leep, tormented with dreams
which transformed Lily into a small child which he was compelled to
carry in his arms, or furnished his Aunt Formica with a long spear,
with which she pursued him, and was forever on the point of overtaking
him.

At 8 o'clock A.M. he might have been seen by a detective at the
Twenty-seventh Street depot. A few minutes after he was going through
the tunnel; and, emerging from that, he considered himself fairly
divided from New York. At the first station beyond the State-line
of Massachusetts he consulted a map, and concluded to stop at the
junction of the Old Colony Railroad. There he changed the route, and
in the evening reached a town which seemed waiting to go somewhere
else, where he passed the night.

The next morning he started on his travels again toward Cape Cod. Five
miles beyond a large village, in a flat, sterile, gloomy region, he
alighted with his baggage, and said, "This is the place for me." The
train went on, and the depot-master went into his little den without
noticing Osgood. Several tall school-girls, who had come to watch for
the train, strolled down a cross-road, and he was alone. He went to
the end of the platform and surveyed the country. He stood on the edge
of a wide plateau along which ran the railroad-track. Beyond that a
road deviated through dismal fields, by unpainted houses, large barns,
and straggling orchards. Below the plateau a wide marsh extended,
intersected by crooked creeks, which gnawed into the black earth like
worms. A rim of sea bordered the tongue of the marsh, but it was too
far off to add life to the scene. The sedge, giving up all hope of
being moistened by the salt waves, had died in great circles, which
looked like mats of gray hair on some pre-Adamite monster's buried
head.

Osgood determined to pursue the windings of the road. He plowed the
sand for two miles, and at a sudden turn of the road came upon a
house, with a number of barns and sheds attached to it. A dog with a
stiff tail ran out from a shed and barked at him, and a pale-faced
woman in a muslin cap appeared at a window of the house. He knocked at
the door: she opened it.

"Will thee come in?" she asked.

He entered, following her as he would have followed a ghost. She moved
a chair from the wall without the least noise, and he dropped upon it.
As he looked at her his identity seemed slipping away--seemed to be
slipping into an atmosphere connected with her and her surroundin