flung aside. After a moment his hand caught it, clutched it. But, even
at the crest of the wave of temptation, words that he had heard one night
in Hamley, that last night of all, flashed into his mind--the words
of old Luke Claridge's prayer, "And if a viper fasten on his hand,
O Lord--"

Suddenly he paused. That scene in the old Meetinghouse swam before his
eyes, got into his brain. He remembered the words of his own prayer, and
how he had then retreated upon the Power that gave him power, for a
draught of the one true tincture which braced the heart to throw itself
upon the spears of trial. Now the trial had come, and that which was in
him as deep as being, the habit of youth, the mother-fibre and
predisposition, responded to the draught he had drunk then. As a body
freed from the quivering, unrelenting grasp of an electric battery
subsides into a cool quiet, so, through his veins seemed to pass an ether
which stilled the tumult, the dark desire to drink the potion in his
hand, and escape into that irresponsible, artificial world, where he had
before loosened his hold on activity.

The phial slipped from his fingers to the floor. He sank upon the side
of the bed, and, placing his hands on his knees, he whispered a few
broken words that none on earth was meant to hear. Then he passed into a
strange and moveless quiet of mind and body. Many a time in days gone
by--far-off days--had he sat as he was doing now, feeling his mind pass
into a soft, comforting quiet, absorbed in a sensation of existence, as
it were between waking and sleeping, where doors opened to new experience
and understanding, where the mind seemed to loose itself from the bonds
of human necessity and find a freer air.

Now, as he sat as still as the stone in the walls around him, he was