he boys are all right for we can hear their voices."

It was then she gave an exclamation of joy, and when Buchan said to me
in the cabin, "It seems that I hear her voice," he was right.

XXVI.

WHEN THE DEATH GLOOM GATHERS.

Amos staggered out of the fog of powder smoke and groped his way to
the door. He took the center of the street reeling as he went, and
made his way to his home. The scenes at the Bucket of Blood were
magnified in his whisky-crazed brain. He raved in wild delirium,
fighting the demons that gathered around his bedside. The doctor came
and shook his head. "He has been drinking so long that my medicine
will not act," he said. Amos glared wildly from his bloodshot eyes
when a monkey seemed to leap on the footboard. He held a glass in his
hand. "Have a cocktail, Amos," said the monkey, as he tossed the
liquid into the air and caught it in another glass. Amos' throat was
parched and he wanted the cocktail, but the monkey did not give it to
him. A rhinoceros came creeping through the wall and looked at him
with its leaden eyes. The monkey tossed the cocktail into the wide
open mouth of the rhinoceros, who smacked his lips and said to the
monkey, "Let's play ante over."

"All right," replied the monkey, "what with?"

"Get his eye, get his eye," exclaimed the rhinoceros.

The monkey crept forward and plucked out one of Amos' eyes, as he
groaned and yelled. For awhile the rhinoceros was on one side of the
dresser and the monkey on the other, tossing his eye to and fro
between them. The scene changed. He was on a white horse, plunging
down a steep rocky road lined with trees on either side; pythons and
rattlesnakes reached out from among the branches striking their fangs
at his head. There was the form of a dead woman behind him on the
horse. Her cold arms clung about his neck as little devils came out
from behind the trees and shouted: "You did it; you did it." The horse
was now plunging over a snow-covered country. He felt the icy winds
chill his heart. He was trying to shake off the dead arms that clung
to his neck, when the horse stopped in a wild spot among the rocks. A
grave digger, with the flesh of face and arms dried to the bone,
appeared. "We will bury her here," he said as he sunk his spade into
the earth. As the grave digger threw up the clods they turned to
little devils, the size of frogs and yelped, "We are the sins of Amos
come out of the grave." The vision passed and another ap