Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 4 (1926-04).djvu/83

clutched tightly in his hand. Civilization, education, even religion are poor armor against the insidious attacks of superstition when one is alone at night in an old, deserted house, where willows whisper outside, and ancient beams and joints creak with weariness, and branches scratch on the roof and tap on dusty, blear-eyed panes as the wind comes and goes.

The Erskine farm was only three-quarters of a mile or so from the old Lathrop place, and so it is not surprizing that at Lina Erskine’s birthday party someone suggested the trip to the old deserted house under the willows.

“There’s an idea for you!” approved the hostess, her gray eyes dancing provocatively over the masculine portion of tho crowd in the big, old-fashioned kitchen. “Anyone volunteer?”

It may have been accidental, but as she put the question her eyes rested momentarily on Cal Weaver. Cal had been a contestant for Lina’s hand ever since the old days in the little white school house over on the Ridge. He did not hesitate.

“I’ll go!” he said, and Lina’s approving smile was ample reward. He felt very brave and daring there in the warm, comfortable kitchen, and he laughed off the good-natured jeers of the rest of the party with careless ease.

“Don’t you folks fret! I’ll bring back a section of paper big enough to recognize, all right. And I won’t come back lookin’ as though I’d seen a ghost, either, like Art Peebles did!” And with this parting shot at his rival, he clapped on his hat and strode, whistling gayly, out into the night.

As long as he was On the main road, Cal’s shrill piping rose triumphantly above the sharp and rather raw autumn wind, but when he turned into the grass-grown, winding old road that led past the Lathrop house, his whistle, despite his efforts, grew faint and tremulous. The night was very dark, with fragments of clouds scudding overhead like great black bats, and the Wind whistled with a soft droning sound in the pines that stood along the road.

He came at length to the edge of the wooded valley, on the opposite side of which was the house that was his destination. As usual, there was a thin, unhealthful mist down in the ravine. Cal could see it writhing and twisting over the tops of the alder bushes, and the damp, miasmic tang of it filled his lungs.

Bravely he strode down the hill, the floating fog seeming to close around him like a shroud. It reeked with the unpleasant breath of swampy vegetation, and it was an effort to breathe in the moisture-laden atmosphere.

The loose old bridge at the bottom of tho ravine rumbled with startling loudness under Cal’s determined heels. The noise startled a night bird into eery life, and something in the dense growth crashed through the underbrush with a sound like a man running in frantic haste! Cal’s heart was pounding against his ribs with rapid, hammerlike blows, but be gritted his teeth and kept on.

The gravel crunched loudly under his feet as he emerged from the mist that concealed the bottom of the ravine and started to climb the opposite hill, and now and then a rounded stone would start rolling down the steep incline, to strike the sounding boards of the bridge, and perhaps roll from there into the murky, brackish water below with a thick and muffled plop. Gradually, in the faint and ever-changing light Of the cloud-obscured moon, Cal could make out ahead and to the right the irregular black bulk of the big willows.

He paused for a moment before turning in at the weed-grown walk