Amos Judd

by John Ames Mitchell

Although familiar with the old library, Molly was impressed anew by its stately proportions as she entered from the little corridor. The spacious room was now flooded by the moonlight that streamed through the high windows at the farther end and brought out, in ghostly relief, the white Ionic columns against the encircling wall. Between them, in varying shapes and sizes, hung the family portraits, and in front of every column stood a pedestal with its marble bust. At the present moment the pallid face of Dante caught the moonbeams, and seemed to follow her with solemn eyes. As she swept with a rustle of silk along the huge, round, crimson carpet, she remembered how deeply she had been impressed in former years by the knowledge that it was made in England expressly for this room. The perfect stillness was broken only by herself as she moved out into the wide circle of mysterious faces.

At her right, between two of the columns, in a lofty mirror that filled the space from floor to cornice, marched her own reflection. She stopped, and regarded it. With her white dress and the moonlight upon her head and shoulders, it was a striking figure and recalled the night, a year ago, when she stood at the window of her chamber, and tried in vain to discover why such a vision should have startled Mr. Amos Judd. Mr. Amos Judd! How she hated him that night! Hated him! the dear, lovely, old, perfect Amos! She smiled, and beat time with a foot, humming a fragment of that bewitching waltz. And the crescent that he had asked her not to wear again, flashed back at her from the mirror. She would remove it now, upon the instant, and never more, not even to-night, should the dear boy be troubled by it. As her fingers touched the jewels she saw something in the mirror that sent the blood from her heart, and caused the hand to drop convulsively to her breast. Behind her, across the room, in the shadow of a pedestal, were glistening two other things that moved like a pair of human eyes. With an involuntary cry she wheeled about, and before she could turn again at a sudden movement behind her, an arm was thrown about her waist, strong fingers clutched her throat and in her ear came a muttered warning: “Be quiet, lady, or it’s up with yer!”

But the cry had reached Amos in the distant dining-room, and she heard his footsteps hurrying across the hall. The fingers tightened at her throat; she was pushed with violence into the shadow of the nearest column, and held there. Gasping, strangling, she seized instinctively with both hands the wrist that was squeezing the life from her body, but her feeble fingers against such a strength were as nothing. Pressing close upon her she saw the dim outline of a cap upon the back of a head, a big neck, and a heavy chin. With bursting throbs the blood beat through her head and eyes, and she would have sunk to the floor but for the hands that held her with an iron force.

In this torture of suffocation came a blur, but through it she saw Amos spring into the room, then stop for a second as if to find his bearings.

“Moll,” he said, in a half-whisper.

There was no answer. Fainting, powerless even to make an effort, she saw the man before her raise a revolver with his other hand, and take deliberate aim at the broad, white shirt-front, an easy target in the surrounding gloom. In an agony of despair she made a frenzied effort, struck up the weapon as the shot was fired, and sent the bullet high above its mark, through the waistcoat of a colonial governor.

The next instant the fingers were torn from her throat, and as she sank half-fainting to her knees, the two men in a savage tussle swayed out into the room, then back with such force against a pedestal that it tottered, and with its heavy bust came crashing to the floor.

The struggling figures also fell. The burglar was beneath, and as he landed, his weapon was knocked from his hand. With a blow and a sudden twist Amos wrenched away, picked up the pistol, turned upon his swiftly rising foe, and sent a bullet through his skull. Without a sound the man sank back again to the floor.

“Are you hurt, Moll?” was the first question as Amos took a step toward the white, crouching figure. Her bare arm shot out into the moonlight and a finger pointed across the library. “There’s another! look out!”

The second man, in his stocking feet like his comrade, had crept from his hiding place, and as she pointed he swung up his pistol and pulled the trigger. But Amos was quicker. Shots in rapid succession echoed through the house, two, three, perhaps half a dozen, she never knew; but she saw to her joy, that Amos at the end of it all was still standing, while the burglar, with a smothered malediction, tumbled heavily into an easy chair behind him, slid out of it to his knees, and pitched forward on his face. There was a convulsive twitching of the legs, and all was still again. Beneath him lay a bag into which, a few moments before, had been stuffed the ancestral silver.