LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER II

      THE BIRTH OF A NEW YEAR

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      On this same New Year's Eve, but so late that it : was night and quite dark, three fellows were sitting drinking ale and Schnapps in the little shrubbery surrounding the city church. They had thrown themselves down on "a withered grass-plot, beneath some lime-trees, the black branches of which gleamed with moisture. Earlier in the evening they had gathered together in a lap-room, but, after closing time, they sat out-of-doors, as they knew that it was New Year's Eve, and for that reason they had betaken themselves to the shrubbery. They wanted to be near the steeple-clock, so as not to miss hearing when it was time to drink a toast to the New Year.

      They were not sitting in darkness, but had abundance of light from the gleams thrown on the shrubbery by the electric lamps in the surrounding streets. Two of them were old and down-at-heel; a couple of unlucky tramps who had slunk into the town to swill up the coppers they had amassed by begging. The third was a man somewhat past thirty. He, like the others, was very shabbily dressed, but he was tall and well built, and seemed to be sound of limb and stalwart.

      They were afraid of being discovered and driven off by the police, and that was the reason of their sitting close together, so that they might talk in low tones, almost in whispers. The younger fellow was doing the talking, and the other two were listening with-such rapt attention that they let the bottles he for a long while undisturbed.

      "Once upon a time I had a chum," said the speaker, and his voice took a serious, almost eerie tone, while a gleam of cunning lit up his eyes, " who was always quite unlike his usual self on New Year's Eve. Not because he had on that day gone through his big account books and was dissatisfied with his year's profits, but simply because he had heard tell of something dangerous and mysterious which might befall anybody on that day. I assure you, friends, that he used to sit silent and anxious from morning to night, and would not once look at a drink. He was not a moody man otherwise, but it would have been as impossible to get him out on a New Year's Eve—for a little spree such as this— as it would be for one of you two to be hail-fellow-well-met with the Lord Lieutenant.

      "Ah, well! I suppose you are wondering what he was afraid of. It was something of a job to get that out of him, but on one occasion; however, he told me what it was. Perhaps you Would not care to hear it to-night ? It does feel a bit dismal in a shrubbery like this, which, likely enough, may have been a graveyard in bygone days. What do you think ? "

      As the two tramps naturally protested that they did not know what it was to be afraid of ghosts he proceeded to tell the story.

      "He had come of a rather superior class, this man I'm telling you about. He had been a student at Upsala University, so he knew a little bit more than fellows like us, you see. And mark you, gentlemen, he kept sober and quiet on New Year's Eve simply so as not to get mixed up in a fight, or expose himself to the risk of any accident, and so come to die on that day. He did not care a rap if he met his death on any other day whatsoever, provided only that nothing fatal befell him on New Year's Eve, for in that case he believed that he would be made to drive the death-cart."

      "The death-cart? " repeated his two hearers together, in a tone of interrogation.

      The tall fellow amused himself by whetting their curiosity, asking them if they really wanted to hear the story just where they were sitting; but they were eager for him to go on with it.

      "Well, this friend of mine," he continued, " always used to assert that there is an old, old cart, of the sort which peasants use for carrying their goods to market, but so dilapidated that it never ought to exhibit itself on the king's highway. It is so bespattered with mud, so dusty and dirty, that one can hardly see what it is made of. Its shafts are flawed, its fellies sit so loosely that they rattle, the wheels have not seen grease within the memory of man, and creak in a way to drive one crazy. Its bottom is rotten, and the driver's cushion is tattered and torn, and half the back of the seat has been broken off. And' this' cart has an old, old horse that is one-eyed, lame, and grey with age in mane and tail. It is so skinny that its spine sticks up like a saw beneath its skin, and all its ribs can be counted. It is stiff-legged, lazy, and ill-disposed, and moves no faster than a young child crawls. For the horse there is harness that is worn out and motheaten, it has lost all its buckles and clasps, and the pieces are joined together with odds and ends of sail twine and birch twigs. It cannot boast a single boss of brass or silver, but only a few sparse tassels of yarn, which are a disfigurement and not an ornament. The reins are in keeping with the harness, for they consist solely of knot upon knot— they have been mended so often that nobody can make any "further use of them."

      He got up and screeched out his hand for the bottle, perhaps give his audience time to reflect on that they had heard.

      "Perhaps you think this sounds too much like romancing," he said, resuming his story; "but see, the fact is that, besides the harness and the wretched reins, there is a driver, who sits crooked and loathsome on the tattered seat, and drives the old horse. He is blue-black on the lips and grey-blue on the cheeks, and his eyes are as sombre as broken mirrors. He is clad in a long black stained monkish habit, with a cowl which he pulls down over his face, and in his hand he holds a blunt and rusty scythe in a long handle. And, mark you, the man who sits driving, with those reins tied together,

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