Dark Hollow | Page 8

the room, they felt themselves
held back by the spirit of this man, who as long as he lived and
breathed would hold himself a determined barrier between them and
what he had been set to guard.
As long as he lived and breathed. Alas! that would be but a little while
now. Already his head, held erect by the passion of his purpose, was
sinking on his breast; already his glazing eye was losing its power of
concentration, when with a final rally of his decaying strength, he
started erect again and cried out in terrible appeal:
"I have disobeyed the judge, and, as you see, it has killed him. Do not
make me guilty of giving away his secret. Swear that you will leave
this door unpassed; swear that no one but his son shall ever turn this
lock; or I will haunt you, I, Bela, man by man, till you sink in terror to
your graves. Swear! sw--"
The last adjuration ended in a moan. His head fell forward again and in
that intense moment of complete silence they could hear the splash of
his life-blood as it dropped from his forehead on to the polished boards
beneath; then he threw up his arms and fell in a heap to the floor.
They had not been driven to answer. Wherever that great soul had gone,
his ears were no longer open to mortal promise, nor would any oath
from the lip of man avail to smooth his way into the shadowy
unknown.
"Dead!" broke from little Miss Weeks as she flung herself down in
reckless abandonment at his side. She had never known an agitation
beyond some fluttering woman's hope she had stifled as soon as born,
and now she knelt in blood. "Dead!" she again repeated. And there was
no one this time to cry: "You need not be frightened; in a few minutes
he will be himself again." The master might reawaken to life, but never

more the man.
A solemn hush, then a mighty sigh of accumulated emotion swept from
lip to lip, and the crowd of later invaders, already abashed if not
terrified by the unexpected spectacle of suspended animation which
confronted them from the judge's chair, shrank tumultuously back as
little Miss Weeks advanced upon them, holding out her meagre arms in
late defence of the secret to save which she had just seen a man die.
"Let us do as he wished," she prayed. "I feel myself much to blame.
What right had we to come in here?"
"The fellow was hurt. We were just bringing him home," spoke up a
voice, rough with the surprise of unaccustomed feeling. "If he had let
us carry him, he might have been alive this minute; but he would run
and struggle to keep us back. He says he killed his master. If so, his
death is a retribution. Don't you say so, fellows? The judge was a good
man---"
"Hush! hush! the judge is all right," admonished one of the party; "he'll
be waking up soon"; and then, as every eye flew in fresh wonder
towards the chair and its impassive occupant, the low whisper was
heard,--no one ever could tell from whose lips it fell: "If we are ever to
know this wonderful secret, now is the time, before he wakes and turns
us out of the house."
No one in authority was present; no one representing the law, not even
a doctor; only haphazard persons from the street and a few neighbours
who had not been on social terms with the judge for years and never
expected to be so again. His secret!--always a source of wonder to
every inhabitant of Shelby, but lifted now into a matter of vital
importance by the events of the day and the tragic death of the negro!
Were they to miss its solution, when only a door lay between it and
them--a door which they might not even have to unlock? If the judge
should rouse,--if from a source of superstitious terror he became an
active one, how pat their excuse might be. They were but seeking a
proper place--a couch--a bed--on which to lay the dead man. They had
been witness to his hurt; they had been witness to his death, and were

they to leave him lying in his blood, to shock the eyes of his master
when he came out of his long swoon? No tongue spoke these words,
but the cunning visible in many an eye and the slight start made by
more than one eager foot in the direction of the forbidden door gave
Miss Weeks sufficient warning of what she might expect in another
moment. Making the most of her diminutive figure,--such a startling
contrast to the one which had