The Shadow of the Attacoa

The Shadow of the AttacoaBy Thornwell JacobsSYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERSCommenced in the April number.

The Shadow of the AttacoaBy Thornwell Jacobs

By Thornwell Jacobs

Commenced in the April number.

Ervin McArthur, bearing the nickname of “Satan” on account of his ungovernable temper, learns printing at the office of theDunvegan(N. C.)Democratand loves Colonel Preston’s daughter. The colonel, objecting to a love affair between his aristocratic daughter and a son of “poor whites,” shifts the youth to a place on theCharleston Chronicle. Here, the Civil War coming on, he distinguishes himself by his journalistic ability and by his inventions of war-engines. In these last he is ably assisted by Helen Brooks, a Boston girl visiting Charleston relatives. She learns to love the inventor and his cause, and he struggles between his allegiance to Helen Preston and his newly awakened love. He returns to Dunvegan on furlough and in an altercation with his old time chum, Henry Bailey, the latter meets his death. Ervin escapes, and another friend, Ernest Lavender, is tried and convicted. Ervin confesses and is tried, but cleared on proof discovered by Helen Preston that the crime was committed by Mack Lonovan, who, wishing to marry Helen Brooks, destroys the only living witness to his secret marriage with half-witted Nance West.

Ervin returns to Charleston and invents the ironclad torpedo, destined, when copied by the Federals, to destroy the Confederate Navy. He also constructs a submarine torpedo boat, and while preparing for his initial trip has an interview with Helen Brooks.

He decides to attack theHousatonicinstead of theNew Ironsides, as Helen has confessed that one whom she loves is on the latter. TheHousatonicis sunk, also the torpedo, Ervin alone being rescued and captured. Sent to the stockade on Morris’ Island, he finds Tait Preston, who is about to be exchanged on account of a wound. Ervin determines to escape.

After some weeks he does so, being wounded in the flight. At this time his dragoon pigeon being accidentally loosened by Mrs. Adams, returns to Dunvegan and Helen Preston leaves her father, who is at home on sick leave, to nurse her lover. Arriving at Charleston, she learns that his friends there suppose him to have been destroyed in the sinking of theHousatonic, but the faithful girl continues her search until she finds him on James’ Island and nurses him back to health.

In the meantime Mrs. Corbin and her family have fled to Columbia and are among the sufferers when that city is burned. Charleston surrenders and theChronicleis confiscated.

Their officers, captains and colonels, stood by them and watched the doomed city burn. A woman with her clothes on fire rushed screaming from the door of her home. Hoarse cries for help came in the darkness. A lost child called piteously, “Mother! Mother!” Drunken negroes fired pistols into the faces of the women. As they bore Bessie on, seeking for a quiet place, some drunken men, thinking they were bearing treasures, flashed their firearms in the women’s faces and cried:

“Stop—hand over your silver and gold!”

Like the spring of a tiger, a blue arm shot out and a pistol flashed. One of the men sank, stunned, on the sidewalk, and another with a shattered arm rolled backward.

“The brutes!” “Old Secesh” muttered,“and to think that these boys wear the blue!”

They were passing a graveyard, and Mrs. Corbin touched Helen’s arm. “Look!” she exclaimed, in amazement. They were opening the graves.

They laid Bessie down on the grass, not far from the old convent, and as they looked up they saw nuns and girls filing sadly out, the priest, with uplifted crucifix, leading the way. The convent had been fired.

“I must see General Sherman!” Helen cried. “Auntie, stay here. I will go for a doctor and get aid, too.”

“I will stay and guard the lady,” said “Old Secesh.”

“I’ll go wid Miss Helen.”

They turned and looked. Old Joe had found them. So they went in search of aid and a physician. They had gone scarcely a block, when Helen recognized Mandy, a neighbor’s cook. She was sitting on top of a great wagon full of furniture and household goods—mahogany chairs, china, paintings—and the coachman was driving the wagon. Thinking that Mandy had bravely rescued her mistress’s goods, Helen cried:

“Mandy, where are you going?”

“Laws a-massy,” came back the answer of the fat negress from over the top of the pearl-handled fan she was using, though it was the dead of winter. “Laws a-massy, chile, I sholy is gwine back into de Union.”

And almost simultaneously Helen heard a moaning voice call to a neighbor in the darkness:

“They have broken the chimes of St. Michael’s! What will Charleston do?”

As they went on, scenes of horror were on every side. Stores were being gutted and their contents strewn into the streets. Hose, pierced with bayonet holes, lay over the sidewalks. Flaming camphine balls were firing every house that the wind had spared. Suddenly they were stopped by a crowd of men which blocked their pathway. In their midst was a reverend gentleman, and by his side was his wife. It was Mr. Shand, pastor of the church.

“Open that box,” a soldier said.

“Gentlemen, I have not the key,” the minister replied.

“What’s the use o’ lyin’? What you got in there?”

“It is the communion service of our church.”

“Ach, mein Gott,” another broke in. “Vat a pious shentlemen!” A coarse, loud laugh followed.

“Look here, hand us that key.” One of them took him by the collar.

“I have told you I have not the key.”

“Well, your watch, then.”

“It is in the ashes of my home.”

“Search him!”

But they found nothing.

Then the Dutchman spied old Joe, dressed in his best suit.

“Hello, you tam plack nigger! Vot for you haf some fine shoes on your tam plack feet?”

Old Joe looked bewildered.

“Zhuck off dem poots.”

“Marster, sholy you ain’t gwine ter take mah onliest pair o’ boots?”

“Zhuck off dem poots, I tell you. Look at dees!” and his bayonet came alarmingly near Joe’s head. So the darky sat down regretfully and pulled his boots off.

“Ach, py tam, vot for a nigger haf zocks, dagleich? Zhuck dem off oncest!”

“Laws a-massy, you sholy ain’ gwine take mah socks, too, is you, marster?”

“Ach, you plack pup, vere did you get dem goot glozes already? Come away from the ladies already oncest. Py tam, I vants dem zoots, too!”

So he drew the reluctant darky aside, and in a few moments old Joe came back a soldier, lugubrious enough in his baggy trousers and short-armed coat. By that time the men, failing to open the chest of communion vessels, had borne it off in triumph on their shoulders.

“Mr. Shand, oh, sir, can you tell me where General Sherman is?” Helen asked.

“I saw him a moment ago, Miss Brooks, just around the corner,” the outraged pastor declared.

They fled on, and as they turned thecorner they suddenly heard loud cries, and saw a group of men in front of them. A negro lay dead in the center, and General Sherman was asking of the mob:

“Men, who did this?”

“He slacked us,” one of the soldiers replied.

“Well, men, it is bad. Don’t let it occur again.”

By this time Helen reached them and stood near to the General.

“Are you General Sherman?” she asked.

“I am, madam,” he answered, stepping over the dead body of the negro to her side.

“General Sherman, I am Helen Brooks, sister of Captain Henry Brooks, whom you know.”

“I am happy to know—”

“General, this is no time for pleasantries. In the name of the lowly Jesus, I beg of you stop this horrible outrage!”

“It is not my doing, Miss Brooks. I would stop it if I could, but it is beyond my power.”

“Beyond your power, General Sherman? Do you think these men would dare to do these things without your assent? Do you mean that your captains and colonels and lieutenants would rob, and loot, and pillage, and murder, and allow their men to do it, if you said it should not be done? Is this the power you have over your army? Look at those men throwing their firebrands on that house here under your very eyes! Do they fear Sherman’s anger or court Sherman’s favor?”

“Do you want a guard, Miss Brooks?”

“Want a guard! What mockery! General, I have just come from a house where the guards you sent set fire to the house they were guarding and burnt it down over the head of a young mother while she was giving birth to her first-born. Shame, shame on you, sir, and yours!”

“Madam, this is war! We did not commence it.”

“General Sherman, you know my family, or you would not have listened to me so far. You know how my father has sacrificed half his fortune for the Union cause, and how my brother well-nigh gave his life. And now—mark my words, sir—this is not a deed of war or necessity, but of infamous, vindictive hate, and the time will come when even in our loved Northland men will repudiate your deeds!”

There was a crash as a house near by fell in. A great mass of sparks and smoke belched upwards.

They passed through the burning streets, past squads of drunken soldiers, and at last found the little group gazing sadly at the sick woman.

“How is Bessie?” Helen asked.

“She—is—dead.”

“And the child?”

“It is unborn.”

The gleam of the burning houses lit up her pale face and tinged the brown locks with gold. Helen knelt and kissed the lips cold in death, and “Old Secesh” turned away with a groan.

There are those who think that they have seen the face of her whom men call Tragedy. They see an old man, and his quivering lips are still whispering the name of her whom they used to touch so passionately. In his trembling hand is a letter, faded, brown, tear-stained. He reads and reads, though he might have thrown it away thirty years ago, and not a word would have been lost, so deeply are they cut in his heart. “Look!” say they, “he is praying still for her return,” and the colonel would start in fright, so sure would he be that they had seen him. “Surely,” say they, “this is Tragedy.” It is not. It is her cousin, Hope.

They see a woman, and she, too, is waiting, but the man stands by her side. Each of her myriad dreams used to fly to him; now they cannot; they are dead. They are dead, and so is he—the man she loved—tho’ many years after she is buried, his pulse will be strong and his step elastic. A catafalque, gilded, perhaps, but within a dead thing lies—a humanheart, and it is her husband! It used to beat for her joyfully in the days when she needed it sorely, but, oh, not so sorely as now! It will never thrill for her again. Then these wise men look up and say: “Love has died, and yet his body remains unburied. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not. It is but an older sister.

They follow the tracks of one who has fled far back into the blackest cavern of the darkest woods, fled with a little babe in her arms, fled to hide her shame. Its father is not there, though he swore never so faithlessly to be a loyal lover, and then a loving husband to her who holds the little one in her arms, kissing it, and then despising it, and then kissing it again and again. She loves this child of shame while he—he breaks the vows which once he intended to keep. Then the wise men turn and say: “Truth is dead and will not live until God awakes and asks Lucifer who defiled this lily of His own garden in the pool of his passion. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not, but it is her shadow. She is near now. Come and see her form.

Runs a boy, blowing kisses to the butterflies, and teaching the honey bees where to search for the flowers, whence the sweetest nectar may be drawn. Thus clearly has he discovered all else save her who is seeking him. Lo! He is a youth now, and daily he hears her whisperings in his ears, and sometimes so close does she come that her gentle touch may be felt on his cheek, and her soft fingers rest lightly on his shoulder. Many years he lived, but love came not into his life. At last he is white-haired and knows—that he is old. His gasp and his heavy breathing, his pulse—they are feeling it anxiously. They know that it is taking two steps backward and one forward. They need not feel his brow nor his feet. They, too, at last are cold. Then they say: “This is Tragedy! A man dying who has never seen love—surely this is Tragedy!”

It is.

Such were the thoughts of Colonel Masters as, with a slow and halting gait, he had wandered down to the burnt district and reached the Battery, now overgrown with weeds. The great game was over! With the hand of a past master, he had played his cards—and lost. Was it his fault?

So now, when his plans were in ruins and his eyes in tears, when his heart was breaking, and his back bending low beneath the burden of accumulating toils, he murmured slowly:

“Return ye, O memories; return ye and quickly come like a whisper of God from His far off garden of joy! Die not in all the years that shall elapse before I shall burn new kisses upon new lips—kisses long feigned and passion-wrapt, nor let your spirit of love grow dim, nor your spirit of power abate! Come ye, as in time past, ye have come—sweeping away the clouds that gather over the head of earth’s lonely pilgrim, stilling the breakers that form in madness on life’s reefs, hushing the storms that roar and howl and threaten in the darkness! Still may ye come, ye echoes of the voice of God, bidding me be true, pleading with me to hope and trust, gently lifting my thoughts to the blue empyrean above, where there shall be no more night!”

“Colonel Masters!”

He looked up in astonishment.

“I have been looking for you all over the city, sir,” the young telegraph boy explained.

With trembling hand the white-haired editor took the brown message. His lips quivered as he tore it open. Would it be some new sorrow?

Col. Masters, Charleston, S. C.:Columbia razed. The Cause is lost. Father killed in battle.Helen.

Col. Masters, Charleston, S. C.:

Columbia razed. The Cause is lost. Father killed in battle.

Helen.

“Oh, God, it is not true—it cannot be true!” The massive form of the great man shook as a tower that is falling, and his face seemed to be fast taking on the lines of the ghastly few who survived the black hole of Calcutta.

“Forgive me, Colonel, but we read the message at the office!”

In his soul, the rosy-lipped dawnwas kissing away the dewy tears of a long, weary night, and Ioskeha had claimed Attacoa.

But the boy was looking at him in amazement. Great wells of joy were evidently springing up in his heart. A new man was being formed before the lad’s eyes. Slowly the stature increased; the stoop of the shoulders that had labored despairingly disappeared. Only a deadly pallor told of the past.

“Go!” he cried to the lad. “Quick, go!”

Then he leaned heavily against the twisted iron rail of the Battery promenade, that some cannon ball had struck spitefully.

“It is a lie,” he said, slowly, but his face was burnished with joy. “It’s too good to be true!”

How long had seemed the waiting till God should shift the scene! And how vain the straining of the eyes for the faintest movement of the proscenium! He had used to think as a student that he understood how slow the Unchanging One was in doing things, but he had not then put it away in his heart, nor meditated over it in sorrow. He had almost ceased to expect another act, though he believed in it, and it hurt him when the curtain quivered as if it were lifting at last.

Sometimes he wished he knew that the play was over altogether and that he was on the untrodden way homeward; but when the melancholia passed he heard distinctly the rumble of the scenery behind the curtain, and it was as if the footlights were already aglow. Once there had been music while he waited. It was when Helen, her daughter, came to visit Charleston. Yet her coming would only add tragedy to the denouement. It introduced another complication into a play already tangled, but it lightened the burden of his accumulating toils.

Now at last the curtain had risen and the final scheme stood revealed. The old actors who had begun the play with him had all vanished save one, and the stage was almost empty. The chairs were there—vacant—chairs that other playgoers had loved in previous acts. He, almost alone, had been chosen by the great Playwright, to live and be, and perhaps triumph.

By the window of Beacon Street, that looked over toward the west and the south, there sat a lonely woman. “After all,” she said to herself, as the bitterness of her thoughts puckered her heart more and more, “this world is but one of the seventy-four comedies with which the Eternal amuses himself.”

The deep tragedy of her life had embittered her soul and of late she had grown more and more to tell herself alone her thoughts. Now that her husband was dead, each wound would re-open. Yet memory came with little pictures of the Ashley, of the golden rice fields, of one who had loved her there. And these pictures made the dull gray of the Boston evening slowly light up with glory. A mocking bird swings in the orchard bough at Camellia-on-the-Ashley, the mellow notes of the cotton pickers are wafted softly, lowly—

“Swing low, sweet chariot—comin’ for to carry me home,Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.”

“Swing low, sweet chariot—comin’ for to carry me home,Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.”

“Swing low, sweet chariot—comin’ for to carry me home,Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.”

“Swing low, sweet chariot—comin’ for to carry me home,

Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.”

Thus her thoughts were gentle, sweet, like the cooing of a mother’s first-born, winsome as his first smile, which makes her forget her hour of travail.

A dog bays in the distance, a deer bounds again into the forest—a young man comes from the chase—a smile, a kiss—an—

She waked suddenly from her dream. Some one was coming up the street, staring earnestly at the numbers. He was an elderly man, who moved as softly toward the grave as the gentle notes of the flute sinking along the last octave. Yet there was life in his step, and she could see that he handled himself well on the slippery pavement, where the half-melted snow had frozen again. Therewas a look about his face that touched a chord down in her heart, and the expression he wore as if he, an old man, were almost a youth again, set her once more to dreaming.

The bell rang. “A gentleman to see you, ma’am,” said Hilda, entering. “He will not give his name. He says he is from Charleston.”

A man in whose eyes an infinite fire seemed burning, entered close on Hilda’s heels.

“Mrs. Brooks,” he said, and his voice made her think of the notes of a passion swept violin, “I trust you will pardon my intrusion in this manner, and I scarcely know how to explain it so that it will seem less rude.” He was staring intently at the woman before him. His deep eyes took in the details of her mourning garments, her face with its fine lines of settled sadness and the abundant threads of white sprinkled through the thick brown braids, gathered under her widow’s cap.

Her mother’s heart prompted the swift question:

“You come from Charleston? Helen—is she—?”

“Your daughter is quite well, madam, and safe in the little hamlet of Dunvegan, in North Carolina, whither I—whither she and her aunts were conveyed after the burning of—.” He paused, knowing the thoughts that the name of Columbia would awaken.

Sighing deeply, Mrs. Brooks motioned her visitor to a chair and looked at him inquiringly. “I am pleased to see you, sir,” she said courteously; “I knew and loved Charleston well in my girlhood.”

“You were, before your marriage, Miss Lezare? Forgive me if I seem rudely inquisitive.”

“Yes, sir, Lezare was my maiden name.”

“Ah, yes—Lezare of Camellia? While you were living there was there a man—Masters, Charles Masters?”

“Stop, sir!” she interrupted. “What right have you to bring back that name into my life—what—?”

“Has it then left your life?” he asked, with a touch of fear in his voice. “Forgive me if I have given you pain, madam. My honor is my pledge that I mean no wrong. It is necessary—do you understand?—absolutely necessary for me to proceed.”

She was silent and seemed as one lost in a deep forest who seems to see a face in the darkness about.

“This man Masters was among those who went to Texas in her struggle for independence, was he not, madam? And after the battle of San Jacinto was reported among the killed? He loved a young lady of Charleston, one whom you may know—a young lady whose proud family were opposed to her union with one who had come to Charleston a penniless youth and had been the architect of his own fortunes—they preferred a wealthy young Bostonian, who brought letters to every family of influence in the state. You knew this, madam?”

His eyes asked pardon for this direct question and his voice was low with tenderness.

“Yes, yes, I knew this,” she responded, lacing and interlacing her slow, slender fingers. “What—what more?”

“You doubtless know, too, madam, that the report of his death was false and that he returned after peace was declared, to find his sweetheart had wedded his rival and gone to Boston to live. What you do not know”—here his voice took on a deep, full ring of joy—“is that he never, for one moment, never did and never has, doubted his sweetheart’s truth. To many men it is given to pass with unseeing eyes the holy worth of a woman’s love, but to Charles Masters it was given to know, when he had plighted his troth in the garden at Camellia, the sacredness of the gift that was his. Never once since then has his reverence for it or his belief in it failed.”

Colonel Masters was doing more than telling a harrowing story—he was reading his own fate in her eyes.

“Sir,” Mrs. Brooks started from her chair, “I will give you all I havein this world, I will give you all God gives me in Heaven to say those words again!”

Word by word her voice had risen, growing stronger under the intense passion of her soul till it touched the highest note of her life, till it quivered like the tremulous tones of the flute thrilled at the holy reaches of the Infinite Beyond.

“He still believes!”

“Then where is he? Has he—”

She shrank back from him, for there was a smile on his features, and though faces grow old, smiles never do.

Reading her thoughts, he lifted her hand to his lips, and it was to her as when the mute touches the chords of the violin. The music was deep and plaintive, and the strain was one that makes all things possible.

“He is here!”

A cold, sleety rain was falling on the street outside, and the ice was forming on the elms of Beacon street. The shadows which sprang from the window that looked toward the west and the south lengthened themselves along the floor. Men hastened homeward in the gathering night, and a damp darkness settled down over the bleak landscape.

But they sat by the window that looked toward the west, and though they faced the sunset, they saw it not, for the morning had come.

Far, far away in the Silver Creek Valley the sun was setting, and the purple shadow of the mystic Attacoa lay like a mighty altar upon the land. The Spring had come, and in her bosom she bore myriads of beautiful flowers wrapped in mantles of living green, as though she would make less bare the way for the shattered soldier in gray as he wearily wended homeward; as though she would make less bitter the sight of blackened chimneys or rotting doorsteps. Scarlet flowers sprang from the red earth of a thousand battlefields, and the deep periwinkle grew rich on the bodies of sunken heroes. Slowly and wearily the tattered men turned again homeward.

And of an evening, when all was so still in the valley that the wood thrush took heart to flutter to the azaleas by the piazza of Sunahlee, a young woman walked up the long, red hill that led to the house. Dreamily she gazed toward the west, where the mighty Attacoa reared its dark bulk. Something she knew of the legends attached to it. For Ervin, in the fullness of their sympathy, had told her lovingly of his highland home, and it gave her a thrill of sweetest pain to fit his descriptions to the landmarks around. She had been in such close attendance upon her aunt, who, since Bessie’s death, had been prostrated, that her observations had been made for the most part from the balcony of the old hotel; but to-day, for the first time, she walked along the road she knew Ervin had trod many times and looked out over aspects once familiar to his eye. She paused before a large gate. Inside she saw a weed-grown driveway leading up to a dilapidated house, plainly handsome in its prime. As she looked she heard the sound of something coming up the long, red hill. There was no sound of hoofs, but as she peered into the gathering twilight she made out the forms of a number of shaggy dogs drawing a rattling old buggy.

It was Uncle Ben. He did not see her until he had alighted stiffly to open the rusty gate.

“Howdy, Mistis, howdy!” His old voice, though feeble, had a hearty ring to it that encouraged Helen to ask him who lived there.

“Dis is S’nahlee, Mistis, Cunnel Tom Preston’s place. I would ax you to come in, Mistis, ’cause de Prestons dey sholy always wuz hospitable—but dey ain’t none of ’em lef’ now, ’ceptin’ of de ole Cunnel, an’ he don’ know nothin’ that’s goin’ on—hasn’t even reelized Miss Helen’s death. This war’s bin awful hard on we-all.”

He sighed, and Helen, who recognized the name, asked:

“Is there no hope for Colonel Preston’s recovery?”

“No’m, I don’t reckon so. Me’n Miz McArthur—she useter live ’cross de road dar in dat little ole log cabin—we nusses him careful all day an’ all night. But he thinks I’m Marse Tait—he died jes’ ’fore Miss Helen did—an’ he thinks she’s Miss Helen, an’ he keeps tellin’ us whut a big hero Marse Ervin wuz wid his battlementary injines, an’ now he’s willin’ fer him to marry Miss Helen an’ take charge of theDimocrat—but, Lawd, Lawd, whut does people do dese days to put in de paper?”

His dogs had walked through the gate and he now drew it carefully to, taking off his shabby old hat in response to Helen’s “good-night.”

She turned to the cabin across the road. Standing at the small gate, now off its hinges, she took in all the surroundings and tried to imagine Ervin at home amid them. She could fancy the whole story of his youthful love for the patrician girl at the big white mansion. Perhaps it was a burning ambition to make a name worthy of her which had led him to Charleston. Perhaps—but no! Deep in her heart Helen Brooks knew that, whatever fancies he had known, Ervin McArthur had given all his heart to but one woman, and that woman herself.

She stood long in regretful self-questioning, yet somehow a spirit of deep peace pervaded all her being. Twilight had fled before the coming of the moon, and she drank in eagerly its gentle glory on the scene about her. In the distance she heard the swift rattle of wheels, this time with quick hoof-beat accompaniment. At the parting of the roads the vehicle stopped and she heard the tones of men.

“Good-night, old fellow!” called a cheery voice.

“Good luck to you. We must all do the best we can to build up our country again.”

Helen turned to leave the gate. A figure came toward her in the dim light. She drew back again, but as he seemed about to turn in at the gate, she stepped forward.

“Do you seek Mrs. McArthur, sir?” she asked, thinking it must be a comrade coming to tell Ervin’s mother some news of her boy’s last hours.

“Yes, madam, I do. Do you know her? Is she well?” He leaned against the gatepost and Helen could see, despite the deep shadow cast by his broad hat, the pallor of his face.

“Oh, yes,” she hastened to reassure him, “she is quite well. I do not know her. I am refugeeing here, but I have just heard that Mrs. McArthur had been nursing Colonel Preston across the way for some months. You will find her there.” She hesitated a moment, then asked: “You bring news of her son’s death?”

“Death? Is he dead? I did not know he was dead.” He had stepped back into the shadow as though to conceal his emotions, and she could not see the joy in his eyes, and mistook the heaving of his breast for sorrow, and, because she could not longer conceal her tears, she bowed her head upon the gatepost.

“Pardon me, madam,” he said, at length, “but would it be rude in me to ask you—”

“It is my oversight—Brooks is the name, Helen Brooks. I and my two aunts and an old negro servant are refugees.”

“Ervin—poor boy—do you know—do you mind telling me how—he died?”

“In the defense of Charleston—have you heard of his wonderful inventions? He went out one night to sink a ship with his new submarine and his boat sank, and all were lost.”

“All?”

“Yes, all.”

He was bowed like one in grief, and neither spoke for a while.

“And, Miss Brooks—he—I used to hear regularly from Ervin, he had some friends—a Mrs. Corbin, I believe.”

“She is my aunt, and is here now.”

“And a Colonel somebody—I—”

“Colonel Masters. He was theeditor of the paper where Mr. McArthur worked.”

“Ah, he loved the old man well. You knew him, too, did you not? Why would he go in that torpedo boat—why did not some one stop him?”

She was silent while the tears sprang to her eyes again.

“You must pardon my speaking of this,” he continued. “There was a girl who lived in Charleston—he did not write her name—I only know he loved her—do you—could you tell me?” He leaned forward, watching her face. “Do you know who she was?”

There was no concealing it any longer.

“Oh, sir,” she said, “I—he—loved—”

“He loved you! Ah, tell me no more! Then we are brother and sister in sorrow.”

And Attacoa, the mount where the light had conquered the darkness, looked down on them as fateful, as inscrutable, as mercilessly silent as the enigmatic Croatan.

He bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hands, all the while looking at her intently through his fingers.

“Only one thing may I ask,” he said at length, “did Ervin—did he know you loved him—when he died?”

“Yes—he—knew—it—only—”

“Only he—”

“Thought there was another—”

“Another?”

“There were reasons why I could not tell him.”

“And those reasons?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“I beg a thousand pardons—from what I know, I judge he must have thought you loved a man in the Northern army—”

“Yes.”

“And you did not?”

“No, I did. I loved him with all my heart—but—”

“But he didn’t love you?”

“But he was my brother!”

The man quivered as though a thousand arrows had suddenly been drawn from his bosom, and then quickly came out of the shadow and took her hands. “Helen!”

With a scream of joyous surprise, because in a moment all the world had been changed, she threw her arms around his neck.

“Oh, dear God!” she cried. “It is he!”

There is a quaintly pious inscription in Dunvegan graveyard, chiseled as if by a hand that trembled, upon the gray tombstone farthest back of all those by the side of the Little Church in Under the Oaks. It reads:

ERVIN McARTHUR,From Whom the Daemon Was Cast Out.A General in the Army of God.

It was only the last line which was not so directed to be inscribed by the will of him who lies beneath it.

The visitor smiles as he reads until he hears of the prowess of the youth who won fame and honor and glory in the city by the sea and meditates upon how great his after life must have been to have merited so pleasant a comparison. The story is still easy to hear in Dunvegan, where his name is often coupled with Dr. Allerton’s, but not to the curious and gossiping. One must first have left the parlor and have become a boon companion of the living-room—and one must be a lover of Dunvegan. Then if the night be dark, so dark that Tawiskara may seem to have come back to Attacoa, the story is his, the story of Ervin McArthur, out of whom the Daemon was cast.

They say in Dunvegan that somewhere in the heart of every man there dwells Tawiskara, the Daemon of Darkness. According to his own way and in his own time, he manifests his power. To one he suggests, to another he promises, and the third he compels—and he must needs go whom the Daemon drives. At the wrong moment, the psychological moment of weakness, he takes hold of a man anda deed is done, a tiny indiscretion or a horrible crime, as the Daemon wills.

They believe in Dunvegan that McArthur was but a type of all men, that the evil heritage of the Shadow of the Attacoa came upon him in exaggerated form because it was needful that the works of God might be manifested in him. They still speak with such pious quaintness in the dreamy village. And they tell their child who shows the evil heart of how Ervin McArthur fought in his awful death-struggle on Attacoa with Tawiskara, the Dark One, and endured unto blood, striving against his sin; of how he, as all men may do, in the strength of Ioskeha, cast the Daemon out.

It is thus that they apologize for the horror with which his life-story was laden, it being in their eyes like the black, ill-odored ink of the press which is yet needful to make the page of each story perfect. They shudder in the telling of it, as the reader must have shuddered in hearing—these are they who hear the mutterings of Tawiskara in their own hearts. And there must be those who dwell in Dunvegan who call the story precious because that through it they have been delivered from much tribulation and anguish of spirit which comes to all those who would perfect the light of their souls by exorcising the Daemons that infest it. These consider that in the horror of the story lies its true meaning and value, and they discountenance the softer versions which have sprung up with the newer generation in the village. If their souls have known deeper night than that of Ervin McArthur, let them love the parable of how they were delivered.

So there are pilgrims who sometimes visit the little graveyard where the shadows are dense at noonday, and where Ervin McArthur lies. They tread lightly upon the blue periwinkle, and there are those who loose reverently the sandals from their feet for fear that God may be near in some wayside bush.

The End.

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