Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 1 (1926-07).djvu/32

Rh  across the water?" and she screamed and flung herself down in the canoe.

"Low bridge!" called Ewan.

He had seen it more clearly, that great log that lay across this narrower part of the stream from shore to shore, forming a crude bridge. The canoe shot under it and Ewan slowed its progress to look about him.

"Hand me that electric torch, sis. Look! There is our cabin. We're nicely in time. In a few minutes we'll be cozily inside, Bess, so cheer up, girl."

A bit back from the shore, with a cleared space about it, stood a small log cabin that to Bessie Gillespie's eyes looked very inviting in the last palely lingering daylight. With thankful heart, as if she had reached a safe refuge from some vaguely threatening evil, she helped her brother carry their belongings from canoe to cabin.

But even after he had long been asleep, comforted by the hot meal she had prepared, Bessie lay sleepless, thinking against her will of the burning eyes of that strange physician; his inhospitable attitude; his unseen wife who had so longed, in vain, to meet her new neighbors.

As for Ewan, his smoldering resentment against the doctor followed him into his dreams, for he tossed and moaned as he slept. Once he cried aloud: "Poor little thing—I'll help you!" at which his sister shuddered in the night, burdened by premonitions that weighed heavily upon her usually blithe spirit.

well after 10 o'clock one morning about two weeks later when Ewan departed to complete a painting begun several days before. Bessie was occupying herself as usual, putting the cabin, in order for the day. The impression of that first evening had faded somewhat from her mind; if she thought of it momentarily now, it was only to dismiss her unreasoning terror of that night as a thing born of darkness and the chill loneliness of unknown, apparently threatening surroundings.

When she heard a masculine step outside the window to which she was busily tacking mosquito netting, she did not lift her eyes, and was correspondingly startled when a voice not her brother’s addressed her.

"Bitte, Fräulein," murmured a coolly ironical baritone. "Ein Wortchen."

"Oh!" cried out the girl, shrinking back from the window, her thoughts flashing involuntarily to the fact that she was entirely alone in the cabin and Ewan beyond hearing.

"Please!" said Dr. Armitage, urgently. "Don't be startled. I know you are thinking that your brother couldn't hear you if you were to call him—but you wo'’t have to call, I assure you."

Bessie looked at him, this mind-reader, out of plucky hazel eyes, but could not answer. The doctor smiled. At that frank, amused smile all fright left the girl at once, for his face immediately lost its forbidding severity and became so gentle, so appealing, so boyish, that courage flowed warmly back to her heart and brought an answering smile to her own lips.

"It's very unfortunate," argued the doctor as if to himself; and he stood a little distance from the window as if to reassure her; "it's very unfortunate that the other night you took my solicitude for sheer rudeness."

"Solicitude?" murmured Bessie, with ironical emphasis.

Resentful color flowed into her brown cheeks so that they glowed hotly.

"That is what I said, Miss?"