The Argosy, December 1905 — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE OUTCAST. He looked at her gravely and shook his head. “No. need help and advice. Let me try to explain this to you, if I can. You saw the struggle which was going on just before his paroxysm of physical force? In that one convulsive moment Lloyd was, I believe, transformed into a being upon whose present consciousness was thrust vividly, and for the first time, a realization of terrestrial things.” Leslie sat with clasped hands, gazing fixedly upon the young doctor as he spoke. Her bewildered and anxious expression exhibited how little of all this her perturbed mind had compre- hended. “My poor, poor child!” Burress ex- claimed, stroking the hand he still retained in his own palm. “It is ter- - tible to see our friend so; but I do not believe it is like insanity. This con- dition of mind will not last forever. I have not been a student of such phe- nomena; somebody with more knowl- edge than I possess can better advise us of his true condition. But I believe Seymour is, to all intent and purpose, a mere infant. “ And we must not waste time—not a moment. I will send for Munhall and for Professor Oglethorpe, who, I now remember, gave us several lectures upon this branch of medico-science. Be brave, Leslie. This will call for all your fortitude, I know. But the case is not . without hope. I say this with every honest intent and belief. Lloyd’s con- dition is serious—more serious than I had any reason to believe, but, please God, we will save him and bring him back to himself—and to you.” He finished brokenly, dropping her hand and turning quickly away. But_ Leslie caught at his sleeye for a mo- ment. gh “Oh, Ramon, I believe you—I trust in you. Remember—remember what he is to me.” Could he forget that? Burress stag- gered to his feet and for a moment wavered there unsteadily. Then the instinct of the physician ruled, and he controlled himself. He spoke sharply to the sobbing Betty. Twill not leave him, but I . 91 “Find somebody to take these tele- grams to the railway station,” he said. He glanced down again at the bound man, whose rolling eyes seemed com- passing the entire room and all the ob- jects in it in their terrified gaze. The bandages upon Lloyd’s head had become disarranged and he stooped over him to readjust them. 3 Lloyd shrank away, and again the strange cry—inarticulate and like that of a dumb person—burst from his throat. But Burress did not wince this time. He arranged the bandages and then trusted himself to look at Leslie once more. “He is all right. He cannot injure himself or be injured. I am going to the office to write the messages. I will be but a minute.” , He walked firmly from the room, crossed the hall, and shut himself into the office. There a sudden thought came to him, and he crumpled into the chair before Munhall’s desk as though stricken by a lightning bolt. The man whose first conscious word he had feared, the single eye-witness of © the tragedy in the forest, had lost all knowledge of the murder and of his own identity. +--+ CHAPTER VIII. THE OUTCAST OF THE UNIVERSE. THE chain of circumstances begin- ning at daybreak that morning, when Ramon Burress stood with the rifle in his hands on the ridge above the wood- road, had been forged so rapidly, link by link, that the man’s soul seemed now shackled to the wheel of torture without hope of release. He lay in his chair panting, utterly unnerved, the tags only of various thoughts clinging to his mind—that - mind which was on the verge of pros- tration. The strain was. becoming un- bearable. Dread of the gallows, and hope of escape, were the poles between which he had vibrated for hours. He had worked over Lloyd with the expectation COMMICOOOKS (C@