"That," said Adam Craig with a shudder, "will be enough of your damned ghosts and fairies."
Afterward to Kenny the evening was always a blur but he knew they had gotten on badly. And Adam, quiet and sullen, had drunk more than usual.
Kenny sparkled through the evening in a baffling, dreamlike oblivion to everything but his thoughts, and floated away to his room, feeling curiously light and iridescent.
He meant not to sleep. He meant to roll the shades to the top and with the cold wind upon his face and the stars winking in silver beneficence overhead, to lie awake and think until the dawn came. He slept soundly, dreaming of thistledown and a little old woman in a green cloak who came out of a hill and played a tune upon a sort of lantern-flute. The notes had winged off in bars of music written in fire against the darkness. He had not finished the dream when he was awakened by someone knocking at his door.
It was Hughie, his face pale and disturbed.
"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "I'm wondering if you'd drive down to the village and telephone the doctor to come here first. Mr. Craig's had a bad fall. He's unconscious."
"Unconscious!" exclaimed Kenny, changing color. "How on earth, Hughie, did he fall?"
"I don't know," said Hughie sadly. "He must have climbed out of bed in the night."
"But, Hughie, he couldn't!"
"He could stagger a step or two," explained Hughie. "Not far. The trouble's in his spine. But he never dragged himself so far before."