As a
necessary consequence--what will he do? He will anticipate the appearance
of the Woman with the Knife, at two in the morning of the twenty-ninth of
February, instead of the first of March. Let him suffer all his
superstitious terrors on the wrong day. Leave him, on the day that is
really his birthday, to pass a perfectly quiet night, and to be as sound
asleep as other people at two in the morning. And then, when he wakes
comfortably in time for his breakfast, shame him out of his delusion by
telling him the truth."
I agreed to try the experiment. Leaving the surgeon to caution Mrs.
Fairbank on the subject of Leap Year, I went to the stables to see Mr.
Raven.
XV
The poor fellow was full of forebodings of the fate in store for him on
the ominous first of March. He eagerly entreated me to order one of the
men servants to sit up with him on the birthday morning. In granting his
request, I asked him to tell me on which day of the week his birthday
fell. He reckoned the days on his fingers; and proved his innocence of all
suspicion that it was Leap Year, by fixing on the twenty-ninth of
February, in the full persuasion that it was the first of March. Pledged
to try the surgeon's experiment, I left his error uncorrected, of course.
In so doing, I took my first step blindfold toward the last act in the
drama of the Hostler's Dream.
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