AD FINEM-A PARABLE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1423, 8 June 1899, Page 11

AD FINEM-A PARABLE.

(By Riccardo Stephens)

In the night, and in a lonely place, one man killed another who had injured him. Having done this, he said to himself, “ Now I can sleep, for his tongue and hand are quieted for evermore,” and, going home he slept. Bu before night had passed he awoke, cold, and saw that, while his wife slept by his side, at the other side of the bed, stood the Dead Man, whose hand was laid upon him. Then he laughed, saying, “You are dead, why should I fear you? ” and fell asleep again, though the cold blood crept about his heart and numbed his brain—and when he awoke the sun shone brightly, a blackbird sang lustily outside the window, and he said, “Here is an end of dreams ! ”

That day, while eating, he felt a cold wind upon his cheek, and turning to look he found that the Dead Man touched him. At this he said nothing, others being there, but presently got up and left the room. In another place, he and the Dead Man going side by side, he said again, “ You are dead, why should I fear you” But this time the Dead Man answered, saying, “Because I am dead,” and vanished.

After that the Dead Man came often, choosing, mostly, the times when the other would be for amusement or sleep, sometimes coming while he laughed, when the laugh died in his throat, for the thing began to wear him away, as many light feet will wear away a stone. Often he looked at his flesh where the Dead Man touched him wondering to see no mark there, until, even by looking, he saw one.

Then, at last, he told his wife all, hurriedly, under his breath, bending to her ear, but with a wandering eye for the Dead Man, who never came. “For this thing,” he said, “I cannot sit quiet in my house by day, or sleep in my bed at night; but I have a way that will fool him. There is a trick that I learned in the East, by which I can myself be like a dead man, breathless and with a still heart. In that state you shall have me buried deep, the earth well trodden down. Let it be on a hill top 30 that at nights I may sleep alon with the wind and the stars. A twelvemonth hence you shall come and dig me up again. By that time the *fching will have forgotten me, and I, sleeping, maybe shall nave forgotten it.” At thi3 the Dead Man, standing unseen at his elbow, laughed, but said nothing. Afterward the other seemed to die, too, the breath leaving his body, the blood ebbing from his cheek, until his enemy came and stood looking down upon him, while he looked back from halfclosed eyes, upon which they had already put death pennies, to keep down the lids. “You have me! said the other in his ear, but went away, laughing quietly.

Then his friends found a lonely resting place, and carried him up where sunrise and sunset could be sen, and where one felt every wind that blew, and was watched by all the stars. “ I shall sleep here,” said the man to himself, “for I shall have peace.” He had none.

The blades of grass as they sprouted over him called to one another, saying, that they covered the man who was hiding from the dead. The tnreads and ebginnigs of springs babbled of it as they began their journey, and he knew that their voices would grow louder, even unto the sea. The passing wind told it to the stars, who knew it already, and the earth whispered it in her sleep at night. As for the man, he could neither sleep nor move, and at least he prayed for the year’s end, which came neither sooner nor later for his praying, but in its own appointed time. With it came the sound of a releasing spade, and the man sobbed in his grave, saying, “Now I shall see my wife, and look upon the world once more.” But it was the dead man who dug down to him.—“ Cornish Magazine.”