The Shape of Fear | Page 6

broiled for him, Dodson, sitting beside
him, said:
"Did you call that little exhibition of yours legerdemain, Tim, you
sweep? Or are you really the Devil's bairn?"
"It was the Shape of Fear," said Tim, quite seriously.
"But it seemed mild as mother's milk."
"It was compounded of the good I might have done. It is that which I
fear."
He would explain no more. Later -- many months later -- he died
patiently and sweetly in the madhouse, praying for rest. The little beast
with the yellow eyes had high mass cele- brated for him, which, all
things considered, was almost as pathetic as it was amusing.
Dodson was in Vienna when he heard of it.
"Sa, sa!" cried he. "I wish it wasn't so dark in the tomb! What do you
suppose Tim is looking at?"
As for Jim O'Malley, he was with diffi- culty kept from illuminating
the grave with electricity.

ON THE NORTHERN ICE

THE winter nights up at Sault Ste. Marie are as white and luminous as
the Milky Way. The silence which rests upon the solitude appears to be
white also. Even sound has been included in Nature's arrestment, for,
indeed, save the still white frost, all things seem to be oblit- erated. The
stars have a poignant brightness, but they belong to heaven and not to
earth, and between their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls the
ebon ether in vast, liquid billows.
In such a place it is difficult to believe that the world is actually
peopled. It seems as if it might be the dark of the day after Cain killed
Abel, and as if all of humanity's re- mainder was huddled in affright
away from the awful spaciousness of Creation.
The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay -- bent on a
pleasant duty -- he laughed to himself, and said that he did not at all
object to being the only man in the world, so long as the world
remained as un- speakably beautiful as it was when he buckled on his
skates and shot away into the solitude. He was bent on reaching his best
friend in time to act as groomsman, and business had delayed him till
time was at its briefest. So he journeyed by night and journeyed alone,
and when the tang of the frost got at his blood, he felt as a spirited
horse feels when it gets free of bit and bridle. The ice was as glass, his
skates were keen, his frame fit, and his venture to his taste! So he
laughed, and cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water. He
could hear the whistling of the air as he cleft it.
As he went on and on in the black stillness, he began to have fancies.
He imagined him- self enormously tall -- a great Viking of the
Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love. And that reminded him
that he had a love -- though, indeed, that thought was always present
with him as a background for other thoughts. To be sure, he had not
told her that she was his love, for he had seen her only a few times, and
the auspicious occasion had not yet presented itself. She lived at Echo
Bay also, and was to be the maid of honor to his friend's bride -- which
was one more reason why he skated almost as swiftly as the wind, and
why, now and then, he let out a shout of exultation.
The one cloud that crossed Hagadorn's sun of expectancy was the

knowledge that Marie Beaujeu's father had money, and that Marie lived
in a house with two stories to it, and wore otter skin about her throat
and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went sledding.
Moreover, in the locket in which she treasured a bit of her dead
mother's hair, there was a black pearl as big as a pea. These things
made it difficult -- perhaps im- possible -- for Ralph Hagadorn to say
more than, "I love you." But that much he meant to say though he were
scourged with chagrin for his temerity.
This determination grew upon him as he swept along the ice under the
starlight. Venus made a glowing path toward the west and seemed
eager to reassure him. He was sorry he could not skim down that
avenue of light which flowed from the love-star, but he was forced to
turn his back upon it and face the black northeast.
It came to him with a shock that he was not alone. His eyelashes were
frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold, so at first he thought it
might be an illusion. But when he had rubbed