The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-07-10

s.s.s
screaming or grating sound exactly ike
that which his fancy had conjured up for
the unnatural Shrek of the dying dragon.
Roderick had gradually while his friend
read brought his chair around so that he
sat facing the door, at which he gazed
steadfastly. He was trembling now and
then and muttering. Els body rocked
from side to side with a gentle but uni
form sway. The friend began to read
again, but had not proceeded much fur
Their in the tale when he stopped. aware
of a hollow, metallic, dangerous yet muir
fed sound as II a shield of brass had fall
len upon floor of silver. Roderick be-
gan to speak in low. gibbering murmur.
a sickly smile quivered about his lips,
shudders passed over his body.
Hear It," he said. IT have heard 1t
long-long- longi Many minutes, many
hours, many days have heard it-yet I
dared not tell! Oh. pity me. miserable
wretch that l AMI dared rot-I dared
not speak. We have put her in a living
tomb Said l not that my senses were
acute? / will now tell you that I heard
her first, feeble STRINGS In her hollow
coffin. l heard them many days ago
yet I dared not tell! I dared not speak,
And now Ethelred-ha, hattie
death cry of the dragon and the clangor
of the shield; Say rather the rending
of her coffin and the grating of the iron
hinges of her prison, and her struggles
within the copper archway of the vault.
She is even now hurrying to upbraid me
with my haste in placing her In a tomb
He sprang furiously to his feet and cried
out with an effort as If he were giving
up his soul: .'Madman! I tell you she
stands now without that door'
The huge. antique leaves of the door
to which the maniac pointed threw them
selves back upon the instant. The rush.
ing gust 1t was that did 1t; but it seemed
as If they had opened in obedience to
some awful spell. And there, standing
just as Roderick had said, was the
shrouded form of the Lady Madeline
There was blood upon her white robes
and the evidences of a bitter struggle to
free herself from the vault in which
she had been unwittingly placed alive
while in cataleptic state by her brother
and his friend.
For an instant she stood trembling and
Keeling to and fro upon the threshold OF
the room, and then, with low, moaning
cry, threw herself upon her brother. He
fell to the floor in her embrace-fell deNd
through the horror of the thing, victim
of the terrors he had anticipated. Lady
Madeline, exhausted by her struggle to
free herself from the vault, fell beside
him In her final death agonies.
From the terrors of that chamber and
mind had been SO worked upon by the
associations and horrors which he had
endured while he had been a guest at
the House of Usher that he was incap-
able of regarding anything in a prac-
teal and natural light. The storm was
still abroad In its wrath, he found, as
he crossed the causeway. But suddenly
wild, red shaft of light shot along the
path, and he turned to see the source
whence a CLEAN so unusual could have
issued from the vast house and Its
shadows which were alone behind him.
| The radiance came from full, blood
red and setting moon, which mad now
| broken through the clouds, set so far
as to be below their canopy. And it shone
through that rift In the front of the man
sion which he had noticed upon his ar
rival as almost imperceptible, but extend
ing in a zigzag line from roof to founoa-
! ton The rift had enlarged, and, as he
watched, it grew still wider. There came
a mighty gusty of wind, and the great,
biood-red orb of the moon burst fully
upon his sight. His brain reeled as he
saw the walls of the building rushing
asunder. There was a great, prolonged,
tumultuous shouting, like the voice Of a
thousand waters and the deep. dark tarn
at his feet closed sullenly over the fraS-
ments of the House of Usher.
| Next weeks one-page classic will be
Stamford and Merton by Thomas Day.