THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES.

A FIND.

By JOSEPH CONRAD.

This tale, episode, experience call it how you will, was related in the fifties of the last century by a man who, by his own confession, was sixty years old at the time. Sixty is not such a bad age - unless in perspective when no doubt it is contemplated by the majority of us with mixed feelings. It is a calm age; the game is practically over by then, and standing aside one begins to remember with a certain vividness what a fine fellow one used to be. I have observed that, by an amiable attention of Providence most people at sixty can take a romantic view of themselves at sixty. Their very failures are a charm to me. And indeed the hopes of the future are a fine company to live with, exquisite forms, striking if you like, but - so to speak - naked, stripped for a run. The robes of glamour are the property of the immovable past which, without them, would sit a shivery sort of thing under the gathering shadows.

I suppose it was the romanticism of growing age which set our man to relate his experience for his own satisfaction or for the wonder of his posterity. It could not have been for his glory, because the experience was simply that of an abominable fright - terror he calls it. You would have guessed that the relation alluded to in the very first lines was in writing.

2.

This finding was declared in the form of the subtitle. The title itself is my own contrivance (can't call it invention) and has the merit of veracity. We will be concerned with an inn here. As to the witches that's merely a conventional expression and we must take our man's word for it that is the case. Persons thus designated had a witch-like appearance.

The finding was made in a box of books bought in London, in a street which no longer exists, from a second-hand bookseller in the last stage of decay. As to the books themselves they were at least twentieth-hand, and on inspection turned out not worth the very small sum of money that was found in them. It might have been some premonition of that fact which made me say: "But I must have the box too." The decayed bookseller assented by way of careless, tragic gesture of a man already doomed to extinction.

A litter of loose pages at the bottom of the box excited my curiosity faintly. The close, neat, irregular handwriting was not very attractive at first sight. But in one place the statement that in A.D. 1813, the writer was 22 years old caught my eye. Two and twenty is an interesting age in which one is easily reckless and easily frightened, the faculty of reflection being weak and the power of imagination strong.

In another place the phrase "Next morning we stood in again", arrested my languid attention, because it was a sea phrase. "Let's see what it is all about," I thought, without excitement.

3.

Oh! but it was a dull-faced MS, each line resembling every other line, close-set and regular. It was, in their place, like the drone of a monotonous voice. A treatise on sugar-refining (the dreariest subject I can think of) could have been given a more lively appearance. "In A.D. 1813 I was twenty-two years old," he begins earnestly and then goes on with every appearance of calm, horrible industry. Don't imagine however, that there is anything archaic in my find. Diabolic ingenuity in invention though as old as the world is by no means a lost art. Look at the telephones for shattering the little peace of mind given to us in this world, or at the machine guns for letting with dispatch life out of our bodies. Now-a-days any blear-eyed old witch if only strong enough to turn an insignificant little handle could lay low a hundred young men of twenty in the twinkling of an eye.

If this isn't progress! ..... Why immense! we have moved on and so you must expect to meet here a certain naiveness of contrivance and simplicity of aim appertaining to the epoch. And of course no motoring tourist can hope to find such an inn anywhere, now. This one, the one of the title, was situated in Spain. That much I only discovered from internal evidence because a good many pages of that relation were missing - perhaps not a great misfortune after all. The writer seemed to have entered into a most elaborate detail of the why and whereof of his presence on that coast - presumably the north coast of Spain. His

4.

experience has nothing to do with the sea, though. As far as I
can make it out, he was an officer on board a sloop-of-war.
There's nothing strange in that. At all stages of the long penin-
sular campaign many of our men-of-war, of the smaller kind were
cruising off the North coast of Spain - as risky and disagreeable
a station as can be well imagined.

It looks as though that ship had had some special service
to perform. A careful explanation of all the circumstances was
to be expected from our man, only, as I've said, some pages (good
tough paper too) were missing, so gone are the covers for jampots or
wadding for the fowling-pieces of an irreverent posterity. But
it is to be seen clearly that communication with the
shore and even the sending of messengers inland was part of her
service, either to obtain intelligence from or to transmit orders
or advice to patriotic Spaniards, guerilleros or secret juntas
of the province. Something of the sort. All this can be inferred
from the preserved scraps of conscientious writing.

Next we come upon the panegyric of a very fine sailor a
member of the ship's company, having the rating of the captain's
coxswain. He was known on board as Cuba Tom; not because he was
Cuban however; he was indeed the best type of a genuine British tar of that time, and a man of war's man for years. He
came by the name on account of some wonderful adventures he had
in that island in his young days, which were the favourite subject
of the yarns he was in the habit of spinning, of an evening on
the forcastle head. He was intelligent, very strong and of

5.

proved courage. Incidentally we are told, so exact is our
narrator, that Tom had the finest pigtail for thickness and
length of any man in the Navy. This appendage much
cared for and sheathed tightly in a porpoise skin hung half way
down his broad back to the great admiration of all beholders and
envy of some.

Our young officer dwells on the manly qualities of Cuba Tom
with something like affection. This sort of relation between
officer and man was not very rare. A youngster on joining the
service was put under the charge of a trustworthy seaman who
slung his first hammock for him and later on (often) became a sort
of humble friend to the junior officer. This man, the narrator
on joining the sloop, had found on board, after some years of separation,
there is something
touching in the warm pleasure he remembers and records at this
meeting with the professional mentor of his boyhood.

We discover then that no Spaniard being forthcoming this
worthy seaman with the unique pigtail and a very high character
for courage and steadiness, had been selected as messenger for
one of these missions inland which have been mentioned. His
preparations were not elaborate. One gloomy autumn morning the
sloop ran close to a bay on ainformative where a landing could be
made on that iron-bound shore. A boat was lowered and pulled in,
Tom Corbin, (Cuba Tom) perched in the bow and our young man (Mr.
Edgar Byrne was his name on this earth which knows him no more)
sitting in the stern sheets.

6.

A few inhabitants of a hamlet whose grey houses could be seen a hundred yards or so up a shallow ravine, had come to the shore and watched the approach of the boat. Two Englishmen leap ashore. Either from dullness or astonishment they gave no greeting, they fall back in silence.

Mr. Byrne had made up his mind to see Tom Corbin started fairly on his way. He looked round at the heavy surprised faces.

"There isn't much to get out of them" he said. "Let us walk up to the village. There will be a wine shop for sure where we may find somebody more promising to talk to and get some information from."

"Aye, aye, sir," said Tom falling into step behind his officer. "A bit of palaver as to courses and distances can do no harm; I crossed the broadest part of Cuba by the help of my tongue tho' knowing far less Spanish than I do now. As they say themselves it was 'four words and no more' with me, that time when I got left behind on shore by the Blanche, frigate."

He made light of what was before him which was but a day's journey into the mountains. It is true that there was another day's journey before striking the mountain path, but that was nothing for a man who had crossed the island of Cuba on his two abanks and with no more than four words of the language to begin with.

The officer and the man were walking now on a thick sodden bed of dead leaves which the peasants thereabouts accumulate in

7.

the streets of their villages to rot during the winter for field manure. Turning his head Mr. Byrne perceived that the whole male population of the hamlet was following them on the noiseless springy carpet. Women stared from the doors of the houses and the children had apparently gone into hiding. The village knew the ship by sight, afar off, but no stranger had landed on that spot perhaps for a hundred years or more. The cocked hat of Mr. Byrne, the bushy whiskers and the enormous pigtail of the sailor filled them with mute wonder. They pressed behind the two Englishmen staring like those islanders discovered by Captain Cook in the South Seas.

It was then that Byrne had his first glimpse of the little man in a yellow hat. Faded and dingy as it was, this garb made him noticeable.

The entrance to the wine shop was like a hole in a wall. The owner was the only person who was not in the street for he came out from the darkness at the back where the inflated forms of wine skins hung on nails could be vaguely distinguished. He was a tall, one-eyed Asturian with scrubby, hollow cheeks; a grave expression of countenance contrasted strangely with the roaming restlessness of his solitary eye. On learning that the matter in hand was the sending on his way of that English mariner toward a certain Gonzales in the mountains, he closed his good eye for a moment as if in meditation. Then opened it, very lively again.

8.

"Possibly, possibly. It could be done."

A murmur arose in the group in the doorway at the name of Gonzales the local leader against the French. Inquiring as to the safety of the road Byrne was glad to learn that no troops of that nation had been seen in the neighbourhood for months. Not the smallest little detachment of these impious Polizones. While giving these answers the owner of the wine-shop busied himself in drawing an earthenware jug of wine which he set before the heretic English, pocketing with grave abstraction the small piece of money the officer threw upon the table in recognition of the unwritten law that none may enter a wine-shop without buying drink. His eye was in constant motion as if it were trying to do the work of the two; but when Byrne made inquiries as to the possibility of hiring a mule it became immediately immovably fixed in the direction of the door. It was closely besieged by the curious, and in front of them, just within the threshold, the little man in the large cloak and yellow hat had taken his stand. He was a diminutive person, a mere homunculus, Byrne describes him, in a ridiculously mysterious, yet assertive attitude, a corner of his cloak thrown cavalierly over his left shoulder, muffling his chin and mouth; while his broad brimmed hat hung on a corner of his square little head. He stood there taking snuff, repeatedly.

"A mule" repeated the wine-seller his eyes fixed on that gnawt figure steadily. The diminutive man took snuff steadily.... "No, senor officer, decidedly no mule is to be got in this poor place."

9.

The coxswain who stood by with the true sailor's air of unconcern in strange surroundings, struck in quietly.

"If your honour will believe me Shank's pony's the best for this job. I would have to leave the beast somewhere, anyhow, since the Captain has told me that half the way will be along paths fit only for goats."

The diminutive man made a step forward and speaking through the folds of the cloak which seemed to muffle a sarcastic intention:

"Si senor. They are too honest in this village to have a single mule amongst them for your worship's service. To that I can bear testimony. In these times it's only rogues or very clever men who can manage to have mules or any other four-footed beasts and the wherewithal to keep them. But what this valiant mariner wants is a guide; and here senor behold my brother-in-law Bernardino wine-seller, and Alcade of this most Christian and hospitable village who will find you one."

This, Mr. Byrne says in his relation, was the only thing to do. A youth in a ragged coat and goatskin breeches was produced after some more talk. The English officer stood treat to the whole village and while the peasants drank he and Cuba Tom took their departure accompanied by the guide. The diminutive man in the cloak had disappeared.

Byrne went along with the coxswain out of the village. He wanted to see him fairly on his way; and he would have gone a

10.

further distance even if the seaman had not suggested respectfully
the advisability of return so as not to keep the ship a moment
longer than necessary so close in with the shore on such an
ununpromising looking morning. The sky was wild and gloomy over
their heads as they took leave of each other, and their surround-
ings of rank bushes and stony fields were dreary.

"In a week's time" said Byrne, "the ship will stand in and
send a boat on shore if the weather permits. If not you'll
have to make it out on shore the best you can till we come along
to take you off."

"Right you are Sir," answered Tom and strode on. Byrne
watched him step out on a narrow path. In a thick pea-jacket
with two pistols in his belt, a cutlass by his side and a stout
cudgel in his hand he looked a sturdy figure and well able to
take care of himself. He turned round for a moment to wave his
hand giving to Byrne one more view of his honest bronzed face
with bushy whiskers. The youth in goatskin breeches looking,
Byrne says, like a faun or a satyr leaping ahead stopped to wait
for him and then went off at a bound. Both disappeared.

Byrne turned back. The hamlet was hidden in a fold of the
ground and the spot seemed the most lonely corner of the earth
and as if accursed in its uninhabited desolate barrenness.
Before he had walked many yards however there appeared very sud-
denly from behind a bush the muffled up diminutive Spaniard.
Naturally Byrne stopped short.

11.

The other made a mysterious gesture with a tiny hand peeping
from under his cloak. His hat hung very much at the side of
his head. "Senor," he said without any preliminaries. "Caution!
It is a positive fact that one-eyed Bernardino, my brother-in-law
has at this moment a mule in his stable. And why he who is not
clever has a mule there? Because he is a rogue; a man without
conscience. Because I had to give the macho to him to secure for
myself a roof to sleep under and a mouthful of olla to keep
my soul in this insignificant body of mine. Yet senor, it
contains a heart many time bigger than the mean thing which
beats in the breast of that brute connection of mine of which I
am ashamed, though I opposed it with all my power. Well, the
misguided woman suffered enough. She had her purgatory on this
earth - God rest her soul."

Byrne says he was so astonished by the sudden appearance of
that sprite-like being and by the sardonic bitterness of the
speech that he was unable to disentangle the significant fact
from what seemed but a piece of family history fired out at him
without rhyme or reason. Not at first. He was confounded and
at the same time he was impressed by the rapid forcible delivery
quite different from the frothy excited loquacity of an Italian.
So he stared while the homunculus letting his cloak fall about
him aspired an immense quantity of snuff out of the hollow of
his palm.

12.

"A mule," exclaimed Byrne seizing at last the real aspect of the discourse. "You say he has a mule? That's queer, Why didn't he refuse to let me have it?"

The diminutive Spaniard muffled himself up again with great dignity.

"Quien sabe," he said coldly with a shrug of his draped shoulders. "He is a great politico in everything, he does. But one thing your worship may be certain of - that his intentions are always rascally. This husband of my defunta sister ought to have been married a long time ago to the widow with the wooden legs."*

"I see. But remember that whatever your motives your worship countenanced him in this lie."

The bright unhappy eyes on each side of a predatory nose confronted Byrne without wincing, while with that testiness which lurks so often at the bottom of Spanish character.

"No doubt the señor officer would not lose an ounce of blood if I were stuck under the fifth rib," he retorted. "But what of this poor sinner here?" Then changing his tone. "Señor by the necessities of the times I live here in exile, a Castillian and an old Christian, existing miserably in the midst of these brute Asturians, dependent on the worst of them all with less conscience and scruples than a wolf. And being a man of intelli-

The gallows, supposed to be widowed of the last executed criminal and waiting for another.

13.

gence I govern myself accordingly. Yet I can hardly contain my
scorn. You have heard the way I spoke. A Caballero of parts
like your worship might have guessed that there was a cat in
there."

"What cat" said Byrne uneasily. "Oh I see. Something
suspicious. No Señor. I guessed nothing. My nation are not
good guessers at that sort of thing; and therefore I ask you
plainly how that wine seller spoke the truth in other parti-
culars?"

"There are no Frenchmen anywhere about," said the little
man with a return to his indifferent manner.

"Or robbers - ladrones?"

"Ladrones en grande - no. Certainly not" was the answer in
a cold philosophical tone. "What is there for them to do after
the French? And nobody travels in these times. But who can
say! Opportunity makes the robber. Still that mariner of yours
has a fierce aspect and with the son of a cat rats will have no
play. But there is a saying too that where honey is there will
soon be flies."

This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne. "In the name
of God," he cried "tell me plainly if you think my man is reason-
ably safe on his journey."

The homunculus undergoing one of his rapid changes, seized
the officer's arm. The grip of his little hand was astonishing.

14.

"Señor! Bernardino had taken notice of him. What more do you want? And listen - men have disappeared on this road - on a certain portion of this road, when Bernardino kept a meson an inn, and I, his brother-in-law, had coaches and mules for hire. Now there are no travellers, no coaches. The French have ruined me. Bernardino has retired here for reasons of his own after my sister died. They were three to torment him; I, his two aunts of his - all affiliated to the devil. And now he has robbed me of my last mule. You are an armed man. Demand the macho from him, with a pistol to his head. Señor - it is not his I tell you - and ride after your man who is so precious to you. And then you shall both be safe for no travellers have been ever known to disappear together in those days. As to the beast I, its owner, I confide it to your honour."

They were staring hard at each other and Byrne nearly burst into a laugh at the ingenuity and transparency of the little man's plot to regain possession of his mule. But he had no difficulty to keep a straight face because he felt deep within him a strange inclination to do that very extraordinary thing. He did not laugh, but his lip quivered; at which the diminutive Spaniard detaching his black glittering eyes from Byrne's face turned his back on him brusquely with a gesture and a fling of the cloak which somehow expressed contempt, bitterness and discouragement at the same time. He turned away and stood still his

15.

hat aslant, muffled up to the ears. But he was not offended to
the point of refusing the silver *duro* which Byrne offered him
with a non-committal speech as if nothing extraordinary had
passed between them.

"I must hurry on board now," said Byrne, then.

"Vaya usted con Dios," muttered the gnome. And this interview ended with a sarcastic low sweep of the hat which was replaced at the same perilous angle as before.

Directly the boat had been hoisted the ship was filled on
the off-shore tack and Byrne imparted the whole story to his
Captain who was but a few years older than himself. There was
some amused indignation at it - but while they laughed they looked
gravely at each other. A Spanish dwarf trying to circumvent an
officer of His Majesty's Navy to steal a mule for him - that was
too funny, too ridiculous, too incredible. Those were the exclama-
mations of the Captain, He couldn't get over the grotesqueness
of it.

"Incredible. That's just it," murmured Byrne at last in a
significant tone.

They exchanged a long stare. "It's as clear as daylight,"
affirmed the captain impatiently, because in his heart he was not
certain. And Tom the best seaman in the ship, the good-hunouredly
deferential friend of his boyhood for the other, was becoming
endowed with a compelling fascination, like a symbolic figure appeal-
ing to their feelings and their conscience, so that they could
not detach their thoughts from his. They went on several times

16.

Now went up on deck, only to look out the coast as if it could tell them something of his fate. It stretched away, lengthening in the distance, mute, naked and savage, veiled now and then by the slanting cold shafts of rain. The westerly swell rolled its interminable angry lines of foam and big dark clouds flew over the ship in a sinister procession.

"I wish to goodness you had done what your little friend in the yellow hat wanted you to do," said the commander of the sleep late in the afternoon with visible exasperation.

"Do you Sir?" answered Byrne, feeling a positive anguish. "I wonder what you would have said afterwards? Why! I might have been kicked out of the service for looting a mule from a nation in alliance with His Majesty. Or I might have been battered to a pulp with flails and pitchforks —a pretty tale to go home with one of your officers— while trying to steal a mule. Or chased ignominiously to the boat — for you would not expect me to shoot down unoffending people for the sake of some mangy mule.... And yet," he added in a low voice, "I almost wish myself I had done it."

Before dark those two young men had worked themselves up into a highly complex psychological state of scornful scepticism and alarmed credulity. It tormented them exceedingly; and the thought that it would have to last for six days at least and possibly be prolonged further for an indefinite time was not to be borne. The ship was therefore put on the inshore tack at dark.

17.

All through the gusty dark night she went towards the land to
look for her man, at times lying over in the heavy puffs, and
others rolling idle in the swell, nearly stationary, as if she too
had a mind of her own to swing perplexed between cool reason and warm
impulse.

Then just at daybreak a boat put off from her and went on
tossed by the seas towards the shallow cove where with consider-
able difficulty a man in a thick coat and a round hat managed to
land on a strip of shingle.

"It was my wish," writes Mr. Byrne "that which my captain
approved, to land secretly on an island. I did not want to be
seen either by my aggrieved friend in the yellow hat whose motives
were not clear, or by the one-eyed wine-seller who may or may not
have been affiliated to the devil, or indeed by any other person in that
village. Unfortunately the only possible landing place, by miles and miles
was the only possible landing place. Neither from the steepness
of the ravine could I make a circuit to avoid the village."

"Fortunately," he goes on, "all the people were yet in their
beds. It was barely daylight when I found myself walking on
the thick layer of sodden leaves filling the only street. No
soul was stirring abroad, no dog barked. The silence was pro-
found, and I had concluded with some wonder that apparently no
dogs were kept in the hamlet, when I heard a low snarl, and,
from a noisome alley between two hovels emerged a vile cur, its
tail between its legs. He slunk off silently showing me his teeth

18.

as he ran before and he disappeared so suddenly that he might
have been the heretic incarnation of an incensed god, spirit.
There was too something so weird in the manner of its coming and
vanishing, that my spirits, already by no means very high, became
further depressed by the revolting sight of this creature as if
by an unlucky presage."

He got away from the coast unobserved as far as he knew and
then struggled manfully to the west against wind and rain, on a
barren dark upland, under a sky of ashes. Far away the harsh
and desolate mountains raising their scarped and denuded ridges
seemed to wait for him menacingly. The evening found him fairly
near to them, but, in sailor language, uncertain of his position,
hungry, wet, and tired, out of a day of steady tramping over broken
ground during which he had seen very few people, and had been
unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom Corbin's pas-
sage. "Oh! on! I must push on" he had been saying to himself
through the hours of solitary effort spurred more by uncertainty
than by definite fear or definite hope.

The lowering daylight died out quickly leaving him faced to
face with a broken bridge. He descended into the ravine, forded
a narrow stream by the last gleam of rapid water and clambering
out on the other side was met by the night which fell like a
bandage over his eyes. The wind sweeping in the darkness the
broadside of the Sierra worried his ears by a continuous roaring
noise as of a maddened sea. He suspected that he had lost the

19.

road. Even in daylight with its ruts and mudholes and ledges of outcropping stone it was difficult to distinguish from the dreary waste of the moor interpersed with boulders and clumps of naked bushes. But as he says "he steered his course by the feel of the wind" his hat rammed low on his brow his head down stopping now and again from mere weariness of mind rather than of body - as if not his strength but his resolution were being overtaxed by the mental aspect of pain necessity in the gloom and by theress of his feelings.

In one of these pauses borne in the wind faintly as if from very far away he heard a sound of knocking, just knocking on wood. He noticed that the wind had lulled suddenly, and that he was alone.

His heart started beating tumultously because in his mind he carried the impression of the desert solitudes he had been traversing for the last six hours - the oppressive sense of an uninhabited world. When he raised his head a gleam of light, illusory as it often happens in dense darkness, swam before his eyes. While he peered the sound of feeble knocking was repeated - and suddenly he felt rather than saw, as if there were a great mass before him, what was it? The spur of a hill? Or a house? Yes. It was a house right close, as though it had risen from the ground or had come to meet him, dumb and pallid, from some dark recess of the night. It towered loftily. He had come up under its lee; another three steps and he could have touched the wall with his hand. It was no doubt a posada and some other traveller was knocking for admittance. He heard again the sound of caution knocking.

20.

At that moment a broad band of light fell into the night through the opened door. Byrne stepped eagerly into it, whereupon the person outside sought admission to be leaped with a stifled cry away into the night. An exclamation of surprise was heard too, from within. Byrne flinging himself against the half closed door forced his way in against some considerable resistance.

A miserable candle, a mere rushlight burned at the end of a long deal table. And in its light Byrne saw, staggering yet, the girl he had driven from the door. She had a short black skirt, an orange shawl, a dark complexion - and the escaped single hairs from the mass sombre and thick like a forest and held up by a comb, made a black mist about her low forehead.

A shrill lamentable howl of: Misericordia! came from the further end of the long room where the light from an open hearth played between heavy shadows. The girl recovering herself drew a hissing breath through her set teeth.

It is unnecessary to report the long process of questions and answers by which he soothed the fears of two old women that sat on each side of the fire over which hung a great iron pot. Byrne thought at once of two witches watching the brewing of some deadly potion. But all the same when one of them raising painfully her hand, a broken form lifted the cover of the pot the escaping steam had an appetising smell. The other did not budge but sat hunched up, her head trembling all the time.

They were horrible. There was something grotesque in their

21.

decrepitude. Their toothless mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of the active one and the hanging yellow cheeks of the other (the still one, whose head trembled) would have been laughable if the sight of their dreadful physical degradation had not been appalling to one's eyes, had not gripped one's heart with poignant amazement at the unspeakable misery of age at the awful persistency of life becoming at last an object of disgust and dread.

To get over it Byrne spoke saying he was an Englishman and that he was in search of a countryman who ought to have passed this way. Directly he had spoken the recollection of his parting with Tom came up in his mind with amazing vividness: The silent villagers, the angry gnome, the one-eyed wine-seller Bernardino. Why these two unspeakable frights must be that man's aunts affiliated to the devil.

Whatever they had been once it was impossible to imagine what use such feeble creatures could be to the devil, now, in the world of the living. Which was Lucilla and which was Erminia? They were now things without a name. A moment of suspended animation followed Byrne's words. The sorceress with the spoon ceased stirring the mess in the iron pot, the very trembling of the other's head stopped for the space of breath. In this infinitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the sense of being really on his quest, of the turn of the path, almost within hail of Tom.

22.

"They have seen him," he thought with conviction. Here was at last somebody who had seen him. He made sure they would deny all knowledge of the Ingles; but on the contrary they were eager to tell him that he had eaten and slept the night in Nuhone, where They both started talking together, describing his appearance and behaviour. An excitement quite fierce in its feebleness possessed them. The doubled up sorceress waved about her wooden spoon, the puffy monster got off her stool and screeched balancing one foot to the other from foot to foot, while the trembling of her head was accelerated to positive vibration. Byrne was quite disconcerted by the behaviour... Yes! The big, fierce Ingles went away in the morning after eating a piece of bread and drinking some wine. And if the cabalero wished to follow the same path nothing could be easier - in the morning.

You will give me a hand, somebody to show me the way?" said Byrne.

"Si Senor. A proper youth. The man the cabalero saw going out."

"But he was knocking at the door," protested Byrne. "He only bolted when he saw me. He was coming in."

"No! No!" the two horrid witches screamed out together. "Going out. Going out!"

After all it may have been true. The sound of knocking had been faint elusive, reflected Byrne. Perhaps only the effect of his fancy. He asked.

"Who is that?"

"That man?"

23.

"Her novio." They screamed pointing to the girl. "He is gone home to a village far away from here. But he will return in the morning. Her novio! And she is an orphan - the child of poor Christian people. She lives with us for the love of God, for the love of God."

The orphan crouching on the corner of the hearth had been looking at Byrne. He thought that she was more like a child of Satan kept there by these two weird harridans for the love of the Devil. Her eyes were a little oblique, her mouth rather thick but admirably formed; she had a sort of wild beauty and the whole expression of her dark face was voluptuous and untamed.
As to the character of her steadfast gaze attached upon him with a sensuously savage attention, "to know what it was like," says Mr. Byrne "you have only to observe a hungry cat watching a bird in a cage or a mouse inside a trap."

It was she who brought him the food, of which he was glad; though with those big slanting black eyes examining him at close range, as if he had something curious written on his face, she gave him an uncomfortable sensation. But anything was better than being approached by these blear-eyed nightmarish witches. He was because he was hungry. His apprehensions somehow had been soothed; perhaps by the sensation of warmth after severe exposure and the ease of resting after the exertion of fighting the gale inch by inch all the way. He had no doubt of Tom's safety. He was now safe in the mountains having been met by Gonzales' men.

24.

Byrnes rose,

and filled a tin goblet with wine out of a skin hanging on
the wall, and sat down again. The witch with the mummy face
began to talk to him, rambling of old times; she boasted of the
inn's fame in those days. Great people in their own coaches
stopped there. An Archbishop slept once in the casa, a long,
long time ago.

The witch with the puffy face seemed to be listening from
her stool, motionless, except for the trembling of her head.
The girl (Byrne was certain she was a casual gipsy admitted
there for some reason or other) sat on the hearth stone in the
glow of the embers. She hummed a tune very low, rattling a
pair of castanets slightly now and then. At the mention of the
Archbishop she chuckled impiously and moved her head to look at
Byrne, so that the red glow of the fire flashed in her black
eyes and on her white teeth under the dark cowl of the enormous
overmantel. And he smiled at her.

She rested now in the ease of security. His advent not
having been expected there could be no plot against him in
existence. There were gipsies about perhaps, but in this
house he could defend himself against a whole herd of such
people and in a day Tom would be coming down again escorted
by Gonzales and his men. Drowsiness stole upon him, which he had
enjoyed, keeping a hold, so he thought at least, on his
wits, but he must have been gone further than he thought because
he was startled beyond measure by a sudden upsurge.

25.

He had never heard anything so pitilessly strident in his life.
The witches had started a fierce quarrel about something
or other. Whatever it was, they were now only abusing
each other violently, without arguments; their senile guttural
screams seemed to express nothing but wicked anger and ferocious
dismay. The gipsy girl's black eyes flew from one to the other.
Never before had Byrne felt himself so removed from fellowship
with human beings. Before he had really time to understand the
subject of the quarrel, the girl jumped up and rattling her castnets
loudly. A silence fell. She came up to the table and bending
over, her eyes in his.

"Senor," she said with decision. "You shall sleep in the
Archbishop's room."

Neither of the witches objected. The dried up one bent
double was propped on a stick. The puffy faced one had now a
crutch.

Byrne got up, walked to the door and turning the key in the
enormous lock put it coolly in his pocket. This was clearly the
only entrance and he did not mean to be taken unawares by what-
ever danger there might have been lurking outside. When he
turned from the door he saw the two witches "affiliated to the
devil" and the Satanic girl looking at him in silence. He
if
wondered/Tom Corbin had done the same last night. And thinking
of him he had again that queer impression of his nearness. The
world was perfectly dumb. And in this stillness he heard the

26.

blood beating in his ears with a confused rushing noise in which
there seemed to be a voice uttering the words: "Mr. Byrne look
out, Sir." Tom's voice. He shuddered; for the delusions of
the sense of hearing are the most vivid of all and from the nature
have a compelling character. by an unknown author.

It seemed impossible that Tom should not be there. Again
a slight chill as of stealthy draught penetrated through his
very clothes and passed over all his body. He shook off the
impression with an effort.

It was the girl who preceded him upstairs carrying an iron
lamp from the naked flame of which ascended a thin thread of
smoke. Her white stoking were full of holes.

With the same quiet resolution with which he had locked the
door below, Byrne threw open one after another the doors in the
corridor. All the rooms were empty except for some nondescript
lumber in one or two. And the girl seeing what he would be at
stopped every time, raising the smoky light in each doorway
patiently. Meantime she observed him with sustained attention. The
last door she herself threw open herself.

"You sleep here senor," she murmured in a voice light like
a child's breath, offering him the lamp.

"Buenos noches señorita" he said politely taking it from
her.

She didn't return the wish audibly, though her lips did
move a little, while her gaze black like a starless night never
for a moment wavered. He stepped in and as he turned to close

27.

the door she was still there motionless and disturbing, with
her voluptuous mouth and slanting eyes, with the expression
of expectant sensual ferocity of a baffled cat. He hesitated
for a moment and in the dumb house he heard again the blood
pulsating ponderously in his ears ~~and through it~~ once more the
illusion of Tom's voice speaking earnestly somewhere near by
~~was specially~~ and terrifying because this time he could not make out the
words.

He slammed the door in her face at last, leaving her in the
dark; and he opened it again almost on the instant. Nobody.
She had been without the slightest sound. He closed the door
quickly and bolted it with two heavy bolts.

He waited a moment mistrust possessed him suddenly. Why
did the quarrel about letting him sleep here. And what meant
that stare of the girl as if she wanted to impress his features
for ever in her mind. His own nervousness alarmed him. He
heard her removed very far from mankind.

He examined his room. It was not very high, just high
enough to take the bed under an enormous baldachin-like canopy
from which fell heavy curtains at foot and head; a bed certainly
worthy of an archbishop. There was a heavy table carved all
round the edges, some armchairs of enormous weight like the
spoils of grandee's palace; a tall shallow wardrobe placed against
the wall and with double doors. He tried them. Locked. A
suspicion came into his mind and he snatched the lamp to make a

the guide the withered witch had promised would show the English officer the shortest way to rejoining his man. A promise he said now of dreadful import. He who had known would have two bodies deal with the dead. He would be next night. Man and officer would go forth from the house together. For Byrne was certain now that he would have to die before the morning--and in the same mysterious manner, leaving behind him an unmarked body.

The sight of a smashed head, cut, of gaping gunshot wounds would have been an inexpressible relief. His soul cried within him to that dead man whom he had never found wanting. "Why don't you tell me what I am to look out for, Tom!" a rigid immobility, extended on his back, he seemed to preserve an austere silence, as if disdaining in the finality of his awful knowledge to hold converse with the living.

Suddenly Byrne flung himself on his knees by the side of the body and dry-eyed, fierce, opened the shirt wide on the breast, as if to tear the secret forcibly from that cold heart which had been so loyal to him in life. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! He raised the lamp and all the smoke from it to him by that face which used to be so kindly, was a small bruise on the forehead--the least thing, a mere mark. The skin even was

35

not broken. He stared at it a long time as if in a dreadful dream. Then he observed that Tom's hands were clenched as though he had fallen facing somebody in a fight with fists. His knuckles on closer view appeared some- what abraded. Both hands.

The discovery of these slight signs was more appaling to Byrne than the absolute absence of every mark would have been. So Tom had died striking against something which could be hit and yet could kill one without leaving a wound--by a breath.

Terror, hot terror began to play about Byrne's heart like a tongue of flame that touches and withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes. He backed away from the body as far as he could, then came forward stealthily casting fearful glances to steal another look at the bruised forehead. There would perhaps be such a look on his forehead--before the morning.

"I can't bear it" he whispered to himself. Tom was for him now an object of horror, an once tempting and revolting to his fear. He couldn't bear to look at him.

At last desperation getting the better of the still growing horror he stepped forward from the wall against which he had been leaning and halting.

36

undaunted Tom (he had seemed to him invincible) helped to paralyse his fa-
culties, added to his despair.

He was no longer Edgar Byrne. He was a tortured soul suffering more
than any sinner's body had ever suffered from rack or boot. The depth of his
torment may be measured when I say that this young man, at least as brave
as the average of his kind, contemplated seizing a pistol and firing into
his own head. But a deadly, chilly, langour was spreading over his limbs. It
was as if his flesh had been wet plaster stiffening slowly about his ribs.
Presently he thought, the two witches will come in, with crutch and stick--horrible
grotesque, monstrosities-- affiliated to the devil-- to put a mark on his forehead, the tiny lit-
tle bruise of death. And he wouldn't be able to do anything. Tom had struck
out at something but it was not like Tom. His limbs were dead already. He sat still, dying the death over and over again; and the only part of him which moved were his eyes, turning round and round in their sockets, running over the walls, the floor, the ceiling, again and again till suddenly they became motionless, stony--staring out of his head into the direction of the bed.

He had been awoken by a shake, dead body, then concealed
The heavy curtains stirred and began as if the body were then half
had turned over and sat up. and Byrne who thought the world could hold no more

derous lot assembled no doubt for his undoing. After his struggle with nameless terror, he yearned for an open fray with armed enemies. But he remained yet bereft of a true reason because he must have been in a hurry (forgetting his weapons he rushed downstairs with a wild cry, opened the door while blows were raining on it outside, and flinging it open flew with his bare hands at the throat). The first man he saw before him. They rolled over together. Byrne's hazy intention was to break through, fly up the mountain path and come back with Gonza-les-mi men to exact an exemplary vengeance. He fought provisionally by the tree, a house, a mountain, or heavens itself seemed to crash down upon his head—and he knew no more.

X X X

Here Mr Byrne describes in detail the manner in which he found his head had been bandaged, informs us that he had lost a great deal of blood and attributes the preservation of his sanity to that circumstance. He sets down Gonzales to profuse apologies in full too. For it was Gonzales who tired of waiting for news from the English had come down to the inn with half his band, on his way to the sea. "His Excellency," he explained, rushed out with fierce impetuosity, and moreover was not known to us for a friend, and so

41

Tom's body was being carried by a bandit-like gang of patriots down the ravine to the shore where two boats from the ship were waiting for what was left of her best seaman.

Mr Byrne very pale and weak stepped into the boat which carried the body of his humble friend. For it was decided that Tom Corbin should rest far out in the bay of Biscay. The officer took the tiller and turning his head for the last look at the shore saw on the grey hillside something moving which he made out to be a little man in a yellow hat mounted on a mule--that mule without which the fate of Tom Corbin would have remained for ever mysterious for ever.