The Argosy — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

The Devil in Dunchester. 71 mare or hysterical delusion, I was curious to hear it, and she was most willing to tell, though probably for the thousandth time. “You see, sir, it was this way. I’d got Mr.Smith’s shirts on hand, and heard it strike twelve as clear as clear, and I says to myself—‘ Lord for- give me—Maybe it’s Sunday and maybe it aint, but I’m going to finish this here shirt.’ ‘Then the door flew -open of 1tself,/and” I thought it was the wind, and I’d shut it when I’d done my button- hole; and suddenly I went all of a tremble, and I looked up and saw something come hopping down the steps into the room—and Lord have mercy upon us, if it weren’t my old man !—At least he hadn’t no body, but there was his head as plain as could be, coming along all of itself, staring and grinning at me, with his hair all on end. He came straight up to me, as much as to say: ‘ Just hide me under your petticoats, Mary Ann, for there’s someone [I don’t much fancy looking after me.’ And sure enough, before I had time to say ‘Tom,’ there was the devil.” “But how did you know it was the devil?” I asked. “Why, sir, I.see him as plain as I see you. He dropped right down into the room out of nowhere, something like a man, but a deal bigger, and almost as black as a nigger, and with wings and a face for all the world like ‘’Pollyon’ in the Pilgrim’s Progress. He gave a kind of roar like a wild beast, and down he came on my poor Tom, and then he spread his wings as black as soot, and pretty near as big as mill-sails, and flew off and away with him in the twinkling of an eye. And, Lord bless and keep us all, I never shall get over it !” “No, indeed, Mrs. Wilkins, I don’t believe as you ever will be the woman you was, again,” chimed in Mrs. Cox, rather by way of expressing her sympathy than of stating a fact. I of course assured Mrs. Wilkins that the troubles through which she had passed had unhinged her nerves, and that the whole affair was the creation of a disordered fancy ; an explanation which she and her friends received with profound scepticism, and which, for various reasons, I did not press upon them. Indeed, apart from motives of personal convenience, he would have been a hard man who, on that happy Sunday morning, could have found it in his heart to destroy the pleasing illusion of Bishop’s Alley. Never on the brightest summer evening had there been such animated groups standing at the doors and sitting on the steps. The truth would have fallen as a blow on the whole population, from Mrs. Wilkins herself to the little match-boy lodging opposite, who had smelt the brimstone. For, however fallen in the estimation of doctors and dignitaries of the church, the devil is still dear to the popular imagination, and I doubt not that the legend of his brief but im- pressive appearance in Bishop’s Alley, even now lends a gloomy dignity to the otherwise sordid shades of that unromantic neighbour- hood. cCoOnniclooolkks im