y that it should be recorded, for one's
own memory is a treacherous book of reference, should verification be
required at a time of delirium, disease, or death.'

Havill asked no further what he meant, and went to the door. Finding
that the rain still continued he returned to Dare, who was by this time
sinking down in a one-sided attitude, as if hung up by the shoulder.
Informing his companion that he was but little inclined to move far
in such a tempestuous night, he decided to remain in the inn till next
morning. On calling in the landlord, however, they learnt that the house
was full of farmers on their way home from a large sheep-fair in the
neighbourhood, and that several of these, having decided to stay on
account of the same tempestuous weather, had already engaged the spare
beds. If Mr. Dare would give up his room, and share a double-bedded room
with Mr. Havill, the thing could be done, but not otherwise.

To this the two companions agreed, and presently went upstairs with as
gentlemanly a walk and vertical a candle as they could exhibit under the
circumstances.

The other inmates of the inn soon retired to rest, and the storm raged
on unheeded by all local humanity.

III.

At two o'clock the rain lessened its fury. At half-past two the obscured
moon shone forth; and at three Havill awoke. The blind had not been
pulled down overnight, and the moonlight streamed into the room, across
the bed whereon Dare was sleeping. He lay on his back, his arms thrown
out; and his well-curved youthful form looked like an unpedestaled
Dionysus in the colourless lunar rays.

Sleep had cleared Havill's mind from the drowsing effects of the last
night's sitting, and he thought of Dare's mysterious manner in speaking
of himself. This lad resembled the Etruscan youth Tages, in one respect,
that of being a boy with, seemingly, the wisdom of a sage; and the
effect of his presence was now heightened by all those sinister and
mystic attributes which are lent by nocturnal environment. He who in
broad daylight might be but a young chevalier d'industrie was now an
unlimited possibility in social phenomena. Havill remembered how the lad
had pointed to his breast, and said that his secret was literally kept
there. The architect was too much of a provincial to have quenched
the common curiosity that was part of his nature by the acquired
metropolitan indifference to other people's lives which, in essence more
unworthy even than the