It was all very still and peaceful. I was just turning a page, when
John Flint jerked his pipe out of his mouth, swung his arm back, and
hurled the pipe as far as he could. I watched it, involuntarily, and
saw where it fell among our blue hydrangeas; from which a thin spiral
of smoke arose lazily in the calm air. But Flint shoved his hat back
on his head, sat up stiffly, and swore.

He had been with me then nearly four years, and I had learned to know
the symptoms:--restlessness, followed by hours of depressed and sullen
brooding. So I had heretofore in a sense been forewarned, though I
never witnessed one of these outbursts without being shaken to the
depths. This one was different--as if the evil force had invaded him
suddenly, giving him no time to resist. A glance at his face made me
lay aside the book hurriedly; for this was no ordinary struggle. The
words that had come to me at first came back now with redoubled
meaning, and rang through my head like passing-bells:

"_For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against ... the
rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of
wickedness_."

He tilted his head, looked upward, and swore steadily. As for me, my
throat felt as if it had been choked with ashes. I could only stare at
him, dumbly. If ever a man was possessed, he was. His voice rose,
querulously:

"I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them, and I
dry them--and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs,
and I study them, and I dry them--and I go to bed. I get up _every_
morning, and I do the same damn thing, over and over and over and
over, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing else.... No drinks, no
lights, no girls, no sprees, no cards, no gang, no risks, no jobs, no
bulls, no anything! God! I could say my prayers to Broadway, anywhere
from the Battery up to Columbus Circle! I want it all so hard I could
point my nose like a lost dog and howl for it!

"... There is a Dutchman got a restaurant down on Eighth Avenue, and I
dream at nights about the hotdog-and-kraut, and the ham-and that they
give you there, and the jane that slings it. Hips on her like a horse,
she has, and an arm that shoves your eats under your nose in a way
you've got to respect. I smell those eats in my sleep. I want some
more Childs' bucks. I want to see the electrics winking on the roofs.
I want to smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the rain.
I want to see a