magician, standing
behind his shoulder, were projecting for him, on the huge black screen
of night, the most marvellous display of memories he had ever
contemplated. For they were all memories, or blends of memories, that
now rose here on the horizon of his consciousness. There was nothing new
in essentials presented to him: but the grouping was occasionally novel
to a fault.

The dear old home--the dear old folks! Green hills, with the little
white-washed cottage in a dimple of them, and in the foreground the
wind-fretted plain of the sea. The boyish games--marbles and
hoop-trundling--and the coming home at dusk to the red-lighted kitchen,
where the mother had the tea ready on the table and the sisters sat at
their knitting by the fire.

The dear, dear mother! how his pulse yearned towards her! there were
tears in his eyes as he thought of her now. Yet, all the same, the quiet
of his pulse was profound.

And there was the familiar scenery of his daily life: the ink-stained
desks, the brass rails for the books, the ledgers and bank-books, and
the files against the walls; and the faces of his fellow-clerks (even
the office boy) depicted here before him to the very life.

The wind across the waters blew chilly in his face: he shivered, a
numbness settling in his limbs.

His sweet young wife, so loving and gentle--how shamefully he had
neglected her, seeking his own pleasure selfishly--there she sat in the
familiar chair by the fireside with dear little Daisy dancing on her
knee. What a quiet, restful interior it was! He wondered: would they
miss him much if he were dead? . . . Above all, would little Daisy
understand what it meant when some one whispered to her "_favee is
dead_"?

The wavering shadows seemed to thicken around the boat. And the figure
at the oars--how lean and white it was: and yet it seemed a good kind of
fellow, too, he thought. Preston watched it musingly as the stream bore
them onward: the rushing of the water almost lulling him to sleep.

Were they sweeping outward, then, to the unknown sea?

It was an unexpected journey. . . . And he had asked to be taken _home_!

Presently the air grew full of shapes: shadowy shapes with mournful
faces; shapes that hinted secrets, with threatenings in their eyes.

If a man's sins, now, should take to themselves bodies, would it not be
in some such guise as this they would front and affright him at dead of
night?

Preston shivered, sitting there like a