“O proper stuff!  This is the very painting of your fear:  This”——­

“Triple fool! be silent!” cried Dr. Thorne again, springing to his feet,—­while we, spell-bound, sat still and waited for the end.  “Cease! do you not see?” cried he, seizing Mac.

But there stood Clarian yet, that red light upon his cheek and brow, that fixed stare of a real, unpainted horror in his speechless face, that long finger still pointing and trembling not,—­there he stood, fixed, while one might count ten.  Then over his blue lips, like a ghost from its tomb, stole a low and hissing whisper, that curdled our blood, and peopled all the room with dreadful things,—­a low whisper that said,—­

“Prithee, see there! behold! it comes! it comes!” Now he beckoned in the air, and called with a shuddering, smothered shriek,—­“Come!  I did it! come!  Ha!” yelled he, plucking the spell from his limbs like a garment, and springing madly forward towards the door,—­“Ha! touch me not!  Off, I say, off!” He paused, gazed wildly round, flung his hand to his brow, and, while his eyes rolled till nothing but their whites were seen, while the purple veins swelled like mole-tracks in his forehead, and a bubbling froth began to gather about his lips, he tossed his arms in the air, gave shrieking utterance to the cry,—­“O Christ! it is gone! it is gone!” and fell to the floor with a bound.

We sprang to him,—­Thorne first of any.

“This is my place, gentlemen,” said he, in quick, nervous tones.  Then, taking the prostrate child into his arms, he carried him to his bed, laid him down, felt his pulse, and placed his head in Mac’s arms.  Returning then, he veiled the picture, flung the salver out of the window, and dismissed the huddled throng of frightened students, warning them to be silent as to the night’s events.  “Very likely Clarian will never see to-morrow; so be careful, lest you soil his memory.”

“What does it mean, Thorne?” asked Mac, as the Doctor and I came again to the bedside.  “It is nothing more than an overdose of cannabis or opium upon an excited nervous system, is it?”

Thorne looked at the delicate-limbed child who lay there in Mac’s strong arms, wiped away the gathering froth from the lips, replaced the feebly quivering limbs, and, as he lingered over the pulse, replied,—­

“He has been taking hashish?”

“He has taken it,—­I do not say he is under its influence now.”

“No,—­he has not touched any stimulant.  This is much worse than that,—­this means epilepsy, Mac, and we may have to choose between death and idiocy.”

He was still examining the boy, and showing Mac how to hold him most comfortably.

“If I could only get at the causes of this attack,—­those, I mean, which lie deeper than the mere physical disorder,—­if I could only find out what it is he has been doing,—­and I could, easily, were I not afraid of directing suspicion towards him, or bringing about some unfortunate embarrassment”—­