The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1911-03-15
ghe Kingdom Of
Slender 3words
Copyright, Bobbs-Merrill Company

copyright, Bobbs-Merrill Company. }
With writing oath the expert
wrenched at the clutch.
go On!" he said savagely. How
dare you stop without my orders?"
The Japanese made no reply, but
the arms that braced the wheel were
rigid as steel.
Bersonin sank back in his seat, his
massive frame quivering, his eyes gilt
tering like flakes Of mica. But for
this. in ten minutes he would have
been clear of the city, flying along
the Chiba road! What if he were de.
tanned? He felt strange, chilly tend.
rils plucking at his flesh, and hun
dred fiery needles seemed pricking
through his brain.
Peering over his shoulder, with his
horrible fear on him, he saw the
crowd part to admit woman who,
quite silently, but with haste, came
forward and knelt on the ground.
There was no movement from the
crowd, In hush like that of death,
the mother rose with Ishikichi in her
arms. The white, still face looked
pitifully small. One clog swayed from
it's thong between the bare toes. The
faded kimono was stained with red.
She spoke no word. There was no
tear on her face. But in the dreadful
silence, she turned slowly with her
burden and looked steadily at the
twitching face in the car-looked and
looked. The chauffeur swung himself
from the seat into the crowd.
An insane desire had been creeping
stealthily on Bersonin. He had felt
it coming when he faced the truth in
Phil's cringing admission. The hor-
rible compulsion to laughter was on
him. The damnable man hysteria had
him by the throat. He fought it des-
perately, as one fights wild beast in
the dark.
In vain.
His jaws opened. He laughed-a
dreadful peal of merriment that
echoed up and down the latticed street
and as he laughed, he knew that he
raised peril nearer, more fearful
even than that from which he had
been flying.
There was an instant's shocked
calm, like the silence which follows
the distant squirt of blue flame from
the muzzle of Krupp gun. Then like
it's answering detonation-in such a
menacing roar as might arise from
the brink of an inferno-the silence of
the quiet street burst into awful
sound.
Ten minutes later but a single light
ed shoji glimmered on the darkened
thoroughfare. The roadway was de-
serted save for soldierly figure in
policeman's uniform who stood
thoughtfully looking at huddle in the
dim roadway mixture OF wrenched
and battered iron and glass, in the
midst of which lay an inert, shapeless
something that might have been a
bundle of old clothes fallen from a
scavenger's' cart.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Voice in the Dark.
Barbara rested i'll in her cabin bed
that night. Confused dreams troubled
her, mingling familiar thoughts in ka
leidoscopic confusion, dragging her
from one tangle to another in weary
ing rapidity against which she strug-
gled in vain. One thing ran through
them all-the gold lacquer Buddha
that had stood OH the Sendai chest
in her bedroom at the embassy; only
it seemed to be also that lost image
before which she had used to sit as
a child
She had no feeling of awakening,
but all at once the visions were gone
and she lay open-eyed, swinging to
the movement of the sea, feeling the
night to be very long. There came
over her a creeping oppression-a
sense of terror of the night, of it's hid
den mysteries and occult forces. The