rched: but God, God knows ... If a leaf of the paper,
which I slowly, warily, stealingly turned, made but one faintest rustle,
how did that _reveille_ boom in echoes through the vacant and haunted
chambers of my poor aching heart, my God! and there was a cough in my
throat which for a cruelly long time I would not cough, till it burst in
horrid clamour from my lips, sending crinkles of cold through my inmost
blood. For with the words which I read were all mixed up visions of
crawling hearses, wails, and lugubrious crapes, and piercing shrieks of
madness in strange earthy vaults, and all the mournfulness of the black
Vale of Death, and the tragedy of corruption. Twice during the ghostly
hours of that night the absolute and undeniable certainty that some
presence--some most gashly silent being--stood at my right elbow, so
thrilled me, that I leapt to my feet to confront it with clenched fists,
and hairs that bristled stiff in horror and frenzy. After that second
time I must have fainted; for when it was broad day, I found my dropped
head over the file of papers, supported on my arms. And I resolved then
never again after sunset to remain in any house: for that night was
enough to kill a horse, my good God; and that this is a haunted planet I
know.

* * * * *

What I read in the _Times_ was not very definite, for how could it be?
but in the main it confirmed inferences which I had myself drawn, and
fairly satisfied my mind.

There had been a battle royal in the paper between my old collaborator
Professor Stanistreet and Dr. Martin Rogers, and never could I have
conceived such an indecorous piece of business, men like them calling
one another 'tyro,' 'dreamer,' and in one place 'block-head.'
Stanistreet denied that the perfumed odour of almonds attributed to the
advancing cloud could be due to anything but the excited fancy of the
reporting fugitives, because, said he, it was unknown that either Cn,
HCn, or K_4FeCn_6 had been given out by volcanoes, and the
destructiveness to life of the travelling cloud could only be owing to
CO and CO_2. To this Rogers, in an article characterised by
extraordinary heat, replied that he could not understand how even a
'tyro'(!) in chemical and geological phenomena would venture to rush
into print with the statement that HCn had not commonly been given out
by volcanoes: that it _had_ been, he said, was perfectly certain; though
whether it had been or not co