For the first time in his life March was shaken to the finest fibre of his soul. His son was the apple of his eye, the best beloved of all his children. He felt a tremor of the nerves which he would have called weakness and affectation in another. When on the third night the searchers returned with no tidings of the young man, March went to his room with a grey-hued face and eyes that were glazed with agony and suspense. He sat at his table and bowed his head upon it. He tried to pray—March was a somewhat conventionally religious man—but he could only groan. In the room above where was the green and yellow curtain the child knelt by the side of the bed shaking from head to foot, the drops of agony standing on his forehead. The soul which was so much older than the little body was wrestling in the throes of a complex passion of love and personal cowardly dread; the poor little ten-year old body could scarcely support the strain.
In the afternoon, two hours after Perry had left, Dennis knelt by the little pool and chanced to look therein. Before his eyes a picture grew. It was Perry stunned and lifeless lying in a hollow, the mouth of which was hidden by elder bushes with their luscious black berries. It was a narrow rocky crevasse formed by the rending slipping land. Everything about the picture was very clear; on the hill above the hollow was an old pine tree twisted into a strange shape; there was a bent bough on it on which a human form dangled—a dead man hanged by the neck to the bent tree. This was the vision that had driven Dennis to his uncle’s room; since then the picture appeared to him again and yet again. Sometimes the hanged man was not there, but the scene was always the same point for point. Even now as he knelt it formed itself between him and the green and yellow curtain.
The child sobbed and twisted his fingers in his hair. In his ears rang the stern words: “If I hear a whisper of this again I shall write very strongly to Mr. Brownlow and warn him of your untruthfulness.”
Mr. Brownlow was Dennis’s future schoolmaster and poor Dennis pictured himself as being pilloried and held up for execration before a whole community of youthful devotees of truth. But then there was Perry. Perry had been kind to him; Perry had banished the terrors of the green and yellow curtain; had tried to screen him from wrath. If only some one else could see! His Highland nurse had told him “the sight” was God’s gift. If only He would give that gift to some one else; to some one who would not be punished and scolded because of his possession. Dennis had prayed on this subject with a child’s unreasoning and sometimes unreasonable faith, and now he once more extended his clasped hands and sobbed into the darkness:
“O do-do-do make some one else see instead of me.”
But no one else saw, and the burden, responsibility, and terror of a gift, whatsoever be its nature, lay heavily on the slender shoulders of Dennis. Therefore the end was inevitable. All strong powers lie upon the men who possess them like mighty compelling forces unless the man be stronger than the gift. To Dennis and to no other was the vision; as he closed his streaming eyes it slowly formed itself once more. He staggered to his feet and made for the room below; the force was stronger than he, or else he was stronger than his weak nerves and trembling body. Though March should beat him within an inch of his fragile life he must tell that which he saw. He did not hesitate now; he opened the door and went straight in. March raised his head, started, and stood up.
“Dennis! Bless my soul, child, what are you doing at this hour? Not undressed. Are you ill.”
“Uncle Hugh,” said Dennis, steadying himself by the table edge, “I—I know where Perry is. At least I think so.”
“You know where Perry is. What do you mean?”
The child began to describe the place of his vision and March listened with growing interest and excitement; when Dennis spoke of the pine and the dangling figure he sprang up: