ay I have been good to them. Should success be final, I can indeed
help mankind.

"_Dec._ 16. Last night, lifting the crucible from the furnace, spilled the
liquor on the floor. Had I one particle more of the essential element! All
was utterly lost: no one will lend to me.

"_Dec._ 18. What have I done that I should feel guilt? What was worth the
life of such a useless creature to the interests of mankind? Why did he
not trust my word and give me what I needed when I asked him? If he had
not waked from his half-drunken sleep when I made the attempt, I would
have given him threefold. I gave him his life once: why will not that
atone? No one will know ever. I will devote my life to relieve distress.
What is such as his, weighed in the balance with my purpose? It is strange
that since then I have forgot the very essential thing in the process. I
cannot read my own cipher in which I wrote it down; but it will come, it
will come.

"_Dec._ 19. Have been all day trying to read the cipher in vain. Have lost
the key, have forgotten the chief link. Until I can recall it the metal is
useless. What if it should never come to me? This night went down to the
Point. Threw into the sea the evidences of what I have brought to pass.
The tide will soon wash them away.

"_Dec._ 20. Surely it is not meant this thing should be known. To-day a
body came on shore, bruised and shattered, but said to be identified by
those who should have known best. Now, no one will ever search this house.
Twice to-day I have been to look at the place: nothing can be seen.
Providence means I should live to finish my work--to complete that which I
alone of mortal men have rightly understood. Why is it this link is broken
off in my mind, and the cipher I myself wrote darker than before? Would
the creature but have given it up quietly! It was in self-defence I struck
at last. What was it to repent of? Some have held that such as he are not
human--only animals a little more sagacious than the brutes about us.

"_Dec._ 22. Useless, useless! My memory fails me entirely. I have tried to
go on in vain. What is this that is with me now these last two days?

"_Dec._ 25. Once I kept Christmas in another fashion than this. I had no
guest but one I dare not name--

'Tumulum circumvolat umbra.'

"_Dec._ 27. To day it put out its hand: the soft wet fingers touched me. I
will go out into the world, I will go out into the world. I will help
those who are sick and in m