Then, in some way, he knew that he was no longer master; from that hour he was the captive. There was a brief, and I suppose, a bitter struggle. The man could no longer control that winged Hunger. It broke the cords that held it down, the two bat-like wings opened wide, and when they came together they enclosed the still struggling man. In that last battle for life the little boat was overturned. The two went down under the yellow water, and their descent, we'll say, was marked by nothing more than a line of bubbles. But even in death the wings of that man-eating creature did not draw back from the bones of its victim. Locked together, the two of them were washed down to the sea. The current carried them up on a sand-bar, and there they rested. There they found them, years afterward, I suppose it was, and when men tried to piece together what was left of the strange bones they failed. It was, as you know, not altogether either man or vampire." There was a moment of unbroken silence. "That's all," said the older man, getting up. It was Hartley who spoke next. "What the devil are you driving at, anyway?" CHAPTER XXII THE BLOT ON THE 'SCUTCHEON Then plant, by the right of the mind, By the power of the tome and scroll, Plant your heel on their neck, and grind, Or their millions will grind your soul. JOHN HARTLEY, "The Siren City." Oh, these towering aspirations--without a fire-escape of humor to all their sky-scrapers of endeavor!--"The Silver Poppy." Cordelia, during a troubled night, dreamed that she had been captured by Indians and bound on two huge wild horses. These horses, she saw to her horror, refused to gallop off in line, and were slowly pulling her tortured body to pieces. But failing in this, she thought her Indians had retaken her and burned her at the stake, and that there was but one oil in all the wide world that could soothe the stinging agony that consumed her. She was seeking, naked, frenzied, alone, for this unfound ointment, when she suddenly wakened and found the autumn sun shining wholesomely on the clean high chimneys and housetops of the city. Cordelia looked on that dream as an omen, and thinking it over, she was startled by it out of a mood of indecision and inactivity which for days had been hanging over her. Some vague sense of impending evil benumbed her. Sitting amid the torn and scattered feathers of a thousand disconsolate Cupids, she had asked herself again and again if the game was worth the candle, if the crown was worth the sweat and tears.