ed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first
change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without
efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London ransacked;
it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure,
and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the
draught.

About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under the
influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last time,
short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see
his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay too
long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto
escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and
great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act of
writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have
elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and
circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the
action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us
both has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I
shall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I know how I
shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most
strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this
room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace.
Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find the courage to release
himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true
hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here
then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I
bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.

THRAWN JANET

THRAWN JANET

The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of
Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful
to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative
or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the
Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye
was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private
admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye
pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many
young persons, coming to prepare themselves against