eminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there is nothing
he can win except the deep happiness of sleep. Come and sleep."

Such were the arguments of that Voice of the river, the old, familiar
arguments of desolation and despair. I leant over the parapet; in
another moment I should have been gone, when I became aware that some
one was standing near to me. I did not see the person because it was too
dark. I did not hear him because of the raving of the wind. But I knew
that he was there. So I waited until the moon shone out for a while
between the edges of two ragged clouds, the shapes of which I can see to
this hour. It showed me Jorsen, looking just as he does to-day, for he
never seems to change--Jorsen, on whom, to my knowledge, I had not set
eyes before.

"Even a year ago," he said, in his strong, rough voice, "you would not
have allowed your mind to be convinced by such arguments as those which
you have just heard in the Voice of the river. That is one of the worst
sides of drink; it decays the reason as it does the body. You must have
noticed it yourself."

I replied that I had, for I was surprised into acquiescence. Then I grew
defiant and asked him what he knew of the arguments which were or were
not influencing me. To my surprise--no, that is not the word--to my
bewilderment, he repeated them to me one by one just as they had arisen
a few minutes before in my heart. Moreover, he told me what I had been
about to do, and why I was about to do it.

"You know me and my story," I muttered at last.

"No," he answered, "at least not more than I know that of many men with