Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 1 (1926-07).djvu/31

30 doctor, advancing beyond his threshold as he spoke.

Behind him came again that suggestive rustling, as of autumn dry leaves, stirred by some creeping

“As long as I find good subjects for my brush,” snapped Ewan.

The doctor had followed brother and sister as they went down the rough log steps. His left hand went to his heart rigidly, and with clenched right fist he smote the wooden railing such a blow that the impact must have bruised his hand, which he now turned, opened, bent his gaze upon as if half dazed by the pain.

“Ewan, let us hurry!” begged Bessie in a tremulous, low whisper. “I am terribly frightened. He—he must be out of his mind.”

“Right you are, Bess,” her brother agreed. “Evidently the Amity Dam people got the thing mixed up; it isn’t the wife who’s insane, hut the husband. Fine neighbors they’ll be,” he added truculently, as he reached the canoe and held it for Bessie to enter.

There was the sound of voices; low, restrained, but coming clearly to the ears of the two voyagers as they pushed off from the shore. One was a woman’s voice; light, lilting, but pulsing with an undertone of significance that came ominously to Bessie, who could not help listening.

“Let me go. Dale! I—I mean to speak to our new neighbors,” pleaded the feminine voice wheedlingly. “It is not nice that you should give them such a poor opinion of you. After all, we’ll be neighbors.”

The doctor’s voice, heavy also with dark meaning, pounded against the girl’s ear-drums, setting her to shuddering involuntarily, so terribly did the hidden import of his words affect her.

“Go inside, Gretel. At once! You know why you must Night has fallen; the sun set but just now. Inside, I tell you!”

The woman’s voice, raised, resentful, yet shrilly sweet: “Yes—it is sunset—and they have gone—and I so wanted”

“Yes, I think I understand, but I am here to take care of just that. Their cabin, Gretel, is on the other side of the stream,” said the man’s baritone heavily, “for which I render thanks to your Maker.”

“The water—keeps running—so fast! It draws a line between us and them,” wailed the woman’s voice, plaintively.

“Thank God for that, Gretel, if you can. If not tonight, you may, tomorrow,” stud the doctor’s voice fervently. “And now, come in, I tell you,” sternly. “Come, Gretel; I insist.”

A woman’s sobs cut sharply on the still night air. There was a scuffing sound as of a struggle. There was an outcry, smothered suddenly: “No! No, Dale, no! ” Then the heavy thud of the great oaken door. Silence. Silence that palpitated with the menace of the unknown.

“Ewan, there’s something terribly strange about those two!” cried Bessie, pushing her paddle agitatedly into the water. “I think they’re both crazy.”

“Nonsense, sis! It’s the man who’s touched. As for the woman”—he hesitated—“she has my deepest sympathy. Poor thing, all alone up here in these woods, cut off from normal social intercourse with other human beings! Whatever she is, I’m sorry for her.”

The canoe glided along in the dusk between shadowy shores that crowded dark and ominous on either hand.

“I don’t know whether I am going to like this or not,” shivered the girl, timorous eyes roving from one side to the otter. “I feel as if any minute something would jump out upon us, Ewan. Oh, what’s that,