"You have done nothing, but you are going to do something?
What will it be?
What ?" And then as he discerned the other's surprise, and read suspicion in his eyes, he curbed himself, lowered his tone, and with an effort was himself.

"Young man," he said, wiping his brow, "I am still ridden--by what happened last night.

I have lain, since we parted, under an overwhelming sense of the presence of evil.

Of evil," he repeated, still speaking a little wildly, "such as this God-fearing town should not know even by repute! You think me over-anxious?
But I have felt the hot blast of the furnace on my cheek, my head bears even now the smell of the burning.

Hell gapes near us!" He was beginning to tremble afresh, partly with impatience of this parleying, partly with anxiety to pluck from the other his answer.
The glitter was returning to his eyes.