“Didn’t you hear it?”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“No.”
“They say it foretells death. Hush!”
The two men sat motionless. Not a sound broke the silence, not even a
creak of the old boards in the floor, or a sigh of the wind, or a
flapping shutter.
“They say it foretells death. I heard it last night and the night
before. What’s that?”
“Nothing. It’s stiller than a graveyard.”
“I heard it last night, and the night before about this time, near one.
’Taint a very pleasant sound, and this old garret’s dismal enough any
way.”
“Monk, you’re afeard. It’s nothing. Don’t waste no more time. I’m
dead-tired and sleepy. You wouldn’t have been in this old hole now if it
hadn’t been for Peters.”
“No, if it hadn’t been for Peters, the strike, like enough, would have
took. But he won’t stand in nobody’s way again.”
While Monk spoke, he drew out a sharp, slender knife, and ran his finger
along the blade.
“I tell you, Shiflet, we must do it the night after this blast’s done,
and the men in the shed say the coal will run out on the 6th, that’s
to-morrow. When Peters is fixed, the managers will have to give in or
quit runnin’ the furnace.”
Both men sat with their arms leaning on the table, and the flickering
light of the tallow candle between them showed two faces, rough,
begrimed by smoke and soot, and disfigured by evil passions, that grew
fiercer as they calmly plotted against the life of a fellow-being.
“We’ll meet at one, where the roads cross. It’ll be quiet then, and
Peters’s house is alone.”
“I’ll be all right,” said Shiflet, with a grin that rendered his
brute-like countenance doubly repulsive. “I’m confounded tired. Bring
your candle and light me down them infernal stairs.”
The men stood up. Monk, small and slim, was dwarfed by the almost giant
stature of his companion. With a few parting words as to secrecy and
silence, they separated.
Monk stood on the upper step until Shiflet disappeared, then closed the
door and replaced the candle on the table.
The room, neither large nor small, was a mere hole, smoked, dirty, and
unplastered, high up in a frame tenement-house. Two or three chairs, an
old chest of drawers, a rickety bedstead, and pine table, composed its
furniture. Some old boots and broken pieces of pig-iron lay scattered
about. The small, box-shaped window was set just below where the ceiling
or roof sloped to the wall. The only door led directly to the stairs
that went down two, three flights to the ground. There were many such
places in Agatha, where the furnace-hands lived.
Monk walked rapidly up and down the room, as if making an effort to wear
off the excitement that the last few moments had brought upon him. His
features had lost much of the malignant expression, which was by no
means habitual. His countenance was not hardened or stamped with the
impress of crime like Shiflet’s, who had just parted from him at the
door—a countenance in which every trace of conscience had long ago been
erased. Monk’s face was neither good nor bad, neither bright nor dull;
but he was a man easily wrought into a passion, governed by impulse.
Crossing to the table, he slung his coat over a chair, and stretched out
his hand to extinguish the light. Midway in the action he suddenly
checked himself, looked hurriedly around the room for an instant, and
stood motionless, with inclined head, listening intently. Not a sound
disturbed the stillness. Pinching out the light, he threw himself on the
bed, and in the darkness there soon came the heavy, regular respiration
of sleep.
The house at Agatha nestled under the north cliff. A hundred feet above
them the railroad lost itself in the black mouth of a tunnel and
reappeared beyond, a high wall of trestlework stretching southward down
the valley to Ely’s Mines. Hours ago, the toiling men and cattle had
lain down to rest, and now the wild, rocky hills around slept in the
moonlight. No sound broke upon the stillness but the muffled puff, puff,
of the furnace, and a murmur of frogs that rose and fell interruptedly
along the shrunken water-course. The cabins under the cliff shone white
and sharp; the iron on the metal-switch flashed with a million gems; the
rails upon the trestle, receding, turned to silver, and the foliage of
early Summer glittered on the trees. A few passionless stars blinked
feebly in the yellow light, where the hill-tops cut against the sky, and
sank below the verge. Calmly, peacefully waned the night—calmly and
peacefully, as though the spirit of evil had not stalked abroad plotting
the death and ruin of men’s bodies and souls.
That narrow spot of ground, with the houses down in the valley, formed
the world for four hundred people. The furnace-hands and their families
saw nothing beyond the hills and rocks that hemmed in their village;
knew nothing of the mad tumults outside. An untaught, sturdy race of
men, they differed little one from another. Every day, when the sun
rose, they went forth to toil, and every night, when the great furnace
over the creek glimmered red, they lay down to sleep. But ignorance and
superstition filled their hearts, and anger, and hate, and jealousy,
were as rife among them as in the crowded cities.
Another day passed, and the night which followed it was dark and cloudy.
Near midnight, the great bell signalled for the last run of iron.
Occasionally blue flames leaped up from the furnace, lurid as the fiery
tongues of a volcano. The long and narrow roof brooded over the sand-bed
like the black wings of some monster bird hovering in the air. Under its
shadow groups of men were but wavering, dusky figures. Suddenly, as an
electric flash, a dazzling yellow glare broke out, and a fierce,
scorching, withering blast swept from an opening that seemed the mouth
of hell itself. Slowly out of the burning cavern a hissing stream of
molten iron came creeping down. It crawled, and turned and crawled, rib
after rib, until it lay like some huge skeleton stretched upon the
ground. A thin vapor floated up in the sulphurous air and quivered with
reflected splendor. The scarlet-shirted men looked weird in the
unearthly brightness. The yellow glow faded to red, that deepened to a
blood-colored spot in the night. The bell rang to discharge the hands,
and squads of men broke up, scattering in the dark.
Monk went to his garret-room, hesitated a moment at the door, then
passed in and shut it so violently that the floor shook. He struck a
match. In the brimstone light a horrible demon countenance wavered, blue
and ghastly; but, when the candle flamed, it grew into Monk’s face,
covered by the black scowl of rage that had disfigured it once before—a
rage that was freshly roused.
“If I’d had my knife, I’d have done it just now, when I stumbled against
him. But he dies to-morrow night at—”
The words froze on his lips, and his black scowling face was suddenly
overspread by a strange pallor. He stood motionless, as if chained to
the floor, his eyes darted quickly about, and he seemed to suspend his
very breath.
A clear, distinct, ticking sound occurred at regular intervals for a
minute, and left profound silence.
Monk raised his head.
“It’s a sign of coming death. That’s for Peters. There it is again!”
The strange sound, like a faint metallic click, repeated itself several
times.
“D—n it! I don’t like to hear the thing. But there _will_ be a sudden
death.”
Time after time Monk heard at intervals the same faint sound, like the
ticking of a watch for a minute, and it made his blood run cold. He
found himself listening to it with terror, and in the long silence,
always straining his ears to catch it, always expecting, dreading its
repetition, until the thing grew more horrible to him than a nightmare.
Sometimes he would fall into a doze, and, wakening with a start, hear
it, while cold perspiration broke in drops on his forehead.
It grew intolerable. He swore he would find the thing and kill it, but
it mocked him in his search. The sound seemed to come from the table,
but when he stood beside the table it ticked so distinctly at the window
that he thought he could put his finger on the spot; but when he tried
to, it had changed again, and sounded at the head of his bed. Sometimes
it seemed close at his right, and he turned only to hear it on the other
side, then in front, then behind. Again and again he searched, and swore
in his exasperation and disappointment.
The sound became exaggerated by his distempered imagination, till he
trembled lest some one else should hear this omen which so plainly
foretold his anticipated crime. Once an hour dragged by, and his unseen
tormentor was silent. His eyes, that had glittered with deathly hatred,
now wore a startled look, and wandered restlessly about the room.
An owl, that perched on the topmost branch of a high tree near by,
screamed loud and long. A bat flew in at the open window, banged against
the ceiling, and darted out.
Monk shivered. Leaning his head between his arms, he drummed nervously
on the table with his fingers. Instantly the clear metallic click
sounded again. He looked up, and a strange light broke into his face, a
mixed expression of amazement and fright. For a moment he seemed
stupefied, then raising his hand he tapped lightly against the wood with
his finger-nail. The last tap had not died until it was answered by what
seemed like a fainter repetition of itself.
Uttering a fearful oath, Monk recoiled from the table, but, as if drawn
back and held by a weird fascination, he sat an hour striking the hard
surface with his nails, and pausing for the response that each time came
clear and distinct.
Gray streaks crept along the east, and quivered like a faded fringe
bordering the black canopy. Still he sat tapping, but no answer came. He
waited, listened vainly; no echo, no sound, and the dull, hueless light
of the cloudy morning glimmered at his window. Then he threw himself on
his bed, and fell into restless slumbers.
A damp thick fog enveloped the houses in its slimy embrace. At nightfall
its reeking folds gathered themselves from the ground, and a noiseless
drizzle came sullenly down.
Monk had not stirred from his room all day. The feverish sleep into
which he had fallen fled from him before noon, and now he stood at his
window looking out into the blackness. A clammy air blew against his
face. He stretched out his hand and drew it back suddenly, as if he had
touched the dead. It was cold and moist. He rubbed it violently against
his clothes, as though he could not wipe off the dampness. A tremor
seized upon him. Hark! was that the dripping of water? No. A sickly
smile played over his countenance. He went to the table and tapped
lightly with his fingers, as he had done before. In another moment the
taps were answered, and he involuntarily counted as they came,
one—two—three—four—five—six—seven—then all was silent. He made the call
a second time, he tried it over and over, and at each response it ticked
seven times, never more, never less, but seven times clearly,
distinctly. Suddenly he sprang up, and through shut teeth hissed,—
“The seventh day, by Heaven! But I’ll cheat you—I’ll not kill him!”
He darted noiselessly down the stairs, and struck out through the woods.
In half an hour he emerged on the edge of a clearing, a dozen yards from
a chopper’s cabin. Creeping stealthily to the door he shook it, then
after a moment’s irresolution cried out,—
“Peters! Peters! look out for Shiflet. He has sworn to murder you
to-night.”
Without waiting for a reply he sprang away, and was quickly lost among
the trees.
A moment afterward a tall form arose out of the shadow of a stump near
the cabin, and passed rapidly in an opposite direction.
At the summit of the hill east of Agatha, a steep precipice is formed by
a great, bare, projecting rock. From the valley, its outline resembles
an enormous face in profile, and they call it “The Devil’s Head.” The
full moon rendered the unbroken mass of cloud translucent, producing a
peculiar sinister effect. The mist still blew through the air, but in
the zenith there was a dull ashen hue, and the surrounding cloud was the
color of earth. The far-off hills loomed up majestic, terrible, against
the gloom; nearer objects were strangely magnified in the tawny light.
At the foot of this phantom crag, on a terrace, is the ore-bank and
blackened coal-shed. Below rose the metal-stack, from whose stone hearth
a waste of sand sloped gently to the creek. The furnace squatted grim
and black. Its blood-shot eye was shut; its gaping throat uttered no
sigh, no groan; its throbbing pulse was stilled—the fierce, struggling
monster was dead. The only bright spot in all the valley was the yellow
circle made by the watchman’s lantern in the coal-shed.
After leaving the “choppings,” Monk threaded his way through the forest,
coming out at last on the open road. This road led directly over the
“Devil’s Head,” and entered the valley by a steep descent half a mile to
the south. At the precipice Monk paused. The wind eddied with a mournful
wail, and the constant motion of tall trees gave the scene almost the
wavering, unsubstantial appearance of a vision. There was something
oppressive in this strange midnight twilight, but Monk did not feel it.
He only felt relief, inexpressible relief; he only stopped there to
breathe, to breathe freely once more with the heavy weight thrown from
him.
After a moment he ran carelessly down the hill, passed under the
ore-cars and into the coal-shed. He hailed Patterson, the watchman, and
the lantern threw gigantic shadows of the two men over the ground. Then
he walked along the narrow cinder-road leading to the bridge over the
creek. Sometimes the willows, that grew on either side, swept their damp
hair against his face. An hour ago he would have started convulsively,
now he heeded not, for he was free and light of heart.
Monk reached the stairs, and ascended to his room. As he passed in, the
powerful figure of Shiflet sprang upon him from behind. There was a
scuffle, some muttered oaths, then a heavy fall. Monk lay stretched upon
the floor motionless, lifeless, and the echo of fleeing steps died away,
leaving the place still as the now silent death-watch.
[Illustration]