things to be done."

The man in his delirium suddenly lifted himself upon an elbow, and with
the other hand fumbled in his breast as though he searched for
something. "Yes, the things to be done," he repeated in a mumbling
voice, and he sank to unintelligible whisperings, with his head fallen
upon his breast.

Trench put an arm about him and raised him up. But he could do nothing
more, and even to him, crouched as he was close to the ground, the
noisome heat was almost beyond endurance. In front, the din of shrill
voices, the screams for pity, the swaying and struggling, went on in
that appalling darkness. In one corner there were men singing in a mad
frenzy, in another a few danced in their fetters, or rather tried to
dance; in front of Trench Ibrahim maintained his guard; and beside
Trench there lay in the House of Stone, in the town beyond the world, a
man who one night had sailed out of Dublin Bay, past the riding lanterns
of the yachts, and had seen Bray, that fairyland of lights, dwindle to a
golden blot. To think of the sea and the salt wind, the sparkle of light
as the water split at the ship's bows, the illuminated deck, perhaps the
sound of a bell telling the hour, and the cool dim night about and
above, so wrought upon Trench that, practical unimaginative creature as
he was, for very yearning he could have wept. But the stranger at his
side began to speak again.

"It is funny that those three faces were always the same ... the man in
the tent with the lancet in his hand, and the man in the back room off
Piccadilly ... and mine. Funny and not quite right. No, I don't think
that was quite right either. They get quite big, too, just when you are
going to sleep in the dark--quite big, and they come very close to you
and won't go away ... they rather frighten one...." And he suddenly
clung to Trench with a close, nervous grip, like a boy in an extremity
of fear. And it was in the tone of reassurance that a man might use to a
boy that Trench replied, "It's all right, old man, it's all right."

But Trench's companion was already relieved of his fear. He had come
out of his boyhood, and was rehearsing some interview which was to take
place in the future.

"Will you take it back?" he asked, with a great deal of hesitation and
timidity. "Really? The others have, all except the man who died at
Tamai. And you will too!" He spoke as though he could hardly believe
some piece of great good fortune which had befallen h