Sturk’s brain was in a hubbub.  He had fifty plans, all jostling and clamouring together, like a nursery of unruly imps—­’Take me’—­’No, take me’—­’No, me!’ He had been dreaming like mad, and his sensorium was still all alive with the images of fifty phantasmagoria, filled up by imagination and conjecture, and a strange, painfully-sharp remembrance of things past—­all whirling in a carnival of roystering but dismal riot—­masks and dice, laughter, maledictions, and drumming, fair ladies, tipsy youths, mountebanks, and assassins:  tinkling serenades, the fatal clang and rattle of the dice-box, and long drawn, distant screams.

There was no more use in Sturk’s endeavours to reduce all this to order, than in reading the Riot Act to a Walpurgis gathering.  So he sat muttering unconscious ejaculations, and looking down, as it were, from his balcony, waiting for the uproar to abate; and when the air did clear and cool a little, there was just one face that remained impassive, and serenely winked before his eyes.

When things arrived at this stage, and he had gathered his recollections about him, and found himself capable of thinking, being a man of action, up he bounced and struck a light, vaulted into his breeches, hauled on his stockings, hustled himself into his roquelaure, and, candle in hand, in slippered feet, glided, like a ghost, down stairs to the back drawing-room, which, as we know, was his study.

The night was serene and breathless.  The sky had cleared, and the moonlight slept mistily on the soft slopes of the park.  The landscape was a febrifuge, and cooled and quieted his brain as he stood before it at his open window, in solitary meditation.  It was not till his slowly wandering eye lighted on the churchyard, with a sort of slight shock, that he again bestirred himself.

There it lay, with its white tombstones and its shadows spread under him, seeming to say—­’Ay, here I am; the narrow goal of all your plans.  Not one of the glimmering memorials you see that does not cover what once was a living world of long-headed schemes, chequered remembrances, and well-kept secrets.  Here lie your brother plotters, all in bond, only some certain inches below; with their legs straight and their arms by their sides, as when grim Captain DEATH called the stern word “attention!” with their sightless faces and unthinking foreheads turned up to the moon.  Dr. Sturk, there are lots of places for you to choose among—­suit yourself—­here—­or here—­or maybe here.’

And so Sturk closed the window and remembered his dream, and looked out stealthily but sternly from the door, which was ajar, and shut it sharply, and with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, took a quick turn to the window; his soul had got into harness again, and he was busy thinking.  Then he snuffed the candle, and then quickened his invention by another brisk turn; and then he opened his desk, and sat down to write a note.