The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

The girl, looking thoroughly wretched, emitted a short, sharp squeal of dismay that she tried a moment afterward to retrieve as a cough.

Mervyn had all an officer’s aversion to familiarity with inferiors in rank, but as Arabella leaned back in her chair to be out of her aunt’s range of vision, and gazed smilingly, reassuringly, at the maid, blithely shaking her head the while, he thought her as kind as she was lovely, and benignly watched the restoration of Norah’s composure.

“Sure, mem, all the time I did hear ut I tould yez av ut incessant, an’ yez thought ’twuz but the thunder, an’ the wind, an’ the rain. But now, mem, it’s at the dure agin, fit to break it in, an’ onst at that low windy some man climbed up, an’ knocked, he did, with his knuckles on the glass.”

In the moment’s silence that followed her words the sullen sound of a repeated knocking at the outer door was obvious. Mervyn suddenly rose, throwing his cards down upon the table, and dashed through the hallway to the outer door.

“Indians! Indians!” quavered Mrs. Annandale, in a paroxysm of terror. “Indians, I’ll wager! Cherokees! Chickasaws, and those devils that wear nose-rings—oh-h-h! and me—so timid!”

Then she said something that Arabella did not understand, and only remembered long afterward.

“We might have caught this bird in England. There was no need to lime a twig for him! Oh—why did I come, and leave my good home—and journey over that nasty smelly ocean to this queer distracted country! Indians! Indians! Indians!” she continued to quaver, rocking herself back and forth, and Norah, flying to her side for protection, knelt at her knee and mechanically repeated the word—Indians! Indians! as if it were the response of some curious liturgy they had picked up in their travels.

Arabella snatched a blunderbuss of her father’s that swung above the mantel-piece and pressed forward into the hall to make sure what disaster had befallen them.

The outer door was open, and the wind still blowing steadily, had extinguished the lamp. Without there was more light than within. She could see the glistening surface of the parade in the moonbeams, shining like darkly lustrous glass with the rainfall, and beyond, the guard-house, near the gate. Its door stood broadly aflare, and the yellow radiance of the firelight fell on the sodden and soaked ground. But what surprised her at this hour was the number of figures astir.—Could there really be a demonstration of the Cherokees impending? she wondered, with a clutch of fear at the heart, hearing always the ominous chant from within—“Indians—Indians!” as mistress and maid swayed in unison. She knew it behooved the rank and file to be in barracks and in bed at this hour. She glanced toward the long, low building where the soldiers were quartered. To her surprise the lanterns, swinging in the galleries, showed the doors were open; figures were going in and coming out. Then she observed that they moved slowly and at their ease, loungingly, and there seemed to be much loud but unexcited talk amongst them, continuous, as of the details of individual experience. Whatever the sensation had been it was obviously spent now. And thus she marked the conversation at the door.

Mervyn stood on the threshold, and on the step below a non-commissioned officer was punctiliously saluting, his attitude, his uniform, his face, rendered visible by the lantern which one of two soldiers held.