The Whirligig of Time

THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME
WAYLAND WELLS WILLIAMS
WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY J. HENRY
And thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges. —Twelfth Night.
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1916, by Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages.
CONTENTS
UNWRITTEN PAPERS
Two o'clock struck by the tall clock on the stairs, and young Harry Wimbourne, lying wide awake in his darkened bedroom, reflected that he had never heard that clock strike two before, except in the afternoon. To his ears the two strokes had a curious and unfamiliar sound; he waited expectantly for more to follow, but none did, and the tones of the second stroke died slowly away in a rather uncanny fashion through the silent house. For the house was silent now; the strange and terrifying series of sounds, issuing from the direction of his mother's room, that had first awakened him, had ceased some time ago. There had been much scurrying to and fro, much opening and shutting of doors, mingled not infrequently with the sound of voices; voices subdued and yet strained, talking so low and so hurriedly that no complete sentences could be caught, though Harry was occasionally able to distinguish the tones of his father, or the nurse, or the doctor. Once he detected the phrase hot water ; and even that seemed to give a slight tinge of familiarity and sanity to the other noises. But then had come those other sounds that froze the very blood in his veins, and made him lie stiff and stark in his bed, perspiring in every pore, in an agony of ignorance and terror. It was all so inexplicable; his mother—! A strange voice would not have affected him so.
But all that had stopped after a while, and everything had quieted down to the stillness that had prevailed for an hour or more when the clock struck two. The stillness was in its way even more wearing than the noises had been, for it gave one the impression that more was to follow. Wait, wait, wait, it seemed to Harry to say; the worst is not nearly over yet; more will happen before the night is out; Wait, wait! and the slow tick of the clock on the stairs, faintly heard through the closed door, took up the burden Wait! Wait! And Harry waited. The passage of time seemed to him both cruelly slow and cruelly fast; each minute dragged along like an hour, and yet when the hour struck it seemed to him to have passed off in the space of a minute.