would be an end to it some day? Good God, if this terrible world had to
roll on to all eternity!" Doctor Gordon laughed again his unnatural
laugh. "Fancy if you were awakened to-night by the last trump," he said.
"How small everything would seem. Hang it, though, if I wouldn't try to
have a hand at that man's finish before the angel of the Lord got his
flaming sword at work."

James looked at him with terror.

"Don't mind me, boy," said Gordon. "I don't mean to blaspheme; but Job
is not in it with me just now. You cannot imagine what I had to contend
with before this melodramatic villain appeared on the stage. Sometimes I
think this is the finish," Gordon's mouth contracted. He looked savage.
James continued to stare at him. Gordon laid his hand on James's
shoulder. "Thank the Lord for one thing," he said almost tenderly, "that
he sent you here. Between us we will take care of poor little Clemency
anyhow. Now go to bed, and go to sleep."

James obeyed as to the one, but he could not as to the other. He became,
as the hours wore on, so nervous that he was half-inclined to take a
sleeping powder. The room seemed full of flashes of lightning. He heard
sounds which made him cold with horror. He was highly strung nervously,
and was really in a state bordering upon hysteria. The mystery which
surrounded him was the main cause. He was never himself before an
unknown quantity. He had too much imagination. He made all sorts of
surmises as to the stranger who was haunting Clemency. Starting with two
known quantities, he might have accomplished something, but here he had
only one: Clemency herself. He had a good head for algebra, but a man
cannot work out a problem easily with only one known quantity. He began
to wonder if the poor girl herself were sleeping. He realized a sort of