Part 5 (1/2)

”I think I have”, said Loveday.

”We shall pa.s.s near it presently; and at the moment when we approach it, I shall feel a little thrill in my back: always it is so with me. But I was saying: that midnight, as I pa.s.sed the tree, drunk as I was, I saw a naked black man with a long beard run out; I took to my heels; he was after me; till I reached the bridge, when I stopped, faced him, fired a blow into his eyes, and he vanished.

”During the week I continued to see apparitions. My groans were heard in the farm-yard: Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have mercy upon me! I was visited by the Methodist preacher at Thring; and finally I found solace: I became a cla.s.s-member, a leader, a local preacher.

”For some time I have been conscious of dissatisfaction among the people with my preaching, who say that my G.o.d 'is not a personal G.o.d', and that my Christianity is 'rum stuff': I am therefore meaning to give it up.

But I still preach every second Thursday night.

”It was about that time that, by accident, I found out the power of my hand to cure headache, and things like that, and the sensation among these villagers was enormous, I can tell you, six years ago; now they come to be touched without the slighest sense of the unusual. But what I have done well in was--the farming. I knew little of agriculture--”

At this point they turned into the lane to Westring: and Loveday went with him a little beyond Priddlestone to see the fatal elm.

VIII

THE METEOR

The next morning, after breakfast, Hogarth went down old Thring Street, and spent a penny for a note-book to contain the signatures of his a.s.sociation.

But this was no day for interest in that scheme: for under the projecting first-floor of the paper-shop were newspaper placards bearing such words as:

THE EARTH IN DANGER

SHALL WE PERISH TO-NIGHT?

and Hogarth was soon bending in the street over a paragraph, short--but in _pica_.

M. Tissot, the astronomer, had, at half-past ten the previous night, observed through the 40-inch telescope of the Nice observatory a body which seemed a tiny planet or aerolite of abnormal size. It was sighted at a point two degrees W. of _a_ Librae at an angle of 43 1/2 with the horizon, and had been photographed, its elements calculated, its spectrum taken. The ascertained diameter was 3 17”, or about 73 miles, and its substance seemed to consist of ironstone mixed with diamond.

By noon a fresh light was thrown upon the little world, the Yerkes observatory and Greenwich both uttering their voice, the Astronomer Royal announcing that the so-called planet was merely a meteor--not more than 400 yards in diameter, with a low velocity of two miles a second; and its distance was less than a tenth of that estimated by Tissot. The Yerkes observatory fixed the diameter at 230 yards. All, however, agreed in the opinion that it must strike the earth between ten and twelve that night.

These later announcements so much allayed the panic, that by one o'clock Hogarth, on peeping into the note-book on the box before the smithy, saw six signatures; and a young man who came about six P.M. to sign, cried out: ”Hullo! the book is filled up!” on which Hogarth ran out, saying: ”Don't run away on that account, I'll run and get--” darting into the house to ask Margaret where a certain account-book was.

”Didn't I throw it into the box of rubbish in the cellar at Lagden, when we were leaving?” she asked; on which he threw off his ap.r.o.n, and was off toward Lagden Dip to get it.

He had almost cleared the village when he was blocked by a crowd before a cottage, from out of which were coming screams--a woman's; and he ran in, found a man named Fred Bates beating his wife, planted a blow on his chest.

The next morning the wife of Bates was found dead, greatly disfigured about the face, whereupon Bates was arrested, and Hogarth, as we shall see, was subpoenaed to give evidence of the beating.

In ten minutes he was at the old farm-house of the Hogarths.

The new tenant was a Mr. Bond, a bankrupt metal-broker, who had two hobbies--farming and astronomy; and, as Hogarth approached the yard-gate, he saw Mr. Bond, his two daughters, his servants, grouped round an optic tube mounted on a tripod. He asked permission to get the account-book, got it, in a few minutes was again pa.s.sing through, and, as he went by, bowing his thanks, Mr. Bond said: ”But--have you seen the asteroid?”

”No--whereabouts?”

”Not quite visible to the naked eye yet: but come--you shall see”.