Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 6 (1925-12).djvu/69

ing full in my face. I heard the hermit in the other room whistling cheerily as he went about getting breakfast. I thought of my apprehensions of the night before and laughed aloud.

Dressing quickly, I opened the door and called out: "Good morning. How's everything?"

The hermit instantly appeared in the kitchen doorway with a pleasant greeting, adding that he was about to call me to breakfast. Yet, in spite of his attempt at cheerfulness his face was drawn and the eagerness had disappeared from his eyes. I knew instinctively he had not slept—that he had been sitting in that rocking chair all night. As he looked at me I sensed about him a sort of hunted air, and I felt a keen impulse of pity. I almost contemplated letting him off, then I decided he hadn't needed to make the bargain if he hadn't wanted to do so, and I went in to breakfast. Not a word was said during the meal. We ate in a strained silence, and after we had finished he abruptly rose and went into the living room, motioning me to follow. Still silent, he stood looking at me, in the center of the room. There was something so downright sad in his eyes that I involuntarily walked up to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

"Well, what about that story?" said, trying to speak gently, but wanting it over. He flinched, as if from some sudden pain, and I instantly removed my hand, nonplussed.

Without a word he turned to the bookcase and took from it a volume covered with heavy Manila paper. It had been lying on the bottom shelf, which I had not noticed before, upon a stack of loose-leaf files packed to overflowing with papers of some kind. Still silent, he removed the manila wrapper and handed the volume to me. I've seen a like volume in your own library. An excellent example of the bookmaker's art, deep gray, embossed in gold. Across the corner a full-rigged ship sailing with all canvas up, and under it the title:

For a moment I was puzzled, couldn't see what he was getting at. Ten years before, that work had flashed across the literary sky like a blazing comet. The critics had hailed Henry Wytten as the genius of the age. Then, like a comet he had disappeared, never to be heard from again, leaving behind that one little book as his sole contribution to immortal literature.

Suddenly I understood, and turned to the hermit in a daze, stammering: "You aren't trying to tell me—you don't mean—you're not—"

"Exactly." He interrupted. "I am the man who was once known as Henry Wytten. Won't you be seated?"

Be seated! And I had found Henry Wytten. Henry Wytten—Old Baldy—ten years! . . . Be seated! Good God! I told him no—I must have air. He followed me outside and we came to a halt at last under the pines quite a way down the trail. I turned and faced him then, trembling with the import of my discovery.

"For God's sake. Wytten," I said, "talk!"

He smiled sadly, regretfully. "I'll talk, Mr. Blondin. It can be told in a few words." His voice was tired, let down. "From the days of my earliest memory I have written poetry. It has been my life, my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams. My very soul. But they wanted to kill my soul. Who? My wife—my people.