Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 40: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

510 | THE ARGOSY. And the cold. Even on a summer day it is chill at the Rock. Never is it warm beside those sentinel pines. How could a place of haunts hold aught but the atmos- phere of the tomb? Come some time on a blazing day, and see for yourself. But rather come on a moonlight night, for then the Voices are raised to their loudest—the Voices round the Rock and in the snapping white of the leaping waters; and the skrrrsh! of the garments of the dead that weave among the pines. Through it all, then, you will hear Her voice as She cries for Their salvation. Down there, close under the rock, they found’ her body. That’s why her name and those of her mother and her father are chiseled on the living monumert. Also, that is why that graven panel, with its biting, hideous scroll, is on the Rock beneath their names—the panel with the brazen numerals spelled out, one below another—One! Two! Three! Four! Five! And there is space—you gage it as the picture grips you—space for—for five more livid, cruel-carved lines. ‘Fhere never will be more than that upon the Rock. The enumeration never will be completed. There was a sixth that would have been set down, but it is missing; the space made ready for it must remain blank with the others, because the hand that was turned to this record of hate has been stilled, and two other hands joined. But—and now you shiver a little, especially if. the moon be full, as you read the message on the Rock and harken to what the natives tell you—surely the toll already there is sufficient to make this an abode of the peaceless damned! The clammy cold is more pronounced as you contemplate the relentless numerals. You brush from your eyes the vision of those that are not there—each representing a life; for a life for her every finger was his measure—and you start at the realization that they are not there only because death took her father before his task was done. Whereat the folk of the hills—who ordimarily avoid the Rock—notice your hush; - and, watching you from the corners of their eyes, they nod to themselves—and whisper. Their tones always sink, and they draw nearer when they tell you this: That some- times the wraiths of the five who are numbered within the panel assemble on the summit of the Rock and raise pitiful hands to heaven, their moanings mingling in the miserable, whiming cadences of a purgatory. The sixth, too, perhaps, whose number is not recorded—through the taking of whose life came about the end of the vengeance—though none will swear that he is actually in that ghostly company. Of the five there is no mistake. They gather in their torment, while above them floats the spirit of Jacqueline, her arms flung like theirs to heaven as she pleads for their forgiveness. Her mother appears to hover, helpless, in her anguish. And her father—who reaches to pull down the hands of Jacqueline that are clasped m prayer! Then, you will learn, there comes 2 great commotion in the pine tops: a doubling in volume of that wailing about the Rock; the bustling water throws itself higher from its jagged bed, to fall with grown fary and chattering. Till suddenly from out the pines there is a frozen blast—-and the five—maybe six—upon the Rock are gone! The specter of her mother fades; and that of her father. The girl is alone in her hopeless supplication! : CHAPTER L on Jacqueline, and contrasted her with e. Dorothy, her companion, who took his hand : solidly as she descended. J ser ter 8 skipped dewn the car “Looks good to you, Jack?” Every- THE ROCK. steps, her fingers barely skimming the body called her Jack as everybody looked hand of the conductor extended to aid with envious approval on her lithe figure her. He smiled on her, as every one smiled that bubbled with the life in her. He fol- COnniclooo SS (C(O)