for the magnificent
spirit so flashing in his eyes, so scathing on his bitter lips. Lane
bade him good-bye and turned away, with a strange intimation that this
was the last time he would ever see Blair alive.

Wretched and desperate, Lane bought drink and took it to his room with
him. On that dark winter night he sat by the window of his room.
Insensible now to the cold, to the wind moaning outside, to the snow
whirling against the pane, he lived with phantoms. To and fro, to and
fro glided the wraith-forms, vanishing and appearing. The soft
rustling sound of the snow was the rustle of their movements. Across
the gleam of light, streaking coldly through the pane, flickering
fitfully on the wall, floated shadows and faces.

He did not know when he succumbed to drowsy weakness. But he awoke at
daylight, lying on the floor, stiff with cold. Drink helped him to
drag through that day. Then something happened to him, and time meant
nothing. Night and day were the same. He did not eat. When he lay back
upon his bed he became irrational, yet seemed to be conscious of it.
When he sat up his senses slowly righted. But he preferred the spells
of aberration. Sometimes he was possessed by hideous nightmares, out
of which he awoke with the terror of a child. Then he would have to
sit up in the dark, in a cold sweat, and wait, and wait, until he
dared to lie back again.

In the daytime delusions grew upon him. One was that he was always
hearing the strange voices of the river, and another that he was
being pursued by an old woman clad in a flowing black mantle, with a
hood on her head and a crooked staff in her hand. The voices and
apparition came to him, now in his waking hours; they came suddenly
without any prelude or warning. He explained them as odd fancies
resulting from strong drink; they grew on him until his harsh laugh
could not shake them off. He managed occasionally to drag himself out
of the house. In the streets he felt this old black hag following him;
but later she came to him in the lonely silence of his room. He never
noticed her unless he glanced behind him, and he was powerless to
resist that impulse. At length the dreary old woman, who seemed to
grow more gaunt and ghostly every day, took the form in Lane's
disordered fancy of the misfortune that war had put upon him.

Lane dreamed once that it was a gray winter afternoon; dark lowering
clouds hung over the drab-colored hills, and a chill north wind
scurried