And now kind friends, what I have wrote,
I hope you will pass o'er,
And not criticise as some have done,
Hitherto herebefore."
_Literary Monthly_, 1910.
IN THE DONJON KEEP
GILBERT W. GABRIEL 1912
At first the darkness was impenetrable, black and choking. There was
no sound, except for the occasional soft spatter of water that dripped
to the stone floor from the mouldy ceiling. Then through a narrow,
barred window came the moonlight in a mottled shaft of phosphorescent
green, and licked its way across the floor, to the edge of the bier.
It shone on two kneeling, crouching figures, and full on the face of
the corpse.
The eunuch, a great, gaunt negro, lifted his head and showed his red,
rolling eyes and his skin, gleaming like bronze in the moonlight. "He
was my friend," he whimpered, bending over the loathsome dead. "He was
my friend."
"Aye, aye," mused the jester, fingering the mildewed shroud, "and
sooth, he was the finest mute that ever crooked a back in the Bohemian
court. Famous he was, all hereabouts, to the marches of the northern
sea.
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