Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries | Page 7

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 down-now gleaming in his head as he looked us over, and now dull as he considered what he saw.
The man was misshapen and doubled up, but there was strength and vigor in him. He had a great, cavernous mouth, and his voice was a sort of bellow. One has seen an oak tree, dwarfed and stunted into knots, but with the toughness and vigor of a great oak in it. Gaul was a thing like that.
He cried out when he saw Abner. He was taken by surprise; and he wished to know if we came by chance or upon some errand.
"Abner," he said, "come in. It's a devil's night-rain and the driving wind."
"The weather," said Abner, "is in God's hand."
"God!" cried Gaul. "I would shoestrap such a God! The autumn is not half over and here is winter come, and no pasture left and the cattle to be