but David Lane never moved a muscle. His

(FROM "THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD."') [David Lane is a deaf-mute who lives alone with his son on a wild island connected with the mainland by means of a rope bridge thrown across the intervening channel. His father and mother had been deaf-mutes like himself, but his son he suspects of being able to hear and speak. The attempts he makes to penetrate this mystery, and the results, are described in the following passage.]

When, on that August morning, Lane's son left his sleeping chamber in the hut, he found his father busily engaged preparing breakfast. The spirits of the boy seemed utterly crushed; the father was dull and gloomy, with a lowering danger in his eyes, but his actions were as kind as usual. He helped his son liberally to food, and pressed him to eat more when the boy appeared satisfied. But he did not kiss him, or fondle him, as was his custom. The boy's eyes were full of tears, and he could hardly swallow the potatoes and fish. He rarely looked at his father, and when their glances chanced to meet, the latter dropped

Meanwhile the father had taken the gun out of its hiding-place under the bed, examined it carefully at the nipple, and placed it against the inner edge of the door jamb. When this was done he stood outside the door, so as to command a view of the head of the path leading to the ledge, folded his arms, set his teeth, knit his brow, and waited.

The sky was serene and blue, not a cloud broke the infinite expanse. The light was cool and gracious, the air fresh and invigorating. The sea-fowl had by this time passed out far from shore, and their shrill dreary notes no longer floated above the dull low murmur of the swells two hundred and fifty feet below.

The boy was long, much longer than usual,

By permission of the author.

though a withering vapour from the pole had frozen him as he stood. The expression of his countenance was that of one awaiting fate rather than one expecting a foe, but it was tragic. Tragic with a dire resolution, and far down under the resolution a wild appalling grief. It was not the face of a man who thought. There was no trace of succession of ideas; but it seemed as though his mind, like his body, was frozen into one unalterable attitude; as though one picture were burned against that path, and nothing could displace it.

At length, above the level of the island, appeared the boy's head.

No muscle of the father moved. mained rigid.

He re

The shoulders and bust of the boy rose into view, then the arms and basket he carried. Still David Lane never stirred.

The figure of the child emerged completely, and he took one pace in the direction of the hut.

Instantly, as though the vitality of a thousand men had been flung upon him, the father sprang into the hut, seized the gun, lifted it to his shoulder, and aiming at the chimney-place,

fired.

The explosion was terrific, for the charge was large and the chamber small, and, in the calm of the morning, it seemed as though the Bishop's Island had been riven from summit to base.

Upon the instant he fired, quick as the flash itself, the man spun round on his heel and

looked at the door. No smoke had reached it. The smoke lay huddled in blue waves near the fireplace.

Then Lane folded his arms swiftly across his breast, knit his brows, and, setting his teeth, stood inside the door confronting fate,

as he had awaited it without.

In a second the boy bounded into the open, pale and awe-stricken. His eyes were wild with terror. He had lost his hat and his basket, and his hair waved hither and thither as if blown by a wind. When he saw his father standing safe before him, the expression changed electrically, and with a low moan of relief he stretched forth his arms and sank to the ground.

The father sprang back, as though the nether realms gaped at his feet, and with a wild shrill yell of despair threw his hands towards heaven, and with his upturned eyes and outstretched

In a few moments the father's arms dropped, the expression of his face altered, and his eyes fell upon the prostrate form in the doorway. Stepping hastily forward, he sprang over the child, and, having reached the open air, strode several times up and down the island, through the white warm sunshine and fragrant dewy air. Then he returned to the doorway and looked in.

The position of the figure had not changed in the least. Again David Lane turned away, and dashed hither and thither blindly. Once more he paused at the doorway. The boy had not moved. A sudden fear seemed to seize upon the father. He leaped into the hut, stooped near the fireplace, and examined the wall. Presently, with his fingers he picked something out from between two of the stones. Holding this to the light, he examined it carefully. Yes, it was the chief portion of the leaden bullet. It broke in two as he turned it in his hand, and showed in the interior an old seam. That was the cut through which the hand-line had passed.1 A look of angry perplexity now passed over his face, and his eyes turned once more to the ground, near the doorway.

Not a muscle had stirred; not a fold of the clothes had been displaced. Frowning heavily, as if he suspected a trick, the father crossed the room, stooped, and catching the child at the waist, lifted him. The head, and arms, and lower limbs, hung down limp and nerveless.

A spasm of horror passed over the features of the father, and he shook the child once, twice, thrice, without effect. Then lifting him higher, he carried him across the little chamber, and placed him on the bed where the boy's mother had died. He put a pillow under his son's head, drew down his limbs, and crossed the long arms over the breast. When this was done he sat down as far off as he could, and regarded the bed with a rigid expressionless air.

In a little while a light shot into his eyes. He rose, kindled a candle, and held the flame opposite the open lips. He had seen this done in Killard during the cholera years. The

1 A fishing-sinker had been used for a bullet.

The child breathed. He flung the candle down, and resumed his old position. He had seen death and sleep; these were the only forms of human unconsciousness with which he was familiar. But here was something which was more deep than sleep, less profound than death. What could it be? Was the boy ever to wake? If sleep, which is less powerful than this, lasts a night time, how long w 11 this last? A week or a month?

Death lasts for ever, and sleep for a night; when will this be over, and what is the end to be deeper or lighter sleep, death or waking?

Whichever it was, doubts that had haunted his mind for a long time were now made certainties. He had seen sea-fowl, which had been invisible, rise and fly away in terror at the firing of a gun, yet, unless he were quite close, and could feel the concussion, he could not tell a gun had been fired.

Tom the Fool had told him it was possible to know at a great distance that a gun had been fired, and that the knowledge came, not through the eyes or sense of touch, but through the ears. Nothing came to him through the ears. They were like fingers, they possessed feeling, nothing more.

Tom had told him the firing of a gun could be known through the ears farther off than anything else.

Accordingly, to make sure above all doubt, he had bought the gun. He had fired that gun, and his son knew he had fired that gun, although he could not know it by the sense of touch, or by the sight of smoke, for he had fired so that the boy could see no smoke. Therefore the boy got messages through his ears.

But his father had married a wife who got no messages through the ears; he had married a wife like himself in this respect; here was his boy now unlike him. His father had told him the gold could not be kept by any one who could send or receive news by the ears, hence he had married a wife like him, David, and he himself one like himself.

The women never knew of the gold, and could not tell anyone; his father had told him, and made him promise to marry a wife such as she that had died of the cholera, and to communicate the secret only to a son, and to a son who could neither know nor make known through the ears. Everyone else was to be kept in darkness; for if once the secret of

less to them, and they would all perhaps be slain, for his own father did not know the penalty.

Now here was the traitor, come in the person of his own boy. The boy he loved with all his heart and soul. Here was a traitor in his own house; one who, as soon as he knew of the secret, would send it abroad, and betray his own father unto death.

Yes, this son for whom he would freely have died, could not, on account of his accursed ears, help betraying his father. He would do it as a matter of certainty, as soon as he knew. Here, lying before him, was the only being on earth he cared for, and this being would hurl his own father to destruction on the very first opportunity. This boy would turn his own father off the Bishop's, tear up the island, and give his father to the police, not because of any want of affection, but because he was cursed with ears that felt and could send messages to other ears!

Monster! Hideous, unnatural child! Mysterious curse! Away! Away! Away! There is infinite malignity of terror in your presence! The boy's eyelids trembled. With a weary sigh he sat up and yawned, and smiled at his father. His eyes looked a little dull. He had forgotten what had passed.

When David Lane saw the boy return to consciousness and smile upon him, the look of angry dread gave place to one of frantic yearning. It seemed as though he strove with his eyes to draw his child back into his own nature. His heart hungered to absorb him; ' but he made no sign. His arms lay clasped upon his knees; his head was thrust forward, his figure motionless; but the agony of love betrayed was in his eyes.

There was no indignation now against his child. The worst possible certainty had been reached. If by any perversity of nature intelligible to himself he feared betrayal at the hands of his son, there might have been a struggle between indignation and love, and, for a time at least, love might have triumphed. But it was not his boy opposed him, but fate, in a form he could not understand. The son, by no fault of his own, but by the power of some curse, had been endowed by fate with an ability which he could not fail to exert for his father's destruction.

This boy, his own child, the idol of his life, his own flesh and blood, was the vessel of some spirit of wrath with power to work his destruction through mysterious and infallible

By this time the boy had realized all, and covered his face, and was weeping.

David Lane caught him by the shoulder and led him forth, flung the loop over the hook, and prepared the meshes for crossing the chasm. When this was done he made signs to the boy.

The latter turned pale with terror. The father repeated the signs calmly, without a trace of passion.

The boy appealed to him with outstretched hands.

Lane pointed to the mainland, and made a swift, decided gesture.

The child flung himself down moaning, and seized his father's knees and clasped them, and rested his pale tear-stained cheek against them in piteous supplication.

The deaf-mute never moved. His resolution was taken inexorably. Nothing could shake him. He raised his son gently, set him on his feet, and turning his back on him went towards the hut. In a few minutes he came back; the boy was gone.

Raising the rope he shook it free of the hook, and the island was cast off into isolation, and he into the rayless solitude of a life without a single love, a single hope, a single ambition, a single fear, save the one guilty one, not his own, but which seemed part of himself, born with his nature and laid upon him anew when first his father communicated the secret to him, and named the precautions and possible penalties in case of discovery.

When the rope once more hung idly down the dim deep cleft, Lane went into his own sleeping room. Something bright lying on the floor attracted his attention. He stooped and looked. It was his boy's clasp-knife. A sudden fury of sorrow seized him and shook him. His breath came short, his chest heaved, he bellowed aloud like a stricken beast. His blood-shot eyes ran fiercely round the place seeking something. Suddenly they stopped, riveted by the sight of the gun lying in a corner. He clutched it by the barrel as though he would drive the sides together, and with a hoarse yell dashed into the sunlight, sprang to the brink of the cliff facing the ocean, and swinging the weapon swiftly twice over his head, let it go, sending it far out into the sunlit air. With a sudden plunge it shot downward and disappeared for ever.