Silent guests
Date: 2026-03-20T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Love stories; Mystery fiction; Lawyers -- Fiction; Mediums -- Fiction

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Title: Silent guests

Author: A. E. Forrest

Release date: March 20, 2026 [eBook #78254]

Language: English

Original publication: Chicago: Pascal Covici, 1927

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78254

Credits: Tim Miller, David E. Brown, Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SILENT GUESTS ***

SILENT GUESTS

SILENT
GUESTS

By
A. E. Forrest

CHICAGO
PASCAL COVICI, Publisher
MCMXXVII

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY
PASCAL COVICI, PUBLISHER, INC.

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE CUNEO PRESS, INC.

“What lurks behind the curtain? Wouldst
thou learn? If thou art wise thou
wouldst not—”

CHAPTER I

A MYSTERIOUS thing, the human mind. Can it keep a secret indefinitely? Here I find myself committing to paper things which I had determined never to divulge—sacred things long hidden; intimate privacies having their roots in the soul.

However, these written pages shall never be seen by the merely inquisitive eye, but shall be safely hidden away and kept as a faithful attestation of the genesis of this house—unless fate decrees otherwise. I believe in fate—are we not all merely its playthings—toys moved hither and yon in Nature’s nursery?

Was it fate that called me from my accustomed life and routine in a distant American city to that little churchyard in a secluded corner of the Canadian backwoods, where so trivial a thing as curiosity aroused by the peculiarity of an epitaph chiseled in a marble headstone marking the grave of an unknown led me into a realm of fact more unreal than even the wildest of dreams and unfolded to me in reality the pages of a weird, transcendental drama? Was it predestined that I should leave home and friends and find in this sparsely settled spot an interest which inextricably drew the very threads of my being into the tangled skein of other and tragic lives?

The mission calling me from the office of a firm of lawyers in Philadelphia into which I had but recently been admitted as junior partner was a forlorn search for traces of an Englishman, one James Hogarth, who had, while in Canada, mysteriously disappeared. The case was important and urgent, we were informed by our clients in London, as seven years had elapsed since Hogarth, heir to a large estate, had been heard from, and the property was about to escheat to the British crown.

I was following a seemingly slender clue—the statement of a butler once in the employ of the Hogarth family that “some six or seven years previously he had seen a letter postmarked ‘Valleyford, Canada’ in which Hogarth made mention of a place called Craighead Hall.”

On this meager thread rested our firm’s hope of a large fee and mine of proving my qualification as a worthwhile partner.

My third day of travel on this, my first long journey, brought me to a village called Laketown, reached only by local train. This day is indelibly fixed in my memory. It was a bright September morning, and marked the last stopping point before reaching my destination.

No premonition of anything untoward troubled me as I rested comfortably on the cushions of an old-fashioned high-swung stage-coach as it rolled quietly along a smooth dirt road away from the village. My spirits were high through avid anticipations of success and the enjoyment of an unusual and well-deserved holiday.

Alone in the coach, a long twenty-mile ride before me, I had ample opportunity for reflection. What should I find: romance, mystery, perhaps danger, for impulsively even before transferring my luggage from the depot platform to the stage-coach labeled “Laketown-Valleyford,” I had questioned the driver of the team of bays:

“Do you know of a place called Craighead Hall?”

The man had given me a peculiar inspection.

“Yes, but nobody of your kind ever goes there.”

Further inquiry brought curiosity but little satisfaction. “Never been there.” “No, nobody ever went there.” “Place was some ten miles east of the village.” “Was said to be a resort for criminals, brought there by the owner, Hugh Craighead, who lived with them, a sort of overlord.” “No, I have never seen him, but I think you run a big chance of being murdered,” he speculated after I had informed him of my errand.

The driver had never heard of James Hogarth, but volunteered that he would not be surprised at the disappearance of anyone who visited Craighead Hall.

My pulse quickened at the thought of meeting this overlord of criminals, but before we reach thirty, romanticism holds strong, especially in those in whose veins flows Scotch blood, and my name is Montrose.

“My partners know my destination,” was my thought, and there was nothing to dull the keenness of anticipation as we jogged on, straight into the wilderness.

The regular thud of hoof on soft dirt became monotonous and I welcomed the opportunity of taking a seat beside the driver when a stop was made that the horses might drink from a small fordable stream crossing the roadway. The air was clear and bracing and the open country with its evidences of a recently gathered bountiful crop of wheat, barley and rye, in time gave place to dense woods.

We traveled miles through an unbroken forest of hardwood; the maples had taken on their best scarlet dress and the oak and beech were changing. We neared a river; spruce and cedar trees occasionally opened to furnish a glimpse of white water tossed into spray. A waterfall, it must have been of some magnitude, gave notice of its force.

The driver, pointing to an avenue between fronds of green, said “Kneeley’s Falls; the river drivers shoot that fall of eighteen feet. Craighead’s foreman tried it once—they got what was left of him six miles downstream.”

Craighead again. I plied the man with questions, but he had no further information to impart.

A wooded hill was on our left; not a human habitation had we passed in ten miles; dense thickets of green fringed the noisy river on the right. Suddenly we dropped without warning into civilization. We crossed on a wooden bridge about one hundred and fifty feet in length, a stream of water so black and swift that it presented the appearance of immobility.

“The Ford, fifty feet deep and running like a millrace,” the driver volunteered, “but old Sandy Todd with his usual Saturday night load of gin aboard thought his mare could ford it.”

The usual small town, I reflected; two main streets, post office at the bridge end, good brick buildings, one sporting four stories, at which I alighted. This was the Myrtle Bank Hotel, with a piazza a few feet above the board sidewalk.

Though the usual small village crowd was assembled to witness the one exciting event of the day, the coach’s arrival, I was obliged to carry my portmanteau into the office.

The dust of travel removed, a very fair dinner, then to the post office. Not the postmaster, hotel proprietor, or livery-stable keeper, nor any of the other citizens of whom I made inquiry had ever heard of Hogarth or any stranger visiting this man’s town. Nor could I hire a vehicle which would take me to the Craighead “plantation” as it was commonly called.

I was not more fortunate on the following morning—“There is a funeral out in the country, everything engaged,” was the excuse vouchsafed at the public livery office. When I insisted, I was informed that roads were bad and Craighead kept a pack of vicious hounds that roamed the woods out to a high fence a mile from his house and did not welcome strangers. No villager had entered the place.

In desperation I borrowed a ride on the seat beside a farmer whose homing course brought him within three miles of Craighead’s enclosure. We had traveled about seven miles and had just passed a small white-painted church when the taciturn farmer, who declined my proffer of money for the accommodation in terms equally decisive with those used in refusing to discuss the Craighead menage, spoke, a little excitement apparent in his voice:

“There is Hugh Craighead now,” pointing to a little cemetery adjoining the church on the east. “He is at John Blank’s grave as usual.”

In the far corner of this little churchyard fate brought me face to face with Hugh Craighead. The man was leaning on a white-painted paling enclosing an isolated grave just outside the God’s acre dedicated to remembrance. So absorbed in thought was he that he did not notice me until I was quite near and called him by name.

I looked into the eyes of a man apparently in the early thirties; kindly yet piercing eyes, wide set in a strong, refined face. Tall, over six feet, symmetrical in build, yet showing evidence of a constitution none too robust. There was a something about his expression difficult of explanation—a sadness and yet not exactly that, the face of a soulful man with a history. Introducing myself, I stated my business and was pleased to hear him say: “Yes, I have heard the name Hogarth. James, I think it was.”

My hopes of immediate success were shattered when he added, after a pause, “That was many years ago when I was abroad. The name was mentioned in the letter of a superintendent now dead.”

I pushed my inquiry as far as I dared without appearing importunate, even suggesting that some old servant at his home might remember Hogarth’s visit. “There are no old servants at Craighead Hall,” he replied in a tone which forbade further questioning.

Evidently feeling that his statement was inadequate, abrupt, he added, “You do not know of my establishment.”

Sensing in the man’s peculiar mien a desire perhaps for privacy as to his peculiar affairs, I merely said, as I turned from him, “I am sorry.”

In turning, my eye was caught by a peculiarity in the markings on the white marble slab at the head of the well-kept grave within the little enclosure. It carried only the words:

JOHN BLANK
and underneath in chiseled script these lines:

Weep not for me, my children dear,
I am not dead, but sleeping here;
The day will come when I shall rise
To meet my loved ones in the skies.

There were lacking the customary dates; neither birth nor death was recorded, nothing but the name so suggestive of desire to hide identity, and the meaningless verse. The grave was evidently not old—could it not hold the object of my search, perhaps masquerading under the pseudonym John Blank?

“Who was this man?” I abruptly inquired of Craighead. “You evidently knew him well.”

A peculiar, hunted look came into Craighead’s eyes as he too turned to glance at the headstone. “Oh yes, I knew him well, knew him during my childhood,” and after a pause added, “I know him yet, but you would not understand,” and turned toward the roadway as though wishing to terminate the interview.

“My friend,” I said, “What was this man’s real name—how did he die? I am much interested.”

Craighead appeared troubled. After a keen direct look, holding my eyes by something peculiar in his, he said, “His history is strange, most tragic. I have never discussed it with any person.” Then he hesitated, “But I rather like your manner, Mr.——”

“Montrose. Gordon Montrose,” I hastily answered. “You evidently did not catch the name.”

“No, I was somewhat nonplussed when you addressed me. You know Hugh Craighead has few friends hereabout,” he said rather pridefully, I then thought.

The thought persisted—“This may be acting.”

“A relative, I presume, and a much loved one to bring you out to his resting place,” I ventured.

“No,” Craighead replied, “the man was just one of the many unfortunates, a plaything of fate, whose life was a fever and whose death was a terrible tragedy. But,” he continued, “he did not suffer alone, as I find cases just as sad as his in our work.”

“I don’t think I quite understand your real work, Mr. Craighead.”

He smiled peculiarly. “I am doing for both body and soul what your ministers of the gospel claim to be doing for the soul. I am salving the mentality of the derelicts of Canada, picking up the hulks held in the whirlpool and those set adrift by the state to become a new menace to society; searching out the history of felons claiming innocence or justification and obtaining the release of the worthy; caring for them until self-respect returns.”

Craighead turned toward Blank’s grave. “That silent sleeper there, a felon, a suicide, yet a man—every inch a man. Would to God I had been a grown man and had known his wrongs.”

He drew his hand across his eyes as though wiping away a film, a vision stirred by recollection; then, as though exhausted, seated himself on a flat slab of marble covering all that was mortal of one who had lived and loved and was no more.

Both of us fell silent. There was for me a moment of embarrassment; the man was so gentlemanly, so womanish and yet so strong. Nothing of the overlord I had pictured; my sympathies were keenly aroused. “I should like to hear his story,” I said, “maybe I can render you some assistance;” an attempt to break the embarrassing silence rather than the expression of a hope.

Craighead looked keenly at me, seeming to wish to read my thought as well as character and after a pause, “Mr. Montrose, what is your calling?”

“Lawyer,” I answered, “and you are also a lawyer. I was informed that you were interested in helping criminals, but did not quite grasp the nature of your work. I wish I could see the reformatory.”

“Reformatory!” he shot back. “You shall. Why man, that word reeks of abuse, cruelty, petty graft and everything that is loathsome. You shall see my home, my guests, the evidence of the worth of my work.”

Here he paused as I replied, promptly accepting the invitation. Into his eyes that were blazing crept a look of defeat, fear, I thought. He looked at his watch, glanced at the sun just disappearing behind the ridge of the peaked roof of the one-storied church. I could read a wish to recall the invitation.

“Mr. Montrose, night will soon be here. You are seven miles from the village, without a conveyance. I have few callers at Craighead Hall. Frankly, were there any means of getting you back to your hotel, I should ask you to spend the day, rather than—” again he hesitated as though reflecting—

“However, I shall enjoy your company tonight,” and his face lighted as he added, “It is long since I have spent an evening in the company of a brother in the law—and I may wish to ask your advice on a matter—Well, my home is but three miles away.”

In silence we walked southward across fields of wheat stubble—across plowed land. No fenced road was encountered until just before coming to a dense wood. We turned into a broad pathway—it was little more—the turf had, however, been cut by the wheels of vehicles.

Save for a monosyllabic “A short cut,” from my host, no word passed between us. Craighead seemed in a brown study and I felt the intruder. We reached the border of the wood, a high fence stretched off to right and left as far as I could see. Craighead selected a key from a ring holding many of varying sizes and unlocked a small gate in the fence, paused for me to enter, then relocked the gate.

I began to entertain misgivings. The man was certainly peculiar. Was he sane? What was hidden in this dark timber confronting us? Was I but following Hogarth, to disappear?

A well-defined roadway led us into deeper shadows. Footsteps made scarcely a sound as they pressed the damp leaves under foot. The gloom was oppressive. The silence of the man walking alongside though just a step ahead, the eerie surroundings, all tended to stir in me a foreboding of evil.

I was about to break the silence, although my host’s preoccupied manner indicated such an intrusion presumptuous, when the air was suddenly shattered by a most startling sound, the baying, near at hand, of what seemed an army of hounds.

I stopped, frozen in my tracks. Before I could utter a word, Craighead placed two fingers in his mouth giving a shrill whistle as half-a-dozen huge, long-eared brown animals came hurtling into the roadway from all directions. We had been surrounded, effectually trapped.

Abruptly the animals stopped, every beast alert, then Craighead said gently, “Come on boys, ’tis only your master.”

They crowded about him, emitting short muffled sounds, not touching him, just seemingly expressing joy and affection. I had retreated a step or two, involuntarily, but aside from being the recipient of a glance from many an upturned eye in which the white showed viciously from ugly, many-wrinkled heads, I was ignored.

As we followed the dogs, a pack of bloodhounds I observed, my uneasiness increased, and the pathway becoming more and more obscure as twilight deepened into night, I thought of retreat.

Craighead suddenly stopped, laid his hand on my shoulder, “Pardon my seeming boorishness, Mr. Montrose. I have a heavy problem; you don’t mind my thinking it out?”

“Not in the least,” I replied, glad to hear his voice addressing me. He sent the dogs ahead of us with a word.

“In my peculiar work I sometimes have to call on my four-footed friends here for aid in running down some poor devil who in gaining physical freedom loses what little mental poise prison has left him and endeavors too early a return to old haunts, where he would soon become either the hunted or the hunter among the wolves of society, and eventually find his way back into confinement.

“These are bloodhounds, most intelligent brutes. They will run down and hold but will not harm any person. You see I have many thousands of acres in my home; the country is sparsely settled. Bears, wolves and the dreaded lynx are plentiful, even in this wood, though we hunt them incessantly. Thank Heaven, though a number of men have run away, nobody has been eaten yet.”

We had been walking with long strides and, just then, emerged from the wood into a clearing. The terrain rose quite rapidly as we advanced, until at length we were on a plateau across which we followed a well-made road seemingly for a long distance. The fading twilight could not hide the fact that on either side were cultivated fields and away to the right a dark shadow marked a hill, much higher than the elevation which we had attained.

Craighead appeared to be hurrying as though anxious to make some goal before darkness closed down; there was a moon, but it had not yet arisen.

“Here we are,” he said.

We came abreast of and passed a number of large barns and a long, one-storied stable of stone. The munching of hay and grain, the stamping of hoofs, and such usual sounds as come from a small army of horses housed for the night, struck my auricular sense as weird and untoward, so highly keyed were my nerves. I thought I could discern people moving about in the open spaces between the buildings, but save for the sounds made by the animals, everywhere was silence. A human voice, or even the barking of a dog would have afforded a degree of relief.

Craighead preceding me, we soon passed a picketed enclosure, evidently the dog kennels. A man was housing the hounds. Farther along, we entered, through a gate, onto a white graveled walk which seemingly led us through an orchard, as I could make out the outline of trees while the perfumed emanations from ripe apples came to me soothingly.

CHAPTER II

WE STOOD before a doorway of dark wood, heavy but not pretentious, and showing some carving in the subdued light thrown by a lamp enclosed in glass and set into the heavy jamb on the left.

The building seemed to be one-storied, and of stone. It stretched away on either side of the door into the night. I could not make even a guess as to its dimensions, but it loomed large in my imagination.

“We are home,” Craighead said, throwing back the heavy oak door and holding it apparently with left arm outstretched and with head slightly bowed; a mute invitation to me to precede him across the portal of Craighead Hall.

I stepped into what was evidently an upper reception hall, as directly in front of me was the top tread of a broad stairway. My host said in a quiet tone, “I have brought you in the nearest way,” closed the door and preceded me down the stair.

I noted two things—the house was silent, and he did not lock the door.

We descended a broad stairway with wide oak bannisters on either side, the lower steps flaring out to at least a dozen feet to the left of the center of a great audience hall. In front was a huge doorway, evidently the main entrance to the house. Small, diamond-shaped, leaded glass windows lined either side and the top of the massive two-leaved door; plain square cut-glass lighted lamps, presenting the appearance of vases, cast their glow to meet that of similar lamps on the staircase. Stretching away to the right was a table, its polished surface glistening as though alive, as far as my vision could penetrate in the subdued light thrown by a row of lamps set into the walls. Heavy black oak paneling went from polished floor to beamed ceiling, and apparently some fifteen to twenty feet away the dying embers of a wood fire in a mass of carving sent up little spurts of flame, throwing shadows back of beams that looked colossal. A medieval hall, lifted bodily from some old-world castle, an Elsinore, some Baron’s lair, where lolled and drank and quarreled, brutal but brave, a race of desperate men, happily long extinct.

Rooted to the spot, I looked in amazement down the length of the polished table and the illusion was complete. Instantly there flashed over me the thought that I should witness the stately procession of flunkies in crimson and yellow preceding the Baron and his lady, or hear the measured tramp, tramp of the halberdiers as they filed in and took their places followed by the Lord of the Castle and his roistering friends.

I felt Craighead’s fingers on my shoulder, heard his voice say as from a distance, so absorbed was I in these strange surroundings, “Pardon me a moment, will you step into the library? I must speak to my sister,” and he ran lightly up the stairs, leaving me bewildered.

No word of any sister or other woman in this strange establishment had come to me or crossed my mind. I had turned toward the stair when addressed, and as Craighead disappeared, my brain sharply pictured my host as at best peculiar, perhaps more so than that word would express.

The library—where was it?

As though in reply to my mental query came a quiet, “The library, sir,” and I turned to find a man standing near me, who, certainly to my thinking, had arisen from nowhere, a man, indicating an open door at some distance to the right, as I faced the stairway.

The man preceded me to the door, stood and bowed me through. He was dressed quietly in dark colored tweeds.

Some friend of my host who would join me, I speculated, and was surprised to hear the door close without a word from him and to find myself alone in a large room, paneled like the hall in black oak. Two French windows at one end, a fireplace half-way down the wall opposite where I entered, a large screen at the farther end, a table or two, heavy chairs all about, a lounge and books, books from floor to ceiling and from end to end almost. Two large hunting scenes in oil covered a portion of one wall.

No touch of woman’s softness was here. The lights, shaded to cast their full strength at certain points, served but to accentuate the severity of the room. It dawned on me, as I entered from the orchard, that this old-world building must sit on the side of a hill, that here, miles and miles from a railroad or access to any port—right here—was mystery, tragedy perhaps. A chill ran through me. One could fairly hear the silence of this mammoth house.

I crossed to the window—its frame extended to the floor—drew aside a curtain, and was peering out onto a wide veranda. I started as though struck a blow as I heard my host say: “My sister presents her compliments and begs to be excused, Mr.——”

“Montrose,” I replied, noting in my host an abstraction, an air of dejection, saddening and depressing beyond description. “Gordon Montrose; Scotch, as Scottish as your name, Craighead, would lead me to believe you, though your lineaments are not perhaps as Scotch as mine,” and to give the man opportunity to find himself, I rambled on, “I have all the romantic leaning of the Scot and let me add, all his curiosity, and this house, this palace hidden away in the wilds of Canada, certainly arouses my entire inheritance in that direction. I am delighted to have the privilege of being your guest for the night.”

“I am glad indeed to have you here,” Craighead interposed before I could add that the strange surroundings into which my search for Hogarth had brought me added greatly to my desire for the story connecting the life of this young man with that of the sleeper just outside the little cemetery whose marble marking read “John Blank.”

Craighead continued, “This certainly is a unique old place when one looks at the surroundings. My father was, shall we say, eccentric. He loved his home in Scotland and transplanted to this place of exile as much of the inside of his boyhood home as was possible, but the light of day will dispel many of your illusions. In the meantime, let us see what the chef has provided for us. You must be famished after such an unaccustomed amount of exercise,” adding, “City chaps, as I well know from experience, seldom get the exercise required by natural laws.”

As we turned toward a table evidently hidden by a screen which had been silently spirited away, a door at the end of the room opened, as though in answer to the inquiry. A well-dressed man with nothing of the butler air, entered and lowering his eyes to the floor said, “Served, sir.”

The dinner was everything to be desired. Mutton broth with barley, fish, roast partridge, everything well-cooked and served from a table behind the large screen by the man who had opened the library door.

Seated across the table from my host I could not avoid noting as he directed the conversation to my work and away from himself that he was preoccupied, uneasy, I thought. He looked old and care-worn for a man evidently not much past thirty. My mind was not on our conversation, nor was his. I wished to ply him with questions, but there was a something in his face which forbade a crudity.

Who were these silent serving men? Could they by any possibility be manumitted criminals? No, their mien gave the lie to any such thought, nor did they carry the subservient air of house servants.

By what magic did our food find a resting place behind the screen at the end of the room? I mentally placed the kitchen at least eighty feet away on what I calculated was the west end of the building, beyond the great hall. The house must back into the solid hill on the north.

What an eery place! What tragedy in the life of man or woman, especially one possessing ample means; for the entire inside finish of the house including furnishings and books by the thousand must have come across the Atlantic to this far-off spot, and this called for heavy expenditure of money! What state of mind could have induced isolation in this God-forsaken spot in the wilderness?

All these thoughts crowded through my mind as we talked of affairs in the outside world, and back of it all was the desire for Craighead’s story.

My ruminations were brought to a sudden stop. I found myself and my host standing. A panel in the apparently solid west wall of the room was open and framed an apparition, a picture in white, or was it a wonderfully beautiful girl just budding into young womanhood?

I could not believe the picture animate until she spoke. The voice had that carrying quality, that slight terminative inflection and refinement characteristic of the cultured Englishwoman.

Her eyes rested for a second on my face, then she turned to Craighead, her lips parted and I heard her say, “Pardon me, Hughie, I did not know that you had returned.”

My host, showing embarrassment, took her hand, leading her to the table, saying, “Mr. Montrose, my sister, Elaine.”

Inwardly I cursed my faltering tongue as it stammered something unintelligible. I was no callow youth, had met many beautiful women without embarrassment, but while heart and head made graceful acknowledgment of the honor, yes, even such response as would a Sir Galahad to the fair chatelaine of the castle in which he found himself a guest, my tongue was tied.

I heard her, as from a great distance, say, “I trust you will be happy here, sir,” as she looked at me with interested sympathy, showing through dark sad eyes. Then turning to her brother she said, “I shall not intrude. I will have my dinner served upstairs.”

Quickly as I recognized the mistake, Craighead forestalled me in thought. “Elaine, what a blunderer I am. Mr. Montrose is my friend, not one of our usual guests. He is engaged as we are, in helping unfortunates. Won’t you join us? We shall both be delighted to have our coffee and liqueur extended indefinitely for the pleasure of your company.”

Gracefully the young lady came to me, offering her hand, and, as I bent over it, she said, “Mr. Montrose, may I also have the privilege of calling you friend? Hugh and I are so close, his friend is my friend.” And when she added to the little compliment a smile so innocent and winning, I felt that I had never before seen so beautiful a picture. She stood so slim and straight, delicate and refined, yes, over-refined, I thought, and yet there was lacking nothing in youthful vigor and confidence; as much a contradiction as her brother.

I looked into her large questioning brown eyes as I assured her, in a reply registering not a little embarrassment, that I was honored, was fortunate, and sincerely trusted that in some way I should be brought to the test that I might demonstrate my appreciation of the honor. Rather an unusual, but sincere, declaration for me, a confirmed bachelor of almost thirty.

As I seated her between Mr. Craighead and myself, I looked down on a wonderful mass of molten gold crowning a well-shaped head. As we talked seriously, or as the conversation touched on events in my country, stirring or portentous, the pupils of her eyes dilated, changing from brown to black, and the white hand in which the veins showed faintly, would noticeably tremble. She seemed so deadly in earnest and so interested in world affairs that one forgot her youth and gave to her expressed opinion a weight usually reserved for that of the more mature.

Never did we touch on matters intimate to the Craighead private life. I found the young lady adroit in drawing me out, making as much a study of me as I of her, apparently. I learned that she and her brother had spent many years abroad, had never separated, and that there was a sister then abroad, also.

The brother seemed uneasy, his eyes seldom left his sister’s face, and I wondered if he might not entertain a fear that the conversation would in some way revert to the request “to be excused” which she certainly had never made. I may not say that the thought left me wholly free of embarrassment. I was sorely puzzled, amazed at meeting here in such strange surroundings a lady, a mere girl, but with all the poise of the young woman of society, capable of discussing interestingly questions far beyond the sphere of the little Canadian principality which it seemed they seldom left.

We were discussing the translation into Greek and Coptic of the writings of Moses, about 300 B. C. at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Alexandria, Egypt. The brother who, I learned, held a Master’s degree from Edinburgh University, advanced the theory that Euclid, who was a dweller at Ptolemy’s court, had much to do with the cryptic figures in the Pentateuch; that the mystic numbers were his, and that the translation from the original by 72 Levites, each in a separate cell, in 72 days, into five books, Genesis to Deuteronomy, meant that the entire history of man, from the beginning, including all laws necessary for his guidance during the circle of life, was represented by Euclid in this way: the five books representing man’s senses, the circle of life 360 degrees formed by five times seventy-two.

“A trick of Mr. Euclid’s,” Hugh was continuing, and I was thinking, “Here is a man who treats Holy Writ rather lightly,” and wondered to what subdivision of the Protestant church the brother and sister claimed affiliation, for I knew that the little edifice where I had met Craighead was not Catholic.

I had been studying the brother’s face as he talked, when I was startled at seeing the sister suddenly straighten back in her chair, extend her right arm over the table with the little finger only resting thereon, the thumb and forefinger placed as though holding a pen or pencil.

The evident rigidity of the arm and hand flashed over my mind’s eye. I looked into her face. To what could be attributed the terrible change that had taken place? A moment before a beautiful, vivacious girl, now a gray-faced woman. Beads of dew covered an ashen forehead. Her eyes looked through and past me. It seemed as though they pierced even the wall in the shadows at the far end of the room. She seemed to be listening.

Involuntarily I placed my hand on hers. It was icy cold and moist. Speechless I arose, but before I could open my lips to tender an offer of aid, her brother who had not taken his gaze from his sister’s face nor moved, said in a low tone, “Please be seated. Do not touch her. My sister is subject to these seizures. It will pass in a little while.”

Then she spoke, not to either of us, but as though addressing somebody present who had spoken to her.

“Yes, yes, I’ll go. Yes, all right dear, though you are mistaken. He is Hugh’s friend and mine,” the last two words were hesitatingly uttered, as she quietly arose, turned and walked toward the west wall apparently unaware of the presence of either her brother or myself.

Hugh preceded her and opened the panel through means, which my excited condition prevented my observing, and my hostess, my brilliant young chatelaine, passed from sight through the wall, without uttering a word, as though walking in a sleep.

Hugh stood in the opening looking up.

CHAPTER III

WHAT an unfortunate family skeleton I had unwittingly intruded upon. Evidently this was a repetition. What possible ailment could in the flash of an eye transform an animated girl of twenty to an ashen-faced woman of forty? Why should the blood withdraw from hand and arm, presenting the chill of the dead, and yet fail to interfere with the sense of speech, of locomotion, yes, even of direction?

I was puzzled, embarrassed.

Hugh closed the panel and walked in silence back to the table, helplessness, sadness, the depths of pity written on his downcast face.

I spoke first, “Mr. Craighead, we are both distressed. I have no desire to intrude. Doubtless you are needed. Please do not permit any mistaken sense of duty as a host to keep you from the side of your sister who sorely needs assistance. May I be shown to my room?”

Craighead reached out his hand to meet mine; ensued a clasp which in the extremely tense situation meant more than months of association; he at least had made a friend.

Disregarding my protest, my host preceded me upstairs and ushering me into a spacious room, said, “Shall see you in the morning. We have no hours here, the sun will awaken you. Good night.” He turned, closed the door, and was gone.

Night clothes, neatly folded, spread on the snow-white bed coverlet, every convenience of refined bachelorhood in the great city whence I had come, was here in this remote part of demi-civilization. I had brought no baggage from the village.

Alone, not a sound in the big place. I speculated on the strangeness of things, wished for day that I might get my bearings, mental and otherwise.

In time I slept, nor did I dream in that unconscious period in which the battery of what is termed life receives its regular charge from nature’s dynamo, without which charge the house of the soul would become uninhabitable. In the twilight of sleep, when the subconscious was dominant, I failed to realize in this house of mystery anything more than a strange, eerie sense of the unusual, not the unreal.

I slept late, and had just finished dressing when the serving man of the evening entered with breakfast on a tray.

Was I spied upon? I had bathed and dressed quietly, had not given any signal, yet there was a silent man with breakfast. A mysterious house, certainly, a peculiar host and hostess. I thought while dressing of the embarrassment of meeting Hugh and inquiring about his sister.

The servant, in silence, after a grave “good morning,” threw open the double French windows letting in the sunlight of a warm September morning, and retired.

It was about ten o’clock when I walked out onto a broad upper veranda and made my first daylight survey of the surroundings.

A broad river, almost a lake, I thought at least two miles wide. Away up to my right as I faced it. The bay narrowed or was partially closed by islands and to my left it stretched away to where vision was cut off by trees. Across was evidently an island, as I could see water pretty well back through the stumps of dead trees running from both its east and west points. Immediately in front of the house, two rows of solemn Lombardy poplars lined on east and west a broad graveled walk, running down to a pretentious boathouse and pier. Back of the poplars were two trellised rows of wild grape and wisteria vines. Hedges of clipped cedar lined a driveway to the beach at the right, and spruce and cedar thickets seemed to extend away up the shore line. An apple orchard to my left stretched over a rise in the ground out of my range of vision around the east end of the house.

A perfect Canadian September day. A melodious voice floated up to me, “Come down and help me pick apples.”

“Coming,” and I was down a stairway at the east end of the veranda wondering what other young lady the place housed, for surely the voice was feminine and as surely young. Thought of meeting my young hostess after last night never entered my head. She was as something a thousand miles removed from the commonplace of apple-picking.

It was my hostess—radiant, smiling through eyes of ebullient youth from a perch at least ten feet from the ground in the crotch of an immense apple tree. Thank God, my vision of the gray-faced woman of last night was dispelled. She became dissociated from Hugh’s sister. Had the afflicted sister even existed?

“Good morning, Mr. Montrose,” was Elaine’s greeting. “You got up just in time to help me. This is my own tree, you see. Every apple on it is a graftling, and I always pick them myself before the men begin.”

I felt at home at once. I picked apples, packed apples in baskets, apples, the names of which I had never before heard, all growing on one immense tree, “all through the labor of love of her father,” I was told.

Her father died before she was born. Hugh had gone to the county seat to appear in court. My luggage at the hotel had been sent for. I was to be Hughie’s guest here “until I tired of the place—and the society,” the last with just a little of that arch look which lets down bars ever so slightly and denies while it invites an adequate response. All so cheerfully and with such an air of certainty of herself, imparted from above and accepted by me as natural and conclusive.

I marveled at the man, Montrose, staid bachelor, lawyer, man of affairs on a serious mission, hypnotized, actually carried away by the charm of a young girl; or was it the unusual in the situation that made me forget everything but the moment and give myself up wholly to enjoyment of an unusual girl’s vivacity and sweetness.

A ripple of silvery laughter as an apple dropped several feet onto my uncovered head.

“Help me down; I could not resist the temptation. It was the last on the tree,” came the laughing voice.

“Eve was more considerate. She did not risk killing him,” I called back.

“Yes,” she replied, “but you know men were scarce then,” as two small high boots slid down along the bole of the tree followed by knickerbockered limbs, a white blouse and light blue flannel coat. Then with “coming!” she swung out onto a lower limb and dropped gracefully into my extended arms.

Just for the fraction of a moment I held her, for so brief an instant that she could not possibly have noted an intent and yet, frankly, there was intent. That was a moment of ecstasy, just to feel her lithe body resting against mine, to sense the innocence, the trust. Surely I was not in love! Did not life hold to sterner things?

Was it the exertion, did the feminine sense catch the thrill of the moment of which I thought only God and I had knowledge? What was it that suffused her cheek and caused her to lower her eyes from mine which had sought them?

“Thank you,” was the commonplace that brought back my truant senses. “Shall we walk down to the river? There are twelve baskets full,” she added.

“And it is quite appropriate that we seek the two small fishes,” I remarked as we walked shoreward between the poplars.

“That was a wonderful allegory, the loaves and fishes,” Elaine replied.

“Allegory?” I queried. “I read it as a happening.”

Laughingly she said, “You must have an orthodox soul, and I am just in the mood to shock it with a sensible interpretation of that miracle.” “You wouldn’t shock me at all; it would be interesting, even if a bit sacrilegious,” I replied and with a side glance at me she said: “Well, then, I’ll take the risk.”

“The fishes, you know, were to the new sect a symbol, representing the all, beginning and end, life and death. The five loaves represent the five senses. The Master’s sermon was the mental food of the multitude, and the twelve baskets full of bread that remained were the teachings that they carried home in their hearts, so that they might have enough food for all their lives; twelve baskets full, because in the circle of the Zodiac there are twelve signs or houses.”

As I listened to this modern interpretation of one of the mysteries of my religion, trepidation seized me. Were we not discussing biblical matters last night when the awful change took place in this young lady? I looked anxious; perhaps I showed my anxiety too plainly, for as she ceased speaking and just as we reached a bench on the pier, she looked into my eyes and exclaimed, “Oh, I am afraid I have shocked you. You mustn’t take it to heart, Mr. Montrose. You see we live a very solitary life here, my brother and I. Visitors are rare, and Hugh is often away. So I turn to books for companionship, and more frequently than not find myself disagreeing with the writers. It’s good mental exercise, but rather doubtful as social training. All the same, I love it—the woods and the river and the solitude. I wouldn’t leave it even to return to Scotland, or to—”

She broke off suddenly, jumped up from the pier bench and started on a run toward the house, calling back to me, “Hugh is home, something must have happened.”

I followed her up the walk, catching a glimpse of her as she disappeared through the front door.

I walked leisurely out to the big apple tree and found a man whom I had not previously seen carrying away the apple baskets. Volunteering help, I took a couple of baskets and followed the man through a door in the cliff side, close to the east wall of the house. We passed several open doors on our right. They were the openings to vaults for different kinds of fruit and vegetables.

Halting at the fifth opening, which had a huge door swung wide, I entered and put my baskets alongside of the workman’s. The room, apparently fifteen feet wide, was long. Many boxes bound with iron straps were neatly arranged on one side of the room and in the far end where the shadows were not penetrated by the light of the single lamp, I could dimly see the outline of another door, closed.

“Where does that door lead to?” I asked.

“I do not know, sir,” the man replied, “I have never seen it open. Mr. Craighead carries the keys.”

“Hello, Montrose, has sister pressed the lawyer into service?” came a greeting from Hugh who was standing in the doorway. We shook hands; he asked the man if Miss Craighead’s apples were all in, receiving an affirmative reply, closed and locked the door, suggesting that we smoke on the veranda while the day was still warm.

Craighead explained that he had received a message at the village, enabling him to return so early, but gave no further information. He seemed worried, evidently feeling that he owed some kind of an explanation as to Elaine’s ailment.

As we rested comfortably, our eyes not meeting, both gazing out over the bay, I could see beads of sweat on his face and hands. I reached over, laying my hand on his, saying, “Can I do anything for you? I would like to be a good friend; there is something worrying you.”

“Yes,” he replied, “I am at my wit’s end. You saw my sister’s serious condition last night; a recurrence, yes, fear for her life or worse, her sanity, keeps me always most anxious. God only knows how it will end if we do not have help.”

“You have taken me into your confidence a little way,” I urged. “Tell me what the doctors say; how did it set up in the first place; what is the disease?”

Craighead looked at me, then said, “My friend, you would not understand should I name the trouble. Our history is a peculiar one, some time I shall tell it to you. Elaine’s trouble dates away back to childhood; perhaps back of that,” and Craighead paused.

I did not understand fully, but a shudder passed over me as I thought of epilepsy, congenital tendency toward insanity, a terrible heritage for this lovable girl. My horror must have shown on my face, for Hugh hastened to say, “Not that, not insanity. I shall tell you the story from the beginning. The day is before us. Elaine has gone out with the hounds, we shall not be interrupted.

“It is not a pleasant story, that of the Craigheads. You wished to know John Blank’s history. They are closely knitted. In telling one, you will hear the other.”

“Please begin at the beginning. I am interested in every detail.”

CHAPTER IV

LEANING back in his chair, with unseeing eyes cast upward, Craighead paused so long that I feared his mind had altered; then drawing his hand across his forehead as though wiping away some vision, his entire expression changed. He commenced as though still a boy.

“This entire estate was even more on the outskirts of civilization when I was a boy than it is now. The village has grown, but it is still ten miles away. We had few neighbors, only one east of us, two miles or more away, through a black ash swamp, impassable even yet except when the river is very low, then difficult. To my knowledge, there was no communication between this neighbor, John Blank, and my family. Blank was a sort of myth to us, never seen, only reputed living down the ‘back channel.’

“Father was a strange man, silent, austere; my sister, the one in Scotland, Alix, and I were in awe of him, but only on account of his austerity. I thought, even at thirteen, that this was a queer place for a rich man to make a home, and wondered why a man of education and refinement should hide a wife, and a beautiful wife my mother was, away in this God-forsaken part of the world and bring my sister and myself up without girls and boys of our age to play with.

“I asked mother, but she requested me never to refer to the subject again. We children went to the red school you saw a mile beyond the little church, when weather permitted our being carried there in a buckboard, and we were tutored by our mother.

“Alix was two years my senior, very bright and a good pianist. I passed the high school examination at twelve years of age, but because of a body too frail, was not permitted to enter preparatory school as planned, with McGill and the profession of doctor as the ultimate. To this illness was due my meeting John Blank, the mythical, never visible but reputed at school a dangerous character, an ogre, without ears and with hoofs where his hands should have been.

“In my wanderings through the dense woods that hemmed in Craighead Hall, as my father named this house, coming much closer then than now and stretching for miles around, I found in the border of the swamp a small knoll covered with beech trees at the summit, and completely hedged about with stunted spruce and cedar; a creek winding around almost the entire base. Here I secretly built a leafy bower, a little house, and almost daily from spring to fall I took a book and crossing nearly a mile of forest reveled in the romantic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lalla Rookh, The Deformed Transformed; the poets and the poetic my sole and beloved companions, and chameleon-like, I became the hero of every song and story.

“The one disturbing thought assailing me, now and then becoming a haunting fear, was that I might some day meet John Blank. Neurotic, I feared that to see him meant death from terror and my retreat was on an upper reach of Blank’s creek.

“One day the woes of Little Dorrit having aroused in me such a feeling of resentment against her oppressors and such a flood of sympathy that I was blinded by tears, I was startled to see standing before me in actual life, John Blank the dreaded. He had no ears—that registered, and as expected, I faded, died, just as my school companions predicted.”

As Craighead said this preposterous thing and paused, I looked at him sharply, questioning his sanity, but he was absorbed in the recollection, was a boy again and resumed as though the thing had just then transpired.

“Yes,” Craighead continued, “I died, but the resurrection did not wait on Old Gabriel.

“Where was I? Snow-white linen, four posts of red cedar roughly hand-carved, a lamp, lighted but turned low, sat on a dresser near at hand. I can see the room now, painted a light blue. I was in bed, evidently not home, for we had no such room as this, and the aroma of roast duck came temptingly over the half partition beyond which I could hear somebody walking. I coughed involuntarily and sat up alarmed when the door opened and a not unkind but stern-faced woman about as old as my mother, I reflected, looked anxiously at me, saying,

“‘Thanks to the good God, he’s alive. He will eat supper with us; then John, you must take the lad home; it is the only thing to do.’

“At mention of John came an instantaneous mental picture, a queer fluttering in my chest and I fell back on the pillow.

“A deep-toned voice came over the partition, ‘How is the lad, Margie?’

“There was in the voice a tone of sadness indescribable, yet I had heard that tone sometimes in the very minor chord struck by sister Alix when she was blue, always when I was having one of my bad coughing days. Byron would have analyzed the note was my thought. Was I not Byron only yesterday? I did analyze it and properly. Here was no ogre, but kindness, refinement, great sadness, and the inner sense even of precocious, adolescent, undernurtured youth reassured me, told me there was nothing here to fear; told me that the earless head was living death, tragedy to this man as was his deformity to that other who wrote The Deformed Transformed, my hero Byron, and fear flew out of the window.

“Tenderly and without offense to the exaggerated modesty of youth, the woman dressed me, took my hand and led me through the door, partially screening with her person the man. He stood as though in deep thought, head bowed, arms locked behind, leaning a little forward as though seeing something through the windows, where my gaze followed across a clearing, along rows of currant bushes down to an impenetrable swamp a few rods away, and growing dark in the fading twilight. I saw it all, and the three-quarter moon, and strange to say, even yet I fail to comprehend just why my immediate thoughts dwelt on these inconsequential things rather than on the man who had shocked me into a faint.

“Then he extended his right hand, a flash at his face, a mental measurement of his stature with my father as the yard stick, six feet tall; my mind went blank for an instant. Here was no hand nor hoofs, only a pitiable, misshapen thing. All the fingers had been severed midway of the third phalanges. What an awful, unsightly thing, a thumb and four gross misshapen stubs in contact with my soft hand which had never known physical labor like that of other boys! I coughed, and the old weak feeling made me reel.

“The man caught me in his arms and groaned, rather than said, ‘Oh, God, it can never be,’ then, still holding my face against his body, ‘Son, do not be afraid of me. I am deformed, but only in body. My ears and fingers, they cut them off, but they couldn’t destroy the will nor my heart. Son, it beats just like your father’s; let us be friends. My God, my lot is hard,’ and then he held me off and in a harsher voice said ‘Look at me. Once I was as other men. Men did this to me.’

“A more terrifying sight for a boy never was presented. The face was scarred and lined, but the head was well-shaped and surmounted a strong athletic-looking body, but the pity of it—the lack of the accustomed semicircular protuberances on either side with scars marking each cheek from chin to temple and from nose bridge to jaw hinge, gave to the picture a terrifying, rather than a disgusting appearance. Without ears it would not have been so bad; the thick iron-gray bunch of hair growing low near the temples relieved the impression to some extent, but the scars, crosses carried by this man, not from the temple of justice to Golgotha, but throughout a lifetime until obliterated by post-mortem putrefaction! Ugh! They give me a chill yet! They brutalized an otherwise kindly, handsome face.

“It was the eyes that saved the day, fearless, determined yet kindly brown eyes through which a man’s soul was shining. My terror was gone, I grasped the stumpy hand, felt drawn to the man, clasped him about the waist and wept. He held me close for a time and I could feel his body racked by sobs. The woman put an arm around me, saying, ‘Supper is ready,’ and led me to the table.

“I never ate much, nor talked during meals; was taught that it was unbecoming in youth to converse before elders, but while I then ate sparingly and at first with a lump in my throat, I was so drawn out by Blank’s quiet questioning that I was soon telling all about my family, all I knew. Especially that mother, while always appearing sad was apparently happy, and in reply to the direct question, said I, was awfully fond of father and mother as they would wander away together and sit on our veranda alone for hours.

“I asked Blank if he knew why father with all his money (I had seen in the back vault a trunk full of gold pieces) settled here in the woods, and there was such a peculiar look in Blank’s eyes when he disclaimed any knowledge of the reason, that I wondered if he did not know more about our family than he was willing to disclose to me. He asked many questions about Alix and I thought I sensed in him a sort of yearning. Perhaps it was only because he had no children or had lost a daughter. I was not a dullard. The very seclusion of our household, father’s peculiar reserve and keenness seemed to have permeated; both Alix and I were observing youths.

“Nine o’clock, and it suddenly dawned on me that my family would be anxious, perhaps hunting for me, though I had stayed as late once when I went to sleep in my retreat. Father would go out to the woods, atop the burnt hill, as we called it because once swept by a forest fire. Father found me there one day, reading Voltaire’s La Pucelle, a forbidden book and locked away thereafter.

“Nobody knew of my bower in the creek’s embrace, or the joy I found in the music of the rippling water, the song of the birds and the whispering of the beech leaves. They all talked to me, never in words, but it seemed as though souls released from the body were trying to tell me the secrets of a hereafter. These friends knew my friends Byron and Shelley and many others, but not Voltaire, so I took him to the wood on the hill.

“Blank took a lantern and led me by the hand down the lane between currant bushes right into the land of mystery, the impenetrable vine-tangled moss-hung swamp. I was surprised to find two logs laid lengthwise, flattened atop, on which we walked, the vines closing overhead. For a quarter of a mile or so we walked on such logs. The way led through tall rushes, then shallow water smothered in wild rice, a dismal pathway to freedom.

“Reeds and rice cradled a canoe well hidden. It was of red cedar and smooth as glass. A shove out and soon reeds and rice were left behind. Water-killed ash trees gave place to water-lily pads and soon we were in open water.

“We were in the back waters of the great river but nearly two miles from the main stream, or bay. Blank paddled in silence, seemed sad or moody. I remember feeling that I was putting him to a great deal of trouble.

“Almost at our landing, a good four miles, Blank spoke, ‘Son, it is better to lie a little sometimes than make others suffer. As you have expressed gratitude to me, give me your promise that you will not say one word about meeting me or going to my home—not to a living soul! I have my reasons and know that you will respect them if you promise.’

“I promised. I would have promised that man anything and I would have kept faith—strange how chivalrous the age, thirteen, is in certain types. Wild horses could not have drawn out the truth as to where I spent that evening. I was ready to invent any story, take any censure. Neither father nor mother ever punished, only chided, but that method of correction had for me a bitter sting.”

Hugh arose without a word from me; he was right back to that night. Leaning over the heavy railing enclosing the front veranda he drew his hand across his eyes as I had observed was his habit when trying to arouse himself and said, “Let us walk.”

As we walked toward the river between the poplars, without preliminary, just as though he had not interrupted his story, Hugh, pointing to the left, said,

“Blank kissed me on the brow, jumped into the canoe, and pushed out into the river. My father had never caressed me; mother often. I remember that while it embarrassed, the act further endeared Blank to me, he seemed so lonesome.

“I circled up there through the orchard instead of taking the path, tiptoed up the east veranda stairs, pushed open the window of my room, the corner one next to yours, and after marveling that the house was so quiet, prepared to say that I had returned home early, fallen asleep in the orchard and had just awakened.

“True, the housekeeper was worried over my absence but not unduly, however, as she was a rather placid specimen. I simply said to her that I was not feeling well when I returned, so did not wish dinner, her chief concern being that it was ‘cold.’

“My parents and Alix had gone to the village and had not yet returned. Soon they came in the front way; father was always so particular in matters of form and deportment. I think he was endeavoring to teach his children through example.

“Father said to me, ‘You look fatigued; what have you been doing?’

“‘Reading, sir,’ I replied.

“‘Then go to bed,’ was his order, kindly given.

“Alix had been led upstairs by the maid. I sorely wished to talk with her, as I sensed something amiss from the strained look on the faces of my parents.

“Mother said,

“‘Kiss me good night, my darling boy,’ took me in her arms and crying silently held me close, while she kissed me fervently.

“I noticed a package of papers, one from Glasgow, with a fat letter with foreign postmark, which father had placed on the big table. Connecting these unusual things with father’s abrupt manner and mother’s tears, living over again the events of the evening, seeing Blank’s awful deformity, as though he stood beside my bed, I finally dozed off, sick at heart for the first time in my young life.

“In the morning I went early to Alix’s room but she knew nothing, though she told me all about the marvels of Valleyford, its high buildings, some three stories higher by one than Craighead Hall, and neither of us was prepared for the shock when, noonday luncheon disposed of, father suddenly said, ‘Children, your grandfather, my father, in Scotland, is dead. Died a month ago. I am his only heir. That means I inherit his property. I must start for Glasgow tomorrow. The property is nothing to me, God knows, but I must save it for you two bairns; mother may go with me. If she does, you must mind Mr. Hallowed, children, just as you would me. Hugh, you must give up your rambling in the woods. You are old enough to know the danger of being attacked by bears and lynx and timber wolves are thick this autumn.’

“We promised. I do not think we realized in the slightest that our parents were going away.”

At this point in his story, Craighead paused as though the recollection of the events of that long past day pained him immeasurably, turned his back to me by squaring around on the bench on the pier on which we had been resting, then resumed:

“I am telling you these details with a purpose, Montrose; it will disclose itself in time. These were almost the parting words of my father, at least his last advice to me. He never returned from Scotland.

“Mother refused to permit him to go alone. Heartsick at leaving her children even for a couple of months, she felt a duty to father, he seemed so strong yet so unfitted to go without her.

“They drove away, their luggage one small leather trunk which father brought from the inner vault. I held open the great stone door which swung back and up so that when opened against the wall it took all my strength to keep it from slamming shut. The staple for the hook meant to hold it open had loosened in the stone and father cautioned me not to trust it, but to brace myself against the open slab until he put some papers into the trunk.

“I noticed that he locked the box from which he took the papers, that there were ribbons and big seals on the documents in his hands and that he was excited, if such a word may be applied to the condition of a man who was always calm. The big door fastened with a spring lock.

“When I returned here five years ago, I tried every key, but could not unlock this vault. Some day I shall have a locksmith in and see what is in the boxes. I have put this off because of the sad memories stirred when I go into even the outer room where Elaine stores her apples.

“Letters came; February, the long winter passed; there was a hitch in the estate’s settlement, Mother was not ill, but could not return alone, expressed much yearning for her children. From Father, admonitions as to health and conduct, directions to be relayed to John Hallowed, the foreman in charge, who watched the two of us like a hawk, even to seeing that we were safely tucked in nights, and I am afraid we led him a merry chase that winter, for youth’s natural trend is to be happy, and happiness in children means pranks and adventuring, distressing to elders in charge, especially such elders as old John, who felt a peculiar responsibility as our guardian.

“In time, I confided to Alix my great adventure in the black ash swamp and we wove many a weird fiction about his life, but not even the wildest of our imaginings came within a thousand miles of the awfulness of the truth. You shall hear his story in good season. I am leading up to it, I cannot tell it. You must see for yourself. Today the whole strange thing would be unbelievable to you who know us as yet so slightly. You must stay with us this fall, Montrose,” Hugh added, and I replied, thanking him, “that I had a whole month, if he and Miss Craighead would not tire of me.”

Resuming the thread of his story, Hugh said, “Our summons came in August. We had become accustomed to the Hallowed regime and there had grown in our young hearts the spirit of content. Gradually during the months there had crept upon us the feeling that our parents had gone on and on out through the wood which I had through tears watched them enter; the picture of both grew dim though Mother’s dear face came frequently into my thoughts. I wonder if the painful love in the hearts of all young people is not perhaps very much intensified through propinquity.

“One evening we were here on this pier and about to go for a swim when we noticed a canoe put straight out from Verde Island, that strip of green right opposite,” and Hugh pointed. “Two men were in the canoe, one paddling. The swim was postponed.

“We speculated as to the canoe’s occupants, with many a pleasant anticipation, as a stranger at Craighead Hall was always an adventure for us children, old John Hallowed not being overly inclined socially.

“The canoe pulled in right alongside the pier. The passenger was a stranger, a well-dressed man, I judged about twenty-five to thirty years of age, the paddler Big Beaver, an Indian who lived on the island from whom father bought furs for rugs and coats. Beaver was our friend. We had often paddled our canoes over to his house, a half dugout in the side of a knoll; he had permitted us to dig for arrowheads and flint axes in the old Indian burying ground on his island.

“We greeted him joyously and his reply was a characteristic ‘Huh,’ but he left out his usual ‘Huh, papooses.’

“The stranger, carefully, with a hand on the pier, I noted, thinking how awkwardly he got out of a canoe, stood and stiffly bowed to Alix, saying, ‘Is this Miss Alix Craighead whom I am addressing?’

“My sister made a little bow and the stranger continued his accent marking his nativity as Scotch, ‘McFarlane, Miss Craighead. I would speak with you and Mr. Hallowed. I come from your mother in Glasgow.’

“I was awestruck with his solemnity. Alix, deathly pale, with a finer sensibility or as she told me later, a premonition of evil things, asked me to run up to the barn and bring Mr. Hallowed to the library. Before I left the pier, I saw the stranger take a large sealed envelope from an inner pocket of his coat, heard Alix ask Beaver to stay for dinner, heard his short ‘No,’ as he pushed back with his paddle, shooting his canoe out into the stream, and when I looked back, Alix, with bosom rising and falling as though in great excitement, was holding the letter out in both hands evidently reading it.

“I found Hallowed dining with the men in the room west of the kitchen, and took him to the library. Alix and Mr. McFarlane were just entering the house, she dry-eyed but sad. Hallowed asked me to go back to where the men were, get Keith and help him take some horses back to a remote pasture. Pride in being of assistance on the farm, fatigue after the exertion of riding a mile and leading a horse sent me willingly to bed after an explanation from Hallowed who met me at the upstairs door, that Alix was asleep, the stranger fatigued, consequently it was not until next morning that I received my shock.

“An unusual thing, Alix bringing my breakfast on a tray. While I breakfasted, she laid out my best wearing apparel and stacked a full wardrobe on my bed. I asked if the Scotchman was royalty before whom I had to dress up, and she answered evasively.

“When I was ready to go out and not until then did she tell me.

“‘Our father has fallen from a horse and was seriously injured.’

“I felt no shock. Had I not seen a man’s leg broken when a tree fell on him? He was working as usual today.

“After a pause Alix said, ‘Father has passed away.’

“The grief of a child is poignant. Stunned, scarcely comprehending, mine was twofold. The thought that I should never see father again and the pity I had for Alix, who at last gave full sway to evidences of the pangs of a stronger nature than mine, up to that time suppressed, made me most miserable. But the little lady who had, since my parents went away, assumed the role of mother protector to her younger brother, soon dried her tears and mine, saying that we still had mother and must hurry to her. That was the reason for the coming of McFarlane. We were to travel with him to Scotland.

“In the early morning of life, nature is more kind to her children than during the midday or the afternoon; in an hour my mind was full of our imminent departure from the only home I had ever known and my heart was aflutter with the excitement of the adventure.

“We left Craighead Hall before noon. Hallowed and his first assistant foreman, Keith, rowed us over to Verde Island, old Big Beaver made a silent sixth; as we anticipated bringing mother back right away we proposed leaving a boat on the island.

“There is a mile of swamp back of the island, under water in the spring, but then dry. At the first house, that of a Mr. Murray, standing where the mainland is reached, where Mr. McFarlane had left a carriage seating six, we had luncheon.

“I remember thinking about McFarlane’s extravagance, keeping a man and a team a whole day. The man surely was a sport for a Scotchman, and I began to admire him.

“Hallowed was quite a talented man who had served grandfather before accompanying father across the ocean. I respected him, obeyed his instructions always. I knew that he was in father’s confidence, held almost as an equal, yet when he lifted Alix in his arms, held her close for a moment and kissed her, I was shocked. He turned to me, placing a hand on each of my shoulders, giving me a gentle shake saying, ‘Hugh Craighead, ye are head of the Craighead clan now. Show by being a man that ye be worthy the honor,’ and turned away, tears glistening on his cheeks.

“I never saw the faithful old retainer again. He died before we returned to the Hall. His body lies over there on the burnt hill, where if he ever visits his grave he may overlook the demesne in which he had as much pride as the owner.

“We drove over dubious roads for hours. It was dark when we reached the railroad station. I had never consciously seen a railroad; was a baby when brought across the ocean.

“Alix stood firm and calm with a hand on McFarlane’s arm as a great shaft of light swept the station platform on which we stood, while I cowered back against the station wall, terrified as the fearsome thing with a grinding noise, a great clanking of iron and hissing of steam passed us and the long line of coaches came to a stop. The thing seemed in pain, or in a fury; it breathed, to that boy of the backwoods, just like a monstrous animal, annoyed at being stopped in its mad journey through the night.

“I was still trying to get a good look at the mastodon as Alix, pulling me by the hand, mounted to the third car, following on the heels of McFarlane. Then we walked back inside to the rear coach.

“How trivialities fasten themselves in the young mind! I was worried, I recollect, that two strange boys, not much taller than I, should pick up our treasured bags and those of Mr. McFarlane and run down the station platform. I called to McFarlane to stop them, but he laughed, saying,

“‘It’s all richt, come along,’ and there were the bags and the two boys when we took our seats. It staggered me to see McFarlane pass a glittering shilling to each of the boys; profligate, I thought.”

“Truants! At last I have found you,” came cheerful, bell-like, Elaine’s voice through the fringe of cedars to the left of the landing.

A particularly vicious-looking bloodhound bounded in the open onto the sand, followed by the young lady, holding a leash.

“Luncheon is over-ready, gentlemen,” and she pulled the beast back from my uncomfortable heel which seemed to interest him inordinately and laughed into my eyes as she said,

“Now you cannot get away, Mr. Montrose. Lucifer has your picture, your measure,” and then addressing her brother, “Hughie, a messenger from the village has been waiting an hour with a letter which he would not entrust even to me.”

Hugh hurried up the avenue while Elaine and I walked over toward the larger roadway, she saying that we must take Lucifer back to his mates.

“Has each dog a name?” I asked, looking at the powerful brute walking ahead of us.

“Yes,” Elaine answered, laughingly, “Some of them two. The pack leader is Julius Caesar, not turned to clay, I assure you, though I think he would keep almost anything away should it see him first.”

“Is he a reincarnation?” I joked.

Apparently seriously, she said, “Yes, dogs, like all other things, are born and reborn, just like humans, but always in their own line of vibration.”

“So you think that this Julius Caesar, this dog, may be a reincarnation of the great Caesar?” I asked lightly, unable to determine whether or not she was serious.

“Stupid! Of course not,” she shot back. “Dogs come back as dogs, birds as birds and man always as man. But the Caesar who conquered the world had lived many lives and crossed many Rubicons before he sent that historic message to Rome. Consider what a man he was—even if we don’t quite approve of him. Isn’t reincarnation the only logical explanation of such a product?”

“Some day, Miss Elaine,” I ventured, “I would like to have you explain your theory of evolution as applied to the human soul. I am in earnest,” I added, as she gave me a quizzical glance. “The idea of the creation of the body from the earth and the breathing into it of life by the Omnipotent has always been accepted and I have not reasoned further.”

Elaine gave me such a serio-comic pitying look, laughingly adding, “You dear old innocent. Once I thought too that we came ready-made from the hands of a Creator, mind and soul and body, but—” and she hesitated, “some day you shall have the evidence that man as he wills creates himself. I wish for Hugh’s sake and my own that we could confide in you. You would then at least understand matters better.”

Her face had become serious, even sorrowful-looking as she talked and I was glad that Hugh interrupted just then.

He came out the garden way as we approached the kennels and announced that he must go at once to the village and might be gone several days. As the carriage drove up, he kissed his sister, then turned to me and while holding my hand, said, “My friend, I am going to ask you to look after my little sister during my absence.”

I ascended right then to the seventh heaven.

CHAPTER V

THE RIVER was a sheet of glass that afternoon. Elaine suggested that we take the punt, a broad flat-bottomed, square-ended boat, and go out and spear garfish, schools of which were sunning their backs above water. She was quick and accurate in handling the three-tined spear and pulled in two for my one. The camaraderie engendered in this hour of sport, “ridding the river of a pest,” as Elaine put it, completely broke down the timidity which I must confess possessed me while with Elaine, ever since that first episode while dining with Hugh.

It was about three o’clock and we were working fast when a bell atop a barn on the hill back of the house, but in plain view to us, began to ring vociferously. Elaine in the front of the boat, spear held crosswise in both hands, turned facing me, a strange look of fear or horror pictured in her great brown eyes.

“Another unfortunate,” she said as though speaking to herself, “and Hugh is away.” Quickly she put out the oars, motioning me back as I stepped forward to take them from her. I asked her what the bell meant, but she made no answer.

I perforce merely steered the boat, while I watched the group of buildings, expecting to see a fire break out. Not until we were on the pier did Elaine vouchsafe a word, then she said, “You must help me with the dogs,” as we went breathlessly up through the house and orchard back walk to the dog kennels, a low stone building in a picket fence enclosure.

A man with a great shock of snow-white hair and a young face touched his forehead and said, “Haig, Miss; he has been uneasy for a week,” then he picked up a leather boot, adding, “We changed his boots, Miss, since Mr. Hugh noticed his nervousness.”

Two hounds giving evidence of having just abandoned their dinner came lounging forward. Elaine placed two fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill whistle, a duplicate of her brother’s signal when I first made the acquaintance of the pack, and every beast was at the fence in a jiffy.

The white-haired man now snapped a leash onto the collar of the wickedest-looking of the animals, handed the braided strap to Elaine and surrounded by the dogs we went toward the wood.

“Haig was disking in the firewood field, Miss. We think he took to the swamp; has been gone hours probably. We missed him only after lunch-hour and did not wish to disturb you knowing that the master was away.”

“You should have notified me at once,” Elaine answered, “The poor fellow is not in good health.”

The gray-haired man left us. We soon reached the plow from which the horses had been turned loose. The half-mile walk was passed in silence except that Elaine talked constantly to the brutes as they crowded about her, whimpering replies strangely, seemingly comprehendingly.

The long boot brought by the man was investigated, I believe, by every dog and they then spread out, circling over the field nearby, silently for a moment, then one gave vent to a prolonged howl, a most dismal sound, and headed off toward the woods on the east; the other dogs in turn found the scent, each giving his lugubrious signal and then running in silence.

As two men on horseback came in sight over a rise of ground, Elaine pointed to the pack and the men spurred toward the swamp woods, making a short cut.

As we walked back toward the house, Elaine explained that she and her brother entertained about forty “guests,” liberated from Canadian and American prisons, that they were constantly coming and going, but they all came “on condition that they should stay at the Hall until Hugh gave them permission to go.”

He found places for them in occupations suited to their condition. Some stayed permanently, working at farming, keeping accounts, or doing such work as best fitted them for the world outside. Most of those liberated through Hugh’s efforts were educated men, proven innocent of the crimes for which they were incarcerated or carrying unreasonably long sentences, all alike robbed of spirit through prison discipline.

“Haig’s case?” I asked.

“Hugh will tell you all about it,” she evaded.

Regulations were that each might choose his work and change it if it proved unsuitable. They were all silent men, good listeners, tractable, helpful to each other, timid for a time, always respectful to Hugh, herself, and the supervisors, who were all life-termers, who chose to remain permanently at the Hall.

The white-haired man and the two house men whom I had seen were rescued from life imprisonment through Hugh’s efforts.

“Was she afraid of her guests?”

“No, only sorry for them. She wished to help Hugh whose ambition was to make of this work a national institution on a big scale.”

The case of the runaway was unfortunate inasmuch as his home was in the village which he doubtless would attempt to reach—and he had not yet recovered from “prison poisoning” as Elaine put it.

After six o’clock and no word from the runaway; Elaine had excused herself. I selected a book from the library and then wandered down to the river; the sun was behind the big hill to the west when I returned to the house, found that the searchers were still out, but that the dogs had lost the scent; repaired to my room to find my bags awaiting me, bathed, debated, then city habit winning, donned dinner clothes and returned to the library.

“Miss Craighead is resting,” the “guest”-waiter explained; “would I prefer to wait, would I dine at the usual hour or await her pleasure?”

“I would prefer to wait,” I replied.

Though now that the sun was down, the fresh Canadian autumn air with a tang and the unusual exercise of the afternoon had aroused in me a splendid appetite, I would have risked starving rather than forego the pleasure of a tête-à-tête dinner with this interesting personality.

I wandered out into the orchard, my thoughts drawing me to the tree of the morning’s adventure. The “twelve baskets” were not there, but I had no difficulty in finding what I wished, an apple to eat.

I dined late, and alone; it must have been at least nine o’clock. Elaine offered no excuse through the servant.

“She must be asleep,” I reasoned. I retired about midnight, ill at ease and not a little disappointed at the ending of a day that had begun so pleasantly.

“Mr. Montrose!”

Was I dreaming? were my last thoughts on losing consciousness, a silvery voice from the branches of the apple tree, carrying me through the mystery period called sleep?

“Mr. Montrose!”

I was awake now, and sprang from my bed, calling excitedly, “What’s wrong, what is it?” as I sensed anxiety or some great change in the voice of Elaine calling from the hallway.

“Please dress quickly and warmly; I have found the runaway. He will die before morning unless we can get to him. I shall be in the hall downstairs or at the pier.”

I dressed quickly and as I started downstairs, Elaine called, “Please get Stanton from the west corner room. I’ll be down in a minute.”

I confess feeling panicky as I rushed through the upper hall, dark as a pocket, knocked, then without awaiting a reply, entered, to find that Stanton was the young-faced gray-haired man who had started the hunt for Haig.

The man was ready to go almost before I could get out of the room and joined me at the foot of the stairway, just as Elaine came down the stairs.

She was clad as in the morning, but wore a short coat of deerskin and a close-fitting deerskin cap. The straight brown line of the cap crossing her forehead probably accentuated her paleness, certainly the hours of “rest” had worked on her sad havoc as she looked more like a spectre than the reality of the girl of the evening. She spoke nervously, authoritatively,

“Stanton, Haig is in the old Blank house beyond the swamp. He needs help—pneumonia perhaps; bring a couple of blankets. Mr. Montrose, will you put on an overcoat, a sweater, that will be better, you will have to work. I’ll bring Hugh’s. Get the big canoe out,” and she ran swiftly upstairs.

I followed, picked up my topcoat, for the night was chilly, and got back to the front door to see Elaine flying down the pathway to the landing.

Stanton was launching a good-sized canoe, wide of beam, beautifully shaped from a pine tree log, and remarked, just as I arrived, “It will hold four, but why should you go, Miss. Mr. Montrose and I can look after him.”

Elaine’s answer was to stoop and seize the roll of blankets, throw them into the bow of the canoe, and seat herself upon them, turning up the collar of her coat, as she faced the two of us, I on the center thwart and Stanton steering.

As we paddled eastward in silence, my mind, I must say, was not on the case of Haig. A delicate white throat peeping out between the upturned lapels of leather; the fair, wan face above it, the graceful outline of the girl as she half reclined in the narrow prow of the canoe, were of much greater interest than was the welfare of the fleeing ex-convict at two o’clock in the morning.

I handled a paddle well, thanks to my early love of the open water and a light canoe. While the fast little craft cut through the water in the darkness, my mind was busy—almost to the asking point. I wondered how Elaine knew about the hiding place of Haig.

Presently, after proceeding a long distance straight east as I judged the direction on swinging out from the pier, we veered to the left a little and proceeding a half-mile or so, turned sharply into a channel with great-limbed water-killed trees on either side, at first dimly outlined, then more close to us. How far we came I could not even guess. The silent night, the sombre surroundings, the gentle dip, dip of the paddles; the strange girl, seemingly asleep, but only seemingly, and I thought with the purpose of avoiding conversation, had their effect on my nerves.

I was relieved to hear Stanton say, “We must go slowly here or I shall miss the channel and come to grief,” a long speech for a Craighead Hall “guest.”

The canoe came almost to a standstill, then moved sharply to the left at a paddle stroke by Stanton, gliding gently among the dead trees whose limbs seemed to reach out like living tentacles of the octopus, in an attempt to enfold us. Into the living woods, ash and willow, through lily pads in clusters, an almost imperceptible path in a field of wild rice and rushes.

Hugh’s description of his boyhood adventure at Blank’s house came vividly before me as we pushed the canoe alongside the remnants of a crude landing pier. It was a pier only in semblance. Ice had loosened boards which time and neglect had reduced almost to nothingness. There were gaps and rotted planks; Mirza’s bridge at Bagdad was not more hazardous, but Elaine lightly sprang over the open places until she reached more solid footing on logs laid lengthwise. Even they were precarious as they also had yielded to time and the elements.

I followed more carefully, but in the dark made one mistake which left me with a leg to the thigh dripping with water and black ooze from a spot that looked solid.

Elaine waited for us, ’twas just a moment, and we proceeded through a tangle for a seemingly interminable distance. How foolish of us to have forgotten to bring a lantern or candle even. I had matches, and used a few before we came to the bottom of a garden in a small clearing. Even the garden was a labyrinth difficult of threading. All sorts of vines seemed to reach up to trip us and weeds abounded.

We stood before a log house, one story high with two small-paned windows, a door between. I could see the outlines of a barn or shed to the left.

I tried the door, Stanton standing back as though awaiting orders, while Elaine still held the roll of blankets that she had elected to carry, notwithstanding my protest. The door withstanding all my efforts, refused to open; there was something more substantial than a lock holding it, I felt.

At Elaine’s suggestion, I tried the window on the right without avail. Stanton, better riverman than I, had carried his paddle to help his balance on the pier and logs. This he inserted under the window frame, which raised.

He threw up the window and called, “Haig!”

No reply.

“He is in there,” Elaine said, and looked at me.

Stanton was holding up the lower frame of the window. I am not a coward, but I certainly had no relish for what was evidently my task. But had I known that the place was full of serpents, I would not have hesitated in her presence.

I crawled awkwardly through the opening which was almost breast-high from the ground. Inside, I listened intently just a moment, then touching the wall with both hands, moved to the right, until I found the door, felt a heavy bar across, lifted one end until it swung upright on a hinge and from the sound, snapped into a holder. I could see nothing. The darkness was inky.

Stanton was trying to and finally did force the lock, and it was a relief to find him beside me, endeavoring to strike a match.

What is there in a human habitation, long deserted, which brings a chill to the spine when entered at the darkest hour of night? Is it a rendezvous for the baser spirits of the departed, the outcasts from the civilization of the tomorrow?

Certainly as I stood awaiting the forcing of the door, I could feel the foul things all about; could even hear them. I was not afraid, merely palsied with horror, quivering.

“Bats,” Stanton said. “Please stay outside, out of the doorway, Miss, they will strike you,” he called to Elaine as his match flared up for a second, then went out, intensifying the darkness.

Stanton again called. Silence, except for that indescribable sough produced by the wings of flying bats. Another match, two this time, and Stanton opened the nearest door in the west half partition. I had found my matches and before his expired was beside him with a fresh light. There was not an article of furniture in the room, but huddled in the far corner, in a half lying, half sitting posture, was Haig, a white-faced frail-looking lad, not long out of his teens apparently. Seemingly the spark of life had left him, he was so still. Elaine was on her knees, beside him, feeling through his wet clothes for heart-beats.

“He is alive, barely alive,” she exclaimed, excitedly. “Make a fire of something. He will not live until we get him home and Hughie would never forgive me.”

I wrapped one of the blankets about him, cursing myself for not bringing either a light or a stimulant; carried him out and rubbed his body vigorously while Stanton tore a cupboard from a corner of the larger room and soon had a fire going outside.

The second blanket was warmed and replaced the first. As I worked over him, I wondered what crime this delicate boy could have committed which would harden the hearts of a jury of men to the extent of condemning so innocent-looking a youth to a living death in prison. I must ask Hugh about it.

He opened his eyes and tried to speak. Elaine, who was close beside him, placed her little white hand over his lips and said, just as a mother would, “Now don’t speak. Just shut your eyes and rest. We shall take you home.”

After Haig’s clothing was dry, at least thoroughly heated, we wrapped him in the two blankets, both hot, and Stanton carried him over the hazardous places alone, while I helped when I could.

We found our way out to the open river just before dawn. It was bitterly cold on the water. Elaine wore my topcoat. When I helped her into it, she was tremulous, almost hysterical, now that the anxiety was over.

I reached the conclusion, as I tucked the ample folds of the coat about her, as she sat in the bottom of the canoe near the bow, that here was a wonderful thing, a girl, a woman, such as I had never thought existed. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her—much.

Instead, I placed Haig’s head in her lap, at her demand, stretched his body back with feet under my seat amidship, and with Stanton paddled back the long four-mile detour to Craighead Hall.

Tucked into Stanton’s bed, with a drink of brandy, hot water bottles about him, I left Haig and sought my room. I did not retire then; broad daylight found me pacing the floor, filled with unease, doubt, fear, yet with a longing unfathomable. I had come searching for a man astray, and had lost myself. What would be the sequel?

CHAPTER VI

THE SUN was pretty well down over the west when I found Elaine in the great hall. I had slept through the day. She had ordered dinner in the library, and was awaiting me. “How did you know I should be ready at this time?” I asked.

“Oh,” she replied, “The walls of this house have ears. You needed a good sleep after last night. I feel greatly indebted to you. Our boy is doing splendidly.”

What hope for a man who wishes to say something when a woman wills that he must not? Here was the woman, the lady hostess, not the approachable girl of the canoe voyage, and I learned a lesson in restraint, found myself drawn away from any encroachment on the personal; intensely interested in a rare quality of mind, beautifully, absorbingly unfolded. Yes, the evening was one of agony and I retired uncertain of myself, baffled, convinced that no thought of me other than as the brother’s friend and her guest during his absence had ever occurred to her.

Next day we were seated on opposite sides of a luncheon table on the upper veranda. The sun was bright. I was about to pull down the Venetian curtain, when Hugh, a Chinaman at his heels, bounded up the east stairway. After greeting his sister with an embrace and me with a handshake, Hugh said,

“This is Fong Wing, who will hereafter make his home with us. He was legally free yesterday morning, but I gave him time to buy an outfit; Elaine, he is yours, the best lady’s maid in Canada. The warden’s family wished him to stay; though he has nominally been in prison for five years, during most of the time he has served as a maid in the family of the warden. They became much attached to Fong.”

Turning to the Chinaman, Hugh said, “Fong, this is your new mistress, Miss Elaine. Guard her as you would your life, and obey her; and this is my friend, Mr. Montrose.”

What is the age of a Chinaman after he has seen forty or fifty years? The queue was missing; shorn clean, his bullet head sported a million bristles sticking straight out. His round satin cap was in his hand. He bowed to me, looked with lamblike eyes into the face of Elaine, knelt, took her right hand and placing it on his bristly pate, said,

“Missie catch one good China boy; good cook; good hair dresser, make good music,” arose and held a chair that Elaine might resume her seat at the table.

Hugh took Fong along presumably to show him his quarters and shortly after joined us, laughingly saying, “At last, sister, we have one cheerful, talkative guest in this house of silent men. Fong is a talker. I would stake my life on his faithfulness. His parting with the warden’s three young lady daughters was comically pathetic.”

“What was his crime?”

“He was given twenty years for using a hatchet promiscuously on a member of a rival tong and glad to get out. Regards me as his benefactor and feels that for fifteen years I shall own him, body and soul.”

Recital of the attempt of Haig to escape and details of the rescue seemed to sober Hugh who was in high spirits. I hoped he would ask Elaine how she knew that the runaway was at the Blank place, but when she mentioned that we had gone there at her request, Hugh’s eyes only took on a saddened expression as he turned them toward those of his sister.

“Montrose, I shall tell you Haig’s story some day,” Hugh said.

Elaine, who had been turning the leaves of a fashion magazine which Hugh had brought, started up, saying, “I must see what they’re going to wear this winter. Where did you put Fong?”

“In the green room, but you need not leave us. No secrets between Mr. Montrose and me that you may not hear,” Hugh replied.

Her answer was a pat on his hand, and surprise of surprises, a glance at me more frank and friendly than she had vouchsafed during Hugh’s absence.

We were smoking and looking out over the river, calm and beautiful and for a time both were silent, then Hugh said, “I am very glad that you saved Haig, Montrose. Had he gotten to his old home, he would have spoiled my plans. I have a fine place for him as soon as he regains his poise. The boy was innocent of any crime, the greatest piece of injustice and cruelty that I ever came across in the many cases which I have investigated.

“You must know that in the best-managed of villages, vice resorts cannot be kept out. Valleyford is a clean village, but it once harbored one such place, kept by a woman who supported an innocent daughter at a Toronto school through the use of her home by girls who plied a vicious trade, alluring young men of the village, and many older men, I am afraid, for gain.

“During the summer holiday season, Haig, who was only seventeen, was celebrating with four older boys from college. They all took several drinks and finally repaired to this house on the suggestion of one of the boys that they go to see some girls. Unfortunately, the daughter had unexpectedly reached home that evening and met three nice appearing girl boarders and received the five boy callers, innocent of the evil calling of her companions, the mother being at the grocer’s. The obvious happened; the daughter was abused, warrants for the five were issued next day at the mother’s instance.

“James Haig, on hearing of the warrant, walked into the sheriff’s office; his brother, nineteen, resisted arrest in Manitoba and was killed; another of the boys after wounding a policeman in Sarnia was shot and died before the other three were placed on trial. The trio was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary though the four girls, and all three boys testified that Jimmie Haig merely met the girls, had been so desperately ill that he lay out on the porch until supported home by his brother. This was his first experience with liquor.”

Hugh paused, added in an aside, “What a terrible curse is liquor. It has filled penitentiaries. I wish it could be abolished,” then resumed:

“The crime is a serious one and is severely punished in Canada, but there were mitigating circumstances and I shall never rest until I have the other two boys under this roof. The stern old Scot who passed sentence on these youths seemed to take a vicious delight in disregarding a recommendation to mercy for James Haig, made by the equally stern jury of farmers. The poor boy was in hell for five years as a punishment for taking a drink. None of the boys was vicious; they were only foolish.

“I saw the mother of these two lost sons die of grief, followed soon after by the proud father whose spirit was broken by the disgrace and when six months ago after nearly three years’ effort, I brought Haig across the river here, a frail, broken young man, parents dead, home and inheritance lost, no spirit, I felt no elation; felt that there was scant justice in the world. This case as no other made me appreciate that truly ‘man’s inhumanity to man makes countless millions mourn.’

“Think of this boy facing his schoolmates; while absolutely innocent of any crime he carries the prison stigma; people not fit to tie his shoe-laces will shun him as a jailbird. ‘Oh justice, how many crimes are committed in thy name!’”

Hugh had arisen and walked the veranda in long strides; pity mingled with passion seemed to almost overpower him. I hastened to suggest that we go and cheer up the boy, adding, “and tonight I wish to discuss with you another subject.”

“Gordon,” Hugh said, and I was pleased at the use of my Christian name, “I have got to tell you the whole story. Strange that we humans should find relief in sharing with others our worries,” and he put his arm over my shoulder as we went into the house.

“Thank you, Hugh,” I replied, feeling my duplicity. I wished to discuss Elaine, not her strange malady. I had decided that I had found the only woman in the world beside whom I would be satisfied to walk through life and whatever her trouble might be, I wanted her. Forgotten her seizure, the fact that I knew so little of her, everything save that I longed to have the privilege of caring for her.

A man whom I had noticed working about the boathouse intercepted us as we were in the upper hall, asking Hugh’s permission for the “guests” to try a night at spearing fish. Hugh readily assented and suggested that possibly I might like to take a hand in the sport, explaining that a flat-bottomed boat would be used; a “jack,” a sort of cradle fixed about four feet high from the boat’s bow, filled with pine knots, furnished the light, the spearmen stood forward and could easily see the fish through six feet of water.

We reached Haig’s room and I marvelled at the man Craighead as he took the boy’s hand, chiding him as gently as though he were his son, though the difference in years as between the two was not great. I was taken into the conversation and gleaned much of interest regarding Hugh’s work.

Later in the men’s dining room, I listened after introduction to at least twenty men ranging in age from possibly twenty-five to sixty, to Hugh’s interesting talk to these “guests.” Inquiry as to work, how the fall plowing, the land clearing, road building, ditch digging and dairying were progressing. I thought what a splendid thing this salving of human souls was, what a wonderful thing, if all ex-convicts on regaining freedom could be taken to a retreat like this and kept until the prison pallor was replaced by sunburn, until the broken will was re-established and at least a measure of self-respect attained.

No! Society had not yet awakened to the advantages of such humanitarianism. It remained for an individual fortunately provided with the means as well as the will to furnish a haven for these social outcasts who otherwise with poisoned minds and shrunken souls would slink back to the old haunts, re-enact their crime, or failing in vicious courage, live as best they could, the prey of every minion of the guardians of society; fortunate if permitted to remain at large, slinking through the world carrying always on face or in walk, the mark of Cain.

We had watched the boat’s lights as the men went joyously out into the quiet river. I found that they talked and jested; the older “guests” seemingly endeavoring to draw out the later recruits in conversation.

I preferred to try my luck at the sport later on.

Elaine, with a peculiar look at her brother, absent-minded, it appeared, had excused herself while Hugh and I were smoking over our coffee, before walking down to the landing. A slight chill was in the air.

Ten o’clock found us in the library. Lying back on the pillows of a couch in the shadowy room, with hands clasped back of his head, Hugh said reminiscently.

“McFarlane was a splendid fellow, seemed old to me at the time, though not more than thirty; on the train, the ship, he looked after our comfort; kept both Alix and myself much interested through his own curiosity and peculiar remarks on what he observed.

“When greatly interested or excited, he lapsed into Scotch so broad that the words were almost unintelligible to me. Craighead affairs were not discussed, though I remember endeavoring to learn something about my forebears.

“When we reached Glasgow, it was night. We were bundled into a four-wheeled carriage, McFarlane giving the driver directions, and I caught the name Hill Head, a name which I had heard father and John Hallowed mention occasionally. It rained slightly, and the air seemed hollow. I can even now distinctly hear the hoofbeats of the horses as we crossed the wooden bridge over the little Kelvin River separating the city from Hill Head borough, also McFarlane’s voice saying, ‘We are a’most there the noo.’

“My nerves were tense as we drove through a gateway with stone pillars in a high brick wall hiding from our view a great square three-story building until we were right upon it. The house was dark, except for a glimmer through diamond-shaped panes of glass, on each side a massive door opening onto a stone-paved terrace.

“We alighted and waited until McFarlane spoke to our coachman, then walked across the stone flagging to the door which a dour-faced man was holding open.

“As we children entered, a sad-eyed, middle-aged woman in nurse’s attire looked at us sharply and said, ‘Puir bairnies, puir bairnies, and the mither buried this day week.’

“Alix screamed.

“‘What do you mean?’ McFarlane exclaimed, ‘Dead? Mrs. Craighead dead?’

“And the woman said, ‘Dead, aye, dead puir thing, gang awa’ hame to her mon when the wee ane came.’

“I lost consciousness; with the exhaustion of hurried travel, seasickness, the terrible shock of hearing that my sainted mother was no more; what could be expected?

“When I recovered my senses after a night’s rest, the first thing that greeted me was Alix, swollen-eyed, holding close to her face a wee baby in a knitted white something.”

Hugh paused, a look indescribable came into his eyes raised to mine and he said, “Gordon, this was Elaine, thus named in compliance with mother’s expressed wish. Elaine, the finest, bravest little comforter that God ever gave to a brother. I resented at that time the ‘will of God’ as the nurse put it in saying that mother gave her life that this little thing might live, but from the day that her little fingers grasped mine, to this hour, I have had no love for any creature on earth approaching my love for my little sister.

“McFarlane took entire charge of the little family of three. We had plenty of money on which to live nicely and travel; always McFarlane, Alix, baby, and nurse and myself.

“We stayed in the great gloomy house for months, then went to southern France. I was out of school for a year, sickly. Finally we took a small residence in Edinburgh where I attended school.

“During all the years until I was twenty-one and had my A. B. degree, McFarlane evaded my every question as to my family history. He had had himself appointed our legal guardian and had mapped out my career. I was to be a lawyer, as we call it.

“I had now reached man’s estate, a citizen of the City of Edinburgh, studious, a dreamer rather than a doer, my mind always painting pictures of the old place, reverting frequently to John Blank and I had always determined that I should come back when Elaine grew up.

“Elaine was a bright youngster, ‘muckle tae bricht,’ old nurse would say. Though frail in appearance, she had wonderful vitality, was a good student, her mind as she came into her teens running to the queer things in literature and history. She studied especially the old Bible, the edition with the apocrypha, the fourteen books of the Septuagint and the Vulgate, added to the Hebrew scriptures, the net result being avoidance of churches and preaching, a most awful thing to McFarlane and to the local dominie, who assured Alix, the little mother of the household, that the ‘girlie was headed straicht for Hell.’

“Alix was a splendid woman, with many friends, but McFarlane’s business interviews with her were so frequent that all suitors were discouraged. The course of our lives ran smoothly and we were very happy together.

“One day, McFarlane on returning from a two-hour business engagement with Alix, as he explained it, asked me to accompany him to Glasgow that I might sign some papers connected with my father’s estate.

“Arrived at the gloomy city, dreading a visit to the ugly house of my forefathers, I was surprised and pleased when we alighted at a clean, bright-looking hotel where we shared a room, repairing next morning to the city hall, where I signed, McFarlane signed, a clerk witnessed, another official signed and put a great blue seal with ribbons on a number of papers.

“To another room, where a more important, if possible, personage than the blue seal handler, critically examined every paper presented; I remember feeling an anxiety equalling that of examination day when my coveted A. B. was in the balance and was greatly relieved when the judge finally affixed his signature to one of the documents, shoved all of them over to a clerk at a desk on a lower level and told McFarlane, ‘You have been a good steward, sir,’ and looking keenly at me, added, ‘and this is the young man, and no blood of his, who has circumvented the iron will of old Alexander Craighead; the old man will turn in his grave tonight.’

“I almost ran from the building, urging McFarlane for an explanation of the judge’s remarks.

“‘Naething, naething at a’; the auld judge is garrulous,’ was all I could elicit.

“It never occurred to me to read what I was signing, but when in our hotel room, McFarlane spread before me what he explained was a power of attorney, giving him authority to handle my affairs until I should revoke it; I read the document carefully and knowing nothing of business, balked at signing. Finally I signed, after McFarlane produced a document of similar import bearing Alix’s signature and I returned to Edinburgh alone, the master of a property about which I knew nothing, nor did I care, as life went along as before.

“I took my post-graduate course, graduated at law, spent six months traveling in Europe and yet I had no idea as to the extent of my inheritance. You may think, friend Montrose, that for a man holding a Master’s degree I was a dullard; the fact is, Alix mothered me, managed, I thought, all business matters, though it was really McFarlane’s steady head that did everything needful.

“I was twenty-four; my time was almost wholly devoted to study. We always called our friend ‘Mr. McFarlane,’ though once I overheard Alix use his Christian name, saying,

“‘No, James, time enough when we must tell him.’

“I sensed an understanding between my elder sister and McFarlane, even surmised that they might marry, thought the secret they were keeping from me was an engagement, as they were much together when McFarlane was not away in Glasgow.

“Alix did not wish me to return to Canada, but while in Europe, I planned a visit to Craighead Hall before taking a place in a law office secured through our faithful friend’s influence.

“Faithful old John Hallowed’s letters and accounts had all through the years kept us in touch with the old place.

“Strange that Elaine, who had never seen this old mansion should have developed a greater interest in it than either Alix or I retained. She knew how many acres had been cleared, all about the enlargement of the orchard and the wonderful success of the fruit grafting. We talked over every item in Hallowed’s reports, otherwise I fear my interest might have flagged.

“John Blank had become almost a myth. One day I was crossing from Calais to Dover, homeward bound after seeing the world; sitting in one of the uncomfortable chairs on deck I found myself looking at the profile of an old lady—the young ones failed to interest me even then.

“Something in the half face before me carried me back to a deft blue room and the block house down the back channel and the woman who dressed me, whom John Blank called Margie. Ridiculous, I thought. This plainly but handsomely gowned lady could not be the roughly dressed woman of the long ago. I walked past her and inspection only tended to confirm my first thought.

“My interest was such that it attracted her attention and fearing that my actions would justly lay me under a charge of rudeness, at least, I stepped up to her, bowed and said, ‘Madam, pardon me, are you not Mrs. Blank from Canada?’

“She paled, appeared annoyed, rather seemed startled, then after hesitating while we looked at each other, eye to eye, said, ‘No, young man, I am not Mrs. Blank of Canada,’ arose and disappeared in the boat’s interior.

“I stammered an apology wholly lost on her.

“Going directly to London I was surprised but delighted to meet McFarlane at the hotel. He said Alix had informed him of the probable date of my arrival there and as we were talking in the lounge even before I had been assigned a room, two men whom I would have sworn were Scotland Yard operatives appeared and he excused himself saying they were friends with whom he wished to discuss some private matters.

“At dinner that night I mentioned the episode on the boat. When the name Mrs. Blank was mentioned, McFarlane started, almost leaving his chair and had me repeat the exact language used by the lady and myself. I inquired as to his interest. He had calmed, said it merely related to my oft repeated story of my adventure in the home of the deformed man and changed the subject, informing me that he had to meet an old friend and was already a little late.

“I finished dinner alone, thinking that the canny Scot was not very cordial, considering our extended separation.

“Next day, McFarlane pleaded a bit of urgent business; we were to have returned together to Edinburgh. He had to stay in London. I could not wait, must see my sisters, so I traveled alone. What joy in that reunion! Alix was even more beautiful than when I had left home. Elaine was a tall, ethereal, big-eyed child.

“I took my place at a high desk and for three years devoted myself assiduously to running errands, copying bills, then briefs, doing the grinding, gruelling inside work considered a necessary stepping-stone to the lower round of the ladder which all solicitors must climb, and my ambition did not stop there. I wished to become an advocate, a barrister. I worked hard, devoted much time previously spent with my sisters to study after work hours.

“One day Alix told me that Elaine was fourteen. I awoke to the realization that here was a young lady, almost; I thought her beautiful, as I do now; apparently she was delicate; she never tired of study, was an omnivorous reader and a good listener, especially when matters pertaining to Craighead Hall were discussed.

“In this year came the turning point in her life and mine.”

Hugh sighed, looked dreamily at the long shadows thrown on a bookcase by the leading running perpendicularly with the flame of the one lamp, which, with one other, served to remove the library from total darkness, hesitated, then said,

“It seems a sacrilege to open up even to your friendly, yes, I venture to say more than friendly—sympathetic—ears, even the first chapter in our book of secrets.

“Elaine is more to me than is existence. Her infirmity, for I cannot now regard it as other than a terrible affliction, though once, God forgive me, I looked upon her peculiar ability to penetrate the impenetrable, to draw aside the veil separating the here from the hereafter and receive messages from the dead—I looked upon this unheard of ability as a gift—a sacred thing, sacred,” and Hugh’s voice trailed off into a low sibilance.

The light over the fireplace sputtered and went out. Everything was in shadow, a mist seemed to gather about Hugh’s reclining form—or was it the change wrought through lessening of the light? I, Gordon Montrose, saw, or thought I saw, a man of fifty or more years of age bending over Hugh. I missed his features, they were indistinct.

In my excitement I started to my feet, calling, “Hugh! Hugh!” and then only we two men, I standing all a-tremble, Hugh calm, but sitting up, were in the room.

“Let us retire, Gordon,” Hugh said. “I cannot go on tonight.”

Excitedly I asked, “Did you see the man bending over you?”

“No, I seldom see him,” Hugh replied, smiling wanly.

“Then,” I answered, “am I taking on the spirit of this haunted old place? Perhaps I am only like many good Scots, seeing my weird,” and I think I laughed lowly, half-heartedly, the sound an apology, for Hugh was silent and his manner embarrassed, while it kept me from further comment or inquiry.

Hugh gave no sign, but took the one remaining lamp from its setting, preceded me upstairs, opened my bedroom door, and said, “Good night—and good morning,” and still carrying the lamp, my room being lighted, walked down the corridor out of sight.

CHAPTER VII

SLEEP would not come. Were they all crazy in this mysterious house? Had I, through contact, lost my sense of reality? I certainly saw a shadowy man standing over Hugh, yet how could such a thing be? Penetrating beyond death. One reads about such things; reads of the Christ in person appearing on the third day after crucifixion, yes, and I had never thought sufficiently deeply to determine whether or not I believed this. Was it not labeled Gospel? And on other occasions the Master appeared. I thought of all recorded appearance of spirits as I remembered my Bible, all the old superstitions as we call them. Then my mind came back to Elaine.

What, exactly, did Hugh mean by drawing aside the veil? Second sight perhaps, but second sight is not a malady, it is a gift, if there is such a thing, an extra sense. I thought of her beautiful, spirituelle face, speaking eyes, golden bronze hair, then of the aged, ashen face of the girl in white, felt her pressed against me as she dropped from the apple tree.

I awoke with the sun shining in my window, facing south—late. Hugh in riding clothes, was standing beside a saddled horse, held by one of the silent men. The horse was a beautiful beast, one could almost use his polished flank for a mirror.

I called a greeting and Hugh called back, “Hope you had a good rest,” as he came across the yard and as he reached the veranda stairhead, “Sorry I cannot stay to entertain you today. I have had breakfast and must go to the village; urgent call and cannot say when I shall be back. Elaine excuses herself this morning. Will be with you shortly, I trust; amuse yourself and prowl about, there are many oddities about the old place worth investigating.”

We shook hands and I assured him that I felt quite at home, secretly rejoicing in anticipation of a day alone with my young hostess.

My breakfast came shortly after Hugh had mounted his horse, waved to me with his riding crop, and disappeared.

The day was warm and windless; a boatload of rivermen was the only thing moving on the placid water in front. These men were taking in and piling in great piles, on the shore of the next point of land to the east, the long logs, called booms, which had served to keep the timber floating down the river, out of the shallow water dotted with trees among which they would otherwise lodge.

I whiled away the morning, going no farther afield than the landing pier, always keeping an eye on the house, momentarily hoping that Elaine would present herself on the veranda.

Luncheon over; I dined alone, again sought the pier where I could have a good view of the house. What a formidable affair it was, rising through its entire length of fully 120 feet, two high stories and a Tudor style palisade atop, all tooled gray limestone, upper and lower veranda stretched across its front for about eighty feet to a tower coming out to the twelve-foot verandas’ width, serving to break the severity of the facade. The house shut off a view of the rise of the hill into the side of which it was fitted.

Disinclined to intrude through inquiry as to the welfare of my hostess, I nevertheless felt quite anxious and finally repaired to the house.

I was shocked on entering the great hall; an unmistakable odor of something afire assailed me. I took the stairs in a few bounds, ran through the hall following my sense of smell until it brought me to the room which I knew was being occupied by Fong Wing, the Chinaman.

Without ceremony I swung open the door and burst in upon the celestial, to find Fong on hands and knees on the floor, before him an improvised shrine, a Buddha, black with age, an oblong plate in front, full of burning punk sticks, the room full of smoke and scattered about in orderly disorder, thousands of small discs of paper, white and pink.

“What in heaven’s name—” here I stopped. Another worshipper, another religion, a devotee as earnest and orthodox as could be found in any Catholic, Protestant or offshoot branch of the Christian church; a heathen, and yet was there to the Deity anything in his manner of worship differentiating his supplication or thank-offering from that of the Christian?

Fong, as becomes any worshipper disturbed in his devotions who naturally does not wish to break off the established connection abruptly, took his time and while I stood, open-mouthed, arose.

I apologized, “Fong, I’m sorry, I thought the house was afire.”

“Allee light, allee light, Mista Montlose.”

“What the devil are you doing with all this paper stuff? You’ll set the house ablaze same day,” I retorted.

“Dlive away devil-man makee li’l Missie sick. We ketchee him last night,” Fong replied.

Fong’s eyes were big and startled as he sputtered out, “No, no! No see him, quick devil-man come, Missie talk, talk, bymby nearly all night. Soon Missie die; Fong dlive devil-man away, maybe.”

The doubt in the “maybe” registered despair, question as to the efficacy of his supplication. There flashed through my mind the prayer of the Christian, the penance, the intermediary, Mary, the Saints, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius; the blood offering of the Hebrews, the burning punk wood of the Chinaman; wherein lies the difference? Is it not in fact in the reflex, is not the end attained in the act itself? Else why should this heathen pray, this one of the five hundred millions of Chinese now living and condemned as we are told to an eternity in Hell. Is religion merely an emotion? Does devotion have its genesis in fear?

“How is your little mistress?” I asked the innocent-faced Chinaman, whom I regarded much as I would a child.

“Velly bad, velly bad. Velly sick. Not eat, while lookee allee same die, last night, today, now maybe.”

“Take me to her,” I ordered, peremptorily, forgetting propriety or anything except that I must get help.

Fong opened a door in the side of his room, crossed a hallway, quietly swung wide another door and I stepped into Elaine’s chamber.

My heart stopped beating. She was lying on a great high mahogany bed with four carved posts marking the corners rising half-way to the room’s ceiling. The westering sun slanting across the white bed-covering caught her face in its full light. She was as motionless as the dead; gray with the pallor of death, there was no rise and fall of the chest, not even a quiver of the throat.

I thought her dead as I stood for a moment looking not at the girl Elaine as I carried her in my heart but at that other ashen-faced woman into whom Elaine was unaccountably metamorphosed on my first night’s sojourn at Craighead Hall.

Gently I placed my hand on her brow, it was cold—but moist—wet in fact.

“This is not death,” I said aloud, though I had forgotten Fong who stood about six feet away with hands clenched together and raised above and in front of his head.

She was lying on her back, arms outstretched. I hastily placed a finger on her left wrist. Thank God! a pulse, feeble heart-beats, regular, in contrast with mine!

Fong, trained lady’s maid of the prison warden’s feminine household, was at home in this emergency. The Chinaman brought cold water, laved her brow, face and throat, talking an unintelligible jargon in low crooning tones.

I stood silent and helpless until Fong directed me to perform a similar office with hands and arms, applying linen wrung out in cold water and rubbing vigorously.

A faint tinge of color gradually replaced the pallor. She sighed, suddenly sat up, eyes wide open and lips apart as though in alarm. She threw out her hands, palms outward as though to ward off—Fong dropped to his knees. I think he thanked some deity, perhaps only the intermediary; it was in Chinese; as for me, I thanked God direct and in good Anglo-Saxon and so loudly that it seemed to arouse Elaine and explain to her the cause of the intrusion.

“Why the reception?” came in a hysterical, whispered laugh from Elaine, her big eyes resting on mine, then she sank back onto the pillows, the eyes closed; she seemed utterly exhausted.

“I shall go for a doctor,” I urged, but she shook her head.

“No! No doctor can do anything. I shall be all right in a little while,” and she seemed to fall asleep as I stood irresolute, not knowing whether to obey or go at once to the village for a physician.

I turned on hearing a rustling as of paper being gathered together, to find the Celestial with a sheaf of leaves in his hands, moon-eyed as he looked at me saying, “Devil-liting, Missie liting to Devil-man, allee time talk, talk, talk.”

I took the sheaf of papers from Fong’s hand. There was no writing, nothing but almost perpendicular strokes on them. These strokes were usually from left to right across the page and while they all ran together in unbroken order, there seemed a semblance of word form. Opposite is a facsimile of one paragraph that struck my eye.

At first meaningless, God help us, I thought, it is a mental disorder, possibly incurable; then my eye caught in the pencil-strokes the words “No the old life.” I followed, partially guessing, partially deciphering, until I had the whole paragraph. This one read:

“No the old life was too hard but until in this life I did not know what the true meaning was—”

Great heavens, I had never suspected. I had read of mediums, automatic writings—men and women allegedly possessing the gift of transcribing without volition messages from the dead. Could such a thing be possible? I had never given the absurd claim a serious thought. ’Twas beyond the range of the possible, yet here in my hands under my very eyes was evidence that such a thing existed. Evidence, not proof, I reflected. Recollection of descriptions of the medium’s physical manifestations when the desire or urge to write came fitted this case.

I glanced over to where Elaine lay, her face calm and turned slightly away from me; the rise and fall of the coverlet showed an easy breathing. Gone all semblance of death, a girl again, she peacefully slept. What was the cause? Why should a mental impairment take this peculiar phase, create this ability to put on paper what a dormant physical consciousness permits the subconscious to receive and through the pliant physical, transcribe? Did Elaine desire to write? No, I preferred the thought that some peculiar complex brought the urge and that she was helpless. Was she a “medium?” Surely the symptoms, the pallor, the unnatural in every respect; did they not resemble very closely those described in what I had at various times read and cast aside as fanciful?

All delicate scruples were cast to the winds. I shamelessly took a pile of written pages of this seemingly meaningless tracery, sat at the little mahogany desk and painstakingly traced the lines.

Fong placed a shaded lamp on the desk top, carefully seeing that no ray of light fell on the quiet sleeper, his little mistress, and left the room. Strange how noiseless a Chinaman can be. I scarcely sensed that he was in the room, so absorbed was I in deciphering the writing, evidently traced for the full line without removal of pencil from the paper. No crossed t’s or dotted i’s, but words stood out as legibly as though in print.

As I read, hour after hour, with no realization as to the passing of time or thought as to my indelicate act, I became more and more mystified. Why should Elaine’s pencil trace such things?

Here apparently was something urging my hostess to “send me away; keep me away from Hugh.”

The name “Hogarth” drew my attention; it seemed to stand out as though written in India ink on a sheet lying on the desk which had fallen from my hand and my errand to this house, which I must admit had become a secondary matter, came sharply before me.

“Send him away, he cannot find Hogarth. He must go away.”

Evidently a question had been asked then. Did Elaine talk or merely think the question?

The next line, “No, you never heard of him, he is nothing to you, he will never be found.”

Another question, a new line, “yes, gone away, can never be found. No, I cannot find him here.”

I searched for further mention of Hogarth through the entire pile of written sheets, went back to where I had left off.

One line said “Hugh must be warned, wait for me.”

Were these lines written while Hugh and I sat in the library on the previous evening? Was the shadowy form that I had seen bending over Hugh the dictator of these alleged messages? Was there then in this thing something more tangible than the meanderings of a mind asleep, even deranged? What did this girl know about Hogarth? Surely I had gleaned from Hugh that the man was unknown to him and therefore Elaine could not have had him in mind. The name Hogarth held only in dim recollection, that uncertain, was all that Hugh had, and of that I was convinced.

I could feel a peculiar chill as of fear as I sat in the semi-darkness of this silent night, a silence so intense as to be oppressive. Not a sound came from the sleeper. For the first time there dawned on my consciousness the thought, “Perhaps this is reality.”

The words of Paul came to me “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain.” “Christ is risen, Christ is risen,” sung by many a sweet-voiced choir had passed me by, the story of the resurrection accepted as a matter spiritual, not as conscious life after death. Was my mind willing to accept such a thing as a spirit, a living entity after death, knowing the things of life, earthly life, seeing the happenings of today’s events, remembering the past, just as though alive in the flesh?

“Go to the Bible for help in all dilemmas,” was my mother’s adjuration. “There you shall learn the truth.”

At fourteen, had I been a Catholic, I should have been known as an oblate, so possessed was I with religious fervor and I knew my Holy Bible thoroughly. That I should cast back at this hour for negation or affirmation of a new and somewhat terrifying thought to a book which I had for years neglected to use did not occur to me as strange. Do we not, almost to a man, when dire trouble overtakes us, go to God as we know him through the teachings during our youth?

The words of Saul “Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit that I may go to her and inquire of her,” and the reply, “Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor,” floated to my consciousness. And Samuel through this medium talked with Saul, told him things as they were.

Could I question the inspired word of God? No! The medium saw and identified Samuel to Saul. God’s laws being unchangeable, man being the same today as in Saul’s time, natural law unchanged, spirits released from the body must today exist as they did before Christ came, and if they could communicate then, they can communicate now and as I thought of the events of last night, fear smote me hard.

How long I pondered these things I know not, nor did I notice, except vaguely that the Chinaman had noiselessly entered and as quietly left the room. Hours must have passed. I remember thinking:

“What change in humanity might be wrought through the conviction, no, the knowledge, that one was never alone, always accompanied by the spirit of a friend who had passed on.”

Should one know his every act was seen by somebody would the world not walk more circumspectly? Would not crime be lessened and life rendered sweeter?

Things seemed unreal. I fancied an influence strange and new to me, which I did not try to analyze, drawing me on to a point where superstition superseded my usual common sense, and I do not know where my thoughts would have carried me had not Fong Wing quietly entered the room with a tray, an eggnog, a bowl of broth and three strips of brown toast; an immaterial observation, everything considered, but something real, tangible.

Fong spoke, “Dlink this, Missie,” presenting the tray.

Then I awoke to the fact that Elaine, awake and questioning-eyed was looking at me.

I sprang to the bedside, “Elaine! Elaine! You have been desperately ill,” I almost shouted and at the same time realized I had addressed her thus familiarly.

She did not seem to notice the use of her Christian name, merely smiled and said as she took the drink from Fong’s hands, “I’m awfully sorry to have worried you. Really, I’ve slept wonderfully. Where is Hughie?”

Then without awaiting an answer to her query, while looking intently past me at her desk, added,

“Thank you for your consideration. I had a miserable headache, but am much—”

At that moment she must have seen the sheets of paper which I had absent-mindedly kept in hand for her expression suddenly changed.

I cannot describe the change. Have you ever wounded a doe, run her to exhaustion’s point and just before using the huntsman’s knife to end her misery, caught the look in your victim’s eyes? If so, you then have seen what I saw as I looked at my hostess; a beseeching, wounded, pleading look which imposed its force on every fibre of my being and brought me to my knees beside the bed asking forgiveness, asking for her confidence, bringing in the name of Hugh, help for her, my anxiety, everything except the one emotion obsessing me, the wish consuming me, everything but the whole truth, that I loved her and was cold with the fear that I had unforgivably offended.

I felt her small hand laid lightly on my bowed head, heard a low pleading voice say, “Please go.”

I do not know how I got out of her presence, nor why I should have walked so far through the night. Dawn came while I was atop a high hill a mile at least from the house, with thoughts inchoate but even yet holding to the night’s events and their possible sequel.

I must have slept all day. Hugh had returned, for my first sensation on awakening was hearing him call from the orchard, “A beautiful sunset, John.”

With spirits at low ebb, realizing that I must give an explanation and offer an apology to the brother of the young lady whose privacy I had encroached upon in the desperation of good purpose, I dressed hastily and went down to the orchard, thinking that my status at the Craighead home would be altered, yes, possibly my visit abridged through the untoward events of the night.

Hugh, standing head bared under an apple tree, called out a quiet, “Hello, Gordon, glad to see you out,” gave me courage and when he, looking frankly and with friendship in the look, held out his hand, I could not suppress the moisture which shut him from my vision as my hand clasped his and his left arm went over my shoulders, giving me a little familiar pull toward him.

“We must save her, Gordon,” and “Yes, Hugh,” was all that was said, but it filled my very soul with gladness.

I excused myself to return to my room to change for dinner as Hugh informed me, “We shall have the little girl’s company at dinner this evening.”

CHAPTER VIII

SUMMONED half an hour later by the Chinaman, all smiles, I met Elaine and Hugh at the foot of the grand stairway, an embarrassing moment for me. A momentary casting down of her eyes, then they were raised in all their glory to mine and I grasped a little warm extended hand which nestled in mine with just the hint of a returned pressure, but the day was saved, it spelled forgiveness.

Our hostess was pale, but in good spirit. During dinner, Hugh explained that his urgent call to the village was to see the member of Parliament from his district making a flying visit home; in the interest of a proposed law touching on prison reform generally and in particular the establishment by the province of a provincial home for released prisoners. He had not accomplished anything definite, but had arranged for the care of Haig, had seen the Presbyterian minister, the Reeve, Sheriff and the Postmaster and thought he had paved the way for the boy’s return without more embarrassment to the unfortunate youth than could naturally be avoided.

These and other topics while the serving man was present. We three alone, an embarrassing silence ensued.

Elaine broke the spell.

“Hughie, I am glad that Mr. Montrose—”

“Gordon,” Hugh interrupted.

“Mr. Gordon, then,” she said, looking at me smilingly, “knows our secret. I wish you would tell him everything—how at first we enjoyed the novelty, experimented with it, played with the fire until we were burned. We never even suspected danger. I was as eager for the experiment as the others. But now it possesses me, controls me, and I am powerless. He found me in Scotland, now he lives right here, right here beside me.”

Her voice rose as she continued, “The man wanted to get through a message, many messages relating to Hugh’s affairs. Gradually he unfolded secrets, family secrets, things not known to Alix and Hughie or myself. I was only a child. Then later when we heard his dreadful story we were so moved that it seemed cruel to refuse to listen to him.”

Hugh spoke. “I encouraged the damnable practice.”

“Because we were in the dark,” Elaine continued, becoming more calm. “The thing was so unbelievable! A dead man, buried in that little enclosure where you and Hughie met, sending his messages telling his history, and always keeping back something, just as though he were alive and talking to me. Don’t think him tyrannical or unkind. He is unhappy. He has not changed in the spirit world. He guides us, helps us through his messages. It was he who urged Hugh to take up this work.”

“I—lose myself often. I can’t help listening to him. I don’t need to write, I can repeat the words as they come to me. When I’m awake, I can keep away from it by sheer will-power, but when I’m asleep, or just falling asleep, I can’t help myself. I must get up and write. That was the first stage—questioning aloud and writing the answers, and now I can’t stop. My right arm is cold this minute.”

Her face was white, not the ashen hue of the first visitation, her right arm extended, the first finger and thumb pressed together as though holding a pencil and rotating rapidly as though drawing many small circles. I had seen many of these circles among the automatic writings last night and wondered as to their significance.

“Save me, Hughie,” she whispered.

Hugh sat as though petrified, gazing at the extended hand. Was there too much light, or did Hugh see the form of his old friend? I do not know, but if not actually visible, doubtless from memory’s storehouse there came to Hugh the vision of the deformed John Blank to paralyze action.

I grasped Elaine’s cold hand, seized her arm, brought her to her feet and shook her violently before realizing what I was doing. Then remembering the treatment administered the evening before, rubbed her arm vigorously for a minute until warmth, imagined if not real, was there.

The blood returned to the girl’s face. Embarrassed, we looked at each other and she and I laughed. Mine was certainly not my usual exhibition of hilarity.

Hugh put his arm about his sister’s waist and half carried her to a large easy-chair where she sat on the great leather arm with one white arm about his neck.

“Exorcising a devil,” was my first coherent thought. Christ driving out evil spirits from humans into swine, a queer proceeding. He must have a super-mind—strong—did not Elaine say she kept Blank away through exercise of will-power—Luther seeing the evil one, D’Evil, sans apostrophe, Devil, and throwing his inkwell at his Satanic majesty, effectively putting him to flight, else we would all, I presume, still be Catholic; these measures, the methods applied, crowded in on me as I moved from the table to a seat near Hugh and Elaine. My brain was chaotically striving for a defensive weapon for Elaine’s protection.

“Thank God I never see him. I should die of fright. Hughie has described him to me, but oh, how I pity him, even now. He is so sad, so unhappy in a state where we think our worries are over.”

There was silence for a moment, then she resumed,

“Do you know, Mr.——, do you know, Gordon, I am told that we do not change when our bodies die; we awaken to find ourselves just as we were, knowing nothing more than when we lived. We are cared for until able to care for ourselves, influenced by those with whom we come in contact, and just as here, there are the good and the bad. Some day I shall show you the messages.”

I sat spellbound. A little hand came out toward me which I eagerly grasped and touched with my lips. I think pity inspired her gracious act for certainly I felt woebegone and probably looked it.

“Is that what we call Heaven, or is it Hell?” I managed to say.

“Perhaps we should call it Purgatory as there seem to be conditions or places which my friend cannot reach,” Elaine replied gravely, then, in a lighter tone, “I shall be in no hurry to make the change. I like life here pretty well, just Hugh and I and our work and the great outdoors,” and she gave her brother a hug which seemed to bring him back to himself.

“Make it a trinity, take me into the circle, I implore,” I said earnestly.

Elaine twisted Hugh’s face upward playfully so that she might see his eyes and said, “Perhaps we shall, Hughie, after he knows all about us, though our skeleton may scare him away back to Pennsylvania. I wish you would go on and tell Gordon the rest of our history; I shall stay and correct you, should you malign your infant sister too frequently.”

Hugh promptly commenced. “I think I was telling you of this girl’s abnormality; the first signs, when the lamp went out. One evening in June, Elaine and a girl-friend were playing with a new toy, a planchette. For a time only undecipherable scribblings resulted, then there was written: ‘I wish to speak with Hugh.’

“The girl came into the study calling: ‘Mr. Hugh, somebody on the planchette is calling for you.’

“I answered, ‘Show him in, I am busy.’

“Elaine then called me and the pencil certainly wrote, ‘I must give Hugh a message.’

“‘I am not consciously guiding the thing,’ Elaine said, and while Alix, McFarlane and I looked on, the pencil wrote, but not in Elaine’s square-topped letters, rather more like a man’s handwriting, ‘Hallowed is dying. You are needed at Craighead Hall.’

“McFarlane said, ‘Drop the dratted thing. It is a machination of the devil.’

“I urged Elaine to try again but she could get only nonsensical things, some vile words, yet even these were a source of wonder to us as they could not have originated in the brain of my little sister.

“That evening we were discussing the peculiarity of thought transference; McFarlane said she had been thinking about the old man at the Hall. We talked of Mesmer and his peculiar gift.

“Elaine suddenly exclaimed, ‘Hugh, Hugh, look what the board has written; I wonder if I guided it.’

“There it was in the same handwriting, ‘Tell Hugh, John Blank says Hallowed is dead. Hugh should come at once.’

“We were mystified, did not think to ask any question of thin air. It would at that stage of inexperience and ignorance have seemed to all of us a silly proceeding.

“We all, except McFarlane, tried the board with no result. Elaine, accused of hoaxing, was advised not unkindly by her sister to devote her energies to the piano or her books. We were always kindly toward each other and the incident evidently hurt this tender flower for she said nothing further about the planchette, though I learned later that during the month following she still played with the board.

“One day there came a letter from one Alexander Douglas of Valleyford, saying that he had officiated at the burial of John Hallowed two days previously and was writing at the request of Lindsay Micklejohn who had worked under Hallowed.

“I remembered Lindsay whose education was nil, my first thought being, ‘How will he run the place? He cannot write.’

“Alix was the first of us to hark back to the message. We compared dates, then stood looking stupidly at each other. Elaine had not said a word. Now she quietly told us that she had received many repetitions of the statement that Hallowed was dead, that she had asked aloud while alone as one of the messages came, ‘Where are you?’ and the pencil wrote: ‘Right here’ and described a lot of circles.

“She went to her room and brought quite a number of sheets of paper, timidly, yet I thought feeling rather proud of her gift and gratified that the genuineness of the message had been established. She was in good health, though at times Alix chided her for not getting outdoors more. She looked pale and did not eat much.

“McFarlane who came in as usual that evening was dumbfounded; I think he was more shocked than any of us. He kept his eyes on Elaine as though she was something set apart.

“‘Uncanny,’ I heard him muttering to himself, and caught the words ‘a witch, that leetle young ane.’

“Now came trouble. Elaine just would accompany me; all our joint protests were vain. Alix asked McFarlane to go with us. He protested that he could not go and added, ‘Neither can you, lass,’ and I was surprised to see the masterful Alix accept the verdict without protest.

“Hysterics, oceans of tears, a fainting spell and the little minx had her way. My employers accepted my resignation, giving me a ‘to whom it may concern’ recommendation, carefully, I noted, weighing its wording so that no responsibility would rest on them should I go wrong. Bless them, theirs was a splendid school for a youth; the chalk-line was never permitted to fade and the work habit was taught every day.

“We four were on the dock at Liverpool when McFarlane exploded his bombshell. He put his arm around Alix’ waist, held out his hand to me and said, ‘For sax year gane, Hugh, this wee girlie has been me wedded wifie; she wadna permeet me to tell.’

“He was all excitement and as usual lapsed into his natural tongue.

“‘Is it true?’ to Alix, was all I could say.

“Yes, it was true; Alix exacted secrecy because she was the little mother to Elaine and myself; looking back now I think she mothered McFarlane also and did not wish our close relationship and happy home disturbed. I was glad; so was Elaine, that during my absence Alix had a protector, a man I liked; he seemed more like a father than a brother.

“Elaine put her arms about her sister, cried a little, but incongruously said, ‘Now I shall have Hughie all to myself. You have James.’

“After goodbyes had been spoken, Elaine aboard and I just about to step onto the deck of the lighter which was to carry us to the waiting ship, my newly found brother-in-law whispered in my ear while holding my hand, ‘Anoo ye’ll ken why Alix canna gae. Ye’ll hae a neephe an ye return.’”

One of McFarlane’s injunctions laid when he knew I was going back to Canada was that I should immediately seek out John Blank, get his full history and relay it to him promptly. We had all settled on the theory that Blank had been able to project his thoughts through space into the mind of Elaine who automatically transcribed them. This theory was strengthened when Elaine informed us that she had discarded the planchette and wrote just as easily without it, but always in a handwriting different from hers.

“The sea took its toll of both Elaine and myself. We were rejoiced after the long voyage to find ourselves with our two small traveling trunks at the station where fifteen years before I first saw a locomotive. A carriage and an express wagon conveyed us clear across the old-time swamp to Verde Island. A new corduroy road, while rather uncomfortable, was much better than walking.

“Big Beaver, a shriveled old Indian then, and he is alive yet, deigned to take my hand, said ‘How’ and grimaced, one could scarcely call it smiled, at Elaine.

“When well out in the river in the same canoe that had brought McFarlane and his sad tidings to us, Beaver said, ‘Where other girl?’

“I told him about Alix and McFarlane, also who Elaine was, but it is difficult to say whether or not an Indian is interested. Beaver merely grunted and when we reached a point in the river where Elaine first saw the old pile of stone here, the Indian said, ‘She tip,’ as the child jumped to her feet with an ‘Oh, oh, that’s beautiful. I’ll never leave that wonderful fairy castle.’

“I told her to sit quietly or we would never reach it.

“Micklejohn was awaiting us, big, kindly, raw-boned fellow that he was. He sleeps beside Hallowed over on the ‘burnt hill,’ as we call it, drowned in a dare-devil attempt to shoot the rapids below the village.

“I missed Hallowed, felt sad, but Elaine’s gladness cheered me. She was all over the house during the first few days; explored from cellar to garret, had to have explained how the water that comes out of the rock under the kitchen in a big stream is pumped by its own force through the use of an engine called a ‘ram’ set away back in a rock chamber. The water is raised to the stone tower on the west of the house and from there flows with some force throughout the whole place including the garden and stables.

“On making an inspection of the vaults in which vegetables and fruit were stored, the third day after our arrival, I heard voices in the vault in which father kept his private boxes and papers and on looking in, found Elaine, the cook and the housemaid before the door of the inner vault which father had always kept locked. The cook had inserted the hooked end of the grate poker into a hole where a big brass bolt had served as a handle in pulling the massive stone door open.

“‘What is in here, Hugh?’ Elaine asked.

“I told her of its previous use and that it was empty and Micklejohn who was with me explained that he had found the lock broken but sprung; he had endeavored to get the door open and failed. The bolt had been removed, in the belief that by putting a hook through to the inside the lock could be forced, but the bolt went in only about six inches and the door was a foot thick. Elaine appropriated this vault as her own because of the inner door being closed.

“Hallowed had added at least two hundred acres to the cleared land. There was quite a sum to my credit in the bank at Valleyford and over a thousand dollars in currency in the oak chest.

“My first work was in identifying myself at the bank, accomplished without difficulty.

“A week from the day I reached home I started in to comply with McFarlane’s injunction to interview John Blank.

“I took the small canoe one afternoon and found my way through the back channel to Blank’s landing, somewhat in need of repair; walked slowly through the deep shade of the ash swamp and up through the rows of currant bushes, thinking how I would be met by the unfortunate man and the kindly wife and of what he would say to me.

“I intended asking all about his wonderful gift of thought transference.

“The house had that deserted appearance which chills the blood. I rapped on the door several times, called, ‘Mr. Blank.’

“Not a sound. Somewhere out on the river a loon sent up its lonesome cry. It threatened rain. After a time I tried to open the door. Something held it firm. The window—I could see that a hickory peg slipped through a hole in the sash into the jamb, secured it. Finally I broke one of the small panes of glass, slipped my arm in and pulled the peg. I called again through the open pane. The door and window, being fastened from the inside, added to my conviction that the man was there, perhaps very ill, so I pushed open the window and managed to crawl through, letting it slip down into place as quietly as possible, though it made a disquieting noise.

“The day was cloudy and though the room where I had once sat with Mr. and Mrs. Blank at dinner was in order, the light was dim. I felt like a burglar, called a couple of times, then opened the door of the south room where you found Haig.”

Here Hugh stopped, looked at Elaine, who had been quietly sleeping for some time, looked at me, shifted his sister to a more comfortable position. I merely nodded and Hugh continued.

“There was nothing but the little white dresser, bed and blue furniture there. Then I lifted the latch of the north room door. It was fastened from the inside. Placing a chair against the door I stood upon it and looked over the top of the partition; a long, square cornered box of cedar was on the floor, a small pine box, open and half full of something white resembling in the dim light flour or chalk stood close beside it and there was some of the white substance on the floor. The braided wool mat was covered with it. Otherwise the room was in order, the bed ‘made up.’

“Nobody was in the house. I was about to withdraw, had even thought of the note of apology for housebreaking that I should leave with an invitation to come to the Hall, when my eye caught a piece of white paper tacked onto the top of the chest.

“I swung over the partition and landed almost atop the small box. On the card, tacked at its four corners, I found written:

JOHN BLANK
and underneath was the verse which you read on his tombstone the day we met. On a folded sheet of paper, slipped partially under the tacked card was written in bold though cramped handwriting,

“‘Life is intolerable, sleep the only solace. There is no God of mercy, my life is proof positive. No more sorrow, no more yearning, only sleep. Why not sleep? This is my will and testament that all I possess shall be the property of one Hugh Craighead of Edinburgh, Scotland. I make no conditions but pray that he may make use of his vast inheritance in searching prisons for the unhappy victims of circumstances such as I, that they may have wrongs righted. Stranger, show mercy in death to one to whom mercy in life has never been shown. Bury me as I am.’

“I never was a coward, yet some feeling other than horror took possession of me. I unbolted the bedroom door, fled across the outer room, raised the bar and swung the front door wide; getting outside was my first thought, for I did not doubt that the body of Blank was in the big chest and the thought unmanned me.

“A thin misty rain was falling, but I sat head in hands on a crude seat fashioned from a section of a tree, unmindful; anything was better than this horrible house.

“My inheritance. The pity of it, the poor fellow giving all he had to the boy who had not repulsed him, the deformed.

“Then came unworthy thoughts. If a body was in that box, it could not be that of Blank for Elaine had caught his thought message. The message had said he was right there in Edinburgh. Probably he was there now, certainly this house had been closed for some weeks. The dust on my clothing attested this, but why this mockery, a hoax. I should find nothing alarming in the chest.

“I applied a match to the carefully trimmed wick of a tallow dip sitting on the table, walked boldly into the room, examined the white substance. It was lime, but that spoke nothing. I took hold of the top of the chest, seemingly a loose lid as it overlapped the lower box, raised it while standing at the south end, perhaps a foot, then dropped it quickly, reeled from the room, ran from the house down through the garden and was in my canoe before I remembered the door. It was open.

“Had the house been afire—perhaps it was as I had left the light on the little stand—I could not have forced myself back.

“As I paddled my canoe over the long four miles through the quietly falling rain, night came and with it a sense of my responsibility as a citizen. The coroner must come. I must again see this awful evidence of a tragedy. Who but I, last in the thoughts of this man, should see his earthly house decently interred; but Elaine’s happiness must not be encroached upon. I must ride to the village. Lindsay would not do. Elaine must be made to think I had an urgent call, a veterinary for one of the horses; no, one of the men could go for such a thing as that; the night was bad; I had it—Smith up the river road had sent an Indian for me. Elaine did not know of my visit to the Blank place, otherwise she would have insisted upon accompanying me.

“I found my little sister asleep on a divan, looking unusually pale; a book, the family Bible, was on the floor. There was also a couple of small sheets of my mother’s writing paper there and a pencil beside her hand. The paper was covered with that peculiar, perpendicular writing which I had not seen since we left Edinburgh. Hard to decipher but finally after repairing to my lighted room I traced the words: ‘Hugh must respect my request.’

“Another line, ‘He will know. Hugh must keep secret.’

“I did not attempt to read further but returned at once to Elaine’s room and quietly shook her. Wide-awake and wild-eyed she looked at me a second, then exclaimed, ‘My, what a terrible dream! Why should he follow me here?’

“Gently I put an arm about her; told her she must stay out in the open air more. She replied, ‘I was out in the woods, just before the mist became rain. I was enjoying the quiet and the damp smell, when a feeling that I must return to the house came over me. I thought something might have happened to you, but when I reached my room I knew—you know the rest Hughie—and he seemed so anxious. The words just came into my head, repeated over and over. Don’t you see, Hughie, that the writing is just like that through the planchette? What is it? What does it all mean?’

“‘Just a troublesome dream, child,’ was all I could say. I told her I must ride up to Smith’s on some urgent call or he would not have sent for me, sent the maid to her room and, supperless, rode out through the dark woods.

“That was a long, hard ride. Village lights looked good when I reached the top of the last hill. My thoughts had not been friendly companions. I was disobeying a written request of the dead and Elaine’s writings troubled me. Somehow in the light of events, thought transference did not fit. The man, John Blank, was dead, had been, to my thinking, dead for weeks. I could not fathom it.

“I sought out the doctor who served as coroner. He listened in silence to my story, then went to a cupboard in the corner of the office, took out a bottle, poured two generous portions of the contents, handed one glass to me saying, ‘Take another drink, young man, ’twill clear your brain,’ adding after he had swallowed the entire contents of his glass, ‘Damn me if I believe a word of it; how could a man murder himself and put the body in a coffin? Put that under your belt and you’ll feel better.’

“Alcohol and I were almost strangers but I took the doctor’s advice and drank most of the stuff. Scotch, he called it. The result was I heard the doctor’s voice as though from a distance saying that Sandy Campbell said that while hunting he had once seen Blank on the river, that some years ago somebody had said in the post office that he had seen Blank and a woman taking a train at Beauville, but he, the doctor-coroner, had never set eyes on him, did not really believe the county harbored such a person.

“‘Why, he must have been either a ticket-of-leave man or an escaped criminal.’

“Vaguely I gleaned that the doctor with some villagers would come to the Hall on the morrow, take boats and hold an inquest, should he find that I was sane and had seen what I stated.

“Long after midnight I aroused a stable boy to care for my horse. The road home was heavy but the rain had ceased falling. I came in through the orchard way, slipped quietly into Elaine’s room, found her sleeping like a baby and retired, wondering if I had done right in summoning the official or if I should not rather have taken a spade, dug a grave and covered from an unsympathetic world all that was left of my friend John Blank.

“They came next day about eleven o’clock, a joking, inquisitive lot. None had ever seen Craighead Hall. My father always stood aloof from the people of the village and township. To a man these seven were silenced when ushered through the front door. I felt a pang of regret. Father would have dined these yokels in the servants’ hall instead of here. To carry out the deception which I had practised on Elaine, we took fishing tackle in the boats. Micklejohn, I took into my confidence and he accompanied the jury with the doctor and myself.

“The door stood ajar as when I had fled Blank’s house. The air was less oppressive than when I had entered the day before. The tallow dip, exhausted of fuel, had harmlessly burned the wick and gone out.

“The coroner, erstwhile jocular and careless, became now the public officer, swore his jury of six, examined the room thoroughly, felt the lime in the box, rubbed it between finger and thumb, lifted, as I had, the box lid and closed it as quickly. The box was carried by the six men and placed on the dining table.

“When the jury was seated, I read the letter, then made a plea that its request be heeded and that no further examination be made. I identified the body as that of John Blank. The old doctor merely shook his head, removed the lid of the chest and I turned my back and looked out the window through the long rows of current bushes down to the dismal black ash swamp and thought of the dead years that had passed since my memorable evening as a guest in this place.

“‘Ingenious’ the coroner called it, could one believe the evidence of one’s eyes. Could any man deliberately prepare in this way to cut the thread of life, fashion out a box, fill it with quicklime, pile it over his person, keep at his side enough to fill out the spaces, leaving only a hand and face clear? The cover was doubtless kept up at the end where the head rested through the use of a neatly fashioned prop, fitting into a slight groove in the top of the right side of the box. A slight jar only was necessary to dislodge the prop permitting the cover to close down into place. The verdict was suicide by the taking of cyanide of potassium.

“Inwardly I mentally apologized; the villagers were after all, kindly fellows, sobered and shocked. They volunteered aid in taking the body away from this almost inaccessible spot. Micklejohn and I led the sad procession of canoes homeward and we carried with us in our canoe all that was mortal of one of God’s creatures who was glad to exchange the certainties of life for the unknown beyond.

“We did not go near the Hall. With the aid of the young men, we conveyed the remains to the little church on the main road, got the sexton to open the church door, but could not arrange for a plot of ground for burial.

“Next day by appointment the six young men met us and for the first time I learned that God frowns on a suicide and that the sacred half-acre could not be his resting place. Indignant, I sought among the curious onlookers who had sprung from nowhere apparently, for the owner of the land adjoining the little cemetery, and pressing on him a banknote of such size that cupidity overcame disinclination, I secured the little six by ten plot where you found me. I declined the aid of the minister; helped dig the grave and without so much as a prayer laid to rest the stranger whose life was a living death, to whom death in a terrible form came as a relief.

“I wrote McFarlane details of the matter, visited the county seat and found that the government had never given title to the Blank place. Through purchase I added over a thousand acres, good and bad, to my estate.

“In due season a letter came from McFarlane urging me to comply with Blank’s request—fit up the farm as a refuge, apply my talent as a barrister, he called it, in releasing prisoners unjustly or overly punished—and enclosing a £5,000 draft.

“I filled out the Craighead estate to its present proportions and while at the village one day purchasing material for the building of the surrounding fence, I sat in court and heard Haig and his companions sentenced. This decided me. I worked on Haig’s case first, but fruitlessly, until justice as the Canadians see it, was satisfied.

“Many sad cases came to my attention. In five years I have given aid to nearly two hundred unfortunates. Some day the province will be moved to a sense of justice and we shall have a commission carrying on the work on a large scale. My work is insignificant. I must see our representative soon and secure his aid in the next sitting of Parliament.”

Hugh interrupted his story here to look at Elaine who had moved uneasily and said, “Gordon, this child is more to me than sister. She seems to like you. Can’t you manage to spend the fall and winter with us?”

My heart seemed to stop functioning. “This is my opportunity,” flashed through my brain, but the struggle for speech was apparently so strenuous that it attracted from Hugh a surprised glance at me. Haltingly I answered, “Nothing would please me better, provided my firm will let me off. They certainly sent me on a wild goose chase. Hogarth seems to have vanished into thin air from here and he stayed here only one afternoon.”

“Perhaps if you arranged to spend a few months at the Hall you might by visiting the neighboring villages and railway points, even going to Montreal and Quebec, our foreign shipping ports, find some trace of the man. He certainly would eventually return to England,” Hugh said, then added, “I must get this youngster to bed. Fong has peeked in here twice to see what has become of his charge.”

I offered to assist, but without knowing just how. Hugh, frail-appearing, just picked her up in his arms, saying, “I shall be back,” opened the panel and disappeared.

CHAPTER IX

I SOLVED the mystery of the opening of the sliding door while Hugh was absent. As he had not used his hands, I tried out treading on different spots on a Persian rug lying in front of where the panel opened and was startled on planting my toe firmly on a tree pattern on the right hand side to see the wall glide to the right in front of me. Instantly removing the pressure, the panel slipped back into place but not before I had glimpsed in the shadows of the staircase the form of a man, dim, merely an outline, but certainly it was a man’s outline and nobody was there when Hugh had gone up those stairs a few moments ago.

I was feeling for the particular spot on the tree pattern rug when Hugh opened the door of the library, evidently having used the front stairway. “You look startled,” he said as he came near where I was standing looking at the wall.

“There’s a man in there,” I exclaimed. “I saw him when I stepped on the rug and the panel opened.”

Hugh laid a hand on my shoulder and said in a quiet, even voice, “Don’t let these apparitions worry you, my friend. They come and go, but they can do you no harm. The dead roam at will. I have seen my father in this room since my return but have never had a word from him.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes; Hugh deliberately filled his pipe. He had not smoked while Elaine was with us. I watched him spread the mouth of a deerskin tobacco bag, pour tobacco into the palm of his left hand, roll it, then fill a large English briar pipe.

“My father’s,” he said, holding up the pipe before applying a match which gave out a blue flame as the sulphur burned. “Often I have watched father sit here and fill this pipe; he would sit for hours after mother retired and seldom spoke.”

“Do you favor him or your mother?” I asked.

“My mother,” he replied. “I have none of his features. He had a hawk’s beak of a nose and the high cheek-bones of a Scot. Mother sang beautifully.”

There came a silence, then Hugh resumed reminiscently, “Father used to sing a doleful little song to us children. It ran thus,” and Hugh, in a deep low voice false in tone, sang,

“‘There was a little dog and his name was Bopeep,

He waded in the waters so deep, deep, deep.

He climbed up the mountains so high, high, high,

And the poor little doggie had only one eye!’

“That’s the only song I ever heard father sing,” Hugh said, “but let me relieve your mind. I see you eyeing the panel,” and he walked over to the wall and the panel opened wide. There was nothing there but the little square at the foot of a stair going up to the right from the opening. Closing the panel, Hugh said, while resuming his seat, “Nature is peculiar. There is nothing between us in life and those whom we call the dead. People talk about a veil, as though a gauze, something, hung between. We make our own veil; we living ones; the other fellow can see us but we interpose the flesh, the earthly, the human part of us between our subconscious self, our silent guest, and the living entities who choose to make our home theirs,” adding, “Do you know, Gordon, the heathen Japs, the Shintoists who place food with their dead are nearer the truth than we Christians? We call them forefather worshippers. Nonsense! They venerate the spirit of their fathers, recognizing their existence.”

“What about food placed on graves?” I asked.

“Not without reason,” Hugh replied, “A reborn spirit carries with it enough of the fleshly life to set up a desire for sustenance; the emanations from food are sufficient, the use of the food itself is not expected. Many an old skinflint who has during his life grudgingly given of his plenty for the support of proselyting missionaries to Japan and China will have a great shock when the doctor has made his last guess and the minister has said his last prayer and he awakens to things as they are and many such fellows will try to find a medium through which he may warn his pet heir not to follow in his foolish footsteps, and squander his patrimony. Much better to use that money helping the unfortunates all about him,” Hugh added.

“Shall we retire or do you wish me to go on with our history?” Hugh asked.

“I could not possibly sleep a wink. Go ahead, you were telling me about hearing Haig sentenced and taking up your present work,” I responded.

“Well,” Hugh commenced, “you of the city may wonder what there was for a girl of fifteen and a man grown, to interest them. Our servants fled when the nature of our ‘guests’ became known. The white-haired man, Stanton, was the first to come. Others followed. The cook and the maid quit as did gradually many of the farm hands. The ‘guests’ replaced them until after Micklejohn’s untimely death almost every member of my household, if I may so term them, was an ex-convict.

“Did that alarm Elaine? No indeed. She and I enjoyed life in our own way. We canoed, fished, hunted. Many a bear and wolf has fallen to her rifle and the killing of our most dangerous pest, the wily lynx, was our greatest adventure. The wolves often chased deer across the ice to the great tamarack swamp up the river and we acquired many a wolf pelt in the deer path. Fall, with the whole river a sheet of glass before the snow came, found both of us skating for miles, exploring shorelines up to where the rapids made the ice dangerous and down seven miles to the rapids below us. We heard from Alix and McFarlane and in due time came news of a Hugh McFarlane, the promised nephew.

“Constant exercise, pleasurable yet hard, toughened both my sister and myself. Neither of us knew fear though wild animals abounded, many like the gray wolf and the lynx, dangerous.

“In the fall of our second year here, a matter of land title took me to Cobourg. The journey was shortened many miles through the use of the river road instead of the main thoroughfare through Valleyford, but night travel over the short cut was not safe. I thought to try it once as I wished to make home that night. There was no moon; no road, merely a bridle-path, but my mare was surefooted and we were within four miles of home before I heard anything worse than a wolf howl and the cry of lynx at a distance.

“Something told me to turn in at the Smith cabin about five miles up the river, but I had promised Elaine that I would return that night, so I rode on into a stretch of dense timber where objects at arm’s length were undiscernible and I knew this particular stretch of wood as the haunt of numerous lynx. I was unarmed, except for a riding crop.

“Cries like those of an infant in pain came from a point just passed, then an answer from directly ahead. My mare stopped short in her rapid walk, snorted and sprang sidewise, almost unseating me. At the same instant a great bulk catapulted from the limb of a tree overhead, alighting on the mare’s back just behind me. I could feel the horse flesh under me wince and in the same split second came a terrific shock from right shoulder to hip. The right hip was thrown up in my effort to retain my saddle when my mount had jumped to the right and the teeth of the brute had evidently missed a vital part as I could feel them tear through my flesh as the mare pivoted, again to the right, throwing the beast off and I lay low on her neck as she ran madly back over the road, dark as a pocket, through which we had just picked our way carefully.

“The whole misadventure happened in less time than it takes to tell of it and in a few minutes I found myself at the door of Smith’s cabin, nearly a mile from the place of the accident; even before I half fell from the saddle I felt faint but attributed the feeling to excitement, but as I staggered to the cabin door I realized that my boot was full of blood and that I must have help quickly.

“Smith opened the door as my hand reached it and I fell in, knocking a rifle from the hands of my host. You must know, Gordon, that my neighbors were always afraid of my ex-convict ‘guests.’ They could not believe in the harmlessness of the poor broken fellows.

“‘A bad tear’ Smith called my wound. The paw of the lynx had scored me deeply from shoulder to thigh; that was nothing. The animal’s teeth had sunk to the bone of the right thigh and had torn clean out through the flesh and clothing and the rough surgery of my kindly neighbor did not effectually stop the loss of blood.

“I wished to take a lantern and get on home in some way, but Smith bound me so tightly in strips torn from his cotton sheets that I could not move; while I slept and before dawn the good fellow rode my mare to the Hall and I awoke to find a couple of men standing over me in the little one-roomed cabin.

“I had to be carried to the creek where two of my men in a canoe met us.

“I am telling you of this incident, Gordon, as it marked a new phase in our lives at the Hall.

“The men carried me to my room; I marveled that Elaine was not about, though Micklejohn said they had not disturbed her. One maid was still with us. I had her summoned and sent her to Elaine to say that I was home, had been detained through a slight accident but was all right.

“The maid returned, wild-eyed, saying the Miss was lying on the floor with a lot of letters scattered about and could not be awakened. With the maid’s help I got to Elaine’s room and fainted from pain and weakness.

“There the doctor found us and I shall never forget the shocked look in my sister’s eyes as she saw my ensanguined garments. The doctor had ministered only to me. She awoke as though from a troubled sleep, gave a little cry, pillowed my head in her lap and said, ‘I know all about it, Hughie. It is all written there. John Blank told me about your accident; that you were at the Smith cabin and a lot of other things before that. We must look into this thing when you are well, Hughie.’

“I shall never forget that morning, Gordon. The mystery of the thing overpowered me. You must remember that Elaine had had, subsequent to the date of his body’s burial, no message from Blank.”

As Hugh got to this point the clock in the great hall boomed the hour of midnight.

“Shall we woo the gentle goddess Nephe?” Hugh said quietly. “I do not feel like going further with my story tonight; merely thinking of my lack of good sense during the days that followed will keep me awake for hours.”

I breakfasted in my room, having learned from a silent young man, who had evidently been awaiting my awakening from an eight-hour sleep that “Mr. and Miss Craighead had arisen early and gone to inspect the work being done on an outlying farm.”

I wrote my firm in Philadelphia asking for an indefinite leave of absence, that “I might search the vicinity for trace of the missing Hogarth.”

The truth is, however, that I wished an excuse to prolong my visit at Craighead Hall. I even thought seriously of tendering my resignation and offering Craighead my services for what they might be worth. The work was to my liking but I knew while I wrote and reflected that I was lying to myself; that my great desire to stay on at Craighead Hall was actuated by one and only one thought—and I could not under any circumstances put that thought into words until I was better known to both Hugh and Elaine.

At dinner that evening I heard about the new house on a farm, a mile or was it two or more miles away? My thoughts were not on farms and improvements. Could it be possible that the animated girl sitting opposite me had any affliction—certainly she showed no traces—seemed much interested in every subject under discussion and expressed genuine pleasure when I told of writing for a prolonged leave of absence from my office.

“We shall have lots of fun gathering the annual crop of hazelnuts from the plains up the river, and I know you will enjoy skating when the ice first forms, it is so thrilling to feel it bend underfoot, though it is quite safe,” Elaine remarked and Hugh said, “Gordon, I wish you would consider seriously a proposition to become a member of the firm of Craighead and Montrose, two Scots, good and true, though Scotch people say I am more English than Scotch in my tastes and manners.”

I answered that it would be difficult to drive me away just now and I ventured a glance at Elaine, alas, unconscious of my real meaning—though she did look at me slightly quizzically. I took it that she thought my remark merely politeness.

I expressed a desire that Hugh should continue his story.

Hugh looked at his sister saying, “Suppose we walk down by the river, the evening is so glorious. Will you come along, Elaine?”

“Thank you, no,” Elaine said. “I must finish some sewing,” and turning to me, “You see, Gordon, young ladies must dress even in the wilderness. I think Fong is going to prove a good seamstress,” and curtseying in an old-fashioned way, as children sometimes do even today, she blew a kiss to Hugh and ran lightly up the path to the house. We had been dining in the little bower in the orchard.

Hugh sent the man in for topcoats and presently we were at the pier. I suggested a quiet canoe ride and that I should wield the paddle. Hugh reclined on cushions forward. His eyes seemed to be searching out some spot in the starry heavens. Perhaps they saw nothing.

We were on a lake of glass; the night was warm for September. Our house lights had disappeared. It was as though there were no other of God’s creatures within a thousand miles.

Silence intense; the canoe drifted; I was startled when I heard Hugh say, evidently soliloquizing:

“Guests star-scattered on the grass—the atheistic tent-maker. He believed and yet did not believe. Like all of us, his naturally searching soul was shackled through involuntary absorption of false interpretations of truths revealed, given cryptically, grudgingly it seems, as though the intention is that we shall use our own God-given intelligence; we must choose at the crossroads. Others may not furnish the finger-boards, though that is just what our numerous creedists are doing and what they were doing for old Omar. Graves arranged in the order of the constellations. What we term religion is probably co-eval with thinking man, yet how many different gestures we find in an identical purpose, worship of God.

“Why should a Being Supreme demand worship—the thought implies a weakness in the all-strong. Laws, by whomsoever or by whatsoever Ruler or Force, laws under which man was brought from the lower form to his present estate, tried and not found wanting, demand respect, obedience, but servility—no! such a thought is repugnant. Perhaps old Moses slipped in the little line anent ‘bowing down and worshipping’ during the darkness between electric flashes on Sinai, just to make his own task easier. The Israelites of the Exodus differed little from the masses of religionists of today. They required a good scare to keep them in line.”

Hugh suddenly sat upright and addressed me.

“Gordon, I am going to tell you a strange story—the real history of John Blank, covering a decade or more of his life. The terrible method adopted in his passing out and the mental anguish entailed in the contemplation are as nothing compared with the man’s sufferings during the period which I shall cover. Every word that I shall say to you I implicitly believe and so will you, Gordon, when I tell you how the story came to me.

“The wound made by the teeth of the lynx was slow in healing; it was three months before I left my room. Those were momentous months. Neither Elaine nor I knew that we were saddling upon her a burden seemingly impossible of removal. We knew nothing about what is called a medium—one through whose peculiarly attuned subconscious messages from those known as the dead are transmitted to the living. We knew nothing about the danger to the medium of the loss of his or her personality or that reason itself is endangered through such practice. We learned in time that the work affects the medium’s health distressingly but we could not quit—every word of this history was written by Elaine while under a mental stress which neither she nor I could explain.

“At first her appearance was merely such as undue excitement would naturally produce. As the daily seances continued into weeks, months, she gradually paled, faded, lost her appetite, her interest in everything except this one obsession.

“The culmination was six months of serious illness, until spring came and I carried her to this canoe and spent weeks, in fact, the whole summer, in diverting her mind. Gradually youth won back; lapses were infrequent, but, friend Gordon, she is still in danger and somehow I feel that in sharing with you our troubles, we shall find relief—”

Hugh paused because I had impulsively reached forward and grasped his hand, stammering, “With God’s help, Hugh, we shall save her—I love her—give her to me. We can travel to cities where there must be psychiatrists who have cured other cases.”

Hugh looked nonplussed.

“Gordon,” he said, taking my hand, “I never dreamed the slightest thing about your caring for my little sister. She is only a child; have you spoken to her?”

“Not a word; I would not dare, yet,” I replied, “I want your assent; I shall stay here until I win her.”

Hugh made no reply for so long a period that I doubted the wisdom of my impulsiveness. Then he said, “You know, Gordon, I am my sister’s only guardian. I like you. I do not know much about you—but I like you. You will not object to my investigating you. I have the means in Philadelphia. Supposing we let it rest here.”

Then, after a pause, “I never thought about Elaine’s marrying—I shall never marry. My chosen work shall be my spouse. Better not say anything to Elaine. She likes you but I’ll warrant no thought of marriage has ever entered her head.”

My reply was the answer of Jacob to his uncle Laban—“Seven years or twice seven would be a short term to serve.”

Hugh said then, “You must hear Blank’s story. Elaine and I are, in some way as yet unknown, involved. There is some connection as McFarlane has urged further questioning—urged without knowing what it means to Elaine; that we learn more of Blank’s early life—says it is important to all of us—though I cannot conceive why.”

I replied to Hugh, “I shall be patient, and I shall not interrupt while you proceed,” and Hugh lay back on the cushions and resumed his recital:

“My sister who always hated a lie, told me just after the surgeon had left me, sewed, plastered and strapped, on my back in bed, that she was sitting up awaiting my return from Cobourg when she became possessed with a desire to write a message that repeated itself in her brain; she was in her room, her account-book was at hand. You see she was trying to become of use to me in the handling of the place.

“The first message she involuntarily wrote was, ‘Hugh is at the Smith cabin and will not be home tonight.’

“She said she cried aloud, ‘Why?’ and into her brain one word at a time came the answer, she received just as a stenographer receives dictation, without knowing the full message until she had written:

“‘Hugh has met with an accident, not serious, will not be home tonight.’

“Remember my sister knew at the time that John Blank was dead but we had not reasoned as to date or thought about the message that came the day I found his body.

“Elaine said she talked with John Blank; wrote the incredible information that he had been with me in the woods—had been with me all day; had endeavored to influence me to stop at the Smith place before entering the wood; could not get the warning message to me; that had she been with me he could have told her—every detail of the incident in the inky darkness was there before me, written in that peculiar vertical-stroke writing.

“Some of the messages were repeated and Elaine wrote in for me the questions asked. I was convinced. No person on earth could have been privy to the circumstances set forth; in fact, I could not have furnished details more exactly.

“Elaine had slept through sheer exhaustion. At daybreak she had awakened, excitedly re-read the messages, seized paper and pencil and feeling weak, returned to her bed, called aloud, ‘Mr. Blank, are you here?’

“Promptly the pencil wrote, ‘Yes,’ and circled in a score of minute circles, then wrote, ‘All is well.’

“A sort of obligation, a relationship into which gratitude entered largely, established itself in Elaine. She had lost all embarrassment at questioning aloud and seemed to regard her correspondent as somebody really existing.

“Elaine had drawn a couch to my bedside on the following evening and while again reading the messages, suggested that she get in touch with and ask Mr. Blank any questions I wished to propound. The minx had paper and pencil with her and asked, at my suggestion, ‘How were you mutilated?’

“The pencil wrote, ‘The events were too terrible.’

“From that moment I urged Elaine to get his history and before we realized it, hours had passed. Strange things were being set forth on the many sheets of paper that fell from the hands of Elaine. As darkness clouded my bedroom I thought I could see behind Elaine a shadowy form. My mind pictured John Blank as I had seen him in the flesh; but there was no repugnant feeling for the distorted, mutilated face. I felt only a great surge of pity, even though I did not know at that time all that had been written.

“We both became absorbed in the story as it unfolded and I feel shame in saying that I failed to interrupt as my sister’s face became drawn and colorless. She worked until exhausted and slept or at least seemed to sleep. I also slept, I think with the aid of the drug administered by the surgeon.

“For weeks this was repeated until we had the entire story and I laboriously wrote it out for transmission to McFarlane while still confined to my bed.”

Hugh sat up in the canoe and looked shoreward.

“We have drifted past the landing,” he said, and I took up my paddle and turned the boat about.

“Shall we go in? I’m afraid my sister may be waiting for us,” and as I gently propelled the light little craft upstream, Hugh mused, rather than spoke to me, “The living dead do not seem to differ much from the living. They seem to hold on to what we regard as the shortcomings of the flesh—even to a show of cunning in evading questions which they do not or cannot answer; in short they are just what they were in the body—no better, no worse—but with the ability, apparently, of moving with the velocity of light or electricity. It would appear that we are, dead, of the same mental calibre as when living, apparently a little more subdued, a little awed, as though aware of a loss of something possessed when alive in the flesh.

“There was nothing assertive, nothing to indicate a greater nobility such as we are accustomed to attributing to our dead throughout Blank’s recital of his misfortunes. This case may be exceptional; the man was a suicide and this has been my only experience. I may err in estimating the changes ordained by nature for every living creature. There are, doubtless, degrees of intelligence and perhaps station.”

As the boat quietly glided alongside the pier, Elaine, with a cheery hallo of welcome, came running down the parkway from the house and walked between Hugh and myself. I could feel the warmth of her body as we strolled houseward, or was it the quickening of my own blood circulation through accelerated heart-beats as I thought, “Now there is another holding my secret.”

But Hugh gave no sign.

CHAPTER X

I  WAS awakened by the yelping of hounds; my windows, extending to the floor, were open. As I stepped out onto the veranda in front, Elaine’s silvery laugh floated up. I peered through the railing and backed into my room for obvious reasons, not wishing to be seen, dressed as I was.

I had seen the young lady running down the pathway to the river with a half-dozen of the long-eared, slack-lipped brown man-chasers bounding about her. The dogs were evidently getting a scent from the blue jacket which she carried in her hand, as during the momentary view which I had, they started running ahead of her and the tone of each held a different note from the yelp of play; a sinister sound meaning business I determined, and I dressed hastily thinking something was amiss, notwithstanding the evident cheerfulness of my little hostess.

The dogs had gone upshore, I was certain and as I reached the water’s edge, I saw Elaine’s white dress a quarter of a mile away; its contrast with the fringe of green spruce trees bordering the waterfront rendered any mistake impossible. She was evidently standing still but I could not make out what it was all about. I reached the point which I had marked but she had vanished.

I stopped running as a most choice jumble of Pidgin English, Cantonese and possibly other varieties of Chinese epithets met my ear.

In the precarious upper crotch of a wild cherry tree, looking down, his usually sallow face empurpled, his eyes like twin moons at the full; indignation, joy or fear, I could not determine which, was the moving cause until it suddenly occurred to me that Fong’s little missie was evidently having some sport at his expense.

Seriously I called, “What is the matter, Fong?”

“Mlatta, mlatta,” came irritably from the Chinaman, “Plitty soon mad dogs eat this Chinaman plenty up.”

I asked where Miss Elaine had gone and Fong pointed out through the spruce thicket, “Mlissie, dogs all gone same way; soon Fong come down, Mlissie say,” and I gathered that the young lady was prone to amuse herself as though no black cloud hung about. Youth irrepressible, flaring up, had brought about Fong’s discomfiture.

He had depreciated the dogs’ ability—in his opinion their most useful occupation was meat-eating and Elaine was proving him in error by running him to cover and then she had called off the hunt and informed Fong that he was at liberty after a half-hour or so.

Should I walk back with Fong or should I follow the little path through the thicket and walk with Elaine? Was it timidity of the dogs? A quarter-mile walk with her—it was worth the venture, though I doubted not I stood a good chance of being eaten alive by the brute escort. My hesitation was only momentary. I plunged into the dense fringe of spruce and walking rapidly soon came out into a more open wood, where hickory and butternut trees abounded.

She was on her knees before a great tangle of hazel bushes and I stopped just for a second—“What shall I say or do?”

She arose, her white skirt gathered by her left hand into a receptacle for the hazelnuts which she was gathering.

A little startled scream; the skirt fluttered from her fingers and the gathered hazelnuts piled in a scattered heap on the ground.

“A thousand pardons—the picture was so charming—I’m sorry,” I stammered.

The startled look left Elaine’s eyes.

“There,” she laughingly said, “You may retrieve my treasures. I had just commenced picking. Did you see anything of poor Fong?”

“Yes,” I replied, “Up a tree.”

She laughed heartily, throwing her bare white arms up in an effort to adjust some little strands of dark gold, disarranged in the flight after the hounds.

“That China boy is a dear; he will never again doubt the usefulness of my canine friends; was he still afraid?”

“Could not be persuaded to come down for half an hour.”

Then she said, “I hope I have not really alarmed him; let us return and take him back to the Hall.”

I ventured a protest; could see my chances for a walk with her in the balance. I was busily stuffing prickly husks into the patch-pockets of my Norfolk when Elaine asked, “Why up so early this morning?”

It was not the words. Something in the quizzical tone, the look, the thought that back of the question was an interest meant much at that moment.

“Your laugh pulled me right across the veranda, over the rail, right up to Fong’s perch,” I replied, and she said, archly, “Do I laugh so rarely that it has such a terrible effect on our friends?”

Then she laughed gaily and for one glorious hour before we reached the Hall I watched her every word and mood for indication of interest in me or a motion that might be interpreted into something deeper than the sentiment called friendship.

When we entered the house, loaded with floral trophies, wild and tame, I was still wholly in the dark as to whether or not this girl had ever given me a thought other than as a guest of her brother—her brother—that was it; he seemed to be her great, her only interest—her heart was his and no other man had as yet made even a dent in it—yet I was not discouraged.

I decided I would spend the winter at Craighead Hall. My excellent chances with my firm at home might go hang; for one hour, responsibility was cast aside; there was for me only one desideratum.

That day and evening, Elaine was brilliant, joyful; her beautiful, expressive eyes fairly danced. One could not bring oneself to believe that she ever had a care or an anxious thought. I fervently offered a silent supplication to the great God in heaven that she should always be just as she was that night.

Under the wideflung branches of a lone giant maple atop the big hill to the west, Hugh resumed his story.

Not a word had been spoken as we leisurely tramped up the river’s edge, out through a fringe of woods, across a cultivated field, then up, up by a zigzag pathway, little used, to the hill’s crest. Hugh was unusually preoccupied; he walked the last stretch ahead of me and seated himself on a bank of green. Pretty well winded by the climb, I threw myself down a few feet from him.

Faintly then floated up to us the voices of rivermen in song. They were taking in the booms used during high water when lumber drives were floated down the river.

With chin resting on the palms of both hands and elbows on his knees, Hugh sat pensively looking out across his demesne of field and forest to where the castellated hall of the Craigheads, a set diamond in a circle of greenery, gleamed white in the evening sunlight.

Suddenly he broke the silence.

“I do not wonder,” he said, “that my father objected to my reading Voltaire. This is where I read La Pucelle—what a terrible impression of the saintly Joan it leaves with you! What an egoist Voltaire was and yet what a great mind! He thought independently, fearlessly. How he ridiculed religion! His satire was cutting. Religion, a contradictory emotion—dying, tortured, hundreds of thousands miserably perishing on rack and in dungeon because of a belief.

“What do we Christians really believe? That God Almighty threw the unlimited universe—or at least our solar system—out of gear that a thieving band of unwashed nomads might have light for their massacre of tens of thousands of women and innocent children?

“This is anthropomorphizing God with a vengeance, but the Israelite could not look higher than the wandering old Arab Abraham or the cunning Jacob, a wily trader, but God’s chosen who easily outwitted his crafty uncle! That’s a long way back, Gordon, but the faith and the trait survive—we need religion, ready-made. Hundreds of millions are comforted by it, whether Christian, Mohammedan, Shinto, Buddhist or Voodoo, and all, even you my friend, come within its control.

“What is your idea of God? For years I carried in my head the picture, a woodcut of a stern-visaged old man with whiskers. I saw it in the kirk at White’s Corners when a wee lad. I can see it even now, yes, and hear the old dominie thunder out a denunciation of the ‘use of stringed instruments.’

“Ezra was a plagiarist, Babylon, his birth-place, borrowed from the Persian Vedas its story of Adamus and Procriti, antedating Moses fifteen hundred years, and Ezra borrowed from Babylon to furnish a beginning to our book of books on which all our hope of heaven is founded. Borrowed its garden on the Tigris but shifted to a different locale, characteristically purloining the snake, the tree and all, but the versatile Babylonian Jew, contrary to the ancient Babylonian teaching, made a transposition of personages; he pictured man in the image of God instead of the reverse.

“I do not feel, Gordon, that Mr. Ezra improved things; I cannot conceive of God as a man; that is debasing to a low level a Power—the marvelous something ruling the limitless universe with its intelligent laws. There is a Supreme Power. Call it God or Law, it is in every soul, in every breath that sustains life and in every spirit even after the great transformation.

“The old Persian version was better; man could draw his own picture, make his God as beautiful, as sympathetic, as consoling as the case demanded, but Ezra, abetted by Moses’ ideas, left us only the jealous, vengeful Jehovah to appease and to worship through groveling. God is in everything. The law plays no favorites; observance brings our meed of happiness, health of mind and body; infraction brings the reverse.

“I wonder what unfortunate cross-current my poor friend Blank ran counter to that he should have had such an existence on earth and yet should find no happiness in the spirit.

“Gordon,” said Hugh, lying back on the grass, “The life history of John Blank as revealed through his messages to Elaine is incomplete; I can give you only that part of the picture showing him a man married and having one child, a girl, two years of age. The canvas to the left of this point is blank. Doubtless many incidents were scamped in the fragmentary recital because our sessions—or shall we call them seances—were necessarily interrupted for sleep and meals—details, often amplifications, interested Elaine, who did most of the questioning and, of course, all of the writing; consequently, I shall tell you perhaps more than is necessary for the satisfying of your curiosity as to how Blank was mutilated and how he happened to become our neighbor.

“Elaine drew his tale from him reluctantly, it seemed to both of us, because he told of his sufferings during days of recitals before we got to the beginning of his troubles, but I have collated and arranged the story in regular sequence as to time and events.

“Blank’s home was not many miles from Southampton, England. His father had been a rich landowner; both father and mother dead, a sister two years his junior, a wife and child as I have told you. He was apprehended on the Strand in London and imprisoned, charged with murder, would not admit his guilt, nor could Elaine or I obtain from him a denial. He was tried in the Old Bailey, made no defense, his counsel pled for mitigation and the judge sent him to Tasmania—he called it Van Diemen’s Land—for life.

“After sentence, his mind benumbed, he found himself aboard the convict ship Success. His cell was so small and crowded that he could scarcely stand upright; a chain with a heavy iron ball was attached to his right ankle. The night was cold and rainy and the ship tossed about as it made its initial step in the long voyage half around the world.

“Insensibility mercifully blotted out his first agonies. Harsh voices aroused him; dawn had come.

“‘Up on deck’ was the order and as the door of his den was thrown open he gathered the ball and chain in his arms and joined a procession in the enclosed way leading forward. On deck he stood in line watching in horror the hideous work going on.

“A nauseous odor reached even down the companionway—burning flesh. He could not appreciate that men could do such awful mischief to man. The open deck was an inferno. Guards with cutlass and gun were all about. Two furnaces, red-hot, were having thrust into them branding irons. Men stripped to the waist were being thrown on the deck; irons were plucked out of the furnaces glowing and pressed to the palm of the right hand and to the back of each prostrate man, leaving a livid arrow where white flesh had gleamed.

“Some screamed, many fainted, all were dragged to their feet, walked or were carried forward.

“Blank’s time came; his coat, vest and shirt were torn off; even then he did not appreciate that such indignity could be put upon him—him, the scion of an honorable house, delicately reared, highly educated—he was lying on his face; a blow behind the ear had ended an attempt to resist; no feeling accompanied the burning.

“He found himself on the foredeck, still on his face, his back wet with salt water which was being thrown indiscriminately on the score or more victims lying near.

“Bread and water only were served him. On the third day out he was again hustled on deck, a slip-noose passed around both wrists, then drawn up to a triangle, and he was lashed with a cat-o’-nine-tails until the blood ran down his back, then immersed in a tank of saltwater.

“He marveled that he stood a daily repetition of this scourging; tried to die as he saw many a strong man succumb, the body being pitched overboard. Sharks followed the ship on its tedious voyage and few days passed without the consignment of some fortunate to their mercy. The flogging was a regulation; it was imposed on all life prisoners.

“Six months or so later, the prisoner who had, from a wish to die, passed to a hunger to kill, locked in his filthy den with three others, felt the ship come to anchor.

“Hours later he heard the voices of his brutal keepers ordering all men to line up for debarkation. His door was thrown open. Both hands carried the thirty-pound ball as he stepped into line upon deck, over the ship’s side—the earth again underfoot.

“Then between files of guards, a wabbling march, legs refusing to properly function.

“The march seemed endless. Then through a postern, a large yard, into a gloomy hall, when nature defaulted and he sank to the stone floor.

“Dimly he could feel lashes applied to his back, but all sense of suffering was absent. He revived to find himself in a stone cell, a plank for a bed, though he was then on the floor. A window, barred, but at least twelve feet from the floor, threw a dim slanting light on the cold gray wall. This was home—a six by eight room, but Paradise compared with the cell on the ‘Success.’

“An officer with two subalterns stood in the cell; one had a book, the other a gun and sword. As Blank endeavored to arise, the officer said, ‘Name and previous station.’

“‘John Blank—’ was as far as he got, and the name was so recorded. He fainted through pain and weakness.

“Days of stupor followed but after a time he took his place with the other convicts on the stone pile with a hammer; guards all about, ever watching for an infraction of regulations; ever ready to lash out with a heavy black bull hide whip if labor was not incessant, or if one convict as much as exchanged a sign with another.

“Month after month of this until, his health restored, his vigor regained, he commenced to entertain thoughts of escape.

“One day a convict near Blank, while working with head bowed over his pile of stone whispered, ‘My last week; I sail on the next boat.’

“Blank whispered back, ‘£1,000 if you will take a message to my sister,’ at the same time looking involuntarily toward his neighbor.

“A guard back of them plied his whip over both backs.

“A flat piece of stone was the medium of communication. Secreting it in his clothing, he managed, while in his cell by the use of the tongue on his belt-buckle to scratch on the stone, ‘Pay £1,000, Bring ship,’ and his sister’s address.

“Hiding the stone, he managed to slip it to the other convict while in the yard, but in so doing, lost his place in the line. A guard noticed his effort to regain his assigned position and he drew a month at the barrow transferring crushed stone. Dozens of other convicts were similarly punished for slight infractions of prison rules.

“For a month at a stretch, then back to breaking stone, then for another month, he made one of six men to strain on a tread-wheel used to turn the gears of a mill, walked hundreds of miles without advancing three feet because he answered in kind when called an offensive name by a guard.

“The work in six-hour stretches toughened and the better fitted him for the enterprise always in his mind—escape at any risk. The thought of escape kept him alive.

“Six months passed with no sign from his sister. One day while working in the woods he overheard two guards discussing the arrival of a strange ship bound for Australia, blown out of her course. She had taken on fresh water, but after staying in port until ordered out, she continued to cruise back and forth within view of shore.

“Blank dragged the thirty-pound ball attached to his ankle nearer and nearer to the fringe of woods, ostensibly to roll out cut logs just felled. Suddenly he picked up the ball and made a dash into the thicket. A bullet stung his shoulder but he ran for an hour, ran until, through loss of blood, he became faint, halted to staunch the blood flow and heard the baying of hounds. He brained one of the dogs with the cant-hook which he still carried but the balance of the pack had him on his back in a moment.

“Next morning, trussed up to a triangle in the jail enclosure, with two hundred prisoners looking on, he received forty lashes from a cat-o’-nine-tails and scarcely felt any pain when a guard passed a lancet down the left side of his head, completely shearing off his ear.

“Days unrecorded and without care, for hope had fled, passed in a dark cell, then one day he was driven, chained in a gang of six, away from the prison. Whisperings in prison told of a terrible place from which there was no chance of escape.

“There was a narrow spit of land jutting out into the ocean, a neck about one hundred and fifty yards across guarded by a barracks house, two smaller guard-houses, all of stone and beyond, chained so that their muzzles almost met, were two rows of ferocious dogs—bull and mastiff.

“The prisoners were marched through a gate between the buildings, the dogs were held back and Blank found himself one of a company of perhaps one hundred men all of whom had lost one or both ears; still carrying the iron ball, but free to mingle with his miserable companions.

“The freedom of the open space was a joy; no restraint as to speaking. The retreat was safe—man-eating sharks infested the water on all sides and there was not a stick of timber on the little peninsula sufficiently heavy for use in making a boat.

“A shelter of stone one story in height housed about half of the prisoners; the others lived in the open, in the broiling sun, except for caves dug in the sand, into which they crawled.

“Blank and his five companions slept on the sand the first night, then through the attraction of like for like, he paired off with a man about fifty years of age, a college man, a physician, there for murder which he denied having committed.

“They dug a pit near the outer point of the spit, using a part of their clothing to hold the sand in place. Then commenced the task of wearing away the links in the chains attached to their legs.

“Months passed in this way. Finally they were both free of the iron ball but still carried the iron bracelets on their ankles and the tedious work of relieving themselves of these irons was a not unwelcome task; it kept mind and body in action.

“Bread, water and meat, twice a week, placed within the line of dogs, kept them alive.

“An organization of the prisoners had been formed; a hierarchy of the most desperate; despotic but effectual, at least insofar as proper distribution of food and the keeping clean of their small world was concerned. A patrol of guards, twenty in number, inspected the camp twice a week but no smaller number ever ventured inside the line of animals.

“Killings among the prisoners were common and passed unnoted apparently. This devoted colony contained the very worst of the condemned desperadoes of Tasmania. No man who passed onto the spit had ever left there alive. Attempts to rush the guards had met with failure and served as an excuse for the lessening of the country’s burden through the shooting down of all participants.

“The seemingly unguarded mainland less than a thousand yards away was ever in Blank’s mind. How to get there was his problem. He could swim it, but the tribe of finny sentinels showed a dorsal and a great swirl if so small a thing as a meat-bone was tossed from shore.

“A year went by; the doctor and Blank had hidden away in their cave a mattress of reeds and bits of flotsam gathered from the shore at night. When tried in the water, it would support only one man; they drew straws and Blank won.

“On a moonless night with wind blowing across the point and slightly inshore, Blank said goodbye to his companion who shoved the raft off.

“Lying on his flimsy support he aided the light wind through using his hands as paddles, frequently having to jerk them out of the proximity of a shark’s teeth as they sported all about him.

“He drifted ashore just at dawn about five miles from Eagle Hawk Neck, his recent home and found a company of musketeers awaiting him.

“Roughly handled by a petty officer he was glad of a two-day respite in a windowless dungeon.

“On the third morning at daybreak they led him back of a guardhouse, whipped him into insensibility and he awoke inside the line of dogs with his friend the doctor bandaging a hand with strips torn from a shirt—all the fingers of both hands had been cut away, deep gashes were in both cheeks and the other ear was missing.

“Despair possessed him; his spirit was crushed.

“Could the wife and child whom he had last seen; could they ever again look upon him with anything but loathing if he escaped? That head without ears—grotesque—those livid scars on face—those stumps which once were shapely hands.

“He kept no record of time. Years passed. The doctor died and he guarded his dugout alone. The chains and leg circlets provided him a much treasured weapon.

“Strange how death passed him by. For months he longed for an end to his mental agony but the body was strong. He became an officer of the ‘Society of the Damned,’ as their organization was named.

“Gradually, in whispers, a plot to rush the guards was hatched. Almost the entire colony was enrolled in the movement. A few of the weaker ones were not invited to participate and they were kept in ignorance of what was afoot.

“Death sure and swift was agreed upon as the price of any act tending to divulge the plan.

“Six months after the first meeting of the conspirators all had been provided with weapons, mainly a stone to be tied in a trouser leg or shirt; nakedness adding to chances of swift running; some with sticks and many with shackles hidden carefully away underground—a precious possession.

“They patiently awaited a propitious night. With a gale blowing from the sea driving sheets of rain toward the barracks, the only thing to give warning the bright flashes of lightning, the Chief sent out his call and over eighty half-naked men lined up at the outer end of the prisoners’ quarters.

“All knew that the chances of success were slight, but few of these men even dreaded the shock of a bullet or the quick stab of a bayonet—either was preferable to suicide.

“An earless man, almost a giant, the leader, armed with a camp poker, stepped alongside Blank and according to arrangement previously agreed upon, the company divided into a line on either side of the long building and while stooping low, formed two wedges. Blank and the giant formed the point of the left wedge and all went forward in the darkness across the hundred yards or so of space between the building and the dogs.

“The howling of the wind, the downpouring rain and the almost constant roll of thunder would, but for the dogs, have made success easy.

“Fifteen feet or more from the double line of bull and mastiff—a sharp warning bark told of discovery—instantly every man rushed forward. A rifle cracked. A quick swing of his weapon, another, and Blank was through the line of dogs, the leader beside him—they knew the weakest spot—the gate. Scattering spurts of flame showed that the guards were firing but thunder drowned the reports.

“A soldier stood before the gate, his gun at present. Blank heard a loud ‘Ah!’ from his companion as the gun flashed—all while a streak of lightning made things near at hand momentarily visible. A swing of the chain with two shackles at the end and the soldier went down. Then he was over the gate and running. He was alone.

“The sound of regular volleys and scattering shots came back on the wind serving only to urge him to greater speed. He made for the sea, ran in shallow water for a mile or so, followed an inlet to a creek up which he waded until it entered a thicket so dense that he could swing himself from one tree to another and traveled thus until daylight came.

“Rain was still falling. He prayed that it might continue and wash away the scent. The trees were getting larger; one served him as a resting place while he ate the chunk of meat carried in a trouser pocket.

“Coatless, hatless and with bare feet, he was, nevertheless, exultant; the fate of the others did not concern him. The years had made of the English gentleman a something akin to the most dangerous of brutes. One thought obsessed him—escape—the life of anything tending to thwart his purpose was forfeit.

“He must have walked over a hundred miles, going ahead by night, hiding by day, feeding like the animal he had become, on roots and berries.

“He reached a broad river and skulked through the wood well away from its bank, toward the mouth, knowing that it must lead to the sea.

“He made a wide detour when smoke indicated the presence of man.

“One day he saw out in the stream a slovenly-looking four-masted ship evidently awaiting the rise of the tide. She was headed downstream.

“That was his anxious hour; to show himself meant to return to be executed.

“Transportation to a home on Tasmania was the penalty meted out to any ship master aiding in an escape. Should the flood-tide precede darkness he was doomed.

“Darkness found him swimming low in the water. Noiselessly he grasped the rudder and climbed up onto the beam above it, huddling as close as possible to the ship’s stern.

“The ship was well out to sea and it was not far from daybreak when he stood up, facing a sleepy steersman resting on a wheel that needed little attention because of the light but steady breeze prevailing.

“Blank said, ‘Speak and you are a dead man.’ Then he told the helmsman that he could have £1,000 if he would hide him until he could talk to the captain.

“The sailor said, ‘Take the helm, stand with your back to the lookout, he’s likely asleep and I’ll bring the captain,’ and threw his oilskin coat over Blank’s shoulders.

“‘£1,000 to the captain,’ Blank whispered.

“The captain and the steersman came separately. There was a plea for sympathy, an offer of all the money the captain would ask—the purchase outright of a ship that the captain might put the ocean between himself and old England.

“Blank was installed in the captain’s cabin, bathed, clothed, ate a part of the captain’s meals and notwithstanding his deformities was almost happy during the long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and up the coast of Africa.

“At Southampton, Blank was hidden, his sister sent for. You can imagine the meeting? The sister was not lacking in fidelity; the disfiguration of the beloved brother meant to her merely a call for more love, more fortitude.

“The captain resigned his employment, purchased for cash at the owner’s asking price, a trim little three-master lying in port, became captain of his own ship and cleared for Quebec, Canada.

“Two hooded and veiled women, apparently, boarded and the vessel went on its way to a strange land. Neither Blank nor his sister appeared on deck during the six weeks before the frowning citadel at Quebec, guarding the waters of the St. Lawrence was reached and passed.

“A few miles up the river, beyond the plains of Abraham, Blank and his sister Margaret bade the Captain goodbye.

“Each carried a heavy pack as they stepped into a small boat and were rowed ashore by the same helmsman who first saw Blank on the rudder, back in the waters of far-away Tasmania.

“Reasoning that safety was to be found only through hiding far from the sea, the brother and sister followed the river, making wide detours whenever hamlets or settlements intervened.

“It was May when they first set foot on Canadian soil. When the leaves began to take on a russet hue, they found what appeared to them a perfect hiding place.

“To their surprise, perhaps, their guide, the river, broadened into an inland sea and they found that settlements, cities even, dotted the shores of both river and lake. They struck back, following a turbulent stream, and found it led them into a real wilderness.

“Margaret made purchases of necessities while John was always hiding. They existed in constant fear of discovery. No spot on earth would prove safe for the condemned. The offense against society would never outlaw.

“An abandoned canoe, washed up on the shore of a back-water or channel back of an island in this river encountered in their wanderings, was used. They had not seen a village or even a human habitation in three days’ walk through dense brush and open wood. A paddle was improvised through the use of the light ax carried.

“For miles up the dark stream, sometimes widening to a couple of hundred yards, but usually so narrow and grown with weeds as to be wellnigh impassable, they proceeded.

“A landing had to be made as night was near. They pushed the canoe through a labyrinth of water-deadened trees, with outreaching arms suggestive of myriad gibbets, until they found the shore thicket for which they were looking and thus they came home.

“Home—home from the proud old family mansion in well-settled England to a spot where the foot of white-faced man had apparently never been planted.

“Difficulty of getting to solid ground, inspired the thought of making this stopping place their permanent abode, and led to a survey of the entire surroundings. It was an almost inaccessible island, surrounded not by open water, but by an impassable swamp.

“The dugout on Hawk’s Neck, Tasmania, inspired their first attempt at a dwelling-place.

“Stealthily, gradually, from a distant village, Margaret gathered such few tools as permitted the building of a cabin. She bought such seedlings as enabled them to plant a garden. A gun became part of their outfit and the following spring found them busily engaged in making comfortable their retreat.

“As the years passed Margaret dared to go openly to a village many miles away. In time they learned from newspapers which they bought that the prison colony on Tasmania was abolished and though Blank’s status was still uncertain, a sense of security was established—but from something that John Blank’s living spirit would not disclose through Elaine, a new cause of sorrow and discontent came into his miserable existence; I am sure of that,” Hugh said, turning on me his gaze which during this long recital had been fixed on the wood beyond the open fields and I knew that he was not on the hilltop where we sat but at that lonesome cabin back of the black ash swamp.

“What a fearful life and what a terrible ending,” I ventured. “What became of the sister?”

“I do not know,” Hugh replied, “but I would swear I saw her on the Dover boat, though it may have been my imagination only.”

As we walked homeward, our backs to the setting sun, we discussed the brutality of the British penal system of the first half of the nineteenth century and I was surprised to hear Hugh put up a plea in extenuation of what to me was unthinkable in a civilization so far advanced—a system instituted and maintained as late as 1854 by a Christian country furnishing us the very laws which I, as an officer of the courts, was sworn to respect.

Hugh calmly said, “Yes, the punishment of offenders against society’s laws was as horrible as any demon incarnate could invent, though I have a conviction that neither the Home authorities nor the English people had any idea as to the depths to which human nature, both in keepers and convicts, descended.

“Abandon hope, except of forcing freedom and the criminal becomes extremely dangerous. Consider the plight of the keepers, outnumbered by their charges, months removed from home and help; they could expect no quarter—could they give it?

“Fear is contagious; the guards were not of the higher type of Anglo-Saxon. They doubtless were rightly afraid of the army of the abandoned and from the ignorant and doubtless cowardly private, the feeling of insecurity crept up through the ranks even to the governor himself. I believe that the horrors of the rack, with its stretchers, breakers, hot irons and lancet was a natural corollary; brutality was supreme on the island, though I find no excuse for the arrow-branding and flogging on shipboard.”

“Remember, Gordon,” Hugh added, “We owe to the severity of the Anglo-Saxon laws the fact that we find today more native honesty of mind in the Anglo-Saxon than in either the Latin or the Slav. The hangings for petty theft—the poaching of a rabbit and such delinquencies as would now, in our Canadian and American courts, invite a fine or at the worst a jail sentence—bred through generations of English mothers a more honest race. Let us be thankful—we shall live to see capital punishment a rarity. Even my poor friend Blank did not suffer altogether in vain.”

CHAPTER XI

TWO WEEKS—the day had passed so rapidly—there was so much to observe—this peculiar household of ex-convicts, so quiet, so well-ordered; a great farm producing a good revenue, as attested by the immense bins of grain which I had inspected with Hugh and Elaine and the many mows packed with hay, the ample straw-stacks, well-fed cattle and spirited horses—all gave evidence of earnest desire to make good on the part of the “guests” who spent their evening in reading, debating, and discussion of present work and future prospects.

Craighead Hall seemed sufficient unto itself. The world outside the enclosure seemed remote and yet Hugh’s mail was voluminous; it was sorted and cared for by Fred Hunt, his secretary, a fair-haired youth who had served time for alleged forgery, though to me he protested innocence. I mixed freely with the “guests.” To the last man they were interesting; they came from the better class—educated, many refined; bitterness, hatred of fellowman who had “persecuted” them was rare. They were getting a new start in life.

I was surprised to find most of them young in years, especially those convicted of crimes of violence—unchecked anger. I never arose early enough to find the house asleep, and, while on duty, the prison habit of silence seemed to cling to them—no, not to all—I am forgetting the Chinaman.

He talked as freely as though he had always been at liberty with boon companions and he was a splendid maid-servant and devoted to both Hugh and his sister—and I was not a little pleased at the attention he extended to me. He was an expert clothes-presser—even ironed out my neck-scarfs and laundered my collars.

I was at ease, save for one perplexing obsession; I lived in a dream—the great mansion with the rows of whispering poplars and the mysterious river in front, sombre woods all around, enclosing us as in an embrace. I lost all worldly perspective; life’s accustomed activities became remote—for hours at a time my mind would dwell on the strange phenomenon observed in Elaine’s condition.

That the dead could communicate with the living was contrary to all my teachings, my belief. I asked Hugh for the “spirit writings” from which he got the details of Blank’s strange story. They were voluminous and in a handwriting distinctly different from Elaine’s clean-cut chirography which followed the English, square-topped letters.

Everything and more of John Blank’s life history as told by Hugh was there; many repetitions, as though a question had been repeated; answers irrelevant; for instance, a statement from Blank that he did not realize that he had passed from life through what we call death, until he found himself among many strangers; that he had lingered near his body, returned to his old home after visiting Craighead Hall; he had seen nothing of either heaven or hell and was still a dweller on earth with man embodied and disembodied and was not happier than while in the flesh. In fact, from the disjointed writings, I gathered that he was more timid and fearful of the world about him than when walking the earth.

He had not changed mentally. He had sought Hugh and Alix in Scotland, his sister in England, could not communicate with her, but “found in the little half-sister a real friend.”

Evidently Hugh or Elaine had asked what he meant by this statement, as there followed a line—“We are all looking for half-sisters or brothers who can take messages.”

He was reasonably happy near Hugh and Elaine, it appeared, and Craighead Hall was his home.

“Great Heavens!” I thought; “One more silent guest in this strange place.”

Had he walked down the broad staircase one bright morning I would not have been taken aback and, after reading this mass of evidence far into the night, I could fairly feel his presence.

I felt that Blank resented my intrusion into the affairs of this family and its relationship with him. I became an expert in deciphering the difficult writing which ran all together with no dots or crosses and I left no scrap unread.

Doubt as to the genuineness of Elaine’s communications with the spirit fled—but my Sunday-school teachings kept bobbing into my head—I could not, even at two o’clock in the afternoon, while sitting alone in the great sombre library, help offering up a silent supplication to the Son of the Father for guidance.

There was a stirring of the air in the room; in just that mental condition which induces one to expect the impossible, I jumped from my chair and turned toward the light to which my back had been that I might the better read, fully expecting to meet the earless phantom.

“Oh!” I exclaimed and almost collapsed through sheer nervous weakness. Elaine, in riding clothes, had playfully tiptoed into the room. A vision of beauty, but as startling an apparition as would have been John Blank in person, so foreign to my expectation was this visit.

“What in the world,” Elaine exclaimed, seeing my blanched face; then she gravely laughed, if I may so describe it, saying, “Throw away those papers; don’t let them bother you; they have upset you. I asked Hughie not to let you worry over them.”

I could not speak for a moment, so great had been my shock and Elaine seemingly appreciative of my condition, went on, “Hugh and I are riding to the village;” and with a mischievous smile, “If you could sit a horse for twenty miles and still wish to live tomorrow, I would ask instead of one, two escorts all through the lonely wood.”

Elaine looked more than surprised when I sprang quickly to her and took her disengaged hand—one held a riding crop—in both of mine.

Just then Hugh stepped into the room calling, “Elaine, we’ll be late returning—” stopped with an “Oh, I did not know Gordon was here.”

My reply was to drop her hand, push Hugh aside in my excitement and rush for the stair calling back, “Wait just a moment while I change.”

“Hold up,” Hugh called, “You haven’t any riding breeches. I’ll get you my Sunday-go-to-meeting pair; they are too grand for any city bridle-path equestrian, but Elaine’s knight-errants must be fittingly clad while on exhibition at the village.”

I was upstairs when the last of this good-humored speech reached me but it was pleasing—Hugh had not resented the familiarity witnessed. Hugh brought the breeches and a coat as well, told me to wear my vest as the night would be chilly.

“I’m as nervous as a fish,” I said to Hugh as he waited while I struggled with a row of buttons on the trouser leg and clasped on a pair of my host’s puttees.

“Pshaw, man,” Hugh retorted, “There is nothing in a twenty-mile ride to get excited about, especially while there are three of us,” he added, glancing sideways at me.

“It is the Blank writings,” I exclaimed.

“Oh that is it; well you must not let things of that nature worry you; they are—that’s all—just accept and forget them.”

Hugh, on a splendid mount, set an easy pace, riding a few yards ahead. I rode beside Elaine. The dogs set up a howl as we passed the kennels; open fields were traversed; the wood road was beautiful; my heart sang.

A verse from a book of my childhood floated into my memory—

I saw the sunlight through the trees,
Checkering the grassy earth;
I felt the breath of the summer breeze
And my spirit was full of mirth.

The padlocked gate, a road which Elaine explained was the “concession line.” What that meant was nothing, but I dwelt on the voice as though an angel had spoken.

Hugh had spurred on ahead when we reached the main road, and as we approached the cemetery, I saw that he had dismounted and was leaning just as when I saw him first, on the white paling of the little plot outside the cemetery’s far corner.

As Elaine did not check her horse or give more than a glance toward Hugh, I made no comment but kept beside her. Truth is, I was not a finished horseman and had to watch my step with the rather mettlesome black under me.

“Here is where Hughie went to school,” Elaine said as we came abreast a clapboarded, one-story, red-painted, neat little building perched atop a considerable hill; the first break in a silence commencing at the cemetery.

My answer was cut short through a determined but most ungraceful attempt to avoid landing on my head on the roadway. My horse had set a front foot on a rolling stone as we took the down-grade of the hill. He went on one knee before recovering to break into a run—and I had my arms around his neck—a rather undignified figure, everything considered.

When my companion came alongside, she was laughing. The gloom gathered at the cemetery was dispelled and though the expense was mine, I was glad.

“You should always keep a tight rein while going downhill,” she twitted me on my horsemanship; solemnly advised me at the next hill then in sight; there was light badinage which I answered in kind to the best of my ability while we covered many miles; but I was always kept aloof from anything approaching sentimentality.

A step on the ladder of my dreams—I had called her Elaine and she dropped the Mr. and my name Gordon from her lips took on a new sound.

Rows of houses with gardens began to show the proximity of the village. Hugh rode with us. He pointed out the tall spire of the church on top of the hill beneath which the village nestles, saying, “Four lads in their early teens got ninety days each in the ‘Black Hole,’ the village lockup, for shooting up that spire when I was a boy.

“Father pleaded for them before the squire, I remember; he was the judge who later sentenced Haig, but though the lads were merely trying out a new rifle and were greatly alarmed when they found how far it would carry—they shot from the hill across the river—no mercy was shown.”

We were going down the hill; I held a tight rein and stole a glance at Elaine; she was looking at me and smiling. Hugh knew nothing of my mishap and kept on talking.

We tied our mounts in the open shed in the rear yard of the “Myrtle Bank.” Where the name originated, I cannot say.

Both Hugh and his sister were afoot before I could get out of the saddle. As we walked toward Front Street, Hugh was accosted by a scholarly-looking stranger and excused himself, saying, “Meet you at the post office in half an hour,” meantime looking at a thick timepiece.

Elaine dismissed me at the first and almost only dry goods store saying that “she did not wish to display to me her vanity.”

From my vantage point at the end of the bridge near the post office I watched Hugh approach. He looked neither to right nor left, though people, neighbors, almost, were passing and eyeing him; a fine upstanding figure, but the face was solemn, aloof, but, I thought, purposeful.

We entered the post office together. Hugh shook hands with an alert-looking young man, saying, “Mr. Montrose, this is our Postmaster, Mr. Harris. I am looking for your father, Mr. Harris.”

Mr. Harris acknowledged my greeting with a real, political, come-along handshake, saying to Hugh, “The governor will be out in a few minutes,” and we turned to see Elaine at the post wicket talking to the clerk.

She turned to me, “You remember Mr. Haig?”

Mr. Haig, the transformed, was a government employee. Certainly Hugh had done a good work here, for the young man, salved and reclaimed, held an air of confidence, though I noted the deferential manner when he greeted Hugh who put his hand through the wicket to Haig.

“Doing splendidly, sir, and all thanks to you, Mr. Craighead, and to you and Mr. Montrose,” he added, looking at Elaine.

Stepping back out of sight, Haig reappeared with a good-sized bundle of letters tied in a package and said, “A busy day, Mr. Craighead, I kept this one out as it was ‘Special.’”

I noted that it carried foreign postage stamps. Hugh started to open the letter, then stuck it in a side pocket of his coat as an important-looking gentleman came up with hand extended and greeted Hugh, who drew him aside, literally by the coat lapel, and called me by a glance.

“Senator Harris, Mr. Montrose,” Hugh was saying, “a Philadelphia lawyer, sojourning with us at the Hall. You will be interested in him. I hope to induce Mr. Montrose to associate himself with me in my reform work. He will stay with us and we shall enlarge our force just as soon as you put through my bill.”

The Senator was cold-eyed.

“My dream is that the government of Canada will set an example for the United States through taking up the work on a proper scale,” Hugh resumed.

“I can only operate in a small way. Every man turned out of a prison should have a home such as Craighead Hall where he can rest and get back some of his self-respect, be taught to be decent, shown that the world is for or against him only as he chooses. The Member who is instrumental in passing this measure will have the gratitude of thousands now living and a thousand thousand unborn.

“Millions of dollars lost under present systems of turning sewage right back into the streets will be saved to taxpayers through the lessening of crime, for I note, Senator, that most of our court and policing cost is expended on ex-criminals who repeat. Come to the Hall and see a model institution.”

The Senator, an influential member of the Upper Parliament I learned later, a typical Canadian politician whose very soul would revolt at the mention of graft—and yet who could see no impropriety in securing for his own son the best that the government could give in the way of plums, the postmastership; good-natured, but reserved in manner and speech, exceedingly proud of self and position, kept on smiling.

“I have for some time been thinking of affording myself the pleasure of calling on you and your charming sister,” the Senator said in a quiet but attractive voice which I mentally contrasted with the reply which would have been made by a member of our Congress not so affable; he would have said “All right, Hugh,” with mental reservation perhaps and, if no votes were involved, would have had ready a good alibi for their next meeting.

Not so this Canadian statesman. There are no politicians in Parliament, Upper or Lower, I have found—all statesmen.

When invited for a specific date, he urged “pressure of business,” coldly, I thought, though taking the number of a Canadian Member is difficult. He proceeded: “Precedence of other measures must be carefully considered before I undertake the introduction of such a radical bill—no, radical is perhaps the wrong appellation; I think well of the scheme, yet it would appeal to many of my colleagues as revolutionary.”

I thought Hugh was urging too earnestly. He put the direct question finally, “Will you or will you not,” in his own straightforward way.

The Senator turned aside and looked down through a window at the black stream carrying all the waters of a great river between rock walls not over a hundred and fifty feet apart—waters that moved so rapidly that the surface looked motionless, like glass; it required a bit of flotsam, shooting past one’s vision, gone in a second of time, to dispel the illusion.

The Senator spoke:

“Gentlemen, the power of that stream is nothing, it may be harnessed by man; what power can check the human torrent called the mind of the multitude? I value my seat. The unthinking, perhaps, among my constituents, complain of the inadequacy of our laws and courts in punishing crime; what would be the fate of a measure in amelioration?

“I but represent the wishes of my people. Petition—give me a request in writing from a safe majority and I will act.”

He addressed me. “Our laws are respected here; punishment for infraction is sure and swift. We have only a few, compared with the many varying statutes of each state of the United States opposing obstacles to the prompt meting out of justice. Our criminal laws are good, our judges are fearless and our juries seldom permit sentiment to sway them. Except in Quebec, our population is Anglo-Saxon—honesty and respect for law is a birthright, let the Frenchman adjust his own affairs in conformity with his moral view; our old Covenanting Scotchman would certainly resent the coddling of a criminal, even with ‘ex-’ prefixed; our Irish are generous, though they make the greater noise and cry louder for condign punishment; on impulse they would forgive.

“Mr. Craighead, go after the many Irish in this district. Avoid the Scotch and pick your Englishman—a few are impossible, many reasonable, but, my boy, all are pigheaded and must be properly approached or they will never sign up on your petition.

“Show every man how the meager tax he now pays may be wiped out almost to the vanishing point, leaving just enough to afford him a subject for complaint, and you will succeed.”

The Senator examined his watch, shot out his hand to Hugh, then to me and vanished through a swinging door. “I can’t see it,” Hugh said and I knew that Elaine, who had just joined us, saw as I did a great disappointment settle on Hugh.

We took tea, a light dinner and learned from Hugh that he had arranged with a traveling preacher to come to the Hall and lecture; I think he would have said preach had he not caught some understandable light in the eyes of his sister. A priest also was coming—it was not fair to “guests” of the Catholic faith that they should have no opportunity of conforming to their teachings.

Hugh, when Elaine protested at the teaching of impossibilities, stressed the point that man must have his religion and that he had not found the Joss of Fong missing when last he visited his room.

From the backs of our moving horses at the top of the hill where the Catholic Church stands sentinel over its little army below, lights seemed to dance like fireflies.

Hugh was silent, apparently depressed but doubtless thinking out a way for the furthering of his work.

As we rode on through the miles, Hugh, a horse’s length ahead, only the diapason of hoofbeats and the pleasant creaking of leathers conforming to the horses’ motions, broke the silence.

“She” was near me. I was happy and yet most miserably unhappy.

Once, as we came in through the silence of the dense woods, I reached across and laid my hand on the sleeve of her riding coat. She permitted the caress, understood it, I think, for she leaned a little forward in the saddle and turned her face toward me as though in acknowledgment. I wished then that I could have seen her eyes.

It was merely a touch of the hand on her sleeve, but the harmonies were awake.

“Jehovah,” I kept repeating, “is in His place in heaven,” and the ten long miles were all too short.

CHAPTER XII

THE lecturer did not present an appearance but the priest came on Friday contrary to Hugh’s understanding. The day set was Sunday but nevertheless, he was heartily welcomed, his horse stabled and Hugh proceeded at once to call in the “guests.”

The big bell atop the barn tolled seven strokes and within three-quarters of an hour nearly forty men were assembled in the great hall awaiting the pleasure of the father. Each man was introduced by Hugh and I marvelled that he could remember their names.

Is there in the physiognomy of the Catholic a mark through which one of the same faith may distinguish him from the Protestant?

Father Nealon, a comparatively young man, certainly under forty, went about his work in a brisk, businesslike manner, picking out those of his faith.

About one-third of the “guests” were confessed—a strange proceeding, transmitting to the Most High, through the successor of Peter, the innermost secrets, believing that a mortal man has the vicarious authority to forgive or at least in a measure absolve.

The rest of the men went about their duties or read; some wandered down to the river to see that the boats were securely under shelter as the day had grown sullen and the wind had risen to almost a gale.

They reassembled later in the evening, before the usual dinner hour. The entire household was there except the Chinaman and I would not say that the Celestial was not hidden within earshot.

In a fine manly way the father talked—not of heaven or purgatory but on things present; duty, cultivation of respect for self, for others, for society’s laws, forgetfulness of old ideas, appreciation of a newly regained citizenship—as fine a discourse as I had ever heard.

He admonished the men to cling to the faith of their childhood, though those of his faith in the audience were in the minority and closed by offering up a very understandable prayer, full of feeling, a sort of summing up, I thought, into which he brought the name of Hugh as a benefactor.

I was impressed with the genuineness of the man, especially after the “guests” had left the hall. Without apology, even hesitation, he accepted and drank a sizable potion of Scotch whiskey, declining water with the remark that “such a wonderful concoction should, like everything in nature, be kept pure.”

Night had fallen and the storm had increased in fury. Rain in sheets on the breast of the wind, the darkness outside stabbed frequently through by flashes of lightning.

“The last of our warm weather; the electricity will cool things off,” Hugh suggested as we walked upstairs that we might all make preparations for dinner.

The father needed no urging to stay overnight, but said that he welcomed an opportunity of “taking a good look at such a magic palace in such a setting.”

We dined much later than usual. There were four of us and Hugh suggested the library as more cozy than the great hall on such a stormy night. It must have been nearly eleven o’clock when Elaine excused herself.

The discourse during dinner turned mainly on Hugh’s work and his effort to make the salving of ex-criminals institutional through an act of Parliament.

Father Nealon expressed himself as completely won over to a cause which had theretofore appeared to him chimerical, if not positively wrong and a menace to public order. He pledged himself to the cause and it meant much to Hugh as the district held many Catholics.

Hugh, when we three were alone, prepared a night-cap of old brandy from the vault. It was, I can testify, smooth, but to me, rather heavy and as, safe from the howling wind outside, we smoked and sipped the mild-tasting amber nectar I could feel that Hugh was being drawn into a discussion of his peculiar faith, or rather lack of it.

The priest had a splendid fund of good-nature and dry wit, but in the background there seemed to be an earnestness of purpose which doubtless was inherent or the result of seminary teaching, and I doubted the wisdom of Hugh’s probable disclosure of the fact that he was anything but a churchman; it might prejudice the goodly man of the church against an accepted responsibility.

First, Hugh confessed that since viewing the cathedrals of Europe he had not been within a church. Then came the assertion that organized churches and such control as they wielded were essential to good government as then conducted; then he claimed that of course religious teachings other than that golden rule of “doing unto others as you would that others should do unto you” had no bearing as claimed on the “fate of the soul.”

Father Nealon seemed to chuckle inwardly as he said, “Well, thanks be! I thought you would be denying a soul to us poor mortals.”

“No, indeed,” Hugh replied, “I do deny, however, that the soul was breathed into Adam or any other ready-made human as your Bible claims.”

The father leaned far back in the big leather chair, turned roguish eyes to me and said, “Now, friend Montrose, we shall just sit and listen while Mr. Craighead tells us how we became the possessors of souls, for a soul we have, to be saved or damned.”

“Too long a story, father,” Hugh replied, “though I feel that having committed myself I should give you my views, rather, my convictions; they certainly do not coincide with yours and I do not ask you to give them any weight, but you ask for them.”

“Never fear,” the priest replied, “though my faith is founded on a rock, nevertheless, I want to learn the genealogy of the most precious of my possessions.”

“Then listen, Mr. Priest,” Hugh began, “listen, not to me, but to your native, unwarped intelligence, for, freed from mistaken inculcations you have a splendid brain and a wonderful soul within you. This intelligence must say that, like the body, the soul is an evolved product of nature’s laws. Do you suppose that the first vertebrate biped known as man carried within him such a soul as you possess? How many changes has the body undergone since its habitat was the water, the cooling gases sweated out from a cooling planet? Many, you will grant, and the soul has not undergone any less in number.

“The soul’s origin? In fact it always was, just as everything in the universe always existed, but everything in the universe, save only the law eternal, changes. We do not live from within. We inspire life with every breath. The unmeasurable universe is as an entity, alive and sending out throughout its entirety, life—millions of different forms of life have lived and disappeared entirely. Only the fittest survive and this law holds today and will hold in the ultimate for all eternity, beyond the grave.”

Father Nealon loudly interjected: “Do you mean to tell me that the soul is not everlasting? For argument’s sake, but for the sake of argument only, I’ll grant you that man came up from the fishes; though I don’t believe a word of it; souls are immortal!”

Hugh smiled, saying, “Your Vulgate teachings will not permit you to think clearly, I see. Let us reason that out. We may only use analogy as a guide. Is anything, from planets to that which nature builds through aggregation on planets, eternal? The soul is as much a planetary product as the body. The body of man has attained its present proportions through a process of unfolding. How many promising bodies involuted and disappeared during the life of our world? We find them in the rocks. The survival of man’s body is probably due to the presence therein as a necessary integral of the evolved soul and spirit which sustains, yes, moulds it. One leans upon the other and helps build the whole. If the body may involute, why not the soul?”

The father, all attention, exclaimed, “Ah! Now I believe you not only read profane writings, but you have studied what the New Testament teaches. Paul distinguishes the soul from both spirit and body, but just what is the soul and what the spirit?”

“Yes,” Hugh replied, “and the crucified Teacher of the doctrine of love pointed out the absurdity of the soul’s awakening only after the bones are gathered together on the last day when He said, according to Matthew, ‘Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.’

“I would say that anything possessing intelligence, the ability to reason, has a soul. Reasoning has built up a carrier, we call it a mind; whether in one part or in the whole of the body. The reasoning mind has evolved the soul of man into the purposeful entity of today, built it up through aggregation just as our planet was assembled. Can you, Father Nealon, conceive of man’s wonderful soul as possessed by his progenitors of a lower order—back to the fish?

“Man reasons through the brain and telegraphs sinews, muscles and organs through the nerves, but many times he acts contrary to the promptings of an as yet unsubjugated soul, what we recognize as our subconscious self—an inner man, the spiritual man, in some degree always subject to the flesh man, his partner in this life only.

“The degree of subjugation of the subconscious, a part of the body of man, yet perhaps eons of years older, constitutes the measurement of his evolution or involution.

“Listen to the soundless voice of the inner man and you will not go far astray. The goal is the acquiring of knowledge, therefore, of an all-embracing power, though there is no absolute, but we are a long way back of it, thanks in some measure to untrue religious teachings throughout the world. We lean too much. ‘Believe in me and ye shall never die,’ as interpreted by the church is stultifying.

“You, father, teach the worship of the God-man, Jesus, or at least your teachings are so interpreted while the Christ—Truth—only should we consider.”

“But the spirit,” the father persisted, and the reply came, “A thorough and complete body, Mr. Priest, a crystallization of the electrons of an atom, perhaps, but we shall never know until Eos throws open to us the gates of dawn and then perhaps we may not have revealed to us many more of nature’s secrets than we now know. That I would judge will depend on the progress made in our many journeys from here to the hereafter and back again.”

Father Nealon sat bolt upright. “Do you, Mr. Craighead, presume to say that souls come back from heaven or hell to this earth and enter into a new body? Preposterous! You must have been imbibing of the doctrines of Mormon or are you a Theosophist?”

Hugh shot back: “Better a book of Mormon or Theosophy than the deductions from that other book, misinterpreted and spread broadcast during nearly two thousand years by ignorant satellites of the higher-ups seeking aggrandizement; poisoning the minds and bodies—the terms are synonymous—of our children; sowing the seeds of fear so thoroughly that the child draws it into his being with the mother’s milk. Fear, the most horrible of diseases, for it affects the mind and the body and the soul; fear of God, of punishment; fear of father and mother, teacher, the world, himself—throw away your doctrine of darkness and fear that the mothers of a thousand years hence may have no phobia when of their bodies they build a house for the stranger; once a dweller on earth, seeking as he must another opportunity for advancement in the science of nature’s manifestations.”

Here, as a vivid flash of lightning brightly illuminating the front of the room was followed instantaneously by a crack of thunder, we all stood tense.

Hugh leaned forward with right arm extended and finger pointing at the father, “Know you, father, not in the spiritual essence of the universe, not in the natural law, is there jealousy, hate or fear, nor hypocrisy. You profess belief that the Spirit of Christ walked the earth, that Abraham and the prophets became visible, yet if I should say to you that the spirit of the living dead has appeared in this room—”

At that instant the left panel of the huge French window was flung back and there came into the room a sheet of water borne on a burst of wind. The lamps in their brackets sent up each chimney a wisp of smoke and went out; the chimney-place gave out a fitful flickering light as the draft brought a dying flame to life. I was drenched to the skin when I turned from shooting the bolt in the closed window.

An awed, shrill cry, “Hugh! Hugh!” rang in my ears.

I saw two figures standing just out from the wall-panel opening—both in white—Elaine it certainly was, but the other figure, a man’s ghostly contour—Hugh stepped clean through the man and I could see Hugh’s dark clothing as though obscured by a mist as he took his sister’s form in his arms and without a word disappeared in the opening in the wall which closed behind them.

The good father stood crossing himself. He made the sign of the cross half-a-dozen times, a weird figure in the dying light of the open grate, now that the draft was excluded.

Father Nealon looked at the spot where the specter had stood, looked at the blank wall where Hugh and the other specter with bronze-gold hair all about the white shoulders above her robe of white had passed, and almost shouted: “What is this? Am I crazy—am I blind? What manner of theatrical chicanery has this crazy man invented?” and he rubbed his eyes as though he had been asleep and strode over to the fireplace.

“Nothing to cause you any alarm, Reverend,” I said, “that was Hugh’s sister evidently walking in her sleep—many people do that.”

I put fresh fuel on the fire and removed my wet coat.

Silence for a moment, then the father said, “Mysterious! I did not see Mr. Hugh go after that voice called his name—where is he? But then I saw nothing but the other. My friend, what did you make of it?”

“What?” I asked.

“Why! the man who stood beside the girl, the big fellow who looked unreal. If I ever hope to see a ghost he was here tonight.”

“Miss Elaine was very real; Hugh carried her out through a secret entrance; nothing of mystery about that; someone left the window unlatched and the wind forced it open—”

I was interrupted.

“Man, man, didn’t you see something like a man standing to the right of the girl—and that Craighead should walk right through it—I saw him or I was dreaming,” and Nealon walked over to the table, held the brandy bottle between his eyes and the fire, saying, “Only a thimbleful gone; not enough to liven a sparrow and yet I believe by my soul I have imagined everything since the venison was served.”

He poured out a brimming glass; it was a wine-glass, fortunately, and drank it off, without a moment’s hesitation.

“Shall we seek sleep that our heads may be clear on the morrow, Mr. Montrose? We can make our apologies in the morning. Probably our host will feel relieved at our taking this liberty.”

I readily acquiesced, banked the fire as the wind was even higher than when the window blew open and the draft was strong, walked upstairs with our friend and bade him good night and pleasant dreams, at his door.

Far into the small hours of the morning, in his room adjoining mine, I could hear him pacing the floor. My estimate of this man was unchanged—one of the finest, most manly of men. A good teacher, a well-beloved pastor of a devoted flock. I wished him for a friend and must say that though years have passed, time has only the more closely cemented a mutual respect and liking begun on this first of his many visits to Craighead Hall. And he kept faith with Hugh.

Sleep and I were strangers until dawn. I thought of all the tragic things which might have ensued since Elaine’s startling visit to the library, yet I dared not disturb the quiet of the household.

I prayed—yes, I asked the Almighty to spare her—and in the midst of my silent prayer thought of Hugh’s contempt for religious convictions—but I was only asking aid. The tramp-tramp next door became monotonous. The priest was badly shaken.

Day must have dawned—a little rivulet came creeping out upon the polished floor, the leaded windows were letting in the driving equinoxial rain. Slowly, so slowly it crept out and out as I watched. Noon was not far off when I awoke.

Rain was still falling, but the wind had moderated. As I stood on the veranda sheltered from both rain and wind, the latter having veered to the north, bringing a most disagreeable chill to the atmosphere, I saw the farm carryall, a three-seated vehicle with springs, driven up to the front door. The curtains parted and there alighted two cloaked and hooded women and a man carrying a small black bag, whom I correctly guessed was a doctor. She must be ill indeed for Hugh to have other women about the Hall—and a doctor.

I found Hugh pacing the upper hall a half-hour later.

“High fever, unconscious since a few moments after I carried her to her room,” Hugh said in answer to my unspoken question, then added, “The doctor and nurses are with her.”

“What was the cause?” I inanely asked.

“A dream,” Hugh replied. “One of those terrible visitations—said Alix must have died as she had seen her on a boat with water all about; you know, Gordon, how unnatural she becomes during one of those visitations. Well, this was the strangest condition of mind I have ever witnessed in her. Seemed as though she was absolutely asleep downstairs and when I laid her on her bed and drew the blanket over her she was cold and still.

“I tell you, man, I was alarmed until I saw her eyelids quiver—then she said, ‘Alix is dead; I saw her on a boat; water all about,’ then became unconscious but her breathing deceived me into thinking she was as usual after a visitation, merely sleeping and I think I slept while watching her.

“This morning at daybreak, her flushed face and pulse spelled fever; I sent for a doctor and day and night nurses. This may be serious.

“I believe that in some way her spirit crossed over to Scotland, was out of her body for a time, though I have never heard of such a thing—”

The doctor approached, coming from the corridor leading to Elaine’s room.

“Mr. Montrose, Dr. Parsons,” Hugh introduced us.

The medical man of middle age carrying a stethoscope in his left hand extended to me his right, saying more to Hugh than to me, “Organically perfect; the cerebro-spinal axis appears to be the seat of the trouble; I find no indication of infection. Can you send blood samples to my laboratory assistant?”

Hugh said, “Certainly, at once,” and I insisted upon being the messenger; said it would ease my mind, and the doctor interposed, while looking me over critically, “Let him go, Mr. Craighead. The analyst may say something which he would not write in his report, besides your friend needs a few hours in which to pick himself up. Where do I camp? I shall stay here tonight,” the doctor added.

Hugh turned to me. “Will you show him to the room adjoining yours?”

“The priest?” I queried.

“Oh, Father Nealon went in the carryall this morning; I shall send his horse as soon as weather permits,” Hugh replied.

I was pulling on a raincoat when the doctor unceremoniously opened my door and without any preliminary, said, “Young man, there is something peculiar about this young person’s case. Has she had some great shock—exhaustion of nerves; unaccountably high fever with no history—the mariner cannot navigate without his chart—out with it—I can see it in your eyes.”

Should I let another, a stranger from the world outside into the close-guarded, secret affliction? I weighed the matter a moment, then said, “Doctor, the young lady is evidently a sleep-walker; she came into the library last night, sound asleep.”

“Yes, yes,” he replied, “but there is something back of that; I’ll have to quiz Craighead. Now off with you and get back pronto,” and he whisked out of my room.

Every mile of the way recalled that recent joyous ride of but a few days ago; but the rain continued to beat upon the supposedly waterproof covering of the wagon.

I sat with the driver and scarcely a word was spoken. Wet through, I hastened to Dr. Parsons’ office and handed the small box entrusted to my care to a thin-faced, spectacled young man. I fully expected a shock. It seemed to me that I was carrying the life-blood of her whom I worshipped. There was only a small piece of lint—I did not even see the blood smear on it.

“Hurry with this,” I said to the analyst who, in reply, merely looked me over through his spectacles, turned on his heel and passed into an inner room.

Two hours later, stiff and annoyed, I got painfully to my feet as the man came into the cold, comfortless office and handed me a sealed letter directed to Dr. A. W. Parsons.

“What did you find?” I queried. “All in there,” the man returned, pointing to the letter, adding as he turned about, “Good day.”

The wagonette awaiting me under the hotel shed set off homeward at once. About three miles out the road passed through a cedar swamp. I remember noting the drooping, forlorn appearance of the trees as I peered out between the curtains. Their bleak outline took on many fantastic shapes, all gloomy. A sharp pain shot through under my left shoulder blade and I remembered nothing more until a week later when I opened my eyes to find a pleasant-faced young woman standing beside my bed, a bottle in one hand and a spoon in the other. I tried to sit up, but while I willed to do so, my body did not move; nor could I recognize my feeble voice as my own when I essayed to speak.

The nurse put her finger on her lips and said, “Quiet; not a word; do not try to move;” then, turning toward a couch out of my line of vision, “Doctor.”

I could hear a grunt as though of somebody just awakened.

“Doctor, the brandy did it; he is conscious,” and next moment the doctor, Parsons, had fingers on my wrist and stood over me looking at his watch.

I tried to ask, but “Elaine” was all that I could whisper. The doctor’s heavy black eyebrows seemed to meet, notwithstanding the great gulf I thought had once separated them as he looked fiercely at me and said, “Young man, if I hear a peep out of you again for twenty-four hours, I’ll take away this good-looking young lady and leave you to Fong Wing with his devil papers and punk sticks.

“Estelle,” he added, addressing the nurse, “did you smell that devilish heathen’s incense? I threw the whole mess, god and all, out the window.”

The nurse leaned over near me and said, “Miss Elaine is well out of danger but you have had a serious week—pneumonia—but the fever has broken; you will be able to convalesce together. Now take this and go to sleep.”

Hugh was in next day. The doctor seemed to blame me for keeping him prisoner at the Hall. Strength to get out of bed had not returned. I kept no account of the passing of time. Sleep—I seemed to sleep always, but one memorable day, I started wide awake to find her sitting on the outer edge of my bed.

I spoke her name. She was so fragile, so pale, the great mass of gold coiled about her white brow accentuated the size and luster of her glorious eyes. If there was ever a face that showed a soul in agony, I was gazing into it.

She laid her little white hand on mine and whispered rather than spoke, “Oh, Gordon, I’m so glad you are going to be well soon,” and when I tried to say what was in my heart—just “I love you,” the words would not come.

She placed the palm of her hand on my lips and held it there a moment and then I sensed rather than heard others come into the room. There was a glad cry, a woman’s voice, an answering hysterical, “Alix! Alix!” the semblance of a struggle and the other woman calling frantically, “Hugh, Hugh, James!” laid Elaine in a dead faint across the foot of my bed.

I sat up and looked first at Elaine, then at the frantic woman almost lying upon her, with both hands holding tight Elaine’s white face. Hugh followed by a stranger ran into the room. Hugh looked just an instant, then pulled Alix aside, but it was the Chinaman who appeared from nowhere with a glass of water, a portion of which he dashed into Elaine’s face. I had made such headway toward recovery that the nurse had gone downstairs.

The others gone, the stranger lingered, pulled a chair to my bedside and introduced himself quietly as though nothing had happened.

“James McFarlane,” he said. “We came over the river a few minutes ago and walked in on Hugh at lunch. My wifie couldn’t wait; the girl was daft to see her little sister; she made a mess of it, but—” he added, “it’s a natural emotion.”

“I hope it will not give her a setback,” I replied.

“Never fear; joy does not kill,” he answered, then, taking a good look at me, said, “Mon, ye look peaked. When ye are weal enow I want a talk wi’ ye about Hugh and his affairs. The lad needs a friend.”

I assured him that I was fit, but he said the morrow or next day would do, carefully adjusted the covering on my bed, put the chairs back in place and as the nurse came in said, “I shall resign now that ye hae better company,” bowing toward tyrannical Estelle who doped me with eggnog, fixed my pillows so that I could sit up and then at my request, sought out the other invalid and brought me the reassuring message that Miss Elaine was none the worse for her experience and was busy in converse with her sister.

CHAPTER XIII

ELAINE came next day, but not alone. The sister was more like Hugh; had blue eyes and dark hair—a beautiful woman whose thirty-odd years—I shall not be too exact—with their inevitable accumulation of weight had merely rounded out a splendid figure and, in my judgment, accentuated rather than diminished her attractiveness.

Hugh had no recollection of getting any letter from McFarlane notifying him that the family was about to sail for Canada until I mentioned the official-looking document with foreign stamps which he had put in a side pocket of his coat while we were in the post office. A search was made but it could not be found.

“Mac” as I mentally dubbed him—though in our frequent meetings during the week before he sought me out for counsel I always addressed him as Mr. McFarlane—“Mac” readily explained seemingly to his own satisfaction though not to mine, that Elaine’s vision was but a dream, a coincidence, “maybe a sort of thought transference,” as he put it.

By appointment made the day previous I met Mac in the library where, as he expressed it, “we shall be oot o’ earshot o’ a’ the pryin’ silent anes wha spring oot o’ the floor and harry the nerves o’ ane.”

The reunited family was at the village. The “wee bairnie,” a lusty youngster, much taken with Fong, was out at the stables with the Chinaman who seemed to have transferred his allegiance from Elaine to the rosy-cheeked young Scot.

I must confess that for a whole week I had thought of little else than that something portentous was impending which would disturb the promise to me of an ideal life here at Craighead Hall. I had builded many a castle but they were all of limestone and set into the side of a hill.

McFarlane’s manner was constrained. “Mr. Montrose, I hae deliberated long, hae sounded Hugh as to his feelin’s toward ye, looked at the situation from all angles and now, mon, I ask ye as a counsellor and as a friend of all parties in interest for your best advice,” was the opening.

“Trust me fully,” was my reply, the thought arising that some crime or physical taint attaching to Hugh was about to be disclosed. It surely could not involve Elaine?

Mac shifted his position from the use of a polished oak table as a rest for his elbows to one in which he leaned back in the large chair, placing his face in shadow.

“Montrose, are ye capable o’ carryin’ on here should Hugh be called away?”

My worst imaginings almost confirmed, I asked anxiously, “What has Hugh done?”

I could not see the expression on Mac’s face until he leaned forward; then I read doubt as to whether or not I was the right person in whom to confide.

“Dash it, Montrose, ye hae the wrong slant. I merely wish to know if ye think yoursel’ capable o’ carryin’ on the farm’s management and keepin’ the pack o’ malefactors from killin’ ane anither durin’ Hugh’s absence.”

“Oh yes, I could do that if necessary, but why should Hugh give up his work?”

“A’ in good time, my friend; I’ll tell ye a’; but do ye think ye could do what Hugh is doin’, help more o’ the rascals to an easy berth?” he came back.

“Yes, my practise is criminal law. I would like that work, but I am no farmer.”

“Then ye could trust the farm management to a gude overseer such as old Hallowed was when I took Hugh and Alix to Scotland,” Mac said, adding, “That settled, I’ll proceed—but ye must hae patience and don’t interrupt.”

I settled back, prepared to curb my impatience; it seemed the only way. McFarlane at times lapsing into broad Scotch, continued, “Hugh Craighead’s father, like Hugh, was a graduate of Edinburgh University. There were two Craigheads, Alexander Junior and James, twins, and they, as far as I can learn, were well-behaved lads, brought up i’ the fear o’ God by old Alexander, a regular Covenanter who lived in Hill Head, just across the Kelvin from Glasgow.

“The father was a stern parent, exacting, intolerant and unforgiving; a bad combination as ye shall witness as I proceed, friend Montrose.

“Another lad about the same age lived with the boys in the same dormitory, the object being to cut down expenses so that something of the old man’s allowance would be left them.

“Alexander Senior was a close-fisted old Scotchman though he had plenty and to spare. The three boys became close friends and graduated together. Before separating, the Craigheads to return to Glasgow and the other lad to England, they agreed to return to the university for a post-graduate course.

“The Craigheads returned, but their friend met a young lady in London and married. He took quarters in London and the boys received frequent invitations to come there as his guest. He wished to have them meet his wife of whose beauty of soul and body he filled his letters.

“Later the urge was stronger; a little girl had been born and pride in paternity made him even more insistent. The Craigheads had never been in London. They were boning down on a course in law; the old man would not appreciate their natural desire to take even a week’s holiday. To him it would have meant a useless waste of good money. No man needed any friend other than Pounds Sterling was his theory, so the boys having a few pounds saved up, hied themselves southwestward, failing to let the old man know that they were not busy in Edinburgh.

“Their visit to the college chum was necessarily brief, but so pleasant that when vacation season came and they were furnished with funds for a continental trip as a part of their educational course, they spent three days in Paris; the fourth found them with Mr. and Mrs. Blankleigh in London.”

McFarlane at this point paused and with inquiry in his eyes glanced keenly at me but as nothing he had recounted was startling I was all impatient to learn where Hugh’s connection commenced.

Then he resumed: “London, with its fingerprints of history reaching away back through centuries, its gay night life; and the affection the twins felt for their host and hostess kept them in the old city for over two months while the grim old man at Hill Head speculated on how much they were absorbing of continental affairs that would be of utility in increasing their ability to make money.

“Of the two boys perhaps the hostess preferred the company of Alexander—‘Sandy’ his friends called him. They frequently visited points of interest together, while James and John after visiting the office of the latter would attend a boxing match or visit a variety show matinee.

“Because the hostess preferred home and her baby girl, she seldom accompanied the boys in their night prowls and frequently Sandy stayed at home for company.

“Now, Mr. Montrose, God knows that was natural enough, as James had a bent for pokin’ into the odd places at night. John was of the same mind. You must remember that he was newly married, only a little more than a couple of years and until his friends came, London at night was to him as much an unknown country as it was to the Craigheads. Newmarket, Chinese runaways, the quarters of sailors near the river, the underworld of a great metropolis, kept these two boys absorbed; often times they were out most of the night. Alexander seemed to care nothing for all this, preferring a quiet evening at home.

“Montrose, I’m not a suspicious mon,” McFarlane shot at me as though I had questioned the propriety of Alexander’s spending his evenings with his hostess, “and, Montrose, I’m not criticizin’ onybody, nor makin’ aspersions,” he resumed, “but one night when both Craighead boys were out, John, havin’ stayed at home, a terrible thing happened.

“James Craighead was leavin’ a theater on the Strand about eleven o’clock that night; just as he stepped across the walk to enter a cab, his friend Blankleigh, with eyes blazin’ like a madman’s, eyewitnesses testified, shot him through the heart, then threw the pistol into the gutter and stood wi’ arms folded until seized by a policeman.

“When the murdered mon, who the witnesses said was facin’ the murderer and smilin’, fell on his face, his head a’most touched Blankleigh; somebody turned him onto his back and when Blankleigh saw the face of the twin and recognized that it was James, he said, ‘My God! what hae I done,’ and struggled to recover the weapon but the police snapped handirons on and carried him off to prison.

“Montrose, I spent months gettin’ all the details o’ this period in the life and trial of John Hogarth Blankleigh—”

“Hogarth!” I yelled, bringing McFarlane fairly out of his chair; “Hogarth! why Hogarth is my reason for being here; what is his connection with this history?”

McFarlane leaned forward saying, “Mon, mon, ye’re overly excited; perhaps ye are too late ailin’ to hae the judgment ye need to advise me.”

He listened patiently while I explained my errand to Craighead Hall, then said, “It’s merely a middle name; there are aplenty o’ Hogarths in England. If ye interrupt me like that ye’ll never hear me through.

“It seems,” he resumed, “that John intended the bullet for Alexander; the boys were verra much alike in height and build and probably, though there was no evidence adduced at the trial, he was crazed through jealousy of Alexander. He rotted in prison for months, never speakin’ to a soul; would not permit his wife e’en to see him when she recovered from an almost fatal sickness.

“At the bar of Old Bailey he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in the penal colony called Van Diemen’s Land—he never saw wife or child again.”

As McFarlane talked, my mind traveled back to Hugh’s story. I heard and yet did not hear the Scotchman speaking. Things began to piece themselves together in my brain—a patchwork quilt.

I sat dreaming, but Mac’s eyes were evidently upon me as he said, “Mon, mon, are ye heedin’ me; ye ken this John Hogarth Blankleigh was your John Blank, Hugh’s friend and I hae his story, e’en to his queer doin’s since his death, though I don’t hold to such things—they are uncanny machinations of auld clutie.”

“Go ahead,” I said, “I am all attention and shall not interrupt again.”

Mac settled back, saying, “Ye didna interrupt, but ye canna sense a thing when your wits are awa’ wool-gatherin’.”

I remained quiet.

“The deeil was to pay at Hill Head when the auld man Craighead got word that his son James was deed,” resumed McFarlane.

“The newspapers printed the usual sensational news. Nobody saw the bereaved auld mon when he read that the cause of his son’s death was jealousy, though Blankleigh had ne’er said ane word but ‘Guilty,’ the papers made out that it was well founded, Alexander and Mrs. Blankleigh havin’ been seen togither overmuch.

“We may only guess at the old man’s line of reasonin’. Every copy of the London and Glasgow papers containin’ anythin’ aboot the case was carefully filed and rested in his strong box at the time of the death—yes, and long after.

“Think of the shock; he thought of his boys about to return, broadened through the experience that comes of continental travel, and learned that they had been in London all the time. Nobody ever knew his feelin’s. Doubtless in his stern way, his twin boys, for whom the mother had given her life, meant as much to this lone auld mon as do children to other parents, but he was silent.

“He sent for his solicitor, willed awa’ all property not subject to entail; disinherited the survivin’ son after givin’ him fifty thousand pounds sterlin’—and his curse. He refused to see Alexander who went home to seek forgiveness; had him turned awa’ at the gates which were locked against every man, with instructions to see his solicitor.

“He died some fifteen or saxteen years afterward never havin’ set eyes on his boy from the day the twins left for the Hook of Holland on their holiday trip.

“Now, Mr. Montrose, pay attention; here is the delicate and most difficult business that brought me across the water. Over nine months, the register says, after the date of the murder of James Craighead, Ruth Blankleigh gave birth to a boy—that boy is known to you as Hugh Craighead.”

“My God, McFarlane, can this be possible?” I said in an awed whisper. “Illegitimate—Hugh illegitimate? Why the man is noble, proud—what will this mean?”

“Aye, that’s the rub, mon, that’s what I’m askin’ ye—how can we break it to him?” McFarlane dejectedly replied. “I’m marrit to his sister, Blankleigh’s first born, but oh, mon, she’s made o’ different stuff. Ye ken Hugh was alys pulin’ as a boy. I reared him wi’ the help o’ God and his sister Alix, frae a wee laddie to man’s estate. He was always a sensitive youth—even Alix doesna ken how to deal wi’ him.”

McFarlane fell into a moody silence, then added, “The birth-register; an’ I could hae laid eyes on it first, the date would not hae so registered.”

“Tell me all,” I said, “Did Craighead acknowledge him as his son?”

Yet, I reflected, which was the more consoling thought, to acknowledge sonship to a man humiliated as Blank had been or to bear the stain of illegitimacy? Then the mother, the sainted mother of Hugh’s tenderest memory—what of her? And I could see no light.

McFarlane was again proceeding in his inimitable, even, yet jerky enunciation. “A year later, Alexander Craighead married the widow of John Hogarth Blankleigh, for the law of England held the felon as dead as though sax feet beneath the sod. He adopted both children, Alix and Hugh, and the papers in the proceedin’ affirm that both are the issue of John and Ruth Blankleigh and by my hope of heaven, Montrose, I believe this true, save for the pesky birth-book—but how to make the world believe it is beyond me and I am afraid of how Hugh will take it.”

“He is very much a man,” I interposed, “though the stain on his mother’s name is a bad feature.”

“Weel, weel,” McFarlane resumed. “We shall see. Anyway, the young ane was Craighead’s chield, that’s certain. She doesna resemble either Hugh or my wife; I refer to Elaine.

“When Hugh’s father—by adoption I mean,” corrected Mac, “came over to Scotland on learnin’ that the auld mon was deed, he found the property so tied up that he couldna get anywhere in a settlement. I think hadna auld Alexander died suddenly, he would hae had Hill Head plastered with squatter’s titles as a hindrance to his son’s succession.

“I was employed by Hugh’s adopted father in the disentanglement of his affairs and we were in the midst of the work when my client was found dead on the far side of the sheep pasture. He had been thrown from a horse that he had ridden for months. The beast was grazin’ nearby when the shepherd saw him—no accountin’ for such things.

“Poor Mrs. Craighead, husband gone, children in Canada, and about to become a mother. The shock killed her, Montrose. She wouldna hear of anythin’ except that I go bring her bairns, just as though they were in the next shire.

“That was a great adventure for me, and oh mon, when I set eyes on that girl Alix down at the pier at this very spot; when I saw how masterful she was, my mind was made up; she should be mine, whether or no. She took a lot of persuadin’ though, and would not permit me to become a comfortable married man for years.”

“Hugh has recounted the bringing up of Elaine and himself,” I said.

“You should hae seen the boy take o’er the property of auld Sandy Craighead though,” the Scot resumed. “The old surrogate was opposed to it, but the law was wi’ me and at that time, three hundred thousand pounds came to Hugh—yes, the children are rich beyond their needs, but there is anither estate that belongs to Hugh—the estate of old John Blankleigh, through his son John H., who lost his entail, it was claimed when he was declared a felon.

“It was a pretty pickle I found when I first undertook to unravel the thing. Hugh, if legitimate, was, in law, a posthumous child as he came to the mother after the father’s conviction and there’s the damnable birth-record which must be corrected, and that’s what will save the estate or I am no solicitor.

“He must go to England and lay claim to his own and it’s a pretty property, a thousand broad acres and a manor-house that puts this old castle to shame.”

“When did you first learn that the children were adopted son and daughter?” I interposed.

“An auld servant gave me the first hint,” Mac responded. “When I came here after the children they were Craigheads as far as I knew; though I was his counsellor he never said otherwise—had I not been clean daft coortin’ Alix for years I would hae been wise to the situation much earlier.

“I found in an old strong box the newspaper articles relatin’ to the case of John Blankleigh and pieced the whole thing together. The record of adoption was in London. Hugh was Alexander’s legal heir and he is also the legal heir of Blankleigh.

“At first when I investigated at Blankleigh’s home, a woman lived there; the house was never closed, though this woman, a sister of Blankleigh’s, later disappeared. A couple, man and wife, old servants, looked after the house. All the tenements were let, nobody knew where Margaret Blankleigh was, all knew that John was in Tasmania or dead, but this old couple answered all inquiries by sayin’ that Miss Margaret was travelin’ on the continent and frequently they kept off trouble-makers by reportin’ that she had been home but had just gone abroad again.

“Hugh saw her once on a channel boat. Of course, after John escaped and went to Canada, he had to keep in hidin’. I think, Montrose, that the brother and sister died about the same time. She was buried from her home.

“Then the trouble began. A scamp of a cousin filed a claim as heir to the Blankleigh estate. I was near comin’ to get Hugh then, though not ready, but on interviewin’ the cousin’s solicitors I learned that their client could not be found,” and here McFarlane stopped short, grasped a handful of his curly hair and gave it a sharp pull, his eyes riveted on mine seemed to expand. Quietly he said, “Gordon Montrose, what did ye say was the name of the mon ye were searchin’ for?”

“Hogarth, James Hogarth, Winchester, England,” I replied.

“Then by the Hall of Holyrood, they are ane and the same,” Mac boomed at me. “James Hogarth, son o’ the brither o’ John Hogarth Blankleigh’s mother, Hugh’s cousin and a bad mon, a ne’er-do-well, who gambled and dissipated. He made the claim and disappeared.”

I sat silent, thinking, piecing together the threads. McFarlane gazed at the ceiling for a moment or so, then said, “What did the veelin come snoopin’ round here for? Ye were on the right track, Montrose, but verra late; seven years will soon be here since the claim was filed and unless Hugh’s heirship is presented and proven the British Crown will be soon the richer by hundreds of thousands of pounds sterlin’. ’Twould be a pity, mon, to let that get oot o’ the family,” and the Scot solicitor got up and paced the floor.

My mind was harking back to a lone cabin beyond the ash swamp to a night described by Hugh, when he found himself in the embrace of John Blank. What must have been the anguish of that father, realizing that his own son fainted at sight of his terrible deformities? Providence was certainly in a grim mood when it brought within three miles of each other John Blankleigh and Alexander Craighead—Blankleigh a felon, hiding from God and the world, Craighead, disgraced, disinherited by an aggrieved father, fleeing to the wilderness with the woman of his heart and her two innocent children.

A picture of the verse on John Blank’s tombstone came before my eyes,

“The day will come when I shall rise,

And meet my dear ones in the skies.”

It was not meaningless to the despairing father—nor to me now.

Craighead could not have been a bad-intentioned man. Love is a strange emotion—all barriers give way, be it strong enough; anything short of taking life is excusable.

McFarlane broke in on me, “Montrose, God Almighty brought these people together in this out-of-the-world place for a purpose. It is up to us to find out what that purpose was,” adding as he took up and started to put on his topcoat which had been draped into his chair, “Alix will fash me when she espies the wrinkles in this; I’m goin’ oot to admire the dawgs and think on it.”

What a peculiar character I thought; used good English when on guard—reverted to his native tongue when aroused—a good clear thinker. Doubtless he would find the way to approach Hugh on the delicate subject that we had discussed.

As for my telling that sensitive fellow that his paternity was in question—why, the thought was revolting—yet it must be done.

I met them at the stairtop, Hugh’s arm encircling the waist of Elaine. Back at the doorway from the orchard, Mac and Alix were evidently exchanging hurried confidences, and there followed Estelle, my erstwhile nurse, and the red-haired secretary Hunt, carrying a portmanteau.

They were all evidently in high spirit. Hugh called: “Hello, Gordon, here you are, come and kiss the first bride to enter Craighead Hall; may there soon be another.” And he whirled Elaine away and pulled me forward to where Estelle was standing, a blush that would have shamed many a rose on her fair face. I kissed her and congratulated the secretary—I could not remember his name at the moment, but I shook his hand so heartily and for such an extended period that both Hugh and Mac rallied me, “I believe the man is envious” from Hugh and from Mac, “Methinks he doth congratulate too much; he is embarrassed.”

Elaine had disappeared. Alix took the bride to a room which adjoined that usually occupied by the secretary; then we four men repaired to the Hall where Hugh poured out four generous drinks and we toasted the groom.

Hugh jokingly admonished the newly-wedded man that in this house of men he must prove himself a super-husband or risk losing his treasure and adding with a wink at Mac, “You must be especially alert while Mr. Montrose is about—he is a very attractive and susceptible young fellow.”

Of course I joined in the laughter, but I kept thinking: “If Hugh but knew!” He revered his mother; his sensitive soul would perish at the parallel being drawn here, the Craighead boys’ visit to the bride and groom in England in the long ago and the sequence.

Late that night, McFarlane gently tapped at my door. “I hae a monstrous proposal to make to ye, mon,” was his greeting as he stepped inside the room.

“Not murder, I hope,” I returned lightly, he looked so serious.

“Nay, Montrose, worse than that. I’m contemplatin’ traffic with the deeil.”

“And you presume that I am a more fit intermediary than you. That’s flattering,” I replied.

“I’m serious, mon,” he replied, “we want John Blank’s shade to come oot o’ his grave just this once to tell Hugh why he thought his wife untrue to him,” continuing, “Hugh ne’er wrote ane word on that i’ all his report of Blank’s communications, which I feel is mighty peculiar; though I don’t believe i’ the thing—not a whit.”

“Rather inconsistent for a solicitor. If you do not believe the communications, why try now to get others?” I rejoined.

“Oh weel,” he replied, “i’ a case o’ this kind ane must perforce get a’ ane can on the subject. ’Tis goin’ straicht against a’ my beliefs, though the writin’s o’ Elaine are well borne oot by the evidence.

“God save us! I hope the Almighty will not take offense that a gude churchman should so disrespect the Holy Word as to hae dealin’s wi’ the minions o’ the Fallen Ane,” and the religious Scot looked piously up at the black beams in the high ceiling, doubtless with an unspoken prayer in his heart.

“But, Montrose, what now suggests itself is, can ye not hae Elaine call up the speerit just this once and ask it just ane question which ye and I shall prepare in writin’? I suspect the mind o’ John Hogarth Blankleigh was tampered with or he never would hae gone huntin’ for Craighead wi’ murderous intention.”

“Not for a thousand Hughs and all the property in England,” I heatedly replied. “I would not see the face of that girl blanched to a death-mask if I knew that everything could be satisfactorily explained and James Craighead brought back to life. Why man, you are asking something preposterous.”

“Weel, weel, then what hae ye to suggest? It goes sorely against my religious beliefs, the tryin’ o’ the experiment.”

At the moment I despised the Scot for the exposition of his selfish reason for a willingness to abandon the project. It was not on Elaine’s account. His mawkish fear of God dissuaded him, though his next words, in a measure, reinstated him in my esteem.

“I would risk the damnation of my immortal soul, friend Montrose, and the little girl is just as much my baby as she is Hugh’s. The guid Lord knows an I thocht there was any risk to Elaine girlie I’d cut off my richt hand before I’d write oot any question, real or hypothetical,” and his face spoke the truth of his expressions.

Mac was a fanatically religious Scotchman who would doubt verified messages from the dead, but who, if shown a weather-beaten olive-wood stick tapering at both ends and informed by an ordained Presbyterian minister that it was a “round from Jacob’s ladder” would probably have said, “Praised be God, the truths of Holy Writ cannot be refuted.”

We parted without perfecting any plan, concluding to sleep on the subject and I retired sad at heart. Unaccountable, but the woes of this family had gotten into my blood and I had not had even a glimpse of her since Hugh swung her from his arm down the hallway.

CHAPTER XIV

I  WAS pressed into service next day. The priest had sent for Hugh and requested that I come along. We set out early; the men were silently going about their work. It was a relief to hear one call to the other occasionally, and Hugh, it seemed, was trying to bring back the habit of sociability lost in prison for he had a cheerful word for those whom we met.

Father Nealon greeted us like brothers and proceeded like the business man he was, to relate his plans for getting signatures to Hugh’s petition, saying that he had had an interview with the Honorable Mr. Harris and received his unqualified promise of support of Hugh’s bill for enlarging his prison work. In return the father had promised to insure the return of Harris to his seat in Parliament. It appeared that an opponent showing great strength was in the field.

The peculiar experiences of that week’s work—for it was work—unceasing far into each night, were novel and interesting. We slept where it was convenient for the farmer to “sleep” us.

Hugh and a young assistant to Father Nealon worked the “Irish Settlement” while an Archie Graham and I called on every farmer of Scotch lineage in the district from Blink Bonny to Devil’s Valley, a hilly country closely settled by Scots.

The hills and valleys probably kept in mind the Highlands of their old home country. I concluded that should I ever seek political office anywhere, I shall first enlist the clergy’s sympathy and interest, for let it be recorded here, the petition held the names of two-thirds of the voters in the Honorable Mr. Harris’ district. The gentleman was elected, presented Hugh’s draft of a statute, which was buried under an avalanche of adverse criticism.

The argument prevailed that prisons were meant to be places to which a man once liberated would rather die than return, but Hugh was far away when the fate of his idea was, at least for a season, sealed.

Roughing it had toughened me and Hugh and I returned to Craighead Hall, he elated and in high spirits, I dreading the overdue disclosure, “time meanin’ muckle” as McFarlane had put it.

Three newly pardoned “guests” had arrived during our absence; short-haired, furtive-eyed, pitiable spectacles, seemingly out of place, even among those who boasted only a few months’ residence at the Hall.

Hugh was all sympathy for them and I saw very little of him that Saturday night except at dinner. McFarlane looked anxious and I thought a little desirous of avoiding my eye.

Alix and Elaine were both, as always, gracious, and I was surprised and delighted when Elaine, on leaving the dining table, beckoned me with her eyes. I could scarcely credit my senses but noted that she turned at the doorway and meaningly looked at me.

I escorted Alix to the stair, then with a muttered apology for leaving her, stepped through the open library door.

Elaine was standing on the hearth, looking pensively into the blaze in the fireplace. As I spoke her name, she laid a finger on her lips, motioning silence or secrecy.

She stopped me with a low-spoken, “Gordon, I must talk with you. James has told me everything and I am going to try, though I have not had any call to write for weeks—not since, no, not even that night when I had the dream about Alix.”

I was taken aback, dumbfounded, could have cursed McFarlane to his face. I did protest to Elaine that she should not have been worried with the matter and called McFarlane a blundering old fogey.

She ignored my railing.

“Gordon, it has to be, I wish you would come here about midnight. I have tried, tried hard to find John Blank,” and she placed her hands over her eyes and whispered. “I cannot think of him as—I cannot call him Hugh’s father. The thought is too awful. A murderer, a convict—I never thought of him in that light before.

“I must be alone until then; he will come here when it is quiet, if he will ever come, but you be here at twelve. Alix does not know that James has talked to me. He and you and I, Gordon, are confederates. You should know as soon as possible.”

I tried to take her hand, but seemingly the effort passed unnoticed as she turned from me, saying, “Now, Gordon, I wish to be alone; will you please throw the catch on the door. I want only the light of the fire,” as I looked toward the unlighted lamp.

I slipped out, up the stairs and to my room, feeling that I must avoid seeing McFarlane or he would insist on accompanying me to the midnight tryst. Four hours—an eternity, and yet what might not happen. Alternations of hope and fear—I did not pray.

Gradually the place settled to a stillness. The frail girl and myself in the lonesome gloom of the library were the only two souls in that household of nearly half a hundred, who had not surrendered physical consciousness into the keeping of the inner being who never wholly sleeps—the engineer of that wonderful machine, the body, the whisperer who gives the signals, but cannot, alas, always force obedience on its twin, the physical being.

At three minutes before twelve I was stealing down the broad stairway; a single light in the great hall was sufficient only to make the gloom in the corners more intense. I quietly turned the doorknob, forgetting that I had thrown the catch, then rapped gently, then more urgently as no response came.

Finally the door was opened. Elaine, whose back-tilted head and bright eyes certainly negatived any visitation, said quietly, “Come in, and you too, James,” and then I noticed McFarlane at my elbow.

Seated near the chimney-place, without light other than that given off by the slow-burning fire, we must indeed have appeared like three conspirators or that unfortunate triangle—two men courting the same girl.

Elaine said regretfully, “I’m afraid my muse has fled, my gift has gone. I have even tried my old friend, the planchette. No use, I am just an ordinary girl again,” and smilingly she pointed to pencil and paper and the aid to beginners in mysticism which were lying on the table.

We had talked probably ten minutes.

“Montrose, you are the man to tell him,” McFarlane insisted, “but ye must be carefu’ not to go into the matter o’ the newspaper reports.”

A voice from the darkness near the door, the voice of a stranger, said quietly, but as though under strain, “I shall know every word from beginning to end.”

We three started to our feet to behold Hugh, a long dark figure in dressing gown and slippers, standing in the room. He was leaning forward, his left hand clenched and in his right a murderous-looking, long-barreled cavalry pistol.

While for the fraction of a second I was too stunned even to speak, not so Elaine; she flew across the room, grabbed the pistol-hand and had the weapon in her possession in the twinkling of an eye.

Hugh laughed; the sound was not pleasant. The man was unnatural; held in his eyes, as one saw at close quarters, such a glare as is seen in the eyes of a wild animal caught in a trap.

“Not yet, child,” he said, looking fixedly at Elaine, then again the same loud, mirthless laugh. “I was looking for prowlers, thieves,” then he gravely bowed to his two silent male auditors, saying, “I beg the pardon of every manumitted unfortunate under this roof. What of the story you have been rehearsing, you poor child and you two cowards? Do you think me so weak a creature that I cannot be told openly what you have been whispering for a fortnight? That I am a bastard, the son of a wanton? Well, by God, I’ll have the truth and before we leave this room,” and he turned and slammed shut the door with such force that the very bookshelves felt the jar.

None of us had a chance to speak. Elaine, wild-eyed, threw herself onto Hugh’s breast, her arms about his neck, as he turned to face us. He caught her up, walked with long strides down the room to the panel in the wall which opened at his tread, stood the scared girl on her feet and said, “To your room, girl—go to your room, and on your life, not a word to your sister.”

The panel closed, there was a muffled sound, an ineffectual effort at opening the panel from the other side, a pounding of small fists. Hugh had secured the door.

He turned to the table, took off the shade from the lamp, calmly picked out a match from the holder, struck it and held it to the turned-up wick; then, without speaking, motioned to Mac and me as though we were two culprits, to be seated.

I had noted from the corner of an eye that Mac had stooped and picked up the pistol from a huge black bearskin rug near where Elaine had been standing before she flung herself at Hugh and as the Scot, in obedience to Hugh’s unspoken command, moved to the big leather chair designated, the inconsequential thought: “What will happen if the chair is too narrow to admit Mac with that big gun protruding from his trousers pocket?” ran through my brain.

All three seated, Hugh at the table like a judge and we two about six feet distant in chairs, Mac and I simultaneously started to speak. I do not know what I intended saying, as Hugh, as alert as a madman and having every appearance of derangement, held up a hand saying, “One at a time. Now, James McFarlane, make your accusation, but before God, if you as much as breathe calumny against my mother, I shall strangle you with these hands,” and he leaned forward, eyes glaring, with fists clenched and muscles strained just as though about to spring at the poor Scotchman who sat forward in his place, scared, shocked, but with a look of determination on his set face.

I was alarmed as to the possible denouement. The storm was not blowing my way, but I felt cheapened and deeply sorrowful. Matters had taken an unfortunate trend. We had blundered and I reproached myself as a fool.

McFarlane was speaking.

“Mon, there’s naethin’ to worry aboot—’tis only this: your mither and Alix’ mither, the poor dear, was marrit to your father before she marrit Alexander Craighead.”

“Who was my father then?” demanded Hugh.

“Hold a moment,” Mac returned. “Not so fast my boy, ye ken Alix and I reared ye. My wifie kens the whole story and she is just as happy.”

“No,” Hugh replied. “She has not been herself. She has not been happy since she came here.”

“No wonder,” Mac argued, and I could see in him a quality, a calm persistence which, under the circumstances, drew my admiration.

“Knowin’ that ye would be unduly disturbed at learnin’ the truth—”

Hugh interrupted—“The truth, that’s what I want—the truth. I overheard enough. You said illegitimate,” pointing at Mac.

“Nay, nay, mon, we were speakin’ o’ the way ye inherited auld Sandy Craighead’s property—the means, mon. Calm yoursel’, ye were his grandson by adoption only.”

Hugh’s face had, from a flush, become deathly pale.

“My father; out with it.”

“Yes,” Mac said, nodding his head without pause. “Yes, your faither was the last of a fine auld English family who killed a mon—John Hogarth Blankleigh, and no relation of auld Sandy Craighead, and was deported.”

“My mother?” and Hugh seemed to wail out the words.

“Your mither marrit Craighead after the deportation to Tasmania. I hae been tryin’ to tell ye.”

Something seemed to break in on Hugh’s senses. From straining forward in his chair toward Mac he suddenly sat bolt upright, said in a vacant manner:

“Strange! Illusions that oft repeat themselves, fantasies which will not down. My God! John Blank!” and the man suddenly fell forward on his face.

I thought him dead as we laid him on the lounge.

Hurriedly I ran for Alix, I don’t know why. I did not have to go far. She and Elaine were just outside in the hall. They both rushed in and I turned my back on the family of four, so closely knit and yet at the moment, one member so metamorphosed by shock out of all semblance of the affectionate, considerate brother of a few short hours ago that he had become an alien—a stranger, to be tenderly handled, loved, yet held in awe if still alive, reverenced if dead.

My thoughts were broken in upon by a petulant, peremptory order from Alix, bending over Hugh, “Go and get Estelle. Hurry—what are you standing there for?” and I recognized nerves, a tension to the breaking point, unconsciously seizing the first vent available for the release of surcharged emotion.

We carried Hugh, still unconscious, to his room. Estelle was putting in order the bed from which Hugh had arisen to investigate the reason for the sounds of footsteps in this gaunt house, when we entered and as the covers were drawn over him, he opened his eyes, looking wildly first at Alix, then at Elaine, but the efficient Estelle, the physician among us, unflinchingly applied a hypodermic needle and my friend went to sleep.

We were a sad couple at breakfast, McFarlane and I.

“The doctor is here but muckle guid it does. Hugh will speak to nobody,” McFarlane told me, “and the women are about daft. He won’t look at them. We made a fine mess o’ it a’.”

I was sitting by a comfortable fire in the library about ten o’clock that morning reading a letter from my firm in Philadelphia. Its import was that we must find Hogarth; Europe had been combed thoroughly and the man must be forthcoming or an estate worth millions would go to the crown and incidentally we stood to lose a modest reward of $100,000.

“The estate must be an immense property, considering the large sum offered,” I was thinking while looking idly at the pointed flames as they shot up from the wood, then died down to a dull glow, when the door quietly opened and Hugh, fully dressed, stepped in.

I sprang to my feet, all excitement.

“Why Hugh!” was my surprised ejaculation.

“Good morning, Gordon, I owe you an apology for my conduct last night,” the dear fellow said and his tone and demeanor spoke volumes—contrition, shame, a crushed man. He hung his head.

I grasped him by both arms as they hung by his sides and gently shook him.

“Hugh, Mac and I were asses not to consult you immediately on his arrival; nothing to overlook in you, old man. Forgive me my stupidity. I must have been carried away by Mac’s cunning Scotch secretiveness.”

“I wish to go over the whole matter with you, Gordon, when it is all clear. I can then decide on my course. Now I am rather bewildered.”

I softened the story McFarlane had told me, left out all question as to Hugh’s paternity. Once in that hour, Elaine looked into the room, but as Hugh’s back was turned while I faced the door from my side of the hearth, I went right on talking earnestly as though not seeing her. She withdrew.

When I touched upon the friendship of the three boys, the Craighead twins and Blankleigh, tears came to the eyes of my auditor and as I told of the shooting of one of the Craigheads, the wrong twin, he shuddered as though he was cold, but he listened in silence.

In telling of the wrath of old man Craighead and how his solicitor paid over to the surviving son £50,000 with the information that his father gave it to him with his curse and the order that he should “never again darken his door, was no longer his son” I am afraid I trenched on dangerous ground as Hugh sprang from his chair and commenced pacing the floor.

“It’s not that I am the son of a murderer; God knows I have nothing but respect for the sorrows of John Blank,” Hugh said, in a grief-laden voice. “Everything points to the unspeakable. I must see the newspaper story, if I have to tear down the old homestead to find it. Why should my mother’s husband shoot down a guest in his home?” and the man increased his strides back and forth across the room without looking at me.

“That is what we must find out, Hugh. We must trace down the cause of your father’s anger.”

“Yes, though it lead to hell,” Hugh whispered.

There was silence for a moment or two.

“I cannot talk with James just yet. There is something here,” and he struck his left breast, “which forbids; nor can I bear to see my sisters. I shall come to your room tonight. In the meantime I shall ride over the farm,” and he started out.

“Let me go with you, Hugh.”

“No, I wish to be alone,” and correctly reading my thought, added, “Have no anxiety, I shall join you tonight when the family has retired.”

He would not permit me to accompany him, but I watched him from the door in the upper hall as he, waving aside a stableman, contrary to custom, brought out his horse and slipped the joined bridle-reins over the animal’s head. Slowly for him, he climbed into the saddle and rode away at a fast canter, out toward the wood.

I took a canoe, a handline, put on one of my host’s short deerskin jackets which I found in the boathouse, for it was a “raw” day, and went after northern pike and solitude. I found both in my unconsciously protracted paddle upriver.

The landing without net or firearm of an immense pike after over two hours’ struggle, the greatest fishing adventure that had up to that day ever befallen me, took my thoughts clear away from that which had obsessed and depressed me.

I awaited Hugh’s coming that night until late and then went to the barns intending to quietly, without alarming the family, send out a searching party. I lied to McFarlane, saying Hugh had told me he would not return from the village before midnight.

It was past that hour when he rode quietly into the stable where I was anxiously passing the time with the man in charge.

“Sorry to have kept you up,” was his quietly spoken greeting and as he tossed me a packet of letters, “Mail for you, Gordon, you are not forgotten of the world it seems,” and his tone was bitter.

We walked through the orchard way into the house, neither speaking. Hugh seemed changed, his manner held a sort of aloofness new to him while with me. Evidently he had either forgotten his promise given during the day, to confer with me, or wished to avoid the interview as he turned to the stairhead with a brief “Good night” and was gone.

The situation was embarrassing. Merely a guest—why should I feel that I alone must shoulder the burden or furnish a solution. The answer was patent—a dream engendered by a vision of a golden-haired girl, walking between the poplars, listening to the prattle of a wee boy as he confidently held her hand, of a lithesome young body which just for a moment I had once held close.

My own affairs entirely forgotten, I sat day-dreaming that morning when Hugh quietly stepped into my room, looked furtively about, saying, “Can we talk without being interrupted—I presume you have had breakfast.”

“Certainly,” I lied, noting the absence of my host’s usual punctiliousness. He had forgotten to say “good morning.”

I had arisen as Hugh pulled a chair up to the hearth in which a small fire was burning and idly opened one of the letters from the half-dozen brought by him the night before; casting my eye over it I was suddenly aroused:

“Listen to this, Hugh,” I exclaimed, “Sorry to inform you that we lost out on the English case, the heir to the Blankleigh estate, James Hogarth, has turned up without our aid and is pressing his case through a new firm of solicitors. Bagly, Atkins and Bagly write that they are not prepared to compensate our firm. In fact, Hogarth their client of seven years ago, persistently refuses even to see them, so you will appreciate that it will not be necessary for you to absent yourself longer.”

Hugh broke in on my reading.

“From your firm, Gordon? My course is clear. Today we shall come to an agreement. I must see this man. He may clear up a lot of the dark spots.”

“Certainly, Hugh, you must go, the property belongs to you and Mr. McFarlane. You owe it to your father’s memory to make claim to what was his.”

“I owe it to myself to ascertain much more than I know now,” was the rather sullen answer.

“Elaine?” I said, attempting to get him to look directly at me, but he evaded my eye saying, “No time for that now, my friend. My sisters shall accompany me. I’ll need them in establishing things. McFarlane says we must hurry and he knows nothing about Hogarth’s reappearance.”

Little did Craighead know of my inner feelings. It seemed as though a light had been snuffed out. That I would also go to England was my determination.

Mac was consulted finally when I balked at Hugh’s proposal that I remain in charge of the Craighead property. I was for going along with the party whether or no, but finally, on Hugh’s promise to return as soon as the law’s demands were met, I gave in. He had urged unfinished work, many poor fellows languishing in prison, who must have a friendly hand to pull them out into the sunshine, urged the necessity of a firm, kindly hand in looking after the “guests” now at the Hall, the election of our member of Parliament and the introduction of his bill.

Emphatically, I must stay. I could not leave him helpless, but not a word did he say of Elaine until I had assented to the proposed arrangement, then, after McFarlane had gone, as we clasped hands over our bargain the old Hugh came back for a moment as he smiled and said, “I shall come back, a man again—and bring my little sister” then added after a hesitation, the hard look coming into his eyes, “Or I shall join my father in his wanderings.”

McFarlane lost his Scotch imperturbability when he learned of the appearance in England of Hogarth and set out at once for the village to arrange for passage home.

Hugh invited me to ride over the place with him so that I might have the benefit of his suggestions as to the conduct of affairs during his absence. I was deeply impressed with his minute knowledge of every detail of farm operation and listened with interest as we rode from field to field, to plans for keeping busy every man in his charge.

“There is no tonic like work,” he said. “It builds both body and brain and these poor boys need help for both and God knows, so do I.”

From the hilltop, near the big maple, we saw Elaine ride out with the hounds and, as it was getting dark, I suggested that we go to meet her.

Riding down the north slope of the hill, we struck the back roadway which in time brought us into the road leading from the locked gate which had on first sight aroused in me suspicion as to my personal safety.

Hugh was silent, abstracted, engrossed with something. My horse was on the left, abreast of his, but he constantly looked to the right and seemed to be talking to himself. The words did not reach me, only sounds, and my attention was soon attracted to the baying of the hounds not far away.

Suddenly out of the semi-darkness came Elaine, and Hugh and I separated, each springing his mount into the undergrowth to avoid being run down. She gave a wild hallo as she shot past. Then came the dogs, evidently in playful pursuit.

There were six of the brutes within twenty yards of us. We had resumed the roadway with one accord. The hounds suddenly stopped, stood whining just a second or two, then with dismal howls turned tail and fled. Neither Hugh’s whistle or Elaine’s who had joined us, had any effect. The man-chasers had gone home.

“Strange,” Elaine said as soon as she got her breath after the effort of whistling and quieting her horse. “I never saw the hounds disobey before; they must be getting cowardly.”

“Perhaps they saw me,” I threw back from my position a length ahead.

“What are you doing out in these woods; don’t you know something might happen to you?” Hugh said somewhat crossly.

“I knew I should meet you, Hughie,” was the reply and I noted that she reached over and patted Hugh’s horse on the neck.

“Better keep nearer the house,” came in sullen tones from Hugh, and Elaine spurred her horse forward. As she passed me, I thought I heard a little cry as of one in pain. I did not hesitate to follow her, but succeeded only in finding the white-haired foreman holding her horse in the stable yard.

It was too dark to see, but I imagined her going through the orchard way, hurt, sore at heart at the unaccustomed mood of a brother whom she worshipped.

I waited, but Hugh did not come and as I passed the kennels, I saw that the animals were quietly lounging about their little yard. I always gave them a wide berth, but on this occasion looked in at the wrinkled old leader and spoke. He merely showed the whites of his eyes and walked away.

Just then I heard the clump-clump of a horse’s hoofs and walked over to the roadway which I had so recently taken at a gallop.

Two riders about a hundred yards distant came toward me as I stood on the smooth graveled road. The light was scant, but I could see Hugh’s horse distinctly, the other vaguely. The air was still. Strange that the hoofbeats of only one horse came to me. My hair began to rise. I could not have moved. In a moment they came out of the gloom, close, and the horse on the left as I looked at them faded and Hugh reined up to say in a quiet voice, “Did Elaine get in safely?”

The whole pack of hounds a few yards away gave vent to the most lugubrious of howls, bringing from Hugh an unusual “Damn those brutes; I’ll send them away.”

My answer was, “My God, Hugh; who was that with you? I certainly saw another horse.”

Hugh’s horse jumped as he touched it smartly with his crop and he called back, “Don’t wait for me for dinner. I have work to do.”

I never learned what he did or where he went that night, but McFarlane who was an early riser, told me he saw him come up the veranda stairs at daybreak.

He did not speak as Hugh looked worn and haggard.

“Has the mon a lassie or does he dally with the cards?” McFarlane queried.

I kept my counsel as to Hugh’s companion of the early evening, while assuring McFarlane that I was not aware before that our host dissipated in any way.

The two days intervening before the day of the exodus were busy ones for me. I went over accounts with the secretary, met and talked to many of the “guests,” endeavoring to learn how the work was distributed, while Hugh informed each one that he was leaving me as fully empowered to look after their interests as though he were present. All were busy making ready for the eventful Sunday morning when they would make the downtrain at midday.

There was a hardness about Hugh that was unexplainable. He made no reference to his companion on the ride back from the hill and I did not dare again to put the question.

Saturday evening we all dined together in the great hall. The long expanse of polished wood, stretching beyond our party of five, down the sombre room with the vacant chairs, seemed to accentuate a feeling which the others apparently shared with me that we were but a remnant of a noble company which must at one time have filled the room. All seemed depressed. Wine, of which all partook, failed in bringing buoyancy. To me it was a sad function and though she sat beside me, I could neither talk nor eat.

McFarlane discoursed on the subject of most interest to him, the reappearance of Hogarth and the necessity for hurry that no decree in the Blankleigh case might be entered before the true heir in person was presented in court. I did not follow him, nor did Hugh, apparently, and Elaine broke in, during one of his lengthy speeches to lay her hand on my arm and say, “Gordon, I am sorry we are going.”

Perhaps she saw something in my eyes, for I could not reply, but only looked at her, for she added, “I shall come back—with Hughie, the old Hughie, and we shall have such good days together again.”

I could only reach for her hand which had fallen below the level of the table and press it.

I felt ashamed of my womanishness. When the others arose, I could scarcely stand.

Said Alix: “Elaine, we have a lot of things to pack. Good night Mr. Montrose, see you later, Hugh,” and we three men resumed our seats only to listen to the Scotch solicitor’s resumption of the trend of his thoughts.

Only for a moment, though, for Hugh, with “I have too many matters to attend to, tonight, boys, you will have to excuse me,” arose and disappeared up the stairway.

The Queen Anne liqueur which had previously always added zest to my smoke, was bitter in my mouth, and I threw away my cigar and sought my room.

Once in the night the lonesome baying of hounds came to my ears. I heard the baby cry as though in pain. The sweetness had departed from my life. Asleep, I saw a spectral horseman—headless, no—only lacking ears, but the hands that held the bridle-rein—they were strong hands, white, shapely, well-formed, a gentleman’s hands—and Williams was saying, “The house is astir early this morning, sir. You wish to see the party off? Shall I serve breakfast, sir? The others have all partaken.”

“Thank you, no, I wish no breakfast, I shall be down in a minute,” I replied, my heart sinking as I realized that this was the hour of parting and I had soddenly overslept.

The luggage was afloat in a batteau paddled by six men when I stepped through the French windows and looked toward the river. Another large boat was being made comfortable with cushions and a carpet of furs.

I ran down the outside stair and entered the front door expecting to find the travelers grouped in the hall awaiting me, but it was nearly an hour before McFarlane appeared, carrying his bag and calling, “Come on, come on, an there should be a mishap, we shall miss the train.”

Estelle, her arms about Elaine, Alix with Fong Wing close behind carrying a package of considerable proportions, but evidently light, came down the stairs and McFarlane, eyeing the package, said “Wifie, I thocht everything had gone,” bringing the reply, “Oh this, I could not leave these black fox skins.”

“Good morning, Gordon,” Elaine extended her hand and turned aside her head, but I saw a tear. I grasped the hand in both of mine, half dragging her, I am afraid, out toward the waiting boat.

Neither she nor I, it appeared, could speak a word. How strong were her affections for this wilderness home! If the good God had only disposed her toward me—no, there was boundless love for Hugh—for the Hall, perhaps even for her horse. Certainly she reluctantly parted from her servant Fong, for her last words to me were, “Gordon, be good to Fong until I come back.”

But a wonderful memory lived with me; it buoyed me up during the long months that followed; it lives with me yet.

When the three, no, four voyagers (I almost forgot the child, he was so interested and quiet) were seated in the boat with four paddlers in their places, Hugh came running down the gravel walk. Just before he reached the pier, when the men who had congregated to wave an adieu had stepped back and Estelle was saying goodbye to Alix, Elaine beckoned me with a look.

I was very near, and went on one knee to hear the whisper which her lips indicated. Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed me full on my mouth, then put her hands over her face—and the boat moved out, Hugh calling, “Goodby, Gordon, and good luck.”

Sorry for me? Yes, she pitied my loneliness. I watched the boat land on Verde Island. A pain indescribable possessed me, and yet that kiss, that little moist red mouth pressed against mine—I would not have changed personality or circumstance with any man in the world. Her friendship, her pity for my evident loneliness even, weighed more than all the loves of history.

CHAPTER XV

ALONE, all alone, I dined with Estelle, now the hostess, and her husband, and yet in this household I was alone. My rising hour was regular, now that I was in charge. Eight o’clock saw me at the stables or riding about the place overseeing the fall work.

I cultivated the friendship of the dogs, turned them loose to accompany me on many a long ride, even learned to whistle so that they came at my call, all much to the disgust of Fong Wing who never ceased to fear the brutes. I used Hugh’s horse and it pained me to see Estelle astride Elaine’s beautiful mount, but time wears away many sharp edges.

Father Nealon was a regular visitor. He never failed to interest me and all the men liked him. We never ventured far on theology. When I told him of the shadowy rider whom I saw with Hugh, he crossed himself and said, “‘And forthwith Jesus gave them leave and the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine.’ Who am I but a servant of our Lord and why should I deny his works and his word? It is not given to me to see these things clearly, but my faith! I would have taken oath that I did see a spirit on the occasion of my first visit to this house.”

November came with snow and ice. And one day came a letter from McFarlane, quaint and brief. The usual scold at the law’s circumlocutions, but full of assurances. Family all well; not a word in particular. Heart-beats quickened at sight of a dainty envelope superscribed, I knew, by a delicate white hand which I had held in my own on that last night. What hopes I entertained, what dreams I wove as I turned it over and over before courage came!

Was it a joy or was it a disappointment? Here it is:

“Gordon dear: I am not happy. Hughie has changed so much. We shall soon see the dear old Hall again. You looked so miserable but I would feel disappointed if you did not miss us. Teach Estelle to skate. We are leaving tomorrow for Scotland. Don’t write until I send our address—will it be Craighead Hall? Much love—from all—Elaine.

“P.S. Kindly see that my tree is banked—you know—from the frost, and have Nell sharp-shod if Estelle uses her. My skates are in the boathouse, above the door. E. C.”

I studied the dash preceding the “from all,” wished the last two words had been omitted, but then—

The tree was banked and the mare re-shod. The skates even were retrieved and ground, but as a skater Estelle was a failure, and I waited patiently until December for the promised address. Then I wrote to her at the London address of McFarlane and waited.

Time did not stand still. Surprising how many vexatious happenings can befall in the conduct of a large plantation, even when there exists no lack of funds. When winter came in earnest, we started building the big sawmill at Gold Creek, a mile west of the Hall. Foundations were in shortly after Hugh left. The dam, the race and spillway were his handiwork. Chisholm, one of the “guests” was a millwright, Atkinson, another “guest,” a carpenter contractor before misfortune overtook him. The men were willing workers and the building soon took form.

At Christmas it was under roof. Aye, Christmas—that was a day of memories—memories of my boyhood home just outside the city, mother and father, aunt and uncle, our entire family, but always boys and girls and games and joy. How different this Christmas!

School and college days and each Christmas at home until at twenty only aunt and uncle welcomed me. Both parents had passed on. At twenty-one, aunt had died and at twenty-five I was alone in the world without a relative; home sold, a city dweller, spending Christmas, my day of memories, in the most lonesome place in the world—a man’s club in a great city.

That Christmas night we served a banquet. The capacity of the great baronial hall was taxed, for Estelle had brought in a number of girl friends. It was the idea of Estelle, who sat at the head of the long oak table, hostess in the place where she belonged. The men were in their best clothes; there were no dinner coats. Fong Wing was ornate in a richly embroidered Mandarin jacket and sang a weird song of Hong Kong Hong Kongee to his own accompaniment on a one-stringed Chinese instrument.

There was talent in this family of one-time derelicts, now real men of worth, and I thought as I looked up the table from my place at the east end what a noble work Hugh had undertaken.

Tables are said to groan; this one was too solid for complaint, but it lacked nothing of the load. Great Canadian pike, baked whole, taken through the ice. I had watched the men in small houses on runners with a spear-handle protruding from the top, dangling an artificial minnow on the end of a line about five feet down through a hole in the ice; a pike would strike, down went the barbed spear and the thing was accomplished. Turkeys, venison, bear steak, vegetables from the vaults, apple—even pumpkin-pies and a great assortment of cakes, the especial pride of the cook, were a part of the menu.

A toast to Hugh was the only drink.

The Chinaman saved his glass of wine, arose and in a quavering voice said, “I dlink to lillee Mistless of Claighead Hall,” and every man stood and drained his glass.

I could not have brought her name into this company, but I loved the Chinese boy for the act.

Was it right that the long table should have been set aside that they should dance? I permitted it.

Two well-handled violins were produced and for the first time the polished floor of Craighead Hall, liberally sprinkled with powder, felt the rhythm of feet, dainty and substantial, gliding to music over its smooth expanse.

I wonder what Hugh would have thought had he dropped in that night. But was not a renewal of acquaintance with social usages a necessary part of the plan of the institution? I stayed in the hall until the table was back in place and every lady guest departed in charge of the hostess.

That morning, before retiring, I re-read for the hundredth time my one letter of letters and as on many previous occasions, convinced myself that the returning family must be on the ocean.

But March came with its winds, which swept clean the veranda of the snow that persisted in drifting into corners. True, I had a few letters from McFarlane; “Only a little while and all would be settled” the refrain of each.

“Alix was with the child and Elaine at Sorrento, Italy; both of the latter were a little ‘puling’ but nothing to cause alarm;” Hugh, I learned, was “dour” and not fit company for “man or beast,” and with the work at the mill and the clearing of the ash swamp and contiguous woods, time slipped away until near the end of May when I learned from the Scot that while Alix and her consort were established at Blankleigh Manor, holding possession, the case was still in doubt, put over until a new court sitting.

The interesting, the important news was that Elaine and Hugh were starting for home in a week.

“Right at this moment she is on the ocean, coming home” and I could do nothing that day but sit and think.

Ten days. I had lost pounds in weight, wandered over the entire place with my friends, the wise but wicked-looking bloodhounds, talked to the old wrinkle-faced Julius Caesar, told him things I knew he would not repeat, thoughts that burned my heart and seared my brain.

Those ten days extended over a greater period than did the seven months during which I had kept watch and ward over her possessions.

Without warning they came—in the night—I sat alone in the library, brooding, had made a pretense of reading, but could not hold interest or follow line—when about ten o’clock the door opened and Hugh stepped through, stopping short just inside.

“Well, Gordon, you are alive,” his greeting.

I sprang forward, impulsively threw my arms around him in a hug that seemed to embarrass, saying only, “Hugh!”

He did not return the embrace. I stepped back, looking at the changes which a few months had wrought and said, “But you are not alone?”

A little of the old Hugh flashed out as he sadly smiled, “I brought her back as I promised, Gordon, but a little worse for wear—both of us. She is upstairs with the women.”

I had reached that condition of mind where nothing mattered. I must see her. I rushed past Hugh, who stood looking over the room, up the stairs and in the upper hall saw her coming toward me.

Stricken dumb, I caught both her hands in mine and stood looking into those glorious eyes, but how big and sad they were! She had grown thin and pale.

“Why, Gordon, have you been ill? You look like death.”

I whispered her name and she shyly withdrew her hands as Estelle and a girl came up to us. Then she said, “Gordon, this is Fong’s successor, Jean,” and Jean, a highly colored Scotch lassie of seventeen or eighteen, made a curtsey saying to Elaine, “Your bath is ready, please.”

And Estelle, the nurse again, put her arm around Elaine’s waist and said, “Mr. Montrose, you will please excuse her, she has had a hard day and needs rest.”

Could I do other than say: “Certainly, certainly,” especially as she, Elaine, added, “Look after Hugh, Gordon. I wish to have a long talk with you in the morning.”

When I returned to the library, Hugh was standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back and I distinctly heard him talking. I could no longer doubt that the man was in a dangerous state. Physically he was far under average and his display of mental breakdown could be deduced from changed attitude, his aloofness and habit of talking to himself.

“Are you talking to yourself?” I ventured the question smilingly.

Hugh looked fixedly at me for so long a moment that I thought his reply would be unpleasant. Then he said, “Gordon, you have been here sufficiently long to appreciate that this house holds guests whom you cannot see.”

Purposely I evaded understanding of his meaning. “I thought that from the first day of my visit Hugh. Men appeared from nowhere even that first night.”

“You understand my meaning,” Hugh coldly replied.

“You know that my father made this house his home, divided his attentions between my sister and myself. I am never alone. I can hear through my brain what he says, just as he hears and answers me,” and he walked over to the panel in the wall; it slid back and as he stepped into the dark stairway he added. “Can you join me at seven thirty? I wish to go up to the mill and see what progress we have made in clearing.”

Nothing for me to do on this eventful night of her return but prepare for a new day of hard riding. I surmised that Hugh’s nerves would keep him moving. I was past the point where my friend’s peculiarities interested me as a speculation. They had become a source of fear.

At seven thirty I had breakfasted and was out on the veranda ready for Hugh. He was astride his horse which was showing evidence of too much stabling. As I went down to where another mount was quietly cropping grass, Hugh jerking his horse almost to her haunches petulantly blurted out, “Why didn’t you have this beast exercised while I was away? She is overfed.”

“Rode her every day,” I replied quietly.

“Then you must have walked her,” and he gave the beast a smart blow with his riding crop and was off up the river road at such a pace that I could join him only after he had reached the mill and dismounted.

We lunched at Smith’s cabin, rode the limits of the plantation, down as far as the ash swamp, considerable of which had been cut over. Only a few words of approval of my stewardship during a long busy eight months were spoken, though every change was noted and explained.

We halted at the edge of the soft ground in the swamp. Hugh turned, saying, “You are all in, old man. Go on home. I shall see what the spring freshet has done to the creek.”

“Better come with me, you are not perfectly fresh yourself,” I argued, but he turned and rode back over our tracks, seeking, as I sensed the higher ground penetrating the swamp.

This was the most exhausting day’s work I had ever known. It was dark when I handed over my tired horse to the stableman. The hounds clamored for freedom as I neared the kennels. I opened the gate. They fawned on me as once they did on Hugh.

The day had been oppressively hot and evening brought no relief. A storm was brewing.

A cold spring-water bath and dinner clothes had a tonic effect and I went buoyantly downstairs, anticipating.

Elaine and Estelle were there and the first greeting was “Where is Hughie?”

I explained.

“Then we shall not wait dinner,” Elaine said. “Hughie spent most of his days and nights riding about the country in England. I suppose he will do the same here,” adding, “I am very much alarmed over his restlessness.”

She was but the shadow of the girl who had kissed me goodbye in November. Spirituelle, but bewitchingly beautiful. Thinness of face accentuated the largeness of her eyes. They represented more than the windows—the soul itself seemed to come out through them.

I committed the error of asking Estelle if her husband would not join us. Her well-bred reply was, “No, Miss Craighead needs all my attention tonight,” and I then appreciated that the European trip had indeed worked sad havoc with the health of this frail girl.

As thunder muttered in the distance, the sister expressed great concern about Hugh. She looked through the windows at the flashes of heat lightning, sighed and said, “He likes storms, though. They soothe him, he says, but I am fearful that he may be struck by lightning.”

“Only electricity burning up super-heated air,” I replied as though I knew all about nature’s forces.

When rain came down briskly, Estelle asked me to see if my windows were closed. Of course they were in this house of mysterious serving men, but “I would see.”

She followed me upstairs, stopped me in the hall and said almost in a whisper.

“Do not do anything to excite her tonight. She has been hysterical all day. I gave you the pleasure of her company at dinner just to help her regain composure. Fred has gone for the doctor.”

“Good lord, Estelle, is it as bad as that?”

“Yes,” she replied, “almost nervous prostration, only her spirit keeps her up. Gracious! even you, Mr. Montrose, look all used up and you have had only one day of that moonstruck brother of hers. What would you have been after eight months of it?” and she flew back downstairs.

I looked into my room, an unnecessary precaution, hastened downstairs, but Elaine and the nurse were coming up.

Flashes followed by thunder and the downpour of rain beating on the upper veranda were disquieting. Elaine resting on a divan in the upper hall from the exertion of climbing the stairs, chided me jokingly on my failure to keep our morning appointment. I was sorely tempted as Estelle had left us alone a moment together.

The orchard door opened suddenly bringing in a sheet of rain and the white-haired overseer slammed shut the door and stood with water running from his clothing onto the rug.

There was a wild look in his eyes as he directed them first to me, then to Elaine, then back to me where they rested for a second, before he said, “Mr. Montrose, I wish to see you a minute.”

Elaine jumped up, crying, “Hugh! Has anything happened to Hugh?”

“Not a thing, Miss, I want to talk privately with Mr. Montrose.”

Estelle who just then returned, said to Elaine, “It must be something about storm damage; they don’t wish to worry you.” They left us.

“For God’s sake, man,” I ejaculated, looking at the wild eyes of Stanton who said, “Hugh’s horse has come in, mud to the mane and I don’t know what to make of it.”

“When?” I inanely exclaimed.

“Just now, and the dogs are out. We cannot have them trace him.”

My heart sank. The brutes always returned to their quarters for dinner. I turned cold, but appreciated the necessity for action.

“A minute,” I said. “I know where to find him. Get a couple of men and I will join you at the corner of the barn.”

“Man,” Stanton said, “It’s raining pitchforks.”

“That’s all right,” I replied more bravely than my condition of mind warranted and fetched a raincoat from my room and was out in the night without being intercepted, as I feared.

Nobody met me at the appointed place. The wind was high so I stepped into the shelter afforded by an angle of the barn. Just then there slunk by me in the darkness a procession of shadowy forms. The dogs were returning to their kennel.

I was all impatience when four men with five horses came from the yard. I had difficulty in mounting; finally succeeded through one of the men’s putting his horse alongside mine to keep him from running sidewise.

I led the party through the rain down to the point to which I surmised Hugh was making when we parted. We spread out and urged our reluctant beasts in the teeth of the storm into the soft swamp. There was no trail. Stanton and I came together where there was a narrow peninsula of reasonably firm ground. He called through the deafening roar of the wind in the trees and the beating of the torrents of rain.

“If we had the dogs now we could trace him.” I made no reply.

We carefully picked our way further into the swamp, both appreciating that at any moment our horses might disappear in the almost fathomless black quagmire.

A wild halloo in front stopped us in our tracks. One of our men, afoot, came staggering out of the dark.

“I’ve found him. He’s dead; all torn to pieces. The dogs, damn them, they did it.”

We threw ourselves from the horses and followed the man to where in the darkness we heard running water. In a minute we crossed a narrow ridge, water on both sides and I recognized Hugh’s boyhood retreat which I had more than once visited.

Hugh was lying on his back just inside the shelter. In the glare of a match I saw his white face. The head was turned toward his shoulder as though in an effort to close a gash in the right side of his neck from which blood still flowed. I could see only this: his eyes were closed. The man who found him was bending close and holding the small lights.

“He is alive or the blood would not spurt like this,” he exclaimed. “What shall we do?”

“Get your horse; take mine, and ride like hell to the woods road. The doctor is on his way to the Hall. If you don’t meet him, go to the house. If he has not arrived, ride toward the village and bring him here.”

“Better stop up the wound with something or the doctor will not be needed,” he said as he hurried out into the pelting storm.

Light was furnished from a burning splinter. Making a pad of a folded handkerchief, I tore a strip of linen from my shirt and bound the neck as tightly as I dared. All in a daze, breath coming with difficulty, I worked as quickly and effectually as I could.

To wait was agony. I straightened one of his legs which was flexed and then noticed that the cloth of his trousers was caked with mud and my hands after the service were incrimsoned. Other wounds—I searched for them, binding up such as were bleeding.

The dogs had worked sad havoc with their master. Occupation brought relief from the terrible tension.

Hugh’s riding crop was picked up by one of the two searchers who had just come in. It showed evidences of a dog’s anger. I visualized the scene; wondered which had first sought shelter here, Hugh or the hounds. Probably the hounds. Hugh would, in his latterly acquired dislike for the animals, attempt to drive them out, probably struck with his riding whip and they attacked. My surmise was not far from being correct.

Stanton busied himself in the making of a stretcher of two poles from the framework of the little habitation, testing their soundness carefully. Stirrup leathers were brought and fastened between the poles to form a cradle. Four coats were then similarly used. Then we waited in silence, watching the still form in lightning flash and the flickering torchlight, while the wind and rain augmented by the noise of the rushing waters of the swollen creek and the crashing thunder created a fearful pandemonium; lightning frequently illuminating the horror of the situation, drops of water pelted from the frail roof, little streamlets ran down the side walls. My rubber coat protected Hugh in a measure, but the leafy flooring beneath him was sadly wet.

The wait was terrible; finally I gave the order, “Let us carry him home.”

I held his head in position while the men gently laid him in his stretcher. He moaned once as we four traversed the narrow trail.

Little did the boy dream as he brought his beloved books to this spot and cleared a path, that in the full day of manhood it would serve as a guide for the bearers of his body on a night when men’s forms six feet distant were undiscernible except when nature’s fearful forces furnished a light.

Hugh’s face was covered; bended branches from his beloved beech tree held up the coat, giving him air to breathe.

Once as we neared the main road after nearly a mile of laborious searching out of our way through the forest and newly cleared land, Hugh spoke. The voice was unnatural, husky and weak.

I was on his right side, near his head and thought he spoke his sister’s name, but what I heard distinctly was “Hell hounds” and words that trailed off into nothingness. Consecutive thought would not come to me. The phrase “This will kill Elaine” had since my first excitement driven everything else from my mind.

A group of men met us just after the main road was reached. They were all excited and crowded around us urging their services, but our burden was light. Not until afterwards did I think of what eight months had done to my friend—it required little effort to carry the light form.

I gave my place to the silent Williams when we reached the east veranda stairway whither I directed the awed carriers after dismissing the other men, thinking to get Hugh to his room without carrying him through the house and apprising his sister of the disaster before the doctor came.

I tiptoed up the stairs, entered Hugh’s room and spread the French windows wide, then pulled a divan out into the open where the stretcher was rested. Four of us were coatless and drenched to the skin.

Up to this moment I had not felt the full force of the tragedy. My feelings were beyond anything my pen can describe. We stood in our sodden garments looking at each other. What should be the next move?

Williams disappeared into the hallway. The raincoat was stripped off, the beech branches thrown on the floor. I examined the bandage on Hugh’s neck and found it saturated.

Estelle, followed by Williams, came in hurriedly. Strange how trivial things impress; in place of the usual nurse’s white, Estelle had on a loose wrapper and her feet were bare.

She looked at Hugh, caught a breath, then said to the bearers, “You may go; Mr. Montrose and Stanton stay.”

The two men disappeared through the windows into the rain.

“Now get these clothes off,” to us. A quick movement to Hugh’s dresser and she was forcing brandy into his mouth. He coughed and I could see a trickle of red down his breast which I had bared.

“Cut off what you cannot unfasten,” the nurse ordered and presently we had him between the sheets of linen and she was uncovering the neck wound while ordering Stanton to get bandages from her room.

The doctor came in through the window, piloted by a man who had waited in the storm to intercept him, and the messenger. Our man had found him under the open shed for vehicles at the little white church where he had taken shelter. The faithful fellow had ridden to the stables where he learned of the doctor’s non-appearance, then out the road through the woods intending to go on until the doctor was found.

There was nothing I could do but stand by and watch the physician and nurse work over the still form. I went over and stood looking at the play of electricity on the tall poplars.

Just as Estelle said, “There, that is the last stitch,” there was a deafening crash simultaneous with a blinding flash of lightning. A bolt seemed to stab the earth with a viciousness indescribable and the smell of sulphur filled the room. I was thrown back and off my balance.

“Gad!” the doctor exclaimed, “we are struck. Go out, Montrose, and look about. This tinderbox must not burn tonight,” and he looked significantly at Hugh’s still form.

Estelle who had been on her knees by the bedside sprang to her feet with, “Doctor! Doctor! Your other patient; she’ll be wild; come on,” and hastened from the room before my shocked senses operated to move me from where I stood.

“Is he dead?” was my breathless query as the medic quietly removed from the bed to the dresser a number of shining implements.

“Morphine,” was the laconic reply, “and the sister must sleep this night—but get out, man, you can’t get any wetter.”

Outside as I circled the house from the east stairway, the storm seemed to have augmented in force while the darkness was so intense that I stepped right into the arms of another watcher coming through the orchard.

“Struck a tree just back of the house,” he yelled through the roar of the storm. “Buildings all right,” and I re-entered the house through the orchard door and quietly went to my room.

There I found Estelle’s husband.

“Orders,” he said. “You are to take a hot bath, then drink this,” indicating a long glass of slightly ambered liquid. “Then go to bed. Doc Parsons says Mr. Hugh will sleep until morning.”

“How about Miss Elaine?” I queried.

“Asleep. She knows nothing about the accident.”

Was it fatigue? The day and night had certainly wearied me, but my nerves were so tense that no bodily condition would have robbed me of wakefulness. I slept within a minute after drinking the generous potion prepared by Estelle—or was it the doctor—he was a great believer in the efficacy of the poppy in emergencies.

The sun shining through parted curtains was drawing an elongated triangle on the polished floor of my room when I opened my eyes. It was late and I cursed myself while hastily dressing as thoughts of Elaine and Hugh and all the terrors of yesternight rushed upon me.

My first action was to rush to Hugh’s room. Estelle, sitting near the bed, placed her finger on lips as I cautiously opened the door and intruded my head.

Then she silently, by motion of those lips, said, “Sleeping; Elaine also,” and I withdrew to search for the doctor. He also was sleeping.

All nature appeared to voice its thanks to the God of the universe for the cleansing of the atmosphere. There was a delightful odor of fresh earth mingled with the perfume of blossoms filling the air. The overseer and a couple of men were busy with pick and shovel removing the last traces of what was yesterday a splendid apple tree. A few small branches many yards away attested the violence of the shock which had worked the destruction.

As I stood near them, one of the men said, “Ah, here is what attracted the lightning,” and he reached down and endeavored to pull up a pipe protruding from the cavity where the tree had stood.

“Seems to go deep,” he grunted while exerting all his strength.

“That must be a vent to one of the vaults—it is hollow,” the foreman remarked, and while I stood by—I felt a little dazed yet—they filled in and sodded the spot that nothing should mar the velvety smoothness of a portion of the estate to which a practical gardener and our Chinaman were devoted. I saw that a small opening atop the vent pipe was left, but the spot was scarcely noticeable.

“Better,” a word common on the lips of doctor and nurse, though too often meaningless, as I knew, nevertheless it braced me on each occasion when I made inquiry as to the condition of the patients.

Work must go on. Forty men must not become idle for lack of guidance and I was relieved when the foreman asked me to ride to the mill and to the logging operations. I took up my duties of the days when I managed the place just as naturally as though they had not been interrupted through Hugh’s return.

The third day Hugh had a “slight fever,” and “Elaine was with him” relayed, was all I could learn. Thank heaven, I did not witness the meeting between brother and sister—it would have been too much.

Trouble multiplied. McFarlane, knowing Hugh’s condition, by letter poured out to me his despair of winning for him his English estate. The court could not disregard the operation of natural law and the registering of birth in connection with the record of John Blankleigh’s incarceration following the shooting of Craighead negated the claim that Hugh was Blankleigh’s son.

“The estate would go to the other claimant, Hogarth, who had submitted irrefutable proof of being the next of kin,” was Mac’s wail, but my worry was over the other question, legitimacy, and the present effect on my sick friend.

Should the doctor be taken into our confidence? I determined to lay the whole matter before Parsons—or should I go to the priest?

The doctor was calling to me, “Come up. I wish to have a word with you.”

Hugh was losing his fight, did not seem to care to win, Parsons said.

Then I bared the whole story. Elaine’s strange malady; the change in Hugh, commencing on the night when he overheard us discussing the family history; the spectral horseman to whom Hugh talked and the change in the behavior of the bloodhounds.

“They evidently could see what only a few of us can,” I concluded lamely at least to the practical doctor’s thinking, for from a quiet, anxious listener, he suddenly blazed forth, “Idiot! A parcel of damned idiots. Why didn’t you tell me all this before? Why man, I have doubted my own sanity; questioned my ability as a physician; tried my damnedest to get to the root of things; and here I have been working to cure the body when the mind is deranged.

“I am not one of those fool doctors who believe that the machine is everything. The operator is of vastly more importance. Why in—well, now I understand his delirium; why he sees things and talks to thin air. Spiritualism, rank nonsense; imagines his father is with him—” and abruptly Parsons left me, walked to the west end of the veranda with head bowed and hands clasped behind his back.

Returning, he stopped and quietly said, “Do you know, Montrose, our think-works, the useful ones, are in the front; the sleep-works in the back of our heads. I saw you looking at the ceiling just now, so conclude you have no suggestions.”

“Wrong, doctor,” I replied, accustomed to Parsons’ brusqueness; “why not get a surgeon from Toronto or Montreal; they have a broader practise than you; may know some kind of a cure for your patient’s hallucinations.”

“All crazy here, from the Chinaman up. Come back about eleven,” and he went back to Hugh’s room.

From eleven to twelve o’clock, I walked the upper veranda impatiently, cursing that habit of all the medical men of my acquaintance—they never once had kept an appointment or considered the other fellow’s feelings. Then Parsons stuck his head out of the opened window.

“No time now, Montrose, am in consultation with a specialist; talk to you later.” My suggestion had evidently been forestalled.

When, after an invitation from Parsons to join the medical men at dinner, I walked into the library where a table was prepared near the open windows, I was presented to Doctor Milne of Toronto, a man about forty, shrewd-looking, with keen, colorless eyes and I noted particularly, the longest, most slender fingers I had ever seen on a human hand.

Parsons noted my hesitancy in taking the proffered hand of Dr. Milne and broke the ice in his characteristic way with, “Lucky, young man, if you never have to feel those fingers in anything more sensitive than your palm” and the specialist smilingly commented: “Very convenient, Mr. Montrose, yes, very convenient in delicate explorations,” holding up his hands; “permit an unusually small incision, unusually small,” and his satisfied air proclaimed to me evident pleasure in his art.

Peculiar, the reasoning of most doctors. I put my questions regarding Hugh directly to Milne. He shifted the responsibility of reply to Parsons, who with apparent amusement watched the blood mantling my face. I was in no mental state to calmly listen to a play on words, however erudite, or weigh foolish professional ethics.

Then Parsons said, “Montrose, don’t you know better than to question a consultant? It isn’t done. Hugh’s wounds are not necessarily fatal—infection, a little fever, nothing alarming, but the doubly accursed dogs bit into his voice. That’s layman’s talk, Montrose, the throat lesion is deep and the man may never again speak above a whisper; but that’s all he seems to need, a whisper in this house where even the living men are silent. The dead don’t need a trumpet.”

Parsons leaned far back and laughed harshly, a most bitter, understandable laugh of commingled sorrow for patient and disgust for himself, his skill which could not restore.

Anger seemed to fill his eyes as he tipped forward as though to emphasize his statement. “That’s not the worst of it. He’s crazy. When not confidentially whispering to some imaginary person, I know he is thinking talk. Usually insanity has little effect on the health, but this thing spiritism is different, he is wasting away.”

Doctor Milne interposed, “Loss of appetite; affects the pneumogastric nerve, checks digestion.”

“We are agreed that an operation may at least partially restore Hugh’s voice,” Parsons said, “but nothing will save him if he will not eat.”

Then the consulting doctor disregarded me wholly and addressing Parsons said, “Perhaps, doctor, you have not had occasion to study that peculiar aberration called spiritism. I regret to say that the malady is becoming quite common, especially among the more serious thinkers. Quite a smattering are scientific men. We have found it convenient to attach to our hospital staff a specialist in psycho-physics; may I suggest Mr. Craighead’s removal to Toronto? He may possibly have both voice and reason benefited.”

“Can’t be moved, in my judgment,” from Parsons.

“Useless to discuss this further then,” said Milne. “Our Dr. Antoine takes his own time in bringing about cures—has clinics or classes. The method is peculiar. I have listened with interest on many occasions. He seems to adopt homeopathic methods, cures like with like, for he certainly teaches spiritism, is an avowed spiritualist.

“I have heard him say that a thousand years hence when people become weaned from what he terms a silly emotional philosophy preached from our pulpits and learn that God is within each of them and was never seen in a burning bush or perched on far-away Mount Sinai, all will know that the dead live and are as real as those in the flesh.

“He holds that lack of knowledge of spiritism in those endowed with a peculiar brain or subconscious attunement affording ability to communicate with spirits, causes many so-called mediums to sicken and die. The fault lies in the ignorance of the living who know nothing of natural laws; such laws are not taught our children because such teachings would controvert common understanding of so-called ‘Bible truths.’

“He believes that ignorant submission of will-power among beginners through curiosity, amazement, interest in the unusual or for gain, yes, submission of the will of the living to the will of the spirit with whom the medium is in touch will cause the being within the living to become silent, the actual spirit to be dispossessed, driven out, the other to take possession but the house cannot accommodate the new tenant. It decays.

“The life term of most mediums seldom exceeds seven years of active work, I have noticed. A strange world, this,” and turning to me, “Mr. ah—Montrose, I presume all of this is Greek to your practical mind.”

“Not quite, doctor,” I replied, “and I think well of your suggestion; we must bring Dr. Antoine here, no matter what the cost.”

“Impossible. He is peculiar, money seems to mean nothing to him; he treats many without charge, makes no distinction between those who pay and the charity patients; seems to be a part of his peculiar philosophy—or shall we call it religion?”

“A pretty blamed dangerous philosophy, I should say,” from Parsons, “but any old religion that makes man feel a responsibility for his fellow man’s weal has my approval. I’ve watched many pass away but have yet to see any spooks hovering about and unless the lad upstairs gets help which I can’t give him—and right soon—he is a goner.”

Before we left the library it was agreed that Hugh should be taken to Dr. Milne’s hospital as promptly as possible.

The following morning Parsons, leaning over my bed, awoke me with, “No wonder your wits are dull; you sleep as though it were a business; now, boy, up and get both brother and sister into the care of this mind carpenter of Milne’s—can’t do either of them any great harm.”

Two days later, after seeing Elaine, Hugh, Estelle, the maid and Dr. Parsons aboard a private car at Brenton, as I leisurely paddled my canoe through the twilight toward the Craighead Pier light, I thought of the vagaries of fate which had brought me to this place, a stranger, interested only in finding a client. Instead I had found a vocation, taken on a great responsibility—and lost myself to a woman beyond my reach.

I had resigned my junior partnership in my law firm and now, with Hugh’s changed attitude toward me, I must give up this work.

The Hall, with its silent “guests”—master, mistress, nurse, all gone, so depressed me that I welcomed work.

What a blessing is work, even hard manual labor, a necessity on the farm. But for the urgency of necessary work on my part I should have become a fit subject for Dr. Antoine’s ministration.

The rivermen, the boom-stringers had moved down the river, giving place later to gangs of drivers who swept millions of logs before a great sweep stretching from shore to shore, when wind and current were right. The boom was formed of long logs chained end to end with a staunch raft on either extremity, drawn forward through the turning of a capstan which slowly drew the sweep toward anchors carried out by boats. The turning of the capstan by four to six men reminded me of John Blank’s treadmill in Tasmania, but invariably these men sang as they worked.

A short note from Dr. Parsons, who had returned to Valleyford, took me hot-foot to the village, where I learned that he was again back in Toronto—a great disappointment.

In confidence from the secretary, Hunt: “Hugh has deeded to Elaine the entire Canadian estate accompanying the gift with an immense endowment in funds.”

My last hope was shattered. Surely I felt impoverished, mentally and otherwise—what except devotion had I to offer?

Parsons surprised me one hot day in July. He said he wanted a good day’s fishing, well knowing that a drive of logs had just passed and that catching fish was out of the question.

I learned that both patients were “on the mend” as the doctor put it. “Hugh’s operation was successful but it had not had time to show results. He was still morose.”

“Pretty lucky for Craighead, picking you out of a law office before you got into some penitentiary. Saved him time and money;” and “clodhopping, farming, rather than law was evidently my forte; he had heard that I had just lost a case before the Governor-General” were some of his good-natured jibes before I could elicit any details of the case obsessing my mind.

Just before sundown as we were returning to the Hall after a fruitless four hours of fishing, Parsons reached into his pocket saying, “Here is a note from the young lady which I forgot to deliver.”

When I snatched the envelope from his hands with an oath, the doctor laughed and said, “Good! I’m glad to see you have some spirit left. Thought this madhouse had got you.”

“Dear faithful Gordon: The doctor has told you all about Hugh, all about me. We are promised return leave about September first. Faithfully, Elaine.”

It was not much, but it raised my spirits.

To insure the doctor’s staying that night, I had Stanton hide his horse and the poor vicarious liar told Parsons with a solemn face that it had strayed from the pasture.

I learned that though Hugh’s voice was not fully restored by the operation, there was prospect of its becoming stronger. The young lady, living in the quiet sanitarium of Dr. Antoine, was in cheerful spirit and “getting back her roses.”

“What of Hugh’s mental poise?” I queried.

Parsons pondered a long minute. “Antoine is a peculiar fellow; he didn’t pooh-pooh Hugh’s dementia at all. Even with the staff of operating surgeons present he told Hugh he knew there were many living spirits of the dead all about us, in our homes, that the hospital was crowded with them. ‘Helping,’ he said.

“Now, Montrose, just imagine spooks helping Milne when he uses those long fingers in an operation that means life or death according to his skill in avoiding a membrane by the vigintillienth of an inch, yet the fellow had an explanation, explained just as though it were true that ‘through electrobiologic batteries charged from the persons present’—whether alive or dead I don’t know,” Parsons interpolated, “‘the spirit within the surgeon was given an ascendancy making the physical for a time merely the agent of the subconscious man.’

“Briefly,” Parsons added, “the operation was not performed by Milne alone; he was aided by the dead surgeons present,” and he laughed, then resumed in a more serious vein, “The strange thing about it, Montrose, is that Milne is different when operating with Antoine present. I have watched him when Antoine looked into the patient’s eyes before the operation as he did into Hugh’s, heard him say to the psychoanalyst, ‘Well!’ and the answer, ‘He has or has not the will to live,’ and in each case the operation was successful or the reverse according to Antoine’s reply.

“One day I asked Antoine why spirits make a rendezvous of the hospital. He replied seriously, ‘Every worthwhile disembodied spirit has his work and you doctors keep busy an army of them caring for souls released through your bad guessing and reckless cutting.’

“I quit him then, but both Elaine and Hugh like him. Hugh has quit whispering to himself.”

That night before retiring, I read and re-read her brief note.

Reveries merged into dreams of mingled ecstacy and despondency. Chemical activity fading, came rapture. The subjective in command, the soul spoke. Then struggling came the conscious, the spoiler, and the vision despair.

Parsons said to me next morning, “Boy! You look as though you had been drawn through a knot-hole.”

CHAPTER XVI

SEPTEMBER, season of fulfillment, that seventh month of the old Roman calendar now held for me a wonderful significance. Here was August with its dusky brush spreading over field and forest a sizing of brown, nature’s preparation for the coating of white to be laid on only a couple of months later in this northern clime. Harvesting was well along and I had time to build on the outer end of the pier a small artistic summer house. There I rested evenings in the pleasantness of the usually-present river-cooled breezes and dreamed.

News from England was disquieting. Hugh’s entailed patrimony would pass from the hands of the rightful heir in September and my friend would bear, to his death, a detested stain. Could, or rather, would he live his life with this mark upon him?

The first of September found me in Toronto before a black-gowned judge pleading and not in vain, for the parole of an unfortunate. Tardy cutting of legal tape made my sojourn in that city so uncertain that there was no conveyance awaiting me at Laketon when three days later I arrived there; thus I resumed acquaintanceship with my driver of a year ago—a year, but seemingly a decade.

He welcomed me to a seat on the coach beside him after stowing away the mail bag for Valleyford: became the questioner, reversing our previous roles.

“What has become of Craighead?”

“In Toronto recovering from an operation,” I replied and he looked the suspicion which he a few minutes later voiced, “Some say that he has been done away with and that you have taken his place; guess I need not have been anxious about you,” and he shifted his position further to the left.

When we had swung across the bridge into the village, although I had endeavored to enlighten my friend as to the work at Craighead Hall, I felt doubt as to whether or not I was cleared as a murder suspect. At best, I remained to him a usurper.

My horse, Hugh’s, was at the hotel stables. As I passed the little red school house and approached the white church, my mind was engrossed with thoughts of the events of my year’s work in this, at first, land of enchantment, turned place of sorrows, and through no fault of mine.

Evening shadows were falling as I passed the church and cast my eyes over to the far corner of the little cemetery.

Was I taking on Hugh’s affliction? There he was—leaning on the paling surrounding John Blank’s grave, just as when I first set eyes on him!

I reined up my mount so violently that even before the beast could be quieted Hugh had walked over to the road fence, was leaning on it as though tired, and when I came alongside, extended his hand, listlessly and said something in greeting which I could not catch.

At my effusive “God bless you old man, I’m glad to see you again,” he merely smiled a sad, wan smile.

“The spirit seems to have left the man,” was my thought as we rode side by side, he on Elaine’s horse which had been tied in the church-shed. He would not trust himself on his own mount which I had proffered.

It was not the Hugh of last September, neither was it the crazed man as he had returned from England. This cross rested heavily on his weakened shoulders. I would gladly have helped bear it with him.

His voice was a whisper as he talked and though I learned that the whole party had returned two days previously, I hesitated at questioning, not wishing to put upon him the effort necessary in making reply.

I could discern, even though his riding stock was high, a livid scar made by the teeth of his dogs, extended by the surgeons.

Our ride into the plantation was almost as silent as was our first walk over the same road. Leaves were falling; the sadness of autumn crept into my blood and it was an unhappy Montrose who walked with his host into the upper hall. Even the thought of again seeing her failed in dispelling a monstrous depression.

She stood near the hearth in the library, one arm about Hugh, to whom she was talking in a low tone when, after preparation in the matter of dinner clothes, I went down to dine. I had never seen her so bewilderingly beautiful. The months in care of the mind-healer had certainly worked wonders and, as I took both her extended hands in mine, reason seemed in the balance. I had difficulty in preventing myself from drawing her into just one embrace, come what might.

Solicitude for Hugh held her close to him and it was not until the following afternoon that opportunity came.

She proposed that we should pick the apples from her tree; even then Hugh made a third party. The telling to Hugh of events intimate to last year’s picking brought from him a smile but he was silent and when we had gathered the meager crop afforded in what the gardener termed an off-year for fruit, and Elaine and I had each taken up two baskets, the total yield, and started for the vaults, he left us.

Sliding back the great oak door at the north end of the east wall of the house we were in a corridor lighted only from the open doorway. On the left was solid masonry; on the right, hewn rock with doors of limestone showing at intervals of about twelve feet heavy wrought iron hinges; overhead a vaulted ceiling of stone.

A number was painted on each door.

“Here is my storeroom,” Elaine said, in a strained voice, holding out a huge key.

Neither of us had spoken after we entered the vault’s corridor. I shall not attempt to explain the reason for her silence. I simply could not speak, so intense were my emotions.

The key fell to the stone floor. I started toward her, whispering her name. She put both hands over her eyes as I stopped, then turned and fled down the corridor.

“Fool! Fool! How I have presumed—now I must quietly slip away from this house and try to forget. She will never forgive what she must have correctly interpreted as an act beyond the bounds of good breeding,” was my thought.

The ignominy of it; could she not trust herself alone with me, her brother’s friend? In my estimation, I fell far below the status of the most unpromising of the Hall’s “guests.”

Listlessly I pulled back the vault door, deposited the baskets on the floor and, utterly exhausted from surcharge of feeling, leaned back against the door of the inner vault. My next sensation was that of a man struck by a falling tree.

I had been pitched forward and was lying on my face, my feet pinned beneath some heavy weight. A musty odor came into the vault. The upper half of the stone door had fallen outward and only the baskets of apples had saved me from a terrible crushing.

With difficulty I extricated myself; my first thought the apples, ruined irretrievably and through my carelessness. I think I endeavored to remove the stone, but desisted when I heard voices. No, there was nothing of the supernatural about one voice. The sound came from the inner vault.

Could I mistake Dr. Parsons’ cheery tones? They came again, then all was silent.

I pulled the lower half of the door out onto the other. It fell with a startling crash and a cloud of dust. Then I stepped through the portal, but the room was dark.

I called “Dr. Parsons!” but there was no response.

I struck a match and the first object that met my eye was a huddled form, apparently that of a man near the farther wall. The match expired. I turned and ran out into the open air.

Hastily I went to my room via the veranda, secured two lamps and hurrying back down the outer stairway was greeted with “Holy virgins! Where are we going at four o’clock daylight with our lamps trimmed?” from Dr. Parsons, the man of all others whom I wished to see.

“Come on, doctor, there’s a dead man in the vaults,” I exclaimed.

“You look crazy but I’ll go with you,” the doctor replied and added as we halted on reaching the open door, to light the lamps, “Hope it’s only the Chinaman. Don’t like to think of any of the other fellows snooping around—they’re too decent.”

Parsons stepped over the broken door, holding a lamp high. Quite a mass of debris was scattered over the floor of the northwest corner of the room. Near it was what appeared to be a clothed human form. I could see a head with reddish hair, the top of the head, as the chin rested on the chest and back of the object was a small brass-bound leather trunk, against the well.

From Parsons came, “Lightning must have struck above this place,” as he looked at the shattered stone some of which was about the legs of the partially recumbent figure.

“Yes, yes, last spring. It struck the air-vent when the tree was destroyed.” I excitedly replied and then for the first time realized that the voices which I had heard in the vault came through this pipe from the orchard above.

“Then this fellow must have been in here since then. Probably killed him.”

By this time, Parsons had his hand on the shoulder of the man and was saying, “Holy Joseph! This has been here a long time, mummified, cured, or I never saw the Catacombs of Rome.”

I stood mute while my friend kept up a continuous flow of fragmentary remarks as he went on with his examination.

“Good thing they elected me coroner; looks like murder. No, by all that’s holy, here we have it. A clean shot, in the right, out the left temple,” and he picked up from the debris a small weapon. “English, a bulldog, one chamber empty, a good shot,” and dropping the weapon, proceeded to look inside the coat.

“Some sport—employed the best tailor in London ten years ago,” as he examined markings on a pocket.

A yellowed parchment crackled as the doctor moved the form. Parsons picked it up.

“Now what! Here is a certified copy of the birth-record of Hugh Hogarth Blankleigh, London, England; queer, they don’t usually carry credentials, these birds—”

I fairly yelled.

“Hogarth, James Hogarth—at last I have found you, too late, but I have found you,” and then it dawned on me that the claimant in England must be a fraud, a part of a conspiracy, that a cable to McFarlane would secure a postponement or if decision had been rendered, a reopening of the case.

“Wait a minute, don’t get panicky,” the doctor called as I snatched the parchment from his hand and started to run from the room.

I stopped, not because commanded, but because, as the doctor was reading the certificate I had caught on the reverse side the name “James Hogarth” among a dozen or so lines of writing in soft pencil. The name stood out as though embossed.

“Here is something!” I said, trying to decipher the irregular lines.

“Read it, man,” Parsons exclaimed as I stood silent, staring at the thing—the last words of a dying man.

Turning closer to the light I read:

“God how I have yelled.

“Air good but so damned thirsty.

“In the dark soon—somebody may hear.”

The “may” was underscored and from the next writing it appeared that he had extinguished the light and slept.

“Must be the second day or night—matches, but must save oil. It shakes light.

“Craighead has the laugh on James Hogarth, Esq., this time.

“No use yelling; I’m caught. Be a good sport, James, die game, Cousin John took his standing, not a peep.

“He got her! God bless her; no man could have told me she was untrue and lived—wonder how he died. I am sorry, yes, sorry that the double damned door slammed.”

Evidently some time elapsed before the other lines were written as the words were hard to decipher.

“Crazy as march hare.

“God! God! God! Must I die—body to the rats, soul to the devil, with John and Jim?

“I wronged you, little Ruth, when I lied to your John, forgive—

“Afire—paying—coward—a pill from five-fingered dick—no pain. Hurry—light splutters, but I’ll burn it.”

This, as nearly as we could decipher was the last message of the source of all the Craighead-Blankleigh tragedy—a disappointed suitor who for revenge and gain, for Hogarth was the next male heir to the entailed estate, had evidently poisoned Blankleigh’s mind to desperation’s breaking point, sending the jealous husband out to commit murder.

As I crouched beside the doctor, the better to get his aid in deciphering, he broke the trend of my thought with, “Well, the poor cuss, he probably deserved it, but I’m sorry. What brought him snooping in here to be caught like the rat he was? What was he going to burn? Why the birth certificate of course. That’s what brought him here.”

It had just then struck me also. The record of birth of Hugh in London had been doctored—altered—pity I did not remember details of dates so frequently repeated by McFarlane—but the certificate was all important—it might restore Hugh to himself. That was the important thing. What matter the property?

A great burden seemed to have fallen from my shoulders. Gladness came to my heart. My long sojourn at this place found an excuse. What had up to this moment been demanded of me seemed trivial. Here in the finding of Hogarth and this document was accomplishment, my excuse for intrusion into the intimate life of these people—the quest was ended.

“Let’s take the certificate to Hugh,” I exclaimed.

“Wait, Montrose, the Scotch crops out in you when money is to be found—I must think.”

“Joy never kills; let’s find Hugh,” I said as I started up.

“Parrot stuff,” Parsons ejaculated. “Trouble kills; something must be done with this.” Then he added, after a moment’s silence, during which he looked at what was once a man’s form. “Go ahead, tell Hugh, wire McFarlane. I’ll get Stanton; he’s silent as the grave, and this find will be our secret. No use harrying Hugh or Elaine with a sight of this; but I’ll take photographs; they may come in handy.”

The parchment was folded and safely in my pocket when I walked into Hugh’s room. He was not about the house, so I found Hunt the secretary. Together we framed a long message to McFarlane, embodying the entire content of the birth certificate and a recital of the circumstances of its finding, promising the proofs by mail. A few minutes later the secretary was on his way to the village telegraph office.

I dared not delay, even though the certificate meant nothing more than proof that the real claimant was here and not before the English court.

I found Hugh through hearing the dogs. They were in a remote corner of the orchard near the river’s edge. She was sitting by his side and the whole pack of hounds sported about them, joyous, and showing none of the sense of fear which evidently brought about the tragedy in the swamp.

“Hugh!” I called from a little distance. They were apparently talking seriously as they both seemed startled. Elaine gave me one quick, frightened glance, then hastened away, the hounds following, while Hugh came toward me without a word.

“Important news, Hugh. I have found your birth certificate,” I blurted out. My friend’s face paled and his hand shook as he took the yellowed parchment and fairly devoured it with his eyes.

“Good God!” he whispered and I put an arm about him.

He staggered as though from a blow. I wondered then if joy does not sometimes kill.

“Why, I am six months older than I thought I was” came from his lips and then the import of that fact seemed to strike him, for the voice, from a whisper broke into an unintelligible something which I cannot adequately describe.

“I doubted her—fool—I doubted her,” was understandable, more from the expression of his eyes than from the words.

Then he sank to the ground, burying his face in his hands.

I was quietly telling him the whole truth as to how Hogarth had been found, reading the last expressed thoughts of that criminal, saying that Hunt was well on his way with the message which would secure him his father’s property—and name—in England.

His form ceased to heave and presently he arose, placed both hands on my shoulders and said, the voice weak, but different.

“Gordon, now I can look you in the face. The strain has been great—I have thought of ending it all.” Here he paused, then looking away added, “’Twas my little sister—the suicide’s sufferings even in the spirit world would have created no barrier. I thought only of her sorrow.”

Then his mood changed and as we stood facing the broad river, the very soul within him seemed to expand as he told me of his plans, now assured for carrying out his great work in the land of his birth, all sense of the injustice done his father and mother which filled my thoughts, seemed for the moment forgotten.

He was the zealot, the emancipator, the friend of the friendless, and his plans carried me along in the scheme.

I should be master of Craighead Hall, filling it with new “guests,” strange faces, until the whole countryside should be peopled with reborn men and the Parliament forced to take notice and lend its approval.

“And I shall return soon and you must come over and see what we have done at Blankleigh Manor,” brought me back to a realization of present things.

I could not say him nay. I could not tell him then that I had made up my mind to go away, that life here was agony; even though I loved both the wonderful old plantation and the work—yes, both court and managerial work—but I could not live under the strain—here.

Hugh was continuing, “But I must not stand idling. Dr. Parsons is opportunely here; he has often expressed a desire to see England again. I’ll take him with us and be off soon as we hear from McFarlane. I must go to Elaine. You haven’t told her anything?” he called back as he hurried toward the house while I aimlessly wandered over to the pier to sit in the little summer house to think and brood.

After a time, as the sun sank low over the big hill where I had listened to Hugh’s recital of his father’s sad history, a wonderful picture spread itself before my senses. I could see this whole country, now sparsely settled, teeming with life, useful activity, mills driven by the harnessed power of the great river, artisans now rotting in prison becoming an indispensable part of a nation’s progress; engineers making a waterway from the upper lakes to the St. Lawrence, and power, unlimited power—being carried throughout the Province—all through my effort. And then my thoughts went back to her and I started up, wide-awake, as she, all in white as I had first seen her, stood in the open doorway.

Her hands were by her sides, a wistful, pleading look was in her soulful, glorious eyes. I stood, irresolute.

“Gordon, I have come to you,” she whispered, and waited.

I could not—no I could not reply.

“Hughie said I should find you here—don’t you want me?” and she held out her hands—

As my arms encircled her in a close embrace, there came to us, through the quiet evening air, the song of the boom-gatherers returning from work.

The Ave Maria, appealing, rising and falling in wonderful cadences to the dip-dip of many paddles—it floated to us over the still waters, a benison.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- SILENT GUESTS
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE