hting mystery.

Darius no longer sat up and twisted himself in the agony of the
struggles. He lay flat, resigned but still obstinate, fighting with the
only muscles that could fight now, those of his chest and throat. The
enemy had got him down, but he would not surrender. Time after time he
won a brief armistice in the ruthless altercation, and breathed deep and
long, and sighed as if he would doze, and then his enemy was at him
again, and Darius, aroused afresh to the same terror, summoned Clara in
the extremity of his anguish.

Edwin moved away, and surveyed the bed from afar. The old man was
perfectly oblivious of him. He looked at his watch, and timed the
crises. They recurred fairly regularly about every hundred seconds.
Thirty-six times an hour Darius, growing feebler, fought unaided and
without hope of aid an enemy growing stronger, and would not yield. He
was dragged to his death thirty-six times every hour, and thirty-six
times managed to scramble back from the edge of the chasm. Occasionally
his voice, demanding that Clara should not desert him, made a shriek
which seemed loud enough to wake the street. Edwin listened for any
noise in the house, but heard nothing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIVE.

A curious instinct drove him out of the room for a space on to the
landing. He shut the door on the human animal in its lonely struggle.
The gas was burning on the landing and also in the hall, for this was
not a night on which to extinguish lights. The clock below ticked
quietly, and then struck three. He had passed more than three hours
with his father. The time had gone quickly. He crept to Maggie's door.
No sound! Utter silence! He crept upstairs to the second storey. No
sound there! Coming down again to the first floor he noticed that the
door of his own bedroom was open. He crept in there, and started
violently to see a dim form on the bed. It was Maggie, dressed, but
fast asleep under a rug. He left her. The whole world was asleep, and
he was awake with his father.

"What an awful shame!" he thought savagely. "Why couldn't we have let
him grow his mushrooms if he wanted to? What harm would it have done
us? Supposing it had been a nuisance, supposing he had tried to kiss
Jane, supposing he had hurt himself, what then? Why couldn't we let him
do what he wanted?"

And he passionately resented his own harshness and that of Maggie as