“Well, on a day when Baluster was thus battening upon us, having already stayed above a month, my brother Dirk and I resolved, by fair means or foul, to fire him out from thence.
“We stole into the parlour, where ’twas his custom of an afternoon to snore off the surfeits of his midday meal. There of a surety lay John, a tunbelly of a man, a weary burden for my mother’s dainty settee. His bald pate was covered about with a crimson scarf (Lord! I can see him now); his vast mouth sagged open like a cod’s, the horrible sound that issued therefrom frighted off the flies.
“For a space we stood, Dirk and I, looking on him; then stole up; and, betwixt those cavernous jaws, each, one after t’other, did empty a black draught!
“We did this thing again on the next day; and on the next we gave him the equal of three black draughts!
“A change came over John Baluster. He lost great part of his equanimity. He became a trouble to my father: followed him about, a consulting importunity. My father administered unto him many various drugs; my father bled him. Meanwhile, by some device or other contrived by Dirk and me, he never wanted for his black draughts. He had tendance enough!
“At last he took a notion that some one of the servants was poisoning him, had his trunk packed the self-same day, and departed.”
Burke ended with loud laughter, in which, I joined; for he had a droll, dry manner of telling a tale. Also I had contracted this while much of his outrageous jollity. Hereafter, as though spent with such laughter, we fell silent.
But, it seemed to me, that upon the woods, also, a silence fell, and a shadow and a fear. I looked up; but the sky was deep blue, and no cloud obscured the sun.
Suddenly we came to a stop. There had come a sound of singing in the woods, and the voice that sang was that unearthly, magical high treble!
And thus it was: