t half of it was concealed by a black vizor of
velvet, through which lamped a pair of dark, unwinking eyes. The figure
was there all day and every minute of the day, but I pegged stolidly on
and gave as little heed as I could to it. But that night when I had
got to bed, a development occurred. The figure took up that impossible
position at my head, and I became aware that it had, balanced over its
shoulder, an axe with a broad back and an edge like a razor, with which
it stood in act to strike.

I got out of bed and re-lit the lamp, refilled my pipe and sat down to
think things over. Wherever I went, the figure was behind me and always
in the same threatening attitude. I began to talk to it at last in
set phrases: "I know perfectly well what you are," I said; "you are
an inhabitant of the land of Mental Overwork. I'm going to hold you at
arm's length, because if I allowed you to take liberties, you might grow
dangerous. We will travel together if you will insist upon it until
this book is finished and then I will take you into some quiet, rural,
restful place and lose you." I did not lose him when the work was over;
he went about with me for a week or two. He travelled with me from
Edinburgh to London, then from London by the long sea-route to Antwerp;
from Antwerp to tranquil little Roche-fort in the Belgian Ardennes; and
it was not until I found myself one day with my easel and my paintbox
sketching some quaint bulbous old trees in the Avenue des Tilleuls, that
I woke up to the fact that I had lost him. He came back to me once more
and once only. I think it was owing to the fact that a fire had occurred
at the printing premises of Messrs Grant & Co. in Turnmill Street, in
which the manuscript of a work of fiction had been destroyed, that I was
asked by my old friend Gowing to put extra pressure upon myself for the
completion of a story on which I was engaged for him. It was a question
of days and almost of hours, and I remember that at the last, from
Friday morning until late on Sunday night, I wrote almost incessantly,
snatching an hour or two's sleep in an armchair, only when Nature
imperatively demanded it. I delivered the manuscript in person on Monday
morning and as I was walking home along Holborn, I suddenly became aware
of the presence of my old unpleasant comrade. I gibed at him with a
feeling of perfect security, but I was brought to a halt by a sudden
horrible discovery--the paving-stone in front of me was n