This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde. Read by Eric Leach. Chapter 1 When Mr. Hiram beoticed the American Minister bought Canterville Chase, everyone told him he was doing a very foolish thing, as there was no doubt at all that the place was haunted. Indeed Lord Canterville himself, who was a man of the most punctilious honour, had felt it his duty to mention the fact to Mr. Otis when they came to discuss terms. We've not cared to live in the place ourselves, said Lord Canterville, since my grand-aunt the dowager Duchess of Bolton was frightened into a fit from which she never really recovered, by two skeleton hands being placed on her shoulders as she was dressing for dinner. I feel bound to tell you, Mr. Otis, that the ghost has been seen by several living members of my family, as well as by the rector of the parish, the Reverend Augustus Dampier, who is a fellow of King's College, Cambridge. After the unfortunate accident to the Duchess, none of our younger servants would stay with us, and Lady Canterville often got very little sleep at night, in consequence of the mysterious noises that came from the corridor and the library. My lord, answered the minister, I will take the furniture and the ghost at evaluation. I've come from a modern country where we have everything that money can buy, and with all our spry young fellows painting the old world red and carrying off your best actors and prima donnas, I reckon that if there were such a thing as a ghost in Europe, we'd have it at home in a very short time in one of our public museums or on the road as a show. I feel that the ghost exists, said Lord Canterville, smiling, though it may have resisted the overtures of your enterprising impresarios, it has been well known for three centuries, since 1584 in fact, and always makes its appearance before the death of any member of our family. Well, so does the family doctor for that matter, Lord Canterville. But there is no such thing, sir, as a ghost, and I guess the laws of nature are not going to be suspended for the British aristocracy. Who are certainly very natural in America? Answered Lord Canterville, who did not quite understand Mr. Otis's last observation. And if you don't mind a ghost in the house, it's all right. Only you must remember I warned you. A few weeks after this, the purchase was concluded, and at the close of the season, the minister and his family went down to Canterville Chase. Mrs. Otis, who as Miss Lucretia R. Tappin of West 53rd Street had been a celebrated New York belle, was now a very handsome middle-aged woman with fine eyes and a superb profile. Many American ladies, on leaving their native land, adopted an appearance of chronic ill health, under the impression that it is a form of European refinement. But Mrs. Otis had never fallen into this error. She had a magnificent constitution and a really wonderful amount of animal spirits. Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. Her eldest son, christened Washington by his parents in a moment of patriotism, which he never ceased to regret, was a fair-haired, rather good-looking young man who had qualified himself for American diplomacy by leading the German at the Newport Casino for three successive seasons, and even in London was well-known as an excellent dancer. Gardenias and the peerage were his only weaknesses. Otherwise, he was extremely sensible. Miss Virginia E. Otis was a little girl of fifteen, life and lovely as a fawn, and with a fine freedom in her large blue eyes, she was a wonderful Amazon and had once raced Old Lord Bilton on her pony twice round the park, winning by a length and a half, just in front of the Achilles statue, to the huge delight of the young Duke of Cheshire, who proposed for her on the spot and was sent back to eat in that very night by his guardians in floods of tears. After Virginia came the twins, who were usually called the star in stripes, as they were always getting swished. They were delightful boys, and with the exception of the worthy minister, the only true Republicans of the family. As Canterville Chase is seven miles from Ascot, the nearest railway station, Mr. Otis had telegraphed for a wagonette to meet them, and they started on their drive in high spirits. It was a lovely July evening, and the air was delicate with the scent of the pine woods. Now and then they heard a wood pigeon brooding over its own sweet voice, or saw deep in the rustling fern the burnished breast of the pheasant. Little squirrels peered at them from the beech trees as they went by, and the rabbits scutted away through the brushwood and over the mossy knolls with their white tails in the air. As they entered the avenue of Canterville Chase, however, the sky became suddenly overcast with clouds. A curious stillness seemed to hold the atmosphere, a great flight of rooks passed silently over their heads, and before they reached the house, some big drops of rain had fallen. Standing on the steps to receive them was an old woman, neatly dressed in black silk with a white cap and apron. This was Mrs. Omni, the housekeeper, whom Mrs. Otis at Lady Canterville's earnest request had consented to keep in her former position. She made them each a low curtsy as they lighted, and said in a quaint old-fashioned manner, I bid you welcome to Canterville Chase. Following her, they passed through the fine Tudor Hall into the library, a long, low room paneled in black oak at the end of which was a large stained glass window. Here they found tea laid out for them, and after taking off their wraps, they sat down and began to look round while Mrs. Omni waited on them. Suddenly, Mrs. Otis caught sight of a dull red stain on the floor just by the fireplace, and quite unconscious of what it really signified, said to Mrs. Omni, I'm afraid something's been spilled there. Yes, madam, replied the old housekeeper in a low voice, blood has been spilled on that spot. How horrid! cried Mrs. Otis. I don't at all care for blood stains in a sitting room. It must be removed at once. The old woman smiled and answered in the same low, mysterious voice. It is the blood of Lady Eleanor de Canterville, who was murdered on that very spot by her own husband, Sir Simon de Canterville, in 1575. So Simon survived to nine years, and disappeared suddenly under very mysterious circumstances. His body's never been discovered, but his guilty spirit still haunts the chase. The bloodstain has been much admired by tourists and others, and cannot be removed. That is all nonsense, cried Washington Otis.  In a few moments no trace of the bloodstain could be seen. I knew Pinkerton would do it, he exclaimed triumphantly as he looked round at his admiring family, but no sooner had he said these words than a terrible flash of lightning lit up the somber room. A fearful peel of thunder made them all start to their feet, and Mrs. Omni fainted. What a monstrous climate, said the American minister calmly as he lit a long charoute. I guess the old country is so overpopulated that they have not enough decent weather for everybody. I've always been of opinion that emigration is the only thing for England. My dear Hiram cried Mrs. Otis, what can we do with a woman who faints? Charge it to her like breakages, answered the minister. She won't faint after that. And in a few moments Mrs. Omni certainly came to. There was no doubt, however, that she was extremely upset, and she sternly warned Mr. Otis to be aware of some trouble coming to the house. I've seen things with my own eyes, sir, she said, that would make any Christian's hair stand on end, and many and many a night if I not close my eyes in sleep for the awful things that are done here. Mr. Otis, however, and his wife warmly assured the honest soul that they were not afraid of ghosts, and after invoking the blessings of Providence on her new master and mistress, and making arrangements for an increase of salary, the old housekeeper tottered off to her own room. Chapter 2 The storm raged fiercely all that night, but nothing of particular note occurred. The next morning, however, when they came down to breakfast, they found the terrible stain of blood once again on the floor. I don't think it can be the fault of the paragon detergent, said Washington, for I've tried it with everything. It must be the ghost. He accordingly rubbed out the stain a second time, but the second morning it appeared again. The third morning also it was there, though the library had been locked up at night by Mr. Otis himself and the key carried upstairs. The whole family were now quite interested. Mr. Otis began to suspect that he had been too dogmatic in his denial of the existence of ghosts. Mrs. Otis expressed her intention of joining the Psychical Society, and Washington prepared a long letter to Messers, Meyers, and Podmore on the subject of the permanence of sanguineous stains when connected with crime. That night all doubts about the objective existence of Fantasmata were removed forever. The day had been warm and sunny, and in the cool of the evening the whole family went out to drive. They did not return home till nine o'clock when they had a light supper. The conversation in no way turned upon ghosts, so they were not even those primary conditions of receptive expectations which so often precede the presentation of psychical phenomena. The subjects discussed, as I have since learned from Mr. Otis, were merely such as form the ordinary conversations of cultured Americans of the better class, such as the immense superiority of Miss Fanny Devonport over Sarah Bernhardt as an actress, the difficulty of obtaining green corn, buckwheat cakes, and hominy even in the best English houses, the importance of Boston in the development of the world's soul, the advantages of the baggage check system in railway traveling, and the sweetness of the New York accent as compared to the London drawl. No mention at all was made of the supernatural, nor was Sir Simon de Canterville alluded to in any way. At eleven o'clock the family retired and by half past all the lights were out. Sometime after Mr. Otis was awakened by a curious noise in the corridor, outside his room. It sounded like the clank of metal, and seemed to be coming nearer every moment. He got up at once, struck a match, and looked at the time. It was exactly one o'clock. He was quite calm and felt his pulse, which was not at all feverish. The strange noise still continued, and with it he heard distinctly the sound of footsteps. He put on his slippers, took a small oblong file out of his dressing-case, and opened the door. Right in front of him he saw, in the one moonlight, an old man of terrible aspect. His eyes were as red-burning coals, long gray hair fell over his shoulders in matted coils, his garments, which were of antique cut, were soiled and ragged, and from his wrists and ankles hung heavy manacles and rusty jives. My dear sir, Mr. Otis, I really must insist on your oiling those chains, and have brought for you that purpose a small bottle of the Tammany Rising Sun lubricator. It is said to be completely efficacious upon one application, and there are several testimonials to that effect on the wrapper from some of our most eminent native divines. I shall leave it here for you by the bedroom candles, and will be happy to supply you with more should you require it. With these words the United States Minister laid the bottle down on a marble table, and closing his door, retired to rest. For a moment the Canterville Ghost stood quite motionless in natural indignation. Then, dashing the bottle violently upon the floor, he fled down the corridor, uttering hollow groans and emitting a ghastly green light. Just however as he reached the top of the great oak staircase, a door was flung open.  There was evidently no time to be lost, so hastily adopting the fourth dimension of space as a means of escape, he vanished through the wainscoting, and the house became quite quiet. Unreaching a small secret chamber in the left wing, he leaned up against a moonbeam to recover his breath, and began to try and realize his position. Never in a brilliant and uninterrupted career of three hundred years had he been so grossly insulted. He thought of the Dowager Duchess whom he had frightened into a fit as he stood before the glass and her lace and diamonds, of the four housemaids who had gone into hysterics when he merely grinned at them through the curtains on one of the spare bedrooms, of the rector of the parish, whose candle had been blown out as he was coming late one night from the library, and who had been under the care of Sir William Gull ever since, a perfect mother to nervous disorders. And of Madame Tremollec, who having wakened up one morning, and seen a skeleton seated in an armchair by a fire reading her diary, had been confined to her bed for six weeks with an attack of brain fever, and on her recovery had become reconciled to the church, and broken off her connection with that notorious sceptic, Michoud de Voltaire. He remembered the terrible night when the wicked Lord Canterville was found choking in his dressing room with the nave of diamonds halfway down his throat, and confessed, just before he died, that he had cheated Charles James Fox out of fifty thousand pounds at Crockford's by means of that very card, and swore that the ghost had made him swallow it. All his great achievements came back to him again, from the butler who had shot himself in the pantry because he had seen a green hand tapping at the windowpane, to the beautiful Lady Stutfield, who was always obliged to wear a black velvet band round her throat to hide the mark of five fingers burnt upon her white skin, and who drowned herself, at last, in the carp pond at the end of the king's walk. With the enthusiastic egotism of the true artist, he went over his most celebrated performances, and smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance, as Red Rubin or the strangled babe. His debut as Guingibion, the bloodsucker of Bexley Moor, and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing nine pins with his own bones upon the lawn tennis ground. And after all this some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer him the rising sun lubricator and throw pillows at his head. It was quite unbearable. Besides, no ghost in history had ever been treated in this manner. Accordingly he determined to have vengeance and remained till daylight in an attitude of deep thought. Chapter 3 The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they discussed the ghost at some length. The United States Minister was naturally a little annoyed to find that his present had not been accepted. I have no wish, he said, to do the ghost any personal injury, and I must say that considering the length of time he's been in the house, I don't think it is at all polite to throw pillows at him. A very just remark at which I am sorry to say the twins burst into shouts of laughter. Upon the other hand, he continued, If he really declines to use the rising sun lubricator, we shall have to take his chains from him. It would be quite impossible to sleep with such a noise going on outside the bedrooms. For the rest of the week, however, they were undisturbed. The only thing that excited any attention being the continual renewal of the bloodstain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like color, also the stain, excited a good deal of comment. Some mornings it was a dull, almost Indian red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple. And once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple rites of the free American Reformed Episcopalian Church, they found it a bright emerald green. These kaleidoscopic changes naturally amused the party very much, and bets on the subject were freely made every evening. The only person who did not enter into the joke was Little Virginia, who, for some unexplained reason, was always a good deal distressed at the sight of the bloodstain, and very nearly cried the morning it was emerald green. The second appearance of the ghost was on Sunday night. Shortly after they had gone to bed, they were suddenly alarmed by a fearful crash in the hall. Rushing downstairs, they found that a large suit of old armor had become detached from its stand, and had fallen on the stone floor, while seated in a high-backed chair was the Canterville ghost, rubbing his knees with an expression of acute agony on his face. The twins, having brought their pea-shooters with them, at once discharged two pellets on him, with that accuracy of aim which can only be attained by long and careful practice on a writing master.  The ghost started up with a wild shriek of rage, and swept through them like a mist, extinguishing Washington Otis's candle as he passed, and so leaving them all in total darkness. On reaching the top of the staircase, he recovered himself, and determined to give his celebrated peel of demonic laughter. This yet, on more than one occasion, found extremely useful. It was said to have turned Lord Raker's wig gray in a single night, and had certainly made three of Lady Canterville's French governesses give warning before their month was up. He accordingly laughed his most horrible laugh, till the old vaulted roof rang and rang again, but hardly had the fearful echo died away when a door opened, and Mrs. Otis came out in a light blue dressing-gown. I'm afraid you're far from well, she said, and have brought you a bottle of Dr. Dobel's tincture. If it is indigestion, you will find it a most excellent remedy. The ghost glared at her in fury, and began at once to make preparations for turning himself into a large black dog, an accomplishment for which he was justly renowned, and to which the family doctor always attributed the permanent idiocy of Lord Canterville's uncle the honourable Thomas Horton. The sound of approaching footsteps, however, made him hesitate in his fell purpose, so he contented himself with becoming faintly phosphorescent, and vanished with a deep churchyard groan, just as the twins had come up to him. On reaching his room he entirely broke down, and became a prey to the most violent agitation. The vulgarity of the twins and the gross materialism of Mrs. Otis were naturally extremely annoying, but what really distressed him most was that he had been unable to wear the suit of mail. He had hoped that even modern Americans would be thrilled by the sight of a spectre and armor, if for no more sensible reason at least out of respect for their natural poet-long fellow, over whose graceful and attractive poetry he himself had wild away, many a weary hour when the Cantervilles were up in town. Besides, it was his own suit. He had worn it with great success at the Canillworth Tournament, and had been highly complimented on it by no less a person than the Virgin Queen herself. Yet when he had put it on he had been completely overpowered by the weight of the huge breastplate and steel cask. He had fallen heavily on the stone pavement, barking both his knees severely, and bruising the knuckles of his right hand. For some days after this he was extremely ill, and hardly stirred out of his room at all. Except to keep the bloodstain in proper repair. However, by taking great care of himself, he recovered, and resolved to make a third attempt to frighten the United States minister and his family. He selected Friday, August 17th for his appearance, and spent most of that day in looking over his wardrobe, ultimately deciding in favor of a large slouched hat with a red feather, a winding sheet frilled at the wrists and neck, and a rusty dagger. Towards evening a violent storm of rain came on, and the wind was so high that all the windows and doors in the old house shook and rattled. In fact it was just such weather as he loved. His plan of action was this. He was to make his way quietly to Washington Otis's room, gibber at him in front of the foot of the bed, and stab himself three times in the throat to the sound of low music. He bore Washington a special grudge, being quite aware that it was he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville bloodstain by means of Pinkerton's Paragon detergent. Having reduced the reckless and foolhardy youth to a condition of abject terror, he was then to proceed to the room occupied by the United States Minister and his wife, and there to place a clammy hand on Mrs. Otis's forehead, while he hissed into her trembling husband's ear the awful secrets of the Charnell House. With regard to Lidda Virginia, he had not quite made up his mind. She had never insulted him in any way and was pretty and gentle. A few hollow groans from the wardrobe he thought would be more than sufficient, or if that failed to wake her he might grabble at the counterpane with palsy twitching fingers. As for the twins, he was quite determined to teach them a lesson. The first thing to be done was of course to sit upon their chests so as to produce the stifling sensation of nightmare, then as their beds were quite close to each other, to stand between them in the form of a green icy cold corpse till they became paralyzed with fear, and finally to throw off the winding sheet and crawl around the room with white bleached bones and one rolling eyeball in the character of Dumb Daniel, or the Suicide Skeleton, a role in which he had on more than one occasion produced a great effect and which he considered quite equal to his famous part of Martin the Maniac or the Masked Mystery. In half past ten he heard the family go into bed. For some time he was disturbed by wild shrieks of laughter from the twins, who with the light-hearted gady of schoolboys were evidently amusing themselves before they retired to rest, but at a quarter past eleven, all was still and as midnight sounded he sallied forth. The owl beat against the window panes, the raven croaked from the old yew tree, and the wind wandered moaning round the house like a lost soul. But the Otis family slept unconscious of their doom, and high above the rain and storm he could hear the steady snoring of the minister for the United States.  On and on he glided like an evil shadow, the very darkness seeming to loathe him as he passed. Once he thought he heard something call, and stopped, but it was only the bang of a dog from the red farm, and he went on muttering strange sixteenth-century curses, and ever and on, branching the rusty dagger in the midnight air. Finally he reached the corner of the passage that led to luckless Washington s room. For a moment he paused there, the wind blowing his long gray locks about his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's shroud. Then the clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was come. He chuckled to himself and turned the corner, but no sooner had he done so than with a piteous wail of terror he fell back and hid his blanched face in his long bony hands.   From the eyes streamed rays of scarlet light, the mouth was a wide well of fire, and a hideous garment, like to his own, swathed with its silent snows the titan form. On its breast was a placard, with strange writing and antique characters, some scroll of shame it seemed, some record of wild sins, some awful calendar of crime, and with its right hand it bore aloft a falchion of gleaming steel. Never having seen a ghost before he naturally was terribly frightened, and after a second hasty glance at the awful phantom he fled back to his room, tripping up his long winding sheet as he sped down the corridor and finally dropping the rusty dagger into the minister's jackboots where it was found in the morning by the butler. Once in the privacy of his own apartment he flung himself down on a small pallet bed and hid his face under the clothes. After a time, however, the brave old canterville spirit asserted itself and he determined to go and speak to the other ghost as soon as it was daylight. Accordingly, just as the dawn was touching the hills with silver, he returned towards the spot where he had first laid eyes on the grizzly phantom, feeling that after all two ghosts were better than one, and that by the aid of his new friend he might safely grapple with the twins. On reaching the spot, however, a terrible sight met his gaze. Something had evidently happened to the spectre for the light had entirely faded from its hollow eyes. The gleaming falchion had fallen from its hand and it was leaning up against the wall in a strained and uncomfortable attitude. He rushed forward and seized it in his arms. When to his horror, the head slipped off and rolled on the floor. The body assumed a recumbent posture and he found himself clasping a white, dimedy bed curtain with a sweeping brush, a kitchen cleaver, and a hollow turnip lying at his feet. Unable to understand this curious transformation, he clutched the placard with feverish haste and there in the gray morning light he read these fearful words. Ye Otis Ghost, ye only true and original spook, beware of ye imitations, all others are counterfeit. The whole thing flashed across him. He'd been tricked, foiled and outwitted. The old Canterville look came into his eyes. He ground his toothless gums together and raising his withered hands high above his head swore according to the picturesque phraseology of the antique school that when Chanticleer had sounded twice his merry horn, deeds of blood would be wrought and murder walk abroad with silent feet.  He laughed a long, low, bitter laugh and waited. Hour after hour he waited, but the cock for some strange reason did not crow again. Finally at half past seven the arrival of the housemaids made him give up his fearful vigil and he stalked back to his room, thinking of his vain oath and baffled purpose. There he consulted several books of ancient chivalry of which he was exceedingly fond and found that on every occasion on which this oath had been used Chanticleer had always crowed a second time. Perdition sees the naughty fowl, he muttered. I have seen the day when with my stout's spear I would have run him through the gorge and made him crow for me and twer in death. He then retired to a comfortable lead coffin and stayed there till evening. Chapter 4 The next day the ghost was very weak and tired. The terrible excitement of the last four weeks was beginning to have its effect. His nerves were completely shattered and he started at the slightest noise. For five days he kept his room and at last made up his mind to give up the point of the bloodstain on the library floor. If the Otis family did not want it, they clearly did not deserve it. They were evidently people on a low material plane of existence and quite incapable of appreciating the symbolic value of sensuous phenomena. The question of phantasmic apparitions and the development of astral bodies was of course quite a different matter and really not under his control. It was his solemn duty to appear in the corridor once a week and to gibber from the large orial window on the first and third Wednesdays in every month, and he did not see how he could honorably escape from his obligations. It is quite true that his life had been very evil, but upon the other hand he was most conscientious in all things connected with the supernatural. For the next three Saturdays, accordingly, he traversed the corridor as usual between midnight and three o'clock, taking every possible precaution against being either heard or seen. He removed his boots, trod as lightly as possible on the old worm-eaten boards, wore a large black velvet cloak, and was careful to use the rising sun lubricator for oiling his chains. I'm bound to acknowledge that it was with a good deal of difficulty that he brought himself to adopt this last mode of protection. However, one night while the family were at dinner, he slipped into Mr. Otis' bedroom and carried off the bottle. He felt a little humiliated at first, but afterwards was sensible enough to see that there was a great deal to be said for the invention and, to a certain degree, it served his purpose. Still, in spite of everything, he was not left unmolested. Strings were continually being stretched across the corridor, over which he tripped in the dark, and on one occasion, while dressed for the part of Black Isaac or the Huntsman of Hoggly Woods, he met with a severe fall through treading on a butter slide which the twins had constructed from the entrance of the tapestry chamber to the top of the oak staircase. This last insult so enraged him that he resolved to make one final effort to assert his dignity and social position and determined to visit the insolent young Etonians the next night in his celebrated character of Wreckless Rupert or the Headless Earl. He had not appeared in this disguise for more than 70 years. In fact, not since he had so frightened pretty Lady Barbara Modish by means of it that she suddenly broke off her engagement with the present Lord Canterville's grandfather and ran away to Gretna Green with handsome Jack Castletown, declaring that nothing in the world would induce her to marry into a family that allowed such a horrible phantom to walk up and down the terrace at twilight. Poor Jack was afterwards shot in a duel by Lord Canterville on Wandsworth Common and Lady Barbara died of a broken heart at Tunbridge Wells before the year was out, so in every way it had been a great success. It was however an extremely difficult make-up if I may use such a theatrical expression in connection with one of the greatest mysteries of the supernatural or to employ a more scientific term the higher natural world, and it took him fully three hours to make his preparations. At last everything was ready and he was very pleased with his appearance. The big leather riding boots that went with the dress were just a little too large for him, and he could only find one of the two horse pistols but on the whole he was quite satisfied, and at a quarter past one he glided out of the wainscoting and crept down the corridor. On reaching the room occupied by the twins, which I should mention was called the blue bed chamber, on account of the colour of its hangings, he found the door just ajar. Wishing to make an effective entrance, he flung it wide open when a heavy jug of water fell right down on him, wetting him to the skin and just missing his left shoulder by a couple of inches. At the same moment he heard stifled shrieks of laughter proceeding from the four-post bed. The shock to his nervous system was so great that he fled back to his room as hard as he could go, and the next day he was laid up with a severe cold. The only thing at all that consoled him in the whole affair was the fact that he had not brought his head with him, for had he done so the consequences might have been very serious. He now gave up all hope of ever frightening this rude American family and contented himself as a rule with creeping about the passages in list slippers, with a thick red muffler round his throat for fear of drafts, and a small archibus in case he should be attacked by the twins. The final blow he received occurred on the 19th of September. He had gone downstairs to the Great Entrance Hall, feeling sure that there at any rate he would be quite unmolested, and was amusing himself by making satirical remarks on the large Seroni photographs of the United States Minister and his wife, which had now taken the place of the Canterville family pictures. He was simply but neatly clad in a long shroud, spotted with churchyard mold, had tied up his jaw with a strip of yellow linen, and carried a small lantern and a sextant spade. In fact he was dressed for the character of Jonas the Graveless, or the corp snatcher of Chertsey Barn, one of his most remarkable impersonations, and one which the Cantervilles had every reason to remember, as it was the real origin of their quarrel with their neighbor, Lord Rufford. It was about a quarter past two o'clock in the morning, and as far as he could ascertain no one was stirring. As he was strolling towards the library, however, to see if there were any traces left of the bloodstain, suddenly there leaped out on him from a dark corner two figures, who waved their arms wildly above their heads, and shrieked out boo in his ear. Seized with a panic, which under the circumstances was only natural, he rushed for the staircase, but found Washington Otis waiting for him there with the big garden syringe, and being thus hemmed in by his enemies on every side, and driven almost to-day, he vanished into the great iron stove which fortunately for him was not lit, and had to make his way home through the flues and chimneys, arriving at his own room in a terrible state of dirt, disorder, and despair. After this he was not seen again on any nocturnal expedition. The twins lay in wait for him on several occasions, and strew the passages with nut shells every night to the great annoyance of the parents and the servants, but it was of no avail. It was quite evident that his feelings were so wounded that he would not appear. Mr. Otis consequently resumed his great work on the history of the Democratic Party, on which he had been engaged for some years. Mrs. Otis organized a wonderful clan bake, which amazed the whole county. The boys took to La Crosse, Euker, Polker, and other American national games, and Virginia wrote about the lanes on her pony, accompanied by the young Duke of Cheshire, who had come to spend the last week of his holidays at Canterville Chase. It was generally assumed that the ghost had gone away, and in fact Mr. Otis wrote a letter to that effect to Lord Canterville, who in reply expressed his great pleasure at the news, and sent his best congratulations to the minister's worthy wife. The Otises however were deceived, for the ghost was still in the house, and thou now almost an invalid was by no means ready to let matters rest, particularly as he had heard that among the guests was the young Duke of Cheshire, whose grand-uncle Lord Francis Stilton had once bet a hundred guineas with Colonel Carberry that he would play dice with the Canterville ghost, and was found the next morning lying on the floor of the card room in such a helpless paralytic state that though he lived on to a great age he was never able to say anything again but double sixes. The story was well known at the time, though of course out of respect to the feelings of the two noble families every attempt was made to hush it up, and a full account of all the circumstances connected with it will be found in the third volume of Lord Tatl's recollections of the Prince Regent and his friends. The ghost then was naturally very anxious to show that he had not lost his influence over the Stiltons, with whom indeed he was distantly connected, his own first cousin having been married Anzacon Nos to the Sir de Bulcle, from whom as everyone knows the Dukes of Cheshire are linearly descended. Accordingly he made arrangements for appearing to Virginia's little lover in his celebrated impersonation of the Vampire Monk or the Bloodless Benedictine, a performance so horrible that when Old Lady's startup saw it, which she did on one fatal New Year's Eve in the year 1764, she went off into the most piercing shrieks, which culminated in violent apoplexy and died in three days after disinheriting the Cantervilles, who were her nearest relations and leaving all her money to her London apothecary. At the last moment, however, his terror of the twins prevented his leaving his room, and the little Duke slept in peace under the great feathered canopy in the royal bed chamber of Virginia. A few days after this, Virginia and her curly-haired cavalier went out riding on broccoli meadows, where she tore her habit so badly and getting through a hedge that on their return home, she made up her mind to go up by the back staircase so as not to be seen. As she was running past the tapestry chamber, the door of which happened to be open, she fancied she saw someone inside, and thinking it was her mother's maid who sometimes used to bring her to work there, looked in to ask her to mend her habit. To her immense surprise, however, it was the Canterville ghost himself. He was sitting by the window watching the ruined gold of the yellowing trees fly through the air and the red leaves dancing madly down the Long Avenue. His head was leaning on his hand, and his whole attitude was one of extreme depression. Indeed, so forlorn and so much out of repair did he look that the little Virginia, whose first idea had been to run away and lock herself in her room, was filled with pity and determined to try and comfort him. So late was her footfall and so deep his melancholy that he was not aware of her presence till she spoke to him. I'm so sorry for you, she said, but my brothers are going back to eatin' tomorrow, and then if you behave yourself no one will annoy you. It is absurd asking me to behave myself, he answered, looking round in astonishment at the pretty little girl who had ventured to address him. Quite absurd! I must rattle my chains and groan through keyholes and walk about at night, if that's what you mean. It is my only reason for existing. It is no reason at all for existing, and you know you have been very wicked. Mrs.  Well, I quite admit it, said the ghost petulantly, but it was purely familiar matter, and concerned no one else.   My wife was very plain, never had my roughs properly starched and knew nothing about cookery. Why, there was a buck-eyed shot in Hogglu Woods, a magnificent cricket, and do you know how she had it sent to table? However, it's no matter now, for it's all over, and I don't think it's very nice of her brothers to starve me to death, though I did kill her. Starve you to death? Oh, Mr. Ghost, I mean Sir Simon, are you hungry? I have a sandwich in my case. Would you like it? No, thank you.  Stop, cried Virginia, stamping her foot.  First you took all my reds, including the vermillion, and I couldn't do any more sunsets. Then you took the emerald green and the chrome yellow, and finally I had nothing left but indigo and Chinese white, and I could only do moonlight scenes which are always depressing to look at, and not at all easy to paint. I never told on you, though I was very much annoyed, and it was most ridiculous the whole thing for whoever heard of emerald green blood. Well really, said the Ghost rather meekly. What was I to do? It was a very difficult thing to get real blood nowadays, and as your brother began it all with his Paragon detergent asset, and he saw no reason why I shouldn't have your paints. As for color, that's always a matter of taste. The cantervilles have blue blood, for instance, the very bluest in England. But I know you Americans don't care for things of this kind. You know, nothing about it, and the best thing you can do is to emigrate and improve your mind. My father will only be too happy to give you a free passage, and though there's a heavy duty on spirits of every kind, there'll be no difficulty about the custom house as the officers are all Democrats. Once in New York you're sure to be a great success. I know lots of people there who would give a hundred thousand dollars to have a grandfather, and much more than that to have a family ghost. I don't think I should like America. I suppose because we have no ruins and no curiosities, said Virginia satirically. No ruins, no curiosities, answered the Ghost. You have your navy and your manners. Good evening. I will go and ask Papa to get the twins an extra week's holiday. Please don't go, Miss Virginia, he cried. I'm so lonely and so unhappy. I really don't know what to do. I want to go to sleep, and I cannot. That's quite absurd. You have merely to go to bed and blow out the candle. It's very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church. But there's no difficulty at all about sleeping. Why, even babies know how to do that, and they're not very clever. I've not slept for three hundred years, he said sadly, and Virginia's beautiful blue eyes opened in wonder. For three hundred years I've not slept, and I'm so tired.  She came towards him, and kneeling down at his side looked up into his old withered face. Poor, poor ghost, she murmured. Have you no place where you can sleep? Far away beyond the pine woods, he answered in a low, dreamy voice. There is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, and there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower. There the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.  You mean the garden of death? She whispered. Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful, to lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. You have no yesterday and no tomorrow? To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is. Virginia trembled, a cold shutter ran through her, and for a moment there was silence. She felt as if she was in a terrible dream.  Have you ever read the old prophecy on the library window? Oh, often, cried the little girl looking up. I know it quite well. It's painted in curious black letters, and is difficult to read. There are only six lines. When a golden girl can win, prayer from out the lips of sin. When the barren almond bears, and a little child gives away its tears, then shall all the house be still, and peace come to Canterville. But I don't know what they mean. They mean that you must weep with me for my sins, because I have no tears, and pray with me for my soul because I have no faith, and then, if you have always been sweet and good and gentle, the angel of death will have mercy on me.  Virginia made no answer, and the ghost wrung his hands in the wild despair as he looked down at her bowed golden head. Suddenly she stood up, very pale and with strange light in her eyes. I'm not afraid, she said firmly, and I will ask the angel to have mercy on you. He rose from his seat with a faint cry of joy, and taking her hand bent over it with old-fashioned grace and kissed it. His fingers were as cold as ice, and his lips burned like fire, but Virginia did not falter as he led her across the dusky room. On the faded green tapestry were broidered little huntsmen. They blew their tassled horns, and with their tiny hands waved for her to go back.  Go back! But the ghost clutched her hand more tightly, and she shut her eyes against them. Horrible animals with lizard tails and goggle eyes blinked at her from the carbon chimney-piece, and murmured, Beware, little Virginia, beware, we may never see you again. But the ghost glided on more swiftly, and Virginia did not listen. When they reached the end of the room he stopped, and muttered some words she could not understand.  A bitter cold wind swept round them, and she felt something pulling at her dress. Quick, quick, cried the ghost, or it would be too late, and in a moment the wainscoting had closed behind them, and the tapestry chamber was empty. Chapter 6 About ten minutes later the bell rang for tea, and as Virginia did not come down, Mrs. Otis sent up one of the footmen to tell her. After a little time he returned and said that he could not find Miss Virginia anywhere. As she was in the habit of going out to the garden every evening to get flowers for the dinner table, Mrs. Otis was not at all alarmed at first, but when six o'clock struck, and Virginia did not appear, she became really agitated, and sent the boys out to look for her while she herself and Mr. Otis searched every room in the house. At half past six the boys came back and said they could find no trace of their sister anywhere. They were all now in the greatest state of excitement and did not know what to do, when Mr. Otis suddenly remembered that for some few days before he had given a band of gypsies permission to camp in the park. He accordingly at once set off for Blackfell Hollow, where he knew they were, accompanied by his eldest son and two of the farm servants. The little duke of Cheshire, who was perfectly frantic with anxiety, begged hard to be allowed to go to, but Mr. Otis would not allow him, as he was afraid there might be a scuffle.  Having sent off Washington and the two men to scour the district, he ran home and dispatched telegrams to all the police inspectors in the county, telling them to look out for our little girl who had been kidnapped by tramps or gypsies.  He had hardly however gone a couple of miles, when he heard somebody galloping after him and looking round saw the little duke coming up on his pony, with his face very flushed and no hat. Please don't be angry with me. If you had let us be engaged last year, there would never have been all this trouble. You won't send me back, will you? I can't go. I won't go! The minister could not help smiling at the handsome young scapegrace, and was a good deal touched at his devotion to Virginia. So, leaning down from his horse, he patted him kindly on the shoulders and said, Well, Cecil, if you won't go back, I suppose you must come with me, but I must get you a hat at Ascot. I'll bother my hat. I want Virginia! cried the little duke, laughing, and they galloped on to the railway station. There, Mr. Otis inquired of the stationmaster if anyone answering to the description of Virginia had been seen on the platform, but could get no news of her. The stationmaster, however, wired up and down the line and assured him that a strict watch would be kept for her, and after having bought a hat for the little duke from a linen draper who was just putting up his shutters, Mr. Otis rode off to Bexley, a village about four miles away, which he was told was a well-known haunt of the Gypsies, as there was a large common next to it. Here they roused up the rural policemen, but could get no information from him, and after riding all over the common, they turned their horses' heads homewards and reached the chase about eleven o'clock, dead tired and almost heartbroken. They found Washington and the twins waiting for them at the gatehouse, with lanterns as the avenue was very dark. Not the slightest trace of Virginia had been discovered. The Gypsies had been caught on broccoli meadows, but she was not with them, and they had explained their sudden departure by saying that they had mistaken the date of short and fair, and had gone off in a hurry for fear that they should be late. Indeed they had been quite distressed at hearing of Virginia's disappearance, as they were very grateful to Mr. Otis for having allowed them to camp in his park, and four of their number had stayed behind to help in search. The carp-pond had been dragged, and the whole chase thoroughly gone over, but without any result. It was evident that for that night at any rate Virginia was lost to them, and it was in a state of the deepest depression that Mr. Otis and the boys walked up to the house, the groom following behind with the two horses and the pony. In the hall they found a group of frightened servants, and lying on a sofa in the library was poor Mrs. Otis, almost out of her mind with terror and anxiety, and having her forehead bathed with odour cologne by the old housekeeper, Mr. Otis at once insisted on her having something to eat, and ordered up supper for the whole party. It was a melancholy meal, as hardly anyone spoke, and even the twins were awestruck and subdued, as they were very fond of their sister. When they had finished, Mr. Otis, in spite of the entreaties of the little duke, ordered them all to bed, saying that nothing more could be done that night, and that he would telegraph in the morning to Scotland Yard for some detectives to be sent down immediately. Just as they were passing out of the dining room, midnight began to boom from the clock tower, and when the last stroke sounded they heard a crash and a sudden shrill cry. A dreadful peel of thunder shook the house. A strain of unearthly music floated through the air. A panel at the top of the staircase flew back with a loud noise, and out on the landing, looking very pale and white, with a little casket in her hand, stepped Virginia. In a moment they had all rushed up to her. Mrs. Otis clasped her passionately in her arms. The duke smothered her with violent kisses, and the twins executed a wild war dance around the group. Good heavens, child, where have you been? said Mr. Otis rather angrily, thinking that she had been playing some foolish trick on them.  You must never play these practical jokes any more. Except on the ghost, except on the ghost, shrieked the twins as they capered about. My own darling, thank God you're found. You must never leave my side again, murmured Mrs. Otis, as she kissed the trembling child and smoothed the tangled gold over her. Papa, said Virginia quietly, I have been with the ghost. He's dead, and you must come and see him. He had been very wicked, but he was really sorry for all that he had done, and he gave me this box of beautiful jewels before he died. The whole family gazed at her in mute amazement, but she was quite grave and serious, and turning around she led them through the opening in the Wayne Scoting down a narrow secret corridor. Washington followed with a lighted candle which she had caught up from the table. Finally they came to a great oak door studded with rusty nails. When Virginia touched it, it swung back on its heavy hinges, and they found themselves in a little low room with a vaulted ceiling and one tiny graded window. Embedded in the wall was a huge iron ring, and chain to it was a gaunt skeleton that was stretched out at full length on the stone floor, and seemed to be trying to grasp with its long, fleshless fingers an old-fashioned trencher and ewer that were placed just out of its reach. The jug had evidently been once filled with water, as it was covered inside with green mould.  Virginia knelt down beside the skeleton, and folding her little hands together began to pray silently while the rest of the party looked on in wonder at the terrible tragedy whose secret was now disclosed to them. Hello, suddenly exclaimed one of the twins who had been looking out of the window to try and discover in what wing of the house the room was situated. Hello, the old withered almond tree has blossomed. I can see the flowers quite plainly in the moonlight. God has forgiven him, said Virginia gravely, as she rose to her feet, and a beautiful light seemed to illuminate her face. What an angel you are! cried the young Duke, and he put his arm around her neck and kissed her. Chapter 7 Four days after these curious incidents, a funeral started from Cantorville Chase at about eleven o'clock at night. The hearse was drawn by eight black horses, each of which carried on its head a great tuft of nodding ostrich plumes, and the lead-in coffin was covered by a rich purple pall, on which was embroidered in gold the Cantorville coat of arms. By the side of the hearse and the coaches walked the servants with lighted torches, and the whole procession was wonderfully impressive. Lord Cantorville was the chief mourner, having come up specially from Wales to attend the funeral, and sat in the first carriage along with Little Virginia. Then came the United States Minister and his wife, then Washington and the three boys, and in the last carriage was Mrs. Omney. It was generally felt that, as she had been frightened by the ghost for more than fifty years of her life, she had a right to see the last of him. A deep grave had been dug in the corner of the churchyard just under the old yew tree, and the service was read in the most impressive manner by the Reverend Augustus Dampier. When the ceremony was over, the servants, according to an old custom observed in the Cantorville family, extinguished their torches, and as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, Virginia stepped forward and laid on it a large cross made of white and pink almond blossoms. As she did so, the moon came out from behind a cloud and flooded with its silent silver the little churchyard, and from a distant corpse a nightingale began to sing. She thought of the ghost's description of the Garden of Death, her eyes became dim with tears, and she hardly spoke a word during the drive home. The next morning before Lord Cantorville went up to town, Mr. Otis had an interview with him on the subject of the jewels the ghost had given to Virginia. They were perfectly magnificent, especially a certain ruby necklace with old Venetian setting, which was really a superb specimen of sixteenth-century work, and their value was so great that Mr. Otis felt considerable scruples about allowing his daughter to accept them. My lord, he said, I know that in this country mortman is held to apply to trinkets as well as to land, and it is quite clear to me that these jewels are, or should be, heirlooms in your family. I must beg you accordingly to take them to London with you and to regard them simply as a portion of your property, which has been restored to you under certain strange conditions. As for my daughter, she is merely a child and has as yet, I am glad to say, but little interest in such appartenances of idle luxury. I am also informed by Mr. Otis, who I may say is no mean authority upon art, having had the privilege of spending several winters in Boston when she was a young girl, that these gems are of great monetary worth, and if offered for sale would fetch a tall price. Under these circumstances, Lord Cantorville, I feel sure that you will recognize how impossible it would be for me to allow them to remain in the possession of any member of my family, and indeed, all such vain gods and toys, however suitable or necessary to the dignity of the British aristocracy, would be completely out of place among those who have been brought up on the severe, and I believe immortal, principles of republican simplicity. Perhaps I should mention that Virginia is very anxious that you should allow her to retain the box, as a memento of your unfortunate but misguided ancestor, as it is extremely old and consequently a good deal out of repair. You may perhaps think fit to comply with her request. From my own part I confess I am a good deal surprised to find a child of mine expressing sympathy with medievalism in any form, and can only account for it by the fact that Virginia was born in one of your London suburbs shortly after Mrs. Otis had returned from a trip to Athens. Lord Cantorville listened very gravely to the worthy minister's speech, pulling his gray moustache now and then to hide an involuntary smile, and when Mr. Otis had ended he shook him cordially by the hand and said, My dear sir, your charming little daughter rendered my unlucky ancestor Sir Simon a very important service, and I and my family are much indebted to her for her marvellous courage and pluck. The jewels are clearly hers, and, God, I believe that if I were heartless enough to take them from her, the wicked old fellow would be out of his grave in a fortnight, leading me, the devil of a life. As for there being heirlooms, nothing is an heirloom that is not so mentioned in a will or legal document, and the existence of these jewels has been quite unknown. I assure you I have no more claim on them than your butler, and when Ms. Virginia grows up, I dare say she will be pleased to have pretty things to wear. Besides, you forget Mr. Otis that you took the furniture and the ghost at evaluation, and anything that belonged to the ghost passed it once into your possession, as whatever your activity Sir Simon may have shown in the corridor at night. In point of law he was really dead, and you acquired his property by purchase. Mr. Otis was a good deal distressed at Lord Cantorville's refusal, and begged him to reconsider his decision, but the good-natured peer was quite firm, and finally induced the minister to allow his daughter to retain the present the ghost had given her. And when, in the spring of 1890, the young Duchess of Cheshire was presented at the Queen's first drawing room on the occasion of her marriage, the jewels were her universal theme of admiration. For Virginia received the Cornette, which is the reward of all good little American girls, and was married to her boy lover as soon as he came of age. They were both so charming, and they loved each other so much that everyone was delighted at the match, except the old marchiness of Dumbleton, who had tried to catch the Duke for one of her seven unmarried daughters, and had given no less than three expensive dinner parties for that purpose, and strange to say, Mr. Otis himself. Mr. Otis was extremely fond of the young Duke personally, but theoretically he objected to titles and, to use his own words, was not without apprehension, lest amid the innervating influences of a pleasure loving aristocracy the true principles of republican simplicity should be forgotten. His objections, however, were completely overruled, and I believe that when he walked up the aisle of St. George's Hanover Square with his daughter leaning on his arm there was not a prouder man in the whole length and breadth of England. The Duke and Duchess after the honeymoon was over went down to Canterville Chase, and on the day after their arrival they walked over in the afternoon to the lonely churchyard by the Pine Woods. There had been a great deal of difficulty at first about the inscription on Sir Simon's Tombstone, but finally it had been decided to engrave on it simply the initials of the old gentleman's name and the verse from the library window. The Duchess had brought with her some lovely roses, which she strewed upon the grave, and after they had stood by it for some time they strolled into the ruined chancel of the old abbey, where the Duchess sat down on a fallen pillar while her husband lay at her feet smoking a cigarette and looking up at her beautiful eyes. Suddenly he threw his cigarette away. He took hold of her hand and said to her, Virginia, a wife should have no secrets from her husband. Do you, Cecil, I have no secrets from you? Yes, you have. He answered smilingly. You have never told me what happened to you when you were locked up with the ghost. I've never told anyone, Cecil, said Virginia gravely. I know that, but you might tell me. Please don't ask me, Cecil. I cannot tell you. Poor Sir Simon. I owe him a great deal. Yes, don't laugh, Cecil. I really do. He made me see what life is and what death signifies, and why love is stronger than both. The Duke rose and kissed his wife lovingly. You can have your secret as long as I have your heart, he murmured. You've always had that, Cecil. And you will tell our children someday, won't you? Virginia blushed. This is the end of The Canterville Ghost, recording by Eric David Leach, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is a library box recording. All library box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org. That's L-I-B-R-I-V-O-X.org. Recorded by Glenn Hallstrom, a.k.a. Smokestack Jones. SmokestackJones at gmail.com. The Cask of a Monteado by Edgar Allen Poe. The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had brought is best acute. But when he ventured upon insult, I vowed the revenge. You, who so well know my nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I give utterance to a thread. At length, I would be avenged. This was a point definitely settled. But the very definitiveness, of which I was resolved, precluded with the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unre-dressed when retribution overtakes its redressor. It is equally unre-dressed when the Avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. It must be understood that neither by one nor deed I had given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my want, to smile in his face. And he did not proceed that my smile now was at the thought of his emulation. He had a weak point, this Fortunato. Although in other regards he was meant to be respected, or even feared, he prided himself on his consortium in wine. Few Italians have the truth for Joseph's spirit. For the most part, their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity, to practice imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting in Germany, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack. But in the manner of old wines, he was sincere. In disrespect, I did not differ from him materially. I was skillful in the Italian villages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. It was a dusk one evening, during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much.  I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. I said to him, my dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking today. But I have received a pipe of what passes for a Montiado, and I have my doubts. How? said he. A Montiado? A pipe? Impossible. And in the middle of the carnival, I had my doubts, I replied. And I was silly enough to pay the full Montiado prize without consulting you on the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain. A Montiado? I had my doubts. A Montiado? And I must satisfy them. A Montiado? As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchisi. If anyone has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me Luchisi cannot tell a Montiado from Sherry. And yet some fools will have it, that his taste is a match for your own. Come, let us go. Winner, to your votes. My friend, no. I will not impose upon you good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Luchisi, I have no engagement. Come. My friend, no. It is not engagement, but the severe cold which I perceive you are afflicted. The votes are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nighter. Let us go nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing, a Montiado. You must have been imposed upon. As for Luchisi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Montiado. Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my art. Putting on a mask of black silk and drawing a rocky air closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my path. So there were no attendants at home. They had absconded to make merry in honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return till morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to ensure the immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. I took from the sconces to Flambeau, and giving one to Fortunato bowed him to several suites of rooms and to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed out a long and widening staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresor's. The gate of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as his throat. The pipe, said he, it is farther on, said I, but observed the wide web work which gleams from the cavern walls. He turned towards me. He turned towards me and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rim of intoxication. Neither, he asked the length. Neither, I replied. How long have you had that cough? My poor friend thought it impossible to reply for many minutes. It is nothing, he said at last. Come, I said with decision. We will go back. Your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, the blood. You are happy as I once was. You are not meant to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back. You will be ill, and I cannot be responsible, besides. That is a little cheesy. Enough, he said. The cough is a mere nothing. It will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough. True, true, I replied, and indeed I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily, but you should use all the proper caution. A drop from this midock will defend us from the dumps. Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mold. Drink, I said, presenting him the wine. He raised his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarity while his bells jingled.  He again took my arm and we proceeded. These vaults, he said, are extensive. The Montressors, I replied, were a great and numerous family. I forget your arms. A huge human foot door on a field of azure. The foot crushes a serpent, rampant as the fangs are embedded in the heel. And the motto? Ne more ne impure less a. Good, he said, the wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fanciful war with the medoc. We have passed through the wall of pile bonds with casks and pinchants intermingling into the enormous recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I'm able to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. The nighter, I said, see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults, where below the river's bed, the drops of moisture trickle along the vaults. Come, we will go back, yet it's too late. You're caught. It has nothing, he said, but let us go on. But first, another draught of the medoc. I broke and reached him a flagon of the digrav. He emptied it in a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gestulation I did not understand. I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement, the grotesque one. Do you not comprehend, he said. Not I, I replied. Then you are not of the brotherhood. How? You are not of the masons. Yes, yes, I said, yes, yes. You? Impossible. A mason? A mason, I replied. A sign, he said. It is this, I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my rocker. You just, exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. But let us proceed to the amanteado. Be it so, I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the amanteado. We passed through a range of lodges, descended, pass on, descending again, arrived at the deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeau rather to glow than flame. At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to a vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown in, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point the mound of sun-size, within the wall thus expressed by the displacing of the bones. We perceived a still interior recess in depth of about four feet, then with three in height of six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no special use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. It was in vain that Fort Tonado, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored the pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination to feeble light did not enable us to see. Proceed, I said. Erin is the amanteado. As for Locezi, he is an ignoramus interrupted by friend as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite, and its surface were two iron staples, disted from each other about two feet horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. It was too much astounded to resist, with drawing the key a step back from the recess.  You could not help feeling the nighter. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power. The amanteado ejaculated my friend not yet recovered from his astonishment. True, I replied, the amanteado. As I said these words, I busied myself among the pile of bonds of which I have before spoken, throwing them aside. I saw an uncovered the quantity of a building stone and a monitor. With these materials, and with the aid of my trial, I began vigorously to wall up at the entrance of the niche. I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The easiest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not a cry of a drunken man. There was then a long inoptenance silence. I had laid the second tier, and the third, the fourth, and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which that I might harken to it with the more satisfaction. I ceased my labors and sat out upon the bonds. When I lasted the clanking subsided, I resumed the trial and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now completely upon a level with my breast. I again paused and holding the flamboy over the mason work. I threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within. A succession of loud and shrill screams bursting suddenly from the throat of the chain form seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated. I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess. With the thought of an instant reassure, I placed my hand upon a desolate fabric of the cat-combs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall, replied to the yells of him who clambered. I re-echoed. I aided. I surpassed them in volumin strength. I did this, and the clamberer grew a steel. He was now midnight, and my task was drawn to a close. I had completed the eighth to ninth and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh. There remained but a single stone to be fitted in plastering. I struggled with its weight. I placed it partially on its destined position. But now there came from out of the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said, Very good joke indeed. An excellent jest. We'll have many a rich laugh about it at the piazzo. Over our wine. The Mantiato, I said. Yes, the Mantiato. But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the piazzo, the late Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone. Yes, I said. Let us be gone for the love of God. Mantresor! Yes, I said, for the love of God. But to these words I harkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud, Fortunato! No answer. I called again, Fortunato! No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it to fall within. Then came forth in return, only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last stone into its position. I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of the bones, for the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. Impeserequias! The end of the casque of a Mantiato by Edgar Allen Poe. The Cold Embrace, by Mary E. Braden. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Cody Logan. The Cold Embrace, by Mary E. Braden. He was an artist. Such things as happened to him happened sometimes to artists. He was a German. Such things as happened to him happened sometimes to Germans. He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless. And being young, handsome, and eloquent, he was beloved.  And she who loved him was his cousin, his cousin Gertrude, whom he swore he loved and returned. Did he love her? Yes, when he first swore it, it soon wore out this passionate love, how threadbare and wretched a sentiment it became at last in the selfish heart of the student. But in its golden dawn, when he was only 19, and had just returned from his apprenticeship to a great painter at Antwerp, and they wandered together in the most romantic outskirts of the city at Rosie Sunset, by holy moonlight, or bright and joyous morning, how beautiful a dream. They kept to the secret from Wilhelm, as he has the father's ambition of a wealthy suitor for his only child, a cold and dreary vision beside the lover's dream.  This ring is a peculiar one, a massive golden serpent, its tail in its mouth, the symbol of eternity. It had been his mother's, and he would know it amongst a thousand. If he were to become blind tomorrow, he could select it from amongst a thousand by the touch alone. He places it on her finger, and they swear to be true to each other for ever and ever, through trouble and danger, sorrow and change, in wealth or poverty. Her father must needs be won to consent to their union by and by, for now they were betrothed, and death alone could part them. But the young student, the scoffer at revelation, yet the enthusiastic adorer of the mystical, asks, Can death part us? I would return to you from the grave, Gertrude. My soul would come back to be near my love, and you, you if you died before me, the cold earth would not hold you from me. If you loved me, you would return, and again these fair arms would be clasped round my neck as they are now. But she told him, with a holier light in her deep blue eyes than had ever shown in his. She told him that the dead who die at peace with God are happy in heaven, and cannot return to the troubled earth, and that it is only the suicide, the lost wretch on whom sorrowful angels shut the door of paradise, whose unholy spirit haunts the footsteps of the living. The first year of their betrothal is past, and she is alone, for he has gone to Italy, on a commission for some rich man, to copy Raphaels, Titians, Guidoes, and a gallery at Florence. He has gone to win fame, perhaps, but it is not the less bitter he has gone. Of course her father misses his young nephew, who has been as a son to him, and he thinks his daughter's sadness no more than a cousin should feel for a cousin's absence. In the meantime, the weeks and months pass, the lover writes, often at first, then seldom, at last, not at all. How many excuses she invents for him, how many times she goes to the distant little post office, to which he is to address his letters, how many times she hopes, only to be disappointed, how many times she despairs, only to hope again, but real despair comes at last, and will not be put off any more. The rich suitor appears on the scene, and her father is determined. She is to marry at once. The wedding day is fixed, the 15th of June, the date seems to burn into her brain. The date, written in fire, dances forever before her eyes. The date, shrieked by the furies, sounds continually in her ears. But there is time yet. It is the middle of May. There is time for a letter to reach him at Florence. There is time for him to come to Brunswick, to take her away and marry her, and spite her for father, and spite of the whole world. But the days and weeks fly by, and he does not write, he does not come. This is indeed despair, which usurps her heart, and will not be put away. It is the 14th of June. For the last time, she goes to the little post office. For the last time, she asked the old question, and they give her for the last time the dreary answer. No, no letter. For the last time, for tomorrow is the day appointed for the bridal. Her father will hear no entreaties. Her rich suitor will not listen to her prayers. They will not be put off a day and hour. Tonight alone is hers, this night which she may employ as she will. She takes another path than that which leads home. She hurries through some by-streets of the city, out onto a lonely bridge, where he and she had stood so often in the sunset, watching the rose-colored light glow, fade, and die upon the river. He returns from Florence. He had received her letter, that letter blotted with tears, entreating, despairing. He had received it, but he loved her no longer. A young Florentine, who was sat to him for a model, had bewitched his fancy. That fancy, which with him stood in place of a heart, and Gertrude had been half-forgotten. If she had a rich suitor, good. Let her marry him. Better for her, better far for himself. He had no wish to fetter himself with a wife.  So, on the fifteenth of June, he enters Brunswick, by that very bridge on which she stood, the stars looking down on her the night before. He strolls across the bridge, and down by the water's edge, a great rough dog of his heels, and the smoke from his short, Mircham pipe, curling and blue wreaths fantastically in the pure morning air. He has his sketchbook under his arm, and attracted now and then by some object that catches the artist's eye, stops to draw. A few weeds and pebbles on the river's brink, a crag on the opposite shore, a group of pollard willows in a distance.  Suddenly, he opens his sketchbook again. This time, that which attracts him is a group of figures, but what is it? It is not a funeral, for there are no mourners. It is not a funeral, but a corpse, lying on a rude beer, covered with an old sail, carried between two bearers. It is not a funeral, for the bearers are fishermen, fishermen in their everyday garb. About a hundred yards from him, they rest their burden on a bank. One stands at the head of the beer, the other throws himself down at the foot of it. And thus they form the perfect group. He walks back two or three paces, selects his point of sight, and begins to sketch a hurried outline. He has finished it before they move. He hears their voices, though he cannot hear their words, and wonders what they can be talking of. Presently, he walks on and joins them. You have a corpse there, my friend, he says. Yes, a corpse washed ashore an hour ago. Drowned? Yes, drowned. A young girl, very handsome. Suicides are always handsome, says the painter. And then he stands for a little while, idly smoking and meditating, looking at the sharp outline of the corpse and the stiff folds of the rough canvas covering. Life is such a golden holiday for him, young, ambitious clever, that it seems as though sorrow and death could have no part in his destiny. At last he says that, as this poor suicide is so handsome, he should like to make a sketch of her. He gives the fishermen some money, and they offer to remove the sailcloth that covers her features. No, he will do it himself. He lifts the rough coarse wet canvas from her face. What face? The face that shone on in the dreams of his foolish boyhood. The face which once was the light of his uncle's home. His cousin Gertrude. His betrothed. He sees as in one glance, while he draws one breath, the rigid features, the marble arms, the hands crossed on the cold bosom, and on the third finger of the left hand, the ring which had been his mother's, the golden serpent, the ring which if he were to become blind, he could select from a thousand others by the touch alone. But he is a genius and a metaphysician. Grief, true grief, is not for such as he. His first thought is flight, flight anywhere out of that accursed city, anywhere from the brink of that hideous river, anywhere away from remorse, anywhere to forget. He is miles on the road that leads away from Brunswick before he knows he has walked a step. It is only when his dog lies down panting at his feet that he feels how exhausted he is himself and sits down upon a bank to rest. How the landscape spins round and round before his dazzled eyes, while his morning sketch of the two fishermen in the canvas covered beer glares readily at him out of the twilight.  At last, he grows a little more composed and tries presently to think of himself as he is, apart from his cousin's suicide. Apart from that, he was no worse off than he was yesterday. His genius was not gone. The money he had earned at Florence still lined his pocketbook. He was his own master, free to go whither he would. And while he sits on the roadside, trying to separate himself from the scene of that morning, trying to put away the image of the corpse covered with a damp canvas sail, trying to think of what he should do next, where he should go, to be farthest away from Brunswick and Remorse, the old diligence coming rumbling and jingling along. He remembers it. It goes from Brunswick to Isla Chappelle. He whistles to the dog, shouts to the postillian to stop, and springs into the coop. During the whole evening, through the long night, though he does not once close his eyes, he never speaks a word. But when morning dawns and the other passengers awake and begin to talk to each other, he joins in the conversation. He tells them that he is an artist, that he is going to Cologne and to Antwerp to copy Rubens's and the great picture by Quentin Matzis in the museum. He remembered afterwards that he talked and laughed boisterously, and that when he was talking and laughing loudest, a passenger, older and graver than the rest, opened the window near him and told him to put his head out. He remembered the fresh air blowing in his face, the singing of the birds in his ears, the flat fields and roadside reeling before his eyes. He remembered this and then falling and a lifeless heap on the floor of the diligence. It is a fever that keeps him for six long weeks on a bed in the hotel in Isla Chappelle. He gets well and accompanied by his dog, starts on foot for Cologne. By this time, he is his former self once more. Again, the blue smoke from his short mursham curls upward in the morning air. Again he sings some old university drinking song. Again stops here and there, meditating and sketching. He is happy and has forgotten his cousin, and so on the Cologne. It is by the great cathedral he is standing, with his dog at his side. It is night, the bells have just chimed the hour, and the clocks are striking eleven. The moonlight shines full upon the magnificent pile over which the artist's eye wanders, absorbed in the beauty of form. He is not thinking of his drowned cousin, for he has forgotten her and is happy. Suddenly, someone, something behind him, puts two cold arms around his neck and clasps its hands on his breast, and yet there is no one behind him. For on the flags bathed in the broad moonlight, there are only two shadows, his own and his dog's. He turns quickly round, there is no one, nothing to be seen in the broad square but himself and his dog, and though he feels he cannot see the cold arms clasped around his neck. It is not ghostly this embrace, for it is palpable to the touch. It cannot be real, for it is invisible. He tries to throw off the cold caress, he clasps the hands in his own to tear them as under to cast them off his neck. He can feel the long delicate fingers cold and wet beneath his touch, and on the third finger of the left hand he can feel the ring which was his mother's, the golden serpent, the ring which he has always said he would know among a thousand by the touch alone. He knows it now.  He asks himself if he is mad. Up Leo he shouts, up up boy, and a newfoundland leaps to his shoulders. The dog's paws are on the dead hands, and the animal utters a terrific howl and springs away from his master. The student stands in the moonlight, the dead arms around his neck, and the dog at a little distance moaning piteously. Presently a watchman, alarmed by the howling of the dog, comes into the square to see what is wrong. In a breath the cold arms are gone. He takes the watchman home to the hotel with him and gives him money, and his gratitude he could have given the man half his little fortune. Will it ever come to him again this embrace of the dead? He tries never to be alone. He makes a hundred acquaintances and shares the chamber of another student. He starts up if he is left by himself in the public room of the inn where he is staying and runs into the street. People notice his strange actions and begin to think that he is mad, but in spite of all he is alone once more. For one night the public room being empty for a moment, when on some idle pretense he strolls into the street. The street is empty too, and for the second time he feels the cold arms around his neck, and for the second time when he calls his dog the animal shrinks away from him with a piteous howl. After this he leaves Cologne, still traveling on foot of necessity now, for his money is getting low. He joins traveling hawkers. He walks side by side with laborers. He talks to every foot passenger he falls in with, and tries from morning till night to get company on the road. At night he sleeps by the fire in the kitchen of the inn at which he stops, but do what he will. He is often alone, and it is now a common thing for him to feel the cold arms around his neck. Many months have passed since his cousin's death. Autumn, winter, early spring. His money is nearly gone. His health is utterly broken. He is the shadow of his former self, and he is getting near to Paris. He will reach that city at the time of the carnival. To this he looks forward. In Paris, and carnival time, he need never surely be alone, never feel that deadly caress. He may even recover his lost gaiety, his lost health. Once more resume his profession. Once more earn fame and money by his art. How hard he tries to get over the distance that divides him from Paris, while day by day he grows weaker, and his steps slower and more heavy. But there is an end at last. The long dreary roads are passed. This is Paris, which he enters for the first time. Paris, of which he has dreamed so much. Paris, whose million voices are to exercise his phantom. To him tonight, Paris seems one vast chaos of lights, music, and confusion. Lights which dance before his eyes and will not be still. Music that rings in his ears and defends him. Confusion which makes his head whirl round and round. But in spite of all, he finds the upper house, where there is a masked ball. He has enough money left to buy a ticket of admission, and to hire a domino to throw over his shabby dress. It seems only a moment after his entering the gates of Paris that he is in the very midst of all the wild gaiety of the upper house ball. No more darkness, no more loneliness, but a mad crowd shouting and dancing, and a lovely debaudeux hanging on his arm. The boisterous gaiety he feels surely is his old light-heartedness coming back. He hears people around him talking of the outrageous conduct of some drunken student, and it is to him they point when they say this. To him who has not moistened his lips since yesterday at noon, for even now he will not drink. Though his lips are parched and his throat burning, he cannot drink. His voice is thick in the horse and his utterance indistinct.  The little debaudeux is worried out. Her arms rest on his shoulder, heavier than lead. The other dancers one by one drop off. The lights in the chandeliers one by one die out. The decorations look pale and shadowy, and that dim light which is neither night nor day. A faint glimmer from the dying lights, a pale streak of cold gray light from the newborn day, creeping in through half-open shutters. And by this light the bright-eyed David O. fades sadly. He looks in her face, how the brightness of her eyes die out. And again he looks her in the face, how white that face is grown. Again, and now it is the shadow of a face alone that looks in his. Again, and they are gone. The bright eyes, the face, the shadow of the face. He is alone, alone in that vast saloon. Alone, and in the terrible silence, he hears the echoes of his own footsteps and that dismal dance which has no music. No music but the beating of his breast. Then the cold arms are around his neck. They whirl him round. They will not be flung off or cast away. He can no more escape from their icy grasp than he can escape from death. He looks behind him. There is nothing but himself and a great empty cell. But he can feel cold, deathlike, but oh, palpable. The long slender fingers and the ring which was his mother's. He tries to shout, but he has no power in his burning throat. The silence of the place is only broken by the echoes of his own footsteps and the dance from which he cannot extricate himself. Who says he has no partner? The cold hands are clasped on his breast, and now he does not shun their caress. No, one more polka if he drops down dead. The lights are all out, and half an hour after, the gendarves come in with the lantern to see that the house is empty. They are followed by a great dog that they have found seated howling on the steps of the theater. At the principal entrance, they stumble over. The body of a student who has died from want of food, exhaustion, and the breaking of a blood vessel. End of The Cold Embrace By a long day of walking, I directed my steps toward the large hall of the inn, with the intention of resting a moment while my repast was being prepared. In the darkened room, the glimmer of small opium lamp lint up the pale and hollow face of an old man, occupied in a holding over the flame, a small ball of the black drug, which would soon be transformed into smoke, source of forgetfulness and dreams. The old man returned my greeting and invited me to lie down on the couch opposite to him. He handed me a pipe already prepared, and we began talking together. As ordered by the laws of politeness, I remarked to my neighbor that he seemed robust for his age. My age, do you then think I am so old? But as you are so wise, you must have seen sixty harvests. Sixty? I am not yet thirty years old, but you must have come from a long way off, not to know who I am.  His name was Leo Favor of Heaven, born and brought up in the capital. He had been promoted six years before to the post of the sub-perfect in the town on which our refuge was dependent. When coming to take his post, he stopped at the inn, the same one where we were. The house was full, but he had remarked on entering a long pavilion which seemed uninhabited. The landlord, being asked, looked perplexed. He ended by saying that the pavilion had been shut for the last two years. All the travelers had complained of noises and strange visions. Probably mischievous spirits lived there. Favor of Heaven, having lived in the capital, but little believed in phantoms, he found the occasion excellent to establish his reputation in the braving imaginary dangers.  He persisted in the intention of remaining the night alone in the haunted house. He had lights brought, installed himself in a big armchair, and placed across his knees along a heavy sword. Hours passed by, the sonorous noise of the gong struck by the watchman announced. Successively the hours, first of the pig, then of the rat, he grew drowsy. Suddenly he was awakened by the gnashing of teeth. All the lights were out. The darkness, however, was not deep enough to prevent his being able to distinguish everything confusedly. Anguish seized him. His heart beat with violence. His staring eyes were fixed on the door. By the half-open door he perceived a round white mass, the deformed head of a monster, who, appearing little by little, stretched long hands with twisted fingers and claws. Favor of Heaven mechanically raised his weapon, his blood frozen in his veins. He tried to strike the head, whose instinct features were certainly dreadful. Without doubt the blow had struck, for a frightful cry was heard. All the demons of the inferior regions seemed to let loose with this yell. Calls were heard from all sides. The trestled frames of the windows were shaken with violence. The monster gained the door. Favor of Heaven pursued him, and threw him down. His terror was such that he felt he must strike and kill. Hardly had he finished than their enter, rolling from side to side, a little being quite round, brandishing unknown weapons at the end of immurable small hands. The perfect with one blow cut him in two like a watermelon. However, the windows were shaken with growing rage. Unknown beings entered by the door without interruption.  Trembling all over, the man struck right and left, exhausting and panting. A cold perspiration overwhelmed him. He felt his strength gradually giving way, then the cock crowed, at last the coming of the day. Little by little, Grey Dawn designed the trellies of the windows, then the sun suddenly appeared above the horizon and darted its rays across the wrents in the paper. Favor of Heaven felt his heart stand still, on the floor inudated with blood. The bodies lying there had human forms, forms that he knew. This one looked like his second wife, and this one, this little head that had rolled against the foot of the table, he would have sworn that it was his last son. With a mad cry, he threw away his weapon and ran to open the door, though which the sun poured in. An armed crowd was moving in the yard. My family, my family, where is my family? They are all with you in the pavilion. But as they were speaking, they saw with stupor the hair of the young man becoming white, and the wrinkles of age cover his face, while he remained motionless as well as insensible. They drew near, he rolled fainting on the ground, and thus ended the sub-perfect in the silence of the dark hall, where only the little light of the opium lamp was shining. I remained several days without knowledge of anything. When I came to myself, I had bared the sorrow of having killed my whole family in these atrocious circumstances. I resigned my post. I had magnificent tomes built for all those who were killed this fatal night, and since then I smoke without seizing the agreeable drug, in order to fly away from remembrance, which will haunt me until my last day. End of deceiving shadows, read by Chris Caron, Ham Lake, Minnesota. THE HIGHWAY MEN By Lord Dunsony, Tom of the Roads had ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the night. From where he was a man might see the white recumbent sheep and the black outline of the lonely downs, and the gray line of the farther and lonelier downs beyond them, or in hollows far beyond him out of the pitiless wind he might see the gray smoke of hamlets arising from black valleys. But all alike was black to the eyes of Tom, and all the sounds were silence in his ears. Only his soul struggled to slip from the iron chains, and to pass southwards into paradise. And the wind blew and blew. For Tom tonight had not but the wind to ride. They had taken his true black horse on the day when they took from him the green fields and the sky, men's voices and the laughter of women, and had left him alone with chains about his neck to swing in the wind forever. And the wind blew and blew. But the soul of Tom of the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains, and whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards into the iron collar by the wind that blows from paradise from the south. And swinging there by the neck there fell away old sneers from off his lips, and scoffs that he had long since scoffed at God fell from his tongue. And there rotted old bad lusts out of his heart, and from his fingers the stains of deeds that were evil. And they all fell to the ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And when these ill things had all fallen away Tom's soul was clean again, as his early love had found it, a long while since in spring. And it swung up there in the wind with the bones of Tom and with his old torn coat and rusty chains. And the wind blew and blew. And ever and anon the souls of Seplicard, coming from consecrated acres, would go by, beating up wind to paradise past the gallows tree and past the soul of Tom that might not go free.  And the wind blew and blew. Sometimes on gusts of the wind came someone's tears and beat and beat against the iron chains, but could not rust them through. And the wind blew and blew. And every evening all the thoughts that Tom had ever uttered came flocking in from doing their work in the world, the work that may not cease, and sat along the gallows branches and cherubbed to the soul of Tom, the soul that might not go free. All the thoughts he had ever uttered, and the evil thoughts rebuked the soul that bore them because they might not die, and all those that he had uttered the most furtively cherubbed the loudest and the shrillest in the branches all the night. And all the thoughts that Tom had ever thought about himself now pointed at the wet bones and mocked at the old torn coat. But the thoughts that he had had of others were the only companions that his soul had to soothe it in the night as it swung to and fro.  And the wind blew and blew. Paul, archbishop of Aloy and Vance, lay in his white sepulcher of marble, facing full to the southwards, towards Paradise, and over his tomb was sculptured the cross of Christ that his soul might have reposed. No wind howled here as it howled in lonely treetops up upon the downs, but came with gentle breezes, orchard scented, over the lowlands from Paradise, from the southwards, and played about forget-me-nots and grasses in the consecrated land where lay the reposeful round of the sepulcher of Paul, archbishop of Aloy and Vance. Easy it was for a man's soul to pass from such a sepulcher and, flitting low, over remembered fields to come upon the garden lands of Paradise and find eternal ease. And the wind blew and blew. In a tavern of foul repute three men were lapping gin. Their names were Joe and Will, and the gypsy Puglioni. None other names had they, four of whom their fathers were, they had no knowledge, but only dark suspicions. Sin had caressed and stroked their faces often with its paws, but the face of Puglioni's sin had kissed all over the mouth and gin. Their food was robbery and their pastime murder. All of them had incurred the sorrow of God and the enmity of man. They sat at a table with a pack of cards before them, all greasy, with the marks of cheating thumbs, and they whispered to one another over their gin, but so low that the landlord of the tavern at the other end of the room could hear only muffled oaths and knew not by whom they swore or what they said. These three were the staunchest friends that ever God had given unto a man, and he to whom their friendship had been given had nothing else, besides saving some bones that swung in the wind and rain, and an old torn coat and iron chains, and a soul that might not go free. But as the night wore on, the three friends left their gin and stole away, and crept down to that graveyard where rested in his sepulcher, Paul, Archbishop of Alloy and Veance. At the edge of the graveyard, but outside the consecrated ground, they dug a hasty grave, two digging while one watched in the wind and rain, and the worms that crept in the unhallowed ground wandered and waited. And the terrible hour of midnight came upon them with its fears, and found them still beside the place of tombs, and the three friends trembled at the horror of such an hour in such a place and shivered in the wind and drenching rain, but still worked on, and the wind blew and blew. Soon they had finished, and at once they left the hungry grave with all its worms unfed, and went away over the wet fields stealthily, but in haste, leaving the place of tombs behind them in the midnight. And as they went they shivered, and each man as he shivered cursed the rain aloud. And so they came to the spot where they had hidden a ladder and a lantern. There they held long debate whether they should light the lantern or whether they should go without it for fear of the king's man. But in the end it seemed to them better that they should have the light of their lantern and risk being taken by the king's men and hanged, than that they should come suddenly face to face in the darkness with whatever one might come face to face with a little after midnight about the gallows tree. On three roads in England whereon it was not the want of folk to go their ways in safety, travelers tonight went unmolested. But the three friends walking several paces wide of the king's highway approached the gallows tree, and Will carried the lantern and Joe the ladder, but Pugley only carried a great sword wherewith to do the work which must be done. When they came close they saw how bad was the case with Tom, for little remained of that fine figure of a man and nothing at all of his great resolute spirit. Only as they came they thought they heard a whimpering cry like the sound of a thing that was caged and unfree. To and fro, to and fro in the wind swung the bones and the soul of Tom for the sins that he had sinned on the king's highway against the laws of the king. And with shadows and a lantern through the darkness at the peril of their lives came the three friends that his soul had won before it swung in chains. Thus the seeds of Tom's own soul that he had sown all his life had grown into a gallows tree that bore in season iron chains in clusters, while the careless seeds that he had strewn here and there, a kindly jest and a few merry words, had grown into the triple friendship that would not desert his bones. Then the three set the ladder against the tree and Puglione went up with his sword in his right hand, and at the top of it he reached up and began to hack at the neck below the iron collar. Presently the bones and the old coat and the soul of Tom fell down with a rattle, and a moment afterwards his head that had watched so long alone swung clear from the swinging chain. These things Will and Joe gathered up, and Puglione came running down his ladder, and they heaped upon its rungs the terrible remains of their friend, and hastened away wet through with the rain, with the fear of phantoms in their hearts and horror lying before them on the ladder. By two o'clock they were down again in the valley out of the bitter wind, but they went on past the open grave into the graveyard all among the tombs with their lantern and their ladder and the terrible thing upon it which kept their friendship still. Then these three that had robbed the law of its due and proper victim still sinned on for what was still their friend, and levered out the marble slabs from the sacred sepulcher of Paul, Archbishop of Alloy and Vaens, and from it they took the very bones of the Archbishop himself and carried them away to the eager grave that they had left, and put them in and shoveled back the earth. But all that lay on the ladder they placed with a few tears within the great white sepulcher under the cross of Christ, and put back the marble slabs. Hence the soul of Tom, a rising hallowed out of sacred ground, went at dawn down the valley and lingering a little about his mother's cottage and old haunts of childhood, passed on and came to the wide lands beyond the clustered homesteads. There, there met with it all the kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had, and they flew and sang beside it all the way southwards until it last with singing all about it, it came to paradise. But Will and Joe and the gypsy Puglione went back to their gin, and robbed and cheated again in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not that, in their sinful lives, they had sinned one sin at which the angel smiled.