THE STEADFAST HEART
fast, held for her an unsightly fascination. They were her specialty…. When her miserable body was given a false life by the black pills, she, delighted to delve into her store and to recount in a tense, strained voice the horrifying particulars of crime after crime, until she worked herself into a state of unreasoning terror which verged upon madness…. Crouching over a smoking lantern, whose flicker caused uncanny shadows to move upon the somber walls, she would recount to Angus dreadful tales which frightened the boy so that he would sit panting and sobbing with fear, yet held him fascinated so that he could not wrench himself away…. She was teaching him the unnatural pleasure of terror….
Ceasing her melody suddenly, Mrs. Burke leaned toward Angus with a jerky, alert, listening movement and asked in the hoarse whisper of caution, “Angy—Angy, have you seen any men lurking about—any strange men?”
Though the boy did not realize it, there were moments in which his mother spoke with another tongue than Angus Burke’s; spoke with precision and correctness, used words in the manner of the cultivated. But Angus did not realize. In the world there existed but two sorts of people, so far as he knew, and they were himself and his family on the one side and a great, ever-shift-
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