is needless to say that I eagerly accepted the service which he had
offered to me.

"I shall have time to write by to-day's post," he said, looking at his
watch. "Don't forget to lock up your cigars, when you get back to the
hotel! I will call to-morrow morning and hear how you have passed the
night."

I rose to take leave of him; and attempted to express the grateful sense
of his kindness which I really felt.

He pressed my hand gently. "Remember what I told you on the moor," he
answered. "If I can do you this little service, Mr. Blake, I shall feel
it like a last gleam of sunshine, falling on the evening of a long and
clouded day."

We parted. It was then the fifteenth of June. The events of the next
ten days--every one of them more or less directly connected with the
experiment of which I was the passive object--are all placed on record,
exactly as they happened, in the Journal habitually kept by Mr. Candy's
assistant. In the pages of Ezra Jennings nothing is concealed, and
nothing is forgotten. Let Ezra Jennings tell how the venture with the
opium was tried, and how it ended.

FOURTH NARRATIVE

Extracted from the Journal of EZRA JENNINGS

1849.--June 15.... With some interruption from patients, and some
interruption from pain, I finished my letter to Miss Verinder in time
for to-day's post. I failed to make it as short a letter as I could
have wished. But I think I have made it plain. It leaves her entirely
mistress of her own decision. If she consents to assist the experiment,
she consents of her own free will, and not as a favour to Mr. Franklin
Blake or to me.

June 16th.--Rose late, after a dreadful night; the vengeance of
yesterday's opium, pursuing me through a series of frightful dreams.
At one time I was whirling through empty space with the phantoms of the
dead, friends and enemies together. At another, the one beloved
face which I shall never see again, rose at my bedside, hideously
phosphorescent in the black darkness, and glared and grinned at me. A
slight return of the old pain, at the usual time in the early morning,
was welcome as a change. It dispelled the visions--and it was bearable
because it did that.

My bad night made it late in the morning, before I could get to Mr.
Franklin Blake. I found him stretched on the sofa, breakfasting on
brandy and soda-water, and a dry biscuit.

"I am beginning, as well as you could possibly wish," he said. "A
miserable, restless night