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Updated: May 3, 2025
It was Halpin Frayser's impression that he was to be garroted on his native heath. "Are there not medicinal springs in California?" Mrs. Frayser resumed before he had time to give her the true reading of the dream "places where one recovers from rheumatism and neuralgia? Look my fingers feel so stiff; and I am almost sure they have been giving me great pain while I slept."
A sound as of the beating of distant drums a murmur of swarming voices, a sharp, far cry signing all to silence, and Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead. A warm, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog.
I shall leave them a record and an appeal. I shall relate my wrongs, the persecutions that I endure I, a helpless mortal, a penitent, an unoffending poet!" Halpin Frayser was a poet only as he was a penitent: in his dream. Taking from his clothing a small red-leather pocketbook, one-half of which was leaved for memoranda, he discovered that he was without a pencil.
However, it is not certain that Halpin Frayser came to his death by exposure. He had been all day in the hills west of the Napa Valley, looking for doves and such small game as was in season.
It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God's mysterious messengers, gliding ahead of the incalculable host of his companions sweeping westward with the dawn line, pronounced the awakening word in the ear of the sleeper, who sat upright and spoke, he knew not why, a name, he knew not whose. Halpin Frayser was not much of a philosopher, nor a scientist.
Something half hidden by the disturbed leaves on the earth caught Holker's attention. It was a red-leather pocketbook. He picked it up and opened it. It contained leaves of white paper for memoranda, and upon the first leaf was the name "Halpin Frayser."
While in San Francisco Halpin Frayser was walking one dark night along the water front of the city, when, with a suddenness that surprised and disconcerted him, he became a sailor. He was in fact "shanghaied" aboard a gallant, gallant ship, and sailed for a far countree.
It was a fallen headboard, and painted on it were the hardly decipherable words, "Catharine Larue." "Larue, Larue!" exclaimed Holker, with sudden animation. "Why, that is the real name of Branscom not Pardee. And bless my soul! how it all comes to me the murdered woman's name had been Frayser!" "There is some rascally mystery here," said Detective Jaralson. "I hate anything of that kind."
Halpin being the youngest and not over robust was perhaps a trifle "spoiled." He had the double disadvantage of a mother's assiduity and a father's neglect. Frayser pere was what no Southern man of means is not a politician.
One who practices sleeping in the woods with nothing under him but the dry leaves and the damp earth, and nothing over him but the branches from which the leaves have fallen and the sky from which the earth has fallen, cannot hope for great longevity, and Frayser had already attained the age of thirty-two.
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