 Chapter 4 of The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories Keeping His Promise It was eleven o'clock at night and young Marriott was locked into his room, cramming as hard as he could cram. He was a fourth year man at Edinburgh University, and he had been plowed for this particular examination so often that his parents had positively declared they could no longer supply the funds to keep him there. His rooms were cheap and dingy, but it was the lecture fees that took the money. So Marriott pulled himself together at last and definitely made up his mind that he would pass or die in the attempt, and for some weeks now he had been reading as hard as mortal man can read. He was trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed conclusively he did not understand the value of either. For no ordinary man, and Marriott was in every sense an ordinary man, can't afford to drive the mind as he had lately been driving his without sooner or later paying the cost. Among the students he had few friends or acquaintances and these few had promised not to disturb him at night, knowing he was at last reading an earnest. It was, therefore, with feelings a good deal stronger than mere surprise that he heard his doorbell ring on this particular night and realized that he was to have a visitor. Some men would simply have muffled the bell and gone on quietly with their work. But Marriott was not this sort. He was nervous. It would have bothered and pecked at his mind all night long not to know who the visitor was and what he wanted. The only thing to do, therefore, was to let him in and out again as quickly as possible. The landlady went to bed at ten o'clock punctually, after which hour nothing would induce her to pretend she heard the bell. So Marriott jumped up from his books with an exclamation that augured ill for the reception of his caller and prepared to let him in with his own hand. The streets of Edinburgh town were very still at this late hour. It was late for Edinburgh and in the quiet neighborhood of F Street, where Marriott lived on the third floor, scarcely a sound broke the silence. As he crossed the floor, the bell rang a second time with unnecessary clamor, and he unlocked the door and passed in the little hallway with considerable wrath and annoyance in his heart at the insolence of the double interruption. The fellows all know I'm reading for this exam. Why in the world do they come to bother me at such an unearthly hour? The inhabitants of the building with themselves were medical students, general students, poor writers to the signet, and some others whose vocations were perhaps not so obvious. The stone staircase dimly lighted at each floor by a gas jet that would not turn above a certain height, wound down to the level of the street with no pretense at carpet or railing. At some levels it was cleaner than at others. It depended on the landlady of the particular level. The acoustic properties of a spiral staircase seemed to be peculiar. Marriott, standing by the open door, booked in hand, thought every moment the owner of the footsteps would come into view. The sound of the boots was so close and so loud that they seemed to travel disproportionately in advance of their cause, wondering who it could be. He stood ready with all manner of sharp greetings for the man who dared thus to disturb his work. But the man did not appear. The steps sounded almost under his nose, yet no one was visible. A sudden queer sensation of fear passed over him, a faintness and a shiver down the back. It went, however, almost as soon as it came, and he was just debating whether he would call aloud to his invisible visitor or slam the door and return to his books when the cause of the disturbance turned the corner very slowly and came into view. It was a stranger. He saw a youngish man, short of figure and very broad. His face was the color of a piece of chalk, and the eyes, which were very bright, had heavy lines underneath them. Though the cheeks and chin were unshaven and the general appearance unkempt, the man was evidently a gentleman, for he was well dressed and bore himself with a certain air. But, strangest of all, he wore no hat, and carried none in his hand, and although rain had been falling steadily all the evening, he appeared to have neither overcoat nor umbrella. A hundred questions sprang up in Marriott's mind and rushed to his lips. Chief among them was something like, who in the world are you and what in the name of heaven do you come to me for? But none of these questions found time to express themselves in words for almost at once the caller turned his head a little so that the gaslight in the hall fell upon his features from a new angle. Then in a flash Marriott recognized him. Field! Man alive, is it you? He gasped. The fourth year man was not lacking in intuition, and he perceived it once, that here was a case for delicate treatment. He divined without any actual process of thought that the catastrophe often predicted it come at last, and that this man's father had turned him out of the house. They had been at a private school together years before, and though they had hardly met once since, the news had not failed to reach him from time to time with considerable detail. For the family lived near his own, and between certain of the sisters there was great intimacy. Young Field had gone wild later. He remembered hearing about it all, drink, a woman, opium, or something of the sort. He could not exactly call to mind. Come in, he said all at once, his anger vanishing. There's been something wrong, I can see. Come in and tell me about it, and perhaps I can help. He hardly knew what to say, and stammered a lot more besides. The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that lay remote from his own select little atmosphere, of books and dreamings. But he had a man's heart for all that. He led the way across the hall, shutting the front door carefully behind him, and noticed as he did so that the other, though certainly sober, was unsteady on his legs and evidently much exhausted. Marriott might not be able to pass his examinations, but he at least knew the symptoms of starvation, acute starvation, unless he was much mistaken, when they stared him in the face. Come along, he said cheerfully, and with genuine sympathy in his voice. I'm glad to see you, I was going to have a bite of something to eat, and you're just in time to join me. The other made no audible reply, and shoveled so feebly with his feet that Marriott took his arm by way of support. He noticed for the first time that the clothes hung on him with pitiful looseness. The broad frame was literally hardly more than a frame. He was as thin as a skeleton, but as he touched him the sensation of faintness and dread returned. It only lasted a moment and then passed off, and he ascribed it not unnaturally to the distress and shock of seeing a former friend in such a pitiful plight. Better let me guide you, it's shamefully dark this hall. I'm always complaining, he said lightly, recognizing by the weight upon his arm that the guidance was sorely needed. But the old cat never does anything except promise. He led him to the sofa, wondering all the time where he had come from, and how he had found out the address. It must be at least seven years since those days at the private school, when they used to be such close friends. Now if you'll forgive me for a minute, he said, I'll get supper ready, such as it is. And no bother to talk, just take it easy on the sofa. I see you're dead tired. You can tell me about it afterwards and we'll make plans. The other sat down on the edge of the sofa and stared in silence while Marriott got out the brown loaf scones and a huge pot of marmalade that Edinburgh students always keep in their cupboards. His eyes shown with the brightness of suggested drugs, Marriott thought, stealing a glance at him from behind the cupboard wall. He did not like yet to take a full square look. The fellow was in a bad way, and it would have been so like an examination to stare and wait for explanations. Besides, he was evidently almost too exhausted to speak, so for reasons of delicacy, and for another reason as well which he could not exactly formulate to himself, he let his visitor rest apparently unnoticed while he busied himself with the supper. He let the spirit lamp to make cocoa, and when the water was boiling he drew up the table with the good things to the sofa so the field need not have even the trouble of moving to a chair. Now let's tuck in, he said, and afterwards we'll have a pipe and a chat. I'm reading for an exam, you know, and I always have something about this time. It's jolly to have a companion. He looked up, and caught his guest's eyes directly straight upon his own. An involuntary shudder ran through him from head to foot. The face opposite him was deadly white and wore a dreadful expression of pain and mental suffering. Like Gad, he said, jumping up. I quite forgot, I've got some whiskey somewhere. What an ass I am. I never touch it myself when I'm working like this. He went to the cupboard and poured out a stiff glass which the other swallowed at a single gulp and without any water. Mary had watched him while he drank and at the same time noticed something else as well. Field's coat was all over dust and on one shoulder was a bit of cobweb. It was perfectly dry, Field arrived on a soaking wet night without hat, umbrella, or overcoat, and yet perfectly dry even dusty. Therefore he had been under cover. What did it all mean? Had he been hiding in the building? It was very strange, yet he volunteered nothing, and Mary had had pretty well made up his mind by this time that he would not ask any questions until he had eaten and slept. Food and sleep were obviously what the poor devil needed most and first. He was pleased with his powers of ready diagnosis, and it would not be fair to press him till he had recovered a bit. They ate their supper together while the host carried on running one side of conversation, beautifully about himself and his exams and his old cat of a landlady, so that the guests need not utter a single word unless he really wished to, which he evidently did not. But while he toyed with his food, feeling no desire to eat, the other ate voraciously. To see a hungry man devour cold scones, stale oat cake, and brown bread laden with marmalade was a revelation to this inexperienced student who had never known what it was to be without at least three meals a day. He watched in spite of himself wondering why the fellow did not choke in the process. But Field seemed to be as sleepy as he was hungry, more than once his head dropped and he ceased to masticate the food in his mouth. Mary had had positively to shake him before he would go on with his meal. A stronger emotion will overcome a weaker, but this struggle between the sting of real hunger and the magical opiate of overpowering sleep was a curious sight to the student who watched it with mingle astonishment and alarm. He had heard of the pleasure it was to feed hungry men and watch them eat, but he had never actually witnessed it, and he had no idea it was like this. Field ate like an animal. Gobbled, stuffed, gorged, Mary had forgot his reading and began to feel something very much like a lump in his throat. Afraid there had been awfully little to offer you, old man, he managed to blurt out at length the last scone had disappeared. And the rapid, one-sided meal was at an end. Field still made no reply, for he was almost asleep in his seat. He merely decked up wearily and gratefully. Now you must have some sleep, you know, he continued, or you'll go to pieces. I shall be up all night reading for this blessed exam. You're more than welcome to my bed. Tomorrow we'll have a late breakfast and see what can be done and make plans. I'm awfully good at making plans, you know, he added with an attempt at lightness. Field maintained his dead sleepy silence, but appeared acquiesce and the other led the way into the bedroom, apologizing as he did so to this half-starved son of a baronet, whose own home was almost a palace, for the size of the room. The weary guest, however, made no pretense of thanks or politeness. He merely steadied himself on his friend's arm as he staggered across the room, and then, with all his clothes on, dropped his exhausted body on the bed in less than a minute. He was, to all appearances, sound asleep. For several minutes, Marriott stood in the open door and watched him, praying devoutly that he might never find himself in a like predicament, and then fell to wondering what he would do with his unbidden guest on the morrow. But he did not stop long to think, for the call of his books was imperative, and happened what might he must see to it that he passed that examination. Having again locked the door into the hall, he set down to his books his notes on Materia Medica, where he had left off when the bell rang. But it was difficult for some time to concentrate his mind on the subject. His thoughts kept wondering to the picture of that white-faced, strange-eyed fellow, starved and dirty, lying in his clothes and boots on the bed. He recalled their school days together before they had drifted apart, and how they had vowed eternal friendship and all the rest of it. And now, what horrible straits to be in! How could any man let the love of dissipation take such hold upon him? But one of their vows together, Marriott had seemed, had completely forgotten. Just now at any rate, it lay too far in the background of his memory to be recalled. Through the half-open door, the bedroom let out of the sitting room and had no other door, he in the sound of deep, long-drawn breathing, the regular, steady breathing of a tired man, so tired that, even to listen to it, made Marriott almost want to go to sleep himself. He needed it, reflected the student, and perhaps it came only just in time. Perhaps so. For outside the bitter wind from across the fourth howled cruelly and drove the wind in cold streams against the windowpanes, and down the deserted streets. Long before Marriott settled down again properly to his reading, he heard distantly, as it were, through the sentences of the book, the heavy, deep breathing of the sleeper in the next room. A couple of hours later, when he yawned and changed his books, he still heard the breathing and went cautiously up to the door to look round. At first the darkness of the room must have deceived him, or else his eyes were confused and dazzled by the recent glare of the reading lamp. For a minute or two he can make out nothing at all but dark lumps of furniture, the mass of the chest of drawers by the wall, and the white patch where his bath stood in the center of the floor. Then the bed came slowly into view, and already saw the outline of the sleeping body gradually take shape before his eyes growing up strangely into the darkness, till it stood out in marked relief, the long black form against the white counterpane. He could hardly help smiling. Field had not moved an inch. He watched him a moment or two and then returned to his books. The night was full of the singing voices of the wind and rain. There was no sound of traffic, no handsomes clattered over the cobbles, and it was still too early for the milk carts. He worked on steadily and conscientiously, only stopping now and again to change a book, or to sip some of the poisonous stuff that kept him awake and made his brain so active, and on these occasions Field's breathing was always distinctly audible in the room. Outside the storm continued to howl, but inside the house all was stillness. The shade of the reading lamp threw all the light upon the littered table, leaving the other end of the room in comparative darkness. The bedroom door was exactly opposite him where he sat. There was nothing to disturb the worker, nothing but an occasional rush of wind against the windows and a slight pain in his arm. This pain, however, which he was unable to account for, grew once or twice very acute. It bothered him, and he tried to remember how and when he could have bruised himself so severely, but without success. At length the page before him turned from yellow to gray, and there were sounds of wheels in the street below. It was four o'clock. Marriott leaned back, and yawned prodigiously. Then he drew back the curtains. The storm had subsided, and the castle rock was shrouded in mist. With another yawn he turned away from the jury outlook and prepared to sleep the remaining four hours till breakfast on the sofa. Field was still breathing heavily in the next room, and he first tiptoed across the floor to take another look at him. Peering cautiously, round the half-open door his first glance fell upon the bed now plainly discernable in the gray light of morning. He stared hard. Then he rubbed his eyes. Then he rubbed his eyes again and thrust his head farther round the edge of the door. With fixed eyes he stared harder still and harder, but it made no difference at all. He was staring into an empty room. The sensation of fear he had felt when Field first appeared upon the scene returned suddenly, but with much greater force. He became conscious, too, that his left arm was throbbing violently and causing him great pain. He stood wondering and staring and trying to collect his thoughts. He was trembling from head to foot. By a great effort of the will he left the support of the door and walked forward boldly into the room. There upon the bed was the impress of a body where Field had lain and slept. There was the mark of the head on the pillow, and the slight indentation at the foot of the bed where the boots had rested on the counterpane. And there, plainer than ever, for he was closer to it, was the breathing. Mary tried to pull himself together. With a great effort he found his voice and called his friend aloud by name. Field, is that you? Where are you? There was no reply, but the breathing continued without interruption, coming directly from the bed. His voice had such an unfamiliar sound that Mary did not care to repeat his questions. But he went down on his knees and examined the bed above and below, pulling the mattress off finally and taking the coverings away separately, one by one. But though the sounds continued, there was no visible sign of Field, nor was there any space in which a human being, however small, could have concealed itself. He pulled the bed out from the wall, but the sounds stayed where it was. It did not move with the bed. Mary at finding self-control a little difficult in his weary condition, at once set upon a thorough search of the room. He went through the cupboard, the chest of drawers, the little alcove where the clothes hung. Everything. But there was no sign of anyone. A small window near the ceiling was closed and anyhow was not large enough to let a cat pass. The sitting-room door was locked on the inside, he could not have got out that way. His thoughts began to trouble Mary's mind, bringing in their train unwelcome sensations. He grew more and more excited. He searched the bed again till it resembled the scene of a pillow fight. He searched both rooms, knowing all the time it was useless, and then he searched again. A cold perspiration broke out all over his body in the sound of heavy breathing, all this time, never ceased to come from the corner where Field had lain down to sleep. Then he tried something else. He pushed the bed back exactly into its original position and lay himself down upon it, just where his guests had lain. But the same instant he sprang up in a single bound. The breathing was close beside him, almost on his cheek and between him and the wall. Now even a child could have squeezed into the space. He went back to his sitting-room, opened the windows, welcoming all the light and air possible, and tried to think the whole matter over quietly and clearly. Men who read too hard and slept too little, he knew were sometimes troubled with very vivid hallucinations. Again he calmly reviewed every incident of the night, his accurate sensations, the vivid details. The emotions stirred in him, the dreadful feast. No single hallucination could ever combine all these and cover so long a period of time. But with less satisfaction he thought of the recurring faintness and curious sense of horror that it once or twice come upon him and then of the violent pains in his arm. These were quite unaccountable. Moreover, now that he began to analyze and examine, there was one other thing that fell upon him like a sudden revelation. During the whole time Field had not actually uttered a single word. Yet as though in mockery upon his reflections, there came ever from that inner room the sound of the breathing, long drawn, deep and regular. The thing was incredible, it was absurd. Haunted by visions of brain fever and insanity, a myriad put on his cap in Macintosh and left the house. The morning air on Arthur's seat would blow the cobwebs from his brain, the scent of the heather and above all the sight of the sea. He roamed over the wet slopes above Holyrood for a couple of hours and he had not returned until the exercise had shaken some of the horror out of his bones and given him a ravining appetite into the bargain. As he entered, he saw that there was another man in the room standing against the window with his back to the light. He recognized his fellow student Green who was reading for the same examination. Red heart all night, Marriott, he said, and thought I'd drop in here to compare notes and have some breakfast. You're out early, he added by way of question. Marriott said he had a headache and a walk had helped it and Green nodded and said, ah. The girl had set the steaming porridge on the table and gone out again. He went on with rather a forced tone. Didn't know you had any friends who drank, Marriott. This was obviously tentative and Marriott replied dryly that he did not know it either. Sounds just as if some chap were sleeping it off in there, doesn't it, though? Persisted the other with a nod in the direction of the bedroom and looking curiously at his friend the two men stared steadily at each other for several seconds and then Marriott said earnestly, then you hear it too, thank God. Of course I hear it, the door's open, sorry if I wasn't meant to. Oh, I didn't mean that, said Marriott, lowering his voice, but I'm awfully relieved. Let me explain, of course, if you hear it too, then it's all right, but really it frightened me more than I can tell you I thought I was going to have brain fever or something and you know what a lot depends on this exam. It always begins with sounds or visions or some sort of beastly hallucination and I, wrought, ejected the other impatiently, what are you talking about? Now listen to me, Green, said Marriott as calmly as he could, where the breathing was still plainly audible and I'll tell you what I mean, only don't interrupt and thereupon he related exactly what had happened during the night telling everything even down to the pain in his arm. When it was over he got up from the table and crossed the room. You hear the breathing now plainly, don't you, he said? Green said he did. Well, come with me and we'll search the room together. The other, however, did not move from his chair. I've been in already, said sheepishly. I heard the sounds and thought it was you, the door was ajar so I went in. Marriott made no comment but pushed the door open as wide as it would go. As it opened the sound of breathing grew more and more distinct. Someone must be in there, said Green under his breath. Someone is in there, but where, said Marriott. Again he urged his friend to go in with him, but Green refused point blanks that he had been in once and had searched the room and there was nothing there. He would not go in again for a good deal. They shut the door and retired into the other room to talk it all over with many pipes. Green questioned his friend very closely, without illuminating result since questions cannot alter facts. The only thing that ought to have a proper, a logical explanation is the pain in my arm, said Marriott, rubbing the member with an attempt at a smile. It hurts so infernally and aches all the way up I can't remember bruising it though. Let me examine it for you, said Green. I'm awfully good at bones in spite of the examiner's opinion to the contrary. It was a relief to play the fool a bit and Marriott took his coat off and rolled up his sleeve. By George, though, I'm bleeding, he explained. Look here, what on earth's this? On the forearm, quite close to the wrist, was a thin red line. There was a tiny drop of apparently fresh blood on it. Green came over and looked closely at it for some minutes. Then he sat back in his chair, looking curiously at his friend's face. You scratched yourself without knowing it, he said presently. There's no sign of a bruise, it must have been something else that made the arm ache. Marriott said very still, staring silently at his arm as though the solution of the whole mystery lay there actually written upon the skin. What's the matter? I see nothing very strange about a scratch, said Green, in an unconvincing sort of voice. It was your cufflinks, probably, last night in your excitement. But Marriott, wiped to the very lips, was trying to speak. The sweat stood in great beads on his forehead. At last he leaned forward close to his friend's face. Look! he said in a low voice that shook a little. Do you see that red mark, I mean, underneath what you call the scratch? Green admitted he saw something or other, and Marriott wiped the place clean with his handkerchief and told him to look again more closely. Yes, I see, returned the other, lifting his head after a moment's careful inspection. It looks like an old scar. It is an old scar, whispered Marriott, his lips trembling. Now it all comes back to me. All what! Green fidgeted it on his chair. He tried to laugh, but without success his friend seemed bordering on collapse. Hush! be quiet and I'll tell you, he said. Field made that scar. For a whole moment the two men looked at each other full in the face without speaking. Field made that scar, repeated Marriott at length in a louder voice. Field, you mean last night? No, not last night, years ago, at school with his knife. Field made his scar in his arm with mine, Marriott was talking rapidly now. We exchanged drops of blood in each other's cuts. He put a drop into my arm and I put one into his. In the name of heaven, what for? It was a boy's compact who made a sacred pledge of bargain. I remember it all perfectly now. We had been reading some dreadful book and we swore to appear to one another. I mean, whoever died first swore to show himself to the other, with the compact with each other's blood. I remember it all so well. The hot summer afternoon in the playground, seven years ago, and one of the masters caught us and confiscated the knives. And I have never thought of it again to this day. And you mean, stammered Green? But Marriott made no answer. He got up and crossed the room and laid down weirdly upon the sofa, hiding his face in his hands. Green himself was a bit nonplussed. He left his friend alone for a little while, thinking it all over again. Suddenly ideas seemed to strike him. He went over to where Marriott's delay emotionalist on the sofa enraused him. In any case, it was better to face the matter whether there was an explanation or not. Giving in was always the silly exit. I say, Marriott. He began as the other turned his white face up to him. There's no good being so upset about it. I mean, if it's all an hallucination, we know what to do. And if it isn't, well, we know what to think, don't we? I suppose so. But it frightens me horribly for some reason, returned his friend in a hush-voiced and that poor devil. But after all, if the worst is true and that chap has kept his promise, well, he has. That's all, isn't it? Marriott nodded. There's only one thing that occurs to me, Green went on. That is, are you quite sure that he actually ate like that? I mean that he actually ate anything at all. He finished blurting out his thought. Marriott stared at him for a moment and then said he could easily make certain. He spoke quietly after the main shock, no lesser surprise could affect him. I put the things away myself, he said, after we had finished. They were on the third shelf in that cupboard. No one's touched him since. He pointed without getting up and Green took the hint and went over to look. Exactly, he said, after a brief examination, just as I thought, it was partly hallucination at any rate. The things haven't been touched, come and see for yourself. Together they examined the shelf. There was the brown loaf, the plate of stale scones, the oat cake, all untouched. Even the glass of whiskey Marriott had poured out, stood there with the whiskey still in it. You were feeding no one, field ate and drank nothing. He was not there at all. But the breathing urged the other in a low voice staring out with a dazed expression on his face. Green did not answer. He walked over to the bedroom while Marriott followed him with his eyes. He opened the door and listened. There was no need for words. The sound of deep, regular breathing came floating through the air. There was no hallucination about that at any rate. Marriott could hear it where he stood on the other side of the room. Green closed the door and came back. There's only one thing to do, he declared with decision. Write home and find out about him, and meanwhile, come and finish your reading in my rooms. I've got an extra bed. Agreed, returned the fourth-year man. There's no hallucination about that exam. I must pass that whatever happens. And this was what they did. It was about a week later when Marriott got the answer from his sister. Part of it he read out to Green. It is curious, she wrote, that in your letter you should have inquired after field. It seems a terrible thing, but you know only a short while ago Sir John's patients became exhausted, and he turned him out of the house. They say without a penny. Well, what do you think? He has killed himself. At least it looks like suicide. Instead of leaving the house, he went down into the cellar and simply starved himself to death. They're trying to suppress it, of course, but I heard it all from my maid, who got it from their footman. They found the body on the fourteenth, and the doctor said he had died about twelve hours before. He was dreadfully thin. Then he died on the thirteenth, said Green. Marriott nodded. That's the very night he came to see you. Marriott nodded again. End of Chapter 4 Keeping His Promise Recording by Chris Pyle The Empty House and Other Girl Stories by Elginon Blackwood Chapter 5 With Intent to Steal To sleep in a lonely barn when the best bedrooms in the house were at our disposal seemed, to say the least, unnecessary, and I felt some explanation was due to our host. But Shorthouse, I soon discovered, had seen to all that our enterprise will be tolerated, not welcomed, for the master kept this sort of thing down with a firm hand. And then how little I could get this man, Shorthouse, to tell me. There was much I wanted to ask and hear, but he surrounded himself with impossible barriers. It was ludicrous. He was surely asking a good deal of me, and yet he would give so little in return. And his reason that it was for my own good may have been perfectly true, but did not bring me any comfort in his train. He gave me stops now and then, however, to keep up my curiosity, till I soon was aware that there were growing up side by side within me a genuine interest and an equally genuine fear, and something of both these probably necessary to all real excitement. The burning question was some distance from the house, on the side of the stables, and I had passed it on several my journeyings, and four, wondering at his forlorn and untired appearance under a regime where everything was so spic and span, but it never once occurred to me as possible that I should come to spend a night under its roof with a comparator stranger and undergo there an experience belonging to an order of things I had always rather ridiculed and despised. At the moment, I can only partially recall the process by which Shorthouse persuaded me to lend him my company. Like myself, he was a guest in his autumn house party, and where there were so many to chatter and to chaff, I think his taciturnity of manner had appealed to me by contrast and that I wished to repay something of what I owed. There was, no doubt, flattery in it as well, for he was more than twice my age of an amazingly wide experience and explorer of all the world's corners and danger-alert, and most subtle flattery of all by far the best shot in the whole party or host included. At first, however, I held out a bit. But surely the story you tell, I said, has the parentage common to all such tales a superstitious heart and imaginative brain and has grown now by frequent repetition into an authentic ghost story. Besides, this head gardener of half-century ago, I added, seeing that he still went on cleaning his gun in silence, who was he, and what positive information have you about him beyond the fact that he was found hangers from the rafter's dread. He was no mirror head gardener, this man who passed as such, he replied without looking up, but a fellow of splendid education who used his curious disguise for his own purpose. Part of this very burn of which he always kept the key was found to have been fitted up as a complete laboratory with alphanar, albric, kirkabyte, and other appliances, some on which the master destroyed at once, perhaps for the best, and which I have only been able to guess at. Black Arts, I laughed. Who knows, he rejoined quietly. The man undoubtedly possessed knowledge, dark knowledge, that was most unusual and dangerous, and I can discover no means by which he came to it, nor ordinary means, that is. But I have found many facts in the case which point to the exercise of a most desperate and a scrupulous will, and the strange disappearances in the neighborhood as well as the bones found buried in the kitchen garden, though never actually traced to him, seemed to me full of dreadful suggestion. I laughed again, a little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded one of the story of Gilles de Reyes, Martrelle of France, who was said to have killed and tortured to death in a few years, no less than 160 women and children for the purposes of necromancy and who was executed for his crimes at Nantes, but Sharthouse would not rise and only return to his subject. His suicide seems to have been only just in time to escape arrest, he said. A magician of no high order, then, I observed skeptically, if suicide was his only way of evading country police. The police of London and St. Petersburg, rather, returned to Shorthouse. For the headquarters of this pretty company was somewhere in Russia and its apparatus for all the marks of the most skillful foreign make. A Russian woman then employed in a household, governess or something, vanished too, about the same time it was never caught. She was no doubt the cleverest of the lot. And remember, the object of this appalling group was not mere vulgar gain, but a kind of knowledge that called for the highest qualities of courage and intellect into seekers. I admit I was impressed by the man's conviction of voice and manner, for there is something very compelling in the force of an earnest man's belief, though I still affected to sneer politely. But, like most black magicians, the fellow only succeeded in surpassing his own destruction, that of his tools rather, and of escaping himself, might better accomplish his objects elsewhere and otherwise, said Shorthouse, giving, as he spoke, the most minute attention to the cleaning of the lock. Elsewhere and otherwise, I gasped. As if the shell he left hanging from the rafter and the barn, in no way impeded the man's spirit from continuing his dreadful work under new conditions, he added quietly without noticing my interruption. The idea being that he sometimes revisits the garden and barn chiefly the barn, I exclaimed, for what purpose? Chiefly the barn, he finished, as if he had not heard me. That is, when there is anybody in it. I stared at him without speaking, for there was a wonder in me how he would add to this. When he wants fresh material, that is, he comes to steal from the living. Fresh material, I repeated aghast, to steal from the living. Even then, in broad daylight, I would be conscious of a creeping sensation at the roots of my hair, as if a cold breeze were passing over my skull. The strong vitality of the living is what this sort of creature is supposed to need most. He went on imperatively. And where he has worked and thought and struggled before, is the easiest place for him to get it in. The former conditions are in some way more easily reconstructed. He stopped suddenly, and devoted all his attention to the gun. It is difficult to explain, you know, rather, he added presently. And besides, it's much better that you should not know till afterwards. I made a noise that was beginning of a score of questions and as of many sentences, but it got no further than a mere noise, and Shorthouse, of course, stepped in again. Your skepticism, he added, is one of the qualities that induced me to ask you to spend the night there with me. In those days, he went on in response to my urging for more information. The family were much abroad and often traveled for years at a time. This man was invaluable in their absence. His wonderful knowledge of horticulture kept the gardens, French, Italian, English, in perfect order. He had carte blanche in a matter of expense, and, of course, selected all his own underlings. It was a sudden, unexpected return of the master that surprised the amazing stories of the countryside before the fellow, with all his cleverness had time to prepare or conceal. But there is no evidence, no more recent evidence, to show something is likely to happen if we sit up there. I asked, pressing him yet further, and I think to his liking, for it showed at least that I was interested. Has anything happened there lately, for instance? Shorthouse glanced up from the gun he was cleaning so assiduously, and his pipe curled up into a odd twist between me and the black-beared and oriental, suntanned face. The magnetism of his look and expression brought more sense of conviction to me than I had felt her though, and I realized that there had been a sudden little change in my attitude, and I was now much more inclined to go in for the adventure with him. At least, I thought, with such a man one would be safe in any emergency, for he is determined, resourceful, and to be depended upon. There's the point, he answered slowly, for there has apparently been a fresh outburst, an attack almost, it seems, quite recently. There is evidence, of course, plenty of it, or I should not feel the interest I do feel, but he hesitated a moment, as though considering how much he ought to let me know. But the fact is that three men this summer on separate occasions who have gone into that burn after nightfall have been accosted. Accosted, I repeated, betrayed an interruption by his choice of so singular a word. And one of the stable men, a recent arrival and quite ignorant of the story, who had to go in there late one night, saw a dark substance hanging down from one of the rafters, and when he climbed up, shaking all over to cut it down, for he said he felt sure it was a corpse, the knife passed through nothing but air, and he heard a sound up under his lips as if someone were laughing. Yet, while he slashed away and afterwards too, the thing went on swinging right there before his eyes and turning slowly with its own weight, like a huge joint on a spit. The man declares too that it had a large bearded face and that the mouth was open and drawn down like the mouth of a hanged man. Can we question this fellow? He's gone, gave notice at once, but not before I had questioned him myself closely. Then this was recent, I said, for our new short house had not been in the house more than a week. Four days ago, he replied, but more than that, only three days ago a couple of men were in there together in full daylight when one of them suddenly turned deadly faint. He said that he felt an overmastering impulse to hang himself, and he looked about for a rope that was furious when his companion tried to prevent him. But did he prevent him? Just in time, but not before he referred on to a beam. He was very violent. I had so much to say and ask that I could get nothing out in time and short house went on again. I've had a watching brief for this case, he said with a smile, whose will significance, however, completely escaped me at the time. And one of the most disagreeable features about it is the deliberate way the servants have invented excuses to go out to the place and always after dark. They have never been near in their lives before, probably. And now all of a sudden have shown the keenest desire and determination to go out there about dusk or soon after. With the most paltry and foolish excuses in the world, of course, he added, they would have been prevented, but the desire stronger than their superstitious dread, in which they cannot explain is very curious. Very, I admit it, feeling that my hair was beginning to stand up again. You see, he went on presently. It all points to volition. In fact, deliberate arrangement. It is no mere family ghost that goes with every envied house in England of a certain age. It is something real and something very malignant. He raised his face from the gun barrel, and for the first time his eye caught mine in the full. Yes, he was very much an earnest. Also, he knew a great deal more than he meant to tell. It is worth tempting and fighting, I think, he said. But I want a companion with me. Are you gay? His enthusiasm undoubtedly caught me, but I still wanted to hedge a bit. I'm very skeptical, I plead it. All the better, he said, almost as if to himself. You have the pluck. I have the knowledge. The knowledge? He looked around cautiously as if to make sure there was no one with an earshot. I have been in the place of myself, he said in a downward voice. Quite lately, in fact, only three nights ago, the day the man turned queer. I stared. But I was obliged to come out. Still I stared. Quickly, he added significantly. You've gone into the thing pretty thoroughly, was all I could find to say, for I had almost made up my mind to go with him, and was not sure that I wanted to hear too much beforehand. He nodded. It is a bore, of course, but I must do everything thoroughly or not at all. That is why you clean your own gun, I suppose. That's why, when there is any danger, I take as few chances as possible. He said, with the same ichnecmatical smile I had noticed before. And then he added with emphasis. And that is also why I ask you to keep me company now. Of course, the shaft went straight home and I gave my promise without further ado. Our preparations for tonight, a couple of rugs and a flask of black coffee were not elaborate and we found no difficulty about ten o'clock and abstained ourselves from the billiard room without attracting any curiosity. Short house met me by arrangement under the cedar on the back lawn and I at once realized with a vividness what a difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying them out in the dark. Ones coming since, at least in matters of this sort, is reduced to a minimum and imagination with all her attendance brights, upserts place of judgment. Two and two no longer make four. They make a mystery and mystery loses no time in growing into a menace. In this particular case, however, my imagination did not find wings very readily. For I knew that my companion was the most unmovable of men and an unemotional, solid, black of a man who would never lose his head and in any conceivable state of affairs would always take the right as well as a strong course. So my faith in the man gave me a false courage that was, nevertheless, very consoling and I looked forward to the night's adventure with a genuine appetite. Side by side and in silence we followed the path that skirted the east woods as they were called and then led across two hay fields and threw another wood to the barn which thus lay about half a mile from the lower farm. In D. it properly belonged and this made us realize more clearly how very ingenious must have been the excuses of the hall servants who felt the desire to visit it. It had been raining during the late afternoon and the trees were dripping heavily on all sides. But the moment we left the second wood and came out into the open, we saw a clearing with the stars overhead against which the barn outlined itself in a black, lumbungous barrel. Short house led the way still without a word and we crawled in through a low door and seated ourselves in a soft heap of hay in the extreme corner. Now, he said speaking for the first time, I'll show you the inside of the barn so that you may know where you are and what to do in case anything happens. A match flared in the darkness and with the help of two more that followed I saw the interior of a lofty and somewhat rickety looking barn erected upon a wall of stone that ran all around and extended to a height of perhaps four feet. Above this masonry rose the wooden sides running up into the usual vaulted roof and supported by a double tier of massive oak rafters which stretched across from wall to wall and were intersected by occasional uprights. I felt as if we were inside the skeleton of some anti-Divulian monster whose huge black ribs completely unfolded us. Most of this, of course, only sketched itself to my eye in the uncertain light of the flickering matches and when I said I had seen enough and the matches went out we were at once enveloped in an atmosphere as densely black as anything that I have ever known and the silence equaled to darkness. We made ourselves comfortable and talked in low voices. The rugs, which were very large covered our legs and their shoulders into a really luxurious bed of softness. Yet neither of us apparently felt sleepy. I certainly didn't and Shorthouse dropping his customary brevity that felt a little short of gruffness plunged into an easy run of talking that took the form after a time of personal reminiscence. This rapidly became a vivid narration of adventure and travel in far countries and at any other time I should have allowed myself to become completely absorbed in what he told but unfortunately I was never able for a single instant to forget the real purpose of our enterprise and consequently I felt all my senses more keenly on alert than usual and my attention accordingly more or less distracted. It was indeed a revelation to hear Shorthouse emboss himself in this fashion and to a young man it was of course doubly fascinating but the little sounds that always punctuate even the deepest silence out of doors claims some portion of my attention and as the night grew on I soon became aware that his tail seemed somewhat disconnected and abrupt and that in fact I heard really only a part of them. It was not so much that I actually heard other sounds but that I expected to hear them this is what stole the other half of my listening. There was neither wind nor rain to break the stillness and certainly there were no physical presences in our neighborhood for we were half a mile even from the lower farm and from the hall and stables at least a mile. Yet the stillness was being continually broken perhaps disturbed is a better word and it was to these very remote and tiny disturbances that I felt compelled to devote at least half of my listening faculties from time to time however I made a remark or asked a question to show that I was listening and interested but in a sense my questions always seemed to bear in one direction and to make for one issue namely my companions previous experience in the barn when he had been obliged to come out quickly apparently I could not help myself in a matter for this was really the one consuming curiosity I had and the fact that it was better for me not to know it made me the keener to know it all even the worst. Shorthouse realized this even better than I did I could tell it by the way he dodged or wholly ignored my questions and the subtle sympathy between us showed plainly enough had I been able at the time to reflect upon this meaning that the nerves of both of us were in a very sensitive and highly strong condition. Probably the complete confidence I felt in his ability to face whatever might happen and the extent to which also I relied upon him for my own courage prevented the exercise of my ordinary powers of reflection while it left my senses free to a more than unusual degree of activity. Chapter 5 Recording by Danny Williams www.dannywilliams.com Chapter 5 Part 2 of The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories 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 Kay Hand The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood with intent to steal Part 2 Things must have gone on in this way for a good hour or more when I made the sudden discovery that there was something unusual in the conditions of our environment. This sounds a roundabout mode of expression but I really know not how else to put it. The discovery almost rushed upon me. By rights we were two men waiting in an alleged haunted barn for something to happen and as two men who trusted one another implicitly though for very different reasons there should have been two minds keenly alert with the ordinary senses in active cooperation. Some slight degree of nervousness too there might also have been but beyond this nothing. It was therefore with something of dismay that I made the sudden discovery that there was something more and something that I ought to have noticed very much sooner than I actually did notice it. The fact was, Shorthouse's stream of talk was wholly unnatural. He was talking with a purpose. He did not wish to be cornered by my questions true but he had another in a deeper purpose still and it grew upon me as an unpleasant deduction from my discovery that this strong cynical unemotional man by my side was talking and had been talking all this time to gain a particular end. In this end I soon felt clearly was to convince himself but of what? For myself as the hours wore on towards midnight I was not anxious to find the answer but in the end it became impossible to avoid it and I knew as I listened that he was pouring forth this steady stream of vivid reminiscences of travel. South seas, big game, Russian exploration, women, adventures of all sorts because he wished the past to reassert itself to the complete exclusion of the present. He was taking his precautions. He was afraid. I felt a hundred things once this was clear to me but none of them more than the wish to get up at once and leave the barn. If Shorthouse was afraid already what in the world was to happen to me in the long hours that lay ahead? I only know that in my fierce efforts to deny myself the evidence of his partial collapse strength came that enabled me to play my part properly and I even found myself helping him by means of animated remarks upon his stories and by more or less judicious questions. I also helped him by dismissing from my mind any desire to inquire into the truth of his former experience and it was good I did so for had he turned it loose on me with those great powers of convincing description that he had at his command I verily believe that I should never have crawled from that barn alive. So at least I felt at the moment. It was the instinct of self-preservation and it brought sound judgment. Here then at least with different motives reached two by opposite ways we were both agreed upon one thing namely that temporarily we would forget. Fools we were for a dominant emotion is not so easily banished and we were forever recurring to it in a hundred ways direct and indirect. A real fear cannot be so easily trifled with and while we toyed on the surface with thousands and thousands of words mere words our subconscious activities were steadily gaining force and would before very long have to be properly acknowledged we could not get away from it at last when he had finished the recital of an adventure which brought him near enough to a horrible death I admitted that in my uneventful life I had never yet been face to face with a real fear. It slipped out inadvertently and of course without intention but the tendency in him at the time was too strong to be resisted he saw the loophole and made for it full tilt. It is the same with all the emotions he said the experiences of others never give a complete account until a man has deliberately turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years he has no knowledge of what they really are or of what they can do. Imaginative authors may write moralists may preach and scholars may criticize but they are dealing all the time in a coinage of which they know not the actual value. Their listener gets a sensation but not the true one until you have faced these emotions he went on with the same race of words that had come from him the whole evening and made them your own your slaves you have no idea of the power that is in them hunger that shows the light beckoning beyond the grave thirst that fills with mangled ice and fire passion love loneliness revenge and he paused for a minute and though I knew we were on the brink I was powerless to hold him and fear he went on fear I think that death from fear or madness from fear must sum up in a second of time the total of all the most awful sensations it is possible for a man to know then you yourself felt something of this fear I interrupted for you said just now I do not mean physical fear he replied for that is more or less a question of nerves and will and it is imagination that makes men cowards I mean an absolute fear a physical fear one might call it that reaches the soul and withers every power one possesses he said a lot more for he too was wholly unable to stem the torrent once it broke loose but I have forgotten it or rather mercifully I did not hear it for I stopped my ears and only heard the occasional words when I took my fingers out to find if he had come to an end in due course he did come to an end and there we left it for I then knew positively what he already knew that somewhere here in the night and within the walls of this very barn where we were sitting there was waiting something of dreadful malignancy and of great power something that we might both have to face air mourning and something that he had already tried to face once and failed in the attempt the night wore slowly on and it gradually became more and more clear to me that I could not dare to rely as at first upon my companion and that our positions were undergoing a slow process of reversal I think heaven this was not born in upon me too suddenly that I had at least the time to readjust myself somewhat to the new conditions preparation was possible even if it was not much and I sought by every means in my power to gather up all the shreds of my courage so that they might together make a decent rope that would stand the strain when it came the strain would come that was certain and I was thoroughly well aware though for my life I cannot put into words the reasons for my knowledge that the massing of the material against us was proceeding somewhere in the darkness with the determination in a horrible skill besides short house meanwhile talked without ceasing the great quantity of hay opposite or straw I believe it actually was seemed to dead in the sound of his voice but the silence too had become so oppressive that I welcomed his torrent and even dreaded the moment when it would stop I heard too the gentle ticking of my watch each second uttered its voice and dropped away into a gulf as if starting on a journey whence there was no return once a dog barked somewhere in the distance probably on the lower farm and once an owl hooded close outside and I could hear the swishing of its wings as it passed overhead above me in the darkness I could just make out the outline of the barn sinister and black the rows of rafters stretching across from wall to wall like wicked arms that pressed upon the hay short house deep in some involved yarn of the south seas that was meant to be full of cheer and sunshine and yet only succeeded in making a ghastly mixture of unnatural coloring seemed to care little whether I listened or not he made no appeal to me and I made one or two quite irrelevant remarks which passed him by and proved that he was merely uttering sounds he too was afraid of the silence I fell to wondering how long a man could talk without stopping then it seemed to me that these words of his went falling into the same gulf where the seconds dropped only they were heavier and fell faster I began to chase them presently one of them fell much faster than the rest and I pursued it and found myself almost immediately in a land of clouds and shadows they rose up and enveloped me pressing on the eyelids it must have been just here that I actually was asleep somewhere between twelve and one o'clock because as I chased this word at tremendous speed through space I knew that I had left the other words far very far behind me till at last I could no longer hear them at all the voice of the storyteller was beyond the reach of hearing and I was falling with ever increasing rapidity through an immense void a sound of whispering roused me two persons were talking under their breath close beside me the words the same escaped me but I caught every now and then bitten off phrases and half sentences to which however I could attach no intelligible meaning the words were quite close at my very side in fact and one of the voices sounded so familiar that curiosity overcame dread and I turned to look I was not mistaken it was short house whispering but the other person who must have been just a little beyond him was lost in the darkness and invisible to me and then that short house at once turned up his face and looked at me and by some means or other that caused me no surprise at the time I easily made out the features in the darkness they were an expression I had never seen there before he seemed distressed, exhausted, worn out and as though he were about to give in after a long mental struggle he looked at me almost beseechingly and the whispering of the other person died away they're at me he said I found it quite impossible to answer the words stuck in my throat his voice was thin, plaintive almost like a child I shall have to go I'm not as strong as I thought they'll call it suicide but of course it's really murder there was real anguish in his voice and it terrified me a deep silence followed these extraordinary words and I somehow understood that the other person was just going to carry on the conversation I even fancied I saw lips shaping themselves just over my friend's shoulder when I felt a sharp blow in the ribs and a voice this time a deep voice sounded in my ear I opened my eyes and a wretched dream vanished yet left behind it an impression of a strong and quite unusual reality do not try to go to sleep again he said sternly you seem exhausted do you feel so there was a note in his voice I did not welcome less than an alarm but certainly more than mere solicitude I do feel terribly sleepy all of a sudden I admitted ashamed so you may he added very earnestly but I rely on you to keep awake if only to watch you've been asleep for half an hour at least and you were so still I thought I'd wake you why I asked for my curiosity and nervousness were altogether too strong to be resisted do you think we are in danger I think they are about here now I can feel my vitality going rapidly that's always the first sign you'll last longer than I remember watch carefully the conversation dropped I was afraid to say all I wanted to say it would have been too unmistakably a confession and intuitively I realized the danger of admitting the existence of certain emotions until positively forced to but presently short house began again his voice sounded odd as if it had lost power it was more like a woman's or a boy's voice than a man's and recalled the voice in my dream I suppose you've got a knife he asked yes a big clasp knife but why? he may no answer you don't think a practical joke likely no one suspects we're here I went on nothing was more significant of our real feelings this night than the way we toyed with words and never dared more than to skirt the things in our mind it's just as well to be prepared he answered evasively better be quite sure see which pocket it's in so as to be ready I obeyed mechanically and told him but even this scrap of talk proved to me that he was getting further from me all the time in his mind he was following a line that was strange to me and as he distanced me I felt that the sympathy between us grew more and more strained he knew more it was not that I minded so much but that he was willing to communicate less and in proportion as I lost his support I dreaded his increasing silence not of words for he talked more volubley than ever and with a fiercer purpose but his silence and giving no hint of what he must have known to be really going on the whole time the night was perfectly still short house continued steadily talking and I jogged him now and again with remarks or questions in order to keep awake he paid no attention however to either about two in the morning a short shower fell and the drops rattled sharply on the roof like shot I was glad when it stopped for it completely drowned all other sounds and made it impossible to hear anything else that might be going on something was going on too all the time though for the life of me I could not say what the outer world had grown quite dim the house party, the shooters, the billiard room and the ordinary daily incidents of my visit all my energies were concentrated on the present and the constant strain of watching, waiting listening was excessively telling short house still talked of his adventures in some eastern country now and less connectedly these adventures, real or imaginary had quite a savor of the Arabian nights and did not by any means make it easier for me to keep my hold on reality the lightest weight will affect the balance under such circumstances and in this case the weight of his talk was on the wrong scale his words were very rapid and I found it overwhelmingly difficult not to follow them into that great gulf of darkness where they all rushed and vanished but that I knew meant sleep again yet it was strange I should feel sleepy when at the same time all my nerves were fairly tingling every time I heard what seemed like a step outside or a movement in the hay opposite the blood stood still for a moment in my veins doubtless the unremitting strain told upon me more than I realized and this was doubly great now that I knew short house was a source of weakness instead of strength as I had counted certainly a curious sense of languor upon me more and more and I was sure that the man beside me was engaged in the same struggle the feverishness of his talk proved this if nothing else it was dreadfully hard to keep awake but this time instead of dropping into the gulf I saw something come up out of it it reached our world by a door in the side of the barn furthest from me and it came in cautiously and silently and moved into the mass of hay opposite there for a moment I lost it but presently I caught it again higher up it was clinging like a great bat to the side of the barn something trailed behind it I could not make out what it crawled up the wooden wall and began to move out along one of the rafters a numb terror settled down all over me as I watched it the thing trailing behind it was apparently a rope the whispering began again just then but the only words I could catch seemed without meaning it was almost like another language the voices were above me under the roof suddenly I saw signs of active movement going on just beyond the place where the thing lay upon the rafter there was something else up there with it then followed panting like the quick breathing that accompanies effort and the next minute a black mass dropped through the air and dangled at the end of the rope instantly it all flashed upon me I sprang to my feet and rushed headlong across the floor of the barn how I moved so quickly in the darkness I do not know but even as I ran it flashed into my mind that I should never get at my knife in time to cut the thing down or else that I should find it had been taken from me somehow or other the goddess of dreams knows how I climbed up by the hay bales and swung out along the rafter I was hanging of course by my arms and the knife was already between my teeth though I had no recollection of how it got there it was open the mass hanging like a side of bacon was only a few feet in front of me and I could plainly see the dark line of rope that fastened it to the beam after the first time that it was swinging and turning in the air and that as I approached it seemed to move along the beam so that the same distance was always maintained between us the only thing I could do for there was no time to hesitate was to jump at it through the air and slash at the rope as I dropped I seized the knife with my right hand gave a great swing of my body with my legs and leaped forward at it through the air horrors it was closer to me than I knew and I plunged full into it I came with the knife, missed the rope and cut deeply into some substance that was soft and yielding but as I dropped past it the thing had time to turn half its width so that it swung around and faced me and I could have sworn as I rushed past it through the air that it had the features of short house the shock of this brought the vile nightmare to an abrupt end and I woke up a second time on the soft hay bed to find that the gray dawn was stealing in and that I was exceedingly cold I failed to keep awake in my sleep since it was growing light, must have lasted at least an hour a whole hour off my guard there was no sound from short house to whom of course my first thoughts turned probably his flow of words had ceased long ago and he too had yielded to the persuasions of the seductive God I turned to wake him and get the comfort of companionship for the horror of my dream went to my utter dismay I saw that the place where he had been was vacant it had been no little shock before to discover that the ally in whom lay all my faith and dependence was really frightened but it is quite impossible to describe the sensations I experienced when I realized he had gone altogether and that I was alone in the barn for a minute or two my head swam and I felt a prey to a hopeless terror the dream too still seemed half real so vivid had it been I was thoroughly frightened hot and cold by turns I lay at my side and handfuls and for some moments had no idea in the world what I should do this time at least I was unmistakably awake and I made a great effort to collect myself and face the meaning of the disappearance of my companion in this I succeeded so far that I decided upon a thorough search of the barn inside and outside it was a dreadful undertaking and I did not feel at all sure of being able to bring it to a conclusion but I knew pretty well that unless something was done at once it would collapse but when I tried to move I found that the cold, the fear and I know not what else unholy besides combined to make it almost impossible I suddenly realized that a tour of inspection during the hole of which my back would be open to attack was not to be thought of my will was not equal to it anything might spring upon me any moment from the dark corners and the growing light was just enough to reveal every movement I made that you might be watching for even then and while I was still half dazed and stupid I knew perfectly well that someone was watching me all the time with the utmost intentness I had not merely awakened I had been awakened I decided to try another plan I called to him my voice had a thin weak sound far away and quite unreal and there was no answer to it Hark though there was something that might have been a very faint voice near me I called again this time with greater distinctness short house where are you can you hear me there certainly was a sound but it was not a voice something was moving it was someone shuffling along and it seemed to be outside the barn I was afraid to call again and the sound continued it was an ordinary sound enough no doubt but it came to me just then as something unusual and unpleasant ordinary sounds remain ordinary only so long as one is not listening to them under the influence of intense listening they become unusual portentious and therefore extraordinary so this common sound came to me as something uncommon disagreeable it conveyed to an impression of stealth and with it there was another a slighter sound just at this minute the wind bore faintly over the field the sound of the stable clock a mile away it was three o'clock the hour when life's pulses beat lowest when poor souls lying between life and death made it hardest to resist vividly I remember this thought crashing through my brain with a sound of thunder and I realized that the strain on my nerves was nearing the limit and that something would have to be done at once if I was to reclaim my self-control at all when thinking over afterwards the events of this dreadful night it has always seemed strange to me that my second nightmare so vivid in its terror and its nearness should have furnished me with no inkling of what was really going on all this while and that I should not have been able to put two and two together or have discovered sooner than I did what this sound was and where it came from I can well believe that the vile scheming which lay behind the whole experience founded an easy trifle to direct my hearing amiss though of course it may equally well have been due to the confused condition of my mind at the time and to the general nervous tension under which I was undoubtedly suffering but whatever the cause for my stupidity at first and failing to trace the sound to its proper source I can only say here that it was with a shock of unexampled horror that my eye suddenly glanced upwards and caught sight of the figure moving in the shadows above my head among the rafters up to this moment I had thought that it was somebody outside the barn crawling round the walls till it came to a door and the rush of horror that froze my heart when I looked up and saw that it was short house creeping stealthily along a beam is something altogether beyond words to describe he was staring intently down upon me and I knew at once that it was he who had been watching me this point was I think for me the climax of feeling in the whole experience I was incapable of any further sensation that is any further sensation in the same direction but here the abominable character of the affair showed itself most plainly for it suddenly presented an entirely new aspect to me the light fell on the picture of a new angle and galvanized me into a fresh ability to feel when I thought a merciful numbness had supervened it may not sound a great deal in the printed letter but it came to me almost as if it had been an extension of consciousness for the hand that held the pencil suddenly touched in with ghastly effect of contrast the element of the ludicrous nothing could have been worse just then short house the masterful spirit so intrepid in the affairs of ordinary life whose power increased rather than lessened in the face of danger this man creeping on hands and knees along a rafter in a barn at three o'clock in the morning watching me all the time as a cat watches a mouse yes it was distinctly ludicrous and while it gave me a measure with which to gauge the dread emotion that caused his aberration it stirred somewhere deep in my interior the strings of an empty laughter one of those moments then came to me that are said to come sometimes under the stress of great emotion when in an instant the mind grows dazzlingly clear an abnormal lucidity took the place of my confusion of thought and I suddenly understood that the two dreams which I had taken for nightmares must really have been sent to me and that I had been allowed from one moment to look over the edge of what was to come the good was helping even when the evil was most determined to destroy I saw it all clearly now short house had overrated his strength the terror inspired by his first visit to the barn when he had failed had roused the man's whole nature to win and he had brought me to divert the deadly stream of evil that he had again underrated the power against him was a parent as soon as he had entered the barn and his wild talk and refusal to admit what he felt were due to this desire not to acknowledge the insidious fear that was growing in his heart but at length it had become too strong he had left my side in my sleep had been overcome himself perhaps first in his sleep by the dreadful impulse he knew that I should interfere and with every movement he made he watched me steadily for the mania was upon him and he was determined to hang himself he pretended not to hear me calling and I knew that anything coming between him and his purpose would meet the full force of his fury the fury of a maniac of one time being truly possessed for a minute or two I sat there and stared I saw then for the first time that there was a bit of rope trailing after him and that this was what made the rustling sound I had noticed short house two had come to a stop his body lay along the rafter like a crouching animal he was looking hard at me that widest patch was his face I can lay claim to no courage in the matter for I must confess in one sense I was frightened almost beyond control but at the same time the necessity for decided action if I was to save his life came to me with an intense relief no matter what animated him for the moment short house was only a man it was flesh and blood I had to contend with and not the intangible powers only a few hours before I had seen him cleaning his gun, smoking his pipe knocking the billiard balls about with very human clumsiness I flashed across my mind with the most wholesome effect then I dashed across the floor of the barn and leaped upon the hay bales as a preliminary to climbing up the sides to the first rafter it was far more difficult than in my dream twice I slipped back into the hay and as I scrambled up for the third time I saw that short house who thus far had made no sound or movement was now busily doing something with his hands upon the beam he was at its further end the other end I saw was already around his neck this gave me at once the necessary strength and in a second I had swung myself on to a beam crying aloud with all the authority I could put in my voice you fool man what in the world are you trying to do come down at once my energetic actions and words combined had an immediate effect upon him for which I blessed heaven he looked up from his horrid task stared hard at me for a second or two and they came wriggling along like a great cat to intercept me he came by a series of leaps and bounds and at an astonishing pace and the way he moved somehow inspired me with a fresh horror for it did not seem the natural movement of a human being at all but more as I have said like that of some lithe wild animal he was close upon me I had no clear idea of what exactly I meant to do I could see his face plainly now he was grinning cruelly the eyes were positively luminous and the menacing expression of the mouth was most distressing to look upon otherwise it was the face of a chalk man white and dead with all the semblance of the living human drawn out of it between his teeth he held my clasp knife which he must have taken from me in my sleep and with a flash I recalled his anxiety to know exactly which pocket it was in drop that knife to him and drop after it yourself don't you dare stop me he hissed the breath coming between his lips across the knife that he held in his teeth nothing in the world can stop me now I have promised and I must do it I can't hold out any longer then drop the knife and I'll help you I shouted back in his face I promise no use he cried laughing a little I must do it and you can't stop me I heard a sound of laughter too somewhere in the air behind me the next second short house came at me with a single bound to this day I cannot quite tell how it happened it is still a wild confusion and a fever of horror in my mind but from somewhere I drew more than my usual allowance of strength and before he could well have realized what I meant to do I had his throat between my fingers he opened his mouth and the knife dropped at once for I gave him a squeeze he need never forget before my muscles had felt like so much soaked paper now they recovered their natural strength and more besides I managed to work ourselves along the rafter until the hay was beneath us and then completely exhausted I let go my hold and we swung round together and dropped on the hay he clawing at me in the air even as we fell the struggle that began by my fighting for his life ended in a wild effort to save my own for short house was quite beside himself I had no idea what he was doing indeed he has always avert that he remembers nothing of the entire night's experience after the time when he first woke me from sleep a sort of deadly mist settled over him he declares and he lost all sense of his own identity the rest was a blank until he came to his senses under a mass of hay with me on the top of him it was the hay that saved us first by breaking the fall and then by impeding his movement so that I was able to prevent his choking me to death End of Chapter 5 Chapter 7 of the empty house and other ghost stories this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the empty house and other ghost stories by Algernon Blackwood Chapter 7 The Wood of the Dead One summer in my wanderings with a knapsack I was at luncheon in the room of a wayside inn in the western country when the door opened and there entered an old rustic who crossed close to my end of the table and sat himself down very quietly in the seat by the bow window we exchanged glances or properly speaking nods for at the moment I did not actually raise my eyes to his face so concerned was I with the important business of satisfying an appetite gained by tramping 12 miles over a difficult country the fine warm rain of 7 o'clock which had since risen in a kind of luminous mist about the treetops now floated far overhead in a deep blue sky and the day was settling down into a blaze of golden light it was one of those days peculiar to Somerset in North Devon when the orchards shine and the meadows seem to add a radiance of their own so brilliantly soft other colorings of grass and foliage the innkeeper's daughter a little maiden with a simple country loveliness presently entered with foaming pewter mug inquired after my welfare and went out again apparently she had not noticed the old man sitting in the saddle by the bow window nor had he for his part so much as once turned his head in our direction under ordinary circumstances I should probably have given no thought to this other occupant of the room but the fact that it was supposed to be reserved for private use and the singular thing that he sat looking aimlessly out of the window with no attempt to engage me in conversation drew my eyes more than once somewhat curiously upon him and I soon caught myself wondering why he sat there so silently and always with averted head he was, I saw a rather bent old man in rustic dress and the skin of his face was wrinkled like that of an apple corduroy trousers were caught up with a string below the knee and he wore a sort of brown fustian jacket that was very much faded his thin hand rested upon a stoutish stick he wore no hat and carried none and I noticed that his head covered with silvery hair was finely shaped and gave the impression of something noble though rather peaked by his studied disregard of my presence I came to the conclusion that he probably had something to do with the little hostel and had a perfect right to use this room with freedom and I finished my luncheon without breaking the silence and then took the settle opposite to smoke a pipe before going on my way through the open window came the scents of the blossoming fruit trees the orchard was drenched in sunshine and the branches danced lazily in the breeze the grass below fairly shone with white and yellow daisies and the red roses climbing in perfusion over the casement mingled their perfume with the sweetly penetrating odor of the sea it was a place to dawdle in to lie and dream away a whole afternoon watching the sleepy butterflies and listening to the chorus of birds which seemed to fill every corner of the sky indeed I was already debating in my mind whether to linger and enjoy it all instead of taking the strenuous pathway over the hills when the old rustic and the settle opposite suddenly turned his face towards me for the first time and began to speak his voice had a quiet dreamy note in it that was quite in harmony with the day and the scene but it sounded far away I thought almost as though it came to me from outside where the shadows were weaving their eternal tissue of dreams upon the garden floor however there was no trace in it of the rough quality one might naturally have expected now that I saw the full face of the speaker for the first time I noted with something like a start that the deep gentle eyes seemed far more in keeping with the timbre of his voice than with the rough and very contrived appearance of the clothes and manner his voice set pleasant waves of sound in motion towards me and the actual words if I remember rightly were you are a stranger in these parts or is not this part of the country strange to you there was no sir nor any outward and visible sign of the deference usually paid by real country folk to the town bread visitor but in its place a gentleness almost a sweetness of polite sympathy that was far more of a compliment than either I answered that I was wandering through a part of the country that was wholly new to me and that I was surprised not to find a place of such idealic loveliness marked upon my map I have lived here all my life he said with a sigh and I am never tired of coming back to it again then you no longer live in the immediate neighborhood I have moved he answered briefly adding after a pause in which his eyes seemed to wander wistfully to the wealth of blossoms beyond the window but I am almost sorry for nowhere else have I found the sunshine lie so warmly the flowers smell so sweetly where the winds and streams make such tender music his voice died away in a thin stream of sound that lost itself in the rustle of the rose leaves climbing in at the window for he turned his head away from me as he spoke and looked out into the garden but it was impossible to conceal my surprise and I raised my eyes and frank astonishment on hearing so poetic and utterance from such a figure of a man though at the same time realizing that it was not in the least inappropriate and that in fact no other sort of expression could have properly been expected from him I am sure you are right I answered at length when it was clear he had seized speaking or there is something of an enchantment here of real fairy-like enchantment that makes me think of the visions of childhood days before one knew anything of of had been oddly drawn into his vein of speech some inner force compelling me but here the spell passed and catch the thoughts that had a moment before opened a long vista before my inner vision to tell you the truth I concluded lamely the place fascinates me and I am too minds about going further even at this stage I remember thinking it odd that I should be talking like this with a stranger whom I met in a country inn for it has always been one of my failings to strangers my manner is brief to surliness it was as though we were figures meeting in a dream speaking without sound obeying laws not operative in the everyday working world and about to play with a new scale of space and time perhaps but my astonishment passed quickly into an entirely different feeling when I became aware that the old man opposite had turned his head from the window again and was regarding me with eyes so bright they seemed almost to shine with an inner flame his gaze was fixed upon my face with an intense ardor and his whole manner had suddenly become alert and concentrated there was something about him I now felt for the first time that made little thrills of excitement run up and down my back I met his look squarely but with an inward tremor stay then a little while longer he said in a much lower and deeper voice than before stay and I will teach you something of the purpose of my coming he stopped abruptly I was conscious of a decided shiver you have a special purpose then in coming back I asked hardly knowing what I was saying to call away someone he went on in that same thrilling voice someone who was not quite ready to come but who was needed elsewhere for a worthier purpose there was a sadness in his manner that mystified me more than ever you mean I began with an unaccountable access of trembling I have come for someone who must soon move even as I have moved he looked me through and through with a dreadfully piercing gaze but I met his eyes with a full straight stare trembling though I was and I was aware that something stirred within me that had never stirred before though for the life of me I could not put a name to it or have analyzed its nature and rolled away for one single second I understood clearly the past and the future existed actually side by side in one immense present that it was I who moved to and fro among shifting protein appearances the old man dropped his eyes from my face and the momentary glimpse of a mightier universe passed utterly away reason regained its sway over a whole limited kingdom come to night I heard the old man say come to me tonight into the wood of the dead come at midnight involuntarily I clutched the arm of the settle for support for I then felt that I was speaking with someone who knew more of the real things that are and will be that I could never know while in the body working through the ordinary channels of sense and this curious half promise of a partial lifting of the veil had its undeniable effect upon me the breeze from the sea had died away outside and the blossoms were still a yellow butterfly floated lazily past the window the song of the birds hushed I smelt the sea I smelt the perfume of heated summer air rising fields and flowers the ineffable sense of June and of the long days of the year and with it from countless green meadows beyond came the hum of myriad summer life children's voices sweet pipings and the sound of water falling I knew myself to be on the threshold of a new order of experience of an ecstasy something drew me forth with a sense of inexpressible yearning towards the being of this strange old man in the window seat and for a moment I knew what it was to taste a mighty and wonderful sensation and to touch the highest pinnacle of joy I have ever known it lasted for less than a second and it was gone but in that brief instant of time the same terrible lucidity came to me that have already shown me how the past and future exists in the present and I realized and understood that pleasure and pain are one and the same force for the joy I had just experienced included also all the pain I had ever felt and ever could feel the sunshine grew to dazzling radiance faded passed away the shadows paused in their dance upon the grass deepened a moment and then melted into air the flowers of the fruit trees laughed with their little silvery laughter as the wind sighed over their radiant eyes the old old tale of its personal love once or twice a voice called my name a wonderful sensation of lightness and power began to steal over me suddenly the door opened and the innkeeper's daughter came in by all ordinary standards hers was a charming country loveliness born of the stars and wild flowers of moonlight shining through autumn mists upon the river and the fields yet by contrast with the higher order of beauty I had just momentarily been surprised she seemed almost ugly how dull her eyes how thin her voice how vapid her smile and insipid her whole presentiment for a moment she stood between me and the occupant of the window seat while I counted out the small change for my meal and for her services but when an instant later she moved aside there was no longer anyone in the room but our two selves this discovery was no shock to me indeed I had almost expected it and the man had gone just as a figure goes out of a dream causing to no surprise and leaving me as part and parcel of the same dream without breaking of continuity but as soon as I had paid my bill and thus resumed in very practical fashion the thread of my normal consciousness I turned to the girl and asked her if she knew the old man who had been sitting in the window seat and what he had meant by the wood of the dead the maiden started visibly glancing quickly round the empty room but answering simply that she had seen no one I described him in great detail and then as the description grew clearer she turned a little pale under her pretty sunburn and said very gravely that it must have been the ghost ghost? what ghost? oh the village ghost she said quietly coming closer to my chair with a little nervous movement of genuine alarm and adding in a lower voice he comes before a death they say it was not difficult to induce a girl to talk and the story she told me shorn of the superstition that had obviously gathered with the years round the memory of a strangely picturesque figure was an interesting and peculiar one the in she said was originally a farmhouse occupied by a yeoman farmer evidently of a superior if rather eccentric character who had been very poor until he reached old age when a sun died suddenly in the colonies and left him an unexpected amount of money almost a fortune the old man thereupon altered no wit his simple manner of living but devoted his income entirely to the improvement of the village and to the assistance of its inhabitants he did this quite regardless of his personal likes and dislikes as if one and all were absolutely alike to him objects of a genuine and impersonal benevolence people had always been a little afraid of the man not understanding his eccentricities but the simple force of this love for humanity changed all that in a very short space of time and before he died he came to be known as the father of the village and was held in great love and veneration by all a short time before his end however he began to act clearly he spent his money just as usefully and wisely but the shock of sudden wealth after a life of poverty people said had unsettled his mind he claimed to see things that others did not see to hear voices and to have visions evidently he was not of the harmless foolish visionary order but a man of character and of great personal force for the people became divided in their opinions and the vicar, good man regarded and treated him as a special case for many his name and atmosphere became charged with a spiritual influence that was not of the best people quoted texts about him kept when possible out of his way and avoided his house after dark none understood him but though the majority loved him an element of dread and mystery became associated with his name chiefly owing to the ignorant gossip of the few a grove of pine trees behind the farm the girl pointed them out to me on the slope of the hill he said was the wood of the dead because just before anyone died in the village he saw them walk into that wood singing none who went in ever came out again he often mentioned the names to his wife who usually published them all the inhabitants within an hour of her husband's confidence and it was found that the people he had seen enter the wood died on warm summer nights he would sometimes take an old stick and wander out hapless under the pines for he loved this wood and used to say he met all his old friends there and would one day walk in there never to return he tried to break him gently off this habit but he always had his own way and once when she followed and found him standing under a great pine in the thickest portion of the grove talking earnestly to someone she could not see he turned and rebuked her very gently but in such a way that she never repeated the experiment saying you should never interrupt me Mary talking with the others for they teach me remember wonderful things and I must learn all I can before I go to join them this story went like wildfire through the village increasing with every repetition until at length everyone was able to give an accurate description of the great veiled figures the woman declared she had seen moving among the trees where her husband stood the pine grove now became positively haunted and the title wood of the dead clung naturally as if it had been applied to it in the ordinary course of events by the compiler of the ordinance survey on the evening of his 90th birthday the old man went up to his wife and kissed her his manner was loving and very gentle and there was she declared afterwards that made her slightly in awe of him and feel that he was almost more of a spirit than a man he kissed her tenderly on both cheeks but his eyes seemed to look right through her as he spoke dearest wife he said I am saying goodbye to you for I am now going into the wood of the dead and I shall not return do not follow me or send to search but be ready soon to come upon the same journey yourself the good woman burst into tears and tried to hold him but he easily slipped from her hands and she was afraid to follow him slowly she saw him cross the field in the sunshine and then enter the cool shadows of the grove of her sight that same night much later she woke to find him lying peacefully by her side in bed with one arm stretched out towards her dead her story was half believed half doubted at the time but in a very few years afterwards it evidently came to be accepted by all the countryside a funeral service was held locked in great numbers and everyone approved of the sentiment which led the widow to add the words the father of the village after the usual texts which appeared upon the stone over his grave this then was the story I pieced together of the village ghost as the little innkeeper's daughter told it to me that afternoon in the pallor of the inn but you're not the first to say you've seen him, the girl concluded and your description is just what we've always heard and that window they say was just where he used to sit and think and think when he was alive and sometimes they say to cry for hours together and would you feel afraid if you had seen him I asked for the girl seemed strangely moved and interested in the whole story I think so she answered timidly surely if he spoke to me he did speak to you didn't he sir she asked after a slight pause he said he had come for someone come for someone she repeated did he say she went on falteringly no he did not say for whom I said quickly noticing the sudden shadow on her face and the tremulous voice are you really sure sir oh quite sure I answered cheerfully I did not even ask him the girl looked at me steadily for nearly a whole minute as though there were many things she wished to tell me or to ask but she said nothing and presently picked up her tray from the table and walked slowly out of the room instead of keeping to my original purpose and pushing on to the next village over the hills I ordered a room prepared for me at the inn and that afternoon I spent wandering about the fields and lying under the fruit trees watching the white clouds sailing over the sea the wood of the dead I surveyed from a distance but in the village I visited the stone erected to the memory of the father of the village who was thus evidently no mythical personage and saw also the monuments of his fine unselfish spirit the school house he built the library the home for the aged poor and the tiny hospital that night as the clock in the church tower was striking half past eleven I stealthily left the inn and crept through the dark orchard and over the hayfield in the direction of the hill whose southern slope was clothed with the wood of the dead a genuine interest impelled me to the adventure but also was obliged to confess to a certain sinking in my heart as I stumbled along over the field in the darkness for I was approaching what might prove to be the birthplace of a real country myth and a spot already lifted by the imaginative thoughts of a considerable number of people into the region I wandered and ill-omined the inn lay below me and all around it the village clustered in a soft black shadow unrelieved by a single light the night was moonless yet distinctly luminous for the stars crowded the sky the silence of deep slumber was everywhere so still indeed that every time my foot kicked against a stone I thought the sound must be heard below in the village and weakened the sleepers I climbed the hill slowly thinking chiefly of the strange story of the noble old man who had seized the opportunity to do good to his fellows the moment came his way and wondering why the causes that operate ceaselessly behind human life did not always select such admirable instruments once or twice a night bird circled swiftly over my head but the bats had long since gone to rest and there was no other sign of life stirring then suddenly with a singular thrill of emotion I saw the first trees of the wood of the dead rise in front of me in a high black wall their crests stood up like giant spears against the starry sky and though there was no perceptible movement of the air on my cheek I heard a faint rushing sound among their branches as the night breeze passed to and fro over their countless little needles a remote hushed murmur rose overhead and died away again almost immediately for in those trees the wind seemed to be never absolutely at rest and on the calmest day there was always a sort of whispering music among their branches for a moment I hesitated on the edge of this dark wood and listened intently delicate perfumes of earth and bark stole out to meet me impenetrable darkness faced me only the consciousness that I was obeying an order strangely given and including a mighty privilege enabled me to find the courage to go forward and step in boldly under the trees instantly the shadows closed in upon me and something came forward to meet me from the center of the darkness it would be easy enough to meet my imagination halfway with fact and say that a cold hand grabbed my own and led me by invisible paths into the unknown depths of the grove but at any rate without stumbling and always with the positive knowledge that I was going straight towards the desired object I pressed on confidently and securely into the wood so dark was it that at first not a single star beam pierced the roof of branches overhead and as we moved forward side by side the trees shifted silently past us in long lines row upon row squadron upon squadron like the units of a vast soundless army and at length we came to a comparatively open space where the trees halted upon us for a while and looking up I saw the white river of the sky beginning to yield to the influence of a new light that now seemed spreading swiftly across the heavens it is the dawn coming said the voice at my side that I certainly recognized but which seemed almost like a whispering from the trees and we are now in the heart of the wood of the dead we seated ourselves on a moss covered boulder and waited the coming of the sun with marvelous swiftness it seemed to me the light in the east passed into the radiance of early morning and when the wind awoke and began to whisper in the tree tops the first rays of the risen sun fell between the trunks and rested in a circle of gold at our feet now come with me whispered to my companion in the same deep voice for time has no existence here and that which I would show you is already there we trod gently and silently over the soft pine needles already the sun was high over our heads and the shadows of the trees coiled closely about their feet the wood became denser again but occasionally we passed through little open bits where we could smell the hot sunshine and the dry baked pine needles then presently we came to the edge of the grove and I saw a hay field lying in the blaze of day and two horses basking lazily with switching tails in the shafts of a laden hay wagon so complete and vivid was the sense of reality that I remember the grateful realization of the cool shade where we sat and looked out upon the hot world beyond the last pitchfork had tossed up its fragrant burden and the great horses were already straining in the shafts after the driver as he walked slowly in front with one hand upon their bridles he was a stalwart fellow with sun burned neck and hands then for the first time I noticed perched loft upon the trembling throne of hay the figure of a slim young girl I could not see her face but her brown hair escaped in disorder from a white sun bonnet and her still browner hands held a well worn hay rake she was laughing and talking with the driver and he from time to time cast up at her ardent glances of admiration glances that one instant smiles and soft blushes in response the cart presently turned into the roadway then skirted the edge of the wood where we were sitting I watched the scene with intense interest and became so much absorbed in it that I quite forgot the manifold strange steps by which I was permitted to become a spectator come down and walk with me cried the young fellow stopping a moment in front of the horses and opening wide his arms jump and I'll catch you oh oh she laughed and her voice sounded to me with merriest laughter I had ever heard from a girl's throat oh oh that's all very well but remember I am queen of the hay and I must ride then I must come and ride beside you he cried and began at once to climb up by way of the driver's seat but with a peel of silvery laughter she slipped down easily over the back of the hay to escape him and ran a little way along the road I could see her quite clearly and noticed the charming natural grace of her movements and the loving expression in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder to make sure he was following evidently she did not wish to escape for long certainly not forever in two strides the big brown swain was after her leaving the horses to do as they pleased another second and his arms would have caught the slender waist and pressed the little body to his heart but just at that instant the old man beside me uttered a peculiar cry it was low and thrilling and it went through me like a sharp sword he had called her by her own name and she had heard for a second she halted glancing back with frightened eyes then with a brief cry of despair the girl swerved aside and dived in swiftly among the shadows of the trees but the young man saw the sudden movement and cried out to her passionately not that way my love not that way it's the wood of the dead she threw a laughing glance over her shoulder at him and the wind caught her hair and drew it out in a brown cloud under the sun but the next minute she was close beside me lying on the breast of my companion and I was certain I heard the words repeatedly uttered with many sighs father you called and I have come and I come willingly for I am very very tired at any rate so the words sounded to me and mingled with them I seemed to catch the answer I was calling whisper I already knew and you shall sleep my child sleep for a long long time until it is time for you to begin the journey again in that brief second of time I had recognized the face and voice of the innkeeper's daughter the next minute a dreadful wail broke from the lips of the young man and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night the wind rose and began to branches about us and the whole scene was swallowed up in a wave of utter blackness again the chill fingers seemed to seize my hand and I was guided by the way I had come to the edge of the wood and crossing the he-field still slumbering in the starlight I crept back to the inn and went to bed a year later I happened to be in the same part of the country and the memory of the strange summer vision returned to me with the added softness of distance I went to the old village and had tea under the same orchard trees at the same inn but the little maid of the inn did not show her face and I took occasion to inquire of her father as to her welfare and her rarebouts married, no doubt I laughed but with a strange feeling that clutched at my heart no sir replied the innkeeper sadly not married though she was just going to be but dead she got a sunstroke in the he-fields just a few days after you were here if I remember rightly and she was gone from us in less than a week End of Chapter 7