What could these innocent men and boys know of the living Damnation that made him pray to die—­provided only that he could be really dead and finished, beyond all consciousness and fear.  The fools!... to think that it was a harmless, concrete thing.  It would emerge in a moment like the Fisherman’s Geni from the Brass Bottle and grow as big as the world.  He felt he was going mad again.

“Help!” he suddenly shrieked. “It is under my foot.  It is moving ... moving ... moving out.”  He sprang to his astounded friend, Delorme, and screamed to him for help—­and then realizing that there was no help, that neither man nor God could save him, he fled from the room screaming like a wounded horse.

Rushing madly down the corridor, falling head-long down the stone stairs, bolting blindly across the entrance-hall, he fled until (unaware of his portly presence up to the moment when he rebounded from him as a cricket-ball from a net) he violently encountered the Head.

Scrambling beneath his gown the demented boy flung his arms around the massy pillar of the Doctor’s leg, and prayed aloud to him for help, between heart-rending screams.

Now it is undeniable that no elderly gentleman, of whatsoever position or condition, loves to be butted violently upon a generous lunch as he makes his placid way to his arm-chair, cigar, book, and ultimate pleasant doze.  If he be pompous by profession, precise by practice, dignified as a duty, a monument of most stately correctness and, to small boys and common men, a great and distant, if tiny, God—­he may be expected to resent it.

The Doctor did.  Almost before he knew what he was doing, he struck the sobbing, gasping child twice, and then endeavoured to remove him by the ungentle application of the untrammelled foot, from the leg to which, limpet-like, he clung.

To Dam the blows were welcome, soothing, reassuring.  Let a hundred Heads flog him with two hundred birch-rods, so they could keep him from the Snake.  What are mere blows?

Realizing quickly that something very unusual was in the air, the worthy Doctor repented him of his haste and, with what dignity he might, inquired between a bleat and a bellow:—­

“What is the matter, my boy?  Hush!  Hush!”

“The Snake!  The Snake!” shrieked Dam.  “Save me!  Save me! It is under my foot!  It is moving ... moving ... moving out,” and clung the tighter.

The good Doctor also moved with alacrity—­but saw no snake.  He was exceedingly perturbed, between a hypothetical snake and an all too actual lunatic boy.

Fortunately, “Stout” (so called because he was Porter), passing the big doors without, was attracted by the screams.

Entering, he hastened to the side of the agitated Head, and, with some difficulty, untied from that gentleman’s leg, a small boy—­but not until the small boy had fainted....

When Dam regained consciousness he had a fit, recovered, and found himself in the Head’s study, and the object of the interested regard of the Head, Messrs. Colfe and Steynker, the school medico, and the porter.