Page:Taylor - In the Dwellings of the Wilderness.djvu/190

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At the Eleventh Hour


sane as you are, but I won't be very long. If you had felt it hanging to you, with its skinny arms wound round you, and you not able to see what it was—perhaps you'd be half-mad too."

"It couldn't have been the—the mummy, you know," Merritt said, as one trying to soothe a child to reason. "That's quite absurd. A mummy couldn't possibly be waltzing around like this. It's not in the nature of things——"

"Of course it's not in the nature of things!" Deane cut in savagely. "Don't I know that?" His voice wavered; became shriller. "I can't stand it any longer, Merritt. Call me any name you like—I deserve it. But I'm—I'm——" He laughed again, crazily, so that Merritt started apprehensively; and suddenly

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