“Oh, that’s nonsense, Willy!” I said, trying to speak with more cheerfulness than I felt. “That is a very poor way of looking at things.”
“Very likely, but it’s the only way I’ve got.” We were on the steps by this time, and he opened the hall door. “Anyhow, it doesn’t make much difference how I look at them; I suppose it will all come to the same sooner or later.”
He shut the door with a bang, and I went upstairs.
CHAPTER II.
“BUT WHERE IS COUNTY GUY?”
“What shall assuage the unforgotten pain,
And teach the unforgetful to forget?”
I lay awake for a long time after I got into bed, and I had not been long asleep when some sound wakened me. I was at first not sorry to awake; I had been sleeping uneasily and feverishly, and my dreams had been full of disasters and difficulties. I did not trouble myself much as to what the sound was—probably a rat, as the house was overrun with them—and I tried to see the face of my watch by the light of the fire, which was still burning brightly. I had made out that it was half-past one, when I again heard a sound. It was a movement in the next room, as if a chair had been pushed against by some one moving cautiously in the dark. I do not pretend to being superior to irrational terrors at night, and now the blood rushed back to my head from my heart, as I sat up in bed and tried to persuade myself that what I had heard was the effect of imagination.