ted for New Hampshire last December. And the
shock of that poor boy's death did the rest."

Ah, yes--Rainer had died. He remembered....

He started for the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life
crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was patient
and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first
Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar
things. He seldom looked at a newspaper and he never opened a letter
without a contraction of the heart. It was not that he had any special
cause for apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on
everything. He had looked too deep down into the abyss.... But little
by little health and energy returned to him, and with them the common
promptings of curiosity. He was beginning to wonder how the world was
going, and when, presently, the hotel-keeper told him there were no
letters for him in the steamer's mail-bag, he felt a distinct sense of
disappointment. His friend had gone into the jungle on a long excursion,
and he was lonely, unoccupied and wholesomely bored. He got up and
strolled into the stuffy reading-room.

There he found a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle, some
copies of _Zion's Herald_ and a pile of New York and London newspapers.

He began to glance through the papers, and was disappointed to find that
they were less recent than he had hoped. Evidently the last numbers had
been carried off by luckier travellers. He continued to turn them over,
picking out the American ones first. These, as it happened, were the
oldest: they dated back to December and January. To Faxon, however, they
had all the flavour of novelty, since they covered the precise period
during which he had virtually ceased to exist. It had never before
occurred to him to wonder what had happened in the world during that
interval of obliteration; but now he felt a sudden desire to know.

To prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically,
and as he found and spread out the earliest number, the date at the top
of the page entered into his consciousness like a key slipping into a
lock. It was the seventeenth of December: the date of the day after his
arrival at Northridge. He glanced at the first page and read in blazing
characters: "Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company. Lavington's name
involved. Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall Street to Its
Foundations."

He read o