Page:Weird Tales v01n02 (1923-04).djvu/173

172 H' LAS' one there, as I tole yuh," she went on, with something like animation, "is Mr. Hay, an' I do feel consid'able proud over his casket—it sure was a happy thought o' mine. See?" She took down the object and held it in the sunlight where I could get a plainer view. "He died jes' las' year."

Mr. Hay's ashes reposed in one of the large square glass perfume bottles such as most druggists carry, and the ornate label thereon had become the painfully true epitaph, "New Mown Hay"!

When I could trust my voice, I inquired, "was he ill long?"

"No; he wa'n't ill a-tall. He left me kinda on'spectedly. However, he always was a great man fer doin' things on th' impulse o' th' moment. We was livin' out on a farm then, an' one day Mr. Hay was cutting' grass in th' orchard an' I 'spose he must 'a' struck a nest o' bees. Anyhow, somethin' started th' team an' they ran 'way an' throwed him off in front o' th' knives, an' th' horses stepped on him a few times an' th' machine finished it up. He cert'inly was most completely dead when we reached him. Hired man tole me he had to gether him up with a rake an' wheelbarrer. Only forty-six years ol', too, he was—mowed down in his prime!

"Well, this is a funny world, ain't it? Some women kin take one man an' keep him 'live an' whole fer fifty or sixty years, but I sure had bad luck with my batch o' husban's. It's a comfort to me, though, that I kin have 'em with me in death, at least. I take down their monnyments ev'ry mornin' an' dust 'em off, an' w'enever I go on th' keers vis'tin' anywheres I pack one in my valeese an' carry it along. When I git it out an' put it up in my room, w'erever I be, I feel right to hum."

I succeeded in getting answers to the rest of my questions in another half hour, and I went on my way, dazed. And though, when my day's work was over, I had no rarebit for supper, yet a vision came to me sometime between the dark and the daylight. I thought I saw myself fall ill and die, and my body was prepared for cremation.

I struggled to escape, to call out, but in vain. They slid me into a kiln and the inexorable heat dissolved flesh, blood and bone. Then some brutal, careless wretch came and swept me up on a dustpan, and put me in a sack and delivered me over to an eager old woman, whose face seemed strangely familiar.

This ghoulish woman bore me away to her home and went to work trying to pack me down in a catsup bottle. It was too small. It seemed to press on my throat. I was choking. I struggled. I shrieked.

And I awoke—to find, thank Heaven, that a large crayon portrait above my bed had fallen down and was now around my neck, and the man in the next room was hammering on the wall with his shoe and shouting and swearing at me.

HAT pictures can be broadcast by radio was proved recently when photographs of President Harding, Vice President Coolidge and Govenor Pinchot of Pensylvania were sent from the Naval Radio Station in Washington, D. C., to a radio receiving station in Philadelphia.