shreds, and dreams,
phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused;
but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a
cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the
cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life's goals obliterated! He had had
enough of the black procession of futile things.

His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the
oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire
misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft
like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead. A cool, delicious
hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that
worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like
a stir of wings in a singing grove. With a last effort to remain in the
waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back
again with one sighing word on his lips:

"Fleda!"

It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his
motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the
nurse. It was Jim Beadle who admitted her.

"He'd be mad if he knew we wouldn't let her come," Jim had said to the
nurse.

It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded
him--the physical as well as business dangers. She came now to serve the
blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him.

The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her,
was, for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio.

CHAPTER XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST

For once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely united. The blow that had
brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes,
and there was no one--friend or foe of Ingolby--who did not regard it as
an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of Manitou,
led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon
and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work. All
night there were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby's house. They
were of all classes-carters, railway workers, bartenders, lawyers,
engineers, bankers, accountants, merchants, ranchmen, carpenters,
insurance agents, manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on.

Some prayed for Ingolby's life, others swore viciously; and those who
swore had no contempt for those who prayed, while those who praye