He looked very pale, and said he could not go to dinner, but would lie on the couch in his den. Headaches were very frequent with him now, but this seemed worse than usual, and at an early hour he retired to his room, saying sleep would do him good, and he should be all right in the morning. He was all right, or seemed so, when he went down to breakfast, and to Louie’s question, “How did you sleep?” he replied: “Sleep? Why, there was not a single break from the time I put my head upon the pillow until I heard Jane open the blinds.” He did not explain that the “no break” was in wakefulness rather than in sleep, for he had not closed his eyes. Once, when he knew by his wife’s breathing that she was sleeping soundly, he arose, and going to the drawer where he kept his revolver, took it out and examined it carefully, holding it once to his head, and thinking how easy it would be to end everything in this world so far as he was concerned. Then there came before him the picture of a ghastly face he had once seen with a bullet-hole in the temple. He could not subject his wife and Louie to that horrid sight, and, returning the revolver to its place, he crept back to bed, shivering with cold, although the night was hot and sultry and a storm was coming up. He could hear the faint mutterings of thunder, and listened as it grew nearer and nearer, until the house shook with the terrific peals and every corner of the room was ablaze with electricity. “If it would only strike me!” he thought; and, going to the window, he watched the storm with a wish that the forked flame darting so viciously through the sky and seeming so near would take him with it—somewhere, he cared not where, so that he escaped what by some premonition he felt sure awaited him on the morrow. It was to-morrow now, for as the storm passed, the early summer morning broke in all its fresh loveliness, and he thought how beautiful were the grounds around his house, with the raindrops on flower and shrub and grass. When he built the house he had deeded it to his wife, and was glad he had done so. The law could not touch that—nor his horses, nor carriage, nor piano. All were his wife’s and Louie’s, unless they gave them up, as perhaps they would. Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing would matter much if things went wrong. It was Sunday, and in a few hours he would know what that day would bring him. He should go to church, of course, he said, and sit once more in his pew, for which he paid nearly as much as Judge White paid for his. He went to church behind his handsome bays, and never stood straighter, or read louder, or seemed more devout, or paid stricter attention to the sermon, although during the last of it his ears were strained to catch the first rumble of the train which was to bring him heaven or hell.