iving death, confined among other miserables
like myself.

It was my all--my one aim, Guest, for which I toiled so hard, fighting
for success. And the good fortune has come in company with a failure
so great that the success is nothing.

Good-bye.

He read his letter over as calmly as if it contained memoranda to send
to a friend prior to his departure on a short journey. Then, folding
it, inclosing it in an envelope, he directed it, and laid it carefully
beside the others on the table before sinking back in his chair.

"Is there anything else?" he said quietly.

At that moment the clock on a cabinet rung out the musical chimes of
four quarters, and a deeper toned bell sounded the hour.

"Ten," he said, smiling. "Two hours more and then the beginning of a
longer day."

He opened a drawer, took out a parchment label, and wrote upon it
carefully:

To Edward Brettison, when time is no more for his obliged and grateful
friend, Malcolm Stratton.

Rising from his chair he crossed to the cabinet, tied the label to one
of the handles of the clock, then opened the door beneath, and laid bare
a shelf of bottles, while a penetrating odour of camphor and other gums
floated out into the room--a familiar odour to those who study natural
history, and preserve specimens of insect or bird life.

He had to move two or three bottles to get at one with a large neck and
stopper, which he shook up and loosened several pieces of dull looking
white crystal. One of these pieces he turned out on to the table by his
letters, hesitated, and jerked out another. Then, setting down the
bottle, he crossed the room to where a table-filter stood on a bracket,
and returned with the large _carafe_ and a tumbler, which he filled
nearly full of water. These two he set down on the table, and taking up
one of the lumps of crystal he dropped it into the glass, taking care
that no water should sprinkle over the side.

He held it up to his lamp to see how quickly it would dissolve, set it
down again, and dropped in the second piece before beginning to tap the
table with his nails, watching the crystalline pieces the while.

"Quick and painless, I hope," he said quietly. "Bah! I can bear a
little pain."

He turned in his chair with a laugh, which froze upon his lips as he saw
his shadow on a panel a few yards away, the weird aspect of the moving
figure having so terrible an effect upon his shattered nerves that he
sprang fro