NIGHT OF HORROR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15056, 27 July 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

NIGHT OF HORROR.

COUNT DRIVEN MAD BY SHOCK.

HAIR TURNED WHITE.

The search party found the Comte' do Norville at a quarter to three in the morning. He was sitting on a little eand hillock on the bank of a shallow pit near the edge of the old quarry, laughing.

"Thank goodness we have found yon at last, M. le Comte," said Devos, the policeman, " Mme. la Comtesse has been frantic almost with grief, and all of us have feared the worst,"

"It is a very fuuny story, really," said the Comte de Norville, and he began to laugh again. There was something uncanny about his laughing. Devos knew the count well (he had been his gamekeeper before they made him constable of Norville), and he had never heard him laugh like that before. He had rarely hoard him laugh at all, for that matter, for the Comte do Norville. was a stem, self-possessed, and quiet man who seldom gave his feelings utterance.

Devos was a man of quick action. "Go thou," he said, dropping his hand heavily on the shoulder of one of the farm labourers who had searched with him all night, : and now stood gaping at the laughing man—" go thou, and ask M. le Docleur to come hence on his bicycle. Tell him to come quickly, and as& Mine. Michel down at the post office to telephone to the chateau and tell Mme. la Gomtesse that we have found M. le Comte, that we are bringing him home to her, and that all is. well." .' *' • , "But why—" the vokel was beginning,, "Go quickly, or I shall have better sight perhaps next time I see thee abroad at three in the morning," said Devos. And • the man, whose poaching was, notorious, ran off hot-foot to do his bidding. Laughing 'Still. ' M. le Comte was laughing still when little Dr. Lebrun flung: himself off his bicycle and greeted him. Several times before the doctor came he had begun to tell a story which he premised with the promise that it was o, funny one. The constable had, every time, prevented him. Devos was no psychologist, but he know: an intoxicated man when he saw one, and he knew that M. le Comte was not intoxicated- He knew also that M, le Comte was not in the habit of telling funny stories to his former gamekeeper and half a dozen farm hands. So he managed to keep M. le Comte from speaking at any length till Dr. Lebrun arrived. As the little doctor arrived M. le Comte sprang up, and saluted him on both checks. "Never have I been better pleased," he said "than I am to see you. Never"— man was laughing and crying at the same time—' never have .1 been better pleased. I have a funny story for you, doctor, and I am not mad, you know." Dr. Lebrun unscrewed the silver top of a little flask, opened the little square case which he always carried on his bicycle, poured a few drops of something into the flask top and made M. le Comte drink them down. They bad no effect whatever, except to stop him from crying. M. le Comte de Norville, whom the doctor had seen sane and sober only the day before, laughed and laughed and laughed* and there was that in his laughter which made the little doctor send all the farm hands to the rightabout. " Now," the

Comte de Norville said, laughing again, " now, doctor, and yon, Devos, my brave one, I will tell you the funniest story you ever heard in your live!-. But I am not mad, yon know." v . "'• • A Funny Story"You can tell it to us," said the doctor, " when you have had a two-hour sleep." "Sleep," laughed the madman, "sleep, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Sit down, doctor, and listen." They did not sit down. Each man slipped an arm through an arm of M. le Comte and walked towards the chateau. Nobody, as the doctor, well knew/ would touch his bicycle, so he left it there near the quarry till he could send someone to fetch it. " The funniest story you ever heard in your lives," chuckled M. le Comte again. And suddenly ho began to tell it. , "I had gone over to Beuzeville, and as the night was so fine I walked home. I borrowed a lantern from M ait re Jacques Bonzon, the farmer, and I was a couple of miles on my way home when the lantern went out. It was dark, very dark, and I hadn't a match. But I didn't mind much, and to punish old Bonzon I threw his lantern away. The old miser should have filled it before ho lent it to me. I walked along, thinking—oh, thinking of nothing, I suppose, when my foot slippedI knew in an Instant. The quarry! I made a great effort to pull myself back, tut it was too late. My foot was over the edge; I overbalanced, and I fell. I knew it was death, and I think I prayed and as I prayed my hands clutched a small tree root. I was saved. "I pulled and scrambled, trying to get | a . foothold, but you know our Norville sand, doctor. It is like a woman> and it : melted from me at my touch- I hung there, I think, for an hour, then the root gave. Even then I saved myself once ; more. It was a bit of rock deep bedded in the sand but small and jagged. This bit of rock." .Ho patted it and laughed again. " I held to it as I hold to hope of salvation. It cut my fingers. I could feel the blood trickle between them. But there I held,' and there I hung, longing for morning. If morning and the blessed light would only come, I thought, then I might see a foothold, and might scramble up. I knew I had not fallen very far, but I knew also what it would mean to leave go"Three hundred feet down, dashing | from stone to stone, and, at the bottom, death at once if God were merciful, if not, death at the bottom of the quarry from starvation." Suddenly M. le Comte laughed loud and long again. "The funniest story I have over told you doctor, is it not? "he shouted. "But come back, both of vou, come back and see what I escaped. 1 ' A puff of wind blew off his soft felt hat. "Grand Dietil" the doctor whispered to Devos, "His hair is white." M. le Comte led them back tto the place near the old quarry, where they had found him, the edge of a shallow pit, twenty feet in depth at most! " Think." he said, "think of those hours till_ the morning came. My arms were living furies, I was crying with the pain of my own weight. I*felt the salt tear." in my mouth, my fingers spurted blood under the nails.

"But pain was preferable to death there in the dark, and pain is merciful, and I did not know all the time that T was there. Then morning came. A little grey pearled on the black sky. I clutched tighter and dared to look 'down. Look!" He clutched -the two men and pushed them to the edge, then ho gripped the blood-stained bit of rock, and threw himself over again. "See," ho said "—see the abyss. Tam going there now." His two hands loosed their hold The two men sprang forward. M. Ie Comte stood on firm ground a few feet lower down,- and he was laughing, laughing, laughing His brain had "withstood the shock of his fall, the horror of that awful night when he thought death war, yawning up for him three hundred feet below, but the shock of the fact that he had been in safety all the time , had driven him out of his mind.

Now the Comte do Norrille is in Caen Lunatic Asylum. ■