Part 21

My thoughts soon wandered away from my recent fright, and took that path which they always followed. My arm dropped to my side, and my fingers relaxed themselves. And then, once more I felt that hand creep to mine, take it, and hold it. Again I felt the unmistakable sensation of fingers that closed round mine. I felt that there was no hand in mine that my hand could clasp in return, but the sensation of a palm against my palm--fingers twining my fingers--was indisputable. The sensation of pressure was there--faintly, it is true, but it was there. It was no fancy, no dream, this time. Whether mortal or not, a hand, or the semblance of a hand, was holding mine. Again the horror overcame me--again I strove to tear my hand away from this invisible clasp. My blood curdled as I found the result of my efforts failed on this second occasion--found that the fingers which fastened on my own could not be shaken off, do what I would. As I moved my hand, even so the hand that held it moved with it. If I clinched my own, I could yet feel the strange pressure of those unseen fingers. If I grasped my right hand in my left, there was still the sensation of another hand between my own. Do what I would, move how I would, that clasp, or phantom of a clasp, was ever on my hand. Yet I struggled with fear until the awful thought flashed through my brain that this was the aura, the forerunner of paralysis or epilepsy. Then I could bear it no longer. Whether that grasp was the result of bodily or mental ailment, I could bear it no longer--I felt my mind was going. I rushed to the door, tore it open, and my screams rang through the house. Remember, I was but a woman, and alone.

As the sound of hurrying feet drew near, that hand or hand-clasp lying on my own quitted it. Then, as the strange sensation ceased, did I hear a mournful sound, like a sigh, or was it only the wind outside? Did the phantom fingers draw themselves away from mine soothingly, even, it seemed, reluctantly, or was that fancy too? As the servants with frightened looks drew near me, could that wild and joyful thought that flashed through my brain be more than the thought of a madwoman? What could it mean?

Except for this I was myself again. I had been frightened, I told all who came to me--frightened by dreams, by shadows, by solitude, and my own thoughts. No one wondered at it; what flesh and blood could stand, unmoved, the anxiety I had borne during the last week? I was over-wrought and suffering from sleeplessness, so Mr. Mainwaring insisted upon giving me an opiate. I swallowed it reluctantly, and my maid sat with me, until, in due time, dull sleep told of the potency and efficacy of the drug which I had been made to take.

This artificial sleep lasted without a break until late in the afternoon. Then I awoke refreshed, and in full possession of my senses. I arose and prayed, as I had never prayed before, that my hand might again feel that unseen touch which had nearly driven me mad in the night. "Will it come again? O, let it come again!" was the constant cry of my heart; and I longed ardently for the night, which, perhaps, might bring that hand seeking my own again. For incredible as it seems, I knew, when those fingers last left mine, that love had in part conquered death--that Walter had been with me. Now I feared nothing. Why should I fear? He had loved me living--he loved me now. Whether he came to me in body or in spirit, should he not be welcome? Oh, that he might come again!

And he came again. Mr. Mainwaring, who would not leave Draycot that day on account of the apparently strange state of my health, that evening insisted upon my taking a turn in the garden. I obeyed him, although every plant, every blossom around, seemed breathing sadness. I was too tired to walk for longer than a few minutes, but sat on my favorite seat, and watched the sun sink behind the hills. Even then and there--in broad daylight--I felt his hand seek my own, and my heart leaped with joy. I shunned or strove to avoid it no longer. I let my hand lie still, and again I felt the touch, or the spirit of the touch, of the one I loved. So naturally those fingers closed round mine; so familiar seemed that clasp to me, that could I have forgotten the last week, I might have closed my eyes, and, lying there with my hand in his, have thought I had only to open them to happiness once more. If I could but forget!

Even if I had not known in whose hand mine was resting, the caress those fingers gave me would have told me. I wondered why I feared and repulsed them at first. If only I could sometimes sit as I sat then, and know and feel that Walter was beside me, I thought that life might even be happy. So I turned my head toward him, and said, softly--so softly:

"Dearest love, you will come often and often, will you not? You will be always with me; then I shall not be unhappy."

He answered not, but I felt a change in the clasp of his hand, and I pondered as to what its meaning could be. Then I fancied that faintly, very faintly, that touch was endeavoring to make me understand something which my grosser earthly faculties failed to grasp--to direct, to lead me somewhere for some purpose. For it left me and came again, left and came again, till at last I learned its meaning.

Then and there I rose. "I come, my love," I said. And once more Walter Linton and his wife walked, as they had walked many a time before, hand-in-hand down the broad garden path; past the rustic lodge, covered with rosebuds and woodbine; through the gateway; out into the high road. I feared nothing: the hand of the one I loved was in mine, and guiding me whither he chose; moreover it was yet daylight, and I was not dreaming.

I even knew that Mr. Mainwaring followed us as we walked down the path. I saw him come to my side and look at me with wonder. I wanted no one to be near my husband and myself, so I waved him back imperiously. "Follow if you like," I said, "but do not speak to us." Perhaps he thought I was mad, perhaps that I was walking in my sleep, and, if so, feared to awake me. Any way, he followed us silently, and that was all I knew or cared about him, or about anything else. For were not my love and I walking, once more, hand-in-hand, and it was not in a dream?

Along and along the road, each side of which is beautiful with its green banks and hedges, and every inch of which we know, even keeping to that side we always choose because the flowers grow thickest there. How fresh and green everything looks this evening! The swallows are flying here and there. Every blade of grass is washed clean from dust by the heavy rain of the morning. No. I am not dreaming. I am walking with my husband. A nightingale breaks Into song near us, as we walk. We stop--who could help stopping to listen? Now its melody ceases, and Walter leads me on. It is like in the old days when we were first wed; before we thought or wished for more wealth. Those days when all the country round was fresh and new to me. Never did the wild-flowers, I think, look gayer than they look this evening, although they are closing fast. I would stop, my darling, and gather a bunch for the children; but they have so many flowers at home, and I fear to loose your hand for a moment. Besides, you wish to lead me further yet; we have somewhere to go to this evening. I forget whither it was you told me, Walter. Is it to the lily-pond, to see if we can find any snow-white cups floating, buoyed up by the broad green leaves? Is it to climb the hill that lies in front of us, and see the very last of the glorious sun; to catch the crimson sparkle of its rays on the distant windows of our dear home? That sun which will rise to-morrow, and waken us both so early--for you will never leave me again, Walter--promise me, my darling--I have been so unhappy. Is it further yet? To the ruins of the gray old abbey where the poet's ivy grows so freely? Shall we wait there, as once before, and see the full moon shine through the rose of the east windows? Shall we wander arm-in-arm through the dim glades, laughing at the foolish monks who chose to live and die there, knowing not love, nor the sweetness of life when two share its joys and troubles? But our troubles are over now, are they not, dearest? No matter, lead me whither you will: I care not--you are with me, your hand is in mine, and I am happy. But wherever we go, we will walk back by moonlight, and then creep up quietly and kiss the children just once before we go to bed. To-morrow we will wake and love again. No, I am not dreaming. But why do you not speak to me and tell me where you have been--why you left me so long? Oh, how I have wept and waited for you! Dearest, you will never leave me again?

This is the spot you wished to lead me to--the place where the ferns grow? Ah, you remembered what I wanted. Are there any of that sort up there? Let us go and see, although the day is flying fast. Through the hazel bushes--deep, deep into the underwood--on and on--up and up--brambles and stones! I did not know it was so steep here. Hold my hand firmer and help me. More bushes, more undergrowth; and how the twilight fades! My darling, we shall find no ferns to-night. May we not go back and come again to-morrow? Yet on, and on! Love, where you lead I follow and fear not! Is not your hand in mine, and you will never leave me again! Still on! My darling, you have brought me to the very edge of a rock! Don't leave me here! Don't draw your hand from mine! Stay one minute--one moment longer! I can not see you; it is dark and cold! I can not feel you, and the world seems filling again with grief. Come back! Come back! Walter! Walter!

They told me I dreamed it--that I walked in my sleep. Clever and learned men said so, and I am only a woman, neither clever nor learned. Mr. Mainwaring, who had with great difficulty followed us--for I say "us," in spite of all that wisdom can urge--found me lying lifeless at the brink of the rocky depth to which Walter had led me, and where he had left me. Down below me lay something that I, thank God, never saw. They bore it home and told me it was all that was left of Walter Linton, my husband. But I knew better, for had he not that evening walked hand-in-hand with me for miles? They told me, also, that he had fallen from the top of the rock--that it was not a great height, but high enough for the fall to kill him instantaneously--that most likely he was led to that fatal place, seeking some rare plant; as a root and withered leaves were clenched in his hand--that the notes he had placed in his pocket when he left his home were still there--that Draycot was still mine and his children's. But they believe me not when I tell them that my love, my husband, through the power of the love he bore me, could come from the dead--could take my hand In his and lead me with him, on and on, till he showed me where and how he died--till he saved those he loved from utter ruin and a life of penury--till, more than all, he cleared his own dear memory from stain and dishonor. Yet these things were!

THRAWN JANET

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. He was graduated at Cambridge and studied law, which he abandoned for literature. In 1889 he settled in Samoa, where he died in 1894. He is the author of numerous essays, a delightful volume of poems called "A Child's Garden of Verses," and many stories. Stevenson's books include: "Treasure Island"; "Kidnapped" and its sequel, "David Balfour"; "The Black Arrow"; "Prince Otto"; "The Silverado Squatters"; "New Arabian Nights"; "Island Nights' Entertainments"; "The Master of Ballantrae"; "An Inland Voyage"; "Travels with a Donkey," and "The Ebb-Tide."_

_"Thrawn Janet" appeared in "The Merry Men and Other Tales."_

THRAWN JANET

By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, "The devil as a roaring lion," on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighborhood. There was one spot, to be more

## particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood

between the high road and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its back was toward the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the one hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister walked there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to "follow my leader" across that legendary spot.

This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of spotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or business into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister's strange looks and solitary life.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam' first into Ba'weary, he was still a young man--a callant, the folk said--fu' o' book learnin' and grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o' the moderates--weary fa' them; but ill things are like guid--they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time; and there were folk even then that said the Lord had left the college professors to their ain devices, an' the lads that went to study wi' them wad hae done mair and better sittin' in a peat-bog, like their forebears of the persecution, wi' a Bible under their oxter and a speerit o' prayer in their heart. There was nae doubt, onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been ower lang at the college. He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He had a feck o' books wi' him--mair than had ever been seen before in a' that presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had wi' them, for they were a' like to have smoored in the Deil's Hag between this and Kilmackerlie. They were books o' divinity, to be sure, or so they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang in the neuk of a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day and half the nicht forbye, which was scant decent--writin', nae less; and first, they were feared he wad read his sermons; and syne it proved he was writin' a book himsel', which way surely no fittin' for ane of his years an' sma' experience.

Onyway it behooved him to get an auld, decent wife to keep the manse for him an' see to his bit denners; and he was recommended to an auld limmer--Janet M'Clour, they ca'd her--and sae far left to himsel' as to be ower persuaded. There was mony advised him to the contrar, for Janet was mair than suspeckit by the best folk in Ba'weary. Lang or that, she had had a wean to a dragoon; she hadnae come forrit for maybe thretty year; and bairns had seen her mumblin' to hersel' up on Key's Loan in the gloamin', whilk was an unco time an' place for a God-fearin' woman. Howsoever, it was the laird himsel' that had first tauld the minister o' Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and the deil was mercifully restrained.

Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet M'Clour was to be servant at the manse, the folk were fair mad wi' her an' him thegether; and some o' the guidwives had nae better to dae than get round her door cheeks and chairge her wi' a' that was ken't again her, frae the sodger's bairn to John Tamson's twa kye. She was nae great speaker; folk usually let her gang her ain gate, an' she let them gang theirs, wi' neither Fair-guid-een nor Fair-guid-day; but when she buckled to she had a tongue to deave the miller. Up she got, an' there wasnae an auld story in Ba'weary but she gart somebody lowp for it that day; they couldnae say ae thing but she could say twa to it; till, at the hinder end, the guidwives up and claught haud of her, and clawed the coats aff her back, and pu'd her doun the clachan to the water o' Dule, to see if she were a witch or no, soum or droun. The carline skirled till ye could hear her at the Hangin' Shaw, and she focht like ten; there was mony a guidwife bure the mark of her neist day, an' mony a lang day after; and just in the hettest o' the collteshangie, wha suld come up (for his sins) but the new minister.

"Women," said he (and he had a grand voice), "I charge you in the Lord's name to let her go."

Janet ran to him--she was fair wud wi' terror--an' clang to him an' prayed him, for Christ's sake, save her frae the cummers; an' they, for their pairt, tauld him a' that was ken't, and maybe mair.

"Woman," says he to Janet, "is this true?"

"As the Lord sees me," says she, "as the Lord made me, no a word o't. Forbye the bairn," says she, "I've been a decent woman a' my days."

"Will you," says Mr. Soulis, "in the name of God, and before me, His unworthy minister, renounce the devil and his works?"

Weel, it wad appear that when he askit that, she gave a girn that fairly frichtit them that saw her, an' they could hear her teeth play dirl thegether in her chafts; but there was naething for it but the ae way or the ither; an' Janet lifted up her hand and renounced the deil before them a'.

"And now," said Mr. Soulis to the guidwives, "home with ye, one and all, and pray to God for His forgiveness."

And he gied Janet his arm, though she had little on her but a sark, and took her up the clachan to her ain door like a leddy of the land; an' her scrieghin' and laughin' as was a scandal to be heard.