s chamber work at the last moment before going
to bed. They were as unclean outwardly as inwardly.

After ransacking the house up-chamber, I ran down-stairs and went into
the room from which Rucker had come, where I found the girl hiding
behind a sofa, peeking over the back of it at me, and screaming "Go
away!" All the walls in this room were hung with some thin black cloth,
and it looked like the inside of a hearse. There was a stand in one
corner, and a large extension table in the middle of the room, with
chairs placed about it. In the corner across from the stand was a
spiritualist medium's cabinet; and hanging on the walls were a guitar, a
banjo and a fiddle. A bell stood in the middle of the table, and there
were writing materials, slates, and other things scattered about, which
theatrical people call "properties," I am told. I tore the black
draperies down, and searched for a place where my mother might be--in
bed I expected to find her, if at all; but she was not there. I tried
the cellar, but it was nothing but a vegetable cave, dug in the earth,
with no walls, and dark as a dungeon when the girl shut down the
trap-door and stood on it: from which I threw her by putting my back
under it and giving a surge. When I came up she was staggering to her
feet, and groaning as she felt of her head for the results of some
suspected cut or bump from her fall. Rucker was following me about
calling me Jacob and Jakey, a good deal as a man will try to smooth down
or pacify a vicious horse or mule; and after I had looked everywhere, I
faced him, took him by the throat, and choked him until his tongue stuck
out, and his face was purple.

"My God," said the girl, who had grown suddenly quiet, "you're killing
him!"

I looked at his empurpled face, and my madness came back on me like a
rush of fire through my veins--and I shut down on his throat again until
I could feel the cords draw under my fingers like taut ropes.

She laid her hand rather gently on my breast, and looked me steadily in
the eye.

"Fool!" she almost whispered. "Your mother's dead! Will it bring her
back to life for you to stretch hemp?"

I guess that by that action she saved my life; but it has been only of
late years that I have ceased to be sorry that I did not kill him. I
looked back into her eyes for a moment--I remember yet that they were
bright blue, with a lighter band about the edge of the sight, instead of
the dark edging that most of us have; a