VIII. Early in the morning after Mr. Dunlap’s dinner-party in honor of Professor Charlton, when the newly risen sun had made a dazzling field of glittering diamonds of the snow that lay white and spotless about the ‘Eyrie,’ Walter Burton threw up the sash of one of the long, low windows in his sitting-room and stepped out on the balcony. With a sigh of relief he drank in deep draughts of the fresh, crisp air, and exclaimed as he shaded his eyes: “What a blessing is fresh air and sunlight after the closeness of the house and gas-light.” The man’s face was haggard and drawn like one who has passed a night of vigil and suffering. His eyes were surrounded by bands of black that gave to them a hollow appearance. “How utterly idiotic and inexplicable seems my mood and conduct of last night out here in the sunshine, now that I am my natural self once more.” Burton walked down from the balcony on the crackling snow that lay dry and sparkling on the lawn in front of the house. After a few moments spent in the exercise of pacing about and swinging his arms, he returned to his sitting-room refreshed and apparently restored to his usual condition of mind. All around the room that he entered were scattered promiscuously, musical instruments, books, cushions, flowers and fragments of a late supper, all in that confusion that could not fail to impress the beholder with the idea that the room had been recently the scene of reckless orgies. Pillows heaped upon a sofa still bore the imprint of some one’s head, and was evidently the couch from which the young man had risen when he went forth into God’s bright sunlight. With supreme disgust depicted on his aesthetic countenance, Walter Burton gazed at the evidence of his nocturnal revel while in that state of mind he had named idiotic. “These sporadic spells of silliness which come over my spirit are as revolting to me, when relieved from their influences, as is incomprehensible the cause of their coming,” muttered Burton, kicking aside the various articles that littered the floor. “What earthly reason could there be for the peculiar effect produced upon me by the scrutiny of that old professor from the South? There exists nothing natural to account for the strange sensation caused by the penetrating gaze of that old Southerner. “The cause must be sought in the sphere of the supernatural, a province wherein reason, education and culture protest against my wandering.” Pausing the young man strove to recall the scenes and sensations of the previous night, but in vain. “It is useless for me to struggle to bring back the vanished state of feeling that possessed me last evening. It refuses to pass before the spectrum of my mind. “It is ever thus while the normal condition of my mental faculties exists. I always fail to catch the fleeting shadow of that distorting spectre that haunts my spirit with its degrading, masterful influence.