 The Burial of the Rats, Part 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Haley Flag. The Burial of the Rats by Bram Stoker, Part 2 As nonchalantly as I could I turned slightly on my stool so as to get my right leg well under me. Then with a sudden jump, turn in my head and garden it with my hands, and with a fight and instinct at the Knights of Old I breathed my lady's name and hurled myself against the back wall of the hut. Watchful as I were, the suddenness of my movement surprised both Pierre and the Old Woman. As I crashed through the rotten timbers, I saw the Old Woman rise with a leap like a tiger and heard her low gasp of baffled rage. My feet lit on something that moved, and as I jumped away I knew that I had stepped on the back of one of the row of men lying on their faces outside the hut. I was torn with nails and splinters, but otherwise unhurt. Breathless, I rushed up the mound in front of me. Herein as I went, the dull crash of the shanty as it collapsed into a mass. It was a nightmare climb. The mound, though but low, was awfully steep, and with each step I took the mass of dust and cinders tore down with me and gave way under my feet. The dust rose and choked me. It was sick and infested awful, but my climb was. I felt for life or death, and I struggled on. The second seemed ours, but the few moments I had and starting, combined with my youth and strength, gave me a great advantage, and though several forms struggled after me in deadly silence which was more dreadful than any sound, I easily reached the top. Since then, I have climbed the cone of Vesuvius, and as I struggled up that dreary steep amid the sulfurous fumes, the memory of that awful night at Montrouge came back to me so vividly that I almost drew faint. The mound was one of the tallest in the region of dust, and as I struggled to the top, patterned for breath, with my heart beaten like a sledgehammer, I saw a way to my left the dull red gleam of the sky, and near still the flashing of lights. God, I knew where I was now, and where lay the road to Paris. For two or three seconds I paused and looked back. My pursuers were still well behind me, but struggling up resolutely and in deadly silence. Beyond the shanty was a wreck, a mass of timber and moving forms. I could see it well, for flames were already bursting out. The rags and straw had evidently caught fire from the lantern. Still silence there, not a sound. Those old wretches could die, game, anyhow. I had no time for more than a passing glance, for as I cast an eye round the mound preparatory to make in my descent, I saw several dark forms rushing round on either side to cut me off on my way. It was now a race for life. They were trying to head me on my way to Paris, and with the instinct of the moment I dashed down to the right-hand side. I was just in time, for, though I came, as it seemed to me down the steep in a few steps. The wary old men who were watching me turned back, and one, as I rushed by into the open in between the two mounds in front, almost struck me a blow with that terrible butcher's axe. There could surely not be two such weapons about. Then began a really horrible chase. I easily ran ahead of the old men, and even when some younger ones and a few women joined in the hunt, I easily distanced them. But I did not know the way, and I could not even guide myself by the light in the sky, for I was running away from it. I had heard that, unless of conscious purpose, haunted men turn always to the left, and so I found it now. And so, I suppose, knew also my pursuers, who were more animals than men, and with cunning or instinct had found out such secrets for themselves. For on finishing a quick spurt after which I intended to take a moment's breathing space, I suddenly saw ahead of me two or three forms swiftly passing behind a mound to the right. I was in the spider's web now indeed, but with a thought of this new danger came the resource of the hunted, and so I darted down the next turn into the right. I continued in this direction for some hundred yards, and then, taking a turn to the left again, felt certain that I had, at any rate, avoided the danger of being surrounded. But not of pursuit. For on came the rabble after me, steady, dogged, relentless, and still in grim silence. In the greater darkness the mound seemed now to be somewhat smaller than before, although for the night was closing, they looked bigger in proportion. I was now well ahead of my pursuers, so I made a dart up the mound in front. Oh joy of joys, I was close to the edge of this inferno of dust eeps. Away behind me the red light of Paris was in the sky, and towering up behind rose the heights of Montmartre. A dim light, with here and there brilliant points like stars. Not to vigor in a moment, I ran over the few remaining mounds of decrease in size, and found myself on the level land beyond. Even then, however, the prospect was not inviting. All before me was dark and dismal, and I had evidently come on one of those dank, low-lying waste places which are found here and there in the neighborhood of great cities. Places of waste and desolation, where the space is required for the ultimate agglomeration of all that is noxious, and the ground is so poor as to create no desire of occupancy even than the lowest squatter. With eyes accustomed to the gloom of the evening, and away now from the shadows of those dreadful dust eeps, I could see much more easily than I could a little while ago. It might have been, of course, that the glare in the sky of the lights of Paris, though the city was some miles away, was reflected here. Howsoever it was, I saw well enough to take barons for certainly some little distance around me. In front was a bleak, flat waste that seemed almost dead level, with here and there the dark shimmering of stagnant pools, seemingly far off on the right, amid a small cluster of scattered lights, rose a dark mass of Fort Montrose, and away to the left in the dim distance, pointed with stray gleams from cottage windows, the lights in the sky showed the locality of Bicentra. A moment's thought decided me to take to the right and try to reach Montrose. Where at least would be some sort of safety, and I might possibly long before come on some of the crossroads which I knew. Somewhere not far off must lie the strategic road made to connect the outlying chain of forts circling the city. Then I looked back, coming over the mounds, and outlying black against the glare of the Parisian horizon. I saw several moving figures, and still away to the right, several more deploying out between me and my destination. They evidently meant to cut me off in this direction, so my choice became constricted. It lay now between going straight ahead or turning to the left. Stooping down to the ground so as to get the advantage of the horizon as a line of sight, I looked carefully in that direction, but could detect no sign of my enemies. I argued that as I had not guarded or were not trying to guard that point, there was evidently danger to me there already. So I made up my mind to go straight on before me. It was not an inviting prospect, and as I went on the reality grew worse. The ground became soft and oozy, and now and again gave way beneath me in a sickening kind of way. I seemed somehow to be going down, for I saw around me places seemingly more elevated than where I was, and this in a place which from a little way back seemed dead level. I looked around, but could see none of my pursuers. This was strange, for all along these birds of the night had followed me through the darkness as well as though it were broad daylight. Now I blinded myself for coming out in my light-coloured tourist suit of tweed. The silence and my not being able to see my enemies, whilst I felt that they were watching me, grew appalling, and in the hope of someone, not of this ghastly crew, hearing me, I raised my voice and shouted several times. There was not the slightest response. Not even an echo rewarded my efforts. For a while I stood stock still, and kept my eyes in one direction. On one of the rising places around me, I saw something dark move along, then another, and another. This was to my left, and seemingly moving to head me off. I thought that again I might, with my skill as a runner, elude my enemies at this game, and so with all my speed darted forward. Splash! My feet had given way in a mass of slimy rubbish, and I had fallen headlong into a raking, stagnant pool. The water in the mud in which my arms sank up to the elbows was filthy and nauseous beyond description, and in the suddenness of my fall, I had actually swallowed some of the filthy stuff, which nearly choked me, and made me gasp for breath. Never shall I forget the moments during which I stood trying to recover myself, almost faint from the fetid odor of that filthy pool, whose white mist rose ghostlike around. Worst of all, with the acute despair of the hunted animal, when he seized the pursuant pack closing on him, I saw before my eyes, whilst I stood helpless, the dark forms of my pursuers, moving swiftly to surround me. It's curious how our minds work on odd matters, even when the energies I've thought are seemingly concentrated on some terrible and pressing need. I was in momentary peril of my life, my safety depending on my action, and my choice of alternatives, coming now with almost every step I took, and yet I could not but think of the strange, dogged persistency of these old men. Their silent resolution, their steadfast, grim persistency, even in such a cause commanded, as well as fear, even a measure of respect. What must they have been in the bigger of their youth? I could understand now that whirlwind rush on the bridge of Arcola at scornful exclamation of the old guard at Waterloo. Unconscious celebration had its own pleasures even at such moments, but fortunately it does not in any way clash with the thought from which action springs. I realized at a glance that so far I was defeated in my object, my enemies as yet had won. They had succeeded in surrounding me on three sides, and were bent on driving me off to the left hand, where there was already some danger for me for they had left no guard. I accepted the alternative. It was a case of Hobson's choice and run. I had to keep the lower ground, for my pursuers were on the higher places. However, though the ooze and broken ground impeded me, my youth and training made me able to hold my ground, and by keeping a diagonal line, I not only kept them from gaining on me, but even began to distance them. This gave me new heart and strength, and by this time her visual training was beginning to tell and my second wind had come. Before me the ground rose slightly. I rushed up the slope and found before me a waste of watery slime with a low dike or bank looking black and grim beyond. I felt that if I could but reach that dike in safety, I could there with solid ground under my feet and some kind of path to guide me, find with comparative ease a way out of my troubles. After a glance right and left and seeing no one near, I kept my eyes for a few minutes to their rightful work of aiding my feet whilst I crossed the swamp. It was rough, hard work, but there was little danger, merely toil, and a short time took me to the dike. I rushed up the slope, exalting, but here again I met a new shock. On either side of me was a number of crouching figures. From right and left they rushed at me. Each body held a rope. The cordon was nearly complete. I could pass on either side and the end was near. There was only one chance, and I took it. I hurled myself across the dike and escaping out of the very clutches of my foes threw myself into the stream. At any other time I should have thought that water foul and filthy, but now it was as welcomed as the most crystal clear stream to the parts traveller. It was a highway of safety. My pursuers rushed after me. Had only one of them held the rope, it would have been all up with me, for he could have entangled me before I had time to swim a stroke. But the many hands holding it embarrassed and delayed them. And when the rope struck the water, I heard the splash well behind me. A few minutes hard swimming took me across the stream. Refreshed with the immersion and encouraged by the escape, I climbed the dike in comparative gaiety of spirits. From the top I looked back. Through the darkness I saw my assailants scattering up and down along the dike. The pursuit was evidently not ended, and again I had to choose my course. Beyond the dike where I stood was a wild, swampy space, very similar to that which I had crossed. I determined to shun such a place and thought for a moment whether I would take up or down the dike. I thought I heard a sound, the muffled sound of oars, so I listened and then shouted, no response, but the sound ceased. My enemies had evidently got a boat of some kind. As they were on the upside of me, I took the down path and began to run. As I passed to the left of where I had entered the water, I heard several splashes, soft and stealthy, like the sound a rat makes as he plunges into the stream, but vastly greater. And as I looked, I saw the dark sheen of the water broken by the ripples of several advancing heads. Some of my enemies were swimming the stream also. And now behind me, up the stream, the silence was broken by the quick rattle and creak of oars. My enemies were in hot pursuit. I put my best leg foremost and ran on. After a break of a couple of minutes, I looked back, and by a gleam of light through the ragged clouds, I saw several dark forms climbing the bank behind me. The wind now had begun to rise, and the water beside me was ruffled and beginning to break in tiny waves on the bank. I had to keep my eyes pretty well on the ground before me lest I should stumble, for I knew that to stumble was death. After a few minutes, I looked back behind me. On the dyke were only a few dark figures, but crossing the waist, swampy ground, were many more. What new danger this portended, I did not know, could only guess. Then as I ran, it seemed to me that my track kept ever sloping away to the right. I looked up ahead, and saw that the river was much wider than before, and that the dyke on which I stood fell quite away, and beyond it was another stream on whose near bank I saw some of the dark forms now across the marsh. I was on an island of some kind. My situation was now indeed terrible, for all my enemies had hemmed me in on every side. Behind came the quickening roll of the oars, as though my pursuers knew that the end was close. Around me on every side was desolation. There was not a roof or light, as far as I could see. Far off to the right rose some dark mass, but what it was I knew not. For a moment I paused to think what I should do, not for more, for my pursuers were drawn closer. Then my mind was made up. I slipped down the bank and took to the water. I struck out straight ahead, so as to gain the current by clearing the backwater of the island, or such I presume it was, when I had passed into the stream. I waited till a cloud came, driving across the moon and leaving all in darkness. Then I took off my hat and laid it softly on the water, floating with the stream, and a second after, dived to the right, and struck out underwater with all my might. I was, I suppose, half a minute underwater, and when I rose, came up as softly as I could, and turning, looked back. There went my light brown hat, floating merrily away. Close behind it came a rickety old boat, driven furiously by a pair of oars. The moon was still partly obscured by the drifting clouds, but in the partial light I could see a man in the boughs, holding aloft, ready to strike, what appeared to me to be that same dreadful poleaxe which I had before escaped. As I looked, the boat drew closer, closer, and the man struck savagely. The hat disappeared. The man fell forward, almost out of the boat. His comrade dragged him in, but without the axe. And then, as I turned, with all my energies bent on reaching the further bank, I heard the fierce roar of the mothered sacra, which marked the anger of my baffled pursuers. That was the first sound I had heard from human lips during all this dreadful chase, and full as it was of menace and danger to me, it was a welcome sound, for it broke that awful silence which shrouded and appalled me. It was as though an overt sign that my opponents were men and not ghosts, and that with them I had, at least, the chance of a man, though but one against many. But now that the spell of silence was broken, the sounds came thick and fast, from boat to shore, and back from shore to boat came quick question and answer, all in the fiercest whispers. I looked back, a fatal thing to do, for in the instant someone caught sight of my face, which showed white on the dark water, and shouted. Hands pointed to me, and in a moment or two, the boat was under way, and following hard after me. I had but a little way to go, but quicker and quicker came the boat after me. A few more strokes, and I would be on the shore, but I felt the oncoming of the boat, and expected every second to feel the crash of an ore or other weapon on my head. Had I not seen that dreadful axe disappear in the water, I do not think I could have won the shore. I heard the muttered curses of those not rowing, and the labored breath of the rowers. With one supreme effort for life or liberty, I touched the bank and sprang up it. There was not a single second to spare, for hard behind me the boat grounded in several dark forms sprang after me. I gained the top of the dike, and keep until the left ran on again. The boat put off, and followed down the stream. Seeing this, I feared danger in this direction, and quickly turning, ran down the dike on the other side, and after passing a short stretch of marshy ground, gained a wild, open, flat country, and sped on. Still behind me came my relentless pursuers. Far away, below me, I saw the same dark mass as before, but now grown closer and greater. My heart gave a great thrill of delight, for I knew it must be the fortress of besetch, and with my new courage, I ran on. I had heard that between each and all the protecting forts of Paris, there are strategic ways, deep sunk roads where soldiers marching should be sheltered from an enemy. I knew that if I could gain this road, I would be safe, but in the darkness, I could not see any sign of it. So, in blind hope of striking it, I ran on. Presently I came to the edge of a deep cut, and found that down below me ran a road guarded on each side by a ditch of water fenced on either side by a straight high wall. Getting fainter and dizzier, I ran on. The ground got more broken, more and more still, till I staggered and fell, and rose again, and ran on in the blind anguish of the hunted. Again the thought of Alice nerved me. I would not be lost and wreck her life. I would fight and struggle for life to the bitter end. With a great effort, I caught the top of the wall. As scrambling like a catamout, I drew myself up. I actually felt a hand touch the sole of my foot. I was now on a sort of causeway, and before me I saw a dim light. Blind and dizzy, I ran on, staggered, and fell, rising, covered with dust and blood. Halt, la! The words sounded like a voice from heaven. A blaze of light seemed to enwrap me, and I shouted with joy. Kiva la! The rattle of musketry, the flash of steel before my eyes. Instinctively I stopped. The close behind me came a rush of my pursuers. Another word or two, and out from a gateway poured, as it seemed to me, a tide of red and blue as the guard turned out. All round seemed blazing with light, and the flash of steel, the clink and rattle of arms, and loud, harsh voices of command. As I fell forward, utterly exhausted, a soldier caught me. I looked back in dreadful expectation, and saw the mass of dark forms disappearing into the night. Then I must have fainted. When I recovered my senses, I was in the guard room. They gave me brandy, and after a while I was able to tell them something of what had passed. Then a commissary of police appeared, apparently out of the empty air, as is the way of the Parisian police officer. He listened attentively, and then had a moment's consultation with the officer in command. Apparently they were agreed, for they asked me if I were ready now to come with them. Where to? I asked, rising to go. Back to the dust-teeps. We shall perhaps catch them yet. I shall try, said I. He eyed me for a moment keenly, and said suddenly, Would you like to wait a while, or till tomorrow, young Englishman? This touched me to the quick, as perhaps he intended, and I jumped to my feet. Come now, I said. Now! Now an Englishman is always ready for his duty! The commissary was a good fellow, as well as a shrewd one. He slapped my shoulder kindly. Brave gasson, he said. Forgive me, but I knew what would do you with most good. The guard is ready. Come. And so, passing right through the guard room, and through a long vaulted passage, we were out into the night. A few of the men in front had powerful lanterns. Through courtyards and down a sloping way, we passed out through a low archway to a sunken road, the same that I had seen in my flight. The order was given to get at the double, and with a quick spring and stride, half run, half walk, the soldiers went swiftly along. I felt my strength renewed again, such is the difference between hunter and hunted. A very short distance took us to a low, lion-pontoon bridge across the stream, and evidently very little higher up than I had struck it. Some effort had evidently been made to damage it, for the ropes had all been cut, and one of the chains had been broken. I heard an officer say to the commissary, we are just in time, a few more minutes, and they would have destroyed the bridge. Forward, quicker still! And on we went. Again, we reached a pontoon on the winding stream. As we came up, we heard the hollow boom of the metal drums as the effort to destroy the bridge was again renewed. But word of command was given, and several men raised their rifles. Fire! A volley rang out, there was a muffled cry, and the dark forms dispersed. But the evil was done, and we saw the far end of the pontoon swing into the stream. This was a serious delay, and it was nearly an hour before we had renewed ropes and restored the bridge sufficiently to allow us to cross. We renewed the chase. Quicker, quicker we went towards the dust heaps. After a time, we came to a place that I knew. There were the remains of a fire. A few smoldering wood ashes still cast a red glow, but the bulk of the ashes were cold. I knew the side of the hut and the hill behind it, up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow, the eyes of the rats, still shone with a sort of phosphorescence. The commissary spoke a word to the officer, and he cried, HUT! The officers were ordered to spread around and watch, and then we commenced to examine the ruins. The commissary himself began to lift away the charbed boards and rubbish. These the soldiers took and piled together. Presently he started back, then bent down and rising, beckoning me. See, he said. It was a gruesome sight. There lay a skeleton, face downwards, a woman by the lines, an old woman by the coarse fiber of the bone. Between the ribs, wrote a long spike-like dagger made from a butcher's sharpened knife, its keen point buried in the spine. You will observe, said the commissary to the officer, and to me, as he took out his notebook, that the woman must have fallen on her dagger. The rats are many here. See, the eyes glistening among that heap of bones. You will also notice, I showed her as he placed his hands on the skeleton, that but little time was lost by them, for the bones are scarcely cold. There was no other sign of anyone near, living or dead, and so deploying again into line, the soldiers passed on. Presently we came to the hut made of the old wardrobe. We approached. In five of the six compartments was an old man sleeping, sleeping so soundly that even the glare of the lanterns did not wake them. Old and grim and grizzled they looked, or their gaunt wrinkled, bronzed faces and their white moustaches. The officer called out harshly and loudly a word of command, and in an instant each one of them was on his feet before us and standing at attention. What do you do here? We sleep, was the answer. Where are the other chiffonniers, asked the commissary, gone to work, and you, we are on guard. Pissed, laughed the officer grimly, as he looked at the old man one after the other in the face and added with cool, deliberate cruelty, asleep on duty. Is this the manor of the old guard? No wonder then, a waterloo. By the gleam of the lantern, I saw the grim old faces grow deadly pale and almost shuttered at the look in the eyes of the old man as the laugh of the soldiers echoed the grim pleasantry of the officer. I felt in that moment that I was, in some measure, avenged. For a moment they looked as if they would throw themselves on the taunter, but years of their life had schooled them and they remained still. You are with five, said the commissary. Where is the sixth? The answer came with a grim chuckle. He is there. And the speaker pointed to the bottom of the wardrobe. He died last night. You won't find much of him. The burial of the rats is quick. The commissary stooped and looked in, and he turned to the officer and said calmly, we may as well go back. No trace here now. Nothing to prove that man was the one wounded by your soldiers bullets. Probably they murdered him to cover up the trace. See, again he stooped and placed his hands on the skeleton. The rats worked quickly and there are many. These bones are warm. I shuddered, and so did many more of those around me. Thumb, said the officer, and so in march in order, with the lanterns swinging in front and the manacled veterans in the midst, with steady tramp, we took ourselves out of the dust heap and turned backward to the fortress of besetch. My year of probation has long since ended, and Alice is my wife. But when I look back upon that try in twelve month, one of the most vivid incidents that memory recalls is that associated with my visit to the city of dust. End of the Burial of the Rats, Part 2. Recording by Haley Flag of Texas. A dream of red hands. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. A Dream of Red Hands by Bram Stoker. The first opinion given to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simple descriptive statement. He's a down-in-the-mouth chap. But I found that it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow workmen. There was, in the phrase, a certain easy tolerance, an absence of positive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete opinion, which marked pretty accurately the man's place in public esteem. Still, there was some dissimilarity between this and his appearance, which unconsciously set me thinking, and by degrees, as I saw more of the place and the workmen. I came to have a special interest in him. He was, I found, forever doing kindnesses, not involving money expenses beyond his humble means, but in the manifold ways of forethought and forbearance, and self-repression, which are the truer charities of life. Women and children trusted him implicitly, though, strangely enough, he rather shunned them, except when anyone was sick, and then he made his appearance, to help, if he could, timidly and awkwardly. He led a very solitary life, keeping house by himself and a tiny cottage, or rather hut, of one room far on the edge of the moral land. His existence seemed so sad and solitary that I wished to cheer it up, and for the purpose took the occasion when we had both been sitting up with the child, injured by me through accident, to offer to lend him books. He gladly accepted, and as we parted in the gray of the dawn, I felt something of mutual confidence had been established between us. The books were always most carefully and punctually returned, and in time Jacob Settle and I became quite friends. Once or twice as I crossed the moral land on Sundays I looked in on him, but on such occasions he was shy and ill at ease, so that I felt diffident about calling to see him. He would never under any circumstances come into my own lodgings. One Sunday afternoon I was coming back from a long walk beyond the moor, and as I passed Settle's cottage, stopped at the door to say, How do you do to him? As the door was shut I thought that he was out, and merely knocked for form's sake, or through habit, not expecting to get any answer. To my surprise I heard a feeble voice from within, though what was said I could not hear. I entered at once, and found Jacob lying half-dressed upon his bed. He was as pale as death, and the sweat was simply rolling off his face. His hands were unconsciously gripping the bed-clothes as a drowning man holds on to whatever he may grasp. Once I came in he half arose, with a wild, hunted look in his eyes, which were wide open and staring, as though something of horror had come before them. But when he recognized me he sank back on the couch, with a smothered sob of relief, and closed his eyes. I stood by him for a while, quite a minute or two, while he gasped. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me, but with such a despairing, woeful expression that, as I am a living man, I would have rather seen that frozen look of horror. I sat down beside him, and asked after his health. For a while he would not answer me, except to say that he was not ill. But then, after scrutinizing me closely, he half arose on his elbow and said, I thank you kindly, sir, but I am simply telling you the truth. I am not ill, as men call it, though God knows whether there be not worse sicknesses than doctors know of. I'll tell you, as you are so kind, but I trust that you won't even mention such a thing to a living soul, for it might work me more and greater woe. I am suffering from a bad dream. A bad dream, I said, hoping to cheer him, but dreams pass away with the light, even with waking. There I stopped. For before he spoke, I saw the answer in his desolate look round the little place. No, no, that's all well for people that live in comfort, and with those they love around them. It is a thousand times worse for those who live alone and have to do so. What cheer is there for me, waking here in the silence of the night, with a wide moor around me full of voices and full of faces that make my waking a worse dream than my sleep? Ah, young sir, you have no past that can send its legions to people, the darkness and the empty space. And I pray the good God that you may never have. As he spoke, there was such an almost irresistible gravity of conviction in his manner that I abandoned my monstrance about his solitary life. I felt that I was in the presence of some secret influence, which I could not fathom, to my relief, for I knew not what to say. He went on. Two nights passed I have dreamt it. It was hard enough the first night, but I came through it. Last night the expectation was in itself almost worse than the dream, until the dream came, and then it swept away every remembrance of it as a pain. I stayed awake till just before the dawn, and then it came again, and ever since I have been in such an agony as I am sure the dying feel, and with it all the dread of tonight. Before he had got to the end of the sun, it's my mind was made up, and I felt that I could speak to him more cheerfully. Try and get to sleep early tonight. In fact, before the evening has passed away, the sleep will refresh you, and I promise you there will not be any bad dreams after tonight. He shook his head hopelessly, so I sat a little longer and then left him. When I got home I made my arrangements for the night, for I had made up my mind to share Jacob Settle's lonely vigil in his cottage on the moor. I judged that if he got to sleep before sunset he would wake well before midnight, and so, just as the bells of the city were striking eleven, I stood opposite his door, armed with a bag, in which were my supper, an extra-large flask, a couple of candles, and a book. The moonlight was bright and flooded the whole moor, till it was almost as light as day, but ever and anon black clouds drove across the sky, and made a darkness which by comparison seemed almost tangible. I opened the door softly, and entered without waking Jacob, who lay asleep with his white face upward. He was still, and again bathed in sweat. I tried to imagine what visions were passing before those closed eyes which could bring with them the misery and woe which were stamped on the face, but fancy failed me, and I waited for the awakening. It came suddenly, and in a fashion which touched me to the quick, for the hollow groan that broke from the man's white lips as he half arose and sank back was manifestly the realization or completion of some train of thought which had gone before. If this be dreaming, I said to myself, then it must be based on some very terrible reality. What can have been that unhappy fact that he spoke of? While thus I spoke, he realized that I was with him. It struck me as strange that he had no period of that doubt as to whether dream or reality surrounded him, which commonly marks an expected environment of waking men. With a positive cry of joy he seized my hand and held it in his too wet, trembling hands, as a frightened child clings on to someone whom it loves I tried to soothe him. There, there, it is all right, I have come to stay with you to-night, and together we will try to fight this evil dream. He let go my hand suddenly, and sank back on his bed and covered his eyes with his hands. Fight it! Fight it! The evil dream? Ah! No, sir. No. No mortal power can fight that dream, for it comes from gold, and is burned in hair. And he beat upon his forehead, then he went on. It is the same dream, ever the same, and yet it grows in its power to torture me every time it comes. What is the dream? I asked, thinking that the speaking of it might give him some relief. But he shrank away from me, and after a long pause said, No, I had better not tell it. It may not come again. There was manifestly something to conceal from me. Something that lay beyond the dream. So I answered, All right, I hope you have seen the last of it. But if it should come again, you will tell me, will you not? I asked, not out of curiosity, but because I think it may relieve you to speak. He answered with what I thought was almost an undo amount of solemnity. If it comes again, I shall tell you all. Then I tried to get his mind away from the subject, to more mundane things. So I produced supper, and made him share it with me, including the contents of the flask. After a little he braced up, and when I lit my cigar, having given him another, we smoked a full hour, and talked of many things. Little by little the comfort of his body stole over his mind, and I could see sleep laying her gentle hands on his eyelids. He felt it too, and told me that now he felt all right, and I might safely leave him. But I told him that, right or wrong, I was going to see in the daylight. So I lit my other candle, and began to read as he fell asleep. By degrees I got interested in my book. So interested that presently I was startled by its dropping out of my hands. I looked, and saw that Jacob was still asleep. And I was rejoiced to see that there was, on his face, a look of unwanted happiness, while his lips seemed to move with unspoken words. Then I turned to my work again, and again woke, but this time to feel chilled to my very marrow by hearing the voice from the bed beside me. "'Not with those red hands! Never, never!' On looking at him I found that he was still asleep. He woke, however, in an instant, and did not seem surprised to see me. There was again that strange apathy as to his surroundings. Then I said, "'Settle, tell me your dream. You may speak freely, for I shall hold your confidence sacred. While we both live I shall never mention what you may choose to tell me.' He replied, "'I said I would, but I had better tell you first what goes before the dream, that you may understand. I was a schoolmaster when I was a very young man. It was only a parish school in a little village in the West country. No need to mention any names. Better not. I was engaged to be married to a young girl who I loved and almost reverenced. It was the old story. While we were waiting for the time when we could afford to set up a house together, another man came along. He was nearly as young as I was, and handsome, and a gentleman, with all a gentleman's attractive ways for a woman of our class. He would go fishing, and she would meet him while I was at my work in school. I reasoned with her, and implored her to give him up. I offered to get married at once, and go away, and begin the world in a strange country. But she would not listen to anything I could say, and I could see that she was infatuated with him. Then I took it on myself to meet the man, and ask him to deal well with the girl, for I thought he might mean honestly by her, so that there might be no talk or chance of talk on the part of the others. I went where I should meet him, with none by, and we met. Here Jacob Settle had to pause, for something seemed to rise in his throat, and he almost gasped for breath. Then he went on, Sir, as God is above us, there was no selfish thought in my heart that day. I loved my pretty Mabel too well, to be content with a part of her love, and I had thought of my own unhappiness too often not to have come to realize that whatever might come to her, my hope was gone. He was insolent to me. You, sir, who are a gentleman, cannot know, perhaps, how galling can be the insolence of one who is above you in station. But I bore with that. I implored him well with the girl, for what might be only a pastime of an idle hour with him might be the breaking of her heart. For I never had a thought of her truth, or that the worst of harm could come to her. It was only the unhappiness to her heart I feared. But when I asked him when he intended to marry her, his laughter gold me so that I'd lost my temper and told him that I would not stand by and see her life made unhappy. Then he grew angry too, and in his anger said such cruel things of her that then and there I swore he should not live to do her harm. God knows how it came about, for in such moments of passion it is hard to remember the steps from a word to a blow. But I found myself standing over his dead body with my hands crimson with the blood that welled from his torn throat. We were alone, and he was a stranger, with none of his kin to seek for him, and murder does not always out. Not all at once. His bones may be whitening still for all I know in the pool of the river where I left him. No one suspected his absence or why it was, except my poor mable, and she did not speak. But it was all in vain, for when I came back again after an absence of months, for I could not live in the place, I learned that her shame had come, and that she had died in it. Hitherto I had been born up by the thought that my ill deed had saved her future. But now, when I learned that I had been too late, and that my poor love was smirched with that man's sin, I fled away with the sense of my useless guilt upon me more heavily than I could bear. Ah, sir, you that have not done such a sin don't know what it is to carry it with you. You may think that custom makes it easy to you, but it is not so. It grows and grows with every hour, till it becomes intolerable, and with it growing too, the feeling that you must forever stand outside heaven. You don't know what it means, and I pray God that you never may. Ordinary men, to whom all things are possible, don't often, if ever, think of heaven. It is a name, and nothing more. And they are content to wait, and let things be, but to those who are doomed to be shut out forever. You cannot think what it means. You cannot guess or measure the terrible, endless longing to see the gates opened and to be able to join the white figures within. And this brings me to my dream. It seemed that the portal was before me, with great gates of massive steel, with bars of the thickness of a mast rising to the very clouds, and so close that between them was just a glimpse of a crystal grotto, on whose shining walls were figured many white-clad forms, with faces radiant, with joy. When I stood before the gate, my heart and soul were so full of rapture and longing that I forgot, and there stood at the gate two mighty angels with sweeping wings, and oh, so stern of countenance, they held each in one hand a flaming sword, and in the other the latchet, which moved to and fro at the lightest touch. Nera were figures all draped in black, with heads covered so that only the eyes were seen, and they handed to each who came, white garments such as the angels were. A low mama came that told that all should put on their own robes and without soil, or the angels would not pass them in, but would smite them down with the flaming swords. I was eager to don my own garment, and hurriedly throw it over me, and stepped swiftly to the gate, but it moved not, and the angels losing the latchet pointed to my dress. I looked down and was aghast, for the whole robe was smeared with blood. My hands were red. They glittered with the blood that dripped from them, as on that day by the river bank, and then the angels raised the flaming swords to smite me down, and the horror was complete. I awoke again and again and again. That awful dream comes to me. I never learned from the experience. I never remember, but at the beginning the hope is ever there to make the end more appalling, and I know that the dream does not come out of the common darkness where the dreams abide, but that it is sent from God as a punishment. Never, never shall I be able to pass the gate, for the soil on the angel garments must ever come from these bloody hands. I listened as in a spell as Jacob Settle spoke. There was something so far away in the tone of his voice, something so dreamy and mystic in the eyes that looked as if through me at some spirit beyond, something so lofty in his very addiction, and in such marked contrast to his work-worn clothes and his poor surroundings that I wondered if the whole thing were not a dream. We were both silent for a long time. I kept looking at the man before me and growing wonderment. Now that his confession had been made, his soul, which had been crushed to the very earth, seemed to leap back again to uprightness with some resilient force. I suppose I ought to have been horrified with his story, but strange to say I was not. It certainly is not pleasant to be made the recipient of the confidence of a murderer, but this poor fellow seemed to have had not only so much provocation, but so much self-denying purpose in his deed of blood that I did not feel called upon to pass judgment upon him. My purpose was to comfort, so I spoke out with what calmness I could, for my heart was beating fast and heavily. You need not despair, Jacob Settle. God is very good, and his mercy is great. Live on and work on in the hope that some day you may feel that you have atoned for the past. Here I paused, for I could see that deep natural sleep this time was creeping upon him. Go to sleep, I said. I shall watch with you here, and we shall have no more evil dreams tonight. He made an effort to pull himself together and answered. I don't know how to thank you for your goodness to me this night, but I think you have best leave me now. I'll try and sleep this out. I feel a weight off my mind, since I have told you all. If there's anything of the man left in me, I must try and fight out life alone. I'll go tonight, as you wish it, I said, but take my advice, and do not live in such a solitary way. Go among men and women. Live among them. Share their joys and sorrows, and it will help you to forget. This solitude will make you melancholy mad. I will, he answered, have consciously, for sleep was overmastering him. I turned to go, and he looked after me. When I had touched the latch, I dropped it, and, coming back to the bed, held out my hand. He grasped it, with both his, as he rose to a sitting posture, and I said my good night, trying to cheer him. Heart man, heart, there is work in this world for you to do, Jacob Settle. You can wear those white robes yet, and pass through that gate of steel. Then I left him. A week after I found his cottage deserted, and, on asking at the works, was told that he had gone north. No one exactly knew whither. Two years afterwards I was staying for a few days with my friend Dr. Monroe in Glasgow. He was a busy man, and could not spare much time for going about with me, so I spent my days in excursions to the trussacks, and lock Catrine, and down the Clyde. On the second last evening of my stay I came back somewhat later than I had arranged, but found that my host was late too. The maid told me that he had been sent for her to the hospital, a case of accident at the gas works, and the dinner was postponed an hour, so telling her I would stroll down to find her master, and walk back with him I went out. At the hospital I found him washing his hands preparatory to starting for home. Casually I asked him what his case was. Oh, the usual thing! A rotten rope, and men's lives of no account. Two men were working in a gasometer. When the rope that held their scaffolding broke it must have occurred just before the dinner hour, for no one noticed their absence till the men had returned. There was about seven feet of water in the gasometer, so they had a hard fight for it, poor fellows. However one of them was alive, just alive, but we have had a hard job to pull him through. It seems that he owes his life to his mate, for I have never heard of greater heroism. They swam together while their strength lasted, but at the end they were so done up that even the lights above, and the men slung with ropes, coming down to help them, could not keep them up. But one of them stood on the bottom, and held up his comrade over his head, and those few breaths made all the difference between life and death. They were a shocking sight when they were taken out, for that water is like a purple dye with the gas and the tar. The man upstairs looked as if he had been washed in blood. Ugh! And the other? Oh! He's worse still, but he must have been a very noble fellow. That struggle under the water must have been fearful. One can see that by the way the blood has been drawn from the extremities. It makes the idea of the stigmata possible to look at him. Resolution like this could, you would think, do anything in the world. Aye! It might almost unbar the gates of heaven. Look here, old man! It is not a very pleasant sight, especially just before dinner. But you are our writer, and this is an odd case. Here is something you would not like to miss, for in all human probability you will never see anything like it again. While he was speaking he had brought me into the mortuary of the hospital. On the beer lay a body covered with a white sheet which was wrapped close around it. Looks like a chrysalis don't it. I say, Jack, if there be anything in the old myth that a soul is typified by a butterfly, well then the one that this chrysalis sent forth was a very noble specimen, and took all the sunlight on its wings. See here, he uncovered the face. Horrible indeed it looked, as though stand with blood. But I knew him at once. Jacob settled. My friend pulled the winding sheet further down. The hands were crossed on the purple breast, as they had been reverently placed by some tender-hearted person. As I saw them my heart throbbed with a great exultation, for the memory of his harrowing dream rushed across my mind. There was no stain now on those poor brave hands, for they were blanched white as snow. And somehow, as I looked, I felt that the evil dream was all over. That noble soul had won away through the gate at last. The white robe had now no stain from the hands that had put it on. End of A Dream of Red Hands. Mr Arthur Furnley Markham, who took what was known as the Red House above the mains of Crookin, was a London merchant, and being essentially a cockney, thought it necessary when he went for the summer holidays to Scotland to provide an entire rig out as a Highland chieftain, as manifested in chromolythographs and on the music hall stage. He had once seen in the Empire the Great Prince, their Bounder King, bring down their house by appearing as the McSlogan of that ilk, and singing the celebrated Scottish song, There's Nothing Like Haggis to Make a Mondry. And he had ever since preserved in his mind a faithful image of the picturesque and warlike appearance which he presented. Indeed, if the true inwardness of Mr Markham's mind on the subject of his selection of Aberdeenshire as a summer resort were known, it would be found that in the foreground of the holiday locality which is fancy painted, stalked the many huge figure of the McSlogan of that ilk. However, be this as it may, a very kind fortune, certainly so far as external beauty was concerned, led him to the choice of Crookham Bay. It is a lovely spot, between Aberdeen and Peterhead, just under the rock-bound headland whence the long dangerous reefs known as the Spurs run out into the North Sea. Between this and the mains of Crookham, a village sheltered by the northern cliffs, lies the deep bay, backed with a multitude of bent-grown dunes where the rabbits are to be found in thousands. Thus, at either end of the bay is a rocky promontory, and when the dawn or the sunset falls on the rocks of red cyanite the effect is very lovely. The bay itself is flawed with level sand, and the tide runs far out, leaving a smooth waste of hard sand on which are dotted here and there, the stake-nets and bagnets of the salmon-fishers. At one end of the bay there is a little group of cluster of rocks whose heads are raised something above high water, except when in rough weather the waves come over them green. At low tide they are exposed down to sand level, and here is perhaps the only little bit of dangerous sand on this part of the eastern coast. Between the rocks, which are apart about some 50 feet, is a small quicksand which, like the Goodwins, is dangerous only with the incoming tide. It extends outwards till it is lost in the sea, and inwards till it fades away in the hard sound of the upper beach. On the slope of the hill, which rises beyond the dunes, midway between the spurs and the port of Crookin, is the Red House. It rises from the midst of a clump of fir trees which protect it on three sides, leaving the whole sea front open. A trim, old-fashioned garden stretches down to the roadway, and crossing which a grassy path, which can be used for light vehicles, threads away to the shore, winding amongst the sandhills. When the Markham family arrived at the Red House, after their 36 hours of pitching on the Aberdeen steamer Van Rye from Blackwell, with a subsequent train to Yellen and drive over a dozen miles, they all agreed that they had never seen a more delightful spot. The general satisfaction was more marked as that, very time, none of the family were, for several reasons, inclined to find favourable anything or any place over the Scottish border. Though the family was a large one, the prosperity of the business allowed them all sorts of personal luxuries, amongst which was a wide latitude in the way of dress. The frequency of the Markham girl's new frocks was a source of envy to their bosom friends, and of joy to themselves. Arthur Fairney Markham had not taken his family into his confidence regarding his new costume. He was not quite certain that he should be free from ridicule, or at least from sarcasm, and as he was sensitive on the subject, he thought it better to be actually in the suitable environment before he allowed the false blender to burst upon them. He had taken some pains to ensure the completeness of the Highland costume. For the purpose, he had paid many visits to the scotch all-wool tartan clothing mart, which had been lately established in Coptall Court by the masters Macallan Moore and Roderick McDew. He had anxious consultations with the head of the firm, Macallan, as he called himself, resenting any such additions as mister or a squire. The known stock of buckles, butts and straps, brooches and ornaments of all kinds were examined in critical detail, and at last an eagle's feather of sufficiently magnificent proportions was discovered, and the equipment was complete. It was only when he saw the finished costume, with the vivid hues of the tartan seemingly modified into comparative sobriety, by the multitude of silver fittings that came gone brooches the filibeg dirk and sporen, that he was fully and absolutely satisfied with his choice. At first, he had thought of the royal stewart dress tartan, but abandoned it on the Macallan, pointing out that if he should happen to be in the neighbourhood of Balmoral it might lead to complications. The Macallan, who, by the way, spoke with a remarkable cockney accent, suggested other plays in turn. But now that the other question of accuracy had been raised, mister Markham foresaw difficulties if he should, by chance, find himself in the locality of the clan whose colours he had usurped. The Macallan at last undertook to have, at Markham's expense, a special pattern woven, which would not be exactly the same as any existing tartan, though partaking of the characteristics of many. It was based on the royal stewart, but contained suggestions as to simplicity of pattern from the Macallister and Ogilvy clans, and as to neutrality of colour from the clans of Buchanan, Macbeth, chief of Macintosh and Macleod. When the specimen had been shown to Markham, he had feared somewhat lest it should strike the eye of his domestic circle as gaudy, but as Roderick McDew fell into perfect ecstasy over its beauty, he did not make any objection to the completion of the piece. He thought, and wisely, that if a genuine Scotchman like McDew liked it, it must be right, especially as the junior partner was a man very much of his own build and appearance. When the Macallan was receiving his check, which, by the way, was a pretty stiff one, he remarked, I've taken the liberty of having some more of the staff woven, in case you or any of your friends should want it. Markham was gratified, and told him that he should be only too happy if the beautiful stuff which they had originated between them should become a favourite, as he had no doubt it would in time. He might make and sell as much as he would. Markham tried the dress on, and his office one evening after the clerks had all gone home, he was pleased, though a little frightened at the result. The Macallan had done his work thoroughly, and there was nothing omitted that could add to the martial dignity of the wearer. I shall not, of course, take the claymore on a pistols with me on ordinary occasions, said Markham to himself as he began to undress. He determined that he would wear the dress for the first time on landing in Scotland, and accordingly on the morning when the Bang Rai was hanging off the girlness lighthouse, waiting for the tide to enter the port of Aberdeen, he emerged from his cabin in all the gaudy splendour of his new costume. The first comment he heard was from one of his own sons, who did not recognise him at first. He is a guy, quite scot, it's the governor! And the boy fled forthwith, and tried to bury his laughter under a cushion in the saloon. Markham was a good sailor, and had not suffered from the pitching of the boat, so that his naturally rubicant face was even more rosy by the conscious blush which suffused his cheeks when he had found himself at once the signisher of all eyes. He could have wished that he had not been so bold, for he knew from the cold that there was a big bear spot under one side of his jointly worn Glengarry cap. However, he faced the group of strangers boldly. He was not outwardly upset, even when some of the comments reached it is, he's off his blooming champ, said a cockney in a suit of exaggerated blood. There's flies on him, said a tall thin Yankee, pale with seasickness. He was on his way to take up his residence for a time as close as he could get to the gates of Balmoral. Happy thought, let us fill our moles, how's the chance? said a young Oxford man on his way home to Inverness. But presently Mr. Markham heard the voice of his eldest daughter. Where is he? Where is he? But he came tearing along the deck with a hat blown behind her. Her face she had signs of agitation, for her mother had just been telling her of her father's condition. But when she saw him, she instantly burst into laughter so violent that it ended in a fit of hysterics. Something of the same kind happened to each of the other children. When they had all had their turn, Mr. Markham went to his cabin and sent his wife's maid to tell each member of the family that he wanted to see them at once. They all made their appearance suppressing their feelings as well as they could. He said to them very quietly, My dears, don't I provide you all with ample allowances? Yes, father, they all answered gravely. No one could be more generous. Don't I let you dress as you please? Yes, father, is a little cheepishly. Then, my dears, don't you think it will be nicer and kinder of you not to try and make me feel uncomfortable, even if I do assume a dress which is ridiculous in your eyes, for quite common enough in the country where we're about to sojourn? There was no answer except that which appeared in their hanging heads. He was a good father, and they all knew it. He was quite satisfied and went on. There now, run away and enjoy yourselves. We shall have another word about it. Then he went on deck again and stood bravely the fire of ridicule which he recognized around him, though nothing more was said within his hearing, the astonishment and the amusement which his get-of-occasioned on the Ban Rai was, however, nothing to that which it created in Aberdeen. The boys and loafers, and women with babies, who waited at the landing-shed, followed en masse as the Markham party took their way to the railway station. Even the porters with their old-fashioned knots and their new fashioned barrows, who awaited the traveller at the foot of the gang-plank, followed in wondering delight. Fortunately, the Peterhead train was just about to start, so that the martyrdom was not unnecessarily prolonged. In the carriage the glorious Highland costume was unseen, and as there were but few persons at the station at Yellen, all went well there. When, however, the carriage drew near to the mains of Crookin, and the Fisher folk had run to their doors to see who it was that was passing, the excitement exceeded all bounds. The children, with one impulse, waved their bonnets and ran shouting behind the carriage, the men forsook their nets, and their baiting, and followed. The women clutched their babies and followed also. The horses were tired after their long journey to Yellen and back, and the hill was steep, so that there was ample time for the crowd to gather, and even to pass on ahead. Mrs. Markham and the elder girls would have liked to make some protest, or to do something to relieve their feelings of shagering at the ridicule which they saw on all faces, but there was a look of fixed determination on the face of the seeming Highlander, which owed them a little, and they were silent. It might have been that the eagles feather, even when arising above the bald head, the cairn-gone brooch, even on the fat shoulder, and the claymore dirk and pistols, even when belted round the extensive porch and protruding from the stocking of the sturdy cough, fulfilled their existence as symbols of martial and terrifying import. When the party arrived at the gate of the Red House, there awaited them a crowd of crook and inhabitants, hapless and respectfully silent. The remainder of the population was painfully toiling up the hill. The silence was broken by only one sound, that of a man with a deep voice. Man, but he's forgotten their pipes. The servants has arrived some days before, and all things were in readiness. In the glow consequent on a good lunch after a hard journey, all the disagreeables of trouble and all the shagering consequent on the adoption of the obnoxious costume were forgotten. That afternoon Markin, still clad in full array, walked through the mains of Crookin. He was all alone, for strange to say, his wife and both daughters had sick headaches and were, as he was told, lying down to rest after the fatigue of the journey, his eldest son, who claimed to be a young man, had gone out by himself to explore the surroundings of the place, and one of the boys could not be found. The other boy, on being told that his father had sent for him to come for a walk, had managed, by accident, of course, to fall into the water-butt, and had to be dried and rigged out afresh. His clothes not having been as yet unpacked, this was, of course, impossible without delay. Mr. Markin was not quite satisfied with his walk. He could not meet any of his neighbours. It was not that there were not enough people about, for every house and cottage seemed to be full. But the people when in the open were either in their doorway, some distance behind him, or on the roadway, a long distance in front. As he passed, he could see the tops of heads and the whites of eyes in the windows, or around the corners of doors. The only interview which he had was anything but a pleasant one. This was with an odd sort of old man, who was hardly ever heard to speak, except to joining the amens in the meeting-house. His sole occupation seemed to be to wait at the window of the post office, from eight o'clock in the morning, to the arrival of the mail at one, when he carried the letter back to a neighbouring baronial castle. The remainder of his day was spent on a seat in a drafty part of the port, where the offal of the fish, the refuse of the bait, and the house rubbish was thrown, and where the ducks were accustomed to hold high revel. When Saf Tami beheld him coming, he raised his eyes, which were generally fixed on the nothing, which lay on the roadway opposite his seat, and seeming dazzled, as if by a burst of sunshine rubbed them, and shaded them with his hand. Then he started up and raised his hand aloft in a denunciatory manner as he spoke. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity. Morn be warned in time. Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Morn, morn, thy vanities as the quicksand which swallows a pole which comes within its spell. Beware vanity, beware of the quicksand which yoneth for thee, and which will swallow thee up. See thyself, learn my norm vanity. Meet thyself face to face, and then in that moment thou shalt learn the fatal force of thy vanity. Learn it, know it, and repent thee, the quicksand swallow thee. Then without another word he went back to his seat and sat there, immovable and expressionless as before. Markham could not but feel a little upset by this tirade, only that it was spoken by a seeming madman. He would have put it down to some eccentric exhibition of Scottish humour or impudence, but the gravity of the message, for it seemed nothing else, made such a reading impossible. He was, however, determined not to give in to ridicule, and although he had not yet seen anything in Scotland to remind him even of a kilt, he determined to wear his highland dress. When he returned home, in less than half an hour, he found that every member of the family was, despite the headaches, out taking a walk. He took the opportunity afforded by the absence of looking himself in his dressing room, took off the highland dress, and, putting on a suit of flannels, lit his cigar, and had a snooze. He was awakened by the noise of the family coming in, and at once donning his dress made his appearance in the drawing room for tea. He did not go out again that afternoon, but after dinner he put on his dress again. He had, of course, dressed for dinner as usual, and went by himself for a walk on the seashore. He had, by this time, come to the conclusion that he would get by degrees, accustomed to the highland dress, before making it his ordinary wear. The moon was up, and he easily followed the path through the sandhills, and shortly struck the shore. The tide was out, and the beach firm as a rock, so he strolled southwards to nearly the end of the bay. Here he was attracted by two isolated rocks some little way out from the edge of the dunes, so he strolled towards them. When he reached the nearest when he climbed it, and sitting there, elevated some fifteen or twenty feet above the waist of sand, enjoyed the lovely peaceful prospect. The moon was rising behind the headland of Pennyfold, and its light was just touching the top of the furthest most rock of the spurs, so three quarters of a mile out. The rest of the rocks were in dark shadow. As the moon rose over the headland, the rocks of the spurs, and then the beach by degrees, became flooded with light. For a good while Mr. Markham sat and looked at the rising moon and the growing light area of light which followed its rise. Then he turned and faced eastwards, and sat with his chin in his hand looking seawards, and reveling in the peace and beauty and freedom of the scene. The roar of London, the darkness and the strife and the weariness of London life, seemed to have passed quite away, and he lived at the moment of freer and higher life. He looked at the glistening water as it stole its way over the flat waist of sand, coming closer and closer insensibly. The tide had turned. Presently he heard a distant shouting along the beach very far off, fishermen calling to each other. He said to himself and looked around. As he did so, he got a horrible shock, for though just then a cloud sailed across the moon he saw, in spite of the sudden darkness surrounding his own image, for an instant. On the top of the opposite rock he could see the bald back of the head and the glengarry cap with the immense eagle's feather. As he staggered back his foot slipped, and he began to slide down towards the sand between the two rocks. He took no concern as to failing, for the sand was really only a few feet below him, and his mind was occupied with a figure or simulacrum of himself, which had already disappeared. As the easiest way of reaching terra firma, he prepared to jump the remainder of the distance. All this had taken but a second, but the brain works quickly, and even as he gathered himself for the spring he saw the sand below him lying so marbly level, shake and shiver, in an odd way. A sudden fear overcame him, his knees failed, and instead of jumping he slid miserably down the rock, scratching his bare legs as he went. His feet touched the sand, and threw it like water, and he was down below his knees before he realised that he was in a quick sand. Wildly he gasped up the rock to keep himself from singing further. Unfortunately there was a jutting spur or edge which he was able to grasp instinctively. To this he clung in grim desperation. He tried to shout, but his breath would not come till after a great effort his voice rang out. Again he shouted, and it seemed as if the sound of his own voice gave him new courage, for he was able to hold on to the rock for a longer time than he thought possible, though he held on only in blind desperation. He was, however, beginning to find his grasp weakening when, joy have joys, his shout was answered by a rough voice from just above him. God, we thank you, I'm native late, and a fisherman with great thigh-boots came hurriedly climbing over the rock. In an instant he recognised the gravity of the danger, and with a cheering, hud-fast-mon, I'm coming, scrambled down till he found a firm foothold. Then, with one strong hand holding the rock above, he leaned down, and catching Rockham's wrist called out to him, hud-to-me-mon, hud-to-me, we are the hund! Then he lent his great strength, and with a steady, sturdy pull, dragged him out of the hungry quicksand, and placed him safe upon the rock. Hardly giving time to draw breath, he pulled and pushed him, never letting him go for an instant, over the rock into the firm sand beyond it, and finally deposited him, still shaking from the magnitude of his danger, high upon the beach. Then he began to speak. Come on, but I was just in time. If I had not laughed at you foolish lads and began to grin at the first, you'd have been sinking down to the bowels of the eff, but then who? Willie Beegre, fucked you was a guest, and Tom McPherson, though he was only like a goblin on a pudding-steel. Nah, said I. Yon's but the daft Englishman. That loony that had escaped his fellow ax-works. I was thinking that, being strange and silly, if not a whole made fail, he had no kin in the ways of the quicksand. I shouted to loan you, and then ran to drag you off if need be, but God be thank it, be a fool though you're only half daft with your vanity. That I was no that late. And he reverently lifted his cap as he spoke. Mr. Markham was deeply touched and thankful for his escape from a horrible death. But the sting of the charge of vanity, thus made once more against him, come through his humility. He was about to reply angrily when, suddenly, a great awe fell upon him as he remembered the warning words of the half-crazy letter-carrier. Meet thou self, face to face, and repent ere the quicksand shall swallow thee. Here, too, he remembered the image of himself that he had seen, and the sudden danger from the deadly quicksand that had followed. He was silent, a full minute, and then said, my good fellow, I owe you my life. The answer came with the reverence from the hardy fisherman. Na, na, you're that to God. But as for me, I'm only too glad to be the humble instrument of his mercy. But you will let me thank you, said Mr. Markham, taking both the great hands of his deliverer in his and holding them tight. My art is too full as yet, and my nerves are too much shaking to let me say much, but believe me, I am very, very grateful. It was quite evident that the poor old fellow was deeply touched, for the tears were running down his cheeks. The fisherman said, with a rough but true courtesy, I say, thank when you will, if it'll do you poor hard good. And I'm thinking that if it were me, I'd be thankful, too. But so, as for me, I need no thanks, I'm glad, so I am. That Arthur Firling Markham was really thankful and grateful, was shown practically later on. Within a week's time, there sailed into Port Crookham, the finest fishing smack had ever been seen in the harbour of Peterhead. She was fully found with sales and gear of all kinds, and with nets of the best. Her master and men went away by the coach, after having left, with Simon Fisher's wife, the papers, which made her over to him. As Mr. Markham and the Salfin Fisher walked together along the shore, the former asked his companion, not to mention the fact that he had been in such imminent danger, for that it would only distress his dear wife and children. He said that he would warn them all of the quicksand, and for that purpose he, then and there, asked questions about it till he felt that his information on the subject was complete. Before they parted, he asked his companion if he had happened to see a second figure, dressed like himself on the other rock because he had approached to sucker him. Na, na, came the answer. There isn't a sick another fool in these parts. Not as there been since the time of Jamie Fleming, him that were fooled to the lair of Udney. Why, ma, sick a heathenest dress as you have on till he has nays seen in these parts with the memory of maan. And I'm thinking that sick a dress was never for sitting on the cold rock as you don't be on maan. But do you not fear the rheumatism of the lumbagy we flopping doing on the cold stands where you bear flesh? I was thinking that it was daft you were when I see the moon and dune the pot, but it's fool or idiot you maan be for the look of that. Mr. Markham did not care to argue the point, and as they were now close to his own home, he asked the salmon fisher to have a glass of whisky, which he did, and they parted for the night. He took good care to warn all his family of the quicksand, telling them that he had himself been in some danger from it. All that night he never slept. He had the hour strike one after the other, but try how he would. He could not get to sleep. Over and over again he went through the horrible episode of the quicksand, from the time that saftami had broken his habitual silence to preach to him of the sin of vanity and to warn him. The question kept ever arising in his mind. Am I then so vain as to be in the ranks of the foolish? And the answer ever came in the words of the crazy prophet. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Meet thy self face to face and repent till the quicksand shall swallow thee. Somehow a feeling of dune began to shape itself in his mind, that he would yet perish in that same quicksand. For there he had already met himself face to face. In the grey of the morning he dozed off, but it was evident that he continued the subject in his dreams, for he was fully awakened by his wife who said, Do sleep quietly. Thou blessed Arlen's suit was gone your brine. So talk and you sleep if you can help it. He was somehow conscious of a glad feeling, as if some terrible weight had been lifted from him. But he did not know any cause of it. He asked his wife what he had said in his sleep and she answered. She said it often enough, goodness knows for one to remember it. Not face to face. A silver eagle plume over the bald head. There is hope yet, not face to face. Go to sleep. Do. And then he did go to sleep, for he seemed to realise that the prophecy of the crazy man had not yet been fulfilled. He had not met himself face to face, as yet at all events. He was awakened early by a maid who came to tell him that there was a fisherman at the door who wanted to see him. He dressed himself as quickly as he could, for he was not yet expert with the highland dress and hurried down, not wishing to keep the salmon fish awaiting. He was surprised and not altogether pleased to find that his visitor was none other than Softami, who at once opened fire on him. I'm on gang about the post, but I thought that I would waste an hour on you and go round to see if you were still that fool with vanities on the Nihikambai. And I see that you no learned the lesson. Well, time is coming, sure enough. However, I have all the time in the mornings to main sale, so I look round, just till I say how you gang you and get to the quicksand, and then to the dale. I'm after my work, thenu, and he went straight away, leaving Mr. Markon considerably vexed, for the maids with an earshot were vainly trying to conceal their giggles. He had fairly made up his mind to wear them at their ordinary clothes, but the visit of Softami resourced his decision. He would show them all that he was not a coward, and he would go on as he had begun, come what might. When he came to breakfast in full martial panoply, the children, one and all, held down their heads in the backs of their necks, became very red indeed. As, however, none of them laughed, except Titus, the youngest boy, who was seized with a fit of hysterical choking and was promptly banished from the room. He could not reprove them, but began to break his egg with a sternly determined air. It was unfortunate that as his wife was hunting him a cup of tea, one of the buttons of his sleeve caught in the lace of a morning wrapper, with the result that the hot tea was spilt over his burnies. Not unnaturally, he made use of a swear word whereupon his wife, somewhat nettle, spoke out. Well, Arthur, if you will make such an idiot of yourself with that ridiculous costume, what else can you expect? You are not accustomed to it, and you never will be. In answer, he began an indignant speech with madame. But he got no further. For now that the subject was brooch, Mrs. Markham intended to have her say out. It was not a pleasant say and truth to tell. It was not said in a pleasant manner. Her wife's manner seldom is pleasant, when she undertakes to tell what she considers truths to her husband. The result was that Arthur Fernley Markham undertook then and there that during his stay in Scotland, he would wear no other costume than the one she abused. Woman-like, his wife had the last word, given in this case, with tears. Very well, Arthur. Of course, you will do as you choose. Make me as ridiculous as you can, and spoil for poor girls chances in life. Young men don't seem to care as a general role for an idiot father-in-law. But I must warn you that your vanity will someday get a rude shock. If indeed you are not before then and in a solemn or dead, it was manifest after a few days that Mr Markham would have to take the major part of his outdoor exercise by himself. The girls now and again took a walk with him, chiefly in the early morning or late at night, or on a wet day when there would be no one about. They professed to be willing to go out at all times, but somehow something always seemed to occur to prevent it. The boys could never be found at all on such occasions, and as to Mrs Markham, she certainly refused to go out with him on any consideration, so long as he should continue to make a fool of himself. On the Sunday, he dressed himself in his habitual broadcloth, for he rightly felt that church was not a place for angry feelings. But on Monday morning, he resumed his highland garb. By this time, he would have given a good deal if he had never thought of the dress, but his British opposites in his sea were strong, and he would not give in. Saf Tami called his house every morning, and not being able to see him nor have any message to take into him, used to call back in the afternoon when the letterbag had been delivered and watched for his going out. On such occasions, he never failed to warn him against his vanity in the same words which he had used at the first. Before many days were over, Mr Markham had come to look upon him, as little short of a scourge. By the time the week was out, they enforced partial solitude, the constant shaguin, and the never-ending brooding which was thus engendered began to make Mr Markham quite ill. He was too proud to take any of his family into his confidence, since they had, in his view, treated him very badly. Then he did not sleep well at night, and when he did sleep, he had constantly bad dreams. Merely to assure himself that his pluck was not failing him, he made it a practice to visit the quicksand at least once every day. He hardly ever failed to go there the last thing at night. It was perhaps this habit that wrought the quicksand with its terrible experience so perpetually into his dreams. More and more vivid these became, till on waking at times, he could hardly realise that he had not been actually in the flesh to visit the fatal spot. He sometimes thought that he might have been walking in his sleep. One night his dream was so vivid that when he awoke, he could not believe that he had only been a dream. He shut his eyes again and again, but each time the vision, if it was a vision, or the reality, if it was a reality, would rise before him. The moon was shining full and yellow over the quicksand as he approached it. He could see the expanse of light shaken and disturbed and full of black shadows as the liquid sand quivered and trembled and wrinkled and eddied, as was its want between its pauses of marble calm. As he too close to it, another figure came towards it from the opposite side with equal footsteps. He saw that it was his own figure, his very self, and in silent terror, compelled by what force he knew not, he advanced, charmed as the bird is by the snake, mesmerized or hypnotized, to meet this other self. As he felt the yielding sand closing over him, he awoke in the agony of death, trembling with fear and, strange to say, with the silly man's prophecy seeming to sound in his ears. Vanity of vanities, all his vanity, see thyself and repent till the quicksand swallow thee. So convinced was he that this was no dream that he arose, early as it was, and dressing himself without disturbing his wife, took his way to the shore. His heart fell when he came across a series of footsteps on the sands, which he at once recognized as his own. There was the same wide heel, the same square toe. He had no doubt now that he had actually been there, and half horrified, and half in a state of dreamy stupor, he followed the footsteps, and found them lost in the edge of the yielding quicksand. This gave him a terrible shock, for there were no return steps marked on the sand, and he felt that there was some dread mystery which he could not penetrate, and the penetration of which would, he fear, undo him. In this state of affairs, he took two wrong courses. Firstly, he kept his trouble to himself, and as none of his family had any clue to it, every innocent word or expression which they used supplied fuel to the consuming fire of his imagination. Secondly, he began to read books, professing to bear upon the mysteries of dreaming, and of mental phenomena generally, with the result that every wild imagination of every crank or half-crazy philosopher became the living germ of unrest in the fertilizing soil of his disordered brain. Thus negatively and positively, all things began to work to a common end. Now, the least of his disturbing causes was Saf Tami, who had now become at certain times of the day a fixture at his gate. After a while, being interested in the previous state of this individual, he made inquiries regarding his past with the following result. Saf Tami was popularly believed to be the son of a lad, in one of the counties around the Firth of Forth. He had been partially educated for the ministry, but for some cause which no one ever knew, threw up his prospect suddenly, and, going to Peterhead in its days of willing prosperity, had there taken service on a whaler. Here, off and on, he had remained for some years, getting gradually more and more silent in his habits till finally, his shipmates protested against so taciturn a mate, and he had found service amongst the fishing smacks of the northern fleet. He had worked for many years at the fishing, with always the reputation of being a wee bit daft. Till at length, he had gradually settled down at Crookin, where the lad, doubtless knowing something of his family history, had given him a job which practically made him a pensioner, the minister who gave the information finished thus. It is a very strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of gift, whether it be that second sight which we scotch people are so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge I know not, but nothing ever disasters tend to see ever occurs in this place, but the man with whom he lives able to court after the events and saying of his which suddenly appears to have full told it, he gets uneasy excited, wakes up in fact, when death is in the air. This did not in any way tend to lessen Mr Markham's concern, but on the contrary seemed to impress the prophecy more deeply on his mind. Of all the books which he had read on his new subject, study, none interested in him so much as a German one, die Deppelgange by Dr Heinrich von Aschenberg, family of Bonn. Here he learned for the first time of cases where men had led a double existence, each nature being quite apart from the other, the body being always a reality with one spirit, and a simulacrum with the other. Needless to say that Mr Markham realised this theory as exactly suiting his own case, the glimpse which he had had of his own back the night of his escape from the quicksand, his own foot marks disappearing into the quicksand with no return steps visible. The prophecy of Saf Tami about his meeting himself and perishing in the quicksand, all at aid to the conviction that he was, in his own person, an instance of the Deppelgange, being then conscious of a double life, he took steps to prove his existence to his own satisfaction. To this end, one more night before going to bed, he wrote his name in chalk on the soles of his shoes. That night he dreamed of the quicksand, and of his visiting it, dreamed so vividly that on walking in the gray of the dawn he could not believe that he had not been there. Arising, without disturbing his wife, he sought his shoes. The chalk signatures were undisturbed. He dressed himself and stole out softly. This time the tide was in, so he crossed the dunes and struck the shore on the further side of the quicksand. There. Oh, horror of horrors! He saw his own footprints dying into the abyss. He went home a desperately sad man. It seemed incredible that he, an elderly commercial man, who had passed along an uneventful life in the pursuit of business in the midst of roaring practical London, should thus find himself enmeshed in mystery and horror, and that he should discover that he had two existences. He could not speak of his trouble, even to his own wife, for, well, he knew that she would at once require the fullest particulars of that other life, the one which she did not know, and that she would, at the start, not only imagine but chart him with all manner of infidelities on the head of it. And so his brooding grew deeper and deeper still. One evening, the tide then going out and the moon being at the full, he was sitting, waiting for dinner, when the maid announced that Saf Tami was making a disturbance outside, because he would not be let in to see him. He was very indignant, but did not like the maid to think that he had any fear on the subject, and so told her to bring him in. Tami entered, walking more briskly than ever with his head up and a look of vigorous decision in the eyes that were so generally cast down. As soon as he entered, he said, I've come to see you once again. Once again, and there you sit, still just like a cockatoo on a pet. We'll mon affigure, mind you that affigure. And without a word more, he turned and walked out of the house, leaving the master in speechless ignition. After dinner, he determined to pay another visit to the quicksand. He would not allow even to himself that he was afraid to go. And so, about nine o'clock, in full array, he marched to the beach, and passing over the sands, sat on the skirt of the nearer rock. The full moon was behind him, and its light lit up the bay, so that its fringe of foam, the dark outline of the headline, and the stakes of the salmonets were all emphasised. In the brilliantly glow, the lights in the windows of Puck Rookin, and in those of the distant castle of the lead, trembled like stars through the sky. For a long time, he sat and drank in the beauty of the scene, and his soul seemed to feel a peace that he had not known for many days. All the pettiness and annoyance and silly fears of the past week seemed blotted out, and a new holy calm took the vacant place. In this sweet and solemn mood, he reviewed his late action calmly, and felt ashamed of himself for his vanity, and for the obstancy which had followed it. And then and there, he made up his mind that the present would be the last time he would wear the costume which had estranged him from those whom he loved, and which had caused him so many hours and days of shagering vexation and pain. But almost as soon as he arrived at this conclusion, another voice seemed to speak within him, and mockingly to ask him if he should ever get the chance to wear the suit again, but it was too late. He had chosen his course and must now abide the issue. He's not too late, came the quick answer of his better self, and full of the thought, he rose up to go home and divest himself of the now hateful costume right away. He paused for one look at the beautiful scene, the light lay pale and mellow, softening every outline of rock and tree and house top, and deepening the shadows into velvety black, and lighting, as with a pale flame the incoming tide that now crept fringe-like across the flat waist of sand. Then he left the rock and stepped out for the shore. But as he did so, a frugal spasm of horror shook him, and for an instant the blood rushing to his head shut out all the light of the full moon. Once more he saw that fatal image of himself moving beyond the quicksand from the opposite rock to the shore. The shock was all the greater for the contrast with the spell of peace which he had just enjoyed, and almost paralysed in every sense, he stood and watched the fatal vision and the wrinkly, crawling quicksand that seemed to writhe and yearn for something that lay between. There could be no mistake this time, for though the moon behind threw the face into shadow, he could see there the same-shaven cheeks as his own, and the small stubby moustache of a few weeks' growth. The light shone on the brilliant tartan and on the eagle's plume, even the bold space at one side of the glengarry cap glistened, as did the kangon brooch on the shoulder and the tops of the silver buttons. As he looked, he felt his feet slightly sinking, for he was still near the edge of the belt of quicksand, and he stepped back. As he did so, the other figure stepped forward, so that the space between them was preserved. So the two stood facing each other, as though in some weird fascination, and in the rushing of the blood through his brain, Markham seemed to hear the words of the prophecy, See thyself face to face, and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee. He did stand face to face with himself. He had repented, and now he was sinking in the quicksand, the warning and prophecy were coming true. Above him, the seagull screamed, circling round the fringe of the incoming tide, and the sound being entirely morsel recalled into himself. On the instant he stepped back a few quick steps, for as yet only his feet were merged in the soft sand. As he did so, the other figure stepped forward, and coming with him, the deadly grip of the quicksand began to sink. It seemed to Markham that he was looking at himself going down to his doom, and on the instant the anguish of his soul found vent in a terrible cry. There was at the same instant a terrible cry from the other figure, and as Markham threw up his hands, the figure did the same. With horror struck eyes, he saw him sink deeper into the quicksand, and then, impelled by what power he knew not, he advanced again towards the sand to meet his fate. But at his more forward foot began to sink, he heard again the cries of the seagulls, which seemed to restore his benumbed faculties. With a mighty effort, he drew his foot out of the sand, which seemed to clutch it, leaving his shoe behind, and then in sheer terror, he turned and ran from the place, never stopping till his breath and strength failed him, and he sank, half-swimming on the grassy path through the sand hills. Arthur Markham made up his mind not to tell his family of his terrible adventure, until at least such time as he should be complete master of himself. Now that the fatal double, his other self, had been engulfed in the quicksand, he felt something like his old peace of mind. That night, he slept soundly, and did not dream at all, and in the morning was quite his old self. It really seemed as though his newer and worse herself had disappeared forever, and strangely enough, Saf Tami was absent from his post that morning, and never appeared there again, but sat in his old place, watching nothing as of old, with lacklustre eye. In accordance with his resolution, he did not wear his highland suit again, but one evening, tied it up in a bundle, claymore, dupe, filibeg and all, and bringing it secretly with him, threw it into the quicksand. With a feeling of intense pleasure, he saw it sucked below the sand, which closed above it into marvell smoothness. Then he went home, and announced cheerily to his family, assembled for evening prayers, Well my dears, you'll be glad to hear that I've abandoned my idea of wearing the highland dress. I see now what a vain old fool I was, and how ridiculous I may have myself shall never see it again. Where is it, father? That's one of the girls wishing to say something so that such a self-sacrificing announcement as a father's should not be passed in absolute silence. His answer was so sweetly given that the girl rose from her seat and came and kissed him. It was in the quicksand, my dear, and out of it my worse herself was buried there along with it, forever. The remainder of the summer was past it crooked with delight by all the family, and on his return to town, Mr. Markham had almost forgotten the whole of the incident of the quicksand, and all touching on it, when one day he got a letter from the McCallum Moor, which caused him much thought, so he said nothing of it to his family, and left it, for certain reasons, and answered. It ran as followed, the McCallum Moor and Roderick MacDew, the Scotch Allwall Tartan Clothing Mart, Coptall Court, E.C. 30th of September, 1892 Dear sir, I trust you will pardon the liberty which I take in writing to you, but I am so desirous of making inquiry, and I am informed that you have been sojourning during the summer in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Enby. My partner, Mr. Roderick MacDew, as he appears with business reasons on our bail heads and in our advertisements, his real name being Emmanuel Moses Marks of London, went early last month to Scotland, Enby, for a tour, but as I have only once heard from him, shortly after his departure, I am anxious lest any misfortune may have befallen him. As I have been unable to obtain any news of him while making all inquiries in my power, I venture to appeal to you. His letter was written in deep dejection of spirit, and mentioned that he feared a judgment had come upon him for wishing to appear as a Scotchman on Scottish soil, as he had one moonlight night shortly after his arrival, seen his Wraith. He evidently alluded to the fact that before his departure he had procured for himself a highland costume, similar to that which we had the honour to supply to you, with which, as perhaps you will remember, he was much struck. He may, however, never have worn it, as he was, to my own knowledge, diffident about putting it on, and even went so far as to tell me that he would at first only venture to wear it late at night or very early in the morning, and then only in remote places, until such time as he should get accustomed to it. Unfortunately, he did not advise me of his route, so that I am in complete ignorance of his whereabouts, and I venture to ask if you may have seen or heard of a highland costume, similar to your own, having been seen anywhere in the neighbourhood in which I am told you have recently purchased the estate which you temporarily occupied. I shall not expect an answer to this letter, unless you can give me some information regarding my friend and partner. So pray, do not trouble to reply, unless there be cause. I am encouraged to think that you may have been in your neighbourhood, as, though his letter is not dated, the envelope is marked with a postmark of Yellen, which I find is in Aberdynshire, and not far from the mains of Crookin. I have the honour to be, dear sir, yours very respectfully. Joshua Sheehany Cohen Benjamin The McCallum Moor End of Crookin Sands End of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Tales by Bram Stoker