Carolina watchman. [volume] (Salisbury, N.C.) 1871-1937, 1932-06-17
FIFTEENTH INSTRUMENT

W1SSSAASoAASoSs
He turned to retrace his steps to
where he had left the trap when sud-
denly a muffled cry broke the silence.
1t sounded weird and unearthly, COM
ing, as it did, through the sitting fog
blanket, and Jonas felt his skin rise
in little pin points as he waited for it
to be repeated.
Then it came again woman S
wailing voice.
For a moment he stood petrified;
then he went blindly forward as
quickly as the hampering conditions
would permit, in the direction from
which he thought that cry came.
1t was not exactly a call for help
it was more like a frightened wall,
but it urged the boy on till suddenly
he pulled up sharply, only saving him
self with difficulty as he found he was
on the river bank.
A sloping, muddy bank, broken
away by much rain and weather; but
now the cry was nearer-almost at
his feet, it seemed-and he answered
1t with a shout, cupping his hands
round his mouth to make it carry fur
ther.
'Hullo -. there!"
His own sense of helplessness was
appalling; one might as we'll have been
imprisoned by walls as by this blanket
of increasing darkness. He shouted
again with all the strength of his
young voice, and then, suddenly, as if
BY a miracle, the fog bank seemed to
break for the smallest fraction of a
moment, like a curtain being slowly
raised by a hooking hand in order to
show him the thing he sought.
She was in the river its width
away from him =. /. a alf-drowned,
Piteous thing, clinging with frail
hands to the o~verhanging bough of a
rotting willow, her white face up
turned, her flaming dark hair dank
and horrible, her mouth wide open as
if to give utterance once more to that
wailing cry.
Jonas caught his breath; instinc-
lively he began to tear off his coat,
when the fog came silently down again
shutting her out, leaving him there,
shivering and helpless, on the muddy,
slippery bank.
1t seemed a lifetime before he could
nerve himself to fresh action. Every
thing was unreal, uncanny; the silent
ly flowing river like a half-dead pois-
o snake creeping by at his feet,
and the strange impenetrable menace
of the fog-enwrapped world.
Jonas seemed suddenly to see Di-
ana's face: her blue eyes, her sensitive
mobile face Little head running
over with gold 49,"
Diana would be happy again if he
left Miss Resale to die.
He was shivering from head to foot,
as with his whole body strained for
ward he started and stared into the
fog to where she had been.
OF what use was her life? What
did her happiness matter that anoth-
er's, SO much more precious, should be
sacrificed to it?
In the few seconds of his hesitation
it seemed to Jonas that he argued the
whole question out with cold ~calcula-
ton before, with an effort that SEEM
ed purely physical, he pulled himself
together and turned deliberately away.
Let her die nobody would ever
know.
II would do anything in the world
for you"
He had told Diana that more than
once, and he had meant it with every
fibre of his being. He was conscious
of a queer sense of triumph to think
that even though Diana would never
know, he was fulfilling his promises.
Then the cry came again: s~trangled,
weaker, o despairing, the cry that
might have come from a child or from
one of the lost lambs which he and
Shurey had sought for together one
bitter March month after a heavyI
fall of snow.
For one second still Jonas hesitated,
standing rigid, his head craned for
ward in strained attention; then he
turned back with quiet deliberation,
scrambled down the muddy bank, and
plunged into the icy river. !.
CHAPTER XIII
Anna was perturbed.
Half a dozen times she had been in
to Diana, and found her sleeping al
ways in the same position, lying on
her side, her face turned against the
pillows, an arm flung up above her
head.
Half a dozen times since the early
morning when Diana had come home,