NIGHT OF HORROR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8190, 3 August 1912, Page 9

NIGHT OF HORROR.

OUNT DRIVEN MAD BY SHOCK. HAIR TURNED WHITE. The search party found the Comto dt ..orvillo at a quarter to three in tho morning. Xlo aas sitting on a little s...id hillock 011 tno bank of a shallot, pa near tho edge of tho old quarry, laughing. ' Thank goodness wo have found you at last, M. lo Comte," said Dovos, the policeman. “Mine, la Comtesso has been frantic almost with grief, and all ot Us have feared tho worst." "It is a very funny story, really," said tho Comto do Norville, and he began to lauga again. There was something uncanny about his laughing. Devos knew tuo count well (ho hud been his gamekeeper before they made him constable of Norville). and ho had never heard him laugh like that before. He had rarely heard him laugh at all, for that matter, for tho Comto do Norville was a storn,- 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 ono of tho larm laborers who had searched with him all night, and now stood gaping at the laughing man —' go thou, and ask M. le Dncteur to oome hence on his bicycle. Tell him to come quickly, and ask lime. Michel down at tho post office to telephone to tho chateau and toll Mmo. la Comtosse that wo have found M. le Comte, that wo aro briuging > him homo to her, and that all is well.” "But why—" the yokel was beginning. "Go quickly, or X 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 Comto was laughing still when little Dr Lebrun flung himself off his bicycle and greeted him. Several times before the doctor came he had begun bo tell a story which ho premised with the promise that it was a funny one. The constable had, every- time, prevented him. Devos was no psychologist, but he knew an intoxicated man when he saw one. and he knew that M. 1c Comte was not intoxicated. Ho knew also that M. do Comto was not in tho habit of telling funny stories to his former gamekeeper and half a dozen farm hands So he managed to keep M. lo 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 cheeks. “Never have I been better pleased," ho said, “than I am to see you. Never”' —the man was laughing and crying at the same time—“never have I been bettor pleased. I have a auiiiy story for you, doctor, and I am not mad. you know.” _ 1 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 tho flask top and made M. le Com to drink them down. They had no effect whatever, except to stop him from crying. M. lo 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 tho farm hands to the rightabout. "Now," the Comte de Norville said, laughing again, “now, doctor, and you, Devos, my brave one, I will tell you the funniest story you ever heard in your lives. But X am not mad, you know.” A • FUNNY STORY. "Y'ou can tell it to us, ’ said the doc,>r, "when you have hfd a two-hoax sleep." "Sleep," laughed the madman, “sleep,* ha, ha, ha, ha, ha 1 .Sit down, doctor, end listen. They did not sit down. Each man slipped an arm cll rough an arm -of M. le Comte and walked towards the chateau. No bud. as the doctor well knew, would touch hit olcyole, so he left it there near the quarry till he could send someone to fetch ’it. "The funniest story -you cvoi heard in vour lives,*’ chuckled M. le „omte again. And suddenly he began tc tell it ‘I had gon; over to Beuzeville, and as the night was so fine I walked home. I borrowed a lantern from Jlaitro Jacques .lunzoa, the farmer, and 1 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 1 threw his lantern away. The old m’ser should have filled it before he lent it to me. I walked along thinking—oh, thinking of nothing, I suppose, when my foot slipped. I knew in an instant. The ouarryl I made a great effort to pull myself back, but it was too late. ily foot was over the edge; x overbalanced, and I fell. I knew it was death, and I think X 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 von know our Norville sand, doctor. It Is like a woman, and it melted from me at my touch. I hung there, X 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 email and jagged. This bit of rock.” He patted it and laughed again. "I held to it as I hold to hone of salvation. It cut my' fingers. I could feel the blood trickle between them. But there 1 held, and there I hung, longing for morning. If morning and the blessed liriit would only come. I thought, then X might see a foothold, and might scramble up. 1 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 tho quarry from starvation." Suddenly M. le Comte laughed loud and long again. "The funniest story I have ever told von doctor, is it not?” he shouted. But come back, both of you, come back and see what I escaped." 1 . ’A puff of • wind blew off his soft felt hat. "Grand Dien!" the doctor whispered to Devos, “His hair is white.” M. le Comto led them back to the place near the old quarry, where they had found him. the edge of a shallow pit, twentv feet in depth at most! .“Think." ho 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 tears 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 I wa-s there. Then morning came. A little grey pearled on the black sky. I clutched tighter and dared to look down. Xx»ok!” He clutched the two men and mshed them to the edge, then he gripped bWd-stained bit of rock, and threw himself over again. "See.” he said “ —see the abyss. I am going there -off.'’ His two hands looked their hold. Th" two n.en sprang forward. At. le Comte stood on firm ground a '“w fe“t lower down, and he was laughing, laughing, laughing. His brain had withstood tho shock of his fall, the horror of that awful night when he thought death was yawning up for him three hundred feet below, but tho shock of the fact that he had been in safety all the time had driven him out of his mind. Xow the Comte do Xorvillo is in Caen Lunatic Asylum. 1