r and
into the corner where he stood stooping. His rope was there right
enough, showing itself conspicuously, seeming to rise on its coils
like a snake and slip its sinuous neck into his hands, so that he had
picked it up and taken it from the corner before he knew what he was
doing.

It was necessary to arrange things with care, but he was a strangely
long time in making his running noose and satisfying himself that it
could not possibly give way or anyhow fail. He was also slow in making
a stop-knot at the part of the rope that he proposed to attach to the
tree, and he felt an extraordinary obtuseness of intelligence while
making the calculations that he had so many times thought out during
the night. "Yes," he said to himself, "twice the length of my arms.
That's quite right. Six feet is twice the length of my arms--but I'll
try it again. Yes--quite all right. Must be. That's a six foot drop.
That's what I decided--a six foot drop. The rope'll stand that. But it
mightn't stand more. An' less than six feet mightn't be enough either.
Yes, that's right."

Then he thought: "I am wasting time." He was conscious of an
imperative necessity for speed and a great danger in acting too
hurriedly; and a queer idea came to him that while in this loft he had
been having a series of cataleptic fits--sudden blanknesses, total
arrests of volition if not of consciousness, during which he had stood
still, listening or staring, but not doing anything to the rope.

He came down from the loft, and in the doorway below a flood of bright
sunlight dazzled him. The sun had risen, Some of Mavis' pigeons were
cooing gently on the granary roof, a horse in the stables began to
whinny, and two of the men came whistling round the outer barn into
the yard.

"Good mornin', sir."

"Good morning."

"Another nice day we are goin' to 'aarve, sir."

"Yes, looks like it."

Seeing his rope and saw, the men asked if there was a job on hand in
which they were to help; but he told them "No." He was only going to
take down a small branch out of the walnut tree, and he could do it
without any assistance.

Then the men went into the stables, and Dale passed through the
kitchen garden to the back of the house. Beneath the walnut tree he
slung the coiled rope over one shoulder and under the other arm; and
then he slowly ascended the ladder, saying to himself: "I am on the
steps of my scaffold. The scaffold steps. I am going up the scaffold
steps." Fro