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 head to hers, pressing it against her cold, wet cheek. 'Do you remember, in the garden yesterday?' she said. 'When you asked me to love you, I was silent. Shall I tell you why I was silent all that time? It was like an hallucination that came into my mind. A little boy; our child. If I loved you as you asked there might be a child to make the meaning of my life—even after you had left me. I seemed to see him running up the garden path before us there; very young; with ruffled hair, and eyes like yours. Only his were not lonely eyes; but happy, for he was with his mother. It was like an hallucination.—I saw him turn his face to smile at us. And then I saw that it must never be. He would have been a disinherited child; like me. An outcast. It was only a dream. I had not to struggle. But while it lasted it kept me silent.'

'My angel! My saint!' Graham whispered.

She had kept her face pressed close to his while she told her dream and she was silent for a moment while the water lapped up to their feet. 'No; not an angel,' she said then. 'Not a saint. Saints do not long for human love as I have longed. I have had desires as wild, as desperate, as those of any woman. You must know me as I am. Not a saint. But it has not all been that. I have had other longings.' She drew from him to look at him again. The rain streamed like tears over her face. It was as if already the dividing waters were veiling her from him. Yet light came to him from her. 'Do you believe in God?' she said. 'Can you feel, before we die, that you believe in God?'

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 'I can believe in God when you are there,' said Graham.

'I believe in Him even when you are not there,' said Marthe. 'Always, at great moments, the sense of a presence has come to me. When my mother killed my father and I found them; when I held her in her frenzies at night; when she died and left me. I feel it bless us now.'

Graham was trembling with grief and pain and adoration. The sense of light was about him, and while he gazed into her eyes he felt himself lifted and sustained on a strength infinitely transcending his own. Marthe's strength? God's strength? What did that matter? Was not the heart of the mystery this flame that she revealed to him in whose light he might find it bliss to die? And as he gazed at it, at that moment, he saw it fall from her face. He felt a shock go through her and heard a far off cry.

The watery wastes were empty. The promontory cut its vast bulk across the sky, shutting out Buissac; but, borne on the wind, beaten by the rain, wavering as a foam-bell wavers on swirling water, the cry had reached them, and he drew away to listen. And Marthe, too, turned her face away and looked towards Buissac.

And in that silent, listening moment Graham felt a vast menace, an abyss of emptiness, poised above them, opening beneath them, and remembered all his terrors. It was as if in that moment Marthe left him. It was the voice of life calling out to them and as she heard it her flame went out.

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 Again it came, and round the promontory they saw a light appear, wavering like the cry, floating in the darkness, rising and falling as if it pulsed and breathed.

'No; no; no,' he heard Marthe say—or thought he heard her say. The words were hardly a whisper and her head was turned away from him.

Graham sprang to his feet, steadying himself by a hand laid on her shoulder. 'Jill! Jill! Jill!' he shouted. Already he could see the boat; the lantern at the bows; the two forms straining at the oars in the racing current. And Jill answered him, crying: 'Marthe! Dick!'

He looked down at Marthe. She sat below him still, her face turned towards the boat, the kid, wrapped in the shawl, held closely to her side. 'We're to live, Marthe,' he said. 'She's come to save us. Nothing can part us now.'

She did not look up at him. She made him no reply. The water lapped up about her feet.

'Come,' he said harshly. 'Stand beside me. Help me. I can't be saved unless I lean on you. You've got to live;—for me.'

It was life Jill brought them; but what was this dark dismay lapping at his soul?

Marthe rose to her knees and he took her hand and pulled her up beside him, grasping her shoulder, fastening her to his side. Let him hold her close. Let him feel her there, against his heart. Life might be the looming menace; but he wanted Marthe.

And she was obedient. She stood steadying him, sustaining them both, for the water was sweeping now

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 strongly over their feet and without her he could not have held himself upright. The boat was near them and the lantern illuminated the faces of the rescuers; a man's face, wary, resolute; Jill's face, golden in the light, exhausted, joyful.

'' ' Attrappez! ' '' called the man. He half rose, crouched and poised himself, flinging a coiled rope. Graham fell to his knees to catch it. He passed it round a corner of the cabin roof, looped it over a projecting beam and over one arm, holding Marthe round the knees with the other.

The boat shot down the stream, while the rowers struggled at the oars, and, as the rope drew taut, turned in the current with a violent jar, then slid, docile, against the roof; and, as they all drew thus near together, Jill, for one moment, raised her eyes upon the two who stood there in a deep glance of love and triumph.

'' ' Gare à vous! ' '' cried the man. 'Keep clear of the boat. Get in carefully.'

'Put your hand on my arm,' said Graham. Then on his. Quickly. Quickly.'

'I cannot with the kid,' said Marthe in a low voice. Take it. Put it in first.'

He controlled a rage of terror and impatience that rose in him, but she had unwrapped the kid and he took it from her.

The terrified little creature struggled in his arms and he tottered and nearly fell, saving himself by a clutch at the side of the boat. Jill held hard at her oars; the

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 boat was righted; the kid was safe. He had tossed it in and turned again to Marthe.

She was not there.

'Marthe!' he cried, looking wildly round him.

She was not there.

'She has fallen!' shouted the boatman. 'She has gone under the boat!—Down the current!—Look!'

Jill shipped her oars and snatched the lantern from its place and held it up. 'Marthe!' she cried. 'Marthe!' and she turned the lantern on the black water, on the poplar groves, on the cliff, round on every side, while the vacant beams stretched far, far into the desolate night.

'Where is she? Let me go to her!' Graham was crying in a nightmare voice; for the boatman had seized him by the arm, and Jill had seized him. 'Let me go to her!' he cried, struggling fiercely. But they dragged him in.

'Row! Row! Row!' said Jill.

And the man rowed down under the cliff-side where the current flowed so swiftly and Jill crouched with the lantern and Graham lay insensible at the bottom of the boat.

There was no face upon the water. Marthe was not there. She had slipped—or fallen—or been swept away. The river had taken her. She was gone.

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LL Buissac, on a radiant afternoon, was gathered high above the river on the promontory road. It was at the spot where Jill Graham, two years before, had leaned on the parapet to look out over the plains and down at the island, and the scene wore again its spring-time vesture. The plains melted in azure undulations to the sky; the river flowed in silver majesty; the island was tranquil, all the ravages of the great flood mantled with compassionate green; and among the poplar groves three white cows moved, quietly grazing. Only one change there was; the unwonted stillness on the opposite shore. No women knelt at the river's edge to wash and no men fished. The sounds of the country-side had gathered themselves into one dense hive of ardent humming on the promontory road, where a memorial tablet, set into the cliff above it, was to be unveiled. It was a great day for Buissac; a day such as history is made of, on which the roots of legend flower; and since Marthe Ludérac's death, legends had rooted themselves. The soil of life in such a remote, unsophisticated community is propitious to them, and the tragic circumstances of her death, the grief that had attended it, had suddenly lifted and enshrined her shadowy, unapprehended figure.

For weeks after the catastrophe, Graham had lain at the Ecu d'Or, his life and his reason in danger, and

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 Jill, pale and silent, had passed among the people, and wherever she was seen, with her stricken face, Marthe Ludérac was remembered. She had visited the curé when the body was recovered and made all arrangements for the funeral; she sat with the mayor and supervised the disposal of Marthe's small fortune. She was at the Manoir day and night, tending the old woman desperately dying there. Her authority was undisputed. A sense of mysterious significance and grief surrounded the dead girl with an aura. Then, when at last Graham could travel, he and she had gone, and for two years Buissac heard no more of them. But Marthe Ludérac was not forgotten. Her legend grew quietly, insistently, as lilies-of-the-valley grow underground; running ever further and throwing up at each new season fresh shoots and flowers. Excitement, elation, was felt in Buissac when it was known that Madame Graham had returned to erect a monument to her; but no surprise. She was already a presence among them.

In the cemetery, half a mile below, there were now three graves under the chestnut branches. A solitary wreath of daffodils had been laid on Madame de Lamouderie's; but Marthe Ludérac's was heaped with tinsel flowers, bead wreaths, and sacred ornaments and looked at last in keeping, it was felt, with the rest of the fine Buissac necropolis. Madame Michon might have pronounced it almost coquet when, with the others, she came to-day to lay upon it her own splendid offering, bristling with porcelain scrolls and inscriptions.

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 The Michons expected great things from this accession of fame to Buissac. They were enlarging the Ecu d'Or, and Madame Michon, sitting on a campstool in the shade of a large black umbrella, was graciously ready to give information to those who crowded round her. Madame Graham was staying at the Ecu d'Or, bien entendu. She was to unveil the monument and might now be expected to appear at any moment. Ce pauvre Monsieur Graham could not be with them. He had not yet recovered, Madame Michon gathered, from the effects of the terrible night when he and Madame had seen their beloved friend swept away before their eyes. But he was, at last, beginning to paint again. One saw the gladness in Madame's face when she spoke of it,—ah, she had suffered, the poor young lady; she was changed; aged. But still as charming as ever; gentille et avenante; full of thought for all her old friends. She was sending the little Germaine to a good school and Madame Jeannin had cause to bless her. But then—had it not been for Blaise Jeannin, Monsieur Graham would have perished with Mademoiselle Ludérac.

Blaise, indeed, in Sunday best, a watch-chain across his waistcoat, was a centre of interest. Many people here to-day had not seen him before and pressed round him as he recited, with the assurance of old custom, his reminiscences. He had climbed down the cliff to this very spot when his mother, on that night of disaster, had told him to follow the Monsieur anglais and help him in his search for the kid, and had seen Gra-

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 ham running along the flooded island. A passing motor had picked him up and brought him to the Ecu d'Or, where cries and lamentations had greeted the dreadful news he had to tell. He could recall it all. Madame Graham saying she must find a boat; Monsieur Michon telling her that it would be an act of madness to attempt to cross the broken dyke; Monsieur Prosper coming forward and asserting that he could take her. Blaise had remained at the Ecu d'Or, dozing before the fire until, hours later, Monsieur Graham had been carried in, unconscious. He had started forward then and cried: '' ' Et mon biquet? '  And Monsieur Prosper had said:  ' Ton biquet?—Eh bien, elle est morte pour ton biquet, cette pauvre demoiselle. ' '' His biquet still remained for Blaise the central figure of the tragedy, and he could not now regret that his mother had accepted the money and he the watch; for here the watch still was and the kid would long ago have been eaten. Madame Graham had come to see them that morning and had told him that it was now a mother.

Madame Jeannin, her pale face shining with excitement, talked with an astonishing volubility. She was a very fount of tradition, for had she not known Mademoiselle Ludérac from her childhood? She could tell them what her favourite dishes had been and how she was not always sad at all but would laugh and make jokes while they did the housework together. It was with Madame Jeannin and her old grandmother that Madame de Lamouderie had taken refuge when terrible misfortunes had befallen her. Ah, yes, she was a

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 veritable countess, pour sûr, and of a great family. La vieille bonne maman had been a nourrice in her Paris house.  ' On y mangeait de bons morceaux, je vous en réponds, '  said Madame Jeannin. But how they could have gone on caring for her she did not know, since all money from Paris ceased at last to come, and well did she remember the day when Mademoiselle came to their cottage and took the poor old lady to live with her—Ah, that was a devotion! When Mademoiselle was not with her, Madame la comtesse pined. She had died of grief, and it had broken one's heart to hear her moaning day and night: 'Marthe;—Marthe;—Marthe.' Only when Madame Graham sat beside her and held her hand would she be still, and in her last moments she had cried out upon Marthe Ludérac's name, as if upon a saint's, and had begged for her intercession with le bon Dieu.

There were many, also, who remembered the child leading her mother in the woods and one or two who said that they had witnessed the scene of the stoning. She had thrown herself before her mother and had looked like a martyr; with great courageous eyes and blood upon her forehead. The story of the young permissionnaire was told; Marthe had become a heroine of the great war; and people passing the Manoir at night had heard the angelic notes of her harp and now recalled the supernatural awe that had fallen upon them. One woman said that she had seen Marthe Ludérac in the forest at evening carrying a succoured animal, and that there had been an aura about her

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 head. So the hive hummed on, storing its legendary honey.

But one figure stood apart from all the dense and eager crowd; bereft, morose, uncommunicating, an old blind dog beside him. No one spoke to Monsieur Trumier, though glances were turned on him as he stood near the veiled monument, holding Médor by a cord.

He had let the Manoir to a family from Bordeaux and lived in Buissac near his niece's family. He made no friends; he spoke to no one, occupying himself with his niece's children and Mademoiselle Ludérac's decrepit animals. He was often to be seen in the cemetery, tending her grave, or in the woods where she had walked; and sometimes he and Médor wandered for hours on the island below, where she had lost her life. A slight feeling of superstitious awe surrounded him and it was whispered among the Buissac children that whereas Mademoiselle Ludérac blessed you if you were good to animals, Monsieur Trumier, if you were cruel, could lay a malediction upon you.

When Jill's little open car appeared at last at the turning of the road, it had to come slowly, so dense had grown the crowd. People stood on the parapet of the wall to look over the heads of others and boys had climbed up into the wayside poplars and clung there to the branches. Jill was pale as she looked at them all, opening a way for her. She had not expected such a concourse.

Sitting beside her were Monsieur le curé and Mon-

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 sieur le maire, a marvellous proximity indeed in the eyes of Buissac, and as the three were seen it was felt, more deeply perhaps than at any other time, that Madame Graham was a remarkable woman.

She was grave and very pale; but she was not wearing black; her clothes were the girlish country clothes they had always seen her wear, and when she got out and made her way among them, she paused to shake hands with Monsieur Prosper, with Blaise, with Madame Jeannin. Then she went to stand beside Monsieur Trumier, stooping to caress the head of the old dog before she looked up at him. It was seen that though she and Monsieur Trumier looked at each other, they did not speak at all.

Monsieur le curé and Monsieur le maire then took their places before the crowd.

Monsieur le curé, who was very red, told them of the filial virtues of the dead girl. She had been, he said, a very perfect example to them all, in that respect. They would all remember how terrible was the cloud of guilt that had rested upon her home and with what patience and fortitude she had tended her mother until her death,  ' munie '  said the curé, with something of doggedness in his tone, '' ' des sacrements de l ' église. '  He ended with an allusion to la sainte Vierge and sainte Anne that was not felt to have much relevance; and indeed the curé evidently felt so himself, for he came to an end abruptly and stepped back to make place for the maire.''

Monsieur le maire spoke at much greater length and

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 in a florid voice. He spoke of France, its glories and attractions, and of the charming young English couple who had come among them. They had loved Buissac from the first; and who would not love Buissac that knew it? And who would not love France, the chivalrous, humanitarian nation? She was a torch to all the peoples, said Monsieur le maire—striking his chest and flinging up his short, fat arm—and, as always, she led the way towards the glorious eras of liberty and progress that opened before the new generations. How France was appreciated, and in the person of a humble and unfortunate young citizen, the magnificent work of art, now to be unveiled before them by its generous donor, attested. Monsieur le curé had spoken to them of Mademoiselle Ludérac's private virtues; he had to remind them of her acts of courageous patriotism. She had succoured French soldiers during the war. She had taken them in and given them food and shelter, poor and unprotected as she was. Her virtues had been French virtues; courage, patriotism, magnanimity; and for ages to come none of those who passed along this road would fail to honour France in honouring her. So, with a quivering voice, Monsieur le maire ended, and no one who saw Madame Graham leaning back against the cliff, with folded arms and downcast eyes, would have suspected that she controlled more than once a bitter inclination to smile.

But though Jill controlled a smile, Monsieur le curé and Monsieur le maire had done what she had intended they should do. The Church and the State had recog-

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 nized Marthe Ludérac. Her turn had come. She stepped forward and withdrew the veil.

The tablet, set flatly in the grey limestone, might almost have grown by natural agencies of time and weather from the cliff, so simple, so elemental was its design. The life-size profile, carved in low relief, seemed to breathe from the rock; but with another breath than that of life. Had the spirit of the dead girl yearned for a reincarnation in her loved country, her longing might thus have found fulfilment; for this strange head, bent forward as if to gaze down at the great river and out over the plains, was like an emanation of the dreaming soul, so remembering past beauty that it had emerged through the rock—and through the minds of those who had loved her—to look and listen for ever to the sights and sounds that had accompanied its pilgrimage on earth. It looked; it listened; but what was the meaning of the beauty that it saw, the secret melody it heard?

Above it, carved in the framing stone, an inscription ran: 'Marthe Ludérac:—She had compassion on all that suffers and lost her life, below this spot, while rescuing a kid from the flood.'

Beneath was a drinking-fountain, and carved round it, processionally, a file of animals, led by an archaic girlish figure carrying a kid.

The crowd gazed, silently, and in an unbroken silence listened to Jill's brief words. She told them that her husband had drawn Marthe Ludérac's head from memory and that a friend of theirs, a young French

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 sculptor, had carved it and the fountain from his designs.

'Very few people knew her,' said Jill, and her voice, steady till now, trembled a little. 'She was very lonely. Her life was very sad. But I think it would make her happy if she could see us all here to-day and know that we all loved her, for her heart was full of love. And it would make her happy to think that because of her everyone in Buissac was kind to animals. She was a great person; though only one or two ever saw her greatness. They will never forget her; and you, I know, will not forget her; but long after we are dead, this memorial will tell people that she lived here and was loved.'

There was nothing more that she could do. She and Dick were together, as Marthe had meant, in leaving them, that they should be; and perhaps, because of Marthe, people in Buissac would be kinder to animals; as she herself would be. There would be less cruelty in the world, because of Marthe. That was all. And she must leave her now, for ever.

She stood in silence, with the rest, gazing up at the dear face; so remote; as remote as a star; yet as near as the light of the star shining upon one.

And little whispers came to her from the crowbut td as all drew near to look more closely at the memorial.

'See;—it is as if the wind were blowing back her hair.'

'She is so grave, yet she seems about to smile.'

'It is a dead face,' said one woman, for, as they looked, a sense of awe crept over them. But her companion said: 'No; it is a face in paradise.'

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text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 1

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 1


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"He fell through the air full upon the monster's back."

WILL tell you of Niord and the Worm. You have heard the tale before in many guises wherein the hero was named Tyr, or Perseus, or Siegfried, or Beowulf, or Saint George. But it was Niord who met the loathly demoniac thing that crawled hideously up from hell, and from which meeting sprang the cycle of hero-tales that revolves down the ages until the very substance of the truth is lost and passes into the limbo of all forgotten legends. I know whereof I speak, for I was Niord.

As I lie here awaiting death, which 193


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 2

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194 creeps slowly upon me like a blind slug, my dreams are filled with glittering visions and the pageantry of glory. It is not of the drab, disease-racked life of James Allison I dream, but all the gleaming figures of the mighty pageantry that have passed before, and shall come after; for I have faintly glimpsed, not merely the shapes that trail out behind, but shapes that come after, as a man in a long parade glimpses, far ahead, the line of figures that precede him winding over a distant hill, etched shadow-like against the sky. I am one and all the pageantry of shapes and guises and masks which have been, are, and shall be the visible manifestations of that illusive, intangible, but vitally existent spirit now promenading under the brief and temporary name of James Allison.

Each man on earth, each woman, is part and all of a similar caravan of shapes and beings. But they cannot remember—their minds cannot bridge the brief, awful gulfs of blackness which lie between those unstable shapes, and which the spirit, soul or ego, in spanning, shakes off its fleshy masks. I remember. Why I can remember is the strangest tale of all; but as I lie here with death's black wings slowly unfolding over me, all the dim folds of my previous lives are shaken out before my eyes, and I see myself in many forms and guises—braggart, swaggering, fearful, loving, foolish, all that men have been or will be.

I have been Man in many lands and many conditions; yet—and here is another strange thing—my line of reincarnation runs straight down one unerring channel. I have never been any but a man of that restless race men once called Nordheimr and later Aryans, and today name by many names and designations. Their history is my history, from the first mewling wail of a hairless white ape cub in the wastes of the Arctic, to the death-cry of the last degenerate product of ultimate civilization, in some dim and unguessed future age.

My name has been Hialmar, Tyr, Bragi, Bran, Horsa, Eric and John. I strode red-handed through the deserted streets of Rome behind the yellow-maned Brennus; I wandered through the violated plantations with Alaric and his Goths when the flame of burning villas lit the land like day and an empire was gasping its last under our sandalled feet; I waded sword in hand through the foaming surf from Hengist's galley to lay the foundations of England in blood and pillage; when Leif the Lucky sighted the broad white beaches of an unguessed world, I stood beside him in the bows of the dragon-ship, my golden beard blowing in the wind; and when Godfrey of Bouillon led his Crusaders over the walls of Jerusalem, I was among them in steel cap and brigandine.

But it is of none of these things I would speak. I would take you back with me into an age beside which that of Brennus and Rome is as yesterday. I would take you back through, not merely centuries and millenniums, but epochs and dim ages unguessed by the wildest philosopher. Oh far, far and far will you fare into the nighted Past before you win beyond the boundaries of my race, blue-eyed, yellow-haired, wanderers, slayers, lovers, mighty in rapine and wayfaring.

It is the adventure of Niord Worm's-bane of which I would speak—the root-stem of a whole cycle of hero-tales which has not yet reached its end, the grisly underlying reality that lurks behind time-distorted myths of dragons, fiends and monsters.

Yet it is not alone with the mouth of Niord that I will speak. I am James Allison no less than I was Niord, and as I


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 unfold the tale, I will interpret some of his thoughts and dreams and deeds from the mouth of the modern I, so that the saga of Niord shall not be a meaningless chaos to you. His blood is your blood, who are sons of Aryan; but wide misty gulfs of aeons lie horrifically between, and the deeds and dreams of Niord seem as alien to your deeds and dreams as the primordial and lion-haunted forest seems alien to the white-walled city street.

It was a strange world in which Niord lived and loved and fought, so long ago that even my aeon-spanning memory cannot recognize landmarks. Since then the surface of the earth has changed, not once but a score of times; continents have risen and sunk, seas have changed their beds and rivers their courses, glaciers have waxed and waned, and the very stars and constellations have altered and shifted.

It was so long ago that the cradle-land of my race was still in Nordheim. But the epic drifts of my people had already begun, and blue-eyed, yellow-maned tribes flowed eastward and southward and westward, on century-long treks that carried them around the world and left their bones and their traces in strange lands and wild waste places. On one of these drifts I grew from infancy to manhood. My knowledge of that northern homeland was dim memories, like half-remembered dreams, of blinding white snow plains and ice fields, of great fires roaring in the circle of hide tents, of yellow manes flying in great winds, and a sun setting in a lurid wallow of crimson clouds, blazing on trampled snow where still dark forms lay in pools that were redder than the sunset.

That last memory stands out clearer than the others. It was the field of Jotunheim, I was told in later years, whereon had just been fought that terrible battle which was the Armageddon of the Æsir-folk, the subject of a cycle of hero-songs for long ages, and which still lives today in dim dreams of Ragnarok and Goetterdaemmerung. I looked on that battle as a mewling infant; so I must have lived about—but I will not name the age, for I would be called a madman, and historians and geologists alike would rise to refute me.

But my memories of Nordheim were few and dim, paled by memories of that long, long trek upon which I had spent my life. We had not kept to a straight course, but our trend had been for ever southward. Sometimes we had bided for a while in fertile upland valleys or rich river-traversed plains, but always we took up the trail again, and not always because of drouth or famine. Often we left countries teeming with game and wild grain to push into wastelands. On our trail we moved endlessly, driven only by our restless whim, yet blindly following a cosmic law, the workings of which we never guessed, any more than the wild geese guess in their flights around the world. So at last we came into the Country of the Worm.

I will take up the tale at the time when we came into jungle-clad hills reeking with rot and teeming with spawning life, where the tom-toms of a savage people pulsed incessantly through the hot breathless night. These people came forth to dispute our way short, strongly built men, black-haired, painted, ferocious, but indisputably white men. We knew their breed of old. They were Picts, and of all alien races the fiercest. We had met their kind before in thick forests, and in upland valleys beside mountain lakes. But many moons had passed since those meetings.

I believe this particular tribe represented


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 the easternmost drift of the race. They were the most primitive and ferocious of any I ever met. Already they were exhibiting hints of characteristics I have noted among black savages in jungle countries, though they had dwelled in these environs only a few generations. The abysmal jungle was engulfing them, was obliterating their pristine characteristics and shaping them in its own horrific mould. They were drifting into head-hunting, and cannibalism was but a step which I believe they must have taken before they became extinct. These things are natural adjuncts to the jungle; the Picts did not learn them from the black people, for then there were no blacks among those hills. In later years they came up from the south, and the Picts first enslaved and then were absorbed by them. But with that my saga of Niord is not concerned.

We came into that brutish hill country, with its squalling abysms of savagery and black primitiveness. We were a whole tribe marching on foot, old men, wolfish with their long beards and gaunt limbs, giant warriors in their prime, naked children running along the line of march, women with tousled yellow locks carrying babies which never cried—unless it were to scream from pure rage. I do not remember our numbers, except that there were some 500 fighting-men—and by fighting-men I mean all males, from the child just strong enough to lift a bow, to the oldest of the old men. In that madly ferocious age all were fighters. Our women fought, when brought to bay, like tigresses, and I have seen a babe, not yet old enough to stammer articulate words, twist its head and sink its tiny teeth in the foot that stamped out its life.

Oh, we were fighters! Let me speak of Niord. I am proud of him, the more when I consider the paltry crippled body of James Allison, the unstable mask I now wear. Niord was tall, with great shoulders, lean hips and mighty limbs. His muscles were long and swelling, denoting endurance and speed as well as strength. He could run all day without tiring, and he possessed a coordination that made his movements a blur of blinding speed. If I told you his full strength, you would brand me a liar. But there is no man on earth today strong enough to bend the bow Niord handled with ease. The longest arrow-flight on record is that of a Turkish archer who sent a shaft 482 yards. There was not a stripling in my tribe who could not have bettered that flight.

As we entered the jungle country we heard the tom-toms booming across the mysterious valleys that slumbered between the brutish hills, and in a broad, open plateau we met our enemies. I do not believe these Picts knew us, even by legends, or they had never rushed so openly to the onset, though they outnumbered us. But there was no attempt at ambush. They swarmed out of the trees, dancing and singing their war-songs, yelling their barbarous threats. Our heads should hang in their idol-hut and our yellow-haired women should bear their sons. Ho! ho! ho! By Ymir, it was Niord who laughed then, not James Allison. Just so we of the Æsir laughed to hear their threats—deep thunderous laughter from broad and mighty chests. Our trail was laid in blood and embers through many lands. We were the slayers and ravishers, striding sword in hand across the world, and that these folk threatened us woke our rugged humour.

We went to meet them, naked but for our wolfhides, swinging our bronze swords, and our singing was like rolling thunder in the hills. They sent their arrows among us, and we gave back their


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 fire. They could not match us in archery. Our arrows hissed in blinding clouds among them, dropping them like autumn leaves, until they howled and frothed like mad dogs and changed to hand-grips. And we, mad with the fighting joy, dropped our bows and ran to meet them, as a lover runs to his love.

By Ymir, it was a battle to madden and make drunken with the slaughter and the fury. The Picts were as ferocious as we, but ours was the superior physique, the keener wit, the more highly developed fighting-brain. We won because we were a superior race, but it was no easy victory. Corpses littered the blood-soaked earth; but at last they broke, and we cut them down as they ran, to the very edge of the trees. I tell of that fight in a few bald words. I cannot paint the madness, the reek of sweat and blood, the panting, muscle-straining effort, the splintering of bones under mighty blows, the rending and hewing of quivering sentient flesh; above all the merciless abysmal savagery of the whole affair, in which there was neither rule nor order, each man fighting as he would or could. If I might do so, you would recoil in horror; even the modern I, cognizant of my close kinship with those times, stand aghast as I review that butchery. Mercy was yet unborn, save as some individual's whim, and rules of warfare were as yet undreamed of. It was an age in which each tribe and each human fought tooth and fang from birth to death, and neither gave nor expected mercy.

So we cut down the fleeing Picts, and our women came out on the field to brain the wounded enemies with stones, or cut their throats with copper knives. We did not torture. We were no more cruel than life demanded. The rule of life was ruthlessness, but there is more wanton cruelty today than ever we dreamed of. It was not wanton bloodthirstiness that made us butcher wounded and captive foes. It was because we knew our chances of survival increased with each enemy slain.

Yet there was occasionally a touch of individual mercy, and so it was in this fight. I had been occupied with a duel with an especially valiant enemy. His tousled thatch of black hair scarcely came above my chin, but he was a solid knot of steel-spring muscles, than which lightning scarcely moved faster. He had an iron sword and a hide-covered buckler. I had a knotty-headed bludgeon. That fight was one that glutted even my battle-lusting soul. I was bleeding from a score of flesh wounds before one of my terrible, lashing strokes smashed his shield like cardboard, and an instant later my bludgeon glanced from his unprotected head. Ymir! Even now I stop to laugh and marvel at the hardness of that Pict's skull. Men of that age were assuredly built on a rugged plan! That blow should have spattered his brains like water. It did lay his scalp open horribly, dashing him senseless to the earth, where I let him lie, supposing him to be dead, as I joined in the slaughter of the fleeing warriors.

When I returned reeking with sweat and blood, my club horridly clotted with blood and brains, I noticed that my antagonist was regaining consciousness, and that a naked tousle-headed girl was preparing to give him the finishing touch with a stone she could scarcely lift. A vagrant whim caused me to check the blow. I had enjoyed the fight, and I admired the adamantine quality of his skull.

We made camp a short distance away, burned our dead on a great pyre, and after looting the corpses of the enemy, we dragged them across the plateau and cast them down in a valley to


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 make a feast for the hyenas, jackals and vultures which were already gathering. We kept close watch that night, but we were not attacked, though far away through the jungle we could make out the red gleam of fires, and could faintly hear, when the wind veered, the throb of tom-toms and demoniac screams and yells keenings for the slain or mere animal squallings of fury.

Nor did they attack us in the days that followed. We bandaged our captive's wounds and quickly learned his primitive tongue, which, however, was so different from ours that I cannot conceive of the two languages having ever had a common source.

His name was Grom, and he was a great hunter and fighter, he boasted. He talked freely and held no grudge, grinning broadly and showing tusk-like teeth, his beady eyes glittering from under the tangled black mane that fell over his low forehead. His limbs were almost ape-like in their thickness.

He was vastly interested in his captors, though he could never understand why he had been spared; to the end it remained an inexplicable mystery to him. The Picts obeyed the law of survival even more rigidly than did the Æsir. They were the more practical, as shown by their more settled habits. They never roamed as far or as blindly as we. Yet in every line we were the superior race.

Grom, impressed by our intelligence and fighting qualities, volunteered to go into the hills and make peace for us with his people. It was immaterial to us, but we let him go. Slavery had not yet been dreamed of.

So Grom went back to his people, and we forgot about him, except that I went a trifle more cautiously about my hunting, expecting him to be lying in wait to put an arrow through my back. Then one day we heard a rattle of tom-toms, and Grom appeared at the edge of the jungle, his face split in his gorilla grin, with the painted, skin-clad, feather-bedecked chiefs of the clans. Our ferocity had awed them, and our sparing of Grom further impressed them. They could not understand leniency; evidently we valued them too cheaply to bother about killing one when he was in our power.

So peace was made with much pow-wow, and sworn to with many strange oaths and rituals we swore only by Ymir, and an Æsir never broke that vow. But they swore by the elements, by the idol which sat in the fetish-hut where fires burned for ever and a withered crone slapped a leather-covered drum all night long, and by another being too terrible to be named.

Then we all sat around the fires and gnawed meat-bones, and drank a fiery concoction they brewed from wild grain, and the wonder is that the feast did not end in a general massacre; for that liquor had devils in it and made maggots writhe in our brains. But no harm came of our vast drunkenness, and thereafter we dwelled at peace with our barbarous neighbours. They taught us many things, and learned many more from us. But they taught us iron-workings, into which they had been forced by the lack of copper in those hills, and we quickly excelled them.

We went freely among their villages—mud-walled clusters of huts in hilltop clearings, overshadowed by giant trees—and we allowed them to come at will among our camps—straggling lines of hide tents on the plateau where the battle had been fought. Our young men cared not for their squat beady-eyed women, and our rangy clean-limbed girls with their tousled yellow heads were not drawn to the hairy-breasted savages. Familiarity over a period of years would


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 have reduced the repulsion on either side, until the two races would have flowed together to form one hybrid people, but long before that time the Æsir rose and departed, vanishing into the mysterious hazes of the haunted south. But before that exodus there came to pass the horror of the Worm.

I hunted with Grom and he led me into brooding, uninhabited valleys and up into silence-haunted hills where no men had set foot before us. But there was one valley, off in the mazes of the south-west, into which he would not go. Stumps of shattered columns, relics of a forgotten civilization, stood among the trees on the valley floor. Grom showed them to me, as we stood on the cliffs that flanked the mysterious vale, but he would not go down into it, and he dissuaded me when I would have gone alone. He would not speak plainly of the danger that lurked there, but it was greater than that of serpent or tiger, or the trumpeting elephants which occasionally wandered up in devastating droves from the south.

Of all beasts, Grom told me in the gutturals of his tongue, the Picts feared only Satha, the great snake, and they shunned the jungle where he lived. But there was another thing they feared, and it was connected in some manner with the Valley of Broken Stones, as the Picts called the crumbling pillars. Long ago, when his ancestors had first come into the country, they had dared that grim vale, and a whole clan of them had perished, suddenly, horribly and unexplainably. At least Grom did not explain. The horror had come up out of the earth, somehow, and it was not good to talk of it, since it was believed that It might be summoned by speaking of It—whatever It was.

But Grom was ready to hunt with me anywhere else; for he was the greatest hunter among the Picts, and many and fearful were our adventures. Once I killed, with the iron sword I had forged with my own hands, that most terrible of all beasts—old sabre-tooth, which men today call a tiger because he was more like a tiger than anything else. In reality he was almost as much like a bear in build, save for his unmistakably feline head. Sabre-tooth was massive-limbed, with a low-hung, great, heavy body, and he vanished from the earth because he was too terrible a fighter, even for that grim age. As his muscles and ferocity grew, his brain dwindled until at last even the instinct of self-preservation vanished. Nature, who maintains her balance in such things, destroyed him because, had his super-fighting powers been allied with an intelligent brain, he would have destroyed all other forms of life on earth. He was a freak on the road of evolution organic development gone mad and run to fangs and talons, to slaughter and destruction.

I killed sabre-tooth in a battle that would make a saga in itself, and for months afterwards I lay semi-delirious with ghastly wounds that made the toughest warriors shake their heads. The Picts said that never before had a man killed a sabre-tooth single-handed. Yet I recovered, to the wonder of all.

While I lay at the doors of death there was a secession from the tribe. It was a peaceful secession, such as continually occurred and contributed greatly to the peopling of the world by yellow-haired tribes. Forty-five of the young men took themselves mates simultaneously and wandered off to found a clan of their own. There was no revolt; it was a racial custom which bore fruit in all the later ages, when tribes sprung from the same roots met, after centuries of separation, and cut one another's throats with joyous abandon. The tendency of the Aryan and


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 the pre-Aryan was always towards disunity, clans splitting off the main stem, and scattering.

So these young men, led by one Bragi, my brother-in-arms, took their girls and venturing to the south-west, took up their abode in the Valley of Broken Stones. The Picts expostulated, hinting vaguely of a monstrous doom that haunted the vale, but the Æsir laughed. We had left our own demons and weirds in the icy wastes of the far blue north, and the devils of other races did not much impress us.

When my full strength was returned, and the grisly wounds were only scars, I girt on my weapons and strode over the plateau to visit Bragi's clan. Grom did not accompany me. He had not been in the Æsir camp for several days. But I knew the way. I remembered well the valley, from the cliffs of which I had looked down and seen the lake at the upper end, the trees thickening into forest at the lower extremity. The sides of the valley were high sheer cliffs, and a steep broad ridge at either end cut it off from the surrounding country. It was towards the lower or southwestern end that the valley floor was dotted thickly with ruined columns, some towering high among the trees, some fallen into heaps of lichen-clad stones. What race reared them none knew. But Grom had hinted fearsomely of a hairy, apish monstrosity dancing loathsomely under the moon to a demoniac piping that induced horror and madness.

I crossed the plateau whereon our camp was pitched, descended the slope, traversed a shallow vegetation-choked valley, climbed another slope, and plunged into the hills. A half-day's leisurely travel brought me to the ridge on the other side of which lay the valley of the pillars. For many miles I had seen no sign of human life. The settlements of the Picts all lay many miles to the east. I topped the ridge and looked down into the dreaming valley with its still blue lake, its brooding cliffs and its broken columns jutting among the trees. I looked for smoke. I saw none, but I saw vultures wheeling in the sky over a cluster of tents on the lake shore.

I came down the ridge warily and approached the silent camp. In it I halted, frozen with horror. I was not easily moved. I had seen death in many forms, and had fled from or taken part in red massacres that spilled blood like water and heaped the earth with corpses. But here I was confronted with an organic devastation that staggered and appalled me. Of Bragi's embryonic clan, not one remained alive, and not one corpse was whole. Some of the hide tents still stood erect. Others were mashed down and flattened out, as if crushed by some monstrous weight, so that at first I wondered if a drove of elephants had stampeded across the camp. But no elephants ever wrought such destruction as I saw strewn on the bloody ground. The camp was a shambles, littered with bits of flesh and fragments of bodies—hands, feet, heads, pieces of human debris. Weapons lay about, some of them stained with a greenish slime like that which spurts from a crushed caterpillar.

No human foe could have committed this ghastly atrocity. I looked at the lake, wondering if nameless amphibian monsters had crawled from the calm waters whose deep blue told of unfathomed depths. Then I saw a print left by the destroyer. It was a track such as a titanic worm might leave, yards broad, winding back down the valley. The grass lay flat where it ran, and bushes and small trees had been crushed down into the earth, all


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 horribly smeared with blood and greenish slime.

With berserk fury in my soul I drew my sword and started to follow it, when a call attracted me. I wheeled, to see a stocky form approaching me from the ridge. It was Grom the Pict, and when I think of the courage it must have taken for him to have overcome all the instincts planted in him by traditional teachings and personal experience, I realize the full depths of his friendship for me.

Squatting on the lake shore, spear in his hands, his black eyes ever roving fearfully down the brooding tree-waving reaches of the valley, Grom told me of the horror that had come upon Bragi's clan under the moon. But first he told me of it, as his sires had told the tale to him.

Long ago the Picts had drifted down from the north-west on a long, long trek, finally reaching these jungle-covered hills, where, because they were weary, and because the game and fruit were plentiful and there were no hostile tribes, they halted and built their mud-walled villages.

Some of them, a whole clan of that numerous tribe, took up their abode in the Valley of the Broken Stones. They found the columns and a great ruined temple back in the trees, and in that temple there was no shrine or altar, but the mouth of a shaft that vanished deep into the black earth, and in which there were no steps such as a human being would make and use. They built their village in the valley, and in the night, under the moon, horror came upon them and left only broken walls and bits of slime-smeared flesh.

In those days the Picts feared nothing. The warriors of the other clans gathered and sang their war-songs and danced their war-dances, and followed a broad track of blood and slime to the shaft-mouth in the temple. They howled defiance and hurled down boulders which were never heard to strike bottom. Then began a thin demoniac piping, and up from the well pranced a hideous anthropomorphic figure dancing to the weird strains of a pipe it held in its monstrous hands. The horror of its aspect froze the fierce Picts with amazement, and close behind it a vast white bulk heaved up from the subterranean darkness. Out of the shaft came a slavering mad nightmare which arrows pierced but could not check, which swords carved but could not slay. It fell slobbering upon the warriors, crushing them to crimson pulp, tearing them to bits as an octopus might tear small fishes, sucking their blood from their mangled limbs and devouring them even as they screamed and struggled. The survivors fled, pursued to the very ridge, up which, apparently, the monster could not propel its quaking mountainous bulk.

After that they did not dare the silent valley. But the dead came to their shamans and old men in dreams and told them strange and terrible secrets. They spoke of an ancient, ancient race of semi-human beings which once inhabited that valley and reared those columns for their own weird inexplicable purposes. The white monster in the pits was their god, summoned up from the nighted abysses of mid-earth uncounted fathoms below the black mould by sorcery unknown to the sons of men. The hairy anthropomorphic being was its servant, created to serve the god, a formless elemental spirit drawn up from below and cased in flesh, organic but beyond the understanding of humanity. The Old Ones had long vanished into the limbo from whence they crawled in the black dawn of the universe, but their bestial god and his inhuman slave lived on. Yet both were organic


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 after a fashion, and could be wounded, though no human weapon had been found potent enough to slay them.

Bragi and his clan had dwelled for weeks in the valley before the horror struck. Only the night before, Grom, hunting above the cliffs, and by that token daring greatly, had been paralyzed by a high-pitched demon piping, and then by a mad clamour of human screaming. Stretched face down in the dirt, hiding his head in a tangle of grass, he had not dared to move, even when the shrieks died away in the slobbering, repulsive sounds of a hideous feast. When dawn broke he had crept shuddering to the cliffs to look down into the valley, and the sight of the devastation, even when seen from afar, had driven him in yammering flight far into the hills. But it had occurred to him, finally, that he should warn the rest of the tribe, and returning, on his way to the camp on the plateau, he had seen me entering the valley.

So spoke Grom, while I sat and brooded darkly, my chin on my mighty fist. I cannot frame in modern words the clan feeling that in those days was a living vital part of every man and woman. In a world where talon and fang were lifted on every hand, and the hands of all men raised against an individual, except those of his own clan, tribal instinct was more than the phrase it is today. It was as much a part of a man as was his heart or his right hand. This was necessary, for only thus banded together in unbreakable groups could mankind have survived in the terrible environments of the primitive world. So now the personal grief I felt for Bragi and the clean-limbed young men and laughing white-skinned girls was drowned in a deeper sea of grief and fury that was cosmic in its depth and intensity. I sat grimly, while the Pict squatted anxiously beside me, his gaze roving from me to the menacing deeps of the valley where the accursed columns loomed like broken teeth of cackling hags among the waving leafy reaches.

I, Niord, was not one to use my brain over-much. I lived in a physical world, and there were the old men of the tribe to do my thinking. But I was one of a race destined to become dominant mentally as well as physically, and I was no mere muscular animal. So as I sat there, there came dimly and then clearly a thought to me that brought a short fierce laugh from my lips.

Rising, I bade Grom aid me, and we built a pyre on the lake shore of dried wood, the ridge-poles of the tents, and the broken shafts of spears. Then we collected the grisly fragments that had been parts of Bragi's band, and we laid them on the pile, and struck flint and steel to it.

The thick sad smoke crawled serpent-like into the sky, and, turning to Grom, I made him guide me to the jungle where lurked that scaly horror, Satha, the great serpent. Grom gaped at me; not the greatest hunters among the Picts sought out the mighty crawling one. But my will was like a wind that swept him along my course, and at last he led the way. We left the valley by the upper end, crossing the ridge, skirting the tall cliffs, and plunged into the fastnesses of the south, which was peopled only by the grim denizens of the jungle. Deep into the jungle we went, until we came to a low-lying expanse, dank and dark beneath the great creeper-festooned trees, where our feet sank deep into the spongy silt, carpeted by rotting vegetation, and slimy moisture oozed up beneath their pressure. This, Grom told me, was the realm haunted by Satha, the great serpent.

Let me speak of Satha. There is nothing


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 like him on earth today, nor has there been for countless ages. Like the meat-eating dinosaur, like old sabre-tooth, he was too terrible to exist. Even then he was a survival of a grimmer age when life and its forms were cruder and more hideous. There were not many of his kind then, though they may have existed in great numbers in the reeking ooze of the vast jungle-tangled swamps still further south. He was larger than any python of modern ages, and his fangs dripped with poison a thousand times more deadly than that of a king cobra.

He was never worshipped by the pure-blood Picts, though the blacks that came later deified him, and that adoration persisted in the hybrid race that sprang from the negroes and their white conquerors. But to other peoples he was the nadir of evil horror, and tales of him became twisted into demonology; so in later ages Satha became the veritable devil of the white races, and the Stygians first worshipped, and then, when they became Egyptians, abhorred him under the name of Set, the Old Serpent, while to the Semites he became Leviathan and Satan. He was terrible enough to be a god, for he was a crawling death. I had seen a bull elephant fall dead in his tracks from Satha's bite. I had seen him, had glimpsed him writhing his horrific way through the dense jungle, had seen him take his prey, but I had never hunted him. He was too grim, even for the slayer of old sabre-tooth.

But now I hunted him, plunging further and further into the hot, breathless reek of his jungle, even when friendship for me could not drive Grom further. He urged me to paint my body and sing my death-song before I advanced further, but I pushed on unheeding.

In a natural runway that wound between the shouldering trees, I set a trap. I found a large tree, soft and spongy of fibre, but thick-boled and heavy, and I hacked through its base close to the ground with my great sword, directing its fall so that when it toppled, its top crashed into the branches of a smaller tree, leaving it leaning across the runway, one end resting on the earth, the other caught in the small tree. Then I cut away the branches on the underside, and cutting a slim, tough sapling I trimmed it and stuck it upright like a prop-pole under the leaning tree. Then, cutting away the tree which supported it, I left the great trunk poised precariously on the prop-pole, to which I fastened a long vine, as thick as my wrist.

Then I went alone through that primordial twilight jungle until an overpowering fetid odour assailed my nostrils, and from the rank vegetation in front of me Satha reared up his hideous head, swaying lethally from side to side, while his forked tongue jetted in and out, and his great yellow terrible eyes burned icily on me with all the evil wisdom of the black elder world that was when man was not. I backed away, feeling no fear, only an icy sensation along my spine, and Satha came sinuously after me, his shining 80-foot barrel rippling over the rotting vegetation in mesmeric silence. His wedge-shaped head was bigger than the head of the hugest stallion, his trunk was thicker than a man's body, and his scales shimmered with a thousand changing scintillations. I was to Satha as a mouse is to a king cobra, but I was fanged as no mouse ever was. Quick as I was, I knew I could not avoid the lightning stroke of that great triangular head; so I dared not let him come too close. Subtly I fled down the runway, and behind me the rush of the great supple body was like the sweep of wind through the grass.

He was not far behind me when I


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 raced beneath the dead-fall, and as the great shining length glided under the trap, I gripped the vine with both hands and jerked desperately. With a crash the great trunk fell across Satha's scaly back, some 6 feet back of his wedge-shaped head.

I had hoped to break his spine but I do not think it did, for the great body coiled and knotted, the mighty tail lashed and thrashed, mowing down the bushes as if with a giant flail. At the instant of the fall, the huge head had whipped about and struck the tree with a terrific impact, the mighty fangs shearing through bark and wood like scimitars. Now, as if aware he fought an inanimate foe, Satha turned on me, standing out of his reach. The scaly neck writhed and arched, the mighty jaws gaped, disclosing fangs a foot in length, from which dripped venom that might have burned through solid stone.

I believe, what of his stupendous strength, that Satha would have writhed from under the trunk, but for a broken branch that had been driven deep into his side, holding him like a barb. The sound of his hissing filled the jungle and his eyes glared at me with such concentrated evil that I shook despite myself. Oh, he knew it was I who had trapped him! Now I came as close as I dared, and with a sudden powerful cast of my spear transfixed his neck just below the gaping jaws, nailing him to the tree-trunk. Then I dared greatly, for he was far from dead, and I knew he would in an instant tear the spear from the wood and be free to strike. But in that instant I ran in, and swinging my sword with all my great power, I hewed off his terrible head.

The heavings and contortions of Satha's prisoned form in life were naught to the convulsions of his headless length in death. I retreated, dragging the gigantic head after me with a crooked pole, and at a safe distance from the lashing, flying tail, I set to work. I worked with naked death then, and no man ever toiled more gingerly than did I. For I cut out the poison sacs at the base of the great fangs, and in the terrible venom I soaked the heads of eleven arrows, being careful that only the bronze points were in the liquid, which else had corroded away the wood of the tough shafts. While I was doing this, Grom, driven by comradeship and Curiosity, came stealing nervously through the jungle, and his mouth gaped as he looked on the head of Satha.

For hours I steeped the arrowheads in the poison, until they were caked with a horrible green scum, and showed tiny flecks of corrosion where the venom had eaten into the solid bronze. I wrapped them carefully in broad, thick, rubber-like leaves, and then, though night had fallen and the hunting beasts were roaring on every hand, I went back through the jungled hills, Grom with me, until at dawn we came again to the high cliffs that loomed above the Valley of Broken Stones.

At the mouth of the valley I broke my spear, and I took all the unpoisoned shafts from my quiver, and snapped them. I painted my face and limbs as the Æsir painted themselves only when they went forth to certain doom, and I sang my death-song to the sun as it rose over the cliffs, my yellow mane blowing in the morning wind.

Then I went down into the valley, bow in hand.

Grom could not drive himself to follow me. He lay on his belly in the dust and howled like a dying dog.

I passed the lake and the silent camp where the pyre-ashes still smouldered, and came under the thickening trees beyond. About me the columns loomed, mere


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 13

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 shapeless heads from the ravages of Staggering aeons. The trees grew more dense, and under their vast leafy branches the very light was dusky and evil. As in twilight shadow I saw the ruined temple, cyclopean walls staggering up from masses of decaying masonry and fallen blocks of stone. About 600 yards in front of it a great column reared up in an open glade, 80 or 90 feet in height. It was so worn and pitted by weather and time that any child of my tribe could have climbed it, and I marked it and changed my plan.

I came to the ruins and saw huge crumbling walls upholding a domed roof from which many stones had fallen, so that it seemed like the lichen-grown ribs of some mythical monster's skeleton arching above me. Titanic columns flanked the open doorway through which ten elephants could have stalked abreast. Once there might have been inscriptions and hieroglyphics on the pillars and walls, but they were long worn away. Around the great room, on the inner side, ran columns in better state of preservation. On each of these columns was a flat pedestal, and some dim instinctive memory vaguely resurrected a shadowy scene wherein black drums roared madly, and on these pedestals monstrous beings squatted loathsomely in inexplicable rituals rooted in the black dawn of the universe.

There was no altar only the mouth of a great well-like shaft in the stone floor, with strange obscene carvings all about the rim. I tore great pieces of stone from the rotting floor and cast them down the shaft which slanted down into utter darkness. I heard them bound along the side, but I did not hear them strike bottom. I cast down stone after stone, each with a searing curse, and at last I heard a sound that was not the dwindling rumble of the falling stones. Up from the well floated a weird demon-piping that was a symphony of madness. Far down in the darkness I glimpsed the faint fearful glimmering of a vast white bulk.

I retreated slowly as the piping grew louder, falling back through the broad doorway. I heard a scratching, scrambling noise, and up from the shaft and out of the doorway between the colossal columns came a prancing incredible figure. It went erect like a man, but it was covered with fur, that was shaggiest where its face should have been. If it had ears, nose and a mouth I did not discover them. Only a pair of staring red eyes leered from the furry mask. Its misshapen hands held a strange set of pipes, on which it blew weirdly as it pranced towards me with many a grotesque caper and leap.

Behind it I heard a repulsive obscene noise as of a quaking unstable mass heaving up out of a well. Then I nocked an arrow, drew the cord and sent the shaft singing through the furry breast of the dancing monstrosity. It went down as though struck by a thunderbolt, but to my horror the piping continued, though the pipes had fallen from the malformed hands. Then I turned and ran fleetly to the column, up which I swarmed before I looked back. When I reached the pinnacle I looked, and because of the shock and surprise of what I saw, I almost fell from my dizzy perch.

Out of the temple the monstrous dweller in the darkness had come, and I, who had expected a horror yet cast in some terrestrial mould, looked on the spawn of nightmare. From what subterranean hell it crawled in the long ago I know not, nor what black age it represented. But it was not a beast, as humanity knows beasts. I call it a worm for lack of a better term. There is no earthly language that has a name for it. I can only say that it looked somewhat more like a worm


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 14

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 14


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 than it did an octopus, a serpent or a dinosaur.

It was white and pulpy, and drew its quaking bulk along the ground, worm-fashion. But it had wide flat tentacles, and fleshy feelers, and other adjuncts the use of which I am unable to explain. And it had a long proboscis which it curled and uncurled like an elephant's trunk. Its forty eyes, set in a horrific circle, were composed of thousands of facets of as many scintillant colours which changed and altered in never-ending transmutation. But through all interplay of hue and glint, they retained their evil intelligence intelligence there was behind those flickering facets, not human nor yet bestial, but a night-born demoniac intelligence such as men in dreams vaguely sense throbbing titanically in the black gulfs outside our material universe. In size the monster was mountainous; its bulk would have dwarfed a mastodon.

But even as I shook with the cosmic horror of the thing, I drew a feathered shaft to my ear and arched it singing on its way. Grass and bushes were crushed flat as the monster came towards me like a moving mountain and shaft after shaft I sent with terrific force and deadly precision. I could not miss so huge a target. The arrows sank to the feathers or clear out of sight in the unstable bulk, each bearing enough poison to have stricken dead a bull elephant. Yet on it came, swiftly, appallingly, apparently heedless of both the shafts and the venom in which they were steeped. And all the time the hideous music played a maddening accompaniment, whining thinly from the pipes that lay untouched on the ground.

My confidence faded; even the poison of Satha was futile against this uncanny being. I drove my last shaft almost straight downward into the quaking white mountain, so close was the monster under my perch. Then suddenly its colour altered. A wave of ghastly blue surged over it, and the vast bulk heaved in earthquake-like convulsions. With a terrible plunge it struck the lower part of the column, which crashed to falling shards of stone. But even with the impact, I leaped far out and fell through the empty air full upon the monster's back.

The spongy skin yielded and gave beneath my feet, and I drove my sword hilt deep, dragging it through the pulpy flesh, ripping a horrible yard-long wound, from which oozed a green slime. Then a flip of a cable-like-tentacle flicked me from the titan's back and spun me 300 feet through the air to crash among a cluster of giant trees.

The impact must have splintered half the bones in my frame, for when I sought to grasp my sword again and crawl anew to the combat, I could not move hand or foot, could only writhe helplessly with my broken back. But I could see the monster and I knew that I had won, even in defeat. The mountainous bulk was heaving and billowing, the tentacles were lashing madly, the antennae writhing and knotting, and the nauseous whiteness had changed to a pale and grisly green. It turned ponderously and lurched back towards the temple, rolling like a crippled ship in a heavy swell. Trees crashed and splintered as it lumbered against them.

I wept with pure fury because I could not catch up my sword and rush in to die glutting my berserk madness in mighty strokes. But the worm-god was death-stricken and needed not my futile sword. The demon pipes on the ground kept up their infernal tune, and it was like the fiend's death-dirge. Then as the monster veered and floundered, I saw it catch up the corpse of its hairy slave. For an instant the apish form dangled in mid-air,


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 15

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 15


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 gripped round by the trunk-like proboscis, then was dashed against the temple wall with a force that reduced the hairy body to a mere shapeless pulp. At that the pipes screamed out horribly, and fell silent for ever.

The titan staggered on the brink of the shaft; then another change came over it—a frightful transfiguration the nature of which I cannot yet describe. Even now when I try to think of it clearly, I am only chaotically conscious of a blasphemous, unnatural transmutation of form and substance, shocking and indescribable. Then the strangely altered bulk tumbled into the shaft to roll down into the ultimate darkness from whence it came, and I knew that it was dead. And as it vanished into the well, with a rending, grinding groan the ruined walls quivered from dome to base. They bent inward and buckled with deafening reverberation, the columns splintered, and with a cataclysmic crash the dome itself came thundering down. For an instant the air seemed veiled with flying debris and stone-dust, through which the treetops lashed madly as in a storm or an earthquake convulsion. Then all was clear again and I stared, shaking the blood from my eyes. Where the temple had stood there lay only a colossal pile of shattered masonry and broken stones, and every column in the valley had fallen, to lie in crumbling shards.

In the silence that followed I heard Grom wailing a dirge over me. I bade him lay my sword in my hand, and he did so, and bent close to hear what I had to say, for I was passing swiftly.

“Let my tribe remember,” I said, speaking slowly. “Let the tale be told from village to village, from camp to camp, from tribe to tribe, so that men may know that not man nor beast nor devil may prey in safety on the golden-haired people of Asgard. Let them build me a cairn where I lie and lay me therein with my bow and sword at hand, to guard this valley for ever; so if the ghost of the god I slew comes up from below, my ghost will ever be ready to give it battle.”

And while Grom howled and beat his hairy breast, death came to me in the Valley of the Worm.


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 16

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 16


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 17

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 17


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 18

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 18


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 19

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 19


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 20

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 20


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 21

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 21


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 22

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 22


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 23

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 23


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 24

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 24


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 25

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 25


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 26

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 26


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 27

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 27


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 28

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 28


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 29

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 29


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 30

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 30


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 31

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 31


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 32

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 32


text: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Epilogue

title: The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Epilogue


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 turn to the chateau, and that after dinner he must depart: he accordingly set out at the time he had fixed, and as he quitted the cottage received the grateful acknowledgments of Madeline for his care of her, and an entreaty that he would remind his lady of the promise she had given of writing soon.

Madeline, now more composed, no longer delayed acquainting her father of her visit to Montmorenci Castle. The instant she mentioned it he started, and betrayed the greatest emotion, but when she proceeded, when she informed him of her being summoned to the presence of the Marquis, of the inquiries he had made concerning the picture, he suddenly exclaimed with uplifted hands and eyes,

"Oh! Providence, how mysterious are thy ways!"

"The Marquis (said Madeline, obeying the motion which her father made for her to proceed) the Marquis promised that when


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 least expected perhaps the mystery should be explained.—"

She paused, for at this moment she heard the trampling of horses feet—she looked towards the window and saw a man alighting at the gate, whom she immediately recollected to have seen at Montmorenci Castle.

Tis a messenger from the Marquis," cried Madeline, sinking back in her chair. Her father started up, and rushed from the room; he met the man at the entrance of the cottage, and Madeline heard them talking together for a few minutes, they then repaired to the study, the door of which was directly bolted, and Madeline remained two hours by herself in a situation that can be better conceived than described—her father then returned to the parlour pale, trembling, disordered;—he entered it, he spoke not to Madeline—he seemed to have no power to speak—but he put an open letter into her hand. With an agitation that shook her whole


text:
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 "De Profundis"

By S. Cornish Watkins

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/193


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 frame she cast her eyes over it, and read as follows.

"The sigh of repentance has at length prevailed—heaven has given me an opportunity of making some atonement for the injustice I committed in my youth:—

"Come then, son of a much injured and unhappy love, come to your rightful home, to the arms of your father—

"The lamp of life but feebly lights his eyes; hasten then, while he has power to see—to bless you he would add—but that he is unworthy of bestowing a blessing.

"Hasten, that he may sink to his grave with some degree of peace, at beholding his rightful heir acknowledged; at beholding an heir better calculated than himself for supporting the honors of ."


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 The variety of emotions that assailed the heart of Madeline on perusing this letter prevented all utterance, and she stood gazing on her father, the very image of astonishment.

"Yes, (said Clermont, at last, in a solemn voice), I am the son of a much injured and unhappy woman, the rightful though long unacknowledged heir of Montmorenci; called to a situation I was always entitled to, when too late for that situation to afford me any pleasure. So much am I attached to my present retirement, so congenial is it to my feelings, that nothing but respect to the memory of my mother, regard to the interest of my child, could tempt me to forego it."

"Heaven can witness for me, (cried Madeline) how little I desire you to leave it on my account. Oh! my father, no wealth, however great, no rank however exalted, can now confer happiness upon me."


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 "My child (exclaimed Clermont, clasping his arms round her) do not torture my soul by expressions which intimate such despondence. Oh, try to alleviate my misery, a misery which no time, no circumstance can banish from my mind, by letting me think that you will be happy,—by letting me think that the approaching change of situation will at least promote your felicity."

"I will try, my father, (said Madeline) I will try to be all you wish me."

"I have no longer any reason to conceal my former situation, (said Clermont) to-morrow therefore in our way to the Castle of Montmorenci, I shall relate a long and affecting story to you."

"To-morrow! (cried Madeline, gasping for breath) to-morrow do we go to Montmorenci Castle?"

"Yes, (replied Clermont) the servant who brought me the letter from his Lord and has just departed, informed me that a carriage would be here early in the morning, to convey us thither; tomorrow therefore I bid


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 adieu to this cottage, in which I imagined my last sigh would have been breathed; to those shadowy woods which screened me from an invidious world; to those lonely shades which heard the voice of my complaining."

Madeline was not less affected than her father at the idea of quitting their retirement; the gaiety, the hopes, that would once have rendered her delighted with the prospect that now opened to her view, were fled, never, never she believed, to be revived.

Her father told her he meant merely to inform Jaqueline that they were going on a visit to a friend, but as soon as they were settled in Montmorenci Castle he intended to write to her and put her in possession of the cottage as a reward for her long and faithful services.

The preparations for their journey were made before they retired to rest; Madeline,


text: Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/194

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/194


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 Reiselust

By Annie Macdonell

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/179


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Rh Ay the blessing of God the Father, ✠ & Son, & holy ✠ Spirit descend upon you all and remain always.

¶ Then say the aforementioned exhortation or something else more fitting in their language, give them the blessing, and say. Go in peace. ℞. Amen.


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 at the time she accompanied the Countess de Merville had fortunately left some clothes behind, and these were now packed up for her.

In the solitude of her little chamber she gave vent to those feelings which tenderness for her father made her suppress in his presence.

"Alas! (she cried) are my hopes always to be disappointed?—must I resign the tranquillity of this cottage?—must I again launch into a world where I experienced little else than distress and danger?—Oh! scenes dear and congenial to my soul! (she exclaimed, as from a window she viewed the valley, now illumined by a bright moon), Oh! scenes dear and congenial to my soul, had I never left you I had never known the reality of falsehood, never been truly unhappy.

"I am now (she continued) about entering into a situation, which from disappointed hope I am incapable of enjoying; a situation


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 which will give the world claims upon me, that from the sadness of my mind I shall be if not unable, at least totally unwilling to fulfil; far better, far happier than for me to remain in an obscurity, where, without strictures from others, or censures from myself, I might act as inclination prompted.

"But what do I say? (cried she, after a pause) do I repine at a change which restores my father to the rank he has been so long unjustly deprived of; at a change which will give to me the means of dispensing happiness to others. Oh! let me chase from my breast a grief so selfish, let me not wrap myself in sorrow and despair, and because the blessing I desired is not mine reject every other. Let me not, like a froward child, dash the proffered cup of joy from my lips, because there is not in it every ingredient I could wish. Yes, (she proceeded, as if animated by a new spirit), I will try to dispel a grief that enervates, that sinks me into languor, that makes me shrink from the idea of fulfilling the claims of society; and I make no


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 doubt my efforts will be successful, for heaven strengthens those who wish to do right, and I shall be again, if not happy, at least tranquil; the felicity I shall have the means of bestowing on others, will soothe my feelings; the tears I wipe from the cheek of misery will dissipate my own, and the sigh I suppress in the bosom of affliction will prevent mine from rising."

The entrance of Jaqueline now disturbed her, she came to make those inquiries which the presence of Clermont had hitherto prevented.

"Dear Mademoiselle, (said she, sitting down by the little toilette as Madeline began to undress) what in the name of wonder occasioned your coming home in the sudden manner you did?"

"Nothing that can afford you any pleasure to hear, (replied Madeline) I therefore request you may ask no more questions about it."


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 "Lord, Mademoiselle, 'tis very natural to inquire about what has surprised one so much. Well, if you had taken my advice, you would never have gone with the Countess—I knew very well how she would serve you; I knew there was no dependence to be placed upon the promises of the great, and you find I was not wrong in thinking or saying so: you see after promising you so fine a fortune, how she has popped off without leaving you so much as a sous."

"You hurt me extremely by talking in this way, (said Madeline) I beg you may never speak again in such a manner of a person who was my best friend, and whose sudden death alone prevented her fulfilling her generous intentions towards me."

"Ah! Mademoiselle, you are a good soul, and willing to excuse every one; but people will have their own thoughts let you say what you will. One looks so foolish now, (she continued) for my chief consolation during your absence was telling the neighbours of the fine situation you had got into for life. 'She has been taken (says I) to


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 one of the finest castles in Dauphine, and from thence she is to be carried to Paris, where, no doubt, she will get a grand match as the lady, her friend, intends to give her a very large fortune; and as soon as she is settled in a house of her own. I am to be sent for, either to be her own woman, or housekeeper, 'twill be at my own option which."

"And pray, Jaqueline, how came you to say such things, when you foresaw, as you yourself acknowledge that I should be disappointed by the Countess?"

Jaqueline looked confused—

"Why, Mademoiselle, (said she, after the hesitation of a minute) I was sometimes inclined to think that she might be as good as her word."

"Well, Jaqueline, let this be a caution to you never again to mention expectations which you are not pretty sure of having fulfilled."

"Aye, Mademoiselle, we all grow wiser every day."


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 She now expressed her regret at the intended departure of Clermont and Madeline, and endeavoured to discover whither they were going; but Madeline evaded her questions, and when nearly undressed dismissed her, highly mortified at not having had her curiosity gratified.

Madeline's mind was too much agitated to permit her to rest, and though she went to bed, she passed a restless night; towards the dawn of day she sunk into a slumber, from which however she was soon disturbed by Jaqueline, who came to tell her the carriage waited. She started up and hastily began to dress.

"Do pray, dear Mademoiselle, (said Jaqueline) do pray come to the window and look at the carriage, I dare say you never saw so fine a one; 'tis so beautifully ornamented, and drawn by six horses, and there are four out-riders and three postilions: dear me, it must be a charming thing to ride in


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 it! I dare say it belongs to a very great man, I should certainly have inquired from the servants, but that my master told me he would be very angry if I asked them any questions."

"Tell my father, (said Madeline) I shall be with him very soon."

"Yes, Mademoiselle, (replied Jaqueline) and by the time you come down the coffee will be made."

Madeline was soon dressed and descended the stairs; but instead of going directly to the parlour, she stole into the garden, to take a last leave of

Scarcely a spot within the garden but what recalled some happy, some delightful hour to her mind; such hours as she never more expected to experience.

O'er the trees beneath whose shelter she had so often sported in childish gaiety, so


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 often enjoyed a delightful retreat from the meridian sun; o'er the flowers which she had planted, and with her pencil so often amused herself by copying, she could now with difficulty prevent herself from weeping, and like the poet she exclaimed,

A deep sigh from a little bower near her startled Madeline: she looked towards it, and beheld her father: he came out and taking her hand, led her into the house.

Breakfast was ready, they took some coffee and then rose to depart; Jaqueline cried


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 bitterly, but Clermont comforted her by an assurance of writing soon, and informing her where he was; he also desired her to choose some neighbour for a companion: with a trembling hand he assisted his daughter into the coach, which set off the moment he had entered it. The deepest melancholy appeared to have taken possession of both, and both for a considerable time observed a profound silence."


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CHAP. V.

at last addressed Madeline.

"I shall now, my love, (said he) fulfil my promise, and relate those events which tenderness made me hitherto conceal from you.

"In the chateau, where you enjoyed the society of one of the most amiable of women, the early and the most happy part of my


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 life was passed under the protection of Count de Valdore, father to your lamented Benefactress; I understood that I was the orphan son of a very particular friend of his, who, though of a respectable family, was unable to leave me any provision, and had in his last moments recommended me to the protection of the Count. Had I been in reality the son of the Count, he could not have paid me greater attention than he did; neither he nor the Countess made any distinction between me and their only child Elvira, with whom, her age being nearly the same of mine, I was educated; the most eminent masters in every branch of literature, and every elegant accomplishment, attending us constantly at the chateau.

"Naturally of a gay disposition, and surrounded by everything which could add to that gaiety, I basked in the sun-shine, nor thought of any clouds that might hereafter obscure its brightness: indeed I had nothing to apprehend, for the Count had always promised me


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 an ample provision. Alas! the happiness I then enjoyed but rendered the misery I afterwards experienced more acute; for recollected joys always sharpen the arrows of affliction.

"The first interruption my happiness received was by the death of the Countess, which happened when I was about eighteen; the grief I felt for her loss was such as an affectionate son must have felt for a tender mother, but, though poignant, it was faint to that experienced by the Count; nobly, however, he tried to check his own feelings, in order to appease those of his daughter and mine: his efforts in time succeeded; but, alas! scarcely were we beginning to regain some degree of tranquillity ere he was taken from us to that blessedness his whole life proved him deserving of. Smothered grief undermined his constitution, and in three months after the death of his lady he was re-united to her in those regions where they could never more be separated.


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 "When he felt his last moments approaching, he dismissed every one but me and Elvira from his room; we knelt on each side of the bed, and, in the most affecting language, he conjured us to submit, without repining, to the divine will; after he had bestowed a solemn and tender benediction upon his daughter, such as her filial piety deserved, he turned to me and took my hand:

'My dear Lausane, (said he, for so I was called) I should have died unhappy if I had not had an opportunity of thanking you for the respect, the attention you ever paid to me and mine.'

"I would have spoken, I would have told him how inadequate that respect, that attention was to the care, the affection I had experienced from him and his family, but the fullness of my heart prevented utterance.

"Had heaven spared my life (continued he) a little longer, I should have disclosed to you a most important secret; it was decreed however that from me you should never hear it; but in a small India box, in my cabinet,


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 you will find a packet addressed to you, and containing all the particulars I would have informed you of: when you read them, you will find that without knowing misfortune you have been most unfortunate; that without feeling injury you have been most injured; but as you hope for prosperity in this world, endless happiness in that to come, I entreat you never rashly to resent those misfortunes, or endeavour to revenge those injuries. Should the author of both still withhold that justice you are entitled to, you will not find yourself under any necessity of accepting his bounty, which in such a case would be degrading to you, as in my will, which will be opened as soon as M. Valdore, my daughter's guardian arrives at the chateau, I have made such provision for you as will enable you to hold the same place in society you have hitherto done.'

"I cannot describe the feelings excited by the words of the Count: astonishment overwhelmed my senses, and I would not


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 long have delayed to seek an explanation of them, had he not died almost immediately after he had ceased speaking.

"The confusion of the family, the grief of his daughter, who would only listen to consolation from me, and my own affliction then deadened my curiosity, and his interment had taken place ere I thought of visiting the cabinet; nor perhaps should I have done so as soon as I did, had I not found myself, the very evening after his funeral, seated with Elvira in the room where it stood. We were alone; for her guardian, who lived in a remote part of the kingdom, was not yet arrived. The moment I beheld the cabinet my curiosity was revived, and I eagerly wished to take from it the important papers; the eyes of Elvira followed mine, and the words of her father instantly recurred to her recollection.

'My dear Lausane, (said she) I am confident you must have suffered much from the suspension of your curiosity; delay no longer to gratify it—it may be requisite for


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 you to be immediately acquainted with the secret my father spoke of; I will retire to give you a proper opportunity of perusing the packet.'

"No, Elvira, (I replied, taking her hand as she rose to withdraw), you have hitherto honored me with the appellation of brother, and heaven can witness for me I bear you the affection of one; a brother should have no secrets from an affectionate sister; since you therefore permit me to consider you as one, condescend to hear the mysterious words of your father explained; they have prepared me for a tale of distress, and if any thing can alleviate the sorrow it may perhaps excite, it can only be the gentle sympathy of such a friend as you are.'

"She re-seated herself, and tremblingly I approached and unlocked the cabinet: the first thing I beheld within it was the India box. I took it out, I drew back the lid, and beheld a large sealed packet, directed in the hand-writing of the Count to me. I felt my


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 whole frame agitated, and could scarcely reach the sofa on which Elvira sat.

"Many minutes elapsed ere I could summon sufficient resolution to break the seal. I felt as if about to raise a veil which had hitherto concealed terrific images from my view, and shuddered at the idea of the horrors they might excite; at length I ventured to do so, and found several sheets of small paper within the envelope, all closely written, and in a hand entirely new to me. Elvira leaned over my shoulder, and together we began to peruse the following story."

Here Clermont paused; and, taking a manuscript from his pocket, he put it into the hand of his daughter, and desired her to read it to herself,

"When you have finished it, (said he) I will go on with my narrative."

Madeline bowed, and read as follows:


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Rh THE EXHORTATION AND SERMON TO THE GODPARENTS, as in folio 6.

ollowing the Apostolic conceptions, Fr. Juan Baptista, Veracruz, and the words of many others DD., that marriage may take place at all times, and that it is already a direct communion. Also, at any time they may come, advise the Parish Priest, having informed secretly that there is no impediment, announce the public Banns, for three Sundays or feasts in the Church. Although if it is necessary or convenient to do these within the week where the Indians gather to expedite matters, the Prelate may dispense, and who has the authority, to announce the three banns, in the following manner, or in another more appropriate.

Rh


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 body it acts upon. As when Goldsmiths burnish a Plate or Vessel of Silver, that having been lately boil'd lookt white before, though they deprive it of the greatest part of its colour, and give it a new power of reflecting the beams of Light and visible Objects, in the manner proper to specular bodies; yet all this is done by the intervention of a burnishing Tool, which often is but a piece of Steel or Iron conveniently shap'd; and all that this Burnisher does, is but to depress the little prominencies of the Silver, and reduce them, and the little cavites of it, to one physically level or plain Superficies. And so when a Hammer striking often on a Nail, makes the head of it grow hot, the Hammer is but a purely Mechanical Agent, and works by local motion. And when by striking a lump of Glass, it breaks it into a multitude of small parts that compose a white powder, it acts as Mechanically in the production of that Whiteness as it does in driving in a Nail to the head. And so likewise, when the powder'd Glass or Colophony lately mention'd is, by the fire, from a white and opacous body, reduc'd into a colourless (or a reddish) and transparent one, it appears not, that the fire, though a natural Agent, need work otherwise than

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text: Author:James John Cummins

title: Author:James John Cummins