Apart from that, he had but
one thought: to complete his written appeal to the
benign powers who, traversing the haunted wood,
might sometime rescue him if he should be denied
the blessing of annihilation. He wrote with terrible
rapidity, the twig in his fingers rilling blood without
renewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands
denied their service to his will, his arms fell to his
sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move
or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharply
drawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother,
standing white and silent in the garments of the
grave!
2
In his youth Halpin Frayser had lived with his
parents in Nashville, Tennessee. The Fraysers were
well-to-do, having a good position in such society as
had survived the wreck wrought by civil war. Their
children had the social and educational opportunities
of their time and place, and had responded to good
associations and instruction with agreeable manners
and cultivated minds. Halpin being the youngest
and not over robust was perhaps a trifle 'spoiled.'
He had the double disadvantage of a mother's
assiduity and a father's neglect. Frayser pere was
what no Southern man of means is not--a poli-
tician. His country, or rather his section and State,
made demands upon his time and attention so ex-
acting that to those of his family he was compelled
to turn an ear partly deafened by the thunder of
the political captains and the shouting, his own
included.
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