air.
The scene was as vivid as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness.
Then the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the
boughs. Their colours were of monstrous beauty. They glistened as they
moved.

He leapt in his bed with a throb of horror. Could this be the delirium
of drink? But no; he had often had an experience like this when he was
sleepless; he had the learned description of it pat and ready; it was
only automatic visualization.

Damn! Why couldn't he sleep? He flung out of bed, uncorked a bottle with
his teeth, tilted it up, and gulped the gurgling fire in the darkness.
Ha! that was better.

His room was already gray with the coming dawn. He went to the window
and opened it. The town was stirring uneasily in its morning sleep.
Somewhere in the distance a train was shunting; _clank, clank, clank_
went the wagons. What an accursed sound! A dray went past the end of his
street rumbling hollowly, and the rumble died drearily away. Then the
footsteps of an early workman going to his toil were heard in the
deserted thoroughfare. Gourlay looked down and saw him pass far beneath
him on the glimmering pavement. He was whistling. Why did the fool
whistle? What had he got to whistle about? It was unnatural that one
man should go whistling to his work, when another had not been able to
sleep the whole night long.

He took another vast glut of whisky, and the moment after was dead to
the world.

He was awakened at eight o'clock by a monstrous hammering on his door.
By the excessive loudness of the first knock he heard on returning to
consciousness, he knew that his landlady had lost her temper in trying
to get him up. Ere he could shout she had thumped again. He stared at
the ceiling in sullen misery. The middle of his tongue was as dry as
bark.

For his breakfast there were thick slabs of rancid bacon, from the top
of which two yellow eggs had spewed themselves away among the cold
gravy. His gorge rose at them. He nibbled a piece of dry bread and
drained the teapot; then shouldering into his greatcoat, he tramped off
to the University.

It was a wretched morning. The wind had veered once more, and a cold
drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the
street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to
an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his
last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of
s