!_" He paused. "Let me, if possible, obtain an hour's
repose. Ay, repose--sleep!" he repeated, answering the astonishment of
his hearers' looks. "My existence is still human!"

And a ghastly and derisive smile wandered over his features as he spoke.
John Melmoth and Moncada quitted the apartment, and the Wanderer,
sinking back in his chair slept profoundly.

The two men did not dare to approach the door until noon next day. The
Wanderer started up, and they saw with horror the change that had come
over him. The lines of extreme age were visible in every feature.

"My hour is come," he said. "Leave me alone. Whatever noises you may
hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not
near, at peril of your lives. Be warned! Retire!"

They passed that day in intense anxiety, and at night had no thought of
repose. At midnight sounds of indescribable horror began to issue from
the Wanderer's apartment, shrieks of supplication, yells of blasphemy--
they could not tell which. The sounds suddenly ceased. The two men
hastened into the room. It was empty.

A small door leading to a back staircase was open, and near it they
discovered the trace of footsteps of a person who had been walking in
damp sand or clay. They traced the footsteps down the stairs, through
the garden, and across a field to a rock that overlooked the sea.

Through the furze that clothed this rock, there was a kind of track as
if a person had dragged his way, or been dragged, through it. The two
men gained the summit of the rock; the wide, waste, engulfing ocean was
beneath. On a crag below, something hung as floating to the blast.
Melmoth clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the
Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night. That was the last
trace of the Wanderer.

Melmoth and Moncada exchanged looks of silent horror, and returned
slowly home.

* * * * *

DIEGO DE MENDOZA

Lazarillo de Tormes

Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's career was hardly of a kind
that would be ordinarily associated with a lively romance of
vagabondage. A grandee of high birth, an ambassador of the
Emperor Charles V., an accomplished soldier and a learned
historian--such was the creator of the hungry rogue Lazarillo,
and the founder of the "picaresque" school of fiction, or the
romance of roguery, which is not yet extinct. Don Diego de
Mendoza, born