THE EMBALMED HEAD. — "AT THE WINDOW SAT A MAN. IT WAS THE ATTITUDE OF A MAN IN DEEP THOUGHT; BUT HE HAD NO HEAD. THE CHILD WAS DREADFULLY FRIGHTENED, AND SCUTTLED QUICKLY AWAY." — SEE NEXT PAGE.

      THE house was an isolated one, situated quite outside the village, and surrounded by a brick wall. It had a gloomy and old-fashioned look. Ivy ran all over its walls, and there were quaint gables and many chimneys, and although its garden was full of rare fruit-trees and many pretty flowers, as could be seen through the gate from the roadside, it was seldom, until the secretary came, that any one walked there.

      The secretary, Silas Hand, was a thin, dry man, dressed always in black, a little seedy, and the very character for a mysterious and secluded person like his employer. Mr. Hand talked but seldom. His thoughts, outside the employment for which he was engaged, were absorbed in a book he was writing on the subject of insects. It was an interminable volume he had begun twenty years before, and he had laid out future work that would occupy twice an ordinary lifetime. Silas Hand, however, intended to live on indefinitely.

      The secretary was the first person who penetrated the household at the Red Cottage, as the place was called. He had come in answer to an advertisement. He was intelligent, discreet and reserved, which were the qualities Monsieur Remollot most desired.

      M. Remollot himself was tall, burly and still handsome, although he was now getting on to sixty. His hair was rapidly growing gray, and he had a dark, smooth face and a pair of large, sunken eyes. There was something cruel and sensual about his large mouth, with its thin, sarcastic lips, and his broad forehead was deeply lined and always contracted with what appeared to be an ever-present anxiety.

      The only domestic was a short, crooked old woman, very deaf and very ill-tempered. She wore a high French cap and big, clattering shoes, and was very seldom seen above-stairs, except when she was on her way to or from her bed.

      The most interesting figure at the Red Cottage was the housekeeper, Madame Celeste Lemonnier, a very handsome woman, slim and elegant, dressed for ever in rustling silks, and her beautiful hair always arranged as if she expected company or intended to go out somewhere, although she never ventured beyond the garden. She was a haughty, ill-tempered person, very impetuous and impatient. Monsieur Remollot was very fond of her, but she was afraid of him. There was a cold cruelty in his manner that would have frightened almost any one. When in one of his sulky fits, sinister, peevish, ironical, his icy sarcasms curling from his sneering lips, he appeared formidable. Ordinarily, he was agreeable enough. Mr. Hand's most valuable quality, as Monsieur Remollot sometimes said, was his lack of curiosity, and yet he succeeded in learning a great deal. Monsieur Remollot had been a judge in France, and had left that country rather suddenly. He was an admirable lawyer, and the book he dictated to his assistant was a work upon jurisprudence.

      The former history of the handsome and insolent Celeste did not appear till later.

      The little establishment proved shortly to be a curious one. At first, Remollot and the lady seemed under some restraint in the presence of the newcomer. They all dined together, and the conversation was conducted in French. There was the most absolute propriety.

      Later, this awkwardness wore off. The judge and the housekeeper grew more lively at dinner, and both drank a surprising quantity of wine. The secretary was pressed to share in this conviviality, and now sometimes left the table a little bewildered. He had not a very strong head, and was unaccustomed to indulgence. Frequently he was obliged to take refuge in the garden for a walk and fresh air. He saw the others, who could consume prodigious potations of the champagne without ill effects, laughing as he disappeared, unsteady in his gait.

      Sometimes, also, Monsieur Remollot drank brandy in the morning, and insisted upon his unhappy secretary joining him in the libation. The sober and steady amanuensis began to find himself a good deal confused about many things that went on about him. His dreams at night were full of grotesque and terrifying images, the creations of a brain unaccustomed to so much alcohol. There were the other inevitable consequences-on rising, headache and languor. His health grew seriously disordered, and he began to cast about for some decent excuse to escape. But the truth is, he had grown afraid of the judge, who in his silent rages was dark and terrible.

      Mr. Hand, utterly miserable, although he was so well paid and had very little to do, often walked down to the gate and stood there, with a fevered brow and aching head, looking out and longing to be off. There was something disreputable, and to a certain degree uncanny, about the Red Cottage and its inmates. The secretary knew by this time, although he could not tell exactly how, that Monsieur Remollot and his handsome housekeeper both had a past which was not altogether a creditable one. They had their own reasons for keeping secluded.

      There was no break in this quiet life until one day Madame Lemonnier's little girl arrived from France. It was a very pretty child, with large, steady brown eyes. The housekeeper greeted her rapturously. Sometimes she sat watching her at play, absorbed in her own thoughts, dark and perhaps not altogether happy. Once the child suddenly came over to her mother's knee and asked where was her papa.

      Madame Lemonnier bade her be quiet, and then kissed her abruptly, and presently got up and left the room, agitated.

      Some strange things were noted by the melancholy secretary. No one entered Monsieur Remollot's bedroom but himself, and he never left it without carefully locking the door. For hours he was accustomed to sit within quite alone. Every night before he retired he was in the habit of making a circuit of the garden to see that the gates and windows were all securely fastened.

      Mr. Hand was finding existence so insupportable that he began to plan a method of summary flight, when, unexpectedly, a terrifying incident occurred. He was passing along the corridor by the judge's bedroom, when he heard voices within. The secretary could not make out the words, but there was evidently a high quarrel going on. Some one was reproaching and threatening him, and he answered with defiant and cynical gibes. Mr. Hand listened in surprise. His head was greatly confused from an unwilling indulgence with his employer the night before; but, although he could not make out the language of what was in progress, there was unmistakably a bitter altercation under way.

      Before Mr. Hand could escape, the door opened and Monsieur Remollot appeared. His face was flushed and his bearing unsteady. The amanuensis would have liked to sink through the floor from fright and shame, for he was exceedingly timid and nervous, at thus being caught eavesdropping, but to his further amazement, the judge smiled jovially and invited him in.

      "You never saw the interior of my private apartment, Mr. Hand," said the tall and burly Frenchman, speaking a little thickly.

      So Mr. Hand entered and looked round. There was nothing particularly noteworthy in the furniture — a bed, a few chairs, a desk, a bookcase and some indifferent pictures — but near the window. there was a little stand on which was placed a circular box of polished brass, and it was closed and secured with a padlock.

      Two revolvers lay on a chair by Monsieur Remollot's bed.

      Monsieur Remollot walked over to the box, unlocked it and removed the lid. His secretary, who had followed him, looked in and saw on a sort of plate a shocking object — a human head which had been cut off sharply at the neck.

      The crown was a little bald. The skin was dark and livid, but the features were preserved perfectly. The eyes were partly open, which gave them a curious downcast, stealthy, listening expression. The face was lean, demure and sinister — the expression that of a quiet, hypocritical rogue plotting mischief.

      "This head," said the judge, "is, as you see, embalmed. It is that of a fellow who was tried before me and found guilty of murder and guillotined. It was an extraordinary case. After the head rolled off into the basket and the executioner was done with it, I succeeded in getting possession of it and had it preserved in the manner you perceive."

      "But," said the trembling secretary, faint and sick, "why do you keep it locked up in this great, strong box?"

      "Well," replied Monsieur Remollot, quietly; "it is always endeavoring to escape. Besides, I would not be surprised if the body were to come in search of it. The fellow is constantly threatening me. You may have heard him sometimes. He was very violent this morning."

      Mr. Hand looked at his employer with a fresh and more dreadful curiosity. Monsieur Remollot was watching the dead face with a listless interest, as the beast-tamer in a menagerie observes some dangerous animal he has secured and made safe, without having conquered. The Frenchman certainly had nothing about him of insanity, but the effects of continuous indulgence in alcohol are, as Mr. Hand imagined he was beginning to know from his own experience, very curious.

      When they had stood thus for some time, Monsieur Remollot locked up the head again in its brass cage, and said that he would now go down to the study and dictate a little upon his book.

      The effect of this incident upon timid Mr. Hand, whose nerves were already in such a sad state, was terrible. He could scarcely sleep at night, and even in the day the atmosphere of the house seemed suffocating. He grew into the habit of spending all his leisure in the garden, and of busying himself with the flowers he had planted. But one day he was alone in Monsieur Remollot's study waiting for that gentleman, when he began looking over the books on the shelves, most of which were in the French language. Behind some large volumes he lighted upon a small bundle of old newspapers.

      From these Mr. Hand now learned the story of Monsieur Remollot's life. The journals were very severe. They were not more than a year old. The first began by stating that Monsieur Remollot, formerly of the High Court of Justice at R---, was now, it had been ascertained, residing in the United States, where he had gone immediately after his strange disappearance from France. Madame Celeste Lemonnier was known to be living with him in charge of his household.

      This recalled a great scandal, which was detailed in the second newspaper, dated a few days afterward. The readers would recollect that Monsieur Lemonnier and his wife had kept a lodging-house or small hotel at R---, and that one morning a stranger had been found dead there. Monsieur Lemonnier, who was known to be jealous of his wife, was arrested for the murder of this person. The opinion was that it was really a case of suicide. However, the trial came on, and was held before Mon, sieur Remollot. The accused declared that he was certain of being convicted, and the proceedings, it was observed, were of a remarkable character. The judge was against the prisoner in everything. He excluded evidence, and frightened witnesses. He was sharp and sarcastic with the lawyers for the defense, and, in his charge, intimidated the jury. At length there followed a verdict of guilty, and when the unlucky Lemonnier was asked if he had anything to say, he broke out with great violence and created a scene. He was a slight, dark man, with a lean, penitential face like those we see in the pictures of the Puritans. In a nervous, hysterical and choking way he went on to say that he had been, indeed, jealous of his handsome wife, and with very good reason. She had been engaged in a guilty friendship with the judge on the bench, and this trial was but a conspiracy to get rid of himself, the husband. Every person of common sense could see that the dead man had committed suicide, and that all the evidence to the contrary brought out in the trial was distorted. As the lodging-housekeeper spoke he grew insolent and excited, and extended his forefinger in the direction of the judge and denounced him; and finally, when the officers were ordered to seize him, and did so, he became so agitated that he fell in a fit and frothed at the mouth.

      The sentence of death was passed. When Lemonnier was led away, he turned, and, looking at the judge, said, in a firm voice, "I go, but I will come again!" Shortly afterward he was guillotined.

      This created a great scandal. The judge was already feared and hated. There were stories that his habits were dissolute. Besides, every one had secretly liked Lemonnier, and had felt that he was unjustly executed.

      Such was the story the papers revived. "It will be remembered," said one of these journals, "that Monsieur Remollot, some months after the trial, resigned his position and left the city. About the same period Madame Lemonnier also disappeared. We have learned a strange circumstance since. Immediately after the execution of Lemonnier, Monsieur Remollot bribed one of the officials of the prison and obtained the criminal's head, which was sent to Paris and embalmed. Monsieur Remollot is declared to have been frightened by Lemonnier's threat in the court-room, that he would come back from the grave. But we have our doubts about this, as Monsieur Remollot is not of the material, we believe, to be frightened at anything. At any rate, we learn, upon indisputable authority, that he and the pretty widow are residing together in America."

      Mr. Hand read this painful story with a swimming brain. He understood now the sort of people to whom he had engaged himself, and he sank into a chair and held his hand to his bewildered head and tried to think once more if there could be no way of releasing himself.

      The melancholy secretary — a shy man, a student, a man who knew little of the wickedness of the world — was horrified at this revolting disclosure. At the thought of the disreputable life into which he had been led — the continual drinking, the late hours and the disorder — and of the association with such iniquitous characters as this perjured and murderous pair who occupied the Red Cottage, Mr. Hand wept.

      Now, he began to have some dismal visions and fancies. He dreamed several nights that the guillotined head of the martyred Lemonnier was in his room, and hopping about the floor. It was muttering to itself, turning from one side to another, as if looking for something, and it said, continually, "I will strangle him yet!"

      One day, about noon, Mr. Hand was ascending the back stairs, which were but dimly lighted, and he fancied he perceived something coming down to meet him — an object jumping lightly from one step to another — and, as he looked more closely, the secretary was almost sure it was the embalmed head. But, as he was about to turn and retreat, he perceived that he had been deceived — it was only a little black kitten.

      On another occasion, Mr. Hand was in the cellar searching for certain bottles of wine for which, to his humiliation, he had been sent he was so afraid now of Monsieur Remollot, who was always tipsy and ferocious, that he would do anything and as the gentle and distressed scholar happened to look up, he saw a dark, livid face peering at him through the cellar-window. He recognized the long, canting, lugubrious countenance of the dead lodging-housekeeper, that horrible guillotined head, once more. But, as it turned out, the whole was fancy again, or, at least, must have been so, for when Mr. Hand, drawn by a dreadful fascination, went to the window, he could make out nothing more dreadful than a bundle of old rags which the wind had blown there. But now his experience took a new and startling turn. One evening, shortly after sunset, he was smoking his pipe in the garden, near the gate, when, looking through the wicket, he saw a man, dressed in seedy black; a lank, thin figure, standing on the other side of the road, directly opposite, as if waiting for some one. The man's head was muffled up in a coat, as if it were raining, although the weather was fine, so that nothing could be seen of him above his shoulders.

      Early next morning this same rather sensitive stranger was seen there again. Mr. Hand spoke to him, asking him what he wanted, when he immediately moved off. But a couple of hours afterward the secretary made him out in the same spot once more. He was still muffled up above the neck, his arms holding his coat over him like an umbrella, although there was not a cloud in the sky. Apparently it was some lunatic, or possibly a robber, awaiting a chance to slip in.

      Mr. Hand went immediately and related the circumstance to his employer. Monsieur Remollot turned pale as death, and for a moment trembled violently. It was undoubtedly a prowling thief, he said, who intended mischief, and he charged the secretary to see that the gate was never for an instant left open. At night, Monsieur Remollot now began to inspect the garden and premises before he retired himself, carrying both revolvers in his hands. He appeared to be extremely frightened over the alarm, and Mr. Hand noticed that he drank more than ever before.

      The ex-judge had evidently related what had occurred to the housekeeper, for that handsome lady was also agitated and alert. She quite gave up her visits to the garden and her pet flowers for several mornings, but presently, the stranger being seen no more, she resumed. But one day she was watering her roses, when, glancing up, she beheld the lank, dark man with the muffled head standing on the wall. He had climbed up there from the outside, and seemed to be preparing to descend. Madame Lemonnier screamed, and the instruder instantly sprang over on the other side and disappeared.

      Monsieur Remollot now took very determined measures. He sent word to the police of the neighboring town that some miscreant was prowling about his premises intent upon robbery, and perhaps murder, and offered to pay for special protection. So an officer came and took up his quarters in the garden, and slept in a little outhouse which was fitted up as a temporary bivouac for his accommodation. And for about a week this arrangement proved thoroughly effective, and the persistent stranger seemed to have been permanently frightened off.

      The watchman must have grown careless, for one afternoon, while Monsieur Remollot was in the garden, walking with his hands behind him, he raised his eyes and saw, in a thick clump of rose-bushes, the dark man secreted. The figure lowered one of its arms from the coat held over its head, and shook his fist at him, and seemed about to advance. Monsieur Remollot instantly called for help, and the intruder once more retreated. He ran in the direction of the stables.

      It proved that by some one's carelessness the gate had been left open, and thus the strange man, who had been so long awaiting his opportunity, had at last succeeded in getting in. Monsieur Remollot was frightfully angry. He scolded and swore and sent Mr. Hand immediately to the chief of the town police. That functionary discharged the negligent sentinel and replaced him with two others. A search of the garden was immediately undertaken, and not a nook that could be thought of left unexplored. No person could be found; but the members of the household all had an uneasy feeling that the persistent intruder, having at length succeeded in effecting an entrance, was now hidden about the premises somewhere, and would remain until he had accomplished his mission, whatever it might be.

      Madame Lemonnier was intensely agitated. To her Monsieur Remollot had evidently communicated his secret fears. The beautiful housekeeper wandered about in a restless and alarmed way, holding her little girl by the hand, and often embracing the child, with a look of remorse and fear on her handsome face.

      Monsieur Remollot was plainly more terrified than he had ever been, for he took the sudden resolution of shutting himself in his room. No one was allowed to enter except the housekeeper, who brought him his meals. Although alone, Mr. Hand, passing along the corridor, sometimes heard him, to the secretary's horror, conversing in loud, defiant tones, as if there was another person present. Mr. Hand even fancied that he could make out a second voice, but the truth is, that the mind of the bewildered scholar was in such a great state of confusion from so much excitement that he could scarcely be sure, among all that went on around him, as to what was real and what delusion.

      But late the next afternoon the little girl, who had been left alone for a few hours to take care of herself, came to her mother with a startling story. It was about sunset. The child said that she had been playing on the stairs, and had gone up to the attic. She had opened the door of the front room and peeped in. The chamber was full of the bright and melancholy light of expiring day, everything could be made out readily — the old and dusty furniture, the four-post bedstead, the dingy pictures. At the window, with his legs crossed, sat a man, with his black coat in his lap and his arms folded. It was the attitude of a person in deep thought; but he had no head. The child was dreadfully frightened, and scuttled away quickly.

      The little girl related this incident to her mother in the presence of Mr. Hand, and taking a light, for it was now dark, they all three went up. But the whole must have been the child's fancy, for there was nothing at all visible except the chair, which was in its usual place by the window; but plainly no one had recently occupied it, for the back was covered with dust.

      It must have been about two o'clock that night when Mr. Hand was awakened by a loud screaming and running. He slipped on his clothes and hurried into the passage. Madame Lemonnier and the deaf cook were at Monsieur Remollot's door trying to get in. Dreadful groans were heard inside. The housekeeper related, hysterically, and wringing her jeweled hands, that a struggle had just ceased, and that Monsieur Remollot had been shrieking for protection from some person who was trying to murder him.

      It was impossible to get the door opened, and Mr. Hand ran down-stairs to the garden and alarmed the watchman, and then to the cellar and procured the ax. He returned, and Monsieur Remollot's door was shattered, and all entered his room.

      The Frenchman was lying on the floor, dead. The furniture was overturned and everything in confusion. A window was raised as if some one had just escaped from it. The brass cage, which had contained the embalmed head, had tumbled to the floor, and was lying open and empty.

      The face of Monsieur Remollot was staring and purple, and he looked as if he had been strangled, but the surgeon, who arrived shortly, after an examination, said that he had died of apoplexy. He had thrown the window up to obtain air.

      The shock of all this was so terrible that Mr. Hand was taken ill. He had a long and dangerous attack of brain fever. When he returned to his senses, Monsieur Remollot had been buried, and Madame Lemonnier and her little girl had disappeared.

      When he was quite well, Mr. Hand related the whole story of his experience at the Red Cottage to his doctor, who listened, amused.

      "The affair, as you tell it," said the physician, "has a supernatural aspect, undoubtedly, and to you it looks as if the murdered Lemonnier had come back from the grave after his head and had strangled his wronger. But you must remember, Mr. Hand, that your nervous system, from the unaccustomed alcohol and the late hours and the forbidding surroundings of your situation, had grown very much disordered. As for Monsieur Remollot, he was suffering from delirium tremens, and on the night of his death he evidently went out somewhere and buried the embalmed head. On his return he had a fit and so died. The circumstances look strange, certainly, if we seek to find something strange in them; but if we study them from the standpoint of common sense, they are explainable and prosaic enough."

      Nevertheless, Mr. Hand still holds to his own theory.