Satan's Bushel Read Online Free PDF

time he looked at it steadily; then he began to talk to it, in a coaxing, conversational tone, half in earnest, half in jest. I don’t remember what he said. He seemed to choose the words for the sound they made. Presently the snake dipped its head and glided to one side. We passed.
    “‘You seem to have a way with them,’ I remarked.
    “‘I hadn’t at first,’ he said. ‘One learns.’
    “As we emerged in the clearing where the village stood I exclaimed, ‘How tranquil!’
    “‘By contrast, you mean,’ he said. ‘Yes, thanks to you.’
    “‘What is the state of native superstition now?’ I asked.
    “‘Indifferent,’ he answered. ‘I got the magicians to undo their work. They banished the spirit, shooed it away. The tree now is believed to be uninhabited.’
    “We were walking toward it. Several times he took in his breath to speak and then said nothing. When we were close to the tree he turned, and I turned, and we stood with our backs to the sun. It was evening. The shadow of the tree lay before us, creeping as we watched it. How we came to be watching it I don’t quite know. I must have got the suggestion from him. One naturally looks to see what it is another person has fixed his attention upon; and he was observing the shadow with an air of timed expectation, as if something were about to happen.
    “‘There’s an Eastern saying that the shadow of a thing is its spirit,’ he said.
    “‘Do you believe it?’ I asked, not in earnest.
    “‘That isn’t the point,’ he said.
    “We were silent again.
    “‘Huh!’ I exclaimed.
    “‘You see it?’ he asked.
    “‘Yes. What an improbable accident.’
    “All at once the shadow had assumed a human outline—the outline of a man from the waist up, in profile. It was not only very distinct, like a silhouette; it had character. One knew the kind of man it was, or had been, or would be if he had ever existed. He would be a man who leaned forward in his steps, pressed life for an answer, lived for defeat and loved little things.
    “‘If you go to the top of the shadow and get the tree against the sun you will not see how it happens,’ said Dreadwind.
    “I did as he suggested, with an impulse to walk around the shadow instead of through or on it; and it was as he said. The mass of the tree did not forecast the shadow. However, I shouldn’t have thought it would, in that case or any other.
    “Just then the figure of a woman appeared, walking toward us from the house. I recognized her at once. She came straight up to us and held out her hand to me. There was no introduction.
    “‘Mrs. Jones particularly wished you to come, he said. I noticed that he hesitated slightly at the name.
    “She nodded her head slowly to confirm this and then the three of us stood watching the shadow.
    “‘It doesn’t change,’ said Dreadwind.
    “I had already noticed that fact. But the time of its phenomenal duration was really very short—not more than five or six minutes, for then the sun went down with a lurch behind the forest. As this occurred and the shadow was extinguished she went close to the tree and touched it lingeringly. It occurred to me that they did this every evening—that they stood together watching the outline come and go and that then invariably she touched the tree in just that way. Their movements had a settled pattern, even that with which he took possession of her and turned her toward the house again.
    “She was no longer in that somnambulant condition I have tried to describe. That state had been succeeded by one much more subtly enigmatic. She was alive to the realities of her environment, listened attentively, reacted normally to whatever happened, spoke with direct simplicity—and was like an object seen through an inverted telescope. She was near as a phenomenal fact and at the same time enormously remote to the senses. Not all the time. There were moments, two or three, when she seemed suddenly magnified as if the telescope