Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/686

 678 and vague hauntings of terror, which began to troop wildly around me, and claim me for their own. Whither had that white face vanished? I kept on asking myself the question again and again. In the first strangeness of the discovery I had flung aside my broken knife, and I now felt an utter and invincible disinclination to rise from that far corner, search for it on the floor, and resume my labours on the door. How suddenly the evening had darkened! Was that a hand which touched my cheek in the dusk? Whose hand? And hush! was not that a whisper—a rustle close beside me? Would the floor creak so loudly unless some one whom I could not see were walking across it?

Above the loud howling of the wind, I heard wild shrieks of demoniac laughter. There were creatures abroad that night, such as the daylight never looked upon. They called me by name—they shouted to me to join them; and far away, along the flinty high-road, I heard more of them coming with a quick tramp. They were mounted on their demon steeds, and they would carry me away with them out of that terrible house, and we should gallop all night with the storm.

Be still ye throbbing pulses! Grant me a moment’s respite—give me time for one last prayer, ere sense and reason desert me altogether!

Louder and louder came the tramp of the horses: no demon steeds those, but veritable animals of flesh and blood. A minute of terrible suspense, and then I heard a loud knocking at the front door, and the confused sound of several voices all talking at once. The first knock dissipated all those weird cobweb fancies of an over-wrought brain, which had held me powerless but a moment before. I sprang to the window, flung open the casement, and cried aloud for help. I know not what I said, but next moment, as it seemed to me, I saw myself surrounded by half-a-dozen kindly faces, and felt that I was safe.

My rescuers proved to be a party of jovial farmers, returning from a distant fair. In a few brief sentences, I gave them an outline of my story—a story which received a ghastly confirmation when they entered the pedlar’s room. Both Jacoby and the treacherous landlord lay dead—the latter in a corner of the room, close to an overturned water-jug, with a bullet through his brain; holding in one hand a long, sharp bowie-knife, and a dark lantern in the other. Jacoby was in the bed, in a half-sitting posture, stabbed to the heart; holding, firmly clenched in one hand, the pistol with which, in the one last moment granted him on earth, he had wrought such swift vengeance on his murderer. When we entered the room the face of Jacoby was invisible—hidden from us by the loose, dimity curtain, which hung from the head of the bed; and which the wind, when it burst open the badly-secured casement, and rushed into the room, had lifted up, and flung tenderly over the dead man’s face, as if in reverent pity at so sad a spectacle. The bed stood just behind the angle of the entrance into the room; and from the position of the body, the face, when uncovered, was fully reflected in the oval glass, which stood on the dressing-table, nearly opposite the foot of the bed. A further examination revealed that both the pedlar’s box and pockets had been rifled of their contents. This, evidently, could not have been the work of the landlord; his career had been cut short too soon for that, whatever his ultimate intentions might have been. The robbery was, therefore, set down as the work of the mulatto woman and the young savage, and steps were at once taken to procure their arrest; which desirable consummation was effected some three weeks later at Liverpool, as they were about to embark for Australia. Some of the property of the murdered man was found in their possession. The woman’s version of the affair was as follows:

She stated, that she was awakened sometime in the night by a loud cry of “Murder!” quickly followed by a pistol-shot, and a heavy fall. That being too frightened to get out of bed, she lay trembling and listening for more than an hour, after which she summoned sufficient courage to creep stealthily out of the house, and make her way to the loft over the stable, where the young savage slept; that together they had, after a time, ventured up-stairs, where they found both Jacoby and the landlord dead. This must have occurred while I lay insensible in the room. That, thereupon, they had loaded themselves with the property of the dead man, and absconded together. As there was no evidence to prove any complicity on their part in the murder, their version of the affair was taken as the correct one, and punishment meted out to them accordingly.

I may just say, in conclusion, that it was afterwards discovered by the police that the landlord of the lonely inn was a notorious forger of whom they had long been in search—a man originally of some education and breeding, but whose numerous misdeeds had at length made his ordinary haunts so hot for him, that he found it advisable to withdraw himself for a year or two from public notice, and bury his talents in the distant wilds of Cornwall. T. S.

old adage, which holds good under so many varied circumstances, of truth being stranger than fiction, was never better exemplified than in the numerous controversies that have arisen about the growth of fish, and which have been carried on with great vigour by the learned in such matters. The wars of the naturalists have been as bitter and prolonged as those other wars promoted by kings for the purpose of conquest or the acquisition of territory; and great or small as uninterested people may deem these intellectual battles, some of them are of more than common interest—particularly those fought under the sign of Pisces. There have been the parr, the grilse, and the salmon growth controversies in connection with the Salmonidæ; and there has been a fierce sprat and herring controversy, as well as a hot contest about the transformation of crabs, the natural history of eels, the food of salmon; while the loves of the Gadidæ have also afforded matter for disputation. There is so little known concerning the natural history of fish and crustacea,