Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/373

Rh came here. It was after midnight, and he did not ring the bell, but waked me by throwing pieces of ice and frozen sod against my window. I saw at once that something was the matter with him; so I went down and talked to him through the closed door—the side door here; for I was afraid at first to let him in, in spite of his promises not to hurt me. He told me his very life was in danger—and he had no other place to go; and he must hide here—hide; and I must not let anyone—even his mother or father—know he had come back; that I was the only one he could trust! So—he was my husband—and I let him in!

"I started to run from him, when I had opened the door; for I was afraid—afraid; but he ran at once into the old billiard-room—the store room there—and tried the locks of the door and the window gratings," the sensitive voice ran on rapidly, "and then threw himself all sweating cold on the lounge there, and went to sleep in a stupor. I thought at first it was another frenzy from whiskey or—or opium. And I stayed there. But just at morning when he woke up, I saw it wasn't that—but it was fear—fear—fear, such as I'd never seen before. He rolled off the couch and half hid under it till I'd pasted brown paper over the window panes—there were no curtains. But he wouldn't tell me what he was afraid of.

"He got so much worse as the days went by that he couldn't sleep at all; he walked the floor all the time and he smoked continually, so that nearly every day I had to slip out and get him cigarettes. He got