e bandages. With clenched teeth and hands
hard gripped he set himself to endure.

But in a few minutes he turned his head again. "Are you still there,
Maloney?"

"Still here, my son," said Maloney.

"Well, go and find someone--anyone who knows--to tell me exactly what
happened last night."

"I can tell ye meself," began Maloney.

But Noel interrupted. "No; not you! You're such a liar. No offence
meant! You can't help it. Find--find Nick, will you?"

"It isn't visitors ye ought to be having with your pulse in this state,"
objected Maloney.

"Do as I say!" commanded Noel stubbornly.

His will prevailed. The Irish doctor saw the futility of argument, and
departed, having extracted a promise from his patient not to move during
his absence.

And then came silence as well as darkness, an awful sense of being
entombed, an isolation that appalled him added to the torture that
racked. With an acuteness of consciousness more harrowing than delirium,
he faced this thing that had come upon him, grabbing all his courage to
endure the ordeal.

He felt as if his brain were on fire, each nerve-centre agonizing
separately in the intolerable, all-enveloping flames. And through the
dreadful stillness he heard the beat, beat, beat, of his heart, like the
feet of a runaway along a desert road.

He turned his head again restlessly from side to side. The agony was
beginning to master him. His powers of endurance were dwindling.

Suddenly he found himself speaking, scarcely knowing what he said,
feeling that he must cry out or die.

"Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O God!" Just the one sentence
over and over to save him from raving insanity. "Lighten our darkness!
Lighten our darkness! Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee!"

He broke off abruptly. What was the good? Prayers were for white-souled
children like Peggy. Was it likely that any cry of his would pierce the
veil?

Yet the words came back to him, so urgent was his distress, so
unbearable the silence of his desert. He said them again with a
desperate earnestness, and almost instinctively began to listen for an
answer. He felt almost a child again himself in his utter need, as he
wrestled to drive the awful darkness from his soul. But no answer came
to his cry and the brave heart of him slowly sank. He was deserted then,
hurled down into hell to die a living death. In a single flashing second
he had been torn from the world he loved--that bright, gay world in