Can Such Things Be [32]
the square and came along the walk toward me. His hands were clasped behind him, his head was bowed; he seemed to observe nothing. As he approached the shadow in which I sat I recognized him as the man whom I had seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But he was terribly altered--grey, worn and haggard. Dissipation and vice were in evidence in every look; illness was no less apparent. His cloth- ing was in disorder, his hair fell across his forehead in a derangement which was at once uncanny, and picturesque. He looked fitter for restraint than lib- erty--the restraint of a hospital. With no defined purpose I rose and confronted him. He raised his head and looked me full in the face. I have no words to describe the ghastly change that came over his own; it was a look of unspeakable terror--he thought himself eye to eye with a ghost. But he was a courageous man. 'Damn you, John Stevens!' he cried, and lifting his trembling arm he dashed his fist feebly at my face and fell headlong upon the gravel as I walked away. Somebody found him there, stone-dead. Nothing more is known of him, not even his name. To know of a man that he is dead should be enough.
THE HAUNTED VALLEY
1: How Trees Are Felled in China
A HALF-MILE north from Jo. Dunfer's, on the road from Hutton's to Mexican Hill, the highway dips into a sunless ravine which opens out on either hand in a half-confidential manner, as if it had a secret to impart at some more convenient season. I never used to ride through it without looking first to the one side and then to the other, to see if the time had ar- rived for the revelation. If I saw nothing--and I never did see anything--there was no feeling of disappointment, for I knew the disclosure was merely withheld temporarily for some good reason which I had no right to question. That I should one day be taken into full confidence I no more doubted than I doubted the existence of Jo. Dunfer himself, through whose premises the ravine ran. It was said that Jo. had once undertaken to erect a cabin in some remote part of it, but for some rea- son had abandoned the enterprise and constructed his present hermaphrodite habitation, half residence and half groggery, at the roadside, upon an extreme corner of his estate; as far away as possible, as if on purpose to show how radically he had changed his mind. This Jo. Dunfer--or, as he was familiarly known in the neighbourhood, Whisky Jo.--was a very im- portant personage in those parts. He was apparently about forty years of age, a long, shock-headed fellow, with a corded face, a gnarled arm and a knotty hand like a bunch of prison-keys. He was a hairy man, with a stoop in his walk, like that of one who is about to spring upon something and rend it. Next to the peculiarity to which he owed his local appellation, Mr. Dunfer's most obvious character- istic was a deep-seated antipathy to the Chinese. I saw him once in a towering rage because one of his herdsmen had permitted a travel-heated Asian to slake his thirst at the horse-trough in front of the saloon end of Jo.'s establishment. I ventured faintly to remonstrate with Jo. for his unchristian spirit, but he merely explained that there was nothing about Chinamen in the New Testament, and strode away to wreak his displeasure upon his dog, which also, I suppose, the inspired scribes had overlooked. Some days afterward, finding him sitting alone in his bar-room, I cautiously approached the sub- ject, when, greatly to my relief, the habitual aus- terity of his expression visibly softened into some- thing that I took for condescension. 'You young Easterners,' he said, 'are a mile-and- a-half too good for this country, and you don't catch on to our play. People who don't know a Chileno from a Kanaka can afford to hang out liberal ideas about Chinese immigration, but a fellow that has to fight for his bone with a lot of mongrel coolies hasn't any time for foolishness.' This long consumer, who had probably never done an honest day's work in his life, sprung the lid of a Chinese tobacco-box and with
THE HAUNTED VALLEY
1: How Trees Are Felled in China
A HALF-MILE north from Jo. Dunfer's, on the road from Hutton's to Mexican Hill, the highway dips into a sunless ravine which opens out on either hand in a half-confidential manner, as if it had a secret to impart at some more convenient season. I never used to ride through it without looking first to the one side and then to the other, to see if the time had ar- rived for the revelation. If I saw nothing--and I never did see anything--there was no feeling of disappointment, for I knew the disclosure was merely withheld temporarily for some good reason which I had no right to question. That I should one day be taken into full confidence I no more doubted than I doubted the existence of Jo. Dunfer himself, through whose premises the ravine ran. It was said that Jo. had once undertaken to erect a cabin in some remote part of it, but for some rea- son had abandoned the enterprise and constructed his present hermaphrodite habitation, half residence and half groggery, at the roadside, upon an extreme corner of his estate; as far away as possible, as if on purpose to show how radically he had changed his mind. This Jo. Dunfer--or, as he was familiarly known in the neighbourhood, Whisky Jo.--was a very im- portant personage in those parts. He was apparently about forty years of age, a long, shock-headed fellow, with a corded face, a gnarled arm and a knotty hand like a bunch of prison-keys. He was a hairy man, with a stoop in his walk, like that of one who is about to spring upon something and rend it. Next to the peculiarity to which he owed his local appellation, Mr. Dunfer's most obvious character- istic was a deep-seated antipathy to the Chinese. I saw him once in a towering rage because one of his herdsmen had permitted a travel-heated Asian to slake his thirst at the horse-trough in front of the saloon end of Jo.'s establishment. I ventured faintly to remonstrate with Jo. for his unchristian spirit, but he merely explained that there was nothing about Chinamen in the New Testament, and strode away to wreak his displeasure upon his dog, which also, I suppose, the inspired scribes had overlooked. Some days afterward, finding him sitting alone in his bar-room, I cautiously approached the sub- ject, when, greatly to my relief, the habitual aus- terity of his expression visibly softened into some- thing that I took for condescension. 'You young Easterners,' he said, 'are a mile-and- a-half too good for this country, and you don't catch on to our play. People who don't know a Chileno from a Kanaka can afford to hang out liberal ideas about Chinese immigration, but a fellow that has to fight for his bone with a lot of mongrel coolies hasn't any time for foolishness.' This long consumer, who had probably never done an honest day's work in his life, sprung the lid of a Chinese tobacco-box and with