Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries | Page 7

his great roan as though he were a spider in the
saddle. He had been married more than once; but one wife had gone
mad, and my Uncle Abner's drovers had found the other on a summer
morning swinging to the limb of a great elm that stood before the door,
a bridle-rein knotted around her throat and her bare feet scattering the
yellow pollen of the ragweed. That elm was to us a duletree. One could
not ride beneath it for the swinging of this ghost.
The estate, undivided, belonged to Gaul and his brother. This brother
lived beyond the mountains. He never came until he came that last time.
Gaul rendered some accounting and they managed in that way. It was
said the brother believed himself defrauded and had come finally to
divide the lands; but this was gossip. Gaul said his brother came upon a
visit and out of love for him.
One did not know where the truth lay between these stories. Why he
came we could not be certain; but why he remained was beyond a
doubt.
One morning Gaul came to my Uncle Abner, clinging to the pommel of

his saddle while his great horse galloped, to say that he had found his
brother dead, and asking Abner to go with some others and look upon
the man before one touched his body-and then to get him buried.
The hunchback sniveled and cried out that his nerves were gone with
grief and the terror of finding his brother's throat cut open and the
blood upon him as he lay ghastly in his bed. He did not know a detail.
He had looked in at the door-and fled. His brother had not got up and
he had gone to call him. Why his brother had done this thing he could
not imagine-he was in perfect health and he slept beneath his roof in
love. The hunchback had blinked his red-lidded eyes and twisted his
big, hairy hands, and presented the aspect of grief. It looked grotesque
and loathsome; but-how else could a toad look in his extremity?
Abner had gone with my father and Elnathan Stone. They had found
the man as Gaul said-the razor by his hand and the marks of his fingers
and his struggle on him and about the bed. And the country had gone to
see him buried. The hills had been afire with talk, but Abner and my
father and Elnathan Stone were silent. They came silent from Gaul's
house; they stood silent before the body when it was laid out for burial;
and, bareheaded, they were silent when the earth received it.
A little later, however, when Gaul brought forth a will, leaving the
brother's share of the estate to the hunchback, with certain loving words,
and a mean allowance to the man's children, the three had met together
and Abner had walked about all night.
As we turned in toward the house Abner asked me if I had got my
supper. I told him "Yes"; and at the ford he stopped and sat a moment
in the saddle.
"Martin," he said, "get down and drink. It is God's river and the water
clean in it."
Then he extended his great arm toward the shadowy house.
"We shall go in," he said; "but we shall not eat nor drink there, for we
do not come in peace."

I do not know much about that house, for I saw only one room in it;
that was empty, cluttered with dust and rubbish, and preempted by the
spider. Long double windows of little panes of glass looked out over
the dark, silent river slipping past without a sound, and the rain driving
into the forest and the loom of the mountains. There was a fire-the
trunk of an apple tree burning, with one end in the fireplace. There
were some old chairs with black hair-cloth seats, and a sofa-all very old.
These the hunchback did not sit on, for the dust appeared when they
were touched. He had a chair beside the hearth, and he sat in that-a
high-backed chair, made like a settee and padded-the arms padded too;
but there the padding was worn out and ragged, where his hands had
plucked it.
He wore a blue coat, made with little capes to hide his hump, and he sat
tapping the burning tree with his cane. There was a gold piece set into
the head of this black stick. He had it put there, the gossips said, that
his fingers might be always on the thing he loved. His gray hair lay
along his face and the draft of the chimney moved it.
He wondered why we came, and his eyes declared how the thing
disturbed him; they flared up and burned