LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1524, 6 January 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

SHADOWED FORTH. By the Author of "In the Dead of Night." I. It was a very foolish compact to make, but Osric and I were at an age when foolish things are often done. Neither of us was turned twenty-one. We were, in fact, nothing more than a couplo of boys, however much we might choose to fancy ourselves men of the world. My career in life was already decided upi I had elected to become an artist and earn my bread by means of my brush and palette. I attended the Life School assiduously, and had already exhibited at one of the minor galleries. I had a couple of rooms on a third floor in Bloomsbury, and my particular chum, Osric Imray, had the two immediately below mine. It was not a part of the town that his own tastes would have led him to live in. He had simply pitched his tent in that particular spot in order that he might be near me, although I was nothing but a poor painter, while he was the son of a rich banker, and, in all probability, would one day be a rich banker himself. But that was a point on which Osric as yet could not make up his mind. Ho hated the name of banker, and at present was coquetting with the law, as he had already coquetted with literature and the arts generally, only, only to discover, after a greater or lesser loss of time and labour, that he had no real vocation for any of them. His father, wise in his generation, did no more than urge him gently, as one might coax an obstinate but high-spirited horse towards the path he would have him follow. Mr Imray, senior, probably judged that when Osric should have had " his fling," and, after having tried half-a-dozen things, have thrown each of them up in turn, he would settle quietly down into the grove arranged for him by parental foresight. And the result proved the accuracy of his calculations. Meanwhile Osric had plenty of pocket money and very little to do, his legal studies being hardly more than a pleasant fiction, at whicn he was as ready to laugh as heartily as any one. Our evenings were nearly always spent either in his room or mine, and many were the wordy arguments, permeated through and through with tobacco smoke, in which we indulged on such occasions, On one particular winter evening, after befogging ourselves for a couple of hours with some of the super-subtleties of German memaphysics, our talk wandered away into another channel, and fell upon ghosts, apparitions, cases of second sight, and such like gruesome matters, till at length we so worked ourselves up that a louder rattle of wind in the chimney than ordinary made both of us start in our seats and stare at each other with frightened eyes.

It was on this evening that the compact which I Lave already designated as a foolish one, was made bctwo'jn Osric aDd myself. Wo agreed that whichever of us died firat should, if it were so permitted by the Unseen Power that rules the destinies of men, appear to the survivor and warn him of the event that had taken place. We were very much in earnest in the matter, and as a proof of our determination to carry out the agreement—if permitted to do so—we then and there made an exchange of ring 3. I think we were both a little bit r»3hamed of our folly next morning, and the topic was hardly ever alluded to again between us. But when, some four months later, Osric and I shook hands and said good-bye, knowing well that we should not fee each other for a long time to come, his last words to me were—' You have not forgotten our compact?' and mine an assurance that there was no likelihood of my doing so. Osric was oalled to Scotland by the fading health or his father, and a week afterwards I started for Italy, and did not again set foot in Kngiand for a couple of years. Ten years came snd wont, during which I only saw Osric some dozen times in all, and that was when he came to London on business. He had long ago settled down into a steady, plodding banker, and was all that his father could dceirc him to hn. Sometimes he camo south I wag in Cumberland or Wales, and at pther times he had not even an hour to spare, so that our

meetings were necessarily infrequent. But with the grip of each other's hand the old spirit of good fellowship came back on the instant —we were nineteen ngain, with the world all before us, and for tbc time boi::g the years that had parted us seemed to have no more substmce than a dream. October was here—October in Lakeland, bringing with it a change of weather that sent such brethren of the brush as, like late swallows, still lingered, flying southward as fast as steam could lend them wiug3. I too, was one of the fugitives, but I took my flight by easy stages, stopping for a night wherever whim or fancy dictated, and then forward again next morning. On a certain chill afternoon I found myself at a quaint old hostelry on the banks of the Dove. I was charmed with the appearance of the place, and decided to take up my quarters in it for the night. Supper, and then to bed, at the early hour of t<>n, pleasantly tired, but not so much so as to cause me to omit my favorite habit of reading myself to sleep. I put the candle on a little table close to the head of my bed, but well out of the way of the curtains After half an hour with my well-loved Elia I dropped quietly off, leaving the candle —a long one—still burning, a practice I generally adopt when sleeping in strange places. After sleeping for some time I awoke suddenly and completely, with a vivid sense upon me of not being alone in the room. I opened my eyes and stared round, bnt without lifting my head from the pillow. Sometimes on waking up in a strange room it has taken me a moment or two to recollect where I was, but in this case I recognised the room and its furniture in an instant. The candle had burnt low and was beginning to gutter. A quarter of an hour more and I should be left in darkness- All was silent, with a death-like oppressive silence such as one never experiences save in lonely country places, such as the town knows nothing of. Not a breath of wind to stir the branches outside, not the timid scratching of a mouse behind the wainscot, not even the faint friendly thud of far-off hoofs on the frosty high road. Nature, animate and inanimate, might have been struck with eternal death, and I the last man left alive in a world of shadows. I shivered involuntarily, and drew the bedclothes more closely about me. As I have already said, there was a vivid sense upon mo at the moment of waking of not being alone in the room. I had a feeling as if some one had been bending over me and breathing lightly on my forehead. I could feel the terror that shone out of my eyes in that first waking star© round the room, while my glance travelled from the clothes cupboard on one side, with the chair still in front of it that I had put there, to the locked door on the other side. But when nothiug met my view save the commonplace room and its commonplace furniture - as like a hundred other inn rooms I had slept in at various times as one pea is like another—and when with a quick swish I had dashed back the curtains at the head of the bed and had satisfied myself that no one was hiddenbehind them the terror that had gripped my heart but a moment before began to loosen its hold. Another minute, and I dropped back with a rebound into the world of work-a-day realities, in whioh such things as ghostly fancies and midnight tremors are either unknown, or known only to be ridiculed. With a shrug and a yawn I nestled down amongst my pillows, and made a mental memorandum never to eat potted trout for supper again. A minute or two later the death-like silence was broken by the faint chiming of some far-away clock. I put forth a la?,y hand, found my watch under the pillow, and drew it out to ascertain the time. It wan exactly half-past one. I was putting my watch back and was congratulating myself that I had still seven cozy hours of bed before me, when my wandering glance was caught and fixed by a strange and sinister-looking shadow on the ceiling of my room. I stared at it with wide-open eyes; and, as I stared, so vivid and realistic did it look, my heart for a moment or two seemed to stand still in dread expectancy, and I felt as if I were about to witness the consummation of some dire tragedy, which I was powerless to hinder or avert. But the shadow moved not for all my staring, and as before I had jeered at myself for allowing the foolish fancies that way'aid me at the moment of waking to have any effect upon me, so now I was not long in perceiving that what at the first glance had so startled me, could be, and was, nothing more than the shadow of a portion of the furniture of the bed, projected by the light of tho candle on to the ceiling, but distorted in the act, as shadows often are distorted, beyond ordinary recognition. But although I was perfectly satisfied in my own mind as to the cause of the shadow, I was none the less impressed by the singularity oE the effect thus obtained. What I saw was the representation of a man, cloaked and wearing a slouched hat—of a man with a remarkably hooked and parrot-like nose~in the act of stooping over some one or something unseen, and striking down at the same moment with a knife or short dagger. Although nothing but a shadow, it seemed instiuct with a sinister and murderous purpose. Life seemed to breathe from its every curve, You almost felt as if you could see the victim. An instant more and that dagger would descend.

I stretched forth my hand and moved the candlestick a couple of inches further to the right. At once the effect was gone. The shadow was still there, but it was a shadow without meaning or purpose. The slouched hat was gone, the hooked nose was gone, the dagger was gone Then I moved the candlestick a few inches to the left, the result being the production of another unmeaning shadow like nothing I had ever seen before. Then I replaced the candlestick as nearly as I could judge on the spot where it had first stood. I wanted to reproduce the first shadow, but the result was something altogether different. Slightly piqued at my illsuccess, I moved the candlestick here and and there, constantly varying the shape of the shadow, but never for a moment obtaining more than the slightest resemblance to the one that had so strangely startled to. It was unaccountable. Then, all at once, the candle ilared out for a moment—the next, darkness swallowed me up. As a rule the impressions which print themselves on our mental tablets during the dark hours, however vivied they may seem at the time, look but dim and faded reproductions of themselves in the clear light of morning So it was in the present case. The recollection of my midnight fancies served as food for a smile over breakfast; then more serious matters claimed me, and I put them aside as so many other trilles are put a3ide, to be remembered, perchance, at same odd moment now and then, or, perchance, forgotten for ever. Two days later I found myself in London, where some terrible news awaited me. My dear friend, Qsric Imray, had been murdered -—murdered and robbed while travelling by railway. It appeared that he had been from home, transacting certain business connected with the bank, and was on his return journey, having in his possession a large sura in uotey and drafts, when he met his sad fate, lie had bribed the guard to lock the door of his compartment, and so keep other passengers out, but at a certain station he was found stabbed to the heart. The bag that had contained his property was missing, and the carriage door was unlocked. Purse, wach, jewellery—all were gone. It was evident that fcliu murderer, whoever he might be, must have quitted his own conipajtmciuis while the train was fit, route, have obtained access to Imray's compartment, probably while the latter was asleep, and having accomplished his dieadful purpose, have gone back along the foot-boards of the carriages to his own seat. A daring deed to do, without a doubt, but certainly not an impossibility. At the next station the murderer had doubtless left the train like any ordinary passenger, and had mingled with, and been lost among the crowd before the discovery of his crime. So effectually had he taken his precautions that all efforts to trace him proved utterly unavailing. Gradually, as time went on, tho exoitement of tho public M'ore itself out, and the attention of tho police became absorbed in other and more immediate duties. (To be Continued*)