“One day an old Shaman of the moors called upon me. He was ancient, ancient—as dry as his staff, and so bent that, a little more, and he had tripped over his long beard in walking. I can’t reproduce his brogue; but this is the substance of what it conveyed to me:—
“Had I ever heard speak of Baruch of the lone shebeen—him that had once kept an illicit still, but that the ghosts had got hold of for his sins? No? Well, he, the Shaman, was come too near the end of his own living tether to fear ghoulish reprisals if he told me. And he told me.
“Baruch, he said, was suspected in the village of keeping the dead’s hurling-goal—had long been suspected—it was an old tale by now. But, och, wirrastrue! if, as he calculated, Baruch was nearing the close of his seven years’ service, Baruch was the man for me, and could do for my child what no other living man, barring a ghosts’ goal-keeper, could do likewise.
“I humoured him when he was present; laughed at him when he was gone; but—I went to see Baruch. It’s all right: you aren’t a father.”
“You went to see Baruch. Go on.”
“He lived remote in such a little cabin as I have described. Lord! what a thing it was!—a living trophy of damnation—a statue inhabiting the human vestment! His face was young enough; but sorrow stricken into stone—unearthly suffering carved out of a block. It is astonishing what expression can be conveyed without a line. There was not a wrinkle in Baruch’s face.
“All scepticism withered in me at the sight—all the desperate effrontery with which I had intended to challenge his gift. I asked him simply if he would cure my child.
“He answered, in a voice as hoarse and feeble as an old man’s, but with a queer little promise of joy in it, like a sound of unborn rain, ‘Asthore! for this I’ve lived me lone among the peats, and bid me time, and suffered what I know. In a good hour be it spoken! Wance more, and come again when the moon has passed its full.’
“I went, without another question, or the thought of one. That was a bad week for me—a mortal struggle for the child. The dead kept pulling him to draw him down; but he fought and held on, the little plucked one. On the day following the night of full moon, I carried him in my arms to the cabin—myself, all the way. I wouldn’t let on to a soul; I went roundabout, and I got to Baruch unnoticed. I knew it was kill or cure for Bobo. He couldn’t have survived another night.
“I tell you, it was a laughing spirit that greeted me. Have you ever seen Doré’s picture of the ‘Wandering Jew,’ at the end of his journey, having his boots pulled off? There is the same release depicted, the same sweet comedy of redemption—the same figure of fun, if you like, that Baruch presented.