of Gershom's rushing pencil, the whispering of Marshall
and his friend, and old Mother Scritcher feebly whimpering in her corner.
The scene was sinister. Suddenly, a rushing gust blew the door wide open.

Golyer started to his feet, trembling in every limb, and looking furtively
over his shoulder out into the night. Quickly recovering himself, he
turned to resume his place. But the moment he dropped Gershom's hand, the
medium had dropped his pencil, and had sunk back in his chair in a deep
and deathlike slumber. Golyer seized the sheet of paper, and with the
first line that he read a strange and horrible transformation was wrought
in the man. His eyes protruded, his teeth chattered, he passed his hand
over his head mechanically, and his hair stood up like the bristles on the
back of a swine in rage. His face was blotched white and purple. He looked
piteously about him for a moment, then crumpling the paper in his hand,
cried out in a hoarse, choking voice, "Yes, it's a fact: I done it. It's
no use denying on't.. Here it is, in black and white. Everybody knows it:
ghosts come spooking around to tattle about it. What's the use of lying? I
done it."

He paused, as if struck by a sudden recollection, then burst into tears
and shook like a tree in a high wind. In a moment he dropped on his knees,
and in that posture crawled over to Marshall: "Here, Mr. Marshall--here's
the whole story. For God's sake, spare my wife and children all you can.
Fix my little property all right for 'em, and God bless you for it!" Even
while he was speaking, with a quick revulsion of feeling he rose to his
feet, with a certain return of his natural dignity, and said, "But they
sha'n't take me! None of my kin ever died that way: I've got too much sand
in my gizzard to be took that way. Good-bye, friends all!"

He walked deliberately out into the wild, windy night.

Marshall glanced hurriedly at the fatal paper in his hand. It was full of
that capricious detail with which in reverie we review scenes that are
past. But a line here and there clearly enough told the story--how he went
out to plant the apple tree; how Susie came by and rejected him; how he
passed into the power of the devil for the time; how Bertie Leon came by
and spoke to him, and patted him on the shoulder, and talked about city
life; how he hated him and his pretty face and his good clothes; how they
came to words and blows, and he struck him with his spade, and he fell
into the