Mortgagor

“ Even as Stuart McGregor dropped to the floor, dying, he knew what had happened.
A little, venomous snake, an African fer-delance, that had been curled up in the inside of the drum, been numbed by the cold, and had been revived by the splintering heat of New York. Yes—even as he died he knew what had happened. Even as he died, he saw that malign, obscene squint in the eagle’s eye. Even as he died, he knew that Farragut Hutchison had killed him—from beyond the grave! ”

“ When the god and Morge were discovered missing, Thougor had called the village together, explaining that Thor had left them, taking Morge as a sacrifice because he was dissatisfied with the tribe's paltry blood offerings and worship. Therefore a great death sacrifice of young men and women must be undertaken to pacify Thor and cause his return. ”

“ But if a hand is lifted against us, then he dies at once—by the Red Death.”
“Touch them not, touch them not,” piped Eddo, “lest my ghost should be spilt with my blood. Touch them not, I command you.”
The company of dwarfs chattered together like parrots at the dawn, and the march began. First went Eddo, dragged along between Richard and Noie, and after them, the raised spear in her hand, followed Rachel, while on either side, hiding themselves behind the boles of the trees, scrambled the people of the dwarfs. ”

“ Why—they would have welcomed a decent, square, honest white murder; a knife flashing in some yellow-haired Norse sailor's brawny fist; a belaying pin in the hand of some bullying Liverpool tramp-ship skipper; some Nome gambler's six-gun splattering leaden death; some apache of the Rue de Venise garroting a passerby.
But here, in the African jungle—and how Stuart McGregor remembered it—the fear of death had seemed pregnant with unmentionable horror. ”

“ In the dark agony of their live corruption, they tossed feebly to and fro, and crawled inchmeal on the chill mosaic. And they still moved in this fashion, slowly and more imperceptibly, till their brains were turned to gray mold, and the sinews were parted from their bones, and the marrow was dried up.
Thus, in an hour, the curse was accomplished. The enemies of the necromancer lay before him, supine and shrunken, in the tomb's final posture, as if doing obeisance to a seated Death. ”

“ He heard of Morar's renown; why did he not hear of his wound? Weep, thou father of Morar! weep; but thy son heareth thee not. Deep is the sleep of the dead; low their pillow of dust. No more shall he hear thy voice; no more awake at thy call. When shall it be morn in the grave, to bid the slumberer awake? Farewell, thou bravest of men! thou conqueror in the field! but the field shall see thee no more; nor the dark wood be lightened with the splendour of thy steel. Thou hast left no son. The song shall preserve thy name. Future times shall hear of thee; they shall hear of the fallen Morar! ”

“ Last night as we sat by the fire on Mosfell all the company of the dead were gathered round us—ay! and all the company of those who shall die to-day. Thou wast there, Gizur the murderer, Ospakar’s son! thou wast there, Swanhild the witch, Groa’s daughter! thou wast there, Ketel Viking! with many another man; and there were we two also. Valkyries have kissed us and death draws near. Therefore, talk no more, but come and make an end. Greeting, Gizur, thou woman-murderer! Draw nigh! draw nigh! Out sword! up shield! and on, thou son of Ospakar! ”

“ One was, that for some weeks before there had been signs of disturbance among newly-made graves in the cemetery, which the authorities had been trying to trace to the nightly wanderings of the village madman -- in vain; and another, that the morning after the death a trail of blood had been found across the church floor, as though someone had passed through from the back entrance to the front. A special service was held that very week to cleanse the holy building from the evil of that stain; for the villagers, deep in their superstitions, declared that nothing human had left that trail ”

“ It had all the appearance of being a tomb, and was lit up by a fire that burnt in its centre with a whitish flame and without smoke. Indeed, there, to the left, was a stone shelf with a little ledge to it three inches or so high, and on the shelf lay what I took to be a corpse; at any rate, it looked like one, with something white thrown over it. To the right was a similar shelf, on which lay some broidered coverings. Over the fire bent the figure of a woman; she was sideways to me and facing the corpse, wrapped in a dark mantle that hid her like a nun's cloak. ”

“ Morag’s nerves being now somewhat composed, she gave her mistress as clear an outline as she could, of all that had befallen her. The Pensassenach dropped some tears, to mingle with those which Morag shed, when she recounted the evidence of John Smith’s death, which she felt to be but too probably true. But when she came to talk of the ghost, she did all she could to laugh the girl out of her fears, insisting with her that she had been deceived by terror [176] and weakness, and seeing how much the poor girl was worn out, she desired her to take some refreshment, and to go to bed directly ”

“ He knew the spells that kill more quickly and surely than knife or poison, at a distance; and he knew also the darker spells by which the dead can be reanimated, even after years or ages of decay. He had slain Arctela in a manner that none could detect, with a rare and subtle invultuation that had left no mark; and her body lay now among the dead, in Mordiggian's temple. Tonight, with the tacit connivance of the terrible, shrouded priests, he would bring her back to life. ”

“ At length the air began to grow grey with light, then golden arrows sped across the snow, and at last the glorious sun peeped above the lava wall and looked in upon our half-frozen forms, and also upon Ventvögel, sitting there amongst us stone dead. No wonder his back felt cold, poor fellow. He had died when I heard him sigh, and was now frozen almost stiff. Shocked beyond measure we dragged ourselves from the corpse—how strange is that horror we mortals have of the companionship of a dead body—and left it sitting there, its arms clasped about its knees. ”

“ In that cellar, among smoke, and blood and dust, were huddled twenty or thirty non-combatants, men, women and children; and in their midst lay an old man, quite dead and the upper part of his head half carried away by a portion of shell, while fallen partially across his legs was the body of his son of sixteen, his boyish features scarcely yet stilled in the repose of death from a ghastly hurt that had torn away the arm and a part of the shoulder. ”

“ Only the hardiest can bear to enter the Morgue this morning, so overwhelming is the dreadful stench. The undertakers even, after hurriedly performing their task of washing a dead body and preparing it for burial, retreat to the yard to await the arrival of the next ghastly find. A strict order is now in force that all bodies should be interred only when it becomes impossible to longer preserve them from absolute putrefaction. There is no iron-clad rule. ”

“ Must you take the girl from the temple? Always, ere this, you have contented yourself with the brief loan that the priests allow, and have rendered back the dead in the required state of exanimation. Truly, is it well to violate the law of the god? Men say that the wrath of Mordiggian, though seldom loosed, is more dreadful than the wrath of all other deities. For this reason, none has dared to defraud him in latter years, or attempt the removal of any of the corpses from his fane. ”

“ How to lay the ghost none knew, and year after year folk had to take care not to be out on the road near the Resting-stone along about midnight.
The old mistress, however, had assured the housekeeper that nowadays none need fear the headless priest. A housewife at Mårbacka—a strong-minded, determined woman, who knew a little more than the common run of folk—had laid the ghost.
That farm mistress happened to be out riding late one evening along Vilarstensbacken when—just as she expected—the ghost appeared in the road near the cairn, and made as if to bar her way. ”

“ I'll have no murder," ordered Mordaunt. "Leave him here."
"He's not got a bad cut," said the man sitting on the log. "He'll come to arter a spell, go back to ther fort, an' give an alarm."
"What's that to me?" asked Mordaunt sharply. "We shall be safe. I won't have him with us because some Indian or another will kill him. It's not my purpose to murder any one."
"Ugh!" grunted one of the savages, and pointed eastward with his hand. "Hurry-long-way-go," he said in English. With the Indians in the lead the party turned from the river into the forest. ”

“ Was the corpse in the coffin hunting for its murderer? He shook and sweated. He lay well hidden in the dark pine thicket; but he trembled for what might happen if the corpse found him. He bent aside the branches and looked out. A hunted deserter could not have spied more wildly after his pursuers.
The funeral was that of a poor man. The attendance was small. The coffin was lowered without wreaths into the grave. There was no sign of tears on any of the faces. Petter Nord had still enough sense to see that this could not be Edith Halfvorson’s funeral train. ”

“ To make matters worse, the name of the guilty man was Running Wolf. The offence being unpardonable, the man was cursed and driven from the tribe:
“Go out. Wander alone among the woods, and if we see you we slay you. Your bones shall be scattered in the forest, and your spirit shall not enter the Happy Hunting Grounds till one of another race shall find and bury them.”
“Which meant,” explained Morton laconically, his only comment on the story, “probably forever.” ”

“ Mortagne was lucky enough to get a fair cut at his head, which slashed through his beaver, and laid his skull bare, but went no farther, only serving to make the youth as savage as a hurt boar; for I had only time to see his hand laid upon his sword, when its cross was knocking against Mortagne’s ribs before, and the point shining out between his blade-bones behind. It was done in the twinkling of an eye.”
“He is a gallant youth,” said Chavigni; “he always was from a boy; but where is your wounded companion?”
“Wounded!” cried the Norman. “Odds life! he’s dead. ”

“ He attacked the branches with his axe and cleared them away. He half wondered that the eyes of the dead remained open while they filled with particles of the bark riven by the axe. Presently the body came within reach. With unspeakable repulsion the young man placed his hand upon the stranger’s chest. There was no sign of life. Indeed, he wondered that he had taken any trouble to ascertain what he already knew.
All this time the young man’s dread and terror, heightened by a sense of utter loneliness in the presence of the dead, had driven the woman from his mind. ”

“ Dread Father of men, In the land of thy grave, Give voice to the Vala, And light to the Brave.”
As she thus chaunted, the Morthwyrtha now sprinkled the drops from the vessel over the bautastein,—now, one by one, cast the fragments of bark scrawled with runes on the fire. Then, whether or not some glutinous or other chemical material had been mingled in the water, a pale gleam broke from the gravestone thus sprinkled, and the whole tomb glistened in the light of the leaping fire. From this light a mist or thin smoke gradually rose, and took, though vaguely, the outline of a vast human form. ”

“ As yet Death is but Life's Night, but out of the night is the Morrow born again, and doth again beget the Night. Only when Day and Night, and Life and Death, are ended and swallowed up in that from which they came, what shall be our fate, oh Holly? ”

“ Mord should give notice of the slaying, and get ready the suit in every way before the Thing.
Then Mord fared down to Ossaby, and thither came nine neighbours who dwelt nearest the spot.
Mord had ten men with him. He shows the neighbours Hauskuld's wounds, and takes witness to the hurts, and names a man as the dealer of every wound save one; that he made as though he knew not who had dealt it, but that wound he had dealt himself. But the slaying he gave notice of at Skarphedinn's hand, and the wounds at his brothers' and Kari's. ”

“ Morrow's face wore none of the active malignancy that stamps the features of those uncontrolled desperadoes who kill in a flare of passion; rather it seemed that the urge to kill was always with him, had been born with him, his face drawn and over-lengthened from the inner effort to render his homicidal tendencies submissive to his brain, not through desire for regeneration, for he had none, but as a mere matter of expediency. ”

“ It had fallen on to the head of the dwarf, and there he lay crushed and dead.
“Ah!” piped the other dwarfs, pointing towards the corpse with their fingers, and closing their eyes to shut out the sight of blood, “ah! Nya is right; she still has power. Those who would kill her must wait till her tree dies.”
Taking no heed of what had happened, Nya walked on into the forest. For a while Rachel noted the little huts built, each of them, at the foot of a tree. ”

“ As he talked, Morg plucked a dogwood blossom that peeped around the corner of his shack like a gossipy old woman. “See that bloom?” He held it toward the visitor. “Some say that a Indian princess who was slain by a jealous chieftain sopped up her heart’s blood with it and that’s how come the stains on the tip of the white flower. There have been Indian princesses right here on this very ground.” Morg nodded slowly. “There’s the empty tomb of one—yes, and there’s a silver mine way back yonder in that cave. They were there long before them scalawags were counterfeiting inside that cave. ”