collapsed, and sank backwards into a chair, like a tumbled bundle of
inert matter. He had fainted.

In less than half an hour he recovered consciousness and sat up. As
before, he made no sound. Not a syllable passed his lips. He rose
quietly and looked about the room.

Then he did a curious thing.

Taking a heavy stick from the rack in the corner he approached the
mantlepiece, and with a heavy shattering blow he smashed the clock to
pieces. The glass fell in shivering atoms.

"Cease your lying voice for ever," he said, in a curiously still, even
tone. "There is no such thing as _time_!"

He took the watch from his pocket, swung it round several times by the
long gold chain, smashed it into smithereens against the wall with a
single blow, and then walked into his laboratory next door, and hung its
broken body on the bones of the skeleton in the corner of the room.

"Let one damned mockery hang upon another," he said smiling oddly.
"Delusions, both of you, and cruel as false!"

He slowly moved back to the front room. He stopped opposite the bookcase
where stood in a row the "Scriptures of the World," choicely bound and
exquisitely printed, the late professor's most treasured possession, and
next to them several books signed "Pilgrim."

One by one he took them from the shelf and hurled them through the open