and all was dark again; but the images which had been
called up remained, and fastened on his brain, and grew there; and when,
in the light of the next flash, the scene returned, he could see the red
lips of the phantom hounds, the bright eyes of the phantom snakes; the
tongues wagged in mockery; the hands brandished great stones to hurl at
him; the mountain-top was instinct with fiendish life,--a very
Blocksberg of all hideous shapes and sins.

And yet he did not shrink. Horrible it was; he was going mad before it.
And yet he took a strange and fierce delight in making it more horrible;
in maddening himself yet more and more; in clothing those fantastic
stones with every fancy which could inspire another man with dread. But
he had no dread. Perfect rage, like perfect love, casts out fear. He
rejoiced in his own misery, in his own danger. His life hung on a
thread; any instant might hurl him from that cairn, a blackened corpse.

What better end? Let it come! He was Prometheus on the peak of Caucasus,
hurling defiance at the unjust Jove! His hopes, his love, his very
honour--curse it!--ruined! Let the lightning stroke come! He were a
coward to shrink from it. Let him face the worst, unprotected,
bare-headed, naked, and do battle, himself, and nothing but himself,
against the universe! And, as men at such moments will do, in the mad
desire to free the self-tortured spirit from some unseen and choking
bond, he began wildly tearing off his clothes.

But merciful nature brought relief, and stopped him in his mad efforts,
or he had been a frozen corpse long ere the dawn. His hands, stiff with
cold, refused to obey him; as he delayed he was saved. After the
paroxysm came the collapse; he sank upon the top of the cairn half
senseless. He felt himself falling over its edge; and the animal
instinct of self-preservation, unconsciously to him, made him slide down
gently, till he sank into a crack between two rocks, sheltered somewhat,
as it befell happily, from the lashing of the rain.

Another minute, and he slept a dreamless sleep.

But there are two men upon that mountain, whom neither rock nor rain,
storm nor thunder have conquered, because they are simply brave honest
men; and who are, perhaps, far more "poetic" characters at this moment
than Elsley Vavasour, or any dozen of mere verse-writers, because they
are hazarding their lives, on an errand of mercy, and all the while have
so little notion that they are hazarding the