Adventure Magazine Cover — page 159: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

IN|\THE NOON OF/ THE MOON 6¢/ Horace Hazeltine ALF hidden in the dusky shadows of the great room’s farthest cor- ner, the tall, lean, white-haired old gentleman, stooping, swung feebly flush the heavy metal door of the small fire-proof safe and secured it by a twirl of its nickeled knob. The bent, shrunk- en figure in the shabby leather armchair before the fireplace, disregarded and un- heeded, watched him furtively. He had come of late, old Peter Hemming, eldest survivor of a long line of honorable but parsimonious Connecticut landowners to ignore his imbecile brother in many mat- ters. For Henry’s mental weakness had de- veloped within recent years into a derange- ment, and his always meager understanding had grown seriously warped. Peter saw no reason, therefore, why this evening’s trans- fer of jeweled family heirlooms, precious plate and hoarded currency, from the an- cient brass-bound, padlocked chest to the new repository of combination-guarded steel, should hold for that clouded, twisted mind the smallest measure of interest. Much more likely, indeed, to arouse those dull wits from their lethargic contemplation of the dimly glowing coals, before which it was Henry’s habit to sit hour after hour, were the tidings Peter now conveyed, as, coming forward, he paused at his brother’s side. “Tt’s snowing—snowing hard. I say it’s snowing—snowing hard.” The head of the seated old man, bald of crown and parchment-yellow like his vacant, wrinkled face, swayed slowly back and forth in signal that he understood the iterated sentences. ‘‘And the moon’s at the full,” he croaked in return, iterating too. “The moon’s at the full.” In the earlier stages of his dementia Henry Hemming had been inclined to craft at these seasons. There was more than one ugly waif word afloat among the neighbors which had to do with his acts of cunning at such times. But in recent years the moons had waxed and waned without exerting any perceptible ill influence upon the crippled intellect. Yet he never failed to note the passing of this lunar phase. “It’s a March blizzard,”’ Peter told him. “It’s been raging since three o’clock, and the drifts are already high. If it keeps on, the roads will be impassable before morning.” He repeated each sentence, and his broth- er’s old head swayed again, understandingly. “The moon’s at the full,” he said, once 723 Co OO) ANG SS (C@