Curious, if True: Strange TalesGaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
General
Curious, if True: Strange Tales
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Curiosities and wonders -- Fiction; Horror tales; Short stories
The morning came, and the summons to come forth and die came. They who
entered the cell found Lois asleep, her face resting on the slumbering
old woman, whose head she still held in her lap. She did not seem
clearly to recognize where she was, when she awakened; the 'silly' look
had returned to her wan face; all she appeared to know was, that
somehow or another, through some peril or another, she had to protect
the poor Indian woman. She smiled faintly when she saw the bright light
of the April day; and put her arm round Nattee, and tried to keep the
Indian quiet with hushing, soothing words of broken meaning, and holy
fragments of the Psalms. Nattee tightened her hold upon Lois as they
drew near the gallows, and the outrageous crowd below began to hoot and
yell. Lois redoubled her efforts to calm and encourage Nattee,
apparently unconscious that any of the opprobrium, the hootings, the
stones, the mud, was directed towards her herself. But when they took
Nattee from her arms, and led her out to suffer first, Lois seemed all
at once to recover her sense of the present terror. She gazed wildly
around, stretched out her arms as if to some person in the distance,
who was yet visible to her, and cried out once with a voice that
thrilled through all who heard it, 'Mother!' Directly afterwards, the
body of Lois the Witch swung in the air, and every one stood, with
hushed breath, with a sudden wonder, like a fear of deadly crime,
fallen upon them.
The stillness and the silence were broken by one crazed and mad, who
came rushing up the steps of the ladder, and caught Lois's body in his
arms, and kissed her lips with wild passion. And then, as if it were
true what the people believed, that he was possessed by a demon, he
sprang down, and rushed through the crowd, out of the bounds of the
city, and into the dark dense forest, and Manasseh Hickson was no more
seen of Christian man.
The people of Salem had awakened from their frightful delusion before
the autumn, when Captain Holdernesse and Ralph Lucy came to find out
Lois, and bring her home to peaceful Barford, in the pleasant country
of England. Instead, they led them to the grassy grave where she lay at
rest, done to death by mistaken men. Ralph Lucy shook the dust off his
feet in quitting Salem, with a heavy, heavy heart; and lived a bachelor
all his life long for her sake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account