Toppleton readily acquiesced. His other sensations had been so acute since his awakening, that he did not realize until the fiend spoke of the chill in the atmosphere that he was himself cold to the very marrow of his bones; that his blood seemed hardly to run in his veins, so congealed had it become. He followed the fiend, who led the way from Toppleton"s room to Barncastle"s own quarters, where a log fire blazed fiercely on the hearth. There was no other light than that of the fire in the room, and Hopkins was glad of it, his eyes were too weary for any illumination save the one which made the darkness in which he now sat even blacker than was natural.
"Lie down there on my bed, Toppleton," said the fiend. "Lie down and listen to me."
Toppleton obeyed, and gladly.
"You are a sick man," began the fiend, "though you may not know it. You have no more than an even chance of living beyond this night. If you do live until to-morrow morning I see no reason why you should not continue to do so for many years to come; in fact I confidently antic.i.p.ate that such will be the case, but you have got to be careful."
"If you were not one of the supernatural element, Mr. Greene," said Toppleton, nervously tapping his fingers together, "I should be inclined to laugh at your notions respecting my health. A man of my habits and physique doesn"t go to pieces after a single late supper, to be brought up standing at the doors of death uncertain as to whether he will be invited in or requested to move on, all in a single night."
"For an acute man you are an obtuse sort of a person," returned the fiend, gravely. "I do not mean that you are in immediate danger of physical collapse, though that will come shortly unless you take care of yourself. It is a worse than physical death that I refer to. You are on the verge of intellectual death, Toppleton. You need twenty-four hours of wakefulness to put you in an insane asylum, an incurable, hopelessly mad for the balance of your days. You remarked a moment since that you were conscious of your head. By that you meant that you felt the weight of it, and it is a leaden weight unless my eyes deceive me. I have experienced it, and I know what it means."
Hopkins" face blanched as the fiend spoke. It was too easy for him to believe all that had been said; and why should it not be so, he asked himself. Here was a case of mortal arrayed in combat against a supernatural being, and in the nature of things it was a contest of the intellectuals and not one of the sort in which Toppleton"s training would have made him an easy victor. In a bout at arms Barncastle would have been a prey to Toppleton with scarce an effort on the American"s part, but mind for mind, the young lawyer was fighting against terrible odds. He had proven to a very considerable extent a winner, and yet his victory was quite as hollow as the victory of a trotting horse who has won only the preliminary heats and still has the final test to undergo; but to win even the trial heat was a great thing, and that his mind should be well-nigh used up was to have been expected. Realizing this, and realizing also that it was his defeated adversary who was advising him as to what was necessary to be done for the preservation of his sanity, he was quite overcome. He nearly fainted, in fact he would have done so had not the fiend seeing his condition applied restoratives to his head and feet, and poured between his open lips a concoction which made every drop of blood in his body glow as with health, which imparted strength to his weary limbs, and which seemed to clear his aching head with its magical potence.
"You have had a narrow escape, my dear fellow," said the fiend, as Hopkins revived. "If I hadn"t saved you, you would have stepped over the line."
"You--are--very--very kind," murmured Hopkins, raising himself on his elbow and then dropping wearily back into the pillows again. "You place me under very deep obli--"
"Don"t speak of that," said the fiend with a smile. "The obligation you have placed me under is still greater. But now, Toppleton, you must sleep, or you will be beyond all hope to-morrow."
"I will," said Toppleton, faintly, and then he closed his eyes and consciousness departed from him.
The fiend regarded him for a moment and turned away with a sigh.
"If I had had the good fortune to operate on you instead of upon Chatford," he said, "well, there"d have been a president of the United States in your family by this time, or, better still, a railway king with an amount of brains equal to the possessions of the best of them.
Oh, well! he wasn"t to be had, and I haven"t done badly with Chatford."
With which reflection the fiend pa.s.sed from the room, and left Toppleton breathing heavily in sleep.
When next Toppleton opened his eyes consciously to himself, he was lying on a great oak bed with a tapestry canopy over his head. The sun was streaming in through the broad mullioned windows. The world without was white with snow, the tall evergreens down by the now ice-covered Barbundle presenting the only vestige of green in sight.
"Ah!" he sighed, as he looked wearily out of the window. "We shall have a white Christmas after all, but," he added, gazing about him, "how the d.i.c.kens did I ever come to be here, I wonder? In Barncastle"s own room--oh, yes, I remember. I fell asleep here last night and I suppose he has--h.e.l.lo!--Who"s that?"
The last words were addressed to whomsoever it was that entered the room at the moment, for the door had opened and closed softly.
"It is I," came a soft, sweet voice, and before Hopkins had time to place it, Lady Alice entered the room.
"Good morning!" said Toppleton, slightly embarra.s.sed at the unexpected appearance of his hostess.
"Good morning!" she replied, coming to his side and stroking his forehead lightly. "And I can say with all my heart, after these awful days of suspense, that it is a good morning. You have been very ill."
"Oh, it was nothing," said Hopkins, endeavouring to conceal his surprise at the way things were going. "Only a little headache and rackety feeling generally. It will pa.s.s off. Barncastle was very good to let me have his quarters."
Lady Alice"s face took on a troubled look.
"How beautiful it is out," said Toppleton, turning his eyes toward the snow-clad landscape again. "I was just thinking that we should have a white Christmas after all."
"Why, my dear, Christmas is over by two weeks. You have been ill here for three weeks yesterday."
"What?" cried Toppleton. "I?"
"Why, certainly," said Lady Alice. "Of course, you didn"t know it, but it is so. You haven"t had a lucid moment in all that time."
A sudden fear clutched at Toppleton"s heart.
"But--but tell me, have I--what do--what have the doctors said--that I had lost my mind, was in danger of a living death; that--"
"Don"t get so excited," returned Lady Alice, softly, still retaining the look of anxiety on her face. "Here, read this. It is a letter from your Rocky Mountain friend, I think, and I fancy it will amuse you. It has only just come."
"My Rocky Mountain friend!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hopkins under his breath. "What devilish complication does this mean, I wonder?"
"Shall I open it for you?" asked Lady Alice.
"Yes," said Hopkins mechanically; "I"ll be very much obliged to you if you will do so. Thank you," he added, staring wildly at the foot of the bed as the young woman opened and handed him the letter.
"While you are reading it," said she, "I"ll run downstairs a moment, and tell Parker to prepare you a little breakfast."
"You are very kind," said Toppleton, faintly; and then as Lady Alice went softly from the room he began to read the letter. ""17, The Temple, London, January 2nd. My dear Barncastle--" Why, she must have made a mistake," he said; "this is for Barn--by Jove! it"s in my handwriting, and signed--Hopkins--Top--ple--ton. What in the name of Heav--"
Here he ceased his soliloquizing and began to read the letter which was as follows:--
"MY DEAR BARNCASTLE,--I understood your game from the beginning. It was audacious, but unavailing, as the attack of a finite upon an infinite mind must always be. I led you on to your own undoing if you so regard it. I removed gladly every obstacle from your path, and let you think in your own conceit that you were an easy victor in the fight. By so doing I put your caution asleep, and when your caution slept you became a victim to my ambition just as did Chatford, with this exception, that I have left you in a position to enjoy life, while circ.u.mstances made it necessary for me to place him in perpetual exile. Perhaps when you get this letter and realize what I have done, you will curse me. Do not do so. You are not a loser in the premises. You have gained the Burningford estates, you have gained the enjoyment of the honours which I have won, at the expense of the difference of strength between the body I have put off and this one of yours which I now occupy.
The latter, let me say to you, is a superb specimen, the ideal habitation for a soul like mine. Aided by it a still greater future than the one, to be paradoxical, I have left behind me, will be mine, and not mine only, but yours also, since it is under your name that my future greatness is to be achieved. I repeat, do not curse me, for in cursing me you but curse yourself, and when you get over the first sensation of horror at the changes I have wrought in our respective destinies, and can think upon it calmly and dispa.s.sionately, you will not find me so much to blame. Nor are you to be deprived of any of your years by my act. The infusion of a younger spirit into the corse of Barncastle will make it young again, and gradually you will recover the physical ground you now seem to have lost.
"I sail for New York on the _City of Paris_ to-morrow, and you may rest a.s.sured that the name that now flies at the mast-head in the firm of Toppleton, Morley, Bronson, Mawson, Perkins, Harkins, Smithers and Hicks will no longer be a mere figurehead, a minimum among maxima; it will become once more what it used to be, a tower of strength in the legal profession, and, permit me to say, a tower of such height that beside it the famous structure erected by your ill.u.s.trious father will become but as an ant hill to the pyramid of Cheops.
"Good-bye, Barncastle, for that is now your name.
In the years to come we may meet again, and when we do, may it be in friendship, for as Barncastle I loved myself, and as Toppleton I love you. May you go and do likewise, and above all, give up masquerading as a Broncho poet, and get down to the business for which you were fitted by nature, if not by birth: that of a member of the n.o.blest aristocracy in the world; that of a peer of the British realm.
"Faithfully yours, "HOPKINS TOPPLETON, _alias_ BARNCASTLE, "_Ne_ CALDERWOOD.
"P.S.--I have had an interview with the original Chatford, and have informed him that it is impossible for him to return to his former corporeal state, because Barncastle no longer knows the formula by which the re-entrance can be effected, which is true. He believes it, and has gone off into s.p.a.ce with his whistle and his sigh."
For a moment Toppleton was overcome. This unexpected denouement was almost too much for him, but the indignation that surged up in his breast gave him strength to withstand the shock; and then, singular to relate, he laughed.
"To think that I should be born a Yankee and at my time of life become a peer surrounded by everything that wealth can procure, and loaded down with every honour that man can devise; oh, nonsense! it"s all a joke, and a good one. Barncastle saw through my trick, and is paying me back in my own coin."
Here Hopkins laughed till the room echoed with his mirth, and as his laugh died away the door opened and the heiress of Burningford entered.
"Why, father!" she cried, exultantly, "do you feel as well--"
At the word "father," Hopkins" heart gave a great throb.
"My dear," he said in a moment, "I have been ill you say for three weeks, and with no lucid intervals?"
"Yes."
"And my hallucination was what?"