Black Bartlemys Treasure

At last, having trimmed my bludgeon to a nicety, I laid it by, and sat brooding, the knife betwixt my knees; now a beam of sun falling athwart the leaves lit upon the broad blade of the knife and made of it a glory. And beholding this and the hand that grasped it, I took pleasure to heed how strong and sinewy were my fingers and how the muscles bulged beneath the brown skin of my forearm; and turning the glittering steel this way and that I fell to joyous thought of my enemy and of my vengeance, now so near.

"To-night!" says I to myself, "Death ever cometh with more terrors in the dark! To-night!" But now, little by little, my joy gave place to anger that the night must be so long a-coming; and, glancing up, I cursed the sun that it must needs shine and the gladsome day that it was not grim night. And presently to anger was added a growing fear lest mine enemy might (by some hap) elude me at the eleventh hour--might, even now, be slipping from my reach. Now at this a sweat brake out on me, and leaping to my feet I was minded to seek him out and end the matter there and then. "Why wait for to-night?" I asked myself. "Surely in the gladsome light of day Death findeth an added bitterness. Why wait for night, then?"

So I stood awhile debating within myself, then, catching up my knotted bludgeon, I set off along the stream incontinent, following a path I had trodden many a time when but a lad; a path that led on through mazy thickets, shady dells and green coppices dappled with sunlight and glad with the trilling melody of birds; but ever as I went, before my eyes was a man who twisted in my grasp and died, over and over again, and in my ears the sounds of his agony. And ever as I went trees reached out arms as if to stay me and bushes stretched forth little, thorny fingers that caught my garments as if to hinder me from my purpose. But I brushed them aside with my scarred arms or beat them down with my heavy staff, o'er-leaping hedge and ditch and fallen tree until I reached the highway, and even as I came there a distant clock chimed the hour of ten. I quickened my pace, twirling my staff as I went, so that the two or three wayfarers I chanced to meet drew from my neighbourhood and eyed me mightily askance. Having gone thus some mile or so, I came to a wall that bordered the road, a high and mossy wall, and following this, to a pair of gates set well back from the highway, with pillars of stone each surmounted by a couchant leopard carved in the stone. Now these gates were of iron, very lofty and strong and fast shut, but besides these was a smaller gate or postern of wood hard by the gatehouse where stood a lusty fellow in fair livery, picking his teeth with a straw and staring at the square toes of his shoes. Hearing me approach he glanced up and, frowning, shook his head and waved me away.