her
world of beings, and looked down on both.

"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."

At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said
of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!"
Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended,
and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had
killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to
face--vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted.
Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence
was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond
shalt thou be on the earth!"

He started to his feet in terror. "Mercy, mercy!" he cried.

Then he drew his breath hard and looked about him. "A dream--only
another dream," he said to himself, and laughed between his close-set
teeth. The lamp still burned on the table. He rose, drew a key from his
pocket, opened a cupboard, and took out a small bottle. It contained an
opiate. "Since I must sleep, let my sleep at least be dreamless," he
said, and he measured a dose. He was lifting the glass to his lips,
when he caught sight of his face in the glass. "Pitiful! pitiful! A mere
dream unnerves me. Pitiful enough, forsooth! And so I must needs hide
myself from myself behind a bulwark like this!" He held the drug to the
light, and while his hand trembled he laughed. Then he drank it off, put
out the light, and sat on the couch.

The dawn had fretted the sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at
the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in
the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded
over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old
song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then
the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or
was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he
stood in a room which he had seen before. On the bed some white thing
lay. It was a child, and the little soul had fled. Beside it a woman
cowered, and moaned "Guilty, guilty!" Her eyes were fixed on the child,
yet she saw nothing; the sightless orbs were bleached. But with her
heart she saw the child; and she saw himself also as he entered. Then it
seemed that she turned her blind face toward him, and called on him by
name. The next instant she wa