sister, who did n't want to go to Lane this hot weather. "Tom Wherry says he envies travelers. If you had to sit in that blazing place in there, even moving off to Lane would look good. Everything 's relative."

Tom Wherry and Jim Nicholls were friends. Jim was a still man when he was n't drinking, and Tom was naturally drawn to any listener. He might now, one would think, have gone to the drug-store and Jim Nicholls. But he did not go. "No help there; no help from him."

§ 6

Jim Nicholls was not drinking. He had been, but he stopped the day of the lynching. When he stopped he always stopped clean short. He might not touch liquor again for three months. He had been known to go for six months. Short or long in abstinence, he was a tall, red, silent man and a good druggist.

That morning after Dargan's field, going home alone in the faint dawn, he felt very quiet, everything clearing up after a spree, sense coming back to a Malay after running amuck.

The air was quite still; it was going to be a hot day. In the east hung sheets of green and yellow, and above the low horizon a long piece of faint red. Suddenly Jim Nicholls, his outward eyes regarding this dawn sky, saw in some inner way bloodshot eyes, his own. "I suppose they are bloodshot," he thought. He seemed to be regarding Jim Nicholls's eyes through another's eyes. The sense disappeared. He had stopped short, but now he went on with long strides. "Funny thing, that!"

The flat earth slowly colored. Pleasantly and Cottonville stood against

the hot, still dawn. He was not upon the road; he was going back to the drug-store by way of the old, cast-out fields. He passed a number of little pine-trees. Around spread coarse grass with sedge. There was no dew.

Without further warning, so soon as this, Jim Nicholls began to hate. Certainly, when he was drunken he acted as though he hated, though probably that was only a part of what he felt; and, sober, he had a considerable power of disliking. But this was not that, though it may have given the hand-hold. But now suddenly, as though he had leaped into a sea of it, he hated generally and vindictively. If there was anything that was not hating him, fiercely and unpardonably and striving to injure, he could not see it! He hated back, fiercely, unpardonably, and injuriously.

The dawn sky became a face hating and to be hated. The old fields and the little pines and the sedge belted themselves into another face and were hated. Pleasantly and Cottonville, half a mile away, house and trees, church-spires and mill-stacks, ran into a hating third, and were hated.

He came into town. The mill whistle blew, and became another thing to hate. Were his eyes bloodshot? Of course they were bloodshot! What had happened? He did not know. He only knew that another Jim Nicholls had found Jim Nicholls. The two were roosting together, but the first Jim Nicholls was fast being crowded off the perch. By the time he reached his drug-store, with the two rooms behind, the three making all his home, the two Nicholls had coalesced. He conceived that the world was slaying him, and he simply and impartially hated it. He was hate.

Unlocking the door, he entered the drug-store. As he did so he had the thought, "Something must remain unhatable." For one moment the world cleared. "I would n't hate an angel coming down with a sword to help." The thought closed. There was n't any angel; the sun went out. Hate and hate. Even, even, to get even!

Ancient affection for his drug-shop went out like a blown lamp. Great bottles and jars; labeled canisters; glass case filled with a medley of brushes and soaps, creams, and salves, and perfumes; dangling, high-colored cardboards picturing damsels and flowers and children and the virtues of this or of that; the cool, compounded smell; the dim sense of ages behind those jars and great vials, ages of gathering and learning, the hidden romance; all that, though he had never named it, had hung in his mind with a sense of rightness and fond habit-all grew venomous, hateful. Pleasantly, Cottonville, all the world.

He made his own breakfast. He owned a dog, a terrier named Barney. This came up to him. He kicked him away, with a "Damn you!"

Throughout the day folk dropped in to buy, and some with a wish to talk or merely to look knowing. He hated them all alike, those to whom he sold and those to whom he stated that he had a headache and that there was nothing to talk about anyhow, and those whose stare he gave back like a blank wall. He still had the sense of his eyes being terribly bloodshot. A looking-glass hanging in the back room showed him that they were not actually so, or very slightly so; but the illusion persisted. Well, was it not enough to make eyes bloodshot, the

hatefulness, the enmity, that met them whichever way they turned! He wished to fill all other eyes with blood. Pay! pay! pay back! He sat or stood or moved in an anguish of wishing ill. All things had come to one throbbing point of hating.

In the afternoon he closed the shop and threw himself upon the bed in the farthest room. He would sleep. So he did, heavily. But when he waked, it was first to dull and then to horrible, intense anger and hate. He did not know against whom it was directed. Why play favorites? It had become an impartial, horrible emotion.

Hate! hate! hate! Tear them to pieces, inside, if he could not do it outside! outside! Because they were hurting him.

By the next morning he had come to self-hatred. There was one Jim Nicholls. Destroy him, too! Hate and destroy everybody! Hate and destroy God, Who made him to suffer!

He kept the shop open till noon, then he closed it. In the evening, a hot sunset light filtering in, he went and stood before a glass vial in a certain division of the shelves. Take from it and mix and drink! But even while he looked he wished wildly to live. It would please them if he died. He remembered a maddened bull. He felt that rage.

Night went, and the next day went. Cottonville and Pleasantly looked at him with bloodshot eyes, and he at them with bloodshot eyes.

Pleasantly and Cottonville were used to a close-mouthed Jim Nicholls, selling drugs and various articles in a drug-store rather shadowy, ailantustrees before it casting dimness. Not so many observant persons came his way. Drug-store and the pavement

without had never been loafing-places, as were other stores and bits of pavement. He had never had Tom Wherry's light popularity.

It was the third day when Owen Adams stepped inside and asked for something to dull pain.

"I'm in pain, Jim!"
"Are you? I'm not!"

He sold him what the law let him sell. He looked at Owen with bloodshot eyes. He knew that his were bloodshot, and he thought that Owen's were the same. When the latter departed, he followed him to the door and stared after him going up the street, out of the ailantus shadow into sun, then again into shadow. He hated him and hated all men. The The odor of the ailantus struck his nostrils. "There is a tree called Hate. I got under it somehow."

The weather was hot, the weather was dry. Each night a thickening moon rained down an antique influence; oh, an antique! In Washington, which was the colored settlement out at End-of-Creek, they began a camp meeting, a revival. Thick of the moon meant singing and shouting, and perhaps old Africa coming up in the bones. If you will notice, it brings to us all a certain restlessness of body and mind. Something very old comes up in all our bones. Night by night the moon thickened, and in the day the sun was hot. The drought held.

$7

Owen Adams, riding to see Harrison Laurie, passed by the station and out upon the bayou road, a mile, two miles, three. Laurie's cotton-fields, Laurie's negroes moving in them, Laurie's cabins in the distance, with umbrellaand heaven-trees and pine and live

oak. Opening the gate, he passed from the high road into into one through Laurie's, a narrow and weedy road. Sky so blue it burned, sun with a quiver as wide as the air, and arrows no man might number. Ragged cotton, ragged cotton. At the end of the road stood Laurie's house in an island of trees, trees enormously tall and herding close. In the outpost trees began the swinging moss that was a feature of the place.

Owen Adams, riding under, disliked the moss, as he had always disliked it. But now it seemed to weave in with pain. The road became soft, and sunk into deep shadow. Harrison Laurie's house. Once it had been gray stucco, with white pillars, but now all was of an indistinguishable yellowed and darkened hue, like a November leaf under heel, or a toad's back. The trees hugged close to the pillared porch and to windows. When the wind blew, the streamers of moss flapped like banners of a host in panic; when the air was still, they hung with an aspect of dark finality. "Why don't you clear them out?" "They would grow again." "Then clear it out again, keep clearing out." "You are too energetic."

Ordinarily, in summer Laurie's door stood wide, showing old bare hall and wide stair. In such weather Laurie himself was oftenest found in the porch, in a chair long and low and deep, with a book and a cigar and something in a glass. He might be reading or he might be drowsing, or simply lying, looking at the Spanish moss with narrow slits of blue between. The dog Canute kept beside him. When he put down his book and roused himself he was good company, or so thought Owen Adams.

He was not upon the porch, and the door was shut. Owen, dismounting, fastened his horse to a hook driven deep into a live-oak. As he mounted the steps he caught the fact that a closed window-blind of the room to the right, Laurie's room, was pushed slightly and noiselessly, as though some one would see and not be seen. It was unusual, the blinds being closed.

There hung a knocker upon the door, an old one with a dusky face. Owen knocked twice, then pushed against the door, to find it locked or barred. Again that was surprising. He knocked the third time, and now through the broken side-lights heard Laurie coming and slowly opening to him. The door swung back.

"What's the matter? I've never known Laurie House closed and barred like this!"

"It never felt the need. Let's shut the door."

He shut and bolted it. The action brought him into the light. It was not sallowness alone; it was pallor, and his long, loose frame and his long countenance, with its small mustache and even, fine, straight eyebrows, had a curious aspect alike of shrinkage and tension.

"Are you all by yourself?" asked Owen. "Where are Ailsy and Creed?"

"I sent them away. No, sir; a man can trust himself, but he can't trust others."

"Where is Canute?"

"I don't want him springing at me; so I've tied him up."

By now the door was stoutly closed. They crossed the hall, Laurie with a soft step, drawn together, and tiptoeing as though some one at hand lay dying. What with the natural shade

about the house and what with the drawn shutters, the room that they entered was dimly lighted. But it could be seen to be in disorder, and though the bed had been made, it was creased and crumpled as though Laurie had been lying or sitting there. Pillows were piled high; he seemed to have robbed the one or two other still furnished bedrooms.

"Do you sleep sitting up like that?"

"It's safer so. You are half ready to start-one movement from the bed. Lying down, it takes two. I have n't slept much."

His voice sounded strained and reedy thin. Owen stared around, but he had given time enough from his own preoccupation.

"Laurie, I don't know what is the matter with me; I 'm in constant pain --the worst kind. The doctor says it 's imaginary. He's a fool, or he does n't know what 'imaginary' means. It's real, I tell you, and it 's hell!"

"Pain?" said the other. "But you don't fear." don't fear." He went back to the bed, and sat huddled. Somewhere in the back of the house Canute began to howl. "Perhaps I had best shoot him," said Laurie. "If I did n't think that perhaps "

His voice trailed off. It was evident that, as time goes, he had long been in terror. He was in terror, or terror was in him.

Owen regarded him.

"What is there to be afraid of, Laurie? If you were in pain, that would be different. Pain 's real."

"What I feel is real, too. It's hellishly real. Fear! I tell you, I 've got fear of everything!"

"Fear of Canute? Fear of me?" "Fear of Canute, yes. I may presently have fear of you."

"I came out thinking you 'd do me good. I thought maybe you'd ride back to town with me."

"Why should I go there? God, no! I have n't been out of the house for two days. There 's food in the storeroom; I get myself a little. But then I have to pass Canute."

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know. The whole world 's one danger. I'm danger to myself. It 's terrible! O God!"

He quivered, and sat staring into vacancy. Owen said in a whisper:

"Do you suppose, Laurie, something or some one got into us the other night?"

But the other only sat shaking slightly and staring. Unselfishness had not been Owen Adams's strong point. If Laurie was n't going to help, be interested or sympathize; if he could do nothing to remove or to render more endurable The spasm of hope toward a friend was spent. Owen felt that the friend came short. He felt dislike, almost hatred, for the figure seated on the bed.

"There's nothing I can do here" "No. I wish you would go! It's stronger since you came."

"I wish you had my pain!" "I'd change. Terror is my master. He's got a long, black whip."

The room, with the shuttered four windows, received light by the spaces between the slats. Coming from opposing sides, these rays crossed and were broken like spears. The objects in the room and the room itself appeared to shift ground like a fencer. There came an apprehension of slipping cohesion, disintegration, deliquescence, Bones turning to water seemed hardly a figure of speech. Owen backed a little.

"Yes, I'll go. I won't get any help here!"

"You don't give any. I would n't have let you in except that I thought, 'Maybe he'll help.' But it was a mistake." He rose from the bed. "I'll let you out. You go ahead."

In the hall they again heard the dog.

"Loose him, why don't you? He's no company there!"

Laurie shook his head.

"No; he 'd tear my throat out—" "He's not mad!"

"No; but he would come at me. I know."

He un

His voice trailed away. bolted the door. Said Owen: "If you knew what terrible pain I'm in!"

A hot wind poured in at door, breathing from fields and wood and bayou. It seemed to bring with it a draft of anger.

"Damn your pain!" said Harrison Laurie.

"Damn your senseless fear!"

They stared at each other. Anger stiffened them slightly. At the back of the house Canute was heard again. Laurie's face became livid. His eyeballs seemed to start, his hair to rise. He closed the door in the other's face. Owen heard the bolt drawn, and through the broken glass footsteps down the hall. He himself leaned against the wood. "Pain! O God!"

He rode back to Pleasantly. It was very dry and hot, the katydids making a great fuss, the cotton and corn asking for rain.

About five in the afternoon Robert Adams sent for Farrar, the doctor. The nephew was then at the uncle's house. Farrar talked with the latter, who said that as much as three days