The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-11

Wohe up dDOuJ l2 O CLOCK Wlln llle illoSt ghastly feeling. could barely breathe and l couldn't cry out for the nurse. knew somehow at once that death was in the house. I was covered with a cold sweat and my breath seemed to come with terrible effort. I thought it was me who was wanted and never thought of praying, you know, or any thing like that, I did like like Hannen, bit the pillow and held on desperate ly. l fancy it lasted about ten minutes and then there was suddenly the sweet
 est relief. The sweat passed, I breathed gently and went to sleep again, but
 knew death had passed and taken somebody.
 Tn the early morning I was awake when the nurse came with her medlcln- | es, and I asked her at once, What | time did Charlie die? Charley, you | know, was the boy left in the sick bay. | She stared and gasped and asked me who had been in the room talking to me, I told her nobody. She looked l frightened, and told me I was foolish l to think of such nonsense, and all that | sort of thing, you know. But she ran l out and brought in the doctor, who | chaffed me, you know, but felt my pulse and his eyes looked strange. | They stuck it out between them that Charley was all right, but knew from
 their eyes they were afraid to tell the | truth, because of the shock 1t might give us in our weak state. They own
 ed up after we were strong that Char
 Fey did die at 12 o'clock that night. But why, I wonder, you know, did death | nIr F., hics l other fellows rested quietly that night,
 and Charley was too far off in that big
 school for me to hear any noise in his | room."
 | Paget rose up and whispered to Is dale to ask if he wished for anything,
 but the sick lad was unconscious.
 1 Hell remain like that, do you l think?" he asked softly as he came back to the fire. No one answered. The moon was sailing now toward the shadowy peaks of the gloomy, distant mountains. From the darkness ot
 the far veldt came suddenly the long alarmed cry of deer bounced on by a lion. Isdale muttered and moved, and l Copeland threw wood on the fire and
 stirred it into a fierce blaze low
 voice spoke from the side of the flames furthest from the wagon.
 You were right, MT. Copeland said | Maynard, the old elephant hunter | right according to my idea about death coming never twice in just the | same shape. It seems to me he studies | the man he's sent after. and has his orders to disguise himself according | merciful or vengeful. But there may
 be more than that. l saw something | once which made me think that the | Lord sometimes allows wronged dead | man to come back at the appointed time and do deaths work It was in
 the north Transvaal country, long be-
 fore gold was found on the Wiwaters- | rand, but man called Blakely and I
 were prospecting and keeping as far away as we could from the Boers on
 one hand and the Zulus on the other, | We built bit of hut in q ravine in the hills and lay close. There l was
 taken i'll, and Blakely nursed me, and
 when I was nearly well it was his turn
 and I nursed him.
 "Blakely was always a silent, gium
 chap, and no particular pal of mine, but we had taken up together, because | two's better than one, and there was | nobody else about in Kimberly at the time we started out willing to risk his life prospecting in that wild country, for this thing was before the Zulu war. | Blakely was sick. I soon saw his chances were mighty slim to pull
 through. He had never talked to me before of where he'd come from or what he'd been doing, but now he got desirious, and began chattering at a great rate. I wasn't more than half re-
 covered myself, weak as girl, and a sight more nervous than most girls. 1 When he began to talk to people l had
 never heard of, as If they were present and to talk, too, of things 1t made me | white to hear of all alone in that si- lent, lonely hut in these horrible gloo- 1 my, watching mountains, l had mind
 to cut and run. But whatever he had
 been, he was mate now, and l stuck by
 him, wondering if I'd have strength
 enough to bury him descently deep.
 One night the rains came on, and you know what they are in the mountains.
 The water came down with a crash
 ing roar on the huge gray rocks which
 nigh edualled the rolling thunder peals in the clouds, I wanted a comrade bad ! lildJ HiSul. 1 II nave WticOintd Blakely was raving, and I was trem- 1 bling so with weakness and nervous fear could not bring him cup of wa
 ter without spilling it Then what must
 he do? What but get 1t into his crazy
 head I was priest, and he wanted to
 confess. He got out of his blankets and
 came to the log wood I was sitting on, | or shaking on, and knelt at my knees. In his deirium he was far stronger
 than I was, and I couldn't push him | away, he blurted it all out with all that
 crash of clouds and roar of rain to em- phasize the eternal horror of it.
 Those ghastly hills are full of the | ghosts of peoples long dead, seekers
 for gold. Men may laugh at the notion,
 but spend a day and a night among
 them alone and you'll know it for cer- tain. They were all out that night in the storm in and about our hut, and | Blakeley knew it. too, for if ever man was in hurry to confess and get ab-
 solution. he was that night. I'm not going to tell you the story in full. In-
 deed he was often incoherent. He's
 been in Australia with a. chap he called
 simply Tom, prospecting, of course. They'd had bad luck, and were about
 giving it up when Tom got news from
 home inclosing a draft for some hum T-El I.su~