[Garble-users] I had a vision of the whole thing, especially of my t

[Stoyer <dre...@na...>]

As always calling me up, to go down-stairs and put them out, and I used
to wander all over the house, from attic to cellar, in my nighty, with a
lamp in one hand and a poker in the other, so that no burglar could have
missed me if he had wanted an easy mark. I always kept a lamp and a
poker handy." The stranger heaved a sigh as of fond reminiscence, and
looked round for the sympathy which in our company of bachelors he
failed of; even the sympathetic Rulledge failed of the necessary
experience to move him in compassionate response. "Well," the stranger
went on, a little damped perhaps by his failure, but supported
apparently by the interest of the fact in hand, "I had the smoking-room
to myself for a while, and then a fellow put his head in that I thought
I knew after I had thought I didn't know him. He dawned on me more and
more, and I had to acknowledge to myself, by and by, that it was a man
named Melford, whom I used to room with in Holworthy at Harvard; that
is, we had an apartment of two bedrooms and a study; and I suppose there
were never two fellows knew less of each other than we did at the end of
our four years together. I can't say what Melford knew of me, but the
most I knew of Melford was his particular brand of nightmare." Wanhope
gave the first sign of his interest in the matter. He took his cigar
from his lips, and softly emitted an "Ah!" Rulledge went further and
interrogatively repeated the word "Nightmare?" "Nightmare," the stranger
continued, firmly. "The curious thing about it was that I never exactly
knew the subject of his nightmare, and a more curious thing yet was
Melford himself never knew it, when I woke him up. He said he couldn't
make out anything but a kind of scraping in a door-lock. His theory was
that in his childhood it had been a much completer thing, but that the
circumstances had broken down in a sort of decadence, and now there was
nothing left of it but that scraping in the door-lock, like somebody
trying to turn a misfit key. I used to throw things at his door, and
once I tried a cold-water douche from the pitcher, when he was very hard
to waken; but that was rather brutal, and after a while I used to let
him roar himself awake;