"Hist, Sammy! Didn"t you hear something? Ah! Now it has gone again. You were not quick enough. Keep your ear open. At the turning of the wind it may come again."
"Well, by grabs! Gillie, where will you end?" laughed the other. "First love, now ghosts. Listening for spooks because we happen to be pa.s.sing the burying spot of some of our ancestors. Allow me to alight and pick a switch for the poor boy to defend himself with when the ghosts set upon him."
"Sammie! Sammie! I hear it again! It"s coming on the breeze. Listen now!"
Gilbert Allison stopped his horse and leaned eagerly forward. Sammie listened, but was again too late. The dead leaves rustled close by over the sunken graves; the tall, bare trees waved their skeleton arms, while the breeze died away to a long, weary sigh and was gone.
"It does not come from the cemetery, Sammie, but from beyond. Perhaps it will come again. Listen!"
The breeze was coming to them again, and they drew their horses to a halt.
"There, Sammie! You did not miss that, did you?"
They listened a moment longer, but the breeze was dying away and with it the cry, whatever it was.
"The d.i.c.kens! Allison, let us hurry on. This is too ghostly a night to tarry. That cry gives me an uneasy feeling to the marrow of my bones."
They quickened their pace, and rode some distance in silence. The sky seemed growing darker and the wind was rising. A thick clump of trees hard by cast a gloomy shadow across the road, and just as they pa.s.sed into this the floating clouds covered the face of the moon, and they were in pitchy darkness.
Suddenly there burst into the black night from somewhere in front of them a most unearthly yell.
Allison"s horse quivered and Sammie"s gave a violent lurch.
"Heavens, Sammie! What was that?"
"Blast the moon!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sammie. "Ride close to the side of the road. It was near here."
They had pa.s.sed the clump of trees, but were still in the dark. All was still save the tiresome moaning of the trees. Then they heard the rapid approach of some man or beast, and the next instant, directly at their sides, there went out onto the night air a succession of blood-curdling yells and barks.
The horses sprang and danced.
The moon came out, and in its pale yellow light they saw the creature disappearing down the road. It was the figure of a man, crouching and springing, rather than walking. As he neared the clump of trees he made the night shudder with still wilder and fiercer screams. Then he disappeared down the shadowy road.
"A madman!" said Allison. "Heavens! What couldn"t he do to a fellow if he had him to himself?"
Sammie laughed nervously.
"His boots are full of snakes, if I am not mistaken--but truly a bad fellow. He must have been what we heard back by the cemetery."
"No. Not such a noise as that. That was a wailing cry. Perhaps--he surely cannot have had his hand on any human being. Let us hurry on. The devil must be hereabouts to-night."
The suburbs seemed again to be asleep. The wind came and went over the rickety homes, spa.r.s.ely scattered, and its moaning was made more dismal by the long-drawn out howl of some sleepless cur.
At rare intervals a light gleamed from a window.
One window from which a light shone Gilbert Allison and his friend looked into that night, and somehow that window remained always open in the memory of each, with a bright light burning behind it.
It was a dreary little structure that stood close to the roadside, quite alone. The window was only a square hole, and the feeble light inside flickered as the wind blew through. There had been gla.s.s there once, no doubt, but that gla.s.s and many other cheap gla.s.s windows had gone into a better, richer piece of gla.s.s, and that hung in a respectable saloon.
Reflecting the decanters and red noses--and broken hearts? No! Ah, no!
Their reflection would have injured the trade. They remained where the cheap gla.s.s had once been, and it was one of these hearts that Gilbert Allison, late of the firm of Allison, Russell & Joy, caught a glimpse of as he paused at the open window.
A woman sat on the floor in the middle of the room.
A woman of petrified misery. She gazed beyond the surrounding walls into the happy past, the mournful future--into Heaven and h.e.l.l, or somewhere.
Close by her side lay the still warm body of the boy. She placed her hands over his face, and, feeling the warmth, opened the tattered, b.l.o.o.d.y little night-dress and pressed her ear over the heart--pressed it closer and closer, but the heart was still.
She did not cry, this woman. Why should she? She knew the child was better off. She lifted a corner of her garment and wiped the thick blood from the face, then she pressed her lips to the lips, the cheeks, the forehead, in long, loving, mother kisses. She drooped her head close over the childish body, and drawing the soft arms around her neck held them there. She stroked back the hair, and her hands were bloodstained.
Resting the child"s body tenderly on the hard floor, she raised her face of misery and her bloodstained hands toward Heaven.
"G.o.d!" she cried. "Look at my hands! See G.o.d! Here it is--my baby"s blood. Come, G.o.d, and see my boy. He"s getting stiff--but come, G.o.d--come! See the bruises and the blood! See the face--the little face, all full of pain and fear--and feel the crushed bones, G.o.d! He is getting cold--cold--cold! The boy"s dead!"
She caught up one of the child"s hands and pressed it convulsively.
After a moment"s silence she began again, suddenly, fiercely:
"Is there any G.o.d? Where is he? Where does he stay? Not with Christians.
They have the power, if G.o.d were with them, to stop the curse. No, not with them. They do not stop it. No. They license it, they do. "Woe, woe to him that puts the bottle to his neighbor"s lips." They do! They do!
But G.o.d must be somewhere. G.o.d come out of somewhere!"
The wind blew and the light flickered. Allison and Sammie, looking in, seemed riveted to the spot. It was not a pleasant picture, yet they gazed.
"My husband a murderer!" wailed the woman. "The boy"s blood on his hands? Lord G.o.d! I never want to see his face again! Have mercy on his soul! Perhaps he cannot help it now--he is a madman. Love him if you can--I loved him once."
Something like a sob sounded in the woman"s voice, but she choked it back. After a moment of silence she moved a short distance from the little corpse, and, raising herself upright on her knees, with her hands clasped at arm"s length over her head, she prayed.
It was not a Christlike prayer--rather the helpless cry of a soul tortured, in the grasp of a Christianized sin.
"Lord G.o.d! Down deep in h.e.l.l--away down--down where the fire is hottest, and the black blackest, and the smoke thickest, there let the man be bound forever who covers the business of h.e.l.l with a respectable covering. There forever let him see my boy"s piteous, quivering face; let him hear the dying moan and see the red blood! I know them, G.o.d! You know them, G.o.d--you know them! Hear my prayer!"
Another gust of wind came, nearer and stronger, and the lamp flickered out. It was quiet. Very quiet. So quiet that Allison and Sammie heard the sigh that escaped the woman"s lips. It was a heavy sigh, filled with tears and utter despair.
A sigh that went farther than all the sighing winds had ever gone. A sigh that was wafted far above to the great G.o.d who keeps record of the sighs that come up from the hearts of a million drunkards" wives, and who writes on the balance-sheet: "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."
Some people, one of them an officer, entered the house from the opposite side, and the two travelers, seeing no need for their services, turned away and mounted their horses.
Mr. Allison was somewhat excited.
"Hanging is too good for that brute!" he said, loudly. "I believe I could stand by and see him roast. Heavens, what a devil! Poor woman, I wish I had not stopped there to-night."
Sammie grunted. "Thinking of the place she referred to as the respectable dealer"s future headquarters?" he questioned.
"Shut up, will you! This is no time for joking!"
The young man complied with the request of his polite friend, and thought to himself, but Mr. Allison was no better pleased. He knew that if he had not seen it, it would have been. It really was. He was deeply stirred. And as he rode on through the night he was thinking new and strange thoughts.