As Guy marshalled his figures and his facts, asked penetrating questions, and prepared the statement to which Mrs Waynflete must at all costs be made to hearken, Cooper, who had a hard enough head of his own, silently gave in and yielded his whole allegiance. Only when the interview was over, he said, pleadingly-- "You'll be gentle, Mr Guy? For it don't come easy to old folks to turn their minds upside down. It is easy for a young lad like you to act." "Think so?" said Guy, with a queer, sad look. "Well, I'll do what I can." He was much more tired than was good for him, as he came in to the study, in the rapidly increasing darkness of the autumn afternoon. Cuthbert was not there, and all his sense of courage and energy failed him; for, the more resolutely a nervous strain is encountered, the less power of resistance is left. He grew drowsy in the dusk, then roused up suddenly to the agony of panic-fear, to the intolerable sense of his enemy within him. He might cover eyes and ears, but it entered by no such avenues--anything to drown--to bury it. There was whisky in the cupboard. He staggered to his feet, and the next moment Cuthbert's hand was on his shoulder. "Steady, my boy, steady. What is it? Lie down again. I am here; you'll be better in a minute." Guy clung to the hand of flesh and blood as if he had been drowning. He hid his face, not hearing one word that Cuthbert said. He was not merely suffering terror, but struggling, fighting to free himself, to escape, to _separate_ himself from the influence that seemed to be upon him, resisting and opposing it with all his strength. "Oh, help--help!" he gasped. "Yes--yes, my dear boy. Lie still. It will pass off directly." And very soon, in two or three minutes, as Cuthbert counted time, the agony seemed to cease, and Guy dropped back, deadly faint, but with closed eyes and smooth brow. Cuthbert brought him, as soon as he let go his desperate hold, some of the remedy provided by the doctor, and tended him with a care and kindness altogether new to him. "It's _much_ better with you here," said Guy, presently, as if half-surprised. "Of course it is. You were so tired; no wonder a bad dream upset you." Guy lifted his heavy eyes for a moment, and looked at him. "A _very_ bad dream," he said drily. "It's over now." "Tell me what it was?" "He came, that's all. No, I can't tell you. You don't understand; but you help." Cuthbert did not think him fit for an argument, and sat by him in silence. He felt that the sight of Guy's agony had tried his own nerves somewhat. It was an odd turn of fate, he thought, that brought a quiet, everyday person like himself, to whom no great heights or depths, either of character or of fortune, were likely to come, who held steady, unexciting opinions, and expected no revelations about anything, to be guide, philosopher, and friend, to this strange being, for whom the balance swung with such frightful oscillations.