Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/201

 of whitewashed tombs, whose skeletons of brick were left bare in leprous patches by the falling away of the plastering. And, wandering, he came to a deep wall, catacombed from base to summit with the resting-places of ten thousand dead; and there was one empty place —one black void—inscribed with a name strangely like his own. And a great weariness and faintness came upon him; and the pains, returning, carried back his thoughts to the warmth and dimness of the sick-room. It seemed to him that this could not be death—he was too weary even to die! But they would put him into the hollow void in the wall!—they might: he would not resist, he felt no fear. He could rest there very well even for a hundred years. He had a gimlet somewhere!—they would let him take it with him;—he could bore a tiny little hole in the wall so that a thread of sunlight would creep into his resting-place every day, and he could hear the voices of the world about him. Yet perhaps he should never be able to leave that dark