“Boy! … Boy!”
“The lad’s taken ill, sir,” the maid informed Mister Dorken, the master of the house.
“Taken ill? I’ll show him what ill is,” he grumbled, and started up the dark, rickety stairs.
“Oh, please be kind, sir!” the maid called after him.
The miser cursed as he made his way to the decrepit room that he rented — in return for the services of the orphaned boy as hand-servant. He pushed open the lockless door, and peered into the darkness of the dingy bedroom.
А dark form was on the pallet in the corner. The miser retreated into the hall and took an already-lit lamp down from the wall. He raised the wick to increase the flame and once again entered the room. In the flickering glow of the lamp, he could see the boy tossing and mumbling on his pallet.
“If you’re play-acting, boy, I’ll…” but a closer look revealed the boy’s flushed face glistening with sweat.
The miser cursed for several seconds and, almost in answer to the miser, the boy said in clear voice: “And the winner is Bucknob!” The miser raised an eyebrow to this because Bucknob was the name of an acquaintance’s dog entered in tomorrow’s fights.
“What are you talking about, boy? If you’re faking I’ll…” But the rest of the boy’s utterances were incomprehensible mumblings. The miser heard a noise, and turned to the door to see the maid peering in. She cringed, and pulled back when he looked at her. He headed out, and the maid retreated from his path. “See to him,” he ordered as he started down the stairs.
“Ha!” the miser cried as he entered the door the next evening.
“You’re in good good spirits, sir” the maid said tentatively — ready to retract her statement should the miser not approve.
Instead he replied, “Yes, I won at the fights this night.”
“Congratulations,” the maid said as she took his hat and coat.
“How’s the boy?” he asked.
“Better, sir. He seemed to be sleeping more peacefully the last time I looked in. Would you like me to check again, sir?”
“No, I’ll do it myself.” The miser climbed the stairs and entered the boy’s room. A lamp was already lit in one corner revealing the sleeping boy in another. The boy still looked ill, but the mumbling had stopped.
After a few minutes of waiting followed by several curses, the miser realized that he would probably hear nothing from the boy until he next took ill — and maybe not even then. The miser would visit the druggist tomorrow, he decided.
Due to the drugs that the miser administered every morning, the boy remained in a deep fever for several weeks. He had the boy moved to his own private chambers, and had dismissed the maid.
The boy’s predictions were not restricted to dog fights, so the miser made money much quicker than he had expected. He congratulated himself on his good fortune in having one such controlled case of prophesy close at hand.
Though the miser was feeding the boy as best he could, after a month and a half, the boy looked so thin and weak that he might pass away from this world.
One day, while debating on whether to awaken the boy and allow him to recuperate on his own — on the chance that another induced fever might give the same results, or to leave the boy be and get what he could out him before he die, the boy gave a shockingly different prophesy. As usual, it was a quote that the miser would hear again in the next 24 hours — “‘I have come back.’”
“What!?” the miser grew angry because only one one prophecy was given each evening, and this evening was wasted on this nonsense. “Why you little…” He rushed toward the boy and it seemed that almost as he touched him, the boy lay dead with a broken neck.
But what did the statement mean? Would the maid come back again? If so, he had better do something about the boy’s body. The miser took the body out to the yard and, by the darkness of the new moon, buried it under a large oak tree. Не then retired to his chambers musing about his misfortune.
The miser was found three days thereafter, his undernourished body nearly disconnected from his head — his face presenting a horrible look of fright. No one could understand how he had become this way, for he had been seen but days before — nor could they explain the gaping hole under the large, now-fallen oak.