A Maid of the Kentucky Hills

by Edwin Carlile Litsey

"And that very day you went back about sunset, driven by the barbs of your passion, to tell the old woman the truth. You could not gain admittance to the house. You saw no one. You have been back twice. You have laid in wait. But you have failed to get speech with any in the house. Is it not so?"

I nodded assent.

"Then what?" continued the Devil.

"Hell—and you!" I retorted, in desperation.

Then the Devil edged closer to me along the plank; he seemed to writhe across it like something with a hurt back. It made my flesh creep to see him. He leaned toward me through the intervening space, and stretching out his ugly, snake-like neck, hissed:

"Honor and virtue are lies! Pleasure is truth. Take her—"

Up I sprang, fist at shoulder, and lunged at that fiendish visage with all the power of my body. I hit nothing, the impetus of the stroke wheeled me entirely around, and there stood mine Enemy, hands on hips, shaking with silent laughter.

I stood and glared at him in angry helplessness.

"Easy—easy!" he chuckled. "You are not the first to shrink at giving up a cherished chimera. You see I am much older than you, and know all of humanity's foibles and make-believes. I am your friend. In your mind you have created an angel out of a piece of ignoble clay. Listen, while I prove to you that I am your friend, and show you a way to success."

Thereupon his vileness became so bold and horrible that I will not soil this white paper with a transscript of it, and I sank upon a bench, elbows on knees and face in hands, listening to the damnable rigmarole because I could not help it. My visitor was beyond personal violence—witness my recent fruitless attempt to strike him—or time and again I would have closed with him and slain him, or been slain. Shudders of shame and rage swept me from head to foot, and my cheeks grew so hot they burned my palms. Hours passed. At times the Devil relaxed, and a sort of armistice prevailed, then he would renew his merciless planning for my destruction, and how smooth and easy the road appeared under the magic of his voice! Throughout the entire night I remained humped over, shaking at intervals as some especially diabolical sentence fell upon my unwilling but helpless ears; holding my tongue, because I knew that no words of mine would avail to move the monster at my elbow.