winding path, and the further I went the more intense seemed the stillness and the deeper the gloom. Once I stood still to listen. There was not a stir or sound save the trickling of the water below. My heart began to beat rather fast and my breath seemed heavy. What was it? Surely I thought it was not fright. I tried to whistle now as I strode along, but the death-like silence mocked me and choked the breath in my throat. At last I reached the stream. The path ran along the side of the water among the rocks and ferns. I looked for the pool but could not see a sign of it. Still I followed the path until it wound along a very narrow ledge of rock. I was so engrossed picking my steps along there, that when I got round and saw the pool lying black and silent at my feet I fairly staggered back with the shock. There was no mistaking the place. The pool was surrounded by high rocks. On the opposite side they ran up quite perpendicularly to a good height. Nowhere, except the ledge at my feet, would a man have been able to get out of the water alone. The black surface of the water was as smooth as glass, not a ripple or bubble or straw broke its awful monotony. It fascinated me, but it was a ghostly spot. I don't know how long I stood there watching it. It seemed ours. A sickening feeling had crept over me, and I knew I was afraid. I looked all round, but there was nothing to break the horrid spell. Behind me there was a face of rock twenty feet high with ferns and creepers falling from every crevice. But it looked black too. I turned silently again towards the water almost hoping to see something there. But there was still the same unbroken surface, the same oppressive deadly silence as before. What was the use of delaying? It had to be done, so I might as well face it at once. I own I was frightened. I would have lost the bit with pleasure, but to stand the laughter, chaff and jeers of the others—no, that I could never do. My mind was made up to it, so I threw off my clothes quickly and came up to the water's edge. I walked out on the one low ledge and looked down. I was trembling then, I knew. I tried to think it was cold, but I knew it was not that. I stooped low down to search the very depths of the pool, but I could see nothing, all was uniformly dark. And yet, good God, what was that? Right down at the bottom lay a long black object. With starting eyes I looked again. It was only a rock. I drew back a pace and sat down. The perspiration was in beads on my forehead. I shook in every limb. Sick and faint my breath went and came in the mearest whispers. So I sat for a minute or two with my head resting on my hands, and then the thought struck me. What if the others are watching me above? I jumped up to make a running plunge of it. But somehow the run slackened into a walk, and the walk ended in a pause near the ledge, and there I stood to have another look into the dark still pool. Suddenly there was a rustling behind me. I jumped round, tingling, quivering all over, and a pebble rolled at my feet from the rocks above. I called out in a shaky voice, Na, there new chaps, none of that! I can see you! But really I could see nothing, and the echo of my voice had such a weird, awful sound that I began to lose my head altogether. There was now no pretending that I was not frightened, for I was. My nerves were completely unstrung, my head was splitting, and my legs could hardly bear me. I preferred to face any ridicule than to endure this for another minute, and I commenced dressing. Then I pictured to myself Jim's grinning face, Frenchie's pantomime of the whole affair, Harding's quiet smile, and the chaff and laughter of them all. And I paused. A sudden rush, a plunge and souse, and I was in. Breathless and gasping, I struck out, only twenty yards across. Madly I swam. The cold water made my flesh creep. On and on, faster and faster, would I never reach it. At last I touched the rocks and turned to come back. Then all their chaff recurred to me. Every stroke seemed to hiss the words at me. Feel for his throat! Feel for his throat! I fancied the dead nigger was on me, and every moment expected to feel his hand on my shoulder. On I sped, faster and faster, mad with the dread of being entangled by the legs, and pulled down, I swam for life. When I scrambled on the ledge, I felt I was saved. Then all at once I began to feel my body tingling with the most exhilarating sense of relief, after an absurd fright, a sense of power restored, of self-respect and triumph, and an insane desire to laugh. I did laugh, but the supochral echoes of my hilarious cackle rather chilled me, and I began to dress. Then, for the first time, occurred to me the conditions of the bet. Two dives and a swim across. Now, this would have been quite natural in ordinary pools, a plunge, a scramble on the opposite bank, another plunge and back. But here, with the precipitous face of rock opposite, it meant two swims across, and two dives from the same spot. But I did not mind. In fact, I was enjoying it now, and I thought with a glow of pride how I would rub it into Jim about fishing up his darned old nigger with the cut throat. I walked to the edge, smiling. Yes, my boy, I murmured. I'll fish you up if you're there, or a fistful of gravel for Jim and Frenchy, little devil. It'll be change for his fiver. And I chuckled at my joke. I drew a long breath and dropped quietly into the water-head first, down, down, down, gently, softly. A couple of easy strokes, and I glided along the bottom. Then something touched me. God in heaven! How it all burst on me at once! I felt four rigid fingers laid on my shoulder, and drawn down my chest, the fingernails scratching me. Instantly I made a grasp with both hands. My left fastened on the neck of a human body, and my right just above closed, and the fingers met through the ragged flesh of a gashed throat. I tried to scream. The water choked me. I let go and swam on, and then up. I shot out of the water, waist high, gasping and glaring wildly, and then sauced under again. As I again came up, I dashed the water from my eyes. I saw the surface of the pool break, and a head rose slowly. Kind heaven! There were two! Slowly the two bodies rose across the black margin, where the shadows ceased, full in the moonlit portion of the pool, cold, clear, and horrible in their ghastly nakedness. And as they rose the murderous wounds appeared. The dank hair hung over their foreheads. The glazed and sightless eyeballs were fixed with the vacant stare of death on me. One bore a terrible gash from temple to eye, and lowered down the bluish red slit of an asagai on the left breast. On the other was one wound only, but half awful. The throat was cut from ear to ear. The bluish lips of the great gash hung wide apart when my hand had torn them. I could even see the severed windpipe. The head was thrown slightly back, but the eyes glared down at me with an awful stony glare, while through the potted lips the teeth gleamed and grinned cold and bright as they caught the light of the moon. One glance, half an instant, showed me all this, and then as the figures rose, waist high, I saw one arm rigid at right angles to the body from the elbow, and the stiff hand that had clawed me. For one instant they poised, balancing, then bowing slowly over. They came down on top of me. Then, indeed, my brain seemed to go. I struggled under them. I fought and shrieked. But I suppose the bubbles came up in silence. The dead stiff hand was laid on my head and pressed me down, down, down. Then the hand of death slipped, and I was free. Once I kicked them as I struggled to the surface, and gasping frantic mad made for the bank. On, on, on, oh, God! Would I never reach it? One more effort, a wrench, and I was out. Never a pause now. One bound, and I had passed the ledge. Then up and up passed the cliffs, over the rocks cut in bleeding, on I dashed as fast as mortal man ever raced, up, up the stony path, until with torn feet and shaking in every limb I reached the wagon. There was an exclamation, a pause, and then a perfect yell of laughter. The laugh saved me. The heartless cruelty of it did what nothing else could have done. It roused my temper. But for that I believe I should have gone mad. Harding alone came forward anxiously towards me. What's the matter? he asked. For God's sake, what is it? The laugh had sobered me, and I answered quietly that it was nothing much, just a thing I would like him to see down at the pool. There were a score of questions in anxious and half-apologetic tones, for they soon realized that something was wrong. But I answered nothing, and so they followed me in silence, and there, on the oily, unbroken surface of the silent pool, floated in grim relief the two bodies. We pulled them out and found the corpses lashed together. At the end of the rope was an empty loop, the stone out of which I must in my struggle have dislodged. Close to the nigger we laid them with another pile of stones to mark the spot. But who they were, and where they came from, none of us ever knew for certain. The week before this two lucky diggers had passed through Newcastle from the fields going home. Four years have now passed, letters have come, friends have inquired, but there is no news of them. And I think, poor chaps, they must have gone home by another route. End of Chapter 5