felt
blindly for a moment for the latch, then his hand touched it, and he
raised it with a click. The sharp sound jarred through the silence, and
Sandy did not open the door. He stood for a little while staring
stupidly down upon the floor with his palm still upon the latch. Was the
man who had brought him there waiting outside? Behind him lay the _water
of death_, but he dared not open the door and chance the facing of that
man. The sheet had fallen away from him, and now he stood entirely
naked. He let the latch fall back to its place--carefully, lest it
should again make a noise, and that man should hear it. Then he gathered
the now damp and dirty sheet about him, and crouched down upon the cold
floor close to the crack of the door.

There he sat for a while, every now and then shuddering convulsively
with cold and terror, then by-and-by he began to cry.

There is something abjectly, almost brutally, pathetic in the ugly
squalor of a man's tears. Sandy Graff crying, and now and then wiping
his eyes with the damp and dirty sheet, was almost a more ugly sight
than he had been in the maudlin bathos of his former drunkenness.

So he sat for a long time, until finally his crying ended, only for a
sudden sob now and then, and he only crouched, wondering dully. At last
he slowly arose, gathering the sheet still closer around him, and
creeping step by step to the tank, looked down into its depth. The water
was as clear as crystal; he dipped his hand into it--it was as cold as
ice. Then he dropped aside the sheet, and stood as naked as the day he
was born. He stepped into the water.

* * * * *

A deathly faintness fell upon him, and he clutched at the edge of the
tank; but even as he clutched his sight failed, and he felt himself
sinking down into the depths.

"Help!" he cried, hoarsely; and then the water closed blackly over his
head.

* * * * *

He felt himself suddenly snatched out from the tank, warm towels were
wrapped about him, his limbs were rubbed with soft linen, and at last he
opened his eyes. He still heard the sound of running water, but now the
place in which he was was no longer dark and gloomy. Some one had flung
open the slatted window, and a great beam of warm, serene sunlight
streamed in, and lay in a dazzling white square upon the wet floor. Two
men were busied about him. They had wrapped his body in a soft warm
blanket, and were wipin