There were trees about his house, cottonwoods and sycamores and one
noble elm branching like a lyre. He chopped them all down and had the
roots grubbed out. The vines which covered his porch were shorn away. To
these things many were witnesses. What transformations he worked within
the walls were largely known by hearsay through the medium of Aunt
Kassie, the old negress who served him as cook and chambermaid and was
his only house servant. To half-fearsome, half-fascinated audiences of
her own color, whose members in time communicated what she told to their
white employers, she related how with his own hands, bringing a crude
carpentry into play, her master ripped out certain dark closets and
abolished a secluded and gloomy recess beneath a hall staircase, and how
privily he called in men who strung his ceilings with electric lights,
although already the building was piped for gas; and how, for final
touches, he placed in various parts of his bedroom tallow dips and oil
lamps to be lit before twilight and to burn all night, so that though
the gas sometime should fail and the electric bulbs blink out there
still would be abundant lighting about him. His became the house which
harbored no single shadow save only the shadow of morbid dread which
lived within its owner's bosom.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116