for
publication in the newspapers, in which I told the true story of Lady
Colford's case and denounced Bell as a villain whose perjury had driven
me to self-murder. After this I wrote a second letter, to be given to
my daughter if she lived to come to years of discretion, setting out the
facts that brought me to my end and asking her to pardon me for having
left her. This done it seemed that my worldly business was completed, so
I set about leaving the world.

Going to a medicine chest I reflected a little. Finally I decided on
prussic acid; its after effects are unpleasant but its action is swift
and certain. What did it matter to me if I turned black and smelt of
almonds when I was dead?

CHAPTER VI

THE GATE OF DARKNESS

Taking the phial from the chest I poured an ample but not an over dose
of the poison into a medicine glass, mixing it with a little water, so
that it might be easier to swallow. I lingered as long as I could over
these preparations, but they came to an end too soon.

Now there seemed to be nothing more to do except to transfer that little
measure of white fluid from the glass to my mouth, and thus to open
the great door at whose bolts and bars we stare blankly from the day of
birth to the day of death. Every panel of that door is painted with a
different picture touched to individual taste. Some are beautiful, and
some are grim, and some are neutral-tinted and indefinite. My favourite
picture used to be one of a boat floating on a misty ocean, and in the
boat a man sleeping--myself, dreaming happily, dreaming always.

But that picture had gone now, and in place of it was one of blackness,
not the tumultuous gloom of a stormy night, but dead, cold, unfathomable
blackness. Without a doubt _that_ was what lay behind the door--only
that. So soon as ever my wine was swallowed and those mighty hinges
began to turn I should see a wall of blackness thrusting itself
'twixt door and lintel. Yes, it would creep forward, now pausing, now
advancing, until at length it wrapped me round and stifled out my breath
like a death mask of cold clay. Then sight would die and sound would die
and to all eternities there would be silence, silence while the stars
grew old and crumbled, silence while they took form again far in the
void, for ever and for ever dumb, dreadful, conquering silence.

That was the only real picture, the rest were mere efforts of the
imagination. And yet, what if some of them were also tr