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To-day's Short Story. I

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To-day's Short Story. I A SOUL ADRIFT. I I was alone at midnight pacing the upper deck of the steamship Cleopatra. Suddenly I started from my reverie, with a strange feeling that someone was standing behind me, and on turning round I saw the figure of a man on the opposite side of the deck. "Who is that?" I called out. The man, who was standing in the shadow of the mizzen mast, moved slightly, but did not speak, amd I was about to repeat my ques- tion when the- swing of the ship brought him into the full glare of the moon, and to my lffi- utterable astonishment I recognised the features of an old friend and former brother officer, Conway, who, when I last heard from him, was in South Africa. "Why, Conway old fellow," I exclaimed, going toward him and extending my hand, "whre on earth did you spring from? You are abut the last person I should have expected I stopped abruptly, for there ¡ was something about nim so strange and weird that I felt a cold shiver run down my back. He didn't look real. "Before you come near me," he said, and his voice, though otherwise familiar, sounded weak and far away, "I want to tell you something about myself. But are we secure from interruption?'' "Quite," I replied, "for at least two hours, but come aft here and sit down." He glided noiselessly towards me, and again I felt a cold tremor run through me, for his footsteps made no sound, and his appearance was misty and unsubstantial. He remained standing near the binnacle, and I aat down on the stern gratings. Old fellow," I said, after a. pause, you will forgive me for asking the question, but has anything happened to you? You seem so-so--different to your old self "Something has happened to me," he re- plied sadly, "something so strange, so awful, that you will scarcely credit it. Listen, and I will ten you my story. Two years ago, as you know, I wemt out to South Africa to tny my luck at the gold- fields and while staying at Delagoa. Bay I met Sinclair, an old schoolfellow, and we agreed to go up country ther. After making all necessary arrangements, we started, a.nd for months wandered about the country, with the same rerult- heavy toil and no gold. "At last, weary with incessant tramping over the inhospitable plains, we settled down in what looked like a promising gully, in the heart of a range of mountains, whose name even we did not know, and once more we commenced. "Luck was with us this time, and the rich earth yielded up its treasure to us bounti- fully. We were enabled to live well, too, for game wail abundant, and we began too, regard ourselves as a pair of the most for- tunate diggers in South Africa. "I think that during the time we were there we only saw a human being, and t'hat was a wandering Zulu, who paid us a visit one day shortly before Sinclair's death. Poor Jack sickened of the fever, and died in my arms. I buried him beneath the shadow of a solitary rook, and the cross I carved upon it marks his last resting-plaoe. I was alone. The desolation of the place was something awful at first, but I did not dare to leave the claim then; in the first place, because I did not like the idea. of travelling through that wild country alone, and, secondly, I did not want to leave the gold unguarded, although we had hidden it away in a tolerably safe place. "However, after a time I got used to the loneliness, began to like it, in fact; for when. my day's work was done I used to lie down outside my hot and build castles in the air, dreaming of the happiness that was in store for me when I should return to England to claim the hand of the girl I loved, who was waiting for me there. And at times my thoughts took strange turns, and weird fancies came into my head. "I would remain in these dream-like trances sometimes for hoars, and come to myøelf to and the moon had risen and the camp fire nearly burned out. One evening the strange idea came into my head that by a supreme effort of will I might free my soul for a short space from its earthly tenement—my body; free it, I mean, without actually taking my life. I should then be at liberty to wander where I chose, and could return and take pos- session of my physical form at any time I wished to. "At last, one fatal evening, I tried the dreadful experiment. Concentrating all my will power on this one object, I succeeded in setting my soul free after an inward struggle, the intensity of which prostrated my bodily strength for days after. I found myself standing by the side of a body which I recog- nised as my own; I was looking down upon the human seanblance of myælf-my earthly home, if I may so express it—stretched out upon the ground, to all appearances dead. I was too startled to wander away then, but returned to my natural form at once, though it was fully an hour before I recovered sufficient strength to enable me to move. I let a week go by before I repeated the experi- ment, for I feared that df I taxed my physical frame too much it might die of exhaustion. But on the second attempt I found the task easier, until at last I was able to free myself almost without an effort. "On these occasions I used to winder to distant parts of the ccmtntry, for being in- corporeal, unbodied, I could move almost with the quickness of thought. The strange- new of the senaataoa of being a-bie to float through space was off after a time, though the power I poseenged of 80 doing had an arwful fascination in it which I seemed tunable to resist, and I remained away longer a;nd kvnger each time. I must tell you that before taking these Billy flights I used to fasten myself up in my hut in order that my body should be secure during the time I was absent from it. I was in such a lonely part of the country that even prodaaory wild beasts were scarce, amd I did not apprehend danger from any other source. You may judge of my horror, then, when, on returning from one of my wander- ings. I discovered that my oabin was burnt to the ground, and that my body—the physical tenement without which I cannot take my place among my fellow men—was a. char-red and useless mass of ashffi! I was a soul adrift on earth without any earthly habitation, for I was not dead, ae, although ukybody was consumed, it con- tained no soul woon it perished; it was simply the burning of an image. Consequently. I still belong to earth, for I am still alive, for the body is merely a temporary abiding place for the soul during its brief sojourn in this world. "But what am I to do?" said Oonway, appealing to me, and clasping his hands with a gesture of despair; "all those that I love mourn me as dead, and of what use would it be for me to umieceive them. Am I doomed to wander for ever on this earth because I was absent from my bodily tenement when tt was destroyed.? I cannot, if I wished, put an end to my existence in too way that an ordinary human being might take, for it is only the body that dies; you cannot kill the soul!" Poor Oonway, his fate is a weird one, and the riddle of his existence, or non-existence, is still unsolved.

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