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A Rolling Stone Vol.III

Chapter XIV

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Chapter XIV.

‘We know not, we, what this may be,
The mystery of ages,
Which, day by day, writes lives away
On unremembered pages.

‘But calm at least they watch the east,
For victory or disaster,
Who firmly hold the best the old,
And faith alone the master.’

It has been said that Mr. Godfrey Palmer had suddenly disappeared from the station; not before his new acquaintances were tired of him. It was supposed by the more charitable that having gratified the yearnings of affection by a last look at the remains of his friend he had gone home again to forget his sorrow. But they were slightly mistaken in these conjectures.

He had gone forth one morning with some vague purpose of seeing a little of the country, and of enjoying himself, meanwhile, with thinking glorious thoughts of the great fortune which recent events had brought within his grasp. Wonderfully, indeed, had the wheel turned with him. He might well walk with erect head and elastic step, as if in page 207 the joy of his heart he could bound along for miles on that even plain. He might well cast all care to the winds, and sing occasionally, in a voice good enough to rejoice the ear of one who was not too close at hand, and could not distinguish the trashy words of the song.

The day itself should have been sufficient to make him glad. The country was renewed in beauty and freshness after the rains, the sunlight transfigured everything, and the atmosphere was so pure and clear that the miles and miles which lay between him and the hills on the verge of the plain seemed but a little way. But he thought neither of the sweet fresh air nor the blessed sunlight; he exulted and revelled in reflections which, though certainly of the earth earthy, had nothing to do with the beauties of the world around him.

He walked farther and farther, because exercise was pleasant on such a day, and he was curious to see more of the place. When he discovered that it was all alike, unless he went as far as the bush on the distant ranges, he thought of turning back. Suddenly, however, he noticed, a little in front of him, beside a plantation of young pines, a thatched cottage. He struck across the flat in a straight line for it, and reached it in a few minutes. The door was closed, there was no smoke from the chimney, and everything was as still as death. Evidently the owner was out; and looking round for him, he was seen going towards the stream with a bucket in his page 208 hand. Mr. Godfrey Palmer thought he would go inside to rest, and wait for his return.

It was dark within, the window being small; but it was cool and clean. Things were arranged neatly, as if the occupier of the house were more fastidious in his habits than most shepherds. Some of his clothes were hanging on the wall, and these, though rough and common in material, were also very clean. There was some cold meat, some bread and tea, on the table, and Mr. Godfrey Palmer, feeling the awakening pangs of hunger and thirst, especially the latter, emptied the teapot, and paid some attention to the mutton. He attended to another thing; he read some letters, and a little of a manuscript book lying on the table; purely for diversion—he was fond of reading other people's papers. These were laid on an old newspaper, and some verses in it caught his eye. He paused to read them.

‘They say that poison-sprinkled flowers
Are sweeter in perfume
Than when, untouched by deadly dew,
They glowed in early bloom.

‘They say that men condemned to die
Have quaffed the sweetened wine
With higher relish than the juice
Of the untampered vine.

‘They say that in the witches' song,
Though rude and harsh it be,
There blends a wild mysterious strain
Of weirdest melody.

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‘And I believe the Devil's voice
Sinks deeper in our ear
Than any whisper sent from Heaven,
However sweet and clear.’1

‘And I believe you are not far wrong, friend poet,’ he said, with one of his strangest smiles. ‘You knew something of mankind. But what——’

Something moved and rustled at the other side of the room. All at once he saw that some one was in the bed opposite to him. A hand was feebly moving to and fro on the coverlid, and what a hand! He had never seen one so like a skeleton's; the white skin seemed to be merely stretched over the bones. It could not rest, that poor, wasted hand. The head moved about, too, on the pillow; but slowly and languidly. Was there any consciousness of his presence in those dull black eyes? He stared at the face until his own eyes began to look fixed and glassy with the intensity of his gaze. Stare as long as he could, it made no difference to the unheeding eyes, and it altered not the startling conviction, which had burst upon him like the lightning flash, that he knew the man.

‘So!’ he said, crouching down in his astonishment on the floor close to the bed, ‘the sea didn't drown you? You've turned up again, have you? But’—and he narrowly observed the face—‘I don't think you've gained much by your escape. I hope page 210 your affairs are in order, for I don't think you'll have another chance of attending to them. What—you're going to speak, are you?’

Something actually was said, indistinctly at first, then plainer. Poor fellow, he saw things which were not; for he rambled on about the hills where the bush was so thick in the ravines that the sun had never seen the gushing streams which ran within them. Oh, for a draught of that ice-cold water! They would not let him go, and it was only a little way. He could see the house among the trees—they waited for him—he had promised—he must go. ‘I can hear the waterfalls,’ he said, and there was a change on his wan face, a pitiable sort of a smile. ‘Not there; not by the road; let us go through those green fields. Don't you see them?’ he asked so quickly and distinctly that Mr. Godfrey Palmer answered, ‘No, I don't.’

‘I see them,’ he went on, in a faint voice, but one that expressed rapturous content with his imaginings. ‘They are so beautiful—so green and smooth. Why are there fields here, in the midst of the bush? It is not far—I cannot go any faster——’

‘Excuse me, you're going fast enough,’ said Mr. Godfrey Palmer,—‘to the Elysian fields. No occasion for farther hurry.’

The eyes, glittering now with fever light, turned towards him. ‘I know you,’ their owner managed to articulate.

‘Well, I know you,’ coolly returned Mr. Godfrey page 211 Palmer, ‘though you're hardly the Adonis you used to be, my dear Henry.’

‘You are the man who made me come here,’ the other began to speak hurriedly and thickly. ‘You keep me here—you want my life—my life!’

And though the voice hardly rose above a whisper, from its intonation one could tell that had the strength been there it would have been a piercing scream.

‘Your life, you poor creature!’ said Mr. Godfrey Palmer, with contemptuous pity, ‘what is it worth now?’

‘There is another like you on the other side’—and the head dashed frantically on the pillow—‘he is just like you—you whisper together.’

‘Got to seeing double, have you?’ said the listener. ‘Ah, that's a bad sign, a very bad sign.’

‘You tried to kill me long ago,’ moaned the one on the bed; ‘but I got away—you followed me—and oh, I cannot get away from here!’

‘I am afraid not,’ said Mr. Godfrey Palmer. ‘This is your last stage.’

‘What are you doing here?’ sharply demanded some one behind him. ‘Get up at once and come away from him!’

Mr. Godfrey Palmer was so taken aback that he could not answer directly,—an unusual thing with him. He sprang to his feet, and turning round saw that the shepherd had returned, and was looking at him with glances of indignation.

‘What am I doing here?’ he said, as soon as he page 212 could collect his most plausible manners, ‘why,—begging your pardon for an intrusion on your domestic sanctities,—I've walked several miles; I was fagged when I saw this house, so I thought I'd come here to rest, hot thinking any one would object to that. Being hungry as well as tired, I helped myself to some lunch, as you'll see, and enjoyed it too.’

‘You're welcome to that; but you need not have disturbed him,’ said the Doctor.

‘Disturbed him? I think he disturbed me. I was shocked at his appearance. You have set up a fever hospital, it seems, and your patient is in a bad way.’

‘Yes, very bad,’ assented the Doctor, who was laying cold wet cloths on the patient's head.

‘Do you know him?’

‘No; he came here by accident, in the wanderings of his mind, I suppose. I found him at my door, and he has never been able to give any account of himself.’

‘And never will, I think. You may guess what he has been from his ravings?’

‘I can guess that he has been leading an anxious life lately, and that he is no common man; that is all.’

‘Does he mention names, and what are they?’

‘Sometimes; but I don't feel bound to repeat what a man says in the delirium of fever,’ said the Doctor, displeased with Mr. Godfrey Palmer's inqisitiveness.

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‘You've been a doctor, haven't you?’

‘How do you know what I've been, and what is it to you?’ sharply asked the Doctor in return.

‘Oh, I've heard of you at the station; I'm staying there,’ carelessly replied Mr. Godfrey Palmer, who had found all he knew in the Doctor's private papers. ‘This man reminds me of a young fellow I used to know, that's why I looked at him so closely. His face interests me.’

‘Yes, it is rather an interesting face,’ said the Doctor more calmly.

‘Now, I should like to know one thing, Doctor, if you don't mind answering the question. Do people in these fevers become sensible before death, or do they often die without recovering their consciousness?

‘Very often,’ said the Doctor shortly.

‘Then he will not be able to tell you who he is?’

‘How can I tell? I hope he won't die of this.’

‘There is a possibility then? I thought it was a hopeless case.’

‘There are very few cases which are altogether hopeless. More often, in such as this, no one can say long before the end which is to be the issue—life or death.’

‘What is the use of all your boasted knowledge, then, you men of medicine, if it does not enable you to speak with certainty?’

‘When a man is very positive in such things you may reasonably suspect him of ignorance. Our page 214 knowledge, in spite of all that has been done,—and great things are being done every day in our science—has taught us one thing, better than all the rest—to understand the immensity of that which remains to be known. And I think—though of this also no one can be certain—that some things we never shall know. I can tell when I have done my best for this man, and it will not be my fault if he dies, but I cannot tell you yet whether he will die or not, because no one can measure exactly the strength of the little thread by which such a one holds to life.’

‘Do you know,’ said Mr. Godfrey Palmer, becoming confidential, ‘you and your patient interest me so much that I should like to see the end of this. I think I shall come again.’

‘Do so if you like,’ said the Doctor indifferently.

‘How far is it to the township? I don't think I shall go back to the station, as I have come so far.’

‘Ten miles from here—fully.

‘Pooh, what is that to a man who's in training? Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ answered the Doctor, going back to his duties, and thinking no more of his visitor.

The same thoughts that had made his misery days ago, when he had found the sick man, were with him yet. His wife had said she would not write again unless she had better news to tell him, and she had not written—was not that a proof that they had found no help? What was it to him that he was safe here in this quiet place? it was only as page 215 if he stood on some rock, and saw them perishing in the flood beneath, and could not so much as stretch forth a hand to save them. They might have been relieved by the charity of some one, but he knew how, in that great city where they were, thousands die, and are huddled, into paupers' graves, and the crowd whirls by, unheeding, and happy in its ignorance. He could imagine how it might be—once he had dreamt that he had found his way to their place, and they were dead. He watched the agony of his fever-stricken patient with a greater agony in his own heart. Sometimes he could not keep it in; he must talk aloud, and when the other cried out also of his imaginary woes, or murmured confused recollections of what he had felt long ago or passed through, their passionate ravings mingled together in the saddest, strangest manner.

But his patient did not talk much now. The fever was leaving him too weak for that. His mind grew no clearer, but seemed to ebb away into a death-like stupor, from which perhaps he never would awake. The Doctor hoped against hope, because he had grown fond of him, with tending him so untiringly, and because his cries to those who were far away, and his frequent mention of names that were dear to him, struck on the chords of his own heart. He had tried to piece his history together bit by bit, out of the wild words of his delirium. Was it anything like his own?—had he offended and broken the hearts of those whose names were so page 216 often on his lips? But there was no word of guilt such as his, and if guilt had been there, it must have found speech at such a time.

Mr. Bailey came to see him again, bringing various presents and comforts from the thoughtful Mrs. Bailey. Mr. Bailey from the first, had had such a dread of infection from the Doctor and his patient that he had not been inside the hut since the latter had come. Now, however, his curiosity prompted him to dare the danger, and he was emboldened by remembering that his master had been none the worse for his visit, So he went in, and saw the invalid, and wondered and pitied. He did not recognise him. Mr. Godfrey Palmer had had little difficulty in doing so; but his memory and his eye had been quickened by a jealous fear of his rival's reappearance. He had wanted him out of the way so much that even when he believed him in his grave he had hardly been able to assure himself that he had gone; it was a thing too good to be true. Mr. Bailey, who was in charity with all the world, and had always been of too little account to have enemies, had not the sharp eyes of jealousy or hatred. He saw only a stranger.

‘Well, poor fellow, I hope he'll get through,’ he said. ‘Mr. Langridge seemed quite cut up by the sight of him. He can't be used to such things. He ordered me to see after him and you, and left some money in case you should want anything.’

‘I can't do much more for him,’ said the Doctor. page 217 ‘It was very thoughtful of Mr. Langridge, though. Have you any one staying at the station now?’

‘Not a soul,’ said Mr. Bailey, ‘and Mary Anne and I feel like pelicans of the wilderness, now that they're all gone, and the station's fallen flat again after such a racket.’

‘There was some one here who said he was staying with you, a well-dressed, fine-looking man, but disagreeable in his manner.’

‘Oh, I know who you mean. Palmer, they called him. Blessings on him! he's gone at last. Mary Anne and I were sick of the fellow always poking and prying about. Hallo! though—talk of such creatures, and they're sure to be about you. There he is.’

‘I believe he, spoke of coming again,’ said the Doctor.

Mr. Godfrey Palmer came up on a hired horse in good style, dismounted with a jaunty spring, and tied up his horse. Mr. Bailey went out to greet him, and also to prevent his own horse from kicking Mr. Palmer's, for whom apparently he only cherished scorn and contempt.

‘And well he may,’ thought Mr. Bailey, ‘if the horse is in any way like the fellow who rides him. My powers! Mr. Palmer,’ he cried by way of salutation, ‘are you in this place yet?’

‘Well, don't you see me, or do you want to feel me as well?’ said Mr. Godfrey Palmer.

‘Thanks; no; I suppose it's you. I don't expect page 218 to meet another like you. But what are you after here?’

‘Why, the fact is I'm too susceptible. I can't tear myself away from the spot. The loss of a friend shook me a good deal, as you must have seen; and then this poor man, who reminds me of another dear friend—both combine in keeping me here, though I've suffered so much in this place.’

‘I never met any one who was so fond of his friends,’ said Mr. Bailey. ‘I suppose if you heard of a third one in the same spot you'd be like to go clean distracted.’

‘I believe I should,’ said Mr. Godfrey Palmer. ‘This second case I couldn't bear over again,’—and here at least he was sincere. ‘Friendship—true friendship is a rare thing, my good Mr. Bailey.’

‘So it is; uncommon,’ assented Mr. Bailey, and though he meant nothing personal by this, somehow Mr. Godfrey Palmer did not like it, and looked at him closely.

Mr. Godfrey Palmer wanted to stay some time, and particularly wanted to outstay Mr. Bailey. But that person likewise was in no hurry to go away; he wished to retail all the gossip of the district, and his budget of news was no paltry little thing which might be emptied in a few moments; it had gathered of every kind at a great rate, while there had been so many visitors, at the station. So both stayed, until the dark clouds which had been hanging over the earth for several hours, in portentous warning of a page 219 great storm, began to discharge their contents. The rain fell in torrents, and the wind howled across the unsheltered plain in such fury, that Mr. Bailey determined not to face it. Besides, there fell all at once, and as it seemed a full hour before its proper time, such a pitchy darkness over the whole land that, having stayed while it came, he was so dismayed by it as to declare he would not move from where he was before morning. Mr. Godfrey Palmer said the same thing; so they ate their supper with the Doctor, and in the breaks of conversation listened to the noise of the tempest, and were thankful for their shelter.

They talked of many things. He could talk well, when he liked, that sly, cat-like man who leaned towards the Doctor, and to emphasise a word sometimes, moved his white, cold hands gracefully, or who laughed now and then; not a loud laugh: he was never noisy: everything with him was smooth and soft and plausible, when he was working for some end. Just as he had unhesitatingly stolen this man's secrets, and seen all the anguish of his heart by reading his papers, so now he craftily probed and poked at the wound he knew of. He had power over him, and he was prepared to use it.

By and by Mr. Bailey began to be left out of the conversation, save for an occasional remark. The truth was, the words which he heard struck horror into his simple trusting soul. All that was sacred to him was in the eyes of the other two a delusion page 220 or a fable. They had long ago cast off all faith in what they had learnt at a mother's knee. Godfrey Palmer spoke of religion as cant and hypocrisy, and inveighed against it with all the insolence of the most disgusting of all cants—that of atheism. The Doctor gloomily confessed that he believed in no creed.

Somehow,—and it seemed a mockery of their own condition, unless they had forgotten what they themselves were, they began to talk of such instances of misspent lives and wasted talent as were familiar to them. Mr. Godfrey Palmer knew a great many. It was astonishing how many young friends had pained and grieved him by falling away from the promise of their youth. The Doctor talked of no one in particular; but a less shrewd man than his companion might have divined that the bitterest of his words were aimed against himself.

‘Perhaps he is some castaway of that kind,’ said Godfrey Palmer, waving his hand towards the bed.

‘Very likely,’ said the Doctor. ‘He must have been an educated man; that cannot be mistaken. Who knows where, or who his relatives are? They little think, and perhaps they don't care, what has become of him.’

‘It's very probable they don't care,’ said Godfrey Palmer. ‘In most cases your righteous members of a family care very little what happens to their scapegrace. Overboard he goes, as soon as he begins to trouble them, or hurt their tender respectability; and page 221 then, who cares where he lies down to die, or how the earth is rid of him?’

‘Yes; it may be so,’ said the Doctor; ‘and yet he has earned it. Would it not be better for every one if such men were thrown overboard at once? What right have they to poison the joy of a whole family? Sometimes do you not see a man who has dragged all his family down with him, because their affection would not let the miserable wretch go? He did not deserve it; he only soiled whatever he touched, and ruined every chance they gave him. If they had cast him off what suffering would have been spared;—yet that is what people call hard-hearted,—refusing to sacrifice the innocent to those who are beyond salvation. Oh! I have known and seen this’—and his face worked with emotion. ‘Some men are like an open sepulchre into which everything has been cast—love and treasure, and faith and hope, and all has been cast in vain. They are not to be saved by any sacrifice which blind affection can make for them. God only knows why they exist; why they ever came into the world; or why, being there, men do not set some mark upon them, and chase them out into a desert place where they can do no more harm.’

Godfrey Palmer looked at the speaker, and said in his thoughts, ‘You are mad, or nearly so.’ ‘Can men help being what they are?’ he answered. ‘Did I make myself, or did you make yourself?’

‘I do not know how much I have made myself what I am,’ said the Doctor; ‘but the thought that page 222 distracts me is, why are these things permitted? Why is evil always to triumph, and to tread the good in the dust? Why is there so much suffering and so little joy? I do not believe—I cannot believe—that all this turmoil and anguish, this fighting and struggling against things which always bear us down in the end, are means of leading mankind to some sublime perfection. If each one suffered for himself and bore his own punishment I might think it was justly ordained; but here we see the sinless crushed by the weight of sins which others have committed, and the reward of wickedness falling on the pure and good. And people tell us this is foreordained and prescribed! They tell us there is One who sees and knows it all, and yet His hand is never stretched forth to save or to destroy. No; it cannot be true! Is it not incredible that One infinitely merciful should allow wickedness to riot on the earth, and should permit such unutterable sorrow to fall with heaviest force upon those who keep His commandments?’

Mr. Godfrey Palmer's lips curved a little; he would have smiled mockingly, but for the terrible earnestness of the other's face.

‘There is nothing left for us to believe in,’ he said. ‘Creed after creed has been argued away, and one religion has been broken upon another, since the world began. We, are here, that's all we can be certain of; if people were honest most would say the same thing.’

page 223

‘She believed in it,’ muttered the other man—he was thinking of mother or wife.

‘Women generally do,’ said Godfrey Palmer. ‘It suits their indolence to take things for granted, and their emotions are easily worked upon. That is the reason why all new religions and sects owe much to women. There are several religions in the world which but for them would not exist. Religion is a sentiment or a tradition, and women are fond of sentiment and tradition.’

‘I suppose you had a mother, Mr. Palmer,’ said Bailey.

‘Yes, and a religious mother, if you wish to know, Mr. Bailey; but please don't bring my mother into the question.’

‘Ah, it's strange now,’ said Mr. Bailey, ‘that however a man may go on against religion he wouldn't like it to be said that his mother had none of it, and he wouldn't have an unbeliever for his wife; how's that, Mr. Palmer?’

‘How can I tell you? I don't understand such things; and, as I said before, there is nothing certain about religion.’

‘Oh, the most terrible thing of all is that we are certain of nothing!’ cried the Doctor. ‘The people who have a belief, false though it may be, are happier than we. Even savages believe in a Paradise where they will have all that has been denied them here. But we cut ourselves off from all hope. If we are to have nothing—nothing but this page 224 mad world, life is not worth living. Oh, if we only knew! If one could come back from the grave and tell us!’

‘Ay, if one did come back,’ was the unexpected response from Mr. Bailey, ‘do you think he'd be believed? People would shut him up in a gaol or a madhouse. He wouldn't convince you, Mr. Palmer, not if he came in his grave-clothes.’

Godfrey Palmer paid no attention to this. ‘You don't know what you believe,’ he thought of the Doctor; ‘it would be a wonder if you did, after your life.’

‘After all,’ he continued, ‘religion of one kind or another is necessary for the world.’

‘Well, I'm glad you've the grace to say that,’ put in Mr. Bailey.

‘But it has no right to bind us down with hard moral codes, and to fetter us with commandments which we cannot keep. Why should perfection be required of us when we are not perfect? There are times when we should do well to get rid of the whole thing.’

‘Get rid of the ten commandments, do you mean?’ asked Mr. Bailey. ‘You'll be justifying murder next.’

‘Well,’ said Godfrey Palmer coolly. ‘Look you, Mr. Bailey, I can even make out a good case in favour of murder. What is it? The removal of one or more human beings from this earth by another or other human beings. There's nothing moral people are more squeamish about than this— page 225 so squeamish that they are almost afraid to hang murderers. Yet every one knows that it would be for the great good of the world if men who only run a muck in it were put out of existence. There are whole nations which ought to be killed off, and if all the worthless incapables who stick in the way of better men were removed I think this would be a tolerable world. And killing is an old law of humanity. Kill or be killed is the alternative when men crowd one another. It is the same in all states of society and all countries; but some do it in a more refined way than others. And religion, my good Bailey, religion has sanctioned murder many a time. The godly have murdered a pretty number in the most pious manner. What is war but murder, on a large scale?—and what is the most horrible of all wars?—why, a religious one. The finest soldiers—that means, men most expert in killing—have been religious enthusiasts. Have we not all heard of a very religious emperor who thanked heaven because his soldiers had shot and hacked to pieces thousands of their fellow-creatures, and who was accustomed to pray fervently for a continuation of such good fortune? Why, Te Deums have been sung for murder!’

‘For God's sake,’ said the Doctor, shrinking away from him, ‘talk of something else!’ His eyes were fixed on Godfrey Palmer's face, as a helpless bird might gaze at the serpent that had fascinated it.

‘No, I have not finished. Why need you care? I have said nothing yet about physicians.’ The page 226 other man winced as if some one had struck him on the face. ‘Besides,’ continued the speaker, ‘I want to look at it in another way;’—his voice softened now, and his manner, which before had been flippant or satirical, became grave and composed. ‘Why shouldn't life be taken out of mercy? Isn't it cruelty in a physician to allow his patient to linger on and on, while disease eats away his strength by inches? He knows that life is nothing, and can be nothing more than a torture, yet he does his best to prolong it. Would it not be a mercy if that which you've just made that poor fellow swallow was something to send him out of his misery for ever?’

‘Our business is not to take life,’ said the Doctor; ‘not even when we see it at the last extremity.’

‘No, you are not sufficiently merciful. The greatest anæsthetic is death, and it is the only one you never use. You do not believe in Euthanasia.’

‘No,’ said the Doctor; ‘it is you who do not understand. If you had ever had a man given into your hands to save from death if you could; if you had been with him day and night, and traced the progress of his disease inch by inch, and felt that he was as helpless as an infant in your hands, you would as soon wish to put the knife to your own heart as to give him into the power of his enemy. Life is a thing that is too precious, and—strange as it may seem—too dear, even to the most tortured wretch, for us to dare to meddle with it. We have no right to lift a finger against it.’

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‘And I wonder whether Barrington held those opinions,’ said Godfrey Palmer. His face was calm, expressionless even; but there was triumph in his eye, as he laid his sacrilegious finger on that which had been dead and buried for years.

A spasm of fear and horror convulsed the features of the man who sat close to him, but he forced himself to answer, ‘What has it to do with this?’

‘Why, don't you remember Barrington? It's not so many years ago. I remember the case perfectly well’—Mr. Godfrey Palmer had refreshed his memory, during his sojourn in the neighbouring town, by reading about the case referred to.—‘Barrington, you know, played false with a patient of his. He was a clever doctor, a splendid fellow altogether; there was nothing he might not have been if he could have kept within bounds; but he was wild and unsteady. When people knew that he was an habitual drunkard they scouted him, his practice was ruined, and he got into debt and all kinds of disgrace. Well, after all that, he was called in to attend an uncle of his; because, though like every one else he knew of Barrington's failings, he was so fond of him he would have no other doctor. It was not a dangerous illness, but the uncle died, and Barrington was his heir—now, do you understand?’

He paused, for at that moment the thunder of the storm burst right above their heads. Instantaneously a terrific flash filled the hut with a white light, and page 228 in that awful moment one of the men called on the name of the One whom he had denied, and fell on his face with his hands raised above his head, as if their little strength could have saved him.

‘Put something before the window,’ said Godfrey Palmer coolly, looking at his awe-stricken companions with a contemptuous smile. ‘We are in the midst of it. Has it blinded you, Doctor?’

‘No,’ said the wretched man, staggering to his feet; ‘but would it had done worse than that!’

Godfrey Palmer hung a cloth before the window, and began to speak again.

‘It was a world's wonder, that case of Barrington's,’ he said. ‘Some thought he had poisoned his uncle, others said the uncle died of natural causes, and others that it was done in mistake when Barrington was not clear-headed enough to know one drug from another. They never could decide exactly upon it, especially as’—and his cold glance fastened on the Doctor's bloodless face—‘Barrington was never even tried; he escaped, and defied all their attempts to bring him to justice.’

The lightning-flash shot between them again, and in its intense brightness the features of one of the two men were white as marble, and seemed as calm and immovable, but the other hid his face again, and cried, ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’

‘I thought you said you believed in nothing a little while ago,’ said Godfrey Palmer. ‘Of what are you afraid, then?’

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‘May the Lord have mercy, on you both!’ said the poor trembling Mr. Bailey, in heart-felt tones.

‘The storm is going over,’ said Godfrey Palmer. He drank something from a little flask, and offered it to the Doctor. ‘Have a little,’ he said; ‘this has upset you.’

The Doctor took the flask from his hand with a fierce clutch, and the next instant it crashed through the window into the blackness outside. Then he turned, and opening the door, rushed out, as one who flees for dear life,—out, out into the terrible night. Silence fell on the others, except that the sick man moaned and moved on his pillow.

‘Your friend is mad,’ said Godfrey Palmer, recovering from his surprise, and laying his hand on Bailey's shoulder.

Bailey pushed him away, and with a look of intense disgust, as if he were removing himself from some abominable thing, got up and went to the farthest end of the hut, where he lay down and pretended to sleep. Godfrey Palmer made no pretence; refreshing slumber soon came at his call, and his face seemed angelical in its tranquillity when it was revealed now and again by a sudden gleam of lightning. But soon there was no other light than the dim glow of the fire; the storm rolled over, and it was still.

1 Written by A. L. Gordon, an Australian poet,—shortly before his death by his own hand.