The storm broke at last; the rain poured in torrents, but heedless of wind and weather, I wandered on like a forsaken fugitive.

I seemed to be the only human being left alive in a world of wrath and darkness.

The rush and roar of the blast, the angry noise of waves breaking hurriedly on the shore, the swirling showers that fell on my defenseless head--all these things were unfelt, unheard by me.

There are times in a man's life when mere physical feeling grows numb under the pressure of intense mental agony-when the indignant soul, smarting with the experience of some vile injustice, forgets for a little its narrow and poor house of clay.

Some such mood was upon me then, I suppose, for in the very act of walking I was almost unconscious of movement.