Dark Hollow | Page 6

figure confronted them,
silent, staring and unmoving. With clenched fingers gripping the arms
of his great chair, and head held forward, he looked like one frozen at
the moment of doom, such the expression of features usually so noble,
and now almost unrecognisable were it not for the snow of his locks
and his unmistakable brow.
Frozen! Not an eyelash quivered, nor was there any perceptible
movement in his sturdy chest. His eyes were on their eyes, but he saw
no one; and down upon his head and over his whole form the sunshine
poured from a large window let into the ceiling directly above him,
lighting up the strained and unnatural aspect of his remarkable
countenance and bringing into sharp prominence the commonplace
objects cluttering the table at his elbow; such as his hat and gloves, and
the bundle of papers he had doubtless made ready for court.
Was he living? Was he dead?--stricken by the sight of so many faces in
a doorway considered sacred from all intrusion? No! the emotion

capable of thus transforming the features of so strong a man must have
a deeper source than that. The woman was to blame for this--the
audacious, the unknown, the mysteriously clad woman. Let her be
found. Let her be made to explain herself and the condition into which
she had thrown this good man.
Indignation burst into words, and pity was beginning to voice itself in
inarticulate murmurs which swelled and ebbed, now louder, now more
faintly as the crowd surged forward or drew back, appalled by that
moveless, breathless, awe-compelling figure. Indignation and pity were
at their height when the strain which held them all in one common
leash was loosed by the movement of a little child.
Attracted possibly by what it did not understand, or simply made
fearless because of its non-comprehension of the mystery before him, a
curly-haired boy suddenly escaped its mother's clutch, and, toddling up
by a pathway of his own to the awesome form in the great chair, laid
his little hand on the judge's rigid arm and, looking up into his face,
babbled out:
"Why don't you get up, man? I like oo better up."
A breathless moment; then the horrified murmur rose here, there and
everywhere: "He's dead! He's dead!" and the mother, with a rush,
caught the child back, and confusion began its reign, when quietly and
convincingly a bluff and masculine voice spoke from the doorway
behind them and they heard:
"You needn't be frightened. In an hour or a half-hour he will be the
same as ever. My aunt has such attacks. They call it catalepsy."

III
BELA THE REDOUBTABLE
CATALEPSY!

A dread word to the ignorant.
Imperceptibly the crowd dwindled; the most discreet among them quite
content to leave the house; others, with their curiosity inflamed anew,
to poke about and peer into corners and curtained recesses while the
opportunity remained theirs and the man of whom they stood in fear sat
lapsed in helpless unconsciousness. A few, and these the most
thoughtful, devoted all their energies to a serious quest for the woman
and child whom they continued to believe to be in hiding somewhere
inside the walls she had so audaciously entered.
Among these was Miss Weeks whose importance none felt more than
herself, and it was at her insistence and under her advice (for she only,
of all who remained, had ever had a previous acquaintance with the
house) that the small party decided to start their search by a hasty
inspection of the front hall. As this could not be reached from the room
where its owner's motionless figure sat at its grim watch, they were
sidling hastily out, with eyes still turned back in awful fascination upon
those other eyes which seemed to follow all their movements and yet
gave no token of life, when a shout and scramble in the passages
beyond cut short their intent and held them panting and eager, each to
his place.
"They've seen her! They've found her!" ran in quick, whispered
suggestion from lip to lip, and some were for rushing to see.
But Miss Weeks' trim and precise figure blocked the doorway, and she
did not move.
"Hark!" she murmured in quick admonishment; "what is that other
sound? Something is happening--something dreadful. What is it? It
does not seem to be near here yet, but it is coming--coming."
Frightened in spite of themselves, both by her manner and tone, they
drew their gaze from the rigid figure in the chair, and, with bated
breaths and rapidly paling cheeks, listened to the distant murmur on the
far-off road, plainly to be heard pulsing through the nearer sounds of
rushing feet and chattering voices in the rooms about.

What was it? They could not guess, and