.
I awoke with a start, to see standing over against me in the gloom of the doorway, not the figure of my wife come from the company of the dead with warning on her lips, but that of Stephen Strong.

Yes, it was he, for the light of the candle that I had lit when I went to seek the drug fell full upon his pale face and large bald head.
"Hullo, doctor," he said in his harsh but not unkindly voice, "having a nip and a nap, eh?
What's your tipple?
Hollands it looks, but it smells more like peach brandy.

May I taste it?
I'm a judge of hollands," and he lifted the glass of prussic acid and water from the table.
In an instant my dazed faculties were awake, and with a swift motion I had knocked the glass from his hand, so that it fell upon the floor and was shattered.
"Ah!" he said, "I _thought_ so.

And now, young man, perhaps you will tell me why you were playing a trick like that ?" "Why ?" I answered bitterly.

"Because my wife is dead; because my name is disgraced; because my career is ruined; because they have commenced a new action against me, and, if I live, I must become a bankrupt----" "And you thought that you could make all these things better by killing yourself.