For a moment, he stood listening. Then, with the bottle hidden
under his coat, he stole softly from the room.
A few minutes later, the man stood out there in the night, on the bank
of the river. Behind him the outlines of the scattered houses that made
the little town were lost against the dusk of the hillside. From the
ghostly tree-shadows that marked the opposite bank, the solemn hills
rose out of the deeper darkness of the lowlands that edged the stream
in sombre mystery. There was no break in the heavy clouds to permit the
gleam of a friendly star. There was no sound save the soft swish of the
water against the bank where he stood, the chirping of a bird in the
near-by willows, and the occasional splash of a leaping fish or water
animal. But to the man there was a feeling of sound. To the lonely human
wreck standing there in the darkness, the river called--called with
fearful, insistent power.
From under the black wall of the night the dreadful flood swept out of
the Somewhere of its beginning. Past the man the river poured its mighty
strength with resistless, smoothly flowing, terrible force. Into the
darkness it swept on its awful way to the Nowhere of its ending. For
uncounted ages, the river had poured itself thus between those walls of
hills. For untold ages to come, until the end of time itself, the stream
would continue to pour its strength past that spot where the man stood.
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