There was a surging noise in my ears--my mouth tasted of blood, my lips were parched and burning as with fever.

"A white-haired fisherman." That was me! The king had said so.

Mechanically I looked down at the clothes I wore--the former property of a suicide.

"He was a fool," the vender of them had said, "he killed himself." Yes, there was no doubt of it--he was a fool.

I would not follow his example, or at least not yet.