nd memories, or try to fit them into words,
but they brought to him a consciousness of having lived--of having
known some experiences that were not altogether material and
temporal.

And then his memory carried him still furthe back--back to the days
when he was a little child, and in the mirror of the darkness he
could see his own small figure trudging in the track of the plough
and hanging to the rein-ends that dropped from the knot on his
father's ample back. Back to the old sod shanty, with its sweet smell
of comfort when the snow beat against the little window and the wind
roared in the rattling stove-pipe, and his mother sat by the fire and
plied her flying needles. What wonderful times they were, and what
wonderful dreams in the little, thoughtful child-mind just catching
the first glimmerings of life! Could it be this old cabin, these
rotting logs, this earthy floor, that were stirring memory cells
asleep for twenty years? He would not allow his mind to be drawn into
speculation--the thing was the remembrance, now, when it was offered
him. Old lullabies stole into his brain; a deep peace compassed him,
and consciousness faded thinner and thinner into the sea of the
infinite...

Allan sat up in a sudden, cold chill of terror. Had he been asleep?
What cold breath of dread had crossed his path? He was no coward; the
sense of fear was almost unknown lo him, but now it enveloped him,
stifled him, set his teeth chattering and his limbs quaking. He had
heard nothing, seen nothing. The gun was in his hands as it had lain
when last he remembered it; his father slept by his side, and near
the wall lay the precious satchel. And yet he shook in absolute,
unreasoning, unfounded terror. His eyes wandered from the lantern to
the door--to the blanket hanging limply in the door; and there they
stared and stayed as though held in the spell of a serpent.
Subconsciously, certainly without any direction of will of his own,
he raised the shot-gun to his shoulder and kept it trained on the
sagging blanket...The blanket seemed to move! It swayed at first as
though a light breeze had touched it, and yet not as though a breeze
had touched it. The impulse seemed too far up--about the height of a
man's shoulder. The blood had gone from Allan's face; he was as one
in a trance, obeying some iron law outside the realm of the will and
the reason. He cocked his gun and tightened his finger on the
trigger, and watched...And then, so plain tha