ressed exuberantly forward, and
then he knew that the beautiful girl, the woman he loved and to whom he
was married, had left him. That was the exquisite calamity of his soul,
and he flinched from the fact as from a blow. He was always flinching,
he remembered. He was always turning from the uncomfortable and the
bothering to seek what was easy and unengaging. Now, for the moment, he
could not undertake any relief from his present misery.

Acres and lakes of water were flowing by, but his thirst was worse than
oceans could quench. He wanted to drink, but the thought of drinking
disgusted him beyond measure. It seemed to him that a drop of water
would flame up in his throat like gasolene on a bed of coals, and at
that moment his eyes fell upon the jug which stood by the misty engine
against the intangible locker. The jug was a monument of comfort and
substantiality.

At the odour which filled the air when he had taken out the cork his
very soul was filled with horror.

"But I got to drink it!" he whimpered. "It's the only thing that'll cure
me, the only thing I can stand. If I don't I'll die!"

Not to drink was suicide, and to drink was living death! He could not
choose between the suggestions; he never had been trained to face fate
manfully. His years' long dissipation had unfitted him for every
squarely made decision, and now with horror on one side and terror on
the other, he could not procrastinate and wonder what folly had brought
him to this state.

"Why couldn't it smell good!" he choked. "The taste'll kill me!"

Taste he must, or perish! The taste was all that he had anticipated, and
melted iron could hardly have been more painful than that first torture
of cold, fusil acid. Gulping it down, he was willing to congratulate
himself on his endurance and wisdom, his very heroism in undertaking
that deadly specific.

After it was over with, however, the raw chill, which the heat of the
sun did not help, began to yield to a glow of warmth. He straightened
his twisted muscles and after a hasty look around retreated into his
cabin and flung himself on his bunk.

What length of time he spent in his recovery from the attacks of his
enemy, or rather enemies of a misspent youth, he could not surmise. He
did at last stir from his place and look with subdued melancholy into a
world of woe. He recalled the visitor, the man who wrote for newspapers,
and in a panic he searched for his money.

The money was gone; $250,