lfil the oath he had taken by adding to the
list a hundredth skull. Should he fail in this the murdered ancestor and
he himself would come back to haunt the laggard. Tom accepted the trust,
but everything seemed to work against him. He never was much of a hunter
nor a very true shot, and he had no liking for war; besides, the Indians
had left the country, as he fancied. So he grumbled at the uncongenial
task appointed for him and kept deferring it from week to week and from
year to year. When his conscience pricked him he allayed the smart with
drink, and his conscience seemed to grow more active as he grew older.

On returning to the cabin after a carouse he declared that he had heard
voices, that the skulls gibbered and cracked their teeth together as if
mocking his weakness, and that a phosphorescent glare shone through the
sockets of their eyes. In his cups he prattled his secret, and soon the
whole country knew that he was under oath to kill a red-skin-and the
country laughed at him. On a certain day it was reported that a band of
Indians had been seen in the neighborhood, and what with drink and the
taunts of his friends, he was impelled to take his rifle and set out once
more on the war-path. A settler heard a shot fired not long after. Next
day a neighbor passing Tom Quick's cabin tapped at the door, and,
receiving no answer, pushed it open and entered. The hundredth skull was
there, on the shelves, a bullet-hole in the forehead, and the scalp gone.
The head was Quick's.

THE CRIME OF BLACK SWAMP

Two miles south of Munger, Ohio, in the heart of what used to be called
the Black Swamp, stood the Woodbury House, a roomy mansion long gone to
decay. John Cleves, the last to live in it, was a man whose evil
practices got him into the penitentiary, but people had never associated
him with the queer sights and sounds in the lower chambers, nor with the
fact that a man named Syms, who had gone to that house in 1842, had never
been known to leave it. Ten years after Syms's disappearance it happened
that Major Ward and his friend John Stow had occasion to take shelter
there for the night--it being then deserted,--and, starting a blaze in
the parlor fireplace, they lit their pipes and talked till late. Stow
would have preferred a happier topic, but the major, who feared neither
man nor devil, constantly turned the talk on the evil reputation of the
house.

While they chatted a door opened with a creak and a human