d you meet
him?"

"In the deepest, shadiest spot in the glen, where the water runs low,
under brushwood. We sat down near that plank bridge. It was moonlight,
but clouded, and very windy. We had a talk."

"On politics?"

"And religion. I think the moon was at the full, and Michael was as near
crazed as possible. He uttered strange blasphemy in his Antinomian
fashion."

"Excuse me, but I think you must have been nearly as mad as he, to sit
listening to him."

"There is a wild interest in his ravings. The man would be half a poet,
if he were not wholly a maniac; and perhaps a prophet, if he were not a
profligate. He solemnly informed me that hell was foreordained my
inevitable portion; that he read the mark of the beast on my brow; that
I had been an outcast from the beginning. God's vengeance, he said, was
preparing for me, and affirmed that in a vision of the night he had
beheld the manner and the instrument of my doom. I wanted to know
further, but he left me with these words, 'The end is not yet.'"

"Have you ever seen him since?"

"About a month afterwards, in returning from market, I encountered him
and Moses Barraclough, both in an advanced stage of inebriation. They
were praying in frantic sort at the roadside. They accosted me as Satan,
bid me avaunt, and clamoured to be delivered from temptation. Again, but
a few days ago, Michael took the trouble of appearing at the
counting-house door, hatless, in his shirt-sleeves--his coat and castor
having been detained at the public-house in pledge. He delivered himself
of the comfortable message that he could wish Mr. Moore to set his house
in order, as his soul was likely shortly to be required of him."

"Do you make light of these things?"

"The poor man had been drinking for weeks, and was in a state bordering
on delirium tremens."

"What then? He is the more likely to attempt the fulfilment of his own
prophecies."

"It would not do to permit incidents of this sort to affect one's
nerves."

"Mr. Moore, go home!"

"So soon?"

"Pass straight down the fields, not round by the lade and plantations."

"It is early yet."

"It is late. For my part, I am going in. Will you promise me not to
wander in the Hollow to-night?"

"If you wish it."

"I do wish it. May I ask whether you consider life valueless?"

"By no means. On the contrary, of late I regard my life as invaluable."

"Of late?"

"Existence is neither aimless nor hopeless to me now, and it