Page:Weird Tales volume 02 number 03.djvu/40



AKE care, Owens," I remember I had said to him, "for mine host tells me that the road hath fallen into bad repute of late: though, truth to tell, 'twas never what one might call well-favored!" And I had laughed, and he with me.

The pair of us had but just returned from the campaign on the peninsula, and, I having some business of a private nature to look to in Bristol, it was decided that the major should proceed to Bath and there await me. Knowing, from the conversation of mine host of the "Woolpack" the previous night, the unsettled state of the highway, I had taken the opportunity of placing my friend on his guard ere he commenced the journey.

"Never fear, John," he had replied carelessly. "I am a soldier, remember, and take no count of common footpads!"

"None-the-less 'tis for you to ride warily, for a blow in the dark is easily struck. Besides, you have my lady's diamonds and those, added to what you yourself carry, form a tempting haul to any knight of the road."

"Never fear," he had said again; "they will not find Howel Owens asleep Farewell till we meet in Bath!"

Mounting, he had waved lightly to me and ridden off, leaving me gazing after him with doubt in my heart, for I liked not the tales I had heard.

And thus it was that on the third day after this, having transacted my business satisfactorily, I found myself struggling blindly against what surely must have been the foulest storm since the creation—or so it seemed to me.



In all truth, 'twas a wretched night. The wind howled and whistled through the naked branches of the trees, which seemed to complain one to the other with great creakings and groanings; the rain drove before it in a beating, soaking deluge, pit-pit-patting on the mud of the road around me; the thunder rolled and growled in the distance, coming gradually nearer and louder till it burst overhead with a reverberating, ear-splitting crash to the accompaniment of blinding flashes of lightning that revealed the whole dreary, sodden landscape.

A truly wild and terrible night, and one that not even a dog would be out in of its own free will. And yet here was