"Hugh Pinsent's voice--oh, Heaven!" cried Miss Ottley--behind me. She had awakened from her swoon. I swung on heel and watched her rise. "Hugh!" she sighed. "Hugh--where are you, dear?" Then she saw Belleville, and the hideous apparition he presented, a black pain-tortured face hovering in mid-air, with two dark, ghostly hands outstretched before it, froze her blood. Mercifully, she swooned again and fell back senseless on the lounge. Belleville recommenced his moaning, and began walking up and down wringing his hands. I stood silent, lost in thought and wondering what I ought to do. Belleville told me. He stopped on a sudden and called my name twice, "Pinsent, Pinsent." [Illustration: _The_ Living Mummy A black pain-tortured face hovering in mid-air _Face Page 296_] "Here!" said I. "I am at your mercy now," he muttered, in a broken voice. "I'm blind." "What!" I cried. "Ay," said he, "and my facial extremities are dying fast--pah! my nose is already dead; look." He put up one hand to his face and before my eyes broke off his nose and tossed it on the floor. It snapped like a piece of tinder, leaving a black, ugly stump. Next he plucked the dagger from his breast--or rather, from where his bosom seemed to be--and cast it on the floor. I was speechless with horror and surprise. "Now that you have naught to fear from me," he groaned, "if you have a heart in your breast you will help to end my pain." "Anything, anything--only tell me how!" I cried, advancing towards him as I spoke. But hearing me approaching, he shouted out for me to stop. "Don't come near me!" he wailed. "Don't touch me--or I shall try to murder you--I'll not be able to prevent myself--and I want to undo some of the ill I've done before I die." I halted. "But what then shall I do?" I asked. "Light the asbestos fire. You'll find matches in the table drawer. I am perishing of cold, that is the only thing that will soothe the anguish I am going through. Oh! be quick, be quick!" I flew to obey him, and in a moment I had set the stove ablaze. Belleville found his way to it as if by instinct, and stooping down, he pressed his awful-looking face against the bars, groaning in a way that made my very flesh creep. "Yes--yes, I'm blind," he kept muttering, between his moans. "And very soon I shall be dead. I must atone. I must atone." "Belleville," I said at last--I forced myself to say it, for his face had grown ink-black, "are you not wasting precious time? Is there not something I can get to counteract the acid? It appears to----" "Hush!" he interrupted. "There is nothing. It is eating into my brain. Besides, I am blind and do not wish to live. But let me think. This pain--I cannot use my wits--it dazes me! Ah! now! I must. I must. How can I die with all--Pinsent! Pinsent!" His voice was a piercing scream. "Yes--yes," I answered. I was shaking like a reed. "Is there not a big jar of yellow spirit near the coffin somewhere?" "Yes."