Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 6 (1925-06).djvu/24

 enter the house, for which he was thankful, and he was always paid at once in cash by Nona. At first he had entertained the suspicion that Cass Ledyard was a forger and hence his almost hermitlike existence, until Mr. Roberts of the bank in Middletown had assured him that the money was as good as any the treasury had ever turned out. So a splendid theoretical bubble was burst.

In appearance, Cass Ledyard was rather odd. His great, glittering, deep-sunken eyes, shaded by huge bushy eyebrows, gave to his white, gaunt, somber face a rather fanatical appearance. He was very tall and slightly round-shouldered. He carried himself in a furtive, hang-dog fashion, as if he were always expecting a blow. When he looked up at one, only his eyes moved. Unless absolutely forced to, he seldom turned his head. His mouth was covered by a thick, bushy, uncared-for beard and his hair was so long it reached almost to his shoulders. Add to this the fact that his head was rather huge, and it can be imagined that he presented a rather grotesque appearance. He always dressed in black, which accentuated the sallow color of his face and the wildness of his habitual expression.

"The only difference between Mrs. Cooley and Cass Ledyard," declared York Sills, "is that she went crazy after living in 'The Castle' and Ledyard was crazy before he moved in."

"A man would have to be insane," asserted Sportsly, "to even think of living on Black Hill."

"It must be terrible for his daughter," added York Sills.

Nona Ledyard was beautiful in the fullest sense of the word; a dark, languid beauty that made one think of the paintings of old Italian masters. There must have been a trace of Latin blood in her, for all the beauty of southern Europe seemed reflected in her sad, rather wistful expression. Her eyes were dark and expressive and were veiled by lashes of wondrous length. Her hair was as black as old ebony and cast off the same soft glittering glow. Her warm red lips served to emphasize the ivory whiteness of her face. She was magnificent. Yet as one gazed into her face one was far more impressed by her tragic, mournful expression than by the beauty and grace of her features.

The people of Dromore pitied her, a girl who should have had every luxury as a setting for her jewel-like loveliness and yet was forced to remain in a weird and shadowy house all alone except for the presence of a grim old man whose very sanity was open to question.

Night after night she used to sit alone in her dark room gazing out on the somber black countryside, a prey to fears and worries too frightful to describe. She lived in abject fear. She was mortally afraid, not of her father, but for her father. The fear that gnawed like a hungry rat at his mind was beginning to grip hers, until life itself became a veritable torture.

Every night, at the darkest hour, her father rushed from the house like a wild animal, his long hair streaming in the breeze as he fled. And always it seemed to Nona as if he were trying to escape from himself. It is frightful when one endeavors to escape from something that is buried in his body as firmly as his very heart. Always when he returned it was nearly dawn, and the wan look of his face was appalling. He was breathless and more colorless than ordinarily, and his dank face was bathed in perspiration. And all through the hours when he was absent, Nona would sit at the window, as cold as ice, as if carved of stone. Every screech of the wind, every crackle of the tree branches, every hoot of an owl threw her into a veritable panic.