Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood with his knife, and carefully felt the point, which was slightly crusted with a dry brown substance.
“I thought so,” he said aloud, as he placed the needle in a pocket instrument-case: “the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm!”
Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
“Did you see him?” asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
“Don’t be childish, Eliza: there’s no one to see. Why is the room left all untidy?”
“Mother dare not go in!” whispered the child. Then she asked in a low voice, “Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the night old Shields died in the snow?”
“The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you should go on thinking about it,” said Barton, rather sternly. “You were tired and ill, and you fancied it.”
“No, I wasn’t,” said the child, solemnly. “I never say no more about it to mother, nor to nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it, too. I remember it at night in my bed, and I am afraid. Oh, what’s that?”
She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream on the other side of the curtained door that separated the parlor from the bar of the Hit or Miss.
Someone seemed to fall against the door, which at the same moment flew open, as if the wind had burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her hand to her breast, her face deadly white and so contorted by terror as to be unrecognizable, flashed into the room. “Oh, come! oh, come!” she cried. “She’s killing her!” Then the girl vanished as hurriedly as she had appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a face maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that moment Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run, after the girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the bar, who were besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.