THE NIGHT-DOINGS AT 'DEADMAN'S'

THE NIGHT-DOINGS AT 'DEADMAN'S'
by Ambrose Bierce

A Story that is Untrue

IT was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond. Clear nights have a trick of be- ing keen. In darkness you may be cold and not know it; when you see, you suffer. This night was bright enough to bite like a serpent. The moon was moving mysteriously along behind the giant pines crowning the South Mountain, striking a cold sparkle from the crusted snow, and bringing out against the black west and ghostly outlines of the Coast Range, beyond which lay the invisible Pa- cific. The snow had piled itself, in the open spaces along the bottom of the gulch, into long ridges that seemed to heave, and into hills that appeared to toss and scatter spray. The spray was sunlight, twice reflected: dashed once from the moon, once from the snow.
In this snow many of the shanties of the aban- doned mining camp were obliterated (a sailor might have said they had gone down), and at irregular in- tervals it had overtopped the tall trestles which had once supported a river called a flume; for, of course, 'flume' is flumen. Among the advantages of which the mountains cannot deprive the gold-hunter is the privilege of speaking Latin. He says of his dead neighbour, 'He has gone up the flume.' This is not a bad way to say, 'His life has returned to the Fountain of Life.'
While putting on its armour against the assaults of the wind, this snow had neglected no coign of van- tage. Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions; where it can get a foothold it makes a stand; where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall. The devious old road, hewn out of the mountainside, was full of it. Squad- ron upon squadron had struggled to escape by this line, when suddenly pursuit had ceased. A more desolate and dreary spot than Deadman's Gulch in a winter midnight it is impossible to imagine. Yet Mr. Hiram Beeson elected to live there, the sole inhabitant.
Away up the side of the North Mountain his little pine-log shanty projected from its single pane of glass a long, thin beam of light, and looked not altogether unlike a black beetle fastened to the hillside with a bright new pin. Within it sat Mr. Beeson himself, before a roaring fire, staring into its hot heart as if he had never before seen such a thing in all his life. He was not a comely man. He was grey; he was ragged and slovenly in his attire; his face was wan and haggard; his eyes were too bright. As to his age, if one had attempted to guess it, one might have said forty-seven, then corrected himself and said seventy-four. He was really twenty- eight. Emaciated he was; as much, perhaps, as he dared be, with a needy undertaker at Bentley's Flat and a new and enterprising coroner at Sonora. Pov- erty and zeal are an upper and a nether millstone. It is dangerous to make a third in that kind of sandwich.
As Mr. Beeson sat there, with his ragged elbows on his ragged knees, his lean jaws buried in his lean hands, and with no apparent intention of going to bed, he looked as if the slightest movement would tumble him to pieces. Yet during the last hour he had winked no fewer than three times.
There was a sharp rapping at the door. A rap at that time of night and in that weather might have surprised an ordinary mortal who had dwelt two years in the gulch without seeing a human face, and could not fail to know that the country was impass- able; but Mr. Beeson did not so much as pull his eyes out of the coals. And even when the door was pushed open he only shrugged a little more closely into himself, as one does who is expecting some- thing that he would rather not see. You may observe this movement in women when, in a mortuary chapel, the coffin is borne up the aisle behind them.
But when a long old man in a blanket overcoat, his head tied up in a handkerchief and nearly his entire face in a muffler, wearing green goggles and with a complexion of glittering whiteness where it could be seen, strode silently into the room, laying a hard, gloved hand on Mr. Beeson's shoulder, the lat- ter so far forgot himself as to look up with an ap- pearance of no small astonishment; whomever he may have been expecting, he had evidently not counted on meeting anyone like this. Nevertheless, the sight of this unexpected guest produced in Mr. Beeson the following sequence: a feeling of aston- ishment; a sense of gratification; a sentiment of pro- found good will. Rising from his seat, he took the knotty hand from his shoulder, and shook it up and down with a fervour quite unaccountable; for in the old man's aspect was nothing to attract, much to repel. However, attraction is too general a property for repulsion to be without it. The most attractive object in the world is the face we instinctively cover with a cloth. When it becomes still more attractive --fascinating--we put seven feet of earth above it.
'Sir,' said Mr. Beeson, releasing the old man's hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack, 'it is an extremely disagreeable night. Pray be seated; I am very glad to see you.'
Mr. Beeson spoke with an easy good breeding that one would hardly have expected, considering all things. Indeed, the contrast between his appear- ance and his manner was sufficiently surprising to be one of the commonest of social phenomena in the mines. The old man advanced a step toward the fire, glowing cavernously in the green goggles. Mr. Beeson resumed.
'You bet your life I am!'
Mr. Beeson's elegance was not too refined; it had made reasonable concessions to local taste. He paused a moment, letting his eyes drop from the muffled head of his guest, down along the row of mouldy buttons confining the blanket overcoat, to the greenish cowhide boots powdered with snow, which had begun to melt and run along the floor in little rills. He took an inventory of his guest, and ap- peared satisfied. Who would not have been? Then he continued:
'The cheer I can offer you is, unfortunately, in keeping with my surroundings; but I shall esteem myself highly favoured if it is your pleasure to partake of it, rather than seek better at Bentley's Flat.'
With a singular refinement of hospitable humil- ity Mr. Beeson spoke as if a sojourn in his warm cabin on such a night, as compared with walking four- teen miles up to the throat in snow with a cutting crust, would be an intolerable hardship. By way of reply, his guest unbuttoned the blanket overcoat. The host laid fresh fuel on the fire, swept the hearth with the tail of a wolf, and added:
'But I think you'd better skedaddle.'
The old man took a seat by the fire, spreading his broad soles to the heat without removing his hat. In the mines the hat is seldom removed except when the boots are. Without further remark Mr. Beeson also seated himself in a chair which had been a bar- rel, and which, retaining much of its original char- acter, seemed to have been designed with a view to preserving his dust if it should please him to crumble. For a moment there was silence; then, from somewhere among the pines, came the snarling yelp of a coyote; and simultaneously the door rattled in its frame. There was no other connection between the two incidents than that the coyote has an aver- sion to storms, and the wind was rising; yet there seemed somehow a kind of supernatural conspiracy between the two, and Mr. Beeson shuddered with a vague sense of terror. He recovered himself in a moment and again addressed his guest.
'There are strange doings here. I will tell you everything, and then if you decide to go I shall hope to accompany you over the worst of the way; as far as where Baldy Peterson shot Ben Hike--I dare say you know the place.'
The old man nodded emphatically, as intimating not merely that he did, but that he did indeed.
'Two years ago,' began Mr. Beeson, 'I, with two companions, occupied this house; but when the rush to the Flat occurred we left, along with the rest. In ten hours the gulch was deserted. That evening, however, I discovered I had left behind me a val- uable pistol (that is it) and returned for it, passing the night here alone, as I have passed every night since. I must explain that a few days before we left, our Chinese domestic had the misfortune to die while the ground was frozen so hard that it was im- possible to dig a grave in the usual way. So, on the day of our hasty departure, we cut through the floor there, and gave him such burial as we could. But before putting him down I had the extremely bad taste to cut off his pigtail and spike it to that beam above his grave, where you may see it at this mo- ment, or, preferably, when warmth has given you leisure for observation.
'I stated, did I not, that the Chinaman came to his death from natural causes? I had, of course, noth- ing to do with that, and returned through no irresist- ible attraction, or morbid fascination, but only be- cause I had forgotten a pistol. That is clear to you, is it not, sir?'
The visitor nodded gravely. He appeared to be a man of few words, if any. Mr. Beeson continued:
'According to the Chinese faith, a man is like a kite: he cannot go to heaven without a tail. Well, to shorten this tedious story--which, however, I thought it my duty to relate--on that night, while I was here alone and thinking of anything but him, that Chinaman came back for his pigtail.
'He did not get it.'
At this point Mr. Beeson relapsed into blank si- lence. Perhaps he was fatigued by the unwonted exercise of speaking; perhaps he had conjured up a memory that demanded his undivided attention. The wind was now fairly abroad, and the pines along the mountainside sang with singular distinctness. The narrator continued:
'You say you do not see much in that, and I must confess I do not myself.
'But he keeps coming!'
There was another long silence, during which both stared into the fire without the movement of a limb. Then Mr. Beeson broke out, almost fiercely, fixing his eyes on what he could see of the impassive face of his auditor:
'Give it him? Sir, in this matter I have no inten- tion of troubling anyone for advice. You will par- don me, I am sure'--here he became singularly persuasive--'but I have ventured to nail that pig- tail fast, and have assumed that somewhat onerous obligation of guarding it. So it is quite impossible to act on your considerate suggestion.
'Do you play me for a Modoc?'
Nothing could exceed the sudden ferocity with which he thrust this indignant remonstrance into the ear of his guest. It was as if he had struck him on the side of the head with a steel gauntlet. It was a protest, but it was a challenge. To be mistaken for a coward--to be played for a Modoc: these two ex- pressions are one. Sometimes it is a Chinaman. Do you play me for a Chinaman? is a question frequently addressed to the ear of the suddenly dead.
Mr. Beeson's buffet produced no effect, and after a moment's pause, during which the wind thundered in the chimney like the sound of clods upon a coffin, he resumed:
'But, as you say, it is wearing me out. I feel that the life of the last two years has been a mis- take--a mistake that corrects itself; you see how. The grave! No; there is no one to dig it. The ground is frozen, too. But you are very welcome. You may say at Bentley's--but that is not important. It was very tough to cut; they braid silk into their pig- tails. Kwaagh.'
Mr. Beeson was speaking with his eyes shut, and he wandered. His last word was a snore. A moment later he drew a long breath, opened his eyes with an effort, made a single remark, and fell into a deep sleep. What he said was this:
'They are swiping my dust!'
Then the aged stranger, who had not uttered one word since his arrival, arose from his seat and de- liberately laid off his outer clothing, looking as angular in his flannels as the late Signorina Festo- razzi, an Irish woman, six feet in height, and weigh- ing fifty-six pounds, who used to exhibit herself in her chemise to the people of San Francisco. He then crept into one of the 'bunks,' having first placed a revolver in easy reach, according to the custom of the country. This revolver he took from a shelf, and it was the one which Mr. Beeson had mentioned as that for which he had returned to the gulch two years before.
In a few moments Mr. Beeson awoke, and seeing that his guest had retired he did likewise. But be- fore doing so he approached the long, plaited wisp of pagan hair and gave it a powerful tug, to assure himself that it was fast and firm. The two beds-- mere shelves covered with blankets not overclean-- faced each other from opposite sides of the room, the little square trap-door that had given access to the Chinaman's grave being midway between. This, by the way, was crossed by a double row of spike- heads. In his resistance to the supernatural, Mr. Beeson had not disdained the use of material precautions.
The fire was now low, the flames burning bluely and petulantly, with occasional flashes, projecting spectral shadows on the walls--shadows that moved mysteriously about, now dividing, now unit- ing. The shadow of the pendent queue, however, kept moodily apart, near the roof at the farther end of the room, looking like a note of admiration. The song of the pines outside had now risen to the dignity of a triumphal hymn. In the pauses the silence was dreadful.
It was during one of these intervals that the trap in the floor began to lift. Slowly and steadily it rose, and slowly and steadily rose the swaddled head of the old man in the bunk to observe it. Then, with a clap that shook the house to its foundation, it was thrown clean back, where it lay with its unsightly spikes pointing threateningly upward. Mr. Beeson awoke, and without rising, pressed his fingers into his eyes. He shuddered; his teeth chattered. His guest was now reclining on one elbow, watching the proceedings with the goggles that glowed like lamps.
Suddenly a howling gust of wind swooped down the chimney, scattering ashes and smoke in all di- rections, for a moment obscuring everything. When the fire-light again illuminated the room there was seen, sitting gingerly on the edge of a stool by the hearth-side, a swarthy little man of prepossessing appearance and dressed with faultless taste, nodding to the old man with a friendly and engaging smile.
'From San Francisco, evidently,' thought Mr. Bee- son, who having somewhat recovered from his fright was groping his way to a solution of the evening's events.
But now another actor appeared upon the scene. Out of the square black hole in the middle of the floor protruded the head of the departed Chinaman, his glassy eyes turned upward in their angular slits and fastened on the dangling queue above with a look of yearning unspeakable. Mr. Beeson groaned, and again spread his hands upon his face. A mild odour of opium pervaded the place. The phantom, clad only in a short blue tunic quilted and silken but covered with grave-mould, rose slowly, as if pushed by a weak spiral spring. Its knees were at the level of the floor, when with a quick upward impulse like the silent leaping of a flame it grasped the queue with both hands, drew up its body and took the tip in its horrible yellow teeth. To this it clung in a seeming frenzy, grimacing ghastly, surging and plunging from side to side in its efforts to disengage its property from the beam, but uttering no sound. It was like a corpse artificially convulsed by means of a galvanic battery. The contrast between its su- perhuman activity and its silence was no less than hideous!
Mr. Beeson cowered in his bed. The swarthy lit- tle gentleman uncrossed his legs, beat an impatient tattoo with the toe of his boot and consulted a heavy gold watch. The old man sat erect and quietly laid hold of the revolver.
Bang!
Like a body cut from the gallows the Chinaman plumped into the black hole below, carrying his tail in his teeth. The trap-door turned over, shutting down with a snap. The swarthy little gentleman from San Francisco sprang nimbly from his perch, caught something in the air with his hat, as a boy catches a butterfly, and vanished into the chimney as if drawn up by suction.
From away somewhere in the outer darkness floated in through the open door a faint, far cry--a long, sobbing wail, as of a child death-strangled in the desert, or a lost soul borne away by the Adver- sary. It may have been the coyote.
In the early days of the following spring a party of miners on their way to new diggings passed along the gulch, and straying through the deserted shanties found in one of them the body of Hiram Beeson, stretched upon a bunk, with a bullet hole through the heart. The ball had evidently been fired from the opposite side of the room, for in one of the oaken beams overhead was a shallow blue dint, where it had struck a knot and been deflected downward to the breast of its victim. Strongly attached to the same beam was what appeared to be an end of a rope of braided horsehair, which had been cut by the bullet in its passage to the knot. Nothing else of interest was noted, excepting a suit of mouldy and incongru- ous clothing, several articles of which were after- ward identified by respectable witnesses as those in which certain deceased citizen's of Deadman's had been buried years before. But it is not easy to under- stand how that could be, unless, indeed, the gar- ments had been worn as a disguise by Death himself --which is hardly credible.

THE MOONLIT ROAD

THE MOONLIT ROAD
by Ambrose Bierce

1: Statement of Joel Hetman, Jr.

I AM the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated
and of sound health--with many other advantages usually valued by those
having them and coveted by those who have them not--I sometimes think
that I should be less un- happy if they had been denied me, for then the
contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continually
demanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the need
of effort I might sometimes forget the sombre secret ever baffling the
conjecture that it compels.
I am the only child of Joel and Julia Hetman. The one was a
well-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplished
woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to have
been a jealous and exacting devotion. The family home was a few miles
from Nash- ville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built dwell- ing of no
particular order of architecture, a little way off the road, in a park
of trees and shrubbery.
At the time of which I write I was nineteen years old, a student at
Yale. One day I received a tele- gram from my father of such urgency
that in com- pliance with its unexplained demand I left at once for
home. At the railway station in Nashville a dis- tant relative awaited
me to apprise me of the reason for my recall: my mother had been
barbarously murdered--why and by whom none could conjec- ture, but the
circumstances were these.
My father had gone to Nashville, intending to re- turn the next
afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand,
so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his
testimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey and
not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly
defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an
angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and
saw in the darkness, in- distinctly, the figure of a man, which
instantly dis- appeared among the trees of the lawn. A hasty pur- suit
and brief search of the grounds in the belief that the trespasser was
some one secretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, he entered at
the un- locked door and mounted the stairs to my mother's chamber. Its
door was open, and stepping into black darkness he fell headlong over
some heavy object on the floor. I may spare myself the details; it was
my poor mother, dead of strangulation by human hands!
Nothing had been taken from the house, the serv- ants had heard no
sound, and excepting those ter- rible finger-marks upon the dead woman's
throat-- dear God! that I might forget them!--no trace of the assassin
was ever found.
I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who, naturally,
was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he now
fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his atten- tion,
yet anything--a footfall, the sudden closing of a door--aroused in him a
fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any small
surprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale,
then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose he
was what is called a 'nervous wreck.' As to me, I was younger then than
now--there is much in that. Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every
wound. Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land! Un-
acquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I
could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.
One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and I
walked home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above the
eastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn still- ness of a
summer night; our footfalls and the cease- less song of the katydids
were the only sound, aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart
the road, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white.
As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow,
and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my
arm, saying, hardly above his breath:
'God! God! what is that?'
'I hear nothing,' I replied.
'But see--see!' he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.
I said: 'Nothing is there. Come, father, let us go in--you are ill.'
He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the
centre of the illuminated road- way, staring like one bereft of sense.
His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly
distressing. I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my
existence. Presently he began to re- tire backward, step by step, never
for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw. I
turned half round to follow, but stood ir- resolute. I do not recall any
feeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation.
It seemed as if an icy wind had touched my face and enfolded my body
from head to foot; I could feel the stir of it in my hair.
At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenly
streamed from an upper window of the house: one of the servants,
awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and in
obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp.
When I turned to look for my father he was gone, and in all the years
that have passed no whisper of his fate has come across the borderland
of conjecture from the realm of the unknown.

2: Statement of Caspar Grattan
To-day I am said to live, to-morrow, here in this room, will lie a
senseless shape of clay that all too long was I. If anyone lift the
cloth from the face of that unpleasant thing it will be in gratification
of a mere morbid curiosity. Some, doubtless, will go further and
inquire, 'Who was he?' In this writing I supply the only answer that I
am able to make-- Caspar Grattan. Surely, that should be enough. The
name has served my small need for more than twenty years of a life of
unknown length. True, I gave it to myself, but lacking another I had the
right. In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even
when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers,
which also seem inadequate distinctions.
One day, for illustration, I was passing along a street of a city,
far from here, when I met two men in uniform, one of whom, half pausing
and looking curiously into my face, said to his companion, 'That man
looks like 767.' Something in the number seemed familiar and horrible.
Moved by an uncon- trollable impulse, I sprang into a side street and
ran until I fell exhausted in a country lane.
I have never forgotten that number, and always it comes to memory
attended by gibbering obscenity, peals of joyless laughter, the clang of
iron doors. So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a
number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both.
What wealth!
Of him who shall find this paper I must beg a little consideration.
It is not the history of my life; the knowledge to write that is denied
me. This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memo- ries,
some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread,
others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with
inter- spaces blank and black--witch-fires glowing still and red in a
great desolation.
Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a last look landward
over the course by which I came. There are twenty years of footprints
fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through
poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one staggering beneath a
burden--
   Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.
Ah, the poet's prophecy of Me--how admirable, how dreadfully
admirable!
Backward beyond the beginning of this via do- lorosa--this epic of
suffering with episodes of sin --I see nothing clearly; it comes out of
a cloud. I know that it spans only twenty years, yet I am an old man.
One does not remember one's birth--one has to be told. But with me
it was different; life came to me full-handed and dowered me with all my
facul- ties and powers. Of a previous existence I know no more than
others, for all have stammering intima- tions that may be memories and
may be dreams. I know only that my first consciousness was of ma- turity
in body and mind--a consciousness accepted without surprise or
conjecture. I merely found myself walking in a forest, half-clad,
footsore, unutterably weary and hungry. Seeing a farmhouse, I approached
and asked for food, which was given me by one who inquired my name. I
did not know, yet knew that all had names. Greatly embarrassed, I
retreated, and night coming on, lay down in the forest and slept.
The next day I entered a large town which I shall not name. Nor
shall I recount further incidents of the life that is now to end--a life
of wandering, always and everywhere haunted by an overmaster- ing sense
of crime in punishment of wrong and of terror in punishment of crime.
Let me see if I can reduce it to narrative.
I seem once to have lived near a great city, a prosperous planter,
married to a woman whom I loved and distrusted. We had, it sometimes
seems, one child, a youth of brilliant parts and promise. He is at all
times a vague figure, never clearly drawn, frequently altogether out of
the picture.
One luckless evening it occurred to me to test my wife's fidelity in
a vulgar, commonplace way fa- miliar to everyone who has acquaintance
with the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, tell- ing
my wife that I should be absent until the follow- ing afternoon. But I
returned before daybreak and went to the rear of the house, purposing to
enter by a door with which I had secretly so tampered that it would seem
to lock, yet not actually fasten. As I approached it, I heard it gently
open and close, and saw a man steal away into the darkness. With mur-
der in my heart, I sprang after him, but he had vanished without even
the bad luck of identification. Sometimes now I cannot even persuade
myself that it was a human being.
Crazed with jealousy and rage, blind and bestial with all the
elemental passions of insulted manhood, I entered the house and sprang
up the stairs to the door of my wife's chamber. It was closed, but
having tampered with its lock also, I easily entered, and despite the
black darkness soon stood by the side of her bed. My groping hands told
me that although disarranged it was unoccupied.
'She is below,' I thought, 'and terrified by my entrance has evaded
me in the darkness of the hall.' With the purpose of seeking her I
turned to leave the room, but took a wrong direction--the right one! My
foot struck her, cowering in a corner of the room. Instantly my hands
were at her throat, stifling a shriek, my knees were upon her struggling
body; and there in the darkness, without a word of accusa- tion or
reproach, I strangled her till she died! There ends the dream. I have
related it in the past tense, but the present would be the fitter form,
for again and again the sombre tragedy re-enacts itself in my
consciousness--over and over I lay the plan, I suffer the confirmation,
I redress the wrong. Then all is blank; and afterward the rains beat
against the grimy windowpanes, or the snows fall upon my scant attire,
the wheels rattle in the squalid streets where my life lies in poverty
and mean employment. If there is ever sunshine I do not recall it; if
there are birds they do not sing.
There is another dream, another vision of the night. I stand among
the shadows in a moonlit road. I am aware of another presence, but whose
I cannot rightly determine. In the shadow of a great dwelling I catch
the gleam of white garments; then the figure of a woman confronts me in
the road--my mur- dered wife! There is death in the face; there are
marks upon the throat. The eyes are fixed on mine with an infinite
gravity which is not reproach, nor hate, nor menace, nor anything less
terrible than recognition. Before this awful apparition I retreat in
terror--a terror that is upon me as I write. I can no longer rightly
shape the words. See! they--
Now I am calm, but truly there is no more to tell: the incident ends
where it began--in darkness and in doubt.
Yes, I am again in control of myself: 'the captain of my soul.' But
that is not respite; it is another stage and phase of expiation. My
penance, constant in de- gree, is mutable in kind: one of its variants
is tran- quillity. After all, it is only a life-sentence. 'To Hell for
life'--that is a foolish penalty: the culprit chooses the duration of
his punishment. To-day my term expires.
To each and all, the peace that was not mine.

3: Statement of the Late Julia Hetman, through the Medium Bayrolles
I had retired early and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful
sleep, from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is,
I think, a com- mon experience in that other, earlier life. Of its
unmeaning character, too, I was entirely persuaded, yet that did not
banish it. My husband, Joel Het- man, was away from home; the servants
slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions;
they had never before distressed me. Nevertheless, the strange terror
grew so insupport- able that conquering my reluctance to move I sat up
and lit the lamp at my bedside. Contrary to my expectation this gave me
no relief; the light seemed rather an added danger, for I reflected that
it would shine out under the door, disclosing my presence to whatever
evil thing might lurk outside. You that are still in the flesh, subject
to horrors of the imagi- nation, think what a monstrous fear that must
be which seeks in darkness security from malevolent existences of the
night. That is to spring to close quarters with an unseen enemy--the
strategy of despair!
Extinguishing the lamp I pulled the bedclothing about my head and
lay trembling and silent, unable to shriek, forgetful to pray. In this
pitiable state I must have lain for what you call hours--with us there
are no hours, there is no time.
At last it came--a soft, irregular sound of footfalls on the stairs!
They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as of something that did not see
its way; to my dis- ordered reason all the more terrifying for that, as
the approach of some blind and mindless malevo- lence to which is no
appeal. I even thought that I must have left the hall lamp burning and
the grop- ing of this creature proved it a monster of the night. This
was foolish and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light, but
what would you have? Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal
witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are
unrelated. We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm of
Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives,
invisible even to ourselves, and one another, yet hiding forlorn in
lonely places; yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb, and as
fearful of them as they of us. Sometimes the disability is re- moved,
the law suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate we break the
spell--we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What
form we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrify
even those whom we most wish to comfort, and from whom we most crave
tenderness and sympathy.
Forgive, I pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was once a
woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way--you do not understand.
You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden.
Much that we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in
yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in
that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You
think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledge of no world
but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no
laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship. O God! what a thing
it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey
to apprehension and despair!
No, I did not die of fright: the Thing turned and went away. I heard
it go down the stairs, hurriedly, I thought, as if itself in sudden
fear. Then I rose to call for help. Hardly had my shaking hand found the
door-knob when--merciful heaven!--I heard it returning. Its footfalls as
it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the
house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I
tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard
the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when
I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat-- felt my arms
feebly beating against something that bore me backward--felt my tongue
thrusting itself from between my teeth! And then I passed into this
life.
No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew at
death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before.
Of this exist- ence we know many things, but no new light falls upon any
page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are
no heights of truth over- looking the confused landscape of that
dubitable domain. We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in
its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad,
malign inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading
past?
What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it is
night, for then you retire to your houses and we can venture from our
places of con- cealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look in
at the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. I
had lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changed
to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate re- main. Vainly I
had sought some method of manifes- tation, some way to make my continued
existence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husband
and son. Always if they slept they would wake, or if in my desperation I
dared ap- proach them when they were awake, would turn toward me the
terrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I sought
from the purpose that I held.
On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to
find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn.
For, al- though the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full- orbed or
slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day,
but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.
I left the lawn and moved in the white light and silence along the
road, aimless and sorrowing. Sud- denly I heard the voice of my poor
husband in exclamations of astonishment, with that of my son in
reassurance and dissuasion; and there by the shadow of a group of trees
they stood--near, so near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of the
elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me--at last, at last, he saw me! In
the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The
death-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exulta- tion I
shouted--I must have shouted,' He sees, he sees: he will understand!'
Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciously
beautiful, to offer myself to his arms, to comfort him with en-
dearments, and, with my son's hand in mine, to speak words that should
restore the broken bonds between the living and the dead.
Alas! alas! his face went white with fear, his eyes were as those of
a hunted animal. He backed away from me, as I advanced, and at last
turned and fled into the wood--whither, it is not given to me to know.
To my poor boy, left doubly desolate, I have never been able to
impart a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, must pass to this Life
Invisible and be lost to me for ever.

MOXON'S MASTER

MOXON'S MASTER

by
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce

"Are you serious?Ñdo you really believe a machine thinks?"

I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals in the
grate, touching them deftly here and there with the fire-poker till they
signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For several weeks I
had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in answering even the
most trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however, was that of
preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said that he had
"something on his mind."

Presently he said:

"What is a 'machine'? The word has been variously defined. Here is one
definition from a popular dictionary: 'Any instrument or organization by
which power is applied and made effective, or a desired effect produced.'
Well, then, is not a man a machine? And you will admit that he thinksÑor
thinks he thinks."

"If you do not wish to answer my question," I said, rather testily, "why not
say so?Ñall that you say is mere evasion. You know well enough that when I
say 'machine' I do not mean a man, but something that man has made and
controls."

"When it does not control him," he said, rising abruptly and looking out of
a window, whence nothing was visible in the blackness of a stormy night. A
moment later he turned about and with a smile said:

"I beg your pardon; I had no thought of evasion. I considered the dictionary
man's unconscious testimony suggestive and worth something in the
discussion. I can give your question a direct answer easily enough: I do
believe that a machine thinks about the work that it is doing."

That was direct enough, certainly. It was not altogether pleasing, for it
tended to confirm a sad suspicion that Moxon's devotion to study and work in
his machine-shop had not been good from him. I knew, for one thing, that he
suffered from insomnia, and that is no light affliction. Had it affected his
mind? His reply to my question seemed to me then evidence that it had;
perhaps I should think differently about it now. I was younger then, and
among the blessings that are not denied to youth is ignorance. Incited by
that great stimulant to controversy, I said:

"And what, pray, does it think withÑin the absence of a brain?"

The reply, coming with less than his customary delay, took his favorite form
of counter-interrogation:

"With what does a plant thinkÑin the absence of a brain?"

"Ah, plants also belong to the philosopher class! I should be pleased to
know some of their conclusions; you may omit the premises."

"Perhaps," he replied, apparently unaffected by my foolish irony, "you may
be able to infer their convictions from their acts. I will spare you the
familiar examples of the sensitive mimosa and those insectivorous flowers
and those whose stamens bend down and shake their pollen upon the entering
bee in order that he may fertilize their distant mates. But observe this. In
an open spot in my garden I planted a climbing vine. When it was barely
above the surface I set a stake into the soil a yard away. The vine at once
made for it, but as it was about to reach it after several days I removed it
a few feet. The vine at once altered its course, making an acute angle, and
again made for the stake. This manoeuver was repeated several times, but
finally, as if discouraged, the vine abandoned the pursuit and ignoring
further attempts to divert it traveled to a small tree, further away, which
it climbed.

"Roots of the eucalyptus will prolong themselves incredibly in search of
moisture. A well-known horticulturist relates that one entered an old
drain-pipe and followed it until it came to a break, where a section of the
pipe had been removed to make way for a stone wall that had been built
across its course. The root left the drain and followed the wall until it
found an opening where a stone had fallen out. It crept through and
following the other side of the wall back to the drain, entered the
unexplored part and resumed its journey."

"And all this?"

"Can you miss the significance of it? It shows the consciousness of plants.
It proves they think."

"Even if it didÑwhat then? We were speaking, not of plants, but of machines.
They may be composed partly of woodÑ wood that has no longer vitalityÑor
wholly of metal. Is thought an attribute also of the mineral kingdom?"

"How else do you explain the phenomena, for example, of crystallization?"

"I do not explain them."

"Because you cannot without affirming what you wish to deny, namely,
intelligent cooperation among the constituent elements of the crystals. When
soldiers form lines, or hollow squares, you call it reason. When wild geese
in flight take the form of a letter V you say instinct. When the homogenous
atoms of a mineral, moving freely in solution, arrange themselves into
shapes mathematically perfect, or particles of frozen moisture into the
symmetrical and beautiful forms of snowflakes, you have nothing to say. You
have not even invented a name to conceal your heroic unreason."

Moxon was speaking with unusual animation and earnestness. As he paused I
heard in an adjoining room known to me as his "machine-shop," which no one
but himself was permitted to enter, a singular thumping sound, as of some
one pounding upon a table with an open hand. Moxon heard it at the same
moment and, visibly agitated, rose and hurriedly passed into the room whence
it came. I thought it odd that any one else should be in there, and my
interest in my friendÑwith doubtless a touch of unwarrantable curiosityÑled
me to listen intently, though, I am happy to say, not at the keyhole. There
were confused sounds, as of a struggle or scuffle; the floor shook. I
distinctly heard hard breathing and a hoarse whisper which said "Damn you!"
Then all was silent, and presently Moxon reappeared and said, with a rather
sorry smile:

"Pardon me for leaving you so abruptly, I have a machine in there that lost
its temper and cut up rough."

Fixing my eyes steadily upon his left cheek, which was traversed by four
parallel excoriations showing blood, I said:

"How would it do to trim its nails?"

I could have spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated
himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue
as if nothing had occurred:

"Doubtless you do not hold with those (I need not name them to a man of your
reading) who have taught that all matter is sentient, that every atom is a
living, feeling, conscious being. I do. There is no such thing as dead,
inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with force, actual and
potential; all sensitive to the same forces in its environment and
susceptible to the contagion of higher and subtler ones residing in such
superior organisms as it may be brought into relationship with, as those of
man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It absorbs
something of his intelligence and purpose Ñmore of them in proportion to the
complexity of the resulting machine and that of his work.

"Do you happen to recall Herbert Spencer's definition of 'Life'? I read it
thirty years ago. He may have altered it afterward, for anything I know, but
in all that time I have been unable to think of a single word that could
profitably be changed or added or removed. It seems to me not only the best
definition, but the only possible one.

"'Life,' he says, 'is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both
simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences
and sequences.'"

"That defines the phenomenon," I said, "but gives no hint of its cause."

"That," he replied, "is all that any definition can do. As Mill points out,
we know nothing of effect except as a consequent. Of certain phenomena, one
never occurs without the other, which is dissimilar: the first in point of
time we call the cause, the second, the effect. One who had many times seen
a rabbit pursued by a dog, and had never seen rabbits and dogs otherwise,
would think the rabbit the cause of the dog.

"But I fear," he added, laughing naturally enough, "that my rabbit is
leading me a long way from the track of my legitimate quarry: I'm indulging
in the pleasure of the chase for its own sake. What I want you to observe is
that in Herbert Spenser's definition of 'life' the activity of a machine is
includedÑthere is nothing in the definition that is not applicable to it.
According to this sharpest of observers and deepest of thinkers, if a man
during his period of activity is alive, so is a machine when in operation.
As an inventor and constructor of machines I know that to be true."

Moxon was silent for a long time, gazing absently into the fire. It was
growing late and I thought it time to be going, but somehow I did not like
the notion of leaving him in that isolated house, all alone except for the
presence of some person whose nature my conjectures could go no further than
that it was unfriendly, perhaps malign. Leaning toward him and looking
earnestly into his eyes while making a motion with my hand through the door
of his workshop, I said:

"Moxon, whom do you have in there?"

Somewhat to my surprise he laughed lightly and answered without hesitation:

"Nobody; the incident that you have in mind was caused by my folly in
leaving a machine in action with nothing to act upon, while I undertook the
interminable task of enlightening your understanding. Do you happen to know
that Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm?"

"O bother them both!" I replied, rising and laying hold of my overcoat. "I'm
going to wish you good night; and I'll add the hope that the machine which
you inadvertently left in action will have her gloves on the next time you
think it needful to stop her."

Without waiting to observe the effect of my shot I left the house.

Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. In the sky beyond the crest
of a hill toward which I groped my way along precarious plank sidewalks and
across miry, unpaved streets I could see the faint glow of the city's
lights, but behind me nothing was visible but a single window of Moxon's
house. It glowed with what seemed to me a mysterious and fateful meaning. I
knew it was an uncurtained aperture in my friend's "machine- shop," and I
had little doubt that he had resumed the studies interrupted by his duties
as my instructor in mechanical consciousness and the fatherhood of Rhythm.
Odd, and in some degree humorous, as his convictions seemed to me at that
time, I could not wholly divest myself of the feeling that they had some
tragic relation to his life and characterÑperhaps to his destinyÑalthough I
no longer entertained the notion that they were the vagaries of a disordered
mind. Whatever might be thought of his views, his exposition of them was too
logical for that. Over and over, his last words came back to me:
"Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm." Bald and terse as the statement
was, I now found it infinitely alluring. At each recurrence it broadened in
meaning and deepened in suggestion. Why, here (I thought) is something upon
which to found a philosophy. If consciousness is the product of rhythm all
things are conscious, for all have motion, and all motion is rhythmic. I
wondered if Moxon knew the significance and breadth of his thoughtÑthe scope
of this momentous generalization; or had he arrived at his philosophic faith
by the tortuous and uncertain road of observation?

That faith was then new to me, and all Moxon's expounding had failed to make
me a convert; but now it seemed as if a great light shone about me, like
that which fell upon Saul of Tarsus; and out there in the storm and darkness
and solitude I experienced what Lewes calls "The endless variety and
excitement of philosophic thought." I exulted in a new sense of knowledge, a
new pride of reason. My feet seemed hardly to touch the earth; it was as if
I were uplifted and borne through the air by invisible wings.

Yielding to an impulse to seek further light from him whom I now recognized
as my master and guide, I had unconsciously turned about, and almost before
I was aware of having done so found myself again at Moxon's door. I was
drenched with rain, but felt no discomfort. Unable in my excitement to find
the doorbell I instinctively tried the knob. It turned and, entering, I
mounted the stairs to the room that I had so recently left. All was dark and
silent; Moxon, as I had supposed, was in the adjoining roomÑthe "machine
shop." Groping along the wall until I found the communicating door I knocked
loudly several times, but got no response, which I attributed to the uproar
outside, for the wind was blowing a gale and dashing the rain against the
thin walls in sheets. The drumming upon the shingle roof spanning the
unceiled room was loud and incessant.

I had never been invited into the machine-shopÑhad, indeed, been denied
admittance, as had all others, with one exception, a skilled metal worker,
of whom no one knew anything except that his name was Haley and his habit
silence. But in my spiritual exaltation, discretion and civility were alike
forgotten and I opened the door. What I saw took all philosophical
speculation out of me in short order.

Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table upon which a single
candle made all the light that was in the room. Opposite him, his back
toward me, sat another person. On the table between the two was a
chessboard; the men were playing. I knew little about chess, but as only a
few pieces were on the board it was obvious that the game was near its
close. Moxon was intensely interestedÑnot so much, it seemed to me, in the
game as in his antagonist, upon whom he had fixed so intent a look that,
standing though I did directly in the line of his vision, I was altogether
unobserved. His face was ghastly white, and his eyes glittered like
diamonds. Of his antagonist I had only a back view, but that was sufficient;
I should not have cared to see his face.

He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with proportions
suggesting those of a gorillaÑtremendous breadth of shoulders, thick, short
neck and broad, squat head, which had a tangled growth of black hair and was
topped by a crimson fez. A tunic of the same color, belted tightly to the
waist, reached the seatÑapparently a boxÑupon which he sat; his legs and
feet were not seen. His left forearm appeared to rest in his lap; he moved
his pieces with his right hand, which seemed disproportionately long.

I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway and in
shadow. If Moxon had looked farther than the face of his opponent he could
have observed nothing now, excepting that the door was open. Something
forbade me either to enter or retire, a feelingÑI know not how it cameÑthat
I was in the presence of imminent tragedy and might serve my friend by
remaining. With a scarcely conscious rebellion against the indelicacy of the
act I remained.

The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board before making his
moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move the piece most convenient to
his hand, his motions in doing so being quick, nervous and lacking in
precision. The response of his antagonist, while equally prompt in the
inception, was made with a slow, uniform, mechanical and, I thought,
somewhat theatrical movement of the arm, that was a sore trial to my
patience. There was something unearthly about it all, and I caught myself
shuddering. But I was wet and cold.

Two or three times after moving a piece the stranger slightly inclined his
head, and each time I observed that Moxon shifted his king. All at once the
thought came to me that the man was dumb. And then that he was a machineÑan
automaton chessplayer! Then I remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me of
having invented such a piece of mechanism, though I did not understand that
it had actually been constructed. Was all his talk about the consciousness
and intelligence of machines merely a prelude to eventual exhibition of this
deviceÑonly a trick to intensify the effect of its mechanical action upon me
in my ignorance of its secret?

A fine end, this, of all my intellectual transportsÑmy "endless variety and
excitement of philosophic thought!" I was about to retire in disgust when
something occurred to hold my curiosity. I observed a shrug of the thing's
great shoulders, as if it were irritated: and so natural was thisÑso
entirely humanÑthat in my new view of the matter it startled me. Nor was
that all, for a moment later it struck the table sharply with its clenched
hand. At that gesture Moxon seemed even more startled than I: he pushed his
chair a little backward, as in alarm.

Presently Moxon, whose play it was, raised his hand high above the board,
pounced upon one of his pieces like a sparrowhawk and with an exclamation
"checkmate!" rose quickly to his feet and stepped behind his chair. The
automaton sat motionless.

The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and
progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between
I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like the thunder,
grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It seemed to come from the body
of the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of wheels. It gave me the
impression of a disordered mechanism which had escaped the repressive and
regulating action of some controlling partÑan effect such as might be
expected if a pawl should be jostled from the teeth of a ratchet-wheel. But
before I had time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was
taken by the strange motions of the automaton itself. A slight but
continuous convulsion appeared to have possession of it. In body and head it
shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion augmented every
moment until the entire figure was in violent agitation. Suddenly it sprang
to its feet and with a movement almost too quick for the eye to follow shot
forward across table and chair, with both arms thrust forward to their full
lengthÑthe posture and lunge of a diver. Moxon tried to throw himself
backward out of reach, but he was too late: I saw the horrible thing's hands
close upon his throat, his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was
overturned, the candle thrown to the floor and extinguished, and all was
black dark. But the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct, and most
terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made by the strangled
man's efforts to breathe. Guided by the infernal hubbub, I sprang to the
rescue of my friend, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the
whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and
heart and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the floor, Moxon
underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head
forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue
thrust out; andÑhorrible contrast!Ñ upon the painted face of the assassin an
expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the solution of a problem
in chess! This I observed, then all was blackness and silence.

Three days later I recovered consciousness in a hospital. As the memory of
that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain I recognized in my
attendant Moxon's confidential workman, Haley. Responding to a look he
approached, smiling.

"Tell me about it," I managed to say, faintlyÑ"all about it."

"Certainly," he said; "you were carried unconscious from a burning
houseÑMoxon's. Nobody knows how you came to be there. You may have to do a
little explaining. The origin of the fire is a bit mysterious, too. My own
notion is that the house was struck by lightning."

"And Moxon?"

"Buried yesterdayÑwhat was left of him."

Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on occasion. When
imparting shocking intelligence to the sick he was affable enough. After
some moments of the keenest mental suffering I ventured to ask another
question:

"Who rescued me?"

"Well, if that interests youÑI did."

"Thank you, Mr. Haley, and may God bless you for it. Did you rescue, also,
that charming product of your skill, the automaton chess-player that
murdered its inventor?"

The man was silent a long time, looking away from me. Presently he turned
and gravely said:

"Do you know that?"

"I do," I replied; "I saw it done."

That was many years ago. If asked today I should answer less confidently.

THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT

THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT
by Ambrose Bierce
     1

IT is well known that the old Manton house is haunted. In all the rural
district near about, and even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not
one person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it; incredulity is
confined to those opinionated persons who will be called 'cranks' as
soon as the useful word shall have penetrated the intellectual demesne
of the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the house is haunted is of
two kinds: the testimony of disinterested witnesses who have had ocular
proof, and that of the house itself. The former may be disregarded and
ruled out on any of the various grounds of objection which may be urged
against it by the ingenious; but facts within the observation of all are
material and controlling.
In the first place, the Manton house has been un- occupied by
mortals for more than ten years, and with its outbuildings is slowly
falling into decay-- a circumstance which in itself the judicious will
hardly venture to ignore. It stands a little way off the loneliest reach
of the Marshall and Harriston road, in an opening which was once a farm
and is still dis- figured with strips of rotting fence and half covered
with brambles overrunning a stony and sterile soil long unacquainted
with the plough. The house it- self is in tolerably good condition,
though badly weather-stained and in dire need of attention from the
glazier, the smaller male population of the region having attested in
the manner of its kind its disapproval of dwelling without dwellers. It
is two stories in height, nearly square, its front pierced by a single
doorway flanked on each side by a window boarded up to the very top.
Corresponding windows above, not protected, serve to admit light and
rain to the rooms of the upper floor. Grass and weeds grow pretty rankly
all about, and a few shade trees, somewhat the worse for wind, and
leaning all in one direction, seem to be making a concerted effort to
run away. In short, as the Marshall town humorist explained in the
columns of the Advance, 'the prop- osition that the Manton house is
badly haunted is the only logical conclusion from the premises.' The
fact that in this dwelling Mr. Manton thought it expedient one night
some ten years ago to rise and cut the throats of his wife and two small
children, removing at once to another part of the country, has no doubt
done its share in directing public attention to the fitness of the place
for supernatural phe- nomena.
To this house, one summer evening, came four men in a wagon. Three
of them promptly alighted, and the one who had been driving hitched the
team to the only remaining post of what had been a fence. The fourth
remained seated in the wagon. 'Come,' said one of his companions,
approaching him, while the others moved away in the direction of the
dwell- ing--'this is the place.'
The man addressed did not move. 'By God!' he said harshly, 'this is
a trick, and it looks to me as if you were in it.'
'Perhaps I am,' the other said, looking him straight in the face and
speaking in a tone which had something of contempt in it. 'You will
remember, however, that the choice of place was with your own assent
left to the other side. Of course if you are afraid of spooks--'
'I am afraid of nothing,' the man interrupted with another oath, and
sprang to the ground. The two then joined the others at the door, which
one of them had already opened with some difficulty, caused by rust of
lock and hinge. All entered. Inside it was dark, but the man who had
unlocked the door pro- duced a candle and matches and made a light. He
then unlocked a door on their right as they stood in the passage. This
gave them entrance to a large, square room that the candle but dimly
lighted. The floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which partly muf- fled
their footfalls. Cobwebs were in the angles of the walls and depended
from the ceiling like strips of rotting lace, making undulatory
movements in the disturbed air. The room had two windows in adjoin- ing
sides, but from neither could anything be seen except the rough inner
surfaces of boards a few inches from the glass. There was no fireplace,
no furniture; there was nothing: besides the cobwebs and the dust, the
four men were the only objects there which were not a part of the
structure.
Strange enough they looked in the yellow light of the candle. The
one who had so reluctantly alighted was especially spectacular--he might
have been called sensational. He was of middle age, heavily built,
deep-chested and broad-shouldered. Looking at his figure, one would have
said that he had a giant's strength; at his features, that he would use
it like a giant. He was clean-shaven, his hair rather closely cropped
and grey. His low fore- head was seamed with wrinkles above the eyes,
and over the nose these became vertical. The heavy black brows followed
the same law, saved from meeting only by an upward turn at what would
otherwise have been the point of contact. Deeply sunken be- neath these
glowed in the obscure light a pair of eyes of uncertain colour, but
obviously enough too small. There was something forbidding in their ex-
pression, which was not bettered by the cruel mouth and wide jaw. The
nose was well enough, as noses go; one does not expect much of noses.
All that was sinister in the man's face seemed accentuated by an
unnatural pallor--he appeared altogether bloodless.
The appearance of the other men was sufficiently commonplace: they
were such persons as one meets and forgets that he met. All were younger
than the man described, between whom and the eldest of the others, who
stood apart, there was apparently no kindly feeling. They avoided
looking at each other.
'Gentlemen,' said the man holding the candle and keys,' I believe
everything is right. Are you ready, Mr. Rosser?'
The man standing apart from the group bowed and smiled.
'And you, Mr. Grossmith?'
The heavy man bowed and scowled.
'You will be pleased to remove your outer clothing.'
Their hats, coats, waistcoats and neckwear were soon removed and
thrown outside the door, in the passage. The man with the candle now
nodded, and the fourth man--he who had urged Grossmith to leave the
wagon--produced from the pocket of his overcoat two long,
murderous-looking bowie- knives, which he drew now from their leather
scabbards.
'They are exactly alike,' he said, presenting one to each of the two
principals--for by this time the dullest observer would have understood
the nature of this meeting. It was to be a duel to the death.
Each combatant took a knife, examined it criti- cally near the
candle and tested the strength of blade and handle across his lifted
knee. Their per- sons were then searched in turn, each by the second of
the other.
'If it is agreeable to you, Mr. Grossmith,' said the man holding the
light,' you will place yourself in that corner.'
He indicated the angle of the room farthest from the door, whither
Grossmith retired, his second part- ing from him with a grasp of the
hand which had nothing of cordiality in it. In the angle nearest the
door Mr. Rosser stationed himself, and after a whispered consultation
his second left him, joining the other near the door. At that moment the
candle was suddenly extinguished, leaving all in profound darkness. This
may have been done by the draught from the opened door; whatever the
cause, the effect was startling.
'Gentlemen,' said a voice which sounded strangely unfamiliar in the
altered condition affecting the relations of the senses--'gentlemen, you
will not move until you hear the closing of the outer door.'
A sound of trampling ensued, then the closing of the inner door; and
finally the outer one closed with a concussion which shook the entire
building.
A few minutes afterward a belated farmer's boy met a light wagon
which was being driven furiously toward the town of Marshall. He
declared that be- hind the two figures on the front seat stood a third,
with its hands upon the bowed shoulders of the others, who appeared to
struggle vainly to free themselves from its grasp. This figure, unlike
the others, was clad in white, and had undoubtedly boarded the wagon as
it passed the haunted house. As the lad could boast a considerable
former expe- rience with the supernatural thereabouts his word had the
weight justly due to the testimony of an expert. The story (in
connection with the next day's events) eventually appeared in the
Advance, with some slight literary embellishments and a concluding
intimation that the gentlemen referred to would be allowed the use of
the paper's columns for their version of the night's adventure. But the
privilege remained without a claimant.
     2
The events that led up to this 'duel in the dark' were simple
enough. One evening three young men of the town of Marshall were sitting
in a quiet corner of the porch of the village hotel, smoking and dis-
cussing such matters as three educated young men of a Southern village
would naturally find interesting. Their names were King, Sancher and
Rosser. At a little distance, within easy hearing, but taking no part in
the conversation, sat a fourth. He was a stranger to the others. They
merely knew that on his arrival by the stage-coach that afternoon he had
written in the hotel register the name Robert Grossmith. He had not been
observed to speak to anyone except the hotel clerk. He seemed, indeed,
singularly fond of his own company--or, as the personnel of the Advance
expressed it, 'grossly ad- dicted to evil associations.' But then it
should be said in justice to the stranger that the personnel was himself
of a too convivial disposition fairly to judge one differently gifted,
and had, moreover, experienced a slight rebuff in an effort at an
'interview.'
'I hate any kind of deformity in a woman,' said King, 'whether
natural or--acquired. I have a theory that any physical defect has its
correlative mental and moral defect.'
'I infer, then,' said Rosser gravely, 'that a lady lacking the moral
advantage of a nose would find the struggle to become Mrs. King an
arduous enterprise.'
'Of course you may put it that way,' was the re- ply; 'but,
seriously, I once threw over a most charming girl on learning quite
accidentally that she had suffered amputation of a toe. My conduct was
brutal if you like, but if I had married that girl I should have been
miserable for life and should have made her so.'
'Whereas,' said Sancher, with a light laugh, 'by marrying a
gentleman of more liberal views she escaped with a parted throat.'
'Ah, you know to whom I refer. Yes, she married Manton, but I don't
know about his liberality; I'm not sure but he cut her throat because he
discovered that she lacked that excellent thing in woman, the middle toe
of the right foot.'
'Look at that chap!' said Rosser in a low voice, his eyes fixed upon
the stranger.
'That chap' was obviously listening intently to the conversation.
'Damn his impudence!' muttered King--' what ought we to do?'
'That's an easy one,' Rosser replied, rising. 'Sir,' he continued,
addressing the stranger, 'I think it would be better if you would remove
your chair to the other end of the veranda. The presence of gentle- men
is evidently an unfamiliar situation to you.'
The man sprang to his feet and strode forward with clenched hands,
his face white with rage. All were now standing. Sancher stepped between
the belligerents.
'You are hasty and unjust,' he said to Rosser; 'this gentleman has
done nothing to deserve such language.'
But Rosser would not withdraw a word. By the custom of the country
and the time there could be but one outcome to the quarrel.
'I demand the satisfaction due to a gentleman,' said the stranger,
who had become more calm. 'I have not an acquaintance in this region.
Perhaps you, sir,' bowing to Sancher, 'will be kind enough to represent
me in this matter.'
Sancher accepted the trust--somewhat reluc- tantly it must be
confessed, for the man's appear- ance and manner were not at all to his
liking. King, who during the colloquy had hardly removed his eyes from
the stranger's face and had not spoken a word, consented with a nod to
act for Rosser, and the upshot of it was that, the principals having
retired, a meeting was arranged for the next evening. The nature of the
arrangements has been already disclosed. The duel with knives in a dark
room was once a commoner feature of south-western life than it is likely
to be again. How thin a veneering of 'chivalry' covered the essential
brutality of the code under which such encounters were possible we shall
see.
     3
In the blaze of a midsummer noonday the old Manton house was hardly
true to its traditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The sunshine
caressed it warmly and affectionately, with evident disregard of its bad
reputation. The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to
grow, not rankly, but with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the
weeds blossomed quite like plants. Full of charming lights and shadows
and populous with pleasant-voiced birds, the neglected shade trees no
longer struggled to run away, but bent reverently beneath their bur- den
of sun and song. Even in the glassless upper windows was an expression
of peace and content- ment, due to the light within. Over the stony
fields the visible heat danced with a lively tremor incom- patible with
the gravity which is an attribute of the supernatural.
Such was the aspect under which the place pre- sented itself to
Sheriff Adams and two other men who had come out from Marshall to look
at it. One of these men was Mr. King, the sheriff's deputy; the other,
whose name was Brewer, was a brother of the late Mrs. Manton. Under a
beneficent law of the State relating to property which had been for a
certain period abandoned by an owner whose residence cannot be
ascertained, the sheriff was legal custodian of the Manton farm and
appurtenances thereunto belonging. His present visit was in mere
perfunctory compliance with some order of a court in which Mr. Brewer
had an action to get possession of the property as heir to his deceased
sister. By a mere coincidence, the visit was made on the day after the
night that Deputy King had unlocked the house for another and very
different purpose. His presence now was not of his own choosing: he had
been ordered to accompany his superior, and at the moment could think of
nothing more pru- dent than simulated alacrity in obedience to the
command.
Carelessly opening the front door, which to his surprise was not
locked, the sheriff was amazed to see, lying on the floor of the passage
into which it opened, a confused heap of men's apparel. Exam- ination
showed it to consist of two hats, and the same number of coats,
waistcoats and scarves, all in a remarkably good state of preservation,
albeit somewhat defiled by the dust in which they lay. Mr. Brewer was
equally astonished, but Mr. King's emotion is not on record. With a new
and lively interest in his own actions the sheriff now unlatched and
pushed open the door on the right, and the three entered. The room was
apparently vacant--no; as their eyes became accustomed to the dimmer
light something was visible in the farthest angle of the wall. It was a
human figure--that of a man crouching close in the corner. Something in
the atti- tude made the intruders halt when they had barely passed the
threshold. The figure more and more clearly defined itself. The man was
upon one knee, his back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated
to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the
fingers spread and crooked like claws; the white face turned upward on
the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth
half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead. Yet, with
the excep- tion of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his
own hand, not another object was in the room.
In thick dust that covered the floor were some confused footprints
near the door and along the wall through which it opened. Along one of
the ad- joining walls, too, past the boarded-up windows, was the trail
made by the man himself in reaching his corner. Instinctively in
approaching the body the three men followed that trail. The sheriff
grasped one of the out-thrown arms; it was as rigid as iron, and the
application of a gentle force rocked the en- tire body without altering
the relation of its parts. Brewer, pale with excitement, gazed intently
into the distorted face. 'God of mercy!' he suddenly cried, 'it is
Manton! '
'You are right,' said King, with an evident at- tempt at calmness:
'I knew Manton. He then wore a full beard and his hair long, but this is
he.'
He might have added: 'I recognized him when he challenged Rosser. I
told Rosser and Sancher who he was before we played him this horrible
trick. When Rosser left this dark room at our heels, for- getting his
outer clothing in the excitement, and driving away with us in his shirt
sleeves--all through the discreditable proceedings we knew whom we were
dealing with, murderer and coward that he was!'
But nothing of this did Mr. King say. With his better light he was
trying to penetrate the mystery of the man's death. That he had not once
moved from the corner where he had been stationed; that his posture was
that of neither attack nor defence; that he had dropped his weapon; that
he had obviously perished of sheer horror of something that he saw
--these were circumstances which Mr. King's dis- turbed intelligence
could not rightly comprehend.
Groping in intellectual darkness for a clue to his maze of doubt,
his gaze, directed mechanically down- ward in the way of one who ponders
momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day
and in the presence of living companions, affected him with terror. In
the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor--leading from the door
by which they had entered, straight across the room to within a yard of
Manton's crouching corpse-- were three parallel lines of
footprints--light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer ones
those of small children, the inner a woman's. From the point at which
they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who
had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude
of rapt attention, horribly pale.
'Look at that!' he cried, pointing with both hands at the nearest
print of the woman's right foot, where she had apparently stopped and
stood. 'The middle toe is missing--it was Gertrude!'
Gertrude was the late Mrs. Manton, sister of Mr. Brewer.

The Man and the Snake

The Man and the Snake
by Ambrose Bierce


I


It is of veritabyll report, and attested of so many that there be
nowe of wyse and learned none to gaynsaye it, that ye serpente hys
eye hath a magnetick propertie that whosoe falleth into its svasion
is drawn forwards in despyte of his wille, and perisheth miserabyll
by ye creature hys byte.


Stretched at ease upon a sofa, in gown and slippers, Harker Brayton
smiled as he read the foregoing sentence in old Morryster's
"Marvells of Science."  "The only marvel in the matter," he said to
himself, "is that the wise and learned in Morryster's day should
have believed such nonsense as is rejected by most of even the
ignorant in ours."

A train of reflections followed--for Brayton was a man of thought--
and he unconsciously lowered his book without altering the
direction of his eyes.  As soon as the volume had gone below the
line of sight, something in an obscure corner of the room recalled
his attention to his surroundings.  What he saw, in the shadow
under his bed, were two small points of light, apparently about an
inch apart.  They might have been reflections of the gas jet above
him, in metal nail heads; he gave them but little thought and
resumed his reading.  A moment later something--some impulse which
it did not occur to him to analyze--impelled him to lower the book
again and seek for what he saw before.  The points of light were
still there.  They seemed to have become brighter than before,
shining with a greenish luster which he had not at first observed.
He thought, too, that they might have moved a trifle--were somewhat
nearer.  They were still too much in the shadow, however, to reveal
their nature and origin to an indolent attention, and he resumed
his reading.  Suddenly something in the text suggested a thought
which made him start and drop the book for the third time to the
side of the sofa, whence, escaping from his hand, it fell sprawling
to the floor, back upward.  Brayton, half-risen, was staring
intently into the obscurity beneath the bed, where the points of
light shone with, it seemed to him, an added fire.  His attention
was now fully aroused, his gaze eager and imperative.  It
disclosed, almost directly beneath the foot rail of the bed, the
coils of a large serpent--the points of light were its eyes!  Its
horrible head, thrust flatly forth from the innermost coil and
resting upon the outermost, was directed straight toward him, the
definition of the wide, brutal jaw and the idiotlike forehead
serving to show the direction of its malevolent gaze.  The eyes
were no longer merely luminous points; they looked into his own
with a meaning, a malign significance.


II


A snake in a bedroom of a modern city dwelling of the better sort
is, happily, not so common a phenomenon as to make explanation
altogether needless.  Harker Brayton, a bachelor of thirty-five, a
scholar, idler, and something of an athlete, rich, popular, and of
sound health, had returned to San Francisco from all manner of
remote and unfamiliar countries.  His tastes, always a trifle
luxurious, had taken on an added exuberance from long privation;
and the resources of even the Castle Hotel being inadequate for
their perfect gratification, he had gladly accepted the hospitality
of his friend, Dr. Druring, the distinguished scientist.  Dr.
Druring's house, a large, old-fashioned one in what was now an
obscure quarter of the city, had an outer and visible aspect of
reserve.  It plainly would not associate with the contiguous
elements of its altered environment, and appeared to have developed
some of the eccentricities which come of isolation.  One of these
was a "wing," conspicuously irrelevant in point of architecture,
and no less rebellious in the matter of purpose; for it was a
combination of laboratory, menagerie, and museum.  It was here that
the doctor indulged the scientific side of his nature in the study
of such forms of animal life as engaged his interest and comforted
his taste--which, it must be confessed, ran rather to the lower
forms.  For one of the higher types nimbly and sweetly to recommend
itself unto his gentle senses, it had at least to retain certain
rudimentary characteristics allying it to such "dragons of the
prime" as toads and snakes.  His scientific sympathies were
distinctly reptilian; he loved nature's vulgarians and described
himself as the Zola of zoology.  His wife and daughters, not having
the advantage to share his enlightened curiosity regarding the
works and ways of our ill-starred fellow-creatures, were, with
needless austerity, excluded from what he called the Snakery, and
doomed to companionship with their own kind; though, to soften the
rigors of their lot, he had permitted them, out of his great
wealth, to outdo the reptiles in the gorgeousness of their
surroundings and to shine with a superior splendor.

Architecturally, and in point of "furnishing," the Snakery had a
severe simplicity befitting the humble circumstances of its
occupants, many of whom, indeed, could not safely have been
intrusted with the liberty which is necessary to the full enjoyment
of luxury, for they had the troublesome peculiarity of being alive.
In their own apartments, however, they were under as little
personal restraint as was compatible with their protection from the
baneful habit of swallowing one another; and, as Brayton had
thoughtfully been apprised, it was more than a tradition that some
of them had at divers times been found in parts of the premises
where it would have embarrassed them to explain their presence.
Despite the Snakery and its uncanny associations--to which, indeed,
he gave little attention--Brayton found life at the Druring mansion
very much to his mind.


III


Beyond a smart shock of surprise and a shudder of mere loathing,
Mr. Brayton was not greatly affected.  His first thought was to
ring the call bell and bring a servant; but, although the bell cord
dangled within easy reach, he made no movement toward it; it had
occurred to his mind that the act might subject him to the
suspicion of fear, which he certainly did not feel.  He was more
keenly conscious of the incongruous nature of the situation than
affected by its perils; it was revolting, but absurd.

The reptile was of a species with which Brayton was unfamiliar.
Its length he could only conjecture; the body at the largest
visible part seemed about as thick as his forearm.  In what way was
it dangerous, if in any way?  Was it venomous?  Was it a
constrictor?  His knowledge of nature's danger signals did not
enable him to say; he had never deciphered the code.

If not dangerous, the creature was at least offensive.  It was de
trop--"matter out of place"--an impertinence.  The gem was unworthy
of the setting.  Even the barbarous taste of our time and country,
which had loaded the walls of the room with pictures, the floor
with furniture, and the furniture with bric-a-brac, had not quite
fitted the place for this bit of the savage life of the jungle.
Besides--insupportable thought!--the exhalations of its breath
mingled with the atmosphere which he himself was breathing!

These thoughts shaped themselves with greater or less definition in
Brayton's mind, and begot action.  The process is what we call
consideration and decision.  It is thus that we are wise and
unwise.  It is thus that the withered leaf in an autumn breeze
shows greater or less intelligence than its fellows, falling upon
the land or upon the lake.  The secret of human action is an open
one--something contracts our muscles.  Does it matter if we give to
the preparatory molecular changes the name of will?

Brayton rose to his feet and prepared to back softly away from the
snake, without disturbing it, if possible, and through the door.
People retire so from the presence of the great, for greatness is
power, and power is a menace.  He knew that he could walk backward
without obstruction, and find the door without error.  Should the
monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with
paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental
weapons from which he could snatch one to suit the occasion.  In
the meantime the snake's eyes burned with a more pitiless
malevolence than ever.

Brayton lifted his right foot free of the floor to step backward.
That moment he felt a strong aversion to doing so.

"I am accounted brave," he murmured; "is bravery, then, no more
than pride?  Because there are none to witness the shame shall I
retreat?"

He was steadying himself with his right hand upon the back of a
chair, his foot suspended.

"Nonsense!" he said aloud; "I am not so great a coward as to fear
to seem to myself afraid."

He lifted the foot a little higher by slightly bending the knee,
and thrust it sharply to the floor--an inch in front of the other!
He could not think how that occurred.  A trial with the left foot
had the same result; it was again in advance of the right.  The
hand upon the chair back was grasping it; the arm was straight,
reaching somewhat backward.  One might have seen that he was
reluctant to lose his hold.  The snake's malignant head was still
thrust forth from the inner coil as before, the neck level.  It had
not moved, but its eyes were now electric sparks, radiating an
infinity of luminous needles.

The man had an ashy pallor.  Again he took a step forward, and
another, partly dragging the chair, which, when finally released,
fell upon the floor with a crash.  The man groaned; the snake made
neither sound nor motion, but its eyes were two dazzling suns.  The
reptile itself was wholly concealed by them.  They gave off
enlarging rings of rich and vivid colors, which at their greatest
expansion successively vanished like soap bubbles; they seemed to
approach his very face, and anon were an immeasurable distance
away.  He heard, somewhere, the continual throbbing of a great
drum, with desultory bursts of far music, inconceivably sweet, like
the tones of an aeolian harp.  He knew it for the sunrise melody of
Memnon's statue, and thought he stood in the Nileside reeds,
hearing, with exalted sense, that immortal anthem through the
silence of the centuries.

The music ceased; rather, it became by insensible degrees the
distant roll of a retreating thunderstorm.  A landscape, glittering
with sun and rain, stretched before him, arched with a vivid
rainbow, framing in its giant curve a hundred visible cities.  In
the middle distance a vast serpent, wearing a crown, reared its
head out of its voluminous convolutions and looked at him with his
dead mother's eyes.  Suddenly this enchanting landscape seemed to
rise swiftly upward, like the drop scene at a theater, and vanished
in a blank.  Something struck him a hard blow upon the face and
breast.  He had fallen to the floor; the blood ran from his broken
nose and his bruised lips.  For a moment he was dazed and stunned,
and lay with closed eyes, his face against the door.  In a few
moments he had recovered, and then realized that his fall, by
withdrawing his eyes, had broken the spell which held him.  He felt
that now, by keeping his gaze averted, he would be able to retreat.
But the thought of the serpent within a few feet of his head, yet
unseen--perhaps in the very act of springing upon him and throwing
its coils about his throat--was too horrible.  He lifted his head,
stared again into those baleful eyes, and was again in bondage.

The snake had not moved, and appeared somewhat to have lost its
power upon the imagination; the gorgeous illusions of a few moments
before were not repeated.  Beneath that flat and brainless brow its
black, beady eyes simply glittered, as at first, with an expression
unspeakably malignant.  It was as if the creature, knowing its
triumph assured, had determined to practice no more alluring wiles.

Now ensued a fearful scene.  The man, prone upon the floor, within
a yard of his enemy, raised the upper part of his body upon his
elbows, his head thrown back, his legs extended to their full
length.  His face was white between its gouts of blood; his eyes
were strained open to their uttermost expansion.  There was froth
upon his lips; it dropped off in flakes.  Strong convulsions ran
through his body, making almost serpentine undulations.  He bent
himself at the waist, shifting his legs from side to side.  And
every movement left him a little nearer to the snake.  He thrust
his hands forward to brace himself back, yet constantly advanced
upon his elbows.


IV


Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library.  The scientist was in
rare good humor.

"I have just obtained, by exchange with another collector," he
said, "a splendid specimen of the Ophiophagus."

"And what may that be?" the lady inquired with a somewhat languid
interest.

"Why, bless my soul, what profound ignorance!  My dear, a man who
ascertains after marriage that his wife does not know Greek, is
entitled to a divorce.  The Ophiophagus is a snake which eats other
snakes."

"I hope it will eat all yours," she said, absently shifting the
lamp.  "But how does it get the other snakes?  By charming them, I
suppose."

"That is just like you, dear," said the doctor, with an affectation
of petulance.  "You know how irritating to me is any allusion to
that vulgar superstition about the snake's power of fascination."

The conversation was interrupted by a mighty cry which rang through
the silent house like the voice of a demon shouting in a tomb.
Again and yet again it sounded, with terrible distinctness.  They
sprang to their feet, the man confused, the lady pale and
speechless with fright.  Almost before the echoes of the last cry
had died away the doctor was out of the room, springing up the
staircase two steps at a time.  In the corridor, in front of
Brayton's chamber, he met some servants who had come from the upper
floor.  Together they rushed at the door without knocking.  It was
unfastened, and gave way.  Brayton lay upon his stomach on the
floor, dead.  His head and arms were partly concealed under the
foot rail of the bed.  They pulled the body away, turning it upon
the back.  The face was daubed with blood and froth, the eyes were
wide open, staring--a dreadful sight!

"Died in a fit," said the scientist, bending his knee and placing
his hand upon the heart.  While in that position he happened to
glance under the bed.  "Good God!" he added; "how did this thing
get in here?"

He reached under the bed, pulled out the snake, and flung it, still
coiled, to the center of the room, whence, with a harsh, shuffling
sound, it slid across the polished floor till stopped by the wall,
where it lay without motion.  It was a stuffed snake; its eyes were
two shoe buttons.