The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1890-06-11


tract your eyes and enchain your mental
faculties However, you turned imme-
diately and saw him standing there
smiling He had a message for you
Yet the weird message, the certainty of
the approach of human being, who
sent that? Nay. then, can not tell you
this
twas the same feeling that had rushed
upon me like an avalanche as | woke.
1t was midnight and there was man
in the room.
Past that hour, was it not? Let me
consider, for the question of time may
have peculiar significance. 1t was 10
o'clock when | retired. At 1890 the
policeman on the beat had passed. His
club had rung sullenly on the stone
coping, and recoliect picturing him to
myself as he passed-a sturdy, alert blue
coat, with pistol and staff; peering into
the alleys; looking curiously at the oc-
casional night lights that burned here
and there with a dim and uncanny flare;
whistling not infrequently; yawning;
looking up at the stars, and at intervals
communing with himself. It all seemed
quite ludicrous, remember, as l lay
there, but the matter is hideously seri-
GUS now. What would | not give to
hear his ''locust" spurn the dull pave
ment with his sonorous. challenging rap.
There is something menacing in that
sound at night to the wrong doer 1t
says authoritatively: ''Who goes there?"
If it is past midnight the patrolman
will come again in an hour or so. Death
o my life! Sixty minutes? Sixty min
utes? Can contain my patience that
long, staring into the muf1ed darkness?
And. indeed, what will this devil be do
ing meanwhile-this man in the room?
No! the plan of waiting for the officer
was not feasible What if he did come
by? Would not the burglar or assassin
defer his operation until the coast was
clear? Undoubtedly. Let me reason
this problem out carefully even coldly.
1t is, let us say, Il matter of life or death.
In the first place. had been foolish
enough to lay my revolver on the dresser,
which was twenty feet from the bed.
That could only be gained by scramble
truder had taken the weapon from its
resting place and stood doubly armed,
watching me as q cat would watch a
mouse?
cannot bring myself to believe that
this would be a sensible move. This di-
lemma must be faced and graprled with
in wise as we'll as a courageous man
ner. This wretch in my room-his life
is not worth as much to himself, to the
world or to humanity as mine. He has
the advantage of weapons; he is ON the
qui vive: he knows that | am awake as
surely as | know that he is in my bed
chamber
The stertorOus putting Of a locomotive
sounds far away. Those men on that
engine now-they are covered with CRIME
and SCOT; they are riskil.s their lives
daily and nightly. But they are toilers.
Wives and children they have, and with
them the honor of women and the life of
man is safe. If were with them now
out on the dreary, drizzling flats, with
the moonlight struggling down on the
pools by the track, should certainly be
safe. Here | am surely in danger.
A large wardrobe in the room gives
out cracking sound, as if the man had
shifted his weight somewhere and the
change had caused the boards in the
wardrobe to expand Or contract. In the
sitting room all at once some fragments
of anthracite drop noisily down the