e not better off than I? 'I wish,' I cried,
'that I could crush them into nothing, and be rid of this infernal
noise they make!'

'The spirit of the place has entered into you,' said that voice.

I raised my arm to strike him; but my hand fell on the stone floor
instead, and sent a jar of new pain all through my battered frame. And
then I mastered my rage and lay still, for I knew there was no way but
this of recovering my strength,--the strength with which, when I got it
back, I would annihilate that reproachful voice and crush the life out of
those groaning fools, whose cries and impotent struggles I could not
endure. And we lay a long time without moving, with always that tumult
raging in our ears. At last there came into my mind a longing to hear
spoken words again. I said, 'Are you still there?'

'I shall be here,' he said, 'till I am able to begin again.'

'To begin! Is there here, then, either beginning or ending? Go on; speak
to me; it makes me a little forget my pain.'

'I have a fire in my heart,' he said; 'I must begin and begin--till
perhaps I find the way.'

'What way?' I cried, feverish and eager; for though I despised him, yet
it made me wonder to think that he should speak riddles which I could not
understand.

He answered very faintly, 'I do not know.' The fool! then it was only
folly, as from the first I knew it was. I felt then that I could treat
him roughly, after the fashion of the place--which he said had got into
me. 'Poor wretch!' I said, 'you have hopes, have you? Where have you come
from? You might have learned better before now.'

'I have come,' he said, 'from where we met before. I have come by the
valley of gold. I have worked in the mines. I have served in the troops
of those who are masters there. I have lived in this town of tyrants, and
lain in this lazar-house before. Everything has happened to me, more and
worse than you dream of.'

'And still you go on? I would dash my head against the wall and die.'

'When will you learn,' he said with a strange tone in his voice, which,
though no one had been listening to us, made a sudden silence for a
moment, it was so strange; it moved me like that glimmer of the blue
sky in my dream, and roused all the sufferers round with an
expectation--though I know not what. The cries stopped; the hands beat no
longer. I think all the miserable crowd were still, and turned to where
he lay. 'When will you learn--that you have died, and can die no m