He put his hand to his head. "Ah, yes," he said, "I remember. I have been dreaming". …
He looked round the room in a bewildered way; then, struck all at once by the strange disorder of the furniture, asked what was the matter.
I told him in the least alarming way, and with the fewest words I could muster, but before I could get to the end of my explanation he was up, ready for resistance, and apparently himself again.
"Where are they?" he said. "What are they doing now? Outside, do you say? Why, good heavens! man, they're blocking us in. Listen!—don't you hear?—it is the rustling of straw. Bring the blunderbuss! quick!—to the window. … God grant we may not be too late!"
We both rushed to the window; Bergheim to undo the shutter, and I to shoot down the first man in sight.
"Look there!" he said, and pointed to the door.
A thin stream of smoke was oozing under the threshold and stealing upward in a filmy cloud that already dimmed the atmosphere of the room.
"They are going to burn us out!" I exclaimed.
"No, they are going to burn us alive," replied Bergheim, between his clenched teeth. "We know too much, and they are determined to silence us at all costs, though they burn the house down over our heads. Now hold your breath, for I am going to open the window, and the smoke will rush in like a torrent."
He opened it, but very little came in—for this reason, that the outside was densely blocked with straw, which had not yet ignited.
In a moment we had dragged the table under the window—put our weapons aside ready for use—and set to work to cut our way out.
Bergheim, standing on the table, wrenched away the straw in great armfuls. I caught it, and hurled it into the middle of the room. We laboured at the work like giants. In a few moments the pile had mounted to the height of the table. Then Bergheim cried out that the straw under his hands was taking fire, and that he dared throw it back into the room no longer!
I sprang to his aid with the two hatchets. I gave him one—I fell to work with the other. The smoke and flame rushed in our faces, as we hewed down the burning straw.
Meanwhile, the room behind us was full of smoke, and above the noise of our own frantic labour we heard a mighty crackling and hissing, as of a great conflagration.
"Take the blunderbuss—quick!" cried Bergheim, hoarsely. "There is nothing but smoke outside now, and burning straw below. Follow me! Jump as far out as you can, and shoot the first you see!"
And with this, he leaped out into the smoke, and was gone!
I only waited to grope out the blunderbuss; then, holding it high above my head, I shut my eyes and sprang after him, clearing the worst of the fire, and falling on my hands and knees among a heap of smouldering straw and ashes beyond. At the same instant that I touched the ground, I heard the sharp crack of a rifle, and saw two figures rush past me.
To dash out in pursuit without casting one backward glance at the burning house behind me—to see a tall figure vanishing among the trees, and two others in full chase—to cover the foremost of these two and bring him down as one would bring down a wolf in the open, was for me but the work of a second.
I saw him fall. I saw the other hesitate, look back, throw up his hands with a wild gesture, and fly towards the hills.
The rest of my story is soon told. The one I had shot was Friedrich, the younger brother. He died in about half an hour, and never spoke again. The elder escaped into the forest, and there succeeded in hiding himself for several weeks among the charcoal-burners. Being hunted down, however, at last, he was tried at Heilbronn, and there executed.
The pair, it seemed, were practised murderers. The pond, when dragged, was found to contain four of their victims; and when the crumbling ruins of the homestead were cleared for the purpose, the mortal remains of a fifth were discovered under the hearth, in that kitchen which had so nearly proved our grave. A store of money, clothes, and two or three watches, was also found secreted in a granary near the house; and these things served to identify three out of the five corpses thus providentially brought to light.
My friend, Gustav Bergheim (now the friend of seventeen years) is well and prosperous; married to his "Mädchen;" and the happy father of a numerous family. He often tells the tale of our terrible night on the borders of the Black Forest, and avers that in that awful dream in which his senses came back to him, he distinctly saw, as in a vision, the mouldering form beneath the hearth, and the others under the sluggish waters of the pond.
THE STORY OF SALOME.
A few years ago, no matter how many, I, Harcourt Blunt, was travelling with my friend Coventry Turnour, and it was on the steps of our hotel that I received from him the announcement that he was again in love.
"I tell you, Blunt," said my fellow-traveller, "she's the loveliest creature I ever beheld in my life."
I laughed outright.
"My dear fellow," I replied, "you've so often seen the loveliest creature you ever beheld in your life."
"Ay, but I am in earnest now for the first time."
"And you have so often been in earnest for the first time! Remember the innkeeper's daughter at Cologne."
"A pretty housemaid, whom no training could have made presentable."
"Then there was the beautiful American at Interlaken."
"Yes; but—"
"And the bella Marchesa at Prince Torlonia's ball."
"Not one of them worthy to be named in the same breath with my imperial Venetian. Come with me to the Merceria and be convinced. By taking a gondola to St. Mark's Place we shall be there in a quarter of an hour."
I went, and he raved of his new flame all the way. She was a Jewess—he would convert her. Her father kept a shop in the Merceria—what of that? He dealt only in costliest Oriental merchandise, and was as rich as a Rothschild. As for any probable injury to his own prospects, why need he hesitate on that account? What were "prospects" when weighed against the happiness of one's whole life? Besides, he was not ambitious. He didn't care to go into Parliament. If his uncle, Sir Geoffrey, cut him off with a shilling, what then? He had a moderate independence of which no one living could deprive him, and what more could any reasonable man desire?
I listened, smiled, and was silent. I knew Coventry Turnour too well to attach the smallest degree of importance to anything that he might say or do in a matter of this kind. To be distractedly in love was his normal condition. We had been friends from boyhood; and since the time when he used to cherish a hopeless attachment to the young lady behind the counter of the tart-shop at Harrow, I had never known him "fancy-free" for more than a few weeks at a time. He had gone through every phase of no less than three grandes passions during the five months that we had now been travelling together; and having left Rome about eleven weeks before with every hope laid waste, and a heart so broken that it could never by any possibility be put together again, he was now, according to the natural course of events, just ready to fall in love again.
We landed at the traghetto San Marco. It was a cloudless morning towards the middle of April, just ten years ago. The Ducal Palace glowed in the hot sunshine; the boatmen were clustered, gossiping, about the quay; the orange-vendors were busy under the arches of the piazzetta; the flâneurs were already eating ices and smoking cigarettes outside the cafés. There was an Austrian military band, strapped, buckled, moustachioed, and white-coated, playing just in front of St. Mark's; and the shadow of the great bell-tower slept all across the square.
Passing under the low round archway leading to the Merceria, we plunged at once into that cool labyrinth of narrow, intricate, and