The mindless thing stood erect, with a face suffused by a rush of blood, staggered, and turned; then, in a deep, sonorous voice, declaimed: "'Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.'" It was the finish of the quatrain begun by Bridge, and interrupted by the blow of the cane. "What?" he continued, as he looked down on the faintly breathing figure of the girl. "Miss Munson! What--what is it? Where are we? We were in the alleyway a minute ago. What has happened? Tell me! Where's the ship?" The girl's eyes opened, and a faint smile came to her face. "What is it?" he insisted, stooping down and taking her cold, wet hands. "Miss Munson, what has happened? We're ashore, and you're all wet! Have you been overboard? You said you could swim! Why, there's the ship now, at anchor! They're putting off with a boat! But why? Tell me, Miss Munson! What does it mean? I've grown a beard! Why--tell me! What is it? Zaza, tell me!" The cold, wet hands of the girl closed gently on his big, bony fingers. "Not Zaza!" she whispered. "Zenie! I am Zenie! I know I am!" THE SLEEP WALKER There was nothing abnormal in the character of Beverton except a tendency, while very young, to walk in his sleep, and nothing in his twenty-five years of life of which he was really ashamed except a deed of his infancy, born of the above-named tendency, for which he had been severely punished at the time. The punishment, no doubt, impressed the incident on his mind, and he recalled it occasionally, always with a flush of shame, while he lived his years of boyhood, youth, and early manhood. He remembered being rudely awakened from sleep, not in a crib where his mother had placed him, nor beside her, where he sometimes slept, but flat on his back on the carpeted floor of a long hall, dimly illumined by distant gas jets, the soft glow from which showed him a woman in a night-robe looking down upon him with angry eyes, and a purple-faced child, a little younger than himself, gasping and choking in her arms. His cheek burned from the slap she had given him, and his head hurt from the impact with the floor, so he joined the other baby in protest, and the uproar brought several uniformed hall-boys and a night clerk, who led him to the room occupied by his parents. After punishment, and when able to understand, he learned what he had done in his sleep--left his crib, sought the hall, buried his small fingers in the throat of this other sleep-walking infant--whom he had never seen before--and might possibly have murdered it had not its mother wakened and arrived in time to interfere. He was well spanked for the feat. His mother believed in both punishment and prayer as factors in reform. For a long time he received nightly spankings in bed, with injunctions to stay where he was put until morning, and supplemented his "Now I lay me down to sleep" with a plea to be cured of his infirmity.