aos, is restored;
Light dies before thine uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.'"

"Stop!" cried Bull suddenly, "the gendarmes are out."

The low lights of the police station were indeed blotted and broken
with hurrying figures, and they heard through the darkness the clash and
jingle of a disciplined cavalry.

"They are charging the mob!" cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm.

"No," said Syme, "they are formed along the parade."

"They have unslung their carbines," cried Bull dancing with excitement.

"Yes," said Ratcliffe, "and they are going to fire on us."

As he spoke there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed to
hop like hailstones on the stones in front of them.

"The gendarmes have joined them!" cried the Professor, and struck his
forehead.

"I am in the padded cell," said Bull solidly.

There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the
swollen sea, all a sort of grey purple--

"What does it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be dead
soon."

Syme turned to him and said--

"You are quite hopeless, then?"

Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly--

"No; oddly enough I am not quite hopeless. There is one insane little
hope that I cannot get out of my mind. The power of this whole planet
is against us, yet I cannot help wondering whether this one silly little
hope is hopeless yet."

"In what or whom is your hope?" asked Syme with curiosity.

"In a man I never saw," said the other, looking at the leaden sea.

"I know what you mean," said Syme in a low voice, "the man in the dark
room. But Sunday must have killed him by now."

"Perhaps," said the other steadily; "but if so, he was the only man whom
Sunday found it hard to kill."

"I heard what you said," said the Professor, with his back turned. "I
also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw."

All of a sudden Syme, who was standing as if blind with introspective
thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking from sleep--

"Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!"

"The Colonel! Yes," cried Bull, "where on earth is the Colonel?"

"He went to speak to Renard," said the Professor.

"We cannot leave him among all those beasts," cried Syme. "Let us die
like gentlemen if--"

"Do not pity the Colonel," said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. "He is
extremely comfortable. He is--"

"No!