Three More John Silence Stories

BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

To M. L. W. The Original of John Silence

and

My Companion in Many Adventures

Contents

Case I: Secret Worship

Case II: The Camp of the Dog

Case III: A Victim of Higher Space

CASE I: SECRET WORSHIP

Harris, the silk merchant, was in South Germany on his way home from abusiness trip when the idea came to him suddenly that he would take themountain railway from Strassbourg and run down to revisit his old schoolafter an interval of something more than thirty years. And it was tothis chance impulse of the junior partner in Harris Brothers of St. Paul's Churchyard that John Silence owed one of the most curious casesof his whole experience, for at that very moment he happened to betramping these same mountains with a holiday knapsack, and fromdifferent points of the compass the two men were actually convergingtowards the same inn. 

Now, deep down in the heart that for thirty years had been concernedchiefly with the profitable buying and selling of silk, this school hadleft the imprint of its peculiar influence, and, though perhaps unknownto Harris, had strongly coloured the whole of his subsequent existence. It belonged to the deeply religious life of a small Protestant community(which it is unnecessary to specify), and his father had sent him thereat the age of fifteen, partly because he would learn the Germanrequisite for the conduct of the silk business, and partly because thediscipline was strict, and discipline was what his soul and body neededjust then more than anything else. 

The life, indeed, had proved exceedingly severe, and young Harrisbenefited accordingly; for though corporal punishment was unknown, therewas a system of mental and spiritual correction which somehow made thesoul stand proudly erect to receive it, while it struck at the very rootof the fault and taught the boy that his character was being cleaned andstrengthened, and that he was not merely being tortured in a kind ofpersonal revenge. 

That was over thirty years ago, when he was a dreamy and impressionableyouth of fifteen; and now, as the train climbed slowly up the windingmountain gorges, his mind travelled back somewhat lovingly over theintervening period, and forgotten details rose vividly again before himout of the shadows. The life there had been very wonderful, it seemed tohim, in that remote mountain village, protected from the tumults of theworld by the love and worship of the devout Brotherhood that ministeredto the needs of some hundred boys from every country in Europe. Sharplythe scenes came back to him. He smelt again the long stone corridors, the hot pinewood rooms, where the sultry hours of summer study werepassed with bees droning through open windows in the sunshine, andGerman characters struggling in the mind with dreams of Englishlawns--and then the sudden awful cry of the master in German--

"Harris, stand up! You sleep!"

And he recalled the dreadful standing motionless for an hour, book inhand, while the knees felt like wax and the head grew heavier than acannon-ball. 

The very smell of the cooking came back to him--the daily _Sauerkraut_, the watery chocolate on Sundays, the flavour of the stringy meat servedtwice a week at _Mittagessen_; and he smiled to think again of thehalf-rations that was the punishment for speaking English. The veryodour of the milk-bowls, --the hot sweet aroma that rose from the soakingpeasant-bread at the six-o'clock breakfast, --came back to him pungently, and he saw the huge _Speisesaal_ with the hundred boys in their schooluniform, all eating sleepily in silence, gulping down the coarse breadand scalding milk in terror of the bell that would presently cut themshort--and, at the far end where the masters sat, he saw the narrow slitwindows with the vistas of enticing field and forest beyond. 

And this, in turn, made him think of the great barnlike room on the topfloor where all slept together in wooden cots, and he heard in memorythe clamour of the cruel bell that woke them on winter mornings at fiveo'clock and summoned them to the stone-flagged _Waschkammer_, where boysand masters alike, after scanty and icy washing, dressed in completesilence. 

From this his mind passed swiftly, with vivid picture-thoughts, to otherthings, and with a passing shiver he remembered how the loneliness ofnever being alone had eaten into him, and how everything--work, meals, sleep, walks, leisure--was done with his "division" of twenty other boysand under the eyes of at least two masters. The only solitude possiblewas by asking for half an hour's practice in the cell-like music rooms, and Harris smiled to himself as he recalled the zeal of his violinstudies. 

Then, as the train puffed laboriously through the great pine foreststhat cover these mountains with a giant carpet of velvet, he found thepleasanter layers of memory giving up their dead, and he recalled withadmiration the kindness of the masters, whom all addressed as Brother, and marvelled afresh at their devotion in burying themselves for yearsin such a place, only to leave it, in most cases, for the still rougherlife of missionaries in the wild places of the world. 

He thought once more of the still, religious atmosphere that hung overthe little forest community like a veil, barring the distressful world;of the picturesque ceremonies at Easter, Christmas, and New Year; of thenumerous feast-days and charming little festivals. The _Beschehr-Fest_, in particular, came back to him, --the feast of gifts at Christmas, --whenthe entire community paired off and gave presents, many of which hadtaken weeks to make or the savings of many days to purchase. And then hesaw the midnight ceremony in the church at New Year, with the shiningface of the _Prediger_ in the pulpit, --the village preacher who, on thelast night of the old year, saw in the empty gallery beyond the organloft the faces of all who were to die in the ensuing twelve months, andwho at last recognised himself among them, and, in the very middle ofhis sermon, passed into a state of rapt ecstasy and burst into a torrentof praise. 

Thickly the memories crowded upon him. The picture of the small villagedreaming its unselfish life on the mountain-tops, clean, wholesome, simple, searching vigorously for its God, and training hundreds of boysin the grand way, rose up in his mind with all the power of anobsession. He felt once more the old mystical enthusiasm, deeper thanthe sea and more wonderful than the stars; he heard again the windssighing from leagues of forest over the red roofs in the moonlight; heheard the Brothers' voices talking of the things beyond this life asthough they had actually experienced them in the body; and, as he sat inthe jolting train, a spirit of unutterable longing passed over hisseared and tired soul, stirring in the depths of him a sea of emotionsthat he thought had long since frozen into immobility. 

And the contrast pained him, --the idealistic dreamer then, the man ofbusiness now, --so that a spirit of unworldly peace and beauty known onlyto the soul in meditation laid its feathered finger upon his heart, moving strangely the surface of the waters. 

Harris shivered a little and looked out of the window of his emptycarriage. The train had long passed Hornberg, and far below the streamstumbled in white foam down the limestone rocks. In front of him, domeupon dome of wooded mountain stood against the sky. It was October, andthe air was cool and sharp, woodsmoke and damp moss exquisitely mingledin it with the subtle odours of the pines. Overhead, between the tips ofthe highest firs, he saw the first stars peeping, and the sky was aclean, pale amethyst that seemed exactly the colour all these memoriesclothed themselves with in his mind. 

He leaned back in his corner and sighed. He was a heavy man, and he hadnot known sentiment for years; he was a big man, and it took much tomove him, literally and figuratively; he was a man in whom the dreams ofGod that haunt the soul in youth, though overlaid by the scum thatgathers in the fight for money, had not, as with the majority, utterlydied the death. 

He came back into this little neglected pocket of the years, where somuch fine gold had collected and lain undisturbed, with all hissemispiritual emotions aquiver; and, as he watched the mountain-topscome nearer, and smelt the forgotten odours of his boyhood, somethingmelted on the surface of his soul and left him sensitive to a degree hehad not known since, thirty years before, he had lived here with hisdreams, his conflicts, and his youthful suffering. 

A thrill ran through him as the train stopped with a jolt at a tinystation and he saw the name in large black lettering on the grey stonebuilding, and below it, the number of metres it stood above the level ofthe sea. 

"The highest point on the line!" he exclaimed. "How well I rememberit--Sommerau--Summer Meadow. The very next station is mine!"

And, as the train ran downhill with brakes on and steam shut off, he puthis head out of the window and one by one saw the old familiar landmarksin the dusk. They stared at him like dead faces in a dream. Queer, sharpfeelings, half poignant, half sweet, stirred in his heart. 

"There's the hot, white road we walked along so often with the twoBrüder always at our heels, " he thought; "and there, by Jove, is theturn through the forest to '_Die Galgen_, ' the stone gallows where theyhanged the witches in olden days!"

He smiled a little as the train slid past. 

"And there's the copse where the Lilies of the Valley powdered theground in spring; and, I swear, "--he put his head out with a suddenimpulse--"if that's not the very clearing where Calame, the French boy, chased the swallow-tail with me, and Bruder Pagel gave us half-rationsfor leaving the road without permission, and for shouting in our mothertongues!" And he laughed again as the memories came back with a rush, flooding his mind with vivid detail. 

The train stopped, and he stood on the grey gravel platform like a manin a dream. It seemed half a century since he last waited there withcorded wooden boxes, and got into the train for Strassbourg and homeafter the two years' exile. Time dropped from him like an old garmentand he felt a boy again. Only, things looked so much smaller than hismemory of them; shrunk and dwindled they looked, and the distancesseemed on a curiously smaller scale. 

He made his way across the road to the little Gasthaus, and, as he went, faces and figures of former schoolfellows, --German, Swiss, Italian, French, Russian, --slipped out of the shadowy woods and silentlyaccompanied him. They flitted by his side, raising their eyesquestioningly, sadly, to his. But their names he had forgotten. Some ofthe Brothers, too, came with them, and most of these he remembered byname--Bruder Röst, Bruder Pagel, Bruder Schliemann, and the bearded faceof the old preacher who had seen himself in the haunted gallery of thoseabout to die--Bruder Gysin. The dark forest lay all about him like a seathat any moment might rush with velvet waves upon the scene and sweepall the faces away. The air was cool and wonderfully fragrant, but withevery perfumed breath came also a pallid memory. .. . 

Yet, in spite of the underlying sadness inseparable from such anexperience, it was all very interesting, and held a pleasure peculiarlyits own, so that Harris engaged his room and ordered supper feeling wellpleased with himself, and intending to walk up to the old school thatvery evening. It stood in the centre of the community's village, somefour miles distant through the forest, and he now recollected for thefirst time that this little Protestant settlement dwelt isolated in asection of the country that was otherwise Catholic. Crucifixes andshrines surrounded the clearing like the sentries of a beleagueringarmy. Once beyond the square of the village, with its few acres of fieldand orchard, the forest crowded up in solid phalanxes, and beyond therim of trees began the country that was ruled by the priests of anotherfaith. He vaguely remembered, too, that the Catholics had showedsometimes a certain hostility towards the little Protestant oasis thatflourished so quietly and benignly in their midst. He had quiteforgotten this. How trumpery it all seemed now with his wide experienceof life and his knowledge of other countries and the great outsideworld. It was like stepping back, not thirty years, but three hundred. 

There were only two others besides himself at supper. One of them, abearded, middle-aged man in tweeds, sat by himself at the far end, andHarris kept out of his way because he was English. He feared he might bein business, possibly even in the silk business, and that he wouldperhaps talk on the subject. The other traveller, however, was aCatholic priest. He was a little man who ate his salad with a knife, yetso gently that it was almost inoffensive, and it was the sight of "thecloth" that recalled his memory of the old antagonism. Harris mentionedby way of conversation the object of his sentimental journey, and thepriest looked up sharply at him with raised eyebrows and an expressionof surprise and suspicion that somehow piqued him. He ascribed it to hisdifference of belief. 

"Yes, " went on the silk merchant, pleased to talk of what his mind wasso full, "and it was a curious experience for an English boy to bedropped down into a school of a hundred foreigners. I well remember theloneliness and intolerable Heimweh of it at first. " His German was veryfluent. 

The priest opposite looked up from his cold veal and potato salad andsmiled. It was a nice face. He explained quietly that he did not belonghere, but was making a tour of the parishes of Wurttemberg and Baden. 

"It was a strict life, " added Harris. "We English, I remember, used tocall it _Gefängnisleben_--prison life!"

The face of the other, for some unaccountable reason, darkened. After aslight pause, and more by way of politeness than because he wished tocontinue the subject, he said quietly--

"It was a flourishing school in those days, of course. Afterwards, Ihave heard--" He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and the odd look--italmost seemed a look of alarm--came back into his eyes. The sentenceremained unfinished. 

Something in the tone of the man seemed to his listener uncalled for--ina sense reproachful, singular. Harris bridled in spite of himself. 

"It has changed?" he asked. "I can hardly believe--"

"You have not heard, then?" observed the priest gently, making a gestureas though to cross himself, yet not actually completing it. "You havenot heard what happened there before it was abandoned--?"

It was very childish, of course, and perhaps he was overtired andoverwrought in some way, but the words and manner of the little priestseemed to him so offensive--so disproportionately offensive--that hehardly noticed the concluding sentence. He recalled the old bitternessand the old antagonism, and for a moment he almost lost his temper. 

"Nonsense, " he interrupted with a forced laugh, "_Unsinn_! You mustforgive me, sir, for contradicting you. But I was a pupil there myself. I was at school there. There was no place like it. I cannot believe thatanything serious could have happened to--to take away its character. Thedevotion of the Brothers would be difficult to equal anywhere--"

He broke off suddenly, realising that his voice had been raised undulyand that the man at the far end of the table might understand German;and at the same moment he looked up and saw that this individual's eyeswere fixed upon his face intently. They were peculiarly bright. Alsothey were rather wonderful eyes, and the way they met his own served insome way he could not understand to convey both a reproach and awarning. The whole face of the stranger, indeed, made a vivid impressionupon him, for it was a face, he now noticed for the first time, in whosepresence one would not willingly have said or done anything unworthy. Harris could not explain to himself how it was he had not becomeconscious sooner of its presence. 

But he could have bitten off his tongue for having so far forgottenhimself. The little priest lapsed into silence. Only once he said, looking up and speaking in a low voice that was not intended to beoverheard, but that evidently _was_ overheard, "You will find itdifferent. " Presently he rose and left the table with a polite bow thatincluded both the others. 

And, after him, from the far end rose also the figure in the tweed suit, leaving Harris by himself. 

He sat on for a bit in the darkening room, sipping his coffee andsmoking his fifteen-pfennig cigar, till the girl came in to light theoil lamps. He felt vexed with himself for his lapse from good manners, yet hardly able to account for it. Most likely, he reflected, he hadbeen annoyed because the priest had unintentionally changed the pleasantcharacter of his dream by introducing a jarring note. Later he must seekan opportunity to make amends. At present, however, he was too impatientfor his walk to the school, and he took his stick and hat and passed outinto the open air. 

And, as he crossed before the Gasthaus, he noticed that the priest andthe man in the tweed suit were engaged already in such deep conversationthat they hardly noticed him as he passed and raised his hat. 

He started off briskly, well remembering the way, and hoping to reachthe village in time to have a word with one of the Brüder. They mighteven ask him in for a cup of coffee. He felt sure of his welcome, andthe old memories were in full possession once more. The hour of returnwas a matter of no consequence whatever. 

It was then just after seven o'clock, and the October evening wasdrawing in with chill airs from the recesses of the forest. The roadplunged straight from the railway clearing into its depths, and in avery few minutes the trees engulfed him and the clack of his boots felldead and echoless against the serried stems of a million firs. It wasvery black; one trunk was hardly distinguishable from another. He walkedsmartly, swinging his holly stick. Once or twice he passed a peasant onhis way to bed, and the guttural "Gruss Got, " unheard for so long, emphasised the passage of time, while yet making it seem as nothing. Afresh group of pictures crowded his mind. Again the figures of formerschoolfellows flitted out of the forest and kept pace by his side, whispering of the doings of long ago. One reverie stepped hard upon theheels of another. Every turn in the road, every clearing of the forest, he knew, and each in turn brought forgotten associations to life. Heenjoyed himself thoroughly. 

He marched on and on. There was powdered gold in the sky till the moonrose, and then a wind of faint silver spread silently between the earthand stars. He saw the tips of the fir trees shimmer, and heard themwhisper as the breeze turned their needles towards the light. Themountain air was indescribably sweet. The road shone like the foam of ariver through the gloom. White moths flitted here and there like silentthoughts across his path, and a hundred smells greeted him from theforest caverns across the years. 

Then, when he least expected it, the trees fell away abruptly on bothsides, and he stood on the edge of the village clearing. 

He walked faster. There lay the familiar outlines of the houses, sheetedwith silver; there stood the trees in the little central square with thefountain and small green lawns; there loomed the shape of the churchnext to the Gasthof der Brüdergemeinde; and just beyond, dimly risinginto the sky, he saw with a sudden thrill the mass of the huge schoolbuilding, blocked castlelike with deep shadows in the moonlight, standing square and formidable to face him after the silences of morethan a quarter of a century. 

He passed quickly down the deserted village street and stopped closebeneath its shadow, staring up at the walls that had once held himprisoner for two years--two unbroken years of discipline andhomesickness. Memories and emotions surged through his mind; for themost vivid sensations of his youth had focused about this spot, and itwas here he had first begun to live and learn values. Not a singlefootstep broke the silence, though lights glimmered here and therethrough cottage windows; but when he looked up at the high walls of theschool, draped now in shadow, he easily imagined that well-known facescrowded to the windows to greet him--closed windows that reallyreflected only moonlight and the gleam of stars. 

This, then, was the old school building, standing foursquare to theworld, with its shuttered windows, its lofty, tiled roof, and the spikedlightning-conductors pointing like black and taloned fingers from thecorners. For a long time he stood and stared. Then, presently, he cameto himself again, and realised to his joy that a light still shone inthe windows of the Bruderstube. 

He turned from the road and passed through the iron railings; thenclimbed the twelve stone steps and stood facing the black wooden doorwith the heavy bars of iron, a door he had once loathed and dreaded withthe hatred and passion of an imprisoned soul, but now looked upontenderly with a sort of boyish delight. 

Almost timorously he pulled the rope and listened with a tremor ofexcitement to the clanging of the bell deep within the building. And thelong-forgotten sound brought the past before him with such a vivid senseof reality that he positively shivered. It was like the magic bell inthe fairy-tale that rolls back the curtain of Time and summons thefigures from the shadows of the dead. He had never felt so sentimentalin his life. It was like being young again. And, at the same time, hebegan to bulk rather large in his own eyes with a certain spuriousimportance. He was a big man from the world of strife and action. Inthis little place of peaceful dreams would he, perhaps, not cutsomething of a figure?

"I'll try once more, " he thought after a long pause, seizing the ironbell-rope, and was just about to pull it when a step sounded on thestone passage within, and the huge door slowly swung open. 

A tall man with a rather severe cast of countenance stood facing him insilence. 

"I must apologise--it is somewhat late, " he began a trifle pompously, "but the fact is I am an old pupil. I have only just arrived and reallycould not restrain myself. " His German seemed not quite so fluent asusual. "My interest is so great. I was here in '70. "

The other opened the door wider and at once bowed him in with a smile ofgenuine welcome. 

"I am Bruder Kalkmann, " he said quietly in a deep voice. "I myself was amaster here about that time. It is a great pleasure always to welcome aformer pupil. " He looked at him very keenly for a few seconds, and thenadded, "I think, too, it is splendid of you to come--very splendid. "

"It is a very great pleasure, " Harris replied, delighted with hisreception. 

The dimly lighted corridor with its flooring of grey stone, and thefamiliar sound of a German voice echoing through it, --with the peculiarintonation the Brothers always used in speaking, --all combined to lifthim bodily, as it were, into the dream-atmosphere of long-forgottendays. He stepped gladly into the building and the door shut with thefamiliar thunder that completed the reconstruction of the past. Healmost felt the old sense of imprisonment, of aching nostalgia, ofhaving lost his liberty. 

Harris sighed involuntarily and turned towards his host, who returnedhis smile faintly and then led the way down the corridor. 

"The boys have retired, " he explained, "and, as you remember, we keepearly hours here. But, at least, you will join us for a little while inthe _Bruderstube_ and enjoy a cup of coffee. " This was precisely whatthe silk merchant had hoped, and he accepted with an alacrity that heintended to be tempered by graciousness. "And to-morrow, " continued theBruder, "you must come and spend a whole day with us. You may even findacquaintances, for several pupils of your day have come back here asmasters. "

For one brief second there passed into the man's eyes a look that madethe visitor start. But it vanished as quickly as it came. It wasimpossible to define. Harris convinced himself it was the effect of ashadow cast by the lamp they had just passed on the wall. He dismissedit from his mind. 

"You are very kind, I'm sure, " he said politely. "It is perhaps agreater pleasure to me than you can imagine to see the place again. Ah, "--he stopped short opposite a door with the upper half of glass andpeered in--"surely there is one of the music rooms where I used topractise the violin. How it comes back to me after all these years!"

Bruder Kalkmann stopped indulgently, smiling, to allow his guest amoment's inspection. 

"You still have the boys' orchestra? I remember I used to play 'zweiteGeige' in it. Bruder Schliemann conducted at the piano. Dear me, I cansee him now with his long black hair and--and--" He stopped abruptly. Again the odd, dark look passed over the stern face of his companion. For an instant it seemed curiously familiar. 

"We still keep up the pupils' orchestra, " he said, "but BruderSchliemann, I am sorry to say--" he hesitated an instant, and thenadded, "Bruder Schliemann is dead. "

"Indeed, indeed, " said Harris quickly. "I am sorry to hear it. " He wasconscious of a faint feeling of distress, but whether it arose from thenews of his old music teacher's death, or--from something else--he couldnot quite determine. He gazed down the corridor that lost itself amongshadows. In the street and village everything had seemed so much smallerthan he remembered, but here, inside the school building, everythingseemed so much bigger. The corridor was loftier and longer, morespacious and vast, than the mental picture he had preserved. Histhoughts wandered dreamily for an instant. 

He glanced up and saw the face of the Bruder watching him with a smileof patient indulgence. 

"Your memories possess you, " he observed gently, and the stern lookpassed into something almost pitying. 

"You are right, " returned the man of silk, "they do. This was the mostwonderful period of my whole life in a sense. At the time I hatedit--" He hesitated, not wishing to hurt the Brother's feelings. 

"According to English ideas it seemed strict, of course, " the other saidpersuasively, so that he went on. 

"--Yes, partly that; and partly the ceaseless nostalgia, and thesolitude which came from never being really alone. In English schoolsthe boys enjoy peculiar freedom, you know. "

Bruder Kalkmann, he saw, was listening intently. 

"But it produced one result that I have never wholly lost, " hecontinued self-consciously, "and am grateful for. "

"_Ach! Wie so, denn?_"

"The constant inner pain threw me headlong into your religious life, sothat the whole force of my being seemed to project itself towards thesearch for a deeper satisfaction--a real resting-place for the soul. During my two years here I yearned for God in my boyish way as perhaps Ihave never yearned for anything since. Moreover, I have never quite lostthat sense of peace and inward joy which accompanied the search. I cannever quite forget this school and the deep things it taught me. "

He paused at the end of his long speech, and a brief silence fellbetween them. He feared he had said too much, or expressed himselfclumsily in the foreign language, and when Bruder Kalkmann laid a handupon his shoulder, he gave a little involuntary start. 

"So that my memories perhaps do possess me rather strongly, " he addedapologetically; "and this long corridor, these rooms, that barred andgloomy front door, all touch chords that--that--" His German failedhim and he glanced at his companion with an explanatory smile andgesture. But the Brother had removed the hand from his shoulder and wasstanding with his back to him, looking down the passage. 

"Naturally, naturally so, " he said hastily without turning round. "_Es ist doch selbstverständlich_. We shall all understand. "

Then he turned suddenly, and Harris saw that his face had turned mostoddly and disagreeably sinister. It may only have been the shadows againplaying their tricks with the wretched oil lamps on the wall, for thedark expression passed instantly as they retraced their steps down thecorridor, but the Englishman somehow got the impression that he had saidsomething to give offence, something that was not quite to the other'staste. Opposite the door of the _Bruderstube_ they stopped. Harrisrealised that it was late and he had possibly stayed talking too long. He made a tentative effort to leave, but his companion would not hear ofit. 

"You must have a cup of coffee with us, " he said firmly as though hemeant it, "and my colleagues will be delighted to see you. Some of themwill remember you, perhaps. "

The sound of voices came pleasantly through the door, men's voicestalking together. Bruder Kalkmann turned the handle and they entered aroom ablaze with light and full of people. 

"Ah, --but your name?" he whispered, bending down to catch the reply;"you have not told me your name yet. "

"Harris, " said the Englishman quickly as they went in. He felt nervousas he crossed the threshold, but ascribed the momentary trepidation tothe fact that he was breaking the strictest rule of the wholeestablishment, which forbade a boy under severest penalties to come nearthis holy of holies where the masters took their brief leisure. 

"Ah, yes, of course--Harris, " repeated the other as though he rememberedit. "Come in, Herr Harris, come in, please. Your visit will be immenselyappreciated. It is really very fine, very wonderful of you to have comein this way. "

The door closed behind them and, in the sudden light which made hissight swim for a moment, the exaggeration of the language escaped hisattention. He heard the voice of Bruder Kalkmann introducing him. Hespoke very loud, indeed, unnecessarily, --absurdly loud, Harris thought. 

"Brothers, " he announced, "it is my pleasure and privilege to introduceto you Herr Harris from England. He has just arrived to make us a littlevisit, and I have already expressed to him on behalf of us all thesatisfaction we feel that he is here. He was, as you remember, a pupilin the year '70. "

It was a very formal, a very German introduction, but Harris ratherliked it. It made him feel important and he appreciated the tact thatmade it almost seem as though he had been expected. 

The black forms rose and bowed; Harris bowed; Kalkmann bowed. Every onewas very polite and very courtly. The room swam with moving figures; thelight dazzled him after the gloom of the corridor, there was thick cigarsmoke in the atmosphere. He took the chair that was offered to himbetween two of the Brothers, and sat down, feeling vaguely that hisperceptions were not quite as keen and accurate as usual. He felt atrifle dazed perhaps, and the spell of the past came strongly over him, confusing the immediate present and making everything dwindle oddly tothe dimensions of long ago. He seemed to pass under the mastery of agreat mood that was a composite reproduction of all the moods of hisforgotten boyhood. 

Then he pulled himself together with a sharp effort and entered into theconversation that had begun again to buzz round him. Moreover, heentered into it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers--there were perhapsa dozen of them in the little room--treated him with a charm of mannerthat speedily made him feel one of themselves. This, again, was a verysubtle delight to him. He felt that he had stepped out of the greedy, vulgar, self-seeking world, the world of silk and markets andprofit-making--stepped into the cleaner atmosphere where spiritualideals were paramount and life was simple and devoted. It all charmedhim inexpressibly, so that he realised--yes, in a sense--the degradationof his twenty years' absorption in business. This keen atmosphere underthe stars where men thought only of their souls, and of the souls ofothers, was too rarefied for the world he was now associated with. Hefound himself making comparisons to his own disadvantage, --comparisonswith the mystical little dreamer that had stepped thirty years beforefrom the stern peace of this devout community, and the man of the worldthat he had since become, --and the contrast made him shiver with a keenregret and something like self-contempt. 

He glanced round at the other faces floating towards him through tobaccosmoke--this acrid cigar smoke he remembered so well: how keen they were, how strong, placid, touched with the nobility of great aims andunselfish purposes. At one or two he looked particularly. He hardly knewwhy. They rather fascinated him. There was something so very stern anduncompromising about them, and something, too, oddly, subtly, familiar, that yet just eluded him. But whenever their eyes met his own they heldundeniable welcome in them; and some held more--a kind of perplexedadmiration, he thought, something that was between esteem and deference. This note of respect in all the faces was very flattering to his vanity. 

Coffee was served presently, made by a black-haired Brother who sat inthe corner by the piano and bore a marked resemblance to BruderSchliemann, the musical director of thirty years ago. Harris exchangedbows with him when he took the cup from his white hands, which henoticed were like the hands of a woman. He lit a cigar, offered to himby his neighbour, with whom he was chatting delightfully, and who, inthe glare of the lighted match, reminded him sharply for a moment ofBruder Pagel, his former room-master. 

"_Es ist wirklich merkwürdig_, " he said, "how many resemblances I see, or imagine. It is really _very_ curious!"

"Yes, " replied the other, peering at him over his coffee cup, "the spellof the place is wonderfully strong. I can well understand that the oldfaces rise before your mind's eye--almost to the exclusion of ourselvesperhaps. "

They both laughed presently. It was soothing to find his mood understoodand appreciated. And they passed on to talk of the mountain village, itsisolation, its remoteness from worldly life, its peculiar fitness formeditation and worship, and for spiritual development--of a certainkind. 

"And your coming back in this way, Herr Harris, has pleased us all somuch, " joined in the Bruder on his left. "We esteem you for it mosthighly. We honour you for it. "

Harris made a deprecating gesture. "I fear, for my part, it is only avery selfish pleasure, " he said a trifle unctuously. 

"Not all would have had the courage, " added the one who resembledBruder Pagel. 

"You mean, " said Harris, a little puzzled, "the disturbing memories--?"

Bruder Pagel looked at him steadily, with unmistakable admiration andrespect. "I mean that most men hold so strongly to life, and can give upso little for their beliefs, " he said gravely. 

The Englishman felt slightly uncomfortable. These worthy men really madetoo much of his sentimental journey. Besides, the talk was getting alittle out of his depth. He hardly followed it. 

"The worldly life still has _some_ charms for me, " he replied smilingly, as though to indicate that sainthood was not yet quite within his grasp. 

"All the more, then, must we honour you for so freely coming, " said theBrother on his left; "so unconditionally!"

A pause followed, and the silk merchant felt relieved when theconversation took a more general turn, although he noted that it nevertravelled very far from the subject of his visit and the wonderfulsituation of the lonely village for men who wished to develop theirspiritual powers and practise the rites of a high worship. Others joinedin, complimenting him on his knowledge of the language, making him feelutterly at his ease, yet at the same time a little uncomfortable by theexcess of their admiration. After all, it was such a very small thing todo, this sentimental journey. 

The time passed along quickly; the coffee was excellent, the cigars softand of the nutty flavour he loved. At length, fearing to outstay hiswelcome, he rose reluctantly to take his leave. But the others would nothear of it. It was not often a former pupil returned to visit them inthis simple, unaffected way. The night was young. If necessary theycould even find him a corner in the great _Schlafzimmer_ upstairs. Hewas easily persuaded to stay a little longer. Somehow he had become thecentre of the little party. He felt pleased, flattered, honoured. 

"And perhaps Bruder Schliemann will play something for us--now. "

It was Kalkmann speaking, and Harris started visibly as he heard thename, and saw the black-haired man by the piano turn with a smile. ForSchliemann was the name of his old music director, who was dead. Couldthis be his son? They were so exactly alike. 

"If Bruder Meyer has not put his Amati to bed, I will accompany him, "said the musician suggestively, looking across at a man whom Harris hadnot yet noticed, and who, he now saw, was the very image of a formermaster of that name. 

Meyer rose and excused himself with a little bow, and the Englishmanquickly observed that he had a peculiar gesture as though his neck had afalse join on to the body just below the collar and feared it mightbreak. Meyer of old had this trick of movement. He remembered how theboys used to copy it. 

He glanced sharply from face to face, feeling as though some silent, unseen process were changing everything about him. All the faces seemedoddly familiar. Pagel, the Brother he had been talking with, was ofcourse the image of Pagel, his former room-master, and Kalkmann, he nowrealised for the first time, was the very twin of another master whosename he had quite forgotten, but whom he used to dislike intensely inthe old days. And, through the smoke, peering at him from the corners ofthe room, he saw that all the Brothers about him had the faces he hadknown and lived with long ago--Röst, Fluheim, Meinert, Rigel, Gysin. 

He stared hard, suddenly grown more alert, and everywhere saw, orfancied he saw, strange likenesses, ghostly resemblances, --more, theidentical faces of years ago. There was something queer about it all, something not quite right, something that made him feel uneasy. He shookhimself, mentally and actually, blowing the smoke from before his eyeswith a long breath, and as he did so he noticed to his dismay that everyone was fixedly staring. They were watching him. 

This brought him to his senses. As an Englishman, and a foreigner, hedid not wish to be rude, or to do anything to make himself foolishlyconspicuous and spoil the harmony of the evening. He was a guest, and aprivileged guest at that. Besides, the music had already begun. BruderSchliemann's long white fingers were caressing the keys to some purpose. 

He subsided into his chair and smoked with half-closed eyes that yet saweverything. 

But the shudder had established itself in his being, and, whether hewould or not, it kept repeating itself. As a town, far up some inlandriver, feels the pressure of the distant sea, so he became aware thatmighty forces from somewhere beyond his ken were urging themselves upagainst his soul in this smoky little room. He began to feel exceedinglyill at ease. 

And as the music filled the air his mind began to clear. Like a liftedveil there rose up something that had hitherto obscured his vision. Thewords of the priest at the railway inn flashed across his brainunbidden: "You will find it different. " And also, though why he couldnot tell, he saw mentally the strong, rather wonderful eyes of thatother guest at the supper-table, the man who had overheard hisconversation, and had later got into earnest talk with the priest. Hetook out his watch and stole a glance at it. Two hours had slipped by. It was already eleven o'clock. 

Schliemann, meanwhile, utterly absorbed in his music, was playing asolemn measure. The piano sang marvellously. The power of a greatconviction, the simplicity of great art, the vital spiritual message ofa soul that had found itself--all this, and more, were in the chords, and yet somehow the music was what can only be described asimpure--atrociously and diabolically impure. And the piece itself, although Harris did not recognise it as anything familiar, was surelythe music of a Mass--huge, majestic, sombre? It stalked through thesmoky room with slow power, like the passage of something that wasmighty, yet profoundly intimate, and as it went there stirred into eachand every face about him the signature of the enormous forces of whichit was the audible symbol. The countenances round him turned sinister, but not idly, negatively sinister: they grew dark with purpose. Hesuddenly recalled the face of Bruder Kalkmann in the corridor earlier inthe evening. The motives of their secret souls rose to the eyes, andmouths, and foreheads, and hung there for all to see like the blackbanners of an assembly of ill-starred and fallen creatures. Demons--wasthe horrible word that flashed through his brain like a sheet of fire. 

When this sudden discovery leaped out upon him, for a moment he lost hisself-control. Without waiting to think and weigh his extraordinaryimpression, he did a very foolish but a very natural thing. Feelinghimself irresistibly driven by the sudden stress to some kind of action, he sprang to his feet--and screamed! To his own utter amazement he stoodup and shrieked aloud!

But no one stirred. No one, apparently, took the slightest notice of hisabsurdly wild behaviour. It was almost as if no one but himself hadheard the scream at all--as though the music had drowned it andswallowed it up--as though after all perhaps he had not really screamedas loudly as he imagined, or had not screamed at all. 

Then, as he glanced at the motionless, dark faces before him, somethingof utter cold passed into his being, touching his very soul. .. . Allemotion cooled suddenly, leaving him like a receding tide. He sat downagain, ashamed, mortified, angry with himself for behaving like a fooland a boy. And the music, meanwhile, continued to issue from the whiteand snakelike fingers of Bruder Schliemann, as poisoned wine might issuefrom the weirdly fashioned necks of antique phials. 

And, with the rest of them, Harris drank it in. 

Forcing himself to believe that he had been the victim of some kind ofillusory perception, he vigorously restrained his feelings. Then themusic presently ceased, and every one applauded and began to talk atonce, laughing, changing seats, complimenting the player, and behavingnaturally and easily as though nothing out of the way had happened. Thefaces appeared normal once more. The Brothers crowded round theirvisitor, and he joined in their talk and even heard himself thanking thegifted musician. 

But, at the same time, he found himself edging towards the door, nearerand nearer, changing his chair when possible, and joining the groupsthat stood closest to the way of escape. 

"I must thank you all _tausendmal_ for my little reception and the greatpleasure--the very great honour you have done me, " he began in decidedtones at length, "but I fear I have trespassed far too long already onyour hospitality. Moreover, I have some distance to walk to my inn. "

A chorus of voices greeted his words. They would not hear of hisgoing, --at least not without first partaking of refreshment. Theyproduced pumpernickel from one cupboard, and rye-bread and sausage fromanother, and all began to talk again and eat. More coffee was made, fresh cigars lighted, and Bruder Meyer took out his violin and began totune it softly. 

"There is always a bed upstairs if Herr Harris will accept it, " saidone. 

"And it is difficult to find the way out now, for all the doors arelocked, " laughed another loudly. 

"Let us take our simple pleasures as they come, " cried a third. "BruderHarris will understand how we appreciate the honour of this last visitof his. "

They made a dozen excuses. They all laughed, as though the politeness oftheir words was but formal, and veiled thinly--more and more thinly--avery different meaning. 

"And the hour of midnight draws near, " added Bruder Kalkmann with acharming smile, but in a voice that sounded to the Englishman like thegrating of iron hinges. 

Their German seemed to him more and more difficult to understand. Henoted that they called him "Bruder" too, classing him as one ofthemselves. 

And then suddenly he had a flash of keener perception, and realised witha creeping of his flesh that he had all along misinterpreted--grosslymisinterpreted all they had been saying. They had talked about thebeauty of the place, its isolation and remoteness from the world, itspeculiar fitness for certain kinds of spiritual development andworship--yet hardly, he now grasped, in the sense in which he had takenthe words. They had meant something different. Their spiritual powers, their desire for loneliness, their passion for worship, were not thepowers, the solitude, or the worship that _he_ meant and understood. Hewas playing a part in some horrible masquerade; he was among men whocloaked their lives with religion in order to follow their real purposesunseen of men. 

What did it all mean? How had he blundered into so equivocal asituation? Had he blundered into it at all? Had he not rather been ledinto it, deliberately led? His thoughts grew dreadfully confused, andhis confidence in himself began to fade. And why, he suddenly thoughtagain, were they so impressed by the mere fact of his coming to revisithis old school? What was it they so admired and wondered at in hissimple act? Why did they set such store upon his having the courage tocome, to "give himself so freely, " "unconditionally" as one of them hadexpressed it with such a mockery of exaggeration?

Fear stirred in his heart most horribly, and he found no answer to anyof his questionings. Only one thing he now understood quite clearly: itwas their purpose to keep him here. They did not intend that he shouldgo. And from this moment he realised that they were sinister, formidableand, in some way he had yet to discover, inimical to himself, inimicalto his life. And the phrase one of them had used a moment ago--"this_last_ visit of his"--rose before his eyes in letters of flame. 

Harris was not a man of action, and had never known in all the course ofhis career what it meant to be in a situation of real danger. He was notnecessarily a coward, though, perhaps, a man of untried nerve. Herealised at last plainly that he was in a very awkward predicamentindeed, and that he had to deal with men who were utterly in earnest. What their intentions were he only vaguely guessed. His mind, indeed, was too confused for definite ratiocination, and he was only able tofollow blindly the strongest instincts that moved in him. It neveroccurred to him that the Brothers might all be mad, or that he himselfmight have temporarily lost his senses and be suffering under someterrible delusion. In fact, nothing occurred to him--he realisednothing--except that he meant to escape--and the quicker the better. Atremendous revulsion of feeling set in and overpowered him. 

Accordingly, without further protest for the moment, he ate hispumpernickel and drank his coffee, talking meanwhile as naturally andpleasantly as he could, and when a suitable interval had passed, he roseto his feet and announced once more that he must now take his leave. Hespoke very quietly, but very decidedly. No one hearing him could doubtthat he meant what he said. He had got very close to the door by thistime. 

"I regret, " he said, using his best German, and speaking to a hushedroom, "that our pleasant evening must come to an end, but it is nowtime for me to wish you all good-night. " And then, as no one saidanything, he added, though with a trifle less assurance, "And I thankyou all most sincerely for your hospitality. "

"On the contrary, " replied Kalkmann instantly, rising from his chair andignoring the hand the Englishman had stretched out to him, "it is we whohave to thank you; and we do so most gratefully and sincerely. "

And at the same moment at least half a dozen of the Brothers took uptheir position between himself and the door. 

"You are very good to say so, " Harris replied as firmly as he couldmanage, noticing this movement out of the corner of his eye, "but reallyI had no conception that--my little chance visit could have afforded youso much pleasure. " He moved another step nearer the door, but BruderSchliemann came across the room quickly and stood in front of him. Hisattitude was uncompromising. A dark and terrible expression had comeinto his face. 

"But it was _not_ by chance that you came, Bruder Harris, " he said sothat all the room could hear; "surely we have not misunderstood yourpresence here?" He raised his black eyebrows. 

"No, no, " the Englishman hastened to reply, "I was--I am delighted to behere. I told you what pleasure it gave me to find myself among you. Donot misunderstand me, I beg. " His voice faltered a little, and he haddifficulty in finding the words. More and more, too, he had difficultyin understanding _their_ words. 

"Of course, " interposed Bruder Kalkmann in his iron bass, "_we_ have notmisunderstood. You have come back in the spirit of true and unselfishdevotion. You offer yourself freely, and we all appreciate it. It isyour willingness and nobility that have so completely won our venerationand respect. " A faint murmur of applause ran round the room. "What weall delight in--what our great Master will especially delight in--is thevalue of your spontaneous and voluntary--"

He used a word Harris did not understand. He said "_Opfer_. " Thebewildered Englishman searched his brain for the translation, andsearched in vain. For the life of him he could not remember what itmeant. But the word, for all his inability to translate it, touched hissoul with ice. It was worse, far worse, than anything he had imagined. He felt like a lost, helpless creature, and all power to fight sank outof him from that moment. 

"It is magnificent to be such a willing--" added Schliemann, sidlingup to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made use of the sameword--"_Opfer_. "

"God! What could it all mean?" "Offer himself!" "True spirit ofdevotion!" "Willing, " "unselfish, " "magnificent!" _Opfer, Opfer, Opfer!_What in the name of heaven did it mean, that strange, mysterious wordthat struck such terror into his heart?

He made a valiant effort to keep his presence of mind and hold hisnerves steady. Turning, he saw that Kalkmann's face was a dead white. Kalkmann! He understood that well enough. _Kalkmann_ meant "Man ofChalk": he knew that. But what did "_Opfer_" mean? That was the real keyto the situation. Words poured through his disordered mind in an endlessstream--unusual, rare words he had perhaps heard but once in hislife--while "_Opfer_, " a word in common use, entirely escaped him. Whatan extraordinary mockery it all was!

Then Kalkmann, pale as death, but his face hard as iron, spoke a few lowwords that he did not catch, and the Brothers standing by the walls atonce turned the lamps down so that the room became dim. In the halflight he could only just discern their faces and movements. 

"It is time, " he heard Kalkmann's remorseless voice continue just behindhim. "The hour of midnight is at hand. Let us prepare. He comes! Hecomes; Bruder Asmodelius comes!" His voice rose to a chant. 

And the sound of that name, for some extraordinary reason, wasterrible--utterly terrible; so that Harris shook from head to foot as heheard it. Its utterance filled the air like soft thunder, and a hushcame over the whole room. Forces rose all about him, transforming thenormal into the horrible, and the spirit of craven fear ran through allhis being, bringing him to the verge of collapse. 

_Asmodelius! Asmodelius!_ The name was appalling. For he understood atlast to whom it referred and the meaning that lay between its greatsyllables. At the same instant, too, he suddenly understood the meaningof that unremembered word. The import of the word "_Opfer_" flashed uponhis soul like a message of death. 

He thought of making a wild effort to reach the door, but the weaknessof his trembling knees, and the row of black figures that stood between, dissuaded him at once. He would have screamed for help, but rememberingthe emptiness of the vast building, and the loneliness of the situation, he understood that no help could come that way, and he kept his lipsclosed. He stood still and did nothing. But he knew now what was coming. 

Two of the Brothers approached and took him gently by the arm. 

"Bruder Asmodelius accepts you, " they whispered; "are you ready?"

Then he found his tongue and tried to speak. "But what have I to do withthis Bruder Asm--Asmo--?" he stammered, a desperate rush of wordscrowding vainly behind the halting tongue. 

The name refused to pass his lips. He could not pronounce it as theydid. He could not pronounce it at all. His sense of helplessness thenentered the acute stage, for this inability to speak the name produceda fresh sense of quite horrible confusion in his mind, and he becameextraordinarily agitated. 

"I came here for a friendly visit, " he tried to say with a great effort, but, to his intense dismay, he heard his voice saying something quitedifferent, and actually making use of that very word they had all used:"I came here as a willing _Opfer_, " he heard his own voice say, "and _Iam quite ready_. "

He was lost beyond all recall now! Not alone his mind, but the verymuscles of his body had passed out of control. He felt that he washovering on the confines of a phantom or demon-world, --a world in whichthe name they had spoken constituted the Master-name, the word ofultimate power. 

What followed he heard and saw as in a nightmare. 

"In the half light that veils all truth, let us prepare to worship andadore, " chanted Schliemann, who had preceded him to the end of the room. 

"In the mists that protect our faces before the Black Throne, let usmake ready the willing victim, " echoed Kalkmann in his great bass. 

They raised their faces, listening expectantly, as a roaring sound, likethe passing of mighty projectiles, filled the air, far, far away, verywonderful, very forbidding. The walls of the room trembled. 

"He comes! He comes! He comes!" chanted the Brothers in chorus. 

The sound of roaring died away, and an atmosphere of still and uttercold established itself over all. Then Kalkmann, dark and unutterablystern, turned in the dim light and faced the rest. 

"Asmodelius, our _Hauptbruder_, is about us, " he cried in a voice thateven while it shook was yet a voice of iron; "Asmodelius is about us. Make ready. "

There followed a pause in which no one stirred or spoke. A tall Brotherapproached the Englishman; but Kalkmann held up his hand. 

"Let the eyes remain uncovered, " he said, "in honour of so freely givinghimself. " And to his horror Harris then realised for the first time thathis hands were already fastened to his sides. 

The Brother retreated again silently, and in the pause that followed allthe figures about him dropped to their knees, leaving him standingalone, and as they dropped, in voices hushed with mingled reverence andawe, they cried, softly, odiously, appallingly, the name of the Beingwhom they momentarily expected to appear. 

Then, at the end of the room, where the windows seemed to havedisappeared so that he saw the stars, there rose into view far upagainst the night sky, grand and terrible, the outline of a man. A kindof grey glory enveloped it so that it resembled a steel-cased statue, immense, imposing, horrific in its distant splendour; while, at the sametime, the face was so spiritually mighty, yet so proudly, so austerelysad, that Harris felt as he stared, that the sight was more than hiseyes could meet, and that in another moment the power of vision wouldfail him altogether, and he must sink into utter nothingness. 

So remote and inaccessible hung this figure that it was impossible togauge anything as to its size, yet at the same time so strangely close, that when the grey radiance from its mightily broken visage, august andmournful, beat down upon his soul, pulsing like some dark star with thepowers of spiritual evil, he felt almost as though he were looking intoa face no farther removed from him in space than the face of any one ofthe Brothers who stood by his side. 

And then the room filled and trembled with sounds that Harris understoodfull well were the failing voices of others who had preceded him in along series down the years. There came first a plain, sharp cry, as of aman in the last anguish, choking for his breath, and yet, with the veryfinal expiration of it, breathing the name of the Worship--of the darkBeing who rejoiced to hear it. The cries of the strangled; the short, running gasp of the suffocated; and the smothered gurgling of thetightened throat, all these, and more, echoed back and forth between thewalls, the very walls in which he now stood a prisoner, a sacrificialvictim. The cries, too, not alone of the broken bodies, but--farworse--of beaten, broken souls. And as the ghastly chorus rose and fell, there came also the faces of the lost and unhappy creatures to whom theybelonged, and, against that curtain of pale grey light, he saw floatpast him in the air, an array of white and piteous human countenancesthat seemed to beckon and gibber at him as though he were already one ofthemselves. 

Slowly, too, as the voices rose, and the pallid crew sailed past, thatgiant form of grey descended from the sky and approached the room thatcontained the worshippers and their prisoner. Hands rose and sank abouthim in the darkness, and he felt that he was being draped in othergarments than his own; a circlet of ice seemed to run about his head, while round the waist, enclosing the fastened arms, he felt a girdletightly drawn. At last, about his very throat, there ran a soft andsilken touch which, better than if there had been full light, and amirror held to his face, he understood to be the cord of sacrifice--andof death. 

At this moment the Brothers, still prostrate upon the floor, began againtheir mournful, yet impassioned chanting, and as they did so a strangething happened. For, apparently without moving or altering its position, the huge Figure seemed, at once and suddenly, to be inside the room, almost beside him, and to fill the space around him to the exclusion ofall else. 

He was now beyond all ordinary sensations of fear, only a drab feelingas of death--the death of the soul--stirred in his heart. His thoughtsno longer even beat vainly for escape. The end was near, and he knew it. 

The dreadfully chanting voices rose about him in a wave: "We worship! Weadore! We offer!" The sounds filled his ears and hammered, almostmeaningless, upon his brain. 

Then the majestic grey face turned slowly downwards upon him, and hisvery soul passed outwards and seemed to become absorbed in the sea ofthose anguished eyes. At the same moment a dozen hands forced him to hisknees, and in the air before him he saw the arm of Kalkmann upraised, and felt the pressure about his throat grow strong. 

It was in this awful moment, when he had given up all hope, and the helpof gods or men seemed beyond question, that a strange thing happened. For before his fading and terrified vision there slid, as in a dream oflight, --yet without apparent rhyme or reason--wholly unbidden andunexplained, --the face of that other man at the supper table of therailway inn. And the sight, even mentally, of that strong, wholesome, vigorous English face, inspired him suddenly with a new courage. 

It was but a flash of fading vision before he sank into a dark andterrible death, yet, in some inexplicable way, the sight of that facestirred in him unconquerable hope and the certainty of deliverance. Itwas a face of power, a face, he now realised, of simple goodness such asmight have been seen by men of old on the shores of Galilee; a face, byheaven, that could conquer even the devils of outer space. 

And, in his despair and abandonment, he called upon it, and called withno uncertain accents. He found his voice in this overwhelming moment tosome purpose; though the words he actually used, and whether they werein German or English, he could never remember. Their effect, nevertheless, was instantaneous. The Brothers understood, and that greyFigure of evil understood. 

For a second the confusion was terrific. There came a great shatteringsound. It seemed that the very earth trembled. But all Harris rememberedafterwards was that voices rose about him in the clamour of terrifiedalarm--

"A man of power is among us! A man of God!"

The vast sound was repeated--the rushing through space as of hugeprojectiles--and he sank to the floor of the room, unconscious. Theentire scene had vanished, vanished like smoke over the roof of acottage when the wind blows. 

And, by his side, sat down a slight un-German figure, --the figure of thestranger at the inn, --the man who had the "rather wonderful eyes. "

 * * * * *

When Harris came to himself he felt cold. He was lying under the opensky, and the cool air of field and forest was blowing upon his face. Hesat up and looked about him. The memory of the late scene was stillhorribly in his mind, but no vestige of it remained. No walls or ceilingenclosed him; he was no longer in a room at all. There were no lampsturned low, no cigar smoke, no black forms of sinister worshippers, notremendous grey Figure hovering beyond the windows. 

Open space was about him, and he was lying on a pile of bricks andmortar, his clothes soaked with dew, and the kind stars shining brightlyoverhead. He was lying, bruised and shaken, among the heaped-up débrisof a ruined building. 

He stood up and stared about him. There, in the shadowy distance, laythe surrounding forest, and here, close at hand, stood the outline ofthe village buildings. But, underfoot, beyond question, lay nothing butthe broken heaps of stones that betokened a building long since crumbledto dust. Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and that greatwooden beams, half burnt, half rotten, made lines through the generaldébris. He stood, then, among the ruins of a burnt and shatteredbuilding, the weeds and nettles proving conclusively that it had lainthus for many years. 

The moon had already set behind the encircling forest, but the starsthat spangled the heavens threw enough light to enable him to make quitesure of what he saw. Harris, the silk merchant, stood among these brokenand burnt stones and shivered. 

Then he suddenly became aware that out of the gloom a figure had risenand stood beside him. Peering at him, he thought he recognised the faceof the stranger at the railway inn. 

"Are _you_ real?" he asked in a voice he hardly recognised as his own. 

"More than real--I'm friendly, " replied the stranger; "I followed you uphere from the inn. "

Harris stood and stared for several minutes without adding anything. Histeeth chattered. The least sound made him start; but the simple words inhis own language, and the tone in which they were uttered, comforted himinconceivably. 

"You're English too, thank God, " he said inconsequently. "These Germandevils--" He broke off and put a hand to his eyes. "But what's becomeof them all--and the room--and--and--" The hand travelled down to histhroat and moved nervously round his neck. He drew a long, long breathof relief. "Did I dream everything--everything?" he said distractedly. 

He stared wildly about him, and the stranger moved forward and took hisarm. "Come, " he said soothingly, yet with a trace of command in thevoice, "we will move away from here. The high-road, or even the woodswill be more to your taste, for we are standing now on one of the mosthaunted--and most terribly haunted--spots of the whole world. "

He guided his companion's stumbling footsteps over the broken masonryuntil they reached the path, the nettles stinging their hands, andHarris feeling his way like a man in a dream. Passing through thetwisted iron railing they reached the path, and thence made their way tothe road, shining white in the night. Once safely out of the ruins, Harris collected himself and turned to look back. 

"But, how is it possible?" he exclaimed, his voice still shaking. "Howcan it be possible? When I came in here I saw the building in themoonlight. They opened the door. I saw the figures and heard the voicesand touched, yes touched their very hands, and saw their damned blackfaces, saw them far more plainly than I see you now. " He was deeplybewildered. The glamour was still upon his eyes with a degree of realitystronger than the reality even of normal life. "Was I so utterlydeluded?"

Then suddenly the words of the stranger, which he had only half heard orunderstood, returned to him. 

"Haunted?" he asked, looking hard at him; "haunted, did you say?" Hepaused in the roadway and stared into the darkness where the building ofthe old school had first appeared to him. But the stranger hurried himforward. 

"We shall talk more safely farther on, " he said. "I followed you fromthe inn the moment I realised where you had gone. When I found you itwas eleven o'clock--"

"Eleven o'clock, " said Harris, remembering with a shudder. 

"--I saw you drop. I watched over you till you recovered consciousnessof your own accord, and now--now I am here to guide you safely back tothe inn. I have broken the spell--the glamour--"

"I owe you a great deal, sir, " interrupted Harris again, beginning tounderstand something of the stranger's kindness, "but I don't understandit all. I feel dazed and shaken. " His teeth still chattered, and spellsof violent shivering passed over him from head to foot. He found that hewas clinging to the other's arm. In this way they passed beyond thedeserted and crumbling village and gained the high-road that ledhomewards through the forest. 

"That school building has long been in ruins, " said the man at his sidepresently; "it was burnt down by order of the Elders of the community atleast ten years ago. The village has been uninhabited ever since. Butthe simulacra of certain ghastly events that took place under that roofin past days still continue. And the 'shells' of the chief participantsstill enact there the dreadful deeds that led to its final destruction, and to the desertion of the whole settlement. They weredevil-worshippers!"

Harris listened with beads of perspiration on his forehead that did notcome alone from their leisurely pace through the cool night. Although hehad seen this man but once before in his life, and had never beforeexchanged so much as a word with him, he felt a degree of confidence anda subtle sense of safety and well-being in his presence that were themost healing influences he could possibly have wished after theexperience he had been through. For all that, he still felt as if hewere walking in a dream, and though he heard every word that fell fromhis companion's lips, it was only the next day that the full import ofall he said became fully clear to him. The presence of this quietstranger, the man with the wonderful eyes which he felt now, rather thansaw, applied a soothing anodyne to his shattered spirit that healed himthrough and through. And this healing influence, distilled from the darkfigure at his side, satisfied his first imperative need, so that healmost forgot to realise how strange and opportune it was that the manshould be there at all. 

It somehow never occurred to him to ask his name, or to feel any unduewonder that one passing tourist should take so much trouble on behalf ofanother. He just walked by his side, listening to his quiet words, andallowing himself to enjoy the very wonderful experience after his recentordeal, of being helped, strengthened, blessed. Only once, rememberingvaguely something of his reading of years ago, he turned to the manbeside him, after some more than usually remarkable words, and heardhimself, almost involuntarily it seemed, putting the question: "Then areyou a Rosicrucian, sir, perhaps?" But the stranger had ignored thewords, or possibly not heard them, for he continued with his talk asthough unconscious of any interruption, and Harris became aware thatanother somewhat unusual picture had taken possession of his mind, asthey walked there side by side through the cool reaches of the forest, and that he had found his imagination suddenly charged with thechildhood memory of Jacob wrestling with an angel, --wrestling all nightwith a being of superior quality whose strength eventually became hisown. 

"It was your abrupt conversation with the priest at supper that firstput me upon the track of this remarkable occurrence, " he heard theman's quiet voice beside him in the darkness, "and it was from him Ilearned after you left the story of the devil-worship that becamesecretly established in the heart of this simple and devout littlecommunity. "

"Devil-worship! Here--!" Harris stammered, aghast. 

"Yes--here;--conducted secretly for years by a group of Brothers beforeunexplained disappearances in the neighbourhood led to its discovery. For where could they have found a safer place in the whole wide worldfor their ghastly traffic and perverted powers than here, in the veryprecincts--under cover of the very shadow of saintliness and holyliving?"

"Awful, awful!" whispered the silk merchant, "and when I tell you thewords they used to me--"

"I know it all, " the stranger said quietly. "I saw and heard everything. My plan first was to wait till the end and then to take steps for theirdestruction, but in the interest of your personal safety, "--he spokewith the utmost gravity and conviction, --"in the interest of the safetyof your soul, I made my presence known when I did, and before theconclusion had been reached--"

"My safety! The danger, then, was real. They were alive and--" Wordsfailed him. He stopped in the road and turned towards his companion, theshining of whose eyes he could just make out in the gloom. 

"It was a concourse of the shells of violent men, spiritually developedbut evil men, seeking after death--the death of the body--to prolongtheir vile and unnatural existence. And had they accomplished theirobject you, in turn, at the death of your body, would have passed intotheir power and helped to swell their dreadful purposes. "

Harris made no reply. He was trying hard to concentrate his mind uponthe sweet and common things of life. He even thought of silk and St. Paul's Churchyard and the faces of his partners in business. 

"For you came all prepared to be caught, " he heard the other's voicelike some one talking to him from a distance; "your deeply introspectivemood had already reconstructed the past so vividly, so intensely, thatyou were _en rapport_ at once with any forces of those days that chancedstill to be lingering. And they swept you up all unresistingly. "

Harris tightened his hold upon the stranger's arm as he heard. At themoment he had room for one emotion only. It did not seem to him odd thatthis stranger should have such intimate knowledge of his mind. 

"It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave theirphotographs upon surrounding scenes and objects, " the other added, "andwho ever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful andlovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon? It is unfortunate. But the wicked passions of men's hearts alone seem strong enough toleave pictures that persist; the good are ever too lukewarm. "

The stranger sighed as he spoke. But Harris, exhausted and shaken as hewas to the very core, paced by his side, only half listening. He movedas in a dream still. It was very wonderful to him, this walk home underthe stars in the early hours of the October morning, the peaceful forestall about them, mist rising here and there over the small clearings, andthe sound of water from a hundred little invisible streams filling inthe pauses of the talk. In after life he always looked back to it assomething magical and impossible, something that had seemed toobeautiful, too curiously beautiful, to have been quite true. And, thoughat the time he heard and understood but a quarter of what the strangersaid, it came back to him afterwards, staying with him till the end ofhis days, and always with a curious, haunting sense of unreality, asthough he had enjoyed a wonderful dream of which he could recall onlyfaint and exquisite portions. 

But the horror of the earlier experience was effectually dispelled; andwhen they reached the railway inn, somewhere about three o'clock in themorning, Harris shook the stranger's hand gratefully, effusively, meeting the look of those rather wonderful eyes with a full heart, andwent up to his room, thinking in a hazy, dream-like way of the wordswith which the stranger had brought their conversation to an end as theyleft the confines of the forest--

"And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after thebrain that sent them forth has crumbled into dust, how vitally importantit must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them withthe keenest possible restraint. "

But Harris, the silk merchant, slept better than might have beenexpected, and with a soundness that carried him half-way through theday. And when he came downstairs and learned that the stranger hadalready taken his departure, he realised with keen regret that he hadnever once thought of asking his name. 

"Yes, he signed the visitors' book, " said the girl in reply to hisquestion. 

And he turned over the blotted pages and found there, the last entry, ina very delicate and individual handwriting--

"_John Silence_, London. "

CASE II: THE CAMP OF THE DOG

I

Islands of all shapes and sizes troop northward from Stockholm by thehundred, and the little steamer that threads their intricate mazes insummer leaves the traveller in a somewhat bewildered state as regardsthe points of the compass when it reaches the end of its journey atWaxholm. But it is only after Waxholm that the true islands begin, so tospeak, to run wild, and start up the coast on their tangled course of ahundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart ofthis delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summerholiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mereround button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainousstretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitouscliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between nowider than a country lane, or, again, so far that an expanse stretchedlike the open sea for miles. 

Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, themajority were uninhabited. Carpeted with moss and heather, theircoast-lines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy bays, with a growth of splendid pine-woods that came down to the water's edgeand led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and mystery into thevery heart of primitive forest. 

The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue ofpaying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in apicturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a merereef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two others, cliff-boundmonsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea. The fourth, which weselected because it enclosed a little lagoon suitable for anchorage, bathing, night-lines, and what-not, shall have what description isnecessary as the story proceeds; but, so far as paying rent wasconcerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of ahundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees. 

It was in the blaze of an evening in July, the air clear as crystal, thesea a cobalt blue, when we left the steamer on the borders ofcivilisation and sailed away with maps, compasses, and provisions forthe little group of dots in the Skägård that were to be our home for thenext two months. The dinghy and my Canadian canoe trailed behind us, with tents and dunnage carefully piled aboard, and when the point ofcliff intervened to hide the steamer and the Waxholm hotel we realisedfor the first time that the horror of trains and houses was far behindus, the fever of men and cities, the weariness of streets and confinedspaces. The wilderness opened up on all sides into endless blue reaches, and the map and compasses were so frequently called into requisitionthat we went astray more often than not and progress was enchantinglyslow. It took us, for instance, two whole days to find ourcrescent-shaped home, and the camps we made on the way were sofascinating that we left them with difficulty and regret, for eachisland seemed more desirable than the one before it, and over all laythe spell of haunting peace, remoteness from the turmoil of the world, and the freedom of open and desolate spaces. 

And so many of these spots of world-beauty have I sought out and dweltin, that in my mind remains only a composite memory of their faces, atrue map of heaven, as it were, from which this particular one standsforth with unusual sharpness because of the strange things that happenedthere, and also, I think, because anything in which John Silence playeda part has a habit of fixing itself in the mind with a living andlasting quality of vividness. 

For the moment, however, Dr. Silence was not of the party. Some privatecase in the interior of Hungary claimed his attention, and it was nottill later--the 15th of August, to be exact--that I had arranged to meethim in Berlin and then return to London together for our harvest ofwinter work. All the members of our party, however, were known to himmore or less well, and on this third day as we sailed through the narrowopening into the lagoon and saw the circular ridge of trees in a goldand crimson sunset before us, his last words to me when we parted inLondon for some unaccountable reason came back very sharply to mymemory, and recalled the curious impression of prophecy with which I hadfirst heard them:

"Enjoy your holiday and store up all the force you can, " he had said asthe train slipped out of Victoria; "and we will meet in Berlin on the15th--unless you should send for me sooner. "

And now suddenly the words returned to me so clearly that it seemed Ialmost heard his voice in my ear: "Unless you should send for mesooner"; and returned, moreover, with a significance I was wholly at aloss to understand that touched somewhere in the depths of my mind avague sense of apprehension that they had all along been intended in thenature of a prophecy. 

In the lagoon, then, the wind failed us this July evening, as was onlynatural behind the shelter of the belt of woods, and we took to theoars, all breathless with the beauty of this first sight of our islandhome, yet all talking in somewhat hushed voices of the best place toland, the depth of water, the safest place to anchor, to put up thetents in, the most sheltered spot for the camp-fires, and a dozen thingsof importance that crop up when a home in the wilderness has actually tobe made. 

And during this busy sunset hour of unloading before the dark, the soulsof my companions adopted the trick of presenting themselves very vividlyanew before my mind, and introducing themselves afresh. 

In reality, I suppose, our party was in no sense singular. In theconventional life at home they certainly seemed ordinary enough, butsuddenly, as we passed through these gates of the wilderness, I saw themmore sharply than before, with characters stripped of the atmosphere ofmen and cities. A complete change of setting often furnishes astartlingly new view of people hitherto held for well-known; theypresent another facet of their personalities. I seemed to see my ownparty almost as new people--people I had not known properly hitherto, people who would drop all disguises and henceforth reveal themselves asthey really were. And each one seemed to say: "Now you will see me as Iam. You will see me here in this primitive life of the wildernesswithout clothes. All my masks and veils I have left behind in the abodesof men. So, look out for surprises!"

The Reverend Timothy Maloney helped me to put up the tents, longpractice making the process easy, and while he drove in pegs andtightened ropes, his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without atie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out forthe life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years of age, muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, andmore, without shirking. The way he handled the axe in cutting downsaplings for the tent-poles was a delight to see, and his eye in judgingthe level was unfailing. 

Bullied as a young man into a lucrative family living, he had in turnbullied his mind into some semblance of orthodox beliefs, doing thehonours of the little country church with an energy that made one thinkof a coal-heaver tending china; and it was only in the past few yearsthat he had resigned the living and taken instead to cramming young menfor their examinations. This suited him better. It enabled him, too, toindulge his passion for spells of "wild life, " and to spend the summermonths of most years under canvas in one part of the world or anotherwhere he could take his young men with him and combine "reading" withopen air. 

His wife usually accompanied him, and there was no doubt she enjoyedthe trips, for she possessed, though in less degree, the same joy of thewilderness that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The onlydifference was that while he regarded it as the real life, she regardedit as an interlude. While he camped out with his heart and mind, sheplayed at camping out with her clothes and body. None the less, she madea splendid companion, and to watch her busy cooking dinner over the firewe had built among the stones was to understand that her heart was inthe business for the moment and that she was happy even with the detail. 

Mrs. Maloney at home, knitting in the sun and believing that the worldwas made in six days, was one woman; but Mrs. Maloney, standing withbare arms over the smoke of a wood fire under the pine trees, wasanother; and Peter Sangree, the Canadian pupil, with his pale skin, andhis loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in veryunfavourable contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon withslender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than aknife. She ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed, too, withwilling pleasure, for in spite of his general appearance of debility hewas as happy to be in camp as any of them. 

But more than any other member of the party, Joan Maloney, the daughter, was the one who seemed a natural and genuine part of the landscape, whobelonged to it all just in the same way that the trees and the moss andthe grey rocks running out into the water belonged to it. For she wasobviously in her right and natural setting, a creature of the wilds, agipsy in her own home. 

To any one with a discerning eye this would have been more or lessapparent, but to me, who had known her during all the twenty-two yearsof her life and was familiar with the ins and outs of her primitive, utterly un-modern type, it was strikingly clear. To see her there madeit impossible to imagine her again in civilisation. I lost allrecollection of how she looked in a town. The memory somehow evaporated. This slim creature before me, flitting to and fro with the grace of thewoodland life, swift, supple, adroit, on her knees blowing the fire, orstirring the frying-pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly seemed theonly way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home; in London shebecame some one concealed by clothes, an artificial doll overdressed andmoving by clockwork, only a portion of her alive. Here she was alive allover. 

I forget altogether how she was dressed, just as I forget how anyparticular tree was dressed, or how the markings ran on any one of theboulders that lay about the Camp. She looked just as wild and naturaland untamed as everything else that went to make up the scene, and morethan that I cannot say. 

Pretty, she was decidedly not. She was thin, skinny, dark-haired, andpossessed of great physical strength in the form of endurance. She had, too, something of the force and vigorous purpose of a man, tempestuoussometimes and wild to passionate, frightening her mother, and puzzlingher easy-going father with her storms of waywardness, while at the sametime she stirred his admiration by her violence. A pagan of the pagansshe was besides, and with some haunting suggestion of old-world paganbeauty about her dark face and eyes. Altogether an odd and difficultcharacter, but with a generosity and high courage that made her verylovable. 

In town life she always seemed to me to feel cramped, bored, a devil ina cage, in her eyes a hunted expression as though any moment she dreadedto be caught. But up in these spacious solitudes all this disappeared. Away from the limitations that plagued and stung her, she would show ather best, and as I watched her moving about the Camp I repeatedly foundmyself thinking of a wild creature that had just obtained its freedomand was trying its muscles. 

Peter Sangree, of course, at once went down before her. But she was soobviously beyond his reach, and besides so well able to take care ofherself, that I think her parents gave the matter but little thought, and he himself worshipped at a respectful distance, keeping admirablecontrol of his passion in all respects save one; for at his age the eyesare difficult to master, and the yearning, almost the devouring, expression often visible in them was probably there unknown even tohimself. He, better than any one else, understood that he had fallen inlove with something most hard of attainment, something that drew him tothe very edge of life, and almost beyond it. It, no doubt, was a secretand terrible joy to him, this passionate worship from afar; only I thinkhe suffered more than any one guessed, and that his want of vitality wasdue in large measure to the constant stream of unsatisfied yearning thatpoured for ever from his soul and body. Moreover, it seemed to me, whonow saw them for the first time together, that there was an unnamablesomething--an elusive quality of some kind--that marked them asbelonging to the same world, and that although the girl ignored him shewas secretly, and perhaps unknown to herself, drawn by some attributevery deep in her own nature to some quality equally deep in his. 

This, then, was the party when we first settled down into our twomonths' camp on the island in the Baltic Sea. Other figures flitted fromtime to time across the scene, and sometimes one reading man, sometimesanother, came to join us and spend his four hours a day in theclergyman's tent, but they came for short periods only, and they wentwithout leaving much trace in my memory, and certainly they played noimportant part in what subsequently happened. 

The weather favoured us that night, so that by sunset the tents were up, the boats unloaded, a store of wood collected and chopped into lengths, and the candle-lanterns hung round ready for lighting on the trees. Sangree, too, had picked deep mattresses of balsam boughs for thewomen's beds, and had cleared little paths of brushwood from their tentsto the central fireplace. All was prepared for bad weather. It was acosy supper and a well-cooked one that we sat down to and ate under thestars, and, according to the clergyman, the only meal fit to eat we hadseen since we left London a week before. 

The deep stillness, after that roar of steamers, trains, and tourists, held something that thrilled, for as we lay round the fire there was nosound but the faint sighing of the pines and the soft lapping of thewaves along the shore and against the sides of the boat in the lagoon. The ghostly outline of her white sails was just visible through thetrees, idly rocking to and fro in her calm anchorage, her sheetsflapping gently against the mast. Beyond lay the dim blue shapes ofother islands floating in the night, and from all the great spaces aboutus came the murmur of the sea and the soft breathing of great woods. Theodours of the wilderness--smells of wind and earth, of trees and water, clean, vigorous, and mighty--were the true odours of a virgin worldunspoilt by men, more penetrating and more subtly intoxicating than anyother perfume in the whole world. Oh!--and dangerously strong, too, nodoubt, for some natures!

"Ahhh!" breathed out the clergyman after supper, with an indescribablegesture of satisfaction and relief. "Here there is freedom, and room forbody and mind to turn in. Here one can work and rest and play. Here onecan be alive and absorb something of the earth-forces that never getwithin touching distance in the cities. By George, I shall make apermanent camp here and come when it is time to die!"

The good man was merely giving vent to his delight at being undercanvas. He said the same thing every year, and he said it often. But itmore or less expressed the superficial feelings of us all. And when, alittle later, he turned to compliment his wife on the fried potatoes, and discovered that she was snoring, with her back against a tree, hegrunted with content at the sight and put a ground-sheet over her feet, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to fall asleepafter dinner, and then moved back to his own corner, smoking his pipewith great satisfaction. 

And I, smoking mine too, lay and fought against the most delicioussleep imaginable, while my eyes wandered from the fire to the starspeeping through the branches, and then back again to the group about me. The Rev. Timothy soon let his pipe go out, and succumbed as his wife haddone, for he had worked hard and eaten well. Sangree, also smoking, leaned against a tree with his gaze fixed on the girl, a depth ofyearning in his face that he could not hide, and that really distressedme for him. And Joan herself, with wide staring eyes, alert, full of thenew forces of the place, evidently keyed up by the magic of findingherself among all the things her soul recognised as "home, " sat rigid bythe fire, her thoughts roaming through the spaces, the blood stirringabout her heart. She was as unconscious of the Canadian's gaze as shewas that her parents both slept. She looked to me more like a tree, orsomething that had grown out of the island, than a living girl of thecentury; and when I spoke across to her in a whisper and suggested atour of investigation, she started and looked up at me as though sheheard a voice in her dreams. 

Sangree leaped up and joined us, and without waking the others we threewent over the ridge of the island and made our way down to the shorebehind. The water lay like a lake before us still coloured by thesunset. The air was keen and scented, wafting the smell of the woodedislands that hung about us in the darkening air. Very small wavestumbled softly on the sand. The sea was sown with stars, and everywherebreathed and pulsed the beauty of the northern summer night. I confess Ispeedily lost consciousness of the human presences beside me, and I havelittle doubt Joan did too. Only Sangree felt otherwise, I suppose, forpresently we heard him sighing; and I can well imagine that he absorbedthe whole wonder and passion of the scene into his aching heart, toswell the pain there that was more searching even than the pain at thesight of such matchless and incomprehensible beauty. 

The splash of a fish jumping broke the spell. 

"I wish we had the canoe now, " remarked Joan; "we could paddle out tothe other islands. "

"Of course, " I said; "wait here and I'll go across for it, " and wasturning to feel my way back through the darkness when she stopped me ina voice that meant what it said. 

"No; Mr. Sangree will get it. We will wait here and cooee to guide him. "

The Canadian was off in a moment, for she had only to hint of her wishesand he obeyed. 

"Keep out from shore in case of rocks, " I cried out as he went, "andturn to the right out of the lagoon. That's the shortest way round bythe map. "

My voice travelled across the still waters and woke echoes in thedistant islands that came back to us like people calling out of space. It was only thirty or forty yards over the ridge and down the other sideto the lagoon where the boats lay, but it was a good mile to coast roundthe shore in the dark to where we stood and waited. We heard himstumbling away among the boulders, and then the sounds suddenly ceasedas he topped the ridge and went down past the fire on the other side. 

"I didn't want to be left alone with him, " the girl said presently in alow voice. "I'm always afraid he's going to say or do something--" Shehesitated a moment, looking quickly over her shoulder towards the ridgewhere he had just disappeared--"something that might lead tounpleasantness. "

She stopped abruptly. 

"_You_ frightened, Joan!" I exclaimed, with genuine surprise. "This is anew light on your wicked character. I thought the human being who couldfrighten you did not exist. " Then I suddenly realised she was talkingseriously--looking to me for help of some kind--and at once I droppedthe teasing attitude. 

"He's very far gone, I think, Joan, " I added gravely. "You must be kindto him, whatever else you may feel. He's exceedingly fond of you. "

"I know, but I can't help it, " she whispered, lest her voice shouldcarry in the stillness; "there's something about him that--that makes mefeel creepy and half afraid. "

"But, poor man, it's not his fault if he is delicate and sometimes lookslike death, " I laughed gently, by way of defending what I felt to be avery innocent member of my sex. 

"Oh, but it's not that I mean, " she answered quickly; "it's something Ifeel about him, something in his soul, something he hardly knowshimself, but that may come out if we are much together. It draws me, Ifeel, tremendously. It stirs what is wild in me--deep down--oh, verydeep down, --yet at the same time makes me feel afraid. "

"I suppose his thoughts are always playing about you, " I said, "but he'snice-minded and--"

"Yes, yes, " she interrupted impatiently, "I can trust myself absolutelywith him. He's gentle and singularly pure-minded. But there's somethingelse that--" She stopped again sharply to listen. Then she came up closebeside me in the darkness, whispering--

"You know, Mr. Hubbard, sometimes my intuitions warn me a little toostrongly to be ignored. Oh, yes, you needn't tell me again that it'sdifficult to distinguish between fancy and intuition. I know all that. But I also know that there's something deep down in that man's soul thatcalls to something deep down in mine. And at present it frightens me. Because I cannot make out what it is; and I know, I _know_, he'll dosomething some day that--that will shake my life to the very bottom. "She laughed a little at the strangeness of her own description. 

I turned to look at her more closely, but the darkness was too great toshow her face. There was an intensity, almost of suppressed passion, inher voice that took me completely by surprise. 

"Nonsense, Joan, " I said, a little severely; "you know him well. He'sbeen with your father for months now. "

"But that was in London; and up here it's different--I mean, I feel thatit may be different. Life in a place like this blows away the restraintsof the artificial life at home. I know, oh, I know what I'm saying. Ifeel all untied in a place like this; the rigidity of one's naturebegins to melt and flow. Surely _you_ must understand what I mean!"

"Of course I understand, " I replied, yet not wishing to encourage her inher present line of thought, "and it's a grand experience--for a shorttime. But you're overtired to-night, Joan, like the rest of us. A fewdays in this air will set you above all fears of the kind you mention. "

Then, after a moment's silence, I added, feeling I should estrange herconfidence altogether if I blundered any more and treated her like achild--

"I think, perhaps, the true explanation is that you pity him for lovingyou, and at the same time you feel the repulsion of the healthy, vigorous animal for what is weak and timid. If he came up boldly andtook you by the throat and shouted that he would force you to lovehim--well, then you would feel no fear at all. You would know exactlyhow to deal with him. Isn't it, perhaps, something of that kind?"

The girl made no reply, and when I took her hand I felt that it trembleda little and was cold. 

"It's not his love that I'm afraid of, " she said hurriedly, for at thismoment we heard the dip of a paddle in the water, "it's something in hisvery soul that terrifies me in a way I have never been terrifiedbefore, --yet fascinates me. In town I was hardly conscious of hispresence. But the moment we got away from civilisation, it began tocome. He seems so--so _real_ up here. I dread being alone with him. Itmakes me feel that something must burst and tear its way out--that hewould do something--or I should do something--I don't know exactly whatI mean, probably, --but that I should let myself go and scream--"

"Joan!"

"Don't be alarmed, " she laughed shortly; "I shan't do anything silly, but I wanted to tell you my feelings in case I needed your help. When Ihave intuitions as strong as this they are never wrong, only I don'tknow yet what it means exactly. "

"You must hold out for the month, at any rate, " I said in asmatter-of-fact a voice as I could manage, for her manner had somehowchanged my surprise to a subtle sense of alarm. "Sangree only stays themonth, you know. And, anyhow, you are such an odd creature yourself thatyou should feel generously towards other odd creatures, " I ended lamely, with a forced laugh. 

She gave my hand a sudden pressure. "I'm glad I've told you at anyrate, " she said quickly under her breath, for the canoe was now glidingup silently like a ghost to our feet, "and I'm glad you're here, too, "she added as we moved down towards the water to meet it. 

I made Sangree change into the bows and got into the steering seatmyself, putting the girl between us so that I could watch them both bykeeping their outlines against the sea and stars. For the intuitions ofcertain folk--women and children usually, I confess--I have always felta great respect that has more often than not been justified byexperience; and now the curious emotion stirred in me by the girl'swords remained somewhat vividly in my consciousness. I explained it insome measure by the fact that the girl, tired out by the fatigue of manydays' travel, had suffered a vigorous reaction of some kind from thestrong, desolate scenery, and further, perhaps, that she had beentreated to my own experience of seeing the members of the party in a newlight--the Canadian, being partly a stranger, more vividly than the restof us. But, at the same time, I felt it was quite possible that she hadsensed some subtle link between his personality and her own, somequality that she had hitherto ignored and that the routine of town lifehad kept buried out of sight. The only thing that seemed difficult toexplain was the fear she had spoken of, and this I hoped the wholesomeeffects of camp-life and exercise would sweep away naturally in thecourse of time. 

We made the tour of the island without speaking. It was all toobeautiful for speech. The trees crowded down to the shore to hear uspass. We saw their fine dark heads, bowed low with splendid dignity towatch us, forgetting for a moment that the stars were caught in theneedled network of their hair. Against the sky in the west, where stilllingered the sunset gold, we saw the wild toss of the horizon, shaggywith forest and cliff, gripping the heart like the motive in a symphony, and sending the sense of beauty all a-shiver through the mind--all thesesurrounding islands standing above the water like low clouds, and likethem seeming to post along silently into the engulfing night. We heardthe musical drip-drip of the paddle, and the little wash of our waves onthe shore, and then suddenly we found ourselves at the opening of thelagoon again, having made the complete circuit of our home. 

The Reverend Timothy had awakened from sleep and was singing to himself;and the sound of his voice as we glided down the fifty yards of enclosedwater was pleasant to hear and undeniably wholesome. We saw the glow ofthe fire up among the trees on the ridge, and his shadow moving about ashe threw on more wood. 

"There you are!" he called aloud. "Good again! Been setting thenight-lines, eh? Capital! And your mother's still fast asleep, Joan. "

His cheery laugh floated across the water; he had not been in the leastdisturbed by our absence, for old campers are not easily alarmed. 

"Now, remember, " he went on, after we had told our little tale of travelby the fire, and Mrs. Maloney had asked for the fourth time exactlywhere her tent was and whether the door faced east or south, "every onetakes their turn at cooking breakfast, and one of the men is always outat sunrise to catch it first. Hubbard, I'll toss you which you do in themorning and which I do!" He lost the toss. "Then I'll catch it, " I said, laughing at his discomfiture, for I knew he loathed stirring porridge. "And mind you don't burn it as you did every blessed time last year onthe Volga, " I added by way of reminder. 

Mrs. Maloney's fifth interruption about the door of her tent, and herfurther pointed observation that it was past nine o'clock, set uslighting lanterns and putting the fire out for safety. 

But before we separated for the night the clergyman had a time-honouredlittle ritual of his own to go through that no one had the heart to denyhim. He always did this. It was a relic of his pulpit habits. He glancedbriefly from one to the other of us, his face grave and earnest, hishands lifted to the stars and his eyes all closed and puckered upbeneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up a short, almost inaudibleprayer, thanking Heaven for our safe arrival, begging for good weather, no illness or accidents, plenty of fish, and strong sailing winds. 

And then, unexpectedly--no one knew why exactly--he ended up with anabrupt request that nothing from the kingdom of darkness should beallowed to afflict our peace, and no evil thing come near to disturb usin the night-time. 

And while he uttered these last surprising words, so strangely unlikehis usual ending, it chanced that I looked up and let my eyes wanderround the group assembled about the dying fire. And it certainly seemedto me that Sangree's face underwent a sudden and visible alteration. Hewas staring at Joan, and as he stared the change ran over it like ashadow and was gone. I started in spite of myself, for something oddlyconcentrated, potent, collected, had come into the expression usually soscattered and feeble. But it was all swift as a passing meteor, and whenI looked a second time his face was normal and he was looking among thetrees. 

And Joan, luckily, had not observed him, her head being bowed and hereyes tightly closed while her father prayed. 

"The girl has a vivid imagination indeed, " I thought, half laughing, asI lit the lanterns, "if her thoughts can put a glamour upon mine in thisway"; and yet somehow, when we said good-night, I took occasion to giveher a few vigorous words of encouragement, and went to her tent to makesure I could find it quickly in the night in case anything happened. Inher quick way the girl understood and thanked me, and the last thing Iheard as I moved off to the men's quarters was Mrs. Maloney crying thatthere were beetles in her tent, and Joan's laughter as she went to helpher turn them out. 

Half an hour later the island was silent as the grave, but for themournful voices of the wind as it sighed up from the sea. Like whitesentries stood the three tents of the men on one side of the ridge, andon the other side, half hidden by some birches, whose leaves justshivered as the breeze caught them, the women's tents, patches ofghostly grey, gathered more closely together for mutual shelter andprotection. Something like fifty yards of broken ground, grey rock, mossand lichen, lay between, and over all lay the curtain of the night andthe great whispering winds from the forests of Scandinavia. 

And the very last thing, just before floating away on that mighty wavethat carries one so softly off into the deeps of forgetfulness, I againheard the voice of John Silence as the train moved out of VictoriaStation; and by some subtle connection that met me on the very thresholdof consciousness there rose in my mind simultaneously the memory of thegirl's half-given confidence, and of her distress. As by some wizardryof approaching dreams they seemed in that instant to be related; butbefore I could analyse the why and the wherefore, both sank away out ofsight again, and I was off beyond recall. 

"Unless you should send for me sooner. "

II

Whether Mrs. Maloney's tent door opened south or east I think she neverdiscovered, for it is quite certain she always slept with the flaptightly fastened; I only know that my own little "five by seven, allsilk" faced due east, because next morning the sun, pouring in as onlythe wilderness sun knows how to pour, woke me early, and a moment later, with a short run over soft moss and a flying dive from the graniteledge, I was swimming in the most sparkling water imaginable. 

It was barely four o'clock, and the sun came down a long vista of blueislands that led out to the open sea and Finland. Nearer by rose thewooded domes of our own property, still capped and wreathed with smokytrails of fast-melting mist, and looking as fresh as though it was themorning of Mrs. Maloney's Sixth Day and they had just issued, clean andbrilliant, from the hands of the great Architect. 

In the open spaces the ground was drenched with dew, and from the sea acool salt wind stole in among the trees and set the branches tremblingin an atmosphere of shimmering silver. The tents shone white where thesun caught them in patches. Below lay the lagoon, still dreaming of thesummer night; in the open the fish were jumping busily, sending musicalripples towards the shore; and in the air hung the magic ofdawn--silent, incommunicable. 

I lit the fire, so that an hour later the clergyman should find goodashes to stir his porridge over, and then set forth upon an examinationof the island, but hardly had I gone a dozen yards when I saw a figurestanding a little in front of me where the sunlight fell in a pool amongthe trees. 

It was Joan. She had already been up an hour, she told me, and hadbathed before the last stars had left the sky. I saw at once that thenew spirit of this solitary region had entered into her, banishing thefears of the night, for her face was like the face of a happy denizen ofthe wilderness, and her eyes stainless and shining. Her feet were bare, and drops of dew she had shaken from the branches hung in herloose-flying hair. Obviously she had come into her own. 

"I've been all over the island, " she announced laughingly, "and thereare two things wanting. "

"You're a good judge, Joan. What are they?"

"There's no animal life, and there's no--water. "

"They go together, " I said. "Animals don't bother with a rock like thisunless there's a spring on it. "

And as she led me from place to place, happy and excited, leapingadroitly from rock to rock, I was glad to note that my first impressionswere correct. She made no reference to our conversation of the nightbefore. The new spirit had driven out the old. There was no room in herheart for fear or anxiety, and Nature had everything her own way. 

The island, we found, was some three-quarters of a mile from point topoint, built in a circle, or wide horseshoe, with an opening of twentyfeet at the mouth of the lagoon. Pine-trees grew thickly all over, buthere and there were patches of silver birch, scrub oak, andconsiderable colonies of wild raspberry and gooseberry bushes. The twoends of the horseshoe formed bare slabs of smooth granite running intothe sea and forming dangerous reefs just below the surface, but the restof the island rose in a forty-foot ridge and sloped down steeply to thesea on either side, being nowhere more than a hundred yards wide. 

The outer shore-line was much indented with numberless coves and baysand sandy beaches, with here and there caves and precipitous littlecliffs against which the sea broke in spray and thunder. But the innershore, the shore of the lagoon, was low and regular, and so wellprotected by the wall of trees along the ridge that no storm could eversend more than a passing ripple along its sandy marges. Eternal shelterreigned there. 

On one of the other islands, a few hundred yards away--for the rest ofthe party slept late this first morning, and we took to the canoe--wediscovered a spring of fresh water untainted by the brackish flavour ofthe Baltic, and having thus solved the most important problem of theCamp, we next proceeded to deal with the second--fish. And in half anhour we reeled in and turned homewards, for we had no means of storage, and to clean more fish than may be stored or eaten in a day is no wiseoccupation for experienced campers. 

And as we landed towards six o'clock we heard the clergyman singing asusual and saw his wife and Sangree shaking out their blankets in thesun, and dressed in a fashion that finally dispelled all memories ofstreets and civilisation. 

"The Little People lit the fire for me, " cried Maloney, looking naturaland at home in his ancient flannel suit and breaking off in the middleof his singing, "so I've got the porridge going--and this time it's_not_ burnt. "

We reported the discovery of water and held up the fish. 

"Good! Good again!" he cried. "We'll have the first decent breakfastwe've had this year. Sangree'll clean 'em in no time, and the Bo'sun'sMate--"

"Will fry them to a turn, " laughed the voice of Mrs. Maloney, appearingon the scene in a tight blue jersey and sandals, and catching up thefrying-pan. Her husband always called her the Bo'sun's Mate in Camp, because it was her duty, among others, to pipe all hands to meals. 

"And as for you, Joan, " went on the happy man, "you look like the spiritof the island, with moss in your hair and wind in your eyes, and sun andstars mixed in your face. " He looked at her with delighted admiration. "Here, Sangree, take these twelve, there's a good fellow, they're thebiggest; and we'll have 'em in butter in less time than you can sayBaltic island!"

I watched the Canadian as he slowly moved off to the cleaning pail. Hiseyes were drinking in the girl's beauty, and a wave of passionate, almost feverish, joy passed over his face, expressive of the ecstasy oftrue worship more than anything else. Perhaps he was thinking that hestill had three weeks to come with that vision always before his eyes;perhaps he was thinking of his dreams in the night. I cannot say. But Inoticed the curious mingling of yearning and happiness in his eyes, andthe strength of the impression touched my curiosity. Something in hisface held my gaze for a second, something to do with its intensity. Thatso timid, so gentle a personality should conceal so virile a passionalmost seemed to require explanation. 

But the impression was momentary, for that first breakfast in Camppermitted no divided attentions, and I dare swear that the porridge, thetea, the Swedish "flatbread, " and the fried fish flavoured with pointsof frizzled bacon, were better than any meal eaten elsewhere that day inthe whole world. 

The first clear day in a new camp is always a furiously busy one, and wesoon dropped into the routine upon which in large measure the realcomfort of every one depends. About the cooking-fire, greatly improvedwith stones from the shore, we built a high stockade consisting ofupright poles thickly twined with branches, the roof lined with moss andlichen and weighted with rocks, and round the interior we made lowwooden seats so that we could lie round the fire even in rain and eatour meals in peace. Paths, too, outlined themselves from tent to tent, from the bathing places and the landing stage, and a fair division ofthe island was decided upon between the quarters of the men and thewomen. Wood was stacked, awkward trees and boulders removed, hammocksslung, and tents strengthened. In a word, Camp was established, andduties were assigned and accepted as though we expected to live on thisBaltic island for years to come and the smallest detail of the Communitylife was important. 

Moreover, as the Camp came into being, this sense of a communitydeveloped, proving that we were a definite whole, and not merelyseparate human beings living for a while in tents upon a desert island. Each fell willingly into the routine. Sangree, as by natural selection, took upon himself the cleaning of the fish and the cutting of the woodinto lengths sufficient for a day's use. And he did it well. The pan ofwater was never without a fish, cleaned and scaled, ready to fry forwhoever was hungry; the nightly fire never died down for lack ofmaterial to throw on without going farther afield to search. 

And Timothy, once reverend, caught the fish and chopped down the trees. He also assumed responsibility for the condition of the boat, and did itso thoroughly that nothing in the little cutter was ever found wanting. And when, for any reason, his presence was in demand, the first place tolook for him was--in the boat, and there, too, he was usually found, tinkering away with sheets, sails, or rudder and singing as he tinkered. 

'Nor was the "reading" neglected; for most mornings there came a soundof droning voices form the white tent by the raspberry bushes, whichsignified that Sangree, the tutor, and whatever other man chanced to bein the party at the time, were hard at it with history or the classics. 

And while Mrs. Maloney, also by natural selection, took charge of thelarder and the kitchen, the mending and general supervision of the roughcomforts, she also made herself peculiarly mistress of the megaphonewhich summoned to meals and carried her voice easily from one end of theisland to the other; and in her hours of leisure she daubed thesurrounding scenery on to a sketching block with all the honesty anddevotion of her determined but unreceptive soul. 

Joan, meanwhile, Joan, elusive creature of the wilds, became I know notexactly what. She did plenty of work in the Camp, yet seemed to have novery precise duties. She was everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes sheslept in her tent, sometimes under the stars with a blanket. She knewevery inch of the island and kept turning up in places where she wasleast expected--for ever wandering about, reading her books in shelteredcorners, making little fires on sunless days to "worship by to thegods, " as she put it, ever finding new pools to dive and bathe in, andswimming day and night in the warm and waveless lagoon like a fish in ahuge tank. She went bare-legged and bare-footed, with her hair down andher skirts caught up to the knees, and if ever a human being turned intoa jolly savage within the compass of a single week, Joan Maloney wascertainly that human being. She ran wild. 

So completely, too, was she possessed by the strong spirit of the placethat the little human fear she had yielded to so strangely on ourarrival seemed to have been utterly dispossessed. As I hoped andexpected, she made no reference to our conversation of the firstevening. Sangree bothered her with no special attentions, and after allthey were very little together. His behaviour was perfect in thatrespect, and I, for my part, hardly gave the matter another thought. Joan was ever a prey to vivid fancies of one kind or another, and thiswas one of them. Mercifully for the happiness of all concerned, it hadmelted away before the spirit of busy, active life and deep contentthat reigned over the island. Every one was intensely alive, and peacewas upon all. 

 * * * * *

Meanwhile the effect of the camp-life began to tell. Always a searchingtest of character, its results, sooner or later, are infallible, for itacts upon the soul as swiftly and surely as the hypo bath upon thenegative of a photograph. A readjustment of the personal forces takesplace quickly; some parts of the personality go to sleep, others wakeup: but the first sweeping change that the primitive life brings aboutis that the artificial portions of the character shed themselves oneafter another like dead skins. Attitudes and poses that seemed genuinein the city drop away. The mind, like the body, grows quickly hard, simple, uncomplex. And in a camp as primitive and close to nature asours was, these effects became speedily visible. 

Some folk, of course, who talk glibly about the simple life when it issafely out of reach, betray themselves in camp by for ever peering aboutfor the artificial excitements of civilisation which they miss. Some getbored at once; some grow slovenly; some reveal the animal in mostunexpected fashion; and some, the select few, find themselves in veryshort order and are happy. 

And, in our little party, we could flatter ourselves that we allbelonged to the last category, so far as the general effect wasconcerned. Only there were certain other changes as well, varying witheach individual, and all interesting to note. 

It was only after the first week or two that these changes becamemarked, although this is the proper place, I think, to speak of them. For, having myself no other duty than to enjoy a well-earned holiday, Iused to load my canoe with blankets and provisions and journey forth onexploration trips among the islands of several days together; and it wason my return from the first of these--when I rediscovered the party, soto speak--that these changes first presented themselves vividly to me, and in one particular instance produced a rather curious impression. 

In a word, then, while every one had grown wilder, naturally wilder, Sangree, it seemed to me, had grown much wilder, and what I can onlycall unnaturally wilder. He made me think of a savage. 

To begin with, he had changed immensely in mere physical appearance, andthe full brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and thegeneral air of vigour and robustness that had come to replace hiscustomary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that Ihardly knew him for the same man. His voice, too, was deeper and hismanner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence inhimself. He now had some claims to be called nice-looking, or at leastto a certain air of virility that would not lessen his value in the eyesof the opposite sex. 

All this, of course, was natural enough, and most welcome. But, altogether apart from this physical change, which no doubt had also beengoing forward in the rest of us, there was a subtle note in hispersonality that came to me with a degree of surprise that almostamounted to shock. 

And two things--as he came down to welcome me and pull up thecanoe--leaped up in my mind unbidden, as though connected in some way Icould not at the moment divine--first, the curious judgment formed ofhim by Joan; and secondly, that fugitive expression I had caught in hisface while Maloney was offering up his strange prayer for specialprotection from Heaven. 

The delicacy of manner and feature--to call it by no milder term--whichhad always been a distinguishing characteristic of the man, had beenreplaced by something far more vigorous and decided, that yet utterlyeluded analysis. The change which impressed me so oddly was not easy toname. The others--singing Maloney, the bustling Bo'sun's Mate, and Joan, that fascinating half-breed of undine and salamander--all showed theeffects of a life so close to nature; but in their case the change wasperfectly natural and what was to be expected, whereas with PeterSangree, the Canadian, it was something unusual and unexpected. 

It is impossible to explain how he managed gradually to convey to mymind the impression that something in him had turned savage, yet this, more or less, is the impression that he did convey. It was not that heseemed really less civilised, or that his character had undergone anydefinite alteration, but rather that something in him, hitherto dormant, had awakened to life. Some quality, latent till now--so far, at least, as we were concerned, who, after all, knew him but slightly--had stirredinto activity and risen to the surface of his being. 

And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as I could get, it was butnatural that my mind should continue the intuitive process andacknowledge that John Silence, owing to his peculiar faculties, and thegirl, owing to her singularly receptive temperament, might each in adifferent way have divined this latent quality in his soul, and fearedits manifestation later. 

On looking back to this painful adventure, too, it now seems equallynatural that the same process, carried to its logical conclusion, shouldhave wakened some deep instinct in me that, wholly without directionfrom my will, set itself sharply and persistently upon the watch fromthat very moment. Thenceforward the personality of Sangree was neverfar from my thoughts, and I was for ever analysing and searching for theexplanation that took so long in coming. 

"I declare, Hubbard, you're tanned like an aboriginal, and you look likeone, too, " laughed Maloney. 

"And I can return the compliment, " was my reply, as we all gatheredround a brew of tea to exchange news and compare notes. 

And later, at supper, it amused me to observe that the distinguishedtutor, once clergyman, did not eat his food quite as "nicely" as he didat home--he devoured it; that Mrs. Maloney ate more, and, to say theleast, with less delay, than was her custom in the select atmosphere ofher English dining-room; and that while Joan attacked her tin platefulwith genuine avidity, Sangree, the Canadian, bit and gnawed at his, laughing and talking and complimenting the cook all the while, andmaking me think with secret amusement of a starved animal at its firstmeal. While, from their remarks about myself, I judged that I hadchanged and grown wild as much as the rest of them. 

In this and in a hundred other little ways the change showed, waysdifficult to define in detail, but all proving--not the coarseningeffect of leading the primitive life, but, let us say, the more directand unvarnished methods that became prevalent. For all day long we werein the bath of the elements--wind, water, sun--and just as the bodybecame insensible to cold and shed unnecessary clothing, the mind grewstraightforward and shed many of the disguises required by theconventions of civilisation. 

And in each, according to temperament and character, there stirred thelife-instincts that were natural, untamed, and, in a sense--savage. 

III

So it came about that I stayed with our island party, putting off mysecond exploring trip from day to day, and I think that this far-fetchedinstinct to watch Sangree was really the cause of my postponement. 

For another ten days the life of the Camp pursued its even anddelightful way, blessed by perfect summer weather, a good harvest offish, fine winds for sailing, and calm, starry nights. Maloney's selfishprayer had been favourably received. Nothing came to disturb or perplex. There was not even the prowling of night animals to vex the rest of Mrs. Maloney; for in previous camps it had often been her peculiar afflictionthat she heard the porcupines scratching against the canvas, or thesquirrels dropping fir-cones in the early morning with a sound ofminiature thunder upon the roof of her tent. But on this island therewas not even a squirrel or a mouse. I think two toads and a small andharmless snake were the only living creatures that had been discoveredduring the whole of the first fortnight. And these two toads in allprobability were not two toads, but one toad. 

Then, suddenly, came the terror that changed the whole aspect of theplace--the devastating terror. 

It came, at first, gently, but from the very start it made me realisethe unpleasant loneliness of our situation, our remote isolation in thiswilderness of sea and rock, and how the islands in this tideless Balticocean lay about us like the advance guard of a vast besieging army. Itsentry, as I say, was gentle, hardly noticeable, in fact, to most of us:singularly undramatic it certainly was. But, then, in actual life thisis often the way the dreadful climaxes move upon us, leaving the heartundisturbed almost to the last minute, and then overwhelming it with asudden rush of horror. For it was the custom at breakfast to listenpatiently while each in turn related the trivial adventures of thenight--how they slept, whether the wind shook their tent, whether thespider on the ridge pole had moved, whether they had heard the toad, andso forth--and on this particular morning Joan, in the middle of a littlepause, made a truly novel announcement:

"In the night I heard the howling of a dog, " she said, and then flushedup to the roots of her hair when we burst out laughing. For the idea ofthere being a dog on this forsaken island that was only able to supporta snake and two toads was distinctly ludicrous, and I remember Maloney, half-way through his burnt porridge, capping the announcement bydeclaring that he had heard a "Baltic turtle" in the lagoon, and hiswife's expression of frantic alarm before the laughter undeceived her. 

But the next morning Joan repeated the story with additional andconvincing detail. 

"Sounds of whining and growling woke me, " she said, "and I distinctlyheard sniffing under my tent, and the scratching of paws. "

"Oh, Timothy! Can it be a porcupine?" exclaimed the Bo'sun's Mate withdistress, forgetting that Sweden was not Canada. 

But the girl's voice had sounded to me in quite another key, and lookingup I saw that her father and Sangree were staring at her hard. They, too, understood that she was in earnest, and had been struck by theserious note in her voice. 

"Rubbish, Joan! You are always dreaming something or other wild, " herfather said a little impatiently. 

"There's not an animal of any size on the whole island, " added Sangreewith a puzzled expression. He never took his eyes from her face. 

"But there's nothing to prevent one swimming over, " I put in briskly, for somehow a sense of uneasiness that was not pleasant had woven itselfinto the talk and pauses. "A deer, for instance, might easily land inthe night and take a look round--"

"Or a bear!" gasped the Bo'sun's Mate, with a look so portentous that weall welcomed the laugh. 

But Joan did not laugh. Instead, she sprang up and called to us tofollow. 

"There, " she said, pointing to the ground by her tent on the side farthestfrom her mother's; "there are the marks close to my head. You cansee for yourselves. "

We saw plainly. The moss and lichen--for earth there was hardly any--hadbeen scratched up by paws. An animal about the size of a large dog itmust have been, to judge by the marks. We stood and stared in a row. 

"Close to my head, " repeated the girl, looking round at us. Her face, Inoticed, was very pale, and her lip seemed to quiver for an instant. Then she gave a sudden gulp--and burst into a flood of tears. 

The whole thing had come about in the brief space of a few minutes, andwith a curious sense of inevitableness, moreover, as though it had allbeen carefully planned from all time and nothing could have stopped it. It had all been rehearsed before--had actually happened before, as thestrange feeling sometimes has it; it seemed like the opening movement insome ominous drama, and that I knew exactly what would happen next. Something of great moment was impending. 

For this sinister sensation of coming disaster made itself felt from thevery beginning, and an atmosphere of gloom and dismay pervaded theentire Camp from that moment forward. 

I drew Sangree to one side and moved away, while Maloney took thedistressed girl into her tent, and his wife followed them, energetic andgreatly flustered. 

For thus, in undramatic fashion, it was that the terror I have spoken offirst attempted the invasion of our Camp, and, trivial and unimportantthough it seemed, every little detail of this opening scene isphotographed upon my mind with merciless accuracy and precision. Ithappened exactly as described. This was exactly the language used. I seeit written before me in black and white. I see, too, the faces of allconcerned with the sudden ugly signature of alarm where before had beenpeace. The terror had stretched out, so to speak, a first tentativefeeler toward us and had touched the hearts of each with a horriddirectness. And from this moment the Camp changed. 

Sangree in particular was visibly upset. He could not bear to see thegirl distressed, and to hear her actually cry was almost more than hecould stand. The feeling that he had no right to protect her hurt himkeenly, and I could see that he was itching to do something to help, andliked him for it. His expression said plainly that he would tear in athousand pieces anything that dared to injure a hair of her head. 

We lit our pipes and strolled over in silence to the men's quarters, andit was his odd Canadian expression "Gee whiz!" that drew my attention toa further discovery. 

"The brute's been scratching round my tent too, " he cried, as he pointedto similar marks by the door and I stooped down to examine them. We bothstared in amazement for several minutes without speaking. 

"Only I sleep like the dead, " he added, straightening up again, "and soheard nothing, I suppose. "

We traced the paw-marks from the mouth of his tent in a direct lineacross to the girl's, but nowhere else about the Camp was there a signof the strange visitor. The deer, dog, or whatever it was that had twicefavoured us with a visit in the night, had confined its attentions tothese two tents. And, after all, there was really nothing out of the wayabout these visits of an unknown animal, for although our own island wasdestitute of life, we were in the heart of a wilderness, and themainland and larger islands must be swarming with all kinds offour-footed creatures, and no very prolonged swimming was necessary toreach us. In any other country it would not have caused a moment'sinterest--interest of the kind we felt, that is. In our Canadian campsthe bears were for ever grunting about among the provision bags atnight, porcupines scratching unceasingly, and chipmunks scuttling overeverything. 

"My daughter is overtired, and that's the truth of it, " explainedMaloney presently when he rejoined us and had examined in turn the otherpaw-marks. "She's been overdoing it lately, and camp-life, you know, always means a great excitement to her. It's natural enough, if we takeno notice she'll be all right. " He paused to borrow my tobacco pouch andfill his pipe, and the blundering way he filled it and spilled theprecious weed on the ground visibly belied the calm of his easylanguage. "You might take her out for a bit of fishing, Hubbard, like agood chap; she's hardly up to the long day in the cutter. Show her someof the other islands in your canoe, perhaps. Eh?"

And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as suddenly, and assuspiciously, as it had come. 

But in the canoe, on our way home, having till then purposely ignoredthe subject uppermost in our minds, she suddenly spoke to me in a waythat again touched the note of sinister alarm--the note that kept onsounding and sounding until finally John Silence came with his greatvibrating presence and relieved it; yes, and even after he came, too, for a while. 

"I'm ashamed to ask it, " she said abruptly, as she steered me home, hersleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind, "and ashamed of mysilly tears too, because I really can't make out what caused them; but, Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me not to go off for your longexpeditions--just yet. I beg it of you. " She was so in earnest that sheforgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways and made us rolldangerously. "I have tried hard not to ask this, " she added, bringingthe canoe round again, "but I simply can't help myself. "

It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my hesitation was plain; forshe went on before I could reply, and her beseeching expression andintensity of manner impressed me very forcibly. 

"For another two weeks only--"

"Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight, " I said, seeing at once what she wasdriving at, but wondering if it was best to encourage her or not. 

"If I knew you were to be on the island till then, " she said, her facealternately pale and blushing, and her voice trembling a little, "Ishould feel so much happier. "

I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to finish. 

"And safer, " she added almost in a whisper; "especially--at night, Imean. "

"Safer, Joan?" I repeated, thinking I had never seen her eyes so softand tender. She nodded her head, keeping her gaze fixed on my face. 

It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my thoughts and judgment mayhave been, and somehow I understood that she spoke with good reason, though for the life of me I could not have put it into words. 

"Happier--and safer, " she said gravely, the canoe giving a dangerouslurch as she leaned forward in her seat to catch my answer. Perhaps, after all, the wisest way was to grant her request and make light of it, easing her anxiety without too much encouraging its cause. 

"All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise, " and the instant lookof relief in her face, and the smile that came back like sunlight to hereyes, made me feel that, unknown to myself and the world, I was capableof considerable sacrifice after all. 

"But, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of, " I added sharply; andshe looked up in my face with the smile women use when they know we aretalking idly, yet do not wish to tell us so. 

"_You_ don't feel afraid, I know, " she observed quietly. 

"Of course not; why should I?"

"So, if you will just humour me this once I--I will never ask anythingfoolish of you again as long as I live, " she said gratefully. 

"You have my promise, " was all I could find to say. 

She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon lying a quarter of amile ahead, and paddled swiftly; but a minute or two later she pausedagain and stared hard at me with the dripping paddle across the thwarts. 

"You've not heard anything at night yourself, have you?" she asked. 

"I never hear anything at night, " I replied shortly, "from the moment Ilie down till the moment I get up. "

"That dismal howling, for instance, " she went on, determined to get itout, "far away at first and then getting closer, and stopping justoutside the Camp?"

"Certainly not. "

"Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it. "

"Most likely you did, " was my unsympathetic response. 

"And you don't think father has heard it either, then?"

"No. He would have told me if he had. "

This seemed to relieve her mind a little. "I know mother hasn't, " sheadded, as if speaking to herself, "for she hears nothing--ever. "

 * * * * *

It was two nights after this conversation that I woke out of deep sleepand heard sounds of screaming. The voice was really horrible, breakingthe peace and silence with its shrill clamour. In less than ten secondsI was half dressed and out of my tent. The screaming had stoppedabruptly, but I knew the general direction, and ran as fast as thedarkness would allow over to the women's quarters, and on getting closeI heard sounds of suppressed weeping. It was Joan's voice. And just as Icame up I saw Mrs. Maloney, marvellously attired, fumbling with alantern. Other voices became audible in the same moment behind me, andTimothy Maloney arrived, breathless, less than half dressed, andcarrying another lantern that had gone out on the way from being bangedagainst a tree. Dawn was just breaking, and a chill wind blew in fromthe sea. Heavy black clouds drove low overhead. 

The scene of confusion may be better imagined than described. Questionsin frightened voices filled the air against this background ofsuppressed weeping. Briefly--Joan's silk tent had been torn, and thegirl was in a state bordering upon hysterics. Somewhat reassured by ournoisy presence, however, --for she was plucky at heart, --she pulledherself together and tried to explain what had happened; and her brokenwords, told there on the edge of night and morning upon this wild islandridge, were oddly thrilling and distressingly convincing. 

"Something touched me and I woke, " she said simply, but in a voicestill hushed and broken with the terror of it, "something pushingagainst the tent; I felt it through the canvas. There was the samesniffing and scratching as before, and I felt the tent give a little aswhen wind shakes it. I heard breathing--very loud, very heavybreathing--and then came a sudden great tearing blow, and the canvasripped open close to my face. "

She had instantly dashed out through the open flap and screamed at thetop of her voice, thinking the creature had actually got into the tent. But nothing was visible, she declared, and she heard not the faintestsound of an animal making off under cover of the darkness. The briefaccount seemed to exercise a paralysing effect upon us all as welistened to it. I can see the dishevelled group to this day, the windblowing the women's hair, and Maloney craning his head forward tolisten, and his wife, open-mouthed and gasping, leaning against a pinetree. 

"Come over to the stockade and we'll get the fire going, " I said;"that's the first thing, " for we were all shaking with the cold in ourscanty garments. And at that moment Sangree arrived wrapped in a blanketand carrying his gun; he was still drunken with sleep. 

"The dog again, " Maloney explained briefly, forestalling his questions;"been at Joan's tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It's time we didsomething. " He went on mumbling confusedly to himself. 

Sangree gripped his gun and looked about swiftly in the darkness. I sawhis eyes aflame in the glare of the flickering lanterns. He made amovement as though to start out and hunt--and kill. Then his glance fellon the girl crouching on the ground, her face hidden in her hands, andthere leaped into his features an expression of savage anger thattransformed them. He could have faced a dozen lions with a walking stickat that moment, and again I liked him for the strength of his anger, hisself-control, and his hopeless devotion. 

But I stopped him going off on a blind and useless chase. 

"Come and help me start the fire, Sangree, " I said, anxious also torelieve the girl of our presence; and a few minutes later the ashes, still growing from the night's fire, had kindled the fresh wood, andthere was a blaze that warmed us well while it also lit up thesurrounding trees within a radius of twenty yards. 

"I heard nothing, " he whispered; "what in the world do you think it is?It surely can't be only a dog!"

"We'll find that out later, " I said, as the others came up to thegrateful warmth; "the first thing is to make as big a fire as we can. "

Joan was calmer now, and her mother had put on some warmer, and lessmiraculous, garments. And while they stood talking in low voicesMaloney and I slipped off to examine the tent. There was little enoughto see, but that little was unmistakable. Some animal had scratched upthe ground at the head of the tent, and with a great blow of a powerfulpaw--a paw clearly provided with good claws--had struck the silk andtorn it open. There was a hole large enough to pass a fist and armthrough. 

"It can't be far away, " Maloney said excitedly. "We'll organise a huntat once; this very minute. "

We hurried back to the fire, Maloney talking boisterously about hisproposed hunt. "There's nothing like prompt action to dispel alarm, " hewhispered in my ear; and then turned to the rest of us. 

"We'll hunt the island from end to end at once, " he said, withexcitement; "that's what we'll do. The beast can't be far away. And theBo'sun's Mate and Joan must come too, because they can't be left alone. Hubbard, you take the right shore, and you, Sangree, the left, and I'llgo in the middle with the women. In this way we can stretch clean acrossthe ridge, and nothing bigger than a rabbit can possibly escape us. " Hewas extraordinarily excited, I thought. Anything affecting Joan, ofcourse, stirred him prodigiously. "Get your guns and we'll start thedrive at once, " he cried. He lit another lantern and handed one each tohis wife and Joan, and while I ran to fetch my gun I heard him singingto himself with the excitement of it all. 

Meanwhile the dawn had come on quickly. It made the flickering lanternslook pale. The wind, too, was rising, and I heard the trees moaningoverhead and the waves breaking with increasing clamour on the shore. Inthe lagoon the boat dipped and splashed, and the sparks from the firewere carried aloft in a stream and scattered far and wide. 

We made our way to the extreme end of the island, measured our distancescarefully, and then began to advance. None of us spoke. Sangree and I, with cocked guns, watched the shore lines, and all within easy touch andspeaking distance. It was a slow and blundering drive, and there weremany false alarms, but after the best part of half an hour we stood onthe farther end, having made the complete tour, and without putting upso much as a squirrel. Certainly there was no living creature on thatisland but ourselves. 

"I know what it is!" cried Maloney, looking out over the dim expanse ofgrey sea, and speaking with the air of a man making a discovery; "it's adog from one of the farms on the larger islands"--he pointed seawardswhere the archipelago thickened--"and it's escaped and turned wild. Ourfires and voices attracted it, and it's probably half starved as well assavage, poor brute!"

No one said anything in reply, and he began to sing again very low tohimself. 

The point where we stood--a huddled, shivering group--faced the widerchannels that led to the open sea and Finland. The grey dawn had brokenin earnest at last, and we could see the racing waves with their angrycrests of white. The surrounding islands showed up as dark masses in thedistance, and in the east, almost as Maloney spoke, the sun came up witha rush in a stormy and magnificent sky of red and gold. Against thissplashed and gorgeous background black clouds, shaped like fantastic andlegendary animals, filed past swiftly in a tearing stream, and to thisday I have only to close my eyes to see again that vivid and hurryingprocession in the air. All about us the pines made black splashesagainst the sky. It was an angry sunrise. Rain, indeed, had alreadybegun to fall in big drops. 

We turned, as by a common instinct, and, without speech, made our wayback slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming snatches of his songs, Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment's notice, and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the extinguishedlanterns. 

Yet it was only a dog!

Really, it was most singular when one came to reflect soberly upon itall. Events, say the occultists, have souls, or at least thatagglomerate life due to the emotions and thoughts of all concerned inthem, so that cities, and even whole countries, have great astral shapeswhich may become visible to the eye of vision; and certainly here, thesoul of this drive--this vain, blundering, futile drive--stood somewherebetween ourselves and--laughed. 

All of us heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother thesound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, andwith exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausibleagainst heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal mightso easily conceal itself from us, or swim away before we had time tolight upon its trail. For we all spoke of that "trail" as though itreally existed, and we had more to go upon than the mere marks of pawsabout the tents of Joan and the Canadian. Indeed, but for these, and thetorn tent, I think it would, of course, have been possible to ignore theexistence of this beast intruder altogether. 

And it was here, under this angry dawn, as we stood in the shelter ofthe stockade from the pouring rain, weary yet so strangely excited--itwas here, out of this confusion of voices and explanations, that--verystealthily--the ghost of something horrible slipped in and stood amongus. It made all our explanations seem childish and untrue; the falserelation was instantly exposed. Eyes exchanged quick, anxious glances, questioning, expressive of dismay. There was a sense of wonder, ofpoignant distress, and of trepidation. Alarm stood waiting at ourelbows. We shivered. 

Then, suddenly, as we looked into each other's faces, came the long, unwelcome pause in which this new arrival established itself in ourhearts. 

And, without further speech, or attempt at explanation, Maloney movedoff abruptly to mix the porridge for an early breakfast; Sangree toclean the fish; myself to chop wood and tend the fire; Joan and hermother to change their wet garments; and, most significant of all, toprepare her mother's tent for its future complement of two. 

Each went to his duty, but hurriedly, awkwardly, silently; and this newarrival, this shape of terror and distress stalked, viewless, by theside of each. 

"If only I could have traced that dog, " I think was the thought in theminds of all. 

But in Camp, where every one realises how important the individualcontribution is to the comfort and well-being of all, the mind speedilyrecovers tone and pulls itself together. 

During the day, a day of heavy and ceaseless rain, we kept more or lessto our tents, and though there were signs of mysterious conferencesbetween the three members of the Maloney family, I think that most of usslept a good deal and stayed alone with his thoughts. Certainly, I did, because when Maloney came to say that his wife invited us all to aspecial "tea" in her tent, he had to shake me awake before I realisedthat he was there at all. 

And by supper-time we were more or less even-minded again, and almostjolly. I only noticed that there was an undercurrent of what is bestdescribed as "jumpiness, " and that the merest snapping of a twig, orplop of a fish in the lagoon, was sufficient to make us start and lookover our shoulders. Pauses were rare in our talk, and the fire was neverfor one instant allowed to get low. The wind and rain had ceased, butthe dripping of the branches still kept up an excellent imitation of adownpour. In particular, Maloney was vigilant and alert, telling us aseries of tales in which the wholesome humorous element was especiallystrong. He lingered, too, behind with me after Sangree had gone to bed, and while I mixed myself a glass of hot Swedish punch, he did a thing Ihad never known him do before--he mixed one for himself, and then askedme to light him over to his tent. We said nothing on the way, but I feltthat he was glad of my companionship. 

I returned alone to the stockade, and for a long time after that keptthe fire blazing, and sat up smoking and thinking. I hardly knew why;but sleep was far from me for one thing, and for another, an idea wastaking form in my mind that required the comfort of tobacco and abright fire for its growth. I lay against a corner of the stockadeseat, listening to the wind whispering and to the ceaseless drip-drip ofthe trees. The night, otherwise, was very still, and the sea quiet as alake. I remember that I was conscious, peculiarly conscious, of thishost of desolate islands crowding about us in the darkness, and that wewere the one little spot of humanity in a rather wonderful kind ofwilderness. 

But this, I think, was the only symptom that came to warn me of highlystrung nerves, and it certainly was not sufficiently alarming to destroymy peace of mind. One thing, however, did come to disturb my peace, forjust as I finally made ready to go, and had kicked the embers of thefire into a last effort, I fancied I saw, peering at me round thefarther end of the stockade wall, a dark and shadowy mass that mighthave been--that strongly resembled, in fact--the body of a large animal. Two glowing eyes shone for an instant in the middle of it. But the nextsecond I saw that it was merely a projecting mass of moss and lichen inthe wall of our stockade, and the eyes were a couple of wandering sparksfrom the dying ashes I had kicked. It was easy enough, too, to imagine Isaw an animal moving here and there between the trees, as I picked myway stealthily to my tent. Of course, the shadows tricked me. 

And though it was after one o'clock, Maloney's light was still burning, for I saw his tent shining white among the pines. 

It was, however, in the short space between consciousness andsleep--that time when the body is low and the voices of the submergedregion tell sometimes true--that the idea which had been all this whilematuring reached the point of an actual decision, and I suddenlyrealised that I had resolved to send word to Dr. Silence. For, with asudden wonder that I had hitherto been so blind, the unwelcomeconviction dawned upon me all at once that some dreadful thing waslurking about us on this island, and that the safety of at least one ofus was threatened by something monstrous and unclean that was toohorrible to contemplate. And, again remembering those last words of hisas the train moved out of the platform, I understood that Dr. Silencewould hold himself in readiness to come. 

"Unless you should send for me sooner, " he had said. 

 * * * * *

I found myself suddenly wide awake. It is impossible to say what wokeme, but it was no gradual process, seeing that I jumped from deep sleepto absolute alertness in a single instant. I had evidently slept for anhour and more, for the night had cleared, stars crowded the sky, and apallid half-moon just sinking into the sea threw a spectral lightbetween the trees. 

I went outside to sniff the air, and stood upright. A curiousimpression that something was astir in the Camp came over me, and when Iglanced across at Sangree's tent, some twenty feet away, I saw that itwas moving. He too, then, was awake and restless, for I saw the canvassides bulge this way and that as he moved within. 

The flap pushed forward. He was coming out, like myself, to sniffthe air; and I was not surprised, for its sweetness after the rain wasintoxicating. And he came on all fours, just as I had done. I saw a headthrust round the edge of the tent. 

And then I saw that it was not Sangree at all. It was an animal. And thesame instant I realised something else too--it was _the_ animal; and itswhole presentment for some unaccountable reason was unutterably malefic. 

A cry I was quite unable to suppress escaped me, and the creature turnedon the instant and stared at me with baleful eyes. I could have droppedon the spot, for the strength all ran out of my body with a rush. Something about it touched in me the living terror that grips andparalyses. If the mind requires but the tenth of a second to form animpression, I must have stood there stockstill for several seconds whileI seized the ropes for support and stared. Many and vivid impressionsflashed through my mind, but not one of them resulted in action, becauseI was in instant dread that the beast any moment would leap in mydirection and be upon me. Instead, however, after what seemed a vastperiod, it slowly turned its eyes from my face, uttered a low whiningsound, and came out altogether into the open. 

Then, for the first time, I saw it in its entirety and noted two things:it was about the size of a large dog, but at the same time it wasutterly unlike any animal that I had ever seen. Also, that the qualitythat had impressed me first as being malefic was really only itssingular and original strangeness. Foolish as it may sound, andimpossible as it is for me to adduce proof, I can only say that theanimal seemed to me then to be--not real. 

But all this passed through my mind in a flash, almost subconsciously, and before I had time to check my impressions, or even properly verifythem, I made an involuntary movement, catching the tight rope in my handso that it twanged like a banjo string, and in that instant the creatureturned the corner of Sangree's tent and was gone into the darkness. 

Then, of course, my senses in some measure returned to me, and Irealised only one thing: it had been inside his tent!

I dashed out, reached the door in half a dozen strides, and looked in. The Canadian, thank God! lay upon his bed of branches. His arm wasstretched outside, across the blankets, the fist tightly clenched, andthe body had an appearance of unusual rigidity that was alarming. On hisface there was an expression of effort, almost of painful effort, so faras the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed to bevery profound. He looked, I thought, so stiff, so unnaturally stiff, andin some indefinable way, too, he looked smaller--shrunken. 

I called to him to wake, but called many times in vain. Then I decidedto shake him, and had already moved forward to do so vigorously whenthere came a sound of footsteps padding softly behind me, and I felt astream of hot breath burn my neck as I stooped. I turned sharply. Thetent door was darkened and something silently swept in. I felt a roughand shaggy body push past me, and knew that the animal had returned. Itseemed to leap forward between me and Sangree--in fact, to leap uponSangree, for its dark body hid him momentarily from view, and in thatmoment my soul turned sick and coward with a horror that rose from thevery dregs and depths of life, and gripped my existence at its centralsource. 

The creature seemed somehow to melt away into him, almost as though itbelonged to him and were a part of himself, but in the sameinstant--that instant of extraordinary confusion and terror in mymind--it seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some utterlyunaccountable fashion, it was gone. And the Canadian woke and sat upwith a start. 

"Quick! You fool!" I cried, in my excitement, "the beast has been inyour tent, here at your very throat while you sleep like the dead. Up, man! Get your gun! Only this second it disappeared over there behindyour head. Quick! or Joan--!"

And somehow the fact that he was there, wide-awake now, to corroborateme, brought the additional conviction to my own mind that this was noanimal, but some perplexing and dreadful form of life that drew upon mydeeper knowledge, that much reading had perhaps assented to, but thathad never yet come within actual range of my senses. 

He was up in a flash, and out. He was trembling, and very white. Wesearched hurriedly, feverishly, but found only the traces of paw-markspassing from the door of his own tent across the moss to the women's. And the sight of the tracks about Mrs. Maloney's tent, where Joan nowslept, set him in a perfect fury. 

"Do you know what it is, Hubbard, this beast?" he hissed under hisbreath at me; "it's a damned wolf, that's what it is--a wolf lost amongthe islands, and starving to death--desperate. So help me God, I believeit's that!"

He talked a lot of rubbish in his excitement. He declared he wouldsleep by day and sit up every night until he killed it. Again his ragetouched my admiration; but I got him away before he made enough noise towake the whole Camp. 

"I have a better plan than that, " I said, watching his face closely. "Idon't think this is anything we can deal with. I'm going to send for theonly man I know who can help. We'll go to Waxholm this very morning andget a telegram through. "

Sangree stared at me with a curious expression as the fury died out ofhis face and a new look of alarm took its place. 

"John Silence, " I said, "will know--"

"You think it's something--of that sort?" he stammered. 

"I am sure of it. "

There was a moment's pause. "That's worse, far worse than anythingmaterial, " he said, turning visibly paler. He looked from my face to thesky, and then added with sudden resolution, "Come; the wind's rising. Let's get off at once. From there you can telephone to Stockholm and geta telegram sent without delay. "

I sent him down to get the boat ready, and seized the opportunity myselfto run and wake Maloney. He was sleeping very lightly, and sprang up themoment I put my head inside his tent. I told him briefly what I hadseen, and he showed so little surprise that I caught myself wonderingfor the first time whether he himself had seen more going on than he haddeemed wise to communicate to the rest of us. 

He agreed to my plan without a moment's hesitation, and my last words tohim were to let his wife and daughter think that the great psychicdoctor was coming merely as a chance visitor, and not with anyprofessional interest. 

So, with frying-pan, provisions, and blankets aboard, Sangree and Isailed out of the lagoon fifteen minutes later, and headed with a goodbreeze for the direction of Waxholm and the borders of civilisation. 

IV

Although nothing John Silence did ever took me, properly speaking, bysurprise, it was certainly unexpected to find a letter from Stockholmwaiting for me. "I have finished my Hungary business, " he wrote, "and amhere for ten days. Do not hesitate to send if you need me. If youtelephone any morning from Waxholm I can catch the afternoon steamer. "

My years of intercourse with him were full of "coincidences" of thisdescription, and although he never sought to explain them by claimingany magical system of communication with my mind, I have never doubtedthat there actually existed some secret telepathic method by which heknew my circumstances and gauged the degree of my need. And that thispower was independent of time in the sense that it saw into the future, always seemed to me equally apparent. 

Sangree was as much relieved as I was, and within an hour of sunset thatvery evening we met him on the arrival of the little coasting steamer, and carried him off in the dinghy to the camp we had prepared on aneighbouring island, meaning to start for home early next morning. 

"Now, " he said, when supper was over and we were smoking round the fire, "let me hear your story. " He glanced from one to the other, smiling. 

"You tell it, Mr. Hubbard, " Sangree interrupted abruptly, and went off alittle way to wash the dishes, yet not so far as to be out of earshot. And while he splashed with the hot water, and scraped the tin plateswith sand and moss, my voice, unbroken by a single question from Dr. Silence, ran on for the next half-hour with the best account I couldgive of what had happened. 

My listener lay on the other side of the fire, his face half hidden by abig sombrero; sometimes he glanced up questioningly when a point neededelaboration, but he uttered no single word till I had reached the end, and his manner all through the recital was grave and attentive. Overhead, the wash of the wind in the pine branches filled in thepauses; the darkness settled down over the sea, and the stars came outin thousands, and by the time I finished the moon had risen to flood thescene with silver. Yet, by his face and eyes, I knew quite well that thedoctor was listening to something he had expected to hear, even if hehad not actually anticipated all the details. 

"You did well to send for me, " he said very low, with a significantglance at me when I finished; "very well, "--and for one swift second hiseye took in Sangree, --"for what we have to deal with here is nothingmore than a werewolf--rare enough, I am glad to say, but often very sad, and sometimes very terrible. "

I jumped as though I had been shot, but the next second was heartilyashamed of my want of control; for this brief remark, confirming as itdid my own worst suspicions, did more to convince me of the gravity ofthe adventure than any number of questions or explanations. It seemed todraw close the circle about us, shutting a door somewhere that locked usin with the animal and the horror, and turning the key. Whatever it washad now to be faced and dealt with. 

"No one has been actually injured so far?" he asked aloud, but in amatter-of-fact tone that lent reality to grim possibilities. 

"Good heavens, no!" cried the Canadian, throwing down his dishclothsand coming forward into the circle of firelight. "Surely there can be noquestion of this poor starved beast injuring anybody, can there?"

His hair straggled untidily over his forehead, and there was a gleam inhis eyes that was not all reflection from the fire. His words made meturn sharply. We all laughed a little short, forced laugh. 

"I trust not, indeed, " Dr. Silence said quietly. "But what makes youthink the creature is starved?" He asked the question with his eyesstraight on the other's face. The prompt question explained to me why Ihad started, and I waited with just a tremor of excitement for thereply. 

Sangree hesitated a moment, as though the question took him by surprise. But he met the doctor's gaze unflinchingly across the fire, and withcomplete honesty. 

"Really, " he faltered, with a little shrug of the shoulders, "I canhardly tell you. The phrase seemed to come out of its own accord. I havefelt from the beginning that it was in pain and--starved, though why Ifelt this never occurred to me till you asked. "

"You really know very little about it, then?" said the other, with asudden gentleness in his voice. 

"No more than that, " Sangree replied, looking at him with a puzzledexpression that was unmistakably genuine. "In fact, nothing at all, really, " he added, by way of further explanation. 

"I am glad of that, " I heard the doctor murmur under his breath, but solow that I only just caught the words, and Sangree missed themaltogether, as evidently he was meant to do. 

"And now, " he cried, getting on his feet and shaking himself with acharacteristic gesture, as though to shake out the horror and themystery, "let us leave the problem till to-morrow and enjoy this windand sea and stars. I've been living lately in the atmosphere of manypeople, and feel that I want to wash and be clean. I propose a swim andthen bed. Who'll second me?" And two minutes later we were all divingfrom the boat into cool, deep water, that reflected a thousand moons asthe waves broke away from us in countless ripples. 

We slept in blankets under the open sky, Sangree and I taking theoutside places, and were up before sunrise to catch the dawn wind. Helped by this early start we were half-way home by noon, and then thewind shifted to a few points behind us so that we fairly ran. In and outamong a thousand islands, down narrow channels where we lost the wind, out into open spaces where we had to take in a reef, racing along undera hot and cloudless sky, we flew through the very heart of thebewildering and lonely scenery. 

"A real wilderness, " cried Dr. Silence from his seat in the bows wherehe held the jib sheet. His hat was off, his hair tumbled in the wind, and his lean brown face gave him the touch of an Oriental. Presently hechanged places with Sangree, and came down to talk with me by thetiller. 

"A wonderful region, all this world of islands, " he said, waving hishand to the scenery rushing past us, "but doesn't it strike you there'ssomething lacking?"

"It's--hard, " I answered, after a moment's reflection. "It has asuperficial, glittering prettiness, without--" I hesitated to find theword I wanted. 

John Silence nodded his head with approval. 

"Exactly, " he said. "The picturesqueness of stage scenery that is notreal, not alive. It's like a landscape by a clever painter, yet withouttrue imagination. Soulless--that's the word you wanted. "

"Something like that, " I answered, watching the gusts of wind on thesails. "Not dead so much, as without soul. That's it. "

"Of course, " he went on, in a voice calculated, it seemed to me, not toreach our companion in the bows, "to live long in a place likethis--long and alone--might bring about a strange result in some men. "

I suddenly realised he was talking with a purpose and pricked up myears. 

"There's no life here. These islands are mere dead rocks pushed up frombelow the sea--not living land; and there's nothing really alive onthem. Even the sea, this tideless, brackish sea, neither salt water norfresh, is dead. It's all a pretty image of life without the real heartand soul of life. To a man with too strong desires who came here andlived close to nature, strange things might happen. "

"Let her out a bit, " I shouted to Sangree, who was coming aft. "Thewind's gusty and we've got hardly any ballast. "

He went back to the bows, and Dr. Silence continued--

"Here, I mean, a long sojourn would lead to deterioration, todegeneration. The place is utterly unsoftened by human influences, byany humanising associations of history, good or bad. This landscape hasnever awakened into life; it's still dreaming in its primitive sleep. "

"In time, " I put in, "you mean a man living here might become brutal?"

"The passions would run wild, selfishness become supreme, the instinctscoarsen and turn savage probably. "

"But--"

"In other places just as wild, parts of Italy for instance, where thereare other moderating influences, it could not happen. The charactermight grow wild, savage too in a sense, but with a human wildness onecould understand and deal with. But here, in a hard place like this, itmight be otherwise. " He spoke slowly, weighing his words carefully. 

I looked at him with many questions in my eyes, and a precautionary cryto Sangree to stay in the fore part of the boat, out of earshot. 

"First of all there would come callousness to pain, and indifference tothe rights of others. Then the soul would turn savage, not frompassionate human causes, or with enthusiasm, but by deadening down intoa kind of cold, primitive, emotionless savagery--by turning, like thelandscape, soulless. "

"And a man with strong desires, you say, might change?"

"Without being aware of it, yes; he might turn savage, his instincts anddesires turn animal. And if"--he lowered his voice and turned for amoment towards the bows, and then continued in his most weightymanner--"owing to delicate health or other predisposing causes, hisDouble--you know what I mean, of course--his etheric Body of Desire, orastral body, as some term it--that part in which the emotions, passionsand desires reside--if this, I say, were for some constitutional reasonloosely joined to his physical organism, there might well take place anoccasional projection--"

Sangree came aft with a sudden rush, his face aflame, but whether withwind or sun, or with what he had heard, I cannot say. In my surprise Ilet the tiller slip and the cutter gave a great plunge as she camesharply into the wind and flung us all together in a heap on the bottom. Sangree said nothing, but while he scrambled up and made the jib sheetfast my companion found a moment to add to his unfinished sentence thewords, too low for any ear but mine--

"Entirely unknown to himself, however. "

We righted the boat and laughed, and then Sangree produced the map andexplained exactly where we were. Far away on the horizon, across an openstretch of water, lay a blue cluster of islands with our crescent-shapedhome among them and the safe anchorage of the lagoon. An hour with thiswind would get us there comfortably, and while Dr. Silence and Sangreefell into conversation, I sat and pondered over the strange suggestionsthat had just been put into my mind concerning the "Double, " and thepossible form it might assume when dissociated temporarily from thephysical body. 

The whole way home these two chatted, and John Silence was as gentle andsympathetic as a woman. I did not hear much of their talk, for the windgrew occasionally to the force of a hurricane and the sails and tillerabsorbed my attention; but I could see that Sangree was pleased andhappy, and was pouring out intimate revelations to his companion in theway that most people did--when John Silence wished them to do so. 

But it was quite suddenly, while I sat all intent upon wind and sails, that the true meaning of Sangree's remark about the animal flared up inme with its full import. For his admission that he knew it was in painand starved was in reality nothing more or less than a revelation of hisdeeper self. It was in the nature of a confession. He was speaking ofsomething that he knew positively, something that was beyond question orargument, something that had to do directly with himself. "Poor starvedbeast" he had called it in words that had "come out of their ownaccord, " and there had not been the slightest evidence of any desire toconceal or explain away. He had spoken instinctively--from his heart, and as though about his own self. 

And half an hour before sunset we raced through the narrow opening ofthe lagoon and saw the smoke of the dinner-fire blowing here and thereamong the trees, and the figures of Joan and the Bo'sun's Mate runningdown to meet us at the landing-stage. 

V

Everything changed from the moment John Silence set foot on that island;it was like the effect produced by calling in some big doctor, somegreat arbiter of life and death, for consultation. The sense of gravityincreased a hundredfold. Even inanimate objects took upon themselves asubtle alteration, for the setting of the adventure--this deserted bitof sea with its hundreds of uninhabited islands--somehow turned sombre. An element that was mysterious, and in a sense disheartening, creptunbidden into the severity of grey rock and dark pine forest and tookthe sparkle from the sunshine and the sea. 

I, at least, was keenly aware of the change, for my whole being shifted, as it were, a degree higher, becoming keyed up and alert. The figuresfrom the background of the stage moved forward a little into thelight--nearer to the inevitable action. In a word this man's arrivalintensified the whole affair. 

And, looking back down the years to the time when all this happened, itis clear to me that he had a pretty sharp idea of the meaning of it fromthe very beginning. How much he knew beforehand by his strange diviningpowers, it is impossible to say, but from the moment he came upon thescene and caught within himself the note of what was going on amongstus, he undoubtedly held the true solution of the puzzle and had no needto ask questions. And this certitude it was that set him in such anatmosphere of power and made us all look to him instinctively; for hetook no tentative steps, made no false moves, and while the rest of usfloundered he moved straight to the climax. He was indeed a true divinerof souls. 

I can now read into his behaviour a good deal that puzzled me at thetime, for though I had dimly guessed the solution, I had no idea how hewould deal with it. And the conversations I can reproduce almostverbatim, for, according to my invariable habit, I kept full notes ofall he said. 

To Mrs. Maloney, foolish and dazed; to Joan, alarmed, yet plucky; and tothe clergyman, moved by his daughter's distress below his usual shallowemotions, he gave the best possible treatment in the best possible way, yet all so easily and simply as to make it appear naturally spontaneous. For he dominated the Bo'sun's Mate, taking the measure of her ignorancewith infinite patience; he keyed up Joan, stirring her courage andinterest to the highest point for her own safety; and the ReverendTimothy he soothed and comforted, while obtaining his implicitobedience, by taking him into his confidence, and leading him graduallyto a comprehension of the issue that was bound to follow. 

And Sangree--here his wisdom was most wisely calculated--he neglectedoutwardly because inwardly he was the object of his unceasing and mostconcentrated attention. Under the guise of apparent indifference hismind kept the Canadian under constant observation. 

There was a restless feeling in the Camp that evening and none of uslingered round the fire after supper as usual. Sangree and I busiedourselves with patching up the torn tent for our guest and with findingheavy stones to hold the ropes, for Dr. Silence insisted on having itpitched on the highest point of the island ridge, just where it was mostrocky and there was no earth for pegs. The place, moreover, was midwaybetween the men's and women's tents, and, of course, commanded the mostcomprehensive view of the Camp. 

"So that if your dog comes, " he said simply, "I may be able to catch himas he passes across. "

The wind had gone down with the sun and an unusual warmth lay over theisland that made sleep heavy, and in the morning we assembled at a latebreakfast, rubbing our eyes and yawning. The cool north wind had givenway to the warm southern air that sometimes came up with haze andmoisture across the Baltic, bringing with it the relaxing sensationsthat produced enervation and listlessness. 

And this may have been the reason why at first I failed to notice thatanything unusual was about, and why I was less alert than normally; forit was not till after breakfast that the silence of our little partystruck me and I discovered that Joan had not yet put in an appearance. And then, in a flash, the last heaviness of sleep vanished and I sawthat Maloney was white and troubled and his wife could not hold a platewithout trembling. 

A desire to ask questions was stopped in me by a swift glance from Dr. Silence, and I suddenly understood in some vague way that they werewaiting till Sangree should have gone. How this idea came to me I cannotdetermine, but the soundness of the intuition was soon proved, for themoment he moved off to his tent, Maloney looked up at me and began tospeak in a low voice. 

"You slept through it all, " he half whispered. 

"Through what?" I asked, suddenly thrilled with the knowledge thatsomething dreadful had happened. 

"We didn't wake you for fear of getting the whole Camp up, " he went on, meaning, by the Camp, I supposed, Sangree. "It was just before dawn whenthe screams woke me. "

"The dog again?" I asked, with a curious sinking of the heart. 

"Got right into the tent, " he went on, speaking passionately but verylow, "and woke my wife by scrambling all over her. Then she realisedthat Joan was struggling beside her. And, by God! the beast had torn herarm; scratched all down the arm she was, and bleeding. "

"Joan injured?" I gasped. 

"Merely scratched--this time, " put in John Silence, speaking for thefirst time; "suffering more from shock and fright than actual wounds. "

"Isn't it a mercy the doctor was here?" said Mrs. Maloney, looking as ifshe would never know calmness again. "I think we should both have beenkilled. "

"It has been a most merciful escape, " Maloney said, his pulpit voicestruggling with his emotion. "But, of course, we cannot risk another--wemust strike Camp and get away at once--"

"Only poor Mr. Sangree must not know what has happened. He is soattached to Joan and would be so terribly upset, " added the Bo'sun'sMate distractedly, looking all about in her terror. 

"It is perhaps advisable that Mr. Sangree should not know what hasoccurred, " Dr. Silence said with quiet authority, "but I think, for thesafety of all concerned, it will be better not to leave the island justnow. " He spoke with great decision and Maloney looked up and followedhis words closely. 

"If you will agree to stay here a few days longer, I have no doubt wecan put an end to the attentions of your strange visitor, andincidentally have the opportunity of observing a most singular andinteresting phenomenon--"

"What!" gasped Mrs. Maloney, "a phenomenon?--you mean that you know whatit is?"

"I am quite certain I know what it is, " he replied very low, for weheard the footsteps of Sangree approaching, "though I am not so certainyet as to the best means of dealing with it. But in any case it is notwise to leave precipitately--"

"Oh, Timothy, does he think it's a devil--?" cried the Bo'sun's Mate ina voice that even the Canadian must have heard. 

"In my opinion, " continued John Silence, looking across at me and theclergyman, "it is a case of modern lycanthropy with other complicationsthat may--" He left the sentence unfinished, for Mrs. Maloney got upwith a jump and fled to her tent fearful she might hear a worse thing, and at that moment Sangree turned the corner of the stockade and cameinto view. 

"There are footmarks all round the mouth of my tent, " he said withexcitement. "The animal has been here again in the night. Dr. Silence, you really must come and see them for yourself. They're as plain on themoss as tracks in snow. "

But later in the day, while Sangree went off in the canoe to fish thepools near the larger islands, and Joan still lay, bandaged and resting, in her tent, Dr. Silence called me and the tutor and proposed a walk tothe granite slabs at the far end. Mrs. Maloney sat on a stump near herdaughter, and busied herself energetically with alternate nursing andpainting. 

"We'll leave you in charge, " the doctor said with a smile that was meantto be encouraging, "and when you want us for lunch, or anything, themegaphone will always bring us back in time. "

For, though the very air was charged with strange emotions, every onetalked quietly and naturally as with a definite desire to counteractunnecessary excitement. 

"I'll keep watch, " said the plucky Bo'sun's Mate, "and meanwhile I findcomfort in my work. " She was busy with the sketch she had begun on theday after our arrival. "For even a tree, " she added proudly, pointing toher little easel, "is a symbol of the divine, and the thought makes mefeel safer. " We glanced for a moment at a daub which was more like thesymptom of a disease than a symbol of the divine--and then took the pathround the lagoon. 

At the far end we made a little fire and lay round it in the shadow of abig boulder. Maloney stopped his humming suddenly and turned to hiscompanion. 

"And what do you make of it all?" he asked abruptly. 

"In the first place, " replied John Silence, making himself comfortableagainst the rock, "it is of human origin, this animal; it is undoubtedlycanthropy. "

His words had the effect precisely of a bombshell. Maloney listened asthough he had been struck. 

"You puzzle me utterly, " he said, sitting up closer and staring at him. 

"Perhaps, " replied the other, "but if you'll listen to me for a fewmoments you may be less puzzled at the end--or more. It depends how muchyou know. Let me go further and say that you have underestimated, ormiscalculated, the effect of this primitive wild life upon all of you. "

"In what way?" asked the clergyman, bristling a trifle. 

"It is strong medicine for any town-dweller, and for some of you it hasbeen too strong. One of you has gone wild. " He uttered these last wordswith great emphasis. 

"Gone savage, " he added, looking from one to the other. 

Neither of us found anything to reply. 

"To say that the brute has awakened in a man is not a mere metaphoralways, " he went on presently. 

"Of course not!"

"But, in the sense I mean, may have a very literal and terriblesignificance, " pursued Dr. Silence. "Ancient instincts that no onedreamed of, least of all their possessor, may leap forth--"

"Atavism can hardly explain a roaming animal with teeth and claws andsanguinary instincts, " interrupted Maloney with impatience. 

"The term is of your own choice, " continued the doctor equably, "notmine, and it is a good example of a word that indicates a result whileit conceals the process; but the explanation of this beast that hauntsyour island and attacks your daughter is of far deeper significance thanmere atavistic tendencies, or throwing back to animal origin, which Isuppose is the thought in your mind. "

"You spoke just now of lycanthropy, " said Maloney, looking bewilderedand anxious to keep to plain facts evidently; "I think I have comeacross the word, but really--really--it can have no actual significanceto-day, can it? These superstitions of mediaeval times can hardly--"

He looked round at me with his jolly red face, and the expression ofastonishment and dismay on it would have made me shout with laughter atany other time. Laughter, however, was never farther from my mind thanat this moment when I listened to Dr. Silence as he carefully suggestedto the clergyman the very explanation that had gradually been forcingitself upon my own mind. 

"However mediaeval ideas may have exaggerated the idea is not of muchimportance to us now, " he said quietly, "when we are face to face with amodern example of what, I take it, has always been a profound fact. Forthe moment let us leave the name of any one in particular out of thematter and consider certain possibilities. "

We all agreed with that at any rate. There was no need to speak ofSangree, or of any one else, until we knew a little more. 

"The fundamental fact in this most curious case, " he went on, "is thatthe 'Double' of a man--"

"You mean the astral body? I've heard of that, of course, " broke inMaloney with a snort of triumph. 

"No doubt, " said the other, smiling, "no doubt you have;--that thisDouble, or fluidic body of a man, as I was saying, has the power undercertain conditions of projecting itself and becoming visible to others. Certain training will accomplish this, and certain drugs likewise;illnesses, too, that ravage the body may produce temporarily the resultthat death produces permanently, and let loose this counterpart of ahuman being and render it visible to the sight of others. 

"Every one, of course, knows this more or less to-day; but it is not sogenerally known, and probably believed by none who have not witnessedit, that this fluidic body can, under certain conditions, assume otherforms than human, and that such other forms may be determined by thedominating thought and wish of the owner. For this Double, or astralbody as you call it, is really the seat of the passions, emotions anddesires in the psychical economy. It is the Passion Body; and, inprojecting itself, it can often assume a form that gives expression tothe overmastering desire that moulds it; for it is composed of suchtenuous matter that it lends itself readily to the moulding by thoughtand wish. "

"I follow you perfectly, " said Maloney, looking as if he would muchrather be chopping firewood elsewhere and singing. 

"And there are some persons so constituted, " the doctor went on withincreasing seriousness, "that the fluid body in them is but looselyassociated with the physical, persons of poor health as a rule, yetoften of strong desires and passions; and in these persons it is easyfor the Double to dissociate itself during deep sleep from their system, and, driven forth by some consuming desire, to assume an animal form andseek the fulfilment of that desire. "

There, in broad daylight, I saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to thefire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to eachother, and listened to Dr. Silence's voice as it mingled with the swishand whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of the little waves. 

"For instance, to take a concrete example, " he resumed; "suppose someyoung man, with the delicate constitution I have spoken of, forms anoverpowering attachment to a young woman, yet perceives that it is notwelcomed, and is man enough to repress its outward manifestations. Insuch a case, supposing his Double be easily projected, the veryrepression of his love in the daytime would add to the intense force ofhis desire when released in deep sleep from the control of his will, and his fluidic body might issue forth in monstrous or animal shape andbecome actually visible to others. And, if his devotion were dog-like inits fidelity, yet concealing the fires of a fierce passion beneath, itmight well assume the form of a creature that seemed to be half dog, half wolf--"

"A werewolf, you mean?" cried Maloney, pale to the lips as he listened. 

John Silence held up a restraining hand. "A werewolf, " he said, "is atrue psychical fact of profound significance, however absurdly it mayhave been exaggerated by the imaginations of a superstitious peasantryin the days of unenlightenment, for a werewolf is nothing but thesavage, and possibly sanguinary, instincts of a passionate man scouringthe world in his fluidic body, his passion body, his body of desire. Asin the case at hand, he may not know it--"

"It is not necessarily deliberate, then?" Maloney put in quickly, withrelief. 

"--It is hardly ever deliberate. It is the desires released in sleepfrom the control of the will finding a vent. In all savage races it hasbeen recognised and dreaded, this phenomenon styled 'Wehr Wolf, ' butto-day it is rare. And it is becoming rarer still, for the world growstame and civilised, emotions have become refined, desires lukewarm, andfew men have savagery enough left in them to generate impulses of suchintense force, and certainly not to project them in animal form. "

"By Gad!" exclaimed the clergyman breathlessly, and with increasingexcitement, "then I feel I must tell you--what has been given to me inconfidence--that Sangree has in him an admixture of savage blood--of RedIndian ancestry--"

"Let us stick to our supposition of a man as described, " the doctorstopped him calmly, "and let us imagine that he has in him thisadmixture of savage blood; and further, that he is wholly unaware of hisdreadful physical and psychical infirmity; and that he suddenly findshimself leading the primitive life together with the object of hisdesires; with the result that the strain of the untamed wild-man in hisblood--"

"Red Indian, for instance, " from Maloney. 

"Red Indian, perfectly, " agreed the doctor; "the result, I say, thatthis savage strain in him is awakened and leaps into passionate life. What then?"

He looked hard at Timothy Maloney, and the clergyman looked hard at him. 

"The wild life such as you lead here on this island, for instance, might quickly awaken his savage instincts--his buried instincts--andwith profoundly disquieting results. "

"You mean his Subtle Body, as you call it, might issue forthautomatically in deep sleep and seek the object of its desire?" I said, coming to Maloney's aid, who was finding it more and more difficult toget words. 

"Precisely;--yet the desire of the man remaining utterly unmalefic--pureand wholesome in every sense--"

"Ah!" I heard the clergyman gasp. 

"The lover's desire for union run wild, run savage, tearing its way outin primitive, untamed fashion, I mean, " continued the doctor, strivingto make himself clear to a mind bounded by conventional thought andknowledge; "for the desire to possess, remember, may easily becomeimportunate, and, embodied in this animal form of the Subtle Body whichacts as its vehicle, may go forth to tear in pieces all that obstructs, to reach to the very heart of the loved object and seize it. _Au fond_, it is nothing more than the aspiration for union, as I said--thesplendid and perfectly clean desire to absorb utterly into itself--"

He paused a moment and looked into Maloney's eyes. 

"To bathe in the very heart's blood of the one desired, " he added withgrave emphasis. 

The fire spurted and crackled and made me start, but Maloney foundrelief in a genuine shudder, and I saw him turn his head and look abouthim from the sea to the trees. The wind dropped just at that moment andthe doctor's words rang sharply through the stillness. 

"Then it might even kill?" stammered the clergyman presently in a hushedvoice, and with a little forced laugh by way of protest that soundedquite ghastly. 

"In the last resort it might kill, " repeated Dr. Silence. Then, afteranother pause, during which he was clearly debating how much or howlittle it was wise to give to his audience, he continued: "And if theDouble does not succeed in getting back to its physical body, thatphysical body would wake an imbecile--an idiot--or perhaps never wake atall. "

Maloney sat up and found his tongue. 

"You mean that if this fluid animal thing, or whatever it is, should beprevented getting back, the man might never wake again?" he asked, withshaking voice. 

"He might be dead, " replied the other calmly. The tremor of a positivesensation shivered in the air about us. 

"Then isn't that the best way to cure the fool--the brute--?" thunderedthe clergyman, half rising to his feet. 

"Certainly it would be an easy and undiscoverable form of murder, " wasthe stern reply, spoken as calmly as though it were a remark about theweather. 

Maloney collapsed visibly, and I gathered the wood over the fire andcoaxed up a blaze. 

"The greater part of the man's life--of his vital forces--goes out withthis Double, " Dr. Silence resumed, after a moment's consideration, "anda considerable portion of the actual material of his physical body. Sothe physical body that remains behind is depleted, not only of force, but of matter. You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, justlike the body of a materialising medium at a seance. Moreover, any markor injury inflicted upon this Double will be found exactly reproduced bythe phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken physical body lying inits trance--"

"An injury inflicted upon the one you say would be reproduced also onthe other?" repeated Maloney, his excitement growing again. 

"Undoubtedly, " replied the other quietly; "for there exists all the timea continuous connection between the physical body and the Double--aconnection of matter, though of exceedingly attenuated, possibly ofetheric, matter. The wound _travels_, so to speak, from one to theother, and if this connection were broken the result would be death. "

"Death, " repeated Maloney to himself, "death!" He looked anxiously atour faces, his thoughts evidently beginning to clear. 

"And this solidity?" he asked presently, after a general pause; "thistearing of tents and flesh; this howling, and the marks of paws? Youmean that the Double--?"

"Has sufficient material drawn from the depleted body to producephysical results? Certainly!" the doctor took him up. "Although toexplain at this moment such problems as the passage of matter throughmatter would be as difficult as to explain how the thought of a mothercan actually break the bones of the child unborn. "

Dr. Silence pointed out to sea, and Maloney, looking wildly about him, turned with a violent start. I saw a canoe, with Sangree in thestern-seat, slowly coming into view round the farther point. His hat wasoff, and his tanned face for the first time appeared to me--to us all, Ithink--as though it were the face of some one else. He looked like awild man. Then he stood up in the canoe to make a cast with the rod, andhe looked for all the world like an Indian. I recalled the expression ofhis face as I had seen it once or twice, notably on that occasion of theevening prayer, and an involuntary shudder ran down my spine. 

At that very instant he turned and saw us where we lay, and his facebroke into a smile, so that his teeth showed white in the sun. Helooked in his element, and exceedingly attractive. He called outsomething about his fish, and soon after passed out of sight into thelagoon. 

For a time none of us said a word. 

"And the cure?" ventured Maloney at length. 

"Is not to quench this savage force, " replied Dr. Silence, "but to steerit better, and to provide other outlets. This is the solution of allthese problems of accumulated force, for this force is the raw materialof usefulness, and should be increased and cherished, not by separatingit from the body by death, but by raising it to higher channels. Thebest and quickest cure of all, " he went on, speaking very gently andwith a hand upon the clergyman's arm, "is to lead it towards its object, provided that object is not unalterably hostile--to let it find restwhere--"

He stopped abruptly, and the eyes of the two men met in a single glanceof comprehension. 

"Joan?" Maloney exclaimed, under his breath. 

"Joan!" replied John Silence. 

 * * * * *

We all went to bed early. The day had been unusually warm, and aftersunset a curious hush descended on the island. Nothing was audible butthat faint, ghostly singing which is inseparable from a pinewood even onthe stillest day--a low, searching sound, as though the wind had hairand trailed it o'er the world. 

With the sudden cooling of the atmosphere a sea fog began to form. Itappeared in isolated patches over the water, and then these patches slidtogether and a white wall advanced upon us. Not a breath of air stirred;the firs stood like flat metal outlines; the sea became as oil. Thewhole scene lay as though held motionless by some huge weight in theair; and the flames from our fire--the largest we had ever made--roseupwards, straight as a church steeple. 

As I followed the rest of our party tent-wards, having kicked the embersof the fire into safety, the advance guard of the fog was creepingslowly among the trees, like white arms feeling their way. Mingled withthe smoke was the odour of moss and soil and bark, and the peculiarflavour of the Baltic, half salt, half brackish, like the smell of anestuary at low water. 

It is difficult to say why it seemed to me that this deep stillnessmasked an intense activity; perhaps in every mood lies the suggestion ofits opposite, so that I became aware of the contrast of furious energy, for it was like moving through the deep pause before a thunderstorm, andI trod gently lest by breaking a twig or moving a stone I might set thewhole scene into some sort of tumultuous movement. Actually, no doubt, it was nothing more than a result of overstrung nerves. 

There was no more question of undressing and going to bed than there wasof undressing and going to bathe. Some sense in me was alert andexpectant. I sat in my tent and waited. And at the end of half an houror so my waiting was justified, for the canvas suddenly shivered, andsome one tripped over the ropes that held it to the earth. John Silencecame in. 

The effect of his quiet entry was singular and prophetic: it was just asthough the energy lying behind all this stillness had pressed forward tothe edge of action. This, no doubt, was merely the quickening of my ownmind, and had no other justification; for the presence of John Silencealways suggested the near possibility of vigorous action, and as amatter of fact, he came in with nothing more than a nod and asignificant gesture. 

He sat down on a corner of my ground-sheet, and I pushed the blanketover so that he could cover his legs. He drew the flap of the tent afterhim and settled down, but hardly had he done so when the canvas shook asecond time, and in blundered Maloney. 

"Sitting in the dark?" he said self-consciously, pushing his headinside, and hanging up his lantern on the ridge-pole nail. "I justlooked in for a smoke. I suppose--"

He glanced round, caught the eye of Dr. Silence, and stopped. He put hispipe back into his pocket and began to hum softly--that underbreathhumming of a nondescript melody I knew so well and had come to hate. 

Dr. Silence leaned forward, opened the lantern and blew the light out. "Speak low, " he said, "and don't strike matches. Listen for sounds andmovements about the Camp, and be ready to follow me at a moment'snotice. " There was light enough to distinguish our faces easily, and Isaw Maloney glance again hurriedly at both of us. 

"Is the Camp asleep?" the doctor asked presently, whispering. 

"Sangree is, " replied the clergyman, in a voice equally low. "I can'tanswer for the women; I think they're sitting up. "

"That's for the best. " And then he added: "I wish the fog would thin abit and let the moon through; later--we may want it. "

"It is lifting now, I think, " Maloney whispered back. "It's over thetops of the trees already. "

I cannot say what it was in this commonplace exchange of remarks thatthrilled. Probably Maloney's swift acquiescence in the doctor's mood hadsomething to do with it; for his quick obedience certainly impressed mea good deal. But, even without that slight evidence, it was clear thateach recognised the gravity of the occasion, and understood that sleepwas impossible and sentry duty was the order of the night. 

"Report to me, " repeated John Silence once again, "the least sound, anddo nothing precipitately. "

He shifted across to the mouth of the tent and raised the flap, fastening it against the pole so that he could see out. Maloney stoppedhumming and began to force the breath through his teeth with a kind offaint hissing, treating us to a medley of church hymns and popular songsof the day. 

Then the tent trembled as though some one had touched it. 

"That's the wind rising, " whispered the clergyman, and pulled the flapopen as far as it would go. A waft of cold damp air entered and made usshiver, and with it came a sound of the sea as the first wave washed itsway softly along the shores. 

"It's got round to the north, " he added, and following his voice came along-drawn whisper that rose from the whole island as the trees sentforth a sighing response. "The fog'll move a bit now. I can make out alane across the sea already. "

"Hush!" said Dr. Silence, for Maloney's voice had risen above a whisper, and we settled down again to another long period of watching andwaiting, broken only by the occasional rubbing of shoulders against thecanvas as we shifted our positions, and the increasing noise of waves onthe outer coast-line of the island. And over all whirred the murmur ofwind sweeping the tops of the trees like a great harp, and the fainttapping on the tent as drops fell from the branches with a sharp pingingsound. 

We had sat for something over an hour in this way, and Maloney and Iwere finding it increasingly hard to keep awake, when suddenly Dr. Silence rose to his feet and peered out. The next minute he was gone. 

Relieved of the dominating presence, the clergyman thrust his face closeinto mine. "I don't much care for this waiting game, " he whispered, "butSilence wouldn't hear of my sitting up with the others; he said it wouldprevent anything happening if I did. "

"He knows, " I answered shortly. 

"No doubt in the world about that, " he whispered back; "it's this'Double' business, as he calls it, or else it's obsession as the Bibledescribes it. But it's bad, whichever it is, and I've got my Winchesteroutside ready cocked, and I brought this too. " He shoved a pocket Bibleunder my nose. At one time in his life it had been his inseparablecompanion. 

"One's useless and the other's dangerous, " I replied under my breath, conscious of a keen desire to laugh, and leaving him to choose. "Safetylies in following our leader--"

"I'm not thinking of myself, " he interrupted sharply; "only, if anythinghappens to Joan to-night I'm going to shoot first--and pray afterwards!"

Maloney put the book back into his hip-pocket, and peered out of thedoorway. "What is he up to now, in the devil's name, I wonder!" headded; "going round Sangree's tent and making gestures. How weird helooks disappearing in and out of the fog. "

"Just trust him and wait, " I said quickly, for the doctor was already onhis way back. "Remember, he has the knowledge, and knows what he'sabout. I've been with him through worse cases than this. "

Maloney moved back as Dr. Silence darkened the doorway and stooped toenter. 

"His sleep is very deep, " he whispered, seating himself by the dooragain. "He's in a cataleptic condition, and the Double may be releasedany minute now. But I've taken steps to imprison it in the tent, and itcan't get out till I permit it. Be on the watch for signs of movement. "Then he looked hard at Maloney. "But no violence, or shooting, remember, Mr. Maloney, unless you want a murder on your hands. Anything done tothe Double acts by repercussion upon the physical body. You had bettertake out the cartridges at once. "

His voice was stern. The clergyman went out, and I heard him emptyingthe magazine of his rifle. When he returned he sat nearer the door thanbefore, and from that moment until we left the tent he never once tookhis eyes from the figure of Dr. Silence, silhouetted there against skyand canvas. 

And, meanwhile, the wind came steadily over the sea and opened the mistinto lanes and clearings, driving it about like a living thing. 

It must have been well after midnight when a low booming sound drew myattention; but at first the sense of hearing was so strained that it wasimpossible exactly to locate it, and I imagined it was the thunder ofbig guns far out at sea carried to us by the rising wind. Then Maloney, catching hold of my arm and leaning forward, somehow brought the truerelation, and I realised the next second that it was only a few feetaway. 

"Sangree's tent, " he exclaimed in a loud and startled whisper. 

I craned my head round the corner, but at first the effect of the fogwas so confusing that every patch of white driving about before the windlooked like a moving tent and it was some seconds before I discoveredthe one patch that held steady. Then I saw that it was shaking all over, and the sides, flapping as much as the tightness of the ropes allowed, were the cause of the booming sound we had heard. Something alive wastearing frantically about inside, banging against the stretched canvasin a way that made me think of a great moth dashing against the wallsand ceiling of a room. The tent bulged and rocked. 

"It's trying to get out, by Jupiter!" muttered the clergyman, rising tohis feet and turning to the side where the unloaded rifle lay. I sprangup too, hardly knowing what purpose was in my mind, but anxious to beprepared for anything. John Silence, however, was before us both, andhis figure slipped past and blocked the doorway of the tent. And therewas some quality in his voice next minute when he began to speak thatbrought our minds instantly to a state of calm obedience. 

"First--the women's tent, " he said low, looking sharply at Maloney, "andif I need your help, I'll call. "

The clergyman needed no second bidding. He dived past me and was out ina moment. He was labouring evidently under intense excitement. I watchedhim picking his way silently over the slippery ground, giving the movingtent a wide berth, and presently disappearing among the floating shapesof fog. 

Dr. Silence turned to me. "You heard those footsteps about half an hourago?" he asked significantly. 

"I heard nothing. "

"They were extraordinarily soft--almost the soundless tread of a wildcreature. But now, follow me closely, " he added, "for we must waste notime if I am to save this poor man from his affliction and lead hiswerewolf Double to its rest. And, unless I am much mistaken"--hepeered at me through the darkness, whispering with the utmostdistinctness--"Joan and Sangree are absolutely made for one another. AndI think she knows it too--just as well as he does. "

My head swam a little as I listened, but at the same time somethingcleared in my brain and I saw that he was right. Yet it was all so weirdand incredible, so remote from the commonplace facts of life ascommonplace people know them; and more than once it flashed upon me thatthe whole scene--people, words, tents, and all the rest of it--weredelusions created by the intense excitement of my own mind somehow, andthat suddenly the sea-fog would clear off and the world become normalagain. 

The cold air from the sea stung our cheeks sharply as we left the closeatmosphere of the little crowded tent. The sighing of the trees, thewaves breaking below on the rocks, and the lines and patches of mistdriving about us seemed to create the momentary illusion that the wholeisland had broken loose and was floating out to sea like a mighty raft. 

The doctor moved just ahead of me, quickly and silently; he was makingstraight for the Canadian's tent where the sides still boomed and shookas the creature of sinister life raced and tore about impatientlywithin. A little distance from the door he paused and held up a hand tostop me. We were, perhaps, a dozen feet away. 

"Before I release it, you shall see for yourself, " he said, "that thereality of the werewolf is beyond all question. The matter of which itis composed is, of course, exceedingly attenuated, but you are partiallyclairvoyant--and even if it is not dense enough for normal sight youwill see something. "

He added a little more I could not catch. The fact was that thecuriously strong vibrating atmosphere surrounding his person somewhatconfused my senses. It was the result, of course, of his intenseconcentration of mind and forces, and pervaded the entire Camp and allthe persons in it. And as I watched the canvas shake and heard it boomand flap I heartily welcomed it. For it was also protective. 

At the back of Sangree's tent stood a thin group of pine trees, but infront and at the sides the ground was comparatively clear. The flap waswide open and any ordinary animal would have been out and away withoutthe least trouble. Dr. Silence led me up to within a few feet, evidentlycareful not to advance beyond a certain limit, and then stooped down andsignalled to me to do the same. And looking over his shoulder I saw theinterior lit faintly by the spectral light reflected from the fog, andthe dim blot upon the balsam boughs and blankets signifying Sangree;while over him, and round him, and up and down him, flew the dark massof "something" on four legs, with pointed muzzle and sharp ears plainlyvisible against the tent sides, and the occasional gleam of fiery eyesand white fangs. 

I held my breath and kept utterly still, inwardly and outwardly, forfear, I suppose, that the creature would become conscious of mypresence; but the distress I felt went far deeper than the mere sense ofpersonal safety, or the fact of watching something so incredibly activeand real. I became keenly aware of the dreadful psychic calamity itinvolved. The realisation that Sangree lay confined in that narrow spacewith this species of monstrous projection of himself--that he waswrapped there in the cataleptic sleep, all unconscious that this thingwas masquerading with his own life and energies--added a distressingtouch of horror to the scene. In all the cases of John Silence--and theywere many and often terrible--no other psychic affliction has ever, before or since, impressed me so convincingly with the patheticimpermanence of the human personality, with its fluid nature, and withthe alarming possibilities of its transformations. 

"Come, " he whispered, after we had watched for some minutes the franticefforts to escape from the circle of thought and will that held itprisoner, "come a little farther away while I release it. "

We moved back a dozen yards or so. It was like a scene in someimpossible play, or in some ghastly and oppressive nightmare from whichI should presently awake to find the blankets all heaped up upon mychest. 

By some method undoubtedly mental, but which, in my confusion andexcitement, I failed to understand, the doctor accomplished his purpose, and the next minute I heard him say sharply under his breath, "It's out!Now watch!"

At this very moment a sudden gust from the sea blew aside the mist, sothat a lane opened to the sky, and the moon, ghastly and unnatural asthe effect of stage limelight, dropped down in a momentary gleam uponthe door of Sangree's tent, and I perceived that something had movedforward from the interior darkness and stood clearly defined upon thethreshold. And, at the same moment, the tent ceased its shuddering andheld still. 

There, in the doorway, stood an animal, with neck and muzzle thrustforward, its head poking into the night, its whole body poised in thatattitude of intense rigidity that precedes the spring into freedom, therunning leap of attack. It seemed to be about the size of a calf, leanerthan a mastiff, yet more squat than a wolf, and I can swear that I sawthe fur ridged sharply upon its back. Then its upper lip slowly lifted, and I saw the whiteness of its teeth. 

Surely no human being ever stared as hard as I did in those next fewminutes. Yet, the harder I stared the clearer appeared the amazing andmonstrous apparition. For, after all, it was Sangree--and yet it was notSangree. It was the head and face of an animal, and yet it was the faceof Sangree: the face of a wild dog, a wolf, and yet his face. The eyeswere sharper, narrower, more fiery, yet they were his eyes--his eyes runwild; the teeth were longer, whiter, more pointed--yet they were histeeth, his teeth grown cruel; the expression was flaming, terrible, exultant--yet it was his expression carried to the border ofsavagery--his expression as I had already surprised it more than once, only dominant now, fully released from human constraint, with the madyearning of a hungry and importunate soul. It was the soul of Sangree, the long suppressed, deeply loving Sangree, expressed in its single andintense desire--pure utterly and utterly wonderful. 

Yet, at the same time, came the feeling that it was all an illusion. Isuddenly remembered the extraordinary changes the human face can undergoin circular insanity, when it changes from melancholia to elation; and Irecalled the effect of hascheesh, which shows the human countenance inthe form of the bird or animal to which in character it mostapproximates; and for a moment I attributed this mingling of Sangree'sface with a wolf to some kind of similar delusion of the senses. I wasmad, deluded, dreaming! The excitement of the day, and this dim light ofstars and bewildering mist combined to trick me. I had been amazinglyimposed upon by some false wizardry of the senses. It was all absurd andfantastic; it would pass. 

And then, sounding across this sea of mental confusion like a bellthrough a fog, came the voice of John Silence bringing me back to aconsciousness of the reality of it all--

"Sangree--in his Double!"

And when I looked again more calmly, I plainly saw that it was indeedthe face of the Canadian, but his face turned animal, yet mingled withthe brute expression a curiously pathetic look like the soul seensometimes in the yearning eyes of a dog, --the face of an animal shotwith vivid streaks of the human. 

The doctor called to him softly under his breath--

"Sangree! Sangree, you poor afflicted creature! Do you know me? Can youunderstand what it is you're doing in your 'Body of Desire'?"

For the first time since its appearance the creature moved. Its earstwitched and it shifted the weight of its body on to the hind legs. Then, lifting its head and muzzle to the sky, it opened its long jawsand gave vent to a dismal and prolonged howling. 

But, when I heard that howling rise to heaven, the breath caught andstrangled in my throat and it seemed that my heart missed a beat; for, though the sound was entirely animal, it was at the same time entirelyhuman. But, more than that, it was the cry I had so often heard in theWestern States of America where the Indians still fight and hunt andstruggle--it was the cry of the Redskin!

"The Indian blood!" whispered John Silence, when I caught his arm forsupport; "the ancestral cry. "

And that poignant, beseeching cry, that broken human voice, minglingwith the savage howl of the brute beast, pierced straight to my veryheart and touched there something that no music, no voice, passionate ortender, of man, woman or child has ever stirred before or since for onesecond into life. It echoed away among the fog and the trees and lostitself somewhere out over the hidden sea. And some part ofmyself--something that was far more than the mere act of intenselistening--went out with it, and for several minutes I lostconsciousness of my surroundings and felt utterly absorbed in the painof another stricken fellow-creature. 

Again the voice of John Silence recalled me to myself. 

"Hark!" he said aloud. "Hark!"

His tone galvanised me afresh. We stood listening side by side. 

Far across the island, faintly sounding through the trees and brushwood, came a similar, answering cry. Shrill, yet wonderfully musical, shakingthe heart with a singular wild sweetness that defies description, weheard it rise and fall upon the night air. 

"It's across the lagoon, " Dr. Silence cried, but this time in full tonesthat paid no tribute to caution. "It's Joan! She's answering him!"

Again the wonderful cry rose and fell, and that same instant the animallowered its head, and, muzzle to earth, set off on a swift easy canterthat took it off into the mist and out of our sight like a thing of windand vision. 

The doctor made a quick dash to the door of Sangree's tent, and, following close at his heels, I peered in and caught a momentary glimpseof the small, shrunken body lying upon the branches but half covered bythe blankets--the cage from which most of the life, and not a little ofthe actual corporeal substance, had escaped into that other form of lifeand energy, the body of passion and desire. 

By another of those swift, incalculable processes which at this stage ofmy apprenticeship I failed often to grasp, Dr. Silence reclosed thecircle about the tent and body. 

"Now it cannot return till I permit it, " he said, and the next secondwas off at full speed into the woods, with myself close behind him. Ihad already had some experience of my companion's ability to run swiftlythrough a dense wood, and I now had the further proof of his poweralmost to see in the dark. For, once we left the open space about thetents, the trees seemed to absorb all the remaining vestiges of light, and I understood that special sensibility that is said to develop in theblind--the sense of obstacles. 

And twice as we ran we heard the sound of that dismal howling drawingnearer and nearer to the answering faint cry from the point of theisland whither we were going. 

Then, suddenly, the trees fell away, and we emerged, hot and breathless, upon the rocky point where the granite slabs ran bare into the sea. Itwas like passing into the clearness of open day. And there, sharplydefined against sea and sky, stood the figure of a human being. It wasJoan. 

I at once saw that there was something about her appearance that wassingular and unusual, but it was only when we had moved quite close thatI recognised what caused it. For while the lips wore a smile that litthe whole face with a happiness I had never seen there before, the eyesthemselves were fixed in a steady, sightless stare as though they werelifeless and made of glass. 

I made an impulsive forward movement, but Dr. Silence instantly draggedme back. 

"No, " he cried, "don't wake her!"

"What do you mean?" I replied aloud, struggling in his grasp. 

"She's asleep. It's somnambulistic. The shock might injure herpermanently. "

I turned and peered closely into his face. He was absolutely calm. Ibegan to understand a little more, catching, I suppose, something of hisstrong thinking. 

"Walking in her sleep, you mean?"

He nodded. "She's on her way to meet him. From the very beginning hemust have drawn her--irresistibly. "

"But the torn tent and the wounded flesh?"

"When she did not sleep deep enough to enter the somnambulistic trancehe missed her--he went instinctively and in all innocence to seek herout--with the result, of course, that she woke and was terrified--"

"Then in their heart of hearts they love?" I asked finally. 

John Silence smiled his inscrutable smile. "Profoundly, " he answered, "and as simply as only primitive souls can love. If only they both cometo realise it in their normal waking states his Double will cease thesenocturnal excursions. He will be cured, and at rest. "

The words had hardly left his lips when there was a sound of rustlingbranches on our left, and the very next instant the dense brushwoodparted where it was darkest and out rushed the swift form of an animalat full gallop. The noise of feet was scarcely audible, but in thatutter stillness I heard the heavy panting breath and caught the swish ofthe low bushes against its sides. It went straight towards Joan--and asit went the girl lifted her head and turned to meet it. And the sameinstant a canoe that had been creeping silently and unobserved round theinner shore of the lagoon, emerged from the shadows and defined itselfupon the water with a figure at the middle thwart. It was Maloney. 

It was only afterwards I realised that we were invisible to him where westood against the dark background of trees; the figures of Joan and theanimal he saw plainly, but not Dr. Silence and myself standing justbeyond them. He stood up in the canoe and pointed with his right arm. Isaw something gleam in his hand. 

"Stand aside, Joan girl, or you'll get hit, " he shouted, his voiceringing horribly through the deep stillness, and the same instant apistol-shot cracked out with a burst of flame and smoke, and the figureof the animal, with one tremendous leap into the air, fell back in theshadows and disappeared like a shape of night and fog. Instantly, then, Joan opened her eyes, looked in a dazed fashion about her, and pressingboth hands against her heart, fell with a sharp cry into my arms thatwere just in time to catch her. 

And an answering cry sounded across the lagoon--thin, wailing, piteous. It came from Sangree's tent. 

"Fool!" cried Dr. Silence, "you've wounded him!" and before we couldmove or realise quite what it meant, he was in the canoe and half-wayacross the lagoon. 

Some kind of similar abuse came in a torrent from my lips, too--though Icannot remember the actual words--as I cursed the man for hisdisobedience and tried to make the girl comfortable on the ground. Butthe clergyman was more practical. He was spreading his coat over her anddashing water on her face. 

"It's not Joan I've killed at any rate, " I heard him mutter as sheturned and opened her eyes and smiled faintly up in his face. "I swearthe bullet went straight. "

Joan stared at him; she was still dazed and bewildered, and stillimagined herself with the companion of her trance. The strange lucidityof the somnambulist still hung over her brain and mind, though outwardlyshe appeared troubled and confused. 

"Where has he gone to? He disappeared so suddenly, crying that he washurt, " she asked, looking at her father as though she did not recognisehim. "And if they've done anything to him--they have done it to metoo--for he is more to me than--"

Her words grew vaguer and vaguer as she returned slowly to her normalwaking state, and now she stopped altogether, as though suddenly awarethat she had been surprised into telling secrets. But all the way back, as we carried her carefully through the trees, the girl smiled andmurmured Sangree's name and asked if he was injured, until it finallybecame clear to me that the wild soul of the one had called to the wildsoul of the other and in the secret depths of their beings the call hadbeen heard and understood. John Silence was right. In the abyss of herheart, too deep at first for recognition, the girl loved him, and hadloved him from the very beginning. Once her normal waking consciousnessrecognised the fact they would leap together like twin flames, and hisaffliction would be at an end; his intense desire would be satisfied; hewould be cured. 

And in Sangree's tent Dr. Silence and I sat up for the remainder of thenight--this wonderful and haunted night that had shown us such strangeglimpses of a new heaven and a new hell--for the Canadian tossed uponhis balsam boughs with high fever in his blood, and upon each cheek adark and curious contusion showed, throbbing with severe pain althoughthe skin was not broken and there was no outward and visible sign ofblood. 

"Maloney shot straight, you see, " whispered Dr. Silence to me after theclergyman had gone to his tent, and had put Joan to sleep beside hermother, who, by the way, had never once awakened. "The bullet must havepassed clean through the face, for both cheeks are stained. He'll wearthese marks all his life--smaller, but always there. They're the mostcurious scars in the world, these scars transferred by repercussion froman injured Double. They'll remain visible until just before his death, and then with the withdrawal of the subtle body they will disappearfinally. "

His words mingled in my dazed mind with the sighs of the troubledsleeper and the crying of the wind about the tent. Nothing seemed toparalyse my powers of realisation so much as these twin stains ofmysterious significance upon the face before me. 

It was odd, too, how speedily and easily the Camp resigned itself againto sleep and quietness, as though a stage curtain had suddenly droppeddown upon the action and concealed it; and nothing contributed sovividly to the feeling that I had been a spectator of some kind ofvisionary drama as the dramatic nature of the change in the girl'sattitude. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, the change had not been so sudden andrevolutionary as appeared. Underneath, in those remoter regions ofconsciousness where the emotions, unknown to their owners, do secretlymature, and owe thence their abrupt revelation to some abruptpsychological climax, there can be no doubt that Joan's love for theCanadian had been growing steadily and irresistibly all the time. It hadnow rushed to the surface so that she recognised it; that was all. 

And it has always seemed to me that the presence of John Silence, sopotent, so quietly efficacious, produced an effect, if one may say so, of a psychic forcing-house, and hastened incalculably the bringingtogether of these two "wild" lovers. In that sudden awakening hadoccurred the very psychological climax required to reveal the passionateemotion accumulated below. The deeper knowledge had leaped across andtransferred itself to her ordinary consciousness, and in that shock thecollision of the personalities had shaken them to the depths and shownher the truth beyond all possibility of doubt. 

"He's sleeping quietly now, " the doctor said, interrupting myreflections. "If you will watch alone for a bit I'll go to Maloney'stent and help him to arrange his thoughts. " He smiled in anticipation ofthat "arrangement. " "He'll never quite understand how a wound on theDouble can transfer itself to the physical body, but at least I canpersuade him that the less he talks and 'explains' to-morrow, the soonerthe forces will run their natural course now to peace and quietness. "

He went away softly, and with the removal of his presence Sangree, sleeping heavily, turned over and groaned with the pain of his brokenhead. 

And it was in the still hour just before the dawn, when all the islandswere hushed, the wind and sea still dreaming, and the stars visiblethrough clearing mists, that a figure crept silently over the ridge andreached the door of the tent where I dozed beside the sufferer, before Iwas aware of its presence. The flap was cautiously lifted a few inchesand in looked--Joan. 

That same instant Sangree woke and sat up on his bed of branches. Herecognised her before I could say a word, and uttered a low cry. It waspain and joy mingled, and this time all human. And the girl too was nolonger walking in her sleep, but fully aware of what she was doing. Iwas only just able to prevent him springing from his blankets. 

"Joan, Joan!" he cried, and in a flash she answered him, "I'm here--I'mwith you always now, " and had pushed past me into the tent and flungherself upon his breast. 

"I knew you would come to me in the end, " I heard him whisper. 

"It was all too big for me to understand at first, " she murmured, "andfor a long time I was frightened--"

"But not now!" he cried louder; "you don't feel afraid now of--ofanything that's in me--"

"I fear nothing, " she cried, "nothing, nothing!"

I led her outside again. She looked steadily into my face with eyesshining and her whole being transformed. In some intuitive way, surviving probably from the somnambulism, she knew or guessed as much asI knew. 

"You must talk to-morrow with John Silence, " I said gently, leading hertowards her own tent. "He understands everything. "

I left her at the door, and as I went back softly to take up my place ofsentry again with the Canadian, I saw the first streaks of dawn lightingup the far rim of the sea behind the distant islands. 

And, as though to emphasise the eternal closeness of comedy to tragedy, two small details rose out of the scene and impressed me so vividly thatI remember them to this very day. For in the tent where I had just leftJoan, all aquiver with her new happiness, there rose plainly to my earsthe grotesque sounds of the Bo'sun's Mate heavily snoring, oblivious ofall things in heaven or hell; and from Maloney's tent, so still was thenight, where I looked across and saw the lantern's glow, there came tome, through the trees, the monotonous rising and falling of a humanvoice that was beyond question the sound of a man praying to his God. 

CASE III: A VICTIM OF HIGHER SPACE

"There's a hextraordinary gentleman to see you, sir, " said the new man. 

"Why 'extraordinary'?" asked Dr. Silence, drawing the tips of his thinfingers through his brown beard. His eyes twinkled pleasantly. "Why'extraordinary, ' Barker?" he repeated encouragingly, noticing theperplexed expression in the man's eyes. 

"He's so--so thin, sir. I could hardly see 'im at all--at first. He wasinside the house before I could ask the name, " he added, rememberingstrict orders. 

"And who brought him here?"

"He come alone, sir, in a closed cab. He pushed by me before I could saya word--making no noise not what I could hear. He seemed to move so softlike--"

The man stopped short with obvious embarrassment, as though he hadalready said enough to jeopardise his new situation, but trying hard toshow that he remembered the instructions and warnings he had receivedwith regard to the admission of strangers not properly accredited. 

"And where is the gentleman now?" asked Dr. Silence, turning away toconceal his amusement. 

"I really couldn't exactly say, sir. I left him standing in the 'all--"

The doctor looked up sharply. "But why in the hall, Barker? Why not inthe waiting-room?" He fixed his piercing though kindly eyes on the man'sface. "Did he frighten you?" he asked quickly. 

"I think he did, sir, if I may say so. I seemed to lose sight of him, asit were--" The man stammered, evidently convinced by now that he hadearned his dismissal. "He come in so funny, just like a cold wind, " headded boldly, setting his heels at attention and looking his master fullin the face. 

The doctor made an internal note of the man's halting description; hewas pleased that the slight signs of psychic intuition which had inducedhim to engage Barker had not entirely failed at the first trial. Dr. Silence sought for this qualification in all his assistants, fromsecretary to serving man, and if it surrounded him with a somewhatsingular crew, the drawbacks were more than compensated for on the wholeby their occasional flashes of insight. 

"So the gentleman made you feel queer, did he?"

"That was it, I think, sir, " repeated the man stolidly. 

"And he brings no kind of introduction to me--no letter or anything?"asked the doctor, with feigned surprise, as though he knew what wascoming. 

The man fumbled, both in mind and pockets, and finally produced anenvelope. 

"I beg pardon, sir, " he said, greatly flustered; "the gentleman handedme this for you. "

It was a note from a discerning friend, who had never yet sent him acase that was not vitally interesting from one point or another. 

"Please see the bearer of this note, " the brief message ran, "though Idoubt if even you can do much to help him. "

John Silence paused a moment, so as to gather from the mind of thewriter all that lay behind the brief words of the letter. Then he lookedup at his servant with a graver expression than he had yet worn. 

"Go back and find this gentleman, " he said, "and show him into the greenstudy. Do not reply to his question, or speak more than actuallynecessary; but think kind, helpful, sympathetic thoughts as strongly asyou can, Barker. You remember what I told you about the importance of_thinking_, when I engaged you. Put curiosity out of your mind, andthink gently, sympathetically, affectionately, if you can. "

He smiled, and Barker, who had recovered his composure in the doctor'spresence, bowed silently and went out. 

There were two different reception-rooms in Dr. Silence's house. One(intended for persons who imagined they needed spiritual assistance whenreally they were only candidates for the asylum) had padded walls, andwas well supplied with various concealed contrivances by means of whichsudden violence could be instantly met and overcome. It was, however, rarely used. The other, intended for the reception of genuine cases ofspiritual distress and out-of-the-way afflictions of a psychic nature, was entirely draped and furnished in a soothing deep green, calculatedto induce calmness and repose of mind. And this room was the one inwhich Dr. Silence interviewed the majority of his "queer" cases, and theone into which he had directed Barker to show his present caller. 

To begin with, the arm-chair in which the patient was always directed tosit, was nailed to the floor, since its immovability tended to impartthis same excellent characteristic to the occupant. Patients invariablygrew excited when talking about themselves, and their excitement tendedto confuse their thoughts and to exaggerate their language. Theinflexibility of the chair helped to counteract this. After repeatedendeavours to drag it forward, or push it back, they ended by resigningthemselves to sitting quietly. And with the futility of fidgeting therefollowed a calmer state of mind. 

Upon the floor, and at intervals in the wall immediately behind, werecertain tiny green buttons, practically unnoticeable, which on beingpressed permitted a soothing and persuasive narcotic to rise invisiblyabout the occupant of the chair. The effect upon the excitable patientwas rapid, admirable, and harmless. The green study was further providedwith a secret spy-hole; for John Silence liked when possible to observehis patient's face before it had assumed that mask the features of thehuman countenance invariably wear in the presence of another person. Aman sitting alone wears a psychic expression; and this expression is theman himself. It disappears the moment another person joins him. And Dr. Silence often learned more from a few moments' secret observation of aface than from hours of conversation with its owner afterwards. 

A very light, almost a dancing, step followed Barker's heavy treadtowards the green room, and a moment afterwards the man came in andannounced that the gentleman was waiting. He was still pale and hismanner nervous. 

"Never mind, Barker" the doctor said kindly; "if you were not psychicthe man would have had no effect upon you at all. You only need trainingand development. And when you have learned to interpret these feelingsand sensations better, you will feel no fear, but only a greatsympathy. "

"Yes, sir; thank you, sir!" And Barker bowed and made his escape, whileDr. Silence, an amused smile lurking about the corners of his mouth, made his way noiselessly down the passage and put his eye to thespy-hole in the door of the green study. 

This spy-hole was so placed that it commanded a view of almost theentire room, and, looking through it, the doctor saw a hat, gloves, andumbrella lying on a chair by the table, but searched at first in vainfor their owner. 

The windows were both closed and a brisk fire burned in the grate. Therewere various signs--signs intelligible at least to a keenly intuitivesoul--that the room was occupied, yet so far as human beings wereconcerned, it was empty, utterly empty. No one sat in the chairs; no onestood on the mat before the fire; there was no sign even that a patientwas anywhere close against the wall, examining the Bocklinreproductions--as patients so often did when they thought they werealone--and therefore rather difficult to see from the spy-hole. Ordinarily speaking, there was no one in the room. It was undeniable. 

Yet Dr. Silence was quite well aware that a human being _was_ in theroom. His psychic apparatus never failed in letting him know theproximity of an incarnate or discarnate being. Even in the dark he couldtell that. And he now knew positively that his patient--the patient whohad alarmed Barker, and had then tripped down the corridor with thatdancing footstep--was somewhere concealed within the four wallscommanded by his spy-hole. He also realised--and this was mostunusual--that this individual whom he desired to watch knew that he wasbeing watched. And, further, that the stranger himself was alsowatching! In fact, that it was he, the doctor, who was beingobserved--and by an observer as keen and trained as himself. 

An inkling of the true state of the case began to dawn upon him, and hewas on the verge of entering--indeed, his hand already touched thedoor-knob--when his eye, still glued to the spy-hole, detected a slightmovement. Directly opposite, between him and the fireplace, somethingstirred. He watched very attentively and made certain that he was notmistaken. An object on the mantelpiece--it was a blue vase--disappearedfrom view. It passed out of sight together with the portion of themarble mantelpiece on which it rested. Next, that part of the fire andgrate and brass fender immediately below it vanished entirely, as thougha slice had been taken clean out of them. 

Dr. Silence then understood that something between him and these objectswas slowly coming into being, something that concealed them andobstructed his vision by inserting itself in the line of sight betweenthem and himself. 

He quietly awaited further results before going in. 

First he saw a thin perpendicular line tracing itself from just abovethe height of the clock and continuing downwards till it reached thewoolly fire-mat. This line grew wider, broadened, grew solid. It was noshadow; it was something substantial. It defined itself more and more. Then suddenly, at the top of the line, and about on a level with theface of the clock, he saw a round luminous disc gazing steadily at him. It was a human eye, looking straight into his own, pressed there againstthe spy-hole. And it was bright with intelligence. Dr. Silence held hisbreath for a moment--and stared back at it. 

Then, like some one moving out of deep shadow into light, he saw thefigure of a man come sliding sideways into view, a whitish facefollowing the eye, and the perpendicular line he had first observedbroadening out and developing into the complete figure of a human being. It was the patient. He had apparently been standing there in front ofthe fire all the time. A second eye had followed the first, and both ofthem stared steadily at the spy-hole, sharply concentrated, yet with asly twinkle of humour and amusement that made it impossible for thedoctor to maintain his position any longer. 

He opened the door and went in quickly. As he did so he noticed for thefirst time the sound of a German band coming in gaily through the openventilators. In some intuitive, unaccountable fashion the musicconnected itself with the patient he was about to interview. This sortof prevision was not unfamiliar to him. It always explained itselflater. 

The man, he saw, was of middle age and of very ordinary appearance; soordinary, in fact, that he was difficult to describe--his onlypeculiarity being his extreme thinness. Pleasant--that is, good--vibrations issued from his atmosphere and met Dr. Silence as headvanced to greet him, yet vibrations alive with currents and dischargesbetraying the perturbed and disordered condition of his mind and brain. There was evidently something wholly out of the usual in the state ofhis thoughts. Yet, though strange, it was not altogether distressing; itwas not the impression that the broken and violent atmosphere of theinsane produces upon the mind. Dr. Silence realised in a flash that herewas a case of absorbing interest that might require all his powers tohandle properly. 

"I was watching you through my little peep-hole--as you saw, " he began, with a pleasant smile, advancing to shake hands. "I find it of thegreatest assistance sometimes--"

But the patient interrupted him at once. His voice was hurried and hadodd, shrill changes in it, breaking from high to low in unexpectedfashion. One moment it thundered, the next it almost squeaked. 

"I understand without explanation, " he broke in rapidly. "You get thetrue note of a man in this way--when he thinks himself unobserved. Iquite agree. Only, in my case, I fear, you saw very little. My case, asyou of course grasp, Dr. Silence, is extremely peculiar, uncomfortablypeculiar. Indeed, unless Sir William had positively assured me--"

"My friend has sent you to me, " the doctor interrupted gravely, with agentle note of authority, "and that is quite sufficient. Pray, beseated, Mr. --"

"Mudge--Racine Mudge, " returned the other. 

"Take this comfortable one, Mr. Mudge, " leading him to the fixed chair, "and tell me your condition in your own way and at your own pace. Mywhole day is at your service if you require it. "

Mr. Mudge moved towards the chair in question and then hesitated. 

"You will promise me not to use the narcotic buttons, " he said, beforesitting down. "I do not need them. Also I ought to mention that anythingyou think of vividly will reach my mind. That is apparently part of mypeculiar case. " He sat down with a sigh and arranged his thin legs andbody into a position of comfort. Evidently he was very sensitive to thethoughts of others, for the picture of the green buttons had onlyentered the doctor's mind for a second, yet the other had instantlysnapped it up. Dr. Silence noticed, too, that Mr. Mudge held on tightlywith both hands to the arms of the chair. 

"I'm rather glad the chair is nailed to the floor, " he remarked, as hesettled himself more comfortably. "It suits me admirably. The factis--and this is my case in a nutshell--which is all that a doctor ofyour marvellous development requires--the fact is, Dr. Silence, I am avictim of Higher Space. That's what's the matter with me--Higher Space!"

The two looked at each other for a space in silence, the little patientholding tightly to the arms of the chair which "suited him admirably, "and looking up with staring eyes, his atmosphere positively tremblingwith the waves of some unknown activity; while the doctor smiled kindlyand sympathetically, and put his whole person as far as possible intothe mental condition of the other. 

"Higher Space, " repeated Mr. Mudge, "that's what it is. Now, do youthink you can help me with _that_?"

There was a pause during which the men's eyes steadily searched downbelow the surface of their respective personalities. Then Dr. Silencespoke. 

"I am quite sure I can help, " he answered quietly; "sympathy must alwayshelp, and suffering always owns my sympathy. I see you have sufferedcruelly. You must tell me all about your case, and when I hear thegradual steps by which you reached this strange condition, I have nodoubt I can be of assistance to you. "

He drew a chair up beside his interlocutor and laid a hand on hisshoulder for a moment. His whole being radiated kindness, intelligence, desire to help. 

"For instance, " he went on, "I feel sure it was the result of no merechance that you became familiar with the terrors of what you term HigherSpace; for Higher Space is no mere external measurement. It is, ofcourse, a spiritual state, a spiritual condition, an inner development, and one that we must recognise as abnormal, since it is beyond the reachof the world at the present stage of evolution. Higher Space is amythical state. "

"Oh!" cried the other, rubbing his birdlike hands with pleasure, "therelief it is to be able to talk to some one who can understand! Ofcourse what you say is the utter truth. And you are right that no merechance led me to my present condition, but, on the other hand, prolongedand deliberate study. Yet chance in a sense now governs it. I mean, myentering the condition of Higher Space seems to depend upon the chanceof this and that circumstance. For instance, the mere sound of thatGerman band sent me off. Not that all music will do so, but certainsounds, certain vibrations, at once key me up to the requisite pitch, and off I go. Wagner's music always does it, and that band must havebeen playing a stray bit of Wagner. But I'll come to all that later. Only first, I must ask you to send away your man from the spy-hole. "

John Silence looked up with a start, for Mr. Mudge's back was to thedoor, and there was no mirror. He saw the brown eye of Barker glued tothe little circle of glass, and he crossed the room without a word andsnapped down the black shutter provided for the purpose, and then heardBarker snuffle away along the passage. 

"Now, " continued the little man in the chair, "I can begin. You havemanaged to put me completely at my ease, and I feel I may tell you mywhole case without shame or reserve. You will understand. But you mustbe patient with me if I go into details that are already familiar toyou--details of Higher Space, I mean--and if I seem stupid when I haveto describe things that transcend the power of language and are reallytherefore indescribable. "

"My dear friend, " put in the other calmly, "that goes without saying. Toknow Higher Space is an experience that defies description, and one isobliged to make use of more or less intelligible symbols. But, pray, proceed. Your vivid thoughts will tell me more than your halting words. "

An immense sigh of relief proceeded from the little figure half lost inthe depths of the chair. Such intelligent sympathy meeting him half-waywas a new experience to him, and it touched his heart at once. He leanedback, relaxing his tight hold of the arms, and began in his thin, scale-like voice. 

"My mother was a Frenchwoman, and my father an Essex bargeman, " he saidabruptly. "Hence my name--Racine and Mudge. My father died before I eversaw him. My mother inherited money from her Bordeaux relations, and whenshe died soon after, I was left alone with wealth and a strange freedom. I had no guardian, trustees, sisters, brothers, or any connection in theworld to look after me. I grew up, therefore, utterly without education. This much was to my advantage; I learned none of that deceitful rubbishtaught in schools, and so had nothing to unlearn when I awakened to mytrue love--mathematics, higher mathematics and higher geometry. These, however, I seemed to know instinctively. It was like the memory of whatI had deeply studied before; the principles were in my blood, and Isimply raced through the ordinary stages, and beyond, and then did thesame with geometry. Afterwards, when I read the books on these subjects, I understood how swift and undeviating the knowledge had come back tome. It was simply memory. It was simply _re-collecting_ the memories ofwhat I had known before in a previous existence and required no books toteach me. "

In his growing excitement, Mr. Mudge attempted to drag the chair forwarda little nearer to his listener, and then smiled faintly as he resignedhimself instantly again to its immovability, and plunged anew into therecital of his singular "disease. "

"The audacious speculations of Bolyai, the amazing theories ofGauss--that through a point more than one line could be drawn parallelto a given line; the possibility that the angles of a triangle aretogether _greater_ than two right angles, if drawn upon immensecurvatures--the breathless intuitions of Beltrami and Lobatchewsky--allthese I hurried through, and emerged, panting but unsatisfied, upon theverge of my--my new world, my Higher Space possibilities--in a word, mydisease!

"How I got there, " he resumed after a brief pause, during which heappeared to be listening intently for an approaching sound, "is morethan I can put intelligibly into words. I can only hope to leave yourmind with an intuitive comprehension of the possibility of what I say. 

"Here, however, came a change. At this point I was no longer absorbingthe fruits of studies I had made before; it was the beginning of newefforts to learn for the first time, and I had to go slowly andlaboriously through terrible work. Here I sought for the theories andspeculations of others. But books were few and far between, and with theexception of one man--a 'dreamer, ' the world called him--whose audacityand piercing intuition amazed and delighted me beyond description, Ifound no one to guide or help. 

"You, of course, Dr. Silence, understand something of what I am drivingat with these stammering words, though you cannot perhaps yet guess whatdepths of pain my new knowledge brought me to, nor why an acquaintancewith a new development of space should prove a source of misery andterror. "

Mr. Racine Mudge, remembering that the chair would not move, did thenext best thing he could in his desire to draw nearer to the attentiveman facing him, and sat forward upon the very edge of the cushions, crossing his legs and gesticulating with both hands as though he sawinto this region of new space he was attempting to describe, and mightany moment tumble into it bodily from the edge of the chair anddisappear form view. John Silence, separated from him by three paces, sat with his eyes fixed upon the thin white face opposite, notingevery word and every gesture with deep attention. 

"This room we now sit in, Dr. Silence, has one side open to space--toHigher Space. A closed box only _seems_ closed. There is a way in andout of a soap bubble without breaking the skin. "

"You tell me no new thing, " the doctor interposed gently. 

"Hence, if Higher Space exists and our world borders upon it and liespartially in it, it follows necessarily that we see only portions of allobjects. We never see their true and complete shape. We see their threemeasurements, but not their fourth. The new direction is concealed fromus, and when I hold this book and move my hand all round it I have notreally made a complete circuit. We only perceive those portions of anyobject which exist in our three dimensions; the rest escapes us. But, once we learn to see in Higher Space, objects will appear as theyactually are. Only they will thus be hardly recognisable!

"Now, you may begin to grasp something of what I am coming to. "

"I am beginning to understand something of what you must have suffered, "observed the doctor soothingly, "for I have made similar experimentsmyself, and only stopped just in time--"

"You are the one man in all the world who can hear and understand, _and_sympathise, " exclaimed Mr. Mudge, grasping his hand and holding ittightly while he spoke. The nailed chair prevented further excitability. 

"Well, " he resumed, after a moment's pause, "I procured the implementsand the coloured blocks for practical experiment, and I followed theinstructions carefully till I had arrived at a working conception offour-dimensional space. The tessaract, the figure whose boundaries arecubes, I knew by heart. That is to say, I knew it and saw it mentally, for my eye, of course, could never take in a new measurement, or myhands and feet handle it. 

"So, at least, I thought, " he added, making a wry face. "I had reachedthe stage, you see, when I could imagine in a new dimension. I was ableto conceive the shape of that new figure which is intrinsicallydifferent to all we know--the shape of the tessaract. I could perceivein four dimensions. When, therefore, I looked at a cube I could see allits sides at once. Its top was not foreshortened, nor its farther sideand base invisible. I saw the whole thing out flat, so to speak. Andthis tessaract was bounded by cubes! Moreover, I also saw itscontent--its insides. "

"You were not yourself able to enter this new world, " interrupted Dr. Silence. 

"Not then. I was only able to conceive intuitively what it was like andhow exactly it must look. Later, when I slipped in there and saw objectsin their entirety, unlimited by the paucity of our poor threemeasurements, I very nearly lost my life. For, you see, space does notstop at a single new dimension, a fourth. It extends in all possible newones, and we must conceive it as containing any number of newdimensions. In other words, there is no space at all, but only aspiritual condition. But, meanwhile, I had come to grasp the strangefact that the objects in our normal world appear to us only partially. "

Mr. Mudge moved farther forward till he was balanced dangerously on thevery edge of the chair. "From this starting point, " he resumed, "I beganmy studies and experiments, and continued them for years. I had money, and I was without friends. I lived in solitude and experimented. Myintellect, of course, had little part in the work, for intellectually itwas all unthinkable. Never was the limitation of mere reason moreplainly demonstrated. It was mystically, intuitively, spiritually that Ibegan to advance. And what I learnt, and knew, and did is all impossibleto put into language, since it all describes experiences transcendingthe experiences of men. It is only some of the results--what you wouldcall the symptoms of my disease--that I can give you, and even thesemust often appear absurd contradictions and impossible paradoxes. 

"I can only tell you, Dr. Silence"--his manner became exceedinglyimpressive--"that I reached sometimes a point of view whence all thegreat puzzle of the world became plain to me, and I understood what theycall in the Yoga books 'The Great Heresy of Separateness'; why all greatteachers have urged the necessity of man loving his neighbour ashimself; how men are all really one; and why the utter loss of self isnecessary to salvation and the discovery of the true life of the soul. "

He paused a moment and drew breath. 

"Your speculations have been my own long ago, " the doctor said quietly. "I fully realise the force of your words. Men are doubtless not separateat all--in the sense they imagine--"

"All this about the very much Higher Space I only dimly, very dimly, conceived, of course, " the other went on, raising his voice again byjerks; "but what did happen to me was the humbler accident of--thesimpler disaster--oh, dear, how shall I put it--?"

He stammered and showed visible signs of distress. 

"It was simply this, " he resumed with a sudden rush of words, "that, accidentally, as the result of my years of experiment, I one day slippedbodily into the next world, the world of four dimensions, yet withoutknowing precisely how I got there, or how I could get back again. Idiscovered, that is, that my ordinary three-dimensional body was but anexpression--a projection--of my higher four-dimensional body!

"Now you understand what I meant much earlier in our talk when I spokeof chance. I cannot control my entrance or exit. Certain people, certainhuman atmospheres, certain wandering forces, thoughts, desires even--theradiations of certain combinations of colour, and above all, thevibrations of certain kinds of music, will suddenly throw me into astate of what I can only describe as an intense and terrific innervibration--and behold I am off! Off in the direction at right angles toall our known directions! Off in the direction the cube takes when itbegins to trace the outlines of the new figure! Off into my breathlessand semi-divine Higher Space! Off, _inside myself_, into the world offour dimensions!"

He gasped and dropped back into the depths of the immovable chair. 

"And there, " he whispered, his voice issuing from among the cushions, "there I have to stay until these vibrations subside, or until they dosomething which I cannot find words to describe properly or intelligiblyto you--and then, behold, I am back again. First, that is, I disappear. Then I reappear. "

"Just so, " exclaimed Dr. Silence, "and that is why a few--"

"Why a few moments ago, " interrupted Mr. Mudge, taking the words out ofhis mouth, "you found me gone, and then saw me return. The music of thatwretched German band sent me off. Your intense thinking about me broughtme back--when the band had stopped its Wagner. I saw you approach thepeep-hole and I saw Barker's intention of doing so later. For me nointeriors are hidden. I see inside. When in that state the content ofyour mind, as of your body, is open to me as the day. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!"

Mr. Mudge stopped and again mopped his brow. A light trembling ran overthe surface of his small body like wind over grass. He still heldtightly to the arms of the chair. 

"At first, " he presently resumed, "my new experiences were so vividlyinteresting that I felt no alarm. There was no room for it. The alarmcame a little later. "

"Then you actually penetrated far enough into that state to experienceyourself as a normal portion of it?" asked the doctor, leaning forward, deeply interested. 

Mr. Mudge nodded a perspiring face in reply. 

"I did, " he whispered, "undoubtedly I did. I am coming to all that. Itbegan first at night, when I realised that sleep brought no loss ofconsciousness--"

"The spirit, of course, can never sleep. Only the body becomesunconscious, " interposed John Silence. 

"Yes, we know that--theoretically. At night, of course, the spirit isactive elsewhere, and we have no memory of where and how, simplybecause the brain stays behind and receives no record. But I foundthat, while remaining conscious, I also retained memory. I had attainedto the state of continuous consciousness, for at night I regularly, withthe first approaches of drowsiness, entered _nolens volens_ thefour-dimensional world. 

"For a time this happened regularly, and I could not control it; thoughlater I found a way to regulate it better. Apparently sleep isunnecessary in the higher--the four-dimensional--body. Yes, perhaps. ButI should infinitely have preferred dull sleep to the knowledge. For, unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owingto my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this newworld that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift ofa monstrous world, so utterly different to all we know and see that Icannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings init. More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picturethem to myself even, but can recall only the _memory of the impression_they made upon me, the horror and devastating terror of it all. To be inseveral places at once, for instance--"

"Perfectly, " interrupted John Silence, noticing the increase of theother's excitement, "I understand exactly. But now, please, tell me alittle more of this alarm you experienced, and how it affected you. "

"It's not the disappearing and reappearing _per se_ that I mind, "continued Mr. Mudge, "so much as certain other things. It's seeingpeople and objects in their weird entirety, in their true and completeshapes, that is so distressing. It introduces me to a world of monsters. Horses, dogs, cats, all of which I loved; people, trees, children; allthat I have considered beautiful in life--everything, from a human faceto a cathedral--appear to me in a different shape and aspect to all Ihave known before. I cannot perhaps convince you why this should beterrible, but I assure you that it is so. To hear the human voiceproceeding from this novel appearance which I scarcely recognise as ahuman body is ghastly, simply ghastly. To see inside everything andeverybody is a form of insight peculiarly distressing. To be so confusedin geography as to find myself one moment at the North Pole, and thenext at Clapham Junction--or possibly at both places simultaneously--isabsurdly terrifying. Your imagination will readily furnish other detailswithout my multiplying my experiences now. But you have no idea what itall means, and how I suffer. "

Mr. Mudge paused in his panting account and lay back in his chair. Hestill held tightly to the arms as though they could keep him in theworld of sanity and three measurements, and only now and again releasedhis left hand in order to mop his face. He looked very thin and whiteand oddly unsubstantial, and he stared about him as though he saw intothis other space he had been talking about. 

John Silence, too, felt warm. He had listened to every word and had mademany notes. The presence of this man had an exhilarating effect uponhim. It seemed as if Mr. Racine Mudge still carried about with himsomething of that breathless Higher-Space condition he had beendescribing. At any rate, Dr. Silence had himself advanced sufficientlyfar along the legitimate paths of spiritual and psychic transformationsto realise that the visions of this extraordinary little person had abasis of truth for their origin. 

After a pause that prolonged itself into minutes, he crossed the roomand unlocked a drawer in a bookcase, taking out a small book with a redcover. It had a lock to it, and he produced a key out of his pocket andproceeded to open the covers. The bright eyes of Mr. Mudge never lefthim for a single second. 

"It almost seems a pity, " he said at length, "to cure you, Mr. Mudge. You are on the way to discovery of great things. Though you may loseyour life in the process--that is, your life here in the world of threedimensions--you would lose thereby nothing of great value--you willpardon my apparent rudeness, I know--and you might gain what isinfinitely greater. Your suffering, of course, lies in the fact that youalternate between the two worlds and are never wholly in one or theother. Also, I rather imagine, though I cannot be certain of this fromany personal experiments, that you have here and there penetrated eveninto space of more than four dimensions, and have hence experienced theterror you speak of. "

The perspiring son of the Essex bargeman and the woman of Normandy benthis head several times in assent, but uttered no word in reply. 

"Some strange psychic predisposition, dating no doubt from one of yourformer lives, has favoured the development of your 'disease'; and thefact that you had no normal training at school or college, no leading bythe poor intellect into the culs-de-sac falsely called knowledge, hasfurther caused your exceedingly rapid movement along the lines of directinner experience. None of the knowledge you have foreshadowed has cometo you through the senses, of course. "

Mr. Mudge, sitting in his immovable chair, began to tremble slightly. Awind again seemed to pass over his surface and again to set it curiouslyin motion like a field of grass. 

"You are merely talking to gain time, " he said hurriedly, in a shakingvoice. "This thinking aloud delays us. I see ahead what you are comingto, only please be quick, for something is going to happen. A band isagain coming down the street, and if it plays--if it plays Wagner--Ishall be off in a twinkling. "

"Precisely. I will be quick. I was leading up to the point of how toeffect your cure. The way is this: You must simply learn to _block theentrances_. "

"True, true, utterly true!" exclaimed the little man, dodging aboutnervously in the depths of the chair. "But how, in the name of space, isthat to be done?"

"By concentration. They are all within you, these entrances, althoughouter cases such as colour, music and other things lead you towardsthem. These external things you cannot hope to destroy, but once theentrances are blocked, they will lead you only to bricked walls andclosed channels. You will no longer be able to find the way. "

"Quick, quick!" cried the bobbing figure in the chair. "How is thisconcentration to be effected?"

"This little book, " continued Dr. Silence calmly, "will explain to youthe way. " He tapped the cover. "Let me now read out to you certainsimple instructions, composed, as I see you divine, entirely from my ownpersonal experiences in the same direction. Follow these instructionsand you will no longer enter the state of Higher Space. The entranceswill be blocked effectively. "

Mr. Mudge sat bolt upright in his chair to listen, and John Silencecleared his throat and began to read slowly in a very distinct voice. 

But before he had uttered a dozen words, something happened. A sound ofstreet music entered the room through the open ventilators, for a bandhad begun to play in the stable mews at the back of the house--the Marchfrom _Tannhäuser_. Odd as it may seem that a German band should twicewithin the space of an hour enter the same mews and play Wagner, it wasnevertheless the fact. 

Mr. Racine Mudge heard it. He uttered a sharp, squeaking cry and twistedhis arms with nervous energy round the chair. A piteous look that wasnot far from tears spread over his white face. Grey shadows followedit--the grey of fear. He began to struggle convulsively. 

"Hold me fast! Catch me! For God's sake, keep me here! I'm on the rushalready. Oh, it's frightful!" he cried in tones of anguish, his voice asthin as a reed. 

Dr. Silence made a plunge forward to seize him, but in a flash, beforehe could cover the space between them, Mr. Racine Mudge, screaming andstruggling, seemed to shoot past him into invisibility. He disappearedlike an arrow from a bow propelled at infinite speed, and his voice nolonger sounded in the external air, but seemed in some curious way tomake itself heard somewhere within the depths of the doctor's own being. It was almost like a faint singing cry in his head, like a voice ofdream, a voice of vision and unreality. 

"Alcohol, alcohol!" it cried, "give me alcohol! It's the quickest way. Alcohol, before I'm out of reach!"

The doctor, accustomed to rapid decisions and even more rapid action, remembered that a brandy flask stood upon the mantelpiece, and in lessthan a second he had seized it and was holding it out towards the spaceabove the chair recently occupied by the visible Mudge. Then, before hisvery eyes, and long ere he could unscrew the metal stopper, he saw thecontents of the closed glass phial sink and lessen as though some onewere drinking violently and greedily of the liquor within. 

"Thanks! Enough! It deadens the vibrations!" cried the faint voice inhis interior, as he withdrew the flask and set it back upon themantelpiece. He understood that in Mudge's present condition one side ofthe flask was open to space and he could drink without removing thestopper. He could hardly have had a more interesting proof of what hehad been hearing described at such length. 

But the next moment--the very same moment it almost seemed--the Germanband stopped midway in its tune--and there was Mr. Mudge back in hischair again, gasping and panting!

"Quick!" he shrieked, "stop that band! Send it away! Catch hold of me!Block the entrances! Block the entrances! Give me the red book! Oh, oh, oh-h-h-h!!!"

The music had begun again. It was merely a temporary interruption. The_Tannhäuser_ March started again, this time at a tremendous pace thatmade it sound like a rapid two-step as though the instruments playedagainst time. 

But the brief interruption gave Dr. Silence a moment in which to collecthis scattering thoughts, and before the band had got through half a bar, he had flung forward upon the chair and held Mr. Racine Mudge, thestruggling little victim of Higher Space, in a grip of iron. His armswent all round his diminutive person, taking in a good part of the chairat the same time. He was not a big man, yet he seemed to smother Mudgecompletely. 

Yet, even as he did so, and felt the wriggling form underneath him, itbegan to melt and slip away like air or water. The wood of the arm-chairsomehow disentangled itself from between his own arms and those ofMudge. The phenomenon known as the passage of matter through matter tookplace. The little man seemed actually to get mixed up in his own being. Dr. Silence could just see his face beneath him. It puckered and grewdark as though from some great internal effort. He heard the thin, reedyvoice cry in his ear to "Block the entrances, block the entrances!" andthen--but how in the world describe what is indescribable?

John Silence half rose up to watch. Racine Mudge, his face distortedbeyond all recognition, was making a marvellous inward movement, asthough doubling back upon himself. He turned funnel-wise like water in awhirling vortex, and then appeared to break up somewhat as a reflectionbreaks up and divides in a distorting convex mirror. He went neitherforward nor backwards, neither to the right nor the left, neither up nordown. But he went. He went utterly. He simply flashed away out of sightlike a vanishing projectile. 

All but one leg! Dr. Silence just had the time and the presence of mindto seize upon the left ankle and boot as it disappeared, and to this heheld on for several seconds like grim death. Yet all the time he knew itwas a foolish and useless thing to do. 

The foot was in his grasp one moment, and the next it seemed--this wasthe only way he could describe it--inside his own skin and bones, and atthe same time outside his hand and all round it. It seemed mixed up insome amazing way with his own flesh and blood. Then it was gone, and hewas tightly grasping a draught of heated air. 

"Gone! gone! gone!" cried a thick, whispering voice, somewhere deepwithin his own consciousness. "Lost! lost! lost!" it repeated, growingfainter and fainter till at length it vanished into nothing and the lastsigns of Mr. Racine Mudge vanished with it. 

John Silence locked his red book and replaced it in the cabinet, whichhe fastened with a click, and when Barker answered the bell he inquiredif Mr. Mudge had left a card upon the table. It appeared that he had, and when the servant returned with it, Dr. Silence read the address andmade a note of it. It was in North London. 

"Mr. Mudge has gone, " he said quietly to Barker, noticing his expressionof alarm. 

"He's not taken his 'at with him, sir. "

"Mr. Mudge requires no hat where he is now, " continued the doctor, stooping to poke the fire. "But he may return for it--"

"And the humbrella, sir. "

"And the umbrella. "

"He didn't go out _my_ way, sir, if you please, " stuttered the amazedservant, his curiosity overcoming his nervousness. 

"Mr. Mudge has his own way of coming and going, and prefers it. If hereturns by the door at any time remember to bring him instantly to me, and be kind and gentle with him and ask no questions. Also, remember, Barker, to think pleasantly, sympathetically, affectionately of himwhile he is away. Mr. Mudge is a very suffering gentleman. "

Barker bowed and went out of the room backwards, gasping and feelinground the inside of his collar with three very hot fingers of one hand. 

It was two days later when he brought in a telegram to the study. Dr. Silence opened it, and read as follows:

 "Bombay. Just slipped out again. All safe. Have blocked entrances. Thousand thanks. Address Cooks, London. --MUDGE. "

Dr. Silence looked up and saw Barker staring at him bewilderingly. Itoccurred to him that somehow he knew the contents of the telegram. 

"Make a parcel of Mr. Mudge's things, " he said briefly, "and addressthem Thomas Cook & Sons, Ludgate Circus. And send them there exactly amonth from to-day and marked 'To be called for. '"

"Yes, sir, " said Barker, leaving the room with a deep sigh and a hurriedglance at the waste-paper basket where his master had dropped the pinkpaper.