The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1915-06-26
CHAPTER XIX.
The Voice Of the Wind.

The Voice Of the Wind.
Hours afterward Brood sat alone in
the room where the tragedy occurred
Much had transpired in the interim TO
make those hours seem like separate
and distinct years to him, each hour
an epoch in which a vital and memoir
able incident had been added to his
already overfulI measure of expert
ence. Underneath all was an ever
present sense of insecurity, as if the
whole order of life had been suddenly
deprived of foundation or support No
matter where he looked, there was not
the slightest ray of light in the dark
ness that enveloped his understand
ing Something tremendous had hap
pened, aside from the visible, phys
ical incident that had stunned him
temporarily at the outset of the tragic
era, something that was beyond com
prehension and intangible and which
continually doomed up before him as
specter that had neither shape nor
substance and yet was as completely
positive as anything else that had
transpired. He could account for the
shooting, the emotions preceding that
unhappy occurrence, the Intervention
of fate that saved Yvonne from death
and laid low the substitute, the sense
of horror that ensued, the sudden rev
citation that came to him as he looked
into Frederic's face with its closed
eyes. and the agony of suspense that
now consumed him, but a cloud still
hung over him that his intelligence
could not penetrate nor his physical
being dispel, no matter how hard he
struggled to clear a way to the open
He had seen a vision Its effect on
him had been overpowering. The for
titude of a lifetime had been shattered
in a single instant of contact with the
influence that had at last made itself
felt in physical manifestation after all
these years Of spiritual attendance. He
had never been completely free from
the vague notion that Matilde was
near him In spirit, that there was an
actual identity to the presence that
filled his dreams and denied him the
boon OF forgetfuIness for a single in
slant of the hours when he was awake
He had never tried to Danish her from
his memory. He wanted to forget her,
to put her out of his thoughts alto
gether, for obvious reasons, but the
fact that she remained the dominant
figure in his present despite the past
was proof, even to him, that she was
and always would be the controlling
force in his mind If not in his heart
Now he was ordering himself to face
new complexities. He was confronted
by the most improbable Of hallucina-
lions. It was not an intangible shadow
| that he now had to contend with but
something definite, something that
took shape and Knocked him. In his
bitter Indictment against circum-
stances, he argued that mis- brain was
mOmentarily unbalanced following the
shock caused by the shooting, and that
in its disordered state he had pictured
things that did not exist 1t was only
reasonable to assume that he had suf-
fered from the effect Of a startling,
vivid hallucinatiOn, and yet there was
| a strange, insistent voice somewhere
in his clearing mind that persuaded
him against his will that he had actual
ly seen the face Of Matilde.
Admitting that he had been deceived
| by a trick Of the imagination, there
| still remained certain indisputable
| facts to confound him First Of all,
the absolute conviction that Yvonne
had the power to preserve the life that
hung so precariously in the balance.
/ He could not overcome the amazing
heiief that she, and not. the skilled
I surgeon, would check the sure progress
OF death Something told him that she
represented a force even mightieT
| than death and that she would 0revafI
no matter what betide.
He had refused to see the nevspa-
per men who came. Doctor Holder
wisely had protested against secrecy.
Murder viii out" he had said fret
fully, little realizing how closely the
trite old saying applied to the situa-
ton He had accepted the statements
of YYonne and Ranjab as to the acct
dental discharge OF the weapon, but
/ for some reason had refrained from
I is for. The fearsome legend about the