Short Horror Stories

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dagon by HP Lovecraft. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Dagon by
HP Lovecraft. I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain,
since by tonight I shall be no more penniless, and

(00:21):
at the end of my supply of the drug which
alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer,
and shall cast myself from this garret window into the
squalid street below. Do not think, from my slavery to
Morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When
you have read these hastily scrawled pages, you may guess,
though never fully realize, why it is that I must

(00:43):
have forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the
most open and least frequented parts of the Broad Pacific
that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a
victim to the German sea raider. The Great War was
then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of
the hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation,
so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize. Whilst

(01:05):
we of her crew were treated with all the fairness
and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed
was the discipline of our captors that five days after
we were taken, I managed to escape alone in a
small boat with water and provisions for a good length
of time. When I finally found myself adrift and free,
I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a

(01:27):
competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun
and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator
of the longitude. I knew nothing, and no island or
coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for
uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun, waiting
either for some passing ship or to be cast on
the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor

(01:49):
land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude
upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change that
happened whilst I slept, its details I shall never no,
for my slumber, though troubled and dream infested, was continuous.
When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself
half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire,

(02:11):
which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as
I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded
some distance away. Though one might well imagine my first
sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected
a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified
than astonished. For there was in the air and in
the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to

(02:33):
the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses
of decaying fish and of other less describable things, which
I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plane.
Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere word
the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and
barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in

(02:54):
sight save a vast reach of black slime. Yet the
very completeness of the stillness and the homage entity of
the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun
was blazing down from the sky, which seemed to me
almost black in its cloudless cruelty, as though reflecting the
inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the
stranded boat, I realized that only one theory could explain

(03:17):
my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of
the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface,
exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain
hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent
of the new land which had risen beneath me that
I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging

(03:37):
ocean strain my ears as I might, nor were there
any sea fowl to prey upon the dead things. For
several hours, I sat thinking or brooding in the boat,
which lay upon its side, and afforded a slight shade
as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed,
the ground lost some of its stickiness, and it seemed
likely to dry sufficiently for traveling purposes in a short time.

(04:00):
That night, I slept but little, and the next day
I made for myself a pack containing food and water,
preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished
sea and possible rescue. On the third morning, I found
the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
The odor of the fish.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Was maddening, but I was too much concerned with graver
things to mind. So slight and evil and set out
boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward,
guided by a faraway hummock, which rose higher than any
other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped,
and on the following day still traveled toward the hummock,

(04:36):
though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had
first despied it. Too weary to ascend, I slept in
the shadow of the hill. I know not why my
dreams were so wild that night, but ere the waning
and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain.
I was awake in a cold perspiration, determine to sleep
no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too

(04:59):
much for me to endure again. And in the glow
of the moon, I saw how unwise I had been
to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun,
my journey would have cost me less energy. Indeed, I
now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had
deterred me. At sunset, picking up my pack, I started
for the crest of the eminence. I have said that
the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source

(05:22):
of vague horror to me, But I think my horror
was greater when I gained the summit of the mound
and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit
or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet
soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the
edge of the world, peering over the rim into a
fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious

(05:43):
reminiscences of paradise loss and of Satan's hideous climb through
the unfashioned realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher
in the sky, I began to see that the slopes
of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I
had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock awarded fairly easy
footholds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a

(06:03):
few hundred feet the declivity became very gradual. Urged on
by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze, I scrambled
with difficulty down the rocks, and stood on the gentler slope.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Beneath, gazing into the stygian.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Depths where no light had yet penetrated. All at once
my attention was captured by a vast and singular object
on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about one hundred
yards ahead of me, an object that gleamed whitely in
the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it
was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself,

(06:37):
But I was conscious of a distant impression that its
contours and position were not altogether the work of nature.
A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express, for,
despite its enormous magnitude and its position in an abyss
which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since
the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that
the strange object was a well shaped monolith, whose massive

(07:00):
bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the warship of
living and thinking creatures. Dazed and frightened, yet without a
certain thrill of the scientists or archaeologist's delight, I examined
my surroundings more closely the moon now near the zenith,
shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed
in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far

(07:22):
flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out
of sight in both directions and almost lapping my feet
as I stood on the slope across the chasm. The
wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith, on whose
surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures.
The writing was in a system of hieroglyphs, unknown to

(07:43):
me and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting,
for the most part of conventionalized aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, muscles, whales,
and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which
which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing
forms I had observed on the ocean risen plane. It

(08:06):
was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold
me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water, on account
of their enormous size, were an array of bas reliefs
whose subjects would have excited the envy of a doret
I think that these things were supposed to depict men,
at least a certain sort of men, though the creatures

(08:26):
were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some
marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which
appeared to be under the waves, as well of their
faces and forms, I dare not speak in detail, and
the mere remembrance makes me grow faint grotesque Beyond the
imagination of a poe or bulward. They were damnably human
in general outline, despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide

(08:50):
and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less
pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been
chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background. For
one of the creatures, which shown in the act of
killing a whale, represented as but little larger than himself.
I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size,

(09:11):
but in a moment decided that they were merely imaginary
gods of some primitive fish or seafaring tribe, some tribe
whose last descendant had perished eiras before the first ancestor
of the piltdown or Neanderthal man was born awestruck at
this unexpected glimpse into a pass beyond the conception of
the most daring anthropologist. I stood musing whilst the moon

(09:33):
cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me. Then
suddenly I saw it, with only a slight churning to
mask its rise to the surface, A thing slid into
view above the dark waters. Vast, polyphemius like and loathsome
it darted, like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith,

(09:54):
about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms. The while
it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain
measured sounds. I think I went mad, then, of my
frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my
delirious journey back to the stranded boat. I remember little.
I believe I sang a great deal and laughed oddly
when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections

(10:17):
of a great storm some time after I reached the boat.
At any rate, I know that I heard peals of
thunder and other tones which nature utters only in her
wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows, I
was in a san Francisco Hospital, brought thither by the
captain of the American ship which had picked up my
boat in mid ocean. In my delirium, I had said much,

(10:39):
but found that my words had been given scant attention
of any land upheaval in the Pacific. My rescuers knew nothing,
nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a
thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I
sought out a celebrated ethnologist and amused him with peculiar
questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon the fish god,

(11:00):
but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did
not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when
the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing.
I tried morphine, but the drug has given only transient secrease,
and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
So now I.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Am to end at all having written a full account
for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow men.
Often I ask myself if it could not all have
been a pure phanfasm, a mere freak of fever. As
I lay sun stricken and raving in the open boat
after my escape from the German man of war. This,
I ask myself, But ever does there come before me

(11:40):
a hideously vivid vision? In reply, I cannot think of
the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may,
at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its
slimy bed, worshiping their ancient stone idols and carving their
own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water soaked granite.
I dream of a day and they may rise above

(12:01):
the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the
remnants of puny war exhausted mankind of a day when
the land shall sink and the dark ocean shall ascend
amidst universal pandemonium. The end is near. I hear a
noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body
lumbering against it. It shall not find me, God that

(12:23):
hand the window, the window end of Daygone.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
A Dead Secret by Lafcadio Herne, read by Tony Sinman.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org A Dead Secret by Lafcadio Hearne

(12:59):
A long time go. In the province of Tamba, there
lived a rich merchant named inamuri Ya Ginsuke. He had
a daughter called Osno. As she was very clever and pretty,
he thought it would be a pity to let her
grow up with only such teaching as the country teachers
could give her, so he sent her in care of
some trusty attendants to Kiyoto, that she might be trained

(13:22):
in the polite accomplishments taught to the ladies of the capital.
After she had thus been educated, she was married to
a friend of her father's family, a merchant named Nagaraya,
and she lived happily with him for nearly four years.
They had one child, a boy, but Osno fell ill
and died in the fourth year after her marriage. On

(13:44):
the night after the funeral of O Sono, her little
son said that his mamma had come back and was
in the room upstairs. She had smiled at him, but
would not talk to him, so he became afraid and
ran away. Then some of the family went upstairs to
the room which had been O Sono's, and they were
startled to see by the light of a small lamp

(14:06):
which had been kindled before a shrine. In that room,
the figure of the dead mother. She appeared as if
standing in front of a tansu or chest of drawers
that still contained her ornaments and her wearing apparel. Her
head and shoulders could very distinctly be seen, but from
the waist downwards the figure thinned into invisibility. It was

(14:27):
like an imperfect reflection of her, and transparent as a
shadow on water. Then the folk were afraid and left
the room below. They consulted together, and the mother of
O Sono's husband said, a woman is fond of her
small things, and O Sono was much attached to her belongings.
Perhaps she has come back to look at them. Many

(14:49):
dead persons will do that unless the things be given
to the parish temple. If we present O Sono's robes
and girdles to the temple, her spirit will probably find rest.
It was agreed that this should be done as soon
as possible, so on the following morning, the drawers were
emptied and all of Osuna's ornaments and dresses were taken

(15:09):
to the temple. But she came back the next night
and looked at the tansu as before, and she came
back also on the night following, and the night after that,
and every night, and the house became a house of fear.
The mother of Osuno's husband then went to the parish
temple and told the chief priest all that had happened

(15:30):
and asked for ghostly counsel. The temple was a zen
temple and the head priest was a learned old man
known as daigen Oshol. He said, there must be something
about which she is anxious in or near that tansu,
but we emptied all the drawers, replied the woman, there
is nothing in the tansu. Well, said daigen Osho. To night,

(15:54):
I shall go to your house and keep watch in
that room and see what can be done. You must
give orders that no person shall enter the room while
I am watching unless I call after sundown. Dagon Osho
went to the house and found the room made ready
for him. He remained there alone reading the sutras, and

(16:16):
nothing happened until after the hour of the rat. Then
the figure of O Sono suddenly outlined itself in front
of the tansu. Her face had a wistful look, and
she kept her eyes fixed upon the tansu, The priest
uttered the holy formula prescribed in such cases, and then,
addressing the figure by the kind yo of O Sono, said,

(16:39):
I have come here in order to help you. Perhaps
in that tansu there is something about which you have
reason to feel anxious. Shall I try to find it
for you? The shadow appeared to give consent by a
slight motion of the head, and the priest, rising opened
the top drawer. It was empty. Successively he opened the second,

(17:01):
the third, and the fourth drawer. He searched carefully behind them,
and beneath them he carefully examined the interior of the chest.
He found nothing, but the figure remained gazing as wistfully
as before. What can she want? Thought the priest. Suddenly
it occurred to him that there might be something hidden

(17:22):
under the paper with which the drawers were lined. He
removed the lining of the first drawer. Nothing. He removed
the lining of the second and third drawers, still nothing.
But under the lining of the lowermost drawer he found
a letter. Is this the thing about which you have
been troubled? He asked? The shadow of the woman turned

(17:45):
toward him, her faint gaze fixed upon the letter. Shall
I burn it for you, he asked. She bowed before him.
It shall be burned in the temple this very morning,
he promised, And no one shall read it except myself.
The figure smiled and vanished. Dawn was breaking as the

(18:09):
priest descended the stairs to find the family waiting anxiously below.
Do not be anxious, he said to them. She will
not appear again, and she never did. The letter was burned.
It was a love letter written to O Sono in
the time of her studies at Kyoto. But the priest

(18:31):
alone knew what was in it, and the secret died
with him, and of a dead secret.

Speaker 5 (18:44):
His Dead Wife's photograph by S. Mukerjee. This is a
LibriVox recording. Our LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Colleen McMahon. His Dead Wife's Photograph by S. Mukerjee.

(19:04):
This story created a sensation when it was first told.
It appeared in the papers, and many big physicists and
natural philosophers were at least so they thought able to
explain the phenomenon. I shall narrate the event and also
tell the reader what explanation was given and let him
draw his own conclusions. This is what happened. A friend

(19:25):
of mine, a clerk in the same office as myself,
was an amateur photographer. Let us call him Jones. Jones
had a half plate Sanderson camera with a Ross lens
and a Thornton picard behind lens shutter with pneumatic release.
The plate in question was a Ratton's ordinary developed with
Ilford Pirosoda developer, prepared at home. All these particulars I

(19:48):
give for the benefit of the more technical reader. Mister Smith,
another clerk in our office, invited mister Jones to take
a likeness of his wife and sister in law. This
sister in law was the wife of mister smith elder brother,
who was also a government servant that on leave. The
idea of the photograph was of the sister in law.
Jones was a keen photographer himself. He had photographed everybody

(20:11):
in the office, including the peons and sweepers, and had
even supplied every sitter of his with copies of his handiwork.
So he most willingly consented and anxiously awaited for the
Sunday on which the photograph was to be taken. Early
on Sunday morning, Jones went to the Smiths. The arrangement
of light in the verandah was such that a photograph
could only be taken after midday, and so he stayed

(20:34):
there to breakfast. At about one in the afternoon, all
arrangements were complete, and the two ladies missus Smiths were
made to sit in two cane chairs, and after long
and careful focusing and moving the camera about for an hour,
Jones was satisfied at last, and an exposure was made.
Jones was sure that the plate was all right, and
so a second plate was not exposed, although in the

(20:56):
usual course of things this should have been done. He
wrapped up things and went home, promising to develop the
plate the same night and bring a copy of the
photograph the next day to the office. The next day,
which was a Monday, Jones came to the office very early,
and I was the first person to meet him. Well,
mister photographer, I asked, what success. I got the picture?

(21:17):
All right, said Jones, unwrapping an unmounted picture and handing
it over to me. Most funny, don't you think so?

Speaker 6 (21:24):
No?

Speaker 5 (21:24):
I don't. I think it is all right at any rate.
I did not expect anything better from you, I said, no,
said Jones. The funny thing is that only two ladies
sat quite right, I said, the third stood in the middle.
There was no third lady at all there, said Jones.
Then you imagined she was there, and there we find her.

(21:45):
I tell you there were only two ladies there when
I exposed, insisted Jones. He was looking awfully worried. Do
you want me to believe that there were only two
persons when the plate was exposed, and then three when
it was developed? I asked, That is exactly what has happened,
said Jones. Then it must be the most wonderful developer

(22:05):
you used. Or was it that this was the second
exposure given to the same plate the developers, the one
which I have been using for the last three years,
and the plate the one I charged on Saturday night
out of a new box that I purchased only in
the afternoon that day. A number of other clerks had
come up in the meantime and were taking great interest
in the picture, and in Jones's assertion. It is only

(22:28):
right that a description of the picture be given here
for the benefit of the reader. I wish I could
reproduce the original picture too, but that for certain reasons
is impossible. When the plate was actually exposed, there were
only two ladies, both of whom were sitting in cane chairs.
When the plate was developed, it was found that there
was in the picture a figure that of a lady

(22:50):
standing in the middle. She wore a broad edged doughty.
The reader should not forget that all the characters are Indians.
Only the upper half of her body was visible, the
lower being concealed from view by the low backs of
the cane chairs. She was evidently behind the chairs and
consequently slightly out of focus. Still everything was quite clear.

(23:10):
Even her long necklace was visible through the little opening
in the doughty near the right shoulder. She was resting
her hands on the backs of the chairs, and the
fingers were nearly totally out of focus, but a ring
on the right ring finger was distinctly visible. She looked
like a handsome young woman of twenty two, short and thin.
One of the ear rings was also clearly discernible, although

(23:32):
the face itself was slightly out of focus. One thing,
and probably the funniest thing that we overlooked then but
observed afterwards, that immediately behind the three ladies was a
barred window. The two ladies, who were one on each side,
covered up the bars to a certain height from the
bottom with their bodies, but the lady in the middle

(23:52):
was partly transparent because the bars of the window were
very faintly distinguishable through her. This fact, however, as I
said already, we did not observe.

Speaker 7 (24:01):
Then.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
We only laughed at Jones and tried to assure him
that he was either drunk or asleep. At this moment,
Smith of our office walked in, removing the trouser clips
from his legs. Smith took the unmounted photograph, looked at
it for a minute, turned red and blue and green,
and finally very pale. Of course, we asked him what
the matter was, and this is what he said. The

(24:24):
third lady in the middle was my first wife, who
has been dead these eight years. Before her death, she
asked me a number of times to have her photograph taken.
She used to say that she had a presentiment that
she might die early. I did not believe in her
presentiment myself, but I did not object to the photograph.
So one day I ordered a carriage and asked her
to dress up. We intended to go to a good professional.

(24:47):
She dressed up and the carriage was ready, But as
we were going to start, news reached us that her
mother was dangerously ill, so we went to see her
mother instead. The mother was very ill, and I had
to leave her there Immediately afterwards I was sent away
on duty to another station, and so could not bring
her back.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
It was in.

Speaker 5 (25:05):
Fact after full three months and a half that I returned,
and then though her mother was all right, my wife
was not. Within fifteen days of my return, she died
of purpurle fever after childbirth, and the child died too.
Thus it happened that her photograph was never taken. When
she dressed up for the last time on the day
that she left my home, she had the necklace in

(25:27):
the earrings on, as you see her wearing them in
the photograph. My present wife has them now, but she
does not generally put them on. This was too big
a pill for me to swallow, so I at once
took French leave from my office, bagged to the photograph,
and rushed out on my bicycle. I went to mister
Smith's house and looked missus Smith up. Of course, she

(25:47):
was much astonished to see a third lady in the picture,
but could not guess who she was. This I had expected,
as supposing Smith's story to be true, this lady had
never seen her husband's first wife. The elder brother's wife, however,
recognized the likeness at once, and she virtually repeated this
story which Smith had told us. In the morning. She
even brought out the necklace and the earrings for my

(26:09):
inspection and conviction. They were the same as those in
the photograph. All the principal newspapers of that time got
hold of the fact, and within a week there was
any number of applications for the ghostly photograph, But mister
Jones refused to supply copies of it to anybody for
various reasons, the principal being that Smith would not allow it.
I am, however, the fortunate possessor of a copy which,

(26:32):
for obvious reasons I am not allowed to show anybody.
One copy of the picture was sent to America, and
another to England. I do not now remember exactly to
whom My own copy I showed to the Reverend Father Blank, Madscbd, etc.
And asked him to find out a scientific explanation of

(26:52):
the phenomenon. The following explanation was given by the gentleman.
I am afraid I shall not be able to reproduce
the learned father exact words. But this is what he meant,
or at least what I understood him to mean. The
girl in question was dressed in this particular way. On
an occasion, say ten years ago. Her image was cast
on space, and the reflection was projected from one luminous

(27:16):
body one planet on another, till it made a circuit
of millions and millions of miles in space, and then
came back to Earth at the exact moment when your
friend mister Jones was going to make the exposure. Take,
for instance, the case of a man who is taking
the photograph of a mirage. He is photographing Place X
from Place Y when X and y R say, two

(27:38):
hundred miles apart, and it may be that his camera
is facing east, while Place X is actually towards the
west of Place HY. At school, I had read a
little of science and chemistry and could make a dry
analysis of assault, But this was an item too abstruse
for my limited comprehension. The fact, however, remains, and I

(27:59):
believe it that Smith's first wife did come back to
this terrestrial globe of ours, over eight years after her death,
to give a sitting for a photograph and a form which,
though it did not affect the retina of our eye,
did impress a sensitized plate in a form that did
not affect the retina of the eye. I say because
Jones must have been looking at his sitters at the

(28:20):
time when he was pressing the bulb of the pneumatic
release of his time and instantaneous shudder. The story is
most wonderful. But this is exactly what happened. Smith says
this is the first time he has ever seen or
heard from his dead wife. It is popularly believed in
India that a dead wife gives a lot of trouble
if she ever revisits this earth. But this is, thank god,

(28:42):
not the experience of my friend mister Smith. It is
now over seven years since the event mentioned above happened,
and the dead girl has never appeared again. I would
very much like to have a photograph of the two
ladies taken once more, but I have never ventured to
approach Smith with the proposal. In fact, I learned photography
myself with a view to take the photograph of the

(29:03):
two ladies. But as I have said, I have never
been able to speak to Smith about my intention, and
probably never shall. The ten pounds that I spent on
my cheap photographic outfit may be a waste, but I
have learnt an art, which, though rather costly for my
limited means, is nevertheless worth learning, being closely allied to
the art that can immortalize the art that baffles Time's

(29:25):
tyrannic claim. End of the Dead Wife's photograph recording by
Colleen McMahon.

Speaker 8 (29:38):
The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Eli Hines, The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood. Certain houses,

(30:05):
like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their
character for evil. In the case of the latter, no
particular feature need betray them. They may boast an open
countenance and an ingenious smile, and yet a little of
their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something

(30:28):
radically amiss with their being, that they are evil. Willy nilly,
they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts,
which makes those in their immediate neighborhood shrink from them,
as from a thing diseased. Perhaps with houses, the same
principle as operative. And it is the aroma of evil

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deeds committed under a particular roof, long after the actual
doers have passed away, that makes the goose flesh come
and the hair rise. Something of the original passion of
the evildoer, and of the horror felt by his victim,
enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes
suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling

(31:14):
of the blood. He is terror stricken without apparent cause.
There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of this
house to bear out the tails of the horror that
was said to rain within. It was neither lonely nor unkempt.
It stood crowded into a corner of the square and

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looked exactly like the houses on either side of it.
It had the same number of windows as its neighbors,
the same balcony overlooking the gardens, the same white steps
leading up to the heavy black front door, and in
the rear there was the same narrow strip of green,
with neat box borders running up to the wall that

(31:57):
divided it from the backs of the adjoining house. Apparently, too,
the number of chimney pots on the roof was the same,
the breadth and angle of the eaves, and even the
height of the dirty area railings. And yet this house
in the square that seemed precisely similar to its fifty

(32:18):
ugly neighbors, was as a matter of fact, entirely different,
horribly different. Wherein lay this marked, invisible difference is impossible
to say. It cannot be ascribed wholly to the imagination,
Because persons who had spent some time in this house,
knowing nothing of the facts, had declared positively that certain

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rooms were so disagreeable they would rather die than enter
them again, and that the atmosphere of the whole house
produced in them symptoms of genuine terror, while the series
of innocent tenants who had tried to live in it
and been forced to DeCamp at the shortest possible notice
was indeed little less than a scandal in the town.

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When Shorthouse arrived to pay a week end visit to
his aunt Julia in her little house on the sea front,
at the other end of town, he found her charge
to the brim with mystery and excitement. He had only
received her telegram that morning, and he had come anticipating boredom.
But the moment he touched her hand and kissed her
apple skin wrinkled cheek, he caught the first wave of

(33:27):
her electrical condition. The impression deepened when he had learned
that there were to be no other visitors, and that
he had been telegraphed for with a very special object.
Something was in the wind, and the something would doubtless
bear fruit. For this elderly spinster Aunt, with a mania

(33:48):
for physical research, had brains as well as willpower, and
by hook or by crook she usually managed to accomplish
her ends. The revelation was made soon after tea, when
she sidled close up to him as they paced slowly
along the seafront in the dusk. I've got the keys,

(34:08):
she announced, in a delighted yet half awesome voice, got
them till Monday, the keys of the bathing machine, or
he asked, innocently, looking from the sea to the town.
Nothing brought her so quickly to the point as feigning stupidity.
Neither she whispered I've got the keys of the haunted
house in the square, and I'm going there tonight. The

(34:32):
shorthouse was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back.
He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and
manner thrilled him. She was in earnest. But you can't
go alone, he began. That's why I wired for you,
she said with decision. He turned to look at her.

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The ugly lined, enigmatical face was alive with excitement. There
was the glow of ja genuine enthusiasm round it like
a halo. Her eyes shone. He caught another wave of
her excitement, and a second tremor, more marked than the first,
accompanied it. Thanks Aunt Julia, he said politely. Thanks awfully,

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I should not dare to go quite alone, she went on,
raising her voice. But with you, I should enjoy it immensely.
You're afraid of nothing, I know. Thanks so much, he
said again. Er is anything likely to happen? A great
deal has happened, she whispered, though it's been most cleverly

(35:39):
hushed up. Three tenants have now come and gone in
the last few months, and the house is said to
be empty for good now In spite of himself, Shorthouse
became interested. His aunt was so very much in earnest.
The house is very old, indeed, she went on, and
the story, an unpleasant one, dates along way back. It

(36:01):
has to do with a murder committed by a jealous
stableman who had some affair with the servant in the house.
One night, he managed to secrete himself in the cellar,
and when everyone was asleep, he crept upstairs to the
servants quarters, chased the girl down to the next landing,
and before anyone could come to the rescue, threw her
bodily over the banisters into the hall below. And the

(36:26):
stableman was caught, I believe, and hanged for murder. But
it all happened a century ago, and I've not been
able to get more details at the story. Shorthouse now
felt his interest thoroughly aroused, but though he was not
particularly nervous for himself, he hesitated a little on his
aunt's account. On one condition, he said, at length, nothing

(36:51):
will prevent my going. She said firmly, But I may
as well hear your condition that you guarantee your powers
self control if anything really horrible happens. I mean that
you are sure you won't get too frightened, Jim, she
said scornfully. I'm not young, I know, nor are my nerves.

(37:13):
But with you I should be afraid of nothing in
the world. This, of course settled it. Her short house
had no pretensions to being other than a very ordinary
young man, and an appeal to his vanity was irresistible.
He agreed to go. Instinctively, by a sort of subconscious preparation,

(37:34):
he kept himself and his forces well in hand the
whole evening, compelling an accumulative reserve of control by that
nameless inward process of gradually putting all the emotions away
and turning the key upon them, a process difficult to describe,
but wonderfully effective, as all men who have lived through
severe trials of the inner man well understand. Later it

(37:58):
stood him in good stead. But it was not until
half past ten, when they stood in the hall well,
in the glare of friendly lamps, still surrounded by comforting
human influences, that he had to make the first call
upon this store of collected strength. For once the door
was closed and he saw the deserted, silent streets stretching

(38:20):
away in the white moonlight before them, it came to
him clearly that the real test that night would be
in dealing with two fears instead of one. He would
have to carry his aunt's fear as well as his own,
And as he glanced down at her sphinxlike countenance and
realized that it might assume no pleasant aspect in a

(38:41):
rush of real terror, he felt satisfied with only one
thing in the whole adventure, that he had the confidence
in his own will and power to stand against any
shock that might come. Slowly, they walked along the empty
streets of the town, a bright autumn moon silk over
the roofs, casting deep shadows. There was no breath of

(39:04):
the wind, and the trees in the formal gardens by
the sea front watched them silently as they passed along.
To his aunt's occasional remarks, Shorthouse made no reply, realizing
that she was simply surrounding herself with mental buffers, saying
ordinary things to prevent herself thinking of extraordinary things. Few

(39:24):
windows showed lights, and from scarcely a single chimney came
smoke or sparks. Shorthouse had already begun to notice everything,
even the smallest details. Presently, they stopped at the street
corner and looked up at the name on the side
of the house full in the moonlight, and with one
accord but without remark, turned into the square and crossed

(39:47):
over to the side of it that lay in the shadow.
The number of the house is thirteen, whispered a voice
at his side, and neither of them made the obvious reference,
but passed a cross the broad sheet of moonlight, and
began to march up the pavement in silence. It was
about half way up the square that Shorthouse felt an

(40:09):
arm slipped quietly but significantly into his own, and knew
then that their adventure had begun in earnest, and that
his companion was already yielding imperceptibly to the influences against them.
She needed support. A few minutes later they stopped before
a tall, narrow house that rose before them into the night,

(40:30):
ugly in shape and painted a dingy white. Shutterless windows
without blinds stared down upon them, shining here and there
in the moonlight. There were weather streaks in the wall
and cracks in the paint, and the balcony bulged out
from the first floor a little unnaturally. But beyond this

(40:52):
generally forlorn appearance of an unoccupied house. There was nothing
at first sight to single out this particular mansion for
the evil character it had most certainly acquired. Taking a
look over their shoulders to make sure they had not
been followed, they went boldly up the steps and stood
against the huge black door that fronted them forbiddingly. But

(41:15):
the first wave of nervousness was now upon them, and
Shorthouse fumbled a long time with the key before he
could fit it into the lock at all. For a moment,
if truth were told, they both hoped it would not open,
for they were prey to various unpleasant emotions. As they
stood there on the threshold of their ghostly adventure, Shorthouse,

(41:37):
shuffling with the key and hampered by the steady weight
on his arm, certainly felt the solemnity of the moment.
It was as if the whole world, for all experience,
seemed at that instant, concentrated in his own consciousness, were
listening to the grating noise of that key. A stray
puff of wind wandering down the empty street woke a

(42:00):
momentary rustling in the trees behind them, but otherwise this
rattling of the key was the only sound audible, and
at last it turned in the lock, and the heavy
door swung open and revealed a yawing gulf of darkness beyond.
With a last glance at the moonlit square, they passed
quickly in, and the door slammed behind them with a

(42:22):
roar that echoed prodigiously through the empty halls and passages.
But instantly with the echoes, another sound made itself hurt,
and Aunt Julia leaned suddenly, so heavily upon him that
he had to take a step backwards to save himself
from falling. A man had coughed so close beside them,

(42:42):
so close that it seemed they must have been actually
by his side in the darkness. With the possibility of
practical jokes in his mind, Shorthouse at once swung his
heavy stick in the direction of the sound, but it
met nothing more solid than air. He heard his aunt
give a little gasp beside him. There's someone here, she whispered.

(43:03):
I heard him be quiet, he said sternly. It was
nothing but the noise of the front door. Oh, get
a light quick, she added, as her nephew, fumbling with
a box of matches, opened it upside down. And let
them all fall with a rattle on to the stone floor.
The sound, however, was not repeated, and there was no

(43:24):
evidence of retreating footsteps. In another minute they had a
candle burning, using an empty end of a cigar case
as a holder, And when the first flare had died down,
he held the improptu lamp aloft and surveyed the scene.
And it was dreary enough in all conscience, For there
is nothing more desolate in all the abodes of men

(43:47):
than an unfinished house, dimly lit, silent and forsaken, and
yet tenanted by rumor with the memories of evil and
violent histories. They were standing in a wide hallway. On
their left was the open door of a spacious dining room,
and in front the hall ran ever narrowing into a long,

(44:11):
dark passage that led apparently to the top of the
kitchen stairs. The broad, uncarpeted staircase rose in a sweep
before them, everywhere draped in shadows, except for a single
spot about half way up, where the moonlight came in
through the window and fell on a bright patch on
the boards. This shaft of light shed a faint radiance

(44:35):
above and below it, lending to the objects within its reach,
a misty outline that was infinitely more suggestive and ghostly
than complete darkness. Filtered moonlight always seemed to paint faces
on the surrounding gloom, and a short house peered up
into the well of darkness and thought of the countless

(44:56):
empty rooms and passages in the upper part of the
old house. He caught himself longing again for the safety
of the moonlit square or the cozy, bright drawing room
they had left an hour before. Then, realizing that these
thoughts were dangerous, he thrust them away again and summoned
all his energy for concentration on the present aunt Julia.

(45:20):
He said aloud severely, we must now go through the
house from top to bottom and make a thorough search.
The echoes of his voice died away slowly all over
the building, and in the intense silence that followed, he
turned to look at her in the candle light. He
saw that her face was already ghastly pale. But she

(45:41):
dropped his arm for a moment and said, in a whisper,
stepping close in front of him, I agree. We must
be sure there's no one hiding. That's the first thing
she spoke with evident effort, and he looked at her
with admiration. You feel quite sure of yourself. It's not
too late, I think so, she whispered, her eyes shifting

(46:03):
nervously towards the shadows behind. Quite sure. Only one thing,
What's that? You must never leave me alone for an instant,
as long as you understand that any sound or appearance
must be investigated at once, For to hesitate means to
admit fear. That is fatal. Agreed, she said, a little shakily,

(46:27):
after a moment's hesitation, I'll try arm in arm short house,
holding the dripping candle in the stick, while his aunt
carried the cloak over her shoulders. Figures of utter comedy
to all but themselves. They began a systematic search, stealthily,
walking on tiptoe and shading the candle lest it should

(46:49):
betray their presence. Through the shutterless windows. They went first
into the big dining room. There was not a stick
of furniture to be seen. Bare walls, ugly man pieces,
and empty grates stared at them. Everything they felt resented
their intrusion, watching them as it were, with veiled eyes.

(47:11):
Whispers followed them, Shadows flitted noiselessly to the right and left.
Something seemed ever at their back, watching, waiting an opportunity
to do them injury. There was the inevitable sense that
operations which went on when the room was empty had
been temporarily suspended till they were well out of the

(47:33):
way again. The whole dark interior of the old building
seemed to become a malignant presence that rose up, warning
them to desist and mind their own business every moment
the strain on the nerves increased. Out of the gloomy
dining room, they passed through large folding doors into a

(47:54):
sort of librri or smoking room, wrapped equally in silence, darkness,
and dust. And from this they regained the hall near
the top of the back stairs. Here a pitch black
tunnel opened before them into the lower regions, and it
must be confessed they hesitated, but only for a minute.

(48:17):
With the worst of the night still to come, it
was essential to turn from nothing. Aunt Julius stumbled at
the top step of the dark descent ill lit by
the flickering candle, and even Shorthouse felt at least half
the decision go out of his legs. Come on, he said, peremptorily,
and his voice ran on and lost itself in the

(48:39):
dark empty spaces below. I'm coming, she faltered, catching his
arm with unnecessary violence. They went a little unsteadily down
the stone steps, a cold, damp air meeting them in
the face, close and malodorous. The kitchen into which the

(48:59):
stairs lay along a narrow passage, was large, with a
lofty ceiling. Several doors opened out of it, some into
cupboards with empty jars still standing on the shelves, and
others into horrible, little, ghostly back offices, each colder and
less inviting than the last. Black beetles scurried over the floor,

(49:22):
and once, when they knocked against a deal table standing
in a corner, something about the size of a cat
jumped down with a rush and fled, scampering across the
stone floor into the darkness. Everywhere there was a sense
of recent occupation, an impression of sadness and gloom. Leaving

(49:42):
the main kitchen, they next went towards the scullery. The
door was standing ajar and as they pushed it open
to its full extent, Aunt Julia uttered a piercing scream,
which she instantly tried to stifle by placing her hand
over her mouth. For a second. Shorthouse stood stock still,
catching his breath. He felt as if his spine had

(50:05):
suddenly become hollow, and some one had filled it with
particles of ice. Facing them directly in their way, between
the door posts stood the figure of a woman. She
had disheveled hair and wildly staring eyes, and her face
was terrified and white as death. She stood there motionless
for the space of a single second. Then the candle flickered,

(50:29):
and she was gone, utterly gone, and the door framed
nothing but the empty darkness, only the beastly jumping candle light.
He said quickly, in a voice that sounded like some
one else's and was only half under control. Come on, aunt,
there's nothing there. He dragged her forward, with a clattering

(50:54):
of feet and a great appearance of boldness. They went on,
but over his body the skin moved as if crawling
ants covered it, and he knew by the weight on
his arm that he was supplying the force of locomotion.
For two. The scullery was cold, bare and empty, more

(51:15):
like a large prison cell than anything else. They went
round it, tried the door into the yard and the windows,
but found them all fastened securely. His aunt moved beside
him like a person in a dream. Her eyes were
tightly shut, and she seemed merely to follow the pressure
of his arm. Her courage filled him with amazement. At

(51:39):
the same time, he noticed that a certain odd change
had come over her face, a change which somehow evaded
his power of analysis. There's nothing here, aunty, he repeated aloud. Quickly,
let's go upstairs and see the rest of the house.
Then we'll choose a room to wait up in. She

(52:00):
followed him obediently, keeping close to his side, and they
locked the kitchen door behind them. It was a relief
to get up again. In the hall, there was more
light than before, for the moon had traveled a little
further down the stairs. Cautiously, they began to go up
into the dark vault of the upper house, the boards

(52:21):
creaking under their weight. On the first floor they found
the large double drawing rooms, a search of which revealed nothing.
Here also was no sign of furniture or recent occupancy.
Nothing but dust and neglect and shadows. They opened the
big folding doors between the front and back drawing rooms,

(52:44):
and then came out again to the landing and went
on upstairs. They had not gone up more than a
dozen steps when they both simultaneously stopped to listen, looking
into each other's eyes with a new apprehension. Across the
flickering candle flame from the room they had left. Hardly

(53:05):
ten seconds before came the sound of doors quietly closing.
It was beyond all question they had heard the booming
noise that accompanies the shutting of heavy doors, followed by
the sharp catching of the latch. We must go back
and see, said Shorthouse briefly, in a low tone, and
turning to go downstairs again. Somehow she managed to drag

(53:29):
after him, her feet catching in her dress, her face livid.
When they entered the front drawing room, it was plain
that the folding doors had been closed half a minute before.
Without hesitation, Shorthouse opened them. He almost expected to see
someone facing him in the back room, but only darkness

(53:50):
and cold air met him. They went through both rooms,
finding nothing unusual. They tried in every way to make
the doors close of them so, but there was not
wind enough even to set the candle flame flickering. The
doors would not move without strong pressure. All was silent
as the grave. Undeniably the rooms were utterly empty, and

(54:15):
the house utterly still. It's beginning, whispered a voice at
his elbow, which he hardly recognized as his aunt's. He
nodded acquiescence, taking out his watch to note the time.
It was fifteen minutes before midnight. He made the entry
of exactly what had occurred in his notebook, setting the
candle in its case upon the floor. In order to

(54:38):
do so, it took a moment or two to balance
it safely against the wall. Aunt Julia always declared that
at this moment she was not actually watching him, but
had turned her head towards the inner room, where she
fancied she heard something moving. But at any rate, both
positively agreed that there came a sound of rushing feet,

(55:00):
heavy and very swift, and the next instant the candle
was out. But to Shorthouse himself had come more than this,
and he has always thanked his fortunate stars that it
came to him alone, and not to his aunt too.
For as he rose from the stooping position of balancing
the candle, and before it was actually extinguished, a face
thrust itself forward so close to his own that he

(55:22):
could have almost touched it with his lips. It was
a face working with passion, a man's face, dark with
thick features and angry, savage eyes. It belonged to a
common man, and it was evil in its ordinary, normal expression,
no doubt. But as he saw it alive with intense,
aggressive emotion, it was a malignant and terrible human countenance.

(55:49):
There was no movement of the air, nothing but the
sound of rushing feet, stalking or muffled feet, the apparition
of the face, and the almost simultaneous extinguishing of the candle.
In spite of himself, Shorthouse uttered a little cry, nearly
losing his balance, as his aunt clung to him with

(56:09):
her whole weight. In one moment of real, uncontrollable terror.
She made no sound, but simply seized him bodily. Fortunately, however,
she had seen nothing, but had only heard the rushing feet.
For her control returned almost at once, and he was
able to disentangle himself and strike a match. The shadows

(56:32):
ran away on all sides before the glare, and his
aunt stooped down and groped for the cigar case with
the precious candle. Then they discovered that the candle had
not been blown out at all it had been crushed out.
The wick was pressed down into the wax, which was flattened,

(56:53):
as if by some smooth, heavy instrument. How his companion
so quickly overcame her terror shorthouse never properly understood, but
his admiration for her self control increased tenfold, and at
the same time served to feed his own dying flame,
for which he was undeniably grateful. Equally inexplicable to him

(57:16):
was the evidence of physical force they had just witnessed.
He at once suppressed the memory of stories he had
heard of physical mediums and their dangerous phenomena. For if
these were true, and either his aunt or himself was
unwittingly a physical medium, it meant that they were simply
aiding to focus the forces of a haunted house already

(57:39):
charged to the brim. It was like walking with unprotected
lamps among uncovered stores of gunpowder. So, with as little
reflection as possible, he simply ReLit the candle and went
up to the next floor. The arm in his trembled.
It's true, and his own tread was often uncertain, But

(58:01):
they went on with thoroughness, and after a search revealing nothing,
they climbed the last flight of stairs to the top floor.
Of all here they found a perfect nest of small
servants rooms, with broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane bottomed chairs,
chests of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The rooms

(58:24):
had low sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs,
small windows, and badly plastered walls, a depressing and dismal
region which they were glad to leave behind. It was
on the stroke of midnight when they entered a small
room on the third floor, close to the top of
the stairs, and arranged to make themselves comfortable for the

(58:48):
remainder of their adventure. It was absolutely bare, and was
said to be the room then used as a clothes
closet into which the infuriated groom had chased his victim
and finally caught her outside. Across the narrow landing began
the stairs leading up to the floor above and the

(59:10):
servants quarters where they had just searched. In spite of
the chilliness of the night. There was something in the
air of this room that cried for an open window.
But there was more than this. Shorthouse could only describe
it by saying that he felt less master of himself

(59:30):
here than in any other part of the house. There
was something that acted directly on the nerves, tiring the resolution,
in feebling the will. He was conscious of this result
before he had been in the room five minutes, and
it was in the short time they stayed there that

(59:51):
he suffered the wholesale depletion of his vital forces, which
was for himself the chief horror of the whole experience.
They put the candle on the floor of the cupboard,
leaving the door a few inches ajar, so that there
was no glare to confuse the eyes and no shadow

(01:00:11):
to shift about on walls and ceiling. Then they spread
the cloak on the floor and sat down to wait.
With their backs against the wall. Shorthouse was within two
feet of the door on to the landing. His position
commanded a good view of the main staircase leading down

(01:00:32):
into the darkness, and also of the beginning of the
servants stairs going to the floor above. The heavy stick
lay beside him within easy reach. The moon was now
high above the house. Through the open window, they could
see the comforting stars, like friendly eyes watching in the sky.

(01:00:53):
One by one, the clocks of the town struck midnight,
and when the sounds died away, the deep silence of
a windless night fell again over everything. Only the boom
of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled the air
with hollow murmurs. Inside the house, the silence became awful, awful,

(01:01:20):
he thought, because any minute now it might be broken
by sounds pretending terror. The strain of waiting told more
and more severely on the nerves. They talked in whispers,
when they talked at all, For their voices aloud sounded
queer and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the

(01:01:45):
night air, invaded the room and made them cold. The
influences against them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing
them of self confidence and the power of decisive action.
Their forces were on the wane, and the possibility of
real fear took on a new and terrible meaning. He

(01:02:10):
began to tremble for the elderly woman by his side,
whose pluck could hardly save her. Beyond a certain extent,
he heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes
seemed so loud that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly.
Certain other sounds that were beginning very faintly to make

(01:02:33):
themselves audible in the depths of the house. Every time
he fastened his attention on these sounds, they instantly ceased.
They certainly came no nearer. Yet he could not rid
himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere
in the lower regions of the house. The drawing room floor,

(01:02:58):
where the doors that had been so strangely closed, seemed
too near. The sounds were further off than that. He
thought of the great kitchen with the scurrying black beetles,
and of the dismal little scullery, But somehow or other,
they did not seem to come from there either. Surely

(01:03:19):
they were not outside the house. Then suddenly the truth
flashed into his mind, and for the space of a
minute he felt as if his blood had stopped flowing
and turned to ice. The sounds were not downstairs at all.

(01:03:40):
They were upstairs, upstairs, somewhere among those horrid, gloomy little
servants rooms, with their bits of broken furniture, low ceilings
and cramped windows. Upstairs where the victim had first been
disturbed and stalked to her death. And the moment he
discovered where the sound were he began to hear them

(01:04:02):
more clearly. It was the sound of feet moving stealthily
along the passage overhead, in and out among the rooms
and past the furniture. He turned quickly to steal a
glance at the motionless figure seated beside him, to note
whether she had shared his discovery. The faint candle light

(01:04:23):
coming through the crack and the cupboard door threw her
strongly marked face into vivid relief against the white of
the wall. But it was something else that made him
catch his breath and stare again. An extraordinary something had
come into her face and seemed to spread over her
features like a mask. It smoothed out the deep lines

(01:04:44):
and drew the skin everywhere a little tighter, so that
the wrinkles disappeared. It brought into the face, with the
sole exception of the old eyes, an appearance of youth,
and almost of childhood. He stared in speechless amazement, amazement
that was dangerously near to horror. It was his aunt's face, indeed,

(01:05:09):
but it was her face of forty years ago, the vacant,
innocent face of a girl. He had heard stories of,
that strange effect of terror which could wipe a human
countenance clean of other emotions, obliterating all previous expressions. But
he had never realized that it could be literally true,

(01:05:29):
or could mean anything so simply horrible as what he
now saw. For the dreadful signature of overmastering fear was
written plainly in that utter vacancy of the girlish face
beside him, And when feeling his intense gaze, she turned
to look at him. He instinctively closed his eyes tightly

(01:05:50):
to shut.

Speaker 9 (01:05:50):
Out the sight.

Speaker 8 (01:05:52):
Yet when he turned a minute later, his feelings well
in hand, he saw, to his intense relief another expression.
His aunt was smiling, and though the face was deathly white,
the awful veil had lifted and the normal look was returning.
Anything wrong was all he could think of to say

(01:06:13):
at the moment, and the answer was eloquent, coming from
such a woman. I feel cold and a little frightened,
she whispered. He offered to close the window, but she
seized hold of him and begged him not to leave
her side, even for an instant. It's upstairs, I know,

(01:06:33):
she whispered with an odd half laugh. But I I
can't possibly go up, But Shorthouse thought otherwise, knowing that
an action lay their best hope of self control. He
took the brandy flask and poured out a glass of
neat spirit, stiff enough to help anybody over anything. She

(01:06:55):
swallowed it with a little shiver. His only idea now
was to get out of the house before her collapse
became inevitable. But this could not safely be done by
turning tail and running from the enemy. Inaction was no
longer possible. Every minute he was growing less master of himself,

(01:07:15):
and desperate aggressive measures were imperative without further delay. Moreover,
the action must be taken towards the enemy, not away
from it. The climax, if necessary and unavoidable, would have
to be faced boldly. He could do it now, but
in ten minutes he might not have the force left

(01:07:37):
to act for himself, much less for both. Upstairs, the
sounds were meanwhile becoming louder and closer, accompanied by occasional
creaking of the boards. Someone was moving stealthily about, stumbling
now and thin awkwardly against the furniture, waiting a few

(01:07:58):
moments to allow the tremendous dose of spirits to produce
its effect, and knowing this would last but a short time,
under the circumstances. Shorthouse then quietly got on his feet,
saying in a determined voice, Now, Aunt Julia, we'll go
upstairs and find what all this noise is about. You
must come too, It's what we agreed. He picked up

(01:08:22):
his stick and went to the cupboard for the candle.
A limp form rose shakily beside him, breathing hard, and
he heard a voice say, very faintly something about being
ready to come. The woman's courage amazed him. It was
so much greater than his own. And as they advanced,
holding aloft the dripping candle, some subtle force exhaled from

(01:08:46):
this trembling, white faced old woman at his side. That
was the true source of his inspiration. It held something
really great that shamed him and gave him the support
without which he would have proved far less Equal to
the occasion. They crossed the dark landing, avoiding with their
eyes the deep black space over the banisters. Then they

(01:09:10):
began to mount the narrow staircase to meet the sounds,
which minute by minute grew louder and nearer. About half
way up the stairs, Aunt Julia stumbled, and Shorthouse turned
to catch her by the arm, and just at that
moment there came a terrific crash in the servant's corridor overhead.

(01:09:30):
It was instantly followed by a shrill, agonized scream that
was a cry of terror and a cry for help
melted into one. Before they could move aside or go
down a single step, someone came rushing along the passage overhead,
blundering horribly, racing madly at full speed, three steps at
a time down the very staircase where they stood. The

(01:09:53):
steps were light and uncertain, but close behind them sounded
the heavier tread of another person. The staircase seemed to shake.
Shorthouse and his companion just had time to flatten themselves
against the wall when the jumble of flying steps was
upon them, and two persons with the slightest possible interval

(01:10:14):
between them, dashed past at full speed. It was a
perfect whirlwind of sound, breaking in upon the midnight silence
of the empty building. The two runners, pursuer and pursued,
had passed clean through them where they stood, and already
with a thud, the boards below had received first one
then the other. Yet they had seen absolutely nothing, not

(01:10:39):
a hand or arm, or face, or even a shred
of flying clothing. There came a second's pause, then the
first one, the lighter of the two, obviously the pursued one,
ran with uncertain footsteps into the little room which Shorthouse
and his aunt had just left. The heavier one followed.

(01:11:02):
There was a sound of scuffling, gasping and smothered screaming,
and then out onto the landing came the step of
a single person treading weightily. A dead silence followed for
the space of half a minute, and then was heard
a rushing sound through the air. It was followed by

(01:11:26):
a dull, crashing thud in the depths of the house below.
On the stone floor of the hall, utter silence reigned
after nothing moved. The flame of the candle was steady,
it had been steady the whole time, and the air

(01:11:47):
had been undisturbed by any movement whatsoever. Palsied with terror,
Aunt Julia, without waiting for her companion, began fumbling her
way downstairs. She was crying gently to herself, and when
Shorthouse put her arm round her and half carried her,
he felt that she was trembling like a leaf. He

(01:12:09):
went into the little room and picked up the cloak
from the floor and arm in arm, walking very slowly,
without speaking word or looking once behind them, they marched
down the three flights into the hall. In the hall
they saw nothing but the whole way down the stairs,

(01:12:30):
they were conscious that someone followed them step by step.
When they went faster, it was left behind, and when
they went more slowly, it caught them up. But never
once did they look behind to see. And at each
turning of the staircase they lowered their eyes for fear

(01:12:53):
of the following horror they might see upon the stairs above.
With trembling hands, short House opened the front door, and
they walked out into the moonlight, and drew a deep
breath of the cool night air blowing in from the
sea end of the empty house.

Speaker 7 (01:13:20):
The Fakier's Drum by Flora Annie Steele. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Newgate novelist The Fakier's Drum by Flora Annie Steele.

(01:13:46):
Oh Most Mighty, Victoria v R REDG Britannicorum v I
Kaiser e hind. Please admit bearer to privileges of praising
God on the little drum. As occasion befitteth, and your
petitioner will ever pray, et cetera. It was written on
a scrap of foreign paper, duly stamped as a petition,

(01:14:09):
and it did not need the interpolation of imperial titles
to prove that this was not, by any means its
first appearance in court to be plain. It had an
ancient and a fish like smell, suggestive of many years
acquaintance with dirty humanity. I looked at the man who

(01:14:29):
had presented it, a very ordinary fakir, standing with hands
folded humbly, and was struck by the wistful expectancy in
his face. It was at once hopeful yet hopeless. Turning
to the court reader for explanation, I found a decorous
smile flowing round the circle of squatting clerks. It was

(01:14:54):
evidently an old established joke. He is damnably noiseful man, Sir, remarked,
My Sir rishtadar cheerfully, and his place of sitting close
to Deputy Commissioner's bungalow. Thus European officers object, so it
is always namunzor refused. The sound of the familiar formula

(01:15:18):
drove the hope from the old man's face. His thin
shoulders seemed to droop, but he said nothing. How long
has this been going on? I asked, fourteen years, Sir,
always on transference of officers, and it is always Namunsor.
He dipped his pen in the ink, gave it the

(01:15:39):
premonitory flick, Munsor granted, said I in a sudden decision Munsor,
during the term of my office that was but a month.
I was only a Locumtenun's during leave, only a month,
and the poor old beggar had waited for teen years

(01:16:00):
to praise God on the little drum. The pathos and
bathos of it hit me hard, but a stare of
infinite surprise had replaced the circumambient smile. The Fakir himself
seemed flabbergasted. I think he felt lost without his petition,
for I saw him fumbling in his pocket as the

(01:16:21):
janisries hustled him out of court, as janisaries love to
do east or west. That night, as I was wondering
if I had smoked enough and yawned enough to make
sleep possible in a hundred degrees of heat and a
hundred million mosquitoes. I was suddenly reminded of the proverb

(01:16:41):
charity begins at home. It had with a vengeance. I
had thought my Sir Rishtadar's language a trifle to picturesque.
Now I recognized its supreme accuracy. The Fakir was a
damnably noiseful man. It is useless trying to add one

(01:17:03):
iota to this description, especially to those unacquainted with the
torture of an Indian drum. By dawn, I was in
the saddle, glad to escape from my own house and
the ceaseless rumpetum tum, which was driving me crazy. When
I returned, the old man was awaiting me in the verandah,

(01:17:25):
his face full of a great content, and the desire
to murder him, which rose up in me with the
thought of the twenty nine knights yet to come, faded
before it. Perfect happiness is not the lot of many,
but apparently it was his. He salamed down to the

(01:17:45):
ground Hussaur. He said, the great joy in me created
a disturbance last night. It will not occur again. The
protector of the poor shall sleep in peace, even though
his slave praises God for him all night long. The
Almighty does not require a loud drum, I said. I

(01:18:07):
was glad to hear it, and my self complacency grew
until I laid my head on the pillow somewhat earlier
than usual. Then I became aware of a faint throbbing
in the air, like that which follows a deep organ note,
A throbbing which found its way into the drum of
my ear and remained there so faint that it kept

(01:18:29):
me on the rack to know if it had stopped
or was still going on. Rumpetum tum tum rumpatum tum
tum rumpa. Even now, the impulse to make the hateful
rhythm interminable seizes on me. I have to lay aside
my pen and take a new one before going on.

(01:18:50):
I draw a veil over the mental struggle which followed.
It would have been quite easy to rescind my permission,
but the thought of one month is fourteen years roused
my pride. As representative of the Almighty Victoria redg. Britannicorum,
et cetera. I had admitted this man to the privileges

(01:19:12):
of praising God on the little drum and there was
an end of it, but the effort left my nerves
shattered with the strain put on them. It was the
middle of the hot weather that awful fortnight before the
rains break. I was young, absolutely alone. Every morning as

(01:19:33):
I rode a perfect wreck past the Fakir's hovel by
the gate, he used to ask me if I had
slept well, And I lied to him, what was the
use of suffering? If no one was the happier for it?
At last one evening it was the twenty first, I remember,

(01:19:54):
for I ticked them off on a calendar like any schoolboy.
I sat out among the Olians, knowing that sleep was mine.
The rains had broken, A cool wind stirred the dripping trees,
the fever of unrest was over. Clouds of winged white

(01:20:14):
ants besieged the lamp. What wonder when the rafters of
the old bungalow were riddled almost beyond the limits of
safety by their galleries. But what did I care? I
was going to sleep, and so I did like a
child until close on the dawn. And then, by heavens,

(01:20:37):
it was too bad in the Verandah. Surely not faint,
but loudly imperative. Rump a tum tum tum. I was
out of bed in an instant, full of fury. The
fiend incarnate must be walking round the house. I was
after him in the moonlight. Not a sign. The white

(01:21:00):
leanders were shining in the dark foliage. A firefly or two,
nothing more. Rumpa tum tum tum. Fainter this time round
the corner. Not there, rumper dum tum tum. A mere

(01:21:21):
whisper now, but loud enough to be traced, so on
the track. I was round the house to the verandah.
Whence I had started, No sign, no sound, gracious, what
was that? A crash, a thud, a roar, and rattle
of earth the house, the roof. When by the growing

(01:21:45):
light of dawn we inspected the damage, we found the
biggest rafter of all lying right across the pillow where
my head had been two minutes before, the first sunbeams
were on the still sparkling trees. When full of curiosity,
I strolled over to the fakir's hut. It also was

(01:22:07):
a heap of ruins, And when we dug the old
man out from among the ant riddled rafters, the doctor
said he had been dead for many hours. This story
may seem strange to Sam, others will agree with my
sir Rishtida, who, after spending the morning over Johnson's Dictionary

(01:22:28):
and a revenue report, informed me that such catastrophes are
but too common in this unhappy land after heavy rain
following on long continued drought. End of the Fakier's Drum
by Flora Annie Steele.

Speaker 6 (01:22:52):
The Ghost of Doctor Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is
a LibriVox recording. All liberal recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
The Ghost of Doctor Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I'm afraid

(01:23:16):
this ghost story will bear a very faded aspect when
transferred to paper. Whatever effect it had on you, whatever
charm it retains in your memory, is perhaps to be
attributed to the favorable circumstances under which it was originally told.
We were sitting, I remember, late in the evening in
your drawing room, where the lights of the chandelier were
so muffled as to produce a delicious obscurity through which

(01:23:40):
the fire diffused a dim red glow. In this rich twilight.
The feelings of the party had been properly attuned by
some tales of English superstitioned, and the lady of smith
Hills Hall had just been describing that bloody footstep which
marks the threshold of her old mansion, when your Yankee guest,
zealous for the honor of his country and desirous of

(01:24:00):
proving that his dead compatriots have the same ghostly privileges
as other dead people, if they think it worthwhile to
use them, began a story of something wonderful that long
ago happened to himself. Possibly in the verbal narrative. He
may have assumed a little more license than would be
allowed in a written record, for the sake of the
artistic effect. He may then have thrown in here and

(01:24:22):
there a few slight circumstances which he will not think
it proper to retain in what he now puts forth
as the sober statement of a veritable fact. A good
many years ago, it must be as many as fifteen,
perhaps more, And while I was still a bachelor, I
resided at Boston and the United States. In that city
there is a large and long established library styled the Athenaeum,

(01:24:46):
connected with which is the reading room, well supplied with
foreign and American periodicals and newspapers. A splendid edifice has
since been erected by the proprietors of the Institution, but
at the period I speak of it was contained within
a large old mansion, formerly the town residence of an
imminent citizen of Boston. The reading room, a spacious hall

(01:25:08):
with a group of the leaca on at one end,
in the Belvidere Apollo at the other, was frequented by
not a few elderly merchants retired from business, by clergymen
and lawyers, and by such literary men as we had
amongst us. These good people were mostly old, leisurely, and somnolent,
and used to nod and doze for hours together with

(01:25:31):
the newspapers before them, ever and anon, recovering themselves so
far as to read a word or two of the
politics of the day, sitting as it were, on the
boundary of the land of dreams, and having little to
do with this world except through the newspapers, which they
so tenaciously grasped. One of these worthies whom I occasionally

(01:25:51):
saw there was the Reverend Doctor Harris, a Unitarian clergyman
of considerable repute and eminence. He was very far advanced
in life, no less than eighty years old, and probably more,
and he resided, I think, at Dorchester, a suburban village
in the immediate vicinity of Boston. I had never been

(01:26:12):
personally acquainted with the good old clergyman, but had heard
of him all of my life as a noteworthy man,
so that when he was first pointed out to me,
I looked at him with a certain specialty of attention,
and always subsequently eyed him with a degree of interest
whenever I happened to see him at the Athenaeum or elsewhere.
He was a small, withered and firm but brisk, old

(01:26:34):
gentleman with snow white hair, a somewhat stooping figure, but
yet a remarkable alacrity of movement. I remember it was
in the street when I first noticed him. The doctor
was plodding along with the staff, but turned smartly about
on being addressed by the gentleman who was with me,
and responded with a good deal of vivacity.

Speaker 9 (01:26:57):
Who is he?

Speaker 6 (01:26:58):
I inquired? As soon as he had passed. The Reverend
Doctor Harris of Dorchester, replied, my companion, and from that
time I often saw him and never forgot his aspect.
His especial haunt was the Athenaeum. There I used to
see him daily, and almost always with the newspaper the
Boston Post, which was the leading journal of the Democratic

(01:27:21):
Party in the Northern States. As old Doctor Harris had
been a noted Democrat during his more active life, it
was a very natural thing that he should still like
to read the Boston Post. There, his reverend figure was
accustomed to sit day after day in the self same
chair by the fireside, and by degrees, seeing him there

(01:27:42):
so constantly, I began to look towards him as I
entered the reading room, and felt that a kind of acquaintance,
at least on my part, was established. Not that I
had any reason, as long as this venerable person remained
in the body, to suppose that he had ever noticed me.
But by some subtle connection, a small, white haired and
firm yet vivacious figure of an old clergyman became associated

(01:28:06):
with my idea and recollection of the place. One day,
especially about noon, as was generally his hour, I am
perfectly certain that I had seen this figure of old
doctor Harris, and taken my customary note of him, although
I remember nothing in his appearance at all different from
what I had seen on many previous occasions. But that

(01:28:27):
very evening a friend said to me, did you hear
that old doctor Harris is dead? No, I said, very quietly,
and it cannot be true, for I saw him at
the Athenaeum today. You must be mistaken, rejoined my friend,
he is certainly dead, and confirmed the fact with such

(01:28:47):
special circumstance that I could no longer doubt it. My
friend has often since assured me that I seemed much
startled at the intelligence, But as well as I can recollect,
I believe that I was very little disturbed, if at all,
but set down the apparition as a mistake of my own,
or perhaps the interposition of a familiar idea into the place,
and amid the circumstances with which I had been accustomed

(01:29:09):
to associate it. The next day, as I ascended the
steps of the Athenaeum, I remember thinking within myself, well,
I never shall see old doctor Harris again. With this
thought in my mind, as I opened the door of
the reading room, I glanced towards the spot and chair
where doctor Harris usually sat, and there, to my astonishment

(01:29:30):
sat the gray and firm figure of the deceased doctor,
reading the newspaper, as was his wont his own death
must have been recorded that very morning in that very newspaper.
I have no recollection of being greatly discomposed at the moment,
nor indeed that I felt any extraordinary emotion whatever, Probably,
if ghosts were in the habit of coming among us,

(01:29:53):
they would coincide with the ordinary train of affairs and
melt into them so familiarly that we should not be
shocked of their presence at all events. So it was
in this instance I looked through the newspapers as usual,
and turned over the periodicals, taking about as much interest
in their contents as at other times. Once or twice,

(01:30:17):
no doubt, I may have lifted my eyes from the
page to look again at the venerable doctor, who ought
then to have been lying in his coffin, dressed out
for the grave, but who felt such interest in the
Boston Post as to come back from the other world
to read it in the morning after his death. One
might have supposed that he would have cared more about
the novelties of the sphere to which he had just

(01:30:38):
been introduced than about the politics he had left behind him.
The apparition took no notice of me, nor behaved otherwise
in any respect than on any previous day. Nobody but
myself seemed to notice him. And yet the old gentleman
round about the fire beside his chair were his life
long acquaintances, who were perhaps thinking of his death, and

(01:31:00):
who in a day or two would deem it a
proper courtesy to attend his funeral. I have forgotten how
the ghost of doctor Harris took its departure from the
Athenaeum on this occasion, or in fact, whether the ghost
or I went first. This equanimity and almost indifference on
my part, the careless way in which I glanced at

(01:31:21):
so singular a mystery and left it aside, is what
now surprises me as much as anything else in the affair.
From that time, for a long while thereafter, for weeks
at least, and I know not, but for months, I
used to see the figure of doctor Harris quite as
frequently as before his death. It grew to be so
common that at length I regarded the venerable defunct no

(01:31:44):
more than any other of the old fogies who basped
before the fire, and dosed over the newspapers. It was
but a ghost, nothing but thin air, not tangible nor appreciable,
nor demanding any attention from a man of flesh and blood.
I cannot recollect any cold shudderings, any awe, any repugnance,

(01:32:04):
any emotion whatsoever, such as would be suitable and decorous
on beholding a visitant from the spiritual world. It is
very strange, but such is the truth. It appears excessively
odd to me now that I did not adopt such
means as I readily might to ascertain whether the appearance

(01:32:25):
had solid substance or was merely gaseous in vapory. I
might have brushed against him, have jostled his chair, or
have trodden accidentally on his poor old toes. I might
have snatched the Boston Post, unless that were an apparition
too out of his shadowy hands. I might have tested
him in a hundred ways, But I did nothing of

(01:32:48):
the kind. Perhaps I was loth to destroy the illusion
and to rob myself so good of a ghost story
which might probably have been explained in some very commonplace way. Perhaps,
after all, I had a secret dread of the old phenomenon,
and therefore kept within my limits with an instinctive caution
which I mistook for indifference. But this as it may,

(01:33:11):
here is the fact I saw the figure day after
day for a considerable space of time, and took no
pains to ascertain whether it was a ghost or no.
I never, to my knowledge, saw him come into the
reading room or depart from it. There sat Doctor Harris
in his customary chair, and I can say little else
about him. After a certain period, I really know not

(01:33:35):
how long I began to notice or to fancy a
peculiar regard in the old gentleman's aspect towards myself. I
sometimes found him gazing at me, and unless I deceived myself,
there was a sort of expectancy in his face.

Speaker 10 (01:33:51):
His spectacles, I.

Speaker 6 (01:33:53):
Think, were shoved up so that his bleared eyes might
beat my own. Had he been a living man, I
should have flattered myself that good Doctor Harris was, for
some reason or other interested in me and desirous of
a personal acquaintance. Being a ghost and amenable to ghostly laws,
it was natural to conclude that he was waiting to

(01:34:14):
be spoken to before delivering whatever message he wished to impart.
But if so, the ghost had shown the bad judgment
common among the spiritual brotherhood, both as regarded the place
of interview and the person whom he had selected as
the recipient of his communications. In the reading room of
the Athenaeum, conversation is strictly forbidden, and I could not

(01:34:36):
have addressed the apparition without drawing the instant notice and
indignant frowns of the slumbrous old gentleman around me. I myself, too,
at that time, was as shy as any ghost, and
followed the ghost's rule never to speak first. And what
an absurd figure should I have made, solemnly and awfully
addressing what must have appeared in the eyes of all
the rest of the company an empty chair. Besides, I

(01:35:01):
had never been introduced to doctor Harris, dead or alive.
And I am not aware that social regulations are to
be abrogated by the accidental fact of one of the
parties having crossed the imperceptible line which separates the other
party from the spiritual world. If ghosts throw off all
conventionalism among themselves, it does not therefore follow that it

(01:35:22):
can be safely dispensed with by those who are still
hampered with flesh and blood. For such reasons as these,
and reflecting moreover that the deceased doctor might burden me
with some disagreeable task with which I had no business
nor wish to be concerned, I stubbornly resolved to have
nothing to say to him. To this determination I adhered,

(01:35:44):
and not a syllable ever pass between the ghost of
doctor Harris and myself. To the best of my recollection,
I never observed the old gentleman either enter the reading
room or depart from it, or move from his chair,
or lay down the newspaper, or exchange a look with
any person in the company, unless it were myself. He
was not, by any means invariably in his place. In

(01:36:06):
the evening, for instance, though often at the reading room myself,
I never saw him. It was at the brightest noontide
that I used to behold him, sitting within the most
comfortable focus of the glowing fire, as real and lifelike
as any object, except that he was so very old
and of an ashen complexion, as any other in the room.

(01:36:29):
After a long while of this strange intercourse, if such
it can be called, I remember once at least, and
I know not but oftener a sad, wistful disappointed gaze
which the ghost fixed upon me from beneath his spectacles,
a melancholy look of hopelessness, which, if my heart had
not been as hard as a paving stone, I could

(01:36:50):
hardly have withstood. But I did withstand it, and I
think I saw him no more after this last appealing look,
which still dwells in my memory as perfectly as while
my own eyes were encountering the dim and bleared eyes
of the ghost. And whenever I recall this strange passage
of my life, I see the small, old, withered figure

(01:37:11):
of doctor Harris, sitting in his accustomed chair, the Boston
Post in his hand, his spectacles shoved upwards, and gazing
at me as I closed the door of the reading
room with that wistful, appealing, hopeless, helpless look. I have
only to add that it was not until long after
I had ceased to encounter the ghost that I became

(01:37:33):
aware how very odd and strange the whole affair had been.
And even now I am made sensible of its strangeness,
chiefly by the wonder and incredulity of those to whom
I tell the story. End of the Ghost of Doctor
Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Speaker 9 (01:37:58):
The Haunted House in Charnwood Forest by Anonymous. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
From all information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
The Haunted House in Charnwood Forest by Anonymous. One fine

(01:38:21):
blustering autumn day, a quiet and venerable looking old gentleman
might be seen with stick in hand, taking his way
through the streets of Leicester. If anyone had followed him,
they would have found him directing his steps toward that
side of the town which leads to Charnwood. The old gentleman,
who was a Quaker, took his way leisurely but thoughtfully,

(01:38:45):
stopping every now and then to see what the farmer's
men were about, who were plowing up the stubbrells to
prepare for another year's crop. He paused also at this
and that farmhouse, evidently having a pleasure in the sight
of good fat cattle, and in the flocks of poultry fowls, ducks,

(01:39:06):
geese and turkeys busy about the barn door, where the
sound of the flail or the swipple, as they there
term it, was already heard busily knocking out the corn
of the last bountiful harvest. Our old friend a friend,
for though you, dear reader, do not know him, he
was both at the time we speak of our old friend. Again.

(01:39:30):
Trudging on would pause on the brow of a hill,
at a stile, or on some rustic bridge, casting its
little obliging arch over a brooklet, and inhale a fresh
autumnal air, and after looking round him nod to himself
as if to say, aye, all good, all beautiful. And

(01:39:51):
so he went on again. But it would not be
long before he would be arrested again by clusters of rich,
jetty blackberries hanging from some old hawthorn hedge, or by
clusters of nuts hanging by the wayside through the copse.
In all these natural beauties, our old wayfarer seemed to

(01:40:11):
have the enjoyment of a child. Blackberries went into his mouth,
and nuts into his pockets. And so, with a quiet,
inquiring and thoughtful, yet thoughtfully cheerful look, the good old
man went on. He seemed bound for a long walk,
and yet to be in no hurry. In one place,

(01:40:33):
he stopped to talk to a very old laborer who
was clearing out a ditch, and if you had been near,
you would have heard that their discourse was of the
past days and the changes in that part of the country,
which the old laborer thought were very much for the worse,
and worse they were for him. For formerly he was

(01:40:54):
young and full of life, and now he was old
and nearly empty of life. Then he was buoyant, sang songs,
made love, went to wakes and merry makings. Now his
wooing days, and his marrying days, and his married days
were over. His good old dame, who in those young

(01:41:16):
buxom days was a round faced, rosy, plump and light
hearted damsel, was dead, and his children were married and
had enough to do. In those days. The poor fellow
was strong and lusty, had no fear and no care.
In these He was weak and tottering, had been pulled

(01:41:37):
and harassed a thousand ways, and was left, as he said,
like an old dry kex, that is, a hemlock or
cow parsnip stalk, hollow and dry, to be knocked down
and trodden into the dust. Some day. Yes, sure enough,
those past days were much better days than these days were.

(01:41:59):
To him no comparison. But mister John Basfred, our old
wanderer was taking the more cheerful view of things, and
telling the nearly worn out laborer that when the night came,
there followed morning, and that the next would be a
heavenly morning, shining on hills of glory, on waters of life,

(01:42:20):
on cities of the blest, where no sun rose and
no sun set, and where every joyful creature, of joyful youth,
who had been dear to him and true to him
and God would again meet him and make times such
as should cause songs of praise to spring out of
his heart, just as flowers spring out of a vernal

(01:42:42):
tree in the rekindled warmth of the sun. The old
laborer leaned reverently on his spade as the worthy man
talked to him. His gray locks, uncovered at his labour
by any hat, were tossed in the autumn wind. His
dim eye was fixed on the distant sky that rolled

(01:43:03):
its dark masses of clouds on the gale, and the
deep wrinkles of his pale and feeble temples seemed to
grow deeper at the thoughts passing within him. He was
listening as to a sermon which brought together his youth
and his age, his past, and his future, and there
were verified on that spot words which Jesus Christ spoke

(01:43:27):
nearly two thousand years ago. Wherever two or three are
met together in My name, there am I in the
midst of them. He was in the midst of the two.
Only there was a temple there in those open fields,
sanctified by two pious hearts, which no ringing of bells,

(01:43:49):
no sound of solemn organ, nor voice of congregated prayers,
nor any preacher, But the ever present and invisible one
who there and then fulfilled his promise and was gracious,
could have made more holy. Our old friend again turned
to set forward. He shook the old laborer kindly by

(01:44:11):
the hand, and there was a gaze of astonishment in
the old man's face. The stranger had not only cheered
him by his words, but left something to cheer him
when he was gone. The friend now went on with
a more determined step. He skirted the memorable Park of Bradgot,
famous for the abode of Lady Jane Gray and the

(01:44:34):
visit of her schoolmaster, Roger Asham. He went on into
a region of woods and hills. At some seven or
eight miles from Leicester. He drew near a solitary farmhouse
within the ancient limits of the forest of Charmwood. It
was certainly a lonely place amid the woodlands and the
wild autumn fields. Evening was fast dropping down, and as

(01:44:58):
the shade of night fell on the sea, the wind
tossed more rushingly the boughs of the thick trees and
roared down the rocky valley. John Basford went up to
the farmhouse, however, as if that was the object of
his journey, and a woman opening it at his knock,
he soon disappeared within Now our old friend was a

(01:45:20):
perfect stranger here, had never been here before, had no
acquaintance nor actual business with the inhabitants, though any one
watching his progress hither would have been quite satisfied that
he was not wandering without an object. But he merely
stated that he was somewhat fatigued with his walk from
the town, and requested leave to rest a while. In

(01:45:42):
such a place, such a request is readily and even
gladly granted. There was a cheerful fire burning on a bright,
clean hearth. The kettle was singing on the hob for tea,
and the contrast of the indoor comfort was sensibly heightened
by the wild bloom without The farmer's wife, who had

(01:46:04):
admitted the stranger, soon went out and called her husband
from the fal yard. He was a plain, hearty sort
of man. Gave our friend a hearty shake of the hand,
sat down, and began to converse. A little time seemed
to establish a friendly interest between the stranger and the
farmer and his wife. John Basford asked whether they would

(01:46:27):
allow him to smoke a pipe, which was not only
readily accorded, but the farmer joined him. They smoked and
talked alternately of the country and the town Lester, being
the farmer's market, and as familiar to him as his
own neighborhood. He soon came to know too who his
guest was, and expressed much pleasure in the visit. Tea

(01:46:50):
was carried into the parlor, and thither they all adjourned.
For now the farming men were coming into the kitchen,
where they sat for the evening tea over The two
gentlemen again had a pipe, and the conversation wandered over
a multitude of things and people known to both. But
the night was come down pitch dark, wild and windy,

(01:47:13):
and old John Basford had to return to Leicester. To Leicester,
exclaimed at once man and wife to Leicester, no such thing.
He must stay where he was, where could he be better?
John Basford confessed that that was true. He had great
pleasure in conversing with them. But then, was it not

(01:47:34):
an unwarrantable liberty to come to a stranger's house and
make thus free? Not in the least, the farmer, replied,
The freer the better. The matter thus was settled, and
the evening wore on. But in the course of the evening,
the guest, whose simple manner, strong sense, and deeply pious

(01:47:55):
feeling had made a most favorable impression on his entertainers,
hinted that he had heard some strange rumors regarding this house,
and that, in truth had been the cause which had
attracted him thither. He had heard, in fact, that a
particular chamber in this house was haunted, and he had
for a long time felt a growing desire to pass

(01:48:18):
a night in it. He now begged this favor might
be granted him. As he had opened this subject, an
evident cloud, and something of an unpleasant surprise had fallen
on the countenances of both man and wife. It deepened
as he proceeded. The farmer had withdrawn his pipe from

(01:48:38):
his mouth and laid it on the table, and the
woman had risen and looked uneasily at their guest. The
moment that he uttered the wish to sleep in the
haunted room, both exclaimed in the same instant against it. No, never,
they exclaimed, never, on any consideration, they had made a

(01:48:58):
firm resolve on the point which nothing would induce them
to break through. The guest expressed himself disappointed, but did
not press the matter further. At the moment he contented
himself with turning the conversation quietly upon this subject, and
after a while found the farmer and his wife confirmed
to him everything that he had heard. Once more. Then,

(01:49:22):
and as incidentally, he expressed his regret that he could
not gratify the curiosity which had brought him so far,
and before the time for retiring arrived, again ventured to
express how much what he had now heard had increased
his previous desire to pass a night in that room.
He did not profess to believe himself invulnerable to fears

(01:49:46):
of such a kind, but was curious to convince himself
of the actual existence of spiritual agency of this character.
The farmer and his wife steadily refused. They declared that
others who had come with the same wish and had
been allowed to gratify it, had suffered such terrors as
had made their after lives miserable. The last of these

(01:50:09):
guests was a clergyman, who received such a fright that
he sprang from his bed at midnight, had descended, gone
into the stable, and, saddling his horse, had ridden away
at full speed. Those things had caused them to refuse,
and that firmly any fresh experiment of the kind the

(01:50:30):
spirit visitation was described to be generally this. At midnight,
the stranger sleeping in that room would hear the latch
of the door raised, and would in the dark perceive
a light step enter, and as with a stealthy tread,
crossed the room and approach the foot of the bed.
The curtains would be agitated, and something would be perceived

(01:50:53):
mounted on the bed and proceeding up it just upon
the body of the person in it. The supernatural visit
would then stretch itself full length on the person of
the agitated guest, and the next moment he would feel
an oppression at his chest as of a nightmare, and
something extremely cold would touch his face. At this crisis,

(01:51:15):
the terrified guest would usually utter a fearful shriek and
often go into a swoon. The whole family would be
roused from their beds by the alarm, But on no
occasion had any traces of the cause of terror been found,
though the house on such occasions had been diligently and
thoroughly searched. The annoying visit was described as being by

(01:51:38):
no means uniform. Sometimes it would not take place for
a very long time, so that they would begin to
hope that there would be no more of it, but
it would when least expected, occur again. Few people of
late years, however, had ventured to sleep in that room,
and never since the aforementioned clergyman was so terribly alarmed

(01:52:00):
about two years ago. Had it once been occupied, then,
said John Basford, it is probable that the annoyance is
done with forever. If the troublesome visitant was still occasionally present,
it would no doubt take care to manifest itself in
some mode or place. It was necessary to test the

(01:52:20):
matter to see whether this particular room was still subject
to so strange a phenomenon. This seemed to have an
effect on the farmer and his wife. The old man
urged his suit all the more earnestly, and after further
show of extreme reluctance on the part of his entertainers,
finally prevailed. The consent. Once being given, the farmer's wife

(01:52:45):
retired to make the necessary arrangements. Our friend heard sundry
goings to and fro, but at length it was announced
to him that all was ready, the farmer and his
wife both repeating that they will be much better pleased
if mister Basford would be pleased to sleep in some
other room. The old man, however, remained firm to his purpose.

(01:53:06):
He was shown to his chamber, and the maid who
led the way, stood at some distance from the denoted door, and,
pointing to it, bad him good night, and hurried away.
Mister Basford found himself alone in the haunted room. He
looked round and discovered nothing that should make it differ
from any other good and comfortable chamber, or that should

(01:53:28):
give to some invisible agent so singular a propensity to
disturb any innocent mortal that not tonated in it. Whether
he felt any nervous terrors we know not. But as
he was come to see all that would or could
occur there, he kept himself most vigilantly awake. He lay
down in a very good feather bed, extinguished his light,

(01:53:51):
and waited in patience. Time and tide, as they will
wait for. No man went on. All sounds of life
ceased in the house. Nothing could be heard but the
rushing wind without and the bark of the yard dog
occasionally amid the laughing blast. Midnight came and found John

(01:54:13):
Basford wide awake and watchfully expectant. Nothing stirred, but he
lay still on the watch at length. Was it so?
Did he hear a rustling movement as it were near
his door? Or was it his excited fancy. He raised
his head from his pillow and listened intensely. Hush, there

(01:54:37):
is something. No, it was his contagious mind, ready to
hear and see what. There was an actual sound of
the latch. He could hear it raised. He could not
be mistaken. There was a sound, as if his door
was cautiously opened. List it was true. There were soft,

(01:54:57):
stealthy footsteps on the carpet. They came directly toward the bed.
They paused at its foot, The curtains were agitated, there
were steps on the bed. Something crept, did not the
heart and the very flesh of the rash old man
now creep too, And upon him sank a palpable form,

(01:55:18):
palpable from its pressure, for the night was dark as
an oven. There was a heavy weight on his chest,
and in the same instant, something almost icy cold touched
his face with a sudden convulsive action. The old man
suddenly flung up his arms, clutched at the terrible object
which thus oppressed him, and shouted with a loud cry,

(01:55:41):
I have got him, I have got him. There was
a sound as of a deep growl, a vehement struggle,
but John Basford held fast his hold and felt that
he had something within it, huge, shaggy and powerful. Once more,
he raised his voice, loud enough to have roused the
whole house, but it seemed no voice of terror, but

(01:56:03):
one of triumph and satisfaction. In the next instant, the
farmer rushed into the room with a light in his hand,
and revealed to John Basford that he held in his
arms the struggling form of a huge Newfoundland dog. Let
him go, sir, in God's name, exclaimed the farmer, on
whose brow drops of real anguish stood and glistened in

(01:56:26):
the light of the candle downstairs. Caesar and the dog,
released from the hold of the Quaker, departed as if
much ashamed. In the same instant, the farmer and his wife,
who now also came in dressed and evidently never having
been to bed, were on their knees by the bedside.

(01:56:47):
You know it all, sir, said the farmer. You see
through it. You were too deep and strong minded to
be imposed on. We were therefore afraid of this when
you asked to sleep in this room. Promise us now
that while we live, you will never reveal what you know.
They then related to him that this house and chamber

(01:57:08):
had never been haunted by any other than this dog,
which had been trained to play the part. That for
generations their family had lived on this farm, but some
years ago their landlord, having suddenly raised their rent to
an amount that they felt they could not give, they
were compelled to think of quitting the farm. This was

(01:57:30):
to them an insuperable source of grief. It was the
place that all their lives and memories were bound up with.
They were extremely cast down. Suddenly, it occurred to them
to give an ill name to the house. They hit
on this scheme, and having practiced it well, did not
long want an opportunity of trying it. It had succeeded

(01:57:52):
beyond their expectations. The fears of their guests were found
to be of a force which completely blinded them to
any discovery of the truth. There had been occasions where
they thought some clumsy accident must have stripped away the delusion,
but no, there seemed a thick layer of blindness, a
fascination of terror cast over the strongest minds, which nothing

(01:58:16):
could pierce through. Case after case occurred, and the house
and farm acquired such a character that no money or
consideration of any kind would have induced a fresh tenant
to live there. The old tenants continued at their old rent,
and the comfortable ghost stretched himself every night in a
capacious kennel, without any need of disturbing his slumbers by

(01:58:40):
cause to disturb those of the guests of the haunted chamber.
Having made this revelation, the farmer and his wife again
implored their guest to preserve their secret. He hesitated, nay,
said he I think it would not be right to
do that. That would be to make myself a party

(01:59:01):
to a public deception. It would be a kind of
fraud on the world and the landlord. It would serve
to keep up those superstitious terrors, which should be as
speedily as possible dissipated. The farmer was in agony. He
rose and strode to and fro in the room. His
countenance grew red and wrathful. He cast dark glances at

(01:59:23):
his guest, whom his wife continued to implore, and who
sat silent, and as it were, lost in reflection. And
do you think it a right thing, sir? Said the farmer,
Thus to force yourself into a stranger's house and family, and,
in spite of the strongest wishes expressed to the contrary,

(01:59:44):
into his very chambers, and that only to do him
a mischief? Is that your religion? Sir? I thought you
had something better in you than that? Am I now
to think your mildness and piety were only so much
hypocrisy put on to ruin me? Nay, friend, I don't
want to ruin thee, said the Quaker. But ruin me

(02:00:05):
you will, roe if you publish this discovery out, I
must turn and be the laughing stock of the whole
country to boot. Now, if that is what you mean,
say so, and I shall know what sort of a
man you are. Let me know at once whether you
are an honest man or a coquetrise, my friend, said
the Quaker. Canst thou call thyself an honest man in

(02:00:28):
practicing this deception for all these years and depriving thy
landlord of the rent he would otherwise have got from another?
And dost thou think it would be honest in me
to assist in the continuance of this fraud? I rob
the landlord of nothing, replied the farmer. I pay a
good fair rent, but I don't want to quit the
old spot. And if you had not thrust yourself into

(02:00:50):
this affair, you would have had nothing to lay on
your conscience concerning it. I must, let me tell you,
look on it as a piece of unwarrantable impertinence to
come thus to my house and be kindly treated, only
to turn Judas against me. The word judas seemed to
hit the friend a great blow. A Judas, yes, a judas,

(02:01:14):
a real judas, exclaimed the wife, who could have thought it.
Nay nay, said the old man. I am no Judas.

Speaker 10 (02:01:23):
It is true.

Speaker 9 (02:01:24):
I forced myself into it, and if you pay the
landlord an honest rent, why I don't know that it
is any business of mine at least while you live.
That is all we want, replied the farmer, his countenance
changing and again flinging himself by his wife on his
knees by the bed. Promise us never to reveal it

(02:01:45):
while we live, and we shall be quite satisfied. We
have no children, and when we go those may come
to the old spot. Who will promise me never to
practice this trick again? Said John Basford. We promise faithfully,
rejoined both farmer and wife. Then I promise, too, said

(02:02:05):
the friend, that not a whisper of what has passed
here shall pass my lips during your lifetime. With warmest
expressions of thanks, the farmer and his wife withdrew and
John Basford, having cleared the chamber of its mystery, lay
down and passed one of the sweetest nights he ever enjoyed.

(02:02:27):
The farmer and his wife lived a good many years
after this, but they both died before mister Basford, and
after their death he related to his friends the facts
which are here detailed. He too, has passed years ago
to his longer night in the Grave, and to the
clearing up of greater mysteries than that of the Haunted

(02:02:49):
House of Charnwood Forest. End of the Haunted House in
Charnwood Forest.

Speaker 11 (02:03:03):
In a Haunted House by Joseph B. Bowles from The
Water Valley Progress, Mississippi, January fourteenth, nineteen o five, read
by Rob Marland. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or

(02:03:23):
to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In a Haunted
House by Joseph B. Bowles. A New Yorker's experience with
a strange old colonial mansion, a nerve wracking night, some
startling incidents which seemed impossible of rational explanation by T. D. Sullivan,

(02:03:46):
Congressman elect from New York City. This is I think
the strangest experience in a career that has not been monotonous.
It is true, and at one time I had some
trouble keeping it out of the papers. Now there's no
more reason for keeping quiet about it, so I may
as well tell the whole story for the first time.

(02:04:09):
The reason why I need not keep the secret any
longer is because a big, old fashioned red brick building
was torn down this year. It was once a private residence,
then an office building, and now its site is the
site of a steel skyscraper. That is the way New
York grows. But at the time this narrative deals with,

(02:04:33):
the house was a residence, a big, rambling, roomy old
residence at that remodeled from a colonial mansion. There was
a young fellow whose father had been a dear friend
of mine. He had recently married. His bride had taken
a fancy to the house, and her husband, being rich
and eager to gratify any whim of hers, had bought

(02:04:56):
it in at a sheriff's sale of uptown property. The
purchaser is now a United States Congressman. I have not
permission to use his name, Sir, I will call him Clark.
His chief opponent at the sale was a real estate dealer.
Oh Gorman is near enough to his real name to

(02:05:17):
suit present purposes. This O. Gorman was a shrewd, shifty,
unscrupulous chap who had visions of the great future of
the Upper West Side, visions that later came true. If
you ever get dissatisfied with the old place, I'll take
it off your hands at the figure of my best

(02:05:37):
bid to day, he said to Clark. After the sale,
Clark laughed at him, gave orders for the house's renovation,
and sailed with his bride for Europe on a six
month's trip. The trouble begins. I was sitting in my
office one day about half a year later, when Clark

(02:05:58):
sauntered in. I saw from his face he was bothered
about something. After our first meeting. He came to the point,
I've made a bad investment in that old Bartolf house,
he said. The colonial builder's name had been Yan Bartolf,
and the house was still referred to in the neighborhood

(02:06:19):
by his name. Doesn't missus Clark like the place as
much as she expected to, I asked him. She hasn't
had a chance to judge of it, he said, and
I don't mean that she shall. The house is haunted. Haunted,
what nonsense. That's what I thought when I came home
last week from Europe and found that on a single

(02:06:41):
day's work had been done on the repairs I ordered,
answered Clark. I went to the contractor and he calmly
informed me he wouldn't touch the job, and then I
could have my money back. He said that ghosts had
frightened his workmen half to death, that he'd seen and
heard things there couldn't be explained, and that every man

(02:07:02):
in his employ would strike if he ordered them to
work there. And you believed all that rot I laughed, no,
replied Clark. Seriously, I didn't. I thought he was lying.
I went over the house myself, and well what he
said was true. You can guide me if you like,

(02:07:22):
old man, but the house is haunted, and I'm going
to get rid of it. I suppose white monsters clattered
their chains at you. I hazarded, and you ran a
block before you identified the hideous specters as a pack
of mice scampering in the loose plastering of the walls.

(02:07:43):
If you take it that way, he said, offended at
my guying, There's no use inviting any more of your
jokes by telling you what really happened to me there.
I'm going to hunt up O'Gorman, tell him the truth
about the place, and see if his offer to buy
it still holds good. He may be willing to pay
something for it. As a land speculation. He never could

(02:08:06):
get a tenant to stay there. Now, Clark's absolute sincerity
began to make an impression on me. I saw that
he was terribly in earnest, that he believed he was
telling the truth, and that he was really ready to
sell the valuable property for a song. Look here, Clark,
I said, I'm sorry I guide you, but it all

(02:08:29):
seems so absurd. You know as well as I do,
that there are no such things as ghosts. Don't be
foolish and give up the place till you've made sure.
What are you going to do this evening? Nothing a special?
Why come and dine with me? Then we'll take a
box of cigars, a bundle of candles, and a light

(02:08:51):
lunch along and go together to this haunted house of
yours for the night. I've always wanted to see a ghost.
Maybe I can find some explanation for it all. My
first idea on hearing his story had been that O. Gorman,
in order to gain possession of the property he coveted,
had bribed the contractor to spring that ghost yarn. But

(02:09:15):
when Clark himself had apparently seen or heard something to
verify the crazy belief, the affair began to take on
a more serious aspect. A night investigation, I took a
long nap that afternoon to obviate the chance of going
to sleep during the vigil, and promptly at ten that

(02:09:37):
evening I started with Clark for the Bartholf mansion. It was,
as I said, a rambling old brick dwelling and built
in colonial days by an eccentric Dutchman concerning whom some
odd stories still survived. The neighbors, it seemed, had regarded
him as a sort of wizard or magician. As we

(02:10:00):
walked up the uneven path to the front porch, the
old pile of brick looked in the moonlight like the
regular dime novel haunted house, And as Clerk led us
in through the great blackened oak doors, the darkness of
the huge hall seemed to rush forward to meet us.
We set about our preparations in a businesslike way. We

(02:10:24):
established our headquarters for the night in the big drawing
room to the right of the hall. We lighted a
half dozen candles, stuck them in the rusty iron sconces
about the wall, and set about examining the room. The
walls were lined with faded tapestry. One or two old,
half defaced pictures hung here and there, notably one of

(02:10:48):
old yan Bartholf himself, which was directly above the mantel.
Several pieces of furniture occupied the bare floor, whose hardwood
boards were warped by dampness neglect. We made sure that
no hiding place for lurking mischief makers existed within the
four walls of the apartment. Then, candle in hand, we

(02:11:11):
made a systematic detour of the whole dusty, creaking house. Well,
said Clark, as we reached the top of the wide
staircase on our return toward the ground floor. If there'd
been a man, or even a mouse concealed anywhere, we'd
have found him. Let's go back to the drawing room.
And why it's dark down there? We were half way downstairs,

(02:11:36):
as he spoke. On our way up, the light of
the candles in the drawing room sconces had cast a
glow across the hall. Now, except where illuminated by the
two candles in our hands, the whole lower floor was
in dense blackness, ghostly mystery. What do you think, now,

(02:11:57):
asked Clark. I made no reply, but ran down the
remaining steps into the drawing room. The smell of extinguished
candles filled the room. All was dark save where a
broad patch of moonlight from the one unshuttered window fell
on the floor. In the very center of that patch

(02:12:18):
was an old mahogany rocking chair. It was rocking with
a quiet, regular motion, as if some invisible guest were
taking his ease and swaying himself to sleep. Do you
see that, whispered Clarke over my shoulder. That's what I
saw when I came up here in broad daylight. It's

(02:12:40):
a current of air, I explained. But even as I
said it, I knew that no real draft could enter
that closed room with force enough to blow out six
candles and start a heavy chair into motion. Moreover, the
air in the room was dead and motionless. I never
used to believe even this sort of thing any more

(02:13:02):
than you do, said Clark. But who can doubt it?

Speaker 12 (02:13:05):
Now?

Speaker 11 (02:13:07):
I can doubt it, I answered. Help me light these
candles in the sconces, and we'll make another inspection of
the room. We lighted the candles. As we set foot
in the room, the chair had ceased rocking. We once
more made the rounds of the apartment, patting the tapestry
against the walls with our hands, looking under each bit

(02:13:28):
of furniture sounding the bricked up fireplace, and in other
ways making sure no trick was played on us by
human agency. If anybody is putting up this line of
practical joking, I said, he can't do anything while we're
in here. If it's a ghost. The sound as if

(02:13:49):
someone sobbing and panting for breath came to us while
I was speaking. It seemed to be in the room
within arm's length of us. That's easily explained, I said,
as Clark grabbed my arm. The wind in the empty
passages of the house and the chimney makes it's growing dark,

(02:14:10):
interrupted my companion. I looked up. Only two of the
six candles were burning. Even as I looked, first one
and then another of those remaining two lights went out.
It was as though some one had passed along that
side of the room and extinguished them. We were in

(02:14:31):
total darkness, for I had closed that one open window shutter.
In the dense blackness, as I groped for a match,
I could hear that great rocking chair slowly begin to
creak back and forth. I found a match at last
and struck it. We re lighted the candles. Then I

(02:14:52):
turned to look at the rocker. It was standing motionless.
We stared hopelessly into each other's face. I hope mine
wasn't as scared and white as Clark's. And this is
the sort of house you advise me to bring my
bride to, he said, At last, we've seen enough. I'm
going home. You're going to spend the night here as

(02:15:16):
you promised, I answered, this ghost seems to be a
harmless sort of creature. As long as he contents himself
with puffing out candles and making chairs rock, he can't
bother us greatly. Let's have a smoke and talk it over.
I sat down in the ghostly rocker and lighted a cigar.
I kept a keen eye on the candles, resolved to

(02:15:39):
get some clue if possible, to the way they were extinguished.
Clark threw himself on a sofa at the other side
of the room. It's no use, he said. I'll get
rid of the house as soon as I can, and
at any terms. I'm sorry because my wife had set
her heart on living here. With a little repair, this

(02:16:00):
would be an ideal home except for the ghost. What
are you doing the ghost? I had risen to my
feet and come to the middle of the room. The
rocker in which I'd been sitting was in the shadow.
The candles, as we had rearranged them, were all at
the lower end of the room, near the big mantelpiece.

(02:16:23):
As I had sat idly listening to Clark's complaint, my
gaze had chanced to fall on Old Jan Bartholph's picture.
I could have sworn that I saw the eyes in
the tarnished face close and then open. I'm just strolling
around for exercise, I said, carelessly. It makes one so

(02:16:45):
nervous to sit still in here. And as I got
to this point, my steps had carried me in a
circuitous route to the mantle. With a sudden motion and
exerting all my strength, I seized the big picture and
wrenched it from its fastenings. It fell to the floor
with a crash, and there, in a great hole in

(02:17:07):
the wall which the canvas had covered, crouched a human body.
With a second sweep of the arm, I seized it
as it was about to vanish into the dark passage
behind the opening, and pulled it into the room, where
it tumbled headlong on the floor. There's your ghost, Clark,
I said, brushing the dust off my clothes and watching

(02:17:28):
the figure scramble to its feet. You're a clever chap,
O Gorman, but you're not clever enough. That's all the
trouble with you, now, Clark, If you'll keep your hands
on this worthy house, haunter, I'm going on an exploring expedition.
Clark had the struggling fellow by the throat, and I

(02:17:49):
lighted an extra candle and clambered up into the hole
above the mantle. I'll be back in a minute, I said.
The aperture led to a passageway nearly three feet wide
that ran the entire length of the house, being depressed
to a height of about three feet at places where
the windows intervened. This explained the unusually deep window seats

(02:18:11):
I'd noticed the inner walls of the passage. Those nearest
the rooms were honeycombed with auger holes, whose aspect showed
them to have been bored many years before. Secret passages
through these apertures. It had been a simple matter for O.
Gorman to detect the whereabouts of the candles in the sconces,

(02:18:35):
and by a sudden puff to blow them out. The
threadbare tapestry did not obstruct the air, and one could
see dimly through it. The passage ran clear around the
house between outer and inner walls, connecting by ladders with
a similar secret passage on the floor above. A ladder

(02:18:56):
descended from the ground floor passage to a space between
the drawer room flooring and the cellar ceiling. This space
was quite large enough to admit the body of a man.
As I glanced into it, I could see the drawing
room candlelight filtering through the cracks in the flooring. A
slender bladed knife thrust through the cracks at the right

(02:19:18):
place would readily account for the rocking of the chair.
One light push of the knife point would set it
in motion. Old Yan Bartholf must have had odd theories
on the subject of building. What may have been the
original object of these passages peep holes, et ceter. No
one can tell whether he sought to spy on his

(02:19:40):
family or guests, or whether he feared he might one
day need shelter from justice or from Indians. I don't know,
perhaps to foister the popular belief in his magic powers.
But the secret chambers were there, and O'Gorman had made
clever use of them. But for his fre in using

(02:20:00):
the cutout eye holes in the portrait in order to
watch us from a better point of view. He would
assuredly have gained his point and bought the house of
Clark for a song. O'Gorman confessed to us that while
wandering over the house with a view to buying it,
just before Clark had outbid him, he had blundered on

(02:20:21):
the secret passage behind Bartholf's picture. The idea of scaring
Clark into selling cheap had occurred to him soon after,
on O'Gorman giving us a written confession, Clark greatly, against
my advice, let the fellow go. He was so much
relieved to find the house was not really haunted. He

(02:20:42):
said that he hadn't the heart to drag the whole
story into the public prints by prosecuting the swindler. End
of in a Haunted House.

Speaker 7 (02:20:58):
At her beckon Call by Flora Annie Steele. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot
G recording by a Newgate novelist at her beckon Call

(02:21:20):
by Flora Annie Steele.

Speaker 3 (02:21:26):
What is your name?

Speaker 7 (02:21:27):
I asked Fooy Jane huzzar, she answered, with a brilliant,
dazzling smile. I sat looking at her, wondering if a
more appropriate name could have been found for that figure.
Among the anemones and celandines, the primulas, pansies and pinks,

(02:21:48):
the thousand and one blossoms, which, glowing against their groundwork
of forget me not, formed a jewel mosaic right to
the foot of the snows above us. Flowerful life, truly,
that was hers. She had a great bunch of scarlet
rhododendrons stuck behind her ear, matching the cloth cap perched

(02:22:11):
jauntily on her head, and as she sat hurting her
buffaloes on the upland, she had threaded chaplet on chaplet
of ox eide daisies and hung them about her wherever
they could be hung. The result was distinctly flowerful. Her
face also was distinctly pretty, distinctly clean for a cashmery girl's,

(02:22:33):
but coquette flirt minx was written in every line of
it and accounted for a most unusual neatness and brightness.
She caught my eye and smiled again, broadly innocently. The
huzzaur would like to paint my picture, wouldn't he She

(02:22:54):
went on in a tone of certainty. The sab who
came last year gave me five rupees. I will take
six this year. Food is dear, and those base born
contractors of the Maharajah seize everything. One will not in
ten one chicken in ten. But I was not going
to be beguiled into the old complaints. I could hear

(02:23:16):
any and every day from the hags of the village
up here on the Mergh, within a stone's throw of
the first patch of snow picketing the outskirts of the
great glacier of Gwashbrari. I liked, if possible, to forget
how vile man could be in the little shingle huts

(02:23:37):
clustering below by the river. I will not describe the
place to begin with, it defies description, and next could
I even hint at its surpassing beauty. The globe trotter
would come and defile it. It is sufficient to say
that a merg is an upland meadow or alp, and

(02:23:57):
that this one, with its forget me nots and sparkling glaciers,
was like a turquoise set in diamonds. I had seated
myself on a projecting spur, whence I could sketch a
frowning defile northwards, down which the emerald green river was
dashing madly among huge rocks crowned by pine trees. I

(02:24:20):
will give five rupees also, that is plenty, I remarked, suavely,
and foully. Jan smiled again. It must do, for I
like being painted. Only a few sybs come, very few,
but whenever they see me they want to paint me
and the flowers, and it makes the other girls in

(02:24:41):
the village angry. Then go Loo and chutch you.

Speaker 13 (02:24:46):
Here.

Speaker 7 (02:24:46):
She went off into a perfect cascade of smiles and
began to pull the eyelashes off the daisies deliberately. There
seems a peculiar temptation in girlhood for cruelty towards flowers
all over the water world. And Fuli Jan was pre
eminently girlish. She looked eighteen, but I doubt if she

(02:25:07):
was really more than sixteen. Even so, it was odd
to find her unappropriated. So I inquired if Goloo or
Chuchu was the happy man. My mother is a widow,
she replied, without the least hesitation. It depends which will
pay the most, for we are poor. There are others too,
so there is no hurry. They are at my beck

(02:25:29):
and call. She crooked her forefinger and nodded her head,
as if beckoning to some one, for sheer light hearted,
innocent enjoyment of her own attraction. I never saw the
equal of that face. I should have made my fortune
if I could have painted it there in the blazing sunlight,
framed in flowers, But it was too much for me.

(02:25:53):
Therefore I asked her to move to the right, further
along the promontory, so that I could put her in
the fore of the picture I had already begun there
by that first clump of iris, I said, pointing to
a patch of green sword leaves where the white and
lilac blossoms were beginning to show. She gave a perceptible shudder.

(02:26:15):
What sit on a grave?

Speaker 11 (02:26:17):
Not?

Speaker 7 (02:26:18):
I does not the huzor know that those are graves.
It is true, all our people are buried here. We
plant the iris over them always. If you ask why,
I know not, it is the flower of death. A
sudden determination to paint her the flowerful life against the
flowerful death completely obliterated the knowledge of my own incompetence.

(02:26:43):
But I urged and bribed in vain fooli John would
not stir. She would not even let me pick a
handful of the flowers for her to hold. It was unlucky. Besides,
one never knew what one might find in the thickets
of leaves, bones and horrid things. Had I never heard
that dead people got tired of their graves and tried

(02:27:04):
to get out. Even if they only wanted something in
their graves, they would stretch forth a hand to get it.
That was one reason why people covered them up with flowers,
just to make them more contented. The idea of stooping
to cull the flower and shaking hands with a corpse
was distinctly unpleasant, even in the sunlight. So I gave

(02:27:27):
up the point and began to sketch the girl as
she sat, Rather a difficult task, for she chattered incessantly.
Did I see that thin blue thread of smoke in
the dark pole of pine trees covering the bottom of
the valley. That was Golo's fire. He was drying orris
root for the Maharajah. There on the opposite mergh, where

(02:27:50):
the buffaloes showed dark among the flowers was Chuchu's hut.
Undoubtedly Chuchu was the richer, but Golu could climb like
an ibex. It was he whom the Huzzar was going
to take as a guide to the peak. He could
dance too. The huzor should see him dance the circle
dance round the fire. No one turned so slowly as Golu.

(02:28:16):
He would not frighten a young lamb, except when he
was angry, well jealous if the Huzar thought that a
better word. By the time she had done chattering, there
was not a petal left on the oxide daisies, and
I was divided between pity and envy towards Golu and Chutchu.

(02:28:38):
That evening, as usual, I set my painting to dry
on the easel at the door of the tent. As
I lounged by the camp fire smoking my pipe, a
big young man coming in with a jar of buffalo
milk on his shoulder and a big bunch of red
rhododendron behind his ear, stopped and grinned at my caricature

(02:28:58):
of Foli John. Five minutes after down by the servant's encampment,
I heard a free fight going on and strolled over
to see what was the matter. After the manner of
Kashmiri quarrels, it had ended almost as it began. For
the race love peace that it had so ended was not. However,

(02:29:20):
I saw at a glance the fault of the smaller
of the antagonists, who was being forcibly held back by
my Shikhari Chutchu. That man there wanted to charge Golu,
this man here the same price for milk as he does,
Your Honor, explained the Shikhari elaborately. That was extortionate, even
though Golu, being the Juzur's guide for tomorrow, may be

(02:29:44):
said to be your Honor's servant for the time. I
have settled the matter justly, the Huszar need not give
thought to it. I looked at the two recipients of
Fuli Jan's favor with interest, for that the bunches of
rhododendron they both war were her gift. I did not
doubt they were both fine young men, but Golu was

(02:30:06):
distinctly the better looking of the two, if a trifle sinister.
Despite the recommendation of my Shikari to cast thought aside,
the incident lingered in my memory, and I mentioned it
to Fuli Jung, when, on returning to finish my sketch,
I found her waiting for me among the flowers. Her

(02:30:28):
smile was more brilliant than ever. They will not hurt
each other, she said. Chutchu knows that Golu is more active,
and Golu knows that Chutchu is stronger. It is like
the dogs in our village. I was not thinking of them,
I replied, I was thinking of you, supposing they were

(02:30:51):
to quarrel with you. She laughed. They will not quarrel.
In summer time. There are plenty of flowers for everybody.
I thought of those red rhododendrons and could not repress
a smile at her bare faced wisdom of the serpent.
And in the winter time then I will marry one

(02:31:14):
of them, or some one. I have only to choose.

Speaker 3 (02:31:19):
That is all.

Speaker 7 (02:31:20):
They are at my beck and call. Three years passed
before recurring leave enabled me to pay another visit to
the merg The rhododendrons were once more on the uplands,
and as I turned the last corner of the pine
set path which threaded its way through the defile, I
saw the meadow before me with its mosaic of flowers

(02:31:44):
bright as ever, the memory of Fuli Jan came back
to me as she had sat in the sunshine, nodding
and beckoning fully Jun echoed the old patriarch who came
out to welcome me as I crossed the plank bridge
to the village. Fulli Jan the hood girl Hussor, she

(02:32:06):
is dead. She died from picking flowers, a vain thing.
It was at the turn beyond the mergh Hussor, halfway
between Chutchu's hut and Goloo's drying stage. There is a
big rhododendron tree hanging over the cliff, and she must
have fallen down. It is three years gone, three years

(02:32:29):
then it must have happened almost immediately after I left
the valley. The idea upset me. I knew not why
the mrg without that flowerful life, nodding and beckoning, felt empty,
and I found myself wondering if indeed the girl had
fallen down, or if she had played with flowers too recklessly,

(02:32:50):
and one of her lovers perhaps both. It was an
idea which dimmed the sunshine, and I was glad that
I had arranged to remain for the night, but to
push on to another meadow, some six miles further up
the river. To do so, however, I required a fresh
relay of coolies, and while my shikari was arranging for

(02:33:13):
this in the village, I made my way by a
cross cut to the promontory with its patches of iris.
Deaths are rare in these small communities, and there were
but two or three new graves, all but one too
recent to be poor FULI jan's that, then, must be hers,

(02:33:35):
with its still clearly defined oblong of viris, already a
mass of pale, purple and white. I sat down on
a rock and began unromantically to eat my lunch. Finishing
up with a pull at my flask and thus providentially fortified,
I stooped leaving to pick one or two of the

(02:33:58):
blossoms from the grave, intending to paint them round the
sketch of the girl's head, which I had with me.
Great Heavens, what was that? I turned, positively sick with
horror and doubt. Was it a hand? It was some

(02:34:19):
time before I could force myself to set aside the
sheathing leaves and subtle the point. Something. It was something
which even as I parted the stems fell to pieces,
as the skeleton of a beckoning hand might have done.

(02:34:39):
I did not stay to see more. I let the
flowers close over it, whatever it was, and made my
way back to the village. My baggage, having changed shoulders,
was streaming out over the plank bridge again, and in
the two first bearers, carrying my cook room pots and pans,
I reckoned cognized Golu and Chuchu. They had both grown

(02:35:03):
stouter and wore huge bunches of red rhododendron behind their ears.
I found out on inquiry that they were both married
and had become bosom friends. I have not seen the
turquoise set in diamonds sense, but I often think of
it and wonder what it was. I saw among the iris,

(02:35:28):
and then I seemed to see fuli Chan sitting among
the flowers, nodding her head and saying, they are at
my beck and call. If I were Golu or Chuchu,
I would be buried somewhere else, and of at her

(02:35:49):
beck and call by Flora Annie Steele.

Speaker 4 (02:35:58):
In a Cup of Tea by laugh Katio Herne, read
by Tony Schinman. This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In a Cup
of Tea by laugh Katio Herne. Have you ever attempted

(02:36:24):
to mount some old tower stairway spiring up through darkness,
and in the heart of that darkness found yourself at
the cobwebbed edge of nothing? Or have you followed some
coast path cut along the face of a cliff, only
to discover yourself at a turn on the jagged verge
of a break. The emotional worth of such experience from
a literary point of view is proved by the force

(02:36:46):
of the sensations aroused, and by the vividness with which
they are remembered. Now, there have been, curiously preserved in
old Japanese story books certain fragments of fiction that produce
an almost similar emotional experience. Perhaps the writer was lazy,
Perhaps he had a quarrel with the publisher. Perhaps he
was suddenly called away from his little table and never

(02:37:06):
came back. Perhaps death stopped the writing brush in the
very middle of a sentence. But no mortal man can
ever tell us exactly why these things were left unfinished.
I select a typical example. On the fourth day of
the first month of the third Tenhwa, that is to say,
about two hundred and twenty years ago, the Lord Nakagawa Sedo,

(02:37:29):
while on his way to make a New Year's visit,
halted with his train at a tea house in Hakusan
in the Hongo district of Yedo. While the party were
resting there, one of the lord's attendants, Awakato named Sakinai,
feeling very thirsty, filled for himself a large water cup
with tea. He was raising the cup to his lips
when he suddenly perceived in the transparent yellow infusion the

(02:37:52):
image or reflection of a face that was not his own. Startled,
he looked around, but could see no one near him.
The face in the tea appeared from the coiffure to
be the face of a young samurai. It was strangely
distinct and very handsome, delicate as the face of a girl,
and it seemed the reflection of a living face, for

(02:38:12):
the eyes and the lips were moving. Bewildered by this
mysterious apparition, second I threw away the tea and carefully
examined the cup. It proved to be a very cheap
water cup with no artistic devices of any sort. He
found and filled another cup, and again the face appeared
in the tea. He then ordered fresh tea and refilled
the cup, and once more the strange face appeared, this

(02:38:35):
time with a mocking smile. But Second Eye did not
allow himself to be frightened. Whoever you are, he muttered,
you shall delude me no further. Then he swallowed the tea,
face and all, and went on his way, wondering whether
he had swallowed a ghost. Late in the evening of
the same day, while on watch in the palace of
the Lord Nakagawa, Second Eye was surprised by the soundless

(02:38:58):
coming of a stranger into the apartment. This stranger, a
richly dressed young samurai, seated himself directly in front of
secin I, and saluting the wakato with a slight bow, observed,
I am shikibu Henai met you to day for the
first time. You do not seem to recognize me, He

(02:39:19):
spoke in a very low but penetrating voice, and sekiin
I was astonished to find before him the same sinister,
handsome face of which he had seen and swallowed the
apparition in a cup of tea. It was smiling now
as the phantom had smiled, but the steady gaze of
the eyes above the smiling lips was at once a

(02:39:40):
challenge and an insult. No, I do not recognize you,
returned sekin I, angry but cool, and perhaps you will
now be good enough to inform me how you obtained
admission to this house. In feudal times, the residence of
a lord was strictly guarded at all hours, and no
one could enter unannounced, except through some unpardonable negligence on

(02:40:01):
the part of the armed watch. Ah, you do not
recognize me, exclaimed the visitor, in a tone of irony,
drawing a little nearer as he spoke. No, you do
not recognize me, yet you took upon yourself this morning
to do me a deadly injury. Sekidn I instantly seized
the tanto at his girdle and made a fierce thrust

(02:40:23):
at the throat of the man, but the blade seemed
to touch no substance. Simultaneously and soundlessly, the intruder leaped
sideward to the chamber wall, and through it. The wall
showed no trace of his exit. He had traversed it
only as the light of a candle passes through lantern paper.
When Second I made report of the incident, his recital
astonished and puzzled the retainers. No stranger had been seen

(02:40:45):
either to enter or leave the palace at the hour
of the occurrence, and no one in the service of
the Lord Nakagawa had ever heard of the name shikibu Hainai.
On the following night, Secin I was off duty and
remained at home with his parents. At a rather late hour,
he was informed that some strangers had called at the
house and desired to speak with him for a moment.

(02:41:06):
Taking his sword, he went to the entrance, and there
found three armed men, apparently retainers, waiting in front of
the door step. The three bowed respectfully to Second Eye,
and one of them said, our names are Matsuoka Bungo,
Suchi Bashi Bungo, and Okumura Heiroku. We are retainers of

(02:41:27):
the noble Shikibu Hanai. When our master last night deigned
to pay you a visit, you struck him with a sword.
He was much will hurt and has been obliged to
go to the hot springs, where his wound is now
being treated. But on the sixteenth day of the coming month,
he will return, and he will then fitly repay you

(02:41:48):
for the injury done him, without waiting to hear more. Second,
I leaped out, sword in hand, and slashed right and
left at the strangers. But the three men sprang to
the wall of the adjoining building and flitted up the
wall like shad. And here the old narrative breaks off.
The rest of the story existed only in some brain
that has been dust for a century. I am able

(02:42:10):
to imagine several possible endings, but none of them would
satisfy an occidental imagination. I prefer to let the reader
attempt to decide for himself the probable consequence of swallowing
a soul and of in a cup of tea.

Speaker 12 (02:42:34):
The last scene of All from Tales of War by
Lord Dunsanet. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
please visit LibriVox dot org. Read for LibriVox by Dale Growthman.

(02:42:57):
Last scene of All by Lord Duncane. After John Caleron
was hit, he carried on in kind of twilight of
the mind. Things grew dimmer and calmer, harsh outlines of
events became blurred, memories came to him. There was singing

(02:43:20):
in his ears, like far off bells. Things seemed more
beautiful than they had a while ago. To him, it
was for all the world like an evening after some
quiet sunset, when lawns and shrubs and woods and some
old spire looked lovely in the late light, and one

(02:43:43):
reflects on past days. Thus he carried on, seeing things dimly,
and what was sometimes called the roar of battle, those
aerial voices that snarl and moan and whine and rage
at soldiers had grown dimmer too. It all seemed further

(02:44:05):
away and littler. As far things are, He still heard
the bullets. There was something so violently and intensely sharp
in the snap of passing bullets at short range that
you hear them in deepest thought, and even in dreams.

(02:44:25):
He heard them tearing by Above all things else. The
rest seemed fainter and dimmer, and smaller and further away.
He did not think he was very badly hit, but
nothing seemed to matter as it did a while ago.

(02:44:46):
Yet he carried on, and then he opened his eyes
very wide and found he was back in London again,
in the underground train. He knew it at once by
the look of it. He had made hundreds of journeys
long ago by those trains. He knew by the dark

(02:45:07):
outside that it had not yet left London. But what
was odder than that, if one stopped to think of it,
was that he knew exactly where it was going. It
was the train that went away out into the country
where he used to live as a boy. He was
sure of that, without thinking. When he began to think

(02:45:30):
how he came to be there, he remembered the war
as a very far off thing. He supposed he had
been unconscious a very long time. He was all right now.
Other people were sitting beside him on the same seat.
They all seemed like people he remembered a very long

(02:45:52):
time ago. In the darkness opposite beyond the windows of
the train, he could see their reflects clearly. He looked
at the reflections, but could not quite remember. A woman
was sitting on his left. She was quite young. She
was like someone that he most deeply remembered than all

(02:46:15):
the others were. He gazed at her and tried to
clear his mind. He did not turn and stare at her.
But he quietly watched her reflection before him in the dark.
Every detail of her dress, her young face, her hat,
the little ornaments she wore were minutely clear before him,

(02:46:39):
looking out of the dark. So contented she looked that
you would say she was untouched by war. As he
gazed at the clear, calm face and the dress that
seemed neat, though old, and like all things so far away,
his mind grew clearer and clearer. It seemed to him

(02:47:03):
certain that it was the face of his mother, but
from thirty years ago, out of old memories and one picture,
he felt sure it was his mother as she had
been when he was very small. And yet after thirty years,
how could he know? He puzzled and tried to be

(02:47:27):
quite sure. But how she came to be there looking
like that out of those oldest memories he did not
even think of at all. He seemed to be hugely
tired by many things, and did not want to think.
Yet he was very happy, more happy even than tired

(02:47:48):
men just come home, all new to comfort. He gazed
and gazed at the face in the dark, and then
he felt quite sure he was about to speak. Was
she looking at him. Was she watching him, he wondered.
He glanced up for the first time to his own

(02:48:11):
reflection in the clear row of faces. His own reflection
was not there, and blank dark showed between his two neighbors.
And then he knew he was dead. The end of
last scene of All by Lord Duncanet.

Speaker 14 (02:48:38):
Man Overboard by Winston Spencer Churchill. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Louise J. Bell Man Overboard by Winston Spencer Churchill.

(02:49:06):
It was a little after half past nine when the
man fell overboard. The mail steamer was hurrying through the
Red Sea in the hope of making up the time
which the currents of the Indian Ocean had stolen. The
night was clear, though the moon was hidden behind clouds.
The warm air was laden with moisture. The still surface

(02:49:28):
of the waters was only broken by the movement of
the great ship, from whose quarter the long slanting undulations
struck out like the feathers from an arrow shaft, and
in whose wake the froth and air bubbles churned up
by the propeller trailed in a narrowing line to the
darkness of the horizon. There was a concert on board.

(02:49:52):
All the passengers were glad to break the monotony of
the voyage and gathered around the piano in the companion house.
The decks were deserted. The man had been listening to
the music and joining in the songs, but the room
was hot, and he came out to smoke a cigarette
and enjoy a breath of the wind which the speedy
passage of the liner created. It was the only wind

(02:50:14):
in the Red Sea that night. The accommodation ladder had
not been unshipped since leaving Aden, and the man walked
out onto the platform as on to a balcony. He
leaned his back against the rail and blew a puff
of smoke into the air. Reflectively. The piano struck up
a lively tune, and a voice began to sing the

(02:50:37):
first verse of the Rowdy Dowdy Boys. The measured pulsations
of the screw were a subdued but additional accompaniment. The
man knew the song. It had been the rage at
all the music halls when he had started for India
seven years before. It reminded him of the brilliant and
busy streets he had not seen for so long, but

(02:51:00):
was soon to see again. He was just going to
join in the chorus when the railing, which had been
insecurely fastened, gave way suddenly with a snap, and he
fell backwards into the warm water of the sea amid
a great splash. For a moment, he was physically too
much astonished to think. Then he realized that he must shout.

(02:51:24):
He began to do this even before he rose to
the surface. He achieved a hoarse, inarticulate, half choked scream.
A startled brain suggested the word help, and he bawled
this out lustily and with frantic effort, six or seven
times without stopping. Then he listened, high, Hi, clear the

(02:51:48):
way for the rowdy dowdy boys. The chorus floated back
to him across the smooth water, for the ship had
already passed completely by, and as he heard the music,
a long stab of terror drove through his heart. The
possibility that he would not be picked up dawned for

(02:52:08):
the first time on his consciousness. The chorus started again.
Then I say, boys, who's for a jolly spree? Rum tumdilium.
Who'll have a drink with me? Help, help, help, shrieked
the man, in desperate fear. Fond of a glass now,

(02:52:30):
and then fond of a row or noise, high, high,
clear the way for the rowdy, dowdy boys. The last
words drawled out, faint and fainter. The vessel was steaming fast.
The beginning of the second verse was confused and broken
by the ever growing distance. The dark outline of the

(02:52:52):
great hall was getting blurred. The stern light dwindled. Then
he set out to swim after it with furious energy,
pausing every dozen strokes to shout long, wild shouts. The
disturbed waters of the sea began to settle again to
their rest. The widening undulations became ripples. The aerated confusion

(02:53:17):
of the screw fizzed itself upwards and out. The noise
of motion and the sounds of life and music died away.
The liner was but a single fading light on the
blackness of the waters, and a dark shadow against the
paler sky. At length, full realization came to the man,

(02:53:41):
and he stopped swimming. He was alone, abandoned. With the understanding,
his brain reeled. He began again to swim. Only now
instead of shouting, he prayed mad incoherent prayers, the words
stumbling into one another. Suddenly, a distant light seemed to

(02:54:06):
flicker and brighten. A surge of joy and hope rushed
through his mind. They were going to stop, to turn
the ship and come back. And with the hope came gratitude.
His prayer was answered. Broken words of thanksgiving rose to
his lips. He stopped and stared after the light, his

(02:54:28):
soul in his eyes. As he watched it, it grew
gradually but steadily smaller. Then the man knew that his
fate was certain. Despair succeeded hope, gratitude gave place to curses.
Beating the water with his arms, he raved impotently. Foul

(02:54:50):
oaths burst from him, as broken as his prayers, and
as unheeded. The fit of passion passed. Hurried by increasing fatigue,
he became silent, silent as was the sea, for even
the ripples were subsiding into the glassy smoothness of the surface.

(02:55:13):
He swam on mechanically along the track of the ship,
sobbing quietly to himself in the misery of fear and
the stern light became a tiny speck yellower, but scarcely
bigger than some of the stars which here and there
shone between the clouds. Nearly twenty minutes passed, and the

(02:55:35):
man's fatigue began to change to exhaustion. The overpowering sense
of the inevitable pressed upon him. With the weariness came
a strange comfort. He need not swim all the long
way to Suez. There was another course. He would die,

(02:55:57):
He would resign his existence since he was thus a mane.
He threw up his hands impulsively and sank down. Down.
He went through the warm water. The physical death took
hold of him, and he began to drown. The pain
of that savage grip recalled his anger. He fought with it, furiously,

(02:56:22):
striking out with arms and legs, he sought to get
back to the air. It was a hard struggle, but
he escaped, victorious, and gasping to the surface, despair awaited him. Feebly,
splashing with his hands, he moaned in bitter misery, I can't,

(02:56:43):
I must, Oh, God, let me die. The moon, then,
in her third quarter, pushed out from behind the concealing
clouds and shed a pale, soft glitter upon the sea.
Upright in the water, fifty yards away was a black

(02:57:05):
triangular object. It was a Finn. It approached him slowly.
His last appeal had been heard. End of Man Overboard
recording by Louise J. Bell, Sebastopol, California.

Speaker 2 (02:57:32):
The Man with the Gash by Jack London. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
The Man with the Gash by Jack London. Jacob Kent

(02:57:54):
had suffered from cupidity all the days of his life. This,
in turn, had engendered a chronic distrustfulness, and his mind
and character had become so warped that he was a
very disagreeable man to deal with. He was also a
victim to somnambulic propensities, and very set in his ideas.

(02:58:16):
He had been a weaver of cloth from the cradle
until the fever of Klondike had entered his blood and
torn him away from his loom. His cabin stood midway
between sixty mile Post and the Stuart River, and men
who made it accustomed to travel the trail to Dawson
likened him to a robber baron perched in his fortress,

(02:58:37):
an exacting toll from the caravans that used his ill
kept roads. Since a certain amount of history was required
in the construction of this figure, the less cultured wayfarers
from Stuart River were prone to describe him after a
still more primordial fashion, in which command of strong adjectives
was to be chiefly noted. This cabin was not his,

(02:59:00):
by the way, having been built several years previously by
a couple of miners who had got out a raft
of logs at that point for a grub stake. They
had been most hospitable lads, and after they abandoned it,
travelers who knew the route made it an object to
arrive there at nightfall. It was very handy, saving them
all the time and toil of pitching camp, and it

(02:59:23):
was an unwritten rule that the last man left a
neat pile of firewood for the next comer. Rarely a
night passed, but from half a dozen to a score
of men crowded into its shelter. Jacob Kent noted these things,
exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in. Thenceforth the weary travelers

(02:59:45):
were malted a dollar per head for the privilege of
sleeping on the floor, Jacob Kent weighing the dust and
never failing to steal the downweight. Besides, he so contrived
that his transient guests chopped his wood for him and
carried his water. This was rank piracy, but his victims
were an easy going breed, and while they detested him,

(03:00:07):
they yet permitted him to flourish in his sins. One
afternoon in April, he sat by his door for all
the world like a predatory spider, marveling at the heat
of the returning sun and keeping an eye on the
trail for prospective flies. The Yukon lay at his feet,
a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bends to

(03:00:28):
the north and south, and stretching an honest two miles
from bank to bank. Over its rough breast ran the
sledge trail, a slender, sunken line eighteen inches wide and
two thousand miles in length, with more curses distributed to
the linear foot than any other road in or out

(03:00:48):
of all Christendom. Jacob Kent was feeling particularly good that afternoon.
The record had been broken the previous night, and he
had sold his hospitality to no less than twenty eight visitors. True,
it had been quite uncomfortable, and four had snored beneath
his bunk all night. But then it had added appreciable

(03:01:09):
weight to the sack in which he kept his gold dust.
That sack, with its glittering yellow treasure, was at once
the chief delight and the chief bane of his existence.
Heaven and hell lay within its slender mouth. In the
nature of things, there being no privacy to his one

(03:01:30):
roomed dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft.

Speaker 3 (03:01:34):
It would be.

Speaker 2 (03:01:35):
Very easy for these bearded, desperate looking strangers to make
away with it. Often he dreamed that such was the case,
and awoke in the grip of nightmare. A select number
of these robbers haunted him through his dreams, and he
came to know them quite well, especially the bronzed leader
with the gash on his right cheek. This fellow was

(03:01:58):
the most persistent of the life, and because of him
he had, in his waking moments, constructed several score of
hiding places in and about the cabin. After a concealment,
he would breathe freely again, perhaps for several nights, only
to collar the man with the gash in the very

(03:02:19):
act of unearthing the sack. Then, on awakening in the
midst of the usual struggle, he would at once get
up and transfer the bag to a new and more
ingenious crypt. It was not that he was the direct
victim of these phanfasms, but he believed in omens and
thought transference, and he deemed these dream robbers to be

(03:02:42):
the astro projection of real personages who happened at those
particular moments, no matter where they were in the flesh,
to be harboring designs in the spirit upon his wealth.
So he continued to bleed the unfortunates who crossed his threshold,
and at the same time to add to his trouble

(03:03:02):
with every ounce that went into the sack. As he
sat sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that
brought him to his feet with a jerk. The pleasures
of life had culminated in the continual weighing and re
weighing of his dust. But a shadow had been thrown
upon this pleasant avocation, which he had hitherto failed to

(03:03:23):
brush aside. His gold scales were quite small, In fact,
their maximum was a pound and a half eighteen ounces,
while his hoard mounted up to something like three and
a third times that he had never been able to
weigh it all at one operation, and hence considered himself
to have been shut out from a new and most

(03:03:44):
edifying coign of contemplation. Being denied this half the pleasure
of possession had been lost. Nay, he felt that this
miserable obstacle actually minimized the fact as it did the
strength of possession. It was the solution of this problem
flashing across his mind that had just brought him to

(03:04:04):
his feet. He searched the trail carefully in either direction.
There was nothing in sight, so he went inside. In
a few seconds, he had the table cleared away and
the scales set up. On one side, he placed the
stamped discs to the equivalent of fifteen ounces and balanced
it with dust. On the other, replacing the weights with dust,

(03:04:26):
he then had thirty ounces precisely balanced. These in turn
he placed together on one side, and again balanced with
more dust. By this time the gold was exhausted and
he was sweating liberally. He trembled with ecstasy, ravished beyond measure. Nevertheless,
he dusted the sack thoroughly to the last least grain,

(03:04:48):
till the balance was overcome, and one side of the
scales sank to the table. Equilibrium, however, was restored by
the addition of a pennyweight and five grains to the
opposite its side. He stood, head thrown back, transfixed. The
sack was empty, but the potentiality of the scales had

(03:05:08):
become immeasurable. Upon them, he could weigh any amount, from
the tiniest grain to pounds upon pounds. Mammon laid hot
fingers on his heart. The sun swung on its westering
way till it flashed through the open doorway full upon
the yellow burdened scales. The precious heaps, like the golden

(03:05:30):
breasts of a bronze Cleopatra, flung back the light in
a mellow glow. Time and space were not god blimey.
But you have the making of several quid there, haven't you.
Jacob Kent wheeled about at the same time, reaching for
his double barreled shotgun, which stood handy, But when his
eyes lit on the intruder's face, he staggered back dizzily.

(03:05:54):
It was the face of the man with the gash.
The man looked at him curiously, Oh that's all right,
he said, waving his hand deprecatingly. You needn't think as
I'll arm you or your blasted dust. You're a rumn,
you are, he added reflectively, as he watched the sweat
pouring from off Kent's face and the quavering of his knees.

(03:06:16):
Why don't you pipe up and say something, he went on,
as the other struggled for breath.

Speaker 3 (03:06:21):
What's gone wrong? O you guff? Anythink the matter?

Speaker 6 (03:06:25):
What?

Speaker 2 (03:06:26):
Where'd you get it? Kent at last managed to articulate,
raising a shaking forefinger to the ghastly scar which seemed
the other's cheek shipmate. Stove me down with a marlin
spike from the main royal And now as you have
your figure red and trim, what I wanta know is
what's it to you?

Speaker 3 (03:06:44):
That's what I want to know. What's it's to you? God? Blimey,
do it hurt you?

Speaker 8 (03:06:48):
Ain't?

Speaker 2 (03:06:48):
It's smug enough for the likes of you, That's what
I wanna know. No, No, Kent answered, sinking upon a
stool with a sickly grin. I was just wondering, did
you ever see the like? The other went on, truculently. No,
ain't did a butte? Yes, Kent nodded his head approvingly,

(03:07:10):
intent on humoring this strange visitor, but wholly unprepared for
the outburst which was to follow his effort to be agreeable.
You blasted bloom in burg, who eaten son of a sea?

Speaker 3 (03:07:22):
Swab?

Speaker 2 (03:07:23):
What do you mean a say in the most unsightly thing,
God Almighty ever put on.

Speaker 3 (03:07:27):
The face of mine as a butte? What do you mean?

Speaker 10 (03:07:31):
You?

Speaker 2 (03:07:31):
And thereat this fiery sun of a sea broke off
into a string of oriental profanity, mingling gods and devils,
lineages and men, metaphors and monsters, with so savage a
virility that Jacob Kent was paralyzed. He shrank back, his
arms lifted as though to ward off physical violence. So

(03:07:53):
utterly unnerved was he that the other paused in the
mid swing of a gorgeous peroration and bust into thunderous laughter.
The Sun's knocked the bottom out of the trail, said
the man with the gash between departing paroxysms of mirth.
And I only ope as you'll appreciate the opportunity of
consortin with a man of my mug get steam up

(03:08:15):
in that fire box, O yurn, go and unrig the
dogs and grub em and don't be shy O the wood,
my lad. There's plenty more where that come from. And
it's you've got the time to sling an axe and
tow up a bucket o water while you're about.

Speaker 3 (03:08:31):
It, lively, or I'll run yo down, So help me.

Speaker 2 (03:08:35):
Such a thing was unheard of. Jacob Kent was making
the fire, chopping wood, packing water, doing menial tasks for
a guest. When Jim Cardigie left Dawson. It was with
his head filled with the iniquities of this roadside shylock,
and all along the trail his numerous victims had added
to the sum of his crimes. Now, Jim Cardigie, with

(03:08:58):
the sailor's love for a sailor's joke, had determined when
he pulled into the cabin to bring its inmate down
a peg or so that he had succeeded beyond expectation.
He could not help but remark though he was in
the dark as to the part the gash on his
cheek had played in it. But while he could not understand,
he saw the terror it created and resolved to exploit

(03:09:21):
it as remorselessly, as would any modern trader. A choice
bit of merchandise strike me blind. But you're a usler,
he said admiringly, his head cocked to one side as
his host bustled about. You never ought to have gone klondiking.
It's the keeper of a pub you was laid out for.
And it's often as I have heard the lad's up

(03:09:42):
and down the river speak O you.

Speaker 3 (03:09:45):
But I adn't no idea you was so jolly nice.

Speaker 2 (03:09:49):
Jacob kn't experience the tremendous yearning to try his shotgun
on him, but the fascination of the gash was too potent.
This was the real man with the gash, the man
who had so often robbed him in the spirit. This
then was the embodied entity of the being whose astral
form had been projected into his dreams, the man who

(03:10:11):
had so frequently harbored designs against his hoard. Hence there
could be no other conclusion. This man with the gash
had now come into the flesh to dispossess him, and
that gash he could no more keep his eyes from
it than stop the beating of his heart, try as
he would. They wandered back to that one point as

(03:10:33):
inevitably as the needle to the pole. Do it ert you,
Jim Cardegie thundered, suddenly looking up from the spreading of
his blankets and encountering the rapt gaze of the other.
It strikes me as ow it'd be the proper thing
for you to draw your jib, doust the glim and
turn in seein' as I it were. It's you just

(03:10:53):
lay to that, you swab or so elp me. I'll
take a pull on your peak purchases. Kent was so
nervous that it took three puffs to blow out the
slush lamp, and he crawled into his blankets without even
removing his moccasins. The sailor was soon snoring lustily from
his hard bed on the floor, but Kent lay staring

(03:11:14):
up into the blackness, one hand on the shotgun, resolved
not to close his eyes. The whole night. He had
not had an opportunity to secrete his five pounds of gold,
and it lay in the ammunition box at the head
of his bunk, But try as he would, he at
last dozed off, with the weight of his dust heavy

(03:11:35):
on his soul. Had he not inadvertently fallen asleep. With
his mind in such condition, the somnambulic demon would not
have been invoked, nor would Jim Cardiggi have gone mining
next day with a dishpan. The fire fought a losing
battle and at last died away, while the frost penetrated
the mossy chinks between the logs and chilled the inner atmosphere.

(03:11:57):
The dogs outside ceased their house and curled up in
the snow, dreamed of salmon stalked heavens where dog drivers
and kindred taskmasters were not within a sailor lay like
a log while his host tossed restlessly about the victim
of strange fantasies. As midnight drew near, he suddenly threw

(03:12:19):
off the blankets and got up. It was remarkable that
he could do what he then did without ever striking
a light. Perhaps it was because of the darkness that
he kept his eyes shut, and perhaps it was for
fear he would see the terrible gash on the cheek
of his visitor. But be this as it may, it
is a fact that, unseen, he opened his ammunition box

(03:12:40):
put a heavy charge into the muzzle of the shotgun
without spilling a particle rammed it down with double wads,
and then put everything away and got back into bed.
Just as daylight laid its steel gray fingers on the
parchment window, Jacob Kent awoke. Turning on his elbow, he
raised the lid and peel teared into the ammunition box.

(03:13:02):
Whatever he saw, or whatever he did not see, exercised
a very peculiar effect upon him. Considering his neurotic temperament,
he glanced at the sleeping man on the floor, let
the lid down gently, and rolled over on his back.
It was an unwonted calm that rested on his face,
not a muscle quivered. There was not the least sign

(03:13:24):
of excitement or perturbation. He lay there a long while thinking,
and when he got up and began to move about,
it was in a cool, collected manner, without noise and
without hurry. It happened that a heavy wooden peg had
been driven into the ridge pole just above Jim Cardegie's head.
Jacob Kent, working softly, ran a piece of half inch

(03:13:47):
manila over it, bringing both ends to the ground. One
end he tied about his waist, and in the other
he rove a running noose. Then he cocked his shotgun
and laid it within reach by the side of numerous
moose hide thongs. By an effort of will, he bore
the sight of the scar slipped the noose over the

(03:14:08):
sleeper's head, and drew it taut by throwing back on
his weight, at the same time seizing the gun and
bringing it to bear. Jim Cardigie awoke, choking, bewildered, staring
down the twin wells of steel.

Speaker 3 (03:14:23):
Where is it?

Speaker 2 (03:14:24):
Kent asked, at the same time, slacking on the rope
you've blasted ah, Kent merely threw back his weight, shutting
off the other's wind.

Speaker 3 (03:14:34):
Blumin' bur Or where is it?

Speaker 2 (03:14:38):
Kent repeated what Cardigie asked, as soon as he had
caught his breath.

Speaker 3 (03:14:43):
The gold dust? What gold dust?

Speaker 2 (03:14:47):
The perplexed sailor demanded, You know well enough, mine ain't
seen nothing of it.

Speaker 3 (03:14:54):
What do you take me for a safe deposit? What
have I got to do with it? Anyhow?

Speaker 2 (03:15:00):
Maybe you know and maybe you don't, But anyway, I'm
going to stop your breath till you do know, And
if you lift a hand, I'll blow your head off fast.
Even Cardigie roared as the rope tightened, Kent eased away
a moment, and the sailor, wriggling his neck as though
from the pressure, managed to loosen the noose a bit

(03:15:22):
and work it up so the point of contact was
just under the chin.

Speaker 3 (03:15:25):
Well.

Speaker 2 (03:15:26):
Kent questioned, expecting the disclosure, but Cardigie grinned, go ahead
with your angin you bloom an old potwarriba. Then, as
the sailor had anticipated, the tragedy became a farce. Cardigie,
being the heavier of the two, Kent, throwing his body
backward and down, could not lift him clear of the
ground strain and strive to the Uttermost the sailor's feet

(03:15:50):
still stuck to the floor and sustained a part of
his weight. The remaining portion was supported by the point
of contact just under his chin. Failing to swing him clear,
Kent't clung on, resolved to slowly throttle him or force
him to tell what he had done with the horde,
but the man with the gash would not throttle. Five, ten,

(03:16:12):
fifteen minutes passed, and at the end of that time,
in despair, kent't let his prisoner down. Well, he remarked,
wiping away the sweat if you won't hang, you'll shoot
some men wasn't born to be hanged anyway. And it's
a pretty mess as you'll make all this irt cabin

(03:16:33):
floor Cardegie was fighting for time. Now look here, I'll
tell you what we do. We'll lay our heads alongside
and reason together.

Speaker 3 (03:16:42):
You've lost some dust. You say as how I know,
and I says how I don't.

Speaker 2 (03:16:48):
Let's get a observation and shape a course vast heaven.
Kent dashed in, maliciously imitating the other's enunciation. I'm going
to shape all the courses of this shebang, and you observe,
And if you do anything more, I'll bore you as
sure as Moses, for the sake of my mother, whom
God have mercy upon, if she loves you.

Speaker 3 (03:17:11):
Ah, would you?

Speaker 2 (03:17:13):
He frustrated a hostile move on the part of the
other by pressing the cold muzzle against his forehead. Lay quiet, now,
if you lift as much as a hair, you'll get it.
It was rather an awkward task, with the trigger of
the gun always within pulling distance of the finger, but
Kent was a weaver, and in a few minutes had
the sailor tied hand and foot. Then he dragged him

(03:17:35):
without and laid him by the side of the cabin,
where he could overlook the river and watch the sun
climb to the meridian. Now I'll give you till noon,
and then what you'll be hitting the brimstone trail. But
if you speak up, I'll keep you till the next
bunch of mounted police come by. Well, God BlimE me

(03:17:56):
if this ain't a go here, I be innocent as
a lamb, and ere you be Lostole o your top
amper and out o your reckonin run me foul and
going to rake me into hell fire?

Speaker 3 (03:18:10):
You bloomin, old pirate youth.

Speaker 2 (03:18:13):
Jim Cardegie loosed the strings of his profanity and fairly
outdid himself. Jacob Kent brought out a stool that he
might enjoy it in comfort. Having exhausted all the possible
combinations of his vocabulary, the sailor quieted down to hard thinking,
his eyes constantly gaging the progress of the sun, which
tore up the eastern slope of the heavens with unseemly haste.

(03:18:36):
His dogs, surprised that they had not long since been
put to harness, crowded around him. His helplessness appealed to
the brutes. They felt that something was wrong, though they
knew not what, and they crowded about, howling their mournful sympathy.

Speaker 3 (03:18:50):
Chuck mush on y swashes.

Speaker 2 (03:18:53):
He cried, attempting in a vermicular way to kick at them,
and discovering himself to be tottering on the edge of
a declivity. As soon as the animals had scattered, he
devoted himself to the significance of that declivity, which he
felt to be there, but could not see. Nor was
he long in arriving at a correct conclusion. In the
nature of things, He figured, man is lazy. He does

(03:19:15):
no more than he has to. When he builds a cabin,
he must put dirt on the roof. From these premises,
it was logical that he should carry that dirt no
further than was absolutely necessary. Therefore, he lay upon the
edge of the hole from which the dirt had been
taken to roof Jacob Kent's cabin. This knowledge, properly utilized,

(03:19:37):
might prolong things, he thought, and he then turned his
attention to the moose hide thongs which bound him. His
hands were tied behind him, and pressing against the snow.
They were wet with the contact. This moistening of the
raw hide, he knew, would tend to make it stretch,
and without apparent effort, he endeavored to stretch it more
and more. He watched the trail hungrily, and when in

(03:20:00):
the direction of sixty mile a dark speck appeared for
a moment against the white background of an ice jam,
he cast an anxious eye at the sun. It had
climbed nearly to the zenith. Now and again he caught
the black speck clearing the hills of ice and sinking
into the intervening hollows. But he dared not permit himself
more than the most cursory glances, for fear of rousing

(03:20:23):
his enemy's suspicion. Once, when Jacob Kent rose to his
feet and searched the trail with care, Cardegie was frightened.
But the dog's sledge had struck a piece of trail
running parallel with a jam, and remained out of sight
till the danger was past. I'll see you ung for this,
Cardigie threatened, attempting to draw the other's attention. And you're

(03:20:45):
roten l jess you see if you don't, I say,
he cried, after another pause, dye believe in ghosts. Kent's
sudden start made him sure of his ground, and he
went on, now a ghost as the right eye ont
a man? What don't do what he says? And you
can't shuffle me off till eight bells? What I mean

(03:21:07):
is twelve o'clock? Can you because if you do, it'll
happen as ow I'll aunt you the ear a minute
a second too quick, and I'll aunt you. So help
me I will Jacob Kent looked dubious, but declined to talk.
How's your chronometer? What's your longitude? How do you know

(03:21:30):
as your time's correct? Cardigie persisted, vainly, hoping to beat
his executioner out of a few minutes. Is it Barracks
time you have or is it the company time? Because
if you do it before the stroke of a bell,
I'll not rest. I give you fair warning. I'll come back.
And if you haven't the time, how will you know

(03:21:54):
that's what I want?

Speaker 3 (03:21:55):
How will you tell? I'll send you off? All right?

Speaker 2 (03:21:59):
Kn't repat?

Speaker 3 (03:22:00):
Got a sundial here? No good?

Speaker 2 (03:22:03):
Thirty two degrees variation of the needle steaks are all set?
How did you get 'em? Compass no line them up
with the north star. Sure, sure, Cardigie groaned, then stole
a glance at the trail. The sled was just clearing
a rise barely a mile away, and the dogs were

(03:22:24):
in full lope, running lightly. How close is the shadows
to the line? Kent walked to the primitive timepiece and
studied it. Three inches, he announced, after a careful survey,
Say just sang out eight bells afore you pull the gun,
will you? Kent agreed, and they lapsed into silence. The

(03:22:46):
thongs about Cardegie's wrists were slowly stretching, and he had
begun to work them over his hands. Say how close
is the shadows? One inch? The sailor riggered slightly to
assure himself that he would topple over at the right moment,
and slipped the first turn over his hands. How close

(03:23:06):
half an inch? Just then Kent heard the jarring churn
of the runners and turned his eyes to the trail.
The driver was lying flat on the sled, and the
dogs swinging down the straight stretch.

Speaker 3 (03:23:18):
To the cabin.

Speaker 2 (03:23:19):
Kent whirled back, bringing his rifle to shoulder. It ain't
eight bells yet, Cardegie expostulated, I'll aunt you sure. Jacob
Kent faltered. He was standing by the sun dial, perhaps
ten paces from his victim. The man on the sled
must have seen that something unusual was taking place, for
he had risen to his knees, his whip singing viciously.

(03:23:41):
Among the dogs, the shadows swept into line. Kent looked
along the sights. Make ready, he commanded solemnly eight, But
just a fraction of a second too soon, Cardigie rolled
backward into the hole. Kent held his fire and ran
to the edge.

Speaker 12 (03:23:59):
Bang.

Speaker 2 (03:24:00):
The gun exploded full in the sailor's face as he
rose to his feet, but no smoke came from the muzzle. Instead,
a sheet of flame burst from the side of the
barrel near its butt, and Jacob Kent went down. The
dogs dashed up the bank, dragging the sled over his body,
and the driver sprang off as Jim Cardegie freed his

(03:24:22):
hands and drew himself from the hole. Jim the newcomer
recognized him. What's the matter.

Speaker 3 (03:24:30):
What's the matter? Oh, nothing at all.

Speaker 2 (03:24:33):
It just happens as I do little things like this
for my ealth. What's the matter, you bloom an igy?
It what's the matter, eh, Cast me loose or I'll
show you what Hurry up, or I'll only stone the
decks with you. Huh, he added, as the other went
to work with his sheath knife.

Speaker 3 (03:24:51):
What's the matter? I wanna know? Just tell me that, willya?
What's the matter?

Speaker 12 (03:24:56):
Hey?

Speaker 2 (03:24:57):
Kent was quite dead when they rolled him over the gun.
An old fashioned heavy weighted muzzle loader lay near him.
Steel and wood had parted company. Near the butt of
the right hand barrel, with lips pressed outward, gaped a
fissure several inches in length. The sailor picked it up curiously.

(03:25:18):
A glittering stream of yellow dust ran through the crack.
The facts of the case dawned upon Jim Cardegie, strike
me standin', he roared, Ears you go, ears is bloomin' dust,
God blimey, and you too, Charlie, if you don't run
and get the dishpanden. End of the Man with the Gash.

Speaker 12 (03:25:48):
Memory by H. P. Lovecraft. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Four more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Red
for LibriVox by Dale Growthman in the valley of Niss,

(03:26:12):
the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for
its light with feeble horns, through the lethal foliage of
the great Upas tree, and within the depths of the valley,
where the light reaches, not move, forms not meet to

(03:26:32):
be held. Rank is the herbage on each slope, where
evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of
the ruined palaces, twining tightly about the broken columns and
strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten hands.

(03:26:57):
And in the trees that grow gigantic in crumbling courtyards,
leap little apes, while in and out of deep treasure
faults writhe poisonous serpents and scaly things without a name.
Vast are the stones which sleep beneath coverlets of dank,
moss and mighty were the walls from which they fell.

(03:27:23):
For all time did their builders erect them, And in
sooth they have yet served nobly. For beneath them the
gray toad makes his habitation. At the very bottom of
the valley lies the river, than whose waters are slimy
and filled with weeds from hidden springs it rises, and

(03:27:48):
to subterranean grottoes it flows, so that the Damen of
the valley knows not why its waters are red, nor
whither they are bound. The genie that haunts the moonbeams
spake to the Daemon of the valley, saying, I am old,

(03:28:09):
and forget much. Tell me the deeds and aspect and
name of them who built these things of stone. And
the Damon replied, I am memory, and am wise in
lore of the past. But I too am old. These

(03:28:32):
beings were like the waters of the river, than not
to be understood. Their deeds I recalled, not for they were,
but of the moment. Their aspect I recalled dimly, for
it was like that of the little apes in the trees.
Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that

(03:28:56):
of the river. These beings of yesterday were called man.
So the genie flew back to the thin horned moon,
and the Damon looked intently at the little apes in
the tree that grew in the crumbling courtyard. And of

(03:29:18):
memory by H. P.

Speaker 13 (03:29:21):
Lovecraft, A moth genus unknown by H. G. Wells. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by David Brent. A moth Genus

(03:29:48):
Unknown by H. G.

Speaker 3 (03:29:49):
Wells.

Speaker 13 (03:29:50):
Probably you have heard of Happily, not w T Happily
the Sun, but the celebrated Happily, the happily of Periplnetta
Happilier Happily the Entomologist. If so, you know at least
of the great feud between Happily and Professor Porkins, though
certain of its consequences may be new to you. For

(03:30:12):
those of you who have not a word of two
of explanation is necessary, which the idle reader may go
over with a glancing eye, if his indolence so incline him.
It is amazing how very widely diffused is the ignorance
of such really important matters as this Happily Porkin's feud.
Those epoch making controversies again that have convulse the Geological

(03:30:35):
Society are I verily believe, almost entirely unknown outside the
fellowship of that body. I have heard men of fair
general Education even refer to the great scenes at these
meetings as vestry meeting squabbles. Yet the great hate of
the English and Scottish geologists has lasted now half a

(03:30:56):
century and has left deep and abundant marks upon the
body of the science. And this Happily Porkin's business, though
perhaps a more personal affair, stirred passions as profound, if
not profounder. Your common man has no conception of the
zeal that animates a scientific investigator. The fury of contradiction

(03:31:17):
you can arouse in him. It is the odium theologicum
in a new form. There are men, for instance, who
would gladly burn Professor Ray Lancaster at Smithfield for his
treatment of the molluscer in Encyclopedia, that fantastic extension of
the cephalopods to cover terepods. But I wonder from Happily

(03:31:38):
and Porkin's It began years and years ago with a
revision of the micro lepidopter, whatever these might be, by Porkins,
in which he extinguished a new species created by Happily Haply,
who was always Quarrelsome replied by a stinging impeachment of
the entire classification of porkins. Footnote remarks on a recent

(03:32:01):
revision of microlepidopter Quarterly Journal Entomological Society, eighteen sixty three,
end footnote. Porkins, in his rejoinder footnote rejoinder to certain
remarks et cetera, ibid. Eighteen sixty four end footnote, suggested
that Happily's microscope was as defective as his powers of observation,

(03:32:24):
and called him an irresponsible meddler. Happily was not a
professor at that time. Happily, in his retort footnote further
remarks et cetera, ibberd end footnote, spoke of blundering collectors
and described, as if inadvertently, Porkins's revision, as a miracle
of ineptitude. It was war to the knife. However, it

(03:32:48):
would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these two
great men quarreled, and how the split between them widened,
until from the microlepidopter they were at war upon every
open question in entomology. There were memorable occasions. At times
the Royal Entomological Society meetings resembled nothing so much as

(03:33:09):
the Chamber of Deputies. On the whole. I fancy Porkin's
was nearer the truth than Happily, But Happily was skillful
with his rhetoric, had a turn of ridicule rare in
a scientific man was endowed with vast energy and had
a fine sense of injury in the matter of the
extinguished species, while Porkins was a man of dull presence,

(03:33:31):
prosy of speech, in shape not unlike a water barrel over,
conscientious with testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments. So
the young men gathered around happily and applauded him. It
was a long struggle, vicious from the beginning, and growing
at last to pitiless antagonism. The successive turns of fortune,

(03:33:53):
now on advantage to one side, and now to another,
now happily tormented by some success of Porkskins, and now
Porkins outshone by happily belong rather to the history of
entomology than to the story. But in eighteen ninety one Porkins,
whose health had been bad for some time, published some
work upon the mesoblast of the Death's head Moth. What

(03:34:18):
the mesoblast of the Death's head Moth may be does
not matter a rap in the story. But the work
was far below his usual standard and gave Happily an
opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked
night and day. To make the most of his advantage.
In an elaborate critique, he rent Porkins to tatters. One

(03:34:40):
can fancy the man's disordered black hair and his queer
dark eyes flashing as he went for his antagonist. And
Porkins made a reply, halting, ineffectual, with painful gasps of silence,
and yet malignant. There was no mistaking his will to
wound happily, nor his incapacity to do so. But few

(03:35:01):
of those who heard him, I was absent from that meeting,
realized how ill the man was. Happily had got his
opponent down and meant to finish him. He followed with
simply brutal attack upon Porkins's in the form of a
paper upon the development of moths in general, a paper
showing evidence of the most extraordinary amount of mental labor,

(03:35:24):
and yet couch in a violently controversial tone. Violent as
it was an editorial note. Witnesses that it was modified.
It must have covered Porkin's with shame and confusion of face.
It left no loophole. It was murderous in argument and
utterly contemptuous in tone. An awful thing for the declining

(03:35:45):
years of a man's career. The world of entomologists waited
breathlessly for the rejoinder from Porkins. He would try one,
for Porkins had always been game. But when it came
it surprised them, for the rejoinder of Porkins was to
catch influenza, to proceed to pneumonia, and to die. It

(03:36:05):
was perhaps as effectual a reply as he could make
under the circumstances, and largely turned the current of feeling
against Happily. The very people who had most gleefully cheered
on the gladiators became serious at the consequence. There could
be no reasonable doubt the fret of the defeat had
contributed to the death of Porkins. There was a limit

(03:36:27):
even to scientific controversy, said serious people. Another crushing attack
was already in the press, and appeared on the day
before the funeral. I don't think Happily exerted himself to
stop it. People remembered how Happily had hounded down his rival,
and forgot that his rival's defects. Scathing satire reads ill

(03:36:48):
over a fresh mold. The thing provoked comments in the
daily papers. This it was that made me think that
you had probably heard of Happily and his controversy. But
as I have already, he remarked, scientific workers live very
much in a world of their own. Half the people,
dare I say, who go along Piccadilly to the Academy

(03:37:08):
every year, could not tell you where the learned societies abide.
Many even think that research is a kind of happy
family cage, in which all kinds of men lie down
together in peace. In his private thoughts, Happily could not
forgive Porkins for dying. In the first place, it was
a mean dodge to escape the absolute pulverization Happily had

(03:37:30):
in mind for him, and in the second it left
Happily's mind with a queer gap in it. For twenty
years he had worked hard, sometimes far into the night,
and seven days a week with microscope scalpel, collecting net
and pen, and almost entirely with reference to porkins. The
European reputation he had won had come as an incident

(03:37:52):
in that great antipathy he had gradually worked up to
a climax. In this last controversy, it had killed Porkins,
but it had also thrown Happily out of gear, so
to speak, And his doctor advised him to give up
work for a time and rest. So Happily went down
into a quiet village in Kent and thought day and
nights of porkins and good things. It was now impossible

(03:38:14):
to say about him. At last, Happily began to realize
in what direction the preoccupation tended. He determined to make
a fight for it, and started by trying to read novels.
But he could not get his mind of porkins white
in the face and making his last speech every sentence
a beautiful opening. For Happily, he turned to fiction and

(03:38:36):
found it had no grip on him. He read The
Island Knight's Entertainments until his sense of causation was shocked
beyond endurance by the bottle imp Then he went to
Kipling and found he proved nothing besides being irrelevant and vulgar.
These scientific people have their limitations. Then, unhappily he tried

(03:38:57):
Beisants in a House, and the opening chapter set his
mind upon learned societies and porkins at once. So Happily
turned to chess and found it a little more soothing.
He soon mastered the Moves and the Chief Gambits and
the Commoner closing positions and began to beat the vicar.
But then the cylindrical contours of the opposite king began

(03:39:19):
to resemble porkins, standing up and gasping ineffectually against checkmates,
and Happily decided to give up chess. Perhaps the study
of some new branch of science would, after all be
better diversion. The best rest is change of occupation. Happily
determined to plunge into diatoms and had one of his

(03:39:41):
smaller microscopes and Halibert's monograph sent down from London. He
thought that perhaps if he could get up a vigorous
quarrel with Halibit, he might be able to begin life
afresh and forget porkins. And very soon he was hard
at work in his habitual strenuous fashion at these very
micro roscopic denizens of the wayside pool. It was on

(03:40:03):
the third day of the diatoms that Happily became aware
of a novel addition to the local fauna. He was
working late at the microscope, and the only light in
the room was a brilliant little lamp with a special
form of green lamp shade. Like all experienced microscopists, he
kept both eyes open it is the only way to

(03:40:23):
avoid excess of fatigue. One eye was over the instrument,
and bright and distinct. Before that was the circular field
of the microscope, a cross which a brown diatom was
slowly moving. But the other eye happily saw as it
were without seeing footnote. The reader unaccustomed to microscopes may

(03:40:43):
easily understand this by rolling a newspaper in the form
of a tube and looking through it at a book,
keeping the other eye open end footnote. He was only
dimly conscious of the brass side of the instrument, the
illuminated part of the tablecloth, a sheet of notepaper, the
foot of the lamp, and the darkened room beyond. Suddenly

(03:41:05):
his attention drifted from one eye to the other. The
tablecloth was of the material called tapestry by shopmen, and
rather brightly colored. The pattern was in gold, with a
small amount of crimson and pale blue upon a grayish background.
At one point the pattern seemed displaced, and there was
a vibrating movement of colors. At this point, happily suddenly

(03:41:29):
moved his head back and looked with both eyes. His
mouth fell open with astonishment. It was a large moth
or butterfly, its wings spread in butterfly fashion. It was
strange it should be in the room at all, for
the windows were closed. Strange that it should not have
attracted his attention when it fluttered into its present position,

(03:41:49):
Strange that it should match the tablecloth. Stranger far to him, Happily,
the great entomologist, it was altogether unknown. There was no delusion.
It was crawling slowly towards the foot of the lamp. Genius,
unknown by heavens and in England, said happily, staring. Then

(03:42:10):
suddenly he thought of Porkin's. Nothing would have maddened Porkins more,
and Porkin's was dead. Something about the head and body
of the insect became singularly suggestive of Porkins's, just as
the chest king had confound. Porkins said, happily, but I
must catch this, And, looking around him for some means

(03:42:30):
of capturing the moth, he rose slowly out of his chair.
Suddenly the insect rose struck the edge of the lamp shade.
Happily heard the ping, and vanished into the shadow. In
a moment, Happily had whipped off the shade, so that
the whole room was illuminated. The thing had disappeared, but
soon his practiced eye detected it upon the wallpaper near

(03:42:52):
the door. He went towards it, poising the lamp shade
for capture. Before he was within striking distance, however, it
had risen and was fluttering round the room. After the
fashion of its kind, it flew with sudden starts and turns,
seeming to vanish here and reappear there. Once happily struck
and missed, Then again the third time he hit his microscope.

(03:43:17):
The instrument swayed, struck and overturned the lamp and fell
noisily on the floor. The lamp turned over on the
table and very luckily went out. Happily was left in
the dark. With a start, he felt the strange moth
blunder into his face. It was maddening. He had no lights.
If he opened the door of the room, the thing

(03:43:38):
would get away. In the darkness. He saw Porkins quite
distinctly laughing at him. Porkins had ever an oily laugh.
He swore furiously and stamped his foot on the floor.
There was a timid rapping at the door. Then it opened,
perhaps a foot and very slowly. The alarmed face of
the landlady appeared behind a pink candle flame. She wore

(03:44:02):
a night cap over her gray hair, and had some
purple garment over her shoulders. What was that fearful smash?
She said? Has anything? The strange moth appeared fluttering about
the chink of the door. Shut the door, said Happily,
and suddenly rushed at her. The door slammed hastily. Happily

(03:44:23):
was left alone in the dark. Then in the paws
he heard the landlady scuttle upstairs, lock her door, and
drag something heavy across the room and put against it.
It became evident to Happily that his conduct and appearance
had been strange and alarming. Confound the moths and porkins. However,

(03:44:43):
it was a pity to lose the moth. Now he
felt his way into the hall and found the matches.
After sending his hat down upon the floor with a
noise like a drum. With the lighted candle, he returned
to the sitting room. No moth was to be seen.
He at once for a moment it seemed that the
thing was fluttering around his head. Happily very suddenly decided

(03:45:05):
to give up. The moth and go to bed, but
he was excited all night long. His sleep was broken
by dreams of the moth, porkins, and the landlady. Twice
in the night he turned out and soused his head
in cold water. One thing was very clear to him.
The landlady could not possibly understand about the strange moth,

(03:45:26):
especially as he had failed to catch it. No one
but an entomologist would understand quite how he felt. She
was probably frightened at his behavior, and yet he failed
to see how he could explain it. He decided to
say nothing further about the events of last night. After breakfast,
he saw her in the garden and decided to go
out and talk to her to reassure her. He talked

(03:45:49):
to her about beans and potatoes, bees, caterpillars, and the
price of fruit. She replied in her usual manner, but
she looked at him a little suspiciously and kept warming
as he walked, so that there was always a bed
of flowers, or a row of beans, or something of
that sort between them. After a while, he began to
feel singularly irritated at this, and to conceal his vexation,

(03:46:13):
he went indoors and presently went out for a walk.
The moss or butterfly, trailing an odd flavor of porkins
with it, kept coming into that walk, though he did
his best to keep his mind off it. Once he
saw it quite distinctly with its wings flattened out upon
the old stone wall that runs along the west edge

(03:46:34):
of the park. But going up to it, he found
it was only two lumps of gray and yellow lichen. This, said, Happily,
is the reverse of mimicry. Instead of a butterfly looking
like a stone, here is a stone looking like a butterfly.
Once something hovered and fluttered around his head, but by
an effort of will, he drove that impression out of

(03:46:55):
his mind again. In the afternoon, Happily called upon the
Vicar and argued with him upon theological questions. They sat
in the little arbor covered with brier, and smoked as
they wrangled. Look at that moth, said Happily, suddenly, pointing
to the edge of the wooden table where, said the vicar.

(03:47:16):
You don't see a moth on the edge of the
table there, said Happily, certainly, not, said the vicar. Hapily
was thunderstruck. He gasped. The vicar was staring at him clearly,
the man saw nothing. The eye of the faith is
no better than the eye of science, said Happily, awkwardly,
I don't see your point, said the vicar, thinking it

(03:47:38):
was part of the argument. That night, Happily found the
moth crawling over his counterplane. He sat on the edge
of the bed in his shirt sleeves and reasoned with himself.
Was it pure hallucination? He knew he was slipping, and
he battled for his sanity with the same silent energy
he had formerly displayed against porkins. So persistent is mental

(03:48:00):
habit that he felt as if it were a struggle
with porkins. He was well versed in psychology. He knew
that such visual illusions do not come as a result
of mental strain. But the point was, he did not
see the moth. He had heard it when it touched
the edge of the lamp shade, and afterwards when it
hit against the wall, and he had felt it strike

(03:48:20):
his face in the dark. He looked at it. It
was not at all dream like, but perfectly clear and solid.
Looking in the candlelight, he saw the hairy body and
the short, feathery antennae, the jointed legs, even a place
where the dawn was rubbed from the wing. He suddenly
felt angry with himself for being afraid of a little insect.

(03:48:42):
His landlady had got the servant to sleep with her
that night because she was afraid to be alone. In addition,
she had locked the door and put the chest of
drawers against it. They listened and talked in whispers after
they had gone to bed, but nothing occurred to alarm them.
About eleven they had ventured to put the candle out
and had both dozed off to sleep. Then they woke

(03:49:05):
up with a start and sat up in bed, listening
in the darkness. Then they heard the slippered feet going
to and fro. In Hapley's room, a chair was overturned.
There was a violent dab at the wall, Then a
china mantle ornament smashed upon the fender. Suddenly the door
of the room opened and they heard him upon the landing.
They clung to one another listening. He seemed to be

(03:49:27):
dancing upon the staircase. Now he would go down three
or four steps quickly, then up again, then hurry down
into the hall. They heard the umbrella stander over, and
the fan like brake then the bolt shot and the
chain rattled. He was opening the door. They hurried to
the window. It was a dim, gray night, an almost
unbroken sheet of watery cloud was sweeping across the moon,

(03:49:49):
and the hedge and the trees in front of the
house were black against the pale roadway. They saw happily,
looking like a ghost, in his shirt and white trousers,
running to and fro in the road and beating the air.
Now he would stop. Now he would dart very rapidly
at something invisible. Now he would move upon it with
stealthy strides. At last he went out of sight up

(03:50:10):
the road towards the down. Then, while they argued who
should go down and lock the door, he returned. He
was walking very fast, and he came straight into the house,
closed the door carefully, and went quietly up to his bedroom.
Everything was silent, Missus Colville said, haply, calling down the staircase.

(03:50:33):
Next morning, I hope I did not alarm you last night.
You may well ask, that, said Missus Carvill. The fact
is I'm a sleep walker, and the last two nights
I have been without my sleeping mixture. There is nothing
to be alarmed about. Really, I'm sorry I made such
an ass of myself. I will go over the down
to Shoreham and get some stuff to make me sleep soundly.

(03:50:56):
I ought to have done it yesterday, But half way
over the down by the chalk pits, the moth came
upon Happily again, he went on trying to keep his
mind upon chest problems, but it was no good. The
thing fluttered into his face, and he struck at it
with his hat and self defense. Then rage, the old rage,
the rage he had so often felt against Porkin's, returned

(03:51:17):
once more. He went on leaping and striking at the
eddying insect. Suddenly he trod on nothing and fell headlong.
There was a gap in his sensations, and Happily found
himself sitting on the heap of flints in front of
the opening of the chalk pits, with a leg twisted
back underneath him. The strange moth was still fluttering around

(03:51:38):
his head. He struck at it with his hand, and
turning his head, saw two men approaching him. One was
the village doctor. It occurred to Happily that this was lucky.
Then it came into his mind with extraordinary vividness, that
no one would ever be able to see the strange
moth except himself, and that it behooved him to keep

(03:51:58):
silent about it. Late that night, however, after his broken
leg was set, he was feverish and forgot his self restraint.
He was lying flat on his bed, and he began
to run his eyes round the room to see if
the moth was still about. He tried not to do this,
but it was no good. He soon caught sight of
the thing resting close to his hand by the night light,

(03:52:20):
on the green tablecloth. The wings quivered with a sudden
wave of anger. He smote at it with his fist,
and the nurse woke up with a shriek. He had
missed it, that moth, he said, And then it was
fancy nothing. All the time, he could see quite clearly
the insect going round the cornice and darting across the room,

(03:52:40):
And he could also see that the nurse saw nothing
of it, and looked at him strangely. He must keep
himself in hand. He knew he was a lost man
if he did not keep himself in hand. But as
the knight waned, the fever grew upon him, and the
very dread he had of seeing the moth made him
see it about five, just as the dawn gray. He

(03:53:01):
tried to get out of bed and catch it, though
his leg was afire with pain. The nurse had to
struggle with him. On account of this, they tied him
down to the bed. At this the moth grew bolder,
and once he felt it settle in his hair. Then,
because he struck out violently with his arms, they tied
these also. At this the moth came and crawled over
his face, and happily wept, swore, screamed, prayed for them

(03:53:25):
to take it off him unavailingly. The doctor was a blockhead,
a half qualified general practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science.
He simply said, there's no moth. Had he possessed the wit,
he might still perhaps have saved happily from his fate
by entering into his delusion and covering his face with gauze,
as he prayed might be done. But as I say,

(03:53:47):
the doctor was a blockhead, and until the leg was healed,
happily was kept tied to his bed with the imaginary
moth crawling over him. It never left him while he
was awake, and it grew to a monster in his
dream while he was awake, he longed for sleep, and
from sleep he awoke screaming. So now Happily is spending

(03:54:08):
the remainder of his days in a padded room, worried
by a moth that no one else can see. The
asylum doctor calls it hallucination, but Happily, when he is
in his easier mood and can talk, says it is
the ghost of porkins, and consequently a unique specimen and
well worth the trouble of catching end of a moth

(03:54:30):
genus unknown.

Speaker 12 (03:54:35):
Mother and Child from Goblin Tales of Lancaster by James Boker,
f R G. S I. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording

(03:55:01):
by Dale Grothman. Mother and Child by James Boker. The
tenants of Plimpton Hall had retired to rest somewhat earlier
than was their wont for it was the last night
of November. The old low rooms were in darkness, and

(03:55:23):
all was silent as a grave. For though the residents,
unfortunately for themselves, were not asleep, they held their breath
and awaited in fear the first stroke of the hour
from the old clock in the kitchen. Suddenly the sound
of hurried footsteps broke the silence. But with sighs of relief,

(03:55:48):
the terrified listeners found that the noise was made by
a belated wayfarer, almost out of his wits with fright,
but who was unable to avoid passing the hall, and
who therefore ran by the haunted building as quickly as
his legs would carry him. The sensation of escape, however,

(03:56:13):
was of but short duration, for the hammer commenced to strike,
and no sooner had the last stroke of eleven startled
the echoes than loud thuds as of a heavy object
bumping upon the stairs were heard. The quaking occupants of
the chambers hid their heads beneath the bedclothes, for they

(03:56:36):
knew that an old fashioned oak chair was on its
way down the noble staircase, and was sliding from step
to step as though dragged along by an invisible being
who had only one hand at liberty. If anyone had
dared to follow that chair across the wide passage and

(03:56:58):
into the wainscoted parlor, he would have been startled by
the sight of a fire blazing in the grate. Whence
ere the servants retired, even the very embers had been removed,
and in the chair the marvelous movement of which had
so frightened all the inmates of the hall, he would

(03:57:19):
have seen a beautiful woman seated with an infant at
her breast. Year after year, on wild nights, when the
snow was driven against the diamond panes, and the cry
of the spirits of the storm came up from the sea,
the weird firelight shone from the haunted room, and through

(03:57:41):
the house sounded a mysterious crooning as the unearthly visitor
softly sang a lullaby to her infant. Lads grew into
gray haired men in the old house, and from youth
to manhood. On the last night of each November. They

(03:58:01):
had heard the notes, but none of them ever had caught,
even when custom had somewhat deadened the terror which surrounded
the events of the much dreaded anniversary, the words of
the song the ghostly woman sang. The maids too, had
always found the grate as it was left before the visit.

(03:58:25):
Not a cinder or a speck of dust remained to
tell of the strange fire, and no one had ever
heard the chair ascend the stairs. Chair and fire and
child and mother, however, were seen by many a weary wayfarer,
drawn to the house by the hospitable look of the window,

(03:58:49):
through which a genial glow of the burning logs shone
forth into the night, But who, by tapping at the
pane and crying for shelter, could not attract the attention
of the pale nurse clad in a quaint old costume
with lace, rough and ruffles, and singing a mournful and

(03:59:11):
melodious lullaby to the child resting upon her beautiful bosom.
Tradition tells of one of these wanderers, a footsore and
miserable seafaring man on the tramp, who, attracted by the
welcome glare, crept to the panes, and seeing the cozy

(03:59:32):
looking fire and the madonna faced mother tenderly nursing her
infant wrapped at the glass, and begged for a morsel
of food and permission to sleep in the hayloft, and,
finding his pleadings unanswered, loudly cursed the woman who could
sit and enjoy warmth and comfort and turn a deaf

(03:59:55):
ear to the prayers of the homeless and hungry, upon
which the seated figure turned the weird light of his
wild eyes upon him and almost changed him to stone.
A laborer going to his daily toil in the early morn,
finding the poor wretch gazing fixedly through the window against

(04:00:18):
which his terror stricken face was closely pressed, his hair
turned white by fear, and his fingers convulsively clutching the
casement and of Mother and Child by James Boker. The

(04:00:43):
Phantom Hag from twenty five Ghost Stories, compiled and edited
by W. Bob Holland. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit at LibriVox dot org. Read
for LibriVox by Dale Grothman, The Phantom Hag. The other

(04:01:10):
evening in an old castle, the conversation turned to apparitions,
each one of the party telling a story. As the
accounts grew more horrible, the young ladies drew closer together.
Have you ever had an adventure with a ghost? Said
they to me. Do you know a story to make

(04:01:31):
a shiver? Come tell us something? I am quite willing
to do so, I replied, I will tell you of
an incident that happened to myself. Toward the close of
the autumn of eighteen fifty eight, I visited one of
my friends, sub prefect of a little city in the
center of France. Albert was an old companion of my youth,

(04:01:55):
and I had been present at his wedding. His charming
wife was full of goodness and grace. My friend wished
to show me his happy home and to introduce me
to his two little daughters. I was feted and taken
great care of. Three days after my arrival, I knew

(04:02:15):
the entire city, curiosities, old castles, ruins, et cetera. Every day,
about five o'clock, Albert would order a phaeton and we
would take a long ride returning home in the evening.
One evening, my friend said to me, tomorrow we will
go further than usual. I want to take you to

(04:02:36):
black Rocks. They are curious old druid stones on the
wild and desolate plain. They will interest you. My wife
has not seen them yet, so we will take her.
The following day. We drove out at the usual hour.
Albert's wife sat by his side. I occupied the back

(04:02:58):
seat alone. The weather was gray and somber that afternoon,
and the journey was not very pleasant. When we arrived
at the Black Rocks, the sun was setting. We got
out of the phaeton and Albert took care of the horses.
We walked some little distance through the fields before reaching

(04:03:19):
the giant remains of the old Druid religion. Albert's wife
wished to climb to the summit of the altar, and
I assisted her. I can still see her graceful figure
as she stood draped in a red shawl, her veil
floating around her. How beautiful it is, but does it

(04:03:40):
not make you feel a little melancholy? Said she, extending
her hand toward the dark horizon, which was lighted a
little by the last rays of the sun. The afternoon
wind blew violently and sighed through the stunted trees that
grew around the stone Carmelachs. Not a dwelling nor a
human being was in sight. We hastened to get down

(04:04:03):
and silently retraced our steps to the carriage. We must hurry,
said Albert. The sky is threatening and we shall have
scarcely time to reach home before night. We carefully wrapped
the robes around his wife. She tied the veil around
her face, and the horses started into a rapid trot.

(04:04:23):
It was growing dark. The scenery around us was bare
and desolate. Clumps of fir trees here and there, and
furzy bushes formed the only vegetation. We began to feel
the cold, for the wind blew with fury. The only
sound we heard was a steady trot of the horses
and the sharp, clear tinkle of their bells. Suddenly I

(04:04:48):
felt a heavy grasp of a hand upon my shoulder.
I turned my head quickly. A horrible apparition presented itself
before my eyes. In the empty place at my side
sat a hideous woman. I tried to cry out. The
phantom placed her fingers upon her lips to impose silence

(04:05:09):
upon me. I could not utter a sound. The woman
was clothed in white linen, Her head was cowled, her
face overspread with a corpse like pallor, and in place
of eyes were ghastly black cavities. I sat motionless, overcome
by terror. The ghost suddenly stood up and leaned over

(04:05:32):
the young wife. She encircled her with her arms and
lowered her hideous head as if to kiss her forehead.
What a wind, cried Madame Albert, turning precipitately toward me.
My veil is torn. As she turned, I felt the
same infernal pressure on my shoulder, and the place occupied

(04:05:55):
by the phantom was empty. I looked out to the
right and left. The road was deserted, not an object
in sight. What a dreadful gale, said Madame Albert. Did
you feel it? I cannot explain the terror that seized me.
My veil was torn by the wind, as if by

(04:06:15):
an invisible hand. I am trembling still. Never mind, said Albert, smiling.
Wrap yourself up, my dear. We will soon be warming
ourselves by the good fire at home. I am starving.
A cold perspiration covered my forehead. A shiver ran through me.

(04:06:35):
My tongue closed to the roof of my mouth. I
could not articulate a sound. A sharp pain in my
shoulder was the only sensible evidence that I was not
the victim of an illucination. Putting a hand upon my
aching shoulder, I felt a rent in the cloak that
was wrapped around me. I looked at it, five perfectly

(04:06:58):
distinct holes, traces of the grip of the horrible phantom.
I thought for a moment that I should die, or
that my reason should leave me. It was, I think,
the most dreadful moment of my life. Finally I became
more calm. This nameless agony had lasted for some minutes.

(04:07:20):
I do not think it is possible for a human
being to suffer more than I did during that time.
As soon as I recovered my senses, I thought at
first I would tell my friends all that had passed,
but hesitated and finally did not, fearing that my story
might frighten Madame Albert, and feeling sure my friend would

(04:07:40):
not believe me. The lights of the little city revived me,
and gradually the oppression of terror that overwhelmed me became lighter.
So soon as we reached home, Madame Albert untied her veil.
It was literally in shreds. I hoped to find my
clothes whole, and proved to myself that it was all imagination.

(04:08:04):
But no, the cloth was torn in five places. Just
where the fingers had seized my shoulder. There was no mark, however,
upon my flesh, only a dull pain. I returned to
Paris the next day, where I endeavored to forget the
strange adventure, or at least when I thought of it,

(04:08:26):
I could force myself to think it and hallucination. The
day after my return, I received a letter from my
friend Albert. It was edged with black I opened it
with a vague fear. His wife had died the day
of my return. The End of the Phantom Hag edited

(04:08:50):
by W. Bob Holland. Stanley Fleming's Hallucination by Ambrose Bierce.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information nor to volunteer, please

(04:09:11):
visit LibriVox dot org. Read for LibriVox by Dale Grothmann.
Stanley Flemings's Hallucination by Ambrose Bierce. Of the two men talking,
one was a physician. I sent for you, doctor, said
the other. But I don't think you can do me

(04:09:31):
any good. Maybe you can recommend a specialist in psychopathy.
I fancy I'm a bit of a loon. You look
all right, the physician said, you shall judge. I have hallucinations.
I wake every night and see in my room intently
watching me a big black Newfoundland dog with a white

(04:09:55):
front foot. You say, you wake. Are you sure about that?
Hallucinations are sometimes only dreams? Oh, I wake all right.
Sometimes I lie still a long time, looking at the
dog as earnestly as the dog looks at me. I

(04:10:15):
always leave the light going. When I can't endure it
any longer, I sit up in bed and nothing is there.

Speaker 9 (04:10:23):
Hmm.

Speaker 12 (04:10:24):
What is the beast's expression? It seems to me sinister.
Of course, I know that, except in art, an animal's
face in repose is always the same expression. But this
is not a real animal. Newfoundland dogs are pretty mild looking.
You know what's the matter with this one? Really, my

(04:10:47):
diagnosis would have no value. I am not going to
treat the dog. The physician laughed at his own pleasantry,
but narrowly watched his patient from the corner of his eye.
He said, Fleming, your description of the beast fits the
dog of the late at Well Barton. Fleming half rose

(04:11:08):
from his chair, sat again, and made a visible attempt
at indifference. I remember Barton, he said, I believe he was.
It was reported that wasn't there something suspicious in his death?
Looking squarely now into the eyes of his patient, the

(04:11:29):
physician said, three years ago the body of your old
enemy at Well Barton was found in the woods near
his house, and yours. He had been stabbed to death.
There have been no arrests, There was no clue. Some
of us have theories. I had one, have you? I why,

(04:11:52):
bless your soul? What would I know about it? You
remember that I left for Europe almost immediately afterward, a
consider time afterward, in a few weeks since my return.
You could not expect me to construct a theory. In fact,
I have not given the matter a thought. What about
his dog? It was the first to find the body.

(04:12:16):
It died of starvation on his grave. We do not
know the inexorable laws underlying coincidences. Stanley Fleming did not,
or he would perhaps not have sprung to his feet
as the night wind brought in through the open window
the long wailing howl of a distant dog. He strode

(04:12:38):
several times across the room in the steadfast gaze of
the physician, then abruptly confronted him, almost shouted, what has
all this got to do with my trouble, doctor Haldeman,
You forget why you were set for rising. The physician
laid his hand upon his patient's arm and said, gently,

(04:13:00):
pardon me, I cannot diagnose your disorder off hand. Tomorrow,
perhaps please go to bed. Leave your door unlocked. I
will pass the night here with your books. Can you
call me without rising? Yes, there's an electric bell. Good

(04:13:22):
if anything disturbed, you pushed the button without sitting up.
Good night. Comfortably installed in an arm chair, the man
of medicine stared into the glowing coals and thought deeply
and long, but apparently to little purpose, for he frequently
rose and opened a door leading to the staircase, listening intently,

(04:13:44):
then resumed his seat. Presently, however, he fell asleep, and
when he woke it was past midnight. He stirred the
failing fire, lifted a book from the table at his side,
and looked at the title. It was Dennaker's Meditations. He
opened it at random and began to read. For as

(04:14:08):
much as it was ordained of God that all flesh
half spirit, and thereby taketh on spiritual powers, so also
the spirit half powers of the flesh, even when it
has gone out of the flesh, and liveth as a
thing apart as many a violence performed by wraith and

(04:14:29):
lemier sleweth. And there be who say that man is
not single in this, but the beasts have the like
evil inducement and the reading was interrupted by a shaking
of the house, as by the falling of a heavy object.
The reader flung down the book, rushed from the room

(04:14:53):
and mounted the stairs to Fleming's bedchamber. He tried the door,
but contrary to his instructions, it was locked. He set
his shoulder against it with such force that it gave way.
On the floor, near the disordered bed, in his night
clothes lay Fleming, gasping away his life. The physician raised

(04:15:17):
the dying man's head from the floor and observed a
wound in the throat. I should have thought of this,
he said, believing it suicide. When the man was dead,
an examination disclosed the unmistakable marks of an animal's fangs
deeply sunk into the jugular vein, but there was no animal.

(04:15:43):
The end of Stanley Fleming's Hallucination by Ambrose Bierce.

Speaker 10 (04:15:53):
The Tawn by Hugh Woolpole. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Rafe Ball. The Tarn by Hugh Walpole. As Foster

(04:16:16):
moved unconsciously across the room, bent towards the bookcase, and
stood leaning forward a little, choosing now one book, now another,
with his eye. His host, seeing the muscles of the
back of his thin, scraggy neck stand out above his
low flannel collar, thought of the ease with which he
could squeeze that throat, and the pleasure, the triumphant, lustful pleasure,

(04:16:40):
that such an action would give him. The low, white walled,
white ceilinged room was flooded with the mellow, kindly lakeland sun.
October is a wonderful month in the English lakes, golden,
rich and perfumed, slow suns moving through apricot tinted skies
to ruby evening glories. The shadows lie then thick about

(04:17:04):
that beautiful country in dark purple patches, in long weblike
patterns of silver, goreze in thick splotches of amber and gray.
The clouds passing galleons across the mountains, now veiling, now revealing,
now descending with ghostlike armies, to the very breast of
the plains, suddenly rising to the softest of blue skies

(04:17:28):
and lying thin in lazy, languorous color. Fenix's cottage looked
across to low fells on his right, seen through the
side windows, sprawled the hills above dur and water. Fennick
looked at Foster's back and felt suddenly sick, so that
he sat down, veiling his eyes for a moment with

(04:17:49):
his hand. Foster had come up there, come all the
way from London to explain. It was so like Foster
to want to explain, to want to put things right.
For how many years had he known Foster? Why for
twenty at least, And during all those years, Foster had
been forever determined to put things right with everybody. He

(04:18:11):
could not bear to be disliked. He hated that any
one should think ill of him. He wanted every one
to be his friend. That was one reason, perhaps why
Foster had got on so well, had prospered so in
his career, One reason too, why Fennick had not. For
Fennick was the opposite of Foster in this. He did

(04:18:33):
not want friends. He certainly did not care that people
should like him, that is, people for whom, for one
reason or another, he had contempt, And he had contempt
for quite a number of people. Fennick looked at that long, thin,
bending back and felt his knees tremble. Soon Foster would
turn round, and that high, ready voice would pipe out

(04:18:56):
something about the books, What jolly books you have, Fenick.
How many many times in the long watches of the night,
when Fenwick could not sleep, had he heard that pipe
sounding close there, yes, in the very shadows of his bed.
And how many times had Fenick replied to it.

Speaker 3 (04:19:15):
I hate you.

Speaker 10 (04:19:16):
You are the cause of my failure in life.

Speaker 15 (04:19:19):
You have been in my way, always, always, always, always
patronizing and pretending, and in truth showing others what a
poor thing you thought me, How great a failure, how
conceited a fool?

Speaker 10 (04:19:37):
I know you can hide nothing from me. I can
hear you. For twenty years now Foster had been persistently
in Fennick's way. There had been that affair so long
ago now, when Robbins had wanted a sub editor for
his wonderful review the Parthenon, and Fennick had gone to
see him, and they had had a splendid talk. How

(04:20:00):
magnificently Fenick had talked that day, with what enthusiasm he
had shown Robins, who was blinded by his own conceit anyway,
the kind of paper the parthen And might be. How
Robbins had caught his own enthusiasm. How he had pushed
his fat body about the room, crying, yes, yes, Fennick,
that's fine, that's fine indeed. And then how, after all

(04:20:24):
Foster had got that job. The paper had only lived
for a year or so, it is true, but the
connection with it had brought Foster into prominence, just as
it might have brought Fennick. Then five years later there
was Fenix's novel, The Bitter Aloe, the novel upon which
he had spent three years of blood and tears endeavor.

(04:20:46):
And then in the very same week of publication, Foster
brings out The Circus, the novel that made his name,
Although heaven knows the thing was poor enough, sentimental trash.
You may say that one novel cannot kill another, but
can it not? Had not the Circus appeared, would not

(04:21:08):
that group of London knowles that conceited limited, ignorant, self
satisfied crowd, who nevertheless, can do by their talk so
much to affect a book's good or evil fortunes, have
talked about The Bitter Aloe and so forced it into prominence.
As it was, the book was stillborn, and the circus

(04:21:30):
went on its prancing triumphant way. After that, there had
been many occasions, some small, some big, and always in
one way or another, that thin, scraggy body of Foster's
was interfering with Fenix's happiness. The thing had become, of course,
an obsession. With Fennick hiding up there in the heart

(04:21:51):
of the lakes with no friends, almost no company, and
very little money. He was given too much to brooding
over his failure. He was a failure, and it was
not his own fault. How could it be his own fault,
with his talents and his brilliance. It was the fault
of modern life and its lack of culture, the fault

(04:22:13):
of the stupid material mess that made up the intelligences
of human beings, and the fault of Foster. Always Fennick
hoped that Foster would keep away from him. He did
not know what he would not do, did he see
the man? And then one day, to his amazement, he
received a telegram passing through this way, may I stop

(04:22:36):
with you Monday and Tuesday, Giles Foster. Fennick could scarcely
believe his eyes, and then from curiosity, from cynical contempt,
from some deeper, more mysterious motive that he dared not analyze.
He had telegraphed, come and here the man was, and

(04:22:58):
he had come, would you believe it? To put things right?
He had heard from Hamelin Edis that Fennick was hurt
with him, had some kind of aggrievance. I didn't like
to feel that, old man, and so I thought I'd
just stop by and have it out with you, see
what the matter was, and put it right. Last night

(04:23:19):
after supper, Foster had tried to put it right, eagerly,
his eyes like a good dog's who is asking for
a bone that he knows that he thoroughly deserves. He
had held out his hand and asked Fennick to say
what was up. Fennick simply had said that nothing was up.
Hamelin Edis was a damned fool. Oh, I'm glad to

(04:23:41):
hear that. Foster had cried, springing out of his chair
and putting his hand on Fenix's shoulder. I'm glad of
that old man. I couldn't bear for us not to
be friends. We've been friends so long. Lord, how Fennick
hated him at that moment. What a jolly lot of

(04:24:02):
books you have? Foster turned round and looked at Fennick
with eager, gratified eyes. Every book here is interesting. I
like your arrangement of them too, And those open bookshelves.
It always seems to me a shame to shut up
books behind glass. Foster came forward and sat down quite
close to his host. He even reached forward and laid

(04:24:24):
his hand on his host's knee. Look here, I'm mentioning
it for the last time positively, but I do want
to make quite certain there is nothing wrong between us,
is there, old man? I know you assured me last night,
but I just want Fennick looked at him, and surveying

(04:24:45):
him felt suddenly an exquisite pleasure of hatred. He liked
the touch of the man's hand on his knee. He
himself bent forward a little, and thinking how agreeable it
would be to push Foster's eyes in, deep, deep into
his head, crunching them, smashing them to purple, leaving the
empty staring, bloody sockets. Said why no, of course not,

(04:25:12):
I told you last night. What could there be? The
hand gripped the knee a little more tightly. I am
so glad. That's splendid, splendid. I hope you won't think
me ridiculous. But I've always had an affection for you,
ever since I can remember. I've always wanted to know
you better. I've admired your talents so greatly. That novel

(04:25:35):
of yours, that the one about the Alloe, the Bitter Aloe. Ah, Yes,
that was it. That was a splendid book. Pessimistic of course,
but still fine. It ought to have done better, I
remember thinking so at the time. Yes, it ought to
have done better. Your time will come, though. What I

(04:25:57):
say is that good work always tells in the end. Yes,
my time will come. The thin piping voice went on,
Now I have had more success than I deserved.

Speaker 3 (04:26:11):
Oh, yes I have.

Speaker 10 (04:26:13):
You can't deny it. I'm not being falsely modest. I
mean it. I've got some talent, of course, but not
so much as people say. And you why you've got
so much more than they acknowledge you have, old man,
you have? Indeed only I do hope you'll forgive my
saying this. Perhaps you haven't advanced quite as you might

(04:26:37):
have done, living up here, shut away here, closed in
by all these mountains, in this wet climate, always raining.
Why you're out of things? You don't see, people don't talk,
and discover what's really going on?

Speaker 3 (04:26:52):
Why look at me?

Speaker 10 (04:26:54):
Fennick turned round and looked at him. Now I have
half the year in London, where gets the best of everything,
best talk, best music, best plays, and then I'm three
months abroad Italy or Grease or somewhere, and then three
months in the country. Now that's an ideal arrangement. You

(04:27:14):
have everything that way, Italy or Grease or somewhere. Something
turned in Fenix's breast, grinding, grinding, grinding. How he had long, oh,
how passionately for just one week in Greece, two days
in Sicily. Sometimes he had thought that he might run

(04:27:36):
to it. But when it had come to the actual
counting of the pennies, and how this fool, this fat head,
this self satisfied, conceited, patronizing, He got up, looked out
at the golden sun. What do you say to a walk?
He suggested, The sun will last for a good hour.

(04:27:57):
Yet soon as the words were out of his lips,
he felt as though someone else had set them for him.
He even turned half round to see whether anyone else
were there. Ever, since Foster's arrival and the evening before,
he had been conscious of this sensation.

Speaker 3 (04:28:16):
A walk.

Speaker 10 (04:28:18):
Why should he take Foster for a walk, show him
his beloved country. Point out those curves and lines and hollows,
the broad silver shield of dorrant water, the cloudy purple
hills hunched like blankets about the knees of some recumbent giant.
Why it was as though he had turned round to
someone behind him and had said, you have some further

(04:28:39):
design in this. They started out, The road sank abruptly
to the lake. Then the path ran between trees at
the water's edge. Across the lake, tones of bright yellow light,
crocus hued rode upon the blue. The hills were dark.

(04:28:59):
The way that Foster walked bespoke the man. He was
always a little ahead of you, pushing his long, thin
body along with little eager jerks. As though he did
not hurry, he would miss something that would be immensely
to his advantage. He talked, throwing words over his shoulder
to Fennick, as you throw crumbs of bread to a robin.

(04:29:20):
Of course, I was pleased. Who would not be? After all,
it's a new prize. They've only been awarding it for
a year or two. But it's gratifying, really gratifying to
secure it. When I opened the envelope and found the
check there. Well, you could have knocked me down with
a feather you could. Indeed, of course, one hundred pounds
isn't much, but it's the honor. Whither were they going?

(04:29:45):
Their destiny was as certain as though they had no
free will. Free will, There is no free will. All
is fate. Fennick suddenly laughed aloud. Foster stopped, Why what
is it? What's what you laughed? Something amused me. Foster

(04:30:06):
slipped his arm through Fenix. It is jolly to be
walking along together like this, arm in arm. Friends. I'm
a sentimental man. I won't deny it. What I say
is that life is short, and one must love one's
fellow beings, or where is one? You live too much alone?
Old man? He squeezed Feenix's arm. That's the truth of it.

(04:30:30):
It was torture, exquisite, heavenly torture. It was wonderful to
feel that thin, bony arm pressing against his almost you
could hear the beating of that other heart. Wonderful to
feel that arm, and the temptation to take it in
your two hands and to end it and twist it.

(04:30:50):
And then to hear the bones.

Speaker 3 (04:30:52):
Crack, crack, crack.

Speaker 10 (04:30:56):
Wonderful to feel that temptation rise through one's body like
boiling water, and yet not to yield to it. For
a moment, Fennix's hand touched Foster's. Then he drew himself apart.
We were at the village. This is the hotel where
they all come in the summer. We turn off at

(04:31:18):
the right here. I'll show you my tarn, your tarn,
asked Foster. Forgive my ignorance, but what is a tarn? Exactly?
A tarn is a miniature lake, a pool of water
lying in the lap of the hill, very quiet, lovely, silent.

(04:31:41):
Some of them are immensely deep. I should like to
see that. It is some little distance upper rough road.
Do you mind not a bit? I have long legs.
Some of them are immensely deep, unfathomable. Nobody touched the bottom,

(04:32:02):
but quiet, like glass with shadows only do you know, Fennick.
But I have always been afraid of water. I've never
learnt to swim. I'm afraid to go out of my tep.
Isn't that ridiculous? But it is all because at my
private school years ago, when I was a small boy,

(04:32:22):
some big fellows took me and held me with my
head under the water, and nearly drowned me they did. Indeed,
they went farther than they meant to. I can see
their faces. Fennick considered this. The picture leaped to his mind.
He could see the boys, large strong fellows probably, and

(04:32:42):
this little skinny thing like a frog, their thick hands
about his throat, his legs like gray sticks kicking out
of the water, and their laughter, their sudden sense that
something was wrong. A skinny body, all flaccid and still.
He drew a deep breath. Foster was walking beside him,

(04:33:03):
now not ahead of him, as though he were a
little afraid and needed reassurance. Indeed, the scene had changed before.
And behind them stretched the uphill path, loose with shale
and stones. On their right, on a ridge at the
foot of the hill were some quarries, almost deserted, but
the more melancholy in the fading afternoon, because a little

(04:33:27):
work still continued there. Faint sounds came from the gaunt,
listening chimneys. A stream of water ran and tumbled angrily
into a pool below. Once and again, a black silhouette
like a question mark appeared against the darkening hill. It
was a little steep here, and Foster puffed and blue.
Fennick hated him the more for that, so thin and spare,

(04:33:51):
and still he could not keep in condition. They stumbled,
keeping below the quarry, on the edge of the running water,
now green, now dirty white gray, pushing their way along
the side of the hill. Their faces were set now
towards helvelen. It rounded the cups of hills, closing in
the base and then sprawling to the right. There's the tarn,

(04:34:16):
Fennech exclaimed, and then added, The sun's not lasting as
long as I had expected. It's growing dark already. Foster
stumbled and caught Fenix's arm. This twilight makes the hills
look strange, like living men. I can scarcely see my way.
We're alone here, Fenneck answered, don't you feel the stillness?

(04:34:41):
The men will have left the quarry now and gone home.
There is no one in all this place but ourselves.
If you watch, you will see a strange green light
steal down over the hills. It lasts but for a moment,
and then it is dark. Ah, here is my tarn.

(04:35:03):
Do you know how I love this place, Foster? It
seems to belong especially to me, just as much as
all your work and your glory and fame and success
seem to belong to you. I have this and you
have that. Perhaps in the end we are even after all. Yes,

(04:35:29):
but I feel as though that piece of water belonged
to me and I to it, and as though we
should never be separated. Yes, isn't it black? It is
one of the deep ones. No one has ever sounded it.
Only hell Velin knows. And one day I fancy that

(04:35:50):
it will take me too into its confidence, will whisper
its secrets. Foster sneezed, very nice, very beautiful, Fennick. I
like your tarn charming. And now let's turn back. That
is a difficult walk beneath the quarry. It's chilly too.

(04:36:13):
Do you see that little jetty there? Fennick led Foster
by the arm. Someone built that out into the water.
He had a boat there. I suppose come and look
down from the end of the little jetty. It looked
so deep, and the mountains seemed to close round. Fennick

(04:36:33):
took Foster's arm and led him to the end of
the jetty. Indeed, the water looked deep here, deep and
very black. Foster appeared down. Then he looked up at
the hills that did indeed seem to have gathered close
around him. He sneezed again. I've caught a cold. I'm afraid.

(04:36:54):
Let's turn homewards Fenick, or we shall never find our
way home. Then said Fennick, and his hands closed about
the thin, scraggy neck. For the instant the head half
turned and two startled strangely. Childish eyes stared. Then with
a push that was ludicrously simple, the body was impelled forward,

(04:37:18):
and there was a sharp cry, a splash, a stir
of something white against the swiftly gathering dusk, again, and
then again, then farther, spreading ripples. Then silence. The silence extended,
having enwrapped the tarn, it spread as though with finger

(04:37:40):
on lip, to the already quiescent hills. Fennix shared in
the silence. He luxuriated in it. He did not move
at all. He stood there, looking upon the inky water
of the tarn, his arms folded, a man lost in
intensest thought. But he was not thinking. He was only

(04:38:02):
conscious of a warm, luxurious relief, a sensuous feeling that
was not thought at all. Foster was gone that tiresome, prating, conceited,
self satisfied, fool gone, never to return. The tarn assured
him of that. It stared back into Fenix's face approvingly,

(04:38:25):
as though it said, you have done well, a clean
and necessary job. We have done it together, you and I.
I am proud of you. He was proud of himself.
At last, he had done something definite with his life. Thought, eager,
active thought was beginning now to flood his brain. For

(04:38:49):
all these years, he had hung around in this place
doing nothing but cherish grievances, weak backboneless. Now at last
there was action. He drew himself up and looked at
the hills. He was proud, and he was cold. He
was shivering. He turned up the collar of his coat. Yes,

(04:39:12):
there was the faint green light that always lingered in
the shadows of the hills for a brief moment before
darkness came. It was growing late. He had better return.
Shivering now so that his teeth chattered, he started off
down the path, and then was aware that he did
not wish to leave the tarn. The tarn was friendly,

(04:39:34):
the only friend he had in all the world. As
he stumbled along in the dark, this sense of loneliness grew.
He was going home to an empty house. There had
been a guest in it last night. Was it wife Foster?
Of course, Foster, with his silly laugh and amiable, mediocre eyes.

(04:39:57):
Well Foster would not be there now. No, he would
never be there again. And suddenly Fennix started to run.
He did not know why, except that now that he
had left the tarn, he was lonely. He wished that
he could have stayed there all night, but because he
was cold, he could not, And so now he was running,

(04:40:19):
so that he might be at home with the lights
and the familiar furniture and all the things that he
knew to reassure him. As he ran, the shale and
stone scattered beneath his feet. They made a tit tattering
noise under him, and someone else seemed to be running too.
He stopped, and the other runner also stopped. He breathed

(04:40:40):
in the silence. He was hot now. The perspiration was
tricking down his cheeks. He could feel a dribble of
it down his back inside his shirt. His knees were pounding,
his heart was thumbing, and all around him the hills
were so amazingly silent, now like India rubber clouds that
you could push in or pull out as you do

(04:41:03):
those India rubber faces, gray against the night sky of
a crystal purple, upon whose surface, like the twinkling eyes
of boats at sea, stars were now appearing. His knees steadied,
his heart beat less fiercely, and he began to run again.
Suddenly he had turned the corner and was out at

(04:41:23):
the hotel. Its lamps were kindly and reassuring. He walked
then quietly along the lakeside path, and had it not
been for the certainty that someone was treading behind him,
he would have been comfortable and at his ease. He
stopped once or twice and looked back. And once he
stopped and called out, who's there? Only the rustling trees answered.

(04:41:49):
He had the strangest fancy, But his brain was throbbing
so fiercely that he could not think that it was
the tarn that was following him, the tarn slipping sliding
along the road, being with him so that he should
not be lonely. He could almost hear the tarn whisper
in his ear. We did that together, and so I

(04:42:13):
do not wish you to bear all the responsibility yourself.
I will stay with you so that you are not lonely.
He climbed the road towards home, and there were the
lights of his house. He heard the gate click behind him,
as though it were shutting him in. He went into
the sitting room, lighted and ready there were the books

(04:42:35):
that Foster had admired. The old woman who looked after
him appeared. Will you be having some tea, sir? No,
thank you Annie. Will the other gentleman be wanting any No,
the other gentleman is away for the night. Then there
will only be one for supper. Yes, only one for supper.

(04:42:58):
He sat in the corner of the sofa and fell
instantly into a deep slumber. He woke when the old
woman tapped him on the shoulder and told him that
supper was served. The room was dark save for the
jumping light of two uncertain candles. Those two red candlesticks.

(04:43:19):
How he hated them up there on the mantelpiece. He
had always hated them, and now they seemed to him
to have something of the quality of Foster's voice, that thin,
reedy piping tone. He was expecting at every moment that
Foster would enter, and yet he knew that he would not.

(04:43:40):
He continued to turn his head towards the door, but
it was so dark there that you could not see.
The whole room was dark, except just there by the fireplace,
where the two candlesticks went whining with their miserable twinkling plate.
He went into the dining room and sat down to
his mind, but he could not eat anything. It was

(04:44:04):
odd that place by the table where Foster's chair should be, odd, naked,
and made a man feel lonely. He got up once
from the table and went to the window, opened it
and looked out. He listened for something. A trickle as
of running water, a stir through the silence, as though

(04:44:26):
some deep pool were filling to the brim, A rustle
in the trees, perhaps an owl hooted sharply, as though
someone had spoken to him unexpectedly behind his shoulder. He
closed the window and looked back, peering under his dark
eyebrows into the room. Later on he went up to bed.

(04:44:49):
Had he been sleeping or had he been lying lazily
as one does, half dozing, half luxuriously not thinking? He
was wide awake, now utter awake, and his heart was
beating with apprehension. It was as though someone had called
him by name. He slept always with his window a

(04:45:09):
little open and the blind up. Tonight, the moonlight shadowed
in sickly fashion the objects in his room. It was
not a flood of light, nor yet a sharp splash,
silvering a square, a circle, throwing the rest into ebony blackness.
The light was dim, a little green, perhaps like the

(04:45:31):
shadow that comes over the hills just before dark. He
stared at the window, and it seemed to him that
something moved there within, or rather against the green gray light.
Something silver tinted, glistened. Fennick stared. It had the look
exactly of slipping water. Slipping water. He listened his head up,

(04:45:57):
and it seemed to him that from beyond the window
he caught the stir of water, not running, but rather
welling up and up, gurgling with satisfaction as it filled
and filled. He sat up higher in bed, and then
saw that down the wallpaper beneath the window water was
undoubtedly trickling. He could see it lurched to the projecting

(04:46:20):
wood of the sill, pause, and then slip slither down
the incline. The odd thing was that it fell so
silently beyond the window there was that odd gurgle, but
in the room itself absolute silence. Whence could it come?

(04:46:41):
He saw the line of silver rise and fall as
the stream on the window ledge ebbed and flowed. He
must get up and close the window. He drew his
legs above the sheets and blankets and looked down. He shrieked.
The floor was covered with a shining film of water.
It was rising as he looked. It had covered half

(04:47:03):
the short, stumpy legs of the bed. It rose without
a wink, a bubble, a break over the sill. It
poured now in a steady flow, but soundless. Fennix sat
back in the bed, The clothes gathered to his chin,
his eyes blinking, the Adam's apple throbbing like a throttle
in his throat. But he must do something, He must

(04:47:25):
stop this. The water was now level with the seats
of the chairs, but still was soundless. Could he but
reach the door. He put down his naked foot, then
cried again. The water was icy coal. Suddenly leaning staring
at its dark, unbroken sheen, Something seemed to push him forward.

(04:47:47):
He fell his head. His face was under the icy liquid.
It seemed adhesive, and in the heart of its ice
hot like melting wax. He struggled to his feet. The
water was breast high. He screamed again and again. He
could see the looking glass, the row of books, the

(04:48:09):
picture of Dora's horse, aloof impervious. He beat at the water,
and flakes of it seemed to cling to him like
scales of fish, clammy to his touch. He struggled, plowing
his way towards the door. The water was now out
his neck. Then something had caught him by the ankle.

(04:48:29):
Something held him. He struggled, crying, let me go, let
me go, I tell you to let me go. I
hate you.

Speaker 3 (04:48:40):
I hate you.

Speaker 10 (04:48:41):
I will not come down to you.

Speaker 12 (04:48:43):
I will not.

Speaker 10 (04:48:45):
The water covered his mouth. He felt that some one
pushed in his eyeballs with bare knuckles. A cold hand
reached up and caught his naked thigh. In the morning,
the little maid knocked, and, receiving no answer, came in
as was her wont with his shaving water. What she

(04:49:09):
saw made her scream. She ran for the gardener. They
took the body, with its staring, protruding eyes, its tongue
sticking out between the clenched teeth, and laid it on
the bed. The only sign of disorder was an overturned
water jug. A small pool of water stained the carpet.

(04:49:32):
It was a lovely morning. A twig of ivy idly
in the little breeze tapped the pane end of the tarn.
Recording by Rafe Ball.

Speaker 4 (04:49:52):
Yuki Honor by Lafcadio Hearne, read by Tony Sineman. This
is a LibriVox according all LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Yuki Onna by Lafcadio Herne. In a

(04:50:16):
village of Musashi Province, there lived two woodcutters, Mosaku and Minokichi.
At the time of which I am speaking. Mosaku was
an old man and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad
of eighteen years. Every day they went together to a
forest situated about five miles from their village. On the

(04:50:37):
way to that forest, there is a wide river to cross,
and there is a ferryboat. Several times a bridge was
built where the ferry is, but the bridge was each
time carried away by a flood. No common bridge can
resist the current there when the river rises. Mosaku and
Minokichi were on their way home one very cold evening,

(04:50:58):
when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry
and they found that the boatmen had gone away, leaving
his boat on the other side of the river. It
was no day for swimming, and the woodcutters took shelter
in the ferryman's hut, thinking themselves lucky to find any
shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut,
nor any place in which to make a fire. It

(04:51:20):
was only a two mate hut with a single door
but no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door and
lay down to rest, with their straw raincoats over them.
At first, they did not feel very cold, and they
thought that the storm would soon be over. The old
man almost immediately fell asleep, but the boy, Minokichi, lay

(04:51:41):
awake a long time, listening to the awful wind and
the continual slashing of the snow against the door. The
river was roaring, and the hut swayed and creaked like
a junket sea. There was a terrible storm, and the
air was every moment becoming colder, and Minokichi shivered under
his rain. But at last, in spite of the cold,

(04:52:04):
he too fell asleep. He was awakened by a showering
of snow in his face. The hut of the door
had been forced open, and by the snow light, yuki
Akari he saw a woman in the room, a woman
all in white. She was bending above Mosaku and blowing
her breath upon him, and her breath was like a

(04:52:25):
bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment, she turned
to Minokichi and stooped over him. He tried to cry out,
but found that he could not utter any sound. The
white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until
her face almost touched him, and he saw that she
was very beautiful, though her eyes made him afraid. For

(04:52:48):
a little while she continued to look at him. Then
she smiled, and she whispered. I intended to treat you
like the other man, but I cannot help feeling some
pitch for you because you are so young. You are
a pretty boy, Minokichi, and I will not hurt you now.

(04:53:08):
But if you ever tell anybody, even your own mother,
about what you have seen this night, I shall know it,
and then I will kill you. Remember what I say.
With these words, she turned from him and passed through
the doorway. Then he found himself able to move, and

(04:53:29):
he sprang up and looked out, but the woman was
nowhere to be seen, and the snow was driving furiously
into the hut. Minokichi closed the door and secured it
by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered
if the wind had blown it open. He thought that
he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken
the gleam of the snow light in the doorway for

(04:53:50):
the figure of a white woman, but he could not
be sure. He called to Mosaku and was frightened because
the old man did not answer. He put out his
hand in the dark and touched Mosaku's face and found
that it was ice. Mosaku was stark and dead. By dawn,

(04:54:12):
the storm was over, and when the ferryman returned to
his station a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying
senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly
cared for and soon came to himself, but he remained
a long time ill from the effects of the cold
of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also

(04:54:33):
by the old man's death, but he said nothing about
the vision of the woman in white. As soon as
he got well again, he returned to his calling, going
alone every morning to the forest and coming back at
nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped
him to sell. One evening in the winter of the
following year, as he was on his way home, he

(04:54:53):
overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the
same road. She was a tall, slim girl, then very
good looking, and she answered Minukichi's greeting in a voice
as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a
song bird. Then he walked beside her and they began
to talk. The girl said that her name was o Yuki,
that she had lately lost both of her parents, and

(04:55:15):
that she was going to Yedo, where she happened to
have some poor relations who might help her to find
a situation as a servant. Minukichi soon felt charmed by
this strange girl, and the more that he looked at her,
the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her whether
she was yet betrothed, and she answered laughingly that she
was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minukichi whether

(04:55:38):
he was married or pledged to marry, and he told
her that although he had only a widowed mother to support,
the question of an honorable daughter in law had not
yet been considered as he was very young. After these confidences,
they walked on for a long time without speaking. But
as the proverb declares, kiga a rebba memo kuchi hodo

(04:56:02):
niem noo wo eol, when the wish is there, the
eyes can say as much as the mouth. By the
time they reached the village, they had become very much
pleased with each other, and then Minukichi asked o Yuki
to rest awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation,
she went there with him, and his mother made her

(04:56:23):
welcome and prepared a warm meal for her. O Yuki
behaved so nicely that Minukichi's mother took a sudden fancy
to her and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo.
And the natural end of the matter was that Yuki
never went to Yiedo at all. She remained in the
house as an honorable daughter in law. O Yuki proved

(04:56:45):
a very good daughter in law. When Minukichi's mother came
to die some five years later, her last words were
words of affection and praise for the wife of her son,
and o Yuki bore Minukichi ten children, boys and girls,
handsome children all of them, and very fair of skin.
The country folk thought o Yuki a wonderful person by nature,

(04:57:06):
different from themselves. Most of the peasant women age early,
but o Yuki, even after having become the mother of
ten children, looked as young and fresh as on the
day when she had first come to the village. One night,
after the children had gone to sleep, o Yuki was
sewing by the light of a paper lamp, and Minokichi,

(04:57:27):
watching her, said, to see you sewing there with the
light on your face makes me think of a strange
thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen.
I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you
are now. Indeed, she was very like you. Without lifting
her eyes from her work, o Yuki responded, tell me

(04:57:49):
about her. Where did you see her? Then? Minokichi told
her about the terrible night in the ferryman's hut, and
about the white woman that had stooped above him, smiling
and whispering, and about the silent death of old Mosaku.
And he said, asleep or awake, that was the only
time that I saw a being as beautiful as you.

(04:58:12):
Of course, she was not a human being, and I
was afraid of her, very much afraid. But she was
so white. Indeed, I have never been sure whether it
was a dream that I saw or the woman of
the snow o. Yuki flung down her sewing and arose
and bowed above Minokichi where he sat, and shrieked into
his face. It was I, I I, Yuki. It was.

(04:58:37):
And I told you then that I would kill you
if you ever said one word about it. But for
those children asleep there, I would kill you this moment.
And now you had better take very very good care
of them, for if ever they have reason to complain
of you, I will treat you as you deserve. Even
as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying
of wind. Then she melted into a bright white mist

(04:59:00):
that spired to the roof beams and shuddered away through
the smoke hole. Never again was she seen. End of
Yuki Onna