Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/83

Rh doing at so late an hour. At that moment the light disappeared, and all became as still as death.

"I must have been mistaken," thought Frants, as he again tried to find the door he had at first sought. In spite of himself, a dread of some evil, or of something supernatural, seemed to haunt him, and the image of his old master, who was drowned, appeared before him in that dark workshop where they had spent so many cheerful hours together. At last he found the door, and retired as quickly as possible to his chamber, where his wife and child were both fast asleep. He, too, at length fell asleep, but he was restless in his slumbers, and disturbed by strange dreams. In the course of the night he dreamed that his wife's uncle, Mr. Flok, stood before him, and said, "Why was I not placed in my coffin?—why was I not laid in a Christian burying-ground? Seek and you will find. Destroy the curse before it destroys you also!"

In the morning, when he awoke, he looked so pale and ill that Johanna was quite alarmed; but he did not like to frighten her by telling her his dreams; and, indeed, he was ashamed at the impression they had made upon himself, for notwithstanding all the confidence he had expressed in coming to the house, he could not help feeling nervous and uncomfortable.

Nor did the unpleasant sensation wear off; his gay spirits vanished, and he was also unhappy because the time was approaching when the purchase-money for the house would become due, and the settlement of the old man's affairs, to which he had looked forward in expectation of obtaining his wife's inheritance, seemed to be as far off as ever. He found it difficult to meet the small daily expenses of his family, and he feared the threatening future. "'Seek and you will find!'" he repeated to himself. "'Destroy the curse before it destroys you!' What curse? I begin to fear that there really is some evil doom connected with this house."

It was also a very unaccountable circumstance, that however often he scratched out the mysterious inscription from the wall, "The Doomed House," it appeared again next day in characters as fresh and as red as ever. His health began to give way under all his anxiety, and the child also became ill. One evening he had been taking a solitary walk to a spot which had now a kind of morbid fascination for him—the dead-house for the drowned—and when he returned home he found Johanna weeping by the cradle of her suffering infant.

"You were right," he exclaimed. "We were happier in our humble garret than in this ill-fated house. Would that we had remained there! Tell me, Johanna, of what are you thinking? Has the doctor been here? What does he say of our dear little one?"

"If it should get worse towards night, yonder lies our last hope," she replied, pointing towards the table.

Frants took up the prescription, and gazed on the incomprehensible Latin words as if therein he would have read his fate. The tears stood in his eyes.

"And to-morrow," said Johanna—"to-morrow will be a day of misery. Have you any means of paying Mr. Stork?"

"None whatever! But that is a small evil compared to this," he