ad
spent itself there was a little calm, not of surcease but of vacuity,
since even the cursing vocabulary has its limitations. Then a grouping
of words long forgotten arrayed itself before him, like the handwriting
on the wall of Belshazzer's banqueting hall.

_When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry
places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return
into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it
empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself
seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and
dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first._

He put his hands before his face to shut out the sight of the words.
Farther on, he felt his way across the room to stand at the window where
he could look across to the gray, shadowy bulk of the manor-house, to
the house and to the window of the upper room which was Ardea's.

"They've got me down," he whispered, as if the words might reach her
ear. "The devils have come back, Ardea, my love; but you can cast them
out again, if you will. Ah, girl, girl! Vincent Farley will never need
you as I need you this night!"

XXVIII

THE BURDEN OF HABAKKUK

During the first half of the year 1894, with Norman too busy at the pipe
foundry to worry him, and the iron-master president too deeply engrossed
in matters mechanical, Mr. Henry Dyckman, still bookkeeper and cashier
for Chiawassee Consolidated, had fewer nightmares; and by the time he
had been a month in undisputed command at the general office he had
given over searching for a certain packet of papers which had
mysteriously disappeared from a secret compartment in his desk.

Later, when the time for the return of the younger Gordon drew near,
there was encouraging news from Europe. Dyckman had not failed to keep
the mails warm with reports of the Gordon and Gordon success; with
urgings for the return of the exiled dynasty; and late in May he had
news of the home-coming intention. From that on there were alternating
chills and fever. If Colonel Duxbury should arrive and resume the reins
of management before Tom Gordon should reappear, all might yet be well.
If not,--the alternative impaired the bookkeeper's appetite, and there
were hot nights in June when he slept badly.

When Tom's advent preceded the earliest date named by Mr. Farley by a
broad fortnight or more, the bookkeeper missed other