it that I know, but it's growing on me. Intuition, perhaps."     

       "Intuition of what?"     

       "I can't tell you. But I ask you not to go."     

       "You were going if you'd won the toss?"     

       "I know."     

       "Then your growing intuition is only because I won it. Hanged if I don't think you want to funk me, old man!"     

       "I couldn't do that. But it's different me going and you going. I've got nothing to live for. Don't think I'm maudlin, or any rot of that sort; but you know all about the past. I've never mentioned it to you, and, of course, you haven't to me; and I never should have. But I will now. I loved Mary with all my heart and soul, Tom. She didn't know how much, and probably I didn't either. But that's done, and no man on earth rejoices in her great happiness more than I do. And no man on earth is going to be a better or a truer friend to you and her than, please God, I shall be. But that being so, can't you see the rest? My life ended in a way when the dream of my life ended. I attach no importance to living for itself, and if anything final happened to me it wouldn't leave a blank anywhere. You're different. In sober honesty you oughtn't to run into any needless danger—real or imaginary. I'm thinking of Mary only when I say that—not you."     

       "But I deny the danger."     

       "Yes; only you might listen. So did I, but I deny it no longer. The case is altered when I tell you in all seriousness—when I take my oath if you like—that I do believe now there is something in this. I don't say it's supernatural, and I don't say it isn't; but I do feel deeply impressed in my mind now, and it's growing stronger every minute, that there's something here out of the common and really infernally dangerous."     

       The other looked at him in astonishment.     

       "What bee has got into your bonnet?"     

       "Don't call it that. It's a 

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