Out of one of these, Charter emerged with a cry, wet with sweat as the cavern-floor from which he came--to find that the minute-hand of his watch had not traversed the distance between two Roman numerals. He seized the time-piece and flung it across the room, lived an age of regret before it struck the walnut edge of his dresser and crashed to the floor.... The sounds of running-down fitted to words in his brain. "_Tick--tick!... tick-tick-tick._" A spring rattled a disordered plaint; then after a silence: "I served you--did my work well--very well--very well!..." Charter writhed, wordlessly imploring it to be still. It was not the value, but the sentient complaining of a thing abused. Faithful, and he had crushed it. He felt at last in the silence that his heart would stop if it ticked again; and as he waited, staring at it, his mind rushed off to a morning of boyhood and terrible cruelty.... He had been hunting at the edge of a half-cleared bit of timber. A fat gray squirrel raced across the dead leaves, fully sixty yards away--its mate following blithely. The leader gained the home-tree as Charter shot, crippling the second--the male. It was a long shot and a very good one, but the boy forgot that. The squirrel tried to climb the tree, but could not. It crawled about, uncoupled, among the roots, and answered the muffled chattering from the hole above--this, as the boy came up, his breast filling with the deadliest shame he had ever known. The squirrel told him all, and answered his mate besides. It was not a chatter for mercy. The little male was cross about it--bewildered, too, for its life-business was so important. The tortured boy dropped the butt of his gun upon the creature's head.... Now the tone changed--the flattened head would not die.... He had fled crying from the thing, which haunted him almost to madness. He _begged_ now, as the old thoughts of that hour began to run about in the deep-worn groove of his mind.... Andas he had treated the squirrel, the watch--so he was treating his own life.... Again he was called to consciousness by some one uttering his name. He answered. The apartment echoed with the flat, unnatural cry of his voice; silence mocking him.... Then, in delusion, he would find himself hurrying across the yard, attracted by some psychic terror of warning. Finally, as he opened the stable-door, sounds of a panting struggle reached him from the box-stall where he kept his loved saddle-mare. Light showed him that she had broken through the flooring, and, frenziedly struggling to get her legs clear from the wreck, had torn the skin and flesh behind, from hoof to hock. He saw the yellow tendons and the gleaming white bone. She was half-up, half-down, the smoky look of torture and accusation in her brown eyes....