CHAPTER I.-THE LEGEND OF THE SABBATH NIGHT.
THE fire-eating Major was
dying in The House, at the tail
of the den, which stood aglow
against the October midnight.
Outside, the autumn trees
swayed athwart the windows,
from all of which, save one,
from cellar to attic, guttering
candles (as it seemed) and
strange tongues of flame flung
contorted shadows and reflec-
tions. They streaked the loan,
mottled the red rocks in the
den, and squirmed bloodily in
the burn beneath them, and,
climbing above, played capering
antics among the gardens and
house-ends of the Back Bowes.
In the one window lay the
shaded light, by which two
women watched the tough old
gentleman wear away the last
moments of his seventy-two
years.
All in the village who could
tumble out of bed were in the
Tullis's garden. They huddled
together at the spectacle, and
held their breath upon strange
sounds that reached them from
The House, the crack of flying
axles, the rattle of chains, at
times a sharp, uncanny treble
struck athwart the hum of
voices, and the eerie whining of
the Major's mare there in the
pauses. The three souls in the
Major's room (so said two of
them) saw and heard none of
these things: if the Devil sent
his messengers for Major Mac-
Nab, he himself did not know
it, and his niece and his nursing-
woman did not so much as
1 Copyright, 1901, by Dodd, Mead, & Co., in the United States of America.