od that was left in him, that he was able to restore light to
the room, and to rush to his friend. When he reached poor Tim he was
stone-still with paralysis. They took him home to the woman, who nursed
him out of that attack--and later on worried him into another.

When he was able to sit up and jeer at things a little again, and help
himself to the quail the woman broiled for him, Dodson, sitting beside
him, said:

"Did you call that little exhibition of yours legerdemain, Tim, you
sweep? Or are you really the Devil's bairn?"

"It was the Shape of Fear," said Tim, quite seriously.

"But it seemed mild as mother's milk."

"It was compounded of the good I might have done. It is that which I
fear."

He would explain no more. Later--many months later--he died patiently
and sweetly in the madhouse, praying for rest. The little beast with
the yellow eyes had high mass celebrated for him, which, all things
considered, was almost as pathetic as it was amusing.

Dodson was in Vienna when he heard of it.

"Sa, sa!" cried he. "I wish it wasn't so dark in the tomb! What do you
suppose Tim is looking at?"

As for Jim O'Malley, he was with difficulty kept from illuminating the
grave with electricity.

ON THE NORTHERN ICE

THE winter nights up at Sault Ste. Marie are as white and luminous as
the Milky Way. The silence which rests upon the solitude appears to be
white also. Even sound has been included in Nature's arrestment, for,
indeed, save the still white frost, all things seem to be obliterated.
The stars have a poignant brightness, but they belong to heaven and not
to earth, and between their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls
the ebon ether in vast, liquid billows.

In such a place it is difficult to believe that the world is actually
peopled. It seems as if it might be the dark of the day after Cain
killed Abel, and as if all of humanity's remainder was huddled in
affright away from the awful spaciousness of Creation.

The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay--bent on a pleasant
duty--he laughed to himself, and said that he did not at all object
to being the only man in the world, so long as the world remained as
unspeakably beautiful as it was when he buckled on his skates and shot
away into the solitude. He was bent on reaching his best friend in time
to act as groomsman, and business had delayed him till time was at its
briefest. So he journeyed by night and journeyed alone, and wh