Since last I set pen to your paper, Blue One, I have descended into Sloughs of Despair. Now, emerged again, I take up my story where I left it. A day or so after the last time I talked with you, I had an attack, of the sort which has mercifully been spared me for over a year. It had been coming on, steadily, but I wasn't going to give in to it--oh, no! So, the first intimation which father and Sarah had of its arrival was late one night, when a moan that I had been biting back for an hour tore its way to freedom past my closed lips, and revealed its presence, surprisingly, in the shape of a scream. Sarah came flying to my bed, and hard on her heels, father. They gave me such remedies as are always at hand, and which generally prove friendly. But this time they failed. My Demon had been in abeyance too long, and was reluctant to loosen his clutches. Once made free of my flesh, he would listen to no reason. Presently there came a period of half-consciousness, through which I dimly heard father at the telephone, calling Dr. McAllister's number. I almost smiled, through the creeping faintness, to think how annoyed he would profess himself to be, "called out of bed at this ungodly hour!" and how once arrived, he would toil to help me. When I opened my eyes again after what seemed years, it was with a vague sense of amazement that Doctor Mac had grown so young since last I had seen him. For he was slim, where once he had been inclined to rotundity, and ruddy-brown where once he had been sparse and grey. Upon my pulse was an unfamiliar hand, and a strange voice, close to me, was saying quietly. "She's coming round, Mr. Carroll." Somehow, this calm disposition of me was annoying. "I'm not," I heard myself contradict weakly. Two steel-blue eyes, set in a lean face, met mine. It was not a friendly encounter. "Please don't talk," ordered this new Doctor Mac briefly. Father laid his hand upon my forehead. "Is the pain better, dear?" he asked, with that break in his voice which always comes when he knows that I am suffering. I tried to flash triumph into the blue eyes, and responded, "Yes." Then, as My Demon's jaws took a fresh hold on my spinal column, "Oh--no--!" There was a low-voiced consultation, and then father said, reassuringly, "Don't talk, Mavis dear, and lie quiet. Doctor Denton is going to give you something to relieve you." I felt six years old again, and resentful to find father going over to the enemy. But I was grateful, that, after all, our own dear Doctor Mac had not been metamorphosed into an ogre with icicle eyes. As the tiny, merciful piston went home, I said feebly, with malice aforethought. "Hello--_Doctor Jumpy_!" And the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was his startled face. And in my first half-dreams, I found myself repeating, childishly, "He did jump! He _did_. And I made him!" And that, Dear Diary, was my informal introduction to the nervous nephew of Mr. John Denton. CHAPTER II