Those six years have passed and more too; but no word from Dunlevy. Nor have I been able to gather any information as to his present whereabouts. I hesitated about opening his box, but still he had empowered me to do so. I found the odd looking writing book in brown sheepskin which I had seen open on his centre table on the evening long ago when I found him drinking his sangaree. The pages were covered with his nervous, irregular handwriting. I started to read, and I read until the oil ran low in my lamp, until the birds began their twittering in the dawn of the coming day, until I had finished the last sentence in the book. I should advise no one to attempt a similar feat, if he hopes to obtain any satisfaction from these fragmentary writings. I read them as I did, not because I found them captivating or thrilling, but because I wondered what it all meant. I knew no more than before what was the man’s story or what had become of him. Here was a mass of disconnected dreams, allegorical visions, a curious blending of fact, fiction and fancy--or--Heaven forbid--did the man actually feel what he says and do as he writes he did? Was he simply a literary experimenter? I think not. In reading Dunlevy it is impossible to feel at any given moment that you can take hold of him. There is a curious illusive frankness in his style which gives the effect of making you believe that he is about to open his heart, and then, deftly switching the subject in such a way as to leave the impression that he has told what he intended to and yet left nothing to which he could be held. He is like a magician in that he is always supersensitive about being watched, and by turning back his sleeves to invite confidence, he finally leaves the stage without emptying his pockets. As a reader, I felt that in spite of the commonness of the first personal pronoun, it was the letter and not the self. Yet this does not seem to be an intentional effect on the part of Dunlevy, for even when he expresses affection he is still reserved and abstract. In fine, the result is a peculiar power of being intangible. I can’t tell for the life of me if his facts are also a part of his dreams. And yet none of them last in space for more than a few pages of his manuscript. Only one fact seems to me certain, both from the internal and the external evidence. It is that this strange mixture of writings was composed and written down at the various times when Dunlevy was either partly or wholly under the influence of that strong liquor of his. Its very influence over him appears to have interested him, and here and there he jots down the most minute sensations, as if he were studying its effects introspectively.