LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1860, 9 February 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A TROOPER'S NIGHT WATCH.

A Taxb op thb Australian Bush.

[From " Temple Bar."

(Concluded.)

Taking possession of the least uneasy chair in the hut, he placed it by the fire with the guttering candle beside him. The room was small One end was entirely taken up by a double bedstead with a dingy valance that had once been white ; at the other was the door leading into the bar. The fireplace extended along the greater part of one side, and on the opposite one was the stretcher with its motionless occupant ; so situated that, although the trooper tried to forget its presence by partly turning his back apon the ghastly figure, it still remained of necessity partly visible to his eye, as it could not fail to be to his mind. For, though he tried to look only into the crackling fire, he could not help seeing the white outline still, as it were with the corner of his eye. However, as a solace he lit his pipe and sought for distraction in the greasy pages of the 'Newgate Calendar ' Meanwhile the storm rose and increased in violence as the hours crept slowly on. The lightning flashed in weird fitful brilliancy through the small unshuttered window, and thunder pealed heavily overhead. It was a night which might have tempted the worst misanthropic of men to seek the society of their kind —a night when most would have endcrsed the maxim that man was not formed to be alone. Such would certainly have been Trooper Callanane's sentiment had he been asked, as he sat there reading the description of horrid crimes, with the victim of a fresh crime lying close beside him, and with the angry voices of nature raging around, as though the wrath of heaven were let loose. He had sat there for some hours, when, feeling restless, he rose, and leaving his candle on the rude mantelpiece, passed through the adjoining tap room, and opening the front door looked out again into the night. The storm was at its climax. Darkness ' that might be felt' alternated with the lurid brilliancy of the lightnings, which lit up with wild flashes the tall dark trees, the flooded road, the glistening rain, and the gaunt black Btumps. He stood for a while watching the spectacle in its wild grandeur, half fascinated, while the wind swept the driving rain into his face. A jagged train of fire darted through the black cloud, and struok a tree close by with a report instantaneous and almost deafening. ' By George,' exclaimed the trooper, closing the door with an involuntary start, as the peal crashed and rolled away into the distance, succeeded by another vivid flash ; ' by George, that's blinding.' He had felt a necessity to speak, but his voice sounded odd and unnatural, as it fell unanswered on the air and was borne away by the angry chorus of the elements. Fastening the bolt of the rickety door to prevent its being blown open, he returned to his dismal post Heaping up fresh logs on the fire, he sat down again to peruse the grisly records of the ' Newgate Calendar,' pnffing vigorously away at hij comforting pipe. What an interminable night it seemed. _ It was har.ily more than midnight yet. ' Heighho,' sighed the trooper, 'the morning is a long time coming.' It was very dull, very dreary, and he never remembered having spent so long a eight. His eyes were bent over the book in his hand, yet, as has been mentioned before, he could, without positively turning his head towards it, see the dim whit* < utline of the corpse. After a while it seeded to him as he sat thos as though there were a slight movement under the white bheet which covered the shattered form. Ho turned sharply round with a sudden contraction of the heart, and with an undefinible thrill which he could not suppress ; for he thought of the broken jaw, of the dreadful glazed eyes, and knew that life could not possibly linger in that body. He looted, but all was still; the rigid outline was lying motionless as before under the white folds. * A fancy,' tho troooer said to himself : 'a most ridiculous fancy. How could it move? One grows fancifnl on a niqiit like this.' He took up his book, and blow fresh puffs from his pipe ; but the fancy, ridiculous as he called it, lingered strangely in his mind; and his sidelong I glance involuntarily wandered, ever and I anon, half furtively from the study in which I he fain would have kept his thoughts engrossed, to the Thing or tho narrow

sLjeLcLer. Presently he staged again. Sursly, surely it moved this time, oi his eyes had strangely deceivsd him. He threw himself back in the chair, and, letting tin-. book fall on his lap, sat" with his head turned towards the corpse, aad his eyes steadily fixed up in it. Yea—there is was; but quite rigid as it seemed, and motionless. The trooper knew that it was preposterous to thi-k otherwise. 'You are a fool, Trooper Callanane,' he said to himself when, after a prolonged of keenest scrutiny, he failed to detect the slightest movement under the white sheet; ' this sort of thing will never do. I suppose my eyes are growing dizzy over this confounded book, and with the dim guttering light, to. It's a rare slow job I have got into, and I wish is were moraing.' With this reiterated wish he set himself to resume his studies, slightly altering his position, however, so as to keep the body the better under observation. Perhaps he might have drzed a little, for after a time he became aware that the fire was burning rather low. Ab he was stooping down to replenish it, his arm was arrested by a sudden start of horror, for again he thought he saw the white sheet heaving, and a slight rustle was audible through the stillness. He sat like one paralysed for a moment, staring at the dread object, which, as though to mock him. now lay motionless as befora. 'lt did move,'the constable said with a gasp; 'l'm hanged if it didn't.' Irresolute still, he waited to see whether there would be any repetition of the movement, half inclined still to believe that his overwrought imagination had deoeived him. 'And yet,' he thought, "tin odd—l was never given to that sort of thing before, and sure I've seen maDy a shocking sight in my lifetime too.' Suddenly it occurred to him, with quite a nsw thrill of awe, that, motionless &b the figure was lying now, its position was certainly changed frim what it had been when it was placed on the stretcher. The arms had been extended at its sides; he remembered that perfectly. Now, horrid sight! there was a marked elevation on the chest, as if the arms had been raised and folded ac-oss. Good heavens ! what could it mean ? Could that woman be alive yet ? ' Impossible 1 impossible!' he said to himself with a shudder. Presently, as he gazed, slowly, but very perceptibly, the sheet rose high above the breast, it looked as though the hands were up'i'ted in an unsuccessful attempt to o*Bt aside the sheet; then, as though from failing strength, they seemed to shake and ' quiver, and to fall back prone and exhausted on the breast, and then the body lay ' still as before.

The trooper looked and gasped. He started to his feet, and seizing the flaring candle was at the bedside in two or three hatity strides. He stooped over the figure with a moment's natural hesitation before unveiling it, and thought he could detect a faint rise and fall, as though feeble respiration were going on underneath. He seized hold of the sheet with an agitated hand ; bnt aa he did so the candle was suddenly knocked out of his hand and extinguished as it fell to" the ground, while something, he could not guess what, seemed to brush past him in the darkness To say that he was not panicstricken for a minute or two would not be true, but Trooper Callanane's nerves were strong, and rose to the occasion. Groping his way back to the expiring fire, he felt for the grim companion of his solitude, the ' Newgate Calendar.' He tore a few pages from the cover, and having kindled them at the embers he succeeded in discovering and relighting the fallen candle. Grasping it securely, and holding it high for fear of further accidents, he once more approached the couch where the murdered woman lay, and having with wary hand lifted the sheet he looked in her face. Dead ! Oh heavens ! who cunld look on that face, so livid, so horribly set, and doubt for one instant that it was dead 1 He touched the brow; it had the ley chill of death. And the arms, which he felt certain that he had seen so lately folded across the breast, they were lying cold and stiff by her side. He touched the breast, and started again to find it warm. Bewildering mystery! What did it mean ?

Baffled in the highest degree, with all his j natural good sense strongly combating the idea of any supernatural solution of the difficulty, the constable looked vainly around him, from the stretcher to the floor, to the ceiling, for an explanation. Nothing there ; only silence around him, only a faint crackle on the hearth or a low matter of thunder in the distance. Not a single living thing seemed between the dead woman lying there and himself, her living guard. With a shudder of repulsion he replaced the sheet over the disfigured face of the dead. Suddenly his eyes fell on the valance surrounding the double bed at the end of the room. The folds hung low, touching the ground. Half mechanically he strode towards it, and, stooping to lift the valance, looked underneath, as be carefully shaded his candle. Something was there. A pair of red, gleaming eyes, shining like fiery coals, glared at him viciously, and with a sudden bound, and a hissing, spluttering sound, a huge black cat, with tail erect and bristling fur, sprang out from its hiding-place. The trooper hastily retreated before the irate and frightened animal, and burst into a fit of loud and prolonged laughter, which sounded strange and harsh in the lonely hnt with its dead mistress. It was unseemly, the trooper felt, that laugh in the presence of the dead, but he could not help it, the revulsion of feeling was so great, the solution of all his awful speculations so comical. For he could guess easily enough now how it had been. The cat, a half wild creature, had doubtless formed a member of that rough household circle It had not been in the hut, he was quite sure, when he first took up his dreary post, and when the presence of any animated creature would have been acceptable; but it must have crept in nnperceived, while he had been standing in the doorway, intent on watohir.g the storm. Probably the old stretcher bed might have been the nightly resting place to which puss had directed his steps as usual ; perhaps he had been looking for his mistress, and recognising her, even in death, had taken up hia oid place on her lap. Everything was explained now. The cat, creeping in under the sheet, had lain down to rest on the dead woman's breast, and had lent to the lifeless form the transient warmth which had so greatly perplexed the constable; the mysterious movements under the white cloth had, it was evident, been occasioned by no other agency, and the trooper laughed again as he thought how it had thrilled through his heart when hands had seemed to be raised underneath, for he knew now that it had been puss turning in his sleep, and stretching his arched back before he composed himself to a fresh nap. And the living touch that had met him, and had left him standing in the dark with the half-raised sheet in his hand—

•It was Y oa > m y friend, was it ?' the trooper said, laughing, and he eyed his brute companion. But the black cat looked up in no laughing mood, if cats might even be supposed to relax their dignity so far. It eat glaring at him -with a most vindictive expression of countenance, as though it meditated a spring—a creature not to be trifled with as it sat there at bay, in mortal terror of the ftrange man on the premises. So, as it waa evidently determined to beaegressive, the trooper thought it might be best not tojdetain the angry brute longer than 'was necessary. Taking up his candle, he slipped through the tap room, and holding opea the door of the hut, stood cautiously aside ta let it pass. The cat was quick to seize the chance of escape, and flew past him into the dark night with a parting hiss and splutter of direct menace. The trooper closed tb.fi door and returned to his post. He looked at his watch; it was half-past one. ' The small hours have come, and ghost-time is past ' he said to himself with a grin. By-and-by he fell asleep, and awoke cold and hungry as the grey morning light streamei into tho desolate disordered chamber. He smiled as ho remembered his sensations of the night, but rejoiced to think that the vigil was over.

During the course of the day the inquest was held on the premises, and he was re leased from his watch. Dan was tried and found guilty, but t'io jury would not ag'eo to bring in a verdict of murder, as undoubtedly it should have been. The verdict " Manslaughter" saved his lifo, and Dan was committed to prison and hard labor for a long term of years. However, the sentence was subsequently commuted, and Daa regained his liberty, and may perhaps be flourishing among new scenes and surroundings. The "shanty"' found no other human occupants. Owls hooted out their melancholy notes from under the eaves at night, and native csts and opossums disputed the premises and fought many a desperate battle For absolute possession. For a time the black cat would creep in from day to day, seeking vainly for food and warmth by the

• teserted hearth, but ultimately it took altogether to the woods, where it lived thenceforth by the chase. The hut was popularly supposed to be haucted ; hence no benighted wayfarer would have sought even temporary shelter under its crushing roof, and after a fei7 years it fell abfolntply to ruir.