an unpleasant
circumstance when the time came for the priests to designate the next
yearly sacrifice."

"Curious, indeed, and most revolting," assented the old man, laying down
his paper. "You _are_ feeling more cheerful, aren't you--and you look so
much brighter. Ah, what a mercy of God's you were spared to me!--you know
you became my walking-stick when you were a very little boy--I could
hardly go far without you now, my son."

"Yes, sir--thank you--I've just been recalling some of the older
religions--Nancy and I had quite a talk about the old Christian faith."

"I'm glad indeed. I had sometimes been led to suspect that Nancy was the
least bit--well, frivolous--but I am an old man, and doubtless the things
that seem best to me are those I see afar off, their colour subdued
through the years."

"Nancy wasn't a bit frivolous this morning--on the contrary, she seemed
for some reason to consider me the frivolous one. She looked shocked at me
more than once. Now, about the old Christian faith, you know--their god
was content with one sacrifice, instead of one each year, though he
insisted on having the body eaten and the blood drunk perpetually. Yet I
suppose, sir, that the Christian god, in this limiting of the human
sacrifice to one person, may be said to show a distinct advance over the
god of the Bakairi, though he seems to have been equally a tribal god,
whose chief function it was to make war upon neighbouring tribes."

"Yes, my boy--quite so," replied the old man most soothingly. He stepped
gently to the door. Halfway down the hall Allan was about to turn into his
room. He came, beckoned by the old man, who said, in tones too low for
Bernal to hear:

"Go quickly for Dr. Merritt. He's out of his head again."

CHAPTER II

FURTHER DISTRESSING FANTASIES OF A CLOUDED MIND

When young Dr. Merritt came, flushed and important-looking, greatly
concerned by the reported relapse, he found his patient with normal pulse
and temperature--rational and joyous at his discovery that the secret of
reading Roman letters was still his.

"I was almost afraid to test it, Doctor," he confessed, smilingly, when
the little thermometer had been taken from between his lips, "but it's all
right--I didn't find a single strange letter--every last one of them meant
something--and I know figures, too--and now I'm as hungry for print as I
am for baked potatoes. You know, never in my life again, after I'm my own
master, shall I