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Dead Girl Finotte
103

with him to nurse him till the man came who looked after the cooking and house-tending; then I left him, and calling all the hands of the plantation I spoke to them of their wickedness and they fled; so that there was nothing left but the crowing of cocks and the clapping of doors to the wind and the creeping of the great centipedes that live among the walls of the rhommerie and the three dead men and the girl in the shed where they rested when not at work, and me—me, Baidaux—and Labat.

"'I had thought to play with him and torment him and make him my slave—but you can not play with a machine. Tonight I made him drown in the sea. He was no other use."

"'And the three dead men and the girl?' I asked.

"Baidaux laughed, and rose up and walked away without a word of goodbye, and though he had not replied to my question I knew that they were no longer working on that plantation.

"I watched him away down the goat track and then passing beyond the trees at the rise of the bluff.

"I never saw him again."


A Weird Story About Captain Kidd

Newgate Ghost

By WILLIAM R. HICKEY

Midnight hung over Newgate. Somewhere about 12 a squall had burst upon the jail, a burst of screaming wind that made the buildings rock, and a copious drift of rain that streamed from the high walls. The downpour increased, beating a regular tattoo upon the gutterways. Then splitting the squares of greater blackness which marked the barred casements of the cells came flash after flash of lightning. As the blinding light died out, came the crash of thunder, harsh and fearsome, more imminently above the jail than ever. Newgate seemed to rock upon its foundations.

Coming as they did, horror and the wrath of heaven together, suddenly, crashingly, black and angry after the fairness of the day, these happenings and their settings must have terrorized the stoutest heart. But Davie Bartmey stood unconcerned within his cell. He seemed detached, as if set apart, a spectator, for some particular whirl of events. Even when a vague yellow light crept across the floor from the direction of the corridor, and flickered unsteadily through the grille of the iron-studded door, he remained unmoved.

Davie Bartmey, late of Kidd's crew, was sentenced to be hanged at dawn. He realized that the ultimate issue was at hand, but either because he was emotionally exhausted, or for some other reason, the pending climax failed to disturb him.

But now a slightly different sound caused him to move toward the barred grille. Someone, holding a lantern high, had turned into the narrow corridor leading to his cell. The stone walls, slime-covered and dripping, left scant room for the man's broad