Part 8

"Having a bedroom adjoining my office, I spent that night in town. I did not go to sleep until late, and had not been asleep long when I was awakened by the continual repetition of a monotonous sound. At first I thought I was dreaming, but as I aroused it came to me distinctly: the sound of blows in the distance struck regularly. I awaked fully. The noise was in the direction of the jail. I dressed hastily and went down on the street. I stepped into the arms of a half-dozen masked men who quietly laid me on my back, blindfolded me and bound me so that I could not move. I threatened and struggled; but to no purpose, and finally gave it up and tried expostulation. They told me that they intended no harm to me; but that I was their prisoner and they meant to keep me. They had come for their man, they said, and they meant to have him. They were perfectly quiet and acted with the precision of old soldiers.

"All the time I could hear the blows at the jail as the mob pounded the iron door with sledges, and now and then a shout or cry from within. Then one great roar went up and the blows ceased suddenly, and then one cry.

"The blows were on the inner door, for the mob had gained access to the outer. They had come prepared and, stout as the door was, it could not resist long.

"In a little while I heard the regular tramp of men, and in a few minutes the column came up the street, marching like soldiers. There must have been five hundred of them. The prisoner was in the midst, bare-headed and walking between two mounted men, and was moaning and pleading and cursing by turns.

"I asked my captors if I might speak, and they gave me ten minutes. I stood up on the top step of the house, and for a quarter of an hour I made what I consider to have been the best speech I ever made or shall make. I told them in closing that I should use all my powers to find out who they were, and if I could I should prosecute them, every one, and try and have them hanged for murder.

"They heard me patiently, but without a word, and when I was through, one of the leaders made a short reply. They agreed with me about the law; but they felt that the way it was being used was such as to cause a failure of justice. They had waited patiently, and were apparently no nearer seeing justice executed than in the beginning. So they proposed to take the law into their own hands. The remedy was, to do away with all but proper defences and execute the law without unreasonable delay.

"It was the first mob I had ever seen, and I experienced a sensation of utter powerlessness and insignificance; just as in a vast disturbance of the elements—a storm at sea, a hurricane, a conflagration. The individual disappeared before the irresistible force.

"An order was given and the column moved on silently.

"A question arose among my guards as to what should be done with me.

"They wished to pledge me to return to my rooms and take no steps until morning, but I would give no pledges. So they took me along with them. From the time they started there was not a word except the orders of the leader and his lieutenants and the occasional outcry of the prisoner, who prayed and cursed by turns.

"They went out of the village and turned in at Halloway's place.

"Here the prisoner made his last struggle. The idea of being taken to Halloway's place appeared to terrify him to desperation. He might as well have struggled against the powers of the Infinite. He said he would confess everything if they would not take him there. They said they did not want his confession. He gave up, and from this time was quiet; and he soon began to croon a sort of hymn.

"The procession stopped at the big sycamore under which I had last parted from Halloway.

"I asked leave to speak again; but they said no. They asked the prisoner if he wanted to say anything. He said he wanted something to eat. The leader said he should have it; that it should never be said that any man—even he—had asked in vain for food in that county.

"Out of a haversack food was produced in plenty, and while the crowd waited amidst profound silence, the prisoner squatted down and ate up the entire plateful.

"Then the leader said he had just five minutes more to live, and he had better pray.

"He began a wild sort of incoherent ramble; confessed that he had murdered Halloway and his wife, but laid the chief blame on his father, and begged them to tell his friends to meet him in Heaven.

"I asked leave to go, and it was given me on condition that I would not return for twenty minutes. This I agreed to. I went to my home and aroused someone, and we returned. It was not much more than a half hour since I had left, but the place was deserted. It was all silent as the grave. There was no living creature there. Only under the great sycamore, from one of its long, pale branches that stretched across the road, hung that dead thing just out of our reach, turning and swaying a little in the night wind.

"We had to climb to the limb to cut the body down.

"The outside newspapers made a good deal of the affair. I was charged with indifference, with cowardice, with venality. Some journals even declared that I had instigated the lynching and participated in it, and said that I ought to be hanged.

"I did not mind this much. It buoyed me up, and I went on with my work without stopping for a rest, as I had intended to do.

"I kept my word and ransacked the county for evidence against the lynchers. Many knew nothing about the matter; others pleaded their privilege and refused to testify on the ground of self-crimination.

"The election came on again, and almost before I knew it I was in the midst of the canvass.

"I held that election would be an indorsement of me, and defeat would be a censure. After all, it is the endorsement of those about our own home that we desire.

"The night before the election I spoke to a crowd at Burley's Fork. The place had changed since Halloway checked Absalom Turnell there. A large crowd was in attendance. I paid Halloway my personal tribute that night, and it met with a deep response. I denounced the lynching. There was a dead silence. I was sure that in my audience were many of the men who had been in the mob that night.

"When I rode home quite a company started with me.

"The moon, which was on the wane, was, I remember, just rising as we set out. It was a soft night, rather cloudy, but not dark, for the sad moon shone a little now and then, looking wasted and red. The other men dropped off from time to time as we came to the several roads that led to their homes and at last I was riding alone. I was dead tired, and after I was left by my companions sat loungingly on my horse, and my mind ran on the last canvass and the strange tragedy that ended it, with its train of consequences. I was not aware when my horse turned off from the main road into the by-road that led through the Halloway place to my own home. It was the same horse I had ridden that night. I waked suddenly to a realization of where I was, and regretted for a second that I had come by that road. The next moment I put the thought away as a piece of cowardice and rode on, my mind perfectly easy. My horse presently broke into a canter and I took a train of thought distinctly pleasant. I mention this to account for my inability to explain what followed. I was thinking of old times and of a holiday I had spent once at Halloway's when old Joel came through on his way to his wife's house. It was the first time I ever remembered seeing Joel. I was suddenly conscious of something white moving on the road before me. At the same second my horse suddenly wheeled with such violence as to break my stirrup-leather and almost throw me over his neck. I pulled him up and turned him back, and there before me, coming along the unused road up the hill from Halloway's, was old Joel, sitting in a cart, looking at me, and bowing to me politely just as he had done that morning on his way to the gallows; while dangling from the white limb of the sycamore, swaying softly in the wind, hung the corpse of Absalom. At first I thought it was an illusion and I rubbed my eyes. But there they were. Then I thought it was a delusion; and I reined in my horse and reasoned about it. But it was not; for I saw both men as plainly as I saw my stirrup-leather lying there in the middle of the road, and in the same way. My horse saw them too, and was so terrified that I could not keep him headed to them. Again and again I pulled him around and looked at the men and tried to reason about them; but every time I looked there they were, and my horse snorted and wheeled in terror. I could see the clothes they wore; the clean, white shirt and neat Sunday suit old Joel had on, and the striped, hickory shirt, torn on the shoulders, and the gray trousers that the lynched man wore—I could see the white rope wrapt around the limb and hanging down, and the knot at his throat; I remembered them perfectly. I could not get near the cart, for the road down to Halloway's, on which it moved steadily without ever approaching, was stopped up. But I rode right under the limb on which the other man hung, and there it was just above my head. I reasoned with myself, but in vain. There it still hung silent and real, swinging gently in the night wind and turning a little back and forth at the end of the white rope.

"In sheer determination to fight it through I got off my horse and picked up my stirrup. He was trembling like a leaf. I remounted and rode back to the spot and looked again, confident that the spectres would now have disappeared. But there they were, old Joel, sitting in his cart, bowing to me civilly with timid, sad, friendly eyes, as much alive as I was, and the dead man, with his limp head and arms, hanging in mid-air and turning in the wind.

"I rode up under the dangling body and cut at it with my switch. At the motion my horse bolted. He ran fully a mile before I could pull him in.

"The next morning I went to my stable to get my horse to ride to the polls. The man at the stable said:

"'He ain't fit to take out, sir. You must 'a gin him a mighty hard ride last night—he won't tetch a moufful; he's been in a cold sweat all night.'

"Sure enough, he looked it.

"I took another horse and rode out by Halloway's to see the place by daylight. It was quiet enough now.

"The sycamore shaded the grass-grown road, and a branch, twisted and broken by some storm, hung by a strip of bark from the big bough that stretched across the road above my head, swaying, with limp leaves, a little in the wind; a dense dogwood bush in full bloom among the young pines, filled a fence-corner down the disused road where old Joel had bowed to me from his phantom cart the night before. But it was hard to believe that these were the things which had created such impressions on my mind—as hard to believe as that the quiet cottage peering out from amid the mass of peach-bloom was one hour the home of such happiness, and the next the scene of such a tragedy.

"Yes, I have seen apparitions," he said, thoughtfully, "but I have seen what was worse."

Once more he put his hands suddenly before his face as though to shut out something from his vision.

AN URBAN HARBINGER

By E. S. Martin

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION [FRONTISPIECE] BY W. GLACKENS

In the sweet country, as the spring's Advance decks out the scenery, And limns with hues the colored things And gives the greens their greenery, I love to watch when I am there Each little step of Nature's care; The wiles with which she goes about To coax the shivering crocus out, And, day by day, succeeding troops Of blooms, to marshal in their groups.

In town, it's different! All's wrought out With least of her complicity, By man-power, helped, as I misdoubt, By steam and electricity. The bed that yesterday was snow To-morrow's plants, set all arow; You press a button and they blow, Just watch them and you'll see it's so. I'm told, too, that in open sight The park men turn them off at night.

You can't rely on city plants Whose habits have been tampered with. I always look at them askance. Such culture as they're pampered with Might well their little minds upset, Confuse their dates, make them forget The calendar, their proper times As set by use and nursery rhymes— All, all, except, come sun, come cold, They're bound to blossom when they're told.

I trust them not, but when it's fair I note in garb delectable Sophronia driving out for air With parent most respectable. And when she leaves her furs at home I say the season's ripening some. Successive hats, new brought from France, Denote to me the sun's advance, And, when her parasols appear, I cry, "Now bless me! summer's here."

THE TRAIL OF THE SANDHILL STAG

BY ERNEST SETON THOMPSON

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR

It was a burning hot day. Yan was wandering in pursuit of birds among the endless groves and glades of the Sandhill wilderness about Carberry. The water in the numerous marshy ponds was warm with the sunheat, so Yan cut across to the trail spring, the only place in the country where he might find a cooling drink. As he stooped beside it his eye fell on a small hoof-mark in the mud, a sharp and elegant track. He had never seen one like it before, but it gave him a thrill, for he knew at once it was the track of a _wild deer_.

"There are no deer in those hills now," the settlers told Yan. Yet when the first snow came that autumn he, remembering the hoof-mark in the mud, quietly took down his rifle and said to himself, "I am going into the hills every day till I bring out a deer." Yan was a tall, raw lad in the last of his teens. He was no hunter yet, but he was a tireless runner, and filled with unflagging zeal. Away to the hills he went on his quest, day after day, and many a score of long white miles he coursed, and night after night he returned to the shanty without seeing even a track. But the longest chase will end. On a far, hard trip in the southern hills he came at last on the trail of a deer—dim and stale, but still a deer-trail—and again he felt a thrill as the thought came, "At the other end of that line of dimples in the snow is the creature that made them; each one is fresher than the last, and it is only a question of time for me to come up with their maker."

At first Yan could not tell by the dim track which way the animal had gone. But he soon found that the mark was a little sharper at one end, and rightly guessed that that was the toe; also he noticed that the spaces shortened in going up hill, and at last a clear imprint in a sandy place ended the doubt.

Away he went with a new fire in his blood, and an odd prickling in his hair; away on a long hard follow through interminable woods and hills, with the trail growing fresher as he flew. All day he followed, and toward night it turned and led him homeward. On it went, soon over familiar ground, back to the saw-mill, then over Mitchell's Plain, and at last into the thick poplar woods nearby, where Yan left it when it was too dark to follow. He was only seven miles from home, and this he easily trotted in an hour.

In the morning he was back to take it up, but instead of an old track, there were now so many fresh ones, crossing and winding, that he could not follow at all. So he prowled along haphazard, until he found two tracks so new that he could easily trail them as before, and he eagerly gave chase.

As he sneaked along watching the tracks at his feet instead of the woods ahead, he was startled by two big-eared, grayish animals, springing from a little glade into which he had stumbled. They trotted to a bank fifty yards away and then turned to gaze at him.

How they did seem to _look_ with their great ears. How they spell-bound him by the soft gaze that he felt rather than saw! He knew what they were. Had he not for weeks been holding ready, preparing and hungering for this very sight! And yet how useless were his preparations; how wholly all his preconcepts were swept away, and a wonder-stricken "Oh-h-h!" went softly from his throat.

As he stood and gazed, they turned their heads away, though they still seemed to look at him with their great ears, and trotting a few steps to a smoother place, began to bound up and down in a sort of play. They seemed to have forgotten him, and the wonderful effortless way in which they would rise six or eight feet in air by a tiny toe-touch was bewildering. Yan stood fascinated by the strange play of the light-limbed, gray-furred creatures.

There was no haste or alarm in their movements, he would watch them until they began to run away—till they should take fright and begin the labored straining, the vast athletic bounds, he had heard of. And it was only on noting that they were rapidly fading into the distance that he realized that _now_ they were running away, _already_ were flying for safety.

Higher and higher they rose each time; gracefully their bodies swayed inward as they curved along some bold ridge, or for a long space the buff-white 'scutcheons that they bore behind them seemed hanging in the air, while these wingless birds were really sailing over a deep gully.

Yan stood intensely gazing until they were out of sight, and it never once occurred to him to shoot.

When they were gone he went to the place where they had begun their play. Here was one track, where was the next? He looked all around and was surprised to see a blank for fifteen feet; and then another blank, and on farther, another: then the blanks increased to eighteen feet, then to twenty, then to twenty-five and sometimes thirty feet. Each of these playful, effortless bounds covered a space of eighteen to thirty feet.

Gods above! They do not run at all, they fly; and once in awhile come down again to tap the hill-tops with their dainty hoofs.

"I'm glad they got away," said Yan. "They've shown me something to-day that never man saw before. I know that no one else has ever, ever seen it, or he would have told of it."

II

Yet when the morning came the old wolfish instinct was back in his heart. "I must away to the hills," he said, "take up the trail, and be a beast of the chase once more; my wits against their wits; my strength against their strength; and against their speed, my gun."

Oh! those glorious sand-hills—an endless rolling stretch of sandy dunes, with lakes and woods and grassy lawns between. Life—life, on every side, and life within, for Yan was young and strong and joyed in powers complete, and he said, "These are the best days of my life, these are my golden days." He thought it then, and oh, how well he came to know it in the after years!

All day at a long wolf-lope he would go and send the white hare and the partridge flying from his path, and swing along and scan the ground for sign and the tell-tale inscript in the snow, the oldest of all writing, more thrillful of interest by far than the finest glyph or scarab that ever Egypt gave to modern day.

But the driving snow was the wild deer's friend, as the driven snow was his foe, and down it came that day and wiped out every trace.

The next day and the next still found Yan careering in the hills, but never a track or sign did he see. And the weeks went by and many a rolling mile he ran and many a bitter day and freezing night he passed in the snowclad hills, sometimes on a deer-trail but more often without. Sometimes in the barren hills, and sometimes led by woodmen's talk to far-off sheltering woods, and once or twice he saw indeed the buff-white bannerets go floating up the hills. Sometimes reports came of a great buck that frequented the timberlands near the saw-mill, and more than once Yan found his trail, but never got a glimpse of him; and the few deer there were, now grew so wild with long pursuit that he had no further chances to shoot, and the hunting season passed in one long train of failures. Bright, unsad failures they, for every day on the trail was a glad triumphant march.

He seemed indeed to come back empty-handed, but he really came home laden with the best spoils of the chase.

III

The year went by. Another season came, and Yan felt in his heart the hunter fret once more. Even had he not, the talk he heard would have set him all afire.

It told of a mighty buck that now lived in the hills—the Sandhill Stag they called him. It told of his size, his speed, and the crowning glory that he bore on his brow, a marvellous growth like sculptured bronze with gleaming ivory points.

So when the first tracking snow came, Yan set out with some comrades who had caught a faint reflected glow of his ardor. They drove in a sleigh to the Spruce Hill, then scattered to meet again at sunset. The woods about abounded in hares and grouse, and the powder burned all around. But no deer-track was to be found, so Yan quietly left the woods and set off alone for Kennedy's Plain, where last this wonderful buck had been seen.

After a few miles he came on a great deer-track, so large and sharp and broken by such mighty bounds that he knew it at once for the trail of the Sandhill Stag.

With a sudden rush of strength to his limbs he led away like a wolf on the trail. And down his spine and in his hair he felt as before, and yet as never before, the strange prickling that he knew was the same as makes the wolf's mane bristle when he hunts. He followed till night was near and he must needs turn, for the Spruce Hill was many miles away.

He knew that it would be long after sunset before he could get there, and he scarcely expected that his comrades would wait for him, but he did not care; he gloried in the independence of his strength, for his legs were like iron and his wind was like a hound's. Ten miles were no more to him than a mile to another man, for he could run all day and come home fresh, and always when alone in the lone hills he felt within so glad a gush of wild exhilaration that his joy was full.

So when his friends, feeling sure that he could take care of himself, drove home and left him, he was glad to be left. They seemed rather to pity him for imposing on himself such long, toilsome tramps. They had no realization of what he found in those wind-swept hills. They never once thought what they, and all their friends and every man that ever lived has striven for and offered his body, his brain, his freedom and his life to buy; what they were vainly wearing out their lives in fearful, hopeless drudgery to gain, that boy was daily finding in those hills. The bitter, biting, blizzard wind was without, but the fire of health and youth was within; and at every stride in his daily march, it was _happiness_ he found, and he knew it. And he smiled such a gentle smile when he thought of them driven home in the sleigh shivering and miserable, yet pitying him.

Oh! what a glorious sunset he saw that day on Kennedy's Plain, with the snow dyed pink and the poplar woods aglow in red and gold. What a glorious tramp through the darkening woods as the shadows fell and the yellow moon came up!

"These are the best days of my life," he said. "These are my golden days!"