Then follows the odd entry without which it is doubtful if the
history of Sidney Trove could ever have been written. At least
only a guess would have been possible, where now is certainty. And
here is the entry:--


"Since leaving home the men of the dark have been very troublesome.
They wake me about every other night and sometimes I wonder what
they mean."


Now an odd thing had developed in the mystery of the boy. Even
before he could distinguish between reality and its shadow that we
see in dreams, he used often to start up with a loud cry of fear in
the night. When a small boy he used to explain it briefly by
saying, "the men in the dark." Later he used to say, "the men
outdoors in the dark." At ten years of age he went off on a three
days' journey with the Allens. They put up in a tavern that had
many rooms and stairways and large windows. It was a while after
his return of an evening, before candle-light, when a gray curtain
of dusk had dimmed the windows, that he first told the story, soon
oft repeated and familiar, of "the men in the dark"--at least he
went as far as he knew.

"I dream," he was wont to say in after life, "that I am listening
in the still night alone--I am always alone. I hear a sound in the
silence, of what I cannot be sure. I discover then, or seem to,
that I stand in a dark room and tremble, with great fear, of what I
do not know. I walk along softly in bare feet--I am so fearful of
making a noise. I am feeling, feeling, my hands out in the dark.