Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1911-08-30

price one paid for invading for sin
gle hour the realm wherein dwell
the exultant gods. He realized, and
groaned. -:
He was quiescent but nearly awake
He now knew the meaning of the
desperate struggles, the incoherant
words, which had induced his awak
ening. Before him two men reeled
and grappled, covered with blood and
slime. Down from their rabid lips
the foam was trucking, and in their
eyes was the dread of insanity. They
clutched like maleficent monsters each
at the others throat, while the sounds
which came from their painting lips
were such as burst from the vibrant
jaws Of angered brutes.
Trendon averted his eyes and shud'
dered. The contrast between the
placid repose, serene and quiet as
body lulled into lehargy and freed
from all pain and discomfort is cap
able of knowing, and this unhallowed
strife this unnatural contention be.
tween two kindred beings shocked
him to the depths of his soul. Inert
but sentient, cognizant but power
less to spring into action, he lay gu
pine upon the couch, watching with
unwilling eyes and with unutterable
loathing and detestation the progress
of the struggle. Even as he gazed,
the corded hands of one fastened up
on the others throat, and compressed
with a strength which seemed to the
Mortified watcher barbarous and un-
human. Trendon saw the black viens
start out from the tortured flesh.
Against that dark ground the corded
hairy hands of the slayer stood in
horrible relief. Then a sudden
change took place. The entire body
of the under man wilted down; his
eyes, flaming with passion, seemed
strating from their sockets. Fail
flesh could i'll sustain that vise-like
grip and the inevitable suffocation.
When Trendon's eyes again turned
upon the combatants, one lay dead
upon the floor, while the other had
fallen, painting but victorious, nearby.
The rest was Blank to him. Once
again he relapsed into stupor, and
once again came the vast and eerie
procession of vissionlngs. Down a
broad river, placid and unrippling,
he was slowly floating, upheld by
some force which he knew not; here
and there strange faces which he
could not recognize beckoned to him
onward, and unfamiliar voices spoke
out his name in q dreadful monotone,
slowly and increasingly. Fear, fear
at the unseen and the unknown, fell
upon him, and he trembled. His quiv.
ering bdy streamed with perspiration
and his writhing hands clutched at
the nothingness of air..
Then out of chaos came a face.
Full of recrimination the dark eyes
which turned upon him, sorrow and
pity written upon the sweet, troubled
countenance which drew nearer and
nearer. He could have wept to see
the look of infinite pity with which
this unknown was regarding him.
Weep he did, great scalding tears,
which burst from some hidden fount
of griefs in the unfathomed depths
70 his soul. And as he wept, the un-
known mingled its tears with his.
He now saw the iineAments and
features more clearly. 1t was the
face of q woman, a beautiful woman,
with a rare regularity Of feature and
form, and radiating from her the sub
tie, indescribable fascination of rich
womanhood. White and trembling,
with dark, appealing eyes, she stood
before him. He was aware of her
presence but only the mute, suffer
ing face was acutely accented upon
his vision, framed in the vast mists
which swirled and eddied about him
1nvoluntarily his lips framed 3
word, and he spoke it aloud. Grace"
Strange, he thought, that recognition
had not come before. Again he re-
peated the name, and the wraithlike
face was suffused with a sad smile.
and once more his own name was
caught up by the unfamiliar voices, In
the same unvarying monotone, and
repeated over and over again.
He was mad with terror and shame.
Remorse, keen and memorable, such
as he had never known, bit deep
into the substance of his being. And
the eyes, now blazing with censure,
searched out and cohfounded the pitt
full excuses which he would have bah
bled forth in extenuation of his dere-
lict condition, before even his crop
ing brain had cast them plausfbly
into outline. Reproach, unspeakabie
and unparalleled, impinged upon him
from that pallid couutenance, now
adamantine in its expression of rigid
recrimination. And in the blaze Of
that living wrath his own fleeting
senses fell abased and numbed into
an abyss of shame such as no man
ever, before had tasted. It was the
agony of death in life.
At the moment when it seemed to
his overweight nerves that he could
stand its gaze no longer, the Face of
Reproach melted away; not by slow
and imperceptible gradations, but in
simultaneously, like the swift leap Of
lightning. One moment it was there,
a visible actually, the next it was
gone and only blank vacuity, lay
where 1t had been. That very instant
q wild and sinister change came over
him, q sudden reversal of feeling,