er drew his head upon her knee, and by the singing fire told him
tales of her own childhood, and from the loving brightness of her tender
eyes the Shadow slunk away and left the boy to sleep, unhaunted.

As day by day went by, in patient monotony, Roger became daily more
aware of this ghostly attendant. He was not always alone, for he had
friends who loved him in spite of the Shadow, and grew used to its
appearing;--but he liked to be by himself; for, out of constant
companionship and daily use, this Shadow made for itself a strange
affinity with him, and following his daily rambles over the sharp hills,
tracing to their source the noisy brooks, or setting snares for the
wild creatures whose innocent timid eyes peered at their little enemy
curiously from nook and crevice, he grew to have a moody pleasure in the
knowledge that nothing else disturbed his path or shared his amusements.

But a time came when he must mix more with the outer world; for he was
sent away from home to school, and there, amid a host of strange faces,
he singled out the only one that had a thought of his past life and
home in it, as his special companion,--the same quiet boy who had
unconsciously feared the Shadow in their earlier school-days.

So good and gentle was he, that he did not feel the cloud of Roger's
hateful Double as every one else did; and he even won the boy himself to
except him only from a certain suspicion that had lately sprung from,
his own consciousness of his burden,--a suspicion gradually growing into
a belief that all the world had such a Shadow as his own.

Now this was not a strange result of so painful a reality. Seeing, as
Roger Pierce did, in every action of others toward himself the dark
atmosphere of the Shadow that was peculiarly his own, he watched also
their mutual actions, and, throwing from his own obscurity a shade over
all human deeds, he became possessed of the monomania, a practical
belief that every mortal man, except it might be Jimmy Doane, was
followed and overlooked by this terrible Second Shadow.

In proportion as the gloom of this black Presence seemed to be lightened
over any one was his esteem for him; but by daily looking so steadily
and with such a will to see only darkness in the hearts of men, he
discovered traces of the Shadow even in Jimmy Doane,--and the darkness
shut down, like night at sea, over all the world then.

Now Roger was miserable enough, knowing well that he could escape, if