had made dramatic. There had been a collapse of several old brick

buildings during a raid in which he had shared, and something about the

wholesale loss of life, both of prisoners and of his companions, had

peculiarly appalled him. As a result, he had acquired an acute and

anomalous horror of any buildings even remotely suggesting the ones which

had fallen in, so that in the end mental specialists forbade him the sight

of such things for an indefinite period. A police surgeon with relatives

in Chepachet had put forward that quaint hamlet of wooden colonial houses

as an ideal spot for the psychological convalescence; and thither the

sufferer had gone, promising never to venture among the brick-lined

streets of larger villages till duly advised by the Woonsocket specialist

with whom he was put in touch. This walk to Pascoag for magazines had been

a mistake, and the patient had paid in fright, bruises, and humiliation

for his disobedience.

So much the gossips of Chepachet and Pascoag knew; and so much, also, the

most learned specialists believed. But Malone had at first told the

specialists much more, ceasing only when he saw that utter incredulity was

his portion. Thereafter he held his peace, protesting not at all when it

was generally agreed that the collapse of certain squalid brick houses in

the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, and the consequent death of many brave

officers, had unseated his nervous equilibrium. He had worked too hard,

all said, it trying to clean up those nests of disorder and violence;