“How are you going to do it?” he cried at last.
“Going to do what?” said the spirit.
“Going to—to—to—make an end of me?” said Asher.
“Oh!” said the spirit, “I shan’t have anything to do with it. Some of those to come will do that; I shall be gone. I suppose they’ll only put your head under the big hammer which strikes the hour, and it will do all that, so that people will say it was an accident. Only twenty-five minutes now.”
Asher turned as white as the parson’s surplice, and his teeth chattered as he groaned out:—
“Oh! what for? what for?”
“Why, you see, you are no good,” said the spirit, “and only in the way, so some one else may just as well be in your place. What do you know of love, or friendship, or affection, or anything genial? Why you’re cold enough to chill the whole parish. Only a quarter of an hour now.”
Ten minutes after the little spirit told the trembling man that he had but five minutes more, and four of these were wasted in unavailing struggles and prayers for release, when all at once Asher felt himself seized by hundreds of tiny hands. The cords were tightened till their pressure was agonising; and then he seemed to be floated up into the great open floor where the bells hung in the massive oaken framework, and though he could not see it, he knew well enough where the tenor bell was, and also how the great iron clock hammer was fixed, which would crush his skull like an egg-shell.
Asher struggled and tried to scream, but he felt himself impelled towards the bell, and directly after his cheek was resting upon the cold metal on one side, while the great hammer barely touched his temple on the other, and he knew when it was raised that it would come down with a fierce crash, and he shuddered as he thought of the splashed bell, and the blood, and brains, and hair clinging to the hammer.
“And they’ll say it was an accident,” muttered Asher to himself, quoting the spirit’s remark. “They’ll never give me credit for doing it myself. I’m the wrong sort.” And then the thoughts of a life seemed crowded into that last minute, and he shuddered to see what a little good he had done. Always money and self, and now what was it worth? He had pinched and punished all around him for the sake of heaping up riches, and now above all would come in those words—