The sight which Helen beheld on entering the shanty might have appalled any heart but hers. Her husband, his face streaming with blood, was engaged in a deadly struggle with a horrible-looking being much larger than himself, who seemed striving to make him drink from a cup which he pressed to his lips. “O Ellen!” cried Michael in a tone of despair, “save me! save me!” Quick she flew towards him, stretching forth at the same time the branch of evergreen. In another instant ’twas in his hand; then, just as he grasped it, his strange adversary uttered a demoniac cry and the cup fell to the floor, shattered in many pieces.
“Oh! I am saved,” exclaimed Roony—“saved! saved! Thank God!” But while his joyful words were ringing through the house, the fiend turned upon his deliverer and out into the black night Helen was driven. Vainly she struggled; a powerful hand, which seemed mailed in iron, thrust her out, and presently, when released from its ruthless grip, she found herself blindly groping here and there in the darkness. Round and round the house she wandered—near it always, yet never finding it.
And during these sad moments,
the last moments of her life, her husband was anxiously seeking her. But it was easy to miss each other in such a snow-storm, and when he shouted her name the wild wind carried away her response, until at length, numbed by the cold, she answered him no more. And so, within a few feet of home, the brave Helen, the faithful Helen, was wrapt in a winding-sheet of snow.
* * * * *
Next morning—sweet Christmas morning—the sun rose in a cloudless sky; and as its bright beams flashed from window to window, from spire to spire, every object, the humblest, the least beautiful, became suddenly transformed into a thing of beauty. Ay, even those two icy hands peeping above the snow hard by Mike Roony’s shanty door sparkle as if they were covered with gems and have a golden halo round them. They were clasped as if in prayer, and when poor Mike discovered them he cried aloud: “Oh! she prayed for me to the last; she prayed for me to the last!”
His wail was heard at the next rock, and far beyond it. Then a crowd began to collect, a very large crowd; for Helen was known to many, and her husband was not the only one who shed tears over her remains this bright Christmas morning.
“I had a feeling that something was going wrong,” spoke Mrs. McGowan. Then, when Roony told of the infernal being who had attacked him, and how he had been rescued by the blessed evergreen which Helen had brought, the good woman solemnly shook her head, and whispered: “This house ought to be exorcised—indeed it ought.”
“Well, one thing I vow by all
that’s holy,” ejaculated Mike, crossing himself and lifting his voice so that the crowd might hear him—“I vow never again to touch liquor—never, never, never!”