"I have an enemy, Sam, that is seeking to do me great injury, and I need your help."

"All right, Ellen; I'm your man. I'll kill any n.i.g.g.e.r that does you harm," said Sam.

"Don't say that, Sam, unless you mean it," said Ellen.

"Try me," was Sam's laconic response.

"Well, we'll see. Sam, my enemy is a woman."

"A woman! I don't like the idea of killing a woman, but if you say so, I'll do it. I've done many a shady thing, but I ain't come to that yet."

"I thought you would back out, Sam."

"Back out! who said I'd back out? Not this chap. Of course, I'll kill the gal; but a fellow has got a little conscience, and has to feel bad a little bit. Who is she?"

"Come with me. I will show you where she lives, and stand there until you are through. There is no one in the room with her, and you are not in the slightest danger." So saying, she led the way until at length they arrived at Erma's house. After a.s.suring themselves that there was no one else near, they entered the yard, and very stealthily approached the window to Erma's room.

Sam had had previous experience in house-breaking and soon had the blinds removed and an opening made in the window. He noiselessly clambered into Erma's room, having his long, keen knife in his hand. The lamp was dimly burning on a stand near the head of the bed. By the side of the lamp was a bouquet of beautiful flowers which Astral had given Erma that evening, and which she had placed where she could see them in the night if she should awake. She also desired that they should be the first object on which her eyes should fall on awaking the next day.

Sam drew near the bed with uplifted knife.

There Erma lay in all her beauty, a lovely smile upon her face, even in her sleep. Her hair was lying carelessly about her brow, and caused her to present the appearance of wild loveliness.

Sam halted, so beautiful was the image before him. His arm descended to his side, and he continued to gaze. He said to himself, "If I kill that girl, it will have to be with my eyes shut." He closes his eyes and creeps closer to the bedside. He lifts his hand again to strike, and opens his eyes to note the spot where a blow delivered would reach her heart. Again Erma's beauty charms him.

Sam mutters to himself, "Ellen told me she wanted me to kill a woman, and, dad gum it, this is an angel." So saying, he turned around and got back out of the window.

"Is she dead?" asked Ellen, eagerly.

"Naw, dad gum it, she ain't dead. And another thing, if ever any harm befalls that girl, I'll tell about this night's work, and I'll kill you besides." So saying, he walked away, carrying in his mind a picture of the beautiful Erma.

Ellen, thoroughly dejected and full of fear as to the revelations that Sam might make, returned to her home.

When, some weeks later, word was brought to her that Erma Wysong had pa.s.sed away, and that it was happy Erma _Herndon_ now; when word came that Astral Herndon had declared himself in favor of building a monument to the skies in honor of Cupid for having brought him so glorious a prize--when these facts were brought to her ladyship, Ellen Sanders, she remembered Sam Ross--and said nothing.

CHAPTER XXVI.

NAME THE CHAPTER AFTER YOU READ IT.

Eternity has clasped a few more of her romping children, the mad galloping years, to her eager bosom since you last gazed upon the countenances of the princ.i.p.al actors in our little drama. Winter, the frozen love of G.o.d, is upon its annual visit to earth, and Astral and Erma Wysong Herndon are spending the winter eve in their cosy, modestly furnished home before a grate full of live, glowing coals, while little Astral Herndon, Jr., a pretty, precocious child of seven summers is astride his fond papa's knee, gazing thoughtfully out of his pretty brown eyes into the fire. Erma, yet wearing black for her brother John, has grown more beautiful with the years and, her rounded, matronly form presents fresh beauties to Astral's eyes each time he looks in her direction, which be a.s.sured is not seldom. She is now holding a book before her face and is supposed to be reading, but in reality she is furtively watching her boy, and notes, with a heaving bosom, the manlike sobriety on his face.

There were strange experiences connected with the birth of that child.

It was on this wise: When Erma knew that G.o.d would bless her with an offspring she besought Astral to allow her to leave Richmond and stay until her child was born. She asked to be separated from him and from the world until G.o.d had fully wrought upon the human being whom he was shortly to introduce into the world through her. The volcanic eruptions that had, from time to time, hurled forth their smoke and lava upon Erma's soul, had left huge craters in her heart so deep as to be unfathomable by means of mortal measuring lines; so wide that human ken could not span from side to side. Astral knew and felt this and learned to look upon his wife as a being in an especial sense the handmaid of G.o.d. So, while not understanding the full meaning of Erma's request, he stood ready to grant it. Erma, escorted by her husband, hied away to the mountains of West Virginia and took up her abode on Nutall's Mountain.

Here Astral left her, to spend those great days with the plain and simple folk of the mountain fastnesses, honest and st.u.r.dy and fearless.

At the foot of Nutall's Mountain, a few miles distant from the crest, lies the Kanawha River, whose waters quarrel as they tumble over the rocks in the river bed on their way to the sea. The path downward from the mountain crest to the river, followed alongside of a deep canyon, that wound its way serpent-like around the mountain side, piloting the mountain streams to their common mother, the Kanawha River. As long as health would permit, Erma would rise in the morning, just before daybreak, and descend this long, winding, rocky pathway to the river, delighting to look through the green foliage of the trees rising up from the sides and bottom of the deep gorge mentioned. Sometimes she would sit upon a huge boulder near at hand, and, surrounded on all sides by the green foliage, drink in the wild, untamed beauty of the mountains, and commune with the Spirit of recklessness and fury that evidently makes the mountain his favorite resort. Also, at night time Erma would steal forth, and, hunting the highest mountain peak, would stand and look by the light of the moon from silent, sullen range to silent sullen range, and marvel at their stillness. At these times Erma's soul seemed to feel the magnetic sweep of the queenly moon as this lovely woman of the skies, gathering her robes about her, sped swiftly but noiselessly along. The ears of her soul caught the far-off patter of the footfalls of the tiny stars as they journeyed silently on to G.o.d. The purpose of these protracted communings with the sublime side of nature, Erma never disclosed to mortal, and as soon as Astral Herndon, Jr., was born and she was able to travel, she yielded herself to the yearning arms of her husband, who was now present to carry her home.

Erma watched her child as it grew, with more than a mother's interest and noticed with eagerness every expression upon the child's face and every utterance from its childish lips. Astral soon discovered this preternatural interest in the child and contented himself with watching Erma while she watched the child. Thus it is to-night: the child gazes, Erma watches it, and Astral watches Erma. A fierce snowstorm is raging without. The mad heavens seem determined to whiten the black earth, nothing daunted that all previous efforts in that direction have ended in the slushy mire; something of the fate that has sometimes attended the efforts of reformers to whiten the civic life of humanity. The winds, seemingly, would deter the snowflakes from their fruitless task of whitening the earth, catching them just before they reached the ground and whirling them around and around until the snowflakes, nimbly twisting out of the hands of the wind, fall exhausted upon the earth to learn from experience the treatment often accorded those who would do good. The snowstorm continues, the child muses, the mother watches.

Astral is an onlooker. The look of earnestness on the child's brow deepens and deepens, and Erma's bosom heaves, her lips move as if in prayer, and the book trembles in her hand. By and by the child opens its lips to speak, Erma leans forward, her eyes aglow with strange fire.

Astral feels the fever rising in his veins and somehow regards himself as face to face with a crisis in two souls. He realizes that soon his wife and her child shall stand revealed unto each other, and a feeling of awe creeps over him.

"Papa," says the child, "what do you want me to be when I am a man?"

Astral can say nothing. Erma's soul is in her eyes and her heart is thumping as though it would come out. The child lifts its eyes and gazes at the burning orbs of its mamma. In its simple way, it said, quietly:

"Mamma, I am going to be what you want me to be. I can tell that that is what you are looking at me so for."

With a scream of joy Erma sprang over to her husband and clasped her boy to her bosom, while she nestled her throbbing temples on Astral's shoulder. The soul of the mother had met that of the child and each had discovered its true inward self to the other, and Erma felt her every prayer answered and her every wish attained.

Erma said, "Astral, it now makes no difference to the world how soon I leave it; and G.o.d may take me at any time."

A feeling of terror, that caused his innermost soul to shudder, stole over Astral as he heard these solemn words come forth from Erma's lips--words that foreshadowed her untimely end. Verily, verily, coming events cast their shadows before them.

A loud knock at the door, succeeded by a dull thud as of a falling body, caused Astral and Erma to spring to their feet. Taking a lamp in his hand, Astral went out into the hallway and to the front door. He opened the door and a gust of wind blew off the lamp chimney and put out the light, the chimney falling to the floor and breaking. Lighting a lantern he saw the form of a man half buried in the drift of snow before his door. Astral, being a man of considerable strength, stooped down, lifted the man into his arms and bore him into the room where his wife and child stood in open-eyed astonishment.

The man was unconscious and Astral lay him in the middle of the floor and sought to restore him to consciousness. The man had on a long rubber ulster, which was b.u.t.toned from top to bottom. This Astral unb.u.t.toned and made the exciting discovery that the man was dressed in the striped clothes of a convict. This drew Erma to him, and she now aided Astral in the work of resuscitating him. At length the man opened his eyes and languidly fastened his gaze on Erma, who experienced a strange thrill as she looked into the eyes of this nearly frozen convict. The longer she looked, the more and more her feelings began to a.s.sume definite form, and a sensation of terror crept over her until she had to get up and move away. The eyes of the convict followed her and continued to affect her strangely.

Astral did not take note of his wife's discomfiture. He asked the man, "Where did you come from?"

He replied in husky tones, "I have come from h.e.l.l and am going to Heaven." The man made an effort to rise and Astral aided him. He asks, "Is that your wife and child?" Astral nodded a.s.sent.

"Send them out of the room or take me out, as I have something to say to you."

Erma grasped up Astral Herndon, Jr., and went up stairs, leaving the convict to talk with her husband. But a deep conviction was settling upon her mind and she could not stay there. She put her boy down and crept down stairs, drawn by an indefinable something to the room where the convict was. She did not enter but paced restlessly to and fro in the cold hallway.

Soon Astral came out with the look of a man thoroughly dumfounded. He grasped Erma by the hand and led her upstairs to her bedroom. They sit down and stare at each other. Astral does not know how to break the news to Erma. At length he says, "Erma, your brother was never hanged. He is downstairs now."

With a mad leap Erma broke out of the room, rushed downstairs, crying, "John! John!! John!!!" When she neared his seat she stopped suddenly, her voice ceased abruptly. John's head lay limp upon his bosom, for his soul had forsaken his body. Becalmed by a more than human power, Erma knelt before his chair in which sat the lifeless form and pa.s.sionately kissed the mute lips that had pa.s.sed under the ban of eternal silence.

"Oh!" she gasped, clapping a hand to her heart. She attempted to rise, but fell forward, her head finding a resting place on her dead brother's knee. Erma's beautiful eyelids closed, opened again as if to give a last view, and then closed, alas, forever. Her heart ceased to beat, and her soul stole noiselessly out of her body to return no more.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE FUNERAL.

Death, the subtle, crafty, relentless foe of human life, who lurks within the gloomy shadows which fringe the borderland where time fades away into eternity; Death, who, bursting from his sunless home, mouldy with the dew of darkness, springs upon the unwary traveler, and bears him swiftly to the spirit land--this Death, walking with ceaseless tread along his dismal pathway, has a strange and, to us, uncanny taste for music. When he has borne his victim away, he returns to the homes of the bereft, wearing a mystic veil, plucks with wild abandon at the heart strings of the sorrowing; and with avidity and in ecstasy drinks in the plaintive notes, the time beat of which is kept by the steady, perpetual fall of drops of blood from the heart. However terrible the wail, however loud the cry, it is but sweet music to the ear of death.

But surely, surely, soulless Death, for once in his awful journeyings, had even _his_ unholy taste for the music of agony fully satisfied, as with his ear to Astral's throbbing heart he drank in its anguished notes and heard that overburdened thing of grief make its futile attempts to burst through the walls that confined it. Added to and intensifying his feeling of blighting personal loss, his soul was charged with the thought that fate had so needlessly reared a ladder to the unspotted blue of his sky, and climbing there, had fanned out the sun of his firmament, leaving in its stead the sombre shadows, the inky hues, the gruesome forms of the dread midnight.

Stunned, bewildered, dazed, Astral cast a look of anguish upon the lifeless form of Erma and turned away petrified with sorrow. He staggered out of the room into the hallway and to the door opening upon the street. This he managed to open, and stood with bared head, facing the storm and welcoming the fury of the elements. Motionless, speechless, gazing into the dark abyss beyond, Astral stood as if rooted to the spot, the fury of the skies unconsciously affording congenial a.s.sociation to the wild ragings and frozen sorrows within. Sulkily the night rolled onward. The snowstorm, as if grieved to longer beat upon the brow of one in the iron grasp of fate, gradually ceased. A hush fell upon the winds, and they began to speak in whispers, afterwards not at all.