nerves telegraphed to
the brain certain interesting information. It was to the effect that a
little pot was boiling on--or under--one leg and one arm. It was in the
hollow underneath the knee, and that opposite the elbow joint that the
boiling was--hardly a boil at first. The pain was not a twinge, it was
not an ache, it was just a faintly simmering, vaguely hurting thing,
enough to keep a man awake. Move but a trifle and the simmer became a
boil. So the man lay still and suffered, not intensely, but
irritatingly. And at last, despite the simmering, he slept.

"What dreams may come!" Markham slept, and, sleeping, he was with his
love again, or at least trying to be. And what a season of it he had! It
appeared late evening to him--it might be nine o'clock--but there was
moonlight, while close to the ground was a white fog. He knew that She
was waiting on a street only a block away from him, but he must pass
through a park, a square rather densely wooded, with an iron fence about
it and gates at the center on each side. From one gate to another a path
led straight across through the thick shrubbery. In the queer
combination of moon and fog all seemed uncanny, but he was going to meet
Her and nothing mattered. He entered the little park jauntily, and went
a few yards up the graveled walk between the trees and bushes, when
there arose before him a startling figure. It was that of a man, or
rather monster, with a huge chest, but narrow loins and oddly spindle
legs, and with a white, dead face malignant of expression. The monster
barred the passage and gestured menacingly, but uttered not a word.
Markham did not care much. He was simply on his way to meet Her, and as
for monsters and _outre_ things in general, what did they amount to! He
was going to meet Her! He advanced a little and studied the creature. "I
can lick him," he soliloquized. "He's a whale about the chest but he's
weak about the small of the back, and his legs are nothing, and I'll
break him in two--him! I've got to meet Her!"

He plunged ahead, and suddenly the monster drifted aside into the bushes
and out of sight. Markham went on to the gate opening upon the opposite
street. He emerged upon the sidewalk and looked about for the woman he
loved. She was not there. A most matter-of-fact looking man came along,
and Markham asked him who or what it was that barred the passage in the
park. "That?" said the wayfarer, "Oh, he's nothing! He's only The
Mechanical Ar