Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/180

 I was — who has been for a moment in mortal peril and finds himself miraculously saved.

I fancy that I am not unique in my familiarity with a curious but not infrequent experience. I mean that of falling at night into a tranquil slumber, at peace with myself and the world and with a conscience like a glass of distilled water, only to awaken, two or three hours later, to the pitch blackness of a room unearthly still, and a painful impression that the total value of life would be amply represented by a three-cent piece. As Master Morpheus took his seat upon my bedside that night our talk was all of the happy escape I had had; but when, close upon midnight, his place was taken by Mistress Insomnia, I opened my eyes upon a very different set of sensations. Of course it was the tea; but if it had been, instead, the knowledge that I had lost my uttermost farthing in the stock market, I could not have