bitter, and if any had spoken, not knowing me, I doubt not I should have
answered ill. In my great heart-torpor, half-blind, half-deaf, I was
that day like a wounded beast of the field, ranging the moorland with a
wild abandonment and dangerous to its kind.

When I came to Cregneesh and saw it for the first time, a little
disjointed gipsy encampment of mud-built tents pitched on the bare
moor, the sky was reddening across the sea, and from that I knew how
far advanced the day must be, how slow my course had been, and how
low my strength. In half an hour more I had sighted my boat, the
"Ben-my-Chree," where she lay in the Doon Creek of the sound, at the
length of some fifty fathoms inside the rocks of Kitterland. When I came
up to her I found her anchored in some five fathoms of water, with the
small-boat lying dry on the shingly beach. Her cabin contained
provisions enough for present needs, and more than that I was in no mood
to think about. Since the morning of the day before I had not broken
fast, but now I ate hungrily of oaten and barley cake. Later in the
evening, when the stars were out and the moon, which was in its last
quarter, was hanging over the Calf, I mixed myself some porridge of
rye-meal and cold water, and ate it on the deck, and then went below to
my bunk and lay me down alone. Between sleeping and waking I tried to
think of my position and to realize it, but an owl was hooting somewhere
on the land, and somewhere over the waters of the sound a diver was
making his unearthly laugh. I could not think save of the hooting owl
and the screaming diver, and when I thought of them, though their note
was doleful and seemed to tell of suffering, or perhaps of demoniac
delight, I could not thank God that I had been made a man. Thus, feeling
how sore a thing it is to be a creature living under the wrath of God, I
tossed on my bunk until I fell to sleep; and so ended the second day of
my unblessed condition.

To follow closely all that befell on the next day, or the many days
thereafter whereof I kept no reckoning, were to weary my spirit. One
thing I know, that a sudden numbness of the spiritual life within me
left me a worse man than I had been before the day of my cutting off,
and that I did soon lose the little I had of human love and tenderness.
My gun had been put in the boat, and with that I ranged the cliffs and
the moor from the Mull Hills that lie to the west of Cregneesh to the
Chasms that are to the east of it. Many puffins I shot, that much
frequent these shores, but their flesh was rank and salt, and they were
scarcely worth the powder I spent on them. Thus, it sometimes happened
that, being in no straits for food, I cast the birds away, or did not
put myself to the pains of lifting them up after they fell to my gun,
but went on, nevertheless, to destroy them in my wanton humor. Rabbits I
snared by a trick I learned when a boy, and sometimes cooked them in the
stove and ate them like a Christian man, and at other times I sat me
down on the hillside and rived them asunder as a wild creature of the
hills might do. But whether I ate in my boat or on the cliff I took no
religion to my table, and thought only that I liked my food or misliked
it.

Many times in these first days I had to tear myself away from thinking
of my condition, for to do so was like the stab of a knife to my brain,
and I plainly saw that in that way madness itself would lie. If I told
myself that other men had been cast alone ere now in desolate places
where no foot of man was and no sound of a human voice, a great stroke
would come upon my spirit with the thought that only their bodies had
been cast away, but that my soul was so. The marooned seaman on an
uninhabited island, when at length he set eyes on his fellow-man, might
lift up his heart to God, but to me the company of men was not blessed.
Free I was to go where men were, even to the towns wherein they herded
together, but go where I would I must yet be alone.

With this thought, and doubting not that for me the day of grace was
past and gone, since God had turned His face from the atonement I had
erewhile been minded to make, I grew day by day more bitter in my heart,
and found it easiest to shut my mind by living actively from hour to
hour. Then, like a half-starved hound, I went abroad at daybreak and
scoured the hills the day long, and returned to my bed at night. I knew
I was a baser thing than I had been, and it brought some comfort then to
know that I was alone and no eye saw me as I now was. Mine was a rank
hold of life, and it gave me a savage delight unknown before to live by
preying on other creatures. I shot and slew daily and hourly, and if for
a moment I told myself that what I had killed held its life on the same
tenure that I did, my humanity was not touched except to feel a strange
wild thrill that it was not I that lay dead. Looking back over these
seven years, it comes to me as an unnatural thing that this mood can
ever have been mine; but mine it was, and from the like of it may God in
His mercy keep all Christian men.

One day--I think it must have been somewhere toward the end of the first
month of my outcast state--I was ranging the cliff-side above the gray
rocks of the Black Head, when I chanced on a hare and shot it. On coming
up with it I found it was lean and bony, and so turned aside and left it
as it squeaked and bounced from my feet. This was in the morning, and
toward nightfall I returned by the same way and saw the hare lying by a
brookside, ragged and bleeding, but still alive. At sight of me the wee
thing tried to move away, but its weakness and a clot of its blood kept
it down, and, feeling its extremity, it lifted its two slender paws in
the air, while its glistening eyes streamed visibly, and set up a
piteous cry like the cry of a little child. I can not write what then I
did, for it wounds me sore to think of it, but when it was done, and
that piteous cry was no more in mine ears, suddenly I said with myself
this awful word, "I am no longer a man, but a beast of the field; and
the God of mercy and of tenderness has cast me forever out of the hollow
of His hand."

CHAPTER XXXVIII

OF HIS WAY OF LIFE

This meeting with the poor hare, though now it looks so trivial a thing,
did then make a great seizure upon my mind, so that it changed my course
and habit of life. For ceasing not to believe that I was wholly given
over to a reprobate soul, I yet laid my gun aside, and locked my shot
and powder in a drawer beneath my bunk, and set my face toward new ways
of living. First I put myself to counting all that I possessed. Thus I
found that of rye and Indian meal I had a peck each, of barley a peck,
with two quarters of fine barley flour, of oats a peck, with two
quarters of oaten meal, of potatoes two kischen, besides onions and a
little common salt. In the hold under the hatches there were stored
sundry useful implements--a spade, a fork, a hedge-knife, some hempen
rope and twine, and with the rest were the four herring-nets which
belonged to the boat, a mackerel-net, and some deep-sea lines. Other
things there were that I do not name--wanting memory of them at this
time of writing--but enough in all for most uses that a lone man might
have.

And this had ofttimes set me wondering why, if it had been meant that I
should be cast utterly away, I had been provided with means of life, who
could well have found them for myself. But after that meeting with the
hare I perceived the end of God in this, namely, that I should not,
without guilt, descend from the state of a Christian man when hunger had
to be satisfied.

And herein also I found the way of the stern Judge with guilty man,
that, having enough for present necessities, I had little for the
future, beyond the year that then was, and that if I must eat, so I must
work. Thus, upon a day somewhere, as I reckon, about a month after my
cutting off, I rose early, and set myself to delve a piece of fallow
ground--where all was fallow--two roods or more in extent, lying a
little to the north of the Black Head, and to the south of the circle of
stones that stand near by. All day I wrought fasting, and when darkness
fell in the fallows were turned. Next morning I put down my seed--of
potatoes a half-kischen, cut in quarters where the eyes were many and
also of barley and oats half a peck each, keeping back my other
half-peck lest the ground were barren, or the weather against it, or the
year too far worn for such-like crops.

And that day of the delving, the first on which I wrought as a man, was
also the first on which I felt a man's craving for the company of other
men. The sun was strong all the fore part of the day, and its hot rays
scorched the skin of my back--for I had stripped to my waist for my
labor--and that set me thinking what month it was, and wondering what
was doing in the world, and how long I had been where I then was. When I
returned to my boat at nightfall, the air, as I remember it, was quiet
over the sound as it might be in a cloister, and only the gulls were
jabbering on Kitterland and the cormorants at the water's edge. And I
sat on the deck while the sun went down in the sea, and the red sky
darkened and the stars began to show and the moon to look out. Then I
went below and ate my barley bread and thought of what it was to be
alone.

It was that night that I bethought me of my watch, which I had not once
looked for since the day of my immersion in the Cross Vein on Orrisdale,
when I found it stopped from being full of water. In my fob it had lain
with its seals and chain since then, but now I took it out and cleaned
it with oil from the fat of the hare and wound it up. For months
thereafter I set a great store by it, always carrying it in my fob when
I went abroad, and when I came home to the boat always hanging it on a
nail to the larboard of the stovepipe in the cabin. And in the long
silence of the night, when I heard it, sure, I thought, it is the same
to me as good company. Very careful I was to wind it when the sun set,
but if perchance it ran down, and I awoke in my bunk, and, listening,
heard it not, then it was as if the pulse had stopped of the little
world I lived in, and there was nothing but a great emptiness.

But withal my loneliness increased rather than diminished, and though I
had no longer any hankering after my old way of life in ranging the
moorlands with my gun, yet I felt that the activity of that existence
had led me off from thinking too much of my forlorn condition.
Wherefore, when my potatoes had begun to show above the ground, and I
had earthed them up, I began to bethink me touching my boat, that it
must be now the time of the herring-fishing come again, and that I would
go out of nights and see what I could take. So, never doubting that
single-handed I could navigate the lugger, I hoisted the nets out of the
hold athwart the bunk-board, and took them ashore to mend and to bask
them on the beach. I had spread them out on the shingle, and was using
my knife and twine on the holes of the dogfish, when suddenly from
behind me there came the loud bark of a dog. Well I remember how I
trembled at the sound of it, for it was the nearest to a man's voice
that I had heard these many lonesome days, and how fearfully I turned my
head over my shoulder as if some man had touched me and spoken. But what
I saw was a poor mongrel dog, small as a cur, and with ragged ears, a
peaky nose, and a scant tail, which for all its loud challenge it
dangled wofully between its legs. Until then I had never smiled or wept
since my cutting off, and I believed myself to have lost the sense of
laughter and of tears, but I must have laughed at the sight of the dog,
so much did it call to mind certain brave vaunters I had known, who
would come up to a bout of wrestling with a right lusty brag, and
straightway set to trembling before one had well put eyes on them. At
the sound of my voice the dog wagged his tail, and crept up timidly with
his muzzle down, and licked the hand I held out to him. All day he sat
by me and watched me at my work, looking up in my face at whiles with a
wistful gaze, and I gave him a morsel of oaten cake, which he ate
greedily, seeming to be half-starved of hunger. And when at dusk my task
was finished and I rose and got into the dingey, thinking now he would
go his ways and be seen of me no more, he leaped into the boat after me,
and when we reached the lugger he settled himself in the corner under
the locker as if he had now fully considered it that with me he would
make his habitation henceforth.

Having all things in readiness for the fishing, I slipped anchor upon an
evening toward autumn, as I reckoned, for the leaves of the trammon were
then closing like a withered hand and the berries of the hollin were
reddening. When the stars were out, but no moon was yet showing, I put
about head to the wind, and found myself in nowise hampered because
short-handed, for when I had to take in my sails I lashed my tiller, and
being a man of more than common strength of arm, it cost me nothing to
step my mainmast.

That night, and many nights thereafter, I had good takings of fish, and
in the labor of looking after my corks and making fast my seizings the
void in my mind was in somewise filled with other matter than thoughts
of my abject state. But one thing troubled me at first, namely, that I
took more fish by many meshes than I could ever consume. To make an end
of my fishing was a thing I could not bring myself to, for I counted it
certain that so to do would be to sink back to my former way of living.
Wherefore I thought it safest to seek for some mode of disposing of my
fish, such as would keep me at my present employment and do no harm to
my feelings as a man, for with this I had now to reckon watchfully,
being in constant danger, as I thought, of losing the sense of manhood.

So I soused some hundreds of my herrings with rought salt, which I
distilled from the salt water by boiling it in a pan with pebbles. The
remainder I concluded to give to such as would consume them, and how to
do this, being what I was, cost me many bitter thoughts, wherein I
seemed to be the most unblessed of all men. At length I hit on a device,
and straightway brought it to bear. Leaving my fishing-ground while the
night was not yet far spent, I ran into the sound before dawn, for soon
I learned those narrow waters until they grew familiar as the palm of my
hand. Then, before the sun rose above the Stack of Scarlet, and while
the eastern sky was only dabbled with pink, I, with a basket of herrings
on my shoulder, crossed the moor to Cregneesh, where the people are poor
and not proud, and creeping in between the cabins, laid my fish down in
the open place that is before the little chapel, and then went my way
quickly lest a door should suddenly open or a window be lifted, and a
face look forth. Thrice I did this before I marked that there were those
who were curious to know whence the fish came, and then I was put on my
nettle to go into the village and yet to keep myself from being seen,
for well I knew that if any eye beheld me that knew who I was, there
would thenceforward be an end of the eating of my herrings, even among
the poorest, and an end of my fishing also. But many times I went into
Cregneesh without being seen of any man, and now I know not whether to
laugh or to weep when I look back on the days I write of, and see myself
like a human fox stealing in by the gray of dawn among the sleeping
homes of men.

CHAPTER XXXIX

OF THE GHOSTLY HAND UPON HIM

All that autumn I followed the herrings, choosing my ground mainly by
guess, but sometimes seeing the blue lights of the herring fleet rise
close under my quarter, and at other times, when the air was still,
hearing voices of men or the sound of laughter rumored over the quiet
waters. But ever fanciful to me, as a dream of a friend dead when it is
past, was that sound on the sea, and as often as I heard it I took in my
nets and hauled my sails, and stood out for the sound. Putting no light
on my mitch-board, I would ofttimes pass the fleet within a
cable's-length and yet not be known, but once and again I knew by the
hush of voices and the dying away of laughter on the boats about me that
my dark craft was seen scudding like a black bird of evil omen through
the night.

In my cabin I was used to burn a tallow dip made of the fat of the birds
I had shot and rushes from the soft places of the moor, and while my
boat drifted under the mizzen between take and take of herrings I would
go below and sit with my dog. He grew sleek with the fare I found him,
and I in these days recovered in a measure my sense of sight and
hearing, for the sea's breath of brine is good to man. Millish veg-veen
I called him, and, though a man of small cheer, I smiled to think what a
sorry misname that name would seem in our harder English tongue. For my
poor mongrel cur had his little sorry vices, such as did oft set me
wondering what the chances of his life had been, and whether, like his
new messmate, he had not somewhere been driven out. Nevertheless, he had
his good parts, too, and was a creature of infinite spirits. I think we
were company each to the other, and if he had found me a cheerier
mate-fellow, I doubt not we should have had some cheerful hours
together.

But in truth, though my fishing did much to tear me away from the burden
of myself, it yet left me many lonesome hours wherein my anguish was
sore and deep, and, looking to the years that might be before me, put me
to the bitter question whether, being a man outside God's grace, I could
hold out on so toilsome a course. Also, when I fell to sleep in the
daytime, after my work of the night was done, I was much wrought upon by
troublous dreams, which sometimes brought back the very breath-odor of
my boyish days with the dear souls that filled them with joy, and
sometimes plagued me with awful questions which in vain I tried to
answer, knowing that my soul's welfare lay therein. And being much
followed by the thought that the spirit of the beast of the field lay in
wait to fall on the spirit of the man within me, I was also put to great
terror in my watchfulness and the visions that came to me in hours of
idleness and sleep. But suddenly this sentence fell on my mind: Thou art
free to go whithersoever thou wilt, though it be the uttermost reaches
of the earth. Go, then, where men are, and so hold thy soul as a man.

Long did this sentence trouble me, not being able to make a judgment
upon it, but at length it fastened on me that I must follow it, and that
all the dread I had felt hitherto of the face of man was no more than a
think-so. Thereupon I concluded that I would go into Castletown at high
fair on the next market-day, which I should know from other days by the
carts I could descry from the top of the Mull going the way of Rushen
Church and Kentraugh. This resolve I never brought to bear, for the same
day whereon I made it a great stroke fell upon my spirit and robbed me
of the little wherewith I had tried to comfort me.

Going out of the sound that night by the Spanish Head, for the season
was far worn, and the herrings lay to the eastward of the island, I
marked in the dusk that a smack that bore the Peel brand on its canvas
was rounding the Chicken Rocks of the Calf. So I stood out well to sea,
and did not turn my head to the wind, and cast my nets, until I was full
two leagues from shore. Then it was black dark, for the night was heavy,
and a mist lay between sea and sky. But soon thereafter I saw a blue
light to my starboard bow, and guessed that the smack from Peel had
borne down in my wake. How long I lay on that ground I know not, for the
takings were good, and I noted not the passage of time. But at short
whiles I looked toward the blue light, and marked that as my boat
drifted so did the smack drift, and that we were yet within hail. The
moon came out with white streamers from behind a rack of cloud, and
knowing then that the fishing was over for that night--for the herring
does not run his gills into mischief when he has light to see by--I
straightway fell to hauling my nets. And then it was that I found the
smell of smoke in the nostrils, and heard loud voices from the Peeltown
smack. Lifting my eyes, I could at first see nothing, for though the
moon's light was in the sky, the mist was still on the sea, and through
it there seemed to roll slowly, for the wind was low, a tunnel of
smoke-like fog. Well I knew that something was amiss, and soon the mist
lifted like a dark veil into the air, and the smoke veered, and a flash
of red flame rose from the smack of the Peel-men. Then I saw that the
boat was afire, and in two minutes more the silence of the sea was lost
in the fire's loud hiss and the men's yet louder shouts. It was as if a
serpent in the bowels of the boat struggled to make its way out, and
long tongues of fire shot out of the scuttle, the hold, the combings,
and the flue of the stove. Little thought had I then of those things,
though now by the eye of memory I see them, and also the sinuous trail
of red water that seemed to crawl over the dark sea from the boat afire
to the boat I sailed in. I had stepped my mast and hoisted sail before
yet I knew what impulse possessed me, but with my hand on the tiller to
go to the relief of the men in peril. On a sudden I was seized with a
mighty fear, and it was as though a ghostly hand laid on me from behind,
and a voice above the tumult of that moment seemed to cry in my ears:
"Not for you, not for you." Then in great terror I turned my boat's head
away from the burning smack, and as I did so the ghostly hand did relax,
and the voice did cease to peal in mine ears.

"They will drop into their dingey," I said with myself. "Yes," I said,
as the sweat started cold from my forehead, "they will drop into the
dingey and be saved;" and turning my head I saw, by the flame of the
fire, that over the bulwark at the stern two men were tumbling down into
the small-boat that they hauled behind. And I sped away in agony, for
now I knew how deep was the wrath upon me, that it was not for me so
much as to stretch my accursed hand to perishing men to save them.
Scarce had I gone a cable's-length when a great shout, mingled with
oaths, made me turn my head, thinking the crew of the boat were crying
curses down on me, not knowing me, for deserting them in their peril,
but I was then in the tunnel of smoke wherein I might not be seen, and,
lo, I saw that the dingey with the two men was sheering off, and that
other two of their mates were left on the burning boat.

"Haul the wind and run the waistrels down, d---- them," shouted one of
the two men on the smack, and amid the leaping flames the mainsail shot
up and filled, and a man stood to the tiller, and with an oath he
shouted to the two in the small-boat that for their treachery they
should go down to hell straightway.

In the glare of that fierce light and the turmoil of that moment my eyes
grew dim, as they had been on the day of my cutting off, and I squeezed
their lids together to relieve them of water. Then I saw how fearful a
thing was going on within my cable's-length. Two men of a crew of four
in the burning smack had got themselves into the small-boat and cleared
off without thought of their comrades who were struggling to save their
craft, and now the two abandoned men, doomed to near death in fire or
water, were with their last power of life, and in life's last
moments--for aught they could tell--thirsting for deadly vengeance. On
the smack went, with its canvas bellied, and the flames shooting through
and hissing over it, but just as it came by the small-boat the men
therein pulled to the windward and it shot past.

Ere this was done, and while the smack's bow was dead on for the dingey,
I too had sheered round and was beating up after the burning boat, and
when the men thereon saw me come out of the smoke they ceased to curse
their false comrades and made a great cry of thanks to God. At a
distance of six fathoms I laid to, thinking the men would plunge into
the sea and come to me, but, apprehending my thoughts, one shouted me to
come closer, for that he could not swim. Closer to the burning smack I
would not go from fear of firing my own boat, and I dared not to risk
that fate wherein we might all have been swallowed up together. For
despair, that fortifies some men, did make of me a coward, and I stood
in constant terror of the coming of death. So I stripped me of my jacket
and leaped into the water and swam to the boat, and climbed its open
combings as best I could through the flame and heat. On the deck the two
men stood, enveloped in swirling clouds of smoke, but I saw them where
they were, and pulling one into the water after me, the other followed
us, and we reached my boat in safety.

Then, as I rubbed my face, for the fire had burned one cheek, the men
fell to thanking me in a shamefaced way--as in the manner of their kind,
fearing to show feeling--when on a sudden they stopped short, for they
had lifted their eyes, and in the flame of their boat had seen me, and
at the same moment I had looked upon them and known them. They were
Illiam Quilleash and Edward Teare, and they fell back from me and made
for the bow, and stood there in silence together.

Taking the tiller, I bore in by tacks for Port-le-Mary, and there I
landed the men, who looked not my way nor ever spoke word or made sign
to me, but went off with their heads down. And when I stood out again
through the Poolvash to round the Spanish Head and make for my moorings
in the sound, and saw the burning smack swallowed up by the sea with a
groan that came over the still waters, its small-boat passed me going
into harbor, and the men who rowed it were Crennell and Corkell, and
when they saw me they knew me, and made a broad sweep out of my course.
Now all this time the ghostly hand had been on my shoulder, and the
strange voice had pealed in mine ears, and though I wanted not to speak
with any man, nor that any man should speak with me, yet I will not say
but that it went to my heart that I should be like as a leper from whose
uncleanness all men should shrink away.

For many days hereafter this lay with a great trouble upon me, so that I
let go my strong intent of walking into Castletown at high fair, and put
this question with myself, whether it was written that I should carry me
through this world down to death's right ending. Not as before did I now
so deeply abhor myself; but felt for myself a secret compassion. In
truth, I had no bitterness left in my heart for my fellow-men, but
tossed with the fear that if I lived alone much longer I must surely
lose my reason, and hence my manhood, sinking down to the brute, this
consideration fell with weight upon me. What thou hast suffered is from
men who know thy crime, and stand in terror of the curse upon thee,
wherein thou art so blotted out of the book of the living that without
sin none may look thy way. Go therefore where no man knows thee, and the
so heavy burden thou bearest will straightway fall from thee. Now, at
this thought my heart was full of comfort, and I went back to my former
design of leaving this place forever. But before I had well begun what I
was minded to do a strange accident befell me, and the relation thereof
is as followeth.

By half-flood of an evening late in autumn--for though the watch showed
short of six the sun was already down--I left my old moorings inside the
rocks of Kitterland, thinking to slip anchor there no more. The breeze
was fresh in the sound, and outside it was stiff from the nor'east, and
so I ran out with a fair wind for Ireland, for I had considered with
myself that to that country I would go, because the people there are
tender of heart and not favored by God. For a short while I had enough
to think of in managing my cordage, but when I was well away to sou'west
of the Calf suddenly the wind slackened. Then for an hour full I stood
by the tiller with little to do, and looked back over the green waters
to the purple mountains vanishing in the dusk, and around to the western
sky, where over the line of sea the crimson streamers were still
trailing where the sun had been, like as the radiance of a goodly life
remains a while after the man has gone. And with that eye that sees
double--the thing that is without and that which is within--I saw myself
then in my little craft on the lonely sea like an uncompanionable bird
in the wide sky, and my heart began to fail me, and for the first time
since my cutting off I must have wept. For I thought I was leaving
forever the fair island of my home, with all that had made it dear in
dearer days. Though it had turned its back on me since, and knew me no
more, but had blotted out my name from its remembrance, yet it was mine,
and the only spot of earth on all this planet, go whither I would, that
I could call my own. How long this mood lasted I hardly can say, but
over the boat two gulls hovered or circled and cried, and I looked up at
their white transparent wings, for lack of better employment, until the
light was gone and another day had swooned to another night. The wind
came up with the darkness, and more in heart than before, I stood out
for the south of Ireland, and reached my old fishing port of Kinsale by
the dawn of the next day.

Then in the gentle sun of that autumn morning I walked up from the
harbor to the market-place, and there found a strange company assembled
about the inn, and in the midst were six or seven poor ship-broken men,
shoeless, half-naked, and lean of cheek from the long peril and
privation that eats the flesh and makes the eyes hollow. In the middle
of the night they had come ashore on a raft, having lost their ship by
foundering twelve days before. This I learned from the gossip of the
people about them, and also that they had eaten supper at the inn and
slept there. While I stood and looked on there came out in the midst of
the group two other men, and one of them was their captain and the other
the innkeeper. And I noted well that the master of the inn was suave to
his tattered customers, and spoke of breakfast as being made ready.

"But first go to the Mayor," said he, addressing the captain, "and make
your protest, and he will lend whatever moneys you want."

The captain, nothing loth, set out with a cheerful countenance for the
Mayor of the town, a servant of the inn going with him to guide him. The
ship-broken crew stayed behind, and I, who was curious to learn if their
necessities would be relieved, remained standing in the crowd around
them. And while we waited, and the men sat on the bench in front of the
inn, there came down on them from every side the harpies that find
sea-going men with clothes. There was one with coats and one with
guernseys, and one with boots of leather and one of neat's-skin, and
with these things they made every man to fit himself. And if one asked
the price, and protested that he had got no money, the Samaritans
laughed and bade them not to think of price or money until their captain
should return from the treasury of the Mayor. The seamen took all with
good cheer, and every man picked out what he wanted, and put it on,
throwing his rags aside, laughing.

But presently the master of the crew returned, and his face was heavy;
and when his men asked how he had fared, and if the Mayor had advanced
him anything, he told them No, and that the Mayor had said he was no
usurer to lend money. At that there were groans and oaths from the crew,
and looks of bewilderment among those who had fetched the clothes; but
the innkeeper said all would be well, and that they had but to send for
a merchant in the next street who made it his trade to advance money to
ship-broken men. This news brought back the light to the dark face of
the captain, and he sent the servant of the inn to fetch the merchant.

When this man came my mind misgave, for I saw the stamp of uncharity in
his face. But the captain told his story, whereof the sum was this: That
they were the English crew of the brig "Betsy," and were seven days out
from Bristol, bound for Buenos Ayres, when they foundered on a rock, and
had made their way thither on a raft, suffering much from hunger and the
cold of the nights, and that they wanted three pounds' advance on their
owners to carry them to Dublin, whence they could sail for their own
port. But the merchant curled his hard lip and said he had just before
been deceived by strangers, and could not lend money except to men of
whom he knew something; that they were strangers, and, moreover, by
their own words, entitled to no more than six days' pay apiece. And so
he went his way.

Hardly had he gone when the harpies of the coats and boots and guernseys
called on the men to strip off these good garments, which straightway
they rolled in their several bundles, and then elbowed themselves out of
the crowd. The poor seamen, resuming their rags, were now in sad case,
scarce knowing whether most to curse their misfortunes or to laugh at
the grim turn that they were taking, when the captain, in a chafe,
called on the innkeeper to give breakfast to his men, for that he meant
to push on to the next town, where people might be found who had more
humanity. But the innkeeper, losing his by-respects, shook his head, and
asked where was his pay to come from for what he had already done.

Now, when I heard this, and saw the men rise up to go on their toilsome
way with naked, bleeding feet, suddenly I bethought me that, though I
had little money, I had what would bring money, and before I had taken
time to consider I had whipped my watch from my fob to thrust it into
the captain's hands. But when I would have parted the crowd to do so, on
a sudden that same ghostly hand that I have before mentioned seemed to
seize me from behind. Then on the instant I faced about to hasten away,
for now the struggle within me was more than I could bear, and I stopped
and went on, and stopped again and again went on, and all the time the
watch was in my palm, and the ghostly hand on my shoulder. At last,
thinking sure that the memory of the seven sea-going men, hungry and
ill-clad, would follow me, and rise up to torment me on land and sea, I
wheeled around and ran back hot-foot and did as I was minded. Then I
walked rapidly away from the market-place, and passing down to the
harbor, I saw a Peeltown fisherman, and knew that he saw me also.

Now, I should have been exceeding glad if this thing had never befallen,
for though it made my feeling less ungentle toward the two men, my old
shipmates, who had turned from me as from a leper when I took them from
the burning boat, yet it brought me to a sense that was full of terror
to my oppressed spirit, namely, that though I might fly to lands where
men knew nothing of my great crime, yet that the curse thereof was
mostly within mine own afflicted soul, from which I could never flee
away.

All that day I stayed in my boat, and the sun shone and the sky was
blue, but my heart was filled with darkness. And when night fell in I
had found no comfort, for then I knew that from my outcast state there
was no escape. This being so, whether to go back to mine own island was
now my question. Oh, it is a goodly thing to lie down in the peace of a
mind at ease and rise up from the refreshment of the gentle sleep. But
not for me was that blessed condition. The quaking of my spirit was more
than I could well stand under without losing my reason, and in the fear
of that mischance lay half the pain of life to me. Long were the dark
hours, and when the soft daylight came again I did resolve that go back
to my own island I would. For what was it to me though the world was
wide if the little place I lived in was but my own narrow soul?

That night in the boat for lack of the tick of my watch there seemed to
be a void in the air of my cabin. But when the tide was about the bottom
of the ebb I heard the plash of an oar alongside and presently the sound
of something that fell overhead. Next morning I found my watch lying on
the deck, by the side of the hatches.

At the top of the flood I lifted anchor, and dropped down the harbor,
having spoken no word to any man since I sailed into it.

CHAPTER XL

OF HIS GREAT LONELINESS

Back at my old moorings inside the rocks of Kitterland I knew full well
that the Almighty Majesty was on this side of me and on that, and I had
nothing to look for now or hereafter. But I think the extremity of my
condition gave me some false courage, and my good genius seemed to say,
What have you to lament? You have health and food and freedom, and you
live under no taskmaster's eye. Let the morning see you rise in content,
and let the night look on you lying down in thankfulness. And turn not
your face to the future to the unsettling of your spirit, so that when
your time comes you may not die with a pale face. Then did I laugh at my
old yearning for fellowship, and asked wherefore I should be lonely
since I lived in the same planet with other men, and had the same moon
and stars above my sleep as hung over the busy world of men. In such
wise did I comfort my torn heart, and shut it up from troubling me, but
well I knew that I was like to one who cries peace where there is no
peace, and that in all my empty sophistry concerning the moon and the
stars there was no blood of poor human neighborliness.

Nevertheless, I daily went about my businesses, in pursuance whereof I
walked up to the place over the Black Head where I had planted my corn
and potatoes. These in their course I reaped and delved, cutting the
barley and rye with my clasp-knife for sickle, and digging a burrow in
the earth for my potatoes. Little of either I had, but enough for my
frugal needs until more might grow.

When my work was done, and I had no longer any employment to take me
ashore, the autumn had sunk to winter, for in this island of Man the
cold and the mist come at a stride. Then sitting alone in my boat, with
no task save such as I could make for myself, and no companion but
little Veg-veen, the strength of the sophistry wherewith I had appeased
myself broke down pitifully. The nights were long and dark, and the sun
shone but rarely for many days together. Few were the ships that passed
the mouth of the sound, either to east or west of it, and since my
coming to moorage there no boat had crossed its water. Cold and bleak
and sullen it lay around my boat, reflecting no more the forehead of the
Calf, and lying now under the sunless sky like a dead man's face that is
moved neither to smiles nor tears. And an awful weariness of the sea
came to me then, such as the loneliest land never brought to the spirit
of a Christian man, for sitting on the deck of my little swaying craft,
with the beat of the sea on its timbers, and the sea-fowl jabbering on
Kitterland, and perhaps a wild colt racing the wind on the Calf, it came
into my mind to think that as far as eye could see or ear could hear
there was nothing around me but the hand of God. Then all was darkness
within me, and I did oft put the question to myself if it was possible
for man to be with God alone and live.

Now it chanced upon a day that I wanted potatoes out of my burrow over
the Black Head, and that returning therefrom toward nightfall, I made a
circuit of the stone circle above the Chasm, and the northernmost side
of it, midway to Cregneesh, came on a sight that arrested my breath.
This was a hut built against a steepness of rugged land from which
stones had sometimes been quarried. The walls were of turf; the roof was
of gorse and sticks, with a hole in it for chimney. Window there was
none, and the doorway was half closed by a broken gate whereof the bars
were intertwined with old straw.

Mean it was, and desolate it looked on the wild moorland, but, it was a
mark of the hand of man, and I, who had dwelt so long with God's hand
everywhere about me, was touched with a sense of human friendliness.
Hearing no voice within, I crept up and looked into the little place. A
bed of straw was in one corner, and facing it was a lump of freestone
hollowed out for the bed of a fire. A broken pipe lay near this rude
hearth, and the floor was of mountain turf worn bare and hard. Two
sacks, a kettle, a saucepan, and some potato-parings were the only other
things in the hut, and poor as it all was it touched me so that in
looking upon it I think my eyes were wet, because it was a man's
habitation. I remember that as I turned to go away the rain began to
fall, and the pattering drops on the roof seemed to my eye and ear to
make the place more human.

In going back to my boat that day I came nearer to Cregneesh than was my
wont in the daytime, and though the darkness was coming down from the
mountains, I could yet see into the streets from the knoll I passed
over. And there in the unpaved way, before a group of houses I saw a
witless man in coat and breeches, but no vest or shirt, and with a rope
about his waist, dancing and singing to a little noisy crowd gathered
about him.

After that I had come upon the hut my mind ran much on the thought of
it, and in three days or thereabouts I went back to look at it again,
and coming near to it from behind, saw sundry beehives of a rude
fashioning, made of straw and sticks. Veg-veen was with me, for he was
now my constant company, and in a moment he had bounced in at the
doorway and out again at yet more speed, with three of his kind close at
his tail. Before I could turn me about to go away a man followed the
dogs out of the hut, and he was the same witless being that I had seen
at his dancing in the streets of Cregnesh. His lip lagged low and his
eyes were dull as a rabbit's; on his head was a crownless hat through
which his hair was seen, and I saw that his breast, where his shirt
would be, was blackened as with soot. I would have gone about my own
employments, but he spoke, telling me not to fear him, for it was false
that he was possessed, as hard-spoken people said, with the spirit of
delusion. I answered nothing to this, but stood and listened with eyes
turned aside, while the broken brain of the poor creature rambled on.

"They call me Billy the Bees," he said, "because I catch them and rear
them--look," and he pointed to his hives. He talked of his three dogs
and named them, saying that they slept in a sack together, and that in
the same sack he slept with them. Something he said of the cold that had
been coming latterly, and pointed to the soot on his breast, saying that
it kept him warm. He told how he made a circuit of the farmhouses once a
week, dancing and singing at all of them, and how the people gave him
barley-meal and eggs. Much more he said, but because the method of
it--where method there was any--has gone from my memory I pass it. That
the world was night about its end he knew of a surety, because he saw
that if a man had money and great store of gear it mattered not what
else he wanted. These with other such words he spoke ramblingly, and I
stood aside and answered him nothing, neither did I look up into his
face. At last he said, timidly, "I know I have always been weak in my
intellects," and hearing that, I could bear to hear no more, but went
about my business with a great weight of trouble upon me. And "O God," I
cried that night in my agony, "I am an ignorant sot, without the grace
of human tenderness, or the gift of understanding. I am guilty before
Thee, and no man careth for my soul, but from this affliction, O
Almighty Master save me; save me from this degradation, for it threatens
me, and when death comes that stands at the foot of life's awful
account, I will pay its price with thankfulness."

Now, after this meeting with the witless man the weariness that I had
felt of my home on the sea lay the heavier on my spirits, and I
concluded with myself that I should forsake my boat and build me a home
on the land within sight of man's habitation. So I walked the cliffs
from the Mull Hills to the Noggin Head, and at last I lit on the place I
looked for. Near to the land where I had lately broken the fallows and
grown me a crop of corn and potatoes, there were four roofless walls.
Some time a house had stood there, but being built on the brink of the
great clefts in the earth that we call the Chasms, it had shrunken in
some settlement of the ground. This had affrighted the poor souls who
inhabited it, and they had left it to fall into ruins. Such was the tale
I heard long afterward, but none came near it then, and none have come
near to it since. Save the four bare walls, and a wall that crossed it
midway, nothing was left. Where the floor had been the grass was
growing; wormwood was in the settle nook, and whinberries had ripened
and rotted on the hearth. The door lintel was gone, and the sill of the
window was fallen off. There was a round patch of long grass where the
well had been, and near to where the porch once stood the trammon-tree
still grew; and thus, though the good people who had lived and died
there, been born and buried, were gone from it forever, the sign of
their faith, or their superstition, lived after them.

Better for me than this forsaken place it was hard for any place to be.
On a dangerous spot it stood, and therefore none would come anigh it.
Near to Cregneesh it was, and from the rising ground above it I could
look down on the homes of men. Truly it looked out on the sea, and had a
great steepness of shelving rocks going down to an awesome depth, where,
on the narrow beach of shingle, the tide beat with a woful moan; but
though the sea was so near, and the sea-fowl screamed of an evening from
the great rock like a cone that lifted its gaunt finger a cable's length
away, yet to me it was within the very pulse of human life.

So I set to work, and roofed it with driftwood and turf and gorse; and
then, with lime from a cliff at the Tubdale Creek in the Calf, I
whitened it within and without, walls and roof. A door I made in
somewise, and for a window I had a piece of transparent skin, having no
glass. And when all was made ready I moved my goods from the boat to my
house, taking all that seemed necessary--flour, and meat, and salt, and
my implements, as well as my bed and the spare clothes I had, which were
not many.

I had been in no haste with this work, being well content with such
employment, but it came to an end at last, and the day that I finished
my task was a day late in the first year after my cutting off. This I
knew because the nights were long, and I had been trying with my watch
to cast on the shortest day, and thereby recover my lost count of time.
On the night of my first sleeping in my new home there came a fierce
storm of wind and rain from the east. Four hours the gale lasted, and
often the gulls were dashed screaming at the walls wherein I sat by the
first fire I had yet kindled on my hearth. Toward midnight the wind fell
suddenly to a dead calm, and, looking out, I saw that the moon was
coming very bright in its rising from behind a heavy cloud over the sea.
So, wondering what chance had befallen my boat--for though I had left it
I had a tenderness for it and meant perchance to use it again--I set out
for the sound. When I got to the head of the cliff I could plainly see
the rocks of Kitterland, and the whole length of the Doon Creek, but
where my boat had been moored no boat could I see, nor any trace of one
from Fistard Head on the east to Half-Walk Rock on the west. Next
morning, under a bright winter's sun, I continued the search for my
boat, and with the rising tide at noon I saw her thrown up on to the
beach of the Doon, dismasted, without spar or boom, bilged below her
water-line, and altogether a hopeless hulk. I made some scabbling shift
to pull her above high-water mark, and then went my ways.

Now this loss, for so I considered it, did at first much to depress me,
thinking, with a bitter envy of my late past, that my future showed me a
far more unblessed condition, seeing that I was now forever imprisoned
on this island and could never leave it again whatsoever evil might
befall. But when I had thought twice upon it, my mind came to that point
that I was filled with gratitude; first, because the wrecking of my boat
on the very day of my leaving it seemed to give assurance that, in
making my home on the land, I had done that which was written for me to
do; and next, because I must inevitably have been swallowed up in the
storm if I had stayed on the sea a single night longer. And my terror of
death was such that to have escaped the peril of it seemed a greater
blessing than releasement from this island could ever be.

Every day thereafter, and oftenest at daybreak, I walked up to the crest
of the rising ground at the back of my house, and stood awhile looking
down on Cregneesh, and watching for the white smoke that lay like a low
cloud over the hollow place wherein Port Erin lay. After that I had done
this I felt strangely refreshed, as by a sense of companionship, and
went about my work, such as it was, with content. But on a bitter
morning, some time in December, as I thought, I came upon a sight that
wellnigh froze my heart within me; for, outstretched on the bare
moorland, under the bleak sky and in the lee of a thick gorse bush
tipped with yellow, I found the witless man, Billy the Bees, lying cold
and dead. His bare chest was blue, as with starvation, under the soot
wherewith in his simpleness he had blackened it, and his pinched face
told of privation and of pain. And now that he lay stretched out dead, I
saw that he had been a man of my own stature. In his hut, which was
farther away than my own house from the place where he lay, there was
neither bite nor sup, and his dogs seemed to have deserted him in his
poverty, for they were gone. The air had softened perceptibly for some
minutes while I went thither, and as I returned to the poor body
wondering what to do with it, the snow began to fall in big flakes. "It
will cover it," I said with myself. "The snow will bury it," I thought;
and casting a look back over my shoulder, I went home with a great
burden of trouble upon me.

All that day, and other two days, the snow continued to fall, until the
walls of my house were blocked up to the level of my window, and I had
to cut a deep trench to the gable where I piled my wood. And for more
than a week following, shut in from my accustomed walk I sat alone in
the great silence and tried to keep my mind away from the one fearful
thought that now followed it. Remembering those long hours and the sorry
employments I found for them--scrabbling on all-fours in play with
Millish-veg-veen, laughing loud, and barking back at the dog's shrill
bark, I could almost weep while here I write to think of the tragic
business that was at the same time lying heavy on my spirit. Christmas
Day fell while thus I was imprisoned, for near to midnight I heard the
church bells ring for Oiel Verree.

When the snow began to melt I saw that the dog put his muzzle to the
bottom of the door instantly, and as often as I drove him away he
returned to the same place. I will not say what awful thing came to my
mind, knowing a dog's nature, and how near to my door lay the body of
the witless man; only that I shuddered with a fear that was new to me
when I remembered that, by the curse I lived under, the time would come
when my unburied bones would lie on the bare face of the moor.

As soon as the snow had melted down to within a foot's depth of the
earth I went out of my house and turned toward where my poor neighbor
lay; but before I had come close to him I saw that three men were coming
over the hillside by way of Port-le-Mary, and, wishing not to be seen by
them, I crept back and lay by the hinder wall of my house to watch what
they did. Then I saw that they came up to the body of the witless man
and saw it, and stood over it some minutes talking earnestly, and then
passed along on their way. And as they walked they turned aside and came
close up by the front of my house, and looked in at the window, pushing
the skin away. Standing by the wall, holding Veg-veen by the throat lest
he should betray me, I heard some words the men said each to the other
before they went on again.

"Well, man, he's dead at last, poor craythur," said one, "and good-luck
too."

And the other answered, "Aw, dear, to think, to think! No man alive
could stand up agen it. Aw, ter'ble, ter'ble!"

"I was at the Tynwald myself yander day," said the first, "and I'll give
it a year, I was saying, to finish him, and behould ye, he's lying dead
in half the time."

Then both together said, "God bless me!" and passed on.

At that moment my eyes became dim, and a sound as of running water went
through my ears. I staggered into my house, and sat down by the cold
hearth, for in my eagerness to go forth on my errand at first awakening,
no fire had I kindled. I recalled the words that the men had spoken, and
repeated them aloud one by one, and very slowly, that I might be sure I
took their meaning rightly. This done, I said with myself, "This error
will go far, until the wide island will say that he who was cut off, he
who is nameless among men, is dead." Dead? What then? I had heard that
when death came and took away a bad man, its twin-angel, the angel of
mercy, bent over those who were left behind on the earth, and drew out
of their softened hearts all evil reports and all uncharity.

And a great awe slid over me at that thought, and the gracious dew of a
strange peace fell upon me. But close behind it came the other thought,
that this error would reach my father also--God preserve him!--and
Mona--God's holy grace be with her!--and bring them pain. And then it
came to me to think that when men said in their hearing, "He whom you
wot of is newly dead," they would take heart and answer, "No, he died
long ago; it was only his misery and God's wrath that died yesterday."

With this thought I rose up and went out, and put some shovels of earth
over the body of my poor neighbor, that his face might be hidden from
the sky.

CHAPTER XLI

OF HOW HE KEPT HIS MANHOOD

The great snow lay long on the mountains, and died off in its silence
like one who passes away in sleep. And the spring came, the summer and
the winter yet again, and to set down in this writing all that befell
would be a weariness, for I feel as I write that the pulse of my life is
low; and neither am I one who can paint his words with wit. My way of
life has now grown straight and even, and at my simple employments I
wrought early and late, that by much bodily toil I might keep in check
the distempers of my mind.

With my fishing-boat, my gun, which I had left behind me of design, had
been carried to the bottom of the sound, and when the hulk of the lugger
drifted up with the tide the gun was no longer within her. This I took
for a direction to me that I should hunt no more. Nevertheless, for some
while I went on to fish with a line from my small-boat, which, being on
the beach, the storm had spared. But soon it was gotten into my head
that, if to shoot a hare was an ill deed, to take a cod was but a poor
business. Well I knew that there was some touch of insanity in such
fancies, and that for man to kill and eat was the law of life, and the
rather because it was enjoined of God that so he should do. But being a
man like as I was, cut off from the land of the living, never more to
have footing there for the great crime committed of spilling blood, I
think it was not an ungentle madness that made me fear to take life,
whether wantonly or of hunger's need. This dread lay close to me, and
got to extremities whereat one of healthy mind might smile. For, being
awakened some nights in succession by the nibble of a mouse, I arose
from my bed in the dawn, and saw the wee mite, and struck it with an
iron rod and killed it, and then suffered many foolish twitches, not
from pity for the mouse, for of humanity I had none left, but from the
sudden thought that the spirit of its life, which I had driven from its
harmless body, was now about me as an invisible thing. Though I had
fallen into such a weakness, yet I think that where choice was none for
one like me between the weakness of a man and the strength of a beast, I
did least injury to my own nature and disposition by yielding with
childish indulgence toward the gentler side.

And truly, it is a beautiful thing to mark how the creatures of earth
and air will answer with confidence to man's tenderness, whether, as
with my saintly father, it comes of the love of them, or, as with me, of
the love of myself. The sea-fowl flew in at my door and pecked up the
morsels that fell at my feet; the wild duck on the moor would not rise
though I walked within a stride of it; a fat hare nested in a hole under
my house and came out at dusk to nibble the parings of potatoes that I
threw at the door, and, but for Millish-veg-veen and his sly
treacheries, with the rabbits of the Black Head I might have sported as
with a kitten.

I could fill this account with the shifts I was put to by want of many
things that even a lone man may need for his comfort or his cheer. Thus,
I was at pains to devise a substitute for tinder, having lost much of
all I had in the wrecking of my boat; and to find leather for the soles
of my shoes when they were worn to the welt was long a search.

Yet herein my case was but that of many another man who has told of his
privation, and the less painful was my position for that I had much to
begin my battle of life with. In this first year of my unblessed
condition my senses not only recovered their wonted strength, but grew
keener than before my cutting off. Oft did my body seem to act without
help of my intelligence, and, with a mind on other matters, I would find
my way over the trackless moor back to my home in the pitch of darkness,
and never so much as stumble by a stone. When the wind was from the
north, or when the air lay still, I could hear the church bells that
rang in the market square at Castletown, and thereby I knew what the day
of the week was. None came nigh to my dwelling, but if a man passed it
by at the space of two furlongs, I seemed to feel his tread on the turf.

And now, as I hold the pen for these writings, my hand is loth and my
spirit is not fain to tell of the strange humors of these times. So
ridiculous and yet so tragic do they look as they come back to me in the
grave-clothes of memory, that my imagination, being no longer turned
wayward, shrinks from them as sorry things that none shall see to be of
nature save he who has lived in an outcast state. But if the eyes I look
for should ever read these lines, the tender soul behind them will bring
me no laughter for my pains, and I ask no tears. Only for my weakness
let it be remembered that the terror of my life was, that the spirit of
madness and of the beast of the field waited and watched to fall upon me
and to destroy the spirit of the man within me.

It is not to be expressed with what eagerness I strove to live in my
solitude as a man should live in the company of his fellows. Down to the
pettiest detail of personal manners, I tried to do as other men must be
doing. Whatsoever seemed to be the habit of a Christian man that I
practised, and (though all alone and having no man's eye to see me) with
a grim and awesome earnestness. Thus before food, I not only washed but
dressed afresh, taking off the sea-boots or the curranes I worked in,
and putting on my shoes with silver buckles. My seaman's jacket I
removed for a long coat of blue, and I was careful that my shirt was
spotless. In this wise I also never failed to attire myself in the
evening of the day for the short hours of rest between my work and my
bed. That my cheeks should be kept clean of hair, and that the hair of
my head should never outgrow itself, was a constant care, for I stood in
fear of the creeping consciousness which my face in the glass might
bring me, that I was other than other men. But I am loth to set down my
little foolish formalities on sitting to meat and rising from it, and
the silly ceremonies wherewith I indulged myself at going abroad and
coming home. Inexpressibly comic and ridiculous some of them would seem
to me now, but for the tragic meaning that in my terror underlay them.
And remembering how much a defaulter I had been in all such courtesies
of life when most they were called for, I could almost laugh to think
how scrupulous I was in their observance when I was quite alone, with
never an eye to see me, what I did or how I was clad, or in what sorry
fashion I in my solitude acquitted myself like a man.

But though I could be well disposed to laugh at my notions of how to
keep my manhood while compelled to live the life of a beast, alone like
a wolf and useless for any purposes of man or the world, it is not with
laughter that I recall another form of the insanity that in these times
possessed me. This was the conviction that I was visited by Ewan, Mona,
and my father. Madness, I call it, but never did my pulse beat more
temperately or my brain seem clearer than when conscious of these
visitations. If I had spent the long day delving, or gathering limestone
on the beach of the sound, and returned to my house at twilight, I would
perhaps be suddenly aware as I lifted the latch--having thought only of
my work until then--that within my kitchen these three sat together, and
that they turned their eyes to me as I entered. Nothing would be more
convincing to my intelligence than that I actually saw what I say, and
yet I always seemed to know that it was not with my bodily eyes that I
was seeing. These indeed were open, and I was broad awake, with plain
power of common sight on common things--my stool, my table, the settle I
had made myself, and perhaps the fire of turf that burned red on the
hearth. But over this bodily vision there was a spiritual vision more
stable than that of a dream, more soft and variable than that of
material reality, in which I clearly beheld Ewan and Mona and my father,
and saw their eyes turned toward me. Madness it may have been, but I
could say it at the foot of the White Throne that what I speak of I have
seen not once or twice, but many times.

And well I remember how these visitations affected me: first as a
terror, for when on a sudden they came to me as I lifted the latch I
would shrink back and go away again, and return to my house with
trembling; and then as a strange comfort, for they were a sort of silent
company in my desolation. More than once, in these days of great
loneliness, did I verily believe that I had sat me down in the midst of
the three to spend a long hour in thinking of the brave good things that
might have been for all of us but for my headstrong passion, helped out
by the cruel tangle of our fate.

One thing I noted that even yet seems strange in the hours when my
imagination is least given to waywardness. Throughout the period wherein
I lived in the boat, and for some time after I removed me to my house,
the three I have named seemed to visit me together; but after that I had
found my witless neighbor lying dead on the moor, and after that I had
heard the converse of the men who mistook his poor body for my own, the
visitations of Mona and my father ceased altogether, and Ewan alone did
I afterward seem to see. This I pondered long, and at length it fastened
on me with a solemn conviction that what I had looked for had come
about, and that the error that I was a dead man had reached the ears of
my father and of Mona. With Ewan I sat alone when he came to me, and oft
did it appear that we were loving company, for in his eyes were looks of
deep pity, and I on my part had ceased to rail at the blind passion that
had parted us flesh from flesh.

These my writings are not for men who will look at such words as I have
here set down with a cold indifference, or my hand would have kept me
back from this revelation. But that I saw apparently what I have
described is as sure before God as that I was a man cut off from the
land of the living.

A more material sequel came of the finding of the body on the moor. I
was so closely followed by dread of a time that was coming when I must
die, and stretch out my body on the bare ground with no man to give it
Christian burial in the earth, that I could take no rest until I had
devised a means whereby this terror might not haunt me in my last hours.
In front of my house there were, as I have said, the places we call the
Chasms, wherein the rock of this hungry coast is honeycombed into a
hundred deep gullies by the sea. One of these gullies I descended by
means of a cradle of rope swung overthwart a strong log of driftwood,
and there I found a long shelf of stone, a deep fissure in the earth, a
tomb of shelving rock coated with fungus and mold, whereto no dog could
come, and wherein no bird of prey could lift its wing. To this place I
resolved that I would descend when the power of life was on the point of
ebbing away. Having lowered myself by my cradle of rope, I meant to draw
the cordage after me, and then, being already near my end, to lie down
in this close gully under the earth, that was to serve me for grave and
death-bed.

But I was still a strong man, and, ungracious as my condition was, I
shrank from the thought of death, and did what I could to put by the
fear of it. Never a day did I fail to walk to the crest of the rising
ground behind me and look down to where in the valley lay the
habitations of men. Life, life, life, was now the constant cry of the
voice of my heart, and a right goodly thing it seemed to me to be alive,
though I might be said not to live, but only to exist.

Whether, from the day whereon I heard the converse of the two men who
went by my house, I was ever seen of any man for a twelvemonth or more,
I scarce can tell. Great was my care to keep out of the ways wherein
even the shepherds walked, and never a foot seemed to come within two
furlongs of these abandoned parts from the bleak Black Head to the
margin of the sound. But it happened, upon a day toward winter,
beginning the second year since my cutting off, that I turned toward
Port-le-Mary, and walking on with absent mind, came nearer than I had
purposed to the village over the Kallow Point. There I was suddenly
encountered by four or five men who, much in liquor, were playing at
leap-frog among the gorse. English seamen they seemed to be, and perhaps
from the brig that some time before I had noted where she lay anchored
to the lee of the Carrick Rock, in the Poolvash below. At sight of them
I was for turning quickly aside, but they raised such a cry and shot out
such a volley of levities and blasphemies that, try how I would to go
on, I could not but stop on the instant and turn my face to them.

Then I saw that of me the men took no note whatever, and that all their
eyes were on my dog Millish-veg-veen, who was with me, and was now
creeping between my feet with his stump of a tail under his belly, and
his little cunning face full of terror. "Why, here's the dog that killed
our monkey," said one, and another shouted, "It's my old cur, sure
enough," and a third laughed and said he had kept a rod in pickle for
more than a year, and the first cried again, "I'll teach the beast to
kill no more Jackeys." Then, before I was yet fully conscious of what
was being done, one of the brawny swaggerers made toward us, and kicked
at the dog with the fierce lunge of a heavy seaman's boot. The dog
yelped and would have made off, but another of the blusterers kicked him
back, and then a third kicked him, and whatever way he tried to escape
between them, one of them lifted his foot and kicked again.

While they were doing this I felt myself struggling to cry out to them
to stop, but not a syllable could I utter, and, like a man paralyzed, I
stood stock-still, and did nothing to save my housemate and only
companion in life. At length one of the men, laughing a great roistering
laugh, stooped and seized the dog by the nape of the neck and swung him
round in the air. Then I saw the poor cur's piteous look toward me, and
heard its bitter cry; but at the next instant it was flying ten feet
above our heads, and when it fell to the ground it was killed on the
instant.

At that sight I heard an awful groan burst from my mouth, and I saw a
cloud of fire flash before my eyes. When next I knew what I was doing I
was holding one of the men by a fierce grip about the waist, and was
swinging him high above my shoulders.

Now, if the good God had not given me back my consciousness at that
moment, I know full well that at the next he who was then in my power
would have drawn no more the breath of a living man. But I felt on a
sudden the same ghostly hand upon me that I have written of before, and
heard the same ghostly voice in mine ear. So, dropping the man gently to
his feet, as gently as a mother might slip her babe to its cot, I lifted
up my poor mangled beast by its hinder legs and turned away with it. And
as I went the other men fell apart from me with looks of terror, for
they saw that God had willed it that, with an awful strength, should I,
a man of great passions, go through life in peril.

When I had found coolness to think of this that had happened, I mourned
for the loss of the only companion that had ever shared with me my
desolate state; but more than my grief for the dog was my fear for
myself, remembering with horror that when I would have called on the men
to desist I could not utter one word. Truly, it may have been the swift
access of anger that then tied my tongue, but I could not question that
my sudden speechlessness told me I was losing the faculty of speech.
This conclusion fastened upon me with great pain, and I saw that for a
twelvemonth or more I had been zealously preserving the minor qualities
of humanity, while this its greatest faculty, speech, that distinguishes
man from the brute, had been silently slipping from me. Preserve my
power of speech also I resolved I would, and though an evil spirit
within me seemed to make a mock at me, and to say, "Wherefore this
anxiety to keep your speech, seeing that you will never require it,
being a man cut off forever from all intercourse with other men?" yet I
held to my purpose.

Then I asked myself how I was to preserve my speech, save by much and
frequent speaking, and how I was to speak, having none--not even my dog
now--to speak to. For, to speak constantly with myself was a practise I
shrank from as leading perchance to madness, since I had noted that men
of broken wit were much given to mumbling vain words to themselves. At
last I concluded that there was but one way for me, and that was to
pray. Having lighted on this thought I had still some misgivings, for
the evil spirit within me again made a mock at me, asking why I should
speak to God, being a man outside God's grace, and why I should waste
myself in the misspent desire of prayer, seeing that the Heavenly
Majesty had set His face from me in rejecting the atonement of my life,
which I had offered for my crime. But after great inward strivings I
came back to my old form of selfishness, and was convinced that, though
when I prayed God would not hear me, yet that the yearning and uplooking
of prayer might be a good thing for the spiritual part of my nature as a
man--for when was the beast known to pray?

At this I tried to recall a few good words such as my father used, and
at length, after much beating of the wings of my memory, I remembered
some that were the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and did betake myself
to prayer in this manner: "O most gracious God, I tremble to come into
Thy presence, so polluted and dishonored as I am by my foul stain of sin
which I have contracted; but I must come or I perish. I am useless to
any purposes of God and man, and, like one that is dead, unconcerned in
the changes and necessities of the world, living only to spend my time,
and, like a vermin, eat of the fruits of the earth. O my God, I can not
help it now; miserable man that I am, to reduce myself to so sad a state
that I neither am worthy to come to Thee nor dare I stay from Thee. The
greatness of my crime brings me to my remedy; and now I humbly pray Thee
to be merciful to my sin, for it is great."

And this prayer I spoke aloud twice daily thenceforward, at the rising
and the setting of the sun, going out of my house and kneeling on the
turf on the top of the Black Head. And when I had prayed I sang what I
could remember of the psalm that runs, "It is good for me that I have
been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes."

In my mind's eye I see myself, a solitary man in that lone place, with
the sea stretching wide below me, and only the sound of its heavy beat
on the rocks rising over me in the quiet air.

CHAPTER XLII

OF THE BREAKING OF THE CURSE

Thus far have I written these four days past, amid pain and the quick
lessening of the powers of life. In sleepless hours of the night I have
made this writing, sitting oftenest by the light of my feeble candles
until the day has been blue over the sea. And now that I glance back and
see my own heart in the mirror I have made for it, I am like to one who
has been brought through a fearsome sickness, that has left its marks
upon him, to look for the first time at his altered face in the glass.
And can it be that I, who have penned these words, am the man of seven
years ago? Ah, now I see how profound has been the change that my great
punishment has made in me, and perceive the end of God in refusing my
poor atonement of life for life, and cutting me off from among men.

I will not say that what I have already written has not cost me some
pangs, and perhaps some tears. But now I am come to that place where I
must tell of the great turning-point in my sad state, and though the
strength fails me wherewith I hold the pen to write of it, my spirit
rises before it like as the lark awakened by the dawn.

This year--surely the darkest within the memory of our poor people of
Man--began with more than its share of a winter of heavy rains. The
spring that followed was also rainy, and when I looked for the summer to
begin, the rains were still incessant. Heavy and sodden was the ground
even of the moor whereon I lived, so that my feet sank into it as into a
morass, and much of the seed I sowed was washed from it and wasted. When
at length the long rains ceased to fall the year was far worn into June,
and then the sun came quick and hot. My house stood on a brow descending
to the cliffs of the coast, and beneath me were less than two feet of
mold above the rock; but when the great heat came after the great rain,
out of the ground there arose a thick miasmic mist that filled the air,
obscured the light, lay heavy in sweat upon my hair and flesh, and made
the walls and floor, the furniture, and the bed of my home, damp and
dripping with constant dew.

Quickly I set myself to the digging of deep trenches that went
vertically down the brow to the cliff head, and soon the ground about me
across many acres was drained dry. But though I lived in a clear air,
and could now see the sun as well as feel it, yet I perceived that the
mists stood in a wide half-circle around me like walls of rain seen
afar, while the spot whereon you stand is fair and in the sunshine. In
my daily walks to the top of the moor I could no longer see the houses
of Cregneesh for the cloud of vapor that lay over it, and when I walked
to the Kallow Head for the first time since the day I lost my dog, the
basin below, where Port-le-Mary stands, was even as a vast vaporous sea,
without one islet of house or hill.

My health suffered little from this unaccustomed humidity, for my bodily
strength was ever wonderful; but my spirits sank to a deep depression,
and oft did I wonder how the poor souls must fare who lived on the low,
wet Curraghs near to where my own home once lay. From day to day, and
week to week, the mist continued to rise from the dank ground under the
hot sun, and still the earth came up in thick clods to the spade.

The nights alone were clear, and toward midsummer I was witness to
strange sights in the heavens. Thus I saw a comet pass close across the
island from coast to coast, with a visible motion as of quivering flame.
What this visitation could foretell I pondered long and sadly, and much
I hungered for knowledge of what was being done in the world of men. But
therein it seemed to my wayward mind that I was like a man buried in the
churchyard while he is yet alive, who hears the bell in the tower that
peals and tolls, but has no window in his tomb from which to see who
comes to rejoice, and who to mourn.

When the fleet of fishing-boats should have put out from Port Erin for
the ground that lies south of the Calf, scarce a sail could I see, and
not a boat had I noted coming from the Poolvash, where Port-le-Mary
stands above the bay. From the top of the Mull Hills I could faintly
descry the road to Castletown, but never a cart on market-day seemed to
pass over it. Groups of people I vaguely saw standing together, and
once, at midday, from the middle of a field of new-mown hay, there came
to me the sounds of singing and prayer. Oftener than at any period
during my solitary life, I saw men on the mountains or felt their
presence near me, for my senses were grown very keen. Oftener, also,
than ever before, the sound of church bells seemed to come through the
air. And going to the beach where my shattered boat lay, I one day came
upon another boat beating idly down the waters of the sound, her sails
flapping in the wind, and no hand at her tiller. I stood to watch while
the little craft came drifting on with the flow of the tide. She ran
head on to the cliff at Fistard, and then I went down to her, and found
never a living soul aboard of her.

From these and other startling occurrences that came to me vaguely, as
if by the one sense of the buried man, I felt that with the poor people
of this island all was not well. But nothing did I know of a certainty
until a day toward the first week of September--as I have reckoned
it--and then a strange thing befell.

The sun was not shining, and when there was no sun there was little
mist. A strong wind, too, had got up from the northeast, and the
atmosphere over land and sea grew clearer as the day wore on. The wind
strengthened after the turn of the ebb, and at half-flood, which was
toward three in the afternoon, it had risen to the pitch of a gale, with
heavy swirling rain. The rain ceased in a few hours, and in the lift of
the heavy clouds I could see from the rising ground above my house a
brig with shortened sail toiling heavily to the southwest of the Calf.
She was struggling in the strong currents that flow there to get into
the lee of the island, but was beaten back and back, never catching the
shelter of the cliffs for the rush of the wind that swept over them. The
darkness was falling in while I watched her, and when she was swept back
and hidden from me by the forehead of the Calf I turned my face
homeward. Then I noticed that on the top of the Mull Hills a great
company of people had gathered, and I thought I saw that they were
watching the brig that was laboring heavily in the sea.

That night I had close employment at my fireside, for I was finishing a
coat that I had someways fashioned with my undeft fingers from the best
pieces of many garments that of themselves would no longer hold
together. Rough as a monk's long sack it was, and all but as shapeless,
but nevertheless a fit companion for the curranes on my feet, which I
had made some time before from the coat of my hapless Millish-veg-veen.

While I wrought with my great sail-maker's needle and twine, the loud
wind moaned about the walls of my house and whistled through its many
crevices, and made the candle whereby I worked to flicker and gutter.
Yet my mind was more cheerful than had lately been its wont, and I sang
to myself with my face to the glow of the fire.

But when toward ten o'clock the sea below sent up a louder hiss than
before, followed by a deeper undergroan, suddenly there was a clash at
my window, and a poor, panting sea-mew, with open beak, came through it
and fell helpless on the floor. I picked up the storm-beaten creature
and calmed it, and patched with the needle the skin of the window which
it had broken by its entrance.

Then all at once my mind went back to the brig laboring in the sea
behind the Calf. Almost at the same moment, and for the first time these
seven years, a quick knock came to my door. I was startled, and made no
answer, but stood stock-still in the middle of the floor with the
frightened bird in my hand. Before I was yet fully conscious of what was
happening, the wooden latch of the door had been lifted, and a man had
stepped across the threshold. In another moment he had closed the door
behind him, and was speaking to me.

"You will never find heart to deny me shelter on such a night as this?"
he said.

I answered him nothing. Surely with my mind I did not hear him, but only
with mine ears. I was like the one who is awakened suddenly out of a
long dream, and can scarce be sure which is the dream and which the
reality, what is behind and what is before.

The man stumbled a step forward, and said, speaking falteringly, "I am
faint from a blow."

He staggered another pace forward, and would have fallen, but I,
recovering in some measure my self-command, caught him in my arms, and
put him to sit on the settle before the hearth.

Scarce had he gained this rest when his eyelids trembled and closed, and
he became insensible. He was a large, swart, and bony man, bearing in
his face the marks of life's hard storms. His dress was plainly the
dress of a priest, but of an order of priesthood quite unknown to me. A
proud poverty sat upon the man, and before I yet knew wherefor, my heart
went out to him in a strange, uncertain reverence.

Loosening the hard collar that bound his neck, I made bare his throat,
and then moistened his lips with water. Some other offices I did for
him, such as with difficulty removing his great boots, which were full
of water, and stretching his feet toward the fire. I stirred the peats,
too, and the glow was full and grateful. Then I looked for the mark of
the blow he spoke of, and found it where most it was to be feared, on
the hinder part of the head. Though there was no blood flowing, yet was
the skull driven in upon the brain, leaving a hollow spot over a space
that might have been covered by a copper token.

He did not soon return to consciousness, but toiled hard at intervals to
regain it, and then lapsed back to a breathless quiet. And I, not
knowing what else to do, took a basin of water, lukewarm, and bathed the
wound with it, damping the forehead with water that was cold. All this
time the sea-mew, which I had cast from my hand when the priest
stumbled, lay in one corner panting, its head down, its tail up, and its
powerless wings stretched useless on either side.

Then the man, taking a long breath, opened his eyes, and seeing me he
made some tender of gratitude. He told me that in being put ashore out
of the brig "Bridget," from Cork, in Ireland, he had been struck on the
head by the boom as it shifted with the wind, but that heeding not his
injury, and thinking he could make Port-le-Mary to lie there that night,
he had set out over the moor, while his late comrades of the brig put
off from our perilous coast for England, whither they were bound.

So much had he said, speaking painfully, when again he fell in
unconsciousness, and this time a strong delirium took hold of him. I
tried not to hear what then he said, for it seemed to me an awful thing
that in such an hour of reason's vanquishment the eye of man might look
into the heart, which only God's eye should see. But hear him I must, or
leave him alone in his present need. And he talked loudly of some great
outrage wherein helpless women were thrown on the roads without shelter,
and even the dead in their graves were desecrated. When he came to
himself again he knew that his mind had wandered, and he told me that
four years before he had been confessor at the convent of Port Royal in
France. He said that in that place they had been men and women of the
Order of Jansenists, teaching simple goodness and piety. But their
convent had been suppressed by commission of the Jesuits, and being
banished from France, he had fled to his native country of Ireland,
where now he held the place of parish priest. More in this manner he
said, but my mind was sorely perplexed, and I cannot recall his words
faithfully, or rightly tell of the commerce of conversation between us,
save that he put to me some broken questions in his moments of ease from
pain, and muttered many times to himself after I had answered him
briefly, or when I had answered him not at all.

For the sense that I was a man awakening out of a dream, a long dream of
seven lonesome years, grew stronger as he told of what traffic the world
had lately seen, and he himself been witness to. And my old creeping
terror of the judgment upon me that forbade that any man should speak
with me, or that I should speak with any man, struggled hard with the
necessity now before me to make a swift choice whether I should turn
away and leave this man, who had sought the shelter of my house, or
break through the curse that bound me.

Choice of any kind I did not make with a conscious mind, but before I
was yet aware I was talking with the priest, and he with me.

The Priest: He said, I am the Catholic priest that your good Bishop sent
for out of Ireland, as you have heard I doubt not?

Myself: I answered No, that I had not heard.

The Priest: He asked me, did I live alone in this house, and how long I
had been here?

Myself: I said, Yes, and that I had been seven years in this place come
Christmas.

The Priest: He asked, What, and do you never go up to the towns?

Myself: I answered, No.

The Priest: Then, said the priest, thinking long before he spoke, you
have not heard of the great sickness that has broken out among your
people.

Myself: I told him I had heard nothing.

The Priest: He said it was the sweating sickness, and that vast numbers
had fallen to it and many had died. I think he said--I can not be
sure--that after fruitless efforts of his own to combat the disease, the
Bishop of the island had sent to Ireland a message for him, having heard
that the Almighty had blessed his efforts in a like terrible scourge
that broke out two years before over the bogs of Western Ireland.

I listened with fear, and began to comprehend much that had of late been
a puzzle to me. But before the priest had gone far his sickness overcame
him afresh, and he fell in another long unconsciousness. While he lay
thus, very silent or rambling afresh through the ways of the past, I
know not what feelings possessed me, for my heart was in a great
turmoil. But when he opened his eyes again, very peaceful in their quiet
light, but with less than before of the power of life in them, he said
he perceived that his errand had been fruitless, and that he had but
come to my house to die. At that word I started to my feet with a cry,
but he--thinking that my thoughts were of our poor people, who would
lose a deliverer by his death--told me to have patience, for that God
who had smitten him down would surely raise up in his stead a far
mightier savior of my afflicted countrymen.

Then in the lapses of his pain he talked of the sickness that had
befallen his own people; how it was due to long rains that soaked the
soil, and was followed by the hot sun that drew out of the earth its
foul sweat; how the sickness fell chiefly on such as had their houses on
bogs and low-lying ground; and how the cure for it was to keep the body
of the sick person closely wrapped in blankets, and to dry the air about
him with many fires. He told me, too, that all medicines he had yet seen
given for this disease were useless, and being oftenest of a cooling
nature were sometimes deadly. He said that those of his own people who
had lived on the mountains had escaped the malady. Much he also said of
how men had fled from their wives, and women from their children in
terror of the infection, but that, save only in the worst cases,
contagion from the sweating sickness there could be none. More of this
sort he said than I can well set down in this writing. Often he spoke
with sore labor, as though a strong impulse prompted him. And I who
listened eagerly heard what he said with a mighty fear, for well I knew
that if death came to him as he foretold, I had now that knowledge which
it must be sin to hide.

After he had said this the lapses into unconsciousness were more
frequent than before, and the intervals of cool reason and sweet respite
from pain were briefer. But a short while after midnight he came to
himself with a smile on his meagre face and peace in his eyes. He asked
me would I promise to do one thing for him, for that he was a dying man;
and I told him yes, before I had heard what it was that he wished of me.
Then he asked did I know where the Bishop lived, and at first I made no
answer.

Bishop's Court they call his house, he said, and it lies to the
northwest of this island by the land they have named the Curraghs. Do
you know it?

I bent my head by way of assent.

The Priest: I would have you to go to him, he said, and say--The
Catholic priest you sent for out of Ireland, Father Dalby, fulfilled his
pledge to you and came to your island, but died by the visitation of God
on the night of his landing on your shores. Will you deliver me this
message?

I did not make him an answer, and he put the question again. Still my
tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and I could not speak.

The Priest: You need not fear, he said, to go to the Bishop, for he is a
holy man, as I have heard, without pride of worldly place, and the poor
and outcast are his constant guests.

Even yet I answered nothing, but only held down my head while my heart
surged within me.

The Priest: The fame of him as a righteous servant of God had gone far
into other lands, and therefore it was I, who love Protestantism not at
all, and hold no dalliance with it, came to your island at his call.

He took my hand in his hands and asked me again if I would go to the
Bishop to say the words which he had given me, and I, with swimming eyes
that saw nothing of the dying face before me, bowed my head, and
answered, I will go.

Near three hours longer he lived, and much of that time he passed in a
feeble delirium. But just before the end came he awoke, and motioned to
a small bag that hung about his waist. I guessed his meaning, and
drawing out a crucifix I placed it in his hands.

Then he passed silently away, and Death, the black camel that had knelt
at the gate of my lone house these seven years of death-in-life, had
entered it at last to take another man than me.

CHAPTER XLIII

OF HIS GREAT RESOLVE

When he had ceased to breathe, the air of my house became suddenly void
and empty. With a great awe upon me I rose and stretched him out on the
settle, and covered his white face with a cloth. Then in the silence I
sat and tried to think of the strange accident that had that night
befallen. One thing I saw with a fearful certainty, that a great burden
of responsibility had fallen upon me. I thought of the people of this
island perishing in their sickness, and I remembered that I alone of all
men here knew how to succor and save them. I alone, and who was I? The
one man accursed among men; the one man cut off forever from the company
of the living; the man without family or kin or name among the people;
whose flesh no man might touch with his flesh; whose eye no other eye
might look upon.

And thus with the burden of responsibility came a yet more terrible
burden of doubt. Was it for me to break through the dread judgment
pronounced upon me, and go down among the people to heal them? And if I
went would the people receive me, even in this their last extreme?
Before the face of death would all other fears sink out of their sight?
Or, fearing death itself less than the curse, would they rise up and
drive me from them?

Long I sat in the anguish of black misgivings, and then rose and ranged
my room from side to side, if perchance I might find some light in my
darkness. And oft did the strangeness of that night's accidents so far
bewilder me that for an instant it would seem that I must be in a dream.
Once I lifted the face-cloth from the face on the settle that I might be
sure that I was awake.

At length it fixed itself on my mind that whatsoever the judgment upon
me, and whatsoever the people's terror of it, I had no choice but to
bear the burden that was now mine own. Go down among my sick countrymen
I should and must, let the end be what it would! Accursed man though I
was, yet to fulfil the dead priest's mission was a mission wherewith God
Himself seemed to charge me!

And now I scarce can say how it escaped me that my first duty was to
take the body of the priest who had died in my house to one of the
churchyards for Christian burial. There must have been some end of
Providence in my strange forgetfulness, for if this thing had but come
into my wild thoughts, and I had indeed done what it was fitting that I
should do, then must certain wonderful consequences have fallen short of
the blessing with which God has blessed them.

What I did, thinking no evil, was to pick up my spade and go out on the
moor and delve for the dead man a shallow grave. As I turned to the door
I stumbled over something that lay on the floor. Stooping to look at it,
I found it to be the poor sea-mew. It was dead and stiff, and had still
its wings outstretched as if in the act of flight.

I had not noted until now, when with a fearful glance backward I stepped
out into the night, that the storm had gone. A thick dew-cloud lay deep
over the land, and the round moon was shining through it. I chose a spot
a little to the south of the stone circle on the Black Head, and there
by the moon's light I howket a barrow of earth. The better part of an
hour I wrought, and when my work was done I went back to my house, and
then the dead man was cold. I took a piece of old canvas, and put it
about the body, from head to feet, wrapping it over the clothes, and
covering the face. This done, I lifted the dead in my arms and carried
it out.

Very hollow and heavy was the thud of my feet on the turf in that
uncertain light. As I toiled along I recalled the promise that I had
given to the priest to see my father and speak with him. This memory
brought me the sore pain of a wounded tenderness, but it strengthened my
resolve. When I had reached the grave which I had made the night was
near to morning, the dew-cloud had lifted away, and out of the unseen,
murmuring sea that lay far and wide in front of me a gray streak, like
an arrow's barb, was shooting up into the darkness of the sky.

One glance more I took at the dead man's face in that vague foredawn,
and its swart meagreness seemed to have passed off under death's
composing hand.

I covered the body with the earth, and then I said my prayer, for it was
nigh to my accustomed hour. Also I sang my psalm, kneeling with my face
toward the sea. And while I sang in that dank air the sky lightened and
the sun rose out of the deep.

I know not what touched me then, if it was not the finger of God
Himself; but suddenly a great burden seemed to fall from me, and my
heart grew full of a blessed joy. And, O Father, I cried, I am delivered
from the body of the death I lived in! I have lived, I have died, and I
live again!

I saw apparently that the night of my long imprisonment was past, that
the doors of my dungeon were broken open, and that its air was to be the
breath of my nostrils no more.

Then the tears gushed from mine eyes and rained down my bony cheeks, for
well I knew that God had seen that I, even I, had suffered enough.

And when I rose to my feet from beside the dead man's grave I felt of a
certainty that the curse had fallen away.

HIS LAST WORDS

Three days have gone since last I put my hand to this writing, and now I
know that though the curse has fallen from me yet must its earthly
penalties be mine to the end. Sorely weary, and more sorely ashamed, I
have, within these three hours past, escaped from the tumult of the
people. How their wild huzzas ring in my ears! "God bless the priest!"
"Heaven save the priest!" Their loud cries of a blind gratitude, how
they follow me! Oh, that I could fly from the memory of them, and wipe
them out of my mind! There were those that appeared to know me among the
many that knew me not. The tear-stained faces, the faces hard and stony,
the faces abashed and confused--how they live before my eyes! And at the
Tynwald, how the children were thrust under my hand for my blessing! My
blessing--mine! and at the Tynwald! Thank God, it is all over! I am away
from it forever. Home I am at last, and for the last time.

Better than three weeks have passed since the priest died in my house
and I buried him on the moor. What strange events have since befallen,
and in what a strange, new world! The Deemster's terrible end, and my
own going with the priest's message to the Bishop, my father. But I
shall not live to set it down. Nor is it needful so to do, for she whom
I write for knows all that should be written henceforward. Everything
she knows save one thing only, and if this writing should yet come to
her hand that also she will then learn.

God's holy grace be with her! I have not seen her. The Deemster I have
seen, the Bishop I have spoken with, and a living vision of our Ewan,
his sweet child-daughter, have I held to my knee. But not once these
many days has she who is dearest of all to me passed before my eyes. It
is better so. I shunned her. Where she was, there I would not go. Yet,
through all these heavy years I have borne her upon my heart. Day and
night she has been with me. Oh, Mona, Mona, my Mona, apart forever are
our paths in this dim world, and my tarnished name is your reproach. My
love, my lost love, as a man I yearned for you to hold you to my breast.
But I was dead to you, and I would not break in with an earthly love
that must be brief and might not be blessed on a memory that death has
purified of its stains. Adieu, adieu, my love, my own Mona; though we
are never to clasp hands again, yet do I know that you will be with me
as an unseen presence when the hour comes--ah! how soon--of death's
asundering.

For the power of life is low in me. I have taken the sickness. It is
from the Deemster that I have taken it. No longer do I fear death. Yet I
hesitate to do with myself what I have long thought that I would do when
the end should come. "To-morrow," and "to-morrow," and "to-morrow," I
say in my heart, and still I am here.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE SWEATING SICKNESS

When the sweating sickness first appeared in the island it carried off
the lone body known as Auntie Nan, who had lived on the Curragh. "Death
never came without an excuse--the woman was old," the people said, and
went their way. But presently a bright young girl who had taken herbs
and broths and odd comforts to Auntie Nan while she lay helpless was
stricken down. Then the people began to hold their heads together. Four
days after the girl was laid to rest her mother died suddenly, and two
or three days after the mother's death the father was smitten. Then
three other children died in quick succession, and in less than three
weeks not a soul of that household was left alive. This was on the
southwest of the Curragh, and on the north of it, near to the church of
Andreas, a similar outbreak occurred about the same time. Two old people
named Creer were the first to be taken; and a child at Cregan's farm and
a servant at the rectory of the Archdeacon followed quickly.

The truth had now dawned upon the people, and they went about with white
faces. It was the time of the hay harvest, and during the two hours'
rest for the midday meal the haymakers gathered together in the fields
for prayer. At night, when work was done, they met again in the streets
of the villages to call on God to avert his threatened judgment. On
Sundays they thronged the churches at morning and afternoon services,
and in the evening they congregated on the shore to hear the Quaker
preachers, who went about, under the shadow of the terror, without
hindrance or prosecution. One such preacher, a town-watch at Castletown,
known as Billy-by-Nite, threw up his calling, and traveled the country
in the cart of a carrier, prophesying a visitation of God's wrath,
wherein the houses should be laid waste and the land be left utterly
desolate.

The sickness spread rapidly, and passed from the Curraghs to the country
south and east of them. Not by ones but tens were the dead now counted
day after day, and the terror spread yet faster than the malady. The
herring season had run a month only, and it was brought to a swift
close. Men who came in from the boats after no more than a night's
absence were afraid to go up to their homes lest the sickness had gone
up before them. Then they went out to sea no longer, but rambled for
herbs in the rank places where herbs grew, and, finding them, good and
bad, fit and unfit, they boiled and ate them.

Still the sickness spread, and the dead were now counted in hundreds. Of
doctors there were but two in the island, and these two were closely
engaged sitting by the bedsides of the richer folk, feeling the pulse
with one hand and holding the watch with the other. Better service they
did not do, for rich and poor alike fell before the sickness.

The people turned to the clergy, and got "beautiful texes," but no cure.
They went to the old Bishop, and prayed for the same help that he had
given them in the old days of their great need. He tried to save them
and failed. A preparation of laudanum, which had served him in good
stead for the flux, produced no effect on the sweating sickness. With
other and other medicines he tried and tried again. His old head was
held very low. "My poor people," he said, with a look of shame, "I fear
that by reason of the sins of me and mine the Spirit of the Lord is gone
from me."

Then the people set up a cry as bitter as that which was wrung from them
long before when they were in the grip of their hunger. "The Sweat is on
us," they groaned; and the old Bishop, that he might not hear their
voice of reproach, shut himself up from them like a servant whom the
Lord had forsaken.

Then terror spread like a fire, but terror in some minds begets a kind
of courage, and soon there were those who would no longer join the
prayer-meetings in the hay-fields or listen to the preaching on the
shore. One of these was a woman of middle life, an idle slattern, who
had for six or seven years lived a wandering life. While others prayed
she laughed mockingly and protested that for the Sweat as well as for
every other scare of life there was no better preventive than to think
nothing about it. She carried out her precept by spending her days in
the inns, and her nights on the roads, being supported in her dissolute
existence by secret means, whereof gossip spoke frequently. The
terrified world about her, busy with its loud prayers, took small heed
of her blasphemies until the numbers of the slain had risen from
hundreds to thousands. Then in their frenzy the people were carried away
by superstition, and heard in the woman's laughter the ring of the
devil's own ridicule. Somebody chanced to see her early one morning
drawing water to bathe her hot forehead, and before night of that day
the evil word had passed from mouth to mouth that it was she who had
brought the sweating sickness by poisoning the wells.

Thereupon half a hundred lusty fellows, with fear in their wild eyes,
gathered in the street, and set out to search for the woman. In her
accustomed haunt, the "Three Legs of Man," they found her, and she was
heavy with drink. They hounded her out of the inn into the road, and
there, amid oaths and curses, they tossed her from hand to hand until
her dress was in rags, her face and arms were bleeding, and she was
screaming in the great fright that had sobered her.

It was Tuesday night, and the Deemster, who had been holding court at
Peeltown late that day, was riding home in the darkness, when he heard
this tumult in the road in front of him. Putting spurs to his horse, he
came upon the scene of it. Before he had gathered the meaning of what
was proceeding in the dark road, the woman had broken from her
tormentors and thrown herself before him, crawling on the ground and
gripping his foot in the stirrup.

"Deemster, save me! save me, Deemster!" she cried in her frantic terror.

The men gathered round and told their story. The woman had poisoned the
wells, and the bad water had brought the Sweat. She was a charmer by
common report, and should be driven out of the island.

"What pedler's French is this?" said the Deemster, turning hotly on the
crowd about him. "Men, men, what forgotten age have you stepped out of
that you come to me with such driveling, doddering, blank idiocy?"

But the woman, carried away by her terror, and not grasping the
Deemster's meaning, cried that if he would but save her she would
confess. Yes, she had poisoned the wells. It was true she was a charmer.
She acknowledged to the evil eye. But save her, save her, save her, and
she would tell all.

The Deemster listened with a feverish impatience. "The woman lies," he
said under his breath, and then lifting his voice he asked if any one
had a torch. "Who is the woman?" he asked; "I seem to know her voice."

"D---- her, she's a witch," said one of the men, thrusting his hot face
forward in the darkness over the woman's cowering body. "Ay, and so was
her mother before her," he said again.

"Tell me, woman, what's your name?" said the Deemster, stoutly; but this
question seemed to break down as he asked it.

There was a moment's pause.

"Mally Kerruish," the woman answered him, slobbering at his stirrup in
the dark road before him.

"Let her go," said the Deemster in a thick underbreath. In another
moment he had disengaged his foot from the woman's grasp and was riding
away.

That night Mally Kerruish died miserably of her fright in the little
tool-shed of a cottage by the Cross Vein, where six years before her
mother had dropped to a lingering death alone.

News of her end was taken straightway to Ballamona by one of the many
tongues of evil rumor. With Jarvis Kerruish, who was in lace collar and
silver-buckled shoes, the Deemster had sat down to supper. He rose, left
his meat untouched, and Jarvis supped alone. Late that night he said,
uneasily:

"I intend to send in my resignation to Castletown--burden of my office
as Deemster is too much for my strength."

"Good," said Jarvis; "and if, sir, you should ever think of resigning
the management of your estate also, you know with how much willingness I
would undertake it, solely in order that you might spend your days in
rest and comfort.

"I have often thought of it latterly," said the Deemster. Half an hour
thereafter he spent in an uneasy perambulation of the dining-room while
Jarvis picked his teeth and cleaned his nails.

"I think I must surely be growing old," he said then, and, drawing a
long breath, he took up his bedroom candle.

II

The sickness increased, the deaths were many in the houses about
Ballamona, and in less than a week after the night of Mally Kerruish's
death, Thorkell Mylrea, a Deemster no longer, had made over to Jarvis
Kerruish all absolute interest in his estates. "I shall spend my last
days in the cause of religion," he said. He had paid up his tithe in
pound-notes--five years' tithe in arrears, with interest added at the
rate of six per cent. Blankets he had ordered for the poor of his own
parish, a double blanket for each family, with cloaks for some of the
old women.

This done, he relinquished his worldly possessions, and shut himself
from the sickness in a back room of Ballamona, admitting none, and never
stirring abroad except to go to church.

The Bishop had newly opened the chapel at Bishop's Court for daily
prayers, and of all constant worshipers there Thorkell was now the most
constant. Every morning his little shriveled figure knelt at the form
before the Communion, and from his blanched lips the prayers were
mumbled audibly. Much he sought the Bishop's society, and in every
foolish trifle he tried to imitate his brother. A new canon of the
Church had lately ordered that every Bishop should wear an episcopal
wig, and over his flowing white hair the Bishop of Man had perforce to
put the grotesque head-covering. Seeing this, Thorkell sent to England
for a periwig, and perched the powdered curls on his own bald crown.

The sickness was at its worst, the terror was at its height, and men
were flying from their sick families to caves in the mountains, when one
day the Bishop announced in church that across in Ireland, as he had
heard, there was a good man who had been blessed under God with
miraculous powers of curing this awful malady.

"Send for him! send for him!" the people shouted with one voice, little
heeding the place they sat in.

"But," said the Bishop, with a failing voice, "the good man is a Roman
Catholic--indeed, a Romish priest."

At that word a groan came from the people, for they were Protestants of
Protestants.

"Let us not think that no good can come out of Nazareth," the Bishop
continued. "And who shall say, though we love the Papacy not at all, but
that holy men adhere to it?"

There was a murmur of disapproval.

"My good people," the Bishop went on, falteringly, "we are in God's
hands, and his anger burns among us."

The people broke up abruptly, and talking of what the Bishop had said,
they shook their heads. But their terror continued, and before its awful
power their qualms of faith went down as before a flood. Then they
cried, "Send for the priest!" and the Bishop sent for him.

Seven weary days passed, and at length with a brightening countenance
the Bishop announced that the priest had answered that he would come.
Other three days went by, and the news passed from north to south that
in the brig "Bridget of Cork," bound for Whitehaven, with liberty to
call at Peeltown, the Romish priest, Father Dalby, had sailed for the
Isle of Man.

Then day after day the men went up to the hilltops to catch sight of the
sail of an Irish brig. At last they sighted one from the Mull Hills, and
she was five leagues south of the Calf. But the wind was high, and the
brig labored hard in a heavy sea. Four hours the people watched her, and
saw her bearing down into the most dangerous currents about their coast.
Night closed in, and the wind rose to the strength of a gale. Next
morning at early dawn the people climbed the headlands again, but no
brig could they now see, and none had yet made their ports.

"She must be gone down," they told themselves, and so saying they went
home with heavy hearts.

But two days afterward there went through the island a thrilling cry,
"He is here!--he has come!--the priest!" And at that word a wave of rosy
health swept over a thousand haggard faces.

In the dark sleeping-room of a little ivy-covered cottage that stood
end-on to the highroad through Michael a blind woman lay dying of the
sickness. It was old Kerry; and on a three-legged stool before her bed
her husband Hommy sat. Pitiful enough was Hommy's poor ugly face. His
thick lubber lips were drawn heavily downward, and under his besom brows
his little eyes were red and his eyelids swollen. In his hands he held a
shovel, and he was using it as a fan to puff air into Kerry's face.

"It's all as one, man," the sick woman moaned. "Ye're only keeping the
breath in me. I'm bound to lave ye."

And thereupon Hommy groaned lustily and redoubled his efforts with the
shovel. There was a knock at the door, and a lady entered. It was Mona,
pale of face, but very beautiful in her pallor, and with an air of
restful sadness.

"And how are you now, dear Kerry?" she asked, leaning over the bed.

"Middling badly, mam," Kerry answered feebly. "I'll be took, sarten
sure, as the saying is."

"Don't lose heart, Kerry. Have you not heard that the priest is coming?"

"Chut, mam! I'll be gone, plaze God, where none of the like will follow
me."

"Hush, Kerry! He was in Patrick yesterday; he will be in German
to-morrow, and the next day he will be here in Michael. He is a good
man, and is doing wonders with the sick."

Kerry turned face to the wall, and Hommy talked with Mona. What was to
become of him when Kerry was gone? Who would be left to give him a bit
of a tidy funeral? The Dempster? Bad cess to the like of him. What could
be expected from a master who had turned his own daughter out of doors?

"I am better where I am," Mona whispered, and that was her sole answer
to the deaf man's too audible questions. And Hommy, after a pause,
assented to the statement with his familiar comment, "The Bishop's a
rael ould archangel, so he is."

Thereupon Kerry turned her gaze from the wall and said, "Didn't I tell
ye, mam, that he wasn't dead?"

"Who?"

"Why--him--him that we mayn't name--_him_."

"Hush, dear Kerry, he died long ago."

"I tell ye, mam, he's a living man, and coming back--I know it--he's
coming back immadient--I saw him."

"Drop it, woman, it's drames," said Hommy.

"I saw him last night as plain as plain--wearing a long gray sack and
curranes on his feet, and a queer sort of hat."

"It must have been the priest that you saw in your dream, dear Kerry."

The sick woman raised herself on one elbow, and answered eagerly, "I
tell you no, mam, but him--_him_."

"Lie still, Kerry; you will be worse if you uncover yourself to the cool
air."

There was a moment's quiet, and then the blind woman said finally, "I'm
going where I'll have my eyes same as another body."

At that Hommy's rugged face broadened to a look of gruesome sorrow, and
he renewed his exertions with the shovel.

IV

At seven o'clock that day the darkness had closed in. A bright turf fire
burned in a room in Bishop's Court, and the Bishop sat before it with
his slippered feet on a sheepskin rug. His face was mellower than of
old, and showed less of strength and more of sadness. Mona stood at a
tea-table by his side, cutting slices of bread and butter.

A white face, with eyes of fear, looked in at the dark window. It was
Davy Fayle. He was but little older to look upon for the seven years
that had gone heavily over his troubled head. His simple look was as
vacant and his lagging lip hung as low; but his sluggish intellect had
that night become suddenly charged with a ready man's swiftness.

Mona went to the door. "Come in," she said; but Davy would not come. He
must speak with her outside, and she went out to him.

He was trembling visibly.

"What is it?" she said.

"Mistress Mona," said Davy, in a voice of great emotion, "it's as true
as the living God."

"What?" she said.

"He's alive--ould Kerry said true--he's alive, and coming back."

Mona glanced into his face by the dull light that came through the
window. His eyes, usually dull and vacant, were aflame with a strange
fire. She laid one hand on the door-jamb, and said, catching her breath,
"Davy, remember what the men said long ago--that they saw him lying in
the snow."

"He's alive, I'm telling you--I've seen him with my own eyes."

"Where?"

"I went down to Patrick this morning to meet the priest coming up--but
it's no priest at all--it's--it's--it's _him_."

Again Mona drew her breath audibly.

"Think what you are saying, Davy. If it should not be true! Oh, if you
should be mistaken!"

"It's Bible truth, Mistress Mona--I'll go bail on it afore God
A'mighty."

"The priest, you say?"

"Aw, lave it to me to know Mastha--I mean--_him_"

"I must go in, Davy. Good-night to you, and thank you--Good-night,
and--" the plaintive tenderness of her voice broke down to a sob. "Oh,
what can it all mean?" she exclaimed more vehemently.

Davy turned away. The low moan of the sea came up through the dark
night.

V

It happened that after service the next morning the Bishop and Thorkell
walked out of the chapel side by side.

"We are old men now, Gilcrist," said Thorkell, "and should be good
friends together."

"That is so," the Bishop answered.

"We've both lost a son, and can feel for each other."

The Bishop made no reply.

"We're childless men, in fact."

"There's Mona, God bless her!" the Bishop said, very softly.

"True, true," said Thorkell, and there was silence for a moment.

"It was partly her fault when she left me--partly, I say;--don't you
think so, Gilcrist?" said Thorkell, nervously.

"She's a dear, sweet soul," the Bishop said.

"It's true."

They stepped on a few paces, and passed by the spot whereon the two
fishermen laid down their dread burden from the Mooragh seven years
before. Then Thorkell spoke again and in a feverish voice.

"D'ye know, Gilcrist, I sometimes awake in the night crying 'Ewan!
Ewan!'"

The Bishop did not answer, and Thorkell, in another tone, asked when the
Irish priest was to reach Michael.

"He may be here to-morrow," the Bishop said.

Thorkell shuddered.

"It must be that God is revenging himself upon us with this fearful
scourge."

"It dishonors God to say so," the Bishop replied. "He is calling upon us
to repent."

There was another pause, and then Thorkell asked what a man should do to
set things right in this world if perchance he had taken a little more
in usury than was fair and honest.

"Give back whatever was more than justice," said the Bishop promptly.

"But that is often impossible, Gilcrist."

"If he has robbed the widow, and she is dead, let him repay the
fatherless."

"It is impossible--I tell you, Gilcrist, it is impossible--impossible."

As they were entering the house Thorkell asked if there was truth in the
rumor that the wells had been charmed.

"To believe such stories is to be drawn off from a trust in God and a
dependence on his good providence," said the Bishop.

"But I must say, brother, that strange things are known to happen. Now I
myself have witnessed extraordinary fulfilments."

"Superstition is a forsaking of God, whom we have most need to fly to in
trouble and distress," the Bishop answered.

"True--very true--I loathe it; but still it's a sort of religion, isn't
it, Gilcrist?"

"So the wise man says--as the ape is a sort of a man."

VI

Three days later the word went round that he who had been looked for was
come to Michael, and many went out to meet him. He was a stalwart man,
straight and tall, bony and muscular. His dress was poverty's own
livery: a gray shapeless sack-coat, reaching below his knees, curranes
on his feet of untanned skin with open clocks, and a cap of cloth, half
helmet and half hood, drawn closely down over his head. His cheeks were
shaven and deeply bronzed. The expression of his face was of a strange
commingling of strength and tenderness. His gestures were few, slow, and
gentle. His measured step was a rhythmic stride--the stride of a man who
has learned in the long endurance of solitude to walk alone in the ways
of the world. He spoke little, and scarcely answered the questions which
were put to him. "Aw, but I seem to have seen the good man in my
drames," said one; and some said "Ay" to that, and some laughed at it.

Within six hours of his coming he had set the whole parish to work. Half
of the men he sent up into the mountains to cut gorse and drag it down
to the Curraghs in piles of ten feet high, tied about with long sheep
lankets of twisted straw. The other half he set to dig trenches in the
marshy places. He made the women to kindle a turf fire in every room
with a chimney-flue, and when night came he had great fires of gorse,
peat, withered vegetation, and dried sea-wrack built on the open spaces
about the houses in which the sickness had broken out. He seemed neither
to rest nor eat. From sick house to sick house, from trench to trench,
and fire to fire, he moved on with his strong step. And behind him, at
all times, having never a word from him and never a look, but trudging
along at his heels like a dog, was the man-lad, Davy Fayle.

Many of the affrighted people who had taken refuge in the mountains
returned to their homes at his coming, but others, husbands and fathers
chiefly, remained on the hills, leaving their wives and families to fend
for themselves. Seeing this, he went up and found some of them in their
hiding-places, and shaming them out of their cowardice, brought them
back behind him, more docile than sheep behind a shepherd. When the
ex-town-watch, Billy-by-Nite, next appeared on the Curraghs in the round
of his prophetic itineration, the strange man said not a word, but he
cut short the vehement jeremiad by taking the Quaker prophet by legs and
neck, and throwing him headlong into one of the drain-troughs newly dug
in the dampest places.

But the strength of this silent man was no more conspicuous than his
tenderness. When in the frenzy of their fever the sufferers would cast
off their clothes, and try to rise from their beds and rush into the
cooler air from the heat by which he had surrounded them, his big horny
hands would restrain them with a great gentleness.

Before he had been five days in Michael and on the Curraghs the sickness
began to abate. The deaths were fewer, and some of the sick rose from
their beds. Then the people plied him with many questions, and would
have overwhelmed him with their rude gratitude. To their questions he
gave few answers, and when they thanked him he turned and left them.

They said that their Bishop, who was grown feeble, the good ould angel,
thought it strange that he had not yet visited him. To this he answered
briefly that before leaving the parish he would go to Bishop's Court.

They told him that Mistress Mona, daughter of the Deemster that was, bad
cess to him, had been seeking him high and low. At this his lip
trembled, and he bent his head.

"The good man's face plagues me mortal," said old Billy-the-Gawk.
"Whiles I know it, and other whiles I don't."

VII

Only another day did the stranger remain in Michael, but the brief times
was full of strange events. The night closed in before seven o'clock. It
was then very dark across the mountains, and the sea lay black beyond
the cliffs, but the Curraghs were dotted over with the many fires which
had been kindled about the infected houses.

Within one of these houses, the home of Jabez Gawne, the stranger stood
beside the bed of a sick woman, the tailor's wife. Behind him there were
anxious faces. Davy Fayle, always near him, leaned against the door-jamb
by the porch.

And while the stranger wrapped the sweltering sufferer in hot blankets,
other sufferers sent to him to pray of him to come to them. First there
came an old man to tell of his grandchild, who had been smitten down
that day, and she was the last of his kin whom the Sweat had left alive.
Then a woman, to say that her husband, who had started again with the
boats but yesterday, had been brought home to her that night with the
sickness. He listened to all who came, and answered quietly, "I will
go."

At length a young man ran in and said, "The Dempster's down. He's
shouting for you, sir. He sent me hot-foot to fetch you."

The stranger listened as before, and seemed to think rapidly for a
moment, for his under lip trembled, and was drawn painfully inward. Then
he answered as briefly as ever, and with as calm a voice, "I will go."

The man ran back with his answer, but presently returned, saying, with
panting breath, "He's rambling, sir; raving mad, sir; and shouting that
he must be coming after you if you're not for coming to him."

"We will go together," the stranger said, and they went out immediately.
Davy Fayle followed them at a few paces.

VIII

Through the darkness of that night a woman, young and beautiful, in
cloak and hood like a nun's, walked from house to house of the Curraghs,
where the fires showed that the sickness was still raging. It was Mona.
These three days past she had gone hither and thither, partly to tend
the sick people, partly in hope of meeting the strange man who had come
to cure them. Again and again she had missed him, being sometimes only a
few minutes before or after him.

Still she passed on from house to house, looking for him as she went in
at every fresh door, yet half dreading the chance that might bring them
face to face.

She entered the house where he had received her father's message almost
on the instant when he left it. The three men had gone by her in the
darkness.

Jabez, the tailor, who sat whimpering in the ingle, told her that the
priest had that moment gone off to Ballamona, where the Dempster that
was--hadn't she heard the newses?--was new down with the Sweat.

Her delicate face whitened at that, and after a pause she turned to
follow. But going back to the hearth, she asked if the stranger had been
told that the Bishop wanted to see him. Jabez told her yes, and that he
had said he would go up to Bishop's Court before leaving the parish.

Then another question trembled on her tongue, but she could not utter
it. At last she asked what manner of man the stranger was to look upon.

"Aw, big and sthraight and tall," said Jabez.

And Billy-the-Gawk, who sat at the opposite side of the ingle, being kin
to Jabez's sick wife, said, "Ay, and quiet like, and solemn
extraordinary."

"A wonderful man, wonderful, wonderful," said Jabez, still whimpering.
"And wherever he comes the Sweat goes down before him with a flood."

"As I say," said Billy-the-Gawk, "the good man's face plagues me mortal.
I can't bethink me where I've seen the like of it afore."

Mona's lips quivered at that word, and she seemed to be about to speak;
but she said nothing.

"And the strong he is!" said Jabez: "I never knew but one man in the
island with half the strength of arm as him."

Mona's pale face twitched visibly, and she listened as with every
faculty.

"Who d'ye mane?" asked Billy-the-Gawk.

At that question there was a moment's silence between the men. Then each
drew a long breath, dislodged a heavy burden from his throat, glanced
significantly up at Mona, and looked into the other's face.

"_Him_," said Jabez, in a faint underbreath, speaking behind his hand.

"_Him?_"

Billy-the-Gawk straightened his crooked back, opened wide his rheumy
eyes, pursed up his wizened cheeks, and emitted a low, long whistle.

"Lord A'mighty!"

For an instant Jabez looked steadily into the old mendicant's face, and
then drew himself up in his seat--

"Lord a-massy!"

Mona's heart leaped to her mouth. She was almost beside herself with
suspense, and felt an impulse to scream.

IX

Within a week after old Thorkell had conversed with the Bishop about the
rumor that the wells had been charmed, his terror of the sickness had
grown nigh to madness. He went to church no longer, but shut himself up
in his house. Night and day his restless footstep could be heard to pass
from room to room, and floor to floor. He ate little, and such was his
dread of the water from his well that for three days together he drank
nothing. At length, burning from thirst, he went up the Dhoon Glen and
drank at a pool, going down on hands and knees to lap the water like a
dog. Always he seemed to be mumbling prayers, and when the bell of the
church rang, no matter for what occasion, he dropped to his knees and
prayed audibly. He forbade the servants of the house to bring him news