9000 BC by Benyan Ali Sinjin

Floating above an expanse of depth, slow with ease; soaring lightly over immense darkness. Body flowing free from the hold of gravity. Where every cold touches - touches cold everywhere. Skin brushing; slick and smooth rushing flicks of body; arms churn, and hands clutch. Muscles pull rapid strokes - as the surface above glistens with reflections: refracted in black, white, gold and aquamarine.
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Gliding forward, hands puncture the mirrored light of playful shade, then break through into the brightness of day. Cascade-laughter erupts in all head-shaking directions.Fiery sparks of sunlight and water explode the air: Scattering with a bejewelled shattering. Erupting iridescent in a tree of light that slowly falls. . . glitters. . . shivers. . . into illusions of summer-rain.“Praethos! Praethos! Come and look!” sings a voice, shrill with thrills. A dark head of wet hair turns to see who calls him from his comfortably suspended position; cold in the ripples and gently swirling sounds. A boy, dressed in a simple white robe and sandals, waves his arms furiously and calls out again “Praethos! Praethos! Its Them! They have arrived!” before turning, and clambering up the dark grey rocks; and finally vanishing over the top. His voice leaving a trail of “Praethos!” fading away behind him in the sunlight.
2


A deep breath fills his lungs.Quick, a burst of kicking erupts at his feet, and Praethos arcs his body beneath the dark surface. His limbs work decisively, cutting the sensual biting of the icier inversion layers lower down. Further into the abyss he descends in purposeful sweeps from strong shoulders.Then his body slows and arights itself; eyes squinting through the bubbles and the shadows, and the hints of sunlight.He notices a familiar hole in the rocks, from where a dim wavering glow of light emanates - and his arms move him powerfully towards it. Body, bending and arcing with every timed stroke and kick, until he is through the hole, along the faintly lit tunnel, to its end.
3


He surfaces inside a chamber carved out of black rock; inhales the cool air with desperate relief; and finds his way to a set of carved steps, in calm even breast-strokes; hardly rippling the encompassing surface of blackness.His naked body rises out of the water - feels the slippery moss between his toes on the uneven stone floor, then walks through a wide clear-lit corridor. Up a long flight of well-spaced stairs he moves, into a room which is warmed by the natural light of the Sun shining its way through a large open walkway. Following the allure of its honeyed warmth, Praethos walks out onto the stone balcony which is suspended high over a dark and lush valley. With the sound of a soft-roaring waterfall, echoing its thunderous chorus in the background, he notices the large oval shape of the Airship with its six curved and ribbed sail-wings, some distance away.
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It makes its way up the valley, skimming the tops of the taller trees. Black and silver colours flicker on its surface, playing games of deception with his vision in the reflecting sunlight.A large ship this one: about three-hundred foot long; and its broadest pair of sail-wings give it about a four-hundred foot wingspan. It bares the gold and red emblem of the Sun on it's sails.These are certainly the Sun-Priests from Tillawanda arriving two days ahead of schedule. They must have had favourable winds; and certainly good sunlight as well, for the single large propeller that helps drive the ship forward, is spinning fast, powered by the energy of the Sun; which is absorbed into the strangely ever-moving black and silver surface.
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The rapid ‘thwap-thwap’ of its blade cuts the air, reverberating through the valley, and slicing the wind with an approaching rhythm. Buoyant in the turquoise sky, the great propeller slows, then comes to an abrupt halt, as the ship lazily loses speed.For a moment it hovers silently, suspended only by its lighter-than-air hull. Then its glittering wings turn to opaque black, as they begin folding back with a high-pitched whining sound.By the time the floating vessel is tethered, and its crew cabins winched to the ground, Praethos has found his way to join the smallish greeting party gathered amongst the shadows beneath its glittering hull. Being this close to such an Airship is a truly remarkable sight to behold, as the light becomes bent and scattered by the strange surface of the ship. As the passenger cabin opens, the shimmering light from above has an uncanny effect on the faces of the Priests.
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Their features seem to light upin angelic smiles one moment, and then flicker dark and demonic the next. An illusionary play on light and dark which leaves Praethos feeling more than a little uncertain. Wandering slowly through the outskirts of Galgary Vellen, he looks up at the familiar buildings: High and narrow, roundly curved in yellow cones, intertwined with orange-dusty streets of cobblestone.Galgary Vellen - his home-town, had evolved around the natural Lake Tigroz, which collects and then empties the raging Black Horse River over the Falls of Vellen, more than a thousand feet to a large plunge-pool below.Praethos stands up high on the rocks that make up the natural dam wall.
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He absorbs the expansive view over the green valley way below, notices how, when the Sun is very near to setting, the Black Horse River flickers elusively between the trees far below and into the distance. A shadow moves to his left. . .Praethos' green eyes dart out from behind the darkness of his thick longish hair - and his face breaks out into a grin: “hello sister - how goes it? What news?”Her hair is straight and black, her eyes pale blue - and she is momentarily startled by being discovered half-way through her stalk. She recovers herself: “Good news for you - the Priests seek an acolyte, or some such thing - but the offer is most likely beneath you, for your heart is at the bottom of that muddy old lake, I'm sure.” Her sharply defined features cut open the space between them, which her eyes fill with an intense gaze of turquoise.
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His voice resonates amidst the silence: “I'll miss you too when I'm gone - I intend to make it back as well - and when I come back I'll own this muddy lake, and whatever lies at the bottom of it. But as for my heart, sweet Hilaris, even I know not where that lies. . .”“As to the honesty of your heart, I'm sure it is doubtful - but those Priests are more doubtful too: Since that ship has been here my mushroom crop has failed almost every morning.” Black hair falls across her face, and her eyes drop to his feet.She fiddles with her fingers, speaking with barely audible tones. “Do not go brother, they are a dangerous fearful cult. Many who have joined them have never even been heard of again. And, those that have returned seem changed, and soon move off elsewhere as they cannot bare to be around people that knew them as they were before.” She looks up again and opens her eyes wide, the ice, the azure, freezing his lips before a word escapes them.
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Knowing that he will not be persuaded, no more is said. Instead they peer within each other. In still agreement the mood changes and their hearts lighten into coy smiles.Running through the empty streets, leaping the walls; and clambering over rocks. Their outer shells are shed, and they are children in the water, frozen immortal in the blackness of the nearing night; lit on the one side by the last rays of the Sun, and on the other by moonlight.Their shadows, hidden in the soft lapping of the Lake; their breathing, drowned by the rumbling sound of waterfall pound.Chimes of softened bubbles. Bodies are silhouettes of shade and flesh; darkness enmeshed in watery-light. Quick flicks of feet and teeth move ‘midst the slow shadows beneath the Lake's flashing surface.
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The weightless motion of their complementary forms enthral the interplay of eyes and glistening thighs, down into a wintry tomb of night and cool drifts. Upon the bottom of the rocks where the crabs scuttle; here secrets keep their own subtle gloom. Night tries to hide away the moon in its half-seen realm. And; there are no deep secrets that are not in darkness revealed.Above what the blue-black mysteries conceal, starlight illuminates the fluidity of truth that denies its very being therein. And sheds its own light in the gloom of brilliance, and perfect tone of moonlit skin.“Do not go. . .”“I'm touched. . . by your concern Hilaris. . . but I do think you're being a bit superstitious. I'm only going to Tillawanda - not the edge of The World.”
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As the clouds are thick, the large propeller of the Airship turns lazily; yet the wind is strong, and so the sail-wings are angled to favour its steady blowing. In this light the ship is mostly black, except for flashes of silver, which make it flicker like a gigantic star.The cabin of the Airship is surprisingly roomy, being able to seat more than the twelve that are in it. Praethos being the only one not wearing the pale-yellow robes of the Priests with their characteristic emblem of a large gold and red Sun emblazoned on its front and back.“So you are the new acolyte,” nods one of the Priests in his direction, “have you been told yet of your first duty?”“I’m to find my way to someone called Boletus in Tillawanda.”
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The Priest looks startled for a moment, “So you're going to join the Vinolentia?”“That was the place I was told. . . I think. . . what exactly are the Vinolentia?”The Priest looks taken aback for a moment, then bursts out laughing; many of the others joining in. Praethos laughs red-faced with them, not exactly sure what the joke is, but not wanting to offend the Priests. Yet, they seem friendly enough.As the laughter rains down warmly on his cheeks he looks around at their faces, their laughs are hollow-eyed and distant, yet with a knowing look. He notices that there is only one woman amongst the lot. Pity. He had heard that there were Priestesses aplenty in Tillawanda.
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A bothered looking middle-aged man with a scruffy beard, and a maniacal nervous chuckle approaches him on his entry to the Order of the Vinolentia. “My name is Boletus, and you are...?”“Praethos... uh - sir”“Well, 'Praethos-uh-sir' welcome to Vinolentia - you are to complete one week’s training. If you do it successfully you will be given your Robe. However, the nature of the training is nothing easy. You may die. You may go insane. In truth, anything may happen if you fail the Testing. Nothing is certain. If you undertake to continue, it will be without any guarantee, promise, or responsibility on our part. Are you still interested?”Up until then, Praethos had been humbly expecting to do a few rituals, gain a bit of status, learn a few well crafted Priestly phrases, and enjoy the life of a Sun-priest.
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But at this unexpected attitude from Boletus, he feels more than a little bit startled, and begins to doubt his choice in coming to Tillawanda entirely. Yet, something pricks up his interest: “What makes it so dangerous?”“You will have to look into the eye of God. If you cannot bare your own true reflection, and instead try and hide in your shadows; your spirit will be melted, even though your body will live on.It will feel like your head has been removed and your insides torn out, your flesh has been shredded and your brain has been mashed, your blood boiled and evaporated. And then, even your bones will feel like they have been turned to dust. But because your body will still be alive, you will feel this agony over and over, for the rest of your life.”“And if I can bare the eye of God upon me?”
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“No-one can bare the eye of God upon them. You will go to the Great Pyramid, and the filters in the stone will shield you from all but a sliver of His gaze. The effect is never the same, so if you can withstand just that sliver, then the grace you may win, will be by the grace of the Great Sun God. None of us can tell the result. The choice, and the consequences of that choice, rest entirely upon yourself. May you walk in the light.”Praethos lay on his back, paralysed with fear - sweat oozing thick and sticky from every pore in his body; the heat unbearable; the concentration intensely bulging from his eyes - their green waters surrounded by blood-red-vessels.He watches as the Priest pours some golden liquid from a clay goblet into his mouth. It is. . . honey. . . yet, it has a pungent aroma which triggers an ancient instinct to expel it.
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Yet Praethos is aware that it is too late - any such action could be dangerous. He has to relinquish his will. . . and so swallows the vile, yet seductive concoction.Its effects are almost immediate as his central sense of being collapses into an inward fall, which screams silently within, as he plunges into the depths of his core. Images of his birth and youth, his life, his love, his decay and sadness wash over his mind like a cool stream of awareness.He feels the agony of the birth canal, the blind fury of a wailing child. The wonder of first love. The cynicism of first death. The first-time awareness of how passion is the bond that unites love and death as a singularity that can never be divided.Then a brief hidden vision of his own death avoids the full circle of his mind's awareness . . . and darkness . . .
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He lies stretched out upon the warm grey stone. Four Priests arrive, and lifting his body up, carry it up a mountain, and over to the entrance of a pyramid, which is carved in a single block out of the dusty top of a rocky-yellow-outcrop.About a hundred foot at its highest point, the perfect triangular shape of the pyramid casts no shadow as the Sun climbs near to midday. The Priests carry his limp form through the pyramid’s entrance.The stone doors of the pyramid groan and then close with a thuDD behind them. Praethos is placed in the centre on a large intricately carved spherical platform, from which an aura of rays, neatly cut into the stone, emanates in all various asymmetric directions. On the rim of platform are the engravings of pictograms and all manner of mysterious symbols.
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Non-being is still some form of being. Death is change. Life is eternal. Stagnation is disaster. Life can only love through death. Love is Aquamarine.Praethos slowly breathes, paralysed with anticipation; skin curiously tight and dry - the heat somehow cooling its way through his unmoving body. Eyes blink an emerald moment. A twinkle-drop of light at the top-most point of the pyramid appears directly above him, as midday reaches its towering climax. Sharp. A silver-tipped gold light penetrates his sight, skin, skull, his head; and fills his body with lightness, and a warm tingling sound; like air yet lighter; like water, but far smoother; and like laughter, yet loftier.
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Who am I? What name can call Me Truly? I am a disk of Gold in Heaven - a place in one sense, yet My rays - My touch of light that fades to starlight - it reaches everywhere.I am a speck in a distant galaxy in the skies of innumerable worlds; most of these worlds do not even exist yet. And still, I am an infinite multitude of such specks. Be not troubled. . . Feel the touching of your body, as my finger-tips tickle it to warmth a bit; yet body is permeable. Feel the shape of the air beyond it, , , with touch, , , hear the wind breathe - miles up.See the Galaxy and myriads of scattered stars, , , beings, , , and life-forms beyond your mere imagination.
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Smell yesterday. . . and then taste the salt of all your ancient yester-years. Loosen your mind free from who and what it is - or not what it is not - be everything, everywhere. Feel the essence that binds us all together - our common core of being, our sacred root.Time is what holds your mind closed.Observe your many lives - our many lifetimes. See your own personal essence when you are dead - know the feeling of dying. Ultimate loss of all that you are and have become.Feel the void of annihilation, and feel not comforted by the immortality of your soul. Know that it survives only as long as time does. For when time runs down to die, then all immortal souls must give up the common thread of their very founding feature.
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Time does not however have to run in a line; the linear-temporal-perspective is common to human intelligence. It is not wrong to note the linear quality of time, merely that such an observation is only a single one of the numinous facets of time.Through transcending linear time, even the human mind can project beyond its immediate bodily existence - joining into the group mind, the all-pervading-consciousness - the Divine Witness, and finally the ALL which is Being and Void, Ultimate substantial existence and non-being at once.Time is like a river where we can choose which courses to follow, yet we are not completely free to swim anywhen we want. And like a river, it has an end which is no-end because My rays draw the water at its mouth up into clouds and then rain it back to the river. The ever changing cycle is born within its own death.
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There is no beginning to it, and also no end. We can go up it and down it, though it certainly seems to go in one direction. Each drop never travels the same path twice; each moment is reborn anew for each individual being of moisture.As the source and the destination both make up the river, so our lives are whole. We exist eternally in the past and present, as well as in all the possible courses of our futures.Because the past is the future, all our life is a singularity, though we may choose to live it elsehow. We are united to the world as our bodily space fits the contours of the earth; our being engrains itself like a scar on the surface, leaving its perfect trace of immortal memory, as an eternal part of the Universe. As our body is bound in space and mass - so our minds are bound in time and energy.
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As the river exists not only at each part of its cycle, so time is united as a whole and cannot be separated into individual lives. Even entire civilisations that live and die are but one bend in the great river of time, all playing their part in achieving the great infinite cycle of life. Because time is more than linear, it does not run completely causally through the ages. The future can cause effects in the present too. Our minds are not confined to the present and thus can cause future probabilities to effect us now.Causality can thus happen backwards.How often has the possibility of future events that may or may not happen, affected our actions in the present?
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In the life of a temporally conscious being, causality often happens in this backward manner, rather than the simple linear forward causation of inanimate matter. We constantly project into the future, even extracting information from the future’s potential. We also conversely recreate our understanding and experience of the past, during meditative moments.The laws of nature that we use to harness the forces of nature, involve making predictions about the outcome of how natural energy behaves. We can only control that energy if we can predict how it will behave in the future. Our mind is our time-site. Our intelligence is the clarity of that perception.Praethos' mind swirls with the vastness of consciousness that seeps into his being. The perspective of a Deity is truly enormously expansive from the vantage point of a living, dying, body. His own life seems insignificant by comparison.
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The insides of his being fall apart - his perspective of himself changing. His petty desires and complaints seem so trivial beside the flowing multitudinous enormities of the cosmic river of time.All sense of self as an isolated individual is swept aside before the sudden rush of realisation - of his connectedness to all things, of his being an essential part of the Divine Order. Then the last remnants of his self collect together, and blend into the infinite consciousness, in a place of non-places, a timeless core of being. Where even God is left mortal.
All at once,all being is one.Awareness.Perfection.
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In this place that I am. . .Universe I Span,more than infinity?My see, , , I-self, , , now:Praethos art I,a speck more than everythingdefined in essence by my own Divine unique limitations.Yet after transcending, all that I am and have experienced, I still remain.And I perceive:At the centre of all: The Absolutes:
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God and ChaosCreation:Essence and Quantity:Deities, Souls and spirits.Form, substance and change.Life, birth and death,space, time, matter,energycircles,spirals, matrixes,dimensions,extremity.
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Good and Eviland the pure emotions:AngerLoveFreedomSadnessJoy
Praethos feels his sense of self returning, at the tin-pan of chimed laughter in the belly of his being. And so he looks back, to the centre of the Universe. And further. . . beyond even God/chaos. . . and sees:
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A knyghte
a princess?
and a Dragon!
Circling them all, and uniting all existence, is the Universal Narrative.
For everything is contained therein.
Even God is but an element of his own narrative destiny.
God is the Dragon, the Knyghte, or the princess. . .
but then is so named the Father, son and Holy Ghost.
God the Powerful, God the Man, and god the unattainable.
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Praethos turns from the centre of all things, to his own life’s story. All the while seeing it from a meta-temporal perspective. An enormous shade stretches before him, a time-line that winds its way into the future, obscured by clouds, shadows and blackness:The Epic Destiny of his Entire SOUL.His being becomes stretched and distorted as the full impact of pain and horror of his future lives impacts into his awareness. For the first time Praethos discovers pure agony, cutting in its hardened spite. Overwhelmed before even part of his fate is revealed, he withdraws his being into himself; and his mind retreats to the calm dark waters of seductive sleep; and her supple dreams.It is a week before he can sit up and open his eyes, which then become frozen by a realisation that leaves him staring blackly into the eyes of others, as he wonders their role in his fate.
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He ponders too the destiny of this world as the memory of the distant future laps at the back of his mind. The vision of immense agony, war, spiritual decay, mechanised destruction; brutal annihilation of whole nations. Suffering and loss. Spiritless hard cities of millions. Living in a myopic darkness of mind. Bodies without Souls; unforgiving, unmoving. Unkind.Praethos leaps, then stumbles from the horse-drawn cart that had just brought him back from Tillawanda. This part of the journey had been long and bumpy, and in contrast with the flighted departure in the Airship, very uncomfortable. His yellow robe and crest of the Sun is soiled by a week's travel in the unforgiving wastelands that stretch between Tillawanda and Galgary Vellen.His home town seems drab and small after his journey to seek his fortune. His steps are slow and deliberate as he makes his way up the thousand foot high stone stairway that ascends the Great cliffs which lead to Lake Tigroz at the top.
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The waterfall tumbles its immortal way down past him, collects in a perpetual roar at the bottom, and disappears into the forest valley. Praethos stands atop the cliffs at last, his breath rising and falling heavily beneath his robe. He looks out into the distance, wondering at all the paths that the Black Horse River might take on its perpetual journey to the sea, and beyond. The Lake is curiously suspended in a neat natural gorge up in the mountains.The waterfall that slides over the cliff-wall, falls below in a perpetual tide. Pondering the all-consciousness of all-being, Praethos wonders if the water that falls over the cliff ever feels the trepidation of the fall - the fear of the plunge into the death of the dark unknown - the thrill of transcending it; the final trepidation. And then, falling anyway.
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Being the master of one's own fate by choosing to face darkness. Is this the way to freedom? To be able to make a dark decision, knowing it for what it is, yet choosing to do it anyway - purely to prove to oneself the absolute freedom of choice. And our darkest decisions are then made when we feel least free.Is this why the Sun-god has done this? Is this why one can see the mistakes people make before they make them? The frustration of seeing other people's futures, being unable to convince them of the choices they can make. Seeing into the future; even when one does not want to. Like a burdenous vision that cannot be cut off - blinding - deafening - lucidly lunatic in its vivid immanence.“Praethos! Look at you! That look in your eyes - what have they done to you?”. Hilaris's face pierces his vision; her icy pair of luminescent turquoise darting from one part of his sunken form to another; noting his stoop and the dark shadow on his features.
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Where was the spirited look of youth? The joyous leap of his voice? His smile-eye greeting? “You look an hundred years old!”He smiles slowly: “Hilaris sweet sister of the stars, do not be troubled, they said I have recovered well, I should be fine in a month or two. I need more rest now though.” Then he slept for the first few days; yet it seemed to Hilaris that after three months even, his well-being had not improved. So she consulted with Ranul; an aged woman who had made her living by diving to the depths of the Tigroz in search of the crabs which were a well sort-after delicacy to the inhabitants of Galgary Vellen.It was Ranul who had trained both of them in diving; showing them how to minimise the movements of the body underwater, and therefore conserving energy and oxygen, allowing one to dive for longer periods. How long ago that now seemed.
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Hilaris tells Ranul that Praethos broods and is uncannily quiet at times - his mind elsewhere. He has become clumsy, his concentration unable to focus on the simplest of tasks.He is often distracted in mid-conversation . . . leaving sentences incomplete as his mind drifts to somewhere else . . . something inside troubles him deeply.Ranul's advice: “Take him to the bottom of the Lake; there he may recover some of his past refreshedness. It seems the Priests have underestimated what their ritual has opened in your brother's mind. I'd be curious to speak to him once he is feeling more talkative. Damn those Priests! They play with life and energy like children - experimenting with power they do not understand. Your brother is time-struck. It seems his mind is no longer localised to this singular life.
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This is a tactic they use to collect more people to their Priesthood. By letting their minds transcend their singular individuality - their consciousness spreads out to others, allowing immense co-operative action that lets them act as a singular being. Their thoughts are rumoured to be shared by all. Each person acting as a cell in a tightly bound unity - that is only of course if they survive the change to the way their minds become restructured.But something else has happened to your brother - I cannot tell exactly what - but it is very unusual that he has returned here, and stayed so long. It seems a part of his singular identity has survived the transition. This is most unusual - as hanging on to the fundamental sense of an individual self in such a situation normally results in death or madness. Some powerful source within him has allowed him to resist. Yet although Praethos seems deathly - and mad at times - he is still Praethos - is he not? Look at the other Priests, all of them take on new names, or new identities after the transformation. Your brother is indeed transformed - yet into what? I suppose only time will tell.”
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Hilaris dropped her loose and simple dress on the rocks by the side of the lake and slipped fluidly into the indigo mysteries. Cool caresses ripple the length of her skin, awakening her body with a sudden penetrating chill.Dipping beneath the icy surface, her mind is sharply woken by a numbing freeze, so she surfaces quickly. Winter looms in the foreboding depths as Hilaris looks up. Her eyes of sky adorned by black lashes; sparkling her vision with perfect droplets, lit up by the life of the Sun.Praethos stands high up the natural cliff, about fifty feet up from the Lake; its churning waters stirring slightly and invitingly below him. He remembers the countless times past that he has leapt and penetrated the Lake from here, often perfecting the dive so as to leave only the faintest trace of a splash. Yet he had not so much as touched the surface of its hidden abyss since his return.
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Hilaris had coaxed and teased to her utmost possible to get him here; and now he stands unmoving. Below him, she dare not say a word in case he backs off - even though she has lost the feeling in her toes from the cold.She dives below once more, kicking furiously to get the blood circulating, burning energy up to lift her body-temperature, as Ranul had taught them.From where he stands, Praethos can feel the cold in his bones, and (the sharp stinging snap of ice) in anticipation of hitting the Lake at the height he must jump. At the sound of water he turns to where Hilaris surfaces again, erupting out high above the surface.Hands lift up a shower of sunlit water-drops; falling back to the Lake in a show of diamond stars - bright with gold and silver trails of cold.
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She slicks back her dark hair; spread wet across her shoulders, and laughs, looking up to where he stands on rock. His Sun-robe falls to his feet - his body a sharp contrast of white skin, black hair, and dark shadows. The Sun glowers behind him. She moves to a position where his head obscures the blinding gold disk, so that she is no longer sightless in its incessant luminosity. This has the curious effect of giving Praethos's silhouette a golden-white aura. His hair emitting that curious quality of silver and black, reminiscent of the surface of the Airship.Her heart lifts and races, as she sees the shape of his mouth drop open and smile for the first time since his return. Gratuitous stars of laughter escape from his heart as his head rolls back, and the Sun's halo erupts gold and yellow; full in Hilaris's face for a brief blinding moment. She averts her eyes from the sudden flood of sharp light; and when she looks again, he is gone. “Praethos!?...?”
the end

With Intent to Steal

WITH INTENT TO STEAL
by Algernon Blackwood

To sleep in a lonely barn when the best bedrooms in the house were at
our disposal, seemed, to say the least, unnecessary, and I felt that
some explanation was due to our host.

But Shorthouse, I soon discovered, had seen to all that; our enterprise
would be tolerated, not welcomed, for the master kept this sort of thing
down with a firm hand. And then, how little I could get this man,
Shorthouse, to tell me. There was much I wanted to ask and hear, but he
surrounded himself with impossible barriers. It was ludicrous; he was
surely asking a good deal of me, and yet he would give so little in
return, and his reason--that it was for my good--may have been perfectly
true, but did not bring me any comfort in its train. He gave me sops now
and then, however, to keep up my curiosity, till I soon was aware that
there were growing up side by side within me a genuine interest and an
equally genuine fear; and something of both these is probably necessary
to all real excitement.

The barn in question was some distance from the house, on the side of
the stables, and I had passed it on several of my journeyings to and fro
wondering at its forlorn and untarred appearance under a régime where
everything was so spick and span; but it had never once occurred to me
as possible that I should come to spend a night under its roof with a
comparative stranger, and undergo there an experience belonging to an
order of things I had always rather ridiculed and despised.

At the moment I can only partially recall the process by which
Shorthouse persuaded me to lend him my company. Like myself, he was a
guest in this autumn house-party, and where there were so many to
chatter and to chaff, I think his taciturnity of manner had appealed to
me by contrast, and that I wished to repay something of what I owed.
There was, no doubt, flattery in it as well, for he was more than twice
my age, a man of amazingly wide experience, an explorer of all the
world's corners where danger lurked, and--most subtle flattery of
all--by far the best shot in the whole party, our host included.

At first, however, I held out a bit.

"But surely this story you tell," I said, "has the parentage common to
all such tales--a superstitious heart and an imaginative brain--and has
grown now by frequent repetition into an authentic ghost story? Besides,
this head gardener of half a century ago," I added, seeing that he still
went on cleaning his gun in silence, "who was he, and what positive
information have you about him beyond the fact that he was found hanging
from the rafters, dead?"

"He was no mere head gardener, this man who passed as such," he replied
without looking up, "but a fellow of splendid education who used this
curious disguise for his own purposes. Part of this very barn, of which
he always kept the key, was found to have been fitted up as a complete
laboratory, with athanor, alembic, cucurbite, and other appliances, some
of which the master destroyed at once--perhaps for the best--and which I
have only been able to guess at--"

"Black Arts," I laughed.

"Who knows?" he rejoined quietly. "The man undoubtedly possessed
knowledge--dark knowledge--that was most unusual and dangerous, and I
can discover no means by which he came to it--no ordinary means, that
is. But I _have_ found many facts in the case which point to the
exercise of a most desperate and unscrupulous will; and the strange
disappearances in the neighbourhood, as well as the bones found buried
in the kitchen garden, though never actually traced to him, seem to me
full of dreadful suggestion."

I laughed again, a little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded
one of the story of Giles de Rays, maréchal of France, who was said to
have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one
hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy, and
who was executed for his crimes at Nantes. But Shorthouse would not
"rise," and only returned to his subject.

"His suicide seems to have been only just in time to escape arrest," he
said.

"A magician of no high order then," I observed sceptically, "if suicide
was his only way of evading the country police."

"The police of London and St. Petersburg rather," returned Shorthouse;
"for the headquarters of this pretty company was somewhere in Russia,
and his apparatus all bore the marks of the most skilful foreign make. A
Russian woman then employed in the household--governess, or
something--vanished, too, about the same time and was never caught. She
was no doubt the cleverest of the lot. And, remember, the object of this
appalling group was not mere vulgar gain, but a kind of knowledge that
called for the highest qualities of courage and intellect in the
seekers."

I admit I was impressed by the man's conviction of voice and manner, for
there is something very compelling in the force of an earnest man's
belief, though I still affected to sneer politely.

"But, like most Black Magicians, the fellow only succeeded in compassing
his own destruction--that of his tools, rather, and of escaping
himself."

"So that he might better accomplish his objects _elsewhere and
otherwise_," said Shorthouse, giving, as he spoke, the most minute
attention to the cleaning of the lock.

"Elsewhere and otherwise," I gasped.

"As if the shell he left hanging from the rafter in the barn in no way
impeded the man's spirit from continuing his dreadful work under new
conditions," he added quietly, without noticing my interruption. "The
idea being that he sometimes revisits the garden and the barn, chiefly
the barn--"

"The barn!" I exclaimed; "for what purpose?"

"Chiefly the barn," he finished, as if he had not heard me, "that is,
when there is anybody in it."

I stared at him without speaking, for there was a wonder in me how he
would add to this.

"When he wants fresh material, that is--he comes to steal from the
living."

"Fresh material!" I repeated aghast. "To steal from the living!" Even
then, in broad daylight, I was foolishly conscious of a creeping
sensation at the roots of my hair, as if a cold breeze were passing over
my skull.

"The strong vitality of the living is what this sort of creature is
supposed to need most," he went on imperturbably, "and where he has
worked and thought and struggled before is the easiest place for him to
get it in. The former conditions are in some way more easily
reconstructed--" He stopped suddenly, and devoted all his attention to
the gun. "It's difficult to explain, you know, rather," he added
presently, "and, besides, it's much better that you should not know till
afterwards."

I made a noise that was the beginning of a score of questions and of as
many sentences, but it got no further than a mere noise, and Shorthouse,
of course, stepped in again.

"Your scepticism," he added, "is one of the qualities that induce me to
ask you to spend the night there with me."

"In those days," he went on, in response to my urging for more
information, "the family were much abroad, and often travelled for years
at a time. This man was invaluable in their absence. His wonderful
knowledge of horticulture kept the gardens--French, Italian, English--in
perfect order. He had carte blanche in the matter of expense, and of
course selected all his own underlings. It was the sudden, unexpected
return of the master that surprised the amazing stories of the
countryside before the fellow, with all his cleverness, had time to
prepare or conceal."

"But is there no evidence, no more recent evidence, to show that
something is likely to happen if we sit up there?" I asked, pressing him
yet further, and I think to his liking, for it showed at least that I
was interested. "Has anything happened there lately, for instance?"

Shorthouse glanced up from the gun he was cleaning so assiduously, and
the smoke from his pipe curled up into an odd twist between me and the
black beard and oriental, sun-tanned face. The magnetism of his look and
expression brought more sense of conviction to me than I had felt
hitherto, and I realised that there had been a sudden little change in
my attitude and that I was now much more inclined to go in for the
adventure with him. At least, I thought, with such a man, one would be
safe in any emergency; for he is determined, resourceful, and to be
depended upon.

"There's the point," he answered slowly; "for there has apparently been
a fresh outburst--an attack almost, it seems,--quite recently. There is
evidence, of course, plenty of it, or I should not feel the interest I
do feel, but--" he hesitated a moment, as though considering how much he
ought to let me know, "but the fact is that three men this summer, on
separate occasions, who have gone into that barn after nightfall, have
been _accosted_--"

"Accosted?" I repeated, betrayed into the interruption by his choice of
so singular a word.

"And one of the stablemen--a recent arrival and quite ignorant of the
story--who had to go in there late one night, saw a dark substance
hanging down from one of the rafters, and when he climbed up, shaking
all over, to cut it down--for he said he felt sure it was a corpse--the
knife passed through nothing but air, and he heard a sound up under the
eaves as if someone were laughing. Yet, while he slashed away, and
afterwards too, the thing went on swinging there before his eyes and
turning slowly with its own weight, like a huge joint on a spit. The man
declares, too, that it had a large bearded face, and that the mouth was
open and drawn down like the mouth of a hanged man."

"Can we question this fellow?"

"He's gone--gave notice at once, but not before I had questioned him
myself very closely."

"Then this was quite recent?" I said, for I knew Shorthouse had not been
in the house more than a week.

"Four days ago," he replied. "But, more than that, only three days ago a
couple of men were in there together in full daylight when one of them
suddenly turned deadly faint. He said that he felt an overmastering
impulse to hang himself; and he looked about for a rope and was furious
when his companion tried to prevent him--"

"But he did prevent him?"

"Just in time, but not before he had clambered on to a beam. He was very
violent."

I had so much to say and ask that I could get nothing out in time, and
Shorthouse went on again.

"I've had a sort of watching brief for this case," he said with a smile,
whose real significance, however, completely escaped me at the time,
"and one of the most disagreeable features about it is the deliberate
way the servants have invented excuses to go out to the place, and
always after dark; some of them who have no right to go there, and no
real occasion at all--have never been there in their lives before
probably--and now all of a sudden have shown the keenest desire and
determination to go out there about dusk, or soon after, and with the
most paltry and foolish excuses in the world. Of course," he added,
"they have been prevented, but the desire, stronger than their
superstitious dread, and which they cannot explain, is very curious."

"Very," I admitted, feeling that my hair was beginning to stand up
again.

"You see," he went on presently, "it all points to volition--in fact to
deliberate arrangement. It is no mere family ghost that goes with every
ivied house in England of a certain age; it is something real, and
something very malignant."

He raised his face from the gun barrel, and for the first time his eye
caught mine in the full. Yes, he was very much in earnest. Also, he knew
a great deal more than he meant to tell.

"It's worth tempting--and fighting, _I_ think," he said; "but I want a
companion with me. Are you game?" His enthusiasm undoubtedly caught me,
but I still wanted to hedge a bit.

"I'm very sceptical," I pleaded.

"All the better," he said, almost as if to himself. "You have the pluck;
I have the knowledge--"

"The knowledge?"

He looked round cautiously as if to make sure that there was no one
within earshot.

"I've been in the place myself," he said in a lowered voice, "quite
lately--in fact only three nights ago--the day the man turned queer."

I stared.

"But--I was obliged to come out--"

Still I stared.

"Quickly," he added significantly.

"You've gone into the thing pretty thoroughly," was all I could find to
say, for I had almost made up my mind to go with him, and was not sure
that I wanted to hear too much beforehand.

He nodded. "It's a bore, of course, but I must do everything
thoroughly--or not at all."

"That's why you clean your own gun, I suppose?"

"That's why, when there's any danger, I take as few chances as
possible," he said, with the same enigmatical smile I had noticed
before; and then he added with emphasis, "And that is also why I ask you
to keep me company now."

Of course, the shaft went straight home, and I gave my promise without
further ado.

Our preparations for the night--a couple of rugs and a flask of black
coffee--were not elaborate, and we found no difficulty, about ten
o'clock, in absenting ourselves from the billiard-room without
attracting curiosity. Shorthouse met me by arrangement under the cedar
on the back lawn, and I at once realised with vividness what a
difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying
them out in the dark. One's common-sense--at least in matters of this
sort--is reduced to a minimum, and imagination with all her attendant
sprites usurps the place of judgment. Two and two no longer make
four--they make a mystery, and the mystery loses no time in growing into
a menace. In this particular case, however, my imagination did not find
wings very readily, for I knew that my companion was the most
_unmovable_ of men--an unemotional, solid block of a man who would
never lose his head, and in any conceivable state of affairs would
always take the right as well as the strong course. So my faith in the
man gave me a false courage that was nevertheless very consoling, and I
looked forward to the night's adventure with a genuine appetite.

Side by side, and in silence, we followed the path that skirted the East
Woods, as they were called, and then led across two hay fields, and
through another wood, to the barn, which thus lay about half a mile from
the Lower Farm. To the Lower Farm, indeed, it properly belonged; and
this made us realise more clearly how very ingenious must have been the
excuses of the Hall servants who felt the desire to visit it.

It had been raining during the late afternoon, and the trees were still
dripping heavily on all sides, but the moment we left the second wood
and came out into the open, we saw a clearing with the stars overhead,
against which the barn outlined itself in a black, lugubrious shadow.
Shorthouse led the way--still without a word--and we crawled in through
a low door and seated ourselves in a soft heap of hay in the extreme
corner.

"Now," he said, speaking for the first time, "I'll show you the inside
of the barn, so that you may know where you are, and what to do, in
case anything happens."

A match flared in the darkness, and with the help of two more that
followed I saw the interior of a lofty and somewhat rickety-looking
barn, erected upon a wall of grey stones that ran all round and extended
to a height of perhaps four feet. Above this masonry rose the wooden
sides, running up into the usual vaulted roof, and supported by a double
tier of massive oak rafters, which stretched across from wall to wall
and were intersected by occasional uprights. I felt as if we were inside
the skeleton of some antediluvian monster whose huge black ribs
completely enfolded us. Most of this, of course, only sketched itself to
my eye in the uncertain light of the flickering matches, and when I said
I had seen enough, and the matches went out, we were at once enveloped
in an atmosphere as densely black as anything that I have ever known.
And the silence equalled the darkness.

We made ourselves comfortable and talked in low voices. The rugs, which
were very large, covered our legs; and our shoulders sank into a really
luxurious bed of softness. Yet neither of us apparently felt sleepy. I
certainly didn't, and Shorthouse, dropping his customary brevity that
fell little short of gruffness, plunged into an easy run of talking
that took the form after a time of personal reminiscences. This rapidly
became a vivid narration of adventure and travel in far countries, and
at any other time I should have allowed myself to become completely
absorbed in what he told. But, unfortunately, I was never able for a
single instant to forget the real purpose of our enterprise, and
consequently I felt all my senses more keenly on the alert than usual,
and my attention accordingly more or less distracted. It was, indeed, a
revelation to hear Shorthouse unbosom himself in this fashion, and to a
young man it was of course doubly fascinating; but the little sounds
that always punctuate even the deepest silence out of doors claimed some
portion of my attention, and as the night grew on I soon became aware
that his tales seemed somewhat disconnected and abrupt--and that, in
fact, I heard really only part of them.

It was not so much that I actually heard other sounds, but that I
_expected_ to hear them; this was what stole the other half of my
listening. There was neither wind nor rain to break the stillness, and
certainly there were no physical presences in our neighbourhood, for we
were half a mile even from the Lower Farm; and from the Hall and
stables, at least a mile. Yet the stillness was being continually
broken--perhaps _disturbed_ is a better word--and it was to these very
remote and tiny disturbances that I felt compelled to devote at least
half my listening faculties.

From time to time, however, I made a remark or asked a question, to show
that I was listening and interested; but, in a sense, my questions
always seemed to bear in one direction and to make for one issue,
namely, my companion's previous experience in the barn when he had been
obliged to come out "quickly."

Apparently I could not help myself in the matter, for this was really
the one consuming curiosity I had; and the fact that it was better for
me not to know it made me the keener to know it all, even the worst.

Shorthouse realised this even better than I did. I could tell it by the
way he dodged, or wholly ignored, my questions, and this subtle sympathy
between us showed plainly enough, had I been able at the time to reflect
upon its meaning, that the nerves of both of us were in a very sensitive
and highly-strung condition. Probably, the complete confidence I felt in
his ability to face whatever might happen, and the extent to which also
I relied upon him for my own courage, prevented the exercise of my
ordinary powers of reflection, while it left my senses free to a more
than usual degree of activity.

Things must have gone on in this way for a good hour or more, when I
made the sudden discovery that there was something unusual in the
conditions of our environment. This sounds a roundabout mode of
expression, but I really know not how else to put it. The discovery
almost rushed upon me. By rights, we were two men waiting in an alleged
haunted barn for something to happen; and, as two men who trusted one
another implicitly (though for very different reasons), there should
have been two minds keenly alert, with the ordinary senses in active
co-operation. Some slight degree of nervousness, too, there might also
have been, but beyond this, nothing. It was therefore with something of
dismay that I made the sudden discovery that there _was_ something more,
and something that I ought to have noticed very much sooner than I
actually did notice it.

The fact was--Shorthouse's stream of talk was wholly unnatural. He was
talking with a purpose. He did not wish to be cornered by my questions,
true, but he had another and a deeper purpose still, and it grew upon
me, as an unpleasant deduction from my discovery, that this strong,
cynical, unemotional man by my side was talking--and had been talking
all this time--to gain a particular end. And this end, I soon felt
clearly, was to _convince himself_. But, of what?

For myself, as the hours wore on towards midnight, I was not anxious to
find the answer; but in the end it became impossible to avoid it, and I
knew as I listened, that he was pouring forth this steady stream of
vivid reminiscences of travel--South Seas, big game, Russian
exploration, women, adventures of all sorts--_because he wished the past
to reassert itself to the complete exclusion of the present_. He was
taking his precautions. He was afraid.

I felt a hundred things, once this was clear to me, but none of them
more than the wish to get up at once and leave the barn. If Shorthouse
was afraid already, what in the world was to happen to me in the long
hours that lay ahead? . . . I only know that, in my fierce efforts to deny
to myself the evidence of his partial collapse, the strength came that
enabled me to play my part properly, and I even found myself helping
him by means of animated remarks upon his stories, and by more or less
judicious questions. I also helped him by dismissing from my mind any
desire to enquire into the truth of his former experience; and it was
good I did so, for had he turned it loose on me, with those great powers
of convincing description that he had at his command, I verily believe
that I should never have crawled from that barn alive. So, at least, I
felt at the moment. It was the instinct of self-preservation, and it
brought sound judgment.

Here, then, at least, with different motives, reached, too, by opposite
ways, we were both agreed upon one thing, namely, that temporarily we
would forget. Fools we were, for a dominant emotion is not so easily
banished, and we were for ever recurring to it in a hundred ways direct
and indirect. A real fear cannot be so easily trifled with, and while we
toyed on the surface with thousands and thousands of words--mere
words--our sub-conscious activities were steadily gaining force, and
would before very long have to be properly acknowledged. We could not
get away from it. At last, when he had finished the recital of an
adventure which brought him near enough to a horrible death, I admitted
that in my uneventful life I had never yet been face to face with a
real fear. It slipped out inadvertently, and, of course, without
intention, but the tendency in him at the time was too strong to be
resisted. He saw the loophole, and made for it full tilt.

"It is the same with all the emotions," he said. "The experiences of
others never give a complete account. Until a man has deliberately
turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years,
he has no knowledge of what they really are, or of what they can do.
Imaginative authors may write, moralists may preach, and scholars may
criticise, but they are dealing all the time in a coinage of which they
know not the actual value. Their listener gets a sensation--but not the
true one. Until you have faced these emotions," he went on, with the
same race of words that had come from him the whole evening, "and made
them your own, your slaves, you have no idea of the power that is in
them--hunger, that shows lights beckoning beyond the grave; thirst, that
fills with mingled ice and fire; passion, love, loneliness, revenge,
and--" He paused for a minute, and though I knew we were on the brink I
was powerless to hold him. " . . . _and fear_," he went on--"fear . . .
I think that death from fear, or madness from fear, must sum up in a
second of time the total of all the most awful sensations it is possible
for a man to know."

"Then you have yourself felt something of this fear," I interrupted;
"for you said just now--"

"I do not mean physical fear," he replied; "for that is more or less a
question of nerves and will, and it is imagination that makes men
cowards. I mean an _absolute_ fear, a physical fear one might call it,
that reaches the soul and withers every power one possesses."

He said a lot more, for he, too, was wholly unable to stem the torrent
once it broke loose; but I have forgotten it; or, rather, mercifully I
did not hear it, for I stopped my ears and only heard the occasional
words when I took my fingers out to find if he had come to an end. In
due course he did come to an end, and there we left it, for I then knew
positively what he already knew: that somewhere here in the night, and
within the walls of this very barn where we were sitting, there was
waiting Something of dreadful malignancy and of great power. Something
that we might both have to face ere morning, and Something that he had
already tried to face once and failed in the attempt.

The night wore slowly on; and it gradually became more and more clear to
me that I could not dare to rely as at first upon my companion, and that
our positions were undergoing a slow process of reversal. I thank Heaven
this was not borne in upon me too suddenly; and that I had at least the
time to readjust myself somewhat to the new conditions. Preparation was
possible, even if it was not much, and I sought by every means in my
power to gather up all the shreds of my courage, so that they might
together make a decent rope that would stand the strain when it came.
The strain would come, that was certain, and I was thoroughly well
aware--though for my life I cannot put into words the reasons for my
knowledge--that the massing of the material against us was proceeding
somewhere in the darkness with determination and a horrible skill
besides.

Shorthouse meanwhile talked without ceasing. The great quantity of hay
opposite--or straw, I believe it actually was--seemed to deaden the
sound of his voice, but the silence, too, had become so oppressive that
I welcomed his torrent and even dreaded the moment when it would stop. I
heard, too, the gentle ticking of my watch. Each second uttered its
voice and dropped away into a gulf, as if starting on a journey whence
there was no return. Once a dog barked somewhere in the distance,
probably on the Lower Farm; and once an owl hooted close outside and I
could hear the swishing of its wings as it passed overhead. Above me, in
the darkness, I could just make out the outline of the barn, sinister
and black, the rows of rafters stretching across from wall to wall like
wicked arms that pressed upon the hay. Shorthouse, deep in some involved
yarn of the South Seas that was meant to be full of cheer and sunshine,
and yet only succeeded in making a ghastly mixture of unnatural
colouring, seemed to care little whether I listened or not. He made no
appeal to me, and I made one or two quite irrelevant remarks which
passed him by and proved that he was merely uttering sounds. He, too,
was afraid of the silence.

I fell to wondering how long a man could talk without stopping. . . . Then
it seemed to me that these words of his went falling into the same gulf
where the seconds dropped, only they were heavier and fell faster. I
began to chase them. Presently one of them fell much faster than the
rest, and I pursued it and found myself almost immediately in a land of
clouds and shadows. They rose up and enveloped me, pressing on the
eyelids. . . . It must have been just here that I actually fell asleep,
somewhere between twelve and one o'clock, because, as I chased this word
at tremendous speed through space, I knew that I had left the other
words far, very far behind me, till, at last, I could no longer hear
them at all. The voice of the story-teller was beyond the reach of
hearing; and I was falling with ever increasing rapidity through an
immense void.

A sound of whispering roused me. Two persons were talking under their
breath close beside me. The words in the main escaped me, but I caught
every now and then bitten-off phrases and half sentences, to which,
however, I could attach no intelligible meaning. The words were quite
close--at my very side in fact--and one of the voices sounded so
familiar, that curiosity overcame dread, and I turned to look. I was not
mistaken; _it was Shorthouse whispering_. But the other person, who must
have been just a little beyond him, was lost in the darkness and
invisible to me. It seemed then that Shorthouse at once turned up his
face and looked at me and, by some means or other that caused me no
surprise at the time, I easily made out the features in the darkness.
They wore an expression I had never seen there before; he seemed
distressed, exhausted, worn out, and as though he were about to give in
after a long mental struggle. He looked at me, almost beseechingly, and
the whispering of the other person died away.

"They're at me," he said.

I found it quite impossible to answer; the words stuck in my throat. His
voice was thin, plaintive, almost like a child's.

"I shall have to go. I'm not as strong as I thought. They'll call it
suicide, but, of course, it's really murder." There was real anguish in
his voice, and it terrified me.

A deep silence followed these extraordinary words, and I somehow
understood that the Other Person was just going to carry on the
conversation--I even fancied I saw lips shaping themselves just over my
friend's shoulder--when I felt a sharp blow in the ribs and a voice,
this time a deep voice, sounded in my ear. I opened my eyes, and the
wretched dream vanished. Yet it left behind it an impression of a strong
and quite unusual reality.

"_Do_ try not to go to sleep again," he said sternly. "You seem
exhausted. Do you feel so?" There was a note in his voice I did not
welcome,--less than alarm, but certainly more than mere solicitude.

"I do feel terribly sleepy all of a sudden," I admitted, ashamed.

"So you may," he added very earnestly; "but I rely on you to keep awake,
if only to watch. You have been asleep for half an hour at least--and
you were so still--I thought I'd wake you--"

"Why?" I asked, for my curiosity and nervousness were altogether too
strong to be resisted. "Do you think we are in danger?"

"I think _they_ are about here now. I feel my vitality going
rapidly--that's always the first sign. You'll last longer than I,
remember. Watch carefully."

The conversation dropped. I was afraid to say all I wanted to say. It
would have been too unmistakably a confession; and intuitively I
realised the danger of admitting the existence of certain emotions until
positively forced to. But presently Shorthouse began again. His voice
sounded odd, and as if it had lost power. It was more like a woman's or
a boy's voice than a man's, and recalled the voice in my dream.

"I suppose you've got a knife?" he asked.

"Yes--a big clasp knife; but why?" He made no answer. "You don't think a
practical joke likely? No one suspects we're here," I went on. Nothing
was more significant of our real feelings this night than the way we
toyed with words, and never dared more than to skirt the things in our
mind.

"It's just as well to be prepared," he answered evasively. "Better be
quite sure. See which pocket it's in--so as to be ready."

I obeyed mechanically, and told him. But even this scrap of talk proved
to me that he was getting further from me all the time in his mind. He
was following a line that was strange to me, and, as he distanced me, I
felt that the sympathy between us grew more and more strained. _He knew
more_; it was not that I minded so much--but that he was willing to
_communicate less_. And in proportion as I lost his support, I dreaded
his increasing silence. Not of words--for he talked more volubly than
ever, and with a fiercer purpose--but his silence in giving no hint of
what he must have known to be really going on the whole time.

The night was perfectly still. Shorthouse continued steadily talking,
and I jogged him now and again with remarks or questions in order to
keep awake. He paid no attention, however, to either.

About two in the morning a short shower fell, and the drops rattled
sharply on the roof like shot. I was glad when it stopped, for it
completely drowned all other sounds and made it impossible to hear
anything else that might be going on. Something _was_ going on, too, all
the time, though for the life of me I could not say what. The outer
world had grown quite dim--the house-party, the shooters, the
billiard-room, and the ordinary daily incidents of my visit. All my
energies were concentrated on the present, and the constant strain of
watching, waiting, listening, was excessively telling.

Shorthouse still talked of his adventures, in some Eastern country now,
and less connectedly. These adventures, real or imaginary, had quite a
savour of the Arabian Nights, and did not by any means make it easier
for me to keep my hold on reality. The lightest weight will affect the
balance under such circumstances, and in this case the weight of his
talk was on the wrong scale. His words were very rapid, and I found it
overwhelmingly difficult not to follow them into that great gulf of
darkness where they all rushed and vanished. But that, I knew, meant
sleep again. Yet, it was strange I should feel sleepy when at the same
time all my nerves were fairly tingling. Every time I heard what seemed
like a step outside, or a movement in the hay opposite, the blood stood
still for a moment in my veins. Doubtless, the unremitting strain told
upon me more than I realised, and this was doubly great now that I knew
Shorthouse was a source of weakness instead of strength, as I had
counted. Certainly, a curious sense of languor grew upon me more and
more, and I was sure that the man beside me was engaged in the same
struggle. The feverishness of his talk proved this, if nothing else. It
was dreadfully hard to keep awake.

But this time, instead of dropping into the gulf, I saw something come
up out of it! It reached our world by a door in the side of the barn
furthest from me, and it came in cautiously and silently and moved into
the mass of hay opposite. There, for a moment, I lost it, but presently
I caught it again higher up. It was clinging, like a great bat, to the
side of the barn. Something trailed behind it, I could not make out
what. . . . It crawled up the wooden wall and began to move out along one
of the rafters. A numb terror settled down all over me as I watched it.
The thing trailing behind it was apparently a rope.

The whispering began again just then, but the only words I could catch
seemed without meaning; it was almost like another language. The voices
were above me, under the roof. Suddenly I saw signs of active movement
going on just beyond the place where the thing lay upon the rafter.
There was something else up there with it! Then followed panting, like
the quick breathing that accompanies effort, and the next minute a black
mass dropped through the air and dangled at the end of the rope.

Instantly, it all flashed upon me. I sprang to my feet and rushed
headlong across the floor of the barn. How I moved so quickly in the
darkness I do not know; but, even as I ran, it flashed into my mind that
I should never get at my knife in time to cut the thing down, or else
that I should find it had been taken from me. Somehow or other--the
Goddess of Dreams knows how--I climbed up by the hay bales and swung out
along the rafter. I was hanging, of course, by my arms, and the knife
was already between my teeth, though I had no recollection of how it got
there. It was open. The mass, hanging like a side of bacon, was only a
few feet in front of me, and I could plainly see the dark line of rope
that fastened it to the beam. I then noticed for the first time that it
was swinging and turning in the air, and that as I approached it seemed
to move along the beam, so that the same distance was always maintained
between us. The only thing I could do--for there was no time to
hesitate--was to jump at it through the air and slash at the rope as I
dropped.

I seized the knife with my right hand, gave a great swing of my body
with my legs and leaped forward at it through the air. Horrors! It was
closer to me than I knew, and I plunged full into it, and the arm with
the knife missed the rope and cut deeply into some substance that was
soft and yielding. But, as I dropped past it, the thing had time to turn
half its width so that it swung round and faced me--and I could have
sworn as I rushed past it through the air, that it had the features of
Shorthouse.

The shock of this brought the vile nightmare to an abrupt end, and I
woke up a second time on the soft hay-bed to find that the grey dawn was
stealing in, and that I was exceedingly cold. After all I had failed to
keep awake, and my sleep, since it was growing light, must have lasted
at least an hour. A whole hour off my guard!

There was no sound from Shorthouse, to whom, of course, my first
thoughts turned; probably his flow of words had ceased long ago, and he
too had yielded to the persuasions of the seductive god. I turned to
wake him and get the comfort of companionship for the horror of my
dream, when to my utter dismay I saw that the place where he had been
was vacant. He was no longer beside me.

It had been no little shock before to discover that the ally in whom lay
all my faith and dependence was really frightened, but it is quite
impossible to describe the sensations I experienced when I realised he
had gone altogether and that I was alone in the barn. For a minute or
two my head swam and I felt a prey to a helpless terror. The dream, too,
still seemed half real, so vivid had it been! I was thoroughly
frightened--hot and cold by turns--and I clutched the hay at my side in
handfuls, and for some moments had no idea in the world what I should
do.

This time, at least, I was unmistakably awake, and I made a great effort
to collect myself and face the meaning of the disappearance of my
companion. In this I succeeded so far that I decided upon a thorough
search of the barn, inside and outside. It was a dreadful undertaking,
and I did not feel at all sure of being able to bring it to a
conclusion, but I knew pretty well that unless something was done at
once, I should simply collapse.

But, when I tried to move, I found that the cold, and fear, and I know
not what else unholy besides, combined to make it almost impossible. I
suddenly realised that a tour of inspection, during the whole of which
my back would be open to attack, was not to be thought of. My will was
not equal to it. Anything might spring upon me any moment from the dark
corners, and the growing light was just enough to reveal every movement
I made to any who might be watching. For, even then, and while I was
still half dazed and stupid, I knew perfectly well that someone was
watching me all the time with the utmost intentness. I had not merely
awakened; I had _been_ awakened.

I decided to try another plan; I called to him. My voice had a thin weak
sound, far away and quite unreal, and there was no answer to it. Hark,
though! There was something that might have been a very faint voice near
me!

I called again, this time with greater distinctness, "Shorthouse, where
are you? can you hear me?"

There certainly was a sound, but it was not a voice. Something was
moving. It was someone shuffling along, and it seemed to be outside the
barn. I was afraid to call again, and the sound continued. It was an
ordinary sound enough, no doubt, but it came to me just then as
something unusual and unpleasant. Ordinary sounds remain ordinary only
so long as one is not listening to them; under the influence of intense
listening they become unusual, portentous, and therefore extraordinary.
So, this common sound came to me as something uncommon, disagreeable. It
conveyed, too, an impression of stealth. And with it there was another,
a slighter sound.

Just at this minute the wind bore faintly over the field the sound of
the stable clock, a mile away. It was three o'clock; the hour when
life's pulses beat lowest; when poor souls lying between life and death
find it hardest to resist. Vividly I remember this thought crashing
through my brain with a sound of thunder, and I realised that the strain
on my nerves was nearing the limit, and that something would have to be
done at once if I was to reclaim my self-control at all.

When thinking over afterwards the events of this dreadful night, it has
always seemed strange to me that my second nightmare, so vivid in its
terror and its nearness, should have furnished me with no inkling of
what was really going on all this while; and that I should not have been
able to put two and two together, or have discovered sooner than I did
_what_ this sound was and _where_ it came from. I can well believe that
the vile scheming which lay behind the whole experience found it an easy
trifle to direct my hearing amiss; though, of course, it may equally
well have been due to the confused condition of my mind at the time and
to the general nervous tension under which I was undoubtedly suffering.

But, whatever the cause for my stupidity at first in failing to trace
the sound to its proper source, I can only say here that it was with a
shock of unexampled horror that my eye suddenly glanced upwards and
caught sight of the figure moving in the shadows above my head among the
rafters. Up to this moment I had thought that it was somebody outside
the barn, crawling round the walls till it came to a door; and the rush
of horror that froze my heart when I looked up and saw that it was
Shorthouse creeping stealthily along a beam, is something altogether
beyond the power of words to describe.

He was staring intently down upon me, and I knew at once that it was he
who had been watching me.

This point was, I think, for me the climax of feeling in the whole
experience; I was incapable of any further sensation--that is any
further sensation in the same direction. But here the abominable
character of the affair showed itself most plainly, for it suddenly
presented an entirely new aspect to me. The light fell on the picture
from a new angle, and galvanised me into a fresh ability to feel when I
thought a merciful numbness had supervened. It may not sound a great
deal in the printed letter, but it came to me almost as if it had been
an extension of consciousness, for the Hand that held the pencil
suddenly touched in with ghastly effect of contrast the element of the
ludicrous. Nothing could have been worse just then. Shorthouse, the
masterful spirit, so intrepid in the affairs of ordinary life, whose
power increased rather than lessened in the face of danger--this man,
creeping on hands and knees along a rafter in a barn at three o'clock in
the morning, watching me all the time as a cat watches a mouse! Yes, it
was distinctly ludicrous, and while it gave me a measure with which to
gauge the dread emotion that caused his aberration, it stirred
somewhere deep in my interior the strings of an empty laughter.

One of those moments then came to me that are said to come sometimes
under the stress of great emotion, when in an instant the mind grows
dazzlingly clear. An abnormal lucidity took the place of my confusion of
thought, and I suddenly understood that the two dreams which I had taken
for nightmares must really have been sent me, and that I had been
allowed for one moment to look over the edge of what was to come; the
Good was helping, even when the Evil was most determined to destroy.

I saw it all clearly now. Shorthouse had overrated his strength. The
terror inspired by his first visit to the barn (when he had failed) had
roused the man's whole nature to win, and he had brought me to divert
the deadly stream of evil. That he had again underrated the power
against him was apparent as soon as he entered the barn, and his wild
talk, and refusal to admit what he felt, were due to this desire not to
acknowledge the insidious fear that was growing in his heart. But, at
length, it had become too strong. He had left my side in my sleep--had
been overcome himself, perhaps, first in _his_ sleep, by the dreadful
impulse. He knew that I should interfere, and with every movement he
made, he watched me steadily, for the mania was upon him and he was
_determined to hang himself_. He pretended not to hear me calling, and I
knew that anything coming between him and his purpose would meet the
full force of his fury--the fury of a maniac, of one, for the time
being, truly possessed.

For a minute or two I sat there and stared. I saw then for the first
time that there was a bit of rope trailing after him, and that this was
what made the rustling sound I had noticed. Shorthouse, too, had come to
a stop. His body lay along the rafter like a crouching animal. He was
looking hard at me. That whitish patch was his face.

I can lay claim to no courage in the matter, for I must confess that in
one sense I was frightened almost beyond control. But at the same time
the necessity for decided action, if I was to save his life, came to me
with an intense relief. No matter what animated him for the moment,
Shorthouse was only a _man_; it was flesh and blood I had to contend
with and not the intangible powers. Only a few hours before I had seen
him cleaning his gun, smoking his pipe, knocking the billiard balls
about with very human clumsiness, and the picture flashed across my
mind with the most wholesome effect.

Then I dashed across the floor of the barn and leaped upon the hay bales
as a preliminary to climbing up the sides to the first rafter. It was
far more difficult than in my dream. Twice I slipped back into the hay,
and as I scrambled up for the third time I saw that Shorthouse, who thus
far had made no sound or movement, was now busily doing something with
his hands upon the beam. He was at its further end, and there must have
been fully fifteen feet between us. Yet I saw plainly what he was doing;
he was fastening the rope to the rafter. _The other end, I saw, was
already round his neck!_

This gave me at once the necessary strength, and in a second I had swung
myself on to a beam, crying aloud with all the authority I could put
into my voice--

"You fool, man! What in the world are you trying to do? Come down at
once!"

My energetic actions and words combined had an immediate effect upon him
for which I blessed Heaven; for he looked up from his horrid task,
stared hard at me for a second or two, and then came wriggling along
like a great cat to intercept me. He came by a series of leaps and
bounds and at an astonishing pace, and the way he moved somehow inspired
me with a fresh horror, for it did not seem the natural movement of a
human being at all, but more, as I have said, like that of some lithe
wild animal.

He was close upon me. I had no clear idea of what exactly I meant to do.
I could see his face plainly now; he was grinning cruelly; the eyes were
positively luminous, and the menacing expression of the mouth was most
distressing to look upon. Otherwise it was the face of a chalk man,
white and dead, with all the semblance of the living human drawn out of
it. Between his teeth he held my clasp knife, which he must have taken
from me in my sleep, and with a flash I recalled his anxiety to know
exactly which pocket it was in.

"Drop that knife!" I shouted at him, "and drop after it yourself--"

"Don't you dare to stop me!" he hissed, the breath coming between his
lips across the knife that he held in his teeth. "Nothing in the world
can stop me now--I have promised--and I must do it. I can't hold out any
longer."

"Then drop the knife and I'll help you," I shouted back in his face. "I
promise--"

"No use," he cried, laughing a little, "I must do it and you can't stop
me."

I heard a sound of laughter, too, somewhere in the air behind me. The
next second Shorthouse came at me with a single bound.

To this day I cannot quite tell how it happened. It is still a wild
confusion and a fever of horror in my mind, but from somewhere I drew
more than my usual allowance of strength, and before he could well have
realised what I meant to do, I had his throat between my fingers. He
opened his teeth and the knife dropped at once, for I gave him a squeeze
he need never forget. Before, my muscles had felt like so much soaked
paper; now they recovered their natural strength, and more besides. I
managed to work ourselves along the rafter until the hay was beneath us,
and then, completely exhausted, I let go my hold and we swung round
together and dropped on to the hay, he clawing at me in the air even as
we fell.

The struggle that began by my fighting for his life ended in a wild
effort to save my own, for Shorthouse was quite beside himself, and had
no idea what he was doing. Indeed, he has always averred that he
remembers nothing of the entire night's experiences after the time when
he first woke me from sleep. A sort of deadly mist settled over him, he
declares, and he lost all sense of his own identity. The rest was a
blank until he came to his senses under a mass of hay with me on the top
of him.

It was the hay that saved us, first by breaking the fall and then by
impeding his movements so that I was able to prevent his choking me to
death.

Keeping His Promise

KEEPING HIS PROMISE
by Algernon Blackwood

It was eleven o'clock at night, and young Marriott was locked into his
room, cramming as hard as he could cram. He was a "Fourth Year Man" at
Edinburgh University and he had been ploughed for this particular
examination so often that his parents had positively declared they could
no longer supply the funds to keep him there.

His rooms were cheap and dingy, but it was the lecture fees that took
the money. So Marriott pulled himself together at last and definitely
made up his mind that he would pass or die in the attempt, and for some
weeks now he had been reading as hard as mortal man can read. He was
trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed
conclusively he did not understand the value of either. For no ordinary
man--and Marriott was in every sense an ordinary man--can afford to
drive the mind as he had lately been driving his, without sooner or
later paying the cost.

Among the students he had few friends or acquaintances, and these few
had promised not to disturb him at night, knowing he was at last reading
in earnest. It was, therefore, with feelings a good deal stronger than
mere surprise that he heard his door-bell ring on this particular night
and realised that he was to have a visitor. Some men would simply have
muffled the bell and gone on quietly with their work. But Marriott was
not this sort. He was nervous. It would have bothered and pecked at his
mind all night long not to know who the visitor was and what he wanted.
The only thing to do, therefore, was to let him in--and out again--as
quickly as possible.

The landlady went to bed at ten o'clock punctually, after which hour
nothing would induce her to pretend she heard the bell, so Marriott
jumped up from his books with an exclamation that augured ill for the
reception of his caller, and prepared to let him in with his own hand.

The streets of Edinburgh town were very still at this late hour--it was
late for Edinburgh--and in the quiet neighbourhood of F---- Street,
where Marriott lived on the third floor, scarcely a sound broke the
silence. As he crossed the floor, the bell rang a second time, with
unnecessary clamour, and he unlocked the door and passed into the
little hallway with considerable wrath and annoyance in his heart at the
insolence of the double interruption.

"The fellows all know I'm reading for this exam. Why in the world do
they come to bother me at such an unearthly hour?"

The inhabitants of the building, with himself, were medical students,
general students, poor Writers to the Signet, and some others whose
vocations were perhaps not so obvious. The stone staircase, dimly
lighted at each floor by a gas-jet that would not turn above a certain
height, wound down to the level of the street with no pretence at carpet
or railing. At some levels it was cleaner than at others. It depended on
the landlady of the particular level.

The acoustic properties of a spiral staircase seem to be peculiar.
Marriott, standing by the open door, book in hand, thought every moment
the owner of the footsteps would come into view. The sound of the boots
was so close and so loud that they seemed to travel disproportionately
in advance of their cause. Wondering who it could be, he stood ready
with all manner of sharp greetings for the man who dared thus to disturb
his work. But the man did not appear. The steps sounded almost under
his nose, yet no one was visible.

A sudden queer sensation of fear passed over him--a faintness and a
shiver down the back. It went, however, almost as soon as it came, and
he was just debating whether he would call aloud to his invisible
visitor, or slam the door and return to his books, when the cause of the
disturbance turned the corner very slowly and came into view.

It was a stranger. He saw a youngish man short of figure and very broad.
His face was the colour of a piece of chalk and the eyes, which were
very bright, had heavy lines underneath them. Though the cheeks and chin
were unshaven and the general appearance unkempt, the man was evidently
a gentleman, for he was well dressed and bore himself with a certain
air. But, strangest of all, he wore no hat, and carried none in his
hand; and although rain had been falling steadily all the evening, he
appeared to have neither overcoat nor umbrella.

A hundred questions sprang up in Marriott's mind and rushed to his lips,
chief among which was something like "Who in the world are you?" and
"What in the name of heaven do you come to me for?" But none of these
questions found time to express themselves in words, for almost at once
the caller turned his head a little so that the gas light in the hall
fell upon his features from a new angle. Then in a flash Marriott
recognised him.

"Field! Man alive! Is it you?" he gasped.

The Fourth Year Man was not lacking in intuition, and he perceived at
once that here was a case for delicate treatment. He divined, without
any actual process of thought, that the catastrophe often predicted had
come at last, and that this man's father had turned him out of the
house. They had been at a private school together years before, and
though they had hardly met once since, the news had not failed to reach
him from time to time with considerable detail, for the family lived
near his own and between certain of the sisters there was great
intimacy. Young Field had gone wild later, he remembered hearing about
it all--drink, a woman, opium, or something of the sort--he could not
exactly call to mind.

"Come in," he said at once, his anger vanishing. "There's been something
wrong, I can see. Come in, and tell me all about it and perhaps I can
help--" He hardly knew what to say, and stammered a lot more besides.
The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that
lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.
But he had a man's heart for all that.

He led the way across the hall, shutting the front door carefully behind
him, and noticed as he did so that the other, though certainly sober,
was unsteady on his legs, and evidently much exhausted. Marriott might
not be able to pass his examinations, but he at least knew the symptoms
of starvation--acute starvation, unless he was much mistaken--when they
stared him in the face.

"Come along," he said cheerfully, and with genuine sympathy in his
voice. "I'm glad to see you. I was going to have a bite of something to
eat, and you're just in time to join me."

The other made no audible reply, and shuffled so feebly with his feet
that Marriott took his arm by way of support. He noticed for the first
time that the clothes hung on him with pitiful looseness. The broad
frame was literally hardly more than a frame. He was as thin as a
skeleton. But, as he touched him, the sensation of faintness and dread
returned. It only lasted a moment, and then passed off, and he ascribed
it not unnaturally to the distress and shock of seeing a former friend
in such a pitiful plight.

"Better let me guide you. It's shamefully dark--this hall. I'm always
complaining," he said lightly, recognising by the weight upon his arm
that the guidance was sorely needed, "but the old cat never does
anything except promise." He led him to the sofa, wondering all the time
where he had come from and how he had found out the address. It must be
at least seven years since those days at the private school when they
used to be such close friends.

"Now, if you'll forgive me for a minute," he said, "I'll get supper
ready--such as it is. And don't bother to talk. Just take it easy on the
sofa. I see you're dead tired. You can tell me about it afterwards, and
we'll make plans."

The other sat down on the edge of the sofa and stared in silence, while
Marriott got out the brown loaf, scones, and huge pot of marmalade that
Edinburgh students always keep in their cupboards. His eyes shone with a
brightness that suggested drugs, Marriott thought, stealing a glance at
him from behind the cupboard door. He did not like yet to take a full
square look. The fellow was in a bad way, and it would have been so like
an examination to stare and wait for explanations. Besides, he was
evidently almost too exhausted to speak. So, for reasons of
delicacy--and for another reason as well which he could not exactly
formulate to himself--he let his visitor rest apparently unnoticed,
while he busied himself with the supper. He lit the spirit lamp to make
cocoa, and when the water was boiling he drew up the table with the good
things to the sofa, so that Field need not have even the trouble of
moving to a chair.

"Now, let's tuck in," he said, "and afterwards we'll have a pipe and a
chat. I'm reading for an exam, you know, and I always have something
about this time. It's jolly to have a companion."

He looked up and caught his guest's eyes directed straight upon his own.
An involuntary shudder ran through him from head to foot. The face
opposite him was deadly white and wore a dreadful expression of pain and
mental suffering.

"By Gad!" he said, jumping up, "I quite forgot. I've got some whisky
somewhere. What an ass I am. I never touch it myself when I'm working
like this."

He went to the cupboard and poured out a stiff glass which the other
swallowed at a single gulp and without any water. Marriott watched him
while he drank it, and at the same time noticed something else as
well--Field's coat was all over dust, and on one shoulder was a bit of
cobweb. It was perfectly dry; Field arrived on a soaking wet night
without hat, umbrella, or overcoat, and yet perfectly dry, even dusty.
Therefore he had been under cover. What did it all mean? Had he been
hiding in the building? . . .

It was very strange. Yet he volunteered nothing; and Marriott had pretty
well made up his mind by this time that he would not ask any questions
until he had eaten and slept. Food and sleep were obviously what the
poor devil needed most and first--he was pleased with his powers of
ready diagnosis--and it would not be fair to press him till he had
recovered a bit.

They ate their supper together while the host carried on a running
one-sided conversation, chiefly about himself and his exams and his "old
cat" of a landlady, so that the guest need not utter a single word
unless he really wished to--which he evidently did not! But, while he
toyed with his food, feeling no desire to eat, the other ate
voraciously. To see a hungry man devour cold scones, stale oatcake, and
brown bread laden with marmalade was a revelation to this inexperienced
student who had never known what it was to be without at least three
meals a day. He watched in spite of himself, wondering why the fellow
did not choke in the process.

But Field seemed to be as sleepy as he was hungry. More than once his
head dropped and he ceased to masticate the food in his mouth. Marriott
had positively to shake him before he would go on with his meal. A
stronger emotion will overcome a weaker, but this struggle between the
sting of real hunger and the magical opiate of overpowering sleep was a
curious sight to the student, who watched it with mingled astonishment
and alarm. He had heard of the pleasure it was to feed hungry men, and
watch them eat, but he had never actually witnessed it, and he had no
idea it was like this. Field ate like an animal--gobbled, stuffed,
gorged. Marriott forgot his reading, and began to feel something very
much like a lump in his throat.

"Afraid there's been awfully little to offer you, old man," he managed
to blurt out when at length the last scone had disappeared, and the
rapid, one-sided meal was at an end. Field still made no reply, for he
was almost asleep in his seat. He merely looked up wearily and
gratefully.

"Now you must have some sleep, you know," he continued, "or you'll go to
pieces. I shall be up all night reading for this blessed exam. You're
more than welcome to my bed. To-morrow we'll have a late breakfast
and--and see what can be done--and make plans--I'm awfully good at
making plans, you know," he added with an attempt at lightness.

Field maintained his "dead sleepy" silence, but appeared to acquiesce,
and the other led the way into the bedroom, apologising as he did so to
this half-starved son of a baronet--whose own home was almost a
palace--for the size of the room. The weary guest, however, made no
pretence of thanks or politeness. He merely steadied himself on his
friend's arm as he staggered across the room, and then, with all his
clothes on, dropped his exhausted body on the bed. In less than a minute
he was to all appearances sound asleep.

For several minutes Marriott stood in the open door and watched him;
praying devoutly that he might never find himself in a like predicament,
and then fell to wondering what he would do with his unbidden guest on
the morrow. But he did not stop long to think, for the call of his books
was imperative, and happen what might, he must see to it that he passed
that examination.

Having again locked the door into the hall, he sat down to his books and
resumed his notes on _materia medica_ where he had left off when the
bell rang. But it was difficult for some time to concentrate his mind on
the subject. His thoughts kept wandering to the picture of that
white-faced, strange-eyed fellow, starved and dirty, lying in his
clothes and boots on the bed. He recalled their schooldays together
before they had drifted apart, and how they had vowed eternal
friendship--and all the rest of it. And now! What horrible straits to be
in. How could any man let the love of dissipation take such hold upon
him?

But one of their vows together Marriott, it seemed, had completely
forgotten. Just now, at any rate, it lay too far in the background of
his memory to be recalled.

Through the half-open door--the bedroom led out of the sitting-room and
had no other door--came the sound of deep, long-drawn breathing, the
regular, steady breathing of a tired man, so tired that, even to listen
to it made Marriott almost want to go to sleep himself.

"He needed it," reflected the student, "and perhaps it came only just in
time!"

Perhaps so; for outside the bitter wind from across the Forth howled
cruelly and drove the rain in cold streams against the window-panes, and
down the deserted streets. Long before Marriott settled down again
properly to his reading, he heard distantly, as it were, through the
sentences of the book, the heavy, deep breathing of the sleeper in the
next room.

A couple of hours later, when he yawned and changed his books, he still
heard the breathing, and went cautiously up to the door to look round.

At first the darkness of the room must have deceived him, or else his
eyes were confused and dazzled by the recent glare of the reading lamp.
For a minute or two he could make out nothing at all but dark lumps of
furniture, the mass of the chest of drawers by the wall, and the white
patch where his bath stood in the centre of the floor.

Then the bed came slowly into view. And on it he saw the outline of the
sleeping body gradually take shape before his eyes, growing up strangely
into the darkness, till it stood out in marked relief--the long black
form against the white counterpane.

He could hardly help smiling. Field had not moved an inch. He watched
him a moment or two and then returned to his books. The night was full
of the singing voices of the wind and rain. There was no sound of
traffic; no hansoms clattered over the cobbles, and it was still too
early for the milk carts. He worked on steadily and conscientiously,
only stopping now and again to change a book, or to sip some of the
poisonous stuff that kept him awake and made his brain so active, and on
these occasions Field's breathing was always distinctly audible in the
room. Outside, the storm continued to howl, but inside the house all was
stillness. The shade of the reading lamp threw all the light upon the
littered table, leaving the other end of the room in comparative
darkness. The bedroom door was exactly opposite him where he sat. There
was nothing to disturb the worker, nothing but an occasional rush of
wind against the windows, and a slight pain in his arm.

This pain, however, which he was unable to account for, grew once or
twice very acute. It bothered him; and he tried to remember how, and
when, he could have bruised himself so severely, but without success.

At length the page before him turned from yellow to grey, and there were
sounds of wheels in the street below. It was four o'clock. Marriott
leaned back and yawned prodigiously. Then he drew back the curtains. The
storm had subsided and the Castle Rock was shrouded in mist. With
another yawn he turned away from the dreary outlook and prepared to
sleep the remaining four hours till breakfast on the sofa. Field was
still breathing heavily in the next room, and he first tip-toed across
the floor to take another look at him.

Peering cautiously round the half-opened door his first glance fell upon
the bed now plainly discernible in the grey light of morning. He stared
hard. Then he rubbed his eyes. Then he rubbed his eyes again and thrust
his head farther round the edge of the door. With fixed eyes he stared
harder still, and harder.

But it made no difference at all. He was staring into an empty room.

The sensation of fear he had felt when Field first appeared upon the
scene returned suddenly, but with much greater force. He became
conscious, too, that his left arm was throbbing violently and causing
him great pain. He stood wondering, and staring, and trying to collect
his thoughts. He was trembling from head to foot.

By a great effort of the will he left the support of the door and walked
forward boldly into the room.

There, upon the bed, was the impress of a body, where Field had lain and
slept. There was the mark of the head on the pillow, and the slight
indentation at the foot of the bed where the boots had rested on the
counterpane. And there, plainer than ever--for he was closer to it--was
_the breathing_!

Marriott tried to pull himself together. With a great effort he found
his voice and called his friend aloud by name!

"Field! Is that you? Where are you?"

There was no reply; but the breathing continued without interruption,
coming directly from the bed. His voice had such an unfamiliar sound
that Marriott did not care to repeat his questions, but he went down on
his knees and examined the bed above and below, pulling the mattress off
finally, and taking the coverings away separately one by one. But
though the sounds continued there was no visible sign of Field, nor was
there any space in which a human being, however small, could have
concealed itself. He pulled the bed out from the wall, but the sound
_stayed where it was_. It did not move with the bed.

Marriott, finding self-control a little difficult in his weary
condition, at once set about a thorough search of the room. He went
through the cupboard, the chest of drawers, the little alcove where the
clothes hung--everything. But there was no sign of anyone. The small
window near the ceiling was closed; and, anyhow, was not large enough to
let a cat pass. The sitting-room door was locked on the inside; he could
not have got out that way. Curious thoughts began to trouble Marriott's
mind, bringing in their train unwelcome sensations. He grew more and
more excited; he searched the bed again till it resembled the scene of a
pillow fight; he searched both rooms, knowing all the time it was
useless,--and then he searched again. A cold perspiration broke out all
over his body; and the sound of heavy breathing, all this time, never
ceased to come from the corner where Field had lain down to sleep.

Then he tried something else. He pushed the bed back exactly into its
original position--and himself lay down upon it just where his guest had
lain. But the same instant he sprang up again in a single bound. The
breathing was close beside him, almost on his cheek, and between him and
the wall! Not even a child could have squeezed into the space.

He went back into his sitting-room, opened the windows, welcoming all
the light and air possible, and tried to think the whole matter over
quietly and clearly. Men who read too hard, and slept too little, he
knew were sometimes troubled with very vivid hallucinations. Again he
calmly reviewed every incident of the night; his accurate sensations;
the vivid details; the emotions stirred in him; the dreadful feast--no
single hallucination could ever combine all these and cover so long a
period of time. But with less satisfaction he thought of the recurring
faintness, and curious sense of horror that had once or twice come over
him, and then of the violent pains in his arm. These were quite
unaccountable.

Moreover, now that he began to analyse and examine, there was one other
thing that fell upon him like a sudden revelation: _During the whole
time Field had not actually uttered a single word!_ Yet, as though in
mockery upon his reflections, there came ever from that inner room the
sound of the breathing, long-drawn, deep, and regular. The thing was
incredible. It was absurd.

Haunted by visions of brain fever and insanity, Marriott put on his cap
and macintosh and left the house. The morning air on Arthur's Seat would
blow the cobwebs from his brain; the scent of the heather, and above
all, the sight of the sea. He roamed over the wet slopes above Holyrood
for a couple of hours, and did not return until the exercise had shaken
some of the horror out of his bones, and given him a ravening appetite
into the bargain.

As he entered he saw that there was another man in the room, standing
against the window with his back to the light. He recognised his
fellow-student Greene, who was reading for the same examination.

"Read hard all night, Marriott," he said, "and thought I'd drop in here
to compare notes and have some breakfast. You're out early?" he added,
by way of a question. Marriott said he had a headache and a walk had
helped it, and Greene nodded and said "Ah!" But when the girl had set
the steaming porridge on the table and gone out again, he went on with
rather a forced tone, "Didn't know you had any friends who drank,
Marriott?"

This was obviously tentative, and Marriott replied drily that he did not
know it either.

"Sounds just as if some chap were 'sleeping it off' in there, doesn't
it, though?" persisted the other, with a nod in the direction of the
bedroom, and looking curiously at his friend. The two men stared
steadily at each other for several seconds, and then Marriott said
earnestly--

"Then you hear it too, thank God!"

"Of course I hear it. The door's open. Sorry if I wasn't meant to."

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Marriott, lowering his voice. "But I'm
awfully relieved. Let me explain. Of course, if you hear it too, then
it's all right; but really it frightened me more than I can tell you. I
thought I was going to have brain fever, or something, and you know what
a lot depends on this exam. It always begins with sounds, or visions, or
some sort of beastly hallucination, and I--"

"Rot!" ejaculated the other impatiently. "What _are_ you talking about?"

"Now, listen to me, Greene," said Marriott, as calmly as he could, for
the breathing was still plainly audible, "and I'll tell you what I
mean, only don't interrupt." And thereupon he related exactly what had
happened during the night, telling everything, even down to the pain in
his arm. When it was over he got up from the table and crossed the room.

"You hear the breathing now plainly, don't you?" he said. Greene said he
did. "Well, come with me, and we'll search the room together." The
other, however, did not move from his chair.

"I've been in already," he said sheepishly; "I heard the sounds and
thought it was you. The door was ajar--so I went in."

Marriott made no comment, but pushed the door open as wide as it would
go. As it opened, the sound of breathing grew more and more distinct.

"_Someone_ must be in there," said Greene under his breath.

"_Someone_ is in there, but _where_?" said Marriott. Again he urged his
friend to go in with him. But Greene refused point-blank; said he had
been in once and had searched the room and there was nothing there. He
would not go in again for a good deal.

They shut the door and retired into the other room to talk it all over
with many pipes. Greene questioned his friend very closely, but without
illuminating result, since questions cannot alter facts.

"The only thing that ought to have a proper, a logical, explanation is
the pain in my arm," said Marriott, rubbing that member with an attempt
at a smile. "It hurts so infernally and aches all the way up. I can't
remember bruising it, though."

"Let me examine it for you," said Greene. "I'm awfully good at bones in
spite of the examiners' opinion to the contrary." It was a relief to
play the fool a bit, and Marriott took his coat off and rolled up his
sleeve.

"By George, though, I'm bleeding!" he exclaimed. "Look here! What on
earth's this?"

On the forearm, quite close to the wrist, was a thin red line. There was
a tiny drop of apparently fresh blood on it. Greene came over and looked
closely at it for some minutes. Then he sat back in his chair, looking
curiously at his friend's face.

"You've scratched yourself without knowing it," he said presently.

"There's no sign of a bruise. It must be something else that made the
arm ache."

Marriott sat very still, staring silently at his arm as though the
solution of the whole mystery lay there actually written upon the skin.

"What's the matter? I see nothing very strange about a scratch," said
Greene, in an unconvincing sort of voice. "It was your cuff links
probably. Last night in your excitement--"

But Marriott, white to the very lips, was trying to speak. The sweat
stood in great beads on his forehead. At last he leaned forward close to
his friend's face.

"Look," he said, in a low voice that shook a little. "Do you see that
red mark? I mean _underneath_ what you call the scratch?"

Greene admitted he saw something or other, and Marriott wiped the place
clean with his handkerchief and told him to look again more closely.

"Yes, I see," returned the other, lifting his head after a moment's
careful inspection. "It looks like an old scar."

"It _is_ an old scar," whispered Marriott, his lips trembling. "_Now_ it
all comes back to me."

"All what?" Greene fidgeted on his chair. He tried to laugh, but without
success. His friend seemed bordering on collapse.

"Hush! Be quiet, and--I'll tell you," he said. "_Field made that scar._"

For a whole minute the two men looked each other full in the face
without speaking.

"Field made that scar!" repeated Marriott at length in a louder voice.

"Field! You mean--last night?"

"No, not last night. Years ago--at school, with his knife. And I made a
scar in his arm with mine." Marriott was talking rapidly now.

"We exchanged drops of blood in each other's cuts. He put a drop into my
arm and I put one into his--"

"In the name of heaven, what for?"

"It was a boys' compact. We made a sacred pledge, a bargain. I remember
it all perfectly now. We had been reading some dreadful book and we
swore to appear to one another--I mean, whoever died first swore to show
himself to the other. And we sealed the compact with each other's blood.
I remember it all so well--the hot summer afternoon in the playground,
seven years ago--and one of the masters caught us and confiscated the
knives--and I have never thought of it again to this day--"

"And you mean--" stammered Greene.

But Marriott made no answer. He got up and crossed the room and lay down
wearily upon the sofa, hiding his face in his hands.

Greene himself was a bit non-plussed. He left his friend alone for a
little while, thinking it all over again. Suddenly an idea seemed to
strike him. He went over to where Marriott still lay motionless on the
sofa and roused him. In any case it was better to face the matter,
whether there was an explanation or not. Giving in was always the silly
exit.

"I say, Marriott," he began, as the other turned his white face up to
him. "There's no good being so upset about it. I mean--if it's all an
hallucination we know what to do. And if it isn't--well, we know what to
think, don't we?"

"I suppose so. But it frightens me horribly for some reason," returned
his friend in a hushed voice. "And that poor devil--"

"But, after all, if the worst is true and--and that chap _has_ kept his
promise--well, he has, that's all, isn't it?"

Marriott nodded.

"There's only one thing that occurs to me," Greene went on, "and that
is, are you quite sure that--that he really ate like that--I mean that
he actually _ate anything at all_?" he finished, blurting out all his
thought.

Marriott stared at him for a moment and then said he could easily make
certain. He spoke quietly. After the main shock no lesser surprise could
affect him.

"I put the things away myself," he said, "after we had finished. They
are on the third shelf in that cupboard. No one's touched 'em since."

He pointed without getting up, and Greene took the hint and went over to
look.

"Exactly," he said, after a brief examination; "just as I thought. It
was partly hallucination, at any rate. The things haven't been touched.
Come and see for yourself."

Together they examined the shelf. There was the brown loaf, the plate of
stale scones, the oatcake, all untouched. Even the glass of whisky
Marriott had poured out stood there with the whisky still in it.

"You were feeding--no one," said Greene "Field ate and drank nothing. He
was not there at all!"

"But the breathing?" urged the other in a low voice, staring with a
dazed expression on his face.

Greene did not answer. He walked over to the bedroom, while Marriott
followed him with his eyes. He opened the door, and listened. There was
no need for words. The sound of deep, regular breathing came floating
through the air. There was no hallucination about that, at any rate.
Marriott could hear it where he stood on the other side of the room.

Greene closed the door and came back. "There's only one thing to do," he
declared with decision. "Write home and find out about him, and
meanwhile come and finish your reading in my rooms. I've got an extra
bed."

"Agreed," returned the Fourth Year Man; "there's no hallucination about
that exam; I must pass that whatever happens."

And this was what they did.

It was about a week later when Marriott got the answer from his sister.
Part of it he read out to Greene--

"It is curious," she wrote, "that in your letter you should have
enquired after Field. It seems a terrible thing, but you know only a
short while ago Sir John's patience became exhausted, and he turned him
out of the house, they say without a penny. Well, what do you think? He
has killed himself. At least, it looks like suicide. Instead of leaving
the house, he went down into the cellar and simply starved himself to
death. . . . They're trying to suppress it, of course, but I heard it all
from my maid, who got it from their footman. . . . They found the body on
the 14th and the doctor said he had died about twelve hours before. . . .
He was dreadfully thin. . . ."

"Then he died on the 13th," said Greene.

Marriott nodded.

"That's the very night he came to see you."

Marriott nodded again.