TwelveTales of Suspenseand theSupernatural

By Davis Grubb

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS • New York

Copyright © 1964 Davis GrubbCopyright 1946, 1949, 1950 The Crowell-CollierPublishing CompanyCopyright 1947 Weird TalesCopyright 1953 Fawcett Publications, Inc.Copyright 1954 Hillman Periodicals, Inc.Copyright © 1963 Davis Publications, Inc.

A-2.64[V]THIS BOOKPUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLYIN THEUNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND IN CANADACOPYRIGHTUNDER THE BERNE CONVENTIONALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOKMAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUTTHE PERMISSION OF CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

Acknowledgments: "The Horsehair Trunk" and "The Return ofVirge Likens" appeared originally in Collier's, "Busby's Rat" inCavalier, "Where the Woodbine Twineth" in Ellery Queen'sMystery Magazine as "You Never Believe Me," "One Foot in theGrave" in Weird Tales, "Wynken, Blynken and Nod" in Nero WolfeMystery Magazine, and "The Rabbit Prince" in The Woman's HomeCompanion.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICALibrary of Congress Catalog Card Number 64-13272

FOR James Bradley Schiller

CONTENTS

Busby’s RatThe Rabbit PrinceRadioOne Foot in the GraveMoonshineThe Man Who Stole the MoonNobody’s Watching!The Horsehair TrunkThe Blue Glass BottleWynken, Blynken and NodReturn of Verge LikensWhere the Woodbine Twineth

**

Busby’s Rat

THIS was what made the memory of that summersuch a troubling thing: There was no moral to it.Preachers searched for it and the whispering womenand the loafers on the long porch of the Brass Housepondered over it years after. Some laid all the blameon old Busby and some on Jonas Tanner. But thewomen laid it mostly on Busby's daughter, Eliza, becauseshe was beautiful and they could not forgiveher that. In the end there was no answer and no lesson.Captain Gunn used to say that the river itselfwas the real criminal. But you cannot hang a river. Old Busby was no fool. Once he had been the finestpilot on the Ohio. Captain Gunn used to tell of thetime when he and Busby were partners on the PrairieBelle. Even then Busby hated the river. He wouldstand at the pilot wheel like a man with a whip lash-ing a great and treacherous beast before him. And inthe end, what he feared most happened: The riverturned on him. This was 15 years after what Captain Gunn alwaysreferred to as the "Trouble Between the States," andhe and Busby were now partners on the Phoenix outof Louisville. A boiler exploded three miles belowShawneetown, and Busby was pinned beneath a cottonbale on the boiler deck with the live steam playing

steadily, mercilessly on his legs. Captain Gunn, by some miracle, had escaped withouta scratch and, all that night, had helped get thewounded and dying to Shawneetown. Busby was leftfor dead on the counter of a general store, and then atmidnight he had begun to scream again and the doctoramputated both legs. In the spring Captain Gunn brought Busby and hissmall daughter Eliza back to Cresap's Landing andsecured for him the position of wharfmaster. ThereBusby sat day in and day out for 20 years on a littlecalico pillow, glowering at the river. He and hisdaughter lived in the two rooms at the fore of the littlewharf boat. The rest of it was storage room for freight;aft there was a room with sleeping accommodationsfor passengers who had to wait overnight for themorning packet. Such a traffic of gamblers and whores and riverscumcame and went there that it was a wonder Elizahad not actually grown up to be as wanton as thewomen of the Landing said she was. She was a dark,ripe girl with hair as rich and shining as a kettle ofblackberries. Legend had it that Busby had murderedher Creole mother in Natchez when the girl was stilla baby, then had fled north with a price on his headand gotten a pilafs berth in the Ohio trade. Yet thewomen of Cresap's Landing never hated Busby somuch as they hated his daughter. And they whispereddarkly as they watched the girl ripen into womanhoodwith the brooding beauty of a river willow.

Still, the thing that made Busby the talk of everyriverman on the Ohio was not his temper nor histwisted body nor his beautiful daughter. It was therats. Captain Gunn always said that Busby loved thecreatures because they were the only living thingsthat the river could never beat. From Pittsburgh toNew Orleans they thrived along the banks among themud and litter of Hood-borne trash, Hitting soundlesslyalong the shores at dusk and dawn-huge andgrey and immortal. When the spring floods washed thousands of themfrom their warrens, it would seem that the last of theirkind had been sucked into the yellow waters forever.But when the river fell, and left the reeking, naked

bluffs studded with the wreckage of houses and treesand the bloated bodies of livestock, the rats were alwaysthere again, darting like nervous shadows underthe willows.

The river had turned on Busby, broken him and lefthim to rot out his destiny on the deck of a wharfboat.But the river could not beat the rats. They were immortal.Busby loved them for that. It had to be theanswer, though Captain Gunn did not like to thinkabout it often. . . . One night, many years after the tragedy on thePhoenix, he went down to the wharfboat to pay Busbya friendly call. It was a warm June night just aftersundown, and Captain Gunn could see Busby on hislittle cushion on the deck, his huge shoulders toweringabove his ruined body, his shaggy, dark head benta little in the half-light. Captain Gunn stopped on thebricks at the head of the landing and stared, almostunbelieving. Busby was speaking in a low voice tosomeone. And yet there was no one there. CaptainCunn could not make out the words but there wassomething gentle and coaxing in the tone that was unlikeBusby's usually loud and profane speech. ThenCaptain Cunn saw the rats. For an instant he was sure they were the shadowytricks that river dusk plays on men's eyes. He couldnot bring his mind to believe what he saw. Therewere a dozen of them-huge grey creatures, sittingon their haunches in a semi-circle around Busby likea litter of begging pups. Busby had a bread loaf between the stumps of hislegs and he was tearing off little bits of it and holdingthem out for the rats to take. There was something almostappealingly human in their aspect. Their littlepaws were like hands, and their black eyes were twinklingwith an almost child-like pleasure. The mostawesome of them seemed to be their leader. CaptainGunn said it was the largest rat he had ever laid eyeson, and he had seen rats on the Memphis waterfrontthat could kill a feisty dog. This rat was nearly twofeet from its whiskers to the tip of its tail, and it sat inthe very center of the semi-circle just a few inchesfrom Busby's calico cushion. Captain Gunn gave up all notions of paying Busby

a visit that night, and yet he could not tear himselfaway from the horrible and yet, somehow fascinating,spectacle. In a few moments the bread was all gone,and then Busby dipped into the pocket of his old pilot'scoat and pulled out something shiny. It was amouth harp. Captain Gunn could barely see him nowas the fog reached up from the cattails along theshore, but he could hear the music. And he was neverlikely to forget the tune-"Old Dan Tucker." Norwould he ever likely forget the sight, faint and blurredbut unmistakable, of old Busby reared back againstthe wall of the cabin playing his mouth harp andkeeping time with his head while the rats prancedand frolicked about him on the deck like dancers at acotillion. Captain Gunn left then. He hurried up to the barof the Brass House and had two stiff drinks of bourbonas fast as he could get them down, saying not aword to anyone that night about what he had justwitnessed. It was a long time before he could bringhimself to speak of it. After a while he tried not tothink of it at all. Nobody might ever have known about the rats ifJonas Tanner hadn't met Eliza Busby that summerand fallen in love with her. Jonas was Captain Cunn'snephew, a man in his middle thirties, dark and earnest-looking with the pale, sallow complexion of peoplewith heart disease. Captain Gunn had felt that thepleasant river voyage from Wheeling to Cincinnatimight improve his nephew's health, so he had arrangedcabin passage for him. The evening the Noah Cunningham put into Cresap'sLanding Jonas caught sight of Eliza in the windowof the wharfboat and fell in love with her almostinstantly. The boat was not scheduled to leave againtill morning, so Captain Gunn had secured accommodationsfor his partner, himself and his nephew atthe Brass House. That evening, as the three sat eatingtheir supper together in the hotel dining room, CaptainGunn could see how deeply Jonas had been smittenwith the beauty of Busby's dark-eyed daughter.But he said nothing, eating his meal in silence with anoccasional glance at Jonas' untouched plate, knowingthe young man would return to the landing that nightto see the girl again… Eliza was alone in the kitchen when Jonas came

back just after sundown. Busby was out on the deckand did not hear him come aboard. At first Eliza wastoo frightened to speak-not so much of Jonas as ofthe awful rage his presence was certain to arouse inBusby. Jonas introduced himself properly and Eliza,scarcely knowing why, asked him to sit down. Neitherof them could keep his eyes off the other. "My name is Jonas Tanner," he said. "I'm thenephew of Captain Gunn of the Noah Cunningham.I hope you're not angry at my just coming up and introducingmyself like this. I saw you when we dockedtoday, and I thought maybe you might not mind mycoming down this evening. It's so quiet up in thetown. Not a bit like Cincinnati or Louisville. What'syour name?" "Eliza," she whispered. "Are you angry with me?" "No," she said. "It's very strange. But I'm not angry."Then she blushed and fell silent for a moment, obliviousto anything in the world but this pale, thinstranger who looked at her with such a tender warmness.Then she gasped and turned quickly at the dryscuffling that marked Busby's progress in from thedeck. Jonas stared at the great torso and the shaggyhead upon it crouched there in the doorway, staringwith an animal malevolence first at the girl and thenat him. "Eliza," Busby said, "go into the bedroom." Jonas glanced quickly at the girl, saw her blackeyes blaze. She seemed more beautiful to him thenthan anything he had ever seen. Then he felt theblood rush angrily to his face. "Eliza!" roared Busby, smashing his fist on the floorbeside him. "Get into the bedroom!" Jonas suddenly grew wild with rage and opened hismouth to answer the old man. Then he saw the rat. Itcame up beside Busby as swiftly and silently as theshadow of a gar. Jonas closed his mouth and felt thesweat break on the back of his neck as Busby reachedover and gathered the huge creature into his arms,stroking its grey ears as if it were a house cat. Elizaseemed to wilt then, and the fire went out of her eyes.She went into the bedroom. "There have been several," said Busby in a strong,clear voice, "who have taken a fancy to my daughter,sir. Everyone of them lived to regret it."

Then, letting the rat loose, he turned suddenly onhis fists and went back out through the open doorwayonto the deck. Jonas stood for a moment, wondering whether tohave the thing out then or to wait. He could hear Elizain the bedroom sobbing softly. Jonas' heart was troublinghim so badly from the excitement that he decidedto put the business off till morning. He wentback to the Brass House then, wondering at what hehad seen-this wild, golden girl living with Busby.And the rat. That seemed the darkest part of thewhole business. Jonas took his heart medicine and undressed silentlyin his room. He decided to say nothing at all toCaptain Gunn but to have the matter out with Busbywhen the Noah Cunningham returned from Cincinnatiat the end of the month. When the steamboat put into Cresap's Landingagain two weeks later, Captain Gunn suspected withoutJonas' telling him that the boy meant to marryEliza Busby and take her away. That night, when hesaw his nephew heading down Walter Street, he wascertain he'd been right.

Busby was alone, as usual, on the forward deck ofthe wharfboat. Eliza sat by the window of the bedroomstaring out at the snowy, filigreed elegance ofthe Noah Cunningham towering in the dusk down theshore. Then she heard Jonas' low whistle from thewillows up on the bank. Her heart was beating so fastshe almost shouted her joy. She bent to peer up through the twilight and gavea low, answering whistle. Another whistle came backto her after a few seconds, and then she heard Jonasmoving cautiously down through the tall grass. It wasalmost completely dark now, except for the twinklinglanterns on the Noah Cunningham and the soft yel-low glow of the oil lamp on the kitchen table. Jonascame quickly up the little gangplank and swept Elizainto his arms. "I couldn't tell you," she whispered, hardly able tobreathe. "I couldn't tell you how much I wanted youto come back that day. He said he'd kill you if youever come back. Cod in heavenl Sometimes I thinkI'm losing my mind, too. Take me with you, Jonas I

I'll marry you or anything. Just take me-!" He kissed her, and there was no sound then but thelapping of the river between the shore and the wharfboat. "There's nothing for you to be afraid of any more,"Jonas murmured. "The Noah Cunningham leaves forCincinnati tomorrow noon and you're coming withme. We'll be married--." They both heard it: the cocking of Busby's pistolin the doorway. Jonas turned and shielded Eliza behindhim. "Captain Tanner," Busby said, "you have chosen--ill-advisedly I should say--to ignore my warning toyou to stay away from my daughter. Now I am entirelywithin my rights in shooting you down as a trespasser." Jonas threw Eliza to the floor and flattened himselfbeside her as the orange flame and the flat roar ofBusby's pistol filled the room. In the void of silenceafterwards Jonas could hear Busby cursing to himselfand re-loading in the dark. Jonas felt about him franticallyfor a weapon. His hand closed on a ten-footsounding-pole that rested against the wall. He raisedit and brought it down in the darkness with all hismight just as Busby shouted and raised the pistol tofire again. Then he could hear Captain gunn comerunning down the bricks of the landing onto the gangplank.Lanterns were appearing on the decks of theNoah Cunningham and voices were crying out in thedark. Eliza lay sobbing in the comer, her head buried inher arms, her dark hair spilling over her white handswhen Captain gunn came through the doorway holdingthe lantern high. Jonas Tanner leaned against thewall, breathing heavily, with the sounding-pole stillin his hands. Busby's massive torso lay sprawled grotesquelyin the doorway. "He's dead," said Captain Gunn, after a moment ofbending over Busby's body. "Don't worry, Jonas. Thisman was hardly human. No river jury will ever convictyou." Jonas did not answer. For a moment Captain Gunnthought he had not heard him. Then he followed Jonas'gaze and saw the rat. It was sitting on its hindlegs in the doorway to the deck, staring at Busby'sbody with an almost childish grief. Captain Gunnswore and picked up a heavy china cup from the tableand threw it at the beast as hard as he could. It struck

it squarely and they all heard the angry squeal ofpain. In an instant, though, it was on its feet againand , with one last vicious-almost human-look ofhate at Jonas, it darted into the night. "Now," said Captain Gunn. "I think we'd betterfetch the magistrate. . . ." In the next session Jonas was tried and, with thetestimony of Captain Gunn and Eliza Busby, was acquitted.The people of Cresap's Landing felt a strongsense of relief that Busby was gone. The older women,it is true, experienced pangs of disappointment thatEliza had not somehow shared in Busby's debacle,but still there were enough of the young ones to makethe wedding a gay affair. Captain Gunn made arrangementsfor Jonas to inherit the position of wharfmasterof Cresap's Landing, and for a wedding present hegave the young couple cabin passage to Mobile.

After their return, Eliza went to work and fixed upthe two little rooms of the wharfboat. Every vestige ofBusby's memory was destroyed, and when CaptainGunn came back in the fall he scarcely recognizedthe place. In his honor, Eliza cooked a supper thatwas the finest meal in the land. It was dusk and thesun seemed to have set the river afire when CaptainGunn left. Jonas went over to his wife and took her in his arms.They stood together for a long moment with theirarms around each other, and then Jonas opened hiseyes and looked over Eliza's shoulder. Sitting on itshaunches in the doorway staring at them, its eyesgleaming like tiny black beads, was the rat. Eliza feltJonas stiffen and almost instantly she sensed what itwas. "Don't move, my dear," Jonas whispered, feelinginside his coat for the small revolver that was there. Eliza was trembling so that Jonas could hardlyhold the pistol steady. Then the shot rang out in theclose room and Eliza screamed. Jonas went over tothe body of the huge rat lying on the deck. It wasdead. He picked it up by the tail and threw it overthe railing into the green, moving water. Eliza wascrying almost hysterically. "There," he said, putting his arms around her,"that's the last of it, Liza. The last thing in the world

to remind you of him. There now . . . there. . . .You mustn't shake like that. He's gone. He's gone foreverand now his rat's gone." Presently Eliza stopped trembling and sobbing andJonas lifted her and laid her in her bunk and went backinto the kitchen. It was dark outside now. The greenfrogs were setting up a racket in the cattails along theshore. Jonas sat down at the kitchen table, thankfulfor the warm yellow light of the oil lamp at his elbow.He poured himself a glass of wine and sipped itslowly. And then he heard the sound. At first it was a patternless whisper, scarcely audibleabove the slapping of the water against the wharfboat.Then Jonas knew there was a rhythm in it-astrange, cadenced skittering like the march of tinyfeet. He dared not move his eyes from the lamp chimneyto the doorway with the towering river dark behindit; knowing well in his heart what horror mightbe there. Then he turned his head suddenly and sawthem--12 of them--huge grey rats sitting up in a rowoutside the doorway, for all the world like a jury thathad come to pass a judgment on his soul. Their tinyeyes never left his face, and by the time Jonas hadsnatched the revolver out of the pocket of his alpacacoat and lifted it to fire, they had dropped and meltedinto the darkness again. Jonas sat perfectly still for a long time in the splitbottomchair. He realized presently that he wasdrenched with sweat and his heart was poundingwildly. He went to the kitchen cupboard and fetcheddown the little paper of powders and measured thedose out in a tumbler. When he had drunk the mixturethe faintness passed away and he sat down againat the table, wondering what to do. Through the doorway to the bedroom he could seeEliza peacefully sleeping, her dark hair tangled overthe white bolster. Then Jonas went up the little gangplankonto the landing and headed for the pharmacist'sto get the strychnine. It was the only way underthe sun to be rid of the last vestige of Busby. It wasn'tso much that the rats would do either him or Elizaany real physical harm-though that was not beyondreason. It was just the very thought of them. It was

the knowledge of them coming and sitting there-a

jury of them. It was perhaps the unspoken fear-insaneperhaps-that if they could be a jury they couldbe executioners, too. . . . Within half an hour Jonas returned to the wharfand hurried anxiously down the gangplank to thecabin to see if Eliza were all right. He put the littlepacket of poison away and hurried over to his wife'sside. He bent to kiss her. She stirred once in her sleepand smiled. Jonas thought he saw her lips form hisname. He left her then, and fetching the lamp fromthe kitchen table went outside to make sure the ratshad not returned. Satisfied, Jonas went inside and, blowing out thelamp, began undressing in the dark. In the morning hewould put out the poisoned bait. The thing would beover then; the rats would be dead.

Jonas had not been asleep 15 minutes when heheard them again outside on the deck. He started upin his bed and stared wildly through the dark towardthe open door. Against the white morning fog theywere there on the deck-distinct and unmistakable.There were 12 of them again, making no noise, notmoving, just sitting and staring in at Jonas like respectablelittle men in grey frock coats. Jonas' heartwas pounding so hard now that he could hear nothingbut the terrible roar of his own blood. "Liza!" he called. "Liza!" He heard her bare feet padding quickly across thefloor to the lamp, heard the match scratch on the tabletop and then the yellow glare moving toward him andEliza's blurred, pale face presently looming over his. "My medicine ... " Jonas gasped. "In ... the. . . kitchen cabinet . . ." She was gone for an instant, and then he heard thepump handle squeaking and the clink of the spoon inhis tumbler and then she was back, lifting his headgently in her hands, her face frantic and twisted withfear and love for him. He drank the liquid quickly and presently lay backsweating in his pillow. "I saw them," he whispered. "They came and satout there ... just looking at me ... like a jury.Liza, get me my pistol. In . . . my . . . coat. . . .Like a jury . . ."

The last thing he heard was Eliza's scream, andthen the darkness walked through the doorway fromthe river and folded round him like a warm hand. . . . Captain Gunn was there within 15 minutes, andold Doctor Bruce got out of bed and came down tothe landing in his rockaway and tried to quiet Eliza.It was useless to try to help Jonas. He was dead withinan hour. Doctor Bruce put Liza to bed and gave her asedative. When she had fallen off into a troubled sleepthe two men went out and stood for a moment on thedeck. "His heart was always bad," Captain Gunn said,steadying a match under the tip of his long black stogie. "He used to have these fits even when he was aboy."Doctor Bruce laid his hand on Captain Cunn's arm. "Gunn," he said. "It wasn't Jonas' heart that killedhim. It was strychnine. He's had a dose tonight thatwould kill a team of mules. I'd never have thought shewould do such a thing--that girl. But I guess blood'sthicker than water ... :' Captain Gunn did not answer. He stood and listenedto it as long as he could stand it, the sound therats were making, squealing in the room behind himlike a pack of happy children.

TheRabbitPrince

TOM SPOON ate his good hot breakfast that morningand stumped merrily off up Lafayette Avenue. Itwas a fine blowing spring day with the wind snappingsmartly above the town and there was but onethought that sang like a silver bird in Tom Spoon'smind. Today was the last day of school. Today he wasthrough with the third grade forever. The tyrannyof Serena Tinkens was ended for him at last. It was an odd thing-the trouble with Miss Tinkens.It was not that she was old--though it oftenseemed that she was. Slim, pale, blue-veined, SerenaTinkens lived alone in a house on Water Street thatappeared somehow to have been constructed of old

grey valentines pasted recklessly together. The parlorof this house was like the breast of Serena Tmkensitself: narrow, tall, inviolate. Magazines were stackedneatly by the oil lamp; dainty lace doilies lay on thespidery polished tables and a crocheted pillow on theseat of the melodeon. On a drop-leaf table lay a crystalpaperweight-a scarlet dusty flower imprison~din a frozen timeless prism: the heart of Serena Tinkens,bloodless, sorrowless and without joy. . The children were laughing and shouting merrilyas Tom Spoon, stamping his feet in happy defiance,marched flamboyantly into the third-grade room. Hesat down just as Serena Tinkens rapped sharply forsilence. "Good morning, children!" she cried with the brightdry voice of an August sparrow. "Good morning, Miss Tinkensl" the children chorused. "And a good morning it is!" cried Serena Tinkens,pressing her pale lips together in a sarcastic smile. "Avery good morning for those of us who have done ourbest work this past winter and are going on to thefourth grade next fall! Today we're having a littleparty here in our pleasant classroom to celebrate ourpromotion! All of us except--" Tom Spoon saw then that the blue eyes of SerenaTinkens had fastened upon him malevolently. "All of us," continued Miss Tinkens, "except foronel And he--just like Ned in our third reader--haschosen the slothful road and, as a result, will have toremain in Three-A for another semester. Tom Spoon,stand up!" Tom stood up, burning, depraved-his head bentas Raleigh's must have been before the blade. Glancingsideways at his schoolmates, who now staredbreathless at this monster in their midst, Tom essayeda foolish frantic smirk. "Now, Tom Spoonl" cooed Miss Tinkens, her voicesoft with violence. "You may go home and play withyour toads and your white mice! We wouldn't wantto keep you. Good morning, Tom Spoon!" Tom swaggered laboriously from the room, the gigglesof the simple girls hanging like donkey tails onhis back. Down the steps, down the moldering mossybricks of the sidewalk, down the street walked TomSpoon into the shattered ruin of the once so perfectseason. Wandering at last out the end of Water Street

and into the green valley of the river, Tom Spoon satupon a stump, abandoning his spirit entirely to theravages of misery. It was a good long while before Tom Spoon wasaware that anything existed in the whole world buthimself and his shame. Then for no particular reasonhe looked up and saw it there in the meadow: a monstrouswooden wagon such as Tom Spoon imaginedonly gypsies traveled in-a wagon violent with all thecolors of creation and with all elegant letters of scarletand gold emblazoned across its side. Hitched to thewagon was the oldest horse that Tom Spoon had everseen, its poor bony back swayed nigh to the tops ofthe buttercups. Gaping from the rear of the paintedwagon was a small stage upon which stood numerouslittle pedestals, canisters and gilded chests and a smalltable with a purple star-spangled cloth thrown overit. Gazing upon all this, Tom Spoon felt his sadnesssnatched from him like the puff of white steam froma showboat whistle. He sat back on his stump, smilingdreamily and nursing his knees, leisurely readingthe great gold and scarlet words: Professor AlexanderGalvani, the Great!! Prestidigitateur Extraordinaire!!! " 'Mornin'!" cried a harsh but not unpleasant voice.Tom Spoon saw an amazing white-haired old manwalking briskly toward him, mopping his shiny foreheadwith a scarlet silk handkerchief and mumblingto himself. "Boy," cried the Great Galvani, getting right downto business, "it's a sad world! Yes, it is! What's yourname?" "Tom Spoon," whispered Tom. "Tom," said the Great Galvani, looking about firstto be sure he was not being overheard, "got two bits?"Tom remembered bitterly the twenty-five-centpiece his mother had given him to pay his share ofthe school party. "Yes," he said, "I have." "Good!" sniffed the Great Galvani. "I thought youwould. Let's have it. That's the admission to myshow."

Tom Spoon pulled the coin out of his pocket andblinked at the wondrous way it popped from his ownfingers into those of the Great Galvani without his

moving a hair. "It's a sad world! Yes, it is!" reiterated the professorloudly. "Drove all night up the river from New Troy1Beat off three gypsies with the strength of my twohands in the bend just below Cresap's Landing! Gotto town just at daybreak-" Pausing here, he spit on the coin, rubbed it brisklybetwixt thumb and forefinger and then held it up toshine like a lover's moon. "Hit town, as I say," he continued, "just as the suncame up! Sheriff said I couldn't put my show on inthe town limits-the varlet! Pulled out of town againand set up here. Have laid eyes on no mortal soulsince then-except you! It's a sad penny-riddenworld, I tell you. Folks just don't care for fun like theydid in the old daysl" And Tom Spoon ruefully agreed. "However!" cried the Great Calvani, glaring fardown the river road for the faintest cloud of dust andthen up Water Street for some harbinger of trade fromthat direction. "However! If there is but one in thiswhole town who has come to see my show, then-bythe shade of the great Houdini-one shall not be disappointed!Come, Tom Spoon!" And grabbing Tom Spoon's hand, the Great Galvanihustled him impatiently off to the rear of thatbeauteous flaming palace on wheels. Tom plumpeddown, rather breathless, in the grass and looked upat the small stage. "La-a-adies--and gentlemen!" bawled the GreatGalvani, red-faced and magnificent. "You are aboutto witness the most astounding performance of magicand legerdemain ever to appear before the unbelievingeye of mortal man!" And it was true. At least to Tom Spoon it was true.Gold coins sprang like mushrooms from nowhere.Rabbits popped, pink-eared and flopping, from theGreat Calvani's coat-tails. A purple billiard ball multipliedmiraculously into a dozen rainbow, globes betweenthe Great Galvani's fingers. Finally, leapingfrom the stage to the knee-high grass, the professorhurled a towrope high into the morning air andclimbed it. When he had reached the very top hehalf-disappeared into the blue sky, his lower half remainingwithin the bewitched vision of Tom Spoonfor an instant. Then, scrambling a little, as if his trousers

had caught on a sharp edge of sky, the Great Galvanidisappeared altogether. "Ho, Tom Spoonl" cried a voice from the blue-nothingto small Tom far below in the grass. "Ho, Tom!Can you see me?" And Tom gawked and stared until the sun motesswarmed into his eyes like golden bees and then, tohis relief, a foot appeared presently and then a leg andthen both legs and quite suddenly and quite modestlythe Great Galvani slid down the rope to the groundand, seating himself upon the wagon tongue, beganperfunctorily to peel an orange. "Tom," cried the Great Galvani presently. "I'mgrateful! Yes, I amI" "Grateful?" said Tom. "Yes, boy! " said the professor, spitting seeds neatlyinto the air, "I'm grateful to find that in this misbegottenvillage of skinflints there is still someone whowould come to see my show I And mind you, TomSpoon, I know how hard two bits is to come by!"Tom flushed, pleased with the praise though notunderstanding it, and watched as the Great Galvanifinished his orange and wiped each finger daintily ona magic silk. "And so," said the professor, "it is nothing but equitable-nay, even honest-that I return your kindnesswith a favor. What do you desire most in thisdisenchanted world?" "You mean--" said Tom, "you mean--what do Iwant?" "Precisely I" cried the Great Galvani. "Speak out,boy! But don't disappoint me. You're too good forsome kinds of wishes, so think well, boyl Think well!This chance may never come down the pike again!" Tom Spoon shut his eye--the left one--andscratched thoughtfully at the scab on his ankle. Andit crept like a wrath into his mind-the dark fairywish. "Anything?" Tom Spoon whispered. "Anything!" cried the Great Galvani. Then Tom Spoon stood up, frowning, his small fistsclenched. "Then I wish-I wish you'd change Miss Tinkensinto a rabbit!" he cried. "Miss Tinkens?" said the Great Galvani. "Now whoin the name of the Great Merlin might that be?"

"My schoolteacher!" cried Tom Spoon. "The meanest,most hatefulest, most darned--" "Say no more!" cried the Great Galvani, holdingup his hand for silence. "You shall have your wish,Tom Spoon! Just tell me where this spinster can befound." 'Well," said Tom Spoon, shaking with excitement, "Miss Tinkens lives over there in the big grey houseon Water Street and she ought to be walking homebefore long--" So the Great Galvani and Tom Spoon hid in thesnowball bush by Serena Tinkens' steps and waited.A mocking bird cried rain down in the willows just asTom Spoon heard the footsteps on the bricks. "Listen!" Tom whispered fiercely, snatching theGreat Galvani's sleeve. "That's her!" "Are you sure, Tom Spoon?" whispered the profes-sor. "We don't want to be making any mistakes!" "I'm positive!" whispered Tom Spoon hoarsely. "She wears high button shoes! Listen!" And, listening, they could hear the tap, tap of SerenaTinkens' austere grey heels upon the stone. In amatter of seconds she was right upon them-Tomcould have reached out and touched the hem of herlong sad skirt-and just as she lifted her foot to ascendthe steps the voice of the Great Galvani cried outsharp and clear: "Serena Tinkens! Be a rabbit!" And Tom stared wildly out, sweating and shakingtill he was near tears. And in that moment Tom spiedit-the poor timid creature of pink and white,hunched there on the bricks by the steps, its longears twitching and its pink nose a writhing button ofagitation. "Take it home, Tom Spoon!" cried the professor,arising and dusting off his knees. "Wait!" cried Tom Spoon. "Professor Galvani! Wait! Take the rabbit with you. What will I do withit? I didn't mean--" "Take it home! Feed it carrots!" cried the GreatGalvani, striding off down the sidewalk. "Good-by,Tom Spoon! Good-byl"

Tom Spoon stared miserably after the disappearingfigure of the old magician and then at the rabbit at

his feet. For it was mortal, Tom realized with horror,in spite of its pink and white unimportance. The burdenof its safety was now clearly his own. So he tookit home and when his mother saw the creature hangingby its ears from Tom Spoon's fist, there in thekitchen door, she dropped a pan of hot cinnamon rollsand screamed out loud. "Not another varmint!" Tom Spoon's mother cried. "Toads in the attic. White mice in the basement.Goldfish in the parlor. Not another varmint, TomSpoon! Just take that creature right back where youfound itl" "1--!can't, Mom," Tom gasped. "You don't understand.This is a very important rabbit! I have to takevery good care of it!" "No impudence, thank you!" cried his plump redfacedmother. "Out with you and out with that varminttoo!" So, with a squeak of despair, Tom Spoon put thewhite rabbit in an egg basket and set off for the rivermeadow with the sudden wild hope that the GreatGalvani would still be there. But there was never atrace of the professor, only the ruts of his bewitchedwagon there in the mud. So Tom Spoon ran off to thehouse of Bob Miller in the hope that Bob would givethe poor creature a home. But Bob's mother stoodwaiting at the back door to announce that she wouldhave no rabbits in her household, either. Nor wouldthe cruel mother of Benny Blankensop. It seemed thatall the mothers of the town stood together that after-noon in a phalanx of resistance and the small boysstood behind their skirts, ogling Tom Spoon and hisfine white pet with the wildest envy in the world.It was late when Tom returned home, defeated andweary, to sit down-a small dark figure of woe-beneaththe apple tree. "Tom Spoon!" "Yes, Pap:' Tom answered and the white beastleaped nervously in its basket. Tom walked up andstood by the porch-a sorry sodden sight. "Tom," said his father. "Your mother tells meyou've brought another animal home. Where did youget it?" "A strange old man with a white mustache and ahorse and wagon--he gave it to me and told me itwas a very fine rabbit and--and for heaven's sakes

not to let anything happen to it and-and he's goneaway and I have to do what he said, Pap!" said TomSpoon, snatching the words from the thin evening air. Tom's father stroked his chin thoughtfully. "It would really be kindest," he said softly, "sinceyou cannot keep it, Tom, to fetch my squirrel gun andlet me--" Tom clutched the basket and staggered back, hiseyes round with horror. "No, Pap!" he whispered. "That would be-m-murder!" "Murder?" laughed Tom's father heartlessly. "Killing a rabbit, murder? Well, we won't kill her, then.We'll just set her free. She'll find her way to the woodsall right. She looks like she's lean and fast enough incase any dogs--" "Dogs!" Tom Spoon sobbed. "Tom," said his father, "I don't want to hear anymore about it! Get rid of the rabbit-I don't care how--but get rid of it! Then come in and get washed forsupper."The screen door slammed and Tom was left alonethere in the tangled moon-shadow of the old appletree. Knowing that there was no appeal, he lifted thewhite rabbit gently from the basket and set it on thegrass."Go away!" Tom Spoon whispered. "Scat!" But the creature sat unmoving, perverse as SerenaTinkens had always been, wiggling its nose and nibblingthe tender wet grass. "Go on!" sobbed Tom Spoon, picking up an appleand backing slowly away. "Scoot!" cried Tom Spoon again and threw the apple.With a bound like an arc of snow, the rabbit disappearedinto the shadows. "Supper, Tom!" his mother called from the kitchen. "Tom!" "I'm not hungry, Moml" Tom answered and ploddedslowly up the narrow staircase to his room, withthe ghastly footsteps of his guilt on the creakingboards behind him. It was long after the big househad grown silent that Tom Spoon slept at last with asquare of moonlight framing his tear-stained face. In the morning Tom awoke, not really believingthat it all had happened. Gulping down his prunes andcereal, he ran off down Lafayette Avenue to peer withhorror through the shutters of Serena Tinkens' empty

house and watch the dusty sunlight stream throughthe still and somehow affrighted air. The crystalgleaming heart of Serena Tinkens winked hauntedlyfrom the dust of the drop-leaf table. And the days passed into weeks and the weeks intotortured months and one night in August-his awfulsecret burning like a stolen coin in the pocket of hismind-Tom Spoon knew he could stand it no longer.Rising, he stole silently out onto the dark porch roof,down through the honeysuckle into the wet grass, andslipped away to the river meadow. August, he thoughtto himself, is the month before September. And Augustis half over. On a day early in September theschool bell would ring. But Serena Tinkens would notbe there. During the summer no one had missed her--but then no one ever had. Anonymous and friendless,Serena Tinkens had faded into the shadows ofthe springs of fifteen years, not to emerge till theschool bell rang. But now they would know. And thechildren would run home and tell their mothers andthe sheriff would be called and they would search thetown for a certain guilty face (which would surely bethe square owlish one of Tom Spoon) and off to thepenitentiary he would go for his life or worse. Tom Spoon stumbled on through the moondust ofthe meadow, thinking these awful thoughts. Then althoughfor a moment he thought it was some trickof moonlight and cloud shadow--he saw the two rabbits.He dropped to his haunches, squatting amongthe flat trembling filigree of the Queen Anne's lace,breathless as much with the beauty of the sight aswith his joy that he had found the lost Serena at last.They leaped--the white Serena Tinkens and herbrown companion--wild free leaps high over the topsof the meadow grass in a dance so full of freedom andjoy that for an instant Tom Spoon half wished he werea rabbit himself. The white one, Tom knew unmistakably,was Miss Tinkens; and the other--a little larger,with a fine rich cinnamon coat--he had never seenbefore. The moments passed and the mists crept upin sweet pale patches between the willows as TomSpoon squatted silently watching them. And creepingto his bed at last, he lay awake till nearly dawn.She was still alive. And he had found out where shewas and there was still time. At ten the next morning Tom Spoon was in the public

library. Miss Leatherby, the librarian, couldscarcely believe her eyes, for she knew Tom Spoonhated books. Yet there he sat, nevertheless, with agreat pile on the table before him, poring throughthem until he found what he wanted: a way to captureshy small creatures of the field without harmingso much as a hair of their tails. By supper time he had finished the trap-a woodenbox with the stick to prop it up--and he had fixed upa little secret cage in the chicken house to hide therabbit from his father, once he had caught it. Latethat night he stole a sweet crisp carrot from the refrigeratorand slipped off once more to the rivermeadow. Tom set the box carefully on a Hat clear space inthe meadow, propped it loosely with the stick, setthe carrot beneath it and crept off, trailing the stringbehind him. He sat so long in the moonlight that henearly fell asleep. But just as his head was about todrop, he saw them again: the wonderful white SerenaTinkens leaping majestically through the grass andbehind her, in brown springing splendor, her companion.Tom watched for what seemed hours as theyfrolicked-leaping the length of the meadow andspringing high over the tops of the Queen Anne's lace.Then, sure enough, as the Wise Woodsman had saidin the musty book that morning, Serena Tinkenssmelled the carrot, thumped over to where it lay,sniffed, nibbled. Tom Spoon pulled the string, thebox fell and she was his again. It was a puzzling thing to Tom Spoon's mother andFather--the sudden hunger for green vegetables thatseized upon him. "I don't understand it!" Tom's mother would exclaim. "That boy has turned up his nose at lettuceand carrots since he was no bigger than a bug." "He's growing!" Tom Spoon's father would sayproudly. "That's why." And Tom would appear at the kitchen door at thatmoment, like as not, asking for another carrot andthen he would wander off casually to sit beneath theapple tree until they had gone into the parlor. Thenhe would pop into the chicken house and poke SerenaTinkens' lunch through the mesh of her secret cage.And daily Tom visited the river road to stare wistfullyup the meadow for some sign of the Great Galvani's

return. As the black numbers on the kitchencalendar inched fatefully forward to that terrible dayof discovery, Tom Spoon nearly gave up hope. He decidedthat when they came to drag him off to prisonhe would make one short grand speech in the parlorso that his poor parents would remember his courageat least. Nor was the Great Galvani's return one momenttoo soon-a bare three days from the first day ofschool. Tom Spoon, making his daily visit to themeadow, uttered a shriek of joy when he saw the sunlightHash on the garish gold and scarlet letters of thefabulous wagon. As quickly as his stumpy legs wouldcarry him he ran home, fetched Serena Tinkens andpounded off toward the river again. " 'Mornin' " cried Professor Galvani. "Hit town atdaybreak again. Never seem to learn about this town.A hamlet of skinflints. Come to town tired and hungrybut the sheriff said-" "Professor!" whispered Tom Spoon, trying to rememberhow prayers went. "Professor--"

Professor Galvani scooped a fried egg out of thesizzling battered lid of a lard can which served as hisfrying pan and popped it between two heels of bread.He munched thoughtfully and neatly, regarding TomSpoon's square white face. "Tom Spoon!" said the Great Galvani softly. "Haveyou grown tired so soon of your cruel and foolishwish?" "Yes," whispered Tom Spoon, "yes!" And he handedthe professor the white kicking hare. "Then come along, Tom Spoon," said the Great Galvaninot unkindly and, taking Tom by the hand, ledhim up the dusty August road to the house of SerenaTinkens. Gently Professor Calvani set the white rabbiton the mossy bricks by the front porch steps. "Rabbit, be Serena Tinkensl" And when Tom Spoon opened his eyes she wasthere, blinking and staring about her in the samebright nervous way she always had; for all the worldas if she had never stirred an inch from that momentof her transformation. Then, with never so much as alook at Tom Spoon or the Great Galvani, she walked

dreamily up the steps and into her house and softlyclosed the door. Tom could scarcely believe that the nightmare wasover. Even on that morning not long after, when hewalked into the third-grade room, it did not seempossible that she was back in the world of small boys--solid and sound and free from the peril of farmers'dogs and open seasons. Tom Spoon crept nervouslyto his old desk and, folding his bands upon his wornfamiliar third reader, looked up at her, wondering ifshe remembered-if she knew. But if she did shedidn't show it. And if, remembering, Serena Tinkensblamed Tom Spoon or anyone else she did not showthat either. Yet, strangely, she was changed. Andwhen she spoke her voice was softer, somehow-thesame voice, but . . . "Good morning, children!" she said. "Good morning, Miss Tinkens!" they cried. "It's a beautiful day for the first day of school!" saidSerena Tinkens. "So let's begin it pleasantly. Shall wesing a song, children?" "Please," piped a tiny girl from the rear, "please, Miss Tinkens, tell us a story!" Miss Tinkens smiled, considering it. "Very well," she said presently and then for a timeshe was silent as if remembering. She stood there, herhands folded primly-yet at the same time girlishly-staring out the window into the woods, smolderingnow with the lambent golden light of Indian summer. "Once upon a time," she began, a tender puzzledsadness gleaming in her eyes, "once upon a time-inthe kingdom of the spring there lived a rabbit prince.And the rabbit prince loved a rabbit princess--" But then, quite suddenly, she stopped. Tom Spoonsat back in his seat and sighed. That, he supposed,was really all of the story Miss Tinkens could possiblyremember.

Radio

WHEN Will came home from work that night hefound six bills and two advertisements in his mail box.He pressed the button of his apartment and stoodthumbing through the irritating sheaf of envelopes ashe waited for the buzzer. The door growled and Willpushed it open and wearily climbed the stairs. Hello, Anne, Will said, throwing the Daily News onthe card table by the radio. Is there any beer? Will's wife shoved back a strand of damp brownhair from her perspiring face and shuffled off to thekitchenette. God, it's been hot today, she said. Wait. I'll look. Will took off his collar and lay down on the wornstudio couch. He relaxed, feeling the loose springpressing into the small of his back but he was too tiredto move. There's half a quart of ale here, Will's wife called.It's probably a little flat but it's cold. Anything, sighed Will. Anything will be fine. Anne brought the brown bottle in and filled theglass for him. It was flat, all right. There wasn't evena collar on it, but it was cold. Will took a good swallowand lay back again. How's the refrigerator? he said. All right today, thank God, said Anne, sinking intothe morris chair by the card table. I've got a roast inthere for Sunday and lamb chops for tomorrow andif it starts acting like it did yesterday I don't knowwhat I'll do! The way meat is these days! Will took another big drink of the ale and listenedto the blaring radio and the expiring refrigerator motorin the kitchenette. Machines, he said. What, Will? said Anne. I was just thinking, Will said. I was just thinkingabout machines. My God, we're at their mercy frommorning till night! We don't run them-they run usl Well, said Anne. You know we can't afford a newrefrigerator after that last cut you took. No, said Will. I know. I was just thinking aboutmachines.He lay there feeling no cooler but somewhat relaxedfrom the ale. Anne, Will said. That radio is awful loud, honey.It gets irritating as hell listening to those damned

commercials all the time. I'd rather listen to the refrigerator.Would you mind turning it down a little? Anne Sighed. I can't, she said. Will turned his head and looked at his wife. Are you kidding me? he said. What do you mean youcan't? Are you kidding me? It broke today, Anne said. The knob that runs thevolume is stuck. You can't make it any louder or anysofter. You can't even turn it off. Will stared at the big stain on the living room ceiling. Machines, he said. He thought about the August day just ending: hisjob in the accounting department at the warehouse,the rows of maddening, little numbers and the unpleasantbreath and growling voice of McFadden, thechief accountant, forever at his shoulder. At lunchtime you grabbed a tasteless sandwich at the comerNews-Luncheon and read the paper while you drankyour coffee. The Bomb. The Jet Fighter. The Machine.You lay awake at night in the hot little box youshared with your wife and listened to the city beyondthe fire escape; the hollow, lonely rattle of the manholecover as the taxi sped north on Lexington, theplane that droned across the night sky as you laythere thinking about it and hoping it was full of mailsacks and movie stars and salesmen from Detroit andLos Angeles and Toledo. One of ours, you thought,smiling securely when it was gone. One of our Machines. Good Lord! Will cried suddenly, sitting up on thecouch and staring at Anne. Can't you do anythingwith that radio! I told you, she said quietly. It's not working properly.The knob is stuck. It won't shut off. And youcan't make it any lower. Will went over to the ancient ten-tube console andtried to turn the jammed volume control. Friends, said the radio. Have you looked ahead forsecurity? Do you think only of today's needs and ofthe present? How about those kids and your littlewife? Will turned the selector knob and slapped thescratched veneered cabinet sharply. Damn it, he whispered, almost sobbing. And now the news, said the voice. Members ofthe Atomic Energy Commission met today to consider

new peace time applications of nuclear--. Will whirled the worn dial knob desperately till hefound a dance band playing from a hotel in Newark.He lay down on the studio couch. You can't even turn it off, he whispered furiously.All you can do is get something else. He and Anne ate supper in silence that evening.They sat around most of the evening reading theDaily News and some old copies of Life magazinethat the Rosens had given them. When the radio becametoo maddening Will would go over wearily andfind another station. At eleven o'clock, after the latenews, Will turned the dial to what seemed a deadfrequency and he and Anne went to bed. That night was even more unbearably hot and airlessthan the torpid, unstirring day had been. Willfinally managed to doze off and had slept for nearlyan hour before the radio awakened him. He lay therelistening to the faint throb of dance music in the livingroom. Anne stirred and mumbled thickly as Will,cursing softly to himself, got up and went into theliving room. He stared at the single, yellow, malevolenteye of the radio. Then he squatted and gropedsleepily along the baseboard for the wall socket. Suddenlya thousand lightnings snatched and grippedWill's bare, perspiring arm. Damn it! he whispered, shaking his hand till thetingling stopped. Then he gingerly grasped the wire and pulled it.The plug would not come loose. Will gave it a heartyyank. It had fused or rusted into the rotten fixtureand was as grimly unyielding as the tentacle of someloathsome animal clinging for its life to the corrupted,crumbling corpse of the old apartment house.Will looked up at the evil, yellow eye and squattedthere, stupid and helpless, blinking back at it andlistening to the faint crossed sounds of two dancebands somewhere behind the night. Will went backto bed. He lay awake for nearly an hour thinkingabout the radio. The Machine. He shivered lightlyand felt the nervous sweat cool on his bare chest. Hethought about the radio in there in the living roomlooking into the dark with its yellow eye, thinkinghow it had defied him. It was almost as if the thingwere alive. Will felt foolish about it and yet he knewpresently that it was something he had to do. He

arose stealthily, shut the bedroom door and locked it.Then he lay back down again, sweating in the stuffiness,and trying not to think about the machine inthe living room defying him. He listened as if he halffeared he would hear it, prowling insolently aboutthe empty rooms like some wired, insensate animal.Will thought once he actually had heard it--stalkingwoodenly into the hallway--sniffing at the lockeddoor. Machines, Will whispered to himself again beforehe fell asleep. The next day being Saturday Will slept till afterten. The day was hotter than Friday had been. Heatseemed to rise like glowing, gold wires from the asphaltof Twenty-third Street and clutch the apartmentlike the mesh of a cage. Will went next door toFred Rosen's and played pinochle till past noon. Hespent the remainder of the afternoon on the studiocouch looking at the Sunday Supplement of the JournalAmerican. Anne had gone next door to Rosen'sfor a cake recipe. Suddenly Will realized that hecould endure the radio no longer. Friends, it was saying. When you think of beerthink of mellow, co-o-o-ol Krausmeier's Beer! Thehops are tops! Will leaped from the couch and ran over to theradio. He tried again to twist the stuck knob but itwas useless. He turned all the other dials and beatfuriously on the top and sides of the cabinet withboth fists. He felt the nervous sweat break out on hisbody. Take a tip from your friendly, neighborhood druggist!Don't let sluggish intestines rob you of summerfun! Take Snyder's gentle, e-a-s-y laxative in the bigeconomy size bottle! Will sat back down on the couch and put his headin his hands. He listened to the faint, friendly voiceof Anne gossiping with Mrs. Rosen in the next apartment.She would be upset, he realized. It would reallybe a cruel thing to do. The radio meant a lot to herduring the dull round of days that was her life. Thesoap operas-the heart throbs without heart or veinor pulse. The impossible thrills of the impossibleBrendas and Rodericks with their sorrowless sorrowsand joyless victories-a world that never was. Stillthere was no choice left to Will. He went out to his

tool box beside the wheezing refrigerator and got theball peen hammer. The following, said the radio. Is transcribed. Will walked over to the radio and began, systematically,and with a kind of furious joy, to smash it topieces. When the veneer cabinet was in splinters Willdelightedly went to work on the delicate little silvertubes. The radio was stilled. The evil, yellow eye wasout and the room was drenched in a rich and beautifulquiet. Will lay down on the studio couch and listenedto the pleasant, far off horns of taxis on LexingtonAvenue and the children playing under the EI andthe low voices of his wife and Mrs. Rosen talkingabout cakes and the drunken news vendor in theground apartment. Anne didn't say anything when she came back halfan hour later and saw the ruined radio and her husbandsleeping peacefully on the studio couch. Evenat supper she had said nothing till Will mentioned ithimself. Anne, I tell you I just couldn't take it any more, hesaid suddenly, putting his fork down. Those damnedsinging commercials and the-the constant yapping!Those girls that sing the song about the cold tablets!My God, you don't sing about cold tablets! You singabout birds and love and children! What kind of aworld, Anne! This-this morning, for example! Iswear to God they were singing a tune about ingrowntoenails! It's all right, said Anne. I don't blame you, Will. She went to the stove and picked up a saucepan ofvanilla sauce she had made for the dried up layer cakeleft over from last Sunday.Of course, she said, as she served Will the dessert,it does get pretty lonely all day. You'll have to admitthat. You're at the office all day. I mean--I listen toall my programs while I work and the time just seemsto fly. I don't even mind the commercials. Will stared sickly at his dessert, feeling suddenlywretched. Maybe, he said lamely, if I get that raise in Augustwe can afford an inexpensive table set. I don't really mind them at all, Anne continued, asif she had not heard him. I've gotten used to them. I--I even like some of them. Even the ones they sing.There's one that's really sort of pretty, Will. The one

about Softy Tissues. Do you want to hear me sing it,Will? No, said Will, sipping his coffee. I heard it. I remember it by heart, said Anne, strangely. Everyword. She left the kitchenette and went into the parlor.When Will finished his coffee he went to the doorand saw her. Anne was sitting in the morris chair bythe radio with tears streaming down her face. Shelooked old. For a moment Will really hated her. I wish you hadn't done it, Will, she said dully. MyGod, I wish you hadn't. Will's lips went white and he sat down on the studiocouch looking at his wife. All right! he shouted. I'm sorry! What can I say butthat! We'll get it fixed on pay dayl If I get a raise I'llbuy you a table model. I told you that already, AnnelWhat more do you want He walked stiffly into the kitchenette and sat downagain. Will stared at the Daily News not seeing thewords at all. He heard the squeal of a prowl car onTwenty-third Street and felt the heat rise and shimmerin the city. Then Will heard the voice speakingin the parlor. For a minute Will thought Anne wasasking him a question and he strained his ears to hearwhat it was. Friends, do you find baking the hot, tiresome chorethat it was in Grandma's day? We-ell it needn't be!With Aunt Sophie's New Jiffy Cake Mix you can bakepastries in nothing flat! Will stood up, trickling sweat and sick. He creptto the door to see. It was Anne. But it was not Anne'svoice. Anne was sitting there forlornly by the ruinsof the radio and her lips were moving. But the voicewas not Anne's. It was the voice of the radio. Once you've tried a Sultan Cigarette you'll neversmoke another brand! Eminent psychiatrists say itactually soothes tired, tense nerves! Will staggered back to his chair and shut his eyesand pressed his hands to his ears. He began to trembleviolently and the perspiration began tricklingdown his back under his shirt. After a bit he cautiouslyopened his fingers and listened. Was it Annehe heard clearing her throat-or was it static? No need to suffer from nagging backaches! Thesharp pain of neuralgia I Muscular aches and pains!

Will got up carefully from his chair thinking calmlyto himself: I will now go into the living room and talkto Anne. She is not well. My wife Anne is tired fromoverwork and broken refrigerators and the high pricesof meat. I must talk to her. It seemed hours later--years later. Will was verytired. He stood in the doorway of the Rosens' apartmentlooking at his neighbor Fred and wanting nothingso much as to be asked in for a bottle of cold beerand a pastrami sandwich. Then, even before he wasaware of the expression on Fred Rosen's face, Willfelt his lips moving and heard the voice speakingquite independently of himself. He sighed, realizingthat there was really nothing in the world he could doabout it. And now the news, said the voice. Police this eveningare investigating the brutal slaying of a youngwoman on East Twenty-third Street. A few momentsago the body was discovered on the pavement, apparentlyhurled from the window of an apartmentshortly after the slaying took place--. And even as Will stood there smiling helplesslywith the hammer in his hand he heard the buzzer atthe door.

One Foot in the Grave

IT was all over. And now Henry was lying, comfortableand easy, between the cool sheets in the roomoff Doc Sandy's office. It was really amazing. Therewas scarcely any pain to it at all. As a matter of fact,Henry, staring at the pale, yellow ceiling of the bedroomin the doctor's house, felt actually more restedand quiet than he had felt in years. He smiled. Allthose months of talking safety to his men in the sawmill-it was ironic. And then it came to him: how ithad happened--his walking through the big, pine fragrantlumber room with Ed Smiley, his foreman hisfoot catching suddenly in a crack-the sudden,wild fear as he pitched forward headlong toward thegreat, whirring blade of the rip-saw--Ed's big handsgrabbing his shoulder, throwing him, saving his life.Then the numbness in his foot and the sickness andthat was all there was to it until now: Henry lyingcomfortably and quietly between the sheets. Doc Sandy's face between him and the ceiling now.

How's it feel, Henry? I'm all right, he could hear his voice saying, faraway. I'm really all right. But you know something,John? It's a funny thing-. I really can't understandhow it could be. What's that, Henry? My foot, he said. The one that's gone. I can't understandhow it could be. It-itches. And it sounded so ridiculous that he laughed inspite of himself. It not only itches, he said, but it feels cold. Especiallythe big toe. That's not strange, said Doc Sandy. That often happens,Henry. You see-the foot's still there in a way.And in a way it isn't. The part that's still there is inyour brain. Or in your soul--it's a hard thing to explain--. Henry shut his eyes then and began to shake weaklywith laughter. What's funny, Henry? I win that bet, John, Henry said. It's a technicality,I'll admit, but I win it. You can't deny that. And he could hear Doc Sandy laughing and curs-ing and saying yes Henry was right, he had Won thebet, and Henry shut his eyes, remembering the nightthe bet was made-the cold winter night-Henry andDoc Sandy playing three-cushion billiards in the RecreationPool Room and drinking beer and talkingabout death. Doc Sandy had bet Henry that he wouldbe under the ground before Henry would and Henryhad bet him that it would be the other way aroundand they put down their cues and shook hands on itand agreed that whoever survived was to pay for theother one's funeral. Yes, Henry kept saying. I win. I win by a foot, John.And I intend to see you give that foot the best funeralthat money can buy. Then the doctor's nurse was giving him a drink; theglass straw was between his lips and the good, coldwater was soothing to his parched throat. He couldhear Doc Sandy lighting his old pipe and then hecould smell the sweet, dry fragrance of the burningtobacco. John, he said. Yes, Henry. John, I keep wondering a funny thing. I keep wonderingwhich-which place my foot went to. It was

part of me--so it must be part of my soul. It's a funnything to wonder but I just can't help it. I mean--when the rest of me goes over--will my foot be waitingthere to join me again? John, it gives you the funniestfeeling in the world to think of a fact-a single,solitary foot wandering around eternity-waiting-.I can't help wondering where it's gone and where it'swaiting--in the Good Place or--. Henry shut his eyes and began to laugh again. What's funny, Henry? My foot! Henry laughed. I swear it, John. When Isaid that a second ago--when I said I wonderedwhere it had gone--so help me, John!--it felt hot!Nobody could have been nicer to Henry than hissecretary Margaret and his foreman Ed Smiley werethose next couple of weeks. Henry stayed in the cotat Doc Sandy's office until he was able to get aroundon crutches and there wasn't a single night that Edand Margaret missed coming to see him and almostalways they brought something-ice cream fromBeam's Confectionary or maybe a big spray of sweetshrubs from Judge Bruce's backyard. Margaret was a queer little person in her early thirties--blonde and pretty in a way that nobody evernoticed particularly--living alone in the Bruce'sboarding house on Lafayette Avenue-going to themovies every Saturday with Ed Smiley and then afterwardshaving an ice-cream soda with him at Beam's.Henry, like many bachelors, often fancied himselfquite a match-maker and he was fond of reflectingthat, had it not been for him, Ed and Margaret wouldnever have met. He was continually asking the girlwhen she was going to get married and Margaret, atthis, would blush warmly and busy herself in the pa-pers on the desk. Henry never teased Ed about it knowing,as a man, that Ed had his own good reasonsfor waiting. But it was something he thought abouta lot during those two weeks in bed. And it was apleasant relief-to think about this-nights whenhis foot would not let him sleep-nights when theplagued, absent thing felt so cold that he could havesworn that it wandered alone among the mountainsof the moon-nights when the rain hurled itselfagainst the windows of the doctor's house and Henry,shivering in the warm cot off the doctor's office, couldfeel the cold, dreadful wet of the March night between

his toes. One night he could stand it no longer.It was late--past midnight--and Doc Sandy had goneto bed long hours before. Just the same Henry had toknow. He had to talk. He called for a long time beforehe heard the doctor's slippers whispering down thekitchen stairs. John, he said. I know it's silly. You'll swear I'vegone loco or something-. Want a sleeping pill, Henry? No, he said. It's not that, John. I swear you'll thinkI've gone loco--. What, Henry? It's just this, Henry said. I've got to know for sure.Did you bury it, John? I know it was just a joke atfirst and we kidded about the bet and all that and yousaid you'd had a little coffin made and buried the foolthing in back of the saw-mill under the puzzle-tree.You think I'm loco but--. I did bury it, Henry, said the doctor. I swear I did. You swear it? I swear it, said the doctor. Look here, Henry. Get agrip on yourself! You're going to be up and around ina day or so-on crutches for a while-then we'll getyou a foot that'll be as good as new! You'll never missit! Henry shut his eyes and pressed the back of hishead hard into the pillow. His hands were wet withperspiration. It's funny your saying that, John. It's very funny. What's funny, Henry? That I'll never miss it. It's very funny--your puttingit like that. It's what's been going through myhead all night. The feeling that-that somehow--itmisses me. There wasn't much trick to the crutches after a fewdays. It was a little hard getting the knack of them atfirst but, within a week, Henry was getting around almostas easily as before. And within two weeks he wasable to get up- and downstairs to his room over themill office without any help at all. In a month theplace was healed enough so that Doc Sandy was ableto fix him up with an artificial foot. Henry felt a littlebetter about it and began to get his sleep at nightnow that he knew the doctor had really buried thething. Then one day he began to worry again andasked the doctor to take him down back of the sawmill

and show him the little grave. You're the damnedest fool I ever did see, Henry! Doc Sandy said, laughing. Getting all upset over afool joke. Did you put a shoe on it? Henry said, staring solemnlyat the little mound under the puzzle-tree. Certainly, said the doctor. And a brand new shoeat that-the pair you bought at Jim Purdy's sale theweek before the accident. Never been worn. Is there a sock on it, too? whispered Henry. Damn it all, man--I Is there? he said. Yes! cried the doctor. Yes, damn it, there's a sockon it! You didn't put it on straight, Henry said, shakinghis head a little sorrowfully. You put it on crooked,John. It pinches my toe! That night it began. Night was the time when it alwayshappened. Henry would go to bed, knowingthat he was perfectly sane, knowing that the thingcould not be true. Yet it was true. It was happening.It was as real as life itself. Sometimes it would be justa pressure on the sole--as if he were standing somewhere,waiting for a train perhaps. And then it wouldbegin-the gentle, pulsing padding--the lift and fallof walking-the easy thud of brick pavement beneaththe foot-the soft crush of leaves or grass. And Henrywould lie quaking and sweating beneath the quilt andstare with wild sorrow and horror into the shudderingdark. The foot--his foot-apart from him--waswalking somewhere--going someplace-living itsown life without any help from him. Then he madeanother discovery that seemed more incredible andawful than any of the rest of it. It was that the footalways seemed to be going the same distance-walkingalong the same ways-the same street. Henry gotso that he could count the number of steps on thebrick pavement and then, after a pause, steps soft andyielding beneath the heel, then another pause andsomething different again-wooden floor perhaps thenthe slower, measured climbing of a stairway. One night after it had stopped Henry sprang fromhis bed in a frenzy of fear. Snatching his clothes fromthe back of the chair by his bed he dressed quickly,lighted the oil lamp and went out back to the puzzletree.Fetching a shovel from the tool-shed behind the

saw-mill he began to dig. When the spade scrapedon the wooden box Henry's heart flew to his mouth.Digging, clawing with his hands, panting and perspiringlike a man in a fever, he dragged the little boxinto the lantern light, pried off the lid with the tip ofthe spade and stared within. For a moment he wassure he had lost his mind. He lifted it out and lookedclosely to be sure. The sole. The sole of the brand newshoe from Jim Purdy's store. He remembered theday he had bought those shoes. He had never wornthem. But the sole. It was scuffed and scratched.Worn. They were shooting pool that afternoon in the Recreation--Henry and Doc Sandy. Henry, said the doctor, chalking his cue-stick andsquinting low alone the cushions for a masse shot. EdSmiley was in to see me this morning. Ed? said Henry. Doesn't look like there's anythingwrong with him. He's the perfect picture of health!Doc Sandy shot and missed. It wasn't about himself that he came to see me,Henry, he said. It was about Margaret. Your Margaret.She's not well, Henry. I'll tell you frankly--I prescribeda couple of weeks' vacation. She's run down--nervous. Ed said he didn't want to ask you and youknow Margaret. She'd never ask you. I hadn't noticed her, Henry said. I really never payany attention to her, John. You know how it is. Youjust take somebody like Margaret for granted--yearafter year. Sure! Sure, I'll give her two weeks off--amonth if she needs it! Thanks for telling me, John. Supper time. Walking home down Lafayette Avenue.Poor little Margaret. Henry felt like a slavedriver.Never realizing what a drab little world itmust have been for her all those years-day after dayin that glum, dingy office, laboring over the books inthat proper, lace-like little hand of hers, keeping hisoffice neat and dusted. When Henry opened the officedoor he heard her. She was crying. Then he saw her:slumped among the papers on the desk, her handsover her face, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Henry stood there wondering what to do, feelingterrible about it. He cleared his throat. Margaret, he said. Margaret. She stood up slowly and turned, facing him. Herface was streaked and wet with tears-plainer and

more homely than he had ever seen her--the face underthe washed blonde hair tired and old. Don't touch me, she whispered. She was shudderingviolently and clutching her handkerchief into atight wet ball. Don't come near me! Let me alone! Ohwhen will you let me alone! Henry felt behind him for a chair and sat downwith a thump. I--I don't understand, he began. What do youmean, Margaret?--Let you alone--. What do I mean! she whispered. What do I meant You ask me that! You dare to ask me that! I--I don't--. I don't understand, he said. Hereached in the pocket of his alpaca coat for a handkerchiefto mop the perspiration from his upper lip. She seemed almost crouching, ready to spring onhim. Last night, she whispered fiercely, the knuckles ofher thin, red hands shining white with rage. Lastnight!--the night before last! How many nights! Lyingthere listening for your footsteps on the pavement--the creaking of the gate--your footsteps onthe tanbark walk--then lying there waiting for yourfootsteps on the stairs. Those nights! My God! Thethings you told me--the things you promised me! Yousaid we'd be married! You said-you said you'd killme if you ever lost me! You ask me what I mean!Those nights! In my room! In my arms! She sprang forward and struck him across the facewith the flat of her hand. Henry didn't feel the blow.He sat staring through the girl--beyond her. My--footsteps? he whispered. She was on the floor now, at his feet, covering hishands with kisses. I'm sorry, she wailed. Oh I'm sorry. I didn't meanto do that! Oh I didn't. Forgive me, dearest! It's justthat-I couldn't stand it! I couldn't! At first--the firstnight-I thought it was a dream when I heard yourfootsteps and then the door opened and I saw it wasyou-. It was like seeing a ghost. I couldn't believe it.Those nights--they've seemed like a dream--unreal,wonderful! My footsteps? he whispered again, rising, pushingher away from him, stepping over her sobbing, shakingshoulders and walking like a sleeper out the doorand up the steps to his room. He lay down with his

clothes on and stared unseeing at the ceiling, movingover the yellow, guttering light of the gas flame bythe bedroom door. A soul within him--a hidden, secret other him-atenant of his heart that the foot had claimed for itsown and taken with it to the grave! Margaret. He hadnever so much as looked at her. He had never seenher. She was a piece of furniture. A desk. A chair. Aledger with the lacy, sorrowful love letter of commerceon its pages. My footstep, he said aloud to the walls. Footsteps. Down the pavement of the shady streetin the secret moment of the night-footsteps up thetanbark walk of the Bruce's boarding house-footstepsup the stairs-the hesitation and then the opendoor. Then he was hearing her flat, tired voice--still andcomposed now. He turned his head on the pillow. Shewas standing in the bedroom door--looking at him.She had on her cheap little flowered hat and the coatwith the touching curl of dusty fur about the collar. I'm sorry to bother you again, she said. I won'tbother you any more. You won't ever have to botherwith me again. The books are in order. I'm leavingtown with Ed Smiley tonight. He's going to marryme. Then she was gone. Henry listened to her quickfootsteps going down the stairs. The street doorslammed and the clock in the town hall struck sixtimes. He lay back-sad, regretful, but at the sametime relieved. It was all over now. Perhaps tonight hecould sleep. Sleep! That El Dorado of peace that hehad longed ceased hoping for. Henry shut his eyes.He had stopped trembling. It was dark outside theWindow--the heavy wine dark of early April. Thenin a moment it began again. Footsteps. The foot. Fast now. Faster than it hadever been. Along the damp pavements of the smalltown night. Running. The thud was almost painful onhis sole. Then a pause. Then the running again--upthe springy, yielding softness of tanbark-under thetrees bursting with dark greenness in the moonlessApril night. Up the wooden steps-two-four-six-eight.Henry shut his eyes and clenched his teethagainst the scream that struggled in his throat. Ten-twelve-.The landing now. Up the hall--. His fingers

tore through the linen sheet beneath him. Thedoor--the open door. He felt he was fainting-hiseyes started from his head. Then it began--not on thesale now but on the toe--a smashing violent rhythmon the toe of his foot-a remorseless, brutal thuddingthat made his leg ache to the very hip. Then itstopped. The padding, running thud again--downthe steps--through the tanbark--through the dark themossy pavements of the April night-then, at last,like a benediction it was still. He lay on the bed for a long while before gettingup. Then he went slowly down the stairs, down thepath to the shed, down to the puzzle-tree with thespade in his shaking fingers. Like a madman he dug.His fingers ached and the nails broke as he clawed thebox from the earth, ripped the wooden lid loose andstared at the thing within. He was standing there atdawn when Doc Sandy and the sheriff came downthe path. Not moving. Just standing looking at thefoot in his hand and the shoe--its toe all dark withsomething sticky and some wisps of washed blondehair.

Moonshine

FIVE years in jail ain't so long, old Darleen snickered,rocking to and fro with folded arms, andwatched the sheriff's car turn up the dirt road ontothe highway. It's a marvel Denver couldn't wait. Bonny sat looking at them: Denver's mother and thebig man in the straight-backed chair by the window. Not long enough, said the man. A God-fearingjudge would have give him twenty years. Or life.Spreading the brew of hell-fire and damnation in TygartsCounty to shipwreck the souls of innocent folksand sending them to Satan headlong! Better if he wasdead! But he ain't! whispered the girl fiercely, her pale,long face alight. And now he's broke out of prisonand he's coming home! Home to take me off to Mexicowith him and it will be like it was at first! Better maybe if you was the both of you dead, saidthe man again, sitting straight as an elder with thebig, soft hands folded almost primly in his lap. Instead of being eat up with the fires of a lust that neitherGod nor Devil wants any parts of because it is a

sin an abomination before both! You'll see! whispered the girl, rising and slammingher small, clenched fists on the table. He'll take meaway with him and then I won't have to stare at yoursilly, fat storekeeper's face every day! Coming hereand preaching to me about Death and Sin and thencoaxing me to run off with you like I was already awidow! Saying things that Denver would kill you forif he was to hear! Mister Fogg, said the old woman, straining up fromher rocker and fetching the big glass mason jar ofmoonshine and the cracked white cup from the cupboardshelf. It's no business of mine if you let yourstore run to seed and leave your ailing sister to runher legs off at the counter while you're up here pesteringanother man's wife. But if you've got the goodsense you was born with you'll be gone afore Denvergets here. He'll not get here, said Darrell Fogg without moving.Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. You heardthe sheriff just now tell how Denver shot them twoguards on his way out. They'll be hunting him inevery holler and hayloft in West Virginia tonight.With guns--. They'll never catch him! cried the wild, dark girl.Never! Never! Never!

--and dogs, the voice went on, the white eyes fixedas if in a vision. Because even dogs hates the corruptionand abomination of such as him. They'll trackhim to yonder doorway like as not. And he'll die yonderon the stoop. Bonny was on him in a flash, her arm darting snakelikeas she struck the wide, soft face with the flat ofher hand . It was you in the beginning! she screamed. Runningto the Law that spring and telling where hismoonshine was hidl And you talk to me about Sin!Turning a man over to the sheriff so's you can chasehis woman! The old woman cooned and chuckled throughoutit all, musing into the moonclear whiteness of the cupand sipping the liquor with grey, pursed lips. It is the Lord's will, Darrell Fogg droned. That Isave you from your own willfulness. Though you areungrateful and fight against His disposing. But I will

not be moved. In a dream last night you come to menaked and I clothed you in His grace. Run away withme now, Bonny girl, before it's too late! The wages ofsin is death and payday is nigh! Hush your mouth! she raged. Get away from me!You make me sick to my stomach with your slobberingpreaching and your Sin! Ever since Denver wentaway--always hanging around and talking that way!He'll kill you when I tell him! Then in the yellow lamplight they suddenly fell silentand Bonny listened to the painful thudding ofher pulses and to the dry wheeze of Darleen's breathingand the doomlike rhythm of the rocker. The oldwoman chuckled and, bending forward, crowed andstruck her stick smartly on the floor. Shut up! cried Bonny. Then she scowled and her black eyes narrowed. What are you laughing at! At what I know! wheezed old Darleen, her eyesa-gleam like those of some evil, wrinkled child.What do you know! cried Bonny, springingup. Never mind what I know! cackled the old woman.Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. I knowwhat you done that night, Bonny! For I seen you doit! In this very room! And I know why my boy hasbroke out of the penitentiary tonight! You spied! cried the girl, clutching the cloth of herthin blouse till the small, pointed breasts pressedthrough. You're always spying! You always was! Butit don't matter! Denver's coming back to take meaway-! Or to kill you, said the old one. Only God knowsever which one. And maybe that's the best way for itto end. Maybe Mister Fogg yonder is right. Sneaking! Watching! cried the girl. You're worsethan him! Eyes, said Darleen, was meant to use. And I knowwhat was done that night. And I know why Denver'scoming back. Yes, maybe I'd have done it, too.Women has their ways of getting things. And it's generallythe right way. Because it's the only way theyknow. Bonny cursed and her great, dark hair tumbledover the scrubbed white wood of the table as shedropped her face into her arms and lay exhausted

with fury. Darleen lit a cigarette, cupping the smallflame like a man does against the moving air. In theshacks along the river yellow kitchen lamps bloomedone by one and abruptly the cheap, rusty voice of aphonograph threaded thinly into the stillness. Bonnystood up presently and dried her perspiring face withher hair. Then she went to the door and stood staringout into the evening where moonlight now shoneamongst the pale blossoms of the redbud. He's coming back, she said, almost gently now, herfigure slender and strong against the bright moonshine.And when I tell him how it all was he'll believeme because I am his own true love. Darleen rocked in shadow beyond the circle ofthe lamplight, a pale, orange coal that glowed anddimmed as she sucked the cigarette. Believe you? she chuckled. About Mister Fogg yonder?Are you fool enough to expect Denver to tuckhis pistol away while you explain that? And him sittingthere all the while? But the girl did not hear. Her thin back arched sud-denly and she crouched, cocking her head against thestirring curtains. Listen! she whispered, harking to the night whispers.Be still! It was likely just dogs, said Darleen presently. Rootingamongst the tin cans down on the bank. It wasn't dogs, whispered Bonny, framed darkagainst the pearly light. It was someone a-runningand stumbling. Someone a-scrambling down thereamongst the weeds! Then it's him, said Darrell Fogg suddenly, hismoon--like face flat and immobile in the gloom. Thefool returneth to his folly like a dog to its vomit. Comeaway with me, Bonny girl! There is still time! Let mewash you clean of this sin and abomination! Hush! she whispered, her face radiant with loveand moonlight mingled. It's him a-comingl It's Denver! The way of the transgressor, he began again, is--! Shut up! Shut up! Darleen ceased for one instant in her rocking andheeded whatever faint mischiefs were astir in the stillness.Then with a grunt she shoved her swollen feetimpatiently and launched the chair again. Because itwas silent once more and whatever living thingmoved up the barren, ravaged river shore toward

them now came so soundlessly that in its very hushthere was as much alarm as in the cadenced measureof the rocker's sentry-like tread itself. Come and set, groaned Darleen. Rest your feet,Bonny. If it's Denver he'll know well and good whereto find you at. But she did not even seem to hear, standing tenseand motionless while the night unwound the pale,blue ribbon of its equinox before her wild eyes andthe night wind stirred the dark locks against herthroat. Darleen was silent, too, until presently sherose and fetched another cupful of Denver's fiery,white whiskey from the fruit jar and settled backagain. Bonny sank all at once into the broken chairby the doorway. She stared at the face of Darrell Foggwith mad, shining eyes. Denver's coming! she whispered, baring her whiteteeth. You know that, don't you! Can't you feel it, too!Ain't you scared! But Darrell Fogg did not answer, did not even stir--sitting on in silence with his big hands, like thoseof some monstrous infant, resting in idiot tranquilityon the knees of his shiny serge trousers. He's coming! she whispered again, speaking to herselfnow and not to them. I could feel every step hetook all the way up from the river to the fence. I couldfeel the water wet on his legs and I could feel it whenhe took hold of the fence post and stopped just nowand just stared at me! Could you feel the gun butt, chuckled Darleen,that's in his hand? Just like I could see him! whispered Bonny, woundin a trance. Like it was plain, bright day! Every stepof the way I could feel him! Why don't he come in? He will, said Darleen, cupping the white china andfathoming its magic depths. With the mist a-rising it'sright risky to chance a shot so far away. Why don't Denver come running up the yard likehe used to do when he come home from work? thewild girl whispered. Why don't he come take me inhis arms I It was long and lonesome at Moundsville, said Darleen.With nothing but a little stone room to sit andthink in for four long years. And him a-knowing whathe knows. With that letter in his shirt-. Bonny whirled and stood facing the night again,

trembling like a well-diviner's wand. The frogs have stopped! she whispered. He's movingagain now! Coming up the yard from the fence underthe redbud--! And then so suddenly that Darleen's old eyes couldnot follow the motion she was gone out the door cryinghis name and Darrell Fogg, almost in the samemovement, rushed forward like some hurtling behemothand followed with the noiseless grace of alllarge people, his shapeless white lips mouthing God'sname and hers all at the same time. Even this happenedso swiftly that it seemed to Darleen that theflat, chopping pattern of the pistol shots was part ofthe same scheme and sound. The old woman stoppedone split second in her headless motion and shiveredbefore she resumed it. And then she waited until Denvercame and stood looking at her in the doorway, theblue automatic in his bird-like hand seeming biggerthan him somehow, a curl of smoke lingering evenyet in the steel ring of the snubbed factual muzzle.Darleen lifted her eyes and stared at him unblinkingover the white cup's rim. So you killed them both, she said. And I reckonthat's just as well. And now I'll be thankful whenyou've done the same to yourself and gone to whateverheaven or hell or tent meeting he's taken her toand I'll be shut of the three of you. Because--. She cheated on me, he gasped. With DarrenFogg--. --Because you was poison together, Darleen wenton, as inexorably as the voice of the moving wood beneathher. Poison to everybody and to your ownselvesand to that poor fat fool of a storekeeper. Becausejust seeing the two of you holding hands was all itever took to get him hot with notions he'd only readin the Book or on the walls of privies and couldn'treally figure out and untangle one from the other. He stood staring at her with the one, somehow patheticlook of childish blond hair falling across hisravaged, sallow face; his mouth set in a parody ofrage and retribution like a small boy playing robber. It came last week, he whispered. And I sat readingit over and over till the note paper was so wet in myhands that the words was gone. In the morning Idried it out again and that time I read it and believedit-how she'd gone tomcatting with him and about

them scheming to run off to Baltimore together. Herthat swore by the Word of God that she would wait-. Then you believed it, said Darleen. When anyonein Tygarts County could have told you that she wouldspit in Mister Fogg's face if he was so much as to laya hand on her arm. You believed a letter from thisriver bank of trash where you was born and whereyou know well and good neither Mister Fogg nor menor none of the rest of us can even scratch our Christiannames on a relief check-let alone write a wholenote page of script! But it was there as plain as God's gospel word!cried Denver. With his name where he'd wrote it onthe bottom! Bragging to me how him and her wouldsneak down to Mope Starcher's orchard of an eveningafter the sun went down. Bragging how hot she was!And naming secrets about her only I could know!Only me that's loved her! God damned fool men, crowed the old woman squinting wrily into the near empty cup. Is it anywonder women goes bad in this world with nothingbut such fools to tum their skirts up for! God damnedfool men! Fool? he whispered. Then what was I supposed tothink? Do you reckon anything would have made me thatcrazy mad? Mad enough to--. To break out, Darleen said, beginning again withoutvariance of pace or inflection, like a phonographrecord when the needle is dropped suddenly into themidst of a phrase. Which is why she done it, you poor,pitiful God damned fooll Made it all up! She--!--wrote the letter herself, droned Darleen. Youmight have known that much if your brains was inyour head instead of in your pants! Because she wasthe only one of us who had been to school and learnedto write. I seen her write it--yonder there at the table--under that very lamp! Spelling out the words hardon slow because school-learning hadn't come to heras easy as the old woman-wisdom she was born with.And signing his name to it-knowing that was theone thing that would bring you back to her-or getyou killed a-trying. Not much hoping, I reckon, thatshe could ever get it through your head that it was allmade up. Not caring, no more I guess--.

I read it over and over, he said dully. Till the wordswas clear wore away. Not even caring if you killed her for it so long asshe knowed she'd won out in the end, Darleen wenton. Maybe not wanting nothing more than just knowingshe had made you love enough to kill-even her.Now shoot me, too, if you're of a mind to. Or go shootit out with the hounds and the deputies, you fool.You poor God damned fool. I'm old and I'm tired. AllI want is to be shed of the pack of you. He had dropped the automatic on the floor by hergently treading feet. She watched until he had vanishedfrom the fall of lamplight outside the doorwayand once when a car rounded the bend of the highwayshe glimpsed him in the headlights, walkingfast to town. Presently she went to the shelf andfetched back another brimming cupful as provenderagainst the long wake, cradling the cup in her handsand settling back in her rocker with lidless, fetal complacency. Women ! Darleen chuckled bitterly to herself, shakingher head in indefatigable irony. If it ain't a wonderwe ever get by at all! But we do!! We do! The cadence of her rocking quickened. For therewasn't anything in the wide world better for chasingaway the blues than Denver's com whiskey. Unless itwas a good hard cry. And Darleen knew that afteranother cup of moonshine there'd be time enoughfor that.

The ManWho Stolethe Moon

No one was a bit the wiser so it really didn't matter.Nobody hailed the poor boy off to the county jail becauseof it. And this, for the very simple reason thatthe night Dode Hornbrook stole the moon from thetrout pond in Dan Puney's meadow no one knew anythingabout it. It is true that Dan Puney tore up hisHagerstown Almanac that night when his rheumatismwent to kicking like a jack rabbit. And the tidesof several seas were stilled for a spell. Still no one wasreally harmed, except perhaps for the discomfort ofa few cold oysters and a cod or two.

To the people of Clay County, Dode Hornbrook'smuteness was a simple matter of his having been bornthat way, God's providence having seen fit to still histongue. No one in the county thought much about itand, certainly, none mocked him for it. Dode's motherand father lived in the fine, white house a quarter ofa mile up the road from Flinderation. They had longago taught the boy to shape words with his fingers inthe vacant air and when he rode to Stathers' GeneralStore on Saturdays he was always obligingly providedwith a bit of paper and a stub of pencil. YetDode Hornbrook's life was a lorn and lonely one.Who, he would often reflect as he followed his father'splough in the sweet gold of the morning, wouldever marry a man who was dumb? Who, indeed? Itwas really because of this that Dode Hornbrook stolethe moon from Dan Puney's pond that night. Dode! his mother would cry. Why don't you takethe buggy and go to town tonight? All you do of anevening is sit around the kitchen and twiddle yourthumbs! That's no life for a strong, healthy boy ofeighteen! You'll be wanting a wife and a home of yourown before long, Dode, and it's time you lookedaround a bit! Why don't you call on Tess Murdock orAmy Stringer and take her to the nickelodeon tonight? Sometimes Dode would answer her, his nimble,strong fingers plucking the evasive words from theair. But more often than not he would tum his headaway and stare out the kitchen window into the hungering,dark night. It was toward the end of October that the new familymoved into the old Randolph place by the coveredbridge. Dode's father, commenting on it at supperthat night, had said that he knew nothing about themexcept that Green Stathers had told him at the storethat they came from Arkansas. And Dode had thoughtnothing of it whatsoever until that night a month laterwhen he had gone up the hollow for pawpawsand seen Daisy. He had found only a few and thefrost had not yet come to bring black ripeness to theirsaffron hides so he had let them lie. And it was nottill he had crossed the fence by the covered bridgethat he saw her. Daisy. Dode was not surprised whenhe heard the name later. He had known from thatmoment it would be that. Slender she was and blackeyed, with flesh as white as buttermilk with freckles

floating in it like bits of sweet country butter. She wassitting on a split-bottom chair on the porch, with oneslender hand resting tranquilly in her lap, her faceturned to the smokey dusk on the evening hills. Dodestopped stock-still in the tall grass by the roadsideand looked. Till the day he died he knew he wouldremember that vision of her there, like a quaint tintype,and he carried it home with him that night, awild, mingled glory stirring in his throat, a fury thatshook him in his dreams. Dode! his mother had said next noon at lunch.That's your favorite! Peach cobbler! And you'vehardly touched it! Dode, I do believe you've spied agirl! Dode lifted his head in terror and shook it quickly I Well then why don't you, Dode? she pleaded, gently.Your dad and I are getting old and you must startthinking of yourself I Why not find yourself somesweet young girl? You think no one wants you becauseof your affliction! Believe me, Dode! Love isnot like thatl Why, when your own dad there cameto ask my hand-his tongue was as useless as yours! But it was futile. And that evening Dode wentagain to the woods where the pawpaws grew and theraincrow cried. And then he had looked with horrorat the rockaway buggy in the yard and seen PudStathers, the storekeeper's son, helping the lovelyDaisy into the seat. Dode stumped dumbly down theroad for home, his big hands shoved dourly into hisjeans, his wits a-whirl with sorrow and wonder. Andwhen he spied his parents sitting in the kitchen bythe oil lamp, Dade knew that he had no stomach toface them just then. And so he walked on-far up theyellow, dusty road and over the fence stile by theschool house and up toward the little orchard by thetrout pond in Dan Puney's meadow. At last, heplumped down wearily on a stump by the pool andburied his face in his hands. A bird sang in the nightlike a trembling gold wire. Dade closed his eyes andthey were filled with her, the slim, white face and thetiny, unaccountably enchanting mole beside her gentlemouth. It was nearly half an hour later when heheard the buggy and their laughter and the frothysnort of the roan. Swiftly, Dade Hornbrook crouchedbehind a little apple tree and waited. Pud Stathersand the young girl sat side by side in the rockaway.

They stopped by the stone fence at the orchard's edgeand fell silent, feeling the autumn keenness and smellingwinter hints in the lingering sweetness of burning. Lordamightyl thought Dode Hornbrook mournfully.Small birds will snuggle in trees and rufHe theirfeathers against the cold rain of March while myheart will lie this winter like a cold cobblestone inDan Puney's meadow. In agony, he watched themthere, fingers interlaced, their faces lifted happily tothe pale, bright night. Dode felt the heart in his breastgutter out like a spent candle. He listened to theirquiet talk and stared glumly at the moon in the bottomof Dan Puney's trout pond . She loves him, Dode said, over and over again thatnight, his fingers numbly shaping the words on thepatch-work quilt. She loves him. They sat side by sidein Pud Stathers' rockaway in the light of the moonand she loves him. And then Dode knew that, indeed,it was the moon that had been the magic of it all. Themoon in Dan Puney's trout pond. Would such a girlas Daisy have sat alone with Pud Stathers in DanPuney's meadow were it not for some such witchery?Was it not always so and had it not ever been, thestark moon enchanting lovers, since the earth's creakingaxle first turned? Dode Hornbrook pondered itfiercely till nearly sunrise and by then he knew thatthere was really but one thing to do. It's true! his mother cried at supper next night. Ithought so then and now I know, Dode Hornbrook!There's a girl who's bewitched you! And like as notit's that new, young beauty from Arkansasl Now, whydon't you ask her to Tucker's Confectionary for a dishof ice cream some night? And suddenly he began speaking to his motherwildly, his hands Hying like wild birds, shaping all thewords that he had kept locked up for longer than sorrowor longing could recall. Who would want to livewith a man without a tongue? What girl would choosea lover who could not shape the plaint of yearning?And besides, he had seen her sitting with Pud Stathersin the light of the moon and it had bewitched herheart and it was Pud she loved that night. Dode! Dode! It wasn't the moon! cried his mother.You've as good a chance as that foolish Stathers boy!Your affliction wouldn't matter! Don't you know, boy!The heart of woman!

But Dode Hornbrook, it seemed, was deaf as wellas dumb that night. And shortly after candle-lighttime he went to the barn and fetched a stout burlapbag. Then he hurried off to Dan Puney's meadow andthe trout pond where the wild moon lived. It wasthere, staring, cold and wrinkled with mountains, farbeneath the lucid, black water. Every now and thenDode spied a fat trout passing over it and when hewaded up to his belt into the cold water he could feelthem slip against his bare ankles and start off into theinky stillness of their world. How else may a mute speak of love? he thoughtwith a wild, lorn pang in his breast. She would bescared if he went to her as he was, fingers dumblyshaping the passion of his heart. But if those handsheld a gift-something to speak a whole world ofwords. The bright cold moon itself! Was there a betterway to say such things? Stooping, Dode thrust his arms into the black waterand caught it firmly in his two strong hands. Andwhen he held it up, it shone its cold, autumnal light,pale as a glow worm's candle, lighting his face andthrobbing palely in his dripping fingers. He waspurely surprised. It was not nearly as heavy as he hadthought it would have been. And it was strange to thetouch, smooth and slick, like a great round melonsnowy with morning hoar. Dode dropped it quicklyin the bag, tossed it over his shoulder and made offdown the meadow toward the road. The night wasblack as a parson's coat and Dode went a little faster,for a little of the pale glow shone through the cloth'swide weave. Undeniably he had begun to feel guiltyabout his theft, and not a little concerned that itmight not wreak some havoc upon his father's gout,not to mention the tides of the world's wide seas. Stillit was done and now there was nothing but to see itto the end. And as he walked he could hear hismother's kind words. Do you really think she would care so much? shehad cried at supper that night. Do you think a girlwould mind your muteness if she knew you reallyloved her? Dode, don't you know there are womenin the world who are married to men whose mouthsspeak only hate and orneriness! Dode! Dode! A woman'sheart! But Dode's mind was stubborn that night. He

would hand it to her as a gift and it would enchanther eyes as it had that night in Pud Stathers' rockaway.There was nothing else to do. And as Dodehurried up the road, the countryside lay stark andblack beneath the lidded sky and, through his shirt,he could feel the moon's coldness on his shoulder. Shewas alone on the porch in the split bottom chair,dreaming wistfully in the darkness. Her parents, aswell as Dode's, were off to prayer meeting at Flinderationthat night so she was alone. Once he hadreached the gate Dode was certain that he wouldfaint with excitement and fear. Yet it was too late forturning. Bravely he lay the bag on the porch anddumped it out for her to see. He picked it up and heldit high. Who is there? the girl cried out. The cold moon gleamed in Dode Hornbrook'strembling hands and lit her pallid, lovely face andfrightened, parted lips. And then Dode saw thesmokey, lightless eyes. She was blind. Who is there? she cried again, starting up andtrembling in her chair. Aghast, Dode tucked the great moon into theburlap bag again and hurried off to Dan Puney'smeadow. His heart spun and sang and wept all atonce as he lowered it at last into the cold, black pond.And then the great, frosty light was everywhere again,filling the gnarled branches of Dan Puney's orchard,shimmering on the wet meadow grass, flashing on theripples in the black water where the quick trout ran.Then, hurrying about among the little trees, Dode beganfilling the bag with Dan Puney's sweet, prizeWinesaps. He would take them to her and she wouldeat one and be comforted and then he would takeher hand and touch his still mouth with it and hewould lay his fingers on her stricken eyes and theywould find a way to things. In many ways, thoughtDode Hornbrook on his way up the road that night,an apple is bigger than a moon. Dan Puney never did understand about his rheumatismthat night. Furious, he tore up his HagerstownAlmanac and cursed the white moon for its lie.And, though nobody in Clay County took much noticeof it at the time, it was the same moon that shonebright in Dan Puney's trout pond that night a yearlater when Daisy Hornbrook's first, fat, chuckling boy

was born,

Noboby'sWatching!

LET me be quite clear about one thing. I do not sharethe view of those who regard television's intellectuallevel of amusement as that of a corrupt and willfuleight-year-old. This may, of course, be quite true butstill it is not the reason I won't permit my wife Anneand the two children to cajole me into buying a televisionset for the home. The reason is Jennings. Because,you see, Jennings has created a possibilityalmost too unpleasant for human imagination to endure. Working at the Los Angeles advertising agencythat handled the Toby Burns Show I first came toknow Jennings the winter more than ten years agowhen Toby Bums made his brief rise on the horizonas television's brightest young comedy discovery. Iwould see Jennings nearly every day at the studios ofKLTV and, like everyone else connected with theshow, I knew about Toby Bums and Jennings' blondewife Sandy long before it hit the columns of the L. A.papers. It was, I'm afraid, the usual Hollywood sortof thing. Toby Bums with his crass and flashy charm.Sandra-the young and beautiful wife. And Jennings-a plodding, paunchy little television engineer withwatery eyes, a touch of a stammer, and dandruff onthe shoulders of his seedy blue suit. I don't blame Sandra! he would say to me in thecontrol room of studio twelve while we'd be settingthings up for the night's show. He's young and good looking!I g'guess I'm no bargain for a girl like Sandra! He had selected me, it seemed, as confidant of allhis misery and disgrace and it was a role which, howeverI tried, I seemed unable to escape. Still it wasin some way strangely indecent--the way he wallowedin it and called upon me to witness the wallowing.Although I listened patiently. Because he wasbrilliant and even curiously engaging in a self-absorbedway and he could make the most complexmiracle of electronics seem as simple, when he toldit, as the computations on a child's abacus. Fuller, he said to me one evening. It almost staggersthe imagination to consider the potentialities ofthis medium.

This was what everyone was saying about televisionthose days so I let it pass as a pleasantry and wenton penciling in some changes in the script. First it was sound, he said. Transmitted throughthe atmosphere! Then sound and light! Yet--. And yet--should the miracle end there, Fuller? I grunted again and looked up. Outside the controlroom window the propmen lugged the chairs andscenery flats around the studio, arranging TobyBurns' familiar cafe set. Toby and Marvin Sykes, theproducer, were going over a piece of business in theopening commercial while Jennings' wife stood fondlyby, one hand resting languidly on the young comedian'sshoulder. Jennings squinted quizzically at methrough his horn-rimmed spectacles and smiled as hebent a little closer. Should it? he repeated. Why, no, I said. Color television is everywhere. 1£- No no! he said. You misunderstand me! Beyondeven that! I stared back stupidly, trying to grasp what thedevil was in his mind. Not just light, he said. Not just sound-. What's left? Matter, he exclaimed, like a jolly schoolmaster. You're joking, Jennings! But I'm not, Fuller! he cried, his eyes watering withexcitement. Solid matter televised through space! Absurd! That, Fuller, he chuckled, is what your SensibleMan of eighteen-hundred would have said of radio IAnd as for television-I Besides, consider it for a moment,Fuller! Matter is energy in a particular arrangement and we already know that we can send energythrough the atmosphere I Now if one might devise atechnique by which-. Jennings, either you've been working too hard oryou're pulling my leg! I'm in dead earnest! he exclaimed. Television scansa flat surface and transmits it! Why not scan all theparts-inside and out-of solid matter as well! Nonsensel I cried. Television doesn't actually transmitthe flat surface at all. It's the image that's transmitted!What you describe could never happen, Jennings! It has happened, Fuller! he said shyly like a childwho has done a naughty thing and has found someone

to confess it to. I have already done it! My pencil scratched on for a few seconds before Irealized what he had said. Then slowly I looked upinto his face. You what? I have done it! he whispered, and sniffed self-effacingly.Nothing much to begin with, mind you! Justa dinky studio prop--a chair!--but nevertheless Isent it whizzing out of this building as slick as a whistleand a few moments later a housewife in Alhambrawas calling the studio all of a-flutter to know howit came to be in her dining room-in front of the televisionset, of course! Thought perhaps she'd won acontest or something! Knew it was ours because ofthe KLTV stenciled on the bottom. We sent a truckout to pick it up this afternoon and Production hasthe devil all day to find out how thedickens--. I don't believe you, I said quietly, and I was truthfulenough in that for I was certain that poor Jennings'brilliant mind had snapped under the strain of his humiliation. No, he said, sensing my thoughts. I'm not an idiot,Fuller! Although, on the other hand, I'm not the geniusyou might suppose! You see I discovered the trickquite by accident one morning while I was adjustingCamera Eight. It was partly a matter of re-arrangingthe speed of the scanning mechanism! Still, since it'sfairly complicated let me put it this way. And off he went into something about something or-other Heaviside layer and ionization and scanningbeams and carbon atoms and the Lord knows what alland even then I didn't believe. The Boss called me into his office that afternoonand said he was having a few people out to his homein the valley that evening to watch the Toby BurnsShow and would Anne and I please arrange to bethere. Anne got a sitter and we arrived promptly atnine. The big ranch-type living room with its Orozco typemurals was full of the usual agency crowd-peoplewith whom Anne and I found little in common sowe screwed our party smiles on our faces and squattedon leather stools nursing our liquor until the butlerturned off the lights and switched on the i bignineteen-inch television screen. Toby Burnss inhis customary form and the Boss's heavy laughter wasthe cue for the rest of us to follow. The show bounded

along with a spritely, slick energy from skit to skit eachfeaturing the ubiquitous and almost immediatelywearying Toby Burns--and then, suddenly,after a magnificent ballet sequence, exploded into theCommercial. The Client was among the guests so, naturally,during that hallowed mercantile devotional, adeathly silence fell across the room-the silence ofMexican cathedrals and the abodes of the hopelesslysick. Sensational! someone murmured with obvious ,choked emotion as the Commercial dissolved politelyinto the grinning face of Toby Burns again. By God, a winner! A winner! someone else gaspedelaborately and glanced anxiously through the darknessfor the Client's silhouette. Toby Burns meanwhilehad launched into another skit--in very badtaste, everybody remarked in the trades next day basedon the timeless humor of cuckoldry. Yet it wasdone with a subtlety surprising to the Burns' technique--so subtly, indeed, as to be all the more profoundlyvulgar-and the face of poor Jennings flashedinstantly into my mind: that quiet, enduring facewith the watery eyes and the mind behind them thatknew all about the errant wife and of the comedianwho knew the trick of hurting as well as the trick oflaughter. Oh, that son of a bitch! I thought to myself.With all of Hollywood in on the shabby secret andeven the columnists of Broadway already dressing itup for their pages! And then I heard the Boss's bellowing voice. Who is standing in front of the set! Dammit, Jenkins,is that you! Can't you serve the drinks without!! I glanced up from my melancholy speculations,searching over the shoulders for the square of livid,flickering screen and then I saw the figure obscuringit. Dammit, man, will you kindly-! DAMMIT, MAN,WILL YOU MOVE AWAYI Lights were switched on, eyes blinked, a couple inthe comer withdrew from one another with a gasp ofsurprise, and the Boss, purple-faced, with highballglass in hand, stood staring at the dazed figure ofToby Bums, swaying a little and pale as doom, on thecarpet before the set. I don't know whose idea this was, said the Bosspresently, turning upon us. But I think, under the circumstances,

the humor of it falls rather flat! Now ifsomeone will get this drunken impersonator out ofmy house we'll continue to watch the shawl He was quaking with rage. And the remaining fiveminutes of the Toby Burns Show-minus Toby Bumsand quite contrary to script-did little to quiet him.Never before in the short story of the medium hadthere been such a hodgepodge of impromptu, emergencyentertainment. He shouldn't have done that, Jennings said quietlynext day when we had gone to work on the nextweek's script. There are limits to decency you know,Fuller! I--I only saw part of it, I murmured, as embarrassed,curiously, as poor Jennings must have beenhimself. -A fellow just doesn't do things like that, Fuller, hesaid, his eyes watering up with emotion. You justdon't rub a fellow's nose in the dirt like thatl-not inpublic that way! He looked away from me and cleared his throat,sucking solemnly on one of the little peppermints healways carried about with him. You don't blame me do you, Fuller? For what IDid--? No, I said. I suppose not. Still it was a pretty cornygag, Jennings! Hiring that drunken extra to make uplike Toby Bums and crash the Boss's party! The Clientwas there, you know, and he wasn't a bit happy aboutit! On the other hand, you certainly can't be held atfault for Toby's turning up drunk on the show likethat and disappearing five minutes before it was over! Jennings smiled at me and shook his head. Still don't believe it, eh? he chuckled. I felt the skin on the back of my neck tighten andthe hairs rise. I--I don't think I understand, Jennings. That I switched on Camera Eight when I lost mytemper last night, he said. That was Toby Burns thatturned up at the party last night, Fuller! A little biliousperhaps but none the worse for his experience intime and space! I've got the thing down pat now, Fuller!Got it so that I can select any receiver in the LosAngeles area and--. Stop it, Jennings! I said. Stop it, man! Good heavens,take a few weeks off! Take Sandy off for a month

in Mexico or South America! A second honeymoon-! I'm all right, Fuller, he said. Believe me, I am! AlthoughI'll admit I was wrong last night-losing myhead that way! But, Fuller, I tell you when that bigloud mouth started making fun of what he was doingto me and--and Sandra--! It wasn't fair, Fuller, itwasn't fair! It wasn't even in the scripts! He ad-libbedit all on the spur of the moment out of sheer meannesslI do hope I've taught him a lesson I I said nothing. I sat back, staring at Jennings witha stunned fascination. He smiled sadly and lookedaround him at the knobs and dials and the little winkingscreens of the monitors and all the paraphernaliaof his strange little electronic world. The greatness of man, you know, Fuller, he said,shows not so much in his inventions as in his strengthto endure the results of them. And with that he shuffled miserably out of the controlroom to attend to some camera arrangement inthe studio. That, you may recall, was the night TobyBums was thrown out of the Crescendo for tossingavocados at the waitresses and shouting drunkenlythat he and Sandy (who, unfortunately for Jennings,was with him) were going to fly to Mexico in amonth for a quick divorce from "that creepy square"she was married to. I read about it next morning inLouella and spent the remainder of the forenoonwondering how Jennings would survive it. On top ofthis minor bombshell the studio was thrown intofurther uproar that afternoon when a highly respectedPasadena minister disappeared suddenly inthe middle of the Corny Caper Quiz-an Audienceparticipation show and turned up almost simultaneouslyin a weltering cascade of whiskey bottles behindthe bar of a rather racy little cocktail lounge inSanta Monica. Several fifths of scotch were brokenthe bartender was removed by the police in a state ofapoplectic fury (thinking it was some sort of publicitystunt by some far-out church group) and wordwent round that a young and alcoholic starlet whowas present at the bar flew to Camarillo that nightto take the "cure." Somehow I found it difficult toassociate this promiscuous kind of cruelty with Jenningsand all that afternoon I was full of an itchingconcern for him. After work I stopped in at a littlebar on the Strip to have some drinks before going

home. When I felt the hand on my arm I turned andsaw Jennings standing by me. He'd been crying. Theeyes under his spectacles were puffed and red, andhe snuffled unhappily as he breathed. If he had beendrinking I was not aware of it and, thinking back, Iam sure now he hadn't been. It would not be Jennings'way to drown a grief. Tears would be his kind of whiskey. Did you hear? he sniffed. I don't suppose youcould have missed it. I nodded and offered to buy him a drink. He shookhis head bitterly and rested his elbows on the bar inthe stiff, uneasy manner of non-drinking men whoregard saloons as strange inner sancta to which theydo not know the password. I don't understand this, Jennings, I said a littlecoldly. Why should you pull such a trick on a completelyinnocent preacher? The guy will probably losehis pulpit over it. I don't mean that, he exclaimed with an impatientwave of his hand. That was an accident! One ofthose fools on the early shift used Camera Eight onthe Corny Caper Quiz by mistake! I refer to my wifeSandra and Toby Bums at the Crescendo last night! Yes, I said. I know about that. It is really too much, Fuller. Now everyone knows! If you want my opinion I think you should sue fordivorce, Jennings, I said. There's no reason for aman to put up with this sort of thing forever! Maybea good beating up would help her. Oh no! he sighed with a smile. Oh, good Lord no!Sandra gets awful yellow and purple bruises justfrom playing ball at the beach She showed them tome once! I shrugged and stared hard into my ice-cubes. I'm sorry, Jennings, I said. About the whole thing.I know how you must feel! No, he said, after a moment's reflection. You are akind man, Fuller! A kind man! An understandingfriend! Otherwise I would never confide in you thisway I But you don't know how I feel! No, you reallydon't! And after a moment's further thought he shuffledglumly out to the comer and caught the Sunset bus.He had hardly gone when Toby Bums appeared,spotted me at the bar, and made his way over to my

side. He was drinking and in a nasty humor . 'Lo, Fuller. Hullo, Toby, I said. I didn't offer to buy him a drink but I guess heread my thinking how I wasn't going to. Had a drink, he said. Have another, Toby! Sure!Have two more! Passed out th' other night, Fuller!S'pose you heard all 'bout it! Pass' out on theshow! Big blackout! Nes' thing I know s'two dayslater! Get bounced out '0 some sof'bitch's party! Client'ssore, Fuller! Awful swee' guy, the Client! Oneawful big Sweetie! I kept on staring into my ice-cubes, saying nothingmore. Sandy's mad, too, Fuller! Awful dam' mad, Fuller!Says I drink too much! Says all my writers drink toomuch, too, Fuller! But you know one damn thing,Fuller? Never had a drop that night I Fuller, someoneslip' of Toby a mickey! Who do you think would do that, Toby? I said. Got it figgered, Fuller! he hissed, closing one eyewith whispering confidence. Tha'li'l tricky squareis who! Tha' li'l 01' husband's whol Sayl Didja catchthe show, Fuller! Tha' routine jus' 'fore I blacked out!Stoned the people, Fuller! Bombed' eml I whirled on him. All right then, Toby. Get this and get it straight! Ithink the routine stank pretty goodl Jennings thinksit stank, tool And if I were you I'd just layoff thatlittle guy for a while! Don't push your luck too far!And let me add that I'm not speaking for the agency!The advice is a present from me! He swayed and glared at me for a moment, startledmore than anything else, and then he laughed. Him! he roared. Di'n' like it, ehl Well tha's wonderful!Glad tuh hear it, Fuller! S'jus' fine with me!Snivelin' li'l snivelin' freakl Li'l square! I walked out on him. After supper that night I droveback to the office. The agency was working up a presentationfor a new cigarette account and the Bosswanted a rough draft ready by nine next morning. Itwas a little after four A.M. when he buzzed me on theinter-com and shouted something about Jennings onthe phone, calling from the studio. He's hystericall roared the Boss. Says Toby Burnsis up there with his writers and they're loaded! Fuller,

someone around this outfit is back of these practicaljokes and I mean to find out who! I know nothing about it, I said. Well then find out something about it! Toby Burnsis our property and if the Client gets wind of this sortof thing we're finished I Jennings says Burns is threateningto beat him up unless he puts him on the air!It's a skit from his last showl He says he wants to repeatit, by popular request I Meet me downstairs in three minutes, I said. I'llget my car and we'll drive up. The nightwatchman at the studios was asleep andwhen he let us in we could hear Toby Burns shoutingand singing far up somewhere in the dark buildingabove us. There was no elevator service that late sowe climbed the stairs. The shouting seemed to comefrom studio twelve and even as we hurried down thehallway toward the voice it was suddenly stilled.We saw Jennings in the control-room as we swungthrough the heavy, sound-proof doors. He wasslumped over the control board, his shoulders heavingand shaking. When we came in he looked up andwiped his cheek on the sleeve of his shirt. Jennings! roared the Boss. Do you know who's backof this joke! Where's Toby Burns and those damnedcomedy writers! But Jennings was not looking at me nor at the Bossnor at anything. Nobody's watching! he said. Where is he! shouted the Boss. Jennings seemed to get hold of himself a little then. Fuller will explain, he said wearily. He will tell youwhere Toby Bums is. Three red-faced men in identical orange sportsshirts lay slumped over various chairs around thedimly lit studio where they had passed out. The writers. Fuller, you do know something about this! criedthe Boss. Are you behind these cheap gags! So I told him about Jennings' discovery and aboutCamera Eight and the vanishing prop chair and theLying pastor of Pasadena and how it really had beenToby Burns in the parlor that night, and after the Bosshad fired me he stormed out into the studio. Burns! God dammit, where are you, Burns! Except for the snoring gag-writers the televisionstudio was empty. A single baby spot lit up Toby

Bums' old cafe set and one of his funny hats lay collapsedand curiously forlorn on an empty chair. Theorange light of Camera Eight burned like the sulleneye of a stainless-steel cyclops. What kind of fool do you take me for! roared theBoss, rushing around the studio, overturning propchairs and tables and poking his head angrily behindscenery flats. He picked up a still burning cigarettefrom the table and ground it out under his shoe. Thenhe stalked over to me and glared in the great mannerthat had gotten him where he was in the world. You're drunk, Fuller! As lousy drunk as those bumsover there! You expect me to swallow this insane sciencefiction story? That Arthur Jennings televised agrown man out of this studio tonight? I find it as hard to believe as you do, I said weakly,but with honesty. --And that he'll turn up presently in some housewife'sparlor in Brentwood? Or in a-in a FlowerStreet tavern? No, Jennings said quietly. Oh, no. He won't turn up. The Boss's face was now a characteristic eggplantpurple. Nobody's watching, Jennings said again. At threeminutes past one in the morning we go off the air. Noteven a test-pattern. Where could he turn up? He'slike a ball that's been thrown-and nobody's there tocatch it. By now, he added, and rather modestly I thought.By now he should be halfway to the moon! He snuffled and looked sidelong at me with a glazeof guilt in his eye. I wouldn't have done it! he exclaimed. I reallydidn't want to, Fuller! He made me do it, you know!He wanted them all to see it over again--that meanlittle skit of his about unfaithfulness! He wanted toshame me once more! Thought it would be a wonderfulgag! Good for another mention in Miss Parsons'column tomorrow morning! That was really too much,Fuller! Don't you agree he went a little too far? Jennings was quizzed by the police, of course, andreleased and the mystery of the Toby Bums disappearanceten years ago is too familiar for me to recountthe subsequent publicity here. Jennings wasfired from his studio job for "drunkenness" and forsmashing the tube in Camera Eight that night and

his wife ran off last April with a stunt man from Desilu.I was sacked, too, and I'm now working as an accountantfor an Encino Escrow firm. I'm frankly gladto be in another business. Because I know what happenedto Toby Burns that night. And there'll be notelevision set in my home while I have anything tosay about it. Because, you see, Jennings told me somethingelse one rainy morning several months laterwhen we met by chance in a supermarket in Glendale.He said there was always a possibility of a sortof echo in a case like this-like radar. Indeed, it ismore than likely that Toby Bums may strike somethingout there and come ricocheting back to earthsome night. Part of him, I mean. Because, Jenningssays, if it survived at all, the signal would be reallybroken up. Perhaps an ear. A solitary thumb. A bit ofscalp. Maybe only a disembodied bad joke. Still,hardly a something you'd want your children tochance upon in the middle of the parlor rug some eveningat dusk-do you think?

TheHorsehairTrunk

To Marius the fever was like a cloud of warm riverfog around him. Or like the blissful vacuum that hehad always imagined death would be. He had lainfor nearly a week like this in the big comer roomwhile the typhoid raged and boiled inside him. MaryAnn was a dutiful wife. She came and fed him hismedicine and stood at the foot of the brass bed whenthe doctor was there, clasping and unclasping herthin hands; and sometimes from between hot, heavylids Marius could glimpse her face, dimly pale andworking slowly in prayer. Such a fool she was, a praying,stupid fool that he had married five years ago.He could remember thinking that even in the deep,troubled delirium of the fever. "You want me to die," he said to her one morningwhen she came with his medicine. "You want me todie, don't you?" "Marius! Don't say such a thing! Don't ever-" "It's true, though," he went on, hearing his voicemiles above him at the edge of the quilt. "You wantme to die. But I'm not going to. I'm going to get well,

Mary Ann. I'm not going to die. Aren't you disappointed?" "No! No! It's not true! It's not!" Now, though he could not see her face through thehot blur of fever, he could hear her crying; sobbingand shaking with her fist pressed tight against herteeth. Such a fool.

On the eighth morning Mariuss woke full of astrange, fiery brilliance as if all his flesh were glassnot vet cool from the furnace. He knew the fever was ;worse, close to its crisis, and yet it no longer had thequality of darkness and mists. Everything was sharpand clear. The red of his necktie hanging in the comerof the bureau mirror was a flame. And he could hearthe minutest stirrings down in the kitchen, the breakingof a match stick in Mary Ann's fingers as clear aspistol shots outside his bedroom window. It was ajoy. Marius wondered for a moment if he might havedied. But if it was death it was certainly more pleasantthan he had ever imagined death would be. Hecould rise from the bed without any sense of weak-ness and he could stretch his arms and he could evenwalk out through the solid door into the upstairs hall.He thought it might be fun to tiptoe downstairs andgive Mary Ann a fright, but when he was in the parlorhe remembered suddenly that she would be unableto see him. Then when he heard her coming fromthe kitchen with his medicine he thought of an evenbetter joke. With the speed of thought Marius wasback in his body under the quilt again, and Mary Annwas coming into the bedroom with her large eyeswide and worried. "Marius,' she whispered, leaning over him andstroking his hot forehead with her cold, thin fingers. "Marius, are you better?" He opened his eyes as if he had been asleep. "I see," he said, "that you've moved the pianolaover to the north end of the parlor." Mary Ann's eyes widened and the glass of amberliquid rattled against the dish. "Mariusl" she whispered. "You haven't been out ofbed! You'll kill yourself I With a fever like--" "No," said Marius faintly, listening to his own voiceas if it were in another room. "1 haven't been out of

bed, Mary Ann," His eyelids flickered weakly up at her face, roundand ghost-like, incredulous. She quickly set the tinklingglass of medicine on the little table. "Then how--?" she said. "Marins, how could youknow?" Marius smiled weakly up at her and closed his eyes,saying nothing, leaving the terrible question unanswered,leaving her to tremble and ponder over it foreverif need be. She was such a fool. It had begun that way, and it had been so easy hewondered why he had never discovered it before.Within a few hours the fever broke in great rivers ofsweat, and by Wednesday, Marius was able to sit upin the chair by the window and watch the starlingshopping on the front lawn. By the end of the monthhe was back at work as editor of the Daily Argus. Buteven those who knew him least were able to detectin the manner of Marius Lindsay that he was achanged man-and a worse one. And those who knewhim best wondered how so malignant a citizen, sucha confirmed and studied misanthrope as Marius couldpossibly change into anything worse than he was.Some said that typhoid always burned the temperfrom the toughest steel and that Marius' mind hadbeen left a dark and twisted thing. At prayer meetingon Wednesday nights the wives used to watch Marius'young wife and wonder how she endured hercross. She was such a pretty thing.

One afternoon in September, as he dozed on thebulging leather couch of his office, Marius decided totry it again. The secret, he knew, lay somewhere onthe brink of sleep. If a man knew that-any man-hewould know what Marius did. It wasn't more than aminute later that Marius knew that all he would haveto do to leave his body was to get up from the couch.Presently he was standing there, staring down at hisheavy, middle-aged figure sunk deep into the crackedleather of the couch, the jowls of the face under theclose-cropped mustache sagging deep in sleep, theheart above his heavy gold watch chain beating solidlyin its breast. I'm not dead, he thought, delighted. But here ismy soul--my damned, immortal soul standing looking

at its body I It was as simple as shedding a shoe. Marius smiledto himself, remembering his old partner Charlie Cunninghamand how they had used to spend long hoursin the office, in this very room, arguing about deathand atheism and the whither of the soul If Charliewere still alive, Marius thought, I would win fromhim a quart of the best Kentucky bourbon in thecounty. As it was, no one would ever know. He wouldkeep his secret even from Mary Ann, especially fromMary Ann, who would go to her grave with the superstitiousbelief that Marius had died for a moment thatfor an instant fate had favored her; that she had 'beenso close to happiness, to freedom from him forever.She would never know. Still, it would be fun to use asa trick, a practical joke to set fools like his wife at theirwits' edge. If only he could move things. If only thefilmy substance of his soul could grasp a tumbler andsend it shattering at Mary Ann's feet on the kitchenfloor some morning. Or tweak a copy boy's nose. Orsnatch a cigar from the teeth of Judge John RobertGants as he strolled home some quiet evening fromthe fall session of the district court. Well, it was, after all, a matter of will, Marius decided.It was his own powerful and indomitable willthat had made the trick possible in the first place. Hewalked to the edge of his desk and grasped at the letteropener on the dirty, ancient blotter. His fingerswere like wisps of fog that blew through a screendoor. He tried again, willing it with all his power,grasping again and again at the small brass daggeruntil at last it moved a fraction of an inch. A littlemore. On the next try it lifted four inches in the airand hung for a second on its point before it dropped.Marius spent the rest of the afternoon practicing untilat last he could lift the letter opener in his fist, fingerstight around the haft, the thumb pressing the coldblade tightly, and drive it through the blotter sodeeply that it bit into the wood of the desk beneath. Marius giggled in spite of himself and hurriedaround the office picking things up like a pleasedchild. He lifted a tumbler off the dusty water coolerand stared laughing at it, hanging there in the middleof nothing. At that moment he heard the copy boycoming for the proofs of the morning editorials andMarius flitted quickly back into the cloak of his flesh.

Nor was he a moment too soon. Just as he openedhis eyes, the door opened and he heard the glass shatteron the floor. "I'm going to take a nap before supper, Mary Ann,"Marius said that evening, hanging his black hat carefullyon the elk-horn hatrack. "Very well," said Mary Ann. He watched heryoung, unhappy figure disappearing into the gloomof the kitchen and he smiled to himself again, thinkingwhat a fool she was, his wife. He could scarcely waitto get to the davenport and stretch out in the cool,dark parlor with his head on the beaded pillow. Now, thought Marius. Now. And in a moment he had risen from his body andhurried out into the hallway, struggling to suppressthe laughter that would tell her he was coming. Hecould already anticipate her white, stricken face whenthe pepper pot pulled firmly from between her fingerscut a clean figure eight in the air before it crashedagainst the ceiling. He heard her voice and was puzzled. "You must go," she was murmuring. "You mustn'tever come here when he's home. I've told you that before,Jim. What would you do if he woke up andfound you here!" Then Marius, as he rushed into the kitchen, sawher bending through the doorway into the dusk withthe saucepan of greens clutched in her white knuckles. "What would you do? You must gol" Marius rushed to her side, careful not to touch her ,careful not to let either of them know he was there ,listening, looking, flaming hatred growing slowly insidehim.

The man was young and dark and well built andclean-looking. He leaned against the half-open screendoor, holding Mary Ann's free hand between his own.His round, dark face bent to hers, and she smiled witha tenderness and passion that Marius had never seenbefore. "I know," the man said. "I know all that. But I justcan't stand it no more, Mary Ann. I just can't stand itthinking about him beating you up that time. Hemight do it again, Mary Ann. He might! He's worse,they say, since he had the fever. Crazy, I think. I've

heard them say he's crazy." "Yes. Yes. You must go away now, though," shewas whispering frantically, looking back over hershoulder through Marins' dark face. "We'll have timeto talk it all over again, Jim. I--I know I'm going toleave him but-- Don't rush me into things, Jim dear.Don't make me do it till I'm clear with myself." "Why not now?" came the whisper. "Why not tonight?We can take a steamboat to Lou'ville and you'llnever have to put up with him again. You'll be shedof him forever, honey. Look! I've got two tickets forLou'ville right here in my pocket on the Nancy B.Turner. My God, Mary Ann, don't make me sufferlike this-Iyin' abed nights dreaming about himcomin' at you with his cane and beatin' you--maybekillin' youl" The woman grew silent and her face softened asshe watched the fireflies dart their zigzags of coldlight under the low trees along the street. She openedher mouth, closed it, and stood biting her lip hard.Then she reached up and pulled his face down to hers,seeking his mouth. "All right," she whispered then. "All right. I'll doit! Now go! Quick!" "Meet me at the wharf at nine," he said. "Tell himthat you're going to prayer meeting. He'll never suspicionanything. Then we can be together without allthis sneakin' around. Oh, honey, if you ever knewhow much 1-" The words were smeared in her kiss as he pulledher down through the half-open door and held her. "All right. All right," she gasped. "Now go! Please!" And he walked away, his heels ringing boldly onthe bricks, lighting a cigarette, the match arching likea shooting star into the darkness of the shrubs. MaryAnn stood stiff for a moment in the shadow of theporch vines, her large eyes full of tears, and the saucepanof greens grown cold in her hands. Marius drewback to let her pass. He stood then and watched herfor a moment before he hurried back into the parlorand lay down again within his flesh and bone in timeto be called for supper. Captain Joe Alexander of the Nancy B. Turner wasnot curious that Marius should want a ticket forLouisville. He remembered years later that he hadthought nothing strange about it at the time. It was

less than two months till the elections and there wasa big Democratic convention there. Everyone had heard of Marius Lindsay and thepower he and his Daily Argus held over the choicesof the people. But Captain Alexander did rememberthinking it strange that Marius should insist on seeingthe passenger list of the Nancy B. that night and thathe should ask particularly after a man named Jim.Smith, Marius had said, but there was no Smith.There was a Jim though, a furniture salesman fromWheeling: Jim O'Toole, who had reserved two staterooms,No.3 and No.4. "What do you think of the Presidential chances thisterm, Mr. Lindsay?" Captain Alexander had said. AndMarius had looked absent for a moment (the captainhad never failed to recount that detail) and then saidthat it would be Cleveland, that the Republicanswere done forever. Captain Alexander had remembered that conversationand the manner of its delivery years later andit had become part of the tale that rivermen told inwharf boats and water-street saloons from Pittsburghto Cairo long after that night had woven itself intolegend. Then Marius had asked for stateroom No.5, andthat had been part of the legend, too, for it was nextto the room that was to be occupied by Jim O'Toole,the furniture salesman from Wheeling. "Say nothing," said Marius, before he disappeareddown the stairway from the captain's cabin, "to anyoneabout my being aboard this boat tonight. My tripto Louisville is connected with the approaching electionand is, of necessity, confidential." "Certainly, sir," said the captain, and he listenedas Marius made his way awkwardly down the gildedstaircase, lugging his small horsehair trunk under hisarm. Presently the door to Marins' stateroom snappedshut and the bolt fell to. At nine o'clock sharp, two rockaway buggies rattleddown the brick pavement of Water Street andmet at the wharf. A man jumped from one, and awoman from the other. "You say he wasn't home when you left," the manwas whispering as he helped the woman down therocky cobbles, the two carpetbags tucked under hisarms.

"No. But it's all right," Mary Ann said. "He alwaysgoes down to the office this time of night to help setup the morning edition." "You reckon he suspicions anything?" The woman laughed, a low, sad laugh. "He always suspicions everybody," she said. "Mariushas the kind of a mind that always suspicions; andthe kind of life he leads, I guess he has to. But I don'tthink he knows about us-tonight. I don't think heever knew about us-ever." They hurried up the gangplank together. The waterlapped and gurgled against the wharf, and offover the river, lightning scratched the dark rimof mountains like the sudden flare of a kitchenmatch. “I'm Jim O' Toole," Jim said to Captain Alexander,handing him the tickets. "This is my wife-"Mary Ann bit her lip and clutched the strap of hercarpetbag till her knuckles showed through the flesh.“--she has the stateroom next to mine. Is everythingin order?" “Right, sir," said Captain Alexander, wondering inwhat strange ways the destinies of this furniture salesmanand his wife were meshed with the life of MariusLindsay. They tiptoed down the worn carpet of the narrow,white hallway, counting the numbers on the long,monotonous row of doors to either side. “Good night, dear," said Jim, glancing unhappilyat the Negro porter dozing on the split-bottom chairunder the swinging oil lantern by the door. "Goodnight, Mary Ann. Tomorrow we'll be on our way.Tomorrow you'll be shed of Marius forever." Marius lay in his bunk, listening as the deepthroatedwhistle shook the quiet valley three times.Then he lay smiling and relaxed as the great driveshafts tensed and plunged once forward and back-ward, gathering into their dark, heavy rhythm as thepaddles bit the black water. The Nancy B. Turnermoved heavily away into the thick current andheaded downstream for the Devil's Elbow and theopen river. Marius was stiff. He had lain for nearlyfour hours waiting to hear the voices. Every soundhad been as clear to him as the tick of his heavywatch in his vest pocket. He had heard the dry, raspingracket of the green frogs along the shore and the

low, occasional words of boys fishing in their skiffsdown the shore under the willows. Then he had stiffened as he heard Mary Ann's excitedmurmur suddenly just outside his stateroomdoor and the voice of the man answering her, comfortingher. Lightning flashed and flickered out againover the Ohio hills and lit the river for one clear moment.Marius saw all of his stateroom etched suddenlyin silver from the open porthole. The mirror,washstand, bowl and pitcher. The horsehair trunk besidehim on the floor. Thunder rumbled in the darkand Marius smiled to himself, secure again in the secretdarkness, thinking how easy it would be, wonderingwhy no one had thought of such a thing before.Except for the heavy pounding rhythm of the driveshafts and the chatter of the drinking glass againstthe washbowl as the boat shuddered through the water,everything was still. The Negro porter dozed inhis chair under the lantern by the stateroom door.Once Marius thought he heard the lovers' voices inthe next room, but he knew then that it was the laughterof the cooks down in the galley. Softly he rose and slipped past the sleeping porter,making his way for the white-painted handrail at thehead of the stairway. Once Marius laughed aloud tohimself as he realized that there was no need to tiptoewith no earthly substance there to make a sound.He crept down the narrow stairway to the galley. TheNegro cooks bent around the long wooden table eatingtheir supper. Marius slid his long shadow alongthe wall toward the row of kitchen knives lying,freshly washed and honed, on the zinc table by thepump. For a moment, he hovered over them, dallying,with his finger in his mouth, like a child beforean assortment of equally tempting sweets, before hechose the longest of them all, and the sharpest, aknife that would sheer the ham clean from a hog withone quick upward sweep. There was, he realized suddenly,the problem of getting the knife past humaneyes even if he himself was invisible. The cookslaughed then at some joke one of them had made andall of them bent forward, their heads in a dark circleof merriment over their plates. In that instant Marius swept the knife soundlesslyfrom the zinc table and darted into the gloomy companionway.The Negro porter was asleep still, and

Marius laughed to himself to imagine the man's horrorat seeing the butcher knife, its razor edge flashingbright in the dull light, inching itself along the wall.But it was a joke he could not afford. He bent at lastand slipped the knife cautiously along the threadbarerug under the little ventilation space beneath thestateroom door; and then, rising, so full of hate thathe was half afraid he might shine forth in the darkness,Marius passed through the door and picked theknife up quickly again in his hand. Off down the Ohio the thunder throbbed again.Marius stepped carefully across the worn rug towardthe sleeping body on the bunk. He felt so gay andlight he almost laughed aloud. In a moment it wouldbe over and there would be one full-throated cry, andMary Ann would come beating on the locked door.And when she saw her lover . . .

With an impatient gesture, Marius lifted the knifeand felt quickly for the sleeping, pulsing throat. Theflesh was warm and living under his fingers as he heldit taut for the one quick stroke. His arm flashed. Itwas done. Marius, fainting with excitement, leanedin the darkness to brace himself. His hand came torest on the harsh, rough surface of the horsehair trunk. "My God!" screamed Marius. "My God!" And at his cry the laughing murmur in the galleygrew still and there was a sharp scrape of a chair outsidethe stateroom door. "The wrong room!" screamed Marius. "The wrongroom!" And he clawed with fingers of smoke at thejetting fountain of his own blood.

The BlueGlassBottle

MURDER. It was a word. You heard it whispered autumnnights when Uncle Jonah and Jason Beam andthe rest thumbed over county legends by the blackwood stove at Passy Reeder's Store. Murder. It wasblack letters you came to know by sight when youwere eight and could read the movie posters on thefront of Moore's Opera House in town. But murder

was not a thing that happened to anyone you knew.It was not something that happened in your own family-to your own Uncle Jonah. My sister India and I sat together on the backporch that night watching the fireflies and listeningto a tree frog far off in Mister Turley's apple orchardUncle Doc Lindsay and Jess Showacre had takenAunt Corinne back to Cresap's Landing in the rockawaybuggy. I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes tightshut, trying to keep from saying or even thinking it:that I was glad it had happened if it meant that they'dlock Corinne up in the county jail and keep her thereforever-even if it did mean that poor drunken UncleJonah lay upstairs dead in his great oak bed. Even ifit meant that India and I might have to live alone togetherin the big house till the end of time itself. Poison, Uncle Doc Lindsay had said when he camedownstairs to the kitchen that evening. Prussic acid.Enough to kill a team of horses. And then he stood staring at each of us with hisblack eyes glittering under the shock of frost-whitehair until I had to sit down quick on the carpet stoolby the stove to catch my breath. I hugged my knees,trembling, and remembered how it had begun. UncleJonah had finished supper that night, complained offeeling poorly, and had gone upstairs to his bed. Aftera spell he had called to Aunt Corinne that she hadbetter telephone to town for Uncle Doc Lindsay andCorinne had said she wouldn't ask any doctor to rideall the seven miles down river from Cresap's Landingjust to tend a drunken old sot and that she hoped hewould die anyway so she could be shut of him forever.I remembered waiting a spell till I could bearJonah's moans of pain no longer and went andcranked the telephone and waited, shivering, till Iheard Uncle Doc Lindsay's kindly, deep voice. Andnow, later, in the kitchen, I was hearing it again. Iopened my eyes and he was looking square at Corinne. One of you present in this room, he was saying,quietly folding his stethoscope into the. squashedbrown bag, is a murderer. And I misdoubt it is eitherof the children. It warn't me! Corinne squalled, her wrinkled littleface curling with hatred like a scarlet leaf. It was thegal-India! It's common knowledge that she's queer!Locky now! She ain't even here--running for her life

through Noah Turley's meadow at this instant mostlikely! Oh, what a cunning one that little misses anddon't you forgit it! Why, many's the time she's threatenedme with the butcher knife, Aaron Lindsay! AndJonah, too! I've heard her--in the hhall 0' nights, orsquattin' in the moonlight by her window plottin’ Itall out-how she'd murder us all! And then, like magic, India was there-or maybeshe had been there all along, hearing what they weresaying-standing at the top of the little staircase thatmounted from the white-washed pantry to the firstlanding. She stared at us gravely, her moon face pallid,hands laced shyly behind her back. Uncle DocLindsay went to the pump, rinsed a china cup h~ hadbrought downstairs with him and had a long dnnk ofthe cold, rusty water. He looked at Corinne again. Then you'd blame the murder of my step-brotheron two orphaned children, he said coldly. A nine-year-oldboy and a seven-year-old girl. Even when thewhole of Marshall County knows the truth about you,Corinne! How you took them in only under threat oflaw when our sister Bess died and have since that daybeen a scourge and a sorrow to them and my stepbrotheras well. No, woman! It's not the girl yonderthat's queer! Come along, Jess. It's a long ride backto town and I want to get this woman into the sheriff'scustody as quickly as I can! And now they were gone and it was dark as a crow'sfeather and my sister India and I squatted togetheron the porch steps under the thousand eyes of thenight. Down river a steamboat blew in the blacknessand hounds in the farms along the bottoms filled theirthroats in answer. I held India's hand and it was warmand a comfort. She was all I had in the world. Eversince our mother had died and we had come up theOhio on the white packet boat, with all our earthlypossessions in a single Kanawha salt box and a browngrocery poke, to live with poor Uncle Jonah and crazyCorinne, we had clung together in a kind of breathlessdesperation. Nights when Jonah was off drunk atPassy Reeder's Store and Corinne raged the house inheadlong fury, cursing all of us and challenging thenameless enemies she would spy about her in the patterns of the mouldering wallpaper and in the gutteringof the oil lamps-it was then that a body wouldknow that it was Corinne who was the queer one and

not my sister. And even if, as the folks of the bottomlands whispered it about, she was simple, it was in agood way-a way that was innocent and charming:hoarding her little box of treasures under the bed inthe attic room where we slept-the scarlet-stainedberry basket of pretty things that she had found inthe fields or in the trash bin where Corinne hadthrown them, or in the woods by the river belowMister Turley's place: bright-colored nothings thatshe would finger and stare at endlessly and with unspeakabledelight in the moonlight of the quarteredwindow of our room; streaked creek pebbles andstones that held the moon, tin jar lids to see one'sown face in and pretty bits of colored glass. It waslike the nest of an enchanted magpie-like the heartof India herself. In the dark that night she pressed my fingers shylywith one warm hand while the slender white fingersof the other squeezed my shoulder. Has she gone away, Ben? India whispered. Forever? The lamp in the kitchen cast a beam through thewindow that touched the tears on her eyelashes withgold. I nodded quickly and squeezed her hand, hopingwith all my soul that it was so. India shivered andturned her face away. Something bad, she whispered, happened here tonight!Uncle Jonah is sick. I don't understand, Ben!I think they are angry-at me! An owl screamed in the butternut tree and suddenlythe night seemed to close upon us like the blackword. Fear rose in my throat till I could scarcelybreathe. Something bad had indeed happened. Somethingthat I did not not understand myself. Murderwas the word. But even to me it was no more thanthat. And yet I was not so frightened that I could nothold the oil lamp above our heads as steady as a littlesun while we made our way up the musty pantrystaircase, past the room where Jonah lay dead andstaring, and up the last short passage to our beds.Morning came over the window sill like friendlyeyes and when. I awoke India was crying out and tuggingat the quilt. She pointed to the window. I racedacross the bare floor, breathless, and pressed my noseto the dusty pane. Jess Showacre was standing underthe crab apple tree with Uncle Doc Lindsay's rockawayand the blue roan. He waved his yellow leghorn

hat when I threw open the window. Ben boy! he yelled. How would you and India liketo take a ride to town! We would! I cried and the sweet of the morningblew cool, brushing away all the night's terrors. Ohyes! Thank you, Mister Showacre! Then shake a leg! answered Jess Showacre. We'redue at the courthouse in half an hour, boy! I whirled and grabbed India's shoulders. It wouldbe the first time we had been to Cresap's Landingsince spring a year ago when Uncle Jonah had goneto Passy Reeder's Store for seed and taken us along.But when I saw my sister's face my heart grew thickand cold. India's eyes were dull and dry with fear. India! I whispered. What's wrong? You're alwayssaying how you love to go to town I Why, you used toplead with Uncle Jonah--! No! she gasped, shrinking back. No, Ben! No! And with that she turned and fled into the darkhouse, racing down the pantry staircase in her nightgownand off somewhere into the still rooms untilpresently I could hear her bare footsteps no more. Idressed quickly, wild with my own eagerness to goto Cresap's Landing, and ran to the yard where JessShowacre waited. I tried to imagine if everythingwould be the same as I remembered it. Where's your sister, Ben? Jess exclaimed, when Iscrambled into the buggy seat beside him. She--she's very shy, Mister Showacre, I said, fullof strange terror that he should ask. She said she'drather wait here till we get back. All by herself? scowled Jess Showacre. Well nowthat's a strange onel I thought women folks was alwaysscared to be alone! And they're always clamoringto go to town! She'll be all right, I said. We're used to being alone. All right, Jess Showacre grunted, grasping thebuggy whip. I wouldn't hear to her staying therealone in the house with the dead but they came fromtown long before you children were awake this morn-ing and fetched Jonah's body back to Marsh Kreglow'sfuneral parlor. Don't worry about India, I said. She'll be all right. I don't reckon Judge Beam will mind, said JessShowacre, snapping the blue roan's flanks. I reckonyou'll be able to speak for both yourself and your sister,

boy! As we spun off into the yellow dust of the river roadI wondered whether it was a trick of morning sunagainst one wrinkled pane of the parlor window or ifI had really glimpsed the shape of India's stricken,livid face behind it in that split second before the rockawaysprang through the gate into the open road. It's terriblel Terrible! I gasped presently, feelingas if the motion of the rockaway were going to makeme sick. Tut, boy! Tut! cried Jess Showacre cheerfully, andgave my cold hand a stout squeeze. The ugly part'snearly past now! You're through with Corinne forever!They're going to put her away and you're comingto live with Ella and me! I talked to Judge Beamabout it this very morning and we'll draw up the paperstomorrow! I wanted to ask him if he meant my sister India,too, but somehow I dared not mention her name withthe specter of that last vision of her still fresh in me.And then in my ears I heard the word again: the blackword that was still, even to me, no more than a vaguehieroglyphic of all dreadfulness. Murder. The word. And for some reason I remembered the owl that hadscreamed in the butternut tree. The courthouse was quiet in the early morning. Theback-country loafers squatted on the steps whittlingand spitting brown arcs into the sun. The little roomwhere Jess Showacre took me smelled like leather andsnuff and old men. Judge Jason Beam sat at one endof the long oak table and Uncle Doc Lindsay at theother and I caught a glimpse of Corinne's obsessedand furious face and the stoney, browed foreheads ofSheriff Moore and Squire Abijah Taney and JakeWherry, the county coroner. Jess Showacre fetcheda chair and pushed it over with a hoarse scrape. Iscrambled into it, trying to keep from meeting theeyes of Corinne. Ben, my boy, said Jason Beam, narrowing his eyesat me, one fat thumb worrying the crumbling leatherspine of a statutes book. We've brought you here thismorning to find out if you can tell us anything thatwill shed any light on the unfortunate death of yourUncle Jonah yesterday evening. Yes sir, I whispered. And can you, boy? he said, sticking out his fat underlip

and folding it neatly between thick thumb andforefinger. I--I don't know, sir, I mumbled. My eyes were drawn then like magnets to those ofCorinne and suddenly, without reason, I thought ofthe harsh, crackling winter morning when India andI had gone down the frosty yard for the eggs andfound thirty of Jonah's prize leghorns beheaded andpiled in a bloody, vengeful heap in the middle of thehenyard. In that case, boomed Jason Beam, we will continue with this hearing where we left off. Aaron, youclaim you arnved at Jonah Cresap's farm in the neigh.borhood of three quarters of an hour after the boyhere telephoned you? I did, said Uncle Doc Lindsay. Jess yonder wentwith me. I found the deceased in his bed in a comatosecondition. I administered what antidote I couldbut it was too late. By that time there was nothing Icould do for him and presently he died. Jason Beam scowled over his square steel spectaclesat a paper at his elbow. Your diagnosis of poisoning due to prussic acid hasbeen verified by Coroner Jake Wherry since thattime, he grunted, and then sat back, scratching brisklyat a stain on the harsh cloth of his vest with a crackedyellow fingernail. ' There is some aspects of this case, Jason Beam said,scowling darkly again, that ain't at all plain to me.But the one thing that's got me up a stump worst ofall is this, Aaron--why would anybody go to the troubleto murder a man who was due to die of heart troublein six months or so anyway? There was a pause and a stillness and it seemed weall were listening to the cadenced, wooden ticking ofthe great clock in the judge's chambers across thehall. You surely mind that day last March, said JasonBeam, when I was in your office and heared youmake the diagnosis yourself? I disremembered it, said Uncle Doc Lindsay. Butnow that you mention it the recollection comes backto me. As you say-it's strange. I mind it like it was yesterday, said Jason Beam,scowling at his fat paunch. Jonah was drunk as usualand he didn't seem much took aback by it. He come

stumbling past me out of your office and when heseen me he turned and told me what you'd said andthen he said-and these was his very words: Jason,there's a pill for every ill but the last one. And withthat he headed on down Lafayette Street to PassyReeder's Store. Then he paused. I could hear the men at the end ofthe street hammering the circus posters to the boardsof Moorhead's Livery Stable. Now then, Jason Beam went on. I would like to getmy hands on the answer to this-and I've an idee Ido. Who-other than the demented woman yonderor parties as yet unknown to the officers at this hearing-who, I say, would stand to get the most out ofJonah Cresap's demise? He paused again and for a moment it seemed almostas if he had fallen asleep. But then he rousedand continued. It's mighty likely that Jonah Cresap's last will andtestament is the hinge to this gate, gentlemen, saidJason Beam. I was with him when he drawed it upin this very chamber-on this very table-fifteen yearago this October. Land, gentlemen!-four hundredacres of rich bottom land where a man can makea broomstick sprout leaves if it's planted right! Andsilver! Thirty thousand dollars of the union waitingin a little steel box down at the Mercantile Bank!There's one hinge to the gate, gentlemen I But here'sthe other!-lately he'd been talking of changing thatwill! I listened to the droning voice and shut my eyesagainst Corinne's baleful black look and to my visionthen there sprang the even more haunting face of mysister India and in my ears again I heard the word.Murder, the face of India whispered and I felt sickand lost. --Because for all her devilishness to him it wasCorinne Cresap yonder that was preying on old Jonah'ssoul, said Jason Beam. Poor Cory, I heard himwhimper that night. When I'm gone there'll be naryneighbor to bring her so much as a stick of cold combread for comfort. I used to hate her and I sworeshe'd never have so much as a clod of my land nor apenny of my silver after I'd crossed over into Glory.But that's all gone and past now. Because when I'mdead and gone there'll be nothing left for poor Cory

but the crazy house if I don't change my will. Themwas his words! You mind it, Jess--and you, Aaron!You was the both of you there that night at PassyReeder's Store when he come in all drunk and slobberingand whimpering about his poor Cory. So itappears to me--. None of us heard her and yet suddenly we knewshe was there-standing behind us in the door of thechamber room with the dust motes swarming in thesun about her, waiting shyly and without breath untilwe should notice she had come. Her skirt was soiledand her bare legs were rubbed raw from the saddleand through the courthouse doorway I saw Jonah'swork horse Belle hitched and slobbering at the ironpost by the town trough. My tongue was stone. Iclenched my hands tight and waited. India! cried Jess Showacre, leaping to his feet.Child, you followed us! You rode all the way to townalone! Why, child-! She walked softly to the long table and stood unflinchingbefore our stares with the terrible guilt burningin her dark eyes. Judge Beam reached out hisgreat arm and pulled her to him. Child, he said softly. There's nothing in God'sworld for you to be scared of here. All we're searchingfor is the Lord's unvarnished truth. Now I want toask you a question-. He stopped for a moment and stared at her gently,till her racing heart could ease its pace a bit. Do you know the meaning of the word murder? His voice was a shadow of sound. My sister India's round face stared back for a momentand then she shook her head. And you, Ben, said Jason Beam, squinting at mewith one eye sharp and inquiring. Do you? Murder. It was a word. You heard the men say it atPassy Reeder's Store. Murder. It was black marks onthe colored poster at the picture show house wherethe man clutched the red-haired girl by the throat. Ishook my head. But it was a lie. I knew it meant somethingelse now-Uncle Jonah stiff in the big oak bedbecause someone had made him dead. I believe you, said Jason Beam, sniffing. Becauseyou are children and therefore Iambs of God. Buttell me this, girl-. Why did you ride all the way toCresap's Landing-to this room?

My fingers stole to the edge of the hard oak chairand gripped it till I heard the knuckles crack. Because I did wrong, whispered India. And I cometo tell them so. I did a bad thing. What do you mean, child? said Jason Beam, strokinga damp lock of hair back from her feverish, lividforehead. What bad thing did you do? I didn't know, said my sister in the soft, cold voicethat seemed as if it would never break, as if grief andterror had frozen it to that shape for all time. I neverguessed it was worth so much! I didn't think it wouldmean such trouble for everybody-with constablesand the law and all! It was just so pretty! I--I took it! Took what, child? whispered Jason Beam, so thatnow his voice was nigh a breath. And then she sighed and reached into the dirtypocket of her little calico apron and handed it to him,wrapped carefully in a clean rag so that it would notbreak before she could bring it back to them to whomit belonged. It was empty, she whispered. I thought nobodywould want it any more. So I stole it. But I neverknew! Who? Jason Beam said. Who did you steal the blueglass bottle from? High among the immemorial oaks of the courthouseyard a woodpecker scolded once and screamedoff into the rising noon. I stole it from him, she went on, as if she had noteven heard Jason Beam's question. When he went upstairsto make Uncle Jonah get well last night. I hid inthe clothes press and when he poured the medicinein the china cup and gave it to Uncle Jonah I crept outand stole the little blue bottle from the bedstand whilehis back was turned. I wanted it for my box of prettythings! I--. But I never knew-! Her hands flew to her face and the whole of hergrief swept through her then in a sudden torrent. JasonBeam stared for a gentle moment longer beforehe turned his head to the table and when he spokenow it was still soft, but with a different softness andwe all knew for whom the words were meant. So we see it now, he said. We had the hinges to thegate but now we've got the latch as well! You waitedtill he had the heart attack you knowed would comewithin a matter of weeks. Because you was sole heir

to the stretch of bottom lands and the money as welland you'd heared him that night in Passy Reeder'sStore talking of changing his will to Corinne's name.And you bided your time till the seizure come andwent to the farm with this bottle of prussic acidnowempty of its death and corruption, thank Godlandmade them wait in the kitchen and went to Jonah'sroom alone and called his sickness poison-andmade it poison I-so that in the end they'd both beout of the way! Knowing that-I Bailiff, grab thatmanl They might have stopped him in time. But I havewondered since if it would have mattered after all.The door to the deed records room slammed shut almostsimultaneously with the blast of Uncle DocLindsay's pistol and we knew that a sort of justicehad been done. But the quiet mind of my sister India never understoodany of it. Late that night I awoke to the grievingof a raincrow in the butternut tree and saw her inher nightgown, on her knees, by the moonstreamingwindow. She had fetched her little box of treasuresfrom beneath the bed. Downstairs in Jonah's old bed,Jess and Ella Showacre slept soundly and we knewthat in the morning they were going to take us awayto live with them forever. When India saw that I hadwakened she beckoned to me and it was then that Isaw its pale glitter in her fingers as she held her handup to the light. They threw it away! she whispered, with a puzzledpursing of her lips. After all that awful fuss aboutmy taking it they threw it in the waste basket afterall! So I took it before we came home. Isn't it beautiful,Ben? I crept over, full of fear and awe, and took it in myfingers and stared up at the mad moon through it:the azure magic of the blue glass bottle pressed closeagainst my eye.

Wynken,Blynken,and Nod

THERE they are! whispered Elaine, her fingers grabbingmy sleeve so roughly that I spilled half the caramelpopcorn. Over by the children's carousel! Nowdo you see what I mean-how strange they are? I suppose you'll accuse me of being snide, Ilaughed, if I point out, darling wife, that when youchoose the end of the season to come to the seashoreyou naturally run into all kinds of eccentric tourists. Now they moved on down the boardwalk, out ofsight: the two grim-faced women and the three grotesquelittle boys that followed behind. Elaine expectingher first born in the winter-now grewquite sentimental as she watched a mother help herbawling, red-faced three-year-old from a blue-painteddolphin on the wheezing carousel. You're very sweet, my dear, I said. But I thinkyou tend to imagine just now that every child inthe world is abused. The soft drink stand a few yards away suddenlycleared its throat and a ragged loudspeaker begancranking out a mournful hillbilly tune. Not every child, Henry! my wife exclaimed. Justthose three. Can't you feel it? There's somethingreally quite dreadful going on in that family. It was the end of the season. Elaine and I hadwaited all through the hot months until late Septemberwhen the resort rates were cheap. At last we hadfound a really perfect little place on the coast ofDelaware and a splendid little cabin in the pines thatwas a steal at thirty a week: a solid, neat cottagewith one large room and fireplace, a fine little kitchenand a screen-in sleeping porch. It was our immediateneighbor who had upset my wife those first few dayswe had been there. Of course, she said, when we had bought taffyapples and wandered down the boardwalk into thesea wind, you think I'm imagining things when Isuggest that something dreadful is going on in thatlittle green cottage across the road! Very well, Elaine! Assuming for a moment that Iam unfair. Suppose you tell me once more what hap.pened this morning while I was gone to town for ice. Well, she said, I had just finished the dishes. AndI could distinctly hear them all the way across theroad.

Hear what? Voices, you said? Yes, said Elaine. The awful, shrill voice of one ofthose women! Dreadful, angry, vicious! And then--. --Then you heard a sound as of someone beingthrashed, I said. Please, dear! You said I might tell it! All right. Go on. You heard sounds of someonebeing severely punished--. One of the children! she said. Perhaps all three ofthem! It was quite hard to tell. The wind was blowingoff-and-on so that the voices would float acrossthe road one minute and die away the next. But presently, I said, it stopped. Yes! And then-then there was nothing but this sound-. Weeping, I said. The quiet weeping? Yes! Just like we heard last night! You certainlyaren't going to stand there and deny that you heardit last night when I woke you! No, I said. I heard it. I heard voices, I admitted. Or at least a voice. AlthoughI'm not as sure as you seem to be that it wassomeone crying. It might have been laughter. Laughter! Really, Henry! It was a child's voice IWeeping like its heart would break. You admittedthat at the time. I shrugged and fastened my eyes on the solid,azure sea line melting slowly into dusk. And then what else happened, I said, this morningwhile I was away? Well, Elaine continued, I went out in the yardafter I'd finished the dishes to get my bathing suitfrom the line so I'd be ready when you got back withthe ice. And suddenly I saw this child-standing behindthat enormous fir tree at the edge of the road. Certainly, Elaine, it's not unnatural for childrenat summer resorts to come calling. Wait! Let me tell you though. There was somethingabout this child-something- Something what? I said. Oh, what's the use!! I-I can't describe it! exclaimedElaine. There was something about it somethingdreadful and-and old! I know what you mean, I chuckled. I've seen childrenwith that look. Owlish. Ah! Here they comeagain. Now really, Elaine, they're not such bad lookinglittle chaps.

Oh please! Don't let them see we're staring.Elaine! She thrust herself around in front of me, standingwith her face obstructing my frankly curious stareso that they would not notice. Elaine, what possible difference-. She was shivering as if from a chill and her lip hadbegun to tremble. I don't care, Henry, she whispered in a low voice.They frighten me! They're like-like sisters out ofsome evil Henry James mansion. Really, darling, you're letting this spoil our wholetrip. I'm sorry, Henry. Over her shoulder I watched them glide stiffly pastunder the golden wire neon of the bowling alleysign. I suddenly found myself thinking of them as thekind of sisters whose pictures appear perennially inthe tabloids: the spinsters who die of neglect andleave a fortune in the soiled mattress. And yet thesetwo were immaculate in their linen dusters withtheir nails trimmed and chalky white, and expensivesummer shoes neatly whited and laced. Behind themfollowed the three odd little boys in their equallyarchaic Buster Brown hats and short pants. Isnickered and tweaked Elaine's nose with thumband finger. Wynken-Blynken-and Nod! I said and shelaughed at that and colored up again. Come on,sweetheart, let's go for a drink at that little placeup at the end of the boardwalk and then head forhome. We drove back to the cottage at half past one andwent to bed. The sea wind ebbed and rose and ebbedagain in the topmost branches of the forest firs likethe movements of some vast autumnal symphony.Now and again one could catch the small, driftinglaughter of girls or the distant whine of a portableradio at a beach party far off to seaward beyond theforest edge. I lay with my arm across Elaine's warmshoulder, hearing the other sound, the weeping ofthe child voice and hoping against hope that she,too, would not awaken and hear. Now, Elaine said in a low voice, her lips againstthe pillow. Now do you doubt me? I said nothing, pretending to be sleeping. Elaine

rose. I listened as she rattled open a box of kitchenmatches, scratched one to flame and lit the copperkerosene lamp that swung from our ceiling. Please. No lights, dear. You'll have the placeswarming with mosquitoesI I don't care, she said. I really can't stand it-justlying there in the dark-listening to it and not doinganything to stop it. I sat up, fetched my cigarettes from the wickerchair by the bed and lighted one for each of us. Isaid nothing. Well, don't you hear it? she said. Tomorrow youwon't be able to say it was just my neurotic fancy! Yes, I said, I hear it. It's one of those children, she said, shivering. That'splain enough- Children have nightmares, I said. But now we both grew quite still. For throughthe hushed darkness, in the hollow of silence left bythe wane of the wind, we heard the sharp, nasal curseof another voice and, after a moment, the quaking,thin lash of a leather thong. The weeping stoppedshort in a catch of breath. Elaine slid miserably intobed beside me and wept herself to sleep. It wasnearly an hour later that I fell asleep myself and inthat time no further sound had stirred in the greencottage across the road. At nine next morning we both awoke with thetaste of the night still thick on our tongues. Elainemade breakfast and fixed our luncheon basket-itwas my turn to do dishes-and then I made the bedswhile she was loading the car with the basket andour swim suits and the three crab pots we'd plannedto set out. The drive to the fishing docks below the line ofcrumbling government breakwaters was only a fewminutes' ride and by noon we were six or seven milesup the coast, with our crab pots set and marked inthe shoals, and our boat riding a fine morning swell.When the noon sun stood high we enjoyed the finelunch of sandwiches and the thermos of Martinisthat Elaine had fixed that morning. It was a wonderful,happy day-the crest of our entire vacation-and as if the fine weather had not been enoughwe caught two fine seabass and came back to findour crab pots crawling with fine hardshells. By nightfall

we were both hungry as sea-wolves and when wereturned to the cottage Elaine went straight to workat the gasoline stove without so much as a glance atthe little green cabin across the road. When supperwas over Elaine put on her nicest party dress-theone she'd been saving for a special night-and wedrove in to the little resort town to make a real mardigras of our last night at the shore. The boardwalk was unusually alive and gay withtourists. All along its half-mile length the coloredbulbs of the midway glittered like a cheap glassnecklace. The barkers' voices were sharper than everand the squawk of loudspeaker music seemed rollickingwith carnival gaiety. We took in everything thatwas still open that late in the season. The House ofMirrors that made us scream in mock horror and theplump gypsy fortune-teller who predicted that ourchild would be a boy who would grow up to be wiseand rich and handsome. Oh, can we go there! cried Elaine, pointing happilyup at the peeling proscenium of an ancient burlesquehouse. No, I said. See, it's boarded over. Mter all, it's latein the season, Elaine. Most of these places along theboardwalk are open all summer and then they closeafter Labor Day. Close? Why, of course. But darling--where everdo they go? One might well wonder that: where they went thesagging runway queens, the leering comics. We wandered away, up the boardwalk. We had only the briefest glimpse of the two sistersand their charges. It was by the raucous, steamingexit of a beer joint known as Saturn's Grotto and wesaw them only for an instant as we were making ourway to the car: the mask-like faces of the HenryJames women in their rustling, summer silks andhigh-laced summer shoes and behind them the trioof pathetic, humorless little boys. We drove to thefashionable resort hotel a half mile up the beach inthe more exclusive section of the colony and spent anhour dancing to a famous orchestra and drinking thekind of foolish seashore drinks one never buys anywhereelse in the world. By three we were worn outand a little high from Brighton Punch and anxiousto be home again. And so we went and all the way

back, along the sea road through the cool pines, wesang the songs we had danced to on that last magiceve of summer's ending. The moment her head touched the pillow Elainefell asleep: a smile on her lips and the blossom thatI had bought her in front of the hotel still glowingand fragrant in her hair. And yet-in that curioushalf-world between sleep and waking-I found that,for my own part, I was thinking not of our wonderfulnight but of the strange little children in the greencottage across the road. Wynken-Blynken-andNod, I chanted softly to myself. It was the weeping that awoke me. Elaine had notheard and was still sleeping. And, I suppose, I wouldhave fallen off again myself had not it been morethan a little apparent that the weeping tonight waslouder-closer-more urgent. We live the most astonishinglycalloused lives. Not calloused, really frightened.Each of us dreads to become involved inthe mischances of others. It is fear that holds us backfrom helping the fallen man in the subway exit thewrecked car beyond the broken guard rail. I-asmuch as Elaine-was aware that there was somethingdreadfully amiss behind the shutters of the littlegreen cottage. And yet my mind wanted only tohurry on, to grab this last precious moment of oursole oasis in the dry year: the week at the shore. Butnow the sobs had become so loud and distinct that Iknew in another instant they would surely awakenElaine. I got out of bed in the darkness, fetched aflashlight from the chair and tiptoed barefoot into thescreened porch. The weeping-choked and hysterical-seemed directly outside in the rhododendronthicket that bordered the porch. The idea of physicaldanger, strangely, had never occurred to me. Whatwas there really in the entire situation that could remotelysuggest danger to anyone but a woman inElaine's sensitive condition? Who lived in the littlegreen cottage after all? Two fragile spinsters andthree curious children. The thin, gasping, childishsobs grew louder as I threw open the screen doorand flicked on the flashlight beam. I saw the woman.She huddled by the steps among the shining rhododendronleaves. She wore a full length, ancient night-dress, drawn tight with a pucker of lace ruffles at herthroat. Her hair hung disheveled about her puffed

and livid face. What is it? I said. What do you want? Help, she breathed. Help-us! Please! What is it? I said again, stupidly, as if somehow itwas necessary to place her: to discover somethingabout this stranger that was not at all like the cool,sedate lady whom I had seen marching stiffly by hersister in the pale, coastal twilight. You-must-help-us! she rasped. You really must-you know! No one else--can help--us! The vision of the three pathetic little boys flashedthrough my mind What have you done to them! I snapped. She was silent. She had fainted dead away in themint bed. I stood for a moment. Then I hunted outmy tennis shoes among the crab pots in the grass,slipped them on, and crept noiselessly across thedusty road. The weeping of another voice grew moredistinct as I approached cautiously through the rankiron weed: a voice thickly muffled. There was asquare of light on the ground to the rear of the greencottage-where the kitchen must be-and so I stolesoftly around to the back. Through the screenedwindow I could see quite clearly into the kitchen.There is a moment-perhaps two--in the lifetimeof each of us when the eye sees, the mind recoils,and all of conscious thinking rejects what the eyeshave seen. Now as I stared through the screenedwindow into the scene in that fantastic yellow lamplightof the little kitchen, my mind refused, for sucha moment, to believe what I saw. They sat aroundthe kitchen table-the three of them-the little boys.Two of them were smoking enormous cigars and thethird, a dirty bowler hat shoved impudently backon his bald head, was pouring liquor from a pintbottle he had chosen from among several others onthe garbage-strewn sink. The amber glare of the kerosenelamp fixed the evil little faces like masks in somepreposterous Grand Guignol. It shone on theirpinched, intent faces as they bent over the fannedhands of poker and cursed softly to one another andjoked together in the rasping voices of angry, worldwearylittle men. The air stank with liquor and cheapcigars. I crept shivering back to the cottage. I could seethe light in our sleeping room now. Elaine was up,

helping the hysterical old woman into the porchdoorway. What is it? Elaine murmured, far more self-possessedthan 1. Did you find out-? Yes, I said. Don't ask me now. Get some clotheson. We're going for the police. My God! said Elaine softly. The children! Is it-? No, I said stupidly. There are no children. Do as Itell you, Elaine. Get dressed and take her out to thecar. It's a matter for the police. Take her? Yes! Do as I say. We can't leave her- Elaine did as I told her and we began the nightmaredrive to the resort town and beyond-to Leweswhere there was law to help us. I could be only halfaware of Elaine's calm, soothing voice in the backseat: struggling through the hysterical whimpers ofthe old woman. Miss Clara was her name. The sisterwas Miss Ella. They were from Newcastle. Wealthy,old, alone, frightened. They had been coming here tothe shore every summer for forty years. Old childrenplaying on the beach-gathering seashells in the sun. What did you find? whispered Elaine presentlywhen Miss Clara had quieted down a bit. You won't believe- Tell mel I know now there are no children. MissClara says that goblins have captured her sister andher. She says that they have held them both prisonerfor nearly two weeks-made them both buy whiskeyfor them and cigars-whipped them when they cried-did dreadful, dreadful things to them-. Not goblins, I said. Midgets. Elaine giggled hysterically. The poor, poor thing! she said. Miss Clara calledthem Wynken, Blynken and Nod-just like you did. Midgets, I said again. God, I should have knownwhen I first saw them. Midgets out of work when theshows along the boardwalk were nailed up for theseason. Remember, Elaine? --You asked me wherethe strange people went when winter came? Nowyou know. Don't you see! They just moved in onthese two old--old children. The motorcycle officer at Lewes listened to ourstory for the second time before he decided to investigate.He roared off ahead of us down the roadalready pearl-grey with morning.

The green cottage was, of course, quite empty exceptfor the hysterical Miss Ella. Elaine and theofficer led her forth from the filthy bedroom themidgets had forced the sisters to share. The kitchenwas deserted. The cigar butts still smoked and glassesof whiskey shone red in the yellow oil light. Themidgets had fled. They had a trunk, said Miss Clara, like a child,hardly daring to believe that it was all finished. Atrunk full of paints and greases and old dirty costumes.They put on children's clothes and then theymade us walk with them on the promenade everyevening-on the boardwalk where our father used totake us in the mornings-made us pretend they wereour children! Why, Miss Ella and I are not evenmarried! Did you give them money? said the police officer. Oh indeed yes! said Clara. They would have killed us, said Miss Ella, if wehadn't. They all came to our cottage one afternoonwhen Miss Clara and I were in town shopping. Andthat night-when we came home-there they were.Nonsense! I exclaimed. They wouldn't have killedyou! They were only midgets! Indeed no, sir! said Miss Ella. They were Wynken-Blynken-and Nod! He may be right, of course, said Miss Clara, aftera moment. He may be quite right, Ella. They mayhave been midgets. Although we did not learn of it until the followingafternoon, the midgets, on hearing us leave for helpthat night, had fled helter skelter to the beach andstolen my rented boat. Then, drunken and riotous,they had made off into the choppy morning sea.Miss Ella and her sister, under insistence fromElaine, were sharing an early supper with us nextafternoon on the screened porch when the motorcycleofficer rode out with the news that the overturnedboat had washed ashore a few miles aboveRehoboth. Did you hear that? I exclaimed, almost cheerfully,shouting a little to Miss Ella who seemed rather deaf.The midgets-they're gone! Oh, is it true? smiled Miss Clara, throwing up herhands. Have they really gone! But Miss Ella, who had begun softly to sing to herself

like a child in reverie, seemed not to have heardme. Bending a little closer, I could make it out quitedistinctly: the child's voice of Miss Ella as she walkedagain with her sister and proud father on the boardwalkof another, older summer morning: Wynken Blynken and Nod one night--sailed offin a wooden shoe! Sailed on a river of crystal light--into a sea of dew! But Miss Clara, if she heard, made no sign. Shewas busy helping Elaine fetch water for the tea.

Return ofVergeLikens

AND the funny part was that not even Riley Me-Grath's own friends blamed Verge Likens for killinghim. Some even found a kind of wry, burlesque justicein the ponderous, infallible way that Verge wentabout bringing Riley's death to pass. Because whateverfear or awe or envy the people of Tygarts Countyfelt for Riley McGrath, self-elected emperor of ourstate, they knew that he'd had no right to shoot downVerge's father, old Stoney Likens, that night at theAirport Inn. The two boys, Verge and Wilford, camewhen Sheriff Reynolds sent for them, and they viewedthe body of the old man with bleak, hill-born muteness. "It was Mister McGrath that done it," explainedFred Starcher, who ran the roadhouse. "But Stoneytaken and swung at him with a beer bottle. So it wasself-defense." Verge looked at Fred and Sheriff Reynolds withflat, dead eyes. "Daddy didn't have no gun on him,"he said patiently, "so I can't see no fair reason forMister McGrath shooting him." And the brother Wilford stood by, dumbly heedingthe exchange. He was slack-mouthed with fascination,his eyes darting from one man to the otherin tum, his moonface bland with an idiot and almostblasphemous innocence. "If Daddy had had a gun," Verge went on, "it wouldhave been different. But it isn't self-defense when aman with a gun shoots down a man that don't havenone." Fred Starcher opened his mouth to explain again

how it all had been and then he saw the eyes, coldand flat as creek stones. "Well," he said, looking away, "it seemed to melike it was self-defense." Although it wouldn't have mattered much one wayor the other whether it had been self-defense or premeditatedmurder or just plain target practice. Becausethere wasn't a man in the state of West Virginiawho could stand up against Riley McGrath for verylong without losing his job, his bank account or someof his blood. But there was no more argument. Forsuddenly, like wraiths, Verge and Wilford were goneout of the place into the March dark, roaring up thehighway for home in Stoney's old fruit truck. "Bud, don't take it so hard," Wilford said. "Like asnot Mister McGrath was drunk." The flat eyes, turning from the highway to Wilford,shone with loathing in the dark. "He was yourdaddy, too," Verge said. "Your blood kin. You gutlessrat." "Don't talk like that, Bud!" Wilford whined. "Ifthere was something to be done I'd be all for it. Butthere ain't!" "Yes there is," said Verge, his eyes fixed on the trafficstripe. "There is something to be done and I amfixing to do it." "What?" "Kill Mister McGrath," Verge said. "Kill Mi-! Bud, you must be crazyl" Wilford criedout. "Mister McGrath's the biggest man in the wholestate of West Virginia! Why, don't Senator Marchesonhisself sit and drink seven-dollar whiskey withMister McGrath in the Stonewall Jackson lobby everytime he comes to town? Don't every policeman intown tip his cap when Mister McGrath walks by?" "That don't matter a bit," said Verge. "I'll find away. It may take me a little time, but I'll find a wayto do it." And that was all Verge Likens ate or drank orbreathed or dreamed about from that night on. One night after supper, months later when thebrothers were alone and neither had spoken for nearlyan hour, Wilford felt suddenly as if the impalpableviolence of Verge's obsession had secretly turned onhim. "Then dammit!" he shrilled to the pale, quiet profile

of his brother, who sat in the shadow of the trumpetvines along the porch, "why don't you get it overwith? Why don't you hide out along the fence by theAirport Inn some night and shoot him in the back?He comes there all the time with that black-hairedMary from Baltimore Streetl Why don't you--" "No, Wilford," Verge said quietly, with neithersurprise nor anger at his brother's outburst. "I wantMister McGrath to see my face when I kill him. If Itaken and shot him in the dark, that way he wouldn'tnever know it was me that done it. When I do it, Iwant Mister McGrath to look at my face a good longwhile and know who it is. And I want to be sure thekilling takes a slow, long while."

Rush Sigafoose was shaving Riley McGrath in hisnumber one chair when Wilford found him nextmorning. Wilford was shaking so badly that he wasafraid he would not be able to make the speech hehad lain awake all night considering. He sat down in one of the straight-backed chairsunder the shelf of lettered shaving mugs to wait untilthe morning ritual was finished. At last Riley Me-Grath labored down from the chair and stripped agreenback from his expensive billfold. Wilford stoodup, quaking. "Mister McGrath," he said, wringing his cotton cap. "Yes, son?" "Mister McGrath," Wilford said, feeling a littlecourage coming back, "I sure would be glad if I couldtalk to you for a little while." "Certainly, my boy," said the great man. "Comealong across the street to my office. I have an appointmentin half an hour with Judge Beam but I can giveyou a moment of my time. A man should never growtoo important to keep in touch with the people of hishome town." The office, musty, small, cluttered as a pack rat'snest, was deathly still as the two seated themselves:Wilford in the stiff split-bottom chair by the windowand Riley McGrath in the creaking swivel chair behindthe old, scratched desk upon which he had parlayedthe fortunes of a state. Wilford watched whileRiley licked the tip of an expensive Havana andclipped it thoughtfully.

"It's about my brother Verge," said Wilford, wettinghis lips and staring at Riley McGrath's sober bluetie. "Our daddy was Stoney Likens." Riley McGrath cracked a kitchen match into Harnewith his thumbnail. He puffed silently for a momentand though Wilford could not see them, he could feelthe grey eyes appraising him, weighing the situation,seeing it simultaneously from every possible angle. "That matter was settled during the last term of Judge Beam's court," Riley McGrath said presently. "Your father attacked me, son. I shot him in self-defensethat night. Nobody regretted the incident morethan I did." "It's my brother Verge," Wilford reiterated, as if hehad not been listening at all. "I just don't want nothingto happen to my brother, Mister McGrath. He'sall I got left now." "Nothing need happen to your brother, son,"grunted Riley McGrath. He leafed through some paperson his desk, already finished with the interview. "Something might," Wilford said. He cleared histhroat and listened for a moment to the coaxing,pointless shrilling of a wren outside. "Verge claims he is fixing to kill you, Mister Me-Grath," Wilford said. Riley McGrath leaned back in his chair and blewa cloud of smoke toward the dusty, yellow window"That's a very foolish idea for your brother to entertain,"he said. "Very foolish, son." "I thought-" gasped Wilford, and then swallowed."If maybe you was to send for him, Mister McGrath.Talk to him. If maybe you was to explain to Vergehow it was self-defense after all. It might help, MisterMcGrath. 'Deed to God, I don't want nothing happeningto Verge." "Nothing will happen to your brother," Riley Me-Grath said, "so long as he behaves himself in thistown." Wilford sighed despairingly and stared at his hands,twisting the cap on his knees. Riley McGrath's eyes were as cold as gun metalnow. "I understand, however," he continued, "that thedeath of your father may have brought about certain-expenses. I've thought about it often. And now I'mgoing to do something-though I don't feel I'm actually

obliged to do it-that may spread oil on troubledwaters." Wilford watched as Riley McGrath opened the alligatorbillfold and counted out five one-hundred dollarbills; he watched him slip them into an envelopeand toss it across the desk. Verge didn't say anything right away when Wilfordfinally got around to confessing what he had donethat day in town. It was after supper and Verge wassquatting on the porch steps, cleaning his rifle andlistening silently as Wilford babbled on apologetically. "That sure was a fool trick, Wilford," Verge saidafter a bit. "But it don't change nothing. There's nothingyou can do about Mister McGrath getting killedand there is nothing he can do about it either. There'snothing any mortal in Tygarts County or in the wholestate of West Virginia can do about it." Then Wilford was still for a while before he pulledout the manila envelope and told his brother aboutthe five one-hundred-dollar bills. Verge laid down therifle and came up on the porch to the rocker whereWilford sat and took the envelope out of his hand.He looked at it and then at Wilford, not laughing, notangry, not glad, not seeming to think or feel anythingat all. "This will make things a sight easier," Verge said. "It will save a lot of time and fuss, I reckon. It willbring the day that much closer. I hope you thankedMister McGrath, Wilford." "Bud," Wilford stammered. "I--I don't recollect ifI--I" "I hope you did," Verge said again, folding theenvelope carefully and slipping it into his shirtpocket. "That certainly was real nice of MisterMcGrath to do that, Wilford." All that night Wilford listened to Verge movingrestlessly about the house and when dawn stoodsuddenly white against the windows he started froma brief, troubled slumber and saw his brother by thebed, dressed in the single cheap mail-order suit hepossessed, his good white shirt a vivid wedge inthe shadow, his square, small face as mute andbaffling as ever." Why, where you going to, Bud?" gasped Wilford,struggling up under the old Army blanket. "I'm catching the morning bus to Charleston,"

Verge said. "I’ll be gone a good long while, I reckon.Good-by, Wilford." "Where?" "To Charleston," said Verge. "I told you that once.I'm going to school with that money." "School!" whispered Wilford. "Why, that's realfine, Bud! A body can't do with too much learningand that's for certain. What kind of a school?" "The kind of school," said Verge (and even inthe dim light Wilford could feel that the flat eyeswere not looking at him nor at anything) "whereI can learn to kill Mister McGrath the right way.Slow. So he'll have to look at my face a good longwhile and know it's coming and there'll not be anyway for him to get at that big blue pistol of his.I don't know when I'll be back. Be sure and takegood care of the place, Wilford." And that was all there was to it. Wilford had creptnaked and shivering to the dusty window andwatched his brother's thin, unforgiving shape fadeinto the mist, moving as inexorably as the piston ofsome machine.

Wilford worked on alone at his job at the boxfactory in town during the next lonely months,moving about uneasily, needing the companionshipof his brother and yet dreading the day when Vergeshould return. Often at night he would start up inthe dark, sweating and a-crawl with panic, feelingsuddenly that he should run to Riley McGrath andtry again to warn him somehow of the awful, unremittingpurpose of which Riley McGrath couldnot be aware inasmuch as he had never laid eyeson Verge Likens' person. Until at last it seemedto Wilford that neither Verge nor the murder norRiley McGrath himself had ever even existed. In all the sixteen months Verge was away, Wilfordhad received only a penny post card from him, twoweeks after the morning he had left. There was nomessage on it at all. A penny post card from a drugstorewith a picture of the Kanawha County Courthouse,colored with the cheap, naive innocence offlowers at a country funeral and yet somehow initself as obsessed and malevolent as Verge himself.No message at all. This would be Verge's way of

saying that he had arrived. Of course, Riley McGrath himself had dismissedthe whole business from his mind months before.Because, naturally enough, he had never really beenfrightened in the beginning. Yet, for some reason,the whole affair came into his mind that last morningin Rush Sigafoose's barbershop as he watchedWilford drive down Beech Street in the old fruittruck on his way to the box factory. Riley McGrathlay back, smothered and wallowing in Roman comfortbeneath the steaming towels. He was chucklingat the memory of the whole absurd encounter asRush Sigafoose's new barber stropped the razor andwhistled softly to himself. "Rush," Riley had murmured from beneath thesteaming cloths, "how's Nevada and the kids?"

Rush Sigafoose remembered that part of it wellbecause those were the last words Riley ever saidto him. Yet it was a long time before Rush knewanything was wrong. He had gone back into thestoreroom for some fresh linen and a bottle of bayrum and even then, after he had been putteringaround the marble shelves for nearly five minutes,he wasn't on to what was going on in the chair. Andthen he saw them in the mirror like figures in somemonstrous waxworks pantomime: Riley McGrath, hishead strained back in the head rest as far as it wouldgo, his face purple and livid by turns and his mouthshaping idiot sounds that Rush could not hear anddidn't much want to. Rush dropped the comb he hadbeen cleaning and started quickly toward them. "Don't come a foot closer, Mister Sigafoose,"Verge Likens said softly, the bright, hollow-groundrazor light as a hair on Riley McGrath's pulsingthroat. "For if you do--I'll cut Mister McGrath cleanto the neckbone." So Rush sat down, shaking and sick to his stomach,and watched them there for maybe half anhour, listening and trying to make out what it wasthat Verge Likens was saying to Riley McGrath. Because that was the worst part of all: Verge takingthe pains to shave Riley and then telling him whohe was and talking to him all that terrible time withthe cold, honed Sheffield blade pressed taut against

the fat folds of Riley's throat; taking all that time tokill a man and all the while talking to him in that Hat,crooning whisper. Rush Sigafoose used to tell that part of the storynext to last and then he would always wind up thetelling in the same way. He'd tell about Verge goingto barber college down in the capital city for a yearand a half on that five hundred dollars just to learnhow to kill a man slow. And how he came back toTygarts County at last and took a cheap room in thehotel by the depot and dropped by to pester RushSigafoose about a job every morning for nearly amonth. Rush had finally hired him the morning before--notknowing him from Adam himself--and that wasthe holy irony of it. Rush always said that VergeLikens was the darnedest natural-born barber he'dever seen. He swore to that. Because when DocBrake came down from the courthouse that morningand looked at Riley McGrath's body he saidthere wasn't so much as a mark on his throat. Notso much as a single scratch.

Wherethe WoodbineTwineth

IT was not that Nell hadn't done everything shecould. Many's the windy, winter afternoon she hadspent reading to the child from Pilgrim's Progressand Hadley's Comportment for Young Ladies andfrom the gilded, flowery leaves of A Spring Garlandof Noble Thoughts. And she had countless timesreminded the little girl that we must all strive tomake ourselves useful in this Life and that fiveyears old wasn't too young to begin to learn. Thoughnone of it had helped. And there were times whenNell actually regretted ever taking in the curious,gold-haired child that tragic winter when Nell'sBrother Amos and his foolish wife had been killed.

Eva stubbornly spent her days dreaming under thepuzzle-tree or sitting on the stone steps of the icehousemaking up tunes or squatting on the littlesquare carpet stool in the dark parlor whisperingsoftly to herself.

Eva! cried Nell one day, surprising her there.Who are you talking to? To my friends, said Eva quietly, Mister Peppercornand Sam and-. Eva! cried Nell. I will not have this nonsense anylonger! You know perfectly well there's no one inthis parlor but you! They live under the davenport, explained Evapatiently. And behind the Pianola. They're verysmall so it's easy. Eva! Hush that talk this instant! cried Nell. You never believe me, sighed the child, when Itell you things are real. They aren't real! said Nell. And I forbid you tomake up such tales any longer! When I was a littlegirl I never had time for such mischievous nonsense.I was far too busy doing the bidding of my fine God-fearingparents and learning to be useful in thisworld! Dusk was settling like a golden smoke over thewillows down by the river shore when Nell finishedpruning her roses that afternoon. And she was strippingoff her white linen garden gloves on her wayto the kitchen to see if Suse and Jessie had finishedtheir Friday baking. Then she heard Eva speakingagain, far off in the dark parlor, the voice quiet atfirst and then rising curiously, edged with terror. Eva! cried Nell, hurrying down the hall, determinedto put an end to the foolishness once and forall. Eva! Come out of that parlor this very instant! Eva appeared in the doorway, her round facestreaming and broken with grief, her fat, dimpledfist pressed to her mouth in grief. You did itl the child shrieked. You did it! Nell stood frozen, wondering how she could meetthis. They heard you! Eva cried, stamping her fat shoeon the bare, thin carpet. They heard you say youdidn't want them to stay here! And now they've allgone away! All of them--Mister Peppercorn andMingo and Sam and Papal Nell grabbed the child by the shoulders andbegan shaking her, not hard but with a mute, hystericalcompulsion. Hush up! cried Nell, thickly. Hush, Eva! Stop itthis very instant!

You did it! wailed the golden child, her headlolling back in a passion of grief and bereavement.My friends! You made them all go away! All that evening Nell sat alone in her bedroomtrembling with curious satisfaction. For punishment Eva had been sent to her room without supper andNell sat listening now to the even, steady sobs faroff down the hall. It was dark and on the river shorea night bird tried its note cautiously against thesilence. Down in the pantry, the dishes done, Suseand Jessie, dark as night itself, drank coffee by thegreat stove and mumbled over stories of the oldtimes before the War. Nell fetched her smellingsalts and sniffed the frosted stopper of the floweredbottle till the trembling stopped. Then, before the summer seemed half begun, itwas late August. And one fine, sharp morning, bluewith the smoke of burning leaves, the steamboatSamantha Collins docked at Cresap's Landing. Evasat, as she had been sitting most of that summer,alone on the cool, worn steps of the ice-house, staringmoodily at the daisies bobbing gently underthe burden of droning, golden bees. Eva! Nell called cheerfully from the kitchen window.Someone's coming today! Eva sighed and said nothing, glowering mournfullyat the puzzle-tree and remembering the wonderfulstories that Mingo used to tell. Grandfather's boat landed this morning, Eva!cried Nell. He's been all the way to New Orleansand I wouldn't be at all surprised if he brought hislittle girl a present! Eva smelled suddenly the wave of honeysucklethat wafted sweet and evanescent from the tangledblooms on the stone wall and sighed, recalling thehigh, gay lilt to the voice of Mister Peppercorn whenhe used to sing her his enchanting songs. Eva! called Nell again. Did you hear what AuntNell said? Your grandpa's coming home this afternoonl Yes'm, said Eva lightly, hugging her fat knees andtucking her plain little skirt primly under her bottom. And supper that night had been quite pleasant.Jessie made raspberry cobblers for the Captain andfetched in a prize ham from the meat-house, frostedand feathery with mould, and Suse had baked freshthat forenoon till the ripe, yeasty smell of hot bread

seemed everywhere in the world. Nobody said aword while the Captain told of his trip to NewOrleans and Eva listened to his stern old voiceand remembered Nell's warnings never to interruptwhen he was speaking and only to speak herselfwhen spoken to. When supper was over the Captainsat back and sucked the coffee briskly from his whitemoustache. Then rising without a word he went tothe chair by the crystal umbrella stand in the hallwayand fetched back a long box wrapped in brownpaper. Eva's eyes rose slowly and shone over the rim ofher cup. I reckon this might be something to please a littlegirl, said the old man gruilly, thrusting the box intoEva's hands. For me? whispered Eva. Well now! grunted the Captain. I didn't fetchthis all the way up the river from N'Orleans for anyother girl in Cresap's Landing! And presently string snapped and paper rustledexpectantly and the cardboard box lay open at lastand Eva stared at the creature which lay within, hereyes shining and wide with sheerest disbelief. Numa! she whispered. What did you say, Eva? said Nell. Don't mumbleyour words I It's Numa! cried the child, searching both theirfaces for the wonder that was hers. They told meshe'd be coming but I didn't know Grandpa wasgoing to bring her! Mister Peppercorn said-. Eva! whispered Nell. Eva looked gravely at her grandfather, hopingnot to seem too much of a tattle-tale, hoping thathe would not deal too harshly with Nell for thefearful thing she had done that summer day. Aunt Nell made them all go away, she began. Nell leaned across the table clutching her linennapkin tight in her white knuckles. Father! she whispered. Please don't discuss itwith her! She's made up all this nonsense and I'vebeen half out of my mind all this summer! First itwas some foolishness about people who live underthe davenport in the parlor--. Eva sighed and stared at the gas-light winkingbrightly on her grandfather's watch chain and felt

somewhere the start of tears. It's really true, she said boldly. She never believesme when I tell her things are real. She made themall go away. But one day Mister Peppercorn cameback. It was just for a minute. And he told me theywere sending me Numa instead! And then she fell silent and simply sat, heedlessof Nell's shrill voice trying to explain. Eva sat staringwith love and wonder at the Creole doll with theblack, straight tresses and the lovely coffee skin. Whatever the summer had been, the autumn, atleast, had seemed the most wonderful season ofEva's life. In the fading afternoons of that dyingIndian Summer she would sit by the hour, notbrooding now, but holding the dark doll in her armsand weaving a shimmering spell of fancy all theirown. And when September winds stirred, sharp andprescient with new seasons, Eva, clutching her darknew friend would tiptoe down the hallway to thewarm, dark parlor and sit by the Pianola to talksome more. Nell came down early from her afternoon napone day and heard Eva's excited voice far off inthe quiet house. She paused with her hand on thenewel post, listening, half-wondering what the othersound might be, half-thinking it was the windnudging itself wearily against the old white house.Then she peered in the parlor door. Eva! said Nell. What are you doing? It was so dark that Nell could not be certain ofwhat she saw. She went quickly to the window and threw upthe shade. Eva sat on the square carpet stool by the Pianola,her blue eyes blinking innocently at Nell and thedark doll staring vacuously up from the cardboardbox beside her. Who was here with you? said Nell. I distinctlyheard two voices. Eva sat silent, staring at Nell's stiff high shoes.Then her great eyes slowly rose. You never believe me, the child whispered, whenI tell you things are real. Old Suse, at least, understood things perfectly. How's the scampy baby doll your grandpappybrought you, lamb? the old Negro woman said that

afternoon as she perched on the high stool by thepump, paring apples for a pie. Eva squatted comfortablyon the floor with Numa and watched thered and white rind curl neatly from Suse's quick,dark fingers. Life is hard! Eva sighed philosophically. Yes ohyes! Life is hard! That's what Numa says! Such talk for a youngster! Suse grunted, ploppinganother white quarter of fruit into the pan of springwater. What you studyin' about Life for! And youonly five! Numa tells me, sighed Eva, her great blue eyesfar away. Oh yes! She really does! She says if AuntNell ever makes her go away she'll take me withher! Take you! chuckled Suse, brushing a blue-bottlefrom her arm. Take you where? Where the woodbine twineth, sighed Eva. Which place? said Suse, cocking her head. Where the woodbine twineth, Eva repeated patiently. I declare! Suse chuckled. I never done heard tellof that place! Eva cupped her chin in her hand and sighed reflectively.Sometimes, she said presently. We just talk. Andsometimes we play. What y'all play? asked Suse, obligingly. Doll, said Eva. Oh yes, we play doll. SometimesNuma gets tired of being doll and I'm the doll andshe puts me in the box and plays with me! She waved her hand casually to show Suse howreally simple it all was. Suse eyed her sideways with twinkling understanding,the laughter struggling behind her lips. She puts you in that little bitty box? said Suse.And you's a doll? Yes oh yes! said Eva. She really does! May I havean apple please, Suse? When she had peeled and rinsed it, Suse handedEva a whole, firm Northern Spy. Don't you go and spoil your supper now, lamb!she warned. Oh! cried Eva. It's not for me. It's for Numa! And she put the dark doll in the box and stumpedoff out the back door to the puzzle-tree. Nell came home from choir practice at five thatafternoon and found the house so silent that she

wondered for a moment if Suse or Jessie had takenEva down to the landing to watch the eveningPacket pass. The kitchen was empty and silent exceptfor the thumping of a pot on the stove andNell went out into the yard and stood listening bythe rose arbor. Then she heard Eva's voice. Andthrough the failing light she saw them then, beneaththe puzzle-tree. Eva! cried Nell. Who is that with you! Eva was silent as Nell's eyes strained to piecetogether the shadow and substance of the dusk. Sheran quickly down the lawn to the puzzle-tree. Butonly Eva was there. Off in the river the eveningPacket blew dully for the bend. Nell felt the windlaced with Autumn, stir the silence round her likea web. Eva! said Nell. I distinctly saw another child withyou! Who was it? Eva sighed and sat cross-legged in the grass withthe long box and the dark doll beside her. You never believe me-, she began softly, staringguiltily at the apple core in the grass. Eva! cried Nell, brushing a firefly roughly fromher arm so that it left a smear of dying gold. I'mgoing to have an end to this nonsense right now! And she picked up the doll in the cardboard boxand started towards the house. Eva screamed interror. Numa! she wailed. You may cry all you please, Eva! said Nell. Butyou may not have your doll back until you cometo me and admit that you don't really believe allthis nonsense about fairies and imaginary people! Numa! screamed Eva, jumping up and down inthe grass and beating her fists against her bare,grass-stained knees, Numa! I'm putting this box on top of the Pianola, Eva,said Nell. And I'll fetch it down again when youconfess to me that there was another child playingwith you this afternoon. I cannot countenance falsehoods! Numa said, screamed Eva, that if you made hergo away--! I don't care to hear another word! said Nell,walking ahead of the wailing child up the dark lawntowards the house. But the words sprang forth like Eva's very tears.

--she'd take me away with her! she screamed. Not another word! said Nell. Stop your cryingand go up to your room and get undressed for bed! And she went into the parlor and placed the dollbox on top of the Pianola next to the music rolls. A week later the thing ended. And years afterthat Autumn night Nell, mad and simpering, wouldtell the tale again and stare at the pitying, doubtingfaces in the room around her and she would whimperto them in a parody of the childish voice of Evaherself: You never believe me when I tell you thingsare real! It was a pleasant September evening and Nellhad been to a missionary meeting with Nan Snyderthat afternoon and she had left Nan at her stepsand was hurrying up the tanbark walk by the icehousewhen she heard the prattling laughter of Evafar back in the misty shadows of the lawn. Nell ranswiftly into the house to the parlor-to the Pianola.The doll box was not there. She hurried to thekitchen door and peered out through the nettinginto the dusky river evening. She did not call to Evathen but went out and stripped a willow switch fromthe little tree by the stone wall and tip-toed softlydown the lawn. A light wind blew from the rivermeadows, heavy and sweet with wetness, like thebreath of cattle. They were laughing and joking togetheras Nell crept soundlessly upon them, speakinglow as children do, with wild, delicious intimacy,and then bubbling high with laughter that cannotbe contained. Nell approached silently, feeling thedew soak through to her ankles, clutching the switchtightly in her hand. She stopped and listened fora moment, for suddenly there was but one voicenow, a low and wonderfully lyric sound that was notthe voice of Eva. Then Nell stared wildly downthrough the misshapen leaves of the puzzle-tree andsaw the dark child sitting with the doll box in itslap. So! cried Nell, stepping suddenly through thecanopy of leaves. You're the darkie child who's beensneaking up here to play with Eva! The child put the box down and jumped to itsfeet with a low cry of fear as Nell sprang forward,the willow switch flailing furiously about the darkankles.

Now scat! cried Nell. Get on home where youbelong and don't ever come back! For an instant the dark child stared in horror firstat Nell and then at the doll box, its sorrowing, somnolenteyes brimming with wild words and a grieffor which it had no tongue, its lips trembling as ifthere were something Nell should know that shemight never learn again after that Autumn nightwas gone. Go on, I say! Nell shouted, furious. The switch flickered about the dark arms and legsfaster than ever. And suddenly with a cry of anguishthe dark child turned and fled through the tall grasstoward the meadow and the willows on the rivershore. Nell stood trembling for a moment, lettingthe rage ebb slowly from her body. Eva! she called out presently. Eva! There was no sound but the dry steady racketof the frogs by the landing. Eva! screamed Nell. Come to me this instant! She picked up the doll box and marched angrilyup towards the lights in the kitchen. Eva! cried Nell. You're going to get a good switchingfor this! A night bird in the willow tree by the stone wallcried once and started up into the still, affrighteddark. Nell did not call again for, suddenly, like themood of the Autumn night, the very sound of hervoice had begun to frighten her. And when she wasin the kitchen Nell screamed so loudly that Suse andJessie, long asleep in their shack down below theice-house, woke wide and stared wondering intothe dark. Nell stared for a long moment after shehad screamed, not believing, really, for it was atonce so perfect and yet so unreal. Trembling violentlyNell ran back out onto the lawn. Come back! screamed Nell hoarsely into the tangledfar off shadows by the river. Come back! Ohplease! Please come back! But the dark child was gone forever. And Nell,creeping back at last to the kitchen, whimperingand slack-mouthed, looked again at the lovely littledreadful creature in the doll box: the gold-haired,plaster Eva with the eyes too blue to be real.

End