ny a time they overwhelmed him with agony and a dread of the future,
mingling with his slavish terrors of a material Gehenna, and stirring up
his turbid thoughts until they drove him to the verge of madness. But
the inward chimera of riotous passions was too fierce for the weak human
reason, and while he hated himself he continued still to sin.

Late one night he was returning to his rooms from the foul haunts of
squalid dissipation and living death, when the thought of his own
intolerable condition pressed on him with a heavier than usual weight.
It was a very cloudy night, and he had long exceeded the usual college
hours. The wind tossed about his clothes, and dashed in his face a keen
impalpable sleet, while nothing dispelled the darkness except the
occasional gleam of a lamp struggling fitfully with the driving mist.
Hazlet reached Saint Werner's wet and miserable; in returning he had
lost his way, and wandered into the most disreputable and
poverty-stricken streets, the very homes of thievery and dirt, where he
seriously feared for his personal safety. By the time he got to the
college gates he was drenched through and through, and while his body
shivered with the cold air, the condition of his mind was agitated and
terrified, and the sudden blaze of light that fell on him from the large
college lamp, as the gates opened, dazzled his unaccustomed eyes.

Hastily running across the court to his own rooms, he groped his way--
giddy and crapulous--giddy and crapulous--up the dark and narrow
stair-case, and after some fumbling with his key opened the door.

Lillyston, who was just going to bed after a long evening of hard work,
heard his footstep on the stairs, and thought with sorrow that he had
not mended his old bad ways. He heard him open the door, and then a
long wild shriek, followed by the sound of some one falling, rang
through the buildings.

In an instant, Lillyston had darted up-stairs, and the other men who
"kept" on the stair-case, jumped out of bed hastily, thrust on their
slippers, and also ran out to see what was the matter. As Lillyston
reached the threshold of Hazlet's rooms, he stumbled against something,
and stooping down found that it was the senseless body of Hazlet himself
stretched at full length upon the floor.

He looked up, but saw nothing to explain the mystery; the rooms were in
darkness, except that a dull, blue flame, flickering over the black and
red relics of the fire, threw fan