As it flared, I saw what—in some way that I shall never understand—I had been expecting to see. It was this that had sent me back to his side again and again; this, maybe, that had brought Barbara with her car; this, for all I know, that appeared to her in the semblance of black wings beating a prophetic message over the house. O’Rane’s hands were cold as ice; the back of his head was brutally smashed. His black eyes stared up to heaven in mild perplexity at the insoluble enigma of death and the eternal paradox of life. He looked a boy of twenty. I covered his face and mounted guard over my last and best friend. . . . WALTHAM ST. LAWRENCE, Berkshire, 1923. THE END TRANSCRIBER NOTES Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed. Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur. Page numbers have been removed due to a non-page layout.