CHAPTER IV.
(I) Frank awoke with a start and opened his eyes.
But it was still dark and he could see nothing.

So he turned over on the other side and tried to go to sleep.
The three of them had come to this little town last night after two or three days' regular employment; they had sufficient money between them; they had found a quite tolerable lodging; they had their programme, such as it was, for the next day or so; and--by the standard to which he had learned to adjust himself--there was no sort of palpable cause for the horror that presently fell on him.

I can only conjecture that the origin lay within, not without, his personality.
The trouble began with the consciousness that on the one side he was really tired, and on the other that he could not sleep and, to clinch it, the knowledge that a twenty-mile walk lay before him.

He began to tell himself that sleep was merely a question of will--of will deliberately relaxing attention.

He rearranged his position a little; shifted his feet, fitted himself a little more closely into the outlines of the bed, thrust one hand under the pillow and bade himself let go.
Then the procession of thoughts began as orderly as if by signal.
He found himself presently, after enumerating all the minor physical points of discomfort--the soreness of his feet, the knobbiness of the bed, the stuffiness of the room in which the three were sleeping, the sound of the Major's slow snoring--beginning to consider the wisdom of the whole affair.