apologized as he assigned me a bunk. "It's the best
I've got," said he. "I've put you alongside of the stove, so if the boys
snore too loud you can heave coal on 'em. Them big lumps is better than
your boots."

I had tried both fuel and footgear fruitlessly, and when my outraged
ears would not permit further slumber I had given up the attempt. Now,
while the blue-haired man with insomnia dealt "Idiot's Delight" I sat
vaguely fascinated by the play of his hands, half dozing under the drone
of his voice.

The wind rioted without, whipping the sea spray across the sand-dunes
until it rattled upon our walls like shot. Meanwhile my companion
adventured aimlessly, his strange and vagrant fancies calling for no
answer, his odd and morbid journeyings matching well with the whimpering
night. His stories were without beginning, and they lacked any end. They
commenced without reason, led through unfrequented paths, then closed
for no cause. Through them ran no thread of relevancy. They were neither
cogent nor cohesive. Their incidents took shape and tumbled forth
irrelated and inconsequent. Wherefore I knew them for the truth, and
found myself ere long wide-eyed and still, my brain as keen as ever
nature made it.

The story of the dead Frenchman has seemed strained and gruesome to me
since, but that night the storm made it real, and the stranger's
unsmiling earnestness robbed it of offense. His words told me a tale of
which he had no thought, and painted pictures quite apart from those he
had in mind. His very frame of mind, his pagan superstition, his frank,
irreverent philosophy, disclosed queer glimpses of this land where
morals are of the fourth dimension, where life is a gamble and death a
joke. Whether he really believed all he said or whether he made sport of
me I do not know. It may be that the elfin voices of the storm roused in
him an impulse to gratify his distorted sense of humor at my expense--or
at his own. He began somewhat as follows:

"It's a good night for a dead man to walk." Then, seeing the flicker in
my eyes, he ran on: "You don't think they can do it, eh? Well, I didn't
believe it neither, and I'm not sure I believe it now, but I've seen
queer things--queer things--and I've only got one pair to draw to.
Either they happened as I saw them or I'm crazy." He leaped at his story
boldly.

"I'm pretty tired and hungry when I hit Council City late one fall, for
I'd upset my rowboat, lost my outfit, and 'mush