From two windows far up in the wall the moonlight streamed in, making
bars of light aslant the darkness.
Not a sound broke the stillness. Yet, to his sensitive nerves, the air
seemed tingling with sensation, stirring with unseen activities. Here the
spirit of the desert seemed more insistent in its piercing vitality,
because it was shut in by four stone walls.
Mechanically he took off his coat, and was about to fold and lay it on
the rug beside the bed, when something hard in one of the pockets knocked
against his knee. Searching, he found and drew forth a small bottle
which, for many a month past, had lain in the drawer of a table where he
had placed it on his return from the Soudan. It was an evil spirit which
sent this tiny phial to his hand at a moment when he had paid out of the
full treasury of his strength and will its accumulated deposit, leaving
him with a balance on which no heavy draft could be made. His pulse
quickened, then his body stiffened with the effort at self-control.
Who placed this evil elixir in his pocket? What any enemy of his work had
done was nothing to what might be achieved by the secret foe, who had
placed this anodyne within his reach at this the most critical moment of
his life.
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