out distinctly. The bureau is so placed that when I am lying on my back, with my head high on the pillow, I can see full into the mirror. I thought I was lying in this manner and staring into the mirror. In this way I saw the bolted door in the far corner of the room. I tried to keep my mind off it, to think of something else, but it drew my eyes like a magnet.
It seemed to me that someone was in the room, a vague figure that I could not recognize. It approached the door and caught at the bolts. It dragged at them and struggled, but in vain—they would not give way. Then it turned and showed me its agonized face. It was Arthur! I recognized his reddish-brown dressing-gown.
I sat up in bed and cried to him, but he was gone. I ran to his room, and there he was, stretched out in the moonlight asleep. It must have been a dream.
OCTOBER 15.—We are having Indian Summer weather now—almost oppressively warm. I have been wandering about all day, unable to settle down to anything. This morning I felt so lonesome that when I took the breakfast dishes down, I tried to strike up a conversation with Mrs. Harlan.
Hitherto I have found her as solemn and uncommunicative as the Sphinx, but as she took the tray from my hands, her wrinkles broke into the semblance of a smile. Positively at that moment it seemed to me that she resembled Arthur. Was it her smile, or the expression of her eyes? Has she, also, something to tell me?
"Don't you get lonesome here?" I asked her sympathetically. She shook her head.
"No, sir, I'm used to it now. I couldn't stand it anywheres else."
"And do you expect to go on living here the rest of your life?"
"That may not be very long, sir," she said, and smiled again.
Her words were simple enough, but the way she looked at me when she uttered them seemed to give them a double meaning. She hobbled away, and I went upstairs and wrote Mrs. O'Brien to expect me early on the morning of the 19th.
OCTOBER 18., 10 a. m.—Am catching the twelve o'clock train tonight. Thank God, I had the resolution to get away! I believe another week of this life would drive me mad. And perhaps Arthur is right—perhaps I shall never come back.
I ask myself if I have become such a weakling as that, to desert him when he needs me most. I don't know. I don't recognize myself any longer. . . .
But of course I will be back. There is the translation, for one thing, which is coming along famously. I could never forgive myself for dropping it at the most vital point.
As for Arthur, when I return, I intend to give in to him no longer. I will make myself master here and cure him against his will. Fresh air, change of scene, a good doctor, these are the things he needs.
But what is his malady? Is it the influence of this house that has fallen on him like a blight? One might imagine so, since it is having the same effect on me.
Yes, I have reached that point where I no longer sleep. At night I lie awake and try to keep my eyes off the mirror across the room. But in the end I always find myself staring into it—watching the door with the heavy bolts. I long to rise from the bed and draw back the bolts, but I'm afraid.
How slowly the day goes by! The night will never come!
NINE P. M.—Have packed my suitcase and put the room in order. Arthur must be asleep. . . . I'm afraid the parting from him will be painful. I shall leave here at eleven o'clock in order to give myself plenty of time. . . . It is beginning to rain. . . .
OCTOBER 19.—At last! It has come! I am mad! I knew it! I felt it creeping on me all the time! Have I not lived in this house a month? Have I not seen—. To have seen what I have seen, to have lived for a month as I have lived, one must be mad. . . .
It was ten o'clock. I was waiting impatiently for the last hour to pass. I had seated myself in a rocking chair by the bed, my suitcase beside me, my back to the mirror. The rain no longer fell. I must have dozed off.
But all at once I was wide awake, my heart beating furiously. Something had touched me. I leapt to my feet, and, turning sharply, my eyes fell upon the mirror. In it I saw the door just as I had seen it the other night, and the figure fumbling with the bolt. I wheeled around, but there was nothing there.
I told myself that I was dreaming again, that Arthur was asleep in his bed. But I trembled as I opened the door of his room and peered in. The room was empty, the bed not even crumpled. Lighting a match, I groped my way through the bathroom into the library.
The moon had come from under a cloud and was pouring in a silvery flood through the windows, but Arthur was not there. I stumbled back into my room.
The moon was there, too. . . . And the door, the door in the corner was half open. The bolt had been drawn. In the darkness I could just make out a flight of steps that wound upward.
I could no longer hesitate. Striking another match, I climbed the black stairway.
When I reached the top I found myself in total darkness, for the blinds were tightly closed. Realizing that the room was probably a duplicate of the one below, I felt along the wall until I came to the gas jet. For a moment the flame flickered, then burned bright and clear.
O God! what was it I saw? A table, thick with dust, and something wrapped in a reddish-brown dressing-gown, that sat with its elbows propped upon it.
How long had it been sitting there that it had grown more dry than the dust upon the table! For how many thousands of days and nights had the flesh rotted from that grinning skull!
In its bony fingers it still clutched a pencil. In front of it lay a sheet of scratch paper, yellow with age. With trembling fingers I brushed away the dust. It was dated October 19, 1912. It read:
"Dear Tom: Old man, can you run down to see me for a few days? I'm afraid I'm in a bad way—"
Reads Story of Mankind on Egyptian Coffins
PROF. JAMES H. BREASTED, Egyptologist and director of the Haskell Oriental Museum at the University of Chicago, is solving some of the mysteries of the beginning of the human race by inspecting sarcophagi of Egyptian kings. From Cairo, he wrote to his associate, Dr. William S. Edgerton:
"You will be interested to know that Gardener and I have settled down at the museum and have already devoted a week to the task we are undertaking. We have a very large amount of space placed at our disposal, and our gallery, over 100 feet long, is already filled with dismounted coffins. The photographer is busily at work, and Gardener and I are copying industriously. The task proved to be far larger than we had anticipated and also very much more difficult. It will be a matter of years, but I have never been more convinced of its necessity and usefulness than now."
