thought a merciful numbness had supervened. It may not sound a great
deal in the printed letter, but it came to me almost as if it had been
an extension of consciousness, for the Hand that held the pencil
suddenly touched in with ghastly effect of contrast the element of the
ludicrous. Nothing could have been worse just then. Shorthouse, the
masterful spirit, so intrepid in the affairs of ordinary life, whose
power increased rather than lessened in the face of danger--this man,
creeping on hands and knees along a rafter in a barn at three o'clock in
the morning, watching me all the time as a cat watches a mouse! Yes, it
was distinctly ludicrous, and while it gave me a measure with which to
gauge the dread emotion that caused his aberration, it stirred
somewhere deep in my interior the strings of an empty laughter.

One of those moments then came to me that are said to come sometimes
under the stress of great emotion, when in an instant the mind grows
dazzlingly clear. An abnormal lucidity took the place of my confusion of
thought, and I suddenly understood that the two dreams which I had taken
for nightmares must really have been sent me, and that I had been
allowed for one moment to look over the edge of what was to come; the
Good was helping, even when the Evil was most determined to destroy.

I saw it all clearly now. Shorthouse had overrated his strength. The
terror inspired by his first visit to the barn (when he had failed) had
roused the man's whole nature to win, and he had brought me to divert
the deadly stream of evil. That he had again underrated the power
against him was apparent as soon as he entered the barn, and his wild
talk, and refusal to admit what he felt, were due to this desire not to
acknowledge the insidious fear that was growing in his heart. But, at
length, it had become too strong. He had left my side in my sleep--had
been overcome himself, perhaps, first in _his_ sleep, by the dreadful