Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/155

Rh have been called "feathered cats," for the owl, cat-like, prowls at night, and steals upon its victim by a quick, fluffy, still swoop or spring. With the silent movements of a spirit, and a voice so super-natural, and with certain associations of time and place, the effect is appalling. As if burned into the brain-tissue with a hot iron, the memory of a certain night experience when but a lad is still fresh and vivid. It was a rural home; sickness had entered at "the witching-time of night." No man around, and the well must stay by the ill; then who should go for the doctor, more than a mile away? Impulsive and sympathetic, I was "the good and brave boy" to volunteer. Not until after midnight was the doctor's house reached, and he was out. Much disappointed that I must return alone, thinking to help the matter, I ventured upon that country-boy expedient known as a "short cut." So the open road was abandoned for a narrow path which led to the old graveyard, which having reached, my timidity began to increase. Cautiously I crossed the stile of the stone-wall, and just as I had entered, the clock in the old church-tower struck one! There was first a startling shock, then a prolonged horror, for the reverberations kept every fibre of my frame in a quivering thrill.



I think the moon was large, and running low, for my shadow which preceded me was frightfully long, while parallel to it, in most forbidding neighborship, lay the dark shadow of a tall Lombardy poplar, as if reflecting some huge monumental shaft. The grave of a sainted mother was near, and a certain sense of her nearness somewhat soothed the fears of that little night waif. I had now got well beyond the saddening shadow of that shaft-like tree, and the exit from the churchyard was but a few steps off, and my courage was beginning to rise, when lo! from out of that dark shaft behind me burst a savage, piercing scream, as it might be of some goblin sentry: