The Fiend's Delight by Ambrose Bierce
page 38 of 143 (26%)
page 38 of 143 (26%)
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little thing in to the fire, and get off its wet clothes." It
suddenly flashed across his mind that he had neglected an obvious precaution-the clothes were not wet-and he hastily added: "There's no tellin' what would have become of it, a-climbin' down that rope, if I hadn't seen it afore it got down to the water." Silently the good wife took that infant into the house and disrobed it; sorrowfully she laid it alongside its little brothers and sister; long and bitterly she wept over the quartette; and then with one tender look at her lord and master, smoking in solemn silence by the fire, and resembling them with all his might, she gathered her shawl about her bowed shoulders and went away into the night. The Discomfited Demon. I never clearly knew why I visited the old cemetery that night. Perhaps it was to see how the work of removing the bodies was getting on, for they were all being taken up and carted away to a more comfortable place where land was less valuable. It was well enough; nobody had buried himself there for years, and the skeletons that were now exposed were old mouldy affairs for which it was difficult to feel any respect. However, I put a few bones in my pocket as souvenirs. The night was one of those black, gusty ones in March, with great inky clouds driving rapidly across the sky, spilling down sudden showers of rain which as suddenly would cease. I could barely see my way between the empty graves, and in blundering about among the coffins I tripped and fell headlong. A peculiar laugh at my side caused me to turn my head, and I saw a singular old gentleman whom I had often noticed hanging about the Coroner's office, sitting cross-legged upon a prostrate tombstone. |
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