The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1915-11-26
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 a vital and memOr.
able incident had been added to his
already overfull 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 loomed up before him as
specter that had neither shape nor
substance anG 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 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 way to the open
He had seen 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 forgetfulness 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
tons. 1t was not an intangible shadow
that he now had to contend with but
something definite, something tha'
took shape and Knocked him. In his
bitter indictment against circum
stances, he argued that his brain was
momentarily unbalanced following the
shock caused by the shooting, and tina
in it's disordered state he had pictured
things that did not exist 1t was onl.
reasonable to assume that he had sui
fered from the effect of startling
vivid hallucination, and yet there wa
a strange, insistent voice somewher
in his clearing mind that persuadet
him against his will that he had actual
ly seen the face of Matilde.
Admitting that he had been deceive
by trick Of the imagination, Their
still remained certain indisputabl
: facts to confound him. First of al
the absolute conviction that Yvonn
had the power to preserve the life tina
: hung so precariously in the balance
He could not overcome the amazin
belief that she, and not the skille
D surgeon, would check the sure progress
J. of death. Something told him that sh
: represented a force even mightie
h than death and that she would prevail
9 no matter what betide.
He had refused to see the newsp
d per men who came. Doctor Hodde
= wisely had protested against secrec
r Murder will out" he had said fre
h fully, little realizing how closely ii
d trite old saying applied to the stu
/, ton. He had accepted the statemen
a of Yvonne and Ranjab as to the acc
dental discharge Of the weapon, b
S for some reason had refrTined fro