"I think I have seen the stairway you speak of," said Paul.
"Yes," answered the old man, "it communicates with the closet of your
room.
"One day Guir had left his home. He had ridden alone into the distant
hills to dispute the range for some cattle with his natural enemy,
the red man. The pow-wow had been long and trying, and it was only
with the setting sun that he had come to a proper understanding, as
he supposed, with the ugly chief who dominated the region about.
"It was midnight when he reached his home. He pounded sharply on the
door; but his good wife, who never retired without him, failed to
answer the summons. So, after repeated knocks, Guir forced the door
and entered. All was dark. An unearthly stillness pervaded the air,
and a horrid suspicion forced itself upon him while groping his way
forward to secure a light. Finding the chimney, he raked together a
few coals, which he blew into a flame, and then, with trembling
hands, lighted the candle upon the shelf above. Looking about him,
Guir's heart sank. His house had been wrecked. His pictures, the work
of years, were scattered in fragments about the floor. The windows
were smashed, and the hall starred with broken glass. Not an
ornament, not a treasure remained intact. But this he knew was as
nothing to the horrible sight which he expected momentarily to greet
his eyes. He called aloud to each member of his family, in the
failing hope that some one would answer; but no sound broke the awful
stillness. Suddenly he bethought him of the secret chamber, and with
a wild prayer that his loved ones had been able to reach it in
safety, and were still in hiding there, he started down the narrow
stairs in search. Reaching the bottom, he found that the door had
been wrenched from its hinges and thrown to the ground; and then
Guir's heart sank, never to rise again. Stepping across the threshold
of the room, candle in hand, a vision of blood swam before his eyes,
and the dimly-burning light revealed the horror-stricken faces of his
murdered family. Not one was left to tell the tale, but the story
pictured before him was unmistakable in every detail. The treacherous
natives had first tortured and then butchered them. For a time he
stood transfixed with horror, unable to remove his eyes from the
awful scene, or his feet from the spot where he had first beheld it;
then, with the cry of sudden madness, he threw himself beside the
bleeding corpses and lost all consciousness. How long he remained
there was problematical, but on awaking Guir was still in the dark,
and where he had fallen. At that moment a strange and overpowering
desire seized him. He must paint the portraits of his murdered family
before it became too late. Had he been sane, such a ghastly thought
would never have possessed him; but Guir was crazed, and for days and
nights following he worked in that dismal vault, by the light of a
smoking lamp, at the task he had set himself, his fired imagination
even intensifying the horrors of the grewsome tableau.