Page:Taylor - In the Dwellings of the Wilderness.djvu/163

 it as plainly as though I had been awake and she was there in actual fact. I saw her flesh shrivel and the skin cling tight to the bones. I saw her face sink in until the eyes were gone, and the cheeks were gaunt and covered with wrinkled brown parchment, and the lips were grinning like the jaws of a skull. And the thing slid out of my arms and lay on the ground, stark and rigid. Then I thought that Holloway, from the ground, spoke, without moving, and said—'It isn't worth while, after all, is it?' And I woke in a cold sweat of abject terror, with his voice ringing in my ears so that I could have sworn that someone had just spoken … Oh, it was maudlin, I don't deny it, and I was well over the edge of madness!" His voice all at once was