For more reasons than one, Fergus judged it prudent¹ to tell not even auntie Jean of his intention; but, waiting until the house was quiet, stole softly from his room and repaired to the kitchen—at the other end of the long straggling house, where he sat down, and taking his book, an annual of the beginning of the century, began to read the story of Kathed and Eurelia. Having finished it, he read another. He read and read, but no brownie came. His candle burned into the socket². He lighted another, and read again. Still no brownie appeared, and, hard and straight as was the wooden chair on which he sat, he began to doze³. Presently he started wide awake, fancying he heard a noise; but nothing was there. He raised his book once more, and read until he had finished the stories in it: for the verse he had no inclination⁴ that night. As soon as they were all consumed, he began to feel very eerie⁵: his courage had been sheltering itself behind his thoughts, which the tales he had been reading had kept turned away from the object of dread⁶. Still deeper and deeper grew the night around him, until the bare, soulless waste of it came at last, when a brave man might welcome any ghost for the life it would bring. And ever as it came, the tide of fear flowed more rapidly, until at last it rose over his heart, and threatened to stifle⁷ him. The direst foe⁹ of courage is the fear itself, not the object of it; and the man who can overcome his own terror is a hero and more. In this Fergus had not yet deserved to be successful. That kind of victory comes only of faith. Still, he did not fly the field; he was no coward. At the same time, prizing courage, scorning fear, and indeed disbelieving in every nocturnal object of terror except robbers, he came at last to such an all but abandonment of dread, that he dared not look over his shoulder, lest he should see the brownie

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