A Fool There Was

by Porter Emerson Browne

"You are leaving?"

Parks nodded.

"Don't you think you'd better stay a little longer? You can help him."

Parks shook his head; there was in his voice a great sadness.

"No one can help him now. It is too late…. Too late."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

THE THING THAT WAS A MAN.

Schuyler came down the stairs slowly, leaning heavily against the broken balustrade. He laughed a little, wildly, with the mirthless chill that is of a maniac. His knees bent; he staggered…. And he laughed again….

At first Blake did not know him…. Then, knowing, he could not believe that his eyes brought to his brain the truth…. This was not John Schuyler. It could not be John Schuyler. It was not possible. John Schuyler was at least a man—not a palsied, pallid, shrunken, shriveled caricature of something that had once been human…. John Schuyler had hands—not nerveless, shaking talons…. This sunken-eyed, sunken- cheeked, wrinkled thing was not John Schuyler—this thing that crawled, quiveringly—from the loose, pendulous lips of which came mirth that was more bitter to hear than the sobs of a soul condemned.