The Man from Jericho

by Edwin Carlile Litsey

She tried to choose her words carefully, for there was so much involved.

"Ah!" he snarled; "so you refuse my hospitality!"

"I do not mean it that way, believe me. But I must hurry, and we can talk as well here."

He came a few paces nearer, covering the distance she had placed between them when she unconsciously backed The Prince.

"I don't like this!" he exclaimed, half rudely, looking at her with bold deviltry in his heavy face. "We are too far apart; friends should be nearer when they talk."

He bared his protruding teeth in a horrible grin as he said this. His shrewd if debased intellect had told him from the first that nothing but the direst need would bring a Dudley to his door on any sort of mission whatsoever. And as he realized that both girl and horse were for the time in his power, a Satanic joy possessed him, and made him toy with the situation, in order to prolong it as far as possible.

"Let me insist on your being my guest as long as you stay!" he leered, trying no longer to cloak the wicked passion which seethed in his tainted soul. "I have wine—refreshments. Come into the parlour where we can talk undisturbed."

A feeling of actual physical nausea shook Julia. She grasped the pommel of her saddle and swayed the least bit, then the sickness passed, and she was erect again, though whiter than one dead. She seemed the wraith of the girl who had ridden down the road. She did not know why this man should insist so strongly on her entering his door. She knew that he had pretended to love her, but that was over now, and gone. They had not seen each other for months. He could not wish to entertain her for any worthy reason, and though she could neither comprehend nor even suspect the depths of vileness in his heart, she knew that she had best remain where she was.

"Please don't insist," she pleaded, her voice slightly tremulous in spite of her will. "I must speak quickly, and be gone. I do not feel that I have come to ask a favour, but simply to ask you to do right. Won't you please have the dividend declared at the bank, instead of passing it? You know it means very much to father and me."

Although she endeavoured to present her cause coolly, her voice was that of a suppliant. It vibrated with pent-up emotion, and had a strange effect upon the man before her. His expression changed; his hands clenched at his sides, and he seemed battling with some internal feeling. He had taken his eyes from her, too, and was looking at the ground. But as she watched him, waiting breathlessly for his answer, he lifted his face again, and she almost cried out from terror, for she was in the presence of an incarnate fiend. His eyes seemed swimming in fire, and his countenance was that of a demon. He did not move nor speak for several moments; he was literally holding himself in his tracks. He was a moral outlaw; the lawless offspring of lawless parents; begotten in basest sin and nurtured in infamy. He had never put the slightest check on any of his wishes or desires. With him desire had always meant gratification. And now, in the murky gloom of his black soul's recesses a new desire had been born; or, rather, a new flame had been given to an old desire. Even when driven from Major Dudley's home he had not forsaken the idea that some day this fair young thing should be his. Subsequently the idea had slumbered in his breast, but he had been only waiting—waiting and plotting. Now she had come within reach of his hand, alone, and he would have given his left hand to have grasped her with his right. No one but his hirelings were near, and it was no innate, dormant worth or goodness which stayed his hand. In part it was the innocence and unconscious purity of the girl herself, which wrapped her as in a garment and held an invisible but powerful shield before her. This moral atmosphere which enveloped her was so evident that even the dulled and warped sensibilities of Devil Marston, at their best but unformed and sickly fungi, recognized it, and trembled before it. Yet the lash which was driving him would in time have made him dash aside this shield, in all probability, had there not been another powerful, though absent factor. The face and form of John Glenning kept constantly recurring. Should he dare touch this girl's dress, to say nothing of forcing his beast's lips on hers, he knew that his life would pay the forfeit. He knew that John Glenning would certainly kill him. So he was torn horribly by different emotions, as he stood and wrestled silently. At length he spoke; the voice of a beast made articulate. It was croaking and harsh; the blending of a bellow and a growl.