THE DEATH MASK

Northern Advocate, 18 February 1911, Page 3

THE DEATH MASK

By Martin J. M'Hugh, Author or "Lone Point Light," "Straws in the Wind," etc., etc.

(Continued..)

For a minute we slowed up at the junction of traffic beside the great arch. My nerves were overstrung, and J chafed with impatience; but, passing into the Avenue dv Bois de Boulogne, Linden again adjusted the levers of the row violently hissing machine.

""**\"Now you will see what it can do!" h) panted. "Anyhow, it will be tho top speed. Hold tight and guard your eyes well!"

The advice was necessary. The machine bounded off at the great avenue like a flying creature. I crouched with head bowed down towards the toiler. The wind whistled, and the stekm hissed sharply in my ears, while the heat from the boiler was excessive. i had a vivid vision of the magnificent avenue, lined with its palatial white houses behind luxuriant trees, of brilliant flowers in parterre beds—flashes 'A colored light—of fine equipages, of astonished pedestrians standing gaping at us. I remember seeing a policeman putting up his arm in warning to ye. And then—crash!-

I found myself, gasping and halfjbtunned, lying en the grass roadborder. I had been thrown there with great violence, but I was not injured— T knew I was not injured—but I was f&int, dizzy, unable to move or articulate, and hardly conscious of seeing.

Then my eyes cleared, and I saw carriages being pulled up arid occupants jumping out, and pedestrians running towards me. A waterman, a policeman and a man in a blouse ran up to me. They gesticulated wildly, and their lips moved.

Were they ghosts? Were the carriages that glided up and stopped suddenly phantom carriages?

Because at the moment it was all like a cinematograph picture—all Aivid life and animation, but without

sound.

For I found myself in an utterly still, fhostlike world.

CHAPTER XIX