es. It seemed to him
that his hands and head were rapidly swelling to enormous size.

All this he had felt before; it was his old enemy, but now with this
second attack began a new and even stranger sensation. In his distorted
wits he fancied that he was in some manner changing, that he was
becoming another man; worse than that, it seemed to him that he was no
longer human, that he was sinking, all in a moment, to the level of
some dreadful beast.

Later on in that same evening Ellis met young Haight coming out of one
of the theatres, and told him a story that Haight did not believe. Ellis
was very pale, and he seemed to young Haight to be trying to keep down
some tremendous excitement.

"If he was drunk," said Ellis, "it was the strangest drunk I ever saw.
He came back into the room on all fours--not on his hands and knees, you
understand, but running along the floor upon the palms of his hands and
his toes--and he pushed the door of the room open with his head,
nuzzling at the crack like any dog. Oh, it was horrible. _I_ don't know
what's the matter with Van. You should have seen him; his head was
hanging way down, and swinging from side to side as he came along; it
shook all his hair over his eyes. He kept rattling his teeth together,
and every now and then he would say, way down in his throat so it
sounded like growls, 'Wolf--wolf--wolf.' I got hold of him and pulled
him up to his feet. It was just as though he was asleep, and when I
shook him he came to all at once and began to laugh. 'What's the matter,
Van?' says I. 'What are you crawling on the floor that way for?' 'I'm
damned if I know,' says he, rubbing his eyes. 'I guess I must have been
out of my head. Too much whisky!' Then he says: 'Put me to bed, will
you, Bandy? I feel all gone in.' Well, I put him to bed and went out to
get some bromide of potassium; he said that made him sleep and kept his
nerves steady. Coming back, I met a bell-boy just outside of Van's door,
and told him to ask the hotel doctor to come up. You see, I had not
opened the door of the room yet, and while I was talking to the bell-boy
I could hear the sound of something four-footed going back and forth
inside the room. When I got inside there was Van, perfectly naked, going
back and forth along the wall, swinging his head very low, grumbling to
himself. But he came to again as soon as I shook him, and seemed
dreadfully ashamed, and went to bed all right. He got to sleep finally,
and I