There is an ominous frown on his
eyebrows--there is a painful nervous contraction on the side of his mouth.
I hear him breathing convulsively when I first look in; he shudders and
sighs in his sleep. It is not a pleasant sight to see, and I turn round
instinctively to the bright sunlight in the yard. My wife turns me back
again in the direction of the stable door.
"Wait!" she says. "Wait! he may do it again."
"Do what again?"
"He was talking in his sleep, Percy, when I first looked in. He was
dreaming some dreadful dream. Hush! he's beginning again."
I look and listen. The man stirs on his miserable bed. The man speaks in a
quick, fierce whisper through his clinched teeth. "Wake up! Wake up,
there! Murder!"
There is an interval of silence. He moves one lean arm slowly until it
rests over his throat; he shudders, and turns on his straw; he raises his
arm from his throat, and feebly stretches it out; his hand clutches at the
straw on the side toward which he has turned; he seems to fancy that he is
grasping at the edge of something. I see his lips begin to move again; I
step softly into the stable; my wife follows me, with her hand fast
clasped in mine. We both bend over him. He is talking once more in his
sleep--strange talk, mad talk, this time.
"Light gray eyes" (we hear him say), "and a droop in the left
eyelid--flaxen hair, with a gold-yellow streak in it--all right, mother!
fair, white arms with a down on them--little, lady's hand, with a reddish
look round the fingernails--the knife--the cursed knife--first on one
side, then on the other--aha, you she-devil! where is the knife?"
He stops and grows restless on a sudden.
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