In the blaze of my anger I burst into the haunted room, thinking to stay the monster with the mere breath of my fury. But the cold blackness drove at me, and, for all my confidence, repelled me on the very threshold. I rushed away to the sluice, let it fall and shut off the race. Then I returned, breathless and panting, and looked at the open door. “You’re a very material devil,” I muttered; “a boy could silence your voice, for all its boastfulness.” As I spoke, again a little ugly secret laugh seemed to issue from it. Probably it was only an expiring screech of the axle, but it made my blood run tingling for all that. I mounted the stairs, determinedly crushing down the demon of fear that sought to unman me. “I have silenced its hateful voice,” I cried to myself, and whispered it again as I re-entered my father’s room. The old man lay silent and motionless as I seated myself once more by the window. Now the great blasts of tempest held monopoly of the ghostly house, unpierced of that other voice that had been like the grinding of the teeth of the storm. Presently I heard him stirring restlessly in his bed, and little fitful moans came from his lips. His uneasiness increased; he muttered and threw his arms constantly into fresh positions. Could it be that my untoward silencing of that voice that for such long years had been his counselor and familiar was making a vacancy in his soul into which deadlier demons were stealing? I moved to the bed and looked down upon him. As I did so the old tenderness reasserted itself and the mood of blackness passed away. If he had bequeathed to us a dark heritage of suffering, it is by suffering that the soul climbs from the bestial pitfalls of the senses. As I leaned down to cover his chest that his restless tossing had bared, a second tempest of hail swept furiously upon the town. I ran to the window and looked out. In the flashing radiance of the lamp that stood upon the bridge opposite--for night was now settled upon the city--I saw the tumult of white beat upon the stones and rebound from them and thrash all the road, as it were, with froth. Suddenly a figure started up in the midst of the flickering curtain of ice. It was there in a moment--waving its wild arms--wringing its hands--shrieking, I could have fancied, though no sound came to me. But, in the wonder and instant of its rising, I knew it to be Duke’s. Hardly had I mastered the first shock of surprise when there came the sound of a great cry behind me. I turned, and there was my father sitting up in bed, and his face was ghastly. “The wheel!” he shrieked, in a suffocating voice; “the wheel! I’m under it!” And fell back upon his pillow. CHAPTER LI. A MEETING ON THE BRIDGE.