Beyond the Pale by H. D. Everett

First published in The Death Mask and Other Stories, “Beyond the Pale” is a tale about a young couple who get on the wrong side of a witch and find themselves on the receiving end of a supernatural attack.

 

About H. D. Everett (1851 – 1923)

Henrietta Dorothy Everett (née Huskisson) was a popular author during the late 1800s to early 1900s. However, her work has since fallen into obscurity, and most people are unlikely to be familiar with her name. The daughter of John Huskisson, a Royal Marines Lieutenant, little is known about her life, including her date of birth. However, church records show she was baptized 4 March 1851.

In 1869, she married Isaac Edward Everett, a solicitor; and began writing in 1896, when she was aged 44. Between then and 1920, she published 22 books, with 17 different publishers, using her pen-name Theo Douglas. Although Everett wrote three historical novels, more than half of her books had fantasy or supernatural themes. For instance, her novel Iras: A Mystery (1896) is about an Egyptologist who revives an ancient mummy and falls in love with the beautiful Iras he has unwrapped.

In 1920, when she published The Death-Mask and Other Stories, for reasons unknown, she discarded her pen-name and published the collection as H. D. Everett. However, her identity had already been revealed in 1910, so using a pseudonym probably no longer offered any advantages.

The Death-Mask and Other Stories earned the praise of both M. R. James and H.P. Lovecraft. In his essay “Some Remarks on Ghost Stories” (1929) [paragraph 16], James described Everett’s anthology as having “a rather quieter tone on the whole” and “some excellently conceived stories”. Meanwhile, in his essay essay Supernatural Horror in Literature [Chapter 9, paragraph 9], Lovecraft stated: “Mrs. H. D. Everett, though adhering to very old and conventional models, occasionally reaches singular heights of spiritual terror in her collection of short stories.”

The Death-Mask and Other Stories was Everett’s only story collection. However, in 2006, Wordsworth Editions republished an expanded versions of the collection under the title The Crimson Blind & Other Stories. The expanded version contained all 14 stories from the original collection, along with two additional tales: “The Pipers of Mallory” and “The Whispering Wall”. It’s interesting to note the author published both of these stories in magazines, prior to putting together her anthology, and either she or her publisher must have decided not to include them in original anthology.

 

Beyond the Pale

By H. D. Everett

(Online Text)

Without doubt the Hennikers’ was a love-match. They had been married a couple of years, and it may fairly be said that neither party had found cause to repent. Rupert Henniker was sincerely attached to his wife, and she positively idolised him. The French proverb says that in all such unions there is one who kisses, and the other who permits the embrace. In this case Henniker was the one kissed, but he willingly yielded the cheek, and felt that Joan’s adoration was well placed.

Joan began her married life with high ideals. She determined so to identify herself with her husband’s pursuits, that she might everywhere be his unfailing companion; and to this young wife the nursery interests, which frequently alter such a programme, had not been vouchsafed by Providence. So when Henniker laid his plans for a season’s shooting in the wilds of Western America, Joan, as a matter of course, expected to go too.

She did not claim to shoulder a rifle beside him; that was not her way: but she could keep the rough little mountain dwelling which had been placed at their disposal, cosy and home-like for Rupert, and see that he missed no comfort that her care could supply. If on the spot, she could see that he changed into dry foot-wear when he came back of an evening; she could wash his socks and darn them, and contrive the best imitation possible of his favourite dishes over the stove which there would be the sole substitute for an English kitchen-range. She had some practical knowledge of these matters, though it was slight and inadequate; but she determined it should be sufficient, and everything in the adventure before them was seen through the rose-coloured medium of romance. The separation which might have been had she held back, was now no longer to be feared; and a prolonged tete-a-tete in the wilds would draw them together even nearer than before. Henniker had expressed himself as proud of his little woman’s pluck, and she was determined to justify that pride and that praise.

Their solitude would not be absolute, as Arnott’s ranche was distant only half a mile, which in that land of prairie wastes and wide distances, seemed almost as close as next door. Arnott and Henniker had been boys together and schoolmates, and it was upon his suggestion they were going out. Arnott’s wife was said to be a good sort, and on Joan’s arrival she would equip her with all needful knowledge.

So young Mrs. Henniker set out on her sea and land journey with a brave heart and bright anticipations, and her courage did not fail when at last they travelled on beyond railways and civilisation, into the great solitudes; climbing the spurs of the foot-hills, and looking up at the huge mountain wall and the high snows behind which the sun sank in the west. Perhaps the adobe hut when reached was something of a disillusion, though it was fairly commodious and not absolutely bare; the Arnotts had put in necessaries in the way of furniture, and had done their best to make it habitable. It would look more home-like when Joan had had time to unpack and arrange her possessions and his—other than the precious rifles, which were not for feminine handling: and about all this Joan would have the aid of a “help” Mrs. Arnott had engaged for her, to soften the edge of hardship in this strange new housekeeping in the wilds. Nita, the half-bred Indian girl, could at least manage the stove, and wash and scrub the place down, if she could do no more.

Mrs. Arnott had of course her own establishment to look after, where a couple of pretty children added to the domestic cares and joys, so she could give Joan only occasional assistance; though a fount of practical advice was at her service whenever she cared to come up to the ranche. So the next day Joan was left alone with her wild-looking “help” when Henniker went off to the hills.

Nita had a double tongue in her head, Spanish and Indian, on which a very little English had been grafted; and it was by the help of the very little English, that she and her new mistress were to exchange ideas and commands. Joan would have scorned to confess that from the beginning she stood in some awe of her assistant, but it was so in fact. Nita’s service was utterly unlike any to which she had been accustomed, and there was something disconcerting about the girl’s sudden lithe movements, and the keen regard of her black eyes. At first mistress and maid were on good terms; and though Nita’s ideas of necessary cleanliness were far from satisfying Joan, the young housekeeper hoped that admonition and instruction would have their due effect in time; and greater energy was displayed after the gift of a gay ribbon out of one of the Henniker travelling trunks.

But with the unpacking of these trunks came the development of an intense curiosity on the part of Nita concerning all kinds of civilised belongings, and, as Joan began uncomfortably to suspect, of a cupidity equally intense. The girl longed to deck herself out in imitation of her mistress, and pile on the few ornaments that were in evidence: Joan had, as a matter of course, left her jewel-case in the custody of an English bank.

Nita was nominally assisting arrangement upon shelves and drawers, and fingering the possessions that were laid away, when Joan first noticed the peculiar scar on her right wrist. Such a slender brown wrist it was, and at some time or other it must have been frightfully hurt. A deeply-seamed scar ran the whole way round the arm, or almost the whole way, as only about an inch of smooth skin was free from the ghastly indentation; and below this, nearer the hand, were a couple of lines of blue tattooing, twisted together at the back into a sort of device. Joan asked her how she had been hurt, but evidently Nita’s English was not equal to the task of explanation; she frowned and drew back, pouring out a torrent of bastard Spanish, which left her mistress as wise as before.

Joan did not inquire further, but, thinking to please her, offered as a gift a string of coral beads which matched the ribbon. To her surprise Nita refused it, but snatched up a small miniature portrait taken from the trunk.

“Not those,” she said, “I don’t want those: I have beads enough. I will have this instead: give me this!”

The miniature was one of Joan’s dead mother, and greatly valued by her; unluckily it was framed in a glittering oval of Paris paste. Joan was shocked at the greed and the demand, and wrenched the portrait out of those brown fingers which closed and clutched against her; there was indeed a struggle over it between the two.

“No, you cannot have that,” she said, trying to disguise her displeasure—for what was the use of being angry with this child of nature? “You may have the corals if you care for them, but not this. It is the only portrait I have of my mother, and I value it more than all the world.”

The girl looked sulky, but no more was said. Of course it was not the picture that she wanted, but the oval of shining mock gems. The attraction of this to one who had never before looked upon diamonds, real or imitation, was greater that Joan could divine. Yet civilised women have before now succumbed to such lures, so to covet possession may be reckoned less surprising in one beyond the pale. Joan was prudent enough again to lock the miniature in her travelling trunk, and when the key was turned she dismissed the matter from her mind. But it was by no means blotted out of Nita’s by that closed lid and turned key.

Several days went by, full of small jarring discomforts which need not be enumerated here. One afternoon Joan went up to the ranche to take counsel with Mrs. Arnott, and on her return she found the place deserted, her boxes broken open and ransacked, and, what specially moved her to wrath, the precious miniature was forced out of its frame and cracked across, while the glittering oval had altogether disappeared. This was an outrage indeed. The actual thefts were of small account measured against this damage, the wrong of the disfiguring crack which split the beloved face in two. Joan cried out that the offender must be caught and punished, and Henniker was of the same mind; so he and Arnott, who was sheriff’s delegate for that part of the district, rode up into the hills in search of Nita, making their errand known.

The girl was supposed to have her abode with the old Indian woman her grandmother, who received them with wrath and curses, and swore to Nita’s innocence—as doubtless she would have sworn to any statement which suited her, having small regard for truth. Also she declared that she knew nothing of the grand-daughter’s whereabouts, so the pursuing party returned baffled, after breathing forth vain threatenings.

Mrs. Arnott was with Joan when her husband and his friend returned.

“Did you really beard old Rachel in her den?” she asked, and looked more than a little concerned.

“Why of course we did. What else were we to do?” was his rejoinder.

“I suppose it was a matter of duty, but the old crone is what they call about here ill to cross and likely to put ill luck upon you both. It was all very well for you to be out to catch a thief, but I wish you and Mr. Henniker had left old Rachel alone. You must know,” she said, turning to Joan, “deserved or not, this grandmother of Nita’s has the reputation of being a witch.”

Of course they laughed at this as at an excellent joke, Joan and the two men, but there was an air about Mrs. Arnott as if she more than half believed in Rachel’s malignant powers.

“I am more sorry than I can say that I sent Nita to you,” she went on. “But the girl seemed teachable and promised to do well. There is nobody else but old Mercy Clew, our herdsman’s wife, and she is coming up to you to-morrow. She is a rough specimen, but I have always thought her honest, and I believe your possessions will be safe with her.”

The foregoing may be taken as the prologue to the drama, all of it commonplace enough, but needful to make clear what will follow.

Joan had spent a busy morning shepherding Mercy Clew—who was both deaf and obstinate—in the way of the help she required. It had been a strenuous time: a trial of patience as well as of physical strength in unaccustomed labours; and she had withdrawn into their living-room for a few minutes’ breathing-space and rest, throwing herself into the one cushioned chair with a gasp of relief. Her eyes were closed, her muscles all relaxed, when tap-tap came behind her—the rapping of impatient fingers on the glass. Mrs. Arnott sometimes tapped like that on her way to the entrance door; and Joan started round to face the window, feeling rather aggrieved by the intrusion. But Mrs. Arnott was not there. The tapping came again, and now she saw something where the glass was struck; only a shadow, but the shadow of a hand.

A hand reaching down from above. If the shadow was of any real substance, the intruder must be crouched upon the roof; the hut had, of course, no storey above the ground-floor. It must be Nita; that was her instant conviction: Nita playing some annoying trick: but with a warrant out against her it was surprising that she dared. Joan ran outside to see.

No, there was no one on the roof, either above the smitten window or behind—no one hiding round the chimney-stack, no one within sight; but, passing it on her return, she discovered that the smitten glass retained the print of a hand.

The hand had been pressed flat against the pane, palm and outspread fingers, and it seemed to have been dipped in something viscous and sticky, faintly streaked with blood. She looked at it from time to time during the day, and watched the gradual drying off of the mark in the keen hill air; but it was still faintly visible when Henniker returned, and his attention was called to it.

“Yes,” he said, “whoever made that mark must have stretched down to do t from the roof. A daring trick, and likely, enough to be Nita’s, unless indeed she has an accomplice. We shall catch her at it if she is foolhardy enough to come again.”

There was no more tapping on the glass that night, to call attention to what was going forward; but when they got up the next morning a second window was marked. This one lighted the bedroom and looked to the other side of the house. Here there was no roof-slope above it but a gable, so it would have been more difficult, well-nigh impossible, to reach down to the glass from above. The print of the hand, however, was made precisely as before; wrist upwards and fingers downwards, a sticky impression streaked with blood. It was Henniker this time who discovered it when he drew aside the window screen to shave; he called to his wife, who was kindling a fire in the stove, and they both regarded it together.

“Somebody is trying to take a rise out of us”—such was Henniker’s ultimatum. “No doubt it is supposed we shall be scared by these cursings of the witch. I’d like to get to the bottom of it before anything is known, so do not let us appear to take notice. I shall not say anything to Jack Arnott—yet, and do not you to his wife.”

It was all very well to resolve on this course of action—or inaction, and easy to take no notice of a sticky mark on the outside of a window, which was presently effaced with a wet cloth. But the next demonstration, if it can be so called, was of a different nature and less possible to ignore.

Mercy Clew came rushing in from her wash-bucket to where Joan was stirring a saucepan over the stove.

“Come you out here, Miss Henniker. I cannot go on in the yard. They have been throwing stones at me this half hour!”

The woman had an air of passionate indignation, but together with the anger there was fear. Mrs. Clew’s command of English was superior to Nita’s, but Joan found her almost as difficult to understand.

“Do you mean that somebody is throwing stones, and at you? Who would dare to do such a thing? It must be a mistake.”

“Come you out and see”—taking hold of Joan by the arm. “I wouldn’t like to have you hurt, but I want you to believe. And if it is the doing of old madam, like enough she’ll stone you too.”

It was true that stones and pieces of rock were scattered over the beaten earth of the yard; but, for all Joan knew, they might have been there since the beginning of time. The woman showed the spot where she was standing, and the direction from which they struck her; and, the moment after, another stone fell plump into the water-bucket, and a second bruised Joan on the shoulder. Nobody was in sight.

“It is horrible of them. What have we done that we should be so persecuted! We must find out who is doing this.”

She was angry rather than dismayed, and eager in searching round the dwelling-house and outbuildings. Except for these possible screens, Hunter’s End stood in the open, away from trees and rocks. There seemed no possible cover to conceal the thrower of the stones, and yet again, immediately on their return, one was tossed into the yard.

“Bring your pail indoors into the kitchen,” Joan commanded. “We shall be safe there.”

But safe they were not, though shut in by walls and doors. The stones still struck them both, and fell within on the floor. The elderly “help” reached for her shawl and bonnet, which were hanging on the pegs.

“I’m sorry to leave you, marm, but stay I can’t where there are such goings on. It’s all through the old madam that your place has got bewitched. And, if I’m not mistaken, you’ll have no more peace here, day nor night.”

“Who is this old madam, and what do you mean about bewitching?” Joan held her back, almost by force, till she answered.

Mercy Clew dropped her voice to a whisper.

“‘Tis not well to say the name of her, but she is kin to the girl you had here, her you sent after with a sheriff’s warrant. It is well known that madam puts spells upon people, and has laid a spell upon the girl herself, if what one hears is true. She’s an awful woman when she is angered, and you will have to get quit of her one way or another, or there will be no peace for this house. Miss Arnott, she knows something of what has been done elsewhere, enough to pass her word to you that I am telling truth. And until madam’s quit of you, I can tell you this. Not a soul about will come nigh the place, or drive their beasts past it. I’m sorry from my heart for what’s before you, but you’ll have to fend for yourselves.”

And the Hennikers had in fact to “fend for themselves” in the days that followed. The witch, if truly a witch was in fault, had contrived to put upon them a boycott as stringent as any that existed in Ireland. And it was not only that the report of the stone-throwing had gone abroad, and the superstitious were afraid to venture into the bewitched quarter, animals, who could not be affected by hearsay, were also a prey to terror. Arnott’s dog, who was used to accompany him in visiting Hunter’s End, on the first occasion after these events began, hesitated when within twenty yards of the door, and appeared to scent danger: he then turned tail and fled for home, despite the calls of his master. And one of the ranche horses, drawing a load of logs for the Hennikers’ use and led by Arnott, jibbed determinedly at about the same distance, and neither blows nor coaxing could induce it to approach nearer. It was impossible to get help for Joan, other than what Mrs. Arnott could occasionally give; and Henniker did not like to leave her uncompanioned in the midst of such eerie happenings, so the guns were idle in their rack, except for the shooting of some rock pigeons and conies [1] in the near neighbourhood of the hut.

Henniker’s opinion had altered from the scornful disbelief professed in the beginning, to a mood of unwilling and annoyed conviction. The stone-throwing against old Mercy in the yard he had dismissed as nothing more than a spiteful trick; the tapping on the glass fell into the same category, and the impression of a human hand in an impossible position, might even have been made by a dummy pressed against the pane. But when it came to later experiences which he shared, occurrences when he and Joan were alone in the house, stone throwing within shut doors which went on at intervals, the affair assumed a different complexion. Stones—it is true they were small ones—were thrown when the two were sitting at supper, first from one side of the room and then from the other; and a good-sized pebble was dropped from above into his coffee-cup, breaking the cup and spilling the contents. Even at night they were allowed no peace; articles left in the kitchen were brought through the shut door into their room and hurled upon the beds; the coverlets were grasped and dragged by something which remained invisible; fingers rapped a tattoo against the window; and, what seemed more extraordinary than all, running footsteps passed backwards and forwards overhead, where was nothing but the sloping roof.

Henniker started out again and again, gun in hand, but there was no target for his shot. Joan kept her courage wonderfully through those harassed days and nights; but when at last her husband accorded her a well-deserved meed of praise, she broke down and shed tears.

“I don’t mind—that is, I can bear it so long as it is only what we hear and feel. But if it should come to seeing anything dreadful, I am sure I could not go on being brave.”

It was after this avowal that Henniker asked advice of Arnott, who had come down to see how they were faring; and it may be noted here that this friend had now been taken into the full confidence which was at first withheld.

“What would you do in my place? It’s beyond endurance that we should be driven out by sheer devilry—for devilry it must be; but how can I stay on here when it is killing my wife? She won’t leave me, or I would send her away, and stay and brave it out by myself.”

“What would I do? Why, I’d be inclined to try what the half-breeds resort to in similar cases. Rank superstition you will say, and so do I; but it is possible there may be something in it as they say that it succeeds. They pit one witch against another, and let the two of them battle it out.

There’s a man up the river who goes by the name of the witch-doctor. If I were you I’d have him over, and pay the dollars of his fee. I understand it is a big one.”

“If we can be freed from this, I don’t mind what I pay, or what absurdity I have to put up with.”

“You will have to put up with absurdity, if his rites are of the sort I imagine. I have heard of them of course, living here, but I have never seen the thing done. I may as well say this is Cora’s advice as well as mine” (Cora was his wife). “Very well, as you are willing, I will send Clew with the buggy at dawn to-morrow to fetch down Hill-of-the-Raven, and you must be prepared to receive him here.”

Hill-of-the-Raven professed himself willing to undertake the job, and soon after mid-day Arnott brought him to Hunter’s End. He was a very lean, very tall old Indian, who looked inappropriately garbed in European dress instead of his native paint and feathers. Arnott acted as interpreter, as his English was of the smallest; and he also Mounted guard over the old man’s bag of conjuring tools while Hill-of-the-Raven made first the outer round of the house, and then entered every room, standing and snuffing the air as a stag might who perceives a taint to windward, all the while muttering incantations to himself. Finally he confabulated again with Arnott, who looked distinctly annoyed.

“Hill-of-the-Raven wants more money,” he informed Henniker. “The old rascal says it is a worse job than he expected, and of a different sort: ‘plenty magic here, and bad magic’. He was to have cleared you out for ten dollars, but now he says he must have five and twenty.”

For answer, Henniker counted the bills into his friend’s hand.

“No doubt he is scoundrel enough for anything, but I will not stint the money. Tell him to go ahead with what he has to do.”

“And he says the senora must help him. There is a woman in it, and there must be a woman against. Will Mrs. Henniker mind?”

Joan raised no objection, and the preparations went forward. The man stripped himself to the waist, wearing only his leather breeches. He then laid a sheet of iron on the wooden top of their table, and produced an odd-looking bowl of beaten metal, which he required Joan to fill with spring water, dipping into it the forefinger of each of her hands, first one and then the other, and stirring the water from left to right. He gazed into the bowl for a few minutes in silence, and then spoke rapidly to Arnott, who translated.

“He is enumerating the articles you have lost and wish restored. Some blouse-waists and a skirt, a belt and buckle, a scarf, and a circle of stones that glitter. That is right, is it not? But nothing more than he could have learnt from Clew.”

This seemed only the preliminary. The witch-doctor now built up with great care four little pyramids of some stuff which looked like dried herbs, one at each corner of the iron sheet, the water bowl still occupying the centre. He took a hot coal from the fire and lighted these pyramids, one after another. As they smouldered he began to speak, as if in conversation with some person invisible, upbraiding, commanding, threatening; and now the sweat stood in beads on his brow and rained from him with the effort he was making, though it appeared to be mental rather than bodily. At intervals he sprinkled water round him in the room, finally snatching up the bowl and emptying it by tossing the whole contents upwards into the air. This in itself was a conjuror’s marvel, as the water totally disappeared and nothing was wetted by it; but this crowning action had a result which astonished the three spectators. A material object fell from the ceiling and dropped upon the iron sheet. A woman’s hand.

They all looked in amaze at this product of Hill-of-the-Raven’s incantation.

“I have succeeded,” the witch-doctor announced to Arnott. “The senor and senora will have no more trouble. But they must fold the hand in a fair white cloth, and bury it at sundown under the nearest tree. The senora will receive again what she has lost, but she will be asked to give back something in return. And that something she would do unwisely to refuse.”

The Hennikers were by no means anxious to detain Hill-of-the-Raven, and he departed with Arnott to set out on his return journey in the buggy. Joan and her husband were left possessors of the strange Thing which had fallen from the ceiling: could it really have been this slight small hand, now lying limp and dead, which had caused all the disturbance and trouble. A human hand, of natural flesh at least, though drained of blood; and—wonder the more, as Joan presently cried out in recognition, it was Nita’s hand. It bore the double line of blue tattooing twisted into a knot, which she well remembered on the girl’s wrist; and the hand appeared to have been severed exactly where Nita bore on her forearm that deeply indented scar. That the hand should have been hers, seemed to make the whole thing more horrible even than before. Joan shuddered away from the touch of it.

“Let us do what the man said: let us bury it out of sight.”

“Yes, but not till sundown,” replied her husband. “We had better keep to the letter of the instructions, absurd as they may seem. Find the white cloth he spoke of, and have it wrapped in readiness, and I will go and dig the hole under the tree.”

So the burial of the small limp hand took place exactly as Hill-of-the-Raven had enjoined, hastily and almost furtively conducted, at least to the consciousness of these two people; they felt almost as if they had been concerned in a murder, and were now hiding away the corpse. There was something solemn, too, in that still evening in which hardly a breath of air stirred, with sunset flush still lingering behind the mountain peaks, and a few faint stars beginning to look forth.

Henniker smoothed over the disturbed ground, and then shouldered his spade.

“That ends the trouble we will hope,” he said.

Joan had kept her courage well in hand through the long strain upon it, but the events of that day had overtaxed her nerves.

“I am ready to hate out west,” she sobbed. “When we have turned our backs on it, and are again in safe England, shall we ever believe that these things really happened, and were not from beginning to end an evil dream?”

A quiet night followed for the inhabiters of Hunter’s End; there were no more tapping fingers, nor scampering feet above upon the roof. The next morning Mercy Clew came back to work, unafraid of further peltings, as she had full confidence in the witch-doctor’s power of exorcism, and belief that all would now be well. And, more notable still, Arnott’s horses driven by, no longer held back and sweated in terror, nor did the dog refuse to accompany his master. Whatever it was that had scared them from the place, was plainly removed and gone; and, now Joan had the companionship of Mrs. Clew, Henniker was released to carry his gun to the hills. This seems like the end of the story, but it is not. There is one more episode to be related, stranger than all.

Six days had gone by, and the seventh had dawned. It had been an undisturbed week, and the first vivid impressions of the witch diablerie were beginning to fade.

The first change that came was in the weather, which recently had been oppressive, heavy with heat, and scarcely a breath of air fanning down into the valley from blue heights and distant snows. The cup of it had doubtless been charged to the brim for a crisis of electrical disturbance. Never had Joan in her English experience witnessed such lightning or heard such thunder: the jagged flashes seemed to leap from peak to peak, and the thunder was caught up by the mountain echoes and doubled and redoubled, rolling like a cannonade among the hills. Then followed torrential rain, driving and pitiless, scourging all before it, and creating, as it seemed in a moment, streams and rivulets where all had been as dry as dust. In the midst of this downpour a hail came from without: a buggy and pair of mules had halted at the gate, and two people were craving shelter, a boon that could hardly be denied.

Henniker opened the door, and a man staggered in supporting a woman wrapped in a hooded cloak, who seemed to be ill or faint. He placed her in a chair, and cleared the wet, lank hair out of his own eyes; he was a good-looking young half-breed, about twenty years of age, and he had some broken English.

“This Hunter’s End?” he asked, looking round. “And your name Henniker? My sister here is ill, having lost her hand. She has come to claim it again from you. And she has brought back the things she took away.”

The fainting woman in the chair was Nita. The man opened a bundle on the table, and there, crumpled and soiled, were Joan’s possessions, and rolled within them the oval frame of paste. As he took the bundle from her knee, the cloak that covered her fell apart, and showed that her right arm ended in a stump, about which a linen bandage was twisted, and the bandage was stained with blood.

“My sister’s hand?” he continued, looking from Joan to Henniker, and back again to Joan. “You have it here. I bring you these in exchange: you have no claim to keep. If you do not restore her hand, she will die.”

Joan whispered hurriedly to her husband.

“This was what Hill-of-the-Raven meant. The thing we were to give back if it was demanded of us. You will have to dig it up.”

“Are your afraid to be left with them?” he queried.

She shook her head, so he shouldered his spade and went forth to the tree-root to open again that small and uncanny grave, which was dug and filled in seven days before. He brought back the parcel in its folds of fair linen, from which he had shaken the dry earth; the rain which still fell without had not penetrated so deep.

The hand when unrolled from the cloth appeared to be unchanged, corruption had not set in.

All this time Nita sat with closed eyes, leaning back in the chair, as if barely conscious of what was taking place. Now she moved when her brother addressed her in their native tongue, and held out the maimed stump of her right arm, from which he unwound the binding cloth, exposing the raw wound.

He then united the severed parts, and Joan used afterwards to aver that she heard the bones grate together as they met. And when the bandage was re-wound (a couple of pieces of bark folded in it to keep straight the wrist) she saw the dead fingers move, and the hue of life suffuse them once again. This was the last of madam Rachel’s magic, and of the uncanny events at Hunter’s End. The brother lifted Nita to her feet, and half carried, half supported her to the waiting buggy, where his mules were hitched to the post. Both of them were apparently indifferent to the still falling sheets of-rain, through which they presently disappeared in the direction of the hills.

H. D. Everett (1851 – 1923)

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1. Conies is the plural form of cony, a word that can be used in several ways. In the context of the story, a cony is a rabbit.