th pitiless force, the river swept onward through the night,
following its ordained way to the mighty sea.

As if summoned again by some dark spirit that brooded over the sombre,
rushing flood, the man rose heavily to his feet. His face turned once
more toward the window. A moment he stood there, listening, listening;
then wheeling back to the whisky bottle and the glass on the bureau, he
quickly poured, and drank again.

Nodding his head in the manner of one reaching a conclusion, he looked
slowly about the room, while a frightful grin of hopeless, despairing
triumph twisted his features, and his lips moved as if he breathed
reckless defiance to an invisible ghostly company.

Moving, now, with a decision and purpose that suggested a native
strength of character, the man quickly packed a suit-case with various
articles of clothing from the bureau drawers and the closet. He was in
the act of closing the suit-case when he stopped suddenly, and, with
a shrug of his shoulders, turned away. Then, as if struck by another
thought, he stooped again over his baggage, and drew forth a fresh,
untouched bottle of whisky.

"I guess you are the only baggage I'll need where I am going," he said,
whimsically; and, leaving the open suit-case where it lay, he crossed
the room, and extinguished the light. Cautiously, he unlocked and opened
the door. For a moment, he stood listening. Then, with the bottle hidden
under his coat, he stole softly from the room.

A few minutes later, the man stood out there in the night, on the bank
of the river. Behind him the outlines of the scattered houses that made
the little town were lost against the dusk of the hillside. From the
ghostly tree-shadows that marked the opposite bank, the solemn hills
rose out of the deeper darkness of the lowlands that edged the stream
in sombre mystery. There was no break in the heavy clouds to permit the
gleam of a friendly star. There was no sound save the soft swish of the
water against the bank where he stood, the chirping of a bird in the
near-by willows, and the occasional splash of a leaping fish or water
animal. But to the man there was a feeling of sound. To the lonely human
wreck standing there in the darkness, the river called--called with
fearful, insistent power.

From under the black wall of the night the dreadful flood swept out of
the Somewhere of its beginning. Past the man the river poured its mighty
strength with resistless, smoothly flowing, ter