DR. LANYON'S STORY.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Arranged from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

[During his scientific researches, Dr. Henry Jekyll, an estimable and upright physician, has discovered a mixture by drinking which he is able to transform himself into a second personality of an evil and wholly animal nature-the negative Iside of his character. In time indulgence in his power caused this second selfMr. Hyde-to gain the ascendency over Jekyll's normal nature. The scene chosen represents the metamorphosis as described by Jekyll's colleague, Dr. Hastie Lanyon, the only being that ever witnessed it.]

N the ninth of January I received by the evening delivery a registered envelope addressed in the hand of my colleague and old school-companion, Henry Jekyll. This is how the letter ran:

you,

"DEAR LANYON: You are one of my oldest friends, and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day when, if you had said to me, 'Jekyll, my life, my honor, my reason, depend upon ,' I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honor, my reason, are now all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night, I am lost. I want you to drive straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced, and you are to go in, alone, to open the glazed press (letter E), breaking the lock, and to draw out, with all its contents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top. You may know the right drawer by its contents: Some powders, a vial, and a paper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to your office exactly as it stands. At midnight, I have to ask you to admit with your own hand into your house a man who will present himself in my name, and to place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from my cabinet, cabinet, Serve me, my dear Lanyon, and save "Your friend, H. J."

Upon reading this letter, I felt sure that my colleague was insane; but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as he requested. I accordingly drove straight to Jekyll's house.

The butler was awaiting my arrival, for he had received by the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith. The lock of the cabinet was very strong and it was not until after two hours' work that the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked, and I took the drawer out, tied it in a sheet, and returned with it to my home.

Twelve o'clock had scarce arrived, ere the knocker on the door sounded very gently. I went myself at the summons, and found a small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.

"Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?" I asked.

He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture, and when I had bidden him enter, he did not obey me, without a searching, backward glance into the darkness. There was a policeman not far off, advancing with his bull's-eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor started and made greater haste.

These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably, as I followed him into the bright light of my consulting-room. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, and I was struck, besides, with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution, and last but not least-with the odd, subjective disturbance caused in me by his presence.

This person, who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity, was dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable. His clothes, although of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement-the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up

to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat almost to his knees, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. My visitor seemed on fire with sombre excitement.

"Have you got it?" he cried. "Have you got it?" So lively was his impatience, that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me. I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood. "Come, sir," said I, "you forget that I have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please."

I sat down myself in my customary seat, with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster.

"I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied, civilly enough. "What you say is very well founded. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood-" he paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria "I understood, a drawer-' "There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer on the floor, still covered with the sheet.

He sprang to it, then paused and laid his hand upon his heart. I could hear his teeth grate convulsively, and his face was so ghastly that I grew alarmed for both his life and

reason.

"Compose yourself," said I.

He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified.

"Have you a graduated glass?" he asked.

I rose from my place and gave him what he asked.

He measured out a few minims of a red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, at first of a reddish hue, began, as the crystals melted, to brighten in color and to throw off fumes of vapor. Suddenly the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded

again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, set down the glass, and then turned and looked at me with an air of scrutiny.

"And now, "said he, "to settle what remains. Will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and go forth from your house without further parley, or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and to power shall be laid open to you, here in this room, upon the instant, and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."

if

"Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from possessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will, perhaps, not wonder that I hear you with no very strong belief. But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."

"It is well," replied my visitor. Lanyon, you remember your vows. What follows is under the seal of our profession. And now,-behold!"

He put the glass to his lips and drank its contents at one gulp. A cry followed, he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table, and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth. As I looked, there came, I thought, a change: He seemed to swell, his face became suddenly black, the features seemed to melt and to alter-and the next moment I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.

"O God!" I screamed, "O God!" again and again, for there before my eyes,-pale and shaken, half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death-there stood Henry Jekyll!

WHEN SPARROWS BUILD.

WB

JEAN INGELOW.

HEN sparrows build and the leaves break forth,
My old sorrow wakes and cries,

For I know there is dawn in the far, far north,

And a scarlet sun doth rise;

Like a scarlet fleece the snow-field spreads,
And the icy fount runs free;

And the bergs begin to bow their heads
And plunge and sail in the sea.

Oh, my lost love, and my own, own love,
And my love that loved me so,

Is there never a chink in the world above
Where they listen for words from below?
Nay, I spoke once and I grieved thee sore.
I remembered all that I said;

And thou wilt hear me, no more, no more,
Till the sea gives up her dead.

Thou didst set thy foot on the ship, and sail
To the ice-fields and the snow.

Thou wert sad, for thy love did not avail,
And the end I could not know.

How could I tell I should love thee away
When I did not love thee anear?

We shall walk no more through the sodden plain
With the faded bents o'erspread;

We shall stand no more by the seething main
While the dark wrack drives o'erhead;

We shall part no more in the wind and rain
Where thy last farewell was said;

But perhaps I shall meet thee and know thee again,
When the sea gives up her dead.