Title: Mysteries and Adventures (1889)
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0700991.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: August 2007
Date most recently updated: August 2007

This eBook was produced by: Colin Choat

Production Notes: This ebook was compiled from the separate stories which
  appeared in other short story collections by Doyle. The text for three of
  the stories could not be found, viz.:
  * The Gully of Bluemansdyke
  * The Silver Hatchet
  * A Night Among the Nihilists

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Title: Mysteries and Adventures (1889)
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle




CONTENTS

The Gully of Bluemansdyke (not included)
The Parson of Jackman's Gulch
My Friend the Murderer
The Silver Hatchet (not included)
The Man from Archangel
That Little Square Box
A Night Among the Nihilists (not included)
The American's Tale
Bones. The April Fool of Harvey's Sluice
The Mystery of Sasassa Valley
Our Derby Sweepstakes
Selecting a Ghost


* * * * *




ELIAS B. HOPKINS,
THE PARSON OF JACKMAN'S GULCH.


He was known in the Gulch as the Reverend Elias B. Hopkins, but it
was generally understood that the title was an honorary one,
extorted by his many eminent qualities, and not borne out by any
legal claim which he could adduce.  "The Parson" was another of his
sobriquets, which was sufficiently distinctive in a land where the
flock was scattered and the shepherds few.  To do him justice, he
never pretended to have received any preliminary training for the
ministry, or any orthodox qualification to practise it.  "We're all
working in the claim of the Lord," he remarked one day, "and it
don't matter a cent whether we're hired for the job or whether we
waltzes in on our own account," a piece of rough imagery which
appealed directly to the instincts of Jackman's Gulch.  It is quite
certain that during the first few months his presence had a marked
effect in diminishing the excessive use both of strong drinks and
of stronger adjectives which had been characteristic of the little
mining settlement.  Under his tuition, men began to understand that
the resources of their native language were less limited than they
had supposed, and that it was possible to convey their impressions
with accuracy without the aid of a gaudy halo of profanity.

We were certainly in need of a regenerator at Jackman's Gulch about
the beginning of '53.  Times were flush then over the whole colony,
but nowhere flusher than there.  Our material prosperity had had a
bad effect upon our morals.  The camp was a small one, lying rather
better than a hundred and twenty miles to the north of Ballarat, at
a spot where a mountain torrent finds its way down a rugged ravine
on its way to join the Arrowsmith River.  History does not relate
who the original Jackman may have been, but at the time I speak of
the camp it contained a hundred or so adults, many of whom were men
who had sought an asylum there after making more civilised mining
centres too hot to hold them.  They were a rough, murderous crew,
hardly leavened by the few respectable members of society who were
scattered among them.

Communication between Jackman's Gulch and the outside world was
difficult and uncertain.  A portion of the bush between it and
Ballarat was infested by a redoubtable outlaw named Conky Jim, who,
with a small band as desperate as himself, made travelling a
dangerous matter.  It was customary, therefore, at the Gulch, to
store up the dust and nuggets obtained from the mines in a special
store, each man's share being placed in a separate bag on which his
name was marked.  A trusty man, named Woburn, was deputed to watch
over this primitive bank.  When the amount deposited became
considerable, a waggon was hired, and the whole treasure was
conveyed to Ballarat, guarded by the police and by a certain number
of miners, who took it in turn to perform the office.  Once in
Ballarat, it was forwarded on to Melbourne by the regular gold
waggons.  By this plan the gold was often kept for months in the
Gulch before being despatched, but Conky Jim was effectually
checkmated, as the escort party were far too strong for him and his
gang.  He appeared, at the time of which I write, to have forsaken
his haunts in disgust, and the road could be traversed by small
parties with impunity.

Comparative order used to reign during the daytime at Jackman's Gulch,
for the majority of the inhabitants were out with crowbar and pick among
the quartz ledges, or washing clay and sand in their cradles by the
banks of the little stream. As the sun sank down, however, the claims
were gradually deserted, and their unkempt owners, clay-bespattered and
shaggy, came lounging into camp, ripe for any form of mischief. Their
first visit was to Woburn's gold store, where their clean-up of the day
was duly deposited, the amount being entered in the storekeeper's book,
and each miner retaining enough to cover his evening's expenses. After
that, all restraint was at an end, and each set to work to get rid of
his surplus dust with the greatest rapidity possible. The focus of
dissipation was the rough bar, formed by a couple of hogsheads spanned
by planks, which was dignified by the name of the "Britannia Drinking
Saloon." Here Nat Adams, the burly bar-keeper, dispensed bad whisky at
the rate of two shillings a noggin, or a guinea a bottle, while his
brother Ben acted as croupier in a rude wooden shanty behind, which had
been converted into a gambling hell, and was crowded every night. There
had been a third brother, but an unfortunate misunderstanding with a
customer had shortened his existence. "He was too soft to live long,"
his brother Nathaniel feelingly observed, on the occasion of his
funeral. "Many's the time I've said to him, 'If you're arguin' a pint
with a stranger, you should always draw first, then argue, and then
shoot, if you judge that he's on the shoot.' Bill was too purlite.

He must needs argue first and draw after, when he might just as
well have kivered his man before talkin' it over with him.  This
amiable weakness of the deceased Bill was a blow to the firm of
Adams, which became so short-handed that the concern could hardly
be worked without the admission of a partner, which would mean a
considerable decrease in the profits.

Nat Adams had had a roadside shanty in the Gulch before the
discovery of gold, and might, therefore, claim to be the oldest
inhabitant.  These keepers of shanties were a peculiar race, and at
the cost of a digression it may he interesting to explain how they
managed to amass considerable sums of money in a land where
travellers were few and far between.  It was the custom of the
"bushmen," i.e., bullock-drivers, sheep tenders, and the other
white hands who worked on the sheep-runs up country, to sign
articles by which they agreed to serve their master for one,
two, or three years at so much per year and certain daily rations.
Liquor was never included in this agreement, and the men remained,
per force, total abstainers during the whole time.  The money was
paid in a lump sum at the end of the engagement.  When that day
came round, Jimmy, the stockman, would come slouching into his
master's office, cabbage-tree hat in hand.

"Morning, master!" Jimmy would say.  "My time's up.  I guess I'll
draw my cheque and ride down to town."

"You'll come back, Jimmy?"

"Yes, I'll come back.  Maybe I'll be away three weeks, maybe a
month.  I want some clothes, master, and my bloomin' boots are
well-nigh off my feet."

"How much, Jimmy?" asks his master, taking up his pen.

"There's sixty pound screw," Jimmy answers thoughtfully; "and you
mind, master, last March, when the brindled bull broke out o' the
paddock.  Two pound you promised me then.  And a pound at the
dipping.  And a pound when Millar's sheep got mixed with ourn;" and
so he goes on, for bushmen can seldom write, but they have memories
which nothing escapes.

His master writes the cheque and hands it across the table.  "Don't
get on the drink, Jimmy," he says.

"No fear of that, master," and the stockman slips the cheque into
his leather pouch, and within an hour he is ambling off upon
his long-limbed horse on his hundred-mile journey to town.

Now Jimmy has to pass some six or eight of the above-mentioned
roadside shanties in his day's ride, and experience has taught him
that if he once breaks his accustomed total abstinence, the
unwonted stimulant has an overpowering effect upon his brain.
Jimmy shakes his head warily as he determines that no earthly
consideration will induce him to partake of any liquor until his
business is over.  His only chance is to avoid temptation; so,
knowing that there is the first of these houses some half-mile
ahead, he plunges into a byepath through the bush which will lead
him out at the other side.

Jimmy is riding resolutely along this narrow path, congratulating
himself upon a danger escaped, when he becomes aware of a
sunburned, black-bearded man who is leaning unconcernedly against
a tree beside the track.  This is none other than the shanty-keeper,
who, having observed Jimmy's manoeuvre in the distance, has
taken a short cut through the bush in order to intercept him.

"Morning, Jimmy!" he cries, as the horseman comes up to him.

"Morning, mate; morning!"

"Where are ye off to to-day then?"

"Off to town," says Jimmy sturdily.

"No, now--are you though?  You'll have bully times down there for
a bit.  Come round and have a drink at my place.  Just by way of
luck."

"No," says Jimmy, "I don't want a drink."

"Just a little damp."

"I tell ye I don't want one," says the stockman angrily.

"Well, ye needn't be so darned short about it.  It's nothin' to me
whether you drinks or not.  Good mornin'."

"Good mornin'," says Jimmy, and has ridden on about twenty yards
when he hears the other calling on him to stop.

"See here, Jimmy!" he says, overtaking him again.  "If you'll do me
a kindness when you're up in town I'd be obliged."

"What is it?"

"It's a letter, Jim, as I wants posted.  It's an important one too,
an' I wouldn't trust it with every one; but I knows you, and if
you'll take charge on it it'll be a powerful weight off my mind."

"Give it here," Jimmy says laconically.

"I hain't got it here.  It's round in my caboose.  Come round for
it with me.  It ain't more'n quarter of a mile."

Jimmy consents reluctantly.  When they reach the tumble-down hut
the keeper asks him cheerily to dismount and to come in.

"Give me the letter," says Jimmy.

"It ain't altogether wrote yet, but you sit down here for a minute
and it'll be right," and so the stockman is beguiled into the
shanty.

At last the letter is ready and handed over.  "Now, Jimmy," says
the keeper, "one drink at my expense before you go."

"Not a taste," says Jimmy.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" the other says in an aggrieved tone.
"You're too damned proud to drink with a poor cove like me.  Here--
give us back that letter.  I'm cursed if I'll accept a favour from
a man whose too almighty big to have a drink with me."

"Well, well, mate, don't turn rusty," says Jim.  "Give us one drink
an' I'm off."

The keeper pours out about half a pannikin of raw rum and hands it
to the bushman.  The moment he smells the old familiar smell his
longing for it returns, and he swigs it off at a gulp.  His eyes
shine more brightly and his face becomes flushed.  The keeper
watches him narrowly.  "You can go now, Jim," he says.

"Steady, mate, steady," says the bushman.  "I'm as good a man as
you.  If you stand a drink I can stand one too, I suppose."  So the
pannikin is replenished, and Jimmy's eyes shine brighter still.

"Now, Jimmy, one last drink for the good of the house," says the
keeper, "and then it's time you were off."  The stockman has a
third gulp from the pannikin, and with it all his scruples and good
resolutions vanish for ever.

"Look here," he says somewhat huskily, taking his cheque out of his
pouch.  "You take this, mate.  Whoever comes along this road, ask
'em what they'll have, and tell them it's my shout.  Let me know
when the money's done."

So Jimmy abandons the idea of ever getting to town, and for
three weeks or a month he lies about the shanty in a state of
extreme drunkenness, and reduces every wayfarer upon the road to
the same condition.  At last one fine morning the keeper comes to
him.  "The coin's done, Jimmy," he says; "it's about time you made
some more."  So Jimmy has a good wash to sober him, straps his
blanket and his billy to his back, and rides off through the bush
to the sheeprun, where he has another year of sobriety, terminating
in another month of intoxication.

All this, though typical of the happy-go-lucky manners of the
inhabitants, has no direct bearing upon Jackman's Gulch, so we must
return to that Arcadian settlement.  Additions to the population
there were not numerous, and such as came about the time of which
I speak were even rougher and fiercer than the original
inhabitants.  In particular, there came a brace of ruffians named
Phillips and Maule, who rode into camp one day, and started a claim
upon the other side of the stream.  They outgulched the Gulch in
the virulence and fluency of their blasphemy, in the truculence of
their speech and manner, and in their reckless disregard of all
social laws.  They claimed to have come from Bendigo, and there
were some amongst us who wished that the redoubted Conky Jim was on
the track once more, as long as he would close it to such visitors
as these.  After their arrival the nightly proceedings at the
Britannia bar and at the gambling hell behind it became more
riotous than ever.  Violent quarrels, frequently ending in
bloodshed, were of constant occurrence.  The more peaceable
frequenters of the bar began to talk seriously of lynching the two
strangers who were the principal promoters of disorder.  Things
were in this unsatisfactory condition when our evangelist, Elias B.
Hopkins, came limping into the camp, travel-stained and footsore,
with his spade strapped across his back, and his Bible in the
pocket of his moleskin jacket.

His presence was hardly noticed at first, so insignificant was the
man.  His manner was quiet and unobtrusive, his face pale, and his
figure fragile.  On better acquaintance, however, there was a
squareness and firmness about his clean-shaven lower jaw, and an
intelligence in his widely-opened blue eyes, which marked him as a
man of character.  He erected a small hut for himself, and started
a claim close to that occupied by the two strangers who had
preceded him.  This claim was chosen with a ludicrous disregard for
all practical laws of mining, and at once stamped the newcomer as
being a green hand at his work.  It was piteous to observe him
every morning as we passed to our work, digging and delving with
the greatest industry, but, as we knew well, without the smallest
possibility of any result.  He would pause for a moment as we went
by, wipe his pale face with his bandanna handkerchief, and shout
out to us a cordial morning greeting, and then fall to again with
redoubled energy.  By degrees we got into the way of making a
half-pitying, half-contemptuous inquiry as to how he got on.  "I hain't
struck it yet, boys," he would answer cheerily, leaning on his
spade, "but the bedrock lies deep just hereabouts, and I reckon
we'll get among the pay gravel to-day."  Day after day he returned
the same reply with unvarying confidence and cheerfulness.

It was not long before he began to show us the stuff that was in
him.  One night the proceedings were unusually violent at the
drinking saloon.  A rich pocket had been struck during the day, and
the striker was standing treat in a lavish and promiscuous fashion
which had reduced three parts of the settlement to a state of wild
intoxication.  A crowd of drunken idlers stood or lay about the
bar, cursing, swearing, shouting, dancing, and here and there
firing their pistols into the air out of pure wantonness.  From the
interior of the shanty behind there came a similar chorus.  Maule,
Phillips, and the roughs who followed them were in the ascendant,
and all order and decency was swept away.

Suddenly, amid this tumult of oaths and drunken cries, men became
conscious of a quiet monotone which underlay all other sounds and
obtruded itself at every pause in the uproar.  Gradually first one
man and then another paused to listen, until there was a general
cessation of the hubbub, and every eye was turned in the direction
whence this quiet stream of words flowed.  There, mounted upon a
barrel, was Elias B. Hopkins, the newest of the inhabitants of
Jackman's Gulch, with a good-humoured smile upon his resolute face.

He held an open Bible in his hand, and was reading aloud a passage
taken at random--an extract from the Apocalypse, if I remember
right.  The words were entirely irrelevant and without the smallest
bearing upon the scene before him, but he plodded on with great
unction, waving his left hand slowly to the cadence of his words.

There was a general shout of laughter and applause at this
apparition, and Jackman's Gulch gathered round the barrel
approvingly, under the impression that this was some ornate joke,
and that they were about to be treated to some mock sermon or
parody of the chapter read.  When, however, the reader, having
finished the chapter, placidly commenced another, and having
finished that rippled on into another one, the revellers came to
the conclusion that the joke was somewhat too long-winded.  The
commencement of yet another chapter confirmed this opinion, and an
angry chorus of shouts and cries, with suggestions as to gagging
the reader or knocking him off the barrel, rose from every side.
In spite of roars and hoots, however, Elias B. Hopkins plodded away
at the Apocalypse with the same serene countenance, looking as
ineffably contented as though the babel around him were the most
gratifying applause.  Before long an occasional boot pattered
against the barrel or whistled past our parson's head; but here
some of the more orderly of the inhabitants interfered in favour of
peace and order, aided curiously enough by the afore-mentioned
Maule and Phillips, who warmly espoused the cause of the little
Scripture reader.  "The little cus has got grit in him," the latter
explained, rearing his bulky red-shirted form between the
crowd and the object of its anger.  "His ways ain't our ways, and
we're all welcome to our opinions, and to sling them round from
barrels or otherwise if so minded.  What I says and Bill says is,
that when it comes to slingin' boots instead o' words it's too
steep by half, an' if this man's wronged we'll chip in an' see him
righted."  This oratorical effort had the effect of checking the
more active signs of disapproval, and the party of disorder
attempted to settle down once more to their carouse, and to ignore
the shower of Scripture which was poured upon them.  The attempt
was hopeless.  The drunken portion fell asleep under the drowsy
refrain, and the others, with many a sullen glance at the
imperturbable reader, slouched off to their huts, leaving him still
perched upon the barrel.  Finding himself alone with the more
orderly of the spectators, the little man rose, closed his book,
after methodically marking with a lead pencil the exact spot at
which he stopped, and descended from his perch.  "To-morrow night,
boys," he remarked in his quiet voice, "the reading will commence
at the 9th verse of the 15th chapter of the Apocalypse," with which
piece of information, disregarding our congratulations, he walked
away with the air of a man who has performed an obvious duty.

We found that his parting words were no empty threat.  Hardly had
the crowd begun to assemble next night before he appeared once more
upon the barrel and began to read with the same monotonous vigour,
tripping over words! muddling up sentences, but still boring
along through chapter after chapter.  Laughter, threats, chaff--
every weapon short of actual violence--was used to deter him, but
all with the same want of success.  Soon it was found that there
was a method in his proceedings.  When silence reigned, or when the
conversation was of an innocent nature, the reading ceased.  A
single word of blasphemy, however, set it going again, and it would
ramble on for a quarter of an hour or so, when it stopped, only to
be renewed upon similar provocation.  The reading was pretty
continuous during that second night, for the language of the
opposition was still considerably free.  At least it was an
improvement upon the night before.

For more than a month Elias B. Hopkins carried on this campaign.
There he would sit, night after night, with the open book upon his
knee, and at the slightest provocation off he would go, like a
musical box when the spring is touched.  The monotonous drawl
became unendurable, but it could only be avoided by conforming to
the parson's code.  A chronic swearer came to be looked upon with
disfavour by the community, since the punishment of his
transgression fell upon all.  At the end of a fortnight the reader
was silent more than half the time, and at the end of the month his
position was a sinecure.

Never was a moral revolution brought about more rapidly and more
completely.  Our parson carried his principle into private life.
I have seen him, on hearing an unguarded word from some worker in
the gulches, rush across, Bible in hand, and perching himself upon
the heap of red clay which surmounted the offender's claim,
drawl through the genealogical tree at the commencement of the New
Testament in a most earnest and impressive manner, as though it
were especially appropriate to the occasion.  In time, an oath
became a rare thing amongst us.  Drunkenness was on the wane too.
Casual travellers passing through the Gulch used to marvel at our
state of grace, and rumours of it went as far as Ballarat, and
excited much comment therein.

There were points about our evangelist which made him especially
fitted for the work which he had undertaken.  A man entirely
without redeeming vices would have had no common basis on which to
work, and no means of gaining the sympathy of his flock.  As we
came to know Elias B. Hopkins better, we discovered that in spite
of his piety there was a leaven of old Adam in him, and that he had
certainly known unregenerate days.  He was no teetotaler.  On the
contrary, he could choose his liquor with discrimination, and lower
it in an able manner.  He played a masterly hand at poker, and
there were few who could touch him at "cut-throat euchre."  He and
the two ex-ruffians, Phillips and Maule, used to play for hours in
perfect harmony, except when the fall of the cards elicited an oath
from one of his companions.  At the first of these offences the
parson would put on a pained smile, and gaze reproachfully at the
culprit.  At the second he would reach for his Bible, and the game
was over for the evening.  He showed us he was a good revolver
shot too, for when we were practising at an empty brandy bottle
outside Adams' bar, he took up a friend's pistol and hit it plumb
in the centre at twenty-four paces.  There were few things he took
up that he could not make a show at apparently, except gold-digging,
and at that he was the veriest duffer alive.  It was pitiful
to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across
it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while
all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had assumed
quite a portly rotundity of form, for the weeks were slipping by,
and it was almost time for the gold-train to start off for
Ballarat.  We reckoned that the amount which we had stored at the
time represented the greatest sum which had ever been taken by a
single convoy out of Jackman's Gulch.

Although Elias B. Hopkins appeared to derive a certain quiet
satisfaction from the wonderful change which he had effected in the
camp, his joy was not yet rounded and complete.  There was one
thing for which he still yearned.  He opened his heart to us about
it one evening.

"We'd have a blessing on the camp, boys," he said, "if we only had
a service o' some sort on the Lord's day.  It's a temptin' o'
Providence to go on in this way without takin' any notice of it,
except that maybe there's more whisky drunk and more card playin'
than on any other day."

"We hain't got no parson," objected one of the crowd.


"Ye fool!" growled another, "hain't we got a man as is worth any
three parsons, and can splash texts around like clay out o' a
cradle.  What more d'ye want?"

"We hain't got no church!" urged the same dissentient.

"Have it in the open air," one suggested.

"Or in Woburn's store," said another.

"Or in Adams' saloon."

The last proposal was received with a buzz of approval, which
showed that it was considered the most appropriate locality.

Adams' saloon was a substantial wooden building in the rear of the
bar, which was used partly for storing liquor and partly for a
gambling saloon.  It was strongly built of rough-hewn logs, the
proprietor rightly judging, in the unregenerate days of Jackman's
Gulch, that hogsheads of brandy and rum were commodities which had
best be secured under lock and key.  A strong door opened into each
end of the saloon, and the interior was spacious enough, when the
table and lumber were cleared away, to accommodate the whole
population.  The spirit barrels were heaped together at one end by
their owner, so as to make a very fair imitation of a pulpit.

At first the Gulch took but a mild interest in the proceedings, but
when it became known that Elias B. Hopkins intended, after reading
the service, to address the audience, the settlement began to warm
up to the occasion.  A real sermon was a novelty to all of them,
and one coming from their own parson was additionally so.
Rumour announced that it would be interspersed with local hits, and
that the moral would be pointed by pungent personalities.  Men
began to fear that they would be unable to gain seats, and many
applications were made to the brothers Adams.  It was only when
conclusively shown that the saloon could contain them all with a
margin that the camp settled down into calm expectancy.

It was as well that the building was of such a size, for the
assembly upon the Sunday morning was the largest which had ever
occurred in the annals of Jackman's Gulch.  At first it was thought
that the whole population was present, but a little reflection
showed that this was not so.  Maule and Phillips had gone on a
prospecting journey among the hills, and had not returned as yet,
and Woburn, the gold-keeper, was unable to leave his store.  Having
a very large quantity of the precious metal under his charge, he
stuck to his post, feeling that the responsibility was too great to
trifle with.  With these three exceptions the whole of the Gulch,
with clean red shirts, and such other additions to their toilet as
the occasion demanded, sauntered in a straggling line along the
clayey pathway which led up to the saloon.

The interior of the building had been provided with rough benches,
and the parson, with his quiet good-humoured smile, was standing at
the door to welcome them.  "Good morning, boys," he cried cheerily,
as each group came lounging up.  "Pass in; pass in.  You'll find
this is as good a morning's work as any you've done.  Leave
your pistols in this barrel outside the door as you pass; you can
pick them out as you come out again, but it isn't the thing to
carry weapons into the house of peace."  His request was
good-humouredly complied with, and before the last of the congregation
filed in, there was a strange assortment of knives and firearms in
this depository.  When all had assembled, the doors were shut, and
the service began--the first and the last which was ever performed
at Jackman's Gulch.

The weather was sultry and the room close, yet the miners listened
with exemplary patience.  There was a sense of novelty in the
situation which had its attractions.  To some it was entirely new,
others were wafted back by it to another land and other days.
Beyond a disposition which was exhibited by the uninitiated to
applaud at the end of certain prayers, by way of showing that they
sympathised with the sentiments expressed, no audience could have
behaved better.  There was a murmur of interest, however, when
Elias B. Hopkins, looking down on the congregation from his rostrum
of casks, began his address.

He had attired himself with care in honour of the occasion.  He
wore a velveteen tunic, girt round the waist with a sash of china
silk, a pair of moleskin trousers, and held his cabbage-tree hat in
his left hand.  He began speaking in a low tone, and it was noticed
at the time that he frequently glanced through the small aperture
which served for a window which was placed above the heads of those
who sat beneath him.

"I've put you straight now," he said, in the course of his address;
"I've got you in the right rut if you will but stick in it."  Here
he looked very hard out of the window for some seconds.  "You've
learned soberness and industry, and with those things you can
always make up any loss you may sustain.  I guess there isn't one
of ye that won't remember my visit to this camp."  He paused for a
moment, and three revolver shots rang out upon the quiet summer
air.  "Keep your seats, damn ye!" roared our preacher, as his
audience rose in excitement.  "If a man of ye moves down he goes!
The door's locked on the outside, so ye can't get out anyhow.  Your
seats, ye canting, chuckle-headed fools!  Down with ye, ye dogs, or
I'll fire among ye!"

Astonishment and fear brought us back into our seats, and we sat
staring blankly at our pastor and each other.  Elias B. Hopkins,
whose whole face and even figure appeared to have undergone an
extraordinary alteration, looked fiercely down on us from his
commanding position, with a contemptuous smile on his stern face.

"I have your lives in my hands," he remarked; and we noticed as he
spoke that he held a heavy revolver in his hand, and that the butt
of another one protruded from his sash.  "I am armed and you are
not.  If one of you moves or speaks he is a dead man.  If not, I
shall not harm you.  You must wait here for an hour.  Why, you
FOOLS" (this with a hiss of contempt which rang in our ears for
many a long day), "do you know who it is that has stuck you
up?  Do you know who it is that has been playing it upon you for
months as a parson and a saint?  Conky Jim, the bushranger, ye
apes.  And Phillips and Maule were my two right-hand men.  They're
off into the hills with your gold----Ha! would ye?"  This to some
restive member of the audience, who quieted down instantly before
the fierce eye and the ready weapon of the bushranger.  "In an hour
they will be clear of any pursuit, and I advise you to make the
best of it, and not to follow, or you may lose more than your
money.  My horse is tethered outside this door behind me.  When the
time is up I shall pass through it, lock it on the outside, and be
off.  Then you may break your way out as best you can.  I have no
more to say to you, except that ye are the most cursed set of asses
that ever trod in boot-leather."

We had time to endorse mentally this outspoken opinion during the
long sixty minutes which followed; we were powerless before the
resolute desperado.  It is true that if we made a simultaneous rush
we might bear him down at the cost of eight or ten of our number.
But how could such a rush be organised without speaking, and who
would attempt it without a previous agreement that he would be
supported?  There was nothing for it but submission.  It seemed
three hours at the least before the ranger snapped up his watch,
stepped down from the barrel, walked backwards, still covering us
with his weapon, to the door behind him, and then passed rapidly
through it.  We heard the creaking of the rusty lock, and the
clatter of his horse's hoofs, as he galloped away.

It has been remarked that an oath had, for the last few weeks, been
a rare thing in the camp.  We made up for our temporary abstention
during the next half-hour.  Never was heard such symmetrical and
heartfelt blasphemy.  When at last we succeeded in getting the door
off its hinges all sight of both rangers and treasure had
disappeared, nor have we ever caught sight of either the one or the
other since.  Poor Woburn, true to his trust, lay shot through the
head across the threshold of his empty store.  The villains, Maule
and Phillips, had descended upon the camp the instant that we had
been enticed into the trap, murdered the keeper, loaded up a small
cart with the booty, and got safe away to some wild fastness among
the mountains, where they were joined by their wily leader.

Jackman's Gulch recovered from this blow, and is now a flourishing
township.  Social reformers are not in request there, however, and
morality is at a discount.  It is said that an inquest has been
held lately upon an unoffending stranger who chanced to remark that
in so large a place it would be advisable to have some form of
Sunday service.  The memory of their one and only pastor is still
green among the inhabitants, and will be for many a long year to
come.



MY FRIEND THE MURDERER


"Number 43 is no better, doctor," said the head warder, in a slightly
reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door.

"Confound 43!" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian
Sketcher.

"And 61 says his tubes are paining him. Couldn't you do anything for
him?"

"He is a walking drug-shop," said I. "He has the whole British
pharmacopoeia inside him. I believe his tubes are as sound as yours are."

"Then there's 7 and 108, they are chronic," continued the warder,
glancing down a blue slip of paper "And 28 knocked off work yesterday--
said lifting things gave him a stitch in his side. I want you to have a
look at him, if you don't mind, doctor. There's 31 too--him that killed
John Adamson in the Corinthian brig--he's been carrying on awful in the
night, shrieking and yelling, he has, and no stopping him either."

"All right, I'll have a look at him afterward," I said, tossing my paper
carelessly aside, and pouring myself a cup of coffee. "Nothing else to
report, I suppose, warder?"

The official protruded his head a little further into the room. "Beg
pardon, doctor," he said, in a confidential tone, "but I notice as 82 has
a bit of a cold, and it would be a good excuse for you to visit him and
have a chat, maybe."

The cup of coffee was arrested half-way to my lips as I stared in
amazement at the man's serious face.

"An excuse?" I said. "An excuse? What the deuce are you talking about,
McPherson? You see me trudging about all day at my practice, when I'm not
looking after the prisoners, and coming back every night as tired as a
dog, and you talk about finding an excuse for doing more work."

"You'd like it, doctor," said Warder McPherson, insinuating one of his
shoulders into the room. "That man's story's worth listening to if you
could get him to tell it, though he's not what you'd call free in his
speech. Maybe you don't know who 82 is?"

"No, I don't, and I don't care either," I answered, in the conviction
that some local ruffian was about to be foisted upon me as a celebrity.

"He's Maloney," said the warder, "him that turned Queen's evidence after
the murders at blue-mansdyke."

"You don't say so?" I ejaculated, laying down my cup in astonishment. I
had heard of this ghastly series of murders, and read an account of them
in a London magazine long before setting foot in the colony. I remembered
that the atrocities committed had thrown the Burke and Hare crimes
completely into the shade, and that one of the most villainous of the
gang had saved his own skin by betraying his companions. "Are you sure?"
I asked."

"Oh, yes, it's him right enough. Just you draw him out a bit, and he'll
astonish you. He's a man to know, is Maloney; that's to say, in
moderation;" and the head grinned, bobbed, and disappeared, leaving me to
finish my breakfast and ruminate over what I had heard.

The surgeonship of an Australian prison is not an enviable position. It
may be endurable in Melbourne or Sydney, but the little town of Perth has
few attractions to recommend it, and those few had been long exhausted.
The climate was detestable, and the society far from congenial. Sheep and
cattle were the staple support of the community; and their prices,
breeding, and diseases the principal topic of conversation. Now as I,
being an outsider, possessed neither the one nor the other, and was
utterly callous to the new "dip" and the "rot" and other kindred topics,
I found myself in a state of mental isolation, and was ready to hail
anything which might relieve the monotony of my existence. Maloney, the
murderer, had at least some distinctiveness and individuality in his
character, and might act as a tonic to a mind sick of the commonplaces of
existence. When, therefore, I went upon my usual matutinal round, I
turned the lock of the door which bore the convict's number upon it, and
walked into the cell.

The man was lying in a heap upon his rough bed as I entered, but,
uncoiling his long limbs, he started up and stared at me with an insolent
look of defiance on his face which augured badly for our interview. He
had a pale, set face, with sandy hair and a steely-blue eye, with
something feline in its expression. His frame was tall and muscular,
though there was a curious bend in his shoulders, which almost amounted
to a deformity. An ordinary observer meeting him in the street might have
put him down as a well-developed man, fairly handsome, and of studious
habits--even in the hideous uniform of the rottenest convict
establishment he imparted a certain refinement to his carriage which
marked him out among the inferior ruffians around him.

"I'm not on the sick-list," he said, gruffly. There was something in the
hard, rasping voice which dispelled all softer illusions, and made me
realize that I was face to face with the man of the Lena Valley and
Bluemansdyke, the bloodiest bushranger that ever stuck up a farm or cut
the throats of its occupants.

"I know you're not," I answered. "Warder McPherson told me you had a
cold, though, and I thought I'd look in and see you."

"Blast Warder McPherson, and blast you, too!" yelled the convict, in a
paroxysm of rage. "Oh, that's right," he added in a quieter voice; "hurry
away; report me to the governor, do! Get me another six months or so--
that's your game."

"I'm not going to report you," I said.

"Eight square feet of ground," he went on, disregarding my protest, and
evidently working himself into a fury again. "Eight square feet, and I
can't have that without being talked to and stared at, and--oh, blast
the whole crew of you!" and he raised his two clinched hands above his
head and shook them in passionate invective.

"You've got a curious idea of hospitality," I remarked, determined not to
lose my temper, and saying almost the first thing that came to my tongue.

To my surprise the words had an extraordinary effect upon him. He seemed
completely staggered at my assuming the proposition for which he had been
so fiercely contending--namely, that the room in which he stood was his
own."

"I beg your pardon," he said; "I didn't mean to be rude. Won't you take a
seat?" and he motioned toward a rough trestle, which formed the headpiece
of his couch.

I sat down, rather astonished at the sudden change. I don't know that I
liked Maloney better under this new aspect. The murderer had, it is true,
disappeared for the nonce, but there was something in the smooth tones
and obsequious manner which powerfully suggested that the witness of the
queen, who had stood up and sworn away the lives of his companions in
crime.

"How's your chest?" I asked, putting on my professional air.

"Come, drop it, doctor--drop it!" he answered, showing a row of white
teeth as he resumed his seat upon the side of the bed. "It wasn't anxiety
after my precious health that brought you along here; that story won't
wash at all. You came to have a look at Wolf Tone Maloney, forger,
murderer, Sydney-slider, ranger, and government peach. That's about my
figure, ain't it? There it is, plain and straight; there's nothing mean
about me."

He paused as if he expected me to say something; but I remained silent,
he repeated once or twice, "There's nothing mean about me."

"And why shouldn't I?" he suddenly yelled, his eyes gleaming and his
whole satanic nature reasserting itself. "We were bound to swing, one and
all, and they were none the worse if I saved myself by turning against
them. Every man for himself, say I, and the devil take the luckiest. You
haven't a plug of tobacco, doctor, have you?"

He tore at the piece of "Barrett's" which I handed him, as ravenously as
a wild beast. It seemed to have the effect of soothing his nerves, for he
settled himself down in the bed and reassumed his former deprecating
manner.

"You wouldn't like it yourself, you know, doctor," he said: "it's enough
to make any man a little queer in his temper. I'm in for six months this
time for assault, and very sorry I shall be to go out again, I can tell
you. My mind's at ease in here; but when I'm outside, what with the
government and what with Tattooed Tom, of Hawkesbury, there's no chance
of a quiet life."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"He's the brother of John Grimthorpe, the same that was condemned on my
evidence; and an infernal scamp he was, too! Spawn of the devil, both of
them! This tattooed one is a murderous ruffian, and he swore to have my
blood after that trial. It's seven years ago, and he's following me yet;
I know he is, though he lies low and keeps dark. He came up to me in
Ballarat in '75: you can see on the back of my hand here where the bullet
chipped me. He tried again in '76, at Port Philip, but I got the drop on
him and wounded him badly. He knifed me in '79, though, in a bar at
Adelaide, and that made our account about level. He's loafing round again
now, and he'll let daylight into me--unless--unless by some
extraordinary chance some one does as much for him." And Maloney gave me
a very ugly smile.

"I don't complain of him so much," he continued. "Looking at it in his
way, no doubt it is a sort of family mater that can hardly be neglected.
It's the government that fetches me. When I think of what I've done for
this country, and then of what this country has done for me, it makes me
fairly wild--clean drives me off my head. There's no gratitude nor
common decency left, doctor!"

He brooded over his wrongs for a few minutes, and then proceeded to lay
them before me in detail.

"Here's nine men," he said; "they've been murdering and killing for a
matter of three years, and maybe a life a week wouldn't more than average
the work that they've done. The government tries them, but they can't
convict; and why?--because the witnesses have all had their throats cut,
and the whole job's been very neatly done. What happens then? Up comes a
citizen called Wolf Tone Maloney; he says 'The country needs me, and here
I am.' And with that he gives his evidence, convicts the lot, and enables
the beaks to hang them. That's what I did. There's nothing mean about me!
And now what does the country do in return? Dogs me, sir, spies on me,
watches me night and day, turns against the very man that worked so very
hard for it. There's something mean about that, anyway. I didn't expect
them to knight me, nor to make me colonial secretary; but, blast it! I
did expect that they would let me alone!"

"Well," I remonstrated, "if you choose to break laws and assault people,
you can't expect it to be looked over on account of former services."

"I don't refer to my present imprisonment, sir," said Maloney, with
dignity. "It's the life I've been leading since that cursed trial that
takes the soul out of me. Just you sit there on that trestle, and I'll
tell you all about it; and then look me in the face and tell me that I've
been treated fair by the police."

I shall endeavor to transcribe the experience of the convict in his own
words, as far as I can remember them, preserving his curious perversions
of right and wrong. I can answer for the truth of his facts, whatever may
be said for his deductions from them. Months afterward, Inspector H. W.
Hann, formerly governor of the jail at Dunedin, showed me entries in his
ledger which corroborated every statement. Maloney reeled the story off
in a dull, monotonous voice, with his head sunk upon his breast and his
hands between his knees. The glitter of his serpent-like eyes was the
only sign of the emotions which were stirred up by the recollection of
the events which he narrated.

You've read of Bluemansdyke (he began, with some pride in his tone). We
made it hot while it lasted; but they ran us to earth at last, and a trap
called Braxton, with a damned Yankee, took the lot of us. That was in New
Zealand, of course, and they took us down to Dunedin, and there they were
convicted and hanged. One and all they put up their hands in the dock,
and cursed me till your blood would have run cold to hear them--which
was scurvy treatment, seeing that we had all been pals together; but they
were a blackguard lot, and thought only of themselves. I think it is as
well that they were hung.

They took me back to Dunedin Jail, and clamped me into the old cell. The
only difference they made was, that I had no work to do and was well fed.
I stood this for a week or two, until one day the governor was making his
rounds, and I put the matter to him.

"How's this?" I said. "My conditions were a free pardon, and you're
keeping me here against the law."

He gave a sort of a smile. "Should you like very much to get out?" he
asked.

"So much," said I, "that unless you open that door I'll have an action
against you for illegal detention."

He seemed a bit astonished by my resolution.

"You're very anxious to meet your death," he said.

"What d'ye mean?" I asked.

"Come here, and you'll know what I mean," he answered. And he led me down
the passage to a window that overlooked the door of the prison. "Look at
that!" said he.

I looked out, and there were a dozen or so rough-looking fellows standing
outside the street, some of them smoking, some playing cards on the
pavement. When they saw me they gave a yell and crowded round the door,
shaking their fists and hooting.

"They wait for you, watch and watch about," said the governor. "They're
the executive of the vigilance committee. However, since you are
determined to go, I can't stop you."

"D'ye call this a civilized land," I cried, "and let a man be murdered in
cold blood in open daylight?"

When I said this the governor and the warder and every fool in the place
grinned, as if a man's life was a rare good joke.

"You've got the law on your side," says the governor; "so we won't detain
you any longer. Show him out, warder."

He'd have done it, too, the black-hearted villain, if I hadn't begged and
prayed and offered to pay for my board and lodging, which is more than
any prisoner ever did before me. He let me stay on those conditions; and
for three months I was caged up there with every larrikin in the township
clamoring at the other side of the wall. That was pretty treatment for a
man that had served his country!

At last, one morning up came the governor again.

"Well, Maloney," he said, "how long are you going to honor us with your
society?"

I could have put a knife into his cursed body, and would, too, if we had
been alone in the bush; but I had to smile, and smooth him and flatter,
for I feared that he might have me sent out.

"You're an infernal rascal," he said; those were his very words, to a man
that had helped him all he knew how. "I don't want any rough justice
here, though; and I think I see my way to getting you out of Dunedin."

"I'll never forget you, governor," said I' and, by God! I never will!

"I don't want your thanks nor your gratitude," he answered; "it's not for
your sake that I do it, but simply to keep order in the town. There's a
steamer starts from the West Quay to Melbourne to-morrow, and we'll get
you aboard it. She is advertised at five in the morning, so have yourself
in readiness."

I packed up the few things I had, and was smuggled out by a back door,
just before daybreak. I hurried down, took my ticket under the name of
Isaac Smith, and got safely aboard the Melbourne boat. I remember hearing
her screw grinding into the water as the warps were cast loose, and
looking back at the lights of Dunedin as I leaned upon the bulwarks, with
the pleasant thought that I was leaving them behind me forever. It seemed
to me that a new world was before me, and that all my troubles had been
cast off. I went down below and had some coffee, and came up again
feeling better than I had done since the morning that I woke to find that
cursed Irishman that took me standing over me with a six-shooter.

Day had dawned by that time, and we were steaming along by the coast,
well out of sight of Dunedin. I loafed about for a couple of hours, and
when the sun got well up some of the other passengers came on deck and
joined me. One of them, a little perky sort of fellow, took a good long
look at me, and then came over and began talking.

"Mining, I suppose?" says he.

"Yes," I says.

"Made your pile?" he says.

"Pretty fair," says I.

"I was at it myself," he says; "I worked at the Nelson fields for three
months, and spent all I made in buying a salted claim which busted up the
second day. I went at it again, though, and struck it rich; but when the
gold wagon was going down to the settlements, it was stuck up by those
cursed rangers, and not a red cent left."

"That was a bad job," I says.

"Broke me--ruined me clean. Never mind, I've seen them all hanged for
it; that makes it easier to bear. There's only one left--the villain
that gave the evidence. I'd die happy if I could come across him. There
were two things I have to do if I meet him."

"What's that?" says I, carelessly.

"I've got to ask him where the money lies--they never had time to make
away with it, and it's cached somewhere in the mountains--and then I've
got to stretch his neck for him, and send his soul down to join the men
that he betrayed."

It seemed to me that I knew something about that cache, and I felt like
laughing; but he was watching me, and it struck me that he had a nasty,
vindictive kind of mind.

"I'm going up on the bridge," I said, for he was not a man whose
acquaintance I cared much about making.

He wouldn't hear of my leaving him, though.

"We're both miners," he says, "and we're pals for the voyage. Come down
to the bar. I'm not too poor to shout."

I couldn't refuse him well, and we went down together; and that was the
beginning of the trouble.. What harm was I doing any one on the ship? All
I asked for was a quiet life, leaving others alone and getting left alone
myself. No man could ask fairer than that. And now just you listen to
what came of it.

We were passing the front of the ladies' cabin, on our way to the saloon,
when out comes a servant lass--a freckled currency she-devil--with a
baby in her arms. We were brushing past her, when she gave a scream like
a railway whistle, and nearly dropped the kid. My nerves gave a sort of
jump when I heard that scream, but I turned and begged her pardon,
letting on that I thought I might have trod on her foot. I knew the game
was up, though, when I saw her white face, and her leaning against the
door and pointing.

"It's him!" she cried; "It's him! I saw him in the court-house. Oh, don't
let him hurt the baby!"

"Who is it?" asked the steward and half a dozen others in a breath.

"It's him--Maloney--Maloney, the murderer--oh, take him away--take
him away!"

I don't rightly remember what happened just at that moment. The furniture
and me seemed to get kind of mixed, and there was cursing, and smashing,
and some one shouting for his gold, and a general stamping round. When I
got steadied a bit, I found somebody's hand in my mouth. From what I
gathered afterward, I concluded that it belonged to that same little man
with the vicious way of talking. He got some of it out again, but that
was because the others were choking me. A poor chap can get no fair play
in this world when once he is down--still, I think he will remember me
till the day of his death--longer, I hope.

They dragged me out on to the poop and held a damned court-martial--on
me, mind you that had thrown over my pals in order to serve them. What
were they to do with me? Some said this, some said that; but it ended by
the captain deciding to send me ashore. The ship stopped, they lowered a
boat, and I was hoisted in, the whole gang of them hooting at me from
over the bulwarks. I saw the man I spoke of tying up his hand, though,
and I felt that things might be worse.

I changed my opinion before we got to land. I had reckoned on the shore
being deserted, and that I might make my way inland; but the ship had
stopped too near the Heads, and a dozen beachcombers and such like had
come down to the water's edge and were staring at us, wondering what the
boat was after. When we got to the edge of the surf the cockswain hailed
them, and after singing out who I was, he and his men threw me into the
water. You may well look surprised--neck and crop into ten feet of
water, with sharks as thick as green parrots in the bush, and I heard
them laughing as I floundered to the shore.

I soon saw it was a worse job than ever. As I came scrambling out through
the weeds, I was collared by a big chap with a velveteen coat, and half a
dozen others got round me and held me fast. Most of them looked simple
fellows enough, and I was not afraid of them; but there was one in a
cabbage-tree hat that had a very nasty expression on his face, and the
big man seemed to be chummy with him.

The dragged me up the beach, and then they let go their hold of me and
stood round in a circle.

"Well, mate," says the man with the hat, "we've been looking out for you
some time in these parts."

"And very good of you, too," I answers.

"None of your jaw," says he, "Come, boys what shall it be--hanging,
drowning, or shooting? Look sharp!"

This looked a bit too like business. "No, you don't" I said. "I've got
government protection and it'll be murder."

"That's what they call it," answered the one in the velveteen coat, as
cheery as a piping crow.

"And you're going to murder me for being a ranger?"

"Ranger be damned!" said the man. "We're going to hang you for peaching
against your pals; and that's an end of the palaver."

They slung a rope round my neck and dragged me up to the edge of the
bush. There were some big she-oaks and blue-gums, and they pitched on one
of these for the wicked deed. They ran the rope over a branch, tied my
hands, and told me to say my prayers. It seemed as if it was all up; but
Providence interfered to save me. It sounds nice enough sitting here and
telling about it, sir; but it was sick work to stand with nothing but the
beach in front of you, and the long white line of surf, with the steamer
in the distance, and a set of bloody-minded villains round you thirsting
for your life.

I never thought I'd owe anything good to the police; but they saved me
that time. A troop of them were riding from Hawkes Point Station to
Dunedin, and hearing that something was up, they came down through the
bush and interrupted the proceedings. I've heard some bands in my time,
doctor, but I never heard music like the jingle of those traps' spurs and
harness as they galloped out on to the open. They tried to hang me even
then, but the police were too quick for them; and the man with the hat
got one over the head with the flat of a sword. I was clapped on to a
horse, and before evening I found myself in my old quarters in the city
jail.

The governor wasn't to be done, though. He was determined to get rid of
me, and I was equally anxious to see the last of him. He waited a week or
so until the excitement had begun to die away, and then he smuggled me
aboard a three-mastered schooner bound to Sydney with tallow and hides.

We got far away to sea without a hitch, and things began to look a bit
more rosy. I made sure that I had seen the last of the prison, anyway.
The crew had a sort of an idea who I was, and if there'd been any rough
weather, they'd have hove me overboard, like enough; for they were a
rough, ignorant lot, and had a notion that I brought bad luck to the
ship. We had a good passage, however, and I was landed safe and sound
upon Sydney Quay.

Now just you listen to what happened next. You'd have thought they would
have been sick of ill-using me and following me by this time--wouldn't
you, now? Well, just you listen. It seems that a cursed steamer started
from Dunedin to Sydney on the very day we left, and got in before us,
bringing news that I was coming. Blessed if they hadn't called a meeting
--a regular mass-meeting--at the docks to discuss about it, and I was
marched right into it when I landed. They didn't take long about
arresting me, and I listened to all the speeches and resolutions. If I'd
been a prince there couldn't have been more excitement. The end of all
was that they agreed that it wasn't right that New Zealand should be
allowed to foist her criminals upon her neighbors, and that I was to be
sent back again by the next boat. So they posted me off again as if I was
a damned parcel; and after another eight-hundred-mile journey I found
myself back for the third time moving in the place that I was started
from.

By the time I had begun to think that I was going to spend the rest of my
existence traveling about from one port to another. Every man's hand
seemed turned against me, and there was no peace or quiet in any
direction. I was about sick of it by the time I had come back; and if I
could have taken to the bush I'd have done it, and chanced it with my old
pals. They were too quick for me, though, and kept me under lock and key;
but I managed, in spite of them, to negotiate that cache I told you of,
and sewed the gold up in my belt. I spent another month in jail, and then
they shipped me abroad a bark that was bound for England.

This time the crew never knew who I was, but the captain had a pretty
good idea, though he didn't let on to me that he had any suspicions. I
guessed from the first that the man was a villain. We had a fair passage,
except a gale or two off the Cape; and I began to feel like a free man
when I saw the blue loom of the old country, and the saucy little
pilot-boat from Falmouth dancing toward us over the waves. We ran down
the Channel, and before we reached Gravesend I had agreed with the pilot
that he should take me ashore with him when he left. It was at this time
that the captain showed me that I was right in thinking him a meddling,
disagreeable man. I got my things packed, such as they were, and left him
talking earnestly to the pilot, while I went below for my breakfast. When
I came up again we were fairly into the mouth of the river, and the boat
in which I was to have gone ashore had left us. The skipper said the
pilot had forgotten me; but that was too thin, and I began to fear that
all my old troubles were going to commence once more.

It was not long before my suspicions were confirmed. A boat darted out
from the side of the river, and a tall cove with a long black beard came
aboard. I heard him ask the mate whether they didn't need a mud-pilot to
take them up in the reaches, but it seemed to me that he was a man who
would know a deal more about handcuffs than he did about steering, so I
kept away from him. He came across the deck, however, and made some
remark to me, taking a good look at me the while. I didn't like
inquisitive people at any time, but an inquisitive stranger with glue
about the roots of his beard is the worst of all to stand, especially
under the circumstances. I began to feel that it was time for me to go.

I soon got a chance, and made good use of it. A big collier came athwart
the bows of our steamer, and we had to slacken down to dead slow. There
was a barge astern, and I slipped down by a rope and was into the barge
before any one missed me. Of course I had to leave my luggage behind me,
but I had the belt with the nuggets round my waist, and the chance of
shaking the police off my track was worth more than a couple of boxes. It
was clear to me now that the pilot had been a traitor, as well as the
captain, and had set the detectives after me. I often wish I could drop
across those two men again.

I hung about the barge all day as she drifted down the stream. There was
one man in her, but she was a big, ugly craft, and his hands were too
full for much looking about. Toward evening, when it got a bit dusky, I
struck out for the shore, and found myself in a sort of marsh place, a
good many miles to the east of London. I was soaking wet and half dead
with hunger, but I trudged into the town, got a new rig-out at a
slop-hot, and after having some supper, engaged a bed at the quietest
lodgings I could find.

I woke pretty early--a habit you pick up in the bush--and lucky for me
that I did so. The very first thing I saw when I took a look through a
chink in the shutter was one of those infernal policemen, standing right
opposite and staring up at the windows. He hadn't epaulets nor a sword,
like our traps, but for all that there was a sort of family likeness, and
the same busybody expression. Whether they followed me all the time, or
whether the woman that let me the bed didn't like the looks of me, is
more than I have ever been able to find out. He came across as I was
watching him, and noted down the address of the house in a book. I was
afraid that he was going to ring at the bell, but I suppose his orders
were simply to keep an eye on me, for after another good look at the
windows he moved on down the street.

I saw that my only chance was to act at once. I threw on my clothes,
opened the window softly, and, after making sure that there was nobody
about, dropped out onto the ground and made off as hard as I could run. I
traveled a matter of two or three miles, when my wind gave out; and as I
saw a big building with people going in and out, I went in too, and found
that it was a railway station. A train was just going off for Dover to
meet the French boat, so I took a ticket and jumped into a third-class
carriage.

There were a couple of other chaps in the carriage, innocent-looking
young beggars, both of them. They began speaking about his and that,
while I sat quiet in the corner and listened. Then they started on
England and foreign countries, and such like. Look ye now, doctor, this
is a fact. One of them begins jawing about the justice of England's laws.
"It's all fair and above-board," says he; "there ain't any secret police,
nor spying, like they have abroad," and a lot more of the same sort of
wash. Rather rough on me, wasn't it, listening to the damned young fool,
with the police following me about like my shadow?

I got to Paris right enough, and there I changed some of my gold, and for
a few days I imagined I'd shaken them off, and began to think of settling
down for a bit of rest. I needed it by that time, for I was looking more
like a ghost than a man. You've never had the police after you, I
suppose? Well, you needn't look offended, I didn't mean any harm. If ever
you had you'd know that it wastes a man away like a sheep with the rot.

I went to the opera one night and took a box, for I was coming out
between the acts when I met a fellow lounging along in the passage. The
light fell on his face, and I saw that it was the mud-pilot that had
boarded us in the Thames. His beard was gone, but I recognized the man at
a glance, for I've a good memory for faces.

I tell you, doctor, I felt desperate for a moment. I could have knifed
him if we had been alone, but he knew me well enough never to give me the
chance. It was more then I could stand any longer, so I went right up to
him and drew him aside, where we'd be free from all the lundgers and
theater-goers.

"How long are you going to keep it up?" I asked him.

He seemed a bit flustered for a moment, but then he saw there was no use
beating about the bush, so he answered straight;

"Until you go back to Australia," he said.

"Don't you know," I said, "that I have served the government and got a
free pardon?"

He grinned all over his ugly face when I said this.

"We know all about you, Maloney," he answered. "If you want a quiet life,
just you go back where you came from. If you stay here, you're a marked
man; and when you are found tripping it'll be a lifer for you, at the
least. Free trade's a fine thing but the market's too full of men like
you for us to need to import any."

It seemed to me that there was something in what he said, though he had a
nasty way of putting it. For some days back I'd been feeling a sort of
home sick. The ways of the people weren't my ways. They stared at me in
the street; and if I dropped into a oar, they'd stop talking and edge
away a bit, as if I was a wild beast. I'd sooner have had a pint of old
Stringybark, too, than a bucketful of their rot-gut liquors. There was
too much damned propriety. What was the use of having money if you
couldn't dress as you liked, nor bust in properly? There was no sympathy
for a man if he shot about a little when he was half-over. I've seen a
man dropped at Nelson many a time with less row than they'd make over a
broken window-pane. The thing was slow, and I was sick of it.

"You want me to go back?" I said.

"I've my order to stick fast to you until you do," he answered.

"Well," I said, "I don't care if I do. All I bargain is that you keep
your mouth shut and don't let on who I am, so that I may have a fair
start when I get there."

He agreed to this, and we went over to Southampton the very next day,
where he saw me safely off once more. I took a passage round to Adelaide,
where no one was likely to know me; and there I settled, right under the
nose of the police. Id been there ever since, leading a quiet life,' but
for little difficulties like the one I'm in for now, and for that devil,
Tattooed Tom, of Hawkesbury. I don't know what made me tell you all this,
doctor, unless it is that being lonely makes a man inclined to jaw when
he gets a chance. Just you take warning from me, though. Never put
yourself out to serve your country; for your country will do precious
little for you. Just you let them look after their own affairs; and if
they find difficulty in hanging a set of scoundrels, never mind chipping
in, but let them alone to do as best they can. Maybe they'll remember how
they treated me after I'm dead, and be sorry for neglecting me. I was
rude to you when you came in, and swore a trifle promiscuous: but don't
you mind me, it's only my way. You'll allow, though, that I have cause to
be a bit touchy now and again when I think of all that's passed. You're
not going, are you? Well, if you must, you must; but I hope you will look
me up at odd times when you are going your rounds. Oh, I say, you've left
the balance of that cake of tobacco behind you, haven't you? No: it's in
your pocket--that's all right. Thank ye doctor, you're a good sort, and
as quick as a hint as any man I've met.

A couple of months after narrating his experiences, Wolf Tone Maloney
finished his term, and was released. For a long time I neither saw him
nor heard of him, and he had almost slipped from my memory, until I was
reminded, in a somewhat tragic manner, of his existence. I had been
attending a patient some distance off in the country, and was riding
back, guiding my tired horse among the boulders which strewed the
pathway, and endeavoring to see my way through the gathering darkness,
when I came suddenly upon a little wayside inn. As I walked my horse up
toward the door, intending to make sure of my bearings before proceeding
further, I heard the sound of a violent altercation within the little
bar. There seemed to be a chorus of expostulation or remonstrance, above
which two powerful voices rang out loud and angry. As I listened, there
was a momentary hush, two pistol shots sounded almost simultaneously, and
with a crash the door burst open and a pair of dark figures staggered out
into the moonlight. They struggled for a moment in a deadly wrestle, and
then went down together among the loose stones. I had sprung off my
horse, and, with the help of half a dozen rough fellows from the bar,
dragged them away from one another.

A glance was sufficient to convince me that one of them was drying fast.
He was a thick-set burly fellow, with a determined cast of countenance.
The blood was welling from a deep stab in his throat, and it was evident
that an important artery had been divided. I turned away from him in
despair, and walked over to where his antagonist was lying. He was shot
through the lungs, but managed to raise himself up on his hand as I
approached, and peered anxiously up into my face. To my surprise, I saw
before me the haggard features and flaxen hair of my prison acquaintance,
Maloney.

"Ah, doctor!" he said, recognizing me. "How is he? Will he die?"

He asked the question so earnestly that I imagined he had softened at the
last moment, and feared to leave the world with another homicide upon his
conscience. Truth, however, compelled me to shake my head mournfully, and
to intimate that the wound would prove a mortal one.

Maloney gave a wild cry of triumph, which brought the blood welling out
from between his lips. "Here, boys," he gasped to the little group around
him. "There's money in my inside pocket. Damn the expense! Drinks round.
There's nothing mean about me. I'd drink with you, but I'm going. Give
the doc my share, for he's as good---" Here his head fell back with a
thud, his eye glazed, and the soul of Wolf Tone Maloney, forger, convict,
ranger, murderer, and government peach, drifted away into the Great
Unknown.

I cannot conclude without borrowing the account of the fatal quarrel
which appeared in the columns of the West Australian Sentinel. The
curious will find it in the issue of October 4, 1881:

"FATAL AFFRAY.--W. T. Maloney, a well-known citizen of New Montrose, and
proprietor of the Yellow Boy gambling saloon, has met with his death
under rather painful circumstances. Mr. Maloney was a man who had led a
checkered existence, and whose past history is replete with interest.
Some of our readers may recall the Lena Village murders, in which he
figured as the principal criminal. It is conjectured that during the
seven months that he owned a bar in that region, from twenty to thirty
travelers were hocussed and made away with. He succeeded, however, in
evading the vigilance of the officers of the law, and allied himself with
the bushrangers of Bluemansdyke, whose heroic capture and subsequent
execution are matters of history. Maloney extricated himself from the
fate which awaited him by turning Queen's evidence. He afterward visited
Europe, but returned to West Australia, where he has long played a
prominent part in local matters. On Friday evening he encountered an old
enemy, Thomas Grimthorpe, commonly known as Tattooed Tom, of Hawkesbury.
Shots were exchanged, and both were badly wounded, only surviving a few
minutes. Mr. Maloney had the reputation of being not only the most
wholesale murderer that ever lived, but also of having a finish and
attention to detail in matters of evidence which has been unapproached by
any European criminal. Sic transit gloria mundi!"



THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL


On the fourth day of March, in the year 1867, I being at that time in my
five-and-twentieth year, I wrote down the following words in my
note-book--the result of much mental perturbation and conflict:

"The solar system, amidst a countless number of other systems as large as
itself, rolls ever silently through space in the direction of the
constellation of Hercules. The great spheres of which it is composed spin
and spin through the eternal void ceaselessly and noiselessly. Of these
one of the smallest and most insignificant is that conglomeration of
solid and of liquid particles which we have named the earth. It whirls
onwards now as it has done before my birth, and will do after my death--a
revolving mystery, coming none know whence, and going none know whither.
Upon the outer crust of this moving mass crawl many mites, of whom I,
John M'Vittie, am one, helpless, impotent, being dragged aimlessly
through space. Yet such is the state of things amongst us that the little
energy and glimmering of reason which I possess is entirely taken up with
the labours which are necessary in order to procure certain metallic
discs, wherewith I may purchase the chemical elements necessary to build
up my ever-wasting tissues, and keep a roof over me to shelter me from
the inclemency of the weather. I thus have no thought to expend upon the
vital questions which surround me on every side. Yet, miserable entity as
I am, I can still at times feel some degree of happiness, and am
even--save the mark!--puffed up occasionally with a sense of my own
importance."

These words, as I have said, I wrote down in my note-book, and they
reflected accurately the thoughts which I found rooted far down in my
soul, ever present and unaffected by the passing emotions of the hour. At
last, however, came a time when my uncle, M'Vittie of Glencairn,
died--the same who was at one time chairman of committees of the House of
Commons. He divided his great wealth among his many nephews, and I found
myself with sufficient to provide amply for my wants during the remainder
of my life, and became at the same time the owner of a bleak tract of
land upon the coast, of Caithness, which I think the old man must have
bestowed upon me in derision, for it was sandy and valueless, and he had
ever a grim sense of humour. Up to this time I had been an attorney in a
midland town in England: Now I saw that I could put my thoughts into
effect, and, leaving all petty and sordid aims, could elevate my mind by
the study of the secrets of nature. My departure from my English home was
somewhat accelerated by the fact that I had nearly slain a man in a
quarrel, for my temper was fiery, and I was apt to forget my own strength
when enraged. There was no legal action taken in the matter, but the
papers yelped at me, and folk looked askance when I met them. It ended by
my cursing them and their vile, smoke-polluted town, and hurrying to my
northern possession, where I might at last find peace and an opportunity
for solitary study and contemplation. I borrowed from my capital before I
went, and so was able to take with me a choice collection of the most
modern philosophical instruments and books, together with chemicals and
such other things as I might need in my retirement.

The land which I had inherited was a narrow strip, consisting mostly of
sand, and extending for rather over two miles round the coast of Mansie
Bay, in Caithness. Upon this strip there had been a rambling, greystone
building--when erected or wherefore none could tell me--and this I had
repaired, so that it made a dwelling quite good enough for one of my
simple tastes. One room was my laboratory, another my sitting-room, and
in a third, just under the sloping roof, I slung the hammock in which I
always slept. There were three other rooms, but I left them vacant,
except one which was given over to the old crone who kept house for me.
Save the Youngs and the M'Leods, who were fisherfolk living round at the
other side of Fergus Ness, there were no other people for many miles in
each direction. In front of the house was the great bay, behind it were
two long barren hills, capped by other loftier ones beyond. There was a
glen between the hills, and when the wind was from the land it used to
sweep down this with a melancholy sough and whisper among the branches of
the fir-trees beneath my attic window.

I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear
for the most part to dislike me. I hate their little crawling ways, their
conventionalities, their deceits, their narrow rights and wrongs. They
take offence at my brusque outspokenness, my disregard for their social
laws, my impatience of all constraint. Among my books and my drugs in my
lonely den at Mansie I could let the great drove of the human race pass
onwards with their politics and inventions and tittle-tattle, and I
remained behind stagnant and happy. Not stagnant either, for I was
working in my own little groove, and making progress. I have reason to
believe that Dalton's atomic theory is founded upon error, and I know
that mercury is not an element.

During the day I was busy with my distillations and analyses. Often I
forgot my meals, and when old Madge summoned me to my tea I found my
dinner lying untouched upon the table. At night I read Bacon, Descartes,
Spinoza, Kant--all those who have pried into what is unknowable. They are
all fruitless and empty, barren of result, but prodigal of polysyllables,
reminding me of men who, while digging for gold, have turned up many
worms, and then exhibit them exultantly as being what they sought. At
times a restless spirit would come upon me, and I would walk thirty and
forty miles without rest or breaking fast. On these occasions, when I
used to stalk through the country villages, gaunt, unshaven, and
dishevelled, the mothers would rush into the road and drag their children
indoors, and the rustics would swarm out of their pot-houses to gaze at
me. I believe that I was known far and wide as the "mad laird o'
Mansie." It was rarely, however, that I made these raids into the
country, for I usually took my exercise upon my own beach, where I
soothed my spirit with strong black tobacco, and made the ocean my friend
and my confidant.

What companion is there like the great restless, throbbing sea? What
human mood is there which it does not match and sympathize with There are
none so gay but that they may feel gayer when they listen to its merry
turmoil, and see the long green surges racing in, with the glint of the
sunbeams in their sparkling crests. But when the grey waves toss their
heads in anger, and the wind screams above them, goading them on to
madder and more tumultuous efforts, then the darkest-minded of men feels
that there is a melancholy principle in Nature which is as gloomy as his
own thoughts. When it was calm in the Bay of Mansie the surface would be
as clear and bright as a sheet of silver, broken only at one spot some
little way from the shore, where a long black line projected out of the
water looking like the jagged back of some sleeping monster. This was the
top of the dangerous ridge of rocks known to the fishermen as the "ragged
reef o' Mansie." When the wind blew from the east the waves would
break upon it like thunder, and the spray would be tossed far over my
house and up to the hills behind. The bay itself was a bold and noble
one, but too much exposed to the northern and eastern gales, and too much
dreaded for its reef, to be much used by mariners. There was something
of romance about this lonely spot. I have lain in my boat upon a calm
day, and peering over the edge I have seen far down the flickering,
ghostly forms of great fish--fish, as it seemed to me, such as naturalist
never knew, and which my imagination transformed into the genii of that
desolate bay. Once, as I stood by the brink of the waters upon a quiet
night, a great cry, as of a woman in hopeless grief, rose from the bosom
of the deep, and swelled out upon the still air, now sinking and now
rising, for a space of thirty seconds. This I heard with my own ears.

In this strange spot, with the eternal hills behind me and the eternal
sea in front, I worked and brooded for more than two years unpestered by
my fellow men. By degrees I had trained my old servant into habits of
silence, so that she now rarely opened her lips, though I doubt not that
when twice a year she visited her relations in Wick, her tongue during
those few days made up for its enforced rest. I had come almost to forget
that I was a member of the human family, and to live entirely with the
dead whose books I pored o'er, when a sudden incident occurred which
threw all my thoughts into a new channel.

Three rough days in June had been succeeded by one calm and peaceful one.
There was not a breath of air that evening. The sun sank down in the west
behind a line of purple clouds, and the smooth surface of the bay was
gashed with scarlet streaks. Along the beach the pools left by the tide
showed up like gouts of blood against the yellow sand, as if some wounded
giant had toilfully passed that way, and had left these red traces of his
grievous hurt behind him. As the darkness closed in, certain ragged
clouds which had lain low on the eastern horizon coalesced and formed a
great irregular cumulus. The glass was still low, and I knew that there
was mischief brewing. About nine o'clock a dull moaning sound came up
from the sea, as from a creature who, much harassed, learns that the hour
of suffering has come round again. At ten a sharp breeze sprang up from
the eastward. At eleven it had increased to a gale, and by midnight the
most furious storm was raging which I ever remember upon that
weather-beaten coast.

As I went to bed the shingle and seaweed were pattering up against my
attic window, and the wind was screaming as though every gust were a lost
soul. By that time the sounds of the tempest had become a lullaby to me.
I knew that the grey walls of the old house would buffet it out, and for
what occurred in the world outside I had small concern. Old Madge was
usually as callous to such things as I was myself. It was a surprise to
me when, about three in the morning, I was awoke by the sound of a great
knocking at my door and excited cries in the wheezy voice of my
housekeeper. I sprang out of my hammock, and roughly demanded of her what
was the matter.

"Eh, maister, maister!" she screamed in her hateful dialect. "Come doun,
mun; come doun! There's a muckle ship gaun ashore on the reef, and the
puir folks are a' yammerin' and ca'in' for help--and I doobt they'll a'
be drooned. Oh, Maister M'Vittie, come down!"

"Hold your tongue, you hag!" I shouted, back in a passion. "What is it to
you whether they are drowned or not? Get back to your bed and leave me
alone." I turned in again and drew the blankets over me. "Those men out
there," I said to myself, "have already gone through half the horrors of
death. If they be saved they will but have to go through the same once
more in the space of a few brief years. It is best therefore that they
should pass away now, since they have suffered that anticipation which is
more than the pain of dissolution." With this thought in my mind I
endeavoured to compose myself to sleep once more, for that philosophy
which had taught me to consider death as a small and trivial incident in
man's eternal and ever-changing career, had also broken me of much
curiosity concerning worldly matters. On this occasion I found, however,
that the old leaven still fermented strongly in my soul. I tossed from
side to side for some minutes endeavouring to beat down the impulses of
the moment by the rules of conduct which I had framed during months of
thought. Then I heard a dull roar amid the wild shriek of the gale, and
I knew that it was the sound of a signal-gun. Driven by an uncontrollable
impulse, I rose, dressed, and having lit my pipe, walked out on to the
beach.

It was pitch dark when I came outside, and the wind blew with such
violence that I had to put my shoulder against it and push my way along
the shingle. My face pringled and smarted with the sting of the gravel
which was blown against it, and the red ashes of my pipe streamed away
behind me, dancing fantastically through the darkness. I went down to
where the great waves were thundering in, and shading my eyes with my
hands to keep off the salt spray, I peered out to sea. I could
distinguish nothing, and yet it seemed to me that shouts and great
inarticulate cries were borne to me by the blasts. Suddenly as I gazed I
made out the glint of a light, and then the whole bay and the beach were
lit up in a moment by a vivid blue glare. They were burning a coloured
signal-light on board of the vessel. There she lay on her beam ends right
in the centre of the jagged reef, hurled over to such an angle that I
could see all the planking of her deck. She was a large two-masted
schooner, of foreign rig, and lay perhaps a hundred and eighty or two
hundred yards from the shore. Every spar and rope and writhing piece of
cordage showed up hard and clear under the livid light which sputtered
and flickered from the highest portion of the forecastle. Beyond the
doomed ship out of the great darkness came the long rolling lines of
black waves, never ending, never tiring, with a petulant tuft of foam
here and there upon their crests. Each as it reached the broad circle of
unnatural light appeared to gather strength and volume, and to hurry on
more impetuously until, with a roar and a jarring crash, it sprang upon
its victim. Clinging to the weather shrouds I could distinctly see some
ten or twelve frightened seamen, who, when their light revealed my
presence, turned their white faces towards me and waved their hands
imploringly. I felt my gorge rise against these poor cowering worms. Why
should they presume to shirk the narrow pathway along which all that is
great and noble among mankind has travelled? There was one there who
interested me more than they. He was a tall man, who stood apart from the
others, balancing himself upon the swaying wreck as though he disdained
to cling to rope or bulwark. His hands were clasped behind his back and
his head was sunk upon his breast, but even in that despondent attitude
there was a litheness and decision in his pose and in every motion which
marked him as a man little likely to yield to despair. Indeed, I could
see by his occasional rapid glances up and down and all around him that
he was weighing every chance of safety, but though he often gazed across
the raging surf to where he could see my dark figure upon the beach, his
self-respect or some other reason forbade him from imploring my help in
any way. He stood, dark, silent, and inscrutable, looking down on the
black sea, and waiting for whatever fortune Fate might send him.

It seemed to me that that problem would very soon be settled. As I
looked, an enormous billow, topping all the others, and coming after
them, like a driver following a flock, swept over the vessel. Her
foremast snapped short off, and the men who clung to the shrouds were
brushed away like a swarm of flies. With a rending, riving sound the ship
began to split in two, where the sharp back of the Mansie reef was sawing
into her keel. The solitary man upon the forecastle ran rapidly across
the deck and seized hold of a white bundle which I had already observed
but failed to make out. As he lifted it up the light fell upon it, and I
saw that the object was a woman, with a spar lashed across her body and
under her arms in such a way that her head should always rise above
water. He bore her tenderly to the side and seemed to speak for a minute
or so to her, as though explaining the impossibility of remaining upon
the ship. Her answer was a singular one. I saw her deliberately raise her
hand and strike him across the face with it. He appeared to be silenced
for a moment or so by this, but he addressed her again, directing her, as
far as I could gather from his motions, how she should behave when in the
water. She shrank away from him, but he caught her in his arms. He
stooped over her for a moment and seemed to press his lips against her
forehead. Then a great wave came welling up against the side of the
breaking vessel, and leaning over he placed her upon the summit of it as
gently as a child might be committed to its cradle. I saw her white dress
flickering among the foam on the crest of the dark billow, and then the
light sank gradually lower, and the riven ship and its lonely occupant
were hidden from my eyes.

As I watched those things my manhood overcame my philosophy, and I felt a
frantic impulse to be up and doing. I threw my cynicism to one side as a
garment which I might don again at leisure, and I rushed wildly to my
boat and my sculls. She was a leaky tub, but what then? Was I, who had
cast many a wistful, doubtful glance at my opium bottle, to begin now to
weigh chances and to cavil at danger? I dragged her down to the sea with
the strength of a maniac and sprang in. For a moment or two it was a
question whether she could live among the boiling surge, but a dozen
frantic strokes took me through it, half full of water but still afloat.
I was out on the unbroken waves now, at one time climbing, climbing up
the broad black breast of one, then sinking down, down on the other side,
until looking up I could see the gleam of the foam all around me against
the dark heavens. Far behind me I could hear the wild wailings of old
Madge, who, seeing me start, thought no doubt that my madness had come to
a climax. As I rowed I peered over my shoulder, until at last on the
belly of a great wave which was sweeping towards me I distinguished the
vague white outline of the woman. Stooping over, I seized her as she
swept by me, and with an effort lifted her, all sodden with water, into
the boat. There was no need to row back, for the next billow carried us
in and threw us upon the beach. I dragged the boat out of danger, and
then lifting up the woman I carried her to the house, followed by my
housekeeper, loud with congratulation and praise.

 Now that I had done this thing a reaction set in upon me, I felt that my
 burden lived, for I heard the faint beat of her heart as I pressed my
 ear against her side in carrying her. Knowing this, I threw her down
 beside the fire which Madge had lit, with as little sympathy as though
 she had been a bundle of fagots. I never glanced at her to see if she
 were fair or no. For many years I had cared little for the face of a
 woman. As I lay in my hammock upstairs, however, I heard the old woman
 as she chafed the warmth back into her, crooning a chorus of, "Eh, the
 puir lassie! Eh, the bonnie lassie" from which I gathered that this
 piece of jetsam was both young and comely.

The morning after the gale was peaceful and sunny. As I walked along the
long sweep of sand I could hear the panting of the sea. It was heaving
and swirling about the reef, but along the shore it rippled in gently
enough. There was no sign of the schooner, nor was there any wreckage
upon the beach, which did not surprise me, as I knew there was a great
undertow in those waters. A couple of broad-winged gulls were hovering
and skimming over the scene of the shipwreck, as though many strange
things were visible to them beneath the waves. At times I could hear
their raucous voices as they spoke to one another of what they saw.

When I came back from my walk the woman was waiting at the door for me. I
began to wish when I saw her that I had never saved her, for here was an
end of my privacy. She was very young--at the most nineteen, with a pale
somewhat refined face, yellow hair, merry blue eyes, and shining teeth.
Her beauty was of an ethereal type. She looked so white and light and
fragile that she might have been the spirit of that storm-foam from out
of which I plucked her. She had wreathed some of Madge's garments round
her in a way which was quaint and not unbecoming. As I strode heavily up
the pathway, she put out her hands with a pretty child-like gesture, and
ran down towards me, meaning, as I surmise, to thank me for having saved
her, but I put her aside with a wave of my hand and passed her. At this
she seemed somewhat hurt; and the tears sprang into her eyes, but she
followed me into the sitting-room and watched me wistfully. "What country
do you come from?" I asked her suddenly.

She smiled when I spoke, but shook her head.

"Francais?" I asked. "Deutsch?" "Espagnol?"--each time she shook her
head, and then she rippled off into a long statement in some tongue of
which I could not understand one word.

After breakfast was over, however, I got a clue to her nationality.
Passing along the beach once more, I saw that in a cleft of the ridge a
piece of wood had been jammed. I rowed out to it in my boat, and brought
it ashore. It was part of the sternpost of a boat, and on it, or rather
on the piece of wood attached to it, was the word "Archangel," painted
in strange, quaint lettering. "So," I thought, as I paddled slowly back,
"this pale damsel is a Russian. A fit subject for the White Czar and a
proper dweller on the shores of the White Sea!" It seemed to me strange
that one of her apparent refinement should perform so long a journey in
so frail a craft. When I came back into the house, I pronounced the word
"Archangel" several times in different intonations, but she did not
appear to recognise it.

I shut myself up in the laboratory all the morning, continuing a research
which I was making upon the nature of the allotropic forms of carbon and
of sulphur. When I came out at mid-day for some food she was sitting by
the table with a needle and thread, mending some rents in her clothes,
which were now dry. I resented her continued presence, but I could not
turn her out on the beach to shift for herself. Presently she presented a
new phase of her character. Pointing to herself and then to the scene of
the shipwreck, she held up one finger, by which I understood her to be
asking whether she was the only one saved. I nodded my head to indicate
that she was. On this she sprang out of her chair with a cry of great
joy, and holding the garment which she was mending over her head, and
swaying it from side to side with the motion of her body, she danced as
lightly as a feather all round the room, and then out through the open
door into the sunshine. As she whirled round she sang in a plaintive
shrill voice some uncouth barbarous chant, expressive of exultation. I
called out to her, "Come in, you young fiend, come in and be silent", but
she went on with her dance. Then she suddenly ran towards me, and
catching my hand before I could pluck it away, she kissed it. While we
were at dinner she spied one of my pencils, and taking it up she wrote
the two words "Sophie Ramusine" upon a piece of paper, and then pointed
to herself as a sign that that was her name. She handed the pencil to me,
evidently expecting that I would be equally communicative, but I put it
in my pocket as a sign that I wished to hold no intercourse with her.

Every moment of my life now I regretted the unguarded precipitancy with
which I had saved this woman. What was it to me whether she had lived or
died? I was no young, hot-headed youth to do such things. It was bad
enough to be compelled to have Madge in the house, but she was old and
ugly, and could be ignored. This one was young and lively, and so
fashioned as to divert attention from graver things. Where could I send
her, and what could I do with her? If I sent information to Wick it would
mean that officials and others would come to me and pry, and peep, and
chatter--a hateful thought. It was better to endure her presence than
that.

I soon found that there were fresh troubles in store for me. There is no
place safe from the swarming, restless race of which I am a member. In
the evening, when the sun was dipping down behind the hills, casting them
into dark shadow, but gilding the sands and casting a great glory over
the sea, I went, as is my custom, for a stroll along the beach. Sometimes
on these occasions I took my book with me. I did so on this night, and
stretching myself upon a sand-dune I composed myself to read. As I lay
there I suddenly became aware of a shadow which interposed itself between
the sun and myself. Looking round, I saw to my great surprise a very
tall, powerful man, who was standing a few yards off, and who, instead of
looking at me, was ignoring my existence completely, and was gazing over
my head with a stern set face at the bay and the black line of the Mansie
reef. His complexion was dark, with black hair, and short, curling beard,
a hawk-like nose, and golden earrings in his ears--the general effect
being wild and somewhat noble. He wore a faded velveteen jacket, a
red-flannel shirt, and high sea boots, coming half-way up his thighs. I
recognised him at a glance as being the same man who had been left on the
wreck the night before.

"Hullo" I said, in an aggrieved voice. "You got ashore all right, then?"

"Yes," he answered, in good English. "It was no doing of mine. The waves
threw me up. I wish to God I had been allowed to drown!" There was a
slight foreign lisp in his accent which was rather pleasing. "Two good
fishermen, who live round yonder point, pulled me out and cared for me;
yet I could not honestly thank them for it."

"Ho! ho!" thought I, "here is a man of my own kidney. Why do you wish to
be drowned?" I asked.

"Because," he cried, throwing out his long arms with a passionate,
despairing gesture, "there--there in that blue smiling bay, lies my soul,
my treasure--everything that I loved and lived for."

"Well, well," I said. "People are ruined every day, but there's no use
making a fuss about it. Let me inform you that this ground on which you
walk is my ground, and that the sooner you take yourself off it the
better pleased I shall be. One of you is quite trouble enough."

"One of us?" he gasped.

"Yes--if you could take her off with you I should be still more
grateful."

He gazed at me for a moment as if hardly able to realise what I said, and
then with a wild cry he ran away from me with prodigious speed and raced
along the sands towards my house. Never before or since have I seen a
human being run so fast. I followed as rapidly as I could, furious at
this threatened invasion, but long before I reached the house he had
disappeared through the open door. I heard a great scream from the
inside, and as I came nearer the sound of a man's bass voice speaking
rapidly and loudly. When I looked in the girl, Sophie Ramusine, was
crouching in a corner, cowering away, with fear and loathing expressed on
her averted face and in every line of her shrinking form. The other, with
his dark eyes flashing, and his outstretched hands quivering with
emotion, was pouring forth a torrent of passionate pleading words. He
made a step forward to her as I entered, but she writhed still farther
away, and uttered a sharp cry like that of a rabbit when the weasel has
him by the throat.

"Here!" I said, pulling him back from her. "This is a pretty to-do! What
do you mean? Do you think this is a wayside inn or place of public
accommodation?"

"Oh, sir," he said, "excuse me. This woman is my wife, and I feared that
she was drowned. You have brought me back to life."

"Who are you?" I asked roughly.

"I am a man from Archangel," he said simply; "a Russian man."

"What is your name?"

"Ourganeff."

"Ourganeff!--and hers is Sophie Ramusine. She is no wife of yours. She
has no ring."

"We are man and wife in the sight of Heaven," he said solemnly, looking
upwards. "We are bound by higher laws than those of earth." As he spoke
the girl slipped behind me and caught me by the other hand, pressing it
as though beseeching my protection. "Give me up my wife, sir," he went
on. "Let me take her away from here."

"Look here, you--whatever your name is," I said sternly; "I don't want
this wench here. I wish I had never seen her. If she died it would be no
grief to me. But as to handing her over to you, when it is clear she
fears and hates you, I won't do it. So now just clear your great body out
of this, and leave me to my books. I hope I may never look upon your face
again."

"You won't give her up to me?" he said hoarsely.

"I'll see you damned first!" I answered.

"Suppose I take her," he cried, his dark face growing darker.

All my tigerish blood flashed up in a moment. I picked up a billet of
wood from beside the fireplace. "Go," I said, in a low voice; "go quick,
or I may do you an injury." He looked at me irresolutely for a moment,
and then he left the house. He came back again in a moment, however, and
stood in the doorway looking in at us.

"Have a heed what you do," he said. "The woman is mine, and I shall have
her. When it comes to blows, a Russian is as good a man as a Scotchman."

"We shall see that," I cried, springing forward, but he was already gone,
and I could see his tall form moving away through the gathering darkness.

For a month or more after this things went smoothly with us. I never
spoke to the Russian girl, nor did she ever address me. Sometimes when I
was at work in my laboratory she would slip inside the door and sit
silently there watching me with her great eyes. At first this intrusion
annoyed me, but by, degrees, finding that she made no attempt to distract
my attention, I suffered her to remain. Encouraged by this concession,
she gradually came to move the stool on which she sat nearer and nearer
to my table, until after gaining a little every day during some weeks,
she at last worked her way right up to me, and used to perch herself
beside me whenever I worked. In this position she used, still without
ever obtruding her presence in any way, to make herself very useful by
holding my pens, test-tubes, or bottles and handing me whatever I wanted,
with never-failing sagacity. By ignoring the fact of her being a human
being, and looking upon her as a useful automatic machine I accustomed
myself to her presence so far as to miss her on the few occasions when
she was not at her post. I have a habit of talking aloud to myself at
times when I work, so as to fix my results better in my mind. The girl
must have had a surprising memory for sounds, for she could always repeat
the words which I let fall in this way, without, of course, understanding
in the least what they meant. I have often been amused at hearing her
discharge a volley of chemical equations and algebraic symbols at old
Madge, and then burst into a ringing laugh when the crone would shake her
head, under the impression, no doubt, that she was being addressed in
Russian.

She never went more than a few yards from the house, and indeed never put
her foot over the threshold without looking carefully out of each window
in order to be sure that there was nobody about. By this I knew that she
suspected that her fellow-countryman was still in the neighbourhood, and
feared that he might attempt to carry her off. She did something else
which was significant. I had an old revolver with some cartridges, which
had been thrown away among the rubbish. She found this one day, and at
once proceeded to clean it and oil it. She hung it up near the door, with
the cartridges in a little bag beside it, and whenever I went for a walk,
she would take it down and insist upon my carrying it with me. In my
absence she would always bolt the door. Apart from her apprehensions she
seemed fairly happy, busying herself in helping Madge when she was not
attending upon me. She was wonderfully nimble-fingered and natty in all
domestic duties.

It was not long before I discovered that her suspicions were well
founded, and that this man from Archangel was still lurking in the
vicinity. Being restless one night I rose and peered out of the window.
The weather was somewhat cloudy, and I could barely make out the line of
the sea, and the loom of my boat upon the beach. As I gazed, however, and
my eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, I became aware that there was
some other dark blur upon the sands, and that in front of my very door,
where certainly there had been nothing of the sort the preceding night.
As I stood at my diamond-paned lattice, still peering and peeping to make
out what this might be, a great bank of clouds rolled slowly away from
the face of the moon, and a flood of cold, clear light was poured down
upon the silent bay and the long sweep of its desolate shores. Then I saw
what this was which haunted my doorstep. It was he, the Russian. He
squatted there like a gigantic toad, with his legs doubled under him in
strange Mongolian fashion, and his eyes fixed apparently upon the window
of the room in which the young girl and the housekeeper slept. The light
fell upon his upturned face, and I saw once more the hawk-like grace of
his countenance, with the single deeply-indented line of care upon his
brow, and the protruding beard which marks the passionate nature. My
first impulse was to shoot him as a trespasser, but, as I gazed, my
resentment changed into pity and contempt. "Poor fool," I said to myself,
"is it then possible that you, whom I have seen looking open-eyed at
present death, should have your whole thoughts and ambition centred upon
this wretched slip of a girl--a girl, too, who flies from you and hates
you? Most women would love you--were it but for that dark face and great
handsome body of yours--and yet you must needs hanker after the one in a
thousand who will have no traffic with you." As I returned to my bed I
chuckled much to myself over this thought. I knew that my bars were
strong and my bolts thick. It mattered little to me whether this strange
man spent his night at my door or a hundred leagues off, so long as he
was gone by the morning. As I expected, when I rose and went out there
was no sign of him, nor had he left any trace of his midnight vigil.

It was not long, however, before I saw him again. I had been out for a
row one morning, for my head was aching, partly from prolonged stooping,
and partly from the effects of a noxious drug which I had inhaled the
night before. I pulled along the coast some miles, and then, feeling
thirsty, I landed at a place where I knew that a fresh-water stream
trickled down into the sea. This rivulet passed through my land, but the
mouth of it, where I found myself that day, was beyond my boundary line.
I felt somewhat taken aback when rising from the stream at which I had
slaked my thirst I found myself face to face with the Russian. I was as
much a trespasser now as he was, and I could see at a glance that he knew
it.

"I wish to speak a few words to you," he said gravely.

"Hurry up, then!" I answered, glancing at my watch. "I have no time to
listen to chatter."

"Chatter!" he repeated angrily. "Ah, \but there. You Scotch people are
strange men. Your face is hard and your words rough, but so are those of
the good fishermen with whom I stay, yet I find that beneath it all there
lie kind honest natures. No doubt you are kind and good, too, in spite of
your roughness."

"In the name of the devil," I said, "say your say, and go your way. I am
weary of the sight of you."

"Can I not soften you in any way?" he cried. "Ah, see--see here "--he
produced a small Grecian cross from inside his velvet jacket. "Look at
this. Our religions may differ in form, but at least we have some common
thoughts and feelings when we see this emblem."

"I am not so sure of that," I answered.

He looked at me thoughtfully.

"You are a very strange man," he said at last. "I cannot understand you.
You still stand between me and Sophie. It is a dangerous position to
take, sir. Oh, believe me, before it is too late. If you did but know
what I have done to gain that woman--how I have risked my body, how I
have lost my soul! You are a small obstacle to some which I have
surmounted--you, whom a rip with a knife, or a blow from a stone, would
put out of my way for ever. But God preserve me from that," he cried
wildly. "I am deep--too deep--already. Anything rather than that."

"You would do better to go back to your country," I said, "than to skulk
about these sand-hills and disturb my leisure. When I have proof that you
have gone away I shall hand this woman over to the protection of the
Russian Consul at Edinburgh. Until then, I shall guard her myself, and
not you, nor any Muscovite that ever breathed, shall take her from me."

"And what is your object in keeping me from Sophie?" he asked. "Do you
imagine that I would injure her? Why, man, I would give my life freely to
save her from the slightest harm. Why do you do this thing?"

"I do it because it is my good pleasure to act so," I answered. "I give
no man reasons for my conduct."

"Look here!" he cried, suddenly blazing into fury, and advancing towards
me with his shaggy mane bristling and his brown hands clenched. "If I
thought you had one dishonest thought towards this girl--if for a moment
I had reason to believe that you had any base motive for detaining
her--as sure as there is a God in Heaven I should drag the heart out of
your bosom with my hands." The very idea seemed to have put the man in a
frenzy, for his face was all distorted and his hands opened and shut
convulsively. I thought that he was about to spring at my throat.

"Stand off," I said, putting my hand on my pistol. "If you lay a finger
on me I shall kill you."

He put his hand into his pocket, and for a moment I thought he was about
to produce a weapon too, but instead of that he whipped out a cigarette
and lit it, breathing the smoke rapidly into his lungs. No doubt he had
found by experience that this was the most effectual way of curbing his
passions.

"I told you," he said in a quieter voice, "that my name is
Ourganeff--Alexis Ourganeff. I am a Finn by birth, but I have spent my
life in every part of the world. I was one who could never be still, nor
settle down to a quiet existence. After I came to own my own ship there
is hardly a port from Archangel to Australia which I have not entered. I
was rough and wild and free, but there was one at home, sir, who was prim
and white-handed and soft-tongued, skilful in little fancies and conceits
which women love. This youth by his wiles and tricks stole from me the
love of the girl whom I had ever marked as my own, and who up to that
time had seemed in some sort inclined to, return my passion. I had been
on a voyage to Hammerfest for ivory, and coming back unexpectedly I
learned that my pride and treasure was to be married to this soft-skinned
boy, and that the party had actually gone to the church, In such moments,
sir, something gives way in my head, and I hardly know what I do. I
landed with a boat's crew--all men who had sailed with me for years, and
who were as true as steel. We went up to the church. They were standing,
she and he, before the priest, but the thing had not been done. I dashed
between them and caught her round the waist. My men beat back the
frightened bridegroom and the lookers on. We bore her down to the boat
and aboard our vessel, and then getting up anchor we sailed away across
the White Sea until the spires of Archangel sank down behind the horizon.
She had my cabin, my room, every comfort. I slept among the men in the
forecastle. I hoped that in time her aversion to me would wear away, and
that she would consent to marry me in England or in France. For days and
days we sailed. We saw the North Cape die away behind us, and we skirted
the grey Norwegian coast, but still, in spite of every attention, she
would not forgive me for tearing her from that pale-faced lover of hers.
Then came this cursed storm which shattered both my ship and my hopes,
and has deprived me even of the sight of the woman for whom I have risked
so much. Perhaps she may learn to love me yet."

"You, sir," he said wistfully, "look like one who has seen much of the
world. Do you not think that she may come to forget this man and to
love me?"

"I am tired of your story," I said, turning away. "For my part, I think
you are a great fool. If you imagine that this love of yours will pass
away you had best amuse yourself as best you can until it does. If, on
the other hand, it is a fixed thing, you cannot do better than cut your
throat, for that is the shortest way out of it. I have no more time to
waste on the matter." With this I hurried away and walked down to the
boat. I never looked round, but I heard the dull sound of his feet upon
the sands as he followed me.

"I have told you the beginning of my story," he said, "and you shall know
the end some day. You would do well to let the girl go."

I never answered him, but pushed the boat off. When I had rowed some
distance out I looked back and saw his tall figure upon the yellow sand
as he stood gazing thoughtfully after me. When I looked again some
minutes later he had disappeared.

For a long time after this my life was as regular and as monotonous as it
had been before the shipwreck. At times I hoped that the man from
Archangel had gone away altogether, but certain footsteps which I saw
upon the sand, and more particularly a little pile of cigarette ash which
I found one day behind a hillock from which a view of the house might be
obtained, warned me that, though invisible, he was still in the vicinity.
My relations with the Russian girl remained the same as before. Old Madge
had been somewhat jealous of her presence at first, and seemed to fear
that what little authority she had would be taken away from her. By
degrees, however, as she came to realise my utter indifference, she
became reconciled to the situation, and, as I have said before, profited
by it, as our visitor performed much of the domestic work.

And now I am coming near the end of this narrative of mine, which I have
written a great deal more for my own amusement than for that of anyone
else. The termination of the strange episode in which these two Russians
had played a part was as wild and as sudden as the commencement. The
events of one single night freed me from all my troubles, and left me
once more alone with my books and my studies, as I had been before their
intrusion. Let me endeavour to describe how this came about.

I had had a long day of heavy and wearying work, so that in the evening I
determined upon taking a long walk. When I emerged from the house my
attention was attracted by the appearance of the sea. It lay like a sheet
of glass, so that never a ripple disturbed its surface. Yet the air was
filled with that indescribable moaning sound which I have alluded to
before--a sound as though the spirits of all those who lay beneath those
treacherous waters were sending a sad warning of coming troubles to their
brethren in the flesh. The fishermen's wives along that coast know the
eerie sound, and look anxiously across the waters for the brown sails
making for the land. When I heard it I stepped back into the house and
looked at the glass. It was down below 29°. Then I knew that a wild night
was coming upon us.

Underneath the hills where I walked that evening it was dull and chill,
but their summits were rosy-red, and the sea was brightened by the
sinking sun. There were no clouds of importance in the sky, yet the dull
groaning of the sea grew louder and stronger. I saw, far to the eastward,
a brig beating up for Wick, with a reef in her topsails. It was evident
that her captain had read the signs of nature as I had done. Behind her a
long, lurid haze lay low upon the water, concealing the horizon. "I had
better push on," I thought to myself, "or the wind may rise before I can
get back."

I suppose I must have been at least half a mile from the house when I
suddenly stopped and listened breathlessly. My ears were so accustomed to
the noises of nature, the sighing of the breeze and the sob of the waves,
that any other sound made itself heard at a great distance. I waited,
listening with all my ears. Yes, there it was again--a long-drawn, shrill
cry of despair, ringing over the sands and echoed back from the hills
behind me--a piteous appeal for aid. It came from the direction of my
house. I turned and ran back homewards at the top of my speed, ploughing
through the sand, racing over the shingle. In my mind there was a great
dim perception of what had occurred.

About a quarter of a mile from the house there is a high sand-hill, from
which the whole country round is visible. When I reached the top of this
I paused for a moment. There was the old grey building--there the boat.
Everything seemed to be as I had left it. Even as I gazed, however, the
shrill scream was repeated, louder than before, and the next moment a
tall figure emerged from my door, the figure of the Russian sailor. Over
his shoulder was the white form of the young girl, and even in his haste
he seemed to bear her tenderly and with gentle reverence. I could hear
her wild cries and see her desperate struggles to break away from him.
Behind the couple came my old housekeeper, staunch and true, as the aged
dog, who can no longer bite, still snarls with toothless gums at the
intruder. She staggered feebly along at the heels of the ravisher, waving
her long, thin arms, and hurling, no doubt, volleys of Scotch curses and
imprecations at his head. I saw at a glance that he was making for the
boat. A sudden hope sprang up in my soul that I might be in time to
intercept him. I ran for the beach at the top of my speed. As I ran I
slipped a cartridge into my revolver. This I determined should be the
last of these invasions.

I was too late. By the time I reached the water's edge he was a hundred
yards away, making the boat spring with every stroke of his powerful
arms. I uttered a wild cry of impotent anger, and stamped up and down the
sands like a maniac. He turned and saw me. Rising from his seat he made
me a graceful bow, and waved his hand to me. It was not a triumphant or a
derisive gesture. Even my furious and distempered mind recognised it as
being a solemn and courteous leave-taking. Then he settled down to his
oars once more, and the little skiff shot away out over the bay. The sun
had gone down now, leaving a single dull, red streak upon the water,
which stretched away until it blended with the purple haze on the
horizon. Gradually the skiff grew smaller and smaller as it sped across
this lurid band, until the shades of night gathered round it and it
became a mere blur upon the lonely sea. Then this vague loom died away
also and darkness settled over it--a darkness which should never be
raised.

And why did I pace the solitary shore, hot and wrathful as a wolf whose
whelp has been torn from it? Was it that I loved this Muscovite girl?
No--a thousand times no. I am not one who, for the sake of a white skin
or a blue eye, would belie my own life, and change the whole tenor of my
thoughts and existence. My heart was untouched. But my pride--ah, there I
had been cruelly wounded. To think that I had been unable to afford
protection to the helpless one who craved it of me, and who relied on me!
It was that which made my heart sick and sent the blood buzzing through
my ears.

That night a great wind rose up from the sea, and the wild waves shrieked
upon the shore as though they would tear it back with them into the
ocean. The turmoil and the uproar were congenial to my vexed spirit. All
night I wandered up and down, wet with spray and rain, watching the gleam
of the white breakers and listening to the outcry of the storm. My heart
was bitter against the Russian. I joined my feeble pipe to the screaming
of the gale. "If he would but come back again!" I cried, with clenched
hands; "if he would but come back!"

He came back. When the grey light of morning spread over the eastern sky,
and lit up the great waste of yellow, tossing waters, with the brown
clouds drifting swiftly over them, then I saw him once again. A few
hundred yards off along the sand there lay a long dark object, cast up by
the fury of the waves. It was my boat, much shattered and splintered. A
little farther on, a vague, shapeless something was washing to and fro in
the shallow water, all mixed with shingle and with seaweed. I saw at a
glance that it was the Russian, face downwards and dead. I rushed into
the water and dragged him up on to the beach. It was only when I turned
him over that I discovered that she was beneath him, his dead arms
encircling her, his mangled body still intervening between her and the
fury of the storm. It seemed that the fierce German Sea might beat the
life from him, but with all its strength it was unable to tear this
one-idea'd man from the woman whom he loved. There were signs which led
me to believe that during that awful night the woman's fickle mind had
come at last to learn the worth of the true heart and strong arm which
struggled for her and guarded her so tenderly. Why else should her little
head be nestling so lovingly on his broad breast, while her yellow hair
entwined itself with his flowing beard? Why too should there be that
bright smile of ineffable happiness and triumph, which death itself had
not had power to banish from his dusky face? I fancy that death had been
brighter to him than life had ever been.

Madge and I buried them there on the shores of the desolate northern sea.
They lie in one grave deep down beneath the yellow sand. Strange things
may happen in the world around them. Empires may rise and may fall,
dynasties may perish, great wars may come and go, but, heedless of it
all, those two shall embrace each other for ever and aye, in their lonely
shrine by the side of the sounding ocean. I sometimes have thought that
their spirits flit like shadowy sea-mews over the wild waters of the bay.
No cross or symbol marks their resting-place, but old Madge puts wild
flowers upon it at times, and when I pass on my daily walk and see the
fresh blossoms scattered over the sand, I think of the strange couple who
came from afar, and broke for a little space the dull tenor of my sombre
life.



THAT LITTLE SQUARE BOX.


"All aboard?" said the captain.

"All aboard, sir!" said the mate.

"Then stand by to let her go."

It was nine o'clock on a Wednesday morning.  The good ship
Spartan was lying off Boston Quay with her cargo under hatches,
her passengers shipped, and everything prepared for a start.  The
warning whistle had been sounded twice; the final bell had been
rung.  Her bowsprit was turned towards England, and the hiss of
escaping steam showed that all was ready for her run of three
thousand miles.  She strained at the warps that held her like a
greyhound at its leash,

I have the misfortune to be a very nervous man.  A sedentary
literary life has helped to increase the morbid love of solitude
which, even in my boyhood, was one of my distinguishing
characteristics.  As I stood upon the quarter-deck of the
Transatlantic steamer, I bitterly cursed the necessity which drove
me back to the land of my forefathers.  The shouts of the sailors,
the rattle of the cordage, the farewells of my fellow-passengers,
and the cheers of the mob, each and all jarred upon my sensitive
nature.  I felt sad too.  An indescribable feeling, as of
some impending calamity, seemed to haunt me.  The sea was
calm, and the breeze light.  There was nothing to disturb the
equanimity of the most confirmed of landsmen, yet I felt as if I
stood upon the verge of a great though indefinable danger.  I have
noticed that such presentiments occur often in men of my peculiar
temperament, and that they are not uncommonly fulfilled.  There is
a theory that it arises from a species of second-sight, a subtle
spiritual communication with the future.  I well remember that Herr
Raumer, the eminent spiritualist, remarked on one occasion that I
was the most sensitive subject as regards supernatural phenomena
that he had ever encountered in the whole of his wide experience.
Be that as it may, I certainly felt far from happy as I threaded my
way among the weeping, cheering groups which dotted the white decks
of the good ship Spartan.  Had I known the experience which
awaited me in the course of the next twelve hours I should even
then at the last moment have sprung upon the shore, and made my
escape from the accursed vessel.

"Time's up!" said the captain, closing his chronometer with a snap,
and replacing it in his pocket.  "Time's up!" said the mate.  There
was a last wail from the whistle, a rush of friends and relatives
upon the land.  One warp was loosened, the gangway was being pushed
away, when there was a shout from the bridge, and two men appeared,
running rapidly down the quay.  They were waving their hands and
making frantic gestures, apparently with the intention of stopping
the ship.  "Look sharp!" shouted the crowd.

"Hold hard!" cried the captain.  "Ease her! stop her!  Up with the
gangway!" and the two men sprang aboard just as the second warp
parted, and a convulsive throb of the engine shot us clear of the
shore.  There was a cheer from the deck, another from the quay, a
mighty fluttering of handkerchiefs, and the great vessel ploughed
its way out of the harbour, and steamed grandly away across the
placid bay.

We were fairly started upon our fortnight's voyage.  There was a
general dive among the passengers in quest of berths and luggage,
while a popping of corks in the saloon proved that more than one
bereaved traveller was adopting artificial means for drowning the
pangs of separation.  I glanced round the deck and took a running
inventory of my compagnons de voyage.  They presented the usual
types met with upon these occasions.  There was no striking face
among them.  I speak as a connoisseur, for faces are a specialty of
mine.  I pounce upon a characteristic feature as a botanist does on
a flower, and bear it away with me to analyse at my leisure, and
classify and label it in my little anthropological museum.  There
was nothing worthy of me here.  Twenty types of young America going
to "Yurrup," a few respectable middle-aged couples as an antidote,
a sprinkling of clergymen and professional men, young ladies,
bagmen, British exclusives, and all the olla podrida of an
ocean-going steamer.  I turned away from them and gazed back at the
receding shores of America, and, as a cloud of remembrances rose
before me, my heart warmed towards the land of my adoption.
A pile of portmanteaus and luggage chanced to be lying on one side
of the deck, awaiting their turn to be taken below.  With my usual
love for solitude I walked behind these, and sitting on a coil of
rope between them and the vessel's side, I indulged in a melancholy
reverie.

I was aroused from this by a whisper behind me.  "Here's a quiet
place," said the voice.  "Sit down, and we can talk it over in
safety."

Glancing through a chink between two colossal chests, I saw that
the passengers who had joined us at the last moment were standing
at the other side of the pile.  They had evidently failed to see me
as I crouched in the shadow of the boxes.  The one who had spoken
was a tall and very thin man with a blue-black beard and a
colourless face.  His manner was nervous and excited.  His
companion was