The Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Megapack. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

was aroused from her first sleep by a distressed voice at her bedroom window, crying, “Miss Moore! Miss Moore!”

      She spoke to her husband, who opened the window. “What’s wanted?” he asked, peering out into the darkness.

      “Priscilla’s sick,” moaned the distressed voice; “awful sick. She’s fainted, an’ I can’t bring her to. Go for the doctor—quick! quick! quick! The voice ended in a shriek on the last word, and the speaker turned and ran back to the cottage, where, on the bed, lay a pale, gaunt woman, who had not stirred since she left it. Immovable through all her sister’s agony, she lay there, her features shaping themselves out more and more from the shadows, the bedclothes that covered her limbs taking on an awful rigidity.

      “She must have died in her sleep,” the doctor said, when he came, “without a struggle.”

      When Mary Brown really understood that her sister was dead, she left her to the kindly ministrations of the good women who are always ready at such times in a country place, and went and sat by the kitchen window in the chair which her sister had occupied that afternoon.

      There the women found her when the last offices had been done for the dead.

      “Come home with me tonight,” one said; “Miss Green will stay with her,” with a turn of her head towards the opposite room, and an emphasis on the pronoun which distinguished it at once from one applied to a living person.

      “No,” said Mary Brown; “I’m a goin’ to set here an’ listen.” She had the window wide open, leaning her head out into the chilly night air.

      The women looked at each other; one tapped her head, another nodded hers. “Poor thing!” said a third.

      “You see,” went on Mary Brown, still speaking with her head leaned out of the window, “I was cross with her this afternoon because she talked about hearin’ music. I was cross, an’ spoke up sharp to her, because I loved her, but I don’t think she knew. I didn’t want to think she was goin’ to die, but she was. An’ she heard the music. It was true. An’ now I’m a-goin’ to set here an’ listen till I hear it too, an’ then I’ll know she ain’t laid up what I said agin me, an’ that I’m a-goin’ to die too.”

      They found it impossible to reason with her; there she sat till morning, with a pitying woman beside her, listening all in vain for unearthly melody.

      Next day they sent for a widowed niece of the sisters, who came at once, bringing her little boy with her. She was a kindly young woman, and took up her abode in the little cottage, and did the best she could for her poor aunt, who, it soon became evident, would never be quite herself again. There she would sit at the kitchen window and listen day after day. She took a great fancy to her niece’s little boy, and used often to hold him in her lap as she sat there. Once in a while she would ask him if he heard any music. “An innocent little thing like him might hear quicker than a hard, unbelievin’ old woman like me,” she told his mother once.

      She lived so for nearly a year after her sister died. It was evident that she failed gradually and surely, though there was no apparent disease. It seemed to trouble her exceedingly that she never heard the music she listened for. She had an idea that she could not die unless she did, and her whole soul seemed filled with longing to join her beloved twin sister, and be assured of her forgiveness. This sister-love was all she had ever felt, besides her love of God, in any strong degree; all the passion of devotion of which this homely, commonplace woman was capable was centred in that, and the unsatisfied strength of it was killing her. The weaker she grew, the more earnestly she listened. She was too feeble to sit up, but she would not consent to lie in bed, and made them bolster her up with pillows in a rocking-chair by the window. At last she died, in the spring, a week or two before her sister had the preceding year. The season was a little more advanced this year, and the apple-trees were blossomed out further than they were then. She died about ten o’clock in the morning. The day before, her niece had been called into the room by a shrill cry of rapture from her: “I’ve heard it! I’ve heard it!” she cried. “A faint sound o’ music, like the dyin’ away of a bell.”

      THE LITTLE MAID AT THE DOOR

      Joseph Bayley and his wife Ann came riding down from Salem village. They had started from their home in Newbury the day before, and had stayed overnight with their relative, Sergeant Thomas Putnam, in Salem village; they were on their way to the election in Boston. The road wound along through the woods from Salem to Lynn; it was some time since they had passed a house.

      May was nearly gone; the pinks and the blackberry vines were in flower. All the woods were full of an indefinite and composite fragrance, made up of the breaths of myriads of green plants and seen and unseen blossoms, like a very bouquet of spring. The newly leaved trees cast shadows that were as much a part of the tender surprise of the spring as the new flowers. They flickered delicately before Joseph Bayley and his wife Ann on the grassy ridges of the road, but they did not remark them. Their own fancies cast gigantic projections which eclipsed the sweet show of the spring and almost their own personalities. That year the leaves came out and the flowers bloomed in vain for the people in and about Salem village. There was epidemic a disease of the mind which deafened and blinded to all save its own pains.

      Ann Bayley on the pillion snuggled closely against her husband’s back; her fearful eyes peered at the road around his shoulder. She was a young and handsome woman; she had on her best mantle of sad-colored silk, and a fine black hood with a topknot, but she did not think of that.

      “Joseph, what is that in the road before us?” she whispered, timorously.

      He pulled up the horse with a great jerk.

      “Where?” he whispered back.

      “There! there! at the right; just beyond that laurel thicket. ’tis some what black, an’ it moves. There! there! Oh, Joseph!”

      Joseph Bayley sat stiff and straight in his saddle, like a soldier; his face was pale and stern, his eyes full of horror and defiance.

      “See you it?” Ann whispered again. “There! now it moves. What is it?”

      “I see it,” said Joseph, in a loud, bold voice. “An’ whatever it be, I will yield not to it; an’ neither will you, goodwife.”

      Ann reached around and caught at the reins. “Let us go back,” she moaned, faintly. “Oh, Joseph, let us not pass it. My spirit faints within me. I see its back among the laurel blooms. ’tis the black beast they tell of. Let us turn back, Joseph, let us turn back!”

      “Be still, woman!” returned her husband, jerking the reins from her hand. “What think ye ’twould profit us to turn back to Salem village? I trow if there be one black beast here, there is a full herd of them there. There is naught left but to ride past it as best we may. Sit fast, an’ listen you not to it, whatever it promise you.” Joseph looked down the road towards the laurel bushes, his muscles now as tense as a bow. Ann hid her face on his shoulder. Suddenly he shouted, with a great voice like a herald: “Away with ye, ye cursed beast! away with ye! We are not of your kind; we are gospel folk. We have naught to do with you or your master. Away with ye!”

      The horse leaped forward. There was a great cracking among the laurel bushes at the right, a glossy black back and some white horns heaved over thorn, then some black flanks plunged heavily out of sight.

      “Oh!” shrieked Ann, “has it gone? Goodman, has it gone?”

      “The Lord hath delivered us from the snare of the enemy,” answered Joseph, solemnly.

      “What looked it like, Joseph, what looked it like?”

      “Like no beast that was saved in the ark.”

      “Had it fiery eyes?” asked Ann, trembling.

      “’Tis well you did not see them.”

      “Ride fast! oh, ride fast!” Ann pleaded, clutching hard at her husband’s cloak. “It may follow on our track.” The horse went down the road at a quick trot. Ann kept peering back and starting at every sound in the