Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/86

74 "What can this mean?" cried Frants, almost wild with excitement. "Who is the mortal enemy to whom he alludes, but whom he does not name? Who has got possession of his house and means? The same person, no doubt, who bound him by an oath to silence, and threatened his life in secret—who proclaimed to the world that he had drowned himself, and caused him to be buried like a suicide. Why was no other acquaintance called to recognise the body? We have no certainty that the drowned man was he. Perhaps his bones lie nearer to us than we imagine. Ha! old master, in my dream I heard you say, 'Seek, and you shall find. Why was I not put into consecrated ground?' Johanna, what do you think about that old lumber-room? There have been some mysterious doings there at midnight; there are some still. That floor is washed while we are sleeping. Before to-morrow's sun can rise, I shall have searched that den of murder from one end to the other."

"Oh, dearest Frants, how wildly you talk! You make me tremble."

But as Frants was determined to go, she sat down by the cradle to watch her sleeping child, while he took a light and proceeded to the workshop. There he seized a hatchet and crowbar, and thus provided with implements he approached the door of the locked chamber. '"The room belongs to me," said he to himself; "who has a right to prevent me from entering it?" To force the door by the aid of the iron crowbar was the work of an instant, and without the slightest hesitation he went in, though it must be confessed he felt a momentary panic. But that wore off immediately, and he began at once to examine the place. Nothing appeared, however, to excite suspicion; there were some sacks of wood in a corner, and he emptied these, almost expecting to see one of them filled with the bones of dead men. But there was no appearance of anything of the kind. The floor appeared to have been recently washed, for it was yet scarcely dry. He then began to take up the boards.

At that moment he heard the handle of the door which led into the neighbouring house turning; holding the hatchet in one hand, and the light high above his head in the other, he put himself in an attitude of defence, while he called out, "Has any one a desire to assist me?"

Presently all was still. Frants put down his light and began hammering at the boards; almost unconsciously he also began to hum aloud an air which his old master used always to sing when he was engaged in finishing any piece of work. But he had not hammered or hummed long before the handle of the door was again turned. This time the door opened, and a tall white figure slowly entered, with an expression of countenance as hellish as if its owner had just come from the abode of evil spirits.

"What, at it again, old man ? Will you go on hammering and nailing till doomsday? Must that song be heard to all eternity?" said a hollow but well-known voice; and Frants recognised with horror the ghastly pale and wild-looking sleep-walker, who, with eyes open, but fixed and glazed, and hair standing on end, had come in his night-gear from his sleeping-chamber.