s limbs and icy fingers grasped his throat--yet he
was not dead. Outlines of things he saw became to him living creatures
of destruction and crouched over him, grinning in his face and tearing
him to bits--yet he was not dead. Snarling beasts sank their fangs into
his flesh, a thousand poison insects rushed and swarmed upon him, and he
felt the virus of their sting bounding through his body--yet he lived.

Slimy serpents wriggled over him, thrusting their forked tongues into
his nose and ears, and when he grabbed frantically to tear them away
they had gone.

A fire burned within him and he tore his flesh and hair, while death
like a dark shadow hovered nearer and nearer, closing in slowly but
surely. The end of Damon Crowley was not as a child falls to sleep nor
as a Christian steps into the great beyond.

It was a time of screams and groans; of frantic clutchings and hard
grapplings. Those in neighboring cells were glad for once that the walls
were thick and the bolts secure.

* * * * *

Gilbert Allison imagined he would feel better when he knew that Damon
Crowley was securely lodged under lock and key; but such was not the
case. The knowledge of this only seemed to press some real or imaginary
burden closer to him. Then he imagined that he would perhaps feel at
peace with the world and himself when white-robed justice had had her
perfect course, and the victim of a nation's sin had been hung by the
neck until dead. But even the news of the tragic death of the murderer
did not prove a cure for his nameless and indefinable ill-feeling.

Then it occurred to him that perhaps his name had not been taken from
over the doors of the establishment of which he had so long been a part.
Being fully resolved to completely sever his connection with the
business, he looked upon this as a necessary step, and not without some
small hope that it might help a little toward restoring his upset
conscience.

Turning a corner, he raised his eyes. There, in the glow of the full
sunlight, blazed the richly-wrought words, "Allison, Russell & Joy."
They looked positively ugly to him and he felt that he had been injured
by the other members of the firm. Entering the establishment to request
that the sign be altered he came upon a trio discussing trade items, and
the old familiar phraseology fell upon his ears like jangling voices.

As he passed out an old customer slapped him familiarly on the back and
ask