“Don’t you think that this presentiment is only the result of anxiety; that you are permitting imaginary evils to disturb you, sir?” put in Jack respectfully.
“No, Jack, I do not. From boyhood there has existed an indescribable bond of sympathy between my brother and myself that has always conveyed to each of us, no matter how far apart, a feeling of anxiety if trouble or danger threatened either one. For days this feeling has been increasing upon me, until it now has become unbearable. I regret that I did not take passage on the steamer that sailed today for New York. Now I must wait a week.” As Mr. Dunlap came to the end of his sentence, a chanting, croning kind of sound was heard coming from some spot just beyond the wall around his place.
“Confound that old hag!” cried the impatient old gentleman, as he heard the first notes of the weird incantation, “for the last month, night and day, she has been haunting my premises, wailing out some everlasting song about Tu Konk, white cows, black kids, and such stuff, all in that infernal jargon of the mountain blacks. She looks more like the devil than anything else. I tried to bribe her to go away, but the old witch only laughed in my face. I then ordered her driven away, but the servants are all afraid of her and can’t be induced to molest her.”
“She probably is only some half-witted old woman, whom the superstitious negroes suppose possessed of supernatural power. I don’t think the matter worthy of your notice,” said Jack.
“I suppose it is foolish, but her hanging about my place just now, makes me nervous; but never mind the hag at present. I was going to say to you, when that howling stopped me, that so strong has become my feeling of apprehension within the last few hours that could I do so, I should leave Port au Prince tonight and hurry straight to Boston and my brother. This cursed Haitian loan, for which the English and American bankers hold our house morally, if not legally, responsible, has held me in Haiti this late in the hot season, and, tonight, I would gladly assume the entire obligation legally, to be placed instantly on Boston Common.”
The positiveness and seriousness with which his kinsman spoke caused even Jack’s steady nerves to become somewhat shaken. Just then footsteps were heard coming rapidly up the walk that led to the roadway. As the two Dunlaps reached the top step of the veranda a telegraph messenger sprang up the stairs and handed an envelope to Mr. John Dunlap. With trembling fingers he opened the paper and going to a lamp that hung in the hallway read it. Then with a cry of pain he would have fallen to the floor had not Jack’s strong arms been around him.
“I knew it, I knew it,” he moaned.
Jack took the message from the cold, numb hand of the grief-stricken man and read:
“Come immediately; your brother dying, Lucy in great danger. David Chapman.”
Jack almost carried the groaning old man to a couch that stood in the hall, placing him upon it he hurried to the side-board in the dinner-room for a glass of wine or water; when he returned he found Mr. Dunlap sitting up, with his face hidden in his hands, rocking back and forward murmuring.