It might stop; but it would not stop. And then, somehow, he imagined that his heart was really out in the yard, down under the hill, and was pumping the water—as the ram had done for years—through the house. It was a queer fancy, and it made him angry because he could not throw it off.
He walked down the hall, rudely snatched the clock door open, and stopped the big pendulum. Then he laughed sillily.
The moonbeams came in at the stained glass windows, and cast red and yellow and pale green fleckings of light on the smooth polished floor.
He began to feel uncanny. He was no coward and he cursed himself for it.
Things began to come to him in a moral way and mixed in with the uncanniness of it all. He imagined he saw, off in the big square library across the way, in the very spot he had seen them lay out his grandfather—Maggie, and she arose suddenly from out of his grandfather's casket and beckoned to him with—
“I love you so—I love you so!”
It was so real, he walked to the spot and put his hands on the black mohair Davenport. And the form on it, sitting bolt upright, was but the pillow he had napped on that afternoon.
He laughed and it sounded hollow to him and echoed down the hall:
“How like her it looked!”
He walked into Harry's room and lit the lamp there. He smiled when he glanced around the walls. There were hunting scenes and actresses in scant clothing. Tobacco pipes of all kinds on the tables, and stumps of ill-smelling cigarettes, and over the mantel was a crayon picture of Death shaking the dice of life. Two old cutlasses crossed underneath it.