 accessory before the fact by Algernon Blackwood. At the Moorland Crossroads, Martin stood examining the signpost for several minutes in some bewilderment. The names on the forearms were not what he expected. Distances were not given, and his map, he concluded with impatience, must be hopelessly out of date. Spreading it against the post, he stooped to study it more closely. The wind blew the corners flapping against his face. The small print was almost indecipherable in the fading light. It appeared, however, as well as he could make out, that two miles back he must have taken the wrong turning. He remembered that turning. The path had looked inviting. He had hesitated a moment, then followed it, caught by the usual lure of walkers, that it might prove a shortcut. The shortcut snare is old as human nature. For some minutes he studied the signpost and the map alternately. Dusk was falling, and his knapsack had grown heavy. He could not make the two guides tally, however, and a feeling of uncertainty crept over his mind. He felt oddly baffled, frustrated. His thought grew thick. Decision was most difficult. I muddled, he thought. I must be tired, as at length he chose the most likely arm. Sooner or later it will bring me to an end, though not the one I intended. He accepted his walker's luck and started briskly. The arm read, over Litticey Hill, in small fine letters that danced and shifted every time he looked at them. But the name was not discoverable on the map. It was, however, inviting, like the shortcut. A similar impulse again directed his choice. Only this time it seemed more insistent, almost urgent. And he became aware, then, of the exceeding loneliness of the country about him. The road for a hundred yards went straight, then curved like a white river running into space. The deep blue-green of Heather lined the banks, spreading upwards through the twilight, and occasional small pines stood solitary here and there, all unexplained. The curious adjective, having made its appearance, haunted him. So many things that afternoon were similarly unexplained. The shortcut, the darkened map, the names on the signpost, his own erratic impulses, and the growing strange confusion that crept upon his spirit. The entire countryside needed explanation, though perhaps interpretation was the truer word. Those lonely little trees had made him see it. Why had he lost his way so easily? Why did he suffer vague impressions to influence his direction? Why was he here? Exactly here. And why did he now go over Littice Hill? Then by a green field that shone like a thought of daylight amid the darkness of the moor, he saw a figure lying in the grass. It was a blot upon the landscape, a mere huddled patch of dirty rags, yet with a certain horrid picturesqueness too, and his mind, though his German was of the schoolroom order, at once picked out the German equivalents as against the English. Lump and lumpen flashed across his brain most oddly. They seemed in that moment right and so expressive, almost like onomatopoeic words, if that were possible of sight. Neither rags nor rascal would have fitted what he saw. The adequate description was in German. Here was a clue tossed up by the part of him that did not reason, but it seems he missed it, and the next minute the tramp rose to a sitting posture and asked the time of evening. In German he asked it, and Martin, answering without a second's hesitation, gave it, also in German. Habsieben, half-past-six. The instinctive guess was accurate. A glance at his watch when he looked a moment later proved it. He heard the man say, with the covert insolence of tramps, thank you, much obliged. For Martin had not shown his watch. Another intuition subconsciously obeyed. He quickened his pace along that lonely road. A curious jumble of thoughts and feelings surging through him. He had somehow known the question would come, and come in German. Yet it flustered and dismayed him. Another thing had also flustered and dismayed him. He had expected it in the same queer fashion, it was right. For when the ragged brown thing rose to ask the question, a part of it remained lying on the grass, another brown, dirty thing. There were two tramps. And he saw both faces clearly, behind the untidy beards, and below the old slouch hats. He cut the look of unpleasant, clever faces that watched him closely while he passed. The eyes followed him. For a second he looked straight into those eyes, so that he could not fail to know them. And he understood, quite horridly, that both faces were too sleek, refined, and cunning for those of ordinary tramps. The men were not really tramps at all, they were disguised. How covertly they watched me was his thought, as he hurried along the darkening road, aware in dead earnestness now of the loneliness and desolation of the Moorland all about him. Uneasy and distressed, he increased his pace. Midway in thinking what an unnecessarily clanking noise his nailed boots made upon the hard white road, there came upon him with a rush together the company of these things that haunted him as unexplained. They brought a single, definite message, that all this business was not really meant for him at all, and hence his confusion and bewilderment, that he had intruded into someone else's scenery, and was trespassing upon another's map of life. By some wrong inner turning he had interpolated his person into a group of foreign forces which operated in the little world of someone else. Unwittingly somewhere he had crossed the threshold, and now was fairly in, a trespasser, an eavesdropper, a peeping tom. He was listening, peeping, overhearing things he had no right to know because they were intended for another. Like a ship at sea he was intercepting wireless messages he could not properly interpret, because his receiver was not accurately tuned to their reception. And more, these messages were warnings. Then fear dropped upon him like the night. He was caught in a net of delicate, deep forces he could not manage, knowing neither their origin nor purpose. He had walked into some huge psychic trap, elaborately planned and baited, yet calculated for another than himself. Something had lured him in, something in the landscape, the time of day, his mood. Owing to some undiscovered weakness in himself he had been easily caught. His fear slipped easily into terror. What happened next happened with such speed and concentration that it all seemed crammed into a moment. At once and in a heap it happened, it was quite inevitable. Down the white road to meet him a man came swaying from side to side in drunkenness quite obviously feigned, a tramp. And while Martin made room for him to pass, the lurch changed in a second to attack, and the fellow was upon him. The blow was sudden and terrific, yet even while it fell Martin was aware that behind him rushed a second man, who caught his legs from under him and bore him with a thud and crash to the ground. Blows reigned then, he saw a gleam of something shining, a sudden deadly nausea plunged him into utter darkness where resistance was impossible. Something of fire entered his throat and from his mouth poured a thick sweet thing that choked him. The world sank far away into darkness. Yet through all the horror and confusion ran the trail of two clear thoughts. He realized that the first tramp had sneaked at a fast double through the heather, and so come down to meet him. And that something heavy was torn from fastenings that clipped it tight and close beneath his clothes against his body. Abruptly then the darkness lifted, passed utterly away. He found himself peering into the map against the signpost. The wind was flapping the corners against his cheek, and he was pouring over names that now he saw quite clear. Upon the arms of the signpost above were those he had expected to find, and the map recorded them quite faithfully. All was accurate again and as it should be. He read the name of the village he had meant to make. It was plainly visible in the dusk, two miles the distance given. Bewildered, shaken, unable to think of anything, he stuffed the map into his pocket unfolded and hurried forward like a man who has just wakened from an awful dream that had compressed into a single second all the detailed misery of some prolonged, oppressive nightmare. He broke into a steady trot that soon became a run. The perspiration poured from him, his legs felt weak, and his breath was difficult to manage. He was only conscious of the overpowering desire to get away as fast as possible from the signpost at the crossroads where the dreadful vision had flashed upon him. For Martin, accountant on a holiday, had never dreamed of any world of psychic possibilities. The entire thing was torture. It was worse than a cooked balance of the books that some conspiracy of clerks and directors proved at his innocent door. He raced as though the countryside ran crying at his heels, and always still ran with him the incredible conviction that none of this was really meant for himself at all. He had overheard the secrets of another. He had taken the warning for another into himself, and so altered its direction. He had thereby prevented its right delivery. It all shocked him beyond words. It dislocated the machinery of his just and accurate soul. The warning was intended for another who could not, would not, now receive it. The physical exertion, however, brought at length a more comfortable reaction, and some measure of composure. With the lights in sight he slowed down and entered the village at a reasonable pace. The inn was reached, a bedroom inspected and engaged, and supper ordered, with the solid comfort of a large bass to satisfy an unholy thirst, and complete the restoration of balance. The unusual sensations largely passed away, and the odd feeling that anything in his simple wholesome world required explanation was no longer present. Still with a vague uneasiness about him, though actual fear quite gone, he went into the bar to smoke an after supper pipe and chat with the natives, as his pleasure was upon a holiday, and so saw two men leaning upon the counter at the far end with their backs towards him. He saw their faces instantly in the glass, and the pipe nearly slipped from between his teeth. Clean shaven, sleek, clever faces, and he caught a word or two as they talked over their drinks, German words. Well-dressed they were, both men, with nothing about them calling for particular attention, they might have been two tourists holiday-making like himself in tweeds and walking boots. And they presently paid for their drinks and went out. He never saw them face to face at all, but the sweat broke out afresh all over him. A feverish rush of heat and ice together ran about his body. Beyond question he recognized the two tramps, this time not disguised. Not yet disguised. He remained in his corner without moving, puffing violently at an extinguished pipe, gripped helplessly by the return of that first vile terror. It came again to him with an absolute clarity of certainty that it was not with himself they had to do, these men, and further that he had no right in the world to interfere. He had no locus standee at all. It would be immoral, even if the opportunity came. And the opportunity, he felt, would come. He had been an eavesdropper, and had come upon private information of a secret kind that he had no right to make use of. Even that good might come. Even to save life. He sat on in his corner, terrified and silent, waiting for the thing that should happen next. But night came without explanation. Nothing happened. He slept soundly. There was no other guest at the inn but an elderly man, apparently a tourist, like himself. He wore goldrim glasses, and in the morning Martin overheard him asking the landlord what direction he should take for Littice Hill. His teeth began then to chatter and a weakness came into his knees. You turned to the left at the crossroads Martin broke in before the landlord could reply. You'll see the signpost about two miles from here, and after that it's a matter of four miles more. How in the world did he know flashed horribly through him? I'm going that way myself, he was saying next. I'll go with you for a bit, if you don't mind. The words came out impulsively and ill-considered, of their own accord they came, for his own direction was exactly opposite. He did not want the men to go alone. The stranger, however, easily evaded his offer of companionship. He thanked him with the remark that he was starting later in the day. They were standing, all three, beside the horse-trough in front of the inn, when at that very moment a tramp, slouching along the road, looked up and asked the time of day, and it was the man with the goldrim glasses who told him. Thank you, much obliged, the tramp replied, passing on with his slow, slouching gate. While the landlord, a talkative fellow, proceeded to remark upon the number of Germans that lived in England, and were ready to swell the Teutonic invasion which he, for his part, deemed imminent. But Martin heard it not. Before he had gone a mile upon his way he went into the woods to fight his conscience, all alone. His feebleness, his cowardness, were surely criminal. Real anguish tortured him. A dozen times he decided to go back upon his steps, and a dozen times the singular authority that whispered he had no right to interfere prevented him. How could he act upon knowledge gained by eavesdropping? How interfere in the private business of another's hidden life, merely because he had overheard, as at the telephone, his secret dangers. Some inner confusion prevented straight thinking altogether. The stranger would merely think him mad. He had no fact to go upon. He smothered a hundred impulses, and finally went on his way with a shaking, troubled heart. The last two days of his holiday were ruined by doubts and questions and alarms, all justified later when he read of the murder of a tourist upon Lettuce Hill. The men wore gold rim glasses, and carried in a belt about his person a large sum of money. His throat was cut, and the police were hard upon the trail of a mysterious pair of tramps, said to be Germans. End of accessory before the fact. The Banshee by Anonymous Of all the superstitions prevalent amongst the natives of Ireland at any period passed or present, there is none so grand or fanciful, none which has been so universally assented to or so cordially cherished as to believe in the existence of the Banshee. There are very few, however, remotely acquainted with Irish life or Irish history, but must have heard a read of the Irish Banshee. Still, as there are different stories and different opinions afloat respecting this strange being, I think a little explanation concerning her appearance, functions, and habits will not be unacceptable to my readers. The Banshee, then, is said to be an immaterial and immortal being attached time out of mind to various respectable and ancient families of Irish, and is said always to appear to announce by cries and lamentations the death of any member of that family to which she belongs. She always comes at night a short time previous to the death of the fated one and takes her stand outside, convenient to the house, and there utters the most plaintive cries and lamentations, generally in some unknown language and in a tone of voice resembling a human female. She continues her visits night after night as vexed or annoyed until the mourned object dies, and sometimes she is said to continue about the halls for several nights after. Sometimes she is said to appear in the shape of a most beautiful young damsel and dressed in the most elegant and fantastic garments, but her general appearance is in the likeness of a very old woman of small stature and bending and decrepit form enveloped in a winding sheet of gravedress and her long white, hoary hair waving over her shoulders and descending to her feet. At other times she is dressed in the costume of the Middle Ages, the different articles of her clothing being of the richest material and of a sable hue. She is very shy and easily irritated, and when once annoyed or vexed she flies away and never returns during the same generation. When the death of the person whom she mourns is contingent or to occur by unforeseen accident, she is particularly agitated and troubled in her appearance and usually loud and mournful in her lamentations. One would fain have it that this strange being is actuated by a feeling quite inimical of the interests of the family which she haunts, and that she comes with joy and triumph to announce their misfortunes. This opinion, however, is rejected by most people who imagine her their most devoted friend, and that she was, at some remote period, a member of the family and once existed on the earth in life and loveliness. It is not every Irish family can claim the honor of an attendant banshee. They must be respectively descended in a ancient title to have any just pretensions to a warning spirit. However, she does not appear to be influenced by the difference of creed or clime, provided there be no impediment as several Protestant families of Norman and Anglo-Saxon origin boast of their own banshee. And to this hour several noble and distinguished families in the country feel proud of the surveillance of that mysterious being. Neither is she influenced by the circumstances of rank or fortune, as she is often found frequenting the cabin of the peasant than the baronial mansion of the Lord of Thousands. Even the humble family of which the writer of this tale belongs has long claimed the honor of a appendage of a banshee, and it may perhaps excite an additional interest in my readers when I inform them that my present story is associated with her last visit to that family. Some years ago they're dwelt in the vicinity of Mount Rap in the Queen's county of Farmer, whose name, for obvious reasons, we shall not at present disclose. He never was married, and his only domestics were a servant boy and an old woman, a housekeeper, who had long been a follower or dependent of the family. He was born and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, but on arriving at manhood for reasons best known to himself. He abjured the tenants of that creed and conformed to the doctrines of Protestantism. However, in after-years he seemed to waver, and refused going to church, and by his manner of living seemed to favor the dogmas of infidelity and atheism. He was rather dark and reserved in his manner, and oftentimes sully and gloomy in his temper. And this, joined with his well-known disregard of religion, served to render him somewhat unpopular among his neighbors and acquaintances. However, he was, in general, respected and was never insulted or annoyed. He was considered as an honest, inoffensive man, and as he was well supplied with firearms and munitions in the use of which he was well practiced, having, in his early days, served several years in the Yeomanry Corps. Few liked to disturb him, even had they been so disposed. He was well educated and decidedly hostile to every species of superstition, and was constantly jeering his old housekeeper, who was extremely superstitious and pretended to be entirely conversant with every matter connected with witchcraft and the fairy world. He seldom darkened a neighbor's door and scarcely ever asked anyone to enter his. He generally spent his leisure hours in reading, of which he was extremely fond, or of furbishing his firearms, to which he was still more attached, or in listening to and laughing at the wild and blood-curdling stories of old Moia with which her memory abounded. Thus he spent his time until the period at which Artele commences. When he was about fifty years of age and old, Moia, the housekeeper, had become extremely feeble, stooped, and a very ugly and forbidding exterior. One morning in the month of November, A.D. 1818, this man arose before daylight and on coming out of the apartment where he slept. He was surprised at finding old Moia in the kitchen, sitting over the raked-up fire, and smoking her tobacco pipe in a very serious and meditative mood. "'Arah, Moia!' said he. "'What brings you out of your bed so early?' "'Ach, Masha!' "'I don't know,' replied the old woman. "'I was so uneasy all night that I could not sleep awake, and I got up to smoke a blast, thinking that it might drive away the weight that's on my heart. "'And what hails you, Moia? Are you sick? Or what came over you?' "'No, the Lord be praised. I'm not sick, but my heart is sore, and there's a load on my spirit that would kill a hundred.' "'Maybe you were dreaming, or something that way,' said the man in a bantering tone, insuspecting from the old woman's grave manner that she was laboring under some mental delusion. "'Dreaming,' re-ackled Moia, with a bitter sneer, I, dreaming. "'Ach, I wished to God that I was only dreaming. But I'm very much afraid it is worse than that, and that there is trouble and misfortune hanging over us.' "'What makes you think so, Moia?' asked he, with a half-suppressed smile. "'Moia, aware of his well-known hostility, to every species of superstition, remains silent, biting her lips and shaking her gray head, prophetically. "'Why don't you answer me, Moia?' again asked the man. "'Ach,' said Moia. "'I am hurt-scalded to have it to tell you. And I know you will laugh at me. "'But, say what you will, there is something bad over us,' for the banshee was about the house all night, and she has me almost frightened out of my wits with her shouting and bawling.' The man was aware of the banshees having been long supposed to haunt his family, but often scouted that supposition. Yet, since it was some years since he had last heard of her visiting the place, he was not prepared for the freezing announcement of old Moia. He turned his pale as a corpse, and trembled excessively. At last, recollecting himself, he said with a forced smile. "'And how do you know it was the banshee, Moia?' "'How do I know?' reiterated Moia tauntingly. "'Didn't I see and hear her several times during the night? And more than that, didn't I hear the dead coach rattling through the house and through the yard, every night and midnight this week back, as if it would tear the house out of the foundation?' The man smiled faintly. He was frightened, yet was ashamed to appear so. He said again. "'And did you hear the banshee before, Moia?' "'Yes,' replied Moia, often. "'Didn't I see her when your mother died? Didn't I see her when your brother was drowned? And sure, there wasn't one of the family that went these sixty years that I did not both see and hear her. And where did you see her, and what way did she look tonight? I saw her at the little window over my bed, a kind of reddish light showing round the house. I looked up, and there I saw her old pale face and glassy eyes, looking in, and she rocking herself to and fro, and clapping her little withered hand, and crying as if her very heart would break. "'Well, Moia, it's all imagination. Go now, and prepare my breakfast as I want to get to Maryborough today, and I must be home early.' Moia trembled. She looked at him imploringly and said, "'For heaven's sake, John, don't go to-day. Stay till some other day, and God bless you, for if you go to-day I would give my old there-will-something-cross-you-that's-bad.' "'Nonsense, woman,' said he, "'Make haste, and get me my breakfast.'" Moia, with tears in her eyes, said about getting the breakfast ready, and while she was so employed, John was engaged in making preparations for his journey. Having now completed his other arrangements, he sat down to breakfast, and having concluded it, he arose to depart. Moia ran to the door, crying loudly. She flung herself on her knees and said, "'John! John, be advised. Don't go to-day. Take my advice. I know more of the world than you do, and I see plainly that if you go, you will never enter this door again with your life.'" Ashamed to be influenced by the drivelings of an old kula, he pushed her away with his hand, and going out to the stable, mounted his horse and departed. Moia followed him with her eyes whilst in sight, and when she could no longer see him, she sat down at the fire and wept bitterly. It was a bitter cold day in the farmer, having finished his business in town, feeling himself chilly, went into a public house to have a tumbler of punch and feed his horse. There he met an old friend who would not part with him until he would have another glass with him, and a little conversation. As it was many years since he had met before, one glass brought another, and it was almost duskish, Air John thought of returning, and having nearly ten miles to travel, it would be dark night before he would get home. Still his friend would not permit him to go, but called for more liquor, and it was far advanced in the night before they departed. John, however, had a good horse, and having had him well fed, he did not spare whip or spurt, but dashed along at a rapid pace through the gloom and silence of the winter's night, and had already distanced the town upward of five miles when, on arriving at a very desolate part of the road, a gunshot fired from behind the bushes, put an end to his mortal existence. Two strange men who had been at the same public house had merry-burl drinking, observing that he had money, and learning the road that he was to travel, conspired to rob and murder him, and wail at him in this lonely spot for that horrid purpose. Poor Moya did not go to bed that night, but sat at the fire, every moment impatiently expecting his return. Often did she listen at the door to try if she could hear the tramp of the horse's footsteps approaching, but in vain. No sound met her ear except a sad wail of the night wind moaning fitfully through the tall bushes which surrounded the ancient dwelling, or the sullen roar of a little dark river which wound its way through the lowlands at a small distance from where she stood. Tired with watching, at length, she fell asleep on the hearth stone, but that sleep was disturbed and broken, and frightful and appalling dreams incessantly haunted her imagination. At length the dark some morning appeared struggling through the wintry clouds, and Moya again opened the door to look out. But what was heard is may when she found the horse standing at the stable door without his rider, and the saddle all besmeared with clotted blood. She raised the death cry. The neighbors thronged round, and it was at once declared that the hapless man was robbed and murdered. A party on horseback immediately set forward to seek him, and arriving at the fatal spot he was found stretched on his back in the ditch. His head perforated with shot and slug, and his body literally immersed in a pool of blood. On examining him it was found that his money was gone in a valuable gold watch, and appendages abstracted from his pocket. His remains were conveyed home, and after having been wait the customary time were committed to the grave of his ancestors in the little green churchyard of the village. Having no legitimate children the nearest heir to his property was a brother, a cabinet-maker, who resided in London. A letter was accordingly dispatched to the brother announcing the sad catastrophe, and calling on him to come and take possession of the property, and two men were appointed to guard the place until he should arrive. The two men, dedicated to act as guardians, or as they were technically termed keepers, were old friends and comrades of the deceased, and had served him in the same yeomanry corps. Jack O'Malley was a Roman Catholic, a square stout, built, and handsome fellow with a pleasant word for everyone, full of that gaiety, vivacity, and nonchalance for which the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland are so particularly distinguished. He was now about 45 years of age, sternly attached to the dogmas of his religion, and always remarkable for his revolutionary and anti-British principles. He was brave as a lion, and never quailed before a man. But, though carrying so little for a living man, he was extremely afraid of a dead one, and would go ten miles out of his road at night to avoid passing a wrath or haunted bush. Harry Taylor, on the other hand, was a staunch Protestant, tall, gentile-looking man of proud and imperious aspect, full of reserve and haughtier, the natural consequence of a consciousness of political and religious ascendancy and superiority of intelligence and education, which so conspicuously marked the demeanor of the Protestant peasantry of those days. Harry, too, loved his glass as well as Jack, but was of a more peaceful disposition, and, as he was well educated and intelligent, he was utterly opposed to superstition, and laughed to squirm the mere idea of ghosts, goblins, and fairies. Thus Jack and Harry were diametrically opposed to each other in every point except their love of the crooks-team. Yet they never failed to seize every opportunity of being together, and, although they often blackened each other's eyes in their political and religious disputes, yet their quarrels were always amicably settled, and they never found themselves happy but in each other's society. It was now the sixth or seventh night that Jack and Harry, as usual, kept their lonely watch in the kitchen of the murdered man. A large turf fire blazed brightly on the herd, and on a bed of straw in the ample chimney corner was stretched old moya in a profound sleep. On the hearthstone, beneath the two friends, stood a small oak table on which was placed a large decanter of whiskey, a jug of boiled water, and a bowl of sugar. And, as if to add an idea of security to that of comfort, on one end of the table were placed in saltier, afformable-looking blunderbuss and a brace of large brass pistols. Jack and his comrade perpetually renewed their acquaintance with the whiskey bottle, and laughed and chatted and recounted the adventures of their young days with as much hilarity as if the house which now witnessed their mirth never echoed to the cry of death or blood. In the course of conversation Jack mentioned the incident of the strange appearance of the Banshee, and expressed a hope that she would not come that night to disturb their quarrels. Banshee the Devil, shouted Harry. How superstitious you papas are! I would like to see the fizz of any man, dead or alive, who dare make his appearance here tonight, and seizing the blunderbuss and looking wickedly at Jack, he paciferated. By Hercules I would drive the contents of this through their souls who dare annoy us. Better for you to shoot your mother than fire at the Banshee, anyhow remarked Jack. Pasha, said Harry, looking contemptuously at his companion, I would think no more riddling the old jade's-eyed than I would have thrown off this tumbler, and to suit the action to the word he drained off another pumper of whiskey-punch. Jack, says Harry, now that we are in such prime humor, will you give us a song? With all the veins in my heart, says Jack, what will it be? Anything you please, your will must be my pleasure, answered Harry. Jack, after coughing and clearing his pipes, chanted forth in a bold and musical voice a rude rigmarole called the Royal Blackbird, which although of no intrinsic merit, yet as it expressed sentiments hostile to British connection and British government and favorable to the House of Stewart, was very popular among the Catholic peasantry of Ireland. Clowsed, on the contrary, was looked upon by the Protestants as highly offensive and disloyal. Harry, however, wished his companion too well to oppose the song, and he quietly awaited its conclusion. Bravo, Jack, said Harry, as soon as the song was ended, that you may never lose your win. In the king's name now, I board you for another song, says Jack. Harry, without hesitation, recognized his friend's right to demand a return, and he instantly trolled forth in a deep sweet and sonorous voice the following song. Oh, boys, I have a song divine. Come, let us now in concert join and toast the bonnie banks of Boine, the Boine of glorious memory. On Boine's famed banks are father's blood. Boine surges with their blood red and red, and from the Boine are foaming flat in tolerance, chain, and slavery. Dark superstitions, bloodstained sons, pressed on the crack went William's guns, and soon the gloomy monster runs, fell hydra-headed, bigotry. Then fill your glasses high and fair, let's shout of triumph in the air, whilst George fills the regal chair, we'll never bow to potpourri. Jack, whose countenance had from the commencement of the song, indicated his aversion to the statements it expressed, now lost all patience at hearing his darling potpourri impugned, in seizing one of the pistols which lay on the table and whirling it over his comrade's head, swore vehemently that he would fracture his skull if he did not instantly drop that blackered orange lampoon. Easy ovic, said Harry, quietly pushing away the upraised arm. I did not oppose your bit of trees in a while ago, and besides, the latter end of my song is more calculated to please you than to irritate your feelings. Jackson pacified, and Harry continued his strain, and fell a bumper to the brim, a flowing one and drink to him, who would let the world go sink or swim, and would arm for Britain's liberty. No matter what may be his hue, or black or white or green or blue, or Papus Peanum or Hindu, would drink to him right cordially. Jack was so pleased with the friendly turn which the latter part of Harry's song took that he joyfully stretched out his hand and even joined in chorus to the concluding stanza. The fire was now decayed on the hearth. The whiskey bottle was almost emptied and the two sentinels, getting drowsy, put out the candle and laid down their heads to slumber. The song and the laugh and the jest were now hushed, and no sound was to be heard but the incessant click-click of the clock in the inner room in the deep heavy breathing of old moya in the chimney corner. They had slept they knew not how long when the old hag awakened with a wild shriek. She jumped out of bed and crouched between the men. They started up and asked her what had happened. Oh, she exclaimed, the banshee, the banshee! Lord, have mercy on us! She has come again, and I never heard her so wild and outrageous before. Jack O'Malley readily believed old moya's tale, so did Harry, but he thought it might be someone who was committing some depredation on the premises. They both listened attentively, but could hear nothing. They opened the kitchen door, but all was still. They looked abroad. It was a fine, calm night, and myriads of twinkling stars were burning in the deep blue heavens. They proceeded around the yard and hay-yard, but all was calm and lonely, and no sound saluted their ears but the trail-barking of some neighboring kerk or the sluggish murmuring of the little torturous river in the distance. Satisfied that all was right, they again went in, replenished the expiring fire, and sat down to finish whatever still remained in the whiskey-bottle. They had not sat many minutes when a wild, unearthly cry was heard without. The banshee again, said moya faintly. Jack O'Malley's soul sank within him. Harry started up and seized the blunder-bus. Jack caught his arm. No, no, Harry, you should not sit down. There's no fear, nothing will happen to us. Harry sat down, but still gripped the blunder-bus, and Jack lit his tobacco-pipe, whilst the old woman was on her knees, striking her breast and repeating her prayers with great dealings. The sad cry was again heard, louder and fiercer than before. It now seemed to proceed from the window, and again it appeared as if issuing from the door. At times it would seem as if coming from afar, whilst again it would appear as if coming down the chimney or springing from the ground beneath their feet. Sometimes the cry resembled the low, plaintive wail of a female in distress. And in a moment it was raised to a prolonged yell, loud and ferocious, and as if coming from a thousand throats. Now the sound resembled a low melancholy chant, and then was quickly changed to a loud, broken, demoniac laugh, continued thus with little intermission for about a quarter of an hour, when it died away and succeeded by a heavy, creaking sound, as if of some large wagon, amidst which the loud tramp of horses' footsteps might be distinguished, accompanied with a strong, rushing wind. This strange noise proceeded round and round the house two or three times, then went down the lane which led to the road, and was heard no more. Jack O'Malley stood aghast, and Harry Taylor, with all his philosophy and skepticism, was astonished and frightened. A dreadful night this, Moyer, said Jack. Yes, said she, that is, the dead coach. I often heard it before, and have sometimes seen it. Seen it, did you, said Harry? Pray describe it. Why, replied the old chrome, it's like any other coach, but twice as big, and hung over with black cloth and a black coffin on the top of it, and drawn by headless black horses. Heaven protect us, ejaculated Jack. It is very strange, remarked Harry. But, continued Moyer, it always comes before the death of a person, and I wonder what brought it now, unless it came with the banshee. It's coming for you, said Harry, with an arch yet subdued smile. No, no, she said, I am none of that family at all, at all. The solemn silence now ensued for a few minutes, and they thought all was vanished when again the dreadful cries struck heavily on their ears. Open the door, Jack, said Harry, and put out Hector. Hector was a large and very ferocious mastiff, belonging to Jack O'Malley, and always accompanied him wherever he went. Jack opened the door and attempted to put out the dog, but the poor animal refused to go, and, as his master attempted to force him, howled in a loud and mournful tone. You must go, said Jack, and he caught him in his arms and flung him over the half-door. The poor dog was scarcely on the ground when he was whirled aloft into the air by some invisible power, and he fell again to earth lifeless. The pavement was besmeared with his entrails and blood. Harry now lost all patience, and again seized his blunderbuss. He exclaimed, Come, Jack, my boy, take your pistol and follow me. I have but one life to lose, and I will venture it to have a crack at this infernal demon. I will follow you to death's door, said Jack, but I would not fire at the Banshee for a million of worlds. Moya seized Harry by the scourge. Don't go out, she cried. Let her alone while she lets you alone, for an hour's luck never shown on anyone that ever molested the Banshee. Cha, woman, said Harry, and he pushed away poor Moya contemptuously. The two men now sallied forth, the wild cries still continue, and it seemed to issue from amongst some stacks in the hay-yard behind the house. They went round and paused. Again they heard the cry, and Harry elevated his blunderbuss. Don't fire, said Jack. Harry replied not. He looked scornfully at Jack, then put his finger on the trigger and, bang, a wade exploded with a thundering sound. An extraordinary scream was now heard, ten times louder and more terrific than they heard before. Their hair stood erect on their heads, and huge round drops of sweat ran down their faces in quick succession. A glare of reddish-blue fight shone around the stacks. The rumbling of the dead coach was again heard coming. It drove up to the house, drawn by six headless sable horses, and the figure of a withered old hag encircled with blue fame was seen running nimbly across the hay-yard. She entered the ominous carriage and it drove away with a horrible sound. It swept through the tall bushes which surrounded the house, and as it disappeared the old hag cast a thrilling skull at the two men and waved their fleshless arms at them vengefully. It was soon lost to sight, but the earthly creaking of the wheels, the tramping of the horses, and the appalling cries of the banshee continued to assail their ears for a considerable time after all had vanished. The brave fellows now returned to the house. They again made fast the door and reloaded their arms. Nothing, however, came to disturb them that night, nor from that time forward, and the arrival of the dead man's brother from London in a few days after relieved them from their irksome task. Old Moia did not live long after. She declined from that remarkable night, and her remains were decently interred in the churchyard, adjoining the last earthly tenement of the loved family to which she had been so long and so faithfully attached. The insulted banshee has never since returned, and although several members of that family have since closed their mortal career, still the warning cry was never given. And it is supposed that the injured spirit will never visit her ancient haunts until every one of the existing generations shall have slept with their fathers. Jack O'Malley and his friend Harry lived some years after. Their friendship still continued undiminished, like Tam, Shanta, and Souter Johnny. They still continued to love each other like a very brother. And like that jovial pair also our two comrades were often fouled for weeks together, and often over their crookskeen would they laugh at their strange adventure with the banshee. It is now, however, all over with them, too. Their race is run, and they are now tenants of the tomb. End of The Banshee. Read by Craig Campbell in Appleton, Wisconsin in 2009. The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson Every night in the year, four of us sat in the small pile of the Georgia Debenham, the undertaker and the landlord and Fettys himself. Sometimes there would be more, but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost. We four would each be planted in his own particular armchair. Fettys was an old drunken Scotchman, a man of education, obviously, and a man of some property since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living, had grown to be an adopted townsman. His blue-camelot cloak was local antiquity, like the church spire. His place in the pile at the George, his absence from church, his own crappiness-disreputable visors, were all things, of course, in Debenham. He had some vague radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth and emphasize with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum, five glasses regularly every evening, and for the greater portion of his nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic saturation. We called him the doctor, for he was supposed to have some special knowledge of medicine, and had been known, upon a pinch, to set a fracture, reduce a dislocation, but beyond these slight particulars, we had no knowledge of his character or antecedents. What dark winter night! It had struck nine some time before the landlord joined us. There was a sick man in the George, a great neighbouring proprietor, suddenly struck down with apoplexia in his way to Parliament. And the great man, still greater, London doctor, had been telegraphed to his bedside. It was the first time that such a thing had happened in Debenham, for the railway was but newly opened, we were all proportionally moot by the occurrence. He's calm, said the landlord, after he filled in light at his pipe. He, said I, who, not the doctor, himself, replied our host, what's his name? Dr. McFarland, said the landlord. Fettys was far through his third tumbler, stupidly followed, now nodding over and staring mazely around him, but at the last word he seemed to awaken, and repeated the name McFarland twice, quietly enough the first time, but with sudden emotion in the second. Yes, said the landlord, that's his name, Dr. Wolf McFarland. Fettys became instantly sober, his eyes awoke, his voice became clear, loud and steady, his language forcible and earnest. We were all startled by the transformation, as if a man had risen from the dead. I beg your pardon, he said. I am afraid I have not been paying much attention to your talk. Who is this Wolf McFarland? And then, when he had heard the landlord out, it cannot be, it cannot be, he added, and yet I would like well to see him face to face. But you knew him, doctor, said the undertaker with a gasp. Good forbid, was the reply, and yet the name is a strange one. It were too much to fancy too. Tell me, landlord, is he old? Well, said the host. He's not a young man to be sure, and his hair is white, but he looks younger than you. He's older though, years older, but, with the slap on the table, it's the Rome you see in my face. Rome and sin, this man perhaps may have an easy conscience and good digestion. Conscience, let me speak. You would think I was some good old decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I. I never counted. Voltaire may have counted if he stood my shoes, but the brains with a rattling filipin's bald head. The brains were clear and active, and I saw and made no deductions. If you know this doctor, I've entered to remark, after a somewhat awful pause, I should gather that you do not share the landlord's good opinion. Fettys paid no regard to me. Yes, he said, with sudden decision. I must see him face to face. There was another pause, and then a door that was closed rather sharply on the first floor, and a step was heard upon the stair. That's the doctor, cried the landlord. Look sharp, and you can catch him. It was but two steps from the small parlor to the tour of the old George. The wide oak staircase lighted almost in the street. There was room for a turkey rug, and nothing more between the threshold and the last round of the descent. But this in the space was every evening brilliantly lit up, not only by the light upon the stair and the great signal lamp below the sign, but by the warm radiance of the bar room window. The George thus brightly advertised himself to pass it by in the cold street. Fettys walked steadily to the spot, and we who were hanging behind beheld the two men meet as one of them phrased it face to face. Dr. McFarlane was alert and vigorous. His white hair saw off his pale and placid though energetic countenance. He was richly dressed in the finest of broadcloth and the whitest of linen, with the great gold watch chain with studs and spectacles of the same precious material. He wore a broad-folded tie, white and speckled with lilac, and he carried on his arm a comfortable driving coat of fur. There was no doubt, but he became his years breathing as he did of wealth and consideration, and it was a surprising contrast to see our parlour salt, bald, dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old Klamler cloak, confront him at the bottom of the stairs. McFarlane, he said somewhat loudly, more like a hero than a friend. The great doctor pulled up short on the fourth step, as though the familiarity of the address surprised and somewhat shocked his dignity. "'Totty McFarlane,' repeated Fettis. The London man almost staggered. He stared for the swiftest of seconds at the man before him, glanced behind him with a sort of scare, and then in a startled whisper, "'Fettis,' he said, "'you.' "'I,' said the other, "'me. Did you think I was dead too? We're not so easily shut out of our acquaintance.' Hush, hush, claimed the doctor. Hush, hush. This meeting is so unexpected. I can see that you are unmanned. I hardly know you. I confess it first. But I am overjoyed. Overjoyed to have this opportunity, for the present is must be how do you do and goodbye and one, for my fly is waiting, and I must not fail the train. But you shall, let me see, yes. You shall give me your address, and you can count on early news of me. We must do something for you, Fettis. I fear you are out at Elbow's, but we must see to that for old Lang's eye, as once we sang its suppers. "'Money!' cried Fettis. "'Money for you! The money I have for you is lying where I cast it, Noine!' Dr. McFarlane had talked himself into some measure of superiority and confidence, but the uncommon energy of his refusal cast him back into his first confusion. A horrible, ugly look came in wind across his most venerable countenance. "'My dear fellow,' he said, "'be it as you please. My last thought is to offend you. I would intrude no more. I will leave you my address, however. I do not wish it. I do not wish to know the roof that shelters you,' interrupted the other. I heard your name. I feared it might be you. I wish to know if, after all, there were a God. I know now that there is none. Be gone!' He stood in the middle of the rug between the stair and doorway, and the great London physician, in order to escape, would be forced to step to one side. It was plain that he hesitated before he thought of this humiliation. White as he was, there was a dangerous glitter in his spectacles, and while he still paused uncertain, he became aware that the driver of his fly was peering in from the street at this unusual scene in quartered glimpse at the same time of our little body from the parlor huddled by the corner of the bar. The presence of so many witnesses decried him at once to flee. He crushed together, brushing on the wane-skirt, and made a dart like a serpent, striking for the door. But his tribulation was not yet entirely to end, for even as he was passing, Fettis clutched him by the arm, and these words came in a whisper, and yet painfully distinct. Have you seen it again? The great rich London doctor cried out with a sharp, throttling cry. He dashed his questionnaire across the open space, and, with his hands over his head, fled out the door like a detected thief. Before it occurred to one of us to make a movement, the fly was already rattling toward the station. The scene was over like a dream, but the dream had left proofs and traces of its passage. The next day the servant found the fine-goed spectacles broken on the threshold, and that very night we were standing breathless by the bar room window, and Fettis, at our side, sober, pale, and resolute in look. God protect us, Mr. Fettis, said the landlord, coming first into possession of his customary senses. What in the universe is all this? These are strange things, you bad saying! Fettis turned toward us. He looked at each and succession in the face. See if you can hold your tongue, said he, that my McFarlane is not safe to cross. Those who have done so already have repented it too late. And then, without so much as finishing his third glass, far less waiting for the other two, he made his goodbye and went forth under the lamp of the hotel into the black night. We three turned to our places in the parlour, with the big red fire and four clear candles. And as we recapitulated what had passed, the first chill of our surprise soon changed into glow of curiosity. We sat late. It was the latest session I have known in the old George. Each man before we parted had his theory that he was bound to prove, and none of us had any near business in this world than to track out the past of our condemned companion, and surprise the secret that he shared with the great London doctor. It was no great boast, but I believe I had a better hand at worming out the story than either of my fellows at the George. And perhaps there is now no other man alive who can narrate to you the following foul and unnatural events. In his young days, Fettis studied medicine in the schools of Edinburgh. He had a talent of a kind, the talent that picks up swiftly what it hears and readily retails it for his own. He worked little at home, but he was civil, attentive, and intelligent in the presence of his masters. They soon picked him out as a lad who listened closely and remembered well. Nay strange as it seemed to me when I first heard it, he was in those days well favoured and pleased by his exterior. There was, at that period, a certain extramural teacher of anatomy, whom I shall designate by the letter K. His name was subsequently too well known. The man who bore it sulked through the streets of Edinburgh in disguise while the mob that applauded at the execution of Burke had called loudly for the blood of his employer. But Mr. K was then at the top of his vogue, and he enjoyed a popularity due partly to his own talent and address, partly to the incapacity of his rival, the university professor. The students, at least, swore by his name, and Fettis believed himself, and was believed by others to have laid the foundations of success when he acquired the favour of this meteorically famous man. Mr. K was a bold vivant, as well as an accomplished teacher. He liked to sly allusion, no less than a care for preparation. In both capacities, Fettis enjoyed and deserved his notice, and by the second year of his attendance, he held the half regular position of second demonstrator or sub-assistant in his class. In this capacity, charge of the theatre and lecture room devolved in particular upon his shoulders, he had to answer for the cleanliness of the premises and the conduct of the other students, and it was a part of his duty to sly, receive, and divide the various subjects. It was with a view to this last, at that time very delicate affair that he was lodged by Mr. K in the same wind, and at last in the same building with the dissecting rooms. Here, after night of turbulent pleasures, his hands still tottering, his sight still misty and confused, he would be called out of bed in the black hours before winter dawn by the unclean and desperate interlopers who supplied the table. He would open the door to these men since infamous throughout the land. He would help them with their tragic burden, pay them their sordid price, and remain alone when they were gone with the unfriendly relics of humanity. From such a scene he would return to snatch another hour or two of slumber, to repair the abuse of the night, and refresh himself for the labours of the day. Few lads could have been more insensible to the impressions of the life thus passed among the ensigns of mortality. His mind was closed against all general considerations. He was incapable of interest to the fate and fortunes of another, the slaves of his own desires and low ambitions. Cold light and selfish in the last resort, he had that modicum of prudence, miscalculated morality, which keeps a man from inconvenient drunkenness or punishable theft. He covered it besides a measure of consideration from his masters and his fellow pupils, and he had no desire to fail conspicuously in the external parts of life. Thus he made it his pleasure to gain some distinction in his studies, and day after day rendered unimpeachable eye service to his employer, Mr. K. For his day of work he indemnified himself by nights, by roaring black-guardedly enjoyment, and when that balance had been struck, the organ that he called his conscience declared itself content. The supply of subjects was a continual trouble to him as well as to his master. In that large and busy class, the raw materials of the anatomists kept perpetually running out, and the business thus rendered necessary was not only unpleasant in itself, but threatened dangerous consequences to all who were concerned. It was the policy of Mr. K. to ask no questions in his dealings with the trade. They bring a body and repay the price, he used to say, dwelling on the alliteration quid pro quo. And again, and somewhat profane, ask no questions, he would tell his students, for conscience's sake. There was no understanding that the subjects were provided by the crime of murder. Had the idea been broached to him in words, he would have recoiled in horror. But the likeness of speech upon so grave a matter was, in itself, an offence against good manners, and a temptation to the men with whom he dealt. That is, for instance, had often remarked to himself upon the singular freshness of the bodies. He had been struck again and again by the hangdog abominable looks of the ruffians who came to him before the dawn, and putting things together clearly in his private thoughts, he perhaps attributed a meaning to a moral and to categorical to the unguarded councils of his master. He understood his duty in short to have three branches, to take what was brought, to pay the price, and to avert the eye from any evidence of crime. One November morning this policy of silence was put sharply to the test. He had been awake all night with a racking toothache, pacing his room like a caged beast or throwing himself in fury upon his bed, and had fallen at last into that profound, uneasy slumber that so often follows on a night of pain. And he was awakened by the third or fourth angry repetition of the concerted signal. There was a thin bright moonshine. It was bitter cold, windy and frosty. The town had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already precluded the noise in business of the day. The ghouls had come out later than usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be gone. Fettys, sick with sleep, lighted them upstairs. He heard their grumbling Irish voices through a dream, and as they stripped the sack from the sad merchandise, he leaned dozing with his shoulder propped against the wall. He had to shake himself to find the men their money. As he did so, his eyes lighted on the dead face. He started. He took two steps nearer with the candle raised. God Almighty, he cried. That was Jane Gilbrith. The men said nothing, but they shoved near the door. I know what I tell you, he continued. She was alive and happy yesterday. It's impossible that she could be dead. It's impossible you should have got this body fairly. Sure, sir, you're mistaken entirely, said one of the men. But the other looked Fettys darkly in the eyes, and demanded the money on the spot. It was impossible to misconceive the threat or exaggerate the danger. The lad's heart failed him. He stammered some excuses, countered out the psalm, and saw his hateful visitors depart. No sooner were they gone than he hastened to confirm his doubts. By a dozen unquestionable marks, he identified the girl he had gestured with the day before. He saw with horror marks upon the body that might well be taken violence. A panic seized him, and he took a refuge at his room. There he reflected in length over the discovery that he had made, considered soberly the bearing of Mr. K's instructions, and the danger to himself of interference and so serious of business, and at last, in some perplexity, determined to wait for the advice of his immediate superior, the class assistant. This was a young doctor, Wolf McFarlane, a high favorite among all the reckless students, clever, dissipated, and unscrupulous to the last degree. He had traveled and studied abroad. His manners were agreeable and a little forward. He was an authority on the stage, skillful on the eyes, or the links, with skate or golf club. He dressed with nice audacity, and to put a finishing touch upon his glory, he kept a gig in a strong crotting horse. With fatties, he was on terms of intimacy. Indeed, their relative positions called for some community of life, and when subjects were scarce, the pair would drive far into the country in McFarlane's gig, visit and desecrate some lonely graveyard, and return before dawn with the booty to the door of the dissecting room. On that particular morning, McFarlane arrived somewhat early than his won't. Fetties heard him and met him on the stairs, told him his story, and showed him the cause for his alarm. McFarlane examined the marks on her body. Yes, he said with an odd, it looks fishy. Oh, what should I do? asked Fetties. Do? repeated the other. Do you want to do anything? Less said, soonest, mended, I should say. Someone else might recognize their objected fetties. She says, well, notice the castle rock? We'll hope not, said McFarlane. And if anybody does, well, you didn't, don't you see? And there's an end. The fact is, this has been going on too long. Stir up the mud, and you'll get caved to the most unholy trouble. You'll be in the shopping box yourself. So will I if you come to that. I should like to know how any one of us would look, or what the devil we would have to save ourselves in any Christian witness box. For me, you know, there's one thing certain that, practically speaking, all of our subjects have been murdered. McFarlane, cried Fetties. Come now, sneered the other, as if you hadn't suspected it yourself. Suspecting is one thing, and proof another. Yes, I know, and I'm as sorry as you are, this should have come here, tapping the body with his cane. The next best thing for me is not to recognize it. And, he said coolly, I don't. You may, if you please. I don't dictate, but I think a man of the world would do as I do. And I may add, I fancy that is what Kay would look at at our hands. The question is, why did he choose us for two assistants? And I answer because he didn't want old wives. This was a tone of all others to affect the mind of a lad like Fetties. He agreed to imitate McFarlane. The body of the unfortunate girl was duly dissected, and no one remarked or appeared to recognize her. One afternoon, when his day's work was over, Fetties dropped into a popular tavern, and found McFarlane sitting with a stranger. This was a small man, very pale and dark, with co-black eyes. The cut of the features gave a promise of intellect and refinement, but which was feebly realized in his manners, for he proved upon near acquaintance course vulgar and stupid. He exercised however a very remarkable control over McFarlane, issued orders like the Great Bradshaw, became inflamed at the least discussion or delay, and commended rudely on the civility in which he was obeyed. This most offensive person took a fancy to Fetties on the spot, plied him with drinks, and ordered him with unusual confidences in his past career. If a tenth part of what he confessed was true, it was a very loathsome rogue, and the lad's vanity was tickled by the attention of so experienced a man. I'm a pretty bad fellow, myself, the stranger remarked, but McFarlane is the boy. Totty McFarlane, I call him. Totty, all of your friend another glass. Or it might be. Totty, you jump up and shut the door. Totty hates me, he said again. Oh, yes, Totty, you do. Don't you call me that confounded name, ground McFarlane. Hear him? Did you ever see the lad's play knife? He would like to do that all over my body, remarked the stranger. We're medicals, however, better way than that, said Fetties. When we dislike a dead friend of ours, we dissect him. McFarlane looked up sharply as though this jest was scarcely on his mind. The afternoon passed. Grey, for that was the stranger's name, invited Fetties to join them at dinner, ordered a fee so sumptuous that the tavern was thrown into commotion, and when all was done, commanded McFarlane to settle the bill. It was late before they separated the man Grey was incapable of drunk. McFarlane, sobered by his fury, chewed the cut of the money he had been forced to squander, and the slights he had been obliged to swallow. Fetties, with various liquor singing in his head, returned home with devious footsteps and a mind entirely nabbanes. The next day McFarlane was absent from class, and Fetties smiled to himself as he imagined him still squiring the intolerable Grey from tavern to tavern. As soon as the hour of liberty had struck, he posted from place to place, in quest of his last night's companions. He could find them however nowhere, so he returned early to his rooms, went early to bed, and slept the sleep of the jost. At four in the morning he was awakened by a well-known signal. Descending to the door, he was filled with astonishment to find McFarlane with his gig, and in the gig one of those long and ghastly packages, with which he was so well acquainted. What! he cried. Have you been out alone? How did you manage? But McFarlane saddened him roughly, bidding him return to business. Well, they got the body upstairs and laid it off the table. McFarlane made it first, as if he were going away. Then he paused and seemed to hesitate, and then, You had better look at the face, said he, in tones of some constraint. You had better, he repeated, as Fetties only stared at him in wonder. But where, and how and when did you come by it, cried the other. Look at the face, was the only answer. Fetties was staggered. Strange doubts assailed him. He looked from the young doctor to the body, and then back again. At last, for the start, he did as he was bitten. He had almost expected the sight that met his eyes, and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death, and naked in that coarsely of sackcloth, the man whom he had left well-clad and full of meat and sin upon threshold of a tavern, awoke, even in the thoughtless Fetties, some of the terrors of the conscience. It was crass tibbe which re-echoed in the soul that the tomb had known should have come to lie upon these icy tables. Yet these were only secondary thoughts, the first concern regarding Wolf. Unprepared for a challenge so momentous, he knew not how to look his comrade in the face. He durst not meet his eye, and he in neither words nor voice set his command. It was McFarlane himself who made the first advance. He came up quietly behind, and laid his hand gently but firmly on the other shoulders. Richardson, said he, may have the head. Now Richardson was a student who had long been anxious for that portion of the human subject to dissect. There was no answer, and the murderer resumed. Talk to your business. You must pay me. Your accounts, you see, must tally. Fetties found a voice, the ghost of his own. Pay you! he cried. Pay you for that! Why, yes, of course you must. By all means and not every possible account you must return the other. I dare not give it for nothing. You dare not take it for nothing. It would compromise us both. This is another case like Jane Gilbert's. The more things are wrong, the more we must act if we're all right. Where does the old cake keep his money? There, answered Fetties, hoarsely, pointing to a cupboard in the corner. Give me the key, then, said the other, calmly holding out his hand. There was an instant hesitation in that I was cast. McFarlane could not suppress a nervous twitch, the infinitesimal mark of an immense relief, as he felt the key between his fingers. He opened the cupboard, brought our pen and ink in a paper book that stood in one compartment, and separated from the funds in a drawer of some suitable to the occasion. Now, look here, he said. There is a payment made. First proof of your good faiths, first step to your security. You have, now, to clinch it by the second. Enter the payment in your book, and then you, for your part, may defy the devil. The next few seconds were for Fetties an agony of thought, but in balancing his tears it was the most immediate that triumphed. Any futile difficulty seemed almost welcome if you could avoid a present quarrel with McFarlane. He set down the candle which he had been carrying all this time, and with a steady hand entered the date, the nature, and the amount of the transaction. And now, said McFarlane, it is only fair that you should pocket the looker. I have had my share already. Further by, when a man of the world falls into a bit of luck, he has a few shillings extra in his pocket, I am ashamed to speak of it, but there is a rule to conduct in the case. No treating, no purchase of expensive class books, no squaring of old debts, borrow, don't lend. McFarlane began Fetties still somewhat hoarsely. I have put my neck in the haltlet to oblige you. To oblige me, cried Wolf. Oh, calm! You did as near as I can see in the madding. You downright had to do it in self-defense. Suppose I got into trouble. Where would you be? The second little matter flows clearly from the first. Mr. Gray is the continuation of Miss Gilbrath. You can't begin and then stop. If you begin, you must keep on beginning, and that's the truth. No rest for the wicked. A horrible sense of blackness in the treachery of fate seized upon the soul of the unhappy student. My God! he cried. But what have I done? Where do I begin? To be made a class assistant in the name of a reason. Where is the harm in that? Service wanted the position. Service might have got it. Would he have been where I am now? My dear fellow, Sid McFarlane, what a boy you are. What harm has come to you? What harm can come to you if you hold your tongue? Well, now, do you know what this life is? There are two squads of us, the lions and the lambs. If you're a lamb, you'll come to lie upon these tables like Gray or Jane Gilbrath. If you're a lion, you'll live and drive a horse like me. Like Kay, like all the world with any witter courage. You're staggered at the first. But look at Kay, my dear fellow. You're clever. You have luck. I like you. And Kay likes you. You're bored to lead the hunt. And I tell you on my honor, in my experience of life, three days from now, you'll laugh at all these scarecrows, like a high school boy, the farce. And with that, McFarlane took his departure and drove up the wind in his gig to get undercover before daylight. Fettis was left alone with his regrets. He saw the miserable peril at which he stood involved. He saw, with an expressible dismay, that there was no limit to his weakness, and that, from concession to concession, he had fallen from the arbitrary McFarlane's destiny to his pain and helpless accomplice. He would have given the world to be a little braver at the time, but it did not occur to him that he might still be brave. The secret of Jane Gilbrath and the cursed entry in the daybook closed his mouth. Hours passed. The class began to arrive. The members of the unhappy gray were dealt out to one and to another and received without remark. Richardson was made happy with the head, and before the hour of freedom rang, Fettis trembled with the exultation to perceive how far they had already gone toward safety. For two days, he continued to watch, with increasing joy at the dreadful process of disguise. On the third day, McFarlane made his appearance. He had been nearly, he said, but he had made up for lost time by the energy at which he directed his students. To Richardson in particular, he extended the most valuable assistance and advice, and that student, encouraged by the praise of the demonstrator, burned high with ambitious hopes and saw the medal already in his grasp. Before the week was out, McFarlane's prophecy had been fulfilled. Fettis had outlived his terrors and had forgotten his baseness. He began to plume himself upon his courage, and so arranged a story in the mind that he could look back on these events with an unhealthy pride. Of his accomplices all but little, they met, of course, in the business of the class. They received their orders together from Mr. K. At times, they had a word or two in private, and McFarlane was from first to last, particularly kind in jovial. But he was plain that he avoided any reference to their common secret, and even when Fettis whispered to him that he had cast his lot with the lions and foresworn the lambs, he only signed to him smilingly to hold his peace. At length, an occasion arose which threw the pair once more into a closer union. Mr. K. was again short of subjects. Pupils were eager, and it was a part of this teacher's pretensions to be always well supplied. At the same time, there came news of a burial in the rustic graveyard of Glen Cross. Time had little changed the place in question. It stood then as now upon a crossroad, out of call of human inhabitants, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of six cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the neighbouring hills, the streamless upon either hand, one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping fertility from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous, old-flowing chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the bell in the old tombs of the precinctor, with the only sounds that disturbed the silence around the rural church. The resurrection man, to use the by-name of the period, was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs, the parts worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners, and the offerings and inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic neighbourhoods where love is more commonly tenacious and where some bonds of blood and fellowship unite, the entire society of a parish. The bodysnatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamplit, terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the cremants torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost indignities before a class of gaping boys. Somewhat as two vultures may swoop upon a dying lamb. Fetiz and McFarlane were to be let loose upon a grave in that green and quiet resting place. The wife of a farmer, a woman who had lived for sixty years and been known for nothing but good butter and godly conversation, was to be rooted from her grave at midnight and carried dead and naked into that faraway city that she had always honoured with her Sunday's best. The place beside her family was to be empty till the crack of doom. Her inner city had almost venerable members to be exposed to that last curiosity of the anatomist. Late one afternoon the pair set forth, well-wrapped in cloaks and furnished with a formidable bottle. It rained without remission, a cold, dense lashing rain. Now again there blew a puff of wind, but these sheets of falling water kept it down. Bottle and all, it was a sad and silent drive, as far as Penichook, where they were to spend the evening. They stopped once to hide their implements in a thick bush not far from the churchyard, and once again at the fishers' trist, to have a toast before the kitchen fire and bury their nips of whiskey with a glass of ale. Where they reached their journey's end, the gig was housed, the horse was fed and comforted, and the two young doctors in a private room sat down to the best dinner and the best wine the house could afforded. The lights, the fire, the beating rain upon the window, the cold incongruous work that lay before them added zest to their enjoyment of the meal. With every glass their cordiality increased. Soon McFarlane handed a little pile of gold to his companion. A compliment, he said, between friends these little dead accommodations ought to fly like pipelines. Fethys pocketed the money and applauded the sentiment to the echo. You are a philosopher, he cried. I was an arson till I knew you. You and Kate between you by the Lord Harry, but you'll make a mother me. Of course we will, applauded McFarlane. A man? I tell you, it required a man to back me up the other morning. There was a big, brawling, forty-year-old cowards who would have turned sick at the look of the dead ding. But not you. You kept your head. I watched you. Well, and why not, Fethys thus vaunted himself? It was no affair of mine. There was nothing to gain in the one side but disturbance, and the other I could count in your gratitude, don't you see? And he slapped his pocket till the gold pieces rang. McFarlane somehow felt a certain touch of alarm at these unpleasant words. He never regretted that he had taught his young companions so successfully, but he had no time to interfere, for the other noisily continued his boastful strain. A great thing is not to be afraid. Now, between you and me, I don't want to hang. That's practical. But for all count, McFarlane, I was born with contempt. Hell, God, devil, right, wrong, sin, crime, and all the old gallery of curiosities. They may frighten boys, but men of the world like you and me despise them. Is to the memory a gray? It was by this time growing somewhat late. The gig, according to order, was brought round the door with both lamps brightly shining, and the young men had to pay the bill and take the road. They announced that they were bound for pebbles, and drove in that direction till they were clear of the last houses of the town. Then, extinguishing their lamps, returned upon their course, and followed a by-road toward Glencourse. There was no sound but that of their own passage, and the incessant strident poring of the rain. It was pitch dark. Here and there, a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night. But for the most part it was at a foot pace, at almost grouping, that they picked their way through the arisen blackness of their solemn and isolated destination. In the sucking woods that traversed the neighborhood of the burying ground, the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary to kindle a match and reallume one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the dripping trees, and environed by huge and moving shadows, they reached the scene of their unhollowed labours. They were both experienced in such affairs, and powerful with the spade, and they had scarce been twenty minutes at their task before they were awarded by a dull rattle of the coffin lid. At the same moment, McFarlane, having hurt his hand upon a stone, flung it carelessly above his head. The grave, in which they now stood almost to the shoulders, was close to the edge of the plateau of the graveyard, and the gig lamp had been propped, the better to illuminate their labours against a tree, and on the immediate verge of the steep bank descending to the stream. Chance had taken a sure aim with the stone, then came a clang of broken glass, night fell upon them. Sounds alternately dull and ringing, announced the bounding of the lantern down the bank, and its occasional collision with the trees. A stone or two, which had dislodged in its descent, rattled behind it into the profanities of the glen, and then silence, like night, resumed its sway. And they might bend their hearing to its utmost pitch, but not was to be heard, except the rain, now marching to the wind, now steadily falling over miles of open country. They were so nearly at the end of their bold task, that they judged it wisest to complete it in the dark. The coffin was exhumed and broken open, the body inserted in the dripping sack, and carried between them to the gig. One mounted to keep it in its place, the other, taking the horse by the mouth, groped along by a wall and brush, until they reached the wider road by the fission's trist. Here was a faint diffused radiancy, which they hailed like daylight. By that they pushed the horse to a good pace, and began to rattle along merrily in the direction of the town. They had both been wetted to the skin during their operations, and now as the gig jumped among the steep ruts, the thing that stood prop between them fell now upon one, and now upon the other. At every repetition of the hoarded contact, each instinctively repelled it with the greater haste, and the process natural though was began to tell upon the nose of the companions. McFarland made some ill-favoured jest about the farmer's wife, but it came hollily from his lips, and was allowed to drop in silence. Still their unnatural burden bumped from side to side, and now the head would be laid as if in confidence upon their shoulders, and now the drenching sackcloth would flap icely about their faces. A creeping chill began to possess the soul of Fetties. He peered at the bundle, and it seemed somehow larger than at first. All over the countryside, and from every degree of distance, the farm dogs accompanied their passage with tragiculations, and it grew and grew upon his mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen the dead body, and that it was in fear of their unholy burden that the dogs were howling. For God's sake, said he, making a great effort to arrive at speech. For God's sake, let's have a light! Seemingly McFarland was affected in the same direction, for though he made no reply, he stopped the horse, passed the reins to his companion, got down, and proceeded to kindle the remaining lump. There by that time got no further than the crossroad down to Otrinily. The reins still poured as though the deluge was returning, and it was no easy matter to make a light in such a world of wet and darkness. When at last the flickering blue flame had transferred to the wick, and began to expand and clarify, and shed a wide circle of misty brightness round the gig, it became possible for the two young men to see each other, and the thing that they had along with them. The rain had rolled at the roughsacking to the outlines of the body underneath. The head was distinct from the trunk, the shoulders plainly mottled. Something at once spectral and human riveted their eyes upon the ghastly comrade of their drive. For some time McFarland stood motionless holding up the lamp. A nameless dread was swarred like a wet sheet about the body, and tightened the white skin of the face of Fettis. A fear that was meaningless. A horror that could not be kept mounting to his brain. Another beat of the watch, and he had spoken. But his comrade forestalled him. That is not a woman, said McFarland in hushed voice. It was a woman who I put her in, whispered Fettis. Held the lamp, said the other. I must see her face. And as Fettis took the lamp, his companion untied the fastenings in sack, and drew down the cover from the head. The light fell very clear upon the dark, well-molded features, and smooth-shaven cheeks of a two familiar countenance. Often beheld in dreams both of these young men. A wild yell rang up into the night. Each leap from his own side into the roadway. The lamp fell broke and was extinguished, and the horse, terrified by this unusual commotion, bounded and went off toward Edinburgh at a gallop, bearing along with it its sole occupant of the gig, the body of the dead and long-desected gray. The End of The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Steenson