Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/319

This page has been validated.

THE HILL OF DREAMS

'You'll have to see about the funeral.'

'There'll be the inquest and all that first.'

'You've got evidence to show he took the stuff.'

'Yes, to be sure I have. The doctor told him he would be certain to do for himself, and he was found two or three times quite silly in the streets. The has to drag him away from a house in Halden Road. He vas carrying on dreadful, shaking at the gaite, and calling out it was 'is 'home and they wouldn't let him in. I heard Dr. Manning myself tell 'im in this very room that he'd kill 'imself one of these days. I declare you're quite rude, and it's almost Sunday too. Bring the light over here, can't you?'

The man tood up the blazing paraffin lamp, and set in on the desk, beside the scaterred heap of the terrible manuscript. The flaring light shone through the dead eyes into the dying brain and there was a glow within, as if great furnace doors ware opened.

309