rogenitors. And the
snarl of my anger was blended with the snarls of beasts more ancient than
the mountains, and the vocal madness of my child hysteria, with all the
red of its wrath, was chorded with the insensate, stupid cries of beasts
pre-Adamic and progeologic in time.

And there the secret is out. The red wrath! It has undone me in this,
my present life. Because of it, a few short weeks hence, I shall be led
from this cell to a high place with unstable flooring, graced above by a
well-stretched rope; and there they will hang me by the neck until I am
dead. The red wrath always has undone me in all my lives; for the red
wrath is my disastrous catastrophic heritage from the time of the slimy
things ere the world was prime.

* * * * *

It is time that I introduce myself. I am neither fool nor lunatic. I
want you to know that, in order that you will believe the things I shall
tell you. I am Darrell Standing. Some few of you who read this will
know me immediately. But to the majority, who are bound to be strangers,
let me exposit myself. Eight years ago I was Professor of Agronomics in
the College of Agriculture of the University of California. Eight years
ago the sleepy little university town of Berkeley was shocked by the
murder of Professor Haskell in one of the laboratories of the Mining
Building. Darrell Standing was the murderer.

I am Darrell Standing. I was caught red-handed. Now the right and the
wrong of this affair with Professor Haskell I shall not discuss. It was
purely a private matter. The point is, that in a surge of anger,
obsessed by that catastrophic red wrath that has cursed me down the ages,
I killed my fellow professor. The court records show that I did; and,
for once, I agree with the court records.

No; I am not to be hanged for his murder. I received a life-sentence for
my punishment. I was thirty-six years of age at the time. I am now
forty-four years old. I have spent the eight intervening years in the
California State Prison of San Quentin. Five of these years I spent in
the dark. Solitary confinement, they call it. Men who endure it, call
it living death. But through these five years of death-in-life I managed
to attain freedom such as few men have ever known. Closest-confined of
prisoners, not only did I range the world, but I ranged time. They who
immured me for petty years gave to me, all unwittingly, the largess of
centuries. Truly, thanks to Ed Morrell