The Carlisle independent., 1915-06-10
CHAPTER XIX.
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 vital and memor- able incident had been added to his already overfull measure of experi- 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 loomed up before him as a specter that had neither shape nor substance ant 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 elation that came to him as he looked into Frederic's face with it's closed eyes, and the agony of suspense that now consumed him, but a cloud still l T.; Is. could not penetrate nor his physical being dispel, no matter how hard he struggled to clear way to the open.
 He had seen a vision. Its effect on him had been overpowering. The for titude of lifetime had been shattered in a single instant of contact with the influence that had at last made itself i felt in physical manifestation after all these years of spiritual attendance. He had never been completely free from i 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 foreetfulness for a single in- stant Of the hours when he was awake. He had never tried to banish 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. 1o l fo new complexities. He was confronted by the most improbable of hallucina- tions. It was not an intangible shadow that he now had to contend with but something definite, something that took shape and mocked him. In his bitter indictment against circum- stances, he argued that his 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 It was only reasonable to assume that he had sui fered from the effect of startling, vivid Authorization, and yet there was l strange, insistent voice somewhere in his clearing mind that persuaded HAIL against iliS VIII llidl uS lidQ dOludi- i 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 belief that she, and not the skilled surgeon, would check the sure progress of death. Something told him that she represented 9 force even mightier than death and that she would prevail, no matter what betide.
 He had refused to see the newspa- per men who came Doctor Holder wisely had protested against secrecy. Murder will out he had said fret fully, little realizing how closely the trite old saying applied to the situa- tion. He had accepted the statements of Yvonne and Ranjab as to the acci- dental discharge of the weapon, but for some reason had refrained from