Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1908-06-25

tired. Fabian Dare was very thank
! full
That first morning, when he awoke
at Oxford after night of dreams, and
saw something in his face which
made him smash the mirror, seemed
so unbearable that he only did not
| kill himself because he thought he
was going to die. There were mo-
ments when he believed himself dead,
and that the soul he had bartered was
in some torture chamber, already tast
ing the second death. He had read
of nothing in all Dante's Inferno which
compared with the poignant anguish
of that day
He could not help connecting his
terrible experiences with Abdul Won
| Tarsenheim though he was utterly in
| the dark as to what that sombre be-
ing had done to him. He read every
work he could get hold of which bore
| on the subject of possession by dew
| lis; there were many references to it
| in the Bible itself. He read mediaev-
(, al works, by monkish authors, about
men who had made bargains with
powers of darkness, and in them saw
a ray Of light, for even in such cases
the church had sometimes interviewed
to cheat the devil of his due
When he felt he could bear life no
more, and must kill himself, he was
confronted by such awful possibilities
that he knew he would rather face
any life than pass through the gates
of terror. But at last his tortures,
tired nerves refused to carry any more
messages, and he fell asleep. He had
not dared to write in his diary that
day. He knew he would have writ
ten words which, If read, would send
him to an insane asylum, If, indeed,
they did not whirl Linn away in a
brain-storm which would never end
Abdul Won Tarsenheim's devilish
cunning had made no mistake in Sc
men he had watched, in their places
of assembly, in Fabian Dare alone he
had seen the look of race, the sport
ing blood which will fight losing
fight, the finely-tempered bit Of steel
which can be bent in two and spring
back. With commoner clay to work
on the operation would have failed.
And it was to tremendous fight that
Fabian nerved himself. Temptations,
such as no man had known before, as
|
delusion that he had yielded to them
was often on the point Of conquering,
SO accusingly would his conscience
, ton he knew he would never resist.
mask he would kill him. He would
the operation, then he would kill him.
| an hoi he q
devil, who could not be killed Every
| 81 must not grow morbid, or l shall
lose the fight
The feeling that his personality did
not fit him irritated him, as clothes
they dislike irritate children. He
tons; he had much lost time to make
up His sense of humor, which went
far to save him in those days, was of
ten touched by the lectures he heard
on the nature of sin, and he used to
wonder what the harmless old lee
turers, who had spent their sheltered
say If they could look into his mind
recorded there-the echoes Of the life
/
imploring hands Of the young girls
offered up by that high priestess, the
Cobra, on the affairs of his carefully
encouraged depravity.
But he kept his knowledge to him
self, and was duly ordained a clergy
man.
Something in his face had caused
the Bishop to look at him curiously,
| o,1- ~ ! ~
vocation; if he felt strong enough.
And he had asked the Bishop wether
to have resisted such temptations as
had assailed no man before did not
make him more fit than the untried,
interrupted youths who had gone up
with him. And the Bishop looked ut
the intellectual, but, to his eyes, dissi-
pated, face, and thought to himself,
THAT young man will be either a dis
grace to the church, or great
preacher"
The Donoyle chaplaincy had been
founded by an ancestor of the family
two hundred years before, and the
maintenance Of chaplain to conduct
services in the chapel Of the castle
was an act of compulsory virtue en-
tailed by the ownership of the estates.
che post appealed to Fabian pecaus e
it was in Ireland, in the country, and
offered the only means of escape from
being curate. Also, it was not far
from town where there was large
church, in which he would occasion
ally be allowed to preach
Fabian's Irish blood revealed in the
Irish atmosphere for the first time
The scenery awoke his poets soul to
rapture, and helped him tortured
nerves to bear their burden.
Looking out of the window of his
study, in the little house in the park
he gazed on a range Of violet-hued
mountains, from whose lap fell a
wooded glen, river itself. disclosing
in its last bend a mountain torrent
overcoming the last obstacles of moss
grown rocks in an effort to reach the
great stream which would bear it tt
the sea.
What is this atmosphere" he con
fided to his diary, which seem:
scared to the south Of Ireland? It ii
not mist Of fog, nor haze of heat, bu
some strange breath of mystery