Page:The Black Cat v06no11 (1901-08).djvu/16



ACOB HAWKSLEY was a chemist, having succeeded to the occupation as an inheritance. The Hawksleys had lived and labored at the same location in Salem, for generations, and before that, tradition said, had compounded drugs in the city of London, in the days before the Puritans left England for conscience sake. The quaint old Hawksley shop and dwelling stood, and part of it still stands, near Salem's water front. Beneath its dingy paint and planking, though remodelled many times, it still retains the stout framework of its colonial days. A generation ago even the old, illegible sign yet hung above its doorway.

Jacob Hawksley, the last of his line, had no assistant and rarely a customer, and, indeed, none but strangers dared to enter his low-ceiled, dingy shop in the early "thirties," when superstition was not so veiled as now, for rumor had woven a web of weirdest horror about the old man and his habitation. Not that he was so very old—three score, perhaps, with a smooth, benignant face, and a shrewd smile for those who feared him most. But tradesmen served him only because they dared not refuse, children fled from him, and strangers, who were mostly mariners, were warned to give his shop a roomy berth.

If but half the wonders related of the round-shouldered, studious-looking little man had been true, they were enough to account for the horror in which he was held, while their foundation on facts was undeniable. Some people said, if any living thing crossed his threshold, it never re-appeared. The grocer opposite, who served the chemist with trembling, told of scores of stray cats and dogs enticed into Hawksley's shop, but they were always homeless, miserable creatures. Ill-natured persons hinted