All this while the fingers of Gershom were flying rapidly over the paper, independently of his eyes, which were sometimes closed, and sometimes rolling as if in trouble.

A wind which had been gathering all the evening now came moaning up the hollow, rattling the window-blinds, and twisting into dull complaint the boughs of the leafless trees.  Its voice came chill and cheerless into the dusky room, where the fire was now glimmering near its death, and the only sounds were those of Gershom’s rushing pencil, the whispering of Marshall and his friend, and old Mother Scritcher feebly whimpering in her corner.  The scene was sinister.  Suddenly, a rushing gust blew the door wide open.

Golyer started to his feet, trembling in every limb, and looking furtively over his shoulder out into the night.  Quickly recovering himself, he turned to resume his place.  But the moment he dropped Gershom’s hand, the medium had dropped his pencil, and had sunk back in his chair in a deep and deathlike slumber.  Golyer seized the sheet of paper, and with the first line that he read a strange and horrible transformation was wrought in the man.  His eyes protruded, his teeth chattered, he passed his hand over his head mechanically, and his hair stood up like the bristles on the back of a swine in rage.  His face was blotched white and purple.  He looked piteously about him for a moment, then crumpling the paper in his hand, cried out in a hoarse, choking voice, “Yes, it’s a fact:  I done it.  It’s no use denying on’t..  Here it is, in black and white.  Everybody knows it:  ghosts come spooking around to tattle about it.  What’s the use of lying?  I done it.”

He paused, as if struck by a sudden recollection, then burst into tears and shook like a tree in a high wind.  In a moment he dropped on his knees, and in that posture crawled over to Marshall:  “Here, Mr. Marshall—­here’s the whole story.  For God’s sake, spare my wife and children all you can.  Fix my little property all right for ’em, and God bless you for it!” Even while he was speaking, with a quick revulsion of feeling he rose to his feet, with a certain return of his natural dignity, and said, “But they sha’n’t take me!  None of my kin ever died that way:  I’ve got too much sand in my gizzard to be took that way.  Good-bye, friends all!”

He walked deliberately out into the wild, windy night.

Marshall glanced hurriedly at the fatal paper in his hand.  It was full of that capricious detail with which in reverie we review scenes that are past.  But a line here and there clearly enough told the story—­how he went out to plant the apple tree; how Susie came by and rejected him; how he passed into the power of the devil for the time; how Bertie Leon came by and spoke to him, and patted him on the shoulder, and talked about city life; how he hated him and his pretty face and his good clothes; how they came to words and blows, and he struck him with his spade, and he fell into the trench, and he buried him there at the roots of the tree.