perhaps--now--there was silence around me; that _now,_ could my palsied
lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul
rose focussed to the effort--my body jerked itself upwards. At that
moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I _did_
utter something--my dead and shuddering tongue _did_ babble forth some
coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On
the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,
placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was
clear--I _had_ uttered something--I was saved. With what of strength
remained to me I reached the place where I had left your _calèche_, and
started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,
for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,
after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and
in this condition you found me.

'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with
this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to
others--to how many others _they_ cannot guess--I think it is not
unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'

THE END